I didn’t know the patriarchal system had reins. Now I’m picturing six old white guys yoked to a cart and being whipped up to speed by a young hoiden. Reins in one hand and whip in the other, glasses slightly askew as the wind whips through her hair, she bears a remarkable resemblance to Joyce.
Joyce is now following one of the first pieces of advice my parents gave me about dating: Never date a hardcore christian, they’re gonna try and convert you.
Good luck. Best bet is to keep it short, or even draft it based on the day before’s comic and hope it remains relevant. Then just copy-paste-and-submit.
But a better approach is to just submit and accept that you can’t bend time.
Not having played any Mario-related game for many years, I was more than unfamiliar with the term “framerule”. In fact, I thought I was seeing a word pronounced as “framma-rool”, thinking it was refetencing something biblical.
Yeah, the likely result of that is he murders a trans girl and the court lets him off because he panicked when he found out she was trans. So lets NOT try that.
And even if it didn’t hold– at least not enough to let him fully get away with it– we’re still left with a dead trans woman. Fir what?
It kinda feels like when people wish gay kids on homophobes. Queer people don’t exist because you want others to learn a lesson. A person shouldn’t have to suffer a transphobic/homophobic living environment or physical violence so that maybe someone will stop saying slurs.
Absolutely.
It’s really more “one day you might find out how many people you love that you estranged from yourself, if you have any kind of self-comprehension or insight.”
But not a great experience for anyone.
The really odd thing is, he goes out of his way to find the stuff that’s not just fetish-tag material. The stuff that’s by transfolk, for transfolk and costs Real Money™ to even access.
(Sure, he would still absolutely get into her pants but he’d keep spouting indulgent Bible-sounding aphorisms all the way up to the touching of bits. Then, right after he’d guilt her for “tempting” him and try to manipulate her into being his submissive sex pet Christian wife.)
Maybe. Not all the godly types actually want to marry every girl they talk into bed. He could also just blame her for being a slut and refuse to marry anyone that easy.
Weird, I read it as a ‘yeah he’s problematic… but why do I still find him attractive?’ Along with the previous panel where she’s goes into panicked defensive mode.
TL;DR He’s implying that Joyce’s erm, ladies region, is now closed for business, in the context of any attraction she may have had for Tristan is gone. “The blinds are closed, nobody is home.”
She got a crush on him just because she heard another girl claiming he had a crush on her. Which was never substantiated by any discernible fact, but she still went full on stalker mode on him and thinking they’d be together in the future.
Her excessive denial is like a reflex. In that last panel, she is realizing that in this case, it has actually become true. The alt-text is basically the author’s confirmation that yep, she is completely over him.
She has kind of realized she had built her childhood crush upon some dreamed up version of Tristan and that she never actually knew who he really was. Now her illusions are getting dispelled.
Maybe, but it’d probably just push him to make the occasional blandly pro-christian-but-not-really-offensive-to-anyone post, and just be quiet on social media in general.
He came from a fundamentalist background, and when he left home he made that his identity. I don’t think you have to come up with a reason why he’s not following the pretty common trajectory he appears to be.
Men may cry out, DOCUMENT, THE WORD and SPREADSHEET, THE EXCELL, but I say unto you. THE OPENOFFICE, and lo, not only is it free, but all thine bases are covered.
i wonder if his parents are encouraged so he doesn’t get targeted for being jewish (since it’s established that his last name is jewish? even if his family doesn’t particularly follow that faith)
That was my first thought, but the antivax, ‘globalist’ conspiracy theory bs we saw yesterday doesn’t fit it either. If it was performative to keep the folks back home off his back then he’d be looking for the most inoffensive to normal people options to post.
Joyce has become so secular that the most phoney evangelicals who don’t believe a word they preach seem like the most over the top bible thumpers to her.
Have you heard The Word!? Cuz I was under the impression that everyone had heard.
AH-WELL-A BIRD BIRD BIRD. B-BIRD’S THE WORD A WELL A BIRD BIRD BIRD. B-BIRD’S THE WORD.
DON’T YOU KNOW ABOUT THE BIRD?
EVERYONE KNOWS THAT THE BIRD IS THE WORD.
BIRD, BIRD, B-BIRD’S THE WORD A WELL-A BIRD. BIRD. B-BIRD’S THE WORD.
My suitemate was a pastor’s son, and he didn’t say things like that. He said he thought his father was probably an atheist too, but hid it because he thought a lot of people got comfort from religion.
You all laugh but the number of people I see on social media responding to a celebrity call out post going ‘I don’t care if he’s problematic I still love him!’…
It’s weird seeing how I’ve changed since high school.
It used to be just… how not awkward I was becoming. But it’s interesting to see myself change.
And to see all of the people I grew up with and never clicked with… they’re becoming adults too. Some I DEFINITELY don’t want to associate with for a couple reasons, but others becoming… an odd kind of different too.
Life really pulls us so many different ways, and it tends to hit different.
I sometimes wonder if anyone I knew in kindergarten has died and I’ve never known.
I don’t think we’ve seen Joyce’s desk from this angle before today/yesterday. Or it’s been a very long time, I skimmed the Joyce tag going back to the start of this semester. Can anyone make out the drawing or photo that’s behind her?
Girl, I learned more than ten years ago: never peek at what the former Halfass Teen Rebel’s growing up to. This world has many Tristans, some tragic, most douche. Go climb the tallest and hairiest man you know, maybe have a gender crisis, an orientation crisis, just a crisis about the strap idk. Buy a handheld massager. The world is your oyster and oh god sharp shell edges sharp shell edges
was he that rebellious? well, other than by christian/joyce’s standards of ‘hanging out’ with that girl, he just seemed like a regular teen girl, tho in a small religious community like joyce’s you either escape or are beaten into submission.
But that’s his own issue and hopefully we don’t have to watch a whole arc of “i can fix him/save him” or so (versus maybe even becky meeting him and bonding to see how it is with someone that’s religious AND queer)
I don’t think he was rebelling much at all, nah, ‘Halfass’. Just thinking of the extreme double standard I’ve known several to grow up with involving dating.
Some realistic fears in some fundie contexts can involve full excommunication from the only social circles you’re allowed physical access to, institutionalization, and homelessness. There’s also an extent of steeping in effectual constant sexual threat for some people, which is part of why Joyce is so fucking neurotic.
Tristan’s the demographic it’s built for, which is why he got to be indifferent at an entirely legally vulnerable age, and still gets the advantages now. It’s a destructive situation for him, too, yeah, but the broad strokes have been choking-on-spit hilarity one-to-one with the people who fucked around as they liked and believe in God-Given Spouse And Child Ownership now. I’m not sure that doesn’t fit this comic’s humor, especially as a kind of passing foil.
I know it’s probably too late for a response, but what does “the broad strokes have been choking-on-spit hilarity one-to-one with the people who fucked around as they liked and believe in God-Given Spouse And Child Ownership now” mean? At first parse it means ” It’s basically funny compared with the people who fucked around as kids but now believe in their piece of the patriarchy,” but then you’re calling Tristan a joke compared to Tristan? So I get the sense that you’re so angry, perhaps remembering your fear of homelessness or institutionalization should you fail purity, that you described your target twice. You compared how sure he was damaged by his childhood, with the damage he continues meting out. Is it the damage that you’re comparing? It’s a joke how damaged he is, compared to how much an AFAB person would get damaged? Or someone who doesn’t see much appeal of sexing a wife?
I guess I’m just commenting to sort through what you typed as much as to ask. I know a comment section is low stakes and you don’t need to copy edit for me. But if you’re writing for others, be it work or zines for your local rainbow club or a blog, consider breaking up your long sentences and avoiding mixed metaphors. Stream of consciousness does not work well without a face to get cues from. (Or if you’re going for a style wherein making the audience work is the goal, that’s something you could add more of like happy noodle boy)
ANYWAY thank you for the engaging reply and big handshake on the not wanting or seeing an “I can fix him” arc from this, albeit I tend to roll with whatever DoA does and go “yeah okay right on”.
Gotta get that godliness in you. Get it right up in there. Not just the tip of god, you need Jesus balls deep in you. So much godliness just filling you all the way. A full Christian cream pie.
Tristan is reminding me of a loot of Christian vloggers who made being Christian their whole personality – online that is. I wonder what we will find out about what hides behind this façade.
If he was secretly cool I reckon he’d lay off the redefining women thing and vaccines at the very least
Secretly uncool in a different way, very possible
Had the opposite kind of experience with a buddy from Middle School. Back then he was one of those very religious and saintly kids who wanted to become a priest. Years later at a best friend’s wedding he came up in a conversation and turns out he started partying Hard afterwards. Couple years more and I heard he got into a car accident, supposedly while drunk.
I guess if I donate $25 to donors choose for lgbt positive stuff every time I see something anti-trans I should do that even if it’s from a character in a comic. I wonder if the state of Connecticut still has those matches.
It feels like the fear of regressing. Of knowing what you used to be and knowing that, even if you don’t see it from here, there will always be a way back to… that.
Ah a fresh immigrant then, I wonder how did he get involved with Brows and the whole Fundie thing. We do have some Jehovah’s Witnesses here but most people are Catholic. Maybe it was the only Christian community available?
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true. Or is it something worse.
This extends beyond Tristan. This is her mother, brother and most of her childhood. It’s looking into a future that she could have lived in. And rejecting it all. A confirmation of the haphazard changes that she’s been going through. She knows the path she’s on now and isn’t going back.
Is Tristan the same age as Joyce, and now also a freshman in college? I assumed he was maybe a year or two older because he sorta looks that way in the flashbacks. Maybe we’ll find out.
Hang on though. It’s just occurred to me that it was previously implied that this is pretty much what Joyce’s Buddy In Atheism Liz’s Facebook looks like. I’m not saying Tristram is also maintining a facade of being Very Christian so his parent’s don’t flip, but it’s a possibility.
Ten bucks says he attended a christian youth retreat a couple weeks ago, and is still riding the endorphin high those retreats are engineered to create. I was always the least religious of my siblings, but I was always the loudest during worship service and wearing the “christ is cool” shirts to school, after one of those retreats.
One time when I was a freshman in high school, a girl in my Spanish class invited me to her youth group, and I desperately needed friends, so I seriously considered going, but at the same time thought, “Okay, this might turn out to be a cult, so I should get some pepper spray to take with me just in case,” and then my mom wouldn’t let me get pepper spray, so I ended up not going.
“…sholes”?
come to think of it, I remember a classmate who did KIND of this, but something more of a progressive→regressive conversion
aw, that’s not fair—maybe it was just taking the reins of the patriarchal system that suppresses far too many women and minorities, idk
I didn’t know the patriarchal system had reins. Now I’m picturing six old white guys yoked to a cart and being whipped up to speed by a young hoiden. Reins in one hand and whip in the other, glasses slightly askew as the wind whips through her hair, she bears a remarkable resemblance to Joyce.
I’m sure there are people with that fetish.
WElcome to the Internet.
The wordbreak doesn’t fit FB formatting. It never hyphenates a word, just leaves a gap and skips to the next line.
Joyce is now following one of the first pieces of advice my parents gave me about dating: Never date a hardcore christian, they’re gonna try and convert you.
I’m sorry if my comments aren’t the best I’m trying to comment before Ana Chronistic and honestly it’s like trying to shave a framerule
Good luck. Best bet is to keep it short, or even draft it based on the day before’s comic and hope it remains relevant. Then just copy-paste-and-submit.
But a better approach is to just submit and accept that you can’t bend time.
Get Patreon and write your comment based on that.
Joke’s on you I’m a broke high school student
That’s how people go crazy – trying to beat Ana to the first comment.
And even if you are first you’ll know that Ana let you post first out of pity.
Joke’s on you, I’m already crazy, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken this on
I must admit, that’s a fair point.
Post, post, post
As fast as you dare,
But you’ll always find Ana
Is already there.
Burma-Shave
I wish I could upvote your rhyme.
Not having played any Mario-related game for many years, I was more than unfamiliar with the term “framerule”. In fact, I thought I was seeing a word pronounced as “framma-rool”, thinking it was refetencing something biblical.
Shows what I know…
Being “first” to comment on an Internet thing is not (and has never been, and never will be) important.
Pretty sure if Joyce messaged him asking to hook up, he’d be considerably less godly.
Indeed, these types are the biggest hypocrites.
👍can confirm.
Still wouldn’t recommend it, but yeah.
As long as he gets to define her.
we need someone to catfish him and get him to fall for a trans girl to change his ways
Yeah, the likely result of that is he murders a trans girl and the court lets him off because he panicked when he found out she was trans. So lets NOT try that.
Yep, gay or trans panic is still a legal defense in 31 states.
And even if it didn’t hold– at least not enough to let him fully get away with it– we’re still left with a dead trans woman. Fir what?
It kinda feels like when people wish gay kids on homophobes. Queer people don’t exist because you want others to learn a lesson. A person shouldn’t have to suffer a transphobic/homophobic living environment or physical violence so that maybe someone will stop saying slurs.
Absolutely.
It’s really more “one day you might find out how many people you love that you estranged from yourself, if you have any kind of self-comprehension or insight.”
But not a great experience for anyone.
Marginalized children are not an ironic punishment.
Nah he definitely already secretly watches trans porn and then spews vitriol to “””repent”””
The really odd thing is, he goes out of his way to find the stuff that’s not just fetish-tag material. The stuff that’s by transfolk, for transfolk and costs Real Money™ to even access.
Yeah we don’t put trans people in danger to try and “fix” shitty people who don’t want to get better.
Why would you ever want to inflict that on a trans woman?
People who are so performative about their faith are very rarely sincere about it.
You are mistaken, he’d still be godly.
(Sure, he would still absolutely get into her pants but he’d keep spouting indulgent Bible-sounding aphorisms all the way up to the touching of bits. Then, right after he’d guilt her for “tempting” him and try to manipulate her into being his submissive
sex petChristian wife.)Ughh, most certainly digging up gash face trauma.
Maybe. Not all the godly types actually want to marry every girl they talk into bed. He could also just blame her for being a slut and refuse to marry anyone that easy.
So what are the odds this ends with Joyce accidently “liking” a post and having to deal with the consequences of that
would it be better or worse if she reacts with the angry face emote.
Worse, the angry reaction is weighted 3 times more than a “like” on FB’s algorithm.
hey, everybody is here for chaos
You know what that is?
G R O W T H
It’s bittersweet, being able to admit to liking him, but also when that attraction is permanently gone.
Doesn’t seem like it’s permanently gone, going by the last panel.
That’s the panel that looks like she realized it’s permanently gone.
Weird, I read it as a ‘yeah he’s problematic… but why do I still find him attractive?’ Along with the previous panel where she’s goes into panicked defensive mode.
I wonder if that’s more like, letting go of one of the very last shreds of a world that was simpler.
I saw it more as “Wait, have *I* changed that much?”
Sometimes your self image isn’t in synch with who you’ve become.
The alt text
I never expected an alt text like that in reference to Joyce
Could you explain the Alt text to me? Sometimes is difficult to understand what Willis writes.
TL;DR He’s implying that Joyce’s erm, ladies region, is now closed for business, in the context of any attraction she may have had for Tristan is gone. “The blinds are closed, nobody is home.”
Which is odd, because she’s saying the same kinds of thing she said when denying her attraction to Joe (or even to Jacob).
Our minds have motives that our self models know naught of.
Humans are complicated.
You mean panel four? Yep. She’s also said the same kind of thing when denying her attraction to Tristran.
Panel 5 is her realising “Oh, wait, that’s true now.”
She got a crush on him just because she heard another girl claiming he had a crush on her. Which was never substantiated by any discernible fact, but she still went full on stalker mode on him and thinking they’d be together in the future.
Her excessive denial is like a reflex. In that last panel, she is realizing that in this case, it has actually become true. The alt-text is basically the author’s confirmation that yep, she is completely over him.
She has kind of realized she had built her childhood crush upon some dreamed up version of Tristan and that she never actually knew who he really was. Now her illusions are getting dispelled.
How much of his tuition is coming from his church? That might have an effect on his social media presence
Maybe, but it’d probably just push him to make the occasional blandly pro-christian-but-not-really-offensive-to-anyone post, and just be quiet on social media in general.
He came from a fundamentalist background, and when he left home he made that his identity. I don’t think you have to come up with a reason why he’s not following the pretty common trajectory he appears to be.
I think someone suggested Mary actually is way more Far Right than her parents.
You can never go home again.
I mean, she really can’t once her mom sells the place, but-
Tristan has THE WORD backed up in him, avoiding taking hold of those worldly vices.
Tristan needs more fibre in his diet.
This is what happens when you don’t get enough fiber.
LOL i wonder what kinda worldly vices are tempting him…if he’s not just passive aggressively/vagueposting about someone he sees ‘sinning’
Not to get Gnostic, but THE WORD is an Emanation.
I prefer THE EXCEL.
I’m too cheap for that – I use THE OPEN OFFICE.
Just as salvationy, but free!
My compy is too weak for that, I use the LIBRE OFFICE
Men may cry out, DOCUMENT, THE WORD and SPREADSHEET, THE EXCELL, but I say unto you. THE OPENOFFICE, and lo, not only is it free, but all thine bases are covered.
Makes note to self to refresh page before answering a comment.
Promptly loses note.
I am a fundamentalist; I far prefer THE NOTEPAD
–Dave, *krakaTHOOM*
Yea, the Notepad has offered salvation on many occasions.
I wonder how much of Tristan is conversion versus just adopting fundamentalist performatively.
Which we’ve discovered is very massive but also pursued by many completely lacking in self-awareness.
Sarah’s sister, at least, isn’t a bigot and is aware of her own false identity.
i wonder if his parents are encouraged so he doesn’t get targeted for being jewish (since it’s established that his last name is jewish? even if his family doesn’t particularly follow that faith)
His last name isn’t Jewish, it’s Polish, and there’ve been plenty of reasons why non-Jew Poles want to leave
Maybe he’s a normal teenager going to parties, and he just posted this stuff to keep his parents off his back.
The redefining a woman part doesn’t really fit with that, though.
Lots of normal teenagers are sexists douches.
That was my first thought, but the antivax, ‘globalist’ conspiracy theory bs we saw yesterday doesn’t fit it either. If it was performative to keep the folks back home off his back then he’d be looking for the most inoffensive to normal people options to post.
Yeah, we’d be seeing the “Isn’t God wonderful” stuff, but not so much the antivax and transphobic stuff.
It was a nice thought, but each strip makes modern Tristan look worse and worse.
Is it really a lie if it ends up being true? Isn’t that more like a promise or something?
Joyce has become so secular that the most phoney evangelicals who don’t believe a word they preach seem like the most over the top bible thumpers to her.
It’s not like there is much difference.
How much they actually believe doesn’t have anything to do with how over the top they preach.
And whether he believes it on not, Tristan isn’t just mouthing vague Christian platitudes, but anti-vax and transphobic stuff as well.
Have you heard The Word!? Cuz I was under the impression that everyone had heard.
AH-WELL-A BIRD BIRD BIRD. B-BIRD’S THE WORD A WELL A BIRD BIRD BIRD. B-BIRD’S THE WORD.
DON’T YOU KNOW ABOUT THE BIRD?
EVERYONE KNOWS THAT THE BIRD IS THE WORD.
BIRD, BIRD, B-BIRD’S THE WORD A WELL-A BIRD. BIRD. B-BIRD’S THE WORD.
I can only say: oo mow mow, papa oo mow mow.
Easy for you to say.
If I had it to do over again, I’d have formatted it like legit conversation, e.g.: “Oo mow mow, papa. Oo. Mow. Mow.”
Except the lyric is actually “Um mau mau” source I was alive then and listening to AM radio, and also aware of the book Mau-mauing the flack catchers.
And it didn’t take the underscore formatting under the book title.
Was it?
but ting tang, walla – walla bing bang!
Thank you for making me laugh so hard this morning I needed a drink.
This is the “Peter Griffin singing Surfin’ Bird” equivalent to Tristan on social media.
what’s the opposite of a glow up?
Throw up
A Dim Down. Or maybe it was Dim Sum.
Ya Dim Sum ya lose sum.
Damnit, now I’m hungry.
I wish I could teleport you some orange chicken I just made.
Texture is kinda funny ’cause I had to use xanthan gum to thicken it, but it good.
I just misread that as “Xanax gum”….gonna be some very interesting chicken.
A fall off, dude fell off hard
I dont know why Joyce is taking this is a sincere conversion , he could be “pastors son” saying the same things.
Because, as she stated, that used to be her.
It’s like looking at herself 6 months in the past.
I sure hope she has some Pepto-Bismol on hand 👀
My suitemate was a pastor’s son, and he didn’t say things like that. He said he thought his father was probably an atheist too, but hid it because he thought a lot of people got comfort from religion.
You all laugh but the number of people I see on social media responding to a celebrity call out post going ‘I don’t care if he’s problematic I still love him!’…
not in his case. Not even a like he got
Yeah, that’s pretty much right.
It’s weird seeing how I’ve changed since high school.
It used to be just… how not awkward I was becoming. But it’s interesting to see myself change.
And to see all of the people I grew up with and never clicked with… they’re becoming adults too. Some I DEFINITELY don’t want to associate with for a couple reasons, but others becoming… an odd kind of different too.
Life really pulls us so many different ways, and it tends to hit different.
I sometimes wonder if anyone I knew in kindergarten has died and I’ve never known.
Plot twist. Everyone you knew in kindergarten has died and you are the only one surviving.
So far.
Well that was 60 years ago and in a state I can’t get to easily unless Greyhound gets a route to Oahu, so I would have no way of knowing that.
the Internet, being a space existing tangent to reality at every point, has made finding things like this out weirdly easier
I’m still awkward but at least now I’m braver to just GO WITH IT.
My best friend in kindergarten went on to help kill a man and hide his body in a river. Maybe he’s dead too, by now.
I’m reasonably certain that my best friend in first grade did prison time as an adult. In my defense, he was interesting.
Yeah, back then all he cared about was showing off his PS1 games, and then I moved away after 1st grade so we didn’t ever really talk after that.
Nothing like the bitter pill of realizing you-in-the-past would be TOTALLY INTO the dude with the mega-cringe twitter takes.
be interesting to see how easily he’d change his ways if roz seduced him for fun and had another leaked tape
don’t be sad, Joyce. That’s why I never asked to visit any personal Facebook or Twitter from any college
I don’t think we’ve seen Joyce’s desk from this angle before today/yesterday. Or it’s been a very long time, I skimmed the Joyce tag going back to the start of this semester. Can anyone make out the drawing or photo that’s behind her?
It’s furry porn
It looks kinda like Dotty lol
Furry porn of Dotty?
I mean, Walky technically did a furry Dotty in one comic where he drew her as a puppy.
insert “bury the bone” Roomies link here.
It’s a portrait of Sarah. The real Sarah is just off screen.
“We need to stop redefining women! God made us all as tall as we’re supposed to be, and we can’t just be deciding everyone under 5’11” is a woman!”
I mean you could. I have my doubts about how well it would work, but that’s another question.
I used to be just over 5’11” but now I’m much closer to 5’10”. Would that make me trans?
watch as he ends up as an ‘egg’/trans himself or a ‘chaser’
Which “worldly vices” do you think he’s turning to the WORD to resist?
Cock.
That was then, this is now.
CHRIST I got so sick of S. E. Hinton…
Something tells me you’re not referencing Something Happened on the Way to Heaven.
He’s got a stupid nose, Joyce. And who the fuck wears vests all the time?
Oooh ooh I know this one, it’s Joyce! Joyce wears vests all the time 😀
Hey Tris… if I wanna identify as a fucking ’54 Buick, why the fuck do you care?
…cuz it ain’t like you’re getting a ride, either way… –AYYYYYYY
Three ‘fucks’ in two posts; must burn down the Internet and dispose of the witnesses…
I never saw a thing. Honest!
Four fucks in three posts now.
luckily for you that extensive testing has shown the internet to be self-conflagrating
–Dave, fires with cats’ fur, surrounded by cats in flames
I’m sure a lot of people here wouldn’t mind a ride from Joyce. Y’know, if she were about 10 years older.
Dumbing of Age Book 15: His Dumb Stupid Face Is Repellent To Me.
This is the one, folks. Title confirmed. It’s perfect.
would make amusing matching couples tshirts
I was rather liking Dumbing of Age Book 15: … It Must Be Stored Up In You 🤭
Girl, I learned more than ten years ago: never peek at what the former Halfass Teen Rebel’s growing up to. This world has many Tristans, some tragic, most douche. Go climb the tallest and hairiest man you know, maybe have a gender crisis, an orientation crisis, just a crisis about the strap idk. Buy a handheld massager. The world is your oyster and oh god sharp shell edges sharp shell edges
was he that rebellious? well, other than by christian/joyce’s standards of ‘hanging out’ with that girl, he just seemed like a regular teen girl, tho in a small religious community like joyce’s you either escape or are beaten into submission.
But that’s his own issue and hopefully we don’t have to watch a whole arc of “i can fix him/save him” or so (versus maybe even becky meeting him and bonding to see how it is with someone that’s religious AND queer)
I don’t think he was rebelling much at all, nah, ‘Halfass’. Just thinking of the extreme double standard I’ve known several to grow up with involving dating.
Some realistic fears in some fundie contexts can involve full excommunication from the only social circles you’re allowed physical access to, institutionalization, and homelessness. There’s also an extent of steeping in effectual constant sexual threat for some people, which is part of why Joyce is so fucking neurotic.
Tristan’s the demographic it’s built for, which is why he got to be indifferent at an entirely legally vulnerable age, and still gets the advantages now. It’s a destructive situation for him, too, yeah, but the broad strokes have been choking-on-spit hilarity one-to-one with the people who fucked around as they liked and believe in God-Given Spouse And Child Ownership now. I’m not sure that doesn’t fit this comic’s humor, especially as a kind of passing foil.
I know it’s probably too late for a response, but what does “the broad strokes have been choking-on-spit hilarity one-to-one with the people who fucked around as they liked and believe in God-Given Spouse And Child Ownership now” mean? At first parse it means ” It’s basically funny compared with the people who fucked around as kids but now believe in their piece of the patriarchy,” but then you’re calling Tristan a joke compared to Tristan? So I get the sense that you’re so angry, perhaps remembering your fear of homelessness or institutionalization should you fail purity, that you described your target twice. You compared how sure he was damaged by his childhood, with the damage he continues meting out. Is it the damage that you’re comparing? It’s a joke how damaged he is, compared to how much an AFAB person would get damaged? Or someone who doesn’t see much appeal of sexing a wife?
I guess I’m just commenting to sort through what you typed as much as to ask. I know a comment section is low stakes and you don’t need to copy edit for me. But if you’re writing for others, be it work or zines for your local rainbow club or a blog, consider breaking up your long sentences and avoiding mixed metaphors. Stream of consciousness does not work well without a face to get cues from. (Or if you’re going for a style wherein making the audience work is the goal, that’s something you could add more of like happy noodle boy)
ANYWAY thank you for the engaging reply and big handshake on the not wanting or seeing an “I can fix him” arc from this, albeit I tend to roll with whatever DoA does and go “yeah okay right on”.
plot twist: during all this Tristan is climbing the tallest and hairiest man he can find
Yeah.
Gotta get that godliness in you. Get it right up in there. Not just the tip of god, you need Jesus balls deep in you. So much godliness just filling you all the way. A full Christian cream pie.
Oh man all this time I thought spit-takes were an urban myth. And then I choked on my breakfast cereal.
Cheerios do not belong in tbe sinuses
holy bukkake, Batman!
Tristan is reminding me of a loot of Christian vloggers who made being Christian their whole personality – online that is. I wonder what we will find out about what hides behind this façade.
Probably a serial killer.
He’d get along swimmingly with Mary.
95% probability he was buddies with Ryan or whatever was the name of the guy whom Amber shanked
If I remember correctly Joe got his name right on the first go with Druggo Mcstabbed.
Perfect
If he was secretly cool I reckon he’d lay off the redefining women thing and vaccines at the very least
Secretly uncool in a different way, very possible
“In an online world where nobody is bound by their word, what is the difference between appearing to have an opinion, and having an opinion?”
— The Alt-Right Playbook
Had the opposite kind of experience with a buddy from Middle School. Back then he was one of those very religious and saintly kids who wanted to become a priest. Years later at a best friend’s wedding he came up in a conversation and turns out he started partying Hard afterwards. Couple years more and I heard he got into a car accident, supposedly while drunk.
Don’t know if it’s just me, but there’s a new ad on this site that makes reading the comments on mobile very difficult.
I guess if I donate $25 to donors choose for lgbt positive stuff every time I see something anti-trans I should do that even if it’s from a character in a comic. I wonder if the state of Connecticut still has those matches.
It feels like the fear of regressing. Of knowing what you used to be and knowing that, even if you don’t see it from here, there will always be a way back to… that.
Huh, it seems Tristan isn’t tagged for some reason…
Why did Tristan get tagged yesterday but not today? Was that his backlit silhouette in the post? I thought Willis was tagging the profile pictures…
I guess my ctrl-f for “tag” didn’t work, since the person right above me had the same question…
Kowalski, huh? I wonder how many generations from the original Polish immigrants. Go Catholic buddy, it’s in your blood!
According to Carol, his dad was from Poland. And she assumed he was Jewish originally, despite going to their church.
Ah a fresh immigrant then, I wonder how did he get involved with Brows and the whole Fundie thing. We do have some Jehovah’s Witnesses here but most people are Catholic. Maybe it was the only Christian community available?
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true. Or is it something worse.
This extends beyond Tristan. This is her mother, brother and most of her childhood. It’s looking into a future that she could have lived in. And rejecting it all. A confirmation of the haphazard changes that she’s been going through. She knows the path she’s on now and isn’t going back.
That’s soooome alt-text you got there, Willis.
Is Tristan the same age as Joyce, and now also a freshman in college? I assumed he was maybe a year or two older because he sorta looks that way in the flashbacks. Maybe we’ll find out.
Seemed the same age. When she mentioned him in her visit back home, it didn’t sound like she was used to him having been away.
I know this is a reach but why do I get the feeling Tristan will be intermingled with glassface ryan?
Hang on though. It’s just occurred to me that it was previously implied that this is pretty much what Joyce’s Buddy In Atheism Liz’s Facebook looks like. I’m not saying Tristram is also maintining a facade of being Very Christian so his parent’s don’t flip, but it’s a possibility.
Oh, others have already thought of that obviously. That’s what I get for coming in late and skimming the comments.
no likes or comments on any of them, he’s just saying all that freely into the void. So a facade for whom?
The number of comments would be tallied off panel to the right.
So he’s getting ratio’d just off-panel, got it.
Ten bucks says he attended a christian youth retreat a couple weeks ago, and is still riding the endorphin high those retreats are engineered to create. I was always the least religious of my siblings, but I was always the loudest during worship service and wearing the “christ is cool” shirts to school, after one of those retreats.
One time when I was a freshman in high school, a girl in my Spanish class invited me to her youth group, and I desperately needed friends, so I seriously considered going, but at the same time thought, “Okay, this might turn out to be a cult, so I should get some pepper spray to take with me just in case,” and then my mom wouldn’t let me get pepper spray, so I ended up not going.
If this is the very last we ever have to see of Tristan in this comic, that would be the best possible timeline.