DUH. In DnD, religions are full of people who can cast healing magic, but only a limited number of times per day, and usually in exchange for “donations” to their respective churches.
Meanwhile, alchemists, apothecaries, and physicians have no theoretical limits on how many people they can cure through non-magical means.
So the only conceptual leap to be made to “medicine is against religion” is imagining that religions might allow worldy competition to influence their spiritual dogma. It’s a stretch, I know, but the setting IS fantasy.
Except you’re not going deep enough. Dungeons and Dragons functions on the Discworld principle. the Gods and Goddesses are a known factor. They exist as a fact, and if they wish to, they could break any atheist’s windows.
it’s a poor business person who only destroys instead of ensnaring. Clerical casting limits are also known, as far as potency( Cure Minor, Light, Moderate, Serious Wounds) and times per day. A smart church will endorse alchemists, apothecaries, and TRAIN their clerics as physicians to conserve spellpower. Then they get the Resurrection and “FIX THIS NAO” business, and then charge a lesser fee for “well, I don’t need this fixed now, but it would be nice to get this splinted” business. as well as distributing palliatives and prophylactics to their holy soldiers on the Crusade against EVIL….
or trees. cuz Dungeons and Dragons can be that way.
While there is no theoretical limitations for physicians to provide curative means, i know that in german health care system, there actually are lawful limitations to e.g. physiotherapy prescriptions – not per person, but per all of them in a quarter of a year. if they’ve already prescribed all of them to other people, tough luck for you… no matter how bad your back pain is.
Ruth: Right, I’ll be GM’ing this game, everyone introduce your characters.
Becky: Wait, YOU’RE GM’ing? I thought you thought DnD was for nerds.
Ruth: I did, but then I heard Joyce thought it was ‘blasphemous’, and I thought, “I’m in!” So what are you playing?
Becky: My character’s a Human Ranger named Chris Sprat!
*Ruth raises an eyebrow* How… original. Dina?
Dina: I’m playing a Raptrosian Arcane Trickster named-
Becky: Blue! BlueBlueBlueBlueBLUE!
Dina: NO.
Becky: Awww…
Dina: Her name is unpronounceable by human tongues. However, you may CALL her ‘Blue’.
Becky: YAAAAASSSS!!
Ruth: *sigh*
That would be a serious reversal from the fund opposition to D&D when it was first released. They said it was Satan worship. I expect this is DYW’s inspiration.
Not really, even then. They hated D&D, because occult, but generally didn’t know anything about roleplaying games beyond that. Hell, even today if you mention some non-D&D tabletop rpg to a non-gamer, you’ll probably have to describe it as “like D&D, but cyberpunk” or whatever.
For your average fundie, even back in the day if you just described roleplaying games generically, didn’t mention D&D and your particular game didn’t trigger the same “occult” flags, they’d never realize you were essentially doing the same thing.
And i’ve always laughed at the “satan worship” when the game encouraged you to go out and slay demons and devils and rescue childrens and you know, be a pretty damn great person.
That’s something I never really got. One of TSR/WOTC’s big competitors is a studio that currently puts out one setting with heavy Gnostic influences and another with vague Taoist flavoring, and the one that’s all knights-and-priests is the one they go after?
Oh, I have stories because we did “fundie-approved” gaming when I was a kid cause all my friends were stuck in that culture.
So it was almost all home-brew systems surrounding systems of “psionics” where magic was one to one replaced with psionics” and there were consistent sci-fi elements.
No one was allowed to play D&D proper, so we snuck it to school to play there instead.
She’s got a ridiculously high level paladin and talks about how she doesn’t like playing elves. Is that a WoW thing? Regardless, I can see her being into D&D.
That pretty much could be any “standard” fantasy RPG.
You would have to go off the beaten path to avoid things like elves or paladins – like Legend of the five rings – Legends of the Shinning Jewel – Fellowship of the White Star – oh, hey, that would be a hoot and a half with this group – 1880-1912 era – no elves or paladins though there are Knights. No armor or swords. Avoid playing with the dynamite or you WILL have a bad time.
But it was in context of “raids” and “killing spiders” and always sitting at her computer – maybe not WoW specifically, but very definitely Computer MMO rpgs, not table top ones.
She could have played D&D, but I’d guess for most of her high school career she was too introverted for what is essentially a face to face social activity – even if it is traditionally one for social outcasts.
I could totally see Amber being into WoW, or Guild Wars. If it were the early 2000’s, she so would have played Runescape. I think she loves the fantasy concepts and heroism stuff and can deal with multiplayer in an online setting but the idea of tabletop gaming probably stresses her out because social anxiety.
“Hey, moses, um, what does “Thou shalt spin fidgets everyday of your lives until the end of time” mean? I mean I get the commandments about adultery and stuff, but what does this one even mean?”
“… …. Yeah, no, I have no idea. He goes off on random stuff pretty often. Usually I just nod and smile a lot.”
Look, it was never EXPLICITLY in the Constitution, but neither were the words “Freedom from Religion” or “Democracy”. Like so much else, various PIECES of the Constitution come together to create a space for spinning.
Give her some time in the waiting room, and then check in. A little false idolatry starts looking a lot more appealing when you realize there’s a good chance they won’t get around to seeing you for another eight hours or so.
I am suddenly interested in any possible Joe and Carla interaction. After all they’re AU!father and daughter kind of? I hope they do have some sort of friendship/relationship in this verse too.
I want to see their interactions but I also want to know how/if Joe ranked her on his list since I feel like that’d sort of give an idea of how those interactions might go. Idk why it’s a big deal to me considering that Carla didn’t really linger on it.
The thought did cross my mind if Joe counted transwomen on his list. But yeah, given Joe and Carla’s alternate history it would be nice to see them talk about something.
Something I was pretty sad about from Shortpacked was that we never got to see how it ended up with Joe and Ultracar. Did we see them together at all after the portal thing?
Actually, there are several churches (similar in doctrine to the one it seems Joyce went to) that use fidget spinners as a way to teach the trinity so. Yeah D&D probably works better in this case.
Catholics believe in the Trinity. Protestants (well, most Protestants) think that’s polytheism and therefore false idolatry. They still do the whole “Father, Son and Holy Ghost” thing, because nobody likes Unitarians, but they emphasize that they are in fact the same person, just with a bad case of DID. Ergo, fidget spinners are bad because they encourage God’s alters to split up even more than the wicked Catholic Church has already.
This is ignoring the fact that the Catholic Church also believes in “three-in-one and one-in-three”
I don’t think I’d heard before that Protestants aren’t into the Trinity. I mean, I know my churches were exceptional, but we were pretty hard on for God In Three Persons, and any Protestant church I ever frequented looked down on non-Trinitarian churches as cults.
Well I didn’t grow up with this so I might be confusing things. I do remember that the concept of unitarianism showed up during the Protestant Reformation, so I guess wires got crossed.
It’s less “catholics aren’t christian because they believe in the trinity” and more “catholics aren’t christian because they believe in the trinity wrong.” Unclear on how they do that, because it’s usually well beneath “the crucifix is idolatry” and “catholics worship saints and the virgin Mary as if they were gods, which is idolatry” under Reasons Catholics “Aren’t Christian.”
It’s unitarians who “aren’t christian” because they don’t believe in the trinity, although i don’t think anybody at any of my churches ever actually used the term “unitarian” to describe that. They just said if you didn’t believe in the trinity you weren’t Christian. But I don’t remember a hell of a lot about the Protestant Reformation, and everyone’s problems with each other were probably different back then, so idk if/how your wires were crossed.
As a Catholic, I can say that their cited reason “Catholics worship saints and the Virgin Mary as if they were gods, which is idolatry” is certainly false. While we do pray to the saints and the angels, we do not worship them. Rather, we pray to them to intercede for us, since they are already in Heaven with God, and therefore have greater influence with Him than Joe Blow down on Earth does. As far as the whole crucifix being idolatry claim, I guess that must be one of the reasons why they splintered away from the Catholic Church to form their own religion in the first place, so really it’s their problem, not mine.
Wait, so it’s not the Trinity, why does Joyce’s and your church dislike fidget spinners? (The kids didn’t pray hard enough to not have ADHD? I’m grasping.)
Because they’re kinda like mandalas, which False Eastern Religeons use to invite the devil into your soul? (Someone pointed me to this fantastic rant about mindfulness colouring books as a pathway to Hell….)
There was a Paraguayan preacher who showed how spinning a fidget spinner in your hand can cause you to accidentally make the devil-horns sign with your fingers, thus imperiling your soul because accidental finger positions with no intention of demonic communion is more powerful than salvation from Christ or something like that.
Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christadelphians, Christian Scientists, Dawn Bible Students, Living Church of God, Oneness Pentecostals, Members Church of God International, Unitarian Universalist Christians, The Way International, The Church of God International, the United Church of God, and the Iglesia ni Cristo.
If I recall the history correctly, Pokemon Cards only started getting demonized by the churches when the public schools banned them for basically being gambling/ distractions. Recently Fidget Spinners are getting banned in schools.
Yeah, because it’s magic. Magic is something you can trust. It’s reliable and clearly exists. Science, on the other hand, is a conspiracy for the weak-minded who have no faith in the gods.
I recently got into D&D because my roommates started a campaign and invited me in. I told my boss a couple days later just to see if her head would explode. Pretty sure she now thinks my roommates are trying to convert me to Satanism. Pretty much what I expected; my boss is basically Joyce’s mom.
IIRC Medicine is actually a(n underutilized) class skill for Clerics. You only get so many spell slots in a day, and you have to assign them in advance, so if you’re willing to roll for your heals, packing bandages lets you swap out Cures for utility or de/buff spells.
You make a prepared list of spells and can pick whichever you want from then as long as you have the appropriate level spell slots left. (You can use a higher level spell slots for a lower level spell). Also some clerical domains automatically include healing spells on the list as a bonus.
Re: alt-text, D&D is better because it shows just how damn long Joyce’s parents have been fundies. And there’s a brief ambiguity of wondering if Joyce is saying that Dungeons and Dragons is against medicine.
My parents are anti-medicine (it’s all a scheme from the doctors to steal your money and addict you to painkillers) and anti-D&D. D&D is of the devil! Also, all RPG video games because they are the same thing.
It was really hard to convince my mother that Final Fantasy was okay to play.
And that’s such a perfect metaphor for early medieval Christianity too. In an ignorant feudal age, small groups (monks) retain ancient (ancient roman and Greece) knowledge, keeping it safe for the future while morning their vestigal empire.
The other Gummie bears sometimes encountered represent the much more advanced Islamic scholars that retained more of the ancient knowledge. Duke Igtorn is a model of a renaissance dictator (think Machiavelli or Gustav Vasa) who want to use the old knowledge to forge himself a larger kingdom than what is supported by the feudal model.
I spent WAY too much time as a teenager overthinking Gummie Bears.
As a point of observation – and I’m very sorry for this – Duke Igtorn does not have a mustache. Look close and you will see that its all coming from within his nose. It’s nose hair.
There’s a certain irony in how there was a time (I can’t remember which century or which country) where women accused of murdering their husbands through witchcraft weren’t burned to death. Their accusers were, for suggesting that magic existed, which went against contemporary Church beliefs that supernatural powers could only come from God and so the belief in magic was heretical.
The accused women, if I remember correctly, usually got a short trial followed by hanging, the punishment for completely mundane murder.
The impression that I’ve been getting is that some of the crazier fundamentalists either don’t want to acknowledge or can’t comprehend that religion can be fictional. Anyone who describes a religion has to actively believe in it. Anyone who believes in a different religion isn’t merely wrong, they’re actively worshiping some sort of real demon.
But that makes perfect sense when you’re living in a reality tunnel where the devil is actively trying to seduce people away from God. What better way than false religion?
Come to that, Joyce could probably take care of it herself, but she’s been told that laying hands on herself is sinful and her grandmother is going to see it in her Outtakes of Shame when she gets to Heaven.
Honestly, characters level relatively quickly compared to how astronomically better high levels are, so an actual D&D world would be filled to the brim with high-level characters — not just the masters of their craft, but just about anyone who’s been doing what they do for any significant amount of time.
Speaking of D&D, guess what, there’s a Chick Tract on the subject. Definitely against Joyce’s religion. Can’t do links right now, but Google Dark Dungeons, it’s hilariously bad. There’s even a parody on YouTube.
Unlikely to be a new one—Jack died last year. Curse you, 2016!
Also, bear in mind that there’s a good chance Joyce wouldn’t have liked Jack Chicken even before her recent adjustments. Pretty sure the dude hated even slight divergences from his denomination.
The weird things is that even in Dark Dungeons, DnD isn’t actually evil. A cultist got a kid she met playing to join her cult, but the game itself was harmless. She could’ve used tennis.
And she didn’t even actually seem to be, like, intentionally using the game to recruit kids. There was just the one kid she met during the game that she decided to recruit.
Also Chick clearly never made any effort at all to learn anything about DnD. Or even read a brief description.
And also condemned Lewis and Tolkien’s works because ‘talking animals and wizards’. Even though both of them were Christian scholars and most of ‘Wardrobe’ was a glorified Christ allegory.
Yes, but Tolkien was Catholic and Lewis was Anglican – probably high church. Jack Chick was a nondenominational fundamentalist, and if there’s one thing that’s consistent among nondenom fundies, it’s hatred of the Catholic church and anything like it.
“Demonimation” sounds like the children show Satanists would make as the mirror image of Davey and Goliath. Give how hard up TV stations are and how little care most put into the “childrens’ block”, you could probably get it on the air.
Well, not knowing anything about it is a plus from his point of view.
And the entire thing about Dark Dungeons isn’t that some cultist recruited a kid while playing it, but that that is what D&D is – a Satanic pathway into the occult.
Of course there is a Chick tract about it. You name a subject, I can pretty much guarantee there is a track covering it. I had some fundie neighbours when I was a kid, they left the stupid things everywhere. My circle of friends would make a point of “discovering” them when the fundies were ‘discretely” lingering nearby, and we would proceed to heckle and ridicule the crap out of them.
The toe thing seems to be true. A few years ago I stubbed my big toe in a way where the pain was intense and not going away. My host told me just to tape it up. I insisted on seeing a doctor… who said that even if it was broken, they’d just tape it up.
Later that night, I heard “So where’s MY $80?” Smart alec.
So one time when I was still an athlete in martial arts, one of the guys on the tournament team somehow (for the life of me, I cannot explain the stupid)managed to break his big toe, index toe, and middle toe, and bust up the bits below the toes.
Our instructor was also a highly trained EMT and I will never forget her looking at his foot and going “Okay, this is bad” after she has reassured him everything was fine.
Having had prior martial arts experience, and experience in hurting myself while doing it: He prolly did a kick with bad form, and hit whatever he was trying to kick wrong.
I’ll tell you from experience another thing you don’t want to hear. You don’t want the nurse in an emergency ward who is doing a twelve-lead on you to look at the ECG and say “Oh shit”.
Very soon afterwards I was surrounded by three doctors and four nurses, and the bloke in charges was asking “Are you sure you’re conscious?”. He got my VT to revert to SVT by means of carotid sinus massage, so they didn’t have to shock me, but they glued electrodes onto my chest and watched me like a hawk until they were able to transfer me to another hospital.
Banning D&D wasn’t random! That game used to have demons on the cover and everything. And it’s not anachronistic of Joyce to bring it up, either. To this day it’s still on the Mount Rushmore of “things fundie kids are told is evil”.
Weren’t terms like “baatezu” and “tana’ri” specifically created as substitutes for referring to monsters as demons in order to placate the people objecting to D&D on religious grounds?
Yep. 2nd Edition did exactly that workaround. By the time 3rd edition rolled around nobody really cared anymore so they brought “Demons” and “Devils” back.
Always found it amusing/interesting how many fundies totally seem to have firsthand knowledge of someone whose life ended because of D&D, though. Usually in the form of suicides, which apparently are totally caused by D&D and not say, untreated mental illness.
As a young D&Der, I met another kid who was convinced that the game was Satanic because we used “weejee” boards while playing. I had no idea what he was talking about, and neither did any of my friends, until we realized that he meant ouija boards. This, of course, was nonsense.
I don’t know if nobody cared anymore, but changing the names of demons and devils didn’t do a thing to convince the fundies it wasn’t Satanic, so why not change it back.
Mostly though, D&D was a lot lower profile by then. Fundies still ranted about it, but it had largely dropped off mainstream radar.
Yeah, that’s the thing. That sensational scuttlebutt you ‘heard’ about a religion? The weirder it sounds, the geometrically less likely it is to be true.
So, is there no end to Carla’s skills? Engineering and field medicine? Then again, she’s the sort of daredevil who, as a kid, probably skated into many a wall and fell down many a flight of stairs. She’s probably absorbed how to deal with minor injuries through the osmosis of repeated occasions listening to doctors talk abut her!
Nah, Willis, D&D was a way funnier choice because it’s not just absurdly random, but also accurate. Look up Dark Dungeons (as other commenters have already said). Fidget spinners would’ve been *just* random and that’s never as great a joke.
I’m going to second this. I think fidget spinners would have been funnier because they’re so obviously innocuous, but I think D&D ended up being the better joke because it’s a thing that actual churches think is evil.
… okay, now I want BECKY to join a DnD group and then drag Joyce into joining.
I KNOW Becky would play the hot lesbian ranger (or druid) with a dinosaur companion, and then get into a rules argument with the DM about whether they had feathers.
And Joyce would play… huh. I got no idea. Probably not cleric or paladin, they’re too smashy-smashy for her notion of the priesthood. Any suggestions?
Ah, I should have scrolled further and seen this before posting down there. Problem with her being a cleric or paladin is because then she’d be “promoting paganism”, and with a monk “eastern religion”. Maybe wizard or sorc? I’ve noticed my first-time girl players seem to lean ranger or arcane.
Yeah I figured that would be an issue with her. We Couuuuld probably argue that Charlemagne was long before Luther and the whole Catholic/Protestant divide.
Yeah, but in my experience the non-denominational evangelical types mostly use that as a way to cherry-pick which parts of the legacy to keep and which parts to wash their hands of.
Atrocities committed during the Crusades? CATHOLIC.
Classifying suicide as a sin? CHRISTIAN.
Dating Jesus’s birth as occurring years AFTER Herod’s death? CHRISTIAN.
Supporting the divine right of kings and pushing feudalism and aristocracy over democracy? CATHOLIC.
Sorry for second one.
Considering her reaction to Jacob’s Way-too-much-like-Catholic-for-her-comfort Church I think we can be pretty safe in assuming that she considers Catholics to be worshippers of Satan.
You can actually lose a toe due to this; one of my family member’s toe was crush when they were a kid; it started to necrosis by the time we got to a hospital, and had to be cut to not affect the foot.
Yes, surgery to repair toe fractures isn’t common, but it’s necessary occasionally (I only saw two in my residency). A littlke more often you have to reduce a displaced fracture, without surgery. Also the big toe moves independently from the lesser toes so you actually shouldn’t tape it to the 2nd toe. You should use a surgical shoe to provide immobilization. (Also there’s a reasonable chance it’s a soft tissue injury not a break, but If you don’t need surgery – and she probably doesn’t – the treatment is the same) If you want to be more aggressive you can use crutches or even a CAM walker, but that’s generally not necessary. She’s probably better off going to a podiatrist or at least an urgent care rather than sitting around for hours at an expensive ER, but I guess it depends on the exact circumstances. (Is this a weekend so all the podiatry offices are closed, or at least the ones on her insurance? Also, not that she would know, but the omniscient narrator might – Is there a podiatry residency at the local hospital? Does the PA at the hospital or the urgent care happen to be b etter at this day and hour?)
I once advised my brother to go to the ER for a broken toe, oin the grounds that he should get a an x-ray just to be sure, and they taped it up wrong, didn’t even give him a surgical shoe, a nd sent him a giant bill he had to fight with his insurance over. And that was at a hospital he worked at. I
Yay! I was in the USA in August and went into an ER with renal colic. They gave me a painkiller and a couple of prescriptions. Cost US$1356.
I’m still fighting with my travel insurance about it.
For a contrast, I once went into an Australian ER with ventricular tachycardia: got an heroic combination of drugs (lidocaine and amiodarone IV infusions), a couple of ambulance rides, a medevac flight, eight days in CCU, and every test known to cardiology. Total cost: A$2 for a disposable razor.
To be fair, that’s what you’re supposed to go to the ER for, not broken toes. ERs are expensive (whether you pay for it directly or not), because they’re ready to handle the serious trauma cases. You don’t want to waste their time with piddling little problems.
The way we pay for it in the US is all screwed up, no denying that.
In Joyce’s case, take some ibuprofen or whatever for the immediate pain (and swelling), then limp over to the university health center when it opens.
I’m struggling right now with the work-related injury I had back in June. I gave the hospital all my worker’s comp info at the ER. They LOST it, even though I witnessed it being scanned, so I sent it all again and I was assured everything was now fine. And Yesterday I got a call from a goddamned DEBT COLLECTOR saying I owe $750, without the hospital having contacted me again or sending me a bill or anything.
D&D is definitely a better punchline than fidget spinners. There has been actual controversy in religious circles over D&D so it makes sense. Random works sometimes, but generally there are better jokes that could be made. This is one of them.
Hmmm…. Joyce is suckered into “just one game to prove there’s no demon summoning or anything”. She plays a ranger with a beast companion. Makes her beast companion a golden retriever.
Plays faithfully every week for the rest of her life.
Compromise: go to the clinic. It’ll be way cheaper than the ER, but they will still x-ray the toe because x-rays are billable. And they will give you painkillers.
You can’t walk in the door of an ER for less than $1500 hereabouts and that’s before you say Well, doc. Clinic lanced my infected thumb (large hypodermic needle, suction) took 20 minutes, scripped me antibiotics, AND charged my insurance $550. Still outrageous just not mind-blowing.
But the more important point here is that Carla is awesome.
Wow. Germany has so called “Durchgangsärzte” where you can show up after an accident – you have to wait for ages, though – and they X-ray and stuff. Their function is to keep people out of ER who are no really emergencies but need treatment today.
And it’s paid for either by special workplace insurenrance (in case of accidents on the way to/from or at work – I think they are financed by the state and dues from anyone who employs people) or you usual (practically mandatory) health insurance.
The only doctor’s bills I ever see are for stuff not included by my health insurance, i.e. tooth implants or other more-than average stuff.
A crusehd toe would not pose a financial problem.
(People with so-called private insurance get the bills and are refunded by their insurance later. Usually, those are people who earn above-averagade wages and get special treatment.
A few people managed to fall out of coverage by normal health insurance even though they don’t earn much, and they get private health insurance which doesn’t cover shit, but it’s really work to get there.)
We’ve got urgent care clinics, which sound like basically the same thing as your Durchgangsärzte. It’s just the payment that’s the problem, though they’re much cheaper than the ER.
The other thing about the ER in the US is that they have to treat you, at least minimally, even if you can’t pay. So it’s often the main source of health care for those without insurance. They’ll get billed outrageous amounts, but you can’t get blood from a stone and they get the problem treated – no follow care though.
Joyce, did you know that you can do table-top RPGs without the magic, polytheism, and demons? You can do RPGs without whatever you want. Let me tell you about a little thing called GURPS.
My personal favorite back in the day was when the fundies were fine with us playing Call of Cthulhu, as long as it wasn’t D&D. They had no idea what it was, but they’d heard of D&D and knew it was evil.
Technically, you want to roll an 18 using three dice. Furthermore, isn’t that a translation error and the actual biblical number of the beast is 616? Finally, I’m sure there’s some way to convert GURPS to 1d6+1d12 (number of weekdays minus the day of rest and the number of apostles)
(sighs) It’s true, GURPS is not little. I just tend to lose perspective with D&D dominating the market to the point where people use it synonymously with “tabletop role-playing game.” And D&D is fine and all, but there are some other great systems out there too! Do not Kleenex my gaming, you philistines!
Fidget spinners would have been funnier but if this comic is still in real time then I don’t think they’re popular enough at the moment for Joyce to be concerned about them. At least if we’re talking about the new ones. Now the old one I remember, the swinging ball one that was bright green that if you swung hard enough it could be used as a weapon haha, then that might be against Joyce’s religion.
I always forget American’s don’t have proper health care, and have to pay for it. (How did it go more recently? Obama tried to finally get you guys one, and Trump… well… Trumped it?)
It creates situations like this one, where you have to really think about if it’s worth it to go to a hospital. Other places, you just go, have it looked at, make sure it’s not much worse than it looks, etc.
Panel 1: This is actually not rock bottom level RAing. Like, it’s doing almost the best with the situation at hand. Student doesn’t want to go to the hospital but has injury, direct her to someone with street medic experience.
On a scale from 1 to 10, it’s solidly a 6…ish.
Now where it falls down is there’s a lot of room between hospital and street medic. A lot of college campuses have specific centers that students can go to for general first aid and check-ups. Plus, this would be the exact situation that would likely have a listing in the training to contact a higher-up, because the school doesn’t want to be responsible for someone injuring themselves on school equipment and then going without medical care.
Ok, so maybe it’s more like a 3, but she still could have managed worse.
Panel 2: Carla is a super-being. Fear her.
Panel 3: I love love love that Carla is a street medic and has basic street medic skills, because yes, of course she is. Anarchist-minded, politically active, and trans? Of course she’s doing street medic work, especially likely built taking care of her own wounds getting beat up as a kid.
And I fully get her being down on hospitals. For most trans folks, anything you can do to avoid dealing with a hospital is preferable even if it’s not in your best interest, just because of how much casual transphobia happens in hospitals (got a fair bit when I had to go into the ER, which was fun).
But it’s still a problem of subculture. Joyce is unlikely to run into the problems Carla has and is more likely to be taken seriously and given some amount of care.
Panels 4-6: And you see that clash of subcultures here. Yes, in the D&D/medicine joke, but also in Joyce being like “yeah, I’m not intending to push through the pain, I’d love painkillers to make this hurt less”.
panel 1: I’m assuming it’s the school that dropped the ball here, being so desperate for RAs that they don’t require any first aid training, and then being too lazy to provide any either. the higher-ups don’t want to be bothered.
also *hugs* 🙂 I hope you’re feeling somewhat better now?
1) There’s also the more practical consideration of a broken toe not really being an emergency, it being somewhere before 6 am and the UI health center not opening until 8.
Feed her some basic painkillers, lug her down to the health center when it opens. ER is not needed. Of course, Ruth hasn’t suggested it and she should have.
That she was able to get up and be vaguely personable is a good sign.
Though I’m kind of sad that this whole bit wasn’t complicated by Billie being there in the room, also half-dressed. Even though there’s no secret anymore, the reactions might have been fun.
Wait are fidget spinners condemned by fundies now? I’ve been out of touch for a while. I at least remember my brother being told he was going to hell for playing D&D…
Basic rule of thumb. ANYTHING that isn’t Jesus or Jesus-adjacent and gets a modicum is going to be called Satan and hellfire by at least one preacher trying to get in its spotlight.
One of my aunts is a podiatrist, and she said the same thing when my toe was run over by a set piece at the school play I was working on and was possibly broken. Toes don’t get x-rayed under normal circumstances, buddy taping is the treatment regardless of it’s a sprain or break, and they generally heal quickly.
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just build her a new toe, Carla
Time for a Shower Shoes upgrade for the bug
“Freshman, do you even medicine?”
I’m guessing a re-engineered toe would require a plenitude of magic words.
Ladies, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic toe.
Medicine is against D&D religion?
If you worship Nerull, yeah probably.
It cuts in to the tithing to clerics if you can just fix yourself.
Considering the amount of anti-vaxxer religious crazies I’d say yes.
In D&D all injuries and diseases are curable by magic, so I guess?
In D&D, religion is medicine. Clerics are the best at curing whatever ails people.
DUH. In DnD, religions are full of people who can cast healing magic, but only a limited number of times per day, and usually in exchange for “donations” to their respective churches.
Meanwhile, alchemists, apothecaries, and physicians have no theoretical limits on how many people they can cure through non-magical means.
So the only conceptual leap to be made to “medicine is against religion” is imagining that religions might allow worldy competition to influence their spiritual dogma. It’s a stretch, I know, but the setting IS fantasy.
Except you’re not going deep enough. Dungeons and Dragons functions on the Discworld principle. the Gods and Goddesses are a known factor. They exist as a fact, and if they wish to, they could break any atheist’s windows.
it’s a poor business person who only destroys instead of ensnaring. Clerical casting limits are also known, as far as potency( Cure Minor, Light, Moderate, Serious Wounds) and times per day. A smart church will endorse alchemists, apothecaries, and TRAIN their clerics as physicians to conserve spellpower. Then they get the Resurrection and “FIX THIS NAO” business, and then charge a lesser fee for “well, I don’t need this fixed now, but it would be nice to get this splinted” business. as well as distributing palliatives and prophylactics to their holy soldiers on the Crusade against EVIL….
or trees. cuz Dungeons and Dragons can be that way.
While there is no theoretical limitations for physicians to provide curative means, i know that in german health care system, there actually are lawful limitations to e.g. physiotherapy prescriptions – not per person, but per all of them in a quarter of a year. if they’ve already prescribed all of them to other people, tough luck for you… no matter how bad your back pain is.
…I’d legitimately love to see Joyce stumble across a D&D game.
“When do they don robes and sacrifice the goat? Those dice don’t even look like they are carved from the bones of children!”
I wonder if Joyce ever had to watch/read Dark Dungeons.
We know she has Chick Tracts so she probably read it.
D&D’s rather popular right now, so it’s certainly possible. It’d be weirder if people WEREN’T playing it on campus somewhere.
If Willis ever wanted another comic, he could do the cast playing D&D.
Oh my god I would pay for that.
I would be extremely willing to write the system.
Seconded.
Ruth: Right, I’ll be GM’ing this game, everyone introduce your characters.
Becky: Wait, YOU’RE GM’ing? I thought you thought DnD was for nerds.
Ruth: I did, but then I heard Joyce thought it was ‘blasphemous’, and I thought, “I’m in!” So what are you playing?
Becky: My character’s a Human Ranger named Chris Sprat!
*Ruth raises an eyebrow* How… original. Dina?
Dina: I’m playing a Raptrosian Arcane Trickster named-
Becky: Blue! BlueBlueBlueBlueBLUE!
Dina: NO.
Becky: Awww…
Dina: Her name is unpronounceable by human tongues. However, you may CALL her ‘Blue’.
Becky: YAAAAASSSS!!
Ruth: *sigh*
Ruth: Roll D4 to see how many femurs you loose.
“Her name is unpronounceable by human tongues. However, you may CALL her ‘Blue’.”
PERFECTION
I’m almost afraid to ask, but is there a fundie-approved tabletop RPG built off the D20 system?
I don’t know of any PnP RPGs ENDORSED by any Christian groups. But I do know of a D20 campaign setting BASED on the Bible. Yes, this is real.
Honestly? That looks kind of cool. I think I’d enjoy playing a “Canaanite maker of idols”
I seriously considered running a campaign using this book, set in Babylon just before the Persian conquest.
I actually have this! Haven’t planned a campaign yet, but it’s a pretty cool read.
The Swedish church has published a roleplaying game called “the road” which is centered about moral choices. It’s pretty awesome.
https://svenskakyrkan.se/vasterasstift/app/WebShop/Item/Details/76
That would be a serious reversal from the fund opposition to D&D when it was first released. They said it was Satan worship. I expect this is DYW’s inspiration.
Not really, even then. They hated D&D, because occult, but generally didn’t know anything about roleplaying games beyond that. Hell, even today if you mention some non-D&D tabletop rpg to a non-gamer, you’ll probably have to describe it as “like D&D, but cyberpunk” or whatever.
For your average fundie, even back in the day if you just described roleplaying games generically, didn’t mention D&D and your particular game didn’t trigger the same “occult” flags, they’d never realize you were essentially doing the same thing.
And i’ve always laughed at the “satan worship” when the game encouraged you to go out and slay demons and devils and rescue childrens and you know, be a pretty damn great person.
But the thing is, you’re not doing it in the name of Jesus, which makes it evil, see? /s
Yeah, there is a HUGE influence from medieval stories about saints and knights.
That’s something I never really got. One of TSR/WOTC’s big competitors is a studio that currently puts out one setting with heavy Gnostic influences and another with vague Taoist flavoring, and the one that’s all knights-and-priests is the one they go after?
Oh, I have stories because we did “fundie-approved” gaming when I was a kid cause all my friends were stuck in that culture.
So it was almost all home-brew systems surrounding systems of “psionics” where magic was one to one replaced with psionics” and there were consistent sci-fi elements.
No one was allowed to play D&D proper, so we snuck it to school to play there instead.
That sounds like a rather fun system.
I don’t think ANY of the cast are gamers, so probably won’t happen.
…… though it would be awesome if it did. Especially if Joyce didn’t find out the NAME of the game until a few hours in.
You don’t think Amber is a gamer? Or at the very least WAS one before everything happened with Not-Ryan.
Wrong type of gamer. She’s pretty talkative about her fandoms and hobbies (at times) and DnD has NEVER come up.
She’s got a ridiculously high level paladin and talks about how she doesn’t like playing elves. Is that a WoW thing? Regardless, I can see her being into D&D.
That pretty much could be any “standard” fantasy RPG.
You would have to go off the beaten path to avoid things like elves or paladins – like Legend of the five rings – Legends of the Shinning Jewel – Fellowship of the White Star – oh, hey, that would be a hoot and a half with this group – 1880-1912 era – no elves or paladins though there are Knights. No armor or swords. Avoid playing with the dynamite or you WILL have a bad time.
But it was in context of “raids” and “killing spiders” and always sitting at her computer – maybe not WoW specifically, but very definitely Computer MMO rpgs, not table top ones.
She could have played D&D, but I’d guess for most of her high school career she was too introverted for what is essentially a face to face social activity – even if it is traditionally one for social outcasts.
You can play D&D online now. My group uses roll20. She could still do that.
She could. But the only things that might hint at it, point more strongly to some WoW like MMO.
I could totally see Amber being into WoW, or Guild Wars. If it were the early 2000’s, she so would have played Runescape. I think she loves the fantasy concepts and heroism stuff and can deal with multiplayer in an online setting but the idea of tabletop gaming probably stresses her out because social anxiety.
IF JESUS WANTED US TO SPIN FIDGETS HE WOULD’VE PUT IT IN THE CONSTITUTION >:C >:C >:C
IT WAS THE FIFTEENTH
AMENDMENTCOMMANDMENTOh, one of the five on the tablet Moses dropped. That explains everything.
“Hey, moses, um, what does “Thou shalt spin fidgets everyday of your lives until the end of time” mean? I mean I get the commandments about adultery and stuff, but what does this one even mean?”
“… …. Yeah, no, I have no idea. He goes off on random stuff pretty often. Usually I just nod and smile a lot.”
Look, it was never EXPLICITLY in the Constitution, but neither were the words “Freedom from Religion” or “Democracy”. Like so much else, various PIECES of the Constitution come together to create a space for spinning.
(Mostly Articles I and II.)
Mostly, though, we just fidget.
So I should just keep my level 26 ChG Warlock and his healing spells away from her?
Give her some time in the waiting room, and then check in. A little false idolatry starts looking a lot more appealing when you realize there’s a good chance they won’t get around to seeing you for another eight hours or so.
Yes, because all the cool kids are playing 5th edition now.
And before that the cool kids were play 3.x.
…. let’s face it, the cool kids NEVER played 4th ed for more than a couple of sessions.
We played “PARANOIA” as well as “Lords of Creation” and sometimes “Slayers” because who doesn’t want to occasionally be a landscaper?
They were all playing WoD, mostly as an excuse to try to get in each other’s pants.
I love Joyce’s whiparound in panel 2. Really captures the surprise of Carla showing up.
That wasn’t actually a whiparound. That was almost the birth of Anti-Joyce, except that she managed to re-absorb her at the last second.
I am suddenly interested in any possible Joe and Carla interaction. After all they’re AU!father and daughter kind of? I hope they do have some sort of friendship/relationship in this verse too.
I want to see their interactions but I also want to know how/if Joe ranked her on his list since I feel like that’d sort of give an idea of how those interactions might go. Idk why it’s a big deal to me considering that Carla didn’t really linger on it.
The thought did cross my mind if Joe counted transwomen on his list. But yeah, given Joe and Carla’s alternate history it would be nice to see them talk about something.
Carla’s father is secretly Joe’s biological father, since as we all know the character claiming to be Joe’s father is simply Joe from the future.
Something I was pretty sad about from Shortpacked was that we never got to see how it ended up with Joe and Ultracar. Did we see them together at all after the portal thing?
I like to think Carla and Rachel are collaborating on a self-driving car project, maybe based off a red Nissan Versa.
…. eh, Carla doesn’t strike me as the “collaborating” type.
@alt-text They’ll spin open a gateway to the netherrealm, just you wait and see.
I initially read that as “Nephalem” and thought – drop in on Tyrael preparing tea for some expected yet unknown guests – Them. [snerk]
At first I read “netherrealm” as “shadowrealm” >.>
Apparently Joyce hasn’t seen what an actual gaming session of D&D is really like.
I have never seen the 8-Bit theatre version of this. Thank you for this.
I cast magic missile at the darkness! 😀
Maybe Joyce thinks D&D is like LARPing except with real witches and wizards?
Ah, Dead Alewives. They’ve derailed more sessions than anyone else save Monty Python.
I see Carla is wearing some official Willis Fan Club merch there.
*plays Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” on the hacked Muzak, followed by Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine”*
Carla can hear her name at 1,000 paces, especially with her army of drones. 😛
She arrives as she is called, like a Ranyhyn.
Actually, there are several churches (similar in doctrine to the one it seems Joyce went to) that use fidget spinners as a way to teach the trinity so. Yeah D&D probably works better in this case.
That’s fucking disgusting.
Why disgusting?
OK, I’ll bite, why would fidget spinners be wicked?
Oh right the Trinity. I guess three-leaf covers will have to go out, too.
I’m looking over a three-leaf clover
That I overlooked be three!–Bugs Bunny
So wait, some Christians have a beef with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?
Catholics believe in the Trinity. Protestants (well, most Protestants) think that’s polytheism and therefore false idolatry. They still do the whole “Father, Son and Holy Ghost” thing, because nobody likes Unitarians, but they emphasize that they are in fact the same person, just with a bad case of DID. Ergo, fidget spinners are bad because they encourage God’s alters to split up even more than the wicked Catholic Church has already.
This is ignoring the fact that the Catholic Church also believes in “three-in-one and one-in-three”
I don’t think I’d heard before that Protestants aren’t into the Trinity. I mean, I know my churches were exceptional, but we were pretty hard on for God In Three Persons, and any Protestant church I ever frequented looked down on non-Trinitarian churches as cults.
Well I didn’t grow up with this so I might be confusing things. I do remember that the concept of unitarianism showed up during the Protestant Reformation, so I guess wires got crossed.
It’s less “catholics aren’t christian because they believe in the trinity” and more “catholics aren’t christian because they believe in the trinity wrong.” Unclear on how they do that, because it’s usually well beneath “the crucifix is idolatry” and “catholics worship saints and the virgin Mary as if they were gods, which is idolatry” under Reasons Catholics “Aren’t Christian.”
It’s unitarians who “aren’t christian” because they don’t believe in the trinity, although i don’t think anybody at any of my churches ever actually used the term “unitarian” to describe that. They just said if you didn’t believe in the trinity you weren’t Christian. But I don’t remember a hell of a lot about the Protestant Reformation, and everyone’s problems with each other were probably different back then, so idk if/how your wires were crossed.
As a Catholic, I can say that their cited reason “Catholics worship saints and the Virgin Mary as if they were gods, which is idolatry” is certainly false. While we do pray to the saints and the angels, we do not worship them. Rather, we pray to them to intercede for us, since they are already in Heaven with God, and therefore have greater influence with Him than Joe Blow down on Earth does. As far as the whole crucifix being idolatry claim, I guess that must be one of the reasons why they splintered away from the Catholic Church to form their own religion in the first place, so really it’s their problem, not mine.
Trinity. Why so limited? A truly omnipotent deity would be able to manifest in whatever form she chose.
Wait, so it’s not the Trinity, why does Joyce’s and your church dislike fidget spinners? (The kids didn’t pray hard enough to not have ADHD? I’m grasping.)
Because they’re kinda like mandalas, which False Eastern Religeons use to invite the devil into your soul? (Someone pointed me to this fantastic rant about mindfulness colouring books as a pathway to Hell….)
It was something random and current.
There was a Paraguayan preacher who showed how spinning a fidget spinner in your hand can cause you to accidentally make the devil-horns sign with your fingers, thus imperiling your soul because accidental finger positions with no intention of demonic communion is more powerful than salvation from Christ or something like that.
Ah — then D&D is way better!
As explained by St Ptraick to Lutheran Satire.
Well, I managed to bungle the HTML on that pretty well, it seems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLfgaUoQCw
The official Lutheran Protestants in Germany (and most other Protestants denominations are basicly viewed as cult over here) teach the Trinity.
Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christadelphians, Christian Scientists, Dawn Bible Students, Living Church of God, Oneness Pentecostals, Members Church of God International, Unitarian Universalist Christians, The Way International, The Church of God International, the United Church of God, and the Iglesia ni Cristo.
That’s a lot more unitarians than I thought there were. Are there any “off-brand” fundies that are unitarian?
Nondenominational. The word I’m looking for is “nondenominational”
If there’s a theological belief out there, I guarantee at least one nondenominational church follows it.
I actually saw a church flier using fidget spinners to explain the concept of the Three in One thing for the Trinity not too long ago.
Paying more attention to them instead of gawd.
Making Him/Them dizzy.
If I recall the history correctly, Pokemon Cards only started getting demonized by the churches when the public schools banned them for basically being gambling/ distractions. Recently Fidget Spinners are getting banned in schools.
Is this the subtle setup for a “Joyce plays D&D” arc?
ASSEMBLE YOUR PARTIES
Carla can be the Zoomer.
Mary can be the demogorgon.
Honestly, I’ve been waiting for Mary’s face to split open into a tooth-filled maw for quite some time now.
There’s no such thing as a zoomer
Medicine is against D&D
But healing spells are A-OK!
Yeah, because it’s magic. Magic is something you can trust. It’s reliable and clearly exists. Science, on the other hand, is a conspiracy for the weak-minded who have no faith in the gods.
Now Joyce cant roll a save VS pain.
so does Joyce mean Dungeons and Dragons is against her religion, or that religions in Dungeons and Dragons have taboos on using medicines?
Former. Many fundamentalist Christian groups have it out for D&D.
I recently got into D&D because my roommates started a campaign and invited me in. I told my boss a couple days later just to see if her head would explode. Pretty sure she now thinks my roommates are trying to convert me to Satanism. Pretty much what I expected; my boss is basically Joyce’s mom.
IIRC Medicine is actually a(n underutilized) class skill for Clerics. You only get so many spell slots in a day, and you have to assign them in advance, so if you’re willing to roll for your heals, packing bandages lets you swap out Cures for utility or de/buff spells.
As of 3rd Edition, clerics can swap out prepared spells for healing spells of the same or lower level. I’m not sure about 5th Ed, I haven’t kept up.
You make a prepared list of spells and can pick whichever you want from then as long as you have the appropriate level spell slots left. (You can use a higher level spell slots for a lower level spell). Also some clerical domains automatically include healing spells on the list as a bonus.
Re: alt-text, D&D is better because it shows just how damn long Joyce’s parents have been fundies. And there’s a brief ambiguity of wondering if Joyce is saying that Dungeons and Dragons is against medicine.
Doesn’t really show how long. Yes, that STARTED in the 80s, but religious vilification just never really DIES.
My parents are anti-medicine (it’s all a scheme from the doctors to steal your money and addict you to painkillers) and anti-D&D. D&D is of the devil! Also, all RPG video games because they are the same thing.
It was really hard to convince my mother that Final Fantasy was okay to play.
…what are their position on fidget spinners?
They are in their 70s, I don’t think they’re aware fidget spinners exist.
Let them remain blissfully ignorant.
Yeah, my parents were against watching the Gummi bears because it had magic in it. Religion can make some people nuts.
And that’s such a perfect metaphor for early medieval Christianity too. In an ignorant feudal age, small groups (monks) retain ancient (ancient roman and Greece) knowledge, keeping it safe for the future while morning their vestigal empire.
The other Gummie bears sometimes encountered represent the much more advanced Islamic scholars that retained more of the ancient knowledge. Duke Igtorn is a model of a renaissance dictator (think Machiavelli or Gustav Vasa) who want to use the old knowledge to forge himself a larger kingdom than what is supported by the feudal model.
As a huge fan of the show, I love this analysis.
I spent WAY too much time as a teenager overthinking Gummie Bears.
As a point of observation – and I’m very sorry for this – Duke Igtorn does not have a mustache. Look close and you will see that its all coming from within his nose. It’s nose hair.
I’m sorry.
http://www.newgumbrea.com/psearch/g1061.jpg
There’s a certain irony in how there was a time (I can’t remember which century or which country) where women accused of murdering their husbands through witchcraft weren’t burned to death. Their accusers were, for suggesting that magic existed, which went against contemporary Church beliefs that supernatural powers could only come from God and so the belief in magic was heretical.
The accused women, if I remember correctly, usually got a short trial followed by hanging, the punishment for completely mundane murder.
To be fair, stories of an entire society which would dissolve in warm water can be pretty dark.
Only one character was melted by water in “The Wizard of Oz” and it gave kids (and some grown-ups) nightmares.
Wait, that wasn’t the plot?
The impression that I’ve been getting is that some of the crazier fundamentalists either don’t want to acknowledge or can’t comprehend that religion can be fictional. Anyone who describes a religion has to actively believe in it. Anyone who believes in a different religion isn’t merely wrong, they’re actively worshiping some sort of real demon.
But that makes perfect sense when you’re living in a reality tunnel where the devil is actively trying to seduce people away from God. What better way than false religion?
Better not play a Dark Knight then. (am currently playing a bard in FF14).
Yeah see, Joyce, if D&D wasn’t against your religion, a cure light wounds would take care of that toe right quick.
Nah, I’d say this calls for a Regenerate, just to be on the safe side. Much-higher in spell level, but worth it.
Where are they going to find a 13th-level cleric?
Come to that, Joyce could probably take care of it herself, but she’s been told that laying hands on herself is sinful and her grandmother is going to see it in her Outtakes of Shame when she gets to Heaven.
Honestly, characters level relatively quickly compared to how astronomically better high levels are, so an actual D&D world would be filled to the brim with high-level characters — not just the masters of their craft, but just about anyone who’s been doing what they do for any significant amount of time.
Speaking of D&D, guess what, there’s a Chick Tract on the subject. Definitely against Joyce’s religion. Can’t do links right now, but Google Dark Dungeons, it’s hilariously bad. There’s even a parody on YouTube.
Ah right, almost forgot there was a video. Jontron reviewed it once.
That’s one of my favorite videos from Jon.
Too bad I’m not allowed to enjoy his content anymore.
You can enjoy it, you just have to close your eyes and imagine your grandmother.
a new one or the everyone has torn to pieces since the 90’s?
Unlikely to be a new one—Jack died last year.
Curse you, 2016!Also, bear in mind that there’s a good chance Joyce wouldn’t have liked Jack Chicken even before her recent adjustments. Pretty sure the dude hated even slight divergences from his denomination.
Well, that’s a delightful typo!
There’s a strip where Joyce had Chick Tracts. (Shortly after she learned Dorothy was an atheist, I believe.)
Yeah, Joyce even had a line toward Dorothy to the effect of “I’ll leave behind my Chick Tracts if you don’t bring your biology textbook”.
And she likely wasn’t being facetious there either, because the same panel showed her to have a literal bagful of them.
The weird things is that even in Dark Dungeons, DnD isn’t actually evil. A cultist got a kid she met playing to join her cult, but the game itself was harmless. She could’ve used tennis.
And she didn’t even actually seem to be, like, intentionally using the game to recruit kids. There was just the one kid she met during the game that she decided to recruit.
Also Chick clearly never made any effort at all to learn anything about DnD. Or even read a brief description.
And also condemned Lewis and Tolkien’s works because ‘talking animals and wizards’. Even though both of them were Christian scholars and most of ‘Wardrobe’ was a glorified Christ allegory.
Yes, but Tolkien was Catholic and Lewis was Anglican – probably high church. Jack Chick was a nondenominational fundamentalist, and if there’s one thing that’s consistent among nondenom fundies, it’s hatred of the Catholic church and anything like it.
Nondenominational fundamentalism is my least favorite denomination.
(Also I spelt it nondemonimational and now I want to start a production company called Demonimation)
“Demonimation” sounds like the children show Satanists would make as the mirror image of Davey and Goliath. Give how hard up TV stations are and how little care most put into the “childrens’ block”, you could probably get it on the air.
Well, not knowing anything about it is a plus from his point of view.
And the entire thing about Dark Dungeons isn’t that some cultist recruited a kid while playing it, but that that is what D&D is – a Satanic pathway into the occult.
Of course there is a Chick tract about it. You name a subject, I can pretty much guarantee there is a track covering it. I had some fundie neighbours when I was a kid, they left the stupid things everywhere. My circle of friends would make a point of “discovering” them when the fundies were ‘discretely” lingering nearby, and we would proceed to heckle and ridicule the crap out of them.
Wait, I thought Carla was an engineering major, not medicine.
You are correct. But she skates everywhere, and it seems like she’s been in a few scrapes and/or wipe-outs.
Carla’s experienced in first aid.
She also plays roller derby, which looks like a fairly violent sport.
Fidget spinners would have been funny
But their condemnations are less well-known. …. and they’re kinda dizzying. Lots of spin in them.
Joyce is looking cute-cute in these strips.
The toe thing seems to be true. A few years ago I stubbed my big toe in a way where the pain was intense and not going away. My host told me just to tape it up. I insisted on seeing a doctor… who said that even if it was broken, they’d just tape it up.
Later that night, I heard “So where’s MY $80?” Smart alec.
Sounds plausible since my pentacostal upbringing frowned upon it. Fortunately, I wasn’t interested because it required too much math.
D&D is funnier.
Besides, by the time copies of Book 8 are out, people will ask, “What are fidget spinners?”
…Is that Joyce’s soul briefly popping out of her body in panel 2?
Breaking a toe has not left Joyce in good spirits.
They sure as heck do order toe x-rays… we don’t know why either, but we do ’em.
I got one too, but I’m in canada, they’d probably x-ray anything if you ask nicely. 🙂
I like that for all her noise, Ruth gives good advice. Go to the hospital or find the girl on the floor she knows can patch it up.
God, Carla. Don’t be such an engineer. You can’t fix EVERYTHING with duct tape.
I can fix Donald Trump with duct tape. Give me enough, and give me access.
You wouldn’t need much. One strip to cover his mouth, one to cover his phone.
You’d also need some to tie up his hands so he can’t sign stupid shit…
Can we make a duct tape rocket to shoot him to the moon?
Too bad Mythbusters are over. We could ask them if you can make a Jato rocket out of duck tape…
To fix him, you’d need to get a sharp enough edge out of it to cut fleshy organs.
hey this isnt really relevant, but heres when david switched the gender studies desks from all lefty desks to all righty desks http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/hi/
Who is this… “David” you speak off?
He is the Receiver of Damns, the Unbelieved Autobiographer, the Fate-Maker of Ships, and the Dasher of Dreams. Invoke that name at your peril.
So one time when I was still an athlete in martial arts, one of the guys on the tournament team somehow (for the life of me, I cannot explain the stupid)managed to break his big toe, index toe, and middle toe, and bust up the bits below the toes.
Our instructor was also a highly trained EMT and I will never forget her looking at his foot and going “Okay, this is bad” after she has reassured him everything was fine.
The Meta-tarsals? Did he drop a car on his foot or something or just kick a steel plate REALLY hard?
Having had prior martial arts experience, and experience in hurting myself while doing it: He prolly did a kick with bad form, and hit whatever he was trying to kick wrong.
Never take Newton’s Third Law lightly huh?
That’s probably up there on the list of “things you don’t want trained EMTs to say when they see the extent of your injury”
And also “thinks you probably shouldn’t say in front of your patient as a trained EMT”
I’ll tell you from experience another thing you don’t want to hear. You don’t want the nurse in an emergency ward who is doing a twelve-lead on you to look at the ECG and say “Oh shit”.
Wow. Well, I’m glad you’re either alive or have successfully uploaded your ghost to the Internet.
Very soon afterwards I was surrounded by three doctors and four nurses, and the bloke in charges was asking “Are you sure you’re conscious?”. He got my VT to revert to SVT by means of carotid sinus massage, so they didn’t have to shock me, but they glued electrodes onto my chest and watched me like a hawk until they were able to transfer me to another hospital.
Medicine is against Dungeons and Dragons?
Unless it’s LARPing. Too much time sitting around a table eating chips and soda is counter-recommended.
I feel like I say this frequently when Carla features but I love Carla. More Carla, please.
Banning D&D wasn’t random! That game used to have demons on the cover and everything. And it’s not anachronistic of Joyce to bring it up, either. To this day it’s still on the Mount Rushmore of “things fundie kids are told is evil”.
Weren’t terms like “baatezu” and “tana’ri” specifically created as substitutes for referring to monsters as demons in order to placate the people objecting to D&D on religious grounds?
Yep. 2nd Edition did exactly that workaround. By the time 3rd edition rolled around nobody really cared anymore so they brought “Demons” and “Devils” back.
Always found it amusing/interesting how many fundies totally seem to have firsthand knowledge of someone whose life ended because of D&D, though. Usually in the form of suicides, which apparently are totally caused by D&D and not say, untreated mental illness.
As a young D&Der, I met another kid who was convinced that the game was Satanic because we used “weejee” boards while playing. I had no idea what he was talking about, and neither did any of my friends, until we realized that he meant ouija boards. This, of course, was nonsense.
But… “ouija” is pronounced “weejee.” Why the confusion?
I always said “wee-ja.” That might be a regional peculiarity of my Minnesota youth.
Southern Ontario. It’s always been ‘wee-ja’ or ‘ooh-wee-ja’ here.
If you use anything it’ll be a note pad, or some other form of paper.
I don’t know if nobody cared anymore, but changing the names of demons and devils didn’t do a thing to convince the fundies it wasn’t Satanic, so why not change it back.
Mostly though, D&D was a lot lower profile by then. Fundies still ranted about it, but it had largely dropped off mainstream radar.
What are the other three?
Fidget spinners, Hillary Clinton, and that dangly thing at the back of your throat.
I kid, of course. Everyone loves uvulas.
Jokes about D&D being considered Satanic by certain churches is always the way to go.
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS. SATAN’S GAME.
The Dead Ale-Wives watchtower invites you to see a re-enactment of this sinister game at work.
https://youtu.be/-leYc4oC83E
And so Joyce becomes a heroin addict.
Does Carla wake up extra early in the morning just in case someone says her name?
Carla doesn’t sleep. Sleep is for puny humans.
Whereas Carla is a tol human.
Carla keeps her own hours.
Yeah, that’s the thing. That sensational scuttlebutt you ‘heard’ about a religion? The weirder it sounds, the geometrically less likely it is to be true.
So, is there no end to Carla’s skills? Engineering and field medicine? Then again, she’s the sort of daredevil who, as a kid, probably skated into many a wall and fell down many a flight of stairs. She’s probably absorbed how to deal with minor injuries through the osmosis of repeated occasions listening to doctors talk abut her!
Joyce is autobiographical, also Jack Chick is real
We’ve seen her first aid before – tending to Amber. With exactly that explanation.
It’s not unlikely she’s run into some physical abuse for being trans too, even with her parent’s support.
Fidget spinners would’ve been funnier.
D&D’s the better joke imo, and it will age better
Nah, Willis, D&D was a way funnier choice because it’s not just absurdly random, but also accurate. Look up Dark Dungeons (as other commenters have already said). Fidget spinners would’ve been *just* random and that’s never as great a joke.
I’m going to second this. I think fidget spinners would have been funnier because they’re so obviously innocuous, but I think D&D ended up being the better joke because it’s a thing that actual churches think is evil.
Hold on, dungeons and dragons is against her religion or medicine is against dungeons and dragons? Or is this some Rock Paper Scissors deal
I say dip that toe in a cup of ice.
… okay, now I want BECKY to join a DnD group and then drag Joyce into joining.
I KNOW Becky would play the hot lesbian ranger (or druid) with a dinosaur companion, and then get into a rules argument with the DM about whether they had feathers.
And Joyce would play… huh. I got no idea. Probably not cleric or paladin, they’re too smashy-smashy for her notion of the priesthood. Any suggestions?
To be fair, Joyce was never against smashing evil in the face. Just look at ToeDad or Rapist McStabby. She could actually make a good Monk.
Ah, I should have scrolled further and seen this before posting down there. Problem with her being a cleric or paladin is because then she’d be “promoting paganism”, and with a monk “eastern religion”. Maybe wizard or sorc? I’ve noticed my first-time girl players seem to lean ranger or arcane.
Pretty sure wizard or sorc would fall under “Satan’s magic”. Ranger seems like the simplest thing.
I can 100% see Joyce insisting on playing an Actual Christian Paladin.
Helped by the fact that Paladins were historically Charlemagne’s equivalent of Knights of the Round Table.
Nononono. Christian. Not Catholic.
(That’s Joyce’s prejudice speaking, not mine. Potentially. We haven’t heard where she stands on Catholicism, but given her background…)
Yeah I figured that would be an issue with her. We Couuuuld probably argue that Charlemagne was long before Luther and the whole Catholic/Protestant divide.
Yeah, but in my experience the non-denominational evangelical types mostly use that as a way to cherry-pick which parts of the legacy to keep and which parts to wash their hands of.
Atrocities committed during the Crusades? CATHOLIC.
Classifying suicide as a sin? CHRISTIAN.
Dating Jesus’s birth as occurring years AFTER Herod’s death? CHRISTIAN.
Supporting the divine right of kings and pushing feudalism and aristocracy over democracy? CATHOLIC.
Sorry for second one.
Considering her reaction to Jacob’s Way-too-much-like-Catholic-for-her-comfort Church I think we can be pretty safe in assuming that she considers Catholics to be worshippers of Satan.
There was also this early on.
We can be pretty sure.
Hell, I’d like to try playing one, myself. Seems like fun.
I have played an actual Christian paladin — in a 3.0 campaign set in Durham in AD1090.
You can actually lose a toe due to this; one of my family member’s toe was crush when they were a kid; it started to necrosis by the time we got to a hospital, and had to be cut to not affect the foot.
I know what you mean, my grandma hurt her toe and didn’t tend to the wound properly. She wound up losing the entire foot!
FWIW, any good hospital would X-ray a big toe, since some types of fractures can actually require minor surgery, like if they involve the joint.
Yes, surgery to repair toe fractures isn’t common, but it’s necessary occasionally (I only saw two in my residency). A littlke more often you have to reduce a displaced fracture, without surgery. Also the big toe moves independently from the lesser toes so you actually shouldn’t tape it to the 2nd toe. You should use a surgical shoe to provide immobilization. (Also there’s a reasonable chance it’s a soft tissue injury not a break, but If you don’t need surgery – and she probably doesn’t – the treatment is the same) If you want to be more aggressive you can use crutches or even a CAM walker, but that’s generally not necessary. She’s probably better off going to a podiatrist or at least an urgent care rather than sitting around for hours at an expensive ER, but I guess it depends on the exact circumstances. (Is this a weekend so all the podiatry offices are closed, or at least the ones on her insurance? Also, not that she would know, but the omniscient narrator might – Is there a podiatry residency at the local hospital? Does the PA at the hospital or the urgent care happen to be b etter at this day and hour?)
I once advised my brother to go to the ER for a broken toe, oin the grounds that he should get a an x-ray just to be sure, and they taped it up wrong, didn’t even give him a surgical shoe, a nd sent him a giant bill he had to fight with his insurance over. And that was at a hospital he worked at. I
Ladies and gentlemen, the United States Healthcare system! Yaaaaaaaay.
Yay! I was in the USA in August and went into an ER with renal colic. They gave me a painkiller and a couple of prescriptions. Cost US$1356.
I’m still fighting with my travel insurance about it.
For a contrast, I once went into an Australian ER with ventricular tachycardia: got an heroic combination of drugs (lidocaine and amiodarone IV infusions), a couple of ambulance rides, a medevac flight, eight days in CCU, and every test known to cardiology. Total cost: A$2 for a disposable razor.
To be fair, that’s what you’re supposed to go to the ER for, not broken toes. ERs are expensive (whether you pay for it directly or not), because they’re ready to handle the serious trauma cases. You don’t want to waste their time with piddling little problems.
The way we pay for it in the US is all screwed up, no denying that.
In Joyce’s case, take some ibuprofen or whatever for the immediate pain (and swelling), then limp over to the university health center when it opens.
Actually, that’s not quite true. I had to pay an airfare to get back home after I was discharged.
I’m struggling right now with the work-related injury I had back in June. I gave the hospital all my worker’s comp info at the ER. They LOST it, even though I witnessed it being scanned, so I sent it all again and I was assured everything was now fine. And Yesterday I got a call from a goddamned DEBT COLLECTOR saying I owe $750, without the hospital having contacted me again or sending me a bill or anything.
I find it fascinating that people who work at, say, Best Buy get an employee discount, but if you work at a hospital, you’re SOL.
D&D is definitely a better punchline than fidget spinners. There has been actual controversy in religious circles over D&D so it makes sense. Random works sometimes, but generally there are better jokes that could be made. This is one of them.
Fidget spinners would have felt dated by today, let alone by the time this gets collected into a book.
Joyce, that might actually be a MORE ridiculous prohibition.
Me: wraps up a game of D&D.
*checks dumbing*
….I love coincidences
‘D&D’ will be funnier much longer. Five years from now, the comments will be full of archive bingers wanting to know what a fidget spinner was.
I actually don’t think D&D is against painkillers.
Hmmm…. Joyce is suckered into “just one game to prove there’s no demon summoning or anything”. She plays a ranger with a beast companion. Makes her beast companion a golden retriever.
Plays faithfully every week for the rest of her life.
*Checks Patron comments, realizes he was probably the first to mention fidget spinners*
…This is my fault, isn’t it?
Compromise: go to the clinic. It’ll be way cheaper than the ER, but they will still x-ray the toe because x-rays are billable. And they will give you painkillers.
You can’t walk in the door of an ER for less than $1500 hereabouts and that’s before you say Well, doc. Clinic lanced my infected thumb (large hypodermic needle, suction) took 20 minutes, scripped me antibiotics, AND charged my insurance $550. Still outrageous just not mind-blowing.
But the more important point here is that Carla is awesome.
Wow. Germany has so called “Durchgangsärzte” where you can show up after an accident – you have to wait for ages, though – and they X-ray and stuff. Their function is to keep people out of ER who are no really emergencies but need treatment today.
And it’s paid for either by special workplace insurenrance (in case of accidents on the way to/from or at work – I think they are financed by the state and dues from anyone who employs people) or you usual (practically mandatory) health insurance.
The only doctor’s bills I ever see are for stuff not included by my health insurance, i.e. tooth implants or other more-than average stuff.
A crusehd toe would not pose a financial problem.
(People with so-called private insurance get the bills and are refunded by their insurance later. Usually, those are people who earn above-averagade wages and get special treatment.
A few people managed to fall out of coverage by normal health insurance even though they don’t earn much, and they get private health insurance which doesn’t cover shit, but it’s really work to get there.)
Better system than we have. Ask most Americans and they just don’t realize how backward our system is.
We’ve got urgent care clinics, which sound like basically the same thing as your Durchgangsärzte. It’s just the payment that’s the problem, though they’re much cheaper than the ER.
The other thing about the ER in the US is that they have to treat you, at least minimally, even if you can’t pay. So it’s often the main source of health care for those without insurance. They’ll get billed outrageous amounts, but you can’t get blood from a stone and they get the problem treated – no follow care though.
Joyce, did you know that you can do table-top RPGs without the magic, polytheism, and demons? You can do RPGs without whatever you want. Let me tell you about a little thing called GURPS.
My personal favorite back in the day was when the fundies were fine with us playing Call of Cthulhu, as long as it wasn’t D&D. They had no idea what it was, but they’d heard of D&D and knew it was evil.
…. LITTLE thing?
Look, bottom line, you’re using dice where you WANT to get a roll of 666, so you’re of the devil.
Technically, you want to roll an 18 using three dice. Furthermore, isn’t that a translation error and the actual biblical number of the beast is 616? Finally, I’m sure there’s some way to convert GURPS to 1d6+1d12 (number of weekdays minus the day of rest and the number of apostles)
The number of the Beast is 616 in Greek and 666 in Latin because tjose are the numeralogical values of Nero’s name in the respective alphabets.
1) 666 is the POPULAR belief and that’s the one behind (part of) the fundamentalist denunciation of DnD. …. yes, this is actual fundie logic.
2) Doesn’t matter if you add the 6s up rather than keep them as is. Fundie logic says it don’t.
Oh, you don’t want the triple six. That’s a crit fail! In GURPS you’re aiming to roll low; the ideal is three ones. You know, like a Trinity of ones.
It occurs to me: GURPS is very amenable to wacko Christian numerology.
Have you come across Steve Jackson Games’ In Nomine?
Never played it, but it looks kinda interesting!
“Little”!? I’ve got more than a shelf-metre of 4th ed and a swag of PDFs, though I am nothing like a serious collector/player.
(sighs) It’s true, GURPS is not little. I just tend to lose perspective with D&D dominating the market to the point where people use it synonymously with “tabletop role-playing game.” And D&D is fine and all, but there are some other great systems out there too! Do not Kleenex my gaming, you philistines!
Fidget spinners would have been funnier but if this comic is still in real time then I don’t think they’re popular enough at the moment for Joyce to be concerned about them. At least if we’re talking about the new ones. Now the old one I remember, the swinging ball one that was bright green that if you swung hard enough it could be used as a weapon haha, then that might be against Joyce’s religion.
Dungeons & Dragons was the correct choice.
Over fidget spinners, I agree.
“Harry Potter” would have been funnier though (esp. w reference to Billie’s new dormmates)
Still waiting for that Fidget Spinner Chick Tract.
you’re gonna be waiting a while, since Chick is dead and all.
I thought someone had the right to continue the brand?
As I recall, when I broke my pinkie toe, I got 2 x-rays. One before, “Yup, that’s broken all right”, and after to make sure it was lined up correctly.
I also had to drive myself to the ER, with a sandal on one foot.
Joyce has gone to see Ruth for help, then was passed on to Carla. I wonder who she is getting passed to next.
I always forget American’s don’t have proper health care, and have to pay for it. (How did it go more recently? Obama tried to finally get you guys one, and Trump… well… Trumped it?)
It creates situations like this one, where you have to really think about if it’s worth it to go to a hospital. Other places, you just go, have it looked at, make sure it’s not much worse than it looks, etc.
“Fidget spinners” would have been funnier.
RE: the alt text. Dungeons & Dragons plays into the fundie stereotype, so I would say you make the correct choice.
So… That means D&D is religion? Or medicine?
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: This is actually not rock bottom level RAing. Like, it’s doing almost the best with the situation at hand. Student doesn’t want to go to the hospital but has injury, direct her to someone with street medic experience.
On a scale from 1 to 10, it’s solidly a 6…ish.
Now where it falls down is there’s a lot of room between hospital and street medic. A lot of college campuses have specific centers that students can go to for general first aid and check-ups. Plus, this would be the exact situation that would likely have a listing in the training to contact a higher-up, because the school doesn’t want to be responsible for someone injuring themselves on school equipment and then going without medical care.
Ok, so maybe it’s more like a 3, but she still could have managed worse.
Panel 2: Carla is a super-being. Fear her.
Panel 3: I love love love that Carla is a street medic and has basic street medic skills, because yes, of course she is. Anarchist-minded, politically active, and trans? Of course she’s doing street medic work, especially likely built taking care of her own wounds getting beat up as a kid.
And I fully get her being down on hospitals. For most trans folks, anything you can do to avoid dealing with a hospital is preferable even if it’s not in your best interest, just because of how much casual transphobia happens in hospitals (got a fair bit when I had to go into the ER, which was fun).
But it’s still a problem of subculture. Joyce is unlikely to run into the problems Carla has and is more likely to be taken seriously and given some amount of care.
Panels 4-6: And you see that clash of subcultures here. Yes, in the D&D/medicine joke, but also in Joyce being like “yeah, I’m not intending to push through the pain, I’d love painkillers to make this hurt less”.
panel 1: I’m assuming it’s the school that dropped the ball here, being so desperate for RAs that they don’t require any first aid training, and then being too lazy to provide any either. the higher-ups don’t want to be bothered.
also *hugs* 🙂 I hope you’re feeling somewhat better now?
Not really, but I’m trying to get back into my routines as my doctor says there is not really much I can do but ride it out.
Aww. That sucks. … Well, we’re here if talking helps pass the time at least. Lots of people care about you here 🙂
Get a better routine! (if you can’t get a better doctor…)
1) There’s also the more practical consideration of a broken toe not really being an emergency, it being somewhere before 6 am and the UI health center not opening until 8.
Feed her some basic painkillers, lug her down to the health center when it opens. ER is not needed. Of course, Ruth hasn’t suggested it and she should have.
Right, it’s still before any time Ruth could be expected to be awake. So she probably got woken up by them. I vaguely wondered about her outfit.
That she was able to get up and be vaguely personable is a good sign.
Though I’m kind of sad that this whole bit wasn’t complicated by Billie being there in the room, also half-dressed. Even though there’s no secret anymore, the reactions might have been fun.
Fidget spinners, definitely
I mean, there was actually a Chick tract for D&D, so it’s what she’s got exposure too.
Incidently, the darkest dungeon chick tract is hilarious. Throw on add block and give it a read. 😛 (https://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0046/0046_01.asp)
….. waitaminute.
….. has Jacob been without glasses ALL THIS TIME?
*checks archive*
5th panel Joyce with dot eyes looks shockingly normal. Relative to other characters, I mean, not her.
Is there anything Carla can’t do?
Humility.
Wait are fidget spinners condemned by fundies now? I’ve been out of touch for a while. I at least remember my brother being told he was going to hell for playing D&D…
Anything that keeps you from giving all of your attention
and moneytothe churchGod, where it belongs.Basic rule of thumb. ANYTHING that isn’t Jesus or Jesus-adjacent and gets a modicum is going to be called Satan and hellfire by at least one preacher trying to get in its spotlight.
I love that Joyce says that like it makes any more sense.
Interesting time of the day for a skirt.
One of my aunts is a podiatrist, and she said the same thing when my toe was run over by a set piece at the school play I was working on and was possibly broken. Toes don’t get x-rayed under normal circumstances, buddy taping is the treatment regardless of it’s a sprain or break, and they generally heal quickly.
No one’s thought of using an ice pack.