No. Liches are normally classified as magic users, not clerics. Jesus’ powers were supposed to be granted by the Jewish/Christian god, therefore he would most likely qualify as some sort of Greater Mummy, possibly one of those ones from Ravenloft who’s appearance looked human and pristine.
Well hell I wasn’t expecting an answer like that. On a side note, Jesus definitely seems like he would be a pyromancer. Yeah. Throwin’ fireballs an shit. Take that Romans. Judas ain’t gonna screw with a pyromancer
Nothri, there can be Cleric Liches, Druid Liches, Bard Liches, even Ex-Paladin Liches. Anyone who’s a spellcaster and can craft the Phylactery, can become one. There was a Druid Lich in the “Red Hand of Doom” adventure, a Bard Lich in Ravenloft, and good ol’ Dr. van Richten wrote about Cleric Liches.
There are also Archliches, but I blame Ed Greenwood for that travesty. Seriously, whoever heard of a Lawful Good Lich?
I’d imagine the hard part is determining their chassis model.
I mean, we have the Terminators, the Daleks, the Cybermen, the CyberPredators (yes, Predators that have been overtaken by the Cybermen), Ultron (and his many bodies), Sonic’s forest buddies (post-Robotnik), Cylons, Transformers……and this is just a small sample.
More like cyborgs. The glimpse we got inside one suggests that its biology and technology are interdependent (data backups for thoughts, antibodies for the machinery, etc).
That’s a horrendous idea. When they come to Earth, they’ll completely ignore the threat women pose (Due to Reddit) assume that cats and bacon are our overlords, assume that everyone but cis white males are horribly weak and unnatural (Due to everything, excepting tumblr) and that we spend all our time procrastinating (Well, that’s accurate.))
In regard to the alt-text, Mr. Willis, where is her original outfit now that she has come back to the room? She just tossed that towel off to the side and there weren’t nuthin’ hiding under it then.
I think it’s more likely she’s here on her own volition, and she potentially ran away, or as much as an adult can run away in these situations. Otherwise, they’d have given her a phone to check in or something.
And *I* think it’s more likely that Becky just killed and ate like three other students at her school and is having one last good-times-with-Joyce thing before they find her and cart her off.
Maybe, though if she was on church/family spying errands she wouldn’t be looking at abominationary apps or admitting to watching sacrilegious sitcoms.
Though it would make sense that she search Joyce’s phone.
Maybe she was kicked out? For some sort of conduct that the school would not approve of (they probably couldn’t legally kick her out for being a lesbian, but if they figured out she was one, they might be able to drum up some BS reason to kick her out).
There are no state-wide LBGTQ anti-discrimination measures in Indiana. It varies by county if/how far LGBTQ people are protected, and I’m not sure what Madison County’s policies are. Besides, I’m sure private institutions like universities can lobby for religious protection against anti-discrimination laws and have that reason accepted, even if it makes no legal or moral sense.
This is where my mind went. Becky came out to her parents and was kicked out. Becky’s morose musings to Sarah also seemed to imply that she anticipates “losing” Joyce as well.
Yeah, I gotta agree – the ‘cancelled’ classes didn’t seem quite right, and the more we hear from Becky, the more it feels like there’s something else going on. Also, you know, that whole meta-knowledge that we’re all probably going to end up shouting “DAMN YOU WILLIS!” at some point in this story…
That’s not being very deductive. If she was truly deductive she’d already deduced what it is. Sherlock Holmes would know her mother’s maiden name 20 minutes before she even showed up.
Thinking of all the Y-chromosome people in DoA, I cannot think of any one of them besides Jacob who hasn’t proven to be at least somewhat of an asshole.
Oh! There is *Scrolls tags* Jeremiah and Reno, they were both thoroughly decent dudes from what little we saw of them. And I think also Mike’s dad, probably?
Sidekick? more like the superman to her batman. and i think Sarah’s hero name should be “Old Testament God” myself. That strip remains my favorite of all of DOA to this day
Whoa, wait, Carla is trans? When did we find this out? I mean, looking back at some of the past strips she’s been in, a couple of her comments make more sense if she were trans, like:
But I don’t think it was said anywhere in the official comic strip, or at least not in any of the strips she’s tagged in. Did Willis say this on his blog at some point?
1. Like others have put forward, she could be running away from home.
2. She misses Joyce enough to put up with the surely catastrophic consequences when her parents find out, with possible non-platanic implications to this gesture.
3. She’s been sent to check up on Joyce, report back on whether or not Joyce is healthy, safe, sticking to the straight and narrow, etc. Mostly with the intention of putting everybody’s minds at ease but with terrible ramifications for Joyce if Becky learns of anything worrying.
Well, there’s running away, and there’s just sneaking off and accepting the consequences for such. I think that’s the difference between 1 and 2.
I have a friend that pretty much believes the church in the mall where her son does tae kwan do is exactly an evil corrupt church cult. I think it was cus of something on HBO.
I imagine she’d report back to her parents, who would pass the information along to Joyce’s parents, who would inform any other concerned parties asking about Joyce’s wellbeing, who will then make the news a topic of conversation with the rest of the church community, who would then shame and embarrass Joyce’s parents into taking harsher action than they might otherwise have chosen.
I’d be willing to consider the idea of Becky running away from home if it hadn’t more or less been established that she’s living on campus at her college.
I took a bus once from western Wisconsin to Columbus Ohio, and only had to change buses twice — Chicago and Indianapolis. And they still managed to misplace my bike at Indy.
I know that it’s a real college in Indiana, but every time I see Becky in her Anderson University shirt, it feels like Willis is giving a shout-out to ME.
Joyce wouldn’t introduce Becky to Joe (horn dog extrodinaire), Walky (he already hogs up all of her college best friend Dorothy’s time and she doesn’t want him taking up Becky’s time too, and would you introduce Mike to your best friend? Would you introduce Mike to anyone?
Joyce found her sweater vest quick enough, by magic 🙂
Becky can’t have a phone because she a fundamental shut in maybe?
She may be running away, but she’s Joyce’s best friend pretty sure she will tell her soon if so.
She may be sent to spy on Joyce, but it’s a bit late, Joyce won’t go home now. She’s learned to say no to her parents when they told her to stop seeing Dorothy.
As to Becky thinking Joyce’s is a lesbian. Ain’t buying that.
As I said first time it came up: these two have been brainwashed about what sex will do to them: how would they react to homosexual relations for each other or with another person?
Probably run screaming into the sunset and hide under the bed or something.
Not saying it isn’t possible, home school religious or not: just not at this stage of the game: Joyce is surely not ready. Becky may be more wordldy than we know, guess we will find out.
Maybe Becky doesn’t even knows what a lesbian is, and just thinks it’s natural for girls to be attracted to each other that way. And it is not what she had been warned about, so she doesn’t make the connection that it might, just might, be PMHP.
I like this theory. Like when parents go out of their way to stress that their kids are never to say a “BAD WORD”, but never say what that bad word was, so the kid hears it and repeats it not knowing it was bad and gets punished for it. Only in this case it would be about 10x worse than that.
My theory (which I haven’t seen anywhere else in this thread yet) is that Becky has gotten expelled from her private, Christian college, and is having to transfer to a public, state college.
I like this hypothesis. Based on what we’ve seen, Becky is both more willing to press the boundaries of her restrictive upbringing, and on a permanent sugar high. Those are not a combination that restrictive religious institutions like.
Why am I starting to suspect that of the two of them, Becky is the less-repressed of the two, despite having apparently come from an even stricter home?
Sometimes when you grasp something too tightly it slips through your fingers and you lose it entirely. Sometimes giving something just enough room to move around gives them enough of an illusion of freedom to not realise how caged they really are.
That’s kind of been the whole storyline for Joyce, she thought she had a happy, loving home. Then she entered the real world, saw what people were really like and how they’re not sin incarnate despite each doing something she found sinful and when she tried to share that with her family they responded with hatred and tried to force their beliefs into her. I think if anything that’s what has shaken Joyce’s core more than anything, her faith in her parents and their wisdom has been shaken and if she can’t be sure of that how can she be sure of anything they taught her?
anyone else feelin like she’s actually ridiculously deviant and either:
a: a closet lesbian with hots for joyce or
b: looking to hook up, will succeed, and joyce will walk in on her and have a mental breakdown
No. They are against specific aspects of science that directly contradict their dogma.
You can’t say chromossomes don’t exist. We can see them.
Evolution is bit more abstract than things you can actually see in a microscope, so they still try to deny and strawman/misrepresent it.
They also won’t deny atoms and gravity, but Big Bang and 6 billion years old Earth is a big fat lie for them, somehow. And so on.
They see the science they approve of as “how God did things”, and science they disagree with as “naturalistic/liberal/atheistic/satanist lies”.
As some would describe it. The world is but a sims game that god has left running. Now if you’re excuse me, I’m going out for a swim. Right after I destroy the pool ladder of course.
So everyone’s speculating that Becky’s hiding something but coming out has been done so many times so far in this series. My theory: Becky may have been cut off or running away or what have you but because she totally had some premarital hanky-panky and got preggo.
Ok Alternative theory: Becky met a man, and they’re getting married, and she came to ask Joyce to be her maid of honor. This causes Joyce to have a panic attack because the whole reason she went to college is to find a guy and get married, not to get an education, and she feels like a failure.
Becky is so relatable it makes me uncomfortable. Willis is a damn good writer.
I would totally buy that she ran away entirely to meet Joyce. No sexuality reasons. Just that she desperately needs Joyce, who understandably wasn’t there for her. She may not feel wronged, but she lost the person she needs.
My upbringing was certainly less extreme, but uh, honestly, I see her, and I just read Depression in Denial.
If this were 19 year old me, the translations could come out to this:
“I know my place” = “I’m tempted to be unhappy about this, but clearly that’s not fair and having those feelings is invalid”
“yes, ma’am!” = “we’ve been best friends since teeny tot times!”, which translates to: “we’ve been each other’s life preserver forever!”, which translates to: “I haven’t realized what this implies about our lives!”
Keep in mind, that world that repressive world that Joyce escaped, just in time to develop into an adult? Becky hasn’t had that. She’s going to the religious school that was chosen for her. Now that her BFF has matured and developed into more of a free-feeling person, she’s going to have to learn that her old friend no longer exists, in a way.
Becky seems smart enough to get that, but repressed enough to not give herself a break.
It’s been less than two months though. Unless she’s already had a large amount of her coursework required in I don’t see how she can be failing, especially in freshman year, unless there’s some mandatory attendance policy she’s failing obviously and badly.
Was it a deliberate decision to have Joyce be wearing the same clothes as her first day? (had to go back all the way to the very first strip to confirm that)
1) Becky has run away from her home/college
2) She’s going to be REALLY disappointed when Joyce introduces her to Ethan
3) She’s actually gay, in the closet and is REALLY into Joyce
Not sure if I’m right or if other people have said similar/complete opposite things. Place yer bets!
Alternatively, if you want to clear this up or tell me to wait and see Mr Willis, Pornlord and rule of the “DAMN YOU”s, I’d be much obliged.
Holy crap guys. If you hit first, we can see a comparison of old Becky and Joyce drawings versus present style. That was a very fortuneate coincidence.
I think even if Becky hasn’t run away she’s taking advantage of her freedom while living away from home. Like Joyce, she’s seeing more of the world but I don’t think she’s as in denial as Joyce is either.
Loading ...
They got sexy squirrels here
That statement might make more sense in EGS.
Grace is hot. Usually.
Especially when she says “I have my ways…”
Love me some Grace.
If you actually need context, you don’t know the right squirrels.
Also Squirrel Girl.
You have impeccable taste.
Squirrel Girl, as in PSU Squirrel Girl?
Or Sequential Art.
They’re known for their nuts.
They love their nuts. 😀
They also bury them.
In the winter they horde all the nuts they can get so they can chew on them at their leisure.
*SQEEEK*
Translation:
STOP STARIN’ AT MY NUTS!
I like your gravatar.
Good Point Sarah. Very good point.
Dun dun dun!
YAY, JOYCE IS OKAY!
She’s undead, actually.
She’s the world’s first Christian lich.
Her phylactery is a bible.
Wouldn’t that just continually exorcise her, then?
She doesn’t need exorcise. She looks pretty fit to me!
You’re thinking of vampires, and depending on which ones they may just get angry at you.
I thought Jesus was the first Christian lich…
Wait – never mind – Jesus was a [i]Jewish[/i] lich.
*slow claps
No. Liches are normally classified as magic users, not clerics. Jesus’ powers were supposed to be granted by the Jewish/Christian god, therefore he would most likely qualify as some sort of Greater Mummy, possibly one of those ones from Ravenloft who’s appearance looked human and pristine.
Well hell I wasn’t expecting an answer like that. On a side note, Jesus definitely seems like he would be a pyromancer. Yeah. Throwin’ fireballs an shit. Take that Romans. Judas ain’t gonna screw with a pyromancer
Nah, I think Jesus is more of a Transmuter guy, wih some Necromancy ability for the healing spells.
I just woulda gone with a plain ‘ol Avatar of Yahweh
Nothri, there can be Cleric Liches, Druid Liches, Bard Liches, even Ex-Paladin Liches. Anyone who’s a spellcaster and can craft the Phylactery, can become one. There was a Druid Lich in the “Red Hand of Doom” adventure, a Bard Lich in Ravenloft, and good ol’ Dr. van Richten wrote about Cleric Liches.
There are also Archliches, but I blame Ed Greenwood for that travesty. Seriously, whoever heard of a Lawful Good Lich?
Liches are classified as Always Evil, are they not? Jesus (and Joyce) would probably be classified as “Deathless”
Jesus saves!
…and only takes half damage.
I’m pretty sure Strom Thurmond antedates her.
It’s actually Dina in a Joyce disguise.
It’s not made from Joyce’s body or anything, Dina just has an incredibly accurate Joyce suit.
Joyce is still unconscious. Dina is behind her, manipulating her like a ventriloquist dummy.
Nobody will notice her back there. The years of hiding behind doors for practice has paid off.
That kinda reminds me of that Angel episode where Angel is transformed into a Muppet.
Joyce as a Dina-operated dummy will still be more than capable of beating the snot out of Faz at will.
That is only, just, less disturbing.
Fluttershy would agree.
well DUH. |:[
Dina is Amazi-girl. Of COURSE she’s got a Joyce shaped body suit on hand!
I mean really! Do you people need everything explained for you? >:(
Victory for Sylvanas…
That’s not Joyce. That’s the grout having taken over her clothes.
I am Grout!
Oh, ow!
It’s sort of like John Carpenter’s The Thing.
But how does she know what a Y-chromosome is? How much info do they include on Of Pandas and People?
Sarah knows. She must be exterminated.
What are you a friggin’ Dalek?!
My general internet policy is to assume EVERYBODY else is an alien robot trying to gather information on humans from message threads.
Brings new meaning to the term “I’m just here for the comments”
I’d imagine the hard part is determining their chassis model.
I mean, we have the Terminators, the Daleks, the Cybermen, the CyberPredators (yes, Predators that have been overtaken by the Cybermen), Ultron (and his many bodies), Sonic’s forest buddies (post-Robotnik), Cylons, Transformers……and this is just a small sample.
The Daleks aren’t robots. They are alien tentacle monsters in elaborate space suits.
More like Space Tanks. Really good at killing, maybe data draining, and little else.
They are draining the data from this very thread in search of information on how to navigate stairs.
Stairs haven’t been a problem for them ina LONG time.
timemonkey, you of all people should know that time is relative.
More like cyborgs. The glimpse we got inside one suggests that its biology and technology are interdependent (data backups for thoughts, antibodies for the machinery, etc).
Daleks are like reverse Pretenders: The Robot shell hides the monster within!
That’s a horrendous idea. When they come to Earth, they’ll completely ignore the threat women pose (Due to Reddit) assume that cats and bacon are our overlords, assume that everyone but cis white males are horribly weak and unnatural (Due to everything, excepting tumblr) and that we spend all our time procrastinating (Well, that’s accurate.))
Becky made rather effective use of the free student bus fare, I see
No you shouldn’t, that’s sexual harassment.
…I’m 80% eye balling squirrels calls for something bigger than sexual harassment.
It could get you onto a sex offenders list.
Sounds about right.
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090720184728/scrubs/images/4/44/4x4kyle.jpg
…..who DOESN’T occasionally look at a Squirrel and consider adding it to their squirrel army?
They’re the ones going around flashing everyone!
Are you suggesting that the squirrels are asking for it? TSK TSK! 😛
It’s worse than that, a few years ago one of them decided to do their streaking on television! Sensitive viewers across the British isles fainted in shock, and Mary Whitehouse spun in her grave! http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/a343915/british-bake-off-squirrel-causes-twitter-storm.html (probably NSFW)
“The boys who stare at me in the comic shop”
In regards to the Alt-Text, I would buy that Joyce can change clothes by spinning around, like Wonder Woman.
Or the Sims.
Or my Aunt Sally
I’ll use a nude mod in The Sims, and my sim will walk outside, spin around, and be wearing layered winter gear.
“Wait, where were you… keeping…”
I like to believe Joyce keeps a spare change of clothes in the Daily Planet broom closet, to which she dashes inside after leaving the shower
In regard to the alt-text, Mr. Willis, where is her original outfit now that she has come back to the room? She just tossed that towel off to the side and there weren’t nuthin’ hiding under it then.
She’s been shown before to be wearing her pajamas under her clothes. Maybe that’s just S.O.P. for her.
so really looking like she ran off or something right
Why did she stop at Joyce’s school, I wonder? Maybe she’s got something to admit to, or something she wants from Joyce…
no really any minute now a man in a trench coat is going to show up and take her back home before the aliens show up
As long as she kicks the man in the nuts and steals his hat.
Joyce is alive. It’s a miracle!
Holy crap, Becky’s run away from college! Ridin’ the rails to Californey, hobo-style!
She has obviously come to Joyce for bindle-tying tips.
Calling it now: Becky was sent to basically spy on Joyce’s school, to see if she’s being corrupted. Alternately, that was just her excuse to go visit.
I think it’s more likely she’s here on her own volition, and she potentially ran away, or as much as an adult can run away in these situations. Otherwise, they’d have given her a phone to check in or something.
And *I* think it’s more likely that Becky just killed and ate like three other students at her school and is having one last good-times-with-Joyce thing before they find her and cart her off.
hmmmm…. this seems unlikely.
.
.
.
she’s probably just here to eat joyce as well.
I’m sure she would love to eat Joyce, if you know what I mean.
Maybe, though if she was on church/family spying errands she wouldn’t be looking at abominationary apps or admitting to watching sacrilegious sitcoms.
Though it would make sense that she search Joyce’s phone.
Maybe she was kicked out? For some sort of conduct that the school would not approve of (they probably couldn’t legally kick her out for being a lesbian, but if they figured out she was one, they might be able to drum up some BS reason to kick her out).
Just a theory, obviously.
There are no state-wide LBGTQ anti-discrimination measures in Indiana. It varies by county if/how far LGBTQ people are protected, and I’m not sure what Madison County’s policies are. Besides, I’m sure private institutions like universities can lobby for religious protection against anti-discrimination laws and have that reason accepted, even if it makes no legal or moral sense.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if she was kicked out explicitly for being a lesbian.
For making eye babies with another girl.
Don’t worry, Sarah. I’m sure this’ll neeeever be brought up again.
Are you calling Ethan a chick, Joyce? That’s just insensitive.
that guy is man, a man who probably dreams of glitter and rainbows but a man nonetheless
Which of the giant space robots and Batman are the glitter and which the rainbows?
Well Batman did have to keep changing the colour of his costume that one time to foil a villain. The Silver age was weird.
Well, since the giant space robots are PLAYSKOOL colored, that allows us to deduce some things about how the batsignal works.
Joyce’s abductee power in this universe is the ability to create sweater vests at will.
She can throw The Good Book at ya faster than a speeding bullet.
She’s able to make tall conclusions in a single bound.
Her friendship is more powerful than a locomotive.
She’s Superfundie!
… Sooo. I get the distinct feeling Becky’s running away, then.
Or at the very least, testing waters for an eventual cutting off.
Or she’s already been cut off. I’m thinking of last strip’s lesbian speculations in a much sadder light now…
This is where my mind went. Becky came out to her parents and was kicked out. Becky’s morose musings to Sarah also seemed to imply that she anticipates “losing” Joyce as well.
Yeah, I gotta agree – the ‘cancelled’ classes didn’t seem quite right, and the more we hear from Becky, the more it feels like there’s something else going on. Also, you know, that whole meta-knowledge that we’re all probably going to end up shouting “DAMN YOU WILLIS!” at some point in this story…
Dumbing of Age is like if every episode of Deep Space Nine was an “O’Brien must suffer” episode and everyone in the cast is O’Brien.
solid snake alert nose go!
*noise. dang it
Nose works, too.
!
With Ethan’s sexuality and Becky’s uhm…”something”, Sarah’s a real natural at deduction.
She gets a job as a detective. I hope Willis makes a comic about that.
Maybe she can go to the GWS-verse and join the Love Detectives.
I can totally see her as a rival to Hazel, who dislikes her only for Jaime to comment that “You too are a lot alike.”
That’s not being very deductive. If she was truly deductive she’d already deduced what it is. Sherlock Holmes would know her mother’s maiden name 20 minutes before she even showed up.
True that. Sarah catches on to suspicious stuff quickly then. It’s in her nature I s’pose.
Doesn’t it count for something that SArah doesn’t weight circumstantial evidence and spurious logic so heavily?
I get the feeling Becky’s visit isn’t solely just to see Joyce for happy reasons.
Thinking of all the Y-chromosome people in DoA, I cannot think of any one of them besides Jacob who hasn’t proven to be at least somewhat of an asshole.
Joe’s obviously a horndog, Mike…Yea…, Walky is only sort of a dick to Joyce, and Danny….Danny’s not that bad is he? An idiot surely, but an asshole?
Yeah agreed
There is Jocelyn.
Actually Jo….never mind
That depends on if Jocelyn actually has a Y-chromosome or not.
Entirely true. But then, I don’t think we know the chromosomal makeup of anyone on the cast for sure in that respect.
Oh! There is *Scrolls tags* Jeremiah and Reno, they were both thoroughly decent dudes from what little we saw of them. And I think also Mike’s dad, probably?
I’m still not convinced that the Warners haven’t been making an insanely dedicated effort to troll Mike his entire life.
… Okay, that I want to see, like, yesterday.
Jacob was a bit of a jerk in the extent to which he was using “making fun of Joyce” as a way of talking to Sarah.
It was Sarah who was using “making fun of Joyce” as a way to talk to Jacob.
the fact that she hates all her male friends isn’t helping her disprove that she might a lesbian.
She hates the way they act, but like dude butts. I think that’s not uncommon.
Your brain needs examining
^ sorry forgot to add newlland
go ahead and take a peak, it will be just like staring into Cthulhu’s eyes
http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-10/16/11/enhanced/webdr09/anigif_original-grid-image-29428-1413473066-4.gif
It’s cool I got a knife that can kill everything. I got it from a guy in a trench coat who’s name is Castiel.
It also seems she’s furthering Beckster into trying out lesbianism.
Or squirrelism.
I’m straight and I don’t hate all MY male friends.
Joyce is wearing the same cloths from the first day.
Joyce did promise to never change after all… 😀
Becky: “Uh, you can change THOSE”
Yay, I was looking for comments on that. It’s a nice touch!
I think Sarah would make a better superhero than Amazi-Girl between her deductive skills and ‘baseball-bat-to-the-rapist’s-face’ skills.
We have a probable sidekick to AmaziGirl: Sarah “The Law” Clinton.
Sidekick? more like the superman to her batman. and i think Sarah’s hero name should be “Old Testament God” myself. That strip remains my favorite of all of DOA to this day
My candidate is “Bat-Woman”.
I thought her superhero name was God.
No, that’s her secret identity.
Hmm. Now I think Becky is hoping Joyce can hook her up with a dude cause Andersen’s probably a super celibate place.
Becky knows all about the loophole.
I would bring up Carla, but then again, she actually probably makes that list for the same reason as Mike.
Yeah, and that’s assuming Joyce even knows her at all, much less that she’s trans.
Similarly, Malaya would totally make that list if Joyce knew her.
Maybe if Amazi-Girl hits her again, she’ll lose her memory and become nice!
Whoa, wait, Carla is trans? When did we find this out? I mean, looking back at some of the past strips she’s been in, a couple of her comments make more sense if she were trans, like:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/purpleandskates/
Sal – “You’re pretty dang tall.”
Carla – “There’s a reason for that.”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/permanent/
Carla – “There’s a dick on my whiteboard! That is a hate crime!”
But I don’t think it was said anywhere in the official comic strip, or at least not in any of the strips she’s tagged in. Did Willis say this on his blog at some point?
I think Willis did word-of-God this at some point. Carla is trans, yes.
Also, did anyone else think Becky had a terrible pink dinosaur-claw in panel four for a second?
I didn’t until you mentioned it.
Okay, so three possibilities on my head.
1. Like others have put forward, she could be running away from home.
2. She misses Joyce enough to put up with the surely catastrophic consequences when her parents find out, with possible non-platanic implications to this gesture.
3. She’s been sent to check up on Joyce, report back on whether or not Joyce is healthy, safe, sticking to the straight and narrow, etc. Mostly with the intention of putting everybody’s minds at ease but with terrible ramifications for Joyce if Becky learns of anything worrying.
Oooh, 3 would be an interesting option, especially as it could potentially turn into a ‘my parents are kinda f-ed up’ moment for Joyce.
two of these seem the same and the other sounds so underhanded and diabolical that I almost want that to actually be whats be whats going on.
but who would she report too? the evil corrupt church cult organization that run Joyce’s home town?
Well, there’s running away, and there’s just sneaking off and accepting the consequences for such. I think that’s the difference between 1 and 2.
I have a friend that pretty much believes the church in the mall where her son does tae kwan do is exactly an evil corrupt church cult. I think it was cus of something on HBO.
I imagine she’d report back to her parents, who would pass the information along to Joyce’s parents, who would inform any other concerned parties asking about Joyce’s wellbeing, who will then make the news a topic of conversation with the rest of the church community, who would then shame and embarrass Joyce’s parents into taking harsher action than they might otherwise have chosen.
Go Sarah go. That is suspicious, investigation time!
It was good that she mentioned how she was raised but that’ll only broke one of the psyche- locks. She still has at least two to go.
Huh. Becky is literally the first character to appear in the strip. That is strange.
Her head has sure shrunk since then.
I’d be willing to consider the idea of Becky running away from home if it hadn’t more or less been established that she’s living on campus at her college.
But the state is Indiana, so bussing halfway across it is only, like, one transfer. Now if it were a real-sized state, I’d wonder too.
Indiana’s a pretty decent-sized state! (says the Vermonter)
Hey! Indiana is a big enough boot to completely squish Kentucky!
I took a bus once from western Wisconsin to Columbus Ohio, and only had to change buses twice — Chicago and Indianapolis. And they still managed to misplace my bike at Indy.
I know that it’s a real college in Indiana, but every time I see Becky in her Anderson University shirt, it feels like Willis is giving a shout-out to ME.
Becky’s hoodie just wants to be friends.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Joyce wouldn’t introduce Becky to Joe (horn dog extrodinaire), Walky (he already hogs up all of her college best friend Dorothy’s time and she doesn’t want him taking up Becky’s time too, and would you introduce Mike to your best friend? Would you introduce Mike to anyone?
Joyce found her sweater vest quick enough, by magic 🙂
Becky can’t have a phone because she a fundamental shut in maybe?
She may be running away, but she’s Joyce’s best friend pretty sure she will tell her soon if so.
She may be sent to spy on Joyce, but it’s a bit late, Joyce won’t go home now. She’s learned to say no to her parents when they told her to stop seeing Dorothy.
As to Becky thinking Joyce’s is a lesbian. Ain’t buying that.
As I said first time it came up: these two have been brainwashed about what sex will do to them: how would they react to homosexual relations for each other or with another person?
Probably run screaming into the sunset and hide under the bed or something.
Not saying it isn’t possible, home school religious or not: just not at this stage of the game: Joyce is surely not ready. Becky may be more wordldy than we know, guess we will find out.
Maybe Becky doesn’t even knows what a lesbian is, and just thinks it’s natural for girls to be attracted to each other that way. And it is not what she had been warned about, so she doesn’t make the connection that it might, just might, be PMHP.
Or maybe she prefers squirrels.
I like this theory. Like when parents go out of their way to stress that their kids are never to say a “BAD WORD”, but never say what that bad word was, so the kid hears it and repeats it not knowing it was bad and gets punished for it. Only in this case it would be about 10x worse than that.
Its really funny that the 3 guys she cant stand the most are probably the ones she will possibly end up with.
What gets me is that Joe is a good guy, yes he wants to bone anything but he respects boundaries and is secure in his manhood
Anything, you say?
Well maybe just girls but still he asks the question and when declined he back off
So, those lady squirrels should be watching their asses, eh?
They can’t consent in a way that Joe would understand, so they are probably safe.
The squirrels, and the asses too.
If you consider Anti-Joyce, those three guys are also the three guys IW! Joyce has at least smooched up with.
I don’t remember her smooching with Mike.
At least.
I’d considering doing Mike a bit further ahead than first base.
My theory (which I haven’t seen anywhere else in this thread yet) is that Becky has gotten expelled from her private, Christian college, and is having to transfer to a public, state college.
Don’t think so. If she had gotten expelled/transferred to IU she’d have shown up with some baggage or something.
I like this hypothesis. Based on what we’ve seen, Becky is both more willing to press the boundaries of her restrictive upbringing, and on a permanent sugar high. Those are not a combination that restrictive religious institutions like.
Oh hell, this bird done flown the coop, hasn’t she?
Why am I starting to suspect that of the two of them, Becky is the less-repressed of the two, despite having apparently come from an even stricter home?
Sometimes people internalize the rules less, despite the reinforcement. Almost everyone is more likely to just not tell their parents than Joyce.
Sometimes when you grasp something too tightly it slips through your fingers and you lose it entirely. Sometimes giving something just enough room to move around gives them enough of an illusion of freedom to not realise how caged they really are.
That’s kind of been the whole storyline for Joyce, she thought she had a happy, loving home. Then she entered the real world, saw what people were really like and how they’re not sin incarnate despite each doing something she found sinful and when she tried to share that with her family they responded with hatred and tried to force their beliefs into her. I think if anything that’s what has shaken Joyce’s core more than anything, her faith in her parents and their wisdom has been shaken and if she can’t be sure of that how can she be sure of anything they taught her?
deus ex machina
no
anyone else feelin like she’s actually ridiculously deviant and either:
a: a closet lesbian with hots for joyce or
b: looking to hook up, will succeed, and joyce will walk in on her and have a mental breakdown
being a lesbian isn’t deviant…
It is to their (Joyce and Becky’s) Fundie point-of-view.
It is however possible to be a lesbian AND deviant.
Ominous feeling continues to be ominous.
I’m not sure the best place to link this, but here goes
psst I wrote a theme song for Dumbing of Age and recorded a test of it with some unfinished illustrations: http://youtu.be/CQJnHliQ2VE
Y-chromosome? You better watch Your mouth with that science-talk young lady.
Detective Sarah works FAST.
Across the state? the only college called Anderson I know is in SC.
Prepare to have your knowledge expanded, then
Something tells me she’s way better socialized than Joyce.
It’s already been established that Joyce is the best socialized of her homeschooling group.
Joyce has stashes of clothes hidden all over campus in case she has to change in a hurry from her secret identity – the ding-dong bandit.
“Depending on how good your gaydar is you probably shouldn’t meet Ethan either…”
I’m surprised Joyce knows what a Chromosome is. Aren’t fundies, like, totally against science?
No. They are against specific aspects of science that directly contradict their dogma.
You can’t say chromossomes don’t exist. We can see them.
Evolution is bit more abstract than things you can actually see in a microscope, so they still try to deny and strawman/misrepresent it.
They also won’t deny atoms and gravity, but Big Bang and 6 billion years old Earth is a big fat lie for them, somehow. And so on.
They see the science they approve of as “how God did things”, and science they disagree with as “naturalistic/liberal/atheistic/satanist lies”.
I believe god made science so he/she could work his wonders. And us humans could have our own little explanation.
As some would describe it. The world is but a sims game that god has left running. Now if you’re excuse me, I’m going out for a swim. Right after I destroy the pool ladder of course.
You can’t just take science apart and just pick the aspects that you like.
Evolution is just as observable as chromosomes.
Just see how selective breeding made the various dog breeds so wildly different, and apply this on a planetary scale for millions of years…
The worst part is, evolution doesn’t even denies the existence of God. It makes him much more awesome, if anything.
I wondered about that too. I mean, one day they talk about chromosomes, and before You know it, they are mastering in microbiology. And marxism.
Am I crazy, or does Becky basically look like a female version of Danny with red hair and freckles?
So everyone’s speculating that Becky’s hiding something but coming out has been done so many times so far in this series. My theory: Becky may have been cut off or running away or what have you but because she totally had some premarital hanky-panky and got preggo.
Ok Alternative theory: Becky met a man, and they’re getting married, and she came to ask Joyce to be her maid of honor. This causes Joyce to have a panic attack because the whole reason she went to college is to find a guy and get married, not to get an education, and she feels like a failure.
So I’m going to hazard a guess that when Joyce was desperately trying to get a hold of Becky, Becky was having her own crisis?
That’d be my guess.
Sounds pretty likely.
Becky is so relatable it makes me uncomfortable. Willis is a damn good writer.
I would totally buy that she ran away entirely to meet Joyce. No sexuality reasons. Just that she desperately needs Joyce, who understandably wasn’t there for her. She may not feel wronged, but she lost the person she needs.
My upbringing was certainly less extreme, but uh, honestly, I see her, and I just read Depression in Denial.
If this were 19 year old me, the translations could come out to this:
“I know my place” = “I’m tempted to be unhappy about this, but clearly that’s not fair and having those feelings is invalid”
“yes, ma’am!” = “we’ve been best friends since teeny tot times!”, which translates to: “we’ve been each other’s life preserver forever!”, which translates to: “I haven’t realized what this implies about our lives!”
Keep in mind, that world that repressive world that Joyce escaped, just in time to develop into an adult? Becky hasn’t had that. She’s going to the religious school that was chosen for her. Now that her BFF has matured and developed into more of a free-feeling person, she’s going to have to learn that her old friend no longer exists, in a way.
Becky seems smart enough to get that, but repressed enough to not give herself a break.
YES I’M READING A BIT MUCH INTO IT
Don’t trust her Becky! She’s gonna take you to her stall.
Option 1: Becky is pregnant. She left school and she was afraid to tell her parents, so she went to Joyce.
Option 2: Joyce was Becky’s crutch all through school. She is failing out of school and (again) can’t go home to tell her parents.
It’s been less than two months though. Unless she’s already had a large amount of her coursework required in I don’t see how she can be failing, especially in freshman year, unless there’s some mandatory attendance policy she’s failing obviously and badly.
Was it a deliberate decision to have Joyce be wearing the same clothes as her first day? (had to go back all the way to the very first strip to confirm that)
That’s not Joyce! It’s a shower detritus golem!
Becky, professional Towel-Girl
( I bet thats fore-shadowing . Its Checkovs Wet-towel )
So I’ma see if I can’t guess a few things here:
1) Becky has run away from her home/college
2) She’s going to be REALLY disappointed when Joyce introduces her to Ethan
3) She’s actually gay, in the closet and is REALLY into Joyce
Not sure if I’m right or if other people have said similar/complete opposite things. Place yer bets!
Alternatively, if you want to clear this up or tell me to wait and see Mr Willis, Pornlord and rule of the “DAMN YOU”s, I’d be much obliged.
*Ruler. Accursed typos.
Holy crap guys. If you hit first, we can see a comparison of old Becky and Joyce drawings versus present style. That was a very fortuneate coincidence.
You have no business eyeballin’ the squirrels’ ends, Becky. Whatever those are.
I think even if Becky hasn’t run away she’s taking advantage of her freedom while living away from home. Like Joyce, she’s seeing more of the world but I don’t think she’s as in denial as Joyce is either.
Last panel Becky looks a lot like Danny
Secret Road Trip!
I’m guessing that christian school she went to didn’t turn out so great.
…ok, you won an internet.
why do i feel like she ran away a long time ago
I have actually done the clothes hiding under a towel thing.