I don’t think there’s any concrete statement on the matter, unless Willis has done some Word of God thing. I always got the impression that she is still Christian, but I’m sure The Cheese and Resurrection Chambers and a Ghost Alien have done a number on her.
Things like the factual existence of bodiless souls would, I think, make atheism a much more dubious proposition in the walkyverse. She’d have less reason to abandon theism.
Not that it stopped Dina even when she was what is perceived as one. Not to mention, existence of one or some elements of a thing don’t automatically prove everything related to the thing.
Welllll… the existence of a soul separate from the body is actually not very well supported (read: basically not at all) by the actual text of the Bible.
Eh, to be fair to Joyce, I don’t think there’s anything she could possibly say that Becky would’ve taken well in that moment, even if it was the most thoughtful apology in the world. Becky was just not in a place to listen to that kind of thing.
I mean it’s all still Joyce’s fault but she’s right.
Well, it’s VERY difficult to accept one’s former bestie MOCKING YOU behind your back and FIVE SECOND LATER being sincerely apologetic, that kind of introspection isn’t THAT fast, ESPECIALLY at THAT age
I don’t think Becky was looking for an apology, she wanted an explanation and Joyce’s explanation was “Well I’m an atheist now because you’re gay and that conflicted with my faith so I dumped it, why haven’t you?” Which is not a comforting explanation even if it’s true.
Technically, that’s probably true. But it’s not anywhere close to a meaningful description of the interaction. Anyways, Joyce has some stuff to work through not around Becky, or she’ll keep bungling any apology. Showing up for actually having an argument instead of letting Becky just leave might have been the best choice in that situation anyways. Shows she cares what Becky thinks at least.
It’s Becky’s prerogative to not *accept* Joyce’s apology, but that doesn’t make the previous strip where Joyce said “I’m sorry, Becky, I’m really, really sorry” not exist. Joyce literally said those words! “Becky isn’t interested in an apology” is a completely factual description of what just happened between them! Anybody remotely tuned into this could probably infer that they did not make up.
The fact that this rift between Joyce and Becky was *not* resolved by Joyce apologizing doesn’t mean the apology didn’t take place; it is an incredibly clear demonstration that it’s about a rift too deep and too painful to be solved by an apology or one short argument, however harsh.
Sure Joyce apologized, but almost immediately after she started trying to argue with Becky over how Becky shouldn’t keep her faith. Which sort of negates the apology. Becky outright asked her “do you really think I’m an idiot because I still believe in God” and Joyce tried to start a theological argument. Joyce basically said that Becky doesn’t have a right to be upset because she’s wrong. Also, it can take time for an apology to be accepted, even a genuine one. We can’t say someone is a bad person just because they don’t immediately forgive someone after they apologize.
For Joyce’s apology to be fake would imply that Joyce thinks the act of causing pain to Becky is something she’s totally okay and happy with and just needs to lie to get the status quo back in order.
Yes, Joyce’s apology was followed up by an argument…
But I do think Becky had a little to do with that. Her blunt “Sorry I heard you!” (as well as some of her other statements/accusations) would have been enough to derail many people’s thought processes.
“We can’t say someone is a bad person just because they don’t immediately forgive someone after they apologize.”
… Okay? But that’s not at all what Cerusee said. They’re not calling Becky a bad person. They’re saying that Becky can be unforgiving even if Joyce apologize. Which is what happened. One does not negate the other.
I feel like you might be either responding to the wrong comment, or projecting things into Cerusee’s comment that are not there.
Yeah but that wasn’t really an apology. After Joyce said that Becky countered “Sorry I heard you.” and not only did Joyce never deny it, she hung her head in acknowledgment. She knows she didn’t apologize for what she did, only that she got caught.
Because the heart of the conflict is that Joyce *isn’t* sorry for losing her faith. Becky wouldn’t have been placated by anything less than Joyce assuring her she was still Christian, and Joyce couldn’t lie to her again.
I’m not entirely sure about that. Becky at least seems to think she’d be okay with it under different circumstances, given how she responds when Johce brings up Dina.
Have you possibly considered that Joyce is actually remorseful for the pain she thinks she caused Becky, and then continuing to push it is an exercise in futility because Becky won’t hear it?
What is she supposed to say? Why is she supposed to be so good at wordsmithing she can conjure up the magic apology that’ll get her feelings across that Becky has already labelled stupid bullshit?
I mean, perhaps a good start would have been to just say “no” when Becky asked, “do you really think I’m an idiot just because I still believe in God?” She could have said. “no, I’ve been having my own issues with losing my faith and I got caught up in the moment. I’m sorry.” If she had done that I would probably be a bit more on Joyce’s side. Rather she essentially says “yes” when Becky asks her if she thinks Becky is an idiot by outright explaining how Becky is wrong.
Okay so that’s still asking Joyce, after Becky has already affirmed to her that she does not believe she is capable of being sorry, to convey in so many words her wild outrage over her abusive cult upbringing, her current disbelief at everything she used to believe as unshakeable fact, and to somehow separate Becky from all the bad parts when as far as Joyce knew, because Becky was already running on this assumption, both of them approached their upbringing in the exact same way and came away with the exact same conclusions.
Meaning at the moment, right now, when she has made the step into accepting that she is a monkey and was given her first chance in her life to just be good and vengeful about all the trash she was handed and told was gourmet dinner, maybe Becky is part of all of this just by association and if Joyce had time to process this on her own time, as in she could do this without Becky and Dorothy stalking her for going off-script, then maybe she could eventually find a way to process the idea that she can think Becky is objectively wrong about life the universe and everything and also it doesn’t have to change much between them, because Becky is currently very much in love with someone who thinks and acts the same way.
Because that doesn’t sound like something Joyce can do, it sounds like Teddy Roosevelt.
But Joyce wasn’t sorry – her “apology” amounted to “Sorry YOU were hurt” not “Sorry I said people who think like you including you are all idiots.” Taking yourself out of the equation is the standard YouTuber / celebrity “apology” that’s not a real one. Just because I say the word “sorry” doesn’t mean it’s an apology
Yeah that’s because Joyce is sorry that Becky was hurt. As in despite what she thinks now, Becky matters enough that she doesn’t want to hurt her. The kind of apology you’re talking about involves deflecting from owning harm, but Joyce did that except within the specific frame work of “you got hurt and that bothers me.”
Because for Joyce to say “sorry I called you an idiot” (and Becky was not her specific target but we’ll get to that) would mean that Joyce is saying “sorry I called you an idiot for believing in objective falsehoods that you already know are objective falsehoods and yet cling to anyway.”
So here’s the thing, I’m an atheist and when I believed as a child God was just There, as in my life rolled on and God existed as a part of it until he did not. I had faith, it was just an incredibly flimsy faith in that it wasn’t really based on anything that mattered to me. I just knew he was there because everyone knew he was there until I didn’t. My faith isn’t based on anything meaningful to me, so for me to assert faith as idiotic would be an admission that I view everyone who has it as an idiot. I don’t get it, ergo it is wrong.
Becky’s faith is real and it’s more real than Joyce’s has ever been, and her ability to detach “from the unimportant stuff” is rooted in how if reality contradicts her faith, it’s unimportant because what really matters is God’s unending love for her. From there, Becky is also able to roll with other interpretations of her faith as valid as long as the unimportant stuff doesn’t take precedent. Mary’s not a good Christian, for example, because even though Mary probably believes the earth is millions of years old she hates gay people and hating gay people is unimportant, but Mary decides it’s important enough that her interpretation of faith is right and she can do whatever she wants.
Joyce was taught to obey the bible as a guide of objective reality. She didn’t have faith, she had programming, so once all of that programmed stressed enough it collapsed in on itself and we now have atheist Joyce.
The reason the scene everyone is reading as “Joyce didn’t say Becky wasn’t an idiot, therefore she called her an idiot” happened the way it did because Becky, having refused to accept that Joyce is sorry for hurting her, believes things Joyce is incapable (this is the important word) of processing as valid, the way you wouldn’t understand if I was eating paint. That shit’s bad for you, why in the world would you need to respect me eating paint because I say it’s good for me?
Joyce is currently, as in her atheism is not a belief in God’s non-existence so much as it is everything she’s had sold to her as objective reality vanishing in a puff of smoke with nothing to fill the void, unable to process Becky’s faith because Joyce can only process it as Becky’s continued insistence on accepting objective falsehoods as objective reality like the Earth being 6000 years old and dinosaurs on the ark. She thinks of herself as an idiot for ever believing, she thinks Becky’s an idiot for still believing, and she thinks everyone who believes is an idiot because what part of the Earth not being 6000 years old do you not understand?
Except nobody but Joyce thinks the Earth is 6000 years old. Becky used to and no longer does, but Joyce and Becky grew up with the same beliefs and structures meaning Becky should have processed this the same way Joyce did, much like how Becky treats Joyce’s atheism as a failing on her part for only believing in things that make her better than other people, because if Becky were to say those things it would be outrageously egotistical since she doesn’t have objective facts to back her up, insisting on it would just make her like Mary.
But with Joyce it’s as simple as binary. 0 is atheism, 1 is the objective fact of God’s existence and the bible as a true document of history. That’s not superiority, that’s just math.
I gotta stop doing these because I can’t even tackle one part of it without needing to get into a hundred other details and they take like half an hour.
Good write up Spencer. Joyce not being able to process Becky’s viewpoint is extremely important to what happened on the stairs. Becky would’ve been interested in Joyce apologizing for calling her an idiot, but without being able to see Becky’s point of view, I don’t think she would be able to do that. Unfortunately this all comes down the fact that, at least at this time, Joyce and Becky don’t understand each other.
But that’s ultimately the only thing Joyce owes Becky. She ows Becky an explanation and some amount of honesty, which tensions were too high at that point to really get into but essentially the best apology that Joyce could offer would be something along the lines of:
“I have been working out what exactly I belive and was venting about what we were taught when growing up but didn’t want to work through these feelings in front of you where I knew I might hurt you. I’m sorry you came into the middle of that and maybe I should have shared more about what I was feeling.”
Except that can all still be basically summarized as “I’m sorry you heard.” And the tough thing about apologizing for effectively calling Becky an idiot for her beliefs is that Becky still represents what Joyce believed and Joyce definitely believed that she herself had been an idiot. While she could have handed it better is saying “I dont think you are an idiot I think I was an idiot for believing many of the same things that you still believe” really that much better.
So I actually hate that that’s not considered a ‘real’ apology under any circumstances.
I’ve seen such apologies used as a GET OUT OF TROUBLE FREE card in online drama in cases like the ones you describe, yes. Those are often people I don’t trust are actually sorry for any aspect of what happened, including upsetting people.
However, on the flip side… I personally hate hurting anyone, no matter how it happens. It’s usually an accident – even more indirect and unintentional than what Joyce did here, to clarify – but I still feel absolutely GUTTED when someone is upset because of something I did. Doesn’t matter if their perspective makes sense or not, or if it’s entirely their misinterpretation of me in their head or their bigotry that’s the reason they’re mad at me. I am still always deeply sorry another person was hurt by something I did/my existence.
…but I can’t actually apologize for being queer, or an atheist, or someone else projecting intent and actions on me that aren’t even factually true. So the most I really can say in those situations is that I’m sorry they’re hurt. And I mean it! I am! It’s not a non-apology meant to deflect. It’s an acknowledgment of their pain, whether or not I can actually fix it.
It’s complicated. I know that was a little bit of a tangent, but my actual point is this: sometimes the only thing someone can truly regret and apologize for is that the other person is upset. I can always be empathetic toward someone hurting, but I can’t always take responsibility for someone else’s thought processes regarding me, y’know…?
It matters to me when I hurt someone I care about, and, like, that pain they’re feeling matters to me, I hate that they’re hurting because of something I did even if it’s something that happens in something I view as asserting myself or refusing to enable, and I do in fact try to express that in ways that can get labeled as insincere because Funny Youtube Man has exploited this to try and draw heat away from his latest Heated Gamer Moment, therefore that means I am also lying.
Even if you’re honestly sorry about hurting them, but you stand by the thing you did to hurt them, it’s not really going to help a lot, is it?
Leaving aside the ambiguity in what Joyce said: “I’m sorry you were hurt by me calling you stupid, but I only did it because you are stupid.” That’s not really going to ease anyone’s pain, right?
@Spencer
Yes. EXACTLY. I really don’t like how some people give such shitty non-apologies that a lot of people won’t accept any nuance in apologies. (Not exactly talking about the comic or these comments yes anymore, but in general?)
@thejeff
I mean, intent makes almost all the difference for me personally, so… I’d say it depends? Not so much in the case of Joyce and Becky, no. But sometimes I think it depends on exactly what the problem is and what you’re willing to do to help fix the hurt (even if you don’t/can’t budge on the initial issue).
…then again, I’ve been told I am very very VERY forgiving, so maybe that’s just me LOL?
It is a better. Maybe not enough, but it accomplishes several things. Makes it clear that Joyce is struggling with her own beliefs rather than just happily mocking Becky’s. Makes it clear that she doesn’t really think Becky’s an idiot, even if she’s still thinking badly of her self for that and can’t easily reconcile that.
Part of the problem is that while it can be summarized as you suggest, the summary leaves out all the nuance that makes her more sympathetic. Makes it clear that she wasn’t just sorry Becky heard because she wanted to go on mocking behind her back.
“I reject your apology” doesn’t mean the apology didn’t happen. It means you rejected the apology.
Anyone can refuse an apology! It’s fine! You’re allowed to feel like someone’s apology is insufficient! But Joyce didn’t say “I’m sorry if your feelings were hurt,” she said “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” and Becky refused to accept it because—and this is what mattered—she’s not really angry that Joyce made a mistake and accidentally hurt her feelings; Becky is angry and upset that *Joyce doesn’t believe what Becky believes*, and Joyce refused to take that back.
It’s really fruitless and exhausting to be locked into a mindset that says that any time someone gets hurt, it has to be someone else’s fault, or that every conflict springs from someone having done something wrong. Sometimes people are in conflict! And it can’t be magically smoothed away in one moment by someone just saying exactly the right words! Joyce genuinely tried, it didn’t take, and it’s not because she didn’t apologize the EXACT RIGHT WAY, or that she didn’t try, or because she doesn’t care about Becky and Becky’s wounded feelings. It’s that they’re at odds about something fundamentally really important to both of them. Becky thinks Joyce thinks the wrong things. To her, an apology that isn’t a renunciation of those wrong thoughts doesn’t count.
My reading is that Joyce apologized for the result (Becky felt hurt), rather than the reason (Joyce said some cruel things). “Sorry you were hurt by what I said” is, in fact, kind of a shitty apology.
Becky didn’t ask Joyce to apologize for being an atheist, but for openly mocking her behind her back. And frankly, even if Joyce was talking about herself, not Becky, what she said was cruel. Becky was well within bounds to want Joyce to apologize for being cruel.
What Becky walked in on was not Joyce talking about the sky sea, but this gem: “Lookit me! I believe in God! I think anything matters and that any bad stuff that happens to me is part of some grand design to teach me life lessons instead of just being friggin’ random bullshit.”
Joyce didn’t owe Becky an apology for thinking God didn’t exist, but she sure as hell owed her one for “Lookit me! I believe in God!”
(I’m gonna add that despite the many, many comments saying that Becky demanded Joyce change her beliefs, I don’t see that anywhere in this argument. She doesn’t ask “How could you turn from God?” she asks “Do you really think I’m an idiot for believing in God?”
Joyce, though I sympathize deeply with her, is the one who comes much closer to insisting that Becky change. She’s the one who says “How on earth are you the one of us refusing to let go of it?!”)
Can you explain how Joyce said anything cruel? Hurtful perhaps, but unintentional and not targeted at Becky, and I’m not sure unintentional, untargeted *cruelty* is a thing. It wasn’t something Becky was meant to hear. Joyce wasn’t talking about Becky, she was talking about herself, or her prior self. She is sorry that Becky was hurt by what she said, she is sorry that Becky heard it when it was clearly not meant for her.
Imagine a PoC complaining in a group of other PoCs about white people all being racist, and their white friend happens to walk in right at that moment and then getting mad that the PoC was calling them racist. You know what? Don’t take it f’ing personally. The world is complicated and people have complex feelings.
I understand where you’re coming from here, but it’s not as thought Joyce intended Becky to hear her. She deliberately took herself away from Becky (and Dorothy) and all her usual responsibilities to go and yell cathartic things.
What she said was ugly and a bit childish. But it’s the first chance she’s had to just scream it all out. I 100% read her ‘look at me’ comments as an attack on herself and her past beliefs. And yes maybe there’s some contempt for Becky in there too – because Joyce hasn’t had time to process how to fit her own loss of faith and Becky’s ongoing faith together in their friendship.
But I think her apologising that Becky heard without apologising for what she said is fair enough, actually.
@Michael L
With all due respect, I think it’s deeply inappropriate to compare a conversation between young atheists about Christians being stupid and gullible to a conversation between people of color about whiteness and white behavior being a problem.
I’m also not convinced that Joyce was talking about only herself. That’s been asserted in the comments, but what she was mocking was belief in “a sky wizard” and, more specifically, that idea “loves me.” That’s what she was mocking.
I’m not Christian, but I absolutely did have friends who were 100% cool talking about how Christianity was stupid and Paganism was superior in every way back when I was.And it is personal, and it is hurtful. And, again, Joyce is the one saying Becky should change her beliefs, not the other way around.
I agree with Cerusee, but the thing is, Joyce is also upset that Becky doens’t believe what she believes. For this conflict to be resolved they will both have to accept that they believe different things, and that they will continue to believe different things, and that they always believed different things, and neither of them is willing to see that right now. So they can’t get to that step where Joyce says “no, you’re not an idiot, I was” because she doesn’t see her ideas as different from Becky’s… and Becky also can’t say “ok, you did believe all this stupid bs that I thought was uninportant” because she just can’t conceive of that
Literally as Becky said Joyce was not sorry about what she said just that she got caught. It’s pretty deceptive to say she doesn’t want an apology when Joyce didn’t really give a true one. You can’t actually apologize if you don’t mean it
I mean, she didn’t know Joyce was hiding out from Dorothy and Becky. Posting where she was going was a fairly innocuous thing to do, even if naming it the way she did was a little odd
I’m also thinking WFT Liz? Because after her sanctimonious rant about not caring about burning bridges over her atheism, she’s still posting to FB as if she’s a believer (unless it’s just sarcasm so dry it could serve in place of desiccant packets.
Sometimes your ride can be real nasty about you not hurrying down. If she was just leaving of her own prerogative I might be madder but I’ve been in the ‘sorry I literally have to run’ boat before
Another possible read on it is “And it’s been…HOW long since i’ve been laid?” considering possibilities face. I mean, Joe’s tag line is literally ‘casual sex.’
I mean, Dorothy has known Joe longer than anyone else in this setting other than perhaps his roommate, so she probably just has a reflexive default reaction to his quips.
I’m glad you brought this up because when I first looked at it I thought she had little vampire fangs, but now I gave it a second look and understand she is biting her lip
Presumably because she’s trying not to laugh. I’m really not sure why else she would be biting her lip. Pretty sure that she didn’t come to Joe’s room for the sin, so it wasn’t a-that-hit’s-too-close-to-home response.
Well, it does answer one question people had from previous comics… how they found them in Joe’s room. (Most people thought it was from the process of elimination…)
I had kinda assumed they just walked through the women’s and men’s dorm hallway and they heard Joyce’s voice coming from one of the rooms or something.
Also this is a bit nitpicky but did neither Dorothy or Becky think to shoot off a text towards Joyce that they were on their way
Becky I get since she was on her “I’m just gonna randomly show up and insert myself into another of Joyce’s friendships” nonsense but I feel like Dorothy could have at least given them a heads up
Granted neither had any way of knowing they’d walk in on Joyce badmouthing believers
Yeah, if they had happened to walk in at a less unfortunate moment it’d be no big deal
Maybe it’s different today with smartphones everywhere, but when I was in college nobody called or texted ahead when they were just idly stopping by somebody’s room. Especially not if it’s on the same floor of the same dorm as you
Announcing your arrival was reserved for when you had like, specific plans
Man, completely different experience. We always texted and normally such texts were a warning with a coded secret message – like hide your chips, please lock the door if boinking, this person you don’t like is with me or my favorite: someone visited their mom = cookies.
Dorothy had reason to expect it to be a “thing”, but she was expecting the usual Becky “thing” not the one that actually happened. She still probably should have warned Joyce.
I don’t see why they would have texted in advance.
Neither were aware of Joyce being an atheist so couldn’t have known they’d walk in on anything and Becky being wildly overpossessive was already a known Becky trait by Joyce. I don’t think either would have seen it as necessary to text just to say they were going to show up to say hi and check in since she was just chilling in the dorms still.
Well, even if they didn’t know they’d walk in on an atheist gripe-session, I think the previous poster was right in suggesting Dorothy might have sent a text (as just a sort of curtesy heads-up, regardless of what Joyce was doing).
Just for the record Joyce didn’t text Joe to let him know she was bringing Liz and Sarah over either. If Becky and Dorothy were being rude here, so was Joyce. It’s nothing special.
I’m not sure it’s so much a weird personal thing as college life being a different social space, especially within one dorm. They’re all essentially living together.
I don’t like unannounced visits either, but dorms are like bedrooms in a shared house rather than separate houses. You don’t text your roommates that you are going to check other rooms to see if they are there in my mind which is more like how dorm culture works.
Of course my experience was long enough ago that texting wasn’t an option. We could call, but only landlines, so it was often easier to just stop by even to other dorms if you weren’t starting from your own room.
From the previous evidence in the comic, at least within the dorms people wander in and out pretty regularly.
Hell it was only a few strips back that Sal climbed up to knock on Danny’s window, which is far more invasive than anything Becky’s done if you think about it.
man *I* would defo want to catch my class-ditching friend out. WELL WELL WELL WOTS ALL THIS THEN n shit. Don’t you have a CLASS, MISSY? BUELLERRR!!!!
that kinda bullshit. fer sher. fun n funny n harmless.
You know, the fact that the actor who played the Dean of Students in Ferris Bueller was arrested on sex offences adds a whole new dimension to that comparison.
I think she’s just being uncharitable because she’s upset, which, it is what it is, both of them probably need to give each other some space for the moment.
Yeah, she doesn’t. As Becky said, she’s sorry that Becky overheard – but she’s not sorry for WHAT she said.
If she really was only talking about herself, like people in the comments section kept insisting, Becky gave her ample chance to say so. Instead, Joyce started arguing to Becky about WHY she thinks Becky is an idiot.
So yeah, Joyce doesn’t feel she’s in the wrong here. Her saying that “Becky isn’t interested in an apology” is kind of disingenuous. Because she has no interest in apologizing for how she actually hurt Becky.
She’s literally working through those realizations about herself (and others) during the incident and argument. 19 year olds aren’t known for their ability to do that while also crafting a perfect apology. It’s not called “emotional maturity of age”.
That I’d certainly agree with. Just not with the take that Joyce did all that could be expected and Becky just wasn’t interested in apologies. Which some posters seem to be saying.
I think it’s also possible that at least on some level, she knows she’d get told off for having botched it, and doesn’t want to deal with any more friends being mad at her right now.
If Dorothy hates her, after all, she’s left with only Sarah and Joe. And neither is usually that interested in being supportive and helpful during long unpacky messy monologues.
I rather think they were talking at cross-purposes.
Becky, also, many of the writers here, heard „Becky is dumb, she still believes in god.“
Joyce was venting when Becky walked in. And thinks she is expected to say she’s sorry for *no longer believing in god and being angry that she ever did*!
So no wonder she doesn’t want to apologize for that.
I don’t think she has a shred of an idea that Becky feels insulted, she ascribes the reaction to Joyce having left the common ground.
Becky said, in the second strip they talked, “Do you really think I’m an idiot because I believe in God?” Joyce was silent for a beat, and then said that the Bible isn’t literally true, implying pretty strongly that she does think anyone who believes it is an idiot.
If she doesn’t have the idea that Becky felt insulted, she really wasn’t listening at all to Becky’s words. Not only what Thulcandran said, but “Dina doesn’t lie to me or make fun of me behind my back.”
Becky said outright that one of her problems is that Joyce lied to her. So no, Becky does not prefer that. Joyce could help fix things by literally saying what commenters kept insisting she actually meant – that she was talking about herself, not Becky. But Joyce chose not to do that – because even if she was talking about herself in part, she WAS also talking about Becky. And she knows that.
The fact that a group of people have come to a bad conclusion and they have used poor reasoning is a reflection on that group of people not the people who can spot the poor reasoning.
And being upset because your group is being pointed out as one that is represented as using poor reasoning, isn’t an argument for your position it is a demand that others acknowledge the validity of your belief because you emotionally want them to.
In fact I would argue the entire point that Becky is upset shows that she is fundamentally so wrapped up in her “faith” as an identity for protection of her own ego, that she is taking insults or negative projections on the entirety of the group as direct insults to her.
Tile and I’m sorry a lot of people call me stupid for enjoying simple video games and I don’t go on a rant about how how dare you think my passion is stupid. I understand that they don’t understand what I get out of it and I move on with my day which is what a mature individual does when they hear somebody criticize their “faith”.
Becky literally has no standing here and is literally just projecting her own negative fears of what her religion actually is on to Joyce. I would say Becky fears that her belief is idiotic and getting called out on it is why it hurts so much.
About that and until Becky faces the fact that it is her own egos reaction to the fact that the group that she has self-defined herself as being is going to be insulted around her life and there is either a need for them to justify it in a rational sense for other people to see why it is not idiotic to come to that conclusion, or get used to it.
Because having an ego reaction because people don’t like my personal LARP variety is just the projection of ego boundaries over controlling of how other people feel and believe for yourself comfort. It is fundamentally selfish not acting as a friend to Joyce and self-centered.
And in fact when she tried to tell her Becky reacted with shutting the conversation down because it was uncomfortable for Becky.
So Becky forced her to shut up and when she spoke to somebody else and Becky happened over here she got angry again.
When told “I don’t want to hear it.” And you then withhold the information from somebody because they specifically told you they don’t want to hear it you aren’t lying to them you are actually giving them politeness and deference.
And the fact that Becky is unable to hear Joyce have a crisis of Faith or an existential rebuilding of her life just shows that Joyce is not actually valued for who she is by Becky.
I agree with Joyce that Becky is being an idiot about this issue but I think every religious person because I keep asking them for some sort of justification other than I value it which is not valid logistical thinking is being idiotic because I do not see the proof that they so desperately believe exists.
I do not think Becky in her totality is an idiot.
And the fact that you want to make choices statement about the group of people who believe something that they have no justification for being bad at thinking on that issue a personal insult to a single person is literally The identical problem Becky is suffering from.
You are right now being immature in trying to make a generalized statement about bad thinking the totality and an insult to a single individual.
Also for Becky not have been insulted in this instance Joyce would have to not ever voice any complaints whatsoever about the religious during the loss of her faith.
Basically just like most religious people you’re saying yeah you cannot believe what I think but I don’t want to hear about it or have any reflection on myself for my own beliefs.
It’s the completely uneven playing field that the religious want they want you to acknowledge the value of their belief and you to shut the fuck up* if you have any complaints.
Which if Becky was truly actually living her faith wouldn’t she need to understand how Joyce was hurt and how Joyce was feeling if she was going to have any chance of saving her and reconvincing her of the truth of her beliefs? Because what she’s doing is ego guarding because any negative perconception about her due to her own actions from her professed faith or apparently not allowed.
If your actual beliefs are that someone’s an idiot because of their religious beliefs and that it’s fine to mock them for their beliefs behind their back, you should apologize for having those beliefs, because you’re a bigot. Honesty about being a bigot does not somehow get you off the hook for being a bigot. Respecting other people’s religious beliefs is not negotiable.
Becky has mocked Joyce’s beliefs by telling her that she only ever believed in things that made her think she was better than other people, that Becky has declared Joyce inauthentic and that her current atheism is a failure on her part.
Except Becky thought Joyce had belief and faith in God in the first place, the way Becky is nothing but belief and faith in God’s unending love for her through the miracles she has experienced. Becky is mocking something that never actually existed, but she can’t process the idea that Joyce, or anyone, approaches religious belief differently than her: whatever belief you have it’s all about God’s love and the unimportant stuff can go away when reality tells it to.
(In giving this post a once-over feel I may have worded the above poorly or vaguely, so if you have any beef please feel free to ask away)
For Joyce to be mocking Becky’s faith would imply that Joyce thinks anyone actually has faith, and do you know who Joyce is mocking as idiots? Folks who don’t know how binary works.
1 means that God is real and the bible is the inerrant word of Christ, which means, objectively, as in someone bigger and smarter than Joyce has decided that this is how the world works (and that part’s a little relevant to why Joyce is thinking like this lately), the Earth is 6000 years old, gay people belong in Hell, dinosaurs breathed fire and were hunted to extinction, and the sky sea covered the Earth and let people live to 900 years old.
0 means that, if any of the above cannot be accepted, as in Joyce’s best friend who she loves more than anyone in the world is objectively a bad person that Joyce needs to hand over to her higher power so she can be saved from Hell for her sinful life choices, then all of it is now up for debate, and because Joyce had to start thinking about it she realized none of it could hold up to scrutiny.
Becky processed this real smoothly: yeah all of that is bullshit, but God loves me. Joyce did not do a bad job processing this so much as the way Joyce’s knowledge of definitely real history and the morals it imparted to her functioned, it all had to come crashing down once Joyce’s cognitive dissonance machine broke from carrying an entire understanding of the universe.
Joyce believed in God the way one believes in math: It exists as an inerrant set of rules that smarter people than you came up with, and being good at math means listening to your betters.
And much like Becky, Joyce thought everyone saw it like that. Of course you also know the Earth is 6000 years old and everyone who does not is a sinner that is deliberately subverting the word of God, that’s why you’re a Christian in the first place.
Care to justify why religions as ideological constructions get special treatment and exclusion from scrutiny?
Like there are Hindu sects that are specifically about the creation of suffering, they specifically in their practice are about the dispoiling of one’s own body causing oneself pain and hurting others for the ritualistic display of the power that it can bring one self.
This is not saying all Hindus are bad but I think that specific group of practitioners are pretty idiotic. I think they make a lot of dumb choices influenced by their religion. I would make an argument for why believing and practicing that religious sect of Hinduism is pretty idiotic.
Are you saying thinking that is bigoted? Or saying that is bigoted?
“Oh, yeah, we used your friend’s Facebook feed to locate track you down because we didn’t like you skipping class/having friends that weren’t us, this is a totally normal thing that healthy boundary-respecting friendships are made of.”
Please tell me we’re actually going to address at some point that this all happened because Dorothy and Becky riverdanced right over Joyce’s right to hang out with other people.
Not to mention Dorothy’s statement implied to me that the only reason she tagged along was to scold Joyce for skipping class which is frankly none of her business
I sort of took it more like she wanted to see what the deal was, since this is atypical behavior from Joyce, but I mean, yeah, sometimes Dorothy can lay a guilt trip on. I don’t know if she planned to or if it just ended up that way.
Well, Dorothy stated that she “Didn’t like” that Joyce was skipping classes. But, she had no intention of following Becky on her quest to track down Joyce (even calling Becky over-possessive over her plans) until she realized the alternative was to spend time with Walky/Lucy.
She’s also smart enough to know that doesn’t mean she then has to act overpossessive herself just because she tagged along. I’m pretty sure she just wanted to check in on Joyce because skipping class is unlike her and she’d be there to help drag Becky away if her jealousy got the best of her.
It was a weird thing for Dorothy to say/choice to make! She is friends with Joyce, she’s always shown that she cared a lot about her and she wants to help Joyce to make good/healthy decisions that she knows Joyce sometimes struggles with. Pushing Joyce pretty hard towards seeking medical care that Joyce absolutely would not have sought otherwise…was something that didn’t bother me, because Joyce could have shut down, if she’d really wanted to?
But something about “I don’t like that Joyce is skipping classes” hits this level of paternalism that just bugs me.
(I think it’s probably because Joyce is already a conscientious student, and she doesn’t need help on that front? If she wants to skip class for a day, that’s really up to her. Whereas her extreme reluctance about vision care was rooted in both phobia and her neuroses about change, and those are things that she not only needs help in moving past, but does, in the grand scheme of things, seem to appreciate having help in.)
“I don’t like that Joyce is skipping classes” does make me rethink Dorothy’s persistence on the glasses issue though. Like maybe Dorothy’s going a little hard on fixing Joyce up so she’ll be as a-okay as she can be, when Dorothy ABANDONS her to go to Yale.
(I could be wildly off-base here! But it would make sense to me, if Dorothy is already expecting she’ll be gone by the following semester, that she’s consciously or unconsciously trying to tie up loose emotional ends and make sure the people she cares about are safe.)
Oh, man, that’s something I haven’t considered. Dorothy doesn’t have too many friends besides through Joyce, does she? She’s almost certainly friendly again with Danny at this point, but they likely don’t hang out the way they used to. She could be hovering over Joyce.
I think it‘s less skipping classes but „Joyce never skips class, what the hell is going on?“
Like, if Joe didn’t show up for class, it wouldn’t be out of character. For Joyce, it is
I thought it was already astablished that there is almost no boundaries set in this Strangely intimate sisterhood of theirs. Joyce will bust in on you when your taking a piss for not telling her you broke up with your boyfriend.
I kinda don’t like that Becky seemed to be so bothered by Joyce skipping class to hang out with another friend that she had to go looking for her, but I’m sure Becky and Dorothy didn’t know what they’d end up walking into.
Wow I think that you’re probably a pretty decent person in most areas of your life and no single aspect of you is the totality of your person.
Your conclusion here is idiotic. Employees like it is bad person of all of the people in the situation it is ignoring the needs of one party indifference for the other and it is immature and childish to expect someone to lie to you to make you feel comfortable about their personal beliefs.
So noting I literally did just say that you are being an idiot on this issue, does that mean I have called you an idiot in your totalistic sense? Because you’ve come to one bad conclusion are you now just an idiot? Your cake and if I was ranting about people who parse issues badly and how idiotic it is when they do so would you then decide to take that personally as a personal insult to yourself and the totality of yourself?
Because if you did you are making a generalized gripe all about you.b
With all that considered how on Earth do you think Joyce should be apologizing right now?
I can’t even parse half of that. Phone and autocorrect, I assume, but it’s mostly gibberish to me.
I don’t know, because I don’t know what Joyce is actually thinking. If she’s thinking Becky has come to a bad conclusion on one issue, then she could say that. “I don’t think you’re really an idiot, even though I think you’re wrong on this.” Maybe with a “sorry it came out that way, I was ranting”.
OTOH, if she really does have this all messed up together in her head enough that she can’t make that separation and she does think Becky is an idiot and that it’s fine to mock even her soon to be former friends over their beliefs, then she shouldn’t apologize or try to explain, because she’d be lying. (Though that could of course change with time as she processes her own deconversion.)
So let me re-ask the question what legitimate apology can Joyce even possibly make that wouldn’t be her lying to Becky just to make it so she’s less upset?
Also if I say football is stupid somebody who over hears me says “well you must think I’m an idiot because I’m into football, how dare you think that people who like football are stupid for thinking that, you owe me an apology.”
What apology do I make to them? Because I don’t necessarily think they’re stupid I think that the valuing of football is kind of stupid and that is not an assessment of that singular individual in their totality by any means. So if somebody else decides to take my generalized statement about a dislike of football as a personal insult how do I apologize for them really being out of bounds about how personal they take my assessment of football?
Like my opinion on football hasn’t changed so what honest actually acceptable truthful apology can I make to the person who is making my opinion about football about how much I dislike them?
I don’t think there is a possibility actually and in fact from the perspective of an individual who has made a generalized statement of dislike about an ideology or sport having somebody else take it personally is not my fault and to apologize for it is inherently disingenuous.
Meaning we’re left with Becky is the only one who has any ability to deal with Becky’s hurt feelings. And in fact since she is not upset at Joyce for any reasonable reason other than but I do not like the idea that Christianity or faith as an ideological grouping reflects badly on Becky.
So quite literally Becky is the only one doing something in this situation that could change. She didn’t have to take Joyce’s journey personally and using it as a justification for why Becky is allowed to bully/inttimidate Joyce into either silence or agreeing with her is abusive.
If I was a Christian still I would be saving Becky is in the wrong as an atheist Becky is still in the wrong. As a Christian people told me Christianity was stupid a lot and you know what wouldn’t have helped that taking it personally and taking it out of them because you think Christianity isn’t very smart so therefore my ego gets hurt.
And you know what Becky needs to grow the hell up if she wants to keep a friend. Because she hasn’t treated Joyce as a friend. She is treated her as somebody who is not allowed to have opinions thoughts or ideas of their own or a journey.
And Joyce was there for Becky at gunpoint. So let’s not make this out like Joyce has been not acting like a friend.
And at least from my perspective having been both a Christian and a non-Christian Becky is killing a friendship for her own perceptions of saving other people’s perceptions of how smart she is for picking Christianity. No way that Christianity could reflect badly on you and if you even mentioned the idea that it could be a negative perception to be a Christian the conversation is over I am too angry to talk how dare you.
And that’s not a logical point for why Joyce is wrong that is an emotional point for why I am upset that people do not perceive Christianity as positive.
I’ve given several examples of what I think Joyce could have said. I’m not sure they’d suffice for the Becky you’re constructed in your head or if they’d be lies coming from the Joyce in your head.
actually specifically I’m trying to point out I can’t think of any valid apology in which Joyce is actually doing right by Becky to apologize.
She would be being dishonest to give Becky the perception of what Becky wants Joyce to be.
Because what Joyce is right now is going through a very sloppy angry hard to work through existential crisis of trying to rebuild their understanding of the world because they are a black and white thinking atheist who has thrown out all of the bath water and is rethinking their entire view of the world from the ground up trying on New world views as hats, sloppily.
If anything it’s a tragedy Becky can’t get her perceptual feelings unhurt long enough to realize that this is a symptom of Joyce going through something really hard.
Doesn’t mean it’s the same amount of suffering or the same type of suffering that Becky has been through, but an existential crisis and suffering is something that somebody is not necessarily going to handle perfectly. And Becky is expecting Joyce to go through something perfectly or she’s going to jump ship. And that really sucks to have somebody who used to call themselves your best friend treat you that way.
lol *I* wouldn’t be interested in an apology if I was Becky. Not right then. This shit has REPERCUSSIONS. This shit has IMPLICATIONS. this shit needs UNPACKING. And it’s been one (1) minute, max. Gonna go. figure out how im feeling about that before I can sensibly assess and respond to an apology.
Yeah, they came to his room for hijinks, and hijinks happened. Joyce wanted to impress Joe and knew Joe would play along to an extent, it just obviously got out of hand, and not really through any fault of Joe’s, who was honestly a pretty gracious host considering they gave him zero warning.
hm, is latin a thing in anglo saxon law. i mean, is latin a thing in any sort of law. my sister is a lawyer here in france and i don’t think she’s had a single hour of latin in her curriculum. shows you which organ i am talking out of now. eh, it’s the next day no one’s reading this, so: *fingers bunched together facing nose; rotates wrist and opens hand outwards*
Like I said the other day, her role was to drop a drama bomb on the plot then skedaddle. Her influence was the catalyst that kick-started this reaction. Since that would irreparably damage any other existing relationships, it took a one-off character to get the job done, and Sarah’s unseen (except for that one time in the Walkyverse) sister fits the bill.
We time-skipped over Thanksgiving, so the next is almost a full year away in in-comic time. Maybe circa 3022, Willis’s descendants will decide to write that plotline.
can’t stop won’t stop
(no but for real this is it) (i hesitated between the two then did both) (am i procrastinating, why yes how could you tell, bye now)
Joyce really does have a problem with black-and-white thinking, where she’s always been kind of like, “People who don’t believe what I believe are bad/stupid and wrong.” She’s on the other side of the fence now regarding religion, but that aspect of her hasn’t changed – and it’s really starting to cost her. It’ll be interesting to see how she grows and develops from here on out.
Becky really has a problem with black and white thinking.
She thinks if a single negative opinion is held about the entire ideological group that she personally self identifies as then obviously you must hate / think she’s a complete idiot. Runs the business there’s no Gray zone or nuance or possible understanding of Joyce’s position of a need to vent about their lived experience.
You are literally accusing Joyce of being black and white when Becky is the one controlling whether or not certain opinions are allowed to be talked about.
Joyce is just in the wrong and a bad person because she has any storm of negative perception of the faithful right?
There’s no nuance to the situation in which Joyce may have a reason for why they’re saying what they said and obviously all statements should take as the totality of the truth and direct insults to a single believer right?
Uhhh, Joyce literally said, “Lookit me, I believe in GOD! I’m an IDIOT!!” Thinking someone is an idiot – as Joyce clearly thinks about Becky – is not just “a single negative opinion.” Plus Joyce adding the “How on earth do you still believe this stupid bullshit” to rub salt into it. Joyce is supposed to be Becky’s best friend – and she’s trashing Becky behind her back, after pretending she was a part of a very intimate and important celebration to Becky (her mother’s birthday) that she’s now indicating Becky was an utter fool for taking part in.
I don’t think I’m the one struggling with nuance here.
It’s kind of tragically self-centered to make somebody else’s foible that indicates that they have and are going through a extremely large change in their life that is difficult and hard to go through is all about how the other person is expressing anger at the category of people that reflects badly on you.
That’s literally making somebody else’s existential crisis all about you.
Trashing believers is trashing a category Becky belongs to not Becky.
The idea that Becky is her faith or ideological construct is a falsity and being insulted on behalf of one’s faith or ideological construct is taking something personal because you feel it reflects on you negatively.
And honestly if they were being mature about it they would take it in stride as evidence that Joyce is having a crisis of faith and if they were in any way inclined that that mattered try to help them.
When I was a Christian if one of my friends started being like look at me I’m an idiot for being a Christian I would take it as a signal that they needed help not a reason to be upset about what they thought about Christians. Nor an indication of what they thought of me.
So quite literally Becky is being immature and taking it personally instead of actually hearing Joyce and understanding what Joyce is going through.
Some atheists never get rid of the all or nothing thinking they were raised with. That said, I’m both confused at Becky seemingly blaming Joyce for not tightly holding on to her faith like Becky did, and Joyce essentially blaming *Becky* for losing it, when we all know that Joyce’s parental figures were the catalyst for the worst shit Joyce went through.
I think the joke is, Sarah would prefer to delay seeing Liz as long as possible i.e. prefer later in the current year (thanksgiving) as opposed to earlier (summer).
Nah, you got exactly what you expected, but you still have to complain about it so everyone knows you’re not a dirty sinner like the dirty sinners that frequent this den of sin.
Dorothy is a smart person who communicates very clearly, and I don’t think she’ll just repeat the exact phrasing Joyce told her (especially when it’s that loaded).
I mean, I think Becky would just say “because Joyce’s apology wasn’t very good” and Dorothy would respond “okay yeah that checks out”. Dorothy can almost certainly read between the lines here, and if she can’t, I don’t think she’d be shocked when Becky gave her perspective.
Oh, sure. I’m not saying it’s gonna turn into a knockdown dragout fight between Dorothy or Becky or anything. The interesting part to me is how Dorothy will respond to Joyce when she learns the truth. Right now I think she suspects, but having it confirmed and confronting Joyce will be an interesting thing to see.
I think the conversation Becky and Dorothy will have is also going to be interesting. Dorothy is at enough of a remove to talk to Becky without being upset by the situation, and she’ll be able to help explain Joyce’s issue and walk Becky through accepting it. It actually kinda sucks for Dorothy that she’ll probably have to play mediator, but I don’t think she’d even think of backing down from that role.
When you want to play Mario Kart, you are committing Lust. When you hog the best character to yourself the entire time, you are committing Greed. When you taunt others for losing, you are committing Pride. When you play Mario Kart for hours and hours past your bedtime, you are committing Gluttony. When someone finally beats you and you ragequit, you are committing Envy and Wrath. When you’re too tired to go to class the next morning because you played Mario Kart all night, you are committing Sloth.
So Becky/Dorothy DID track Joyce down to a place they weren’t invited, a place Joyce had zero expectation they’d randomly show up (a place both of them tend to avoid). They weren’t “looking around” or “randomly walking by” so Joyce did have a reasonable expectation they wouldn’t be there.
Also interesting to note for all Liz’s talk about “not caring about burning bridges” she’s still posting on FB like she’s devout. Hm…
Properly managed, Facebook is less of a bridge and more of an outward-facing mask that keeps people from realizing that the bridge is no longer intact.
Yeah, it’s a public-facing facade that looks good enough to keep parents from asking any questions while all her actual friends, presumably, know because she’s contacting them through literally any other means of messaging that religious family members AREN’T on.
And dang, I’m assuming she’s been doing the dry sarcasm and counting on being indistinguishable as parody from what people actually say so said religious family members don’t expect for a while now because that is… not particularly subtle. Everyone who’s in on the joke sees that one and snickers.
After all, Joyce was a fundamentalist Christian when they met, and stayed that way through half the first term. Liz was supposedly maintaining a christian facade to many/most people at the time. In those circumstances why would either of them assume that they were no longer believers?
Yeah but how would they have broached the subject?
I mean, maybe Joyce could have made a comment about “ever have doubts about god?” after the kidnapping, which might have caused Liz to open up with a “Of course… I don’t think he exists”. Or maybe Liz opened up with a “you had some bad things happen… that must make you doubt god”.
I also have the question but maybe Sarah scoffed at seeing Liz’s fake feed herself (it is a bit heavy handed even if people like that do exist) and Joyce took note of it.
I had assumed that they already knew they were both atheists before hand and were just playing up the fact. (Just from the way they were smiling during the conversation, and the way they both feel into the “don’t have patience” arguments… didn’t seem like it was any sort of big revelation.)
She’s been posting like that, as explained earlier, to keep her stepmom(s) off her case.
Which suggests to me, taken with the specific variety of Campus Christian Group she was allegedly in, that she might well have some religious trauma of her own from her upbringing.
I figure that Liz’s performance was just as performative as Joyce’s. She is obviously a bit more worldly, but maintaining a fake Facebook of such aggressive religiosity suggests consequences if she doesn’t. Probably since it is a parental figure probably married to her Dad, financial ones? (Since we know Sarah needed her scholarship.) It is what a lot of people do when they feel forced to act/hide in a certain way – explode messily in all the ways they feel they can’t normally in the rare moments they aren’t over-looked.
Not all that much more worldly, since she seems to have bought the gummy “edibles”.
But yeah, I suspect she’s got her own religious trauma to unpack. Hopefully not as extreme as what our main cast has been through.
I hope someone told her that wasn’t an actual edible. If she actually does find someone willing to give her one in the future and she expects it to be like taking a male vitamin, she could have a real bad time.
Yeah. There’s a great line from Jocelyne back when she was talking to Ethan: “You kidding? I’m their [her parents’] favorite. Precisely because they know the least about me.”
Yes, they relentlessly tracked Joyce and Liz all the way to… their mutual friend’s dorm room, using information that Liz freely posted to the general public.
What even is this take.
Yea, it’s still Facebook stalking just cause they’re close. I’d also be pretty peeved if I was trying to have some seperate friend hangouts and my other friends decided to intrude
Yeah this is actually cyberstalking, it’s just something we can do with the veneer of respectability because it’s incredibly normalized. There was a whole arc of Lupin III about this in the last anime!
Like a text wouldn’t kill them. They’re zoomers, they should only communicate through those anyway.
Checking a Facebook account is a thing that could be part of cyberstalking, so it superficially resembles it, but at this point it’s just extending the definition to make it sound so much worse than it is.
You can’t “cyberstalk” with a single act. It’s a pattern.
I mean I don’t know how else to describe a scenario wherein you find someone who does not want to be found by you using a social media account.
Like, why is it not cyberstalking to go “I need to see Joyce right now even though she has not indicated she wants to see me, here’s her Cool Christian Friend’s facebook account, and then that Cool Christian Friend just posted that she is in this room right now, so that’s where Joyce is.” Just because it’d be something I’d react to in a normal and well-meaning context (as in not one where the person doing it admitted to thinking claiming ownership of me in front of another friend is funny) with “okay don’t do that again please just text me” or probably not think about it at all if it bothered me enough to get unpleasant feelings about it.
It kind of is because of the specific circumstance and Becky’s motivations.
To be clear for as completely unwilling to acknowledge healthy boundaries Becky is, she’s not doing anything that in another circumstance Joyce wouldn’t find hilarious. That’s kind of the root of the problem and it was inevitably going to break.
But searching someone’s info so to can find them to show that your friend belongs to you is wack. Meeting Liz wasn’t for Becky, even if Becky has never been given a reason to think it’s wrong.
The only reason Joyce wouldn’t have been happy for Becky to meet Liz is because she didn’t want Becky to see how she was behaving around Liz, which wouldn’t have been the case if Liz was the Jesusy friend they both thought she was. Even if Becky had come in doing her “I’m Joyce’s bestest friend” shtick.
Mind you, I don’t take that shtick nearly as seriously as you do. It’s obnoxious, but I don’t think it’s Becky’s real motivation.
Becky called it her real motivation. Joyce can actually meet Becky without needing to introduce her to Liz, it doesn’t involve Becky.
Anyway there’s a conversation around how Joyce does not need to include Becky, as in Becky inserted herself because Dorothy told her she was being over-possessive and then Becky smirked and said it made her realer than Dorothy, and another conversation about Becky would obviously expect her arrival to be met with cheers because there’s never been a point where Joyce and her learned how to establish boundaries or have a conversation the other didn’t need to be around for.
Like, “Becky’s actions would have been fine if the scenario played out in a way that she did the same things with the same dialogue but there was no dialogue questioning it” isn’t really a great defense of Becky’s intrusion, because there was finally one point in time where Joyce did not want Becky in the room and here she came.
I know Becky said that’s why, but that’s part of the shtick and I don’t think the schtick is her real motivation. That’s part of the wacky Becky armor.
That’s not an excuse for the schtick, but it means to me that you can’t use what she says about that to get to why she’s actually doing something.
I understand that you don’t agree. That you think the “I’m Joyce’s bestest friend” bit is real and important to Becky.
If nothing else, the conversation Joyce and Becky inevitably have will need to include this. Becky and Joyce have both had problems with boundaries in the past so it would be good to talk about it and how it relates to their upbringings.
I think they are, if only because inertia. Dorothy having been longterm involved with Danny means a lot of hanging out with Joe. I don’t think Joe and Dorothy are particularly close friends, mind, but I think they’d both agree if someone called them friends.
Joyce didn’t post it. Joyce didn’t know it was posted. Joyce assumed her friends would be in class and that her conversation was private. Coming to check on her instead of going to class themselves is a bit smothering.
Dorothy and Becky didn’t have class, near as I can tell. They came back from earlier class, ran into Walky and Lucy headed to calc without Joyce, found out she was skipping and went to find her. Their next class is their shared poli-sci class coming up soon.
A part of me right now is just pondering given Liz and her social media face how Joyce found out Liz was an atheist. Did Joyce randomly vent to her in an ill advised way at a bad moment which miraculously (heh) worked out for her? Did Sarah mention it to Liz? (I somehow doubt it).
Maybe Sarah saw the feed and scoffed about Liz being a bit too obviously fake/disbelief in Liz’s stepmother not being suspicious and Joyce found out that way?
I do hope that this firmly fixes in Joyce’s mind that Liz is a two-faced hypocrite who she doesn’t want or need to know. Basically, the only service Liz has provided is a massively-exaggerated version of Joyce’s faults turned up to eleven and an insight on just who she could become if she isn’t honest with herself.
I would love to know where this take on Liz is coming from.
People seem unreasonably vehement in their hatred of a young woman who seems to only be hiding things from her parents and otherwise just didn’t want to be involved in drama with people she doesn’t know at a college she was only visiting to be around her big sister.
If there’s an actual reason for that aggression I would love to know it.
She presented herself to Joyce as a religious girl and created an online friendship with her on that pretence. This is not covering her beliefs from her parents (I don’t think that has been mentioned in the strip); it’s setting out to deceive a wide number of people and keeping that deceit going even after developing a personal connection with some of them.
I don’t really have a problem with how Liz expressed herself beyond the general “bad atheist take” bits. My problem with Liz is that she’s happily watching Joyce’s world burn and, without missing a beat, is proud of whatever small part she had in that.
Like, the FB post is weird but also I don’t care. The “how to be an asshole” contest was stupid but also whatever. It’s not even doing something as small as offering to stick around or helping mend what was broken. And I’m not saying she could, but she should try to do something else with herself than hurt everyone she comes into contact with, and I’m judging her for not even trying.
Joe at least tries. Unsuccessfully, clumsily, toxicly, etc. But he tries. His heart’s in the right county. Liz’s is trying for escape velocity.
So I’m guessing last panel Dorothy is annoyed at Joyce’s scolding if Joe bbrcayse it sounds like avoiding responsibility. Getting the sense that Dorothy is gonna blow up at Joyce about this and Joyce will come back with “why we’re you stalking me?”
So I’m guessing that Dorothy is gonna be less neutral than expected, which I think lines is up the split in cast as:
Becky: Dina, Dorothy. Joyce: Sarah, Joe
I’m assuming a prank war based on what all college movies have taught me.
Oh, interesting. I saw Dorothy’s face as a response to what Joyce said, “It was not helpful.” That she now feels awkward about the choices that led her here. Well, hopefully we’ll see what that’s about tomorrow.
I think your right that she doesn’t like the choices that got here and will try to understand what Joyce did. Dorothy always looks for sensible solutions but Joyce kind of failed at what to Dorothy seemed like a slam dunk. Maybe she’s hyper reasonable like always but that last panel indicates a bit more emotional response to all this.
Why would Dorothy blow up and/or side with Becky at all?
Even if she thinks Joyce made mistakes (over the apology, etc.):
– Dorothy isn’t known for outbursts
– Becky has been hostile to Dorothy since they met. (Jokingly maybe, but its still something she has to put up with), so why side with someone who treats you like that?
– Dorothy recognized before this all happened that Becky might be overposessive, and as such might think “why are you stalking me?” as a valid question Joyce might ask
– She is probably smart enough to recognize the problems atheists have in navigating a world full of christians, and would be forgiving of Joyce as a result
I’m just following what seems to be Dorothy’s emotional state here. She previously said she was disappointed in Joyce and I don’t think Dorothy values being an atheist as much as civility and then kindness(in that order). Dorothy also isn’t necessarily as bothered by it as say I would be by beckys bullying.
It’d be nice if she’s reasonable like always but that last panel says to me that Dorothy does not like this, also probably cause it’s a choice Joyce is making that doesn’t fit in with Dorothy’s “make Joyce better” mindset
Dorothy wouldn’t have to value being an atheist herself… just recognize the struggles involved with being one in a world dominated by christian dogma.
And even if she isn’t necessarily bothered by becky’s bullying, if she really does value civility/kindness, then Joyce (i.e. the person who doesn’t bully, and who isn’t overly possessive) would be the logical person to side with.
Idk, to Dorothy, Joyce was handed the solution: apologise to Becky and everything works out. To Dorothy Joyce was being a bully when she mocked Becky’s beliefs, it doesn’t matter about personal histories. Again maybe Dorothy chooses to listen and understand Joyce’s struggles but from her perspective Joyce is being an unreasonable jerk who won’t work with her. I get the sense she’s gonna be a little annoyed with that. Could also be guilt cause she did help Becky find Joyce through stalkerish means, we’ll see
I don’t necessarily think Dorothy would think Joyce was being a bully.
After all, it WAS supposed to be a private conversation. (One that Becky wasn’t supposed to hear.) And Joyce was probably raising points that Dorothy agrees with herself (even if she wouldn’t necessarily be that blunt in her statements.) And the fact that Joyce DID make the effort to at least go after Becky suggests a wilingness to “work with her”.
I mean I agree with all that, they really should have respected Joyce’s boundaries but I don’t think Dorothy is in a logical state right now. Usually this is the part where Dorothys plan is followed or no one follows it and either way Dorothy did what she could. But here Joyce did do it and it didn’t work. Again, I agree with your logic, I would do that just not sure about Dorothy would
The very fact that Joyce followed Dorothy’s plan and it didn’t work is what makes me hope that Dorothy will stop trying to “fix” the situation long enough to hear Joyce out. After all, by Dorothy’s logic and POV now, Joyce is the one who did all she could (as far as Dorothy knows), and Becky is the now the one refusing to accept an apology. I’m hoping the fact that they’ve veered off the script Dorothy planned is enough to snap her out of the black and white “Becky = victim, Joyce = aggressor” mindset, especially now that the fact that Becky was in this situation in the first place because of her overpossessiveness is being indirectly highlighted.
@Regina phalange (there isn’t a reply button on my screen)
I hope so, there’s some new info coming to light that could change her perspective. It all depends on what final panel Dorothy face means. Like the lip bite could be guilt or frustration. I initially assumed frustration but it’s possible it could be guilt.
Actually weird thing to remember Dorothy has never not been an atheist.
So she, like many of my atheist friends who were never religious previously, does not understand the weight of the existential crisis of losing faith having never valued Faith to begin with.
That’s a good point, really explains why she’s more interested in civility than respect to her beliefs. She doesn’t really need the validation because she never needed it
I can see Dina stumbling into a conflict with Becky over this.
Becky: “I am upset with Joyce. She thinks its dumb to believe in god”
Dina: “It is.”
Becky: “But we love each other”
Dina: “That does not mean I do not think your belief in god is dumb”
I feel like it would be more like
Becky: “Dina do you think I’m an idiot cuz I believe in god?”
Dina: “I believe you are misguided. However, you believe I am misguided as well.”
Dina is a wonderful character. But, she does have problems with various social situations. Expecting her to put forward such a diplomatic answer might be a bit much.
This is why I worry that things between Becky and Dina will ultimately blow up in a very messy way. People CAN make it work, but more often than not my experience is that couples who have major disagreements over BIG LIFE GOALS (such as whether or not to have children) wind up eventually splitting over it. How big a role religion should play in the lives of the couple is one of those. For instance, while I don’t know if gay marriage is allowed in Indiana, I am very certain that Becky will at least want to have some sort of ceremony, and she will want God and her faith to be represented somehow. Dina might also very well draw the line at asking some “magical sky fairy” to bless their love, or at least make it clear to Becky that she’s only going along with it because she loves her but deep down she thinks it’s all hooey. That sort of knowledge can really wound a person, deep inside, knowing that person you love most is only going along with something for your sake, not because they share in it with you.
Absolutely, it’s been fine up until this moment but even if Dina is fully supportive of Becky, she’s gonna struggle defending her girlfriend when she kind of agrees with a lot of Joyce’s takes. Not in an edge lord way but as a personal view of life.
This is why I’m a bit concerned Becky might not be completely truthful
I can see that “I believe the same as Dina” statement sticking with her and while Joyce didn’t intend it that might increase her insecurities about their relationship
It would be hypocritical but I can see a scenario where she avoids telling Dina the reason for the argument in order to protect her own feelings out of fear that Dina would agree with Joyce
Here is a question…. How did Joyce know that Becky/Dorothy were actually looking for her (as Joyce says “…how did you even know to look for us in Joe’s room”) as opposed to just stumbling across them by accident? There was nothing in other comics to suggest she was told “we were trying to find you”.
It is possible that Joyce just assumed such (since Becky wouldn’t normally have any reason to be in the boy’s section of the Dorms otherwise), but Dorothy knows some of the residents (Joe, Danny, Walky).
Because when looking for Joyce while hanging out with her cool new friend who is Sarah’s sister, you wouldn’t think to look in the room of a guy that everyone involved has a reasonable assumption of disliking.
Yeah but Dorothy is sort-of friends with Joe. So its not out of the realm of possibility that they could have come to the room on a non-Joyce reason. (Not to mention the possibility that they were on the floor to see someone else… like Walky, and just stumbled on the conversation in Joe’s room.)
Because they were supposed to be in class. The only other possibility is that they both skipped and were wandering around the male wing of the dorm together. Which seems highly unlike both of them, for different reasons.
I didn’t think Dorothy/Becky were supposed to be in class. (Remember, before they went on their Joyce-searching mission, the alternative presented to Dorothy was that she go with Walky/Lucy to lunch.)
Does Dorothy feel partially responsible for this? After all, she was unable to stop Becky. Now what? Will Sal and Danny walk into the room all happy and in love bringing more confusion into everyone’s minds?
The real question is why was Liz even sharing that she was going to Joe’s room?
I have two possible reasons.
(A) She was bragging to her in the know friends.
(B) Her parents have some gps tracking app on her phone and nothing better to do than figure out what locations are.
(C) Some combination of the above.
Personally, I think it’s just A. Liz has already proven she’s more than willing to spill she’s atheist in face-to-face conversation. And we have strong evidence she’s big onto performative acts of edgyness.
And not every person needs a traumatic history. Unless Sarah says something, I’m going to assume Liz’s parent situation is normal.
I don’t really see B as a possibility, because that’s not something you’d brag about to your controlling parental figures. You’d make up a lie about how you were hanging out with your new Christian friend and leave it vague until questioned for details.
I agree that Liz posting that primarily for her step-mom(s)’s sake doesn’t make sense.
This is why (B) hypothesizes her parents are GPS/social network stalking her. “Liz, honey! Why did your phone location say you spent half an hour in the same dorm as where that disgusting sex tape was filmed!”
An extreme set of behavior that you would think would have been alluded to by Sarah or Liz if true.
Yep, I was just headed down here to say Joe actually has a pretty good point today. I know Joe kind of made his own bed here (get it? ’cause it’s his room?), but I think as the reader we’ve seen him make far bigger strides in his personal growth than the other characters have, and in situations like this one here I kinda feel bad for him. I’m curious to find out if his quip today was actually in relation to Joyce seeming to immediately associate his room with debauchery (and likely sin!) when she needed cover for the lies she was telling Liz.
Okay, this is the first time I’ve picked up that “Liz is Joyce’s Christian friend from Facebook” isn’t based on old information, but on Liz still pretending to be Ultra-Christian online while mocking Christians behind their backs, and I didn’t think it was possible for me to hate her more than I already did, but here we are.
And with that “Hm”, I think Joyce is kind of thinking “Wait, is this reallyHm someone I want to be like?”
While I don’t hate Liz nearly as much as a lot of people do (tbh I don’t actually think she’s done anything wrong besides be an edgelord, which Joyce was actively egging on), I think these situations are pretty different. I don’t see anything wrong at all with pretending to be a Christian (or straight) but mocking Christians (or homophobes) behind their backs because saying your true feelings would be a threat to your way of life.
Posting stuff as described here is actively putting down the group Liz claims to truly be part of. It would protect her enough to just post loving Jesus memes all day—just as it would protect a young gay woman to present as straight or even post about an opposite-sex relationship—so why go out of her way to post fake hate? This is more like a closeted gay kid posting about how he’s going to be protesting a school drag event (even though the truth is he’s there because he likes drag shows).
I think this depends on exactly WHAT the stepmoms situation is. Even in your example, I could certainly see ultra-christian parents chastising their child and saying they were disappointed in them for not protesting the drag event and “standing up the devil” or something.
Christianity can be quite toxic, and that could include shunning people who are no longer faithful, or strong-arm attempts to drag them back to church. (Not all christians act that way, but some do.)
Imagine trying to have a nice family holiday dinner, when every spoken word is some variation on “Why don’t you believe anymore? Come to church with us!”
I don’t know what you mean. It’s not like I’ve occasionally gone trolling “but chemicals” forums by pointing out true facts about dihydrogen monoxide and have everyone there go “my god, this is terrible”!
Btw, did you know 320 THOUSAND people die of dihydrogen monoxide inhalation every year? And the government keeps pumping this deadly chemical into our homes!
People can very easily come away with scalding burns from contact with the chemical. It’s the principal cause of erosion, and yet it gets dumped into our waterways all the time!
I’m not gonna make deep character reads in a character who has potentially vanished now they’ve sewed chaos, like it could just be petulant young adulthood and nothing else, but you don’t go out of your way to pretend you’re a devout Christian if you fucking hate Christians so god damn much unless something is making you do so.
It just seems like she is laying it on a little thick with the den of sin stuff. Is posting Bible verses not enough? Does she need to track her every movement and explain how it is deeply Christian?
I kind of want to see more of Liz now, rather than just have her blow up things for the main cast and vanish into the night.
I suspect her hatred of Christians is at least partly performative. It seems to me she was playing up to Joyce at least as much as Joyce was playing up to her. Newly atheist, not really comfortable with it, not willing to confront her moms on it, whether that’s a real threat or just an unpleasant confrontation. Tempted by all the bad girl sex and drugs stuff, but not nearly as experienced as she’s pretending.
Eh. For major major characters, this is a good sentiment, but I’m not sure I entirely agree with it as it applies to Liz. I think Liz is a good character, because she served her purpose well. Sure, most people are probably pretty meh about her, but she also probably wasn’t supposed to evoke any strong emotions from readers.
I like Mary now because she’s lowkey enough that seeing her get hompfked to the death by Dina or annoying the fuck out of everyone with sloppy makeouts with her boyfriend is funny, and it’s also funny when Joyce had Fuckface on her head and when Mary pointed it out Dorothy and Joyce just started roasting her and Mary stared incredulously before noting that it is an iguana on her head and she’s not the weird one, and then she whines to Ruth that Joyce called her a tattler.
Like, that’s just actually funny. She’s not at all sympathetic or likeable and she never will, but she’s small and annoying enough that you can put her into plenty of comedy scenarios at her expense and have a laugh.
It’s stepmomS, so I guess there’s a couple of divorces hanging around in the background? We don’t have any solid intel on the family situation, but it might be… fraught? Yeah, let’s go with fraught for now.
It may just be the one stepmom. Apparently using the plural when you mean the singular when talking about a parent is a thing now, which is cool and good and not needlessly fucking confusing in the slightest
For as much arguing as there’s been the past few days, i think we can all agree the worst part of the comments in this storyline has been the reddit “Joyce shouldn’t apologize BECAUSE she’s RIGHT and all religious people are DUMB and EVIL” atheists. It’s only a couple but whoo boy so they just. Keep posting.
I want to agree with you, but I think I find the comments saying “Joyce’s apology counts” more aggravating.
Just because she didn’t say the exact words “I’m sorry you were offended” doesn’t make Joyce’s apology any less of an insincere politician’s apology.
I know one leads to the other, but I find the latter more aggravating because I know these people would not have accepted such an apology as real or sincere in Becky’s shoes regardless of the topic.
A lot of people are discussing Liz’s religious facade on Facebook and why she has to pretend to be religious when she’s not. I figured I’d throw in some details from my (extremely minimal) Facebook experience to show why that’s important.
Back in community college (so around ’11-’14) I was still using Facebook to connect with peers. I had updated my bio to mention that I didn’t believe in a personal god, along with some Sherlock quotes or whatever I was interested in at the time. No one ever checks my Facebook bio, really. It hadn’t caused me problems in the past, even though that is probably the only way my mom would know I was bi and she does a lot of Facebook stalking as a hobby.
Some random family member from Florida, who I don’t even remember or really know, decided to send me a DM. They introduced themselves and in the first message demanded to know why I didn’t believe in a personal god.
Like, this person was family. But they didn’t have any reason to deserve an answer to that. And I didn’t give them one. But the thought of any family member coming and harassing me over something like a little blurb in my bio was ridiculous.
So I can totally understand why someone like Liz might need to put up barriers and pretend to be religious online. Even if it’s not your immediate family, people still might get the bright idea to come bother you about your Facebook facade.
Of course, I’ve also had work experiences where the entire department was full of little old religious ladies. They would expect me to provide the correct answer to their. not quite proverbs? but two-part sayings? it felt like a password LOL. but they’d say their bit, and my coworker around my age would nudge me and tell me the correct answer. and i’d just be like a deer in headlights. my facade was nowhere near as good as Liz’s, probably because she works at hers lol.
I think there’s a difference between updating your bio to show you no longer believe and actively keeping up a facade of posting Jesusy stuff you no longer believe. Like pretending to be in the Campus Crusade for Christ.
It might be necessary, if your immediate family is extreme enough that not continuing to publicly affirm your beliefs would make them come after you, but that’s heading in a troublesome direction. Especially when Sarah seems to make no such pretense – though we don’t know she actually shares stepmoms with Sarah, I think.
Today’s bit about posting to pray for her since she’s entering the “sinful realm” is just weird, since not letting her stepmoms know she was entering the sinful realm at all seems easier.
Somebody else mentioned that it might be a covert brag about meeting Mr. Sex Tape and hanging out in his room for her in-the-know friends. Otherwise it doesn’t make any sense to post it.
I guess the real question would be, “Why is someone Liz’s age using Facebook (home of senior citizens and businesses to cheap to make a real website) of all things to connect with people?”
The fact Liz posted this means it was posted during her visit. Unless she considered the whole campus the “sinful realm”? But if she doesn’t believe in God or prayer anymore, why is she posting it at all? Especially as it happens? She’d have to be working hard to “keep up appearances” if she’s going to this level of detail to post life happenings as they happen. I think she’s speaking one way around Joyce and still questioning at other times in her life. Just as i think Joyce is still cringing just a little bit when she says some of these anti-God comments during the visit.
As another poster suggested, she gets to let her atheist friends know she’s visiting the sex tape guy, while at the same time she gets a bit of a thrill pulling the wool over the eyes of the more religious people in her life.
I was thinking it was Joyce Hming about Joe and Roz’s sex tape (because she’s watched it and then felt super ashamed), but that could actually be about Becky.
Like, “wow that thing you do all the time and I’ve never thought about it and always loved having you here, it actually blew up in my face, huh.”
Out of the many strange takes I find in the comments section, the claim that looking at your friend’s Facebook is cyberstalking is one of the weirdest. That looking for your friend at university without texting/calling ahead is somehow rude. That dropping by unannounced is apparently bad and a transgression.
Looking at your friend’s facebook or dropping by unannounced is fine. If your friend skips class so you decide to track them down using someone else’s facebook feed, that is a bit clingy.
Like it’s not all or nothing, and whatever I think on Becky’s actions and thought processes an important thing to remember is that she and Joyce have no idea how to establish boundaries. Becky’s actions and thought processes would still be questionable at best, but if she didn’t walk in on that specific conversation Joyce would be cheering Becky on for being a cool unflappable rebel as she has done all her life.
Like, it’s a number of things that would be completely sensible in another context.
Does Becky want to meet Liz even if Joyce is alone with her? Why wouldn’t she? They’d get along great! Except we know Becky did it because she is Joyce’s Cool Christian Friend (as in Dorothy didn’t just say as much, Becky laughed about how it made her awesome) and Liz is unneeded, as in Becky has declared herself as filling a role for Joyce that Joyce herself might not even care about, and Dorothy, who has already committed the great crime of being a School Misser, voiced objections that Joyce skip a class to hang out with a cool online friend (and then the other half of the motivation was getting away from Walky and Lucy).
Are Becky and Dorothy stopping by Joyce’s room, that place they’ve been given unfettered access to? Super! Except they aren’t just walking to Joyce’s room to say hi, they aren’t checking a usual haunt to bump into her, and that they didn’t just text her feels so bizarre as to be a deliberate beat (which is weird but “ha! surprise!” does seem like a Becky move that, again, Joyce would never otherwise question).
And while I touched on this one above I do want to give it its own focus: Dorothy and Becky can want to meet Joyce’s Cool Christian Friend Liz for their own sake, but that they couldn’t just say they were doing it, letting Joyce know they wanted to, and instead made it a thing about Becky asserting her dominance, yeah that changes things.
Like I do actually think this is a pretty good example of cyberstalking, in that Becky and Dorothy tracked Joyce down using social media instead of just directly talking to her, as in they didn’t want her to know they were coming (and granted this might just be a way to get the plot rolling, because if Joyce had been texted and she told them they were at Joe’s, this drama bomb would have dropped) and both of them didn’t really have Joyce’s best interests in mind or the forethought to just check that pressing their desires onto Joyce couldn’t go wrong, but just kind of feel innately wrong (but, again, something these three have never really had to think about).
If it were any one or two things about this, as in something a regular person could do without much moral fuss, then it wouldn’t really be a thing to talk about, but that it’s got all of them send it into sus territory.
I’m glad you mentioned that, be ause I was confused, too. Stuff that my friends haven’t even posted ends up on my feed because a friend was tagged or the algorithm thought my friend might’ve been in a picture. FB is in the business of making sure you connect with as many people as possible so you want to use the site more, which ups the amount they can charge. The end result is that you don’t have to be a creeper to see stuff like that.
I mean, I rather doubt that Dorothy was sitting back thinking “this is okay and normal” as Becky tied red string to pins on a board or something. If anyone is going to be the voice of reason there and dip out when things get a little too I sessive and weird, it’s Dorothy.
I would like joyce to decide “i want to try sex now”, approach joe, and have joe turn her down because he wants a relationship wuth her rather than casual sex
Given that Joyce’s sex ed probably consists only of what she’s gleaned from conversations with her friends and from Amber’s fanfiction, she may mean that literally.
(Or maybe she watched Joe and Roz’s sex tape and has some idea, I dunno, I can’t find anything I’m looking for around here)
I think she knows the basics…
– There was a comic quite a long time ago that showed Joyce watching the Joe/Roz video
– She does write her own adult stories, so she probably knows at least the basics of how things fit togethers (even if she doesn’t know about the more… exotic… stuff.)
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IDontKnowWhatYouExpected.gif
whoops deleted my cookies
*re-adds Tumblr link that only gets updated in October, apparently*
What did you expect?
Pumpkin juice?
Foursquare would finally have proven useful.
so wait, is Joyce still a christian in the walkyverse or did she become atheist over there as well?
I don’t think there’s any concrete statement on the matter, unless Willis has done some Word of God thing. I always got the impression that she is still Christian, but I’m sure The Cheese and Resurrection Chambers and a Ghost Alien have done a number on her.
The irony packed into that first sentence. 😅
Walkyverse!Joyce is still a Christian last we saw her, yes.
Things like the factual existence of bodiless souls would, I think, make atheism a much more dubious proposition in the walkyverse. She’d have less reason to abandon theism.
Not that it stopped Dina even when she was what is perceived as one. Not to mention, existence of one or some elements of a thing don’t automatically prove everything related to the thing.
So true!!!
I wish I could upvote this!
Welllll… the existence of a soul separate from the body is actually not very well supported (read: basically not at all) by the actual text of the Bible.
Well she probably will gradually drift to Cheesus.
What happens in Joe’s sin den, stays in Joe’s sin den.
Today’s strip suggests that is very much not the case.
Except when it was filmed and made a headline
Wow, Panel 1 Joyce. ‘Not interested in an apology’?
She’s not wrong. She did say “sorry” and Becky was not receptive to it.
She wasn’t interested in my apology, so I assume she wouldn’t have been interested in any apology.
She also said she wasn’t interested in Liz’s apology.
Eh, to be fair to Joyce, I don’t think there’s anything she could possibly say that Becky would’ve taken well in that moment, even if it was the most thoughtful apology in the world. Becky was just not in a place to listen to that kind of thing.
I mean it’s all still Joyce’s fault but she’s right.
Well, it’s VERY difficult to accept one’s former bestie MOCKING YOU behind your back and FIVE SECOND LATER being sincerely apologetic, that kind of introspection isn’t THAT fast, ESPECIALLY at THAT age
Oh, I disagree. I can remember some moments that right after my brain went: and then, I made a mistake. Brace for impact.
That said, bffs can generally tell someone’s tone/body language and Joyce wasn’t ready to apologize, so insincerity anyways.
I don’t think Becky was looking for an apology, she wanted an explanation and Joyce’s explanation was “Well I’m an atheist now because you’re gay and that conflicted with my faith so I dumped it, why haven’t you?” Which is not a comforting explanation even if it’s true.
Technically, that’s probably true. But it’s not anywhere close to a meaningful description of the interaction. Anyways, Joyce has some stuff to work through not around Becky, or she’ll keep bungling any apology. Showing up for actually having an argument instead of letting Becky just leave might have been the best choice in that situation anyways. Shows she cares what Becky thinks at least.
And now she actually has a chance to be not around Becky!
…Joyce *did* apologize. Becky wasn’t having it.
It’s Becky’s prerogative to not *accept* Joyce’s apology, but that doesn’t make the previous strip where Joyce said “I’m sorry, Becky, I’m really, really sorry” not exist. Joyce literally said those words! “Becky isn’t interested in an apology” is a completely factual description of what just happened between them! Anybody remotely tuned into this could probably infer that they did not make up.
The fact that this rift between Joyce and Becky was *not* resolved by Joyce apologizing doesn’t mean the apology didn’t take place; it is an incredibly clear demonstration that it’s about a rift too deep and too painful to be solved by an apology or one short argument, however harsh.
Sure Joyce apologized, but almost immediately after she started trying to argue with Becky over how Becky shouldn’t keep her faith. Which sort of negates the apology. Becky outright asked her “do you really think I’m an idiot because I still believe in God” and Joyce tried to start a theological argument. Joyce basically said that Becky doesn’t have a right to be upset because she’s wrong. Also, it can take time for an apology to be accepted, even a genuine one. We can’t say someone is a bad person just because they don’t immediately forgive someone after they apologize.
She started arguing because Becky told her that her apology was fake.
Because her apology *was* fake.
Nothing Joyce said was insincere.
For Joyce’s apology to be fake would imply that Joyce thinks the act of causing pain to Becky is something she’s totally okay and happy with and just needs to lie to get the status quo back in order.
Yes, Joyce’s apology was followed up by an argument…
But I do think Becky had a little to do with that. Her blunt “Sorry I heard you!” (as well as some of her other statements/accusations) would have been enough to derail many people’s thought processes.
“We can’t say someone is a bad person just because they don’t immediately forgive someone after they apologize.”
… Okay? But that’s not at all what Cerusee said. They’re not calling Becky a bad person. They’re saying that Becky can be unforgiving even if Joyce apologize. Which is what happened. One does not negate the other.
I feel like you might be either responding to the wrong comment, or projecting things into Cerusee’s comment that are not there.
Yeah but that wasn’t really an apology. After Joyce said that Becky countered “Sorry I heard you.” and not only did Joyce never deny it, she hung her head in acknowledgment. She knows she didn’t apologize for what she did, only that she got caught.
Because the heart of the conflict is that Joyce *isn’t* sorry for losing her faith. Becky wouldn’t have been placated by anything less than Joyce assuring her she was still Christian, and Joyce couldn’t lie to her again.
I’m not entirely sure about that. Becky at least seems to think she’d be okay with it under different circumstances, given how she responds when Johce brings up Dina.
Have you possibly considered that Joyce is actually remorseful for the pain she thinks she caused Becky, and then continuing to push it is an exercise in futility because Becky won’t hear it?
What is she supposed to say? Why is she supposed to be so good at wordsmithing she can conjure up the magic apology that’ll get her feelings across that Becky has already labelled stupid bullshit?
I mean, perhaps a good start would have been to just say “no” when Becky asked, “do you really think I’m an idiot just because I still believe in God?” She could have said. “no, I’ve been having my own issues with losing my faith and I got caught up in the moment. I’m sorry.” If she had done that I would probably be a bit more on Joyce’s side. Rather she essentially says “yes” when Becky asks her if she thinks Becky is an idiot by outright explaining how Becky is wrong.
Okay so that’s still asking Joyce, after Becky has already affirmed to her that she does not believe she is capable of being sorry, to convey in so many words her wild outrage over her abusive cult upbringing, her current disbelief at everything she used to believe as unshakeable fact, and to somehow separate Becky from all the bad parts when as far as Joyce knew, because Becky was already running on this assumption, both of them approached their upbringing in the exact same way and came away with the exact same conclusions.
Meaning at the moment, right now, when she has made the step into accepting that she is a monkey and was given her first chance in her life to just be good and vengeful about all the trash she was handed and told was gourmet dinner, maybe Becky is part of all of this just by association and if Joyce had time to process this on her own time, as in she could do this without Becky and Dorothy stalking her for going off-script, then maybe she could eventually find a way to process the idea that she can think Becky is objectively wrong about life the universe and everything and also it doesn’t have to change much between them, because Becky is currently very much in love with someone who thinks and acts the same way.
Because that doesn’t sound like something Joyce can do, it sounds like Teddy Roosevelt.
But Joyce wasn’t sorry – her “apology” amounted to “Sorry YOU were hurt” not “Sorry I said people who think like you including you are all idiots.” Taking yourself out of the equation is the standard YouTuber / celebrity “apology” that’s not a real one. Just because I say the word “sorry” doesn’t mean it’s an apology
Yeah that’s because Joyce is sorry that Becky was hurt. As in despite what she thinks now, Becky matters enough that she doesn’t want to hurt her. The kind of apology you’re talking about involves deflecting from owning harm, but Joyce did that except within the specific frame work of “you got hurt and that bothers me.”
Because for Joyce to say “sorry I called you an idiot” (and Becky was not her specific target but we’ll get to that) would mean that Joyce is saying “sorry I called you an idiot for believing in objective falsehoods that you already know are objective falsehoods and yet cling to anyway.”
So here’s the thing, I’m an atheist and when I believed as a child God was just There, as in my life rolled on and God existed as a part of it until he did not. I had faith, it was just an incredibly flimsy faith in that it wasn’t really based on anything that mattered to me. I just knew he was there because everyone knew he was there until I didn’t. My faith isn’t based on anything meaningful to me, so for me to assert faith as idiotic would be an admission that I view everyone who has it as an idiot. I don’t get it, ergo it is wrong.
Becky’s faith is real and it’s more real than Joyce’s has ever been, and her ability to detach “from the unimportant stuff” is rooted in how if reality contradicts her faith, it’s unimportant because what really matters is God’s unending love for her. From there, Becky is also able to roll with other interpretations of her faith as valid as long as the unimportant stuff doesn’t take precedent. Mary’s not a good Christian, for example, because even though Mary probably believes the earth is millions of years old she hates gay people and hating gay people is unimportant, but Mary decides it’s important enough that her interpretation of faith is right and she can do whatever she wants.
Joyce was taught to obey the bible as a guide of objective reality. She didn’t have faith, she had programming, so once all of that programmed stressed enough it collapsed in on itself and we now have atheist Joyce.
The reason the scene everyone is reading as “Joyce didn’t say Becky wasn’t an idiot, therefore she called her an idiot” happened the way it did because Becky, having refused to accept that Joyce is sorry for hurting her, believes things Joyce is incapable (this is the important word) of processing as valid, the way you wouldn’t understand if I was eating paint. That shit’s bad for you, why in the world would you need to respect me eating paint because I say it’s good for me?
Joyce is currently, as in her atheism is not a belief in God’s non-existence so much as it is everything she’s had sold to her as objective reality vanishing in a puff of smoke with nothing to fill the void, unable to process Becky’s faith because Joyce can only process it as Becky’s continued insistence on accepting objective falsehoods as objective reality like the Earth being 6000 years old and dinosaurs on the ark. She thinks of herself as an idiot for ever believing, she thinks Becky’s an idiot for still believing, and she thinks everyone who believes is an idiot because what part of the Earth not being 6000 years old do you not understand?
Except nobody but Joyce thinks the Earth is 6000 years old. Becky used to and no longer does, but Joyce and Becky grew up with the same beliefs and structures meaning Becky should have processed this the same way Joyce did, much like how Becky treats Joyce’s atheism as a failing on her part for only believing in things that make her better than other people, because if Becky were to say those things it would be outrageously egotistical since she doesn’t have objective facts to back her up, insisting on it would just make her like Mary.
But with Joyce it’s as simple as binary. 0 is atheism, 1 is the objective fact of God’s existence and the bible as a true document of history. That’s not superiority, that’s just math.
I gotta stop doing these because I can’t even tackle one part of it without needing to get into a hundred other details and they take like half an hour.
Good write up Spencer. Joyce not being able to process Becky’s viewpoint is extremely important to what happened on the stairs. Becky would’ve been interested in Joyce apologizing for calling her an idiot, but without being able to see Becky’s point of view, I don’t think she would be able to do that. Unfortunately this all comes down the fact that, at least at this time, Joyce and Becky don’t understand each other.
But that’s ultimately the only thing Joyce owes Becky. She ows Becky an explanation and some amount of honesty, which tensions were too high at that point to really get into but essentially the best apology that Joyce could offer would be something along the lines of:
“I have been working out what exactly I belive and was venting about what we were taught when growing up but didn’t want to work through these feelings in front of you where I knew I might hurt you. I’m sorry you came into the middle of that and maybe I should have shared more about what I was feeling.”
Except that can all still be basically summarized as “I’m sorry you heard.” And the tough thing about apologizing for effectively calling Becky an idiot for her beliefs is that Becky still represents what Joyce believed and Joyce definitely believed that she herself had been an idiot. While she could have handed it better is saying “I dont think you are an idiot I think I was an idiot for believing many of the same things that you still believe” really that much better.
So I actually hate that that’s not considered a ‘real’ apology under any circumstances.
I’ve seen such apologies used as a GET OUT OF TROUBLE FREE card in online drama in cases like the ones you describe, yes. Those are often people I don’t trust are actually sorry for any aspect of what happened, including upsetting people.
However, on the flip side… I personally hate hurting anyone, no matter how it happens. It’s usually an accident – even more indirect and unintentional than what Joyce did here, to clarify – but I still feel absolutely GUTTED when someone is upset because of something I did. Doesn’t matter if their perspective makes sense or not, or if it’s entirely their misinterpretation of me in their head or their bigotry that’s the reason they’re mad at me. I am still always deeply sorry another person was hurt by something I did/my existence.
…but I can’t actually apologize for being queer, or an atheist, or someone else projecting intent and actions on me that aren’t even factually true. So the most I really can say in those situations is that I’m sorry they’re hurt. And I mean it! I am! It’s not a non-apology meant to deflect. It’s an acknowledgment of their pain, whether or not I can actually fix it.
It’s complicated. I know that was a little bit of a tangent, but my actual point is this: sometimes the only thing someone can truly regret and apologize for is that the other person is upset. I can always be empathetic toward someone hurting, but I can’t always take responsibility for someone else’s thought processes regarding me, y’know…?
(My comment was mostly @ Airyu, BTW)
I mean yeah I agree with you, Doki.
It matters to me when I hurt someone I care about, and, like, that pain they’re feeling matters to me, I hate that they’re hurting because of something I did even if it’s something that happens in something I view as asserting myself or refusing to enable, and I do in fact try to express that in ways that can get labeled as insincere because Funny Youtube Man has exploited this to try and draw heat away from his latest Heated Gamer Moment, therefore that means I am also lying.
Even if you’re honestly sorry about hurting them, but you stand by the thing you did to hurt them, it’s not really going to help a lot, is it?
Leaving aside the ambiguity in what Joyce said: “I’m sorry you were hurt by me calling you stupid, but I only did it because you are stupid.” That’s not really going to ease anyone’s pain, right?
@Spencer
Yes. EXACTLY. I really don’t like how some people give such shitty non-apologies that a lot of people won’t accept any nuance in apologies. (Not exactly talking about the comic or these comments yes anymore, but in general?)
@thejeff
I mean, intent makes almost all the difference for me personally, so… I’d say it depends? Not so much in the case of Joyce and Becky, no. But sometimes I think it depends on exactly what the problem is and what you’re willing to do to help fix the hurt (even if you don’t/can’t budge on the initial issue).
…then again, I’ve been told I am very very VERY forgiving, so maybe that’s just me LOL?
It is a better. Maybe not enough, but it accomplishes several things. Makes it clear that Joyce is struggling with her own beliefs rather than just happily mocking Becky’s. Makes it clear that she doesn’t really think Becky’s an idiot, even if she’s still thinking badly of her self for that and can’t easily reconcile that.
Part of the problem is that while it can be summarized as you suggest, the summary leaves out all the nuance that makes her more sympathetic. Makes it clear that she wasn’t just sorry Becky heard because she wanted to go on mocking behind her back.
the summary leaves out all the nuance that makes her more sympathetic
Who, Joyce? I’m not sure what I missed but I’d be glad to hear it as I probably have a take on that too.
Meant to be to PigmyWurm’s “Except that can all still be basically summarized as “I’m sorry you heard.””
Apparently I hit reply in the wrong spot.
“I reject your apology” doesn’t mean the apology didn’t happen. It means you rejected the apology.
Anyone can refuse an apology! It’s fine! You’re allowed to feel like someone’s apology is insufficient! But Joyce didn’t say “I’m sorry if your feelings were hurt,” she said “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” and Becky refused to accept it because—and this is what mattered—she’s not really angry that Joyce made a mistake and accidentally hurt her feelings; Becky is angry and upset that *Joyce doesn’t believe what Becky believes*, and Joyce refused to take that back.
It’s really fruitless and exhausting to be locked into a mindset that says that any time someone gets hurt, it has to be someone else’s fault, or that every conflict springs from someone having done something wrong. Sometimes people are in conflict! And it can’t be magically smoothed away in one moment by someone just saying exactly the right words! Joyce genuinely tried, it didn’t take, and it’s not because she didn’t apologize the EXACT RIGHT WAY, or that she didn’t try, or because she doesn’t care about Becky and Becky’s wounded feelings. It’s that they’re at odds about something fundamentally really important to both of them. Becky thinks Joyce thinks the wrong things. To her, an apology that isn’t a renunciation of those wrong thoughts doesn’t count.
Agreed 100%, thank you.
The problem is that Becky clarified what Joyce was apologising for. “Sorry I heard you.” And Joyce didn’t have a rebuttal.
Joyce apologised for the result, Becky wants an apology for the reason.
Which is fundamentally not something you can apologize for, IMO.
You can apologize for actions you’ve taken, but not for what you are or what you believe.
My reading is that Joyce apologized for the result (Becky felt hurt), rather than the reason (Joyce said some cruel things). “Sorry you were hurt by what I said” is, in fact, kind of a shitty apology.
Becky didn’t ask Joyce to apologize for being an atheist, but for openly mocking her behind her back. And frankly, even if Joyce was talking about herself, not Becky, what she said was cruel. Becky was well within bounds to want Joyce to apologize for being cruel.
What Becky walked in on was not Joyce talking about the sky sea, but this gem: “Lookit me! I believe in God! I think anything matters and that any bad stuff that happens to me is part of some grand design to teach me life lessons instead of just being friggin’ random bullshit.”
Joyce didn’t owe Becky an apology for thinking God didn’t exist, but she sure as hell owed her one for “Lookit me! I believe in God!”
(I’m gonna add that despite the many, many comments saying that Becky demanded Joyce change her beliefs, I don’t see that anywhere in this argument. She doesn’t ask “How could you turn from God?” she asks “Do you really think I’m an idiot for believing in God?”
Joyce, though I sympathize deeply with her, is the one who comes much closer to insisting that Becky change. She’s the one who says “How on earth are you the one of us refusing to let go of it?!”)
@Thulcandran: Yeah, at this point that’s essentially my reading of that part as well.
Can you explain how Joyce said anything cruel? Hurtful perhaps, but unintentional and not targeted at Becky, and I’m not sure unintentional, untargeted *cruelty* is a thing. It wasn’t something Becky was meant to hear. Joyce wasn’t talking about Becky, she was talking about herself, or her prior self. She is sorry that Becky was hurt by what she said, she is sorry that Becky heard it when it was clearly not meant for her.
Imagine a PoC complaining in a group of other PoCs about white people all being racist, and their white friend happens to walk in right at that moment and then getting mad that the PoC was calling them racist. You know what? Don’t take it f’ing personally. The world is complicated and people have complex feelings.
I understand where you’re coming from here, but it’s not as thought Joyce intended Becky to hear her. She deliberately took herself away from Becky (and Dorothy) and all her usual responsibilities to go and yell cathartic things.
What she said was ugly and a bit childish. But it’s the first chance she’s had to just scream it all out. I 100% read her ‘look at me’ comments as an attack on herself and her past beliefs. And yes maybe there’s some contempt for Becky in there too – because Joyce hasn’t had time to process how to fit her own loss of faith and Becky’s ongoing faith together in their friendship.
But I think her apologising that Becky heard without apologising for what she said is fair enough, actually.
@Michael L
With all due respect, I think it’s deeply inappropriate to compare a conversation between young atheists about Christians being stupid and gullible to a conversation between people of color about whiteness and white behavior being a problem.
I’m also not convinced that Joyce was talking about only herself. That’s been asserted in the comments, but what she was mocking was belief in “a sky wizard” and, more specifically, that idea “loves me.” That’s what she was mocking.
I’m not Christian, but I absolutely did have friends who were 100% cool talking about how Christianity was stupid and Paganism was superior in every way back when I was.And it is personal, and it is hurtful. And, again, Joyce is the one saying Becky should change her beliefs, not the other way around.
Oh what the hell, is the reply function ever going to work for me?
I agree with Cerusee, but the thing is, Joyce is also upset that Becky doens’t believe what she believes. For this conflict to be resolved they will both have to accept that they believe different things, and that they will continue to believe different things, and that they always believed different things, and neither of them is willing to see that right now. So they can’t get to that step where Joyce says “no, you’re not an idiot, I was” because she doesn’t see her ideas as different from Becky’s… and Becky also can’t say “ok, you did believe all this stupid bs that I thought was uninportant” because she just can’t conceive of that
Literally as Becky said Joyce was not sorry about what she said just that she got caught. It’s pretty deceptive to say she doesn’t want an apology when Joyce didn’t really give a true one. You can’t actually apologize if you don’t mean it
It is not like Joe is a bull-shitter.
Just noticed Joyce’s wearing wellies!
Weren’t those the boots that Jennifer (Billie) bought her in the mall?
She’s been wearing those Ugg boots a lot.
Hey Liz, what the fuck?
I mean, she didn’t know Joyce was hiding out from Dorothy and Becky. Posting where she was going was a fairly innocuous thing to do, even if naming it the way she did was a little odd
I’m also thinking WFT Liz? Because after her sanctimonious rant about not caring about burning bridges over her atheism, she’s still posting to FB as if she’s a believer (unless it’s just sarcasm so dry it could serve in place of desiccant packets.
When we first met her, she said she was still posing as a believer on Facebook to please her stepmom.
She’s probably a lot more dependent on her stepmom’s goodwill than Joyce is on Becky, to be fair.
Replace “she” with “Mary” and it fits, but this word baloon as it is, is very confusing.
What does Mary have to do with this?
Nothing, but I can believe that Mary wrote something like this on the facebook page. Just to proof, that she is better than everyone else.
She returned to her home planet after her role in the plot was complete.
Sometimes your ride can be real nasty about you not hurrying down. If she was just leaving of her own prerogative I might be madder but I’ve been in the ‘sorry I literally have to run’ boat before
This has little to do with today’s comic but, how tall are these people?
Don’t quote me, but I believe Joyce and Dorothy are about 5’3”-4”, Sarah is 5’9”-10”, and Joe is 6’3”.
Makes sense, I was wondering because of Joe looking extra tall when standing next to Dorothy and Joyce.
What’s Dorothy’s face mean in the last panel? Dorothy… what did you do? Dorothy, what did you do!?
I think she’s just being Disappointed in Joe’s Very Good Quip.
Yeah, I read it as like a “Well, you’re not *wrong*, exactly” expression.
I interpret it as Dorothy trying not to laugh.
The quip is good, but the timing is poor; but hey, I wouldn’t be able to keep such a good one for myself either
Another possible read on it is “And it’s been…HOW long since i’ve been laid?” considering possibilities face. I mean, Joe’s tag line is literally ‘casual sex.’
This was my read. She’s clearly looking and Joe like “he *is* rather nice looking” and having a lengthy self-argument…
I mean, Dorothy has known Joe longer than anyone else in this setting other than perhaps his roommate, so she probably just has a reflexive default reaction to his quips.
She can have third place, after Danny and Richard.
She’s trying to hold in a fart
I’m glad you brought this up because when I first looked at it I thought she had little vampire fangs, but now I gave it a second look and understand she is biting her lip
Presumably because she’s trying not to laugh. I’m really not sure why else she would be biting her lip. Pretty sure that she didn’t come to Joe’s room for the sin, so it wasn’t a-that-hit’s-too-close-to-home response.
Incoming vessel, sir. It’s ID reads as…Jorothy?
Doe?
A deer?
A female dear?
Rey?
A note that follows Luke?
Me?
A guy with jam and bread?
Fa?
Hahbah, the next game-on for Fallout 4?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hNd5nbgNLk
So?
So, how long do you think we can keep this up?
La?
La-nger than you might expect
Tea?
An abomination masquerading as a drink!
That will bring us back to?
Orange juice. A drop of golden sun.
maybe… she’s reminded why she came to Joe’s room just now? within her own virtue ethics worldview she has kind of sinned (i.e. been a bad Dorothy.)
*echoes of the theme from Goldfinger*
Did not consider that Liz literally posted their location online.
Well, it does answer one question people had from previous comics… how they found them in Joe’s room. (Most people thought it was from the process of elimination…)
I just figured that Joyce’s voice carried.
I had kinda assumed they just walked through the women’s and men’s dorm hallway and they heard Joyce’s voice coming from one of the rooms or something.
I was wondering how they knew where to go
Also this is a bit nitpicky but did neither Dorothy or Becky think to shoot off a text towards Joyce that they were on their way
Becky I get since she was on her “I’m just gonna randomly show up and insert myself into another of Joyce’s friendships” nonsense but I feel like Dorothy could have at least given them a heads up
Granted neither had any way of knowing they’d walk in on Joyce badmouthing believers
Yeah, they probably didn’t really have any particular reason to expect this to be a *thing*, exactly.
Yeah, if they had happened to walk in at a less unfortunate moment it’d be no big deal
Maybe it’s different today with smartphones everywhere, but when I was in college nobody called or texted ahead when they were just idly stopping by somebody’s room. Especially not if it’s on the same floor of the same dorm as you
Announcing your arrival was reserved for when you had like, specific plans
I went to college when people had phones and it would have never occurred to me to text in advance for something like that at that age tbh
Okay but if you wanted to find a friend you wouldn’t search the internet for their current location right?
Like this isn’t accidentally stumbling onto Joyce, they deliberately inserted themselves into her day because Becky thought it’d be funny.
Man, completely different experience. We always texted and normally such texts were a warning with a coded secret message – like hide your chips, please lock the door if boinking, this person you don’t like is with me or my favorite: someone visited their mom = cookies.
Dorothy had reason to expect it to be a “thing”, but she was expecting the usual Becky “thing” not the one that actually happened. She still probably should have warned Joyce.
I don’t see why they would have texted in advance.
Neither were aware of Joyce being an atheist so couldn’t have known they’d walk in on anything and Becky being wildly overpossessive was already a known Becky trait by Joyce. I don’t think either would have seen it as necessary to text just to say they were going to show up to say hi and check in since she was just chilling in the dorms still.
Well, even if they didn’t know they’d walk in on an atheist gripe-session, I think the previous poster was right in suggesting Dorothy might have sent a text (as just a sort of curtesy heads-up, regardless of what Joyce was doing).
Right, even if not for Joyce’s sake specifically maybe Liz or Sarah wouldn’t appreciate more people randomly showing up without heads up
Idk maybe this is a weird personal thing I’m projecting onto the characters but showing up to a gathering unannounced/uninvited feels rude to me
Just for the record Joyce didn’t text Joe to let him know she was bringing Liz and Sarah over either. If Becky and Dorothy were being rude here, so was Joyce. It’s nothing special.
I’m not sure it’s so much a weird personal thing as college life being a different social space, especially within one dorm. They’re all essentially living together.
Is there not a difference between “hey Joe, meet my friend!” and “hey Joyce, we came over to meet your friend”?
Yes, but both involve showing up unannounced/uninvited.
Showing up unannounced isn’t inherently possessive, it’s Kramer.
It’s college. Everyone here does it, but it’s being painted as serious rudeness.
It’s rude because of Becky’s specific motives and the lengths she took to reach them, yeah.
I don’t like unannounced visits either, but dorms are like bedrooms in a shared house rather than separate houses. You don’t text your roommates that you are going to check other rooms to see if they are there in my mind which is more like how dorm culture works.
That’s my feeling too.
Of course my experience was long enough ago that texting wasn’t an option. We could call, but only landlines, so it was often easier to just stop by even to other dorms if you weren’t starting from your own room.
From the previous evidence in the comic, at least within the dorms people wander in and out pretty regularly.
Hell it was only a few strips back that Sal climbed up to knock on Danny’s window, which is far more invasive than anything Becky’s done if you think about it.
man *I* would defo want to catch my class-ditching friend out. WELL WELL WELL WOTS ALL THIS THEN n shit. Don’t you have a CLASS, MISSY? BUELLERRR!!!!
that kinda bullshit. fer sher. fun n funny n harmless.
It’s probable that was Becky’s exact plan. Shit.
You know, the fact that the actor who played the Dean of Students in Ferris Bueller was arrested on sex offences adds a whole new dimension to that comparison.
Eh, when i was living on campus my friends never texted me they were coming over, they just showed up
Joyce is kinda unaware of how apologizing works, isn’t she? Or maybe she doesn’t find fault of calling her friend dumb for her beliefs
I think she’s just being uncharitable because she’s upset, which, it is what it is, both of them probably need to give each other some space for the moment.
Yeah, she doesn’t. As Becky said, she’s sorry that Becky overheard – but she’s not sorry for WHAT she said.
If she really was only talking about herself, like people in the comments section kept insisting, Becky gave her ample chance to say so. Instead, Joyce started arguing to Becky about WHY she thinks Becky is an idiot.
So yeah, Joyce doesn’t feel she’s in the wrong here. Her saying that “Becky isn’t interested in an apology” is kind of disingenuous. Because she has no interest in apologizing for how she actually hurt Becky.
She’s literally working through those realizations about herself (and others) during the incident and argument. 19 year olds aren’t known for their ability to do that while also crafting a perfect apology. It’s not called “emotional maturity of age”.
That I’d certainly agree with. Just not with the take that Joyce did all that could be expected and Becky just wasn’t interested in apologies. Which some posters seem to be saying.
Joyce did all that can be expected from Joyce, right now and Becky just wasn’t interested in it. The italics are key.
Yeah, true enough, but that also doesn’t debunk anything I said.
I think it’s also possible that at least on some level, she knows she’d get told off for having botched it, and doesn’t want to deal with any more friends being mad at her right now.
If Dorothy hates her, after all, she’s left with only Sarah and Joe. And neither is usually that interested in being supportive and helpful during long unpacky messy monologues.
I rather think they were talking at cross-purposes.
Becky, also, many of the writers here, heard „Becky is dumb, she still believes in god.“
Joyce was venting when Becky walked in. And thinks she is expected to say she’s sorry for *no longer believing in god and being angry that she ever did*!
So no wonder she doesn’t want to apologize for that.
I don’t think she has a shred of an idea that Becky feels insulted, she ascribes the reaction to Joyce having left the common ground.
Becky said, in the second strip they talked, “Do you really think I’m an idiot because I believe in God?” Joyce was silent for a beat, and then said that the Bible isn’t literally true, implying pretty strongly that she does think anyone who believes it is an idiot.
If she doesn’t have the idea that Becky felt insulted, she really wasn’t listening at all to Becky’s words. Not only what Thulcandran said, but “Dina doesn’t lie to me or make fun of me behind my back.”
So Becky would prefer that Joyce lie to her face instead of owning the fact that she currently has those beliefs about believers?
An apology at this point from Joyce would literally be a demanded lie for Becky’s comfort.
Is that a good thing?
Becky said outright that one of her problems is that Joyce lied to her. So no, Becky does not prefer that. Joyce could help fix things by literally saying what commenters kept insisting she actually meant – that she was talking about herself, not Becky. But Joyce chose not to do that – because even if she was talking about herself in part, she WAS also talking about Becky. And she knows that.
The fact that a group of people have come to a bad conclusion and they have used poor reasoning is a reflection on that group of people not the people who can spot the poor reasoning.
And being upset because your group is being pointed out as one that is represented as using poor reasoning, isn’t an argument for your position it is a demand that others acknowledge the validity of your belief because you emotionally want them to.
In fact I would argue the entire point that Becky is upset shows that she is fundamentally so wrapped up in her “faith” as an identity for protection of her own ego, that she is taking insults or negative projections on the entirety of the group as direct insults to her.
Tile and I’m sorry a lot of people call me stupid for enjoying simple video games and I don’t go on a rant about how how dare you think my passion is stupid. I understand that they don’t understand what I get out of it and I move on with my day which is what a mature individual does when they hear somebody criticize their “faith”.
Becky literally has no standing here and is literally just projecting her own negative fears of what her religion actually is on to Joyce. I would say Becky fears that her belief is idiotic and getting called out on it is why it hurts so much.
About that and until Becky faces the fact that it is her own egos reaction to the fact that the group that she has self-defined herself as being is going to be insulted around her life and there is either a need for them to justify it in a rational sense for other people to see why it is not idiotic to come to that conclusion, or get used to it.
Because having an ego reaction because people don’t like my personal LARP variety is just the projection of ego boundaries over controlling of how other people feel and believe for yourself comfort. It is fundamentally selfish not acting as a friend to Joyce and self-centered.
So you agree with Joyce that Becky is an idiot. We’re just going to have to agree to disagree on that!
PS withholding speech is not lying.
And in fact when she tried to tell her Becky reacted with shutting the conversation down because it was uncomfortable for Becky.
So Becky forced her to shut up and when she spoke to somebody else and Becky happened over here she got angry again.
When told “I don’t want to hear it.” And you then withhold the information from somebody because they specifically told you they don’t want to hear it you aren’t lying to them you are actually giving them politeness and deference.
And the fact that Becky is unable to hear Joyce have a crisis of Faith or an existential rebuilding of her life just shows that Joyce is not actually valued for who she is by Becky.
I agree with Joyce that Becky is being an idiot about this issue but I think every religious person because I keep asking them for some sort of justification other than I value it which is not valid logistical thinking is being idiotic because I do not see the proof that they so desperately believe exists.
I do not think Becky in her totality is an idiot.
And the fact that you want to make choices statement about the group of people who believe something that they have no justification for being bad at thinking on that issue a personal insult to a single person is literally The identical problem Becky is suffering from.
You are right now being immature in trying to make a generalized statement about bad thinking the totality and an insult to a single individual.
Also for Becky not have been insulted in this instance Joyce would have to not ever voice any complaints whatsoever about the religious during the loss of her faith.
Basically just like most religious people you’re saying yeah you cannot believe what I think but I don’t want to hear about it or have any reflection on myself for my own beliefs.
It’s the completely uneven playing field that the religious want they want you to acknowledge the value of their belief and you to shut the fuck up* if you have any complaints.
Which if Becky was truly actually living her faith wouldn’t she need to understand how Joyce was hurt and how Joyce was feeling if she was going to have any chance of saving her and reconvincing her of the truth of her beliefs? Because what she’s doing is ego guarding because any negative perconception about her due to her own actions from her professed faith or apparently not allowed.
If your actual beliefs are that someone’s an idiot because of their religious beliefs and that it’s fine to mock them for their beliefs behind their back, you should apologize for having those beliefs, because you’re a bigot. Honesty about being a bigot does not somehow get you off the hook for being a bigot. Respecting other people’s religious beliefs is not negotiable.
Exactly – especially when Becky’s religious beliefs don’t in any way hurt anyone.
Okay but that’s kind of the fun part.
Becky has mocked Joyce’s beliefs by telling her that she only ever believed in things that made her think she was better than other people, that Becky has declared Joyce inauthentic and that her current atheism is a failure on her part.
Except Becky thought Joyce had belief and faith in God in the first place, the way Becky is nothing but belief and faith in God’s unending love for her through the miracles she has experienced. Becky is mocking something that never actually existed, but she can’t process the idea that Joyce, or anyone, approaches religious belief differently than her: whatever belief you have it’s all about God’s love and the unimportant stuff can go away when reality tells it to.
(In giving this post a once-over feel I may have worded the above poorly or vaguely, so if you have any beef please feel free to ask away)
For Joyce to be mocking Becky’s faith would imply that Joyce thinks anyone actually has faith, and do you know who Joyce is mocking as idiots? Folks who don’t know how binary works.
1 means that God is real and the bible is the inerrant word of Christ, which means, objectively, as in someone bigger and smarter than Joyce has decided that this is how the world works (and that part’s a little relevant to why Joyce is thinking like this lately), the Earth is 6000 years old, gay people belong in Hell, dinosaurs breathed fire and were hunted to extinction, and the sky sea covered the Earth and let people live to 900 years old.
0 means that, if any of the above cannot be accepted, as in Joyce’s best friend who she loves more than anyone in the world is objectively a bad person that Joyce needs to hand over to her higher power so she can be saved from Hell for her sinful life choices, then all of it is now up for debate, and because Joyce had to start thinking about it she realized none of it could hold up to scrutiny.
Becky processed this real smoothly: yeah all of that is bullshit, but God loves me. Joyce did not do a bad job processing this so much as the way Joyce’s knowledge of definitely real history and the morals it imparted to her functioned, it all had to come crashing down once Joyce’s cognitive dissonance machine broke from carrying an entire understanding of the universe.
Joyce believed in God the way one believes in math: It exists as an inerrant set of rules that smarter people than you came up with, and being good at math means listening to your betters.
And much like Becky, Joyce thought everyone saw it like that. Of course you also know the Earth is 6000 years old and everyone who does not is a sinner that is deliberately subverting the word of God, that’s why you’re a Christian in the first place.
Care to justify why religions as ideological constructions get special treatment and exclusion from scrutiny?
Like there are Hindu sects that are specifically about the creation of suffering, they specifically in their practice are about the dispoiling of one’s own body causing oneself pain and hurting others for the ritualistic display of the power that it can bring one self.
This is not saying all Hindus are bad but I think that specific group of practitioners are pretty idiotic. I think they make a lot of dumb choices influenced by their religion. I would make an argument for why believing and practicing that religious sect of Hinduism is pretty idiotic.
Are you saying thinking that is bigoted? Or saying that is bigoted?
Last panel is the most “I really don’t want to be here right now” look I have ever seen on Dorothy’s face.
“Oh, yeah, we used your friend’s Facebook feed to locate track you down because we didn’t like you skipping class/having friends that weren’t us, this is a totally normal thing that healthy boundary-respecting friendships are made of.”
Please tell me we’re actually going to address at some point that this all happened because Dorothy and Becky riverdanced right over Joyce’s right to hang out with other people.
Not to mention Dorothy’s statement implied to me that the only reason she tagged along was to scold Joyce for skipping class which is frankly none of her business
I sort of took it more like she wanted to see what the deal was, since this is atypical behavior from Joyce, but I mean, yeah, sometimes Dorothy can lay a guilt trip on. I don’t know if she planned to or if it just ended up that way.
Well, Dorothy stated that she “Didn’t like” that Joyce was skipping classes. But, she had no intention of following Becky on her quest to track down Joyce (even calling Becky over-possessive over her plans) until she realized the alternative was to spend time with Walky/Lucy.
I mean Dorothy is smart enough to know those weren’t the only 2 options she had
She’s also smart enough to know that doesn’t mean she then has to act overpossessive herself just because she tagged along. I’m pretty sure she just wanted to check in on Joyce because skipping class is unlike her and she’d be there to help drag Becky away if her jealousy got the best of her.
She bailed because otherwise she’d be getting horny hanging out with Walky.
It was a weird thing for Dorothy to say/choice to make! She is friends with Joyce, she’s always shown that she cared a lot about her and she wants to help Joyce to make good/healthy decisions that she knows Joyce sometimes struggles with. Pushing Joyce pretty hard towards seeking medical care that Joyce absolutely would not have sought otherwise…was something that didn’t bother me, because Joyce could have shut down, if she’d really wanted to?
But something about “I don’t like that Joyce is skipping classes” hits this level of paternalism that just bugs me.
(I think it’s probably because Joyce is already a conscientious student, and she doesn’t need help on that front? If she wants to skip class for a day, that’s really up to her. Whereas her extreme reluctance about vision care was rooted in both phobia and her neuroses about change, and those are things that she not only needs help in moving past, but does, in the grand scheme of things, seem to appreciate having help in.)
“I don’t like that Joyce is skipping classes” does make me rethink Dorothy’s persistence on the glasses issue though. Like maybe Dorothy’s going a little hard on fixing Joyce up so she’ll be as a-okay as she can be, when Dorothy ABANDONS her to go to Yale.
(I could be wildly off-base here! But it would make sense to me, if Dorothy is already expecting she’ll be gone by the following semester, that she’s consciously or unconsciously trying to tie up loose emotional ends and make sure the people she cares about are safe.)
Oh, man, that’s something I haven’t considered. Dorothy doesn’t have too many friends besides through Joyce, does she? She’s almost certainly friendly again with Danny at this point, but they likely don’t hang out the way they used to. She could be hovering over Joyce.
I think it‘s less skipping classes but „Joyce never skips class, what the hell is going on?“
Like, if Joe didn’t show up for class, it wouldn’t be out of character. For Joyce, it is
I mean they knew what was going on, Sarah’s sister was visiting and they decided to spend time with her
I mean, the first time Dorothy stopped paying attention to Joyce, Joyce acquired a gay boyfriend.
I’d cite more examples, but my brain is tired and not recollecting anything.
Joyce skipped due to Jacob too so maybe she thought an intervention was needed over Joe. 🙂 That aside, still needs to stay in her lane.
I mean the first thing she said was “this is so much more disappointing than you skipping class” so yeah actually.
I wonder if it does have to do with Dorothy having to make Joyce into a proper adult before she goes to Yale. Someone else here said that right?
I thought it was already astablished that there is almost no boundaries set in this Strangely intimate sisterhood of theirs. Joyce will bust in on you when your taking a piss for not telling her you broke up with your boyfriend.
The intrusiveness was all Becky, she just dragged Dorothy along for the ride.
There was no reason for either Becky or Dorothy to expect this, and visiting a friend without calling ahead is normally a harmless thing
I kinda don’t like that Becky seemed to be so bothered by Joyce skipping class to hang out with another friend that she had to go looking for her, but I’m sure Becky and Dorothy didn’t know what they’d end up walking into.
Becky was interested in an apology, not whatever the hell that was.
I don’t think she was. Joyce didn’t apologize, but they hadn’t even argued. Now they have.
I agree with Huehuetotl. Becky was not interested in any apology that Joyce is currently capable of providing/should provide.
Assuming that Joyce really does think Becky’s an idiot and wants to continue mocking believers, then you’re right that she shouldn’t apologize.
She certainly shouldn’t apologize for leaving their religion.
It seems to me that there might be some middle ground in there where an apology could fit.
Wow I think that you’re probably a pretty decent person in most areas of your life and no single aspect of you is the totality of your person.
Your conclusion here is idiotic. Employees like it is bad person of all of the people in the situation it is ignoring the needs of one party indifference for the other and it is immature and childish to expect someone to lie to you to make you feel comfortable about their personal beliefs.
So noting I literally did just say that you are being an idiot on this issue, does that mean I have called you an idiot in your totalistic sense? Because you’ve come to one bad conclusion are you now just an idiot? Your cake and if I was ranting about people who parse issues badly and how idiotic it is when they do so would you then decide to take that personally as a personal insult to yourself and the totality of yourself?
Because if you did you are making a generalized gripe all about you.b
With all that considered how on Earth do you think Joyce should be apologizing right now?
I can’t even parse half of that. Phone and autocorrect, I assume, but it’s mostly gibberish to me.
I don’t know, because I don’t know what Joyce is actually thinking. If she’s thinking Becky has come to a bad conclusion on one issue, then she could say that. “I don’t think you’re really an idiot, even though I think you’re wrong on this.” Maybe with a “sorry it came out that way, I was ranting”.
OTOH, if she really does have this all messed up together in her head enough that she can’t make that separation and she does think Becky is an idiot and that it’s fine to mock even her soon to be former friends over their beliefs, then she shouldn’t apologize or try to explain, because she’d be lying. (Though that could of course change with time as she processes her own deconversion.)
So let me re-ask the question what legitimate apology can Joyce even possibly make that wouldn’t be her lying to Becky just to make it so she’s less upset?
Also if I say football is stupid somebody who over hears me says “well you must think I’m an idiot because I’m into football, how dare you think that people who like football are stupid for thinking that, you owe me an apology.”
What apology do I make to them? Because I don’t necessarily think they’re stupid I think that the valuing of football is kind of stupid and that is not an assessment of that singular individual in their totality by any means. So if somebody else decides to take my generalized statement about a dislike of football as a personal insult how do I apologize for them really being out of bounds about how personal they take my assessment of football?
Like my opinion on football hasn’t changed so what honest actually acceptable truthful apology can I make to the person who is making my opinion about football about how much I dislike them?
I don’t think there is a possibility actually and in fact from the perspective of an individual who has made a generalized statement of dislike about an ideology or sport having somebody else take it personally is not my fault and to apologize for it is inherently disingenuous.
Meaning we’re left with Becky is the only one who has any ability to deal with Becky’s hurt feelings. And in fact since she is not upset at Joyce for any reasonable reason other than but I do not like the idea that Christianity or faith as an ideological grouping reflects badly on Becky.
So quite literally Becky is the only one doing something in this situation that could change. She didn’t have to take Joyce’s journey personally and using it as a justification for why Becky is allowed to bully/inttimidate Joyce into either silence or agreeing with her is abusive.
If I was a Christian still I would be saving Becky is in the wrong as an atheist Becky is still in the wrong. As a Christian people told me Christianity was stupid a lot and you know what wouldn’t have helped that taking it personally and taking it out of them because you think Christianity isn’t very smart so therefore my ego gets hurt.
And you know what Becky needs to grow the hell up if she wants to keep a friend. Because she hasn’t treated Joyce as a friend. She is treated her as somebody who is not allowed to have opinions thoughts or ideas of their own or a journey.
And Joyce was there for Becky at gunpoint. So let’s not make this out like Joyce has been not acting like a friend.
And at least from my perspective having been both a Christian and a non-Christian Becky is killing a friendship for her own perceptions of saving other people’s perceptions of how smart she is for picking Christianity. No way that Christianity could reflect badly on you and if you even mentioned the idea that it could be a negative perception to be a Christian the conversation is over I am too angry to talk how dare you.
And that’s not a logical point for why Joyce is wrong that is an emotional point for why I am upset that people do not perceive Christianity as positive.
I’ve given several examples of what I think Joyce could have said. I’m not sure they’d suffice for the Becky you’re constructed in your head or if they’d be lies coming from the Joyce in your head.
actually specifically I’m trying to point out I can’t think of any valid apology in which Joyce is actually doing right by Becky to apologize.
She would be being dishonest to give Becky the perception of what Becky wants Joyce to be.
Because what Joyce is right now is going through a very sloppy angry hard to work through existential crisis of trying to rebuild their understanding of the world because they are a black and white thinking atheist who has thrown out all of the bath water and is rethinking their entire view of the world from the ground up trying on New world views as hats, sloppily.
If anything it’s a tragedy Becky can’t get her perceptual feelings unhurt long enough to realize that this is a symptom of Joyce going through something really hard.
Doesn’t mean it’s the same amount of suffering or the same type of suffering that Becky has been through, but an existential crisis and suffering is something that somebody is not necessarily going to handle perfectly. And Becky is expecting Joyce to go through something perfectly or she’s going to jump ship. And that really sucks to have somebody who used to call themselves your best friend treat you that way.
lol *I* wouldn’t be interested in an apology if I was Becky. Not right then. This shit has REPERCUSSIONS. This shit has IMPLICATIONS. this shit needs UNPACKING. And it’s been one (1) minute, max. Gonna go. figure out how im feeling about that before I can sensibly assess and respond to an apology.
Is it just my imagination or is Joe’s hair looking longer now?
Is he going to grow it out??
His hair is fluffier somehow, I’ve noticed it too. I like it better than the strict rectangle of the past.
Joe legitimately has a good point here though?
Yeah, they came to his room for hijinks, and hijinks happened. Joyce wanted to impress Joe and knew Joe would play along to an extent, it just obviously got out of hand, and not really through any fault of Joe’s, who was honestly a pretty gracious host considering they gave him zero warning.
You could even say they ensued.
Well in all fairness every last one of them barged their way into his room.
Yeah, I’m absolutely with Joe here.
Except that he didn’t shut the door.
It’s a college dorm.
Also it’s Joe. He wouldn’t be able to watch any hot chicks that walked by and they wouldn’t be able to see him.
We’re never gonna get to Thanksgiving, huh.
Bye Liz, forever.
She came, she broke everything, and she fucked off.
Veni, fregi, discessi.
LIZ EUNT DOMUS!
People called Liz, they go, the house?
it says, Liz go home!
Life of Brian reference? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjOfQfxmTLQ
Sarah is in pre-law so maybe she has a latin class?
maybe she texts this to her sister because she’s still mad at her, but in a sassy way?
hm, is latin a thing in anglo saxon law. i mean, is latin a thing in any sort of law. my sister is a lawyer here in france and i don’t think she’s had a single hour of latin in her curriculum. shows you which organ i am talking out of now. eh, it’s the next day no one’s reading this, so: *fingers bunched together facing nose; rotates wrist and opens hand outwards*
I read that initially without any context and thought you were referring to Roz.
It would not be out of character for her.
Like I said the other day, her role was to drop a drama bomb on the plot then skedaddle. Her influence was the catalyst that kick-started this reaction. Since that would irreparably damage any other existing relationships, it took a one-off character to get the job done, and Sarah’s unseen (except for that one time in the Walkyverse) sister fits the bill.
We time-skipped over Thanksgiving, so the next is almost a full year away in in-comic time. Maybe circa 3022, Willis’s descendants will decide to write that plotline.
I hope I’ll have descendants around to read that strip by then, assuming I haven’t found a way to become immortal or something.
You have better odds than me.
Actual immortality is out of the question. Entropy always wins in the end. An indefinite lifespan is not.
SARAH doesn’t expect to see Liz until Thanksgiving.
Sarah didn’t expect to see Liz today, either.
…How did I initially manage to read this as Liz running off to hook up with Roz?
Wishful thinking.
Nah, I’m not particularly inclined to give Liz a good time at the moment.
Y’know I wasn’t either, but also Roz and Liz would be really hot and that has trumped any ill will I have for her.
Art! Art! Art! Art! Art! Art!
ask and ye shall (very occasionally) receive (a bad photoshop of your ship)
Goddamn you, you forever go above and beyond!
can’t stop won’t stop
(no but for real this is it) (i hesitated between the two then did both) (am i procrastinating, why yes how could you tell, bye now)
This is hilarious!
Good night, milu.
why thank you J! =)
I think Roz is straight.
She still strikes me at the type to experiment
As is quickly becoming the norm, the man has a point.
Joyce really does have a problem with black-and-white thinking, where she’s always been kind of like, “People who don’t believe what I believe are bad/stupid and wrong.” She’s on the other side of the fence now regarding religion, but that aspect of her hasn’t changed – and it’s really starting to cost her. It’ll be interesting to see how she grows and develops from here on out.
Becky really has a problem with black and white thinking.
She thinks if a single negative opinion is held about the entire ideological group that she personally self identifies as then obviously you must hate / think she’s a complete idiot. Runs the business there’s no Gray zone or nuance or possible understanding of Joyce’s position of a need to vent about their lived experience.
You are literally accusing Joyce of being black and white when Becky is the one controlling whether or not certain opinions are allowed to be talked about.
Joyce is just in the wrong and a bad person because she has any storm of negative perception of the faithful right?
There’s no nuance to the situation in which Joyce may have a reason for why they’re saying what they said and obviously all statements should take as the totality of the truth and direct insults to a single believer right?
Uhhh, Joyce literally said, “Lookit me, I believe in GOD! I’m an IDIOT!!” Thinking someone is an idiot – as Joyce clearly thinks about Becky – is not just “a single negative opinion.” Plus Joyce adding the “How on earth do you still believe this stupid bullshit” to rub salt into it. Joyce is supposed to be Becky’s best friend – and she’s trashing Becky behind her back, after pretending she was a part of a very intimate and important celebration to Becky (her mother’s birthday) that she’s now indicating Becky was an utter fool for taking part in.
I don’t think I’m the one struggling with nuance here.
My point being, just because someone has a reason for shitty behavior, that does not make their shitty behavior less shitty.
It’s kind of tragically self-centered to make somebody else’s foible that indicates that they have and are going through a extremely large change in their life that is difficult and hard to go through is all about how the other person is expressing anger at the category of people that reflects badly on you.
That’s literally making somebody else’s existential crisis all about you.
Trashing believers is trashing a category Becky belongs to not Becky.
The idea that Becky is her faith or ideological construct is a falsity and being insulted on behalf of one’s faith or ideological construct is taking something personal because you feel it reflects on you negatively.
And honestly if they were being mature about it they would take it in stride as evidence that Joyce is having a crisis of faith and if they were in any way inclined that that mattered try to help them.
When I was a Christian if one of my friends started being like look at me I’m an idiot for being a Christian I would take it as a signal that they needed help not a reason to be upset about what they thought about Christians. Nor an indication of what they thought of me.
So quite literally Becky is being immature and taking it personally instead of actually hearing Joyce and understanding what Joyce is going through.
Some atheists never get rid of the all or nothing thinking they were raised with. That said, I’m both confused at Becky seemingly blaming Joyce for not tightly holding on to her faith like Becky did, and Joyce essentially blaming *Becky* for losing it, when we all know that Joyce’s parental figures were the catalyst for the worst shit Joyce went through.
Do you mind if I try to tackle that point about Joyce “blaming” Becky for losing it?
Cuz I think I might have a perspective that could expand upon it.
Wait did thanks giving pass our not I thought se had a two month time skip between the middle of October and now. What month are we in?
It’s the beginning of the spring semester (so I think still January?)
January.
I think it’s still Friday of the first week of the new semester.
Thanksgiving did pass during the time skip.
I think the joke is, Sarah would prefer to delay seeing Liz as long as possible i.e. prefer later in the current year (thanksgiving) as opposed to earlier (summer).
How DARE they sell porn in this pornography store!
I came in her for smut. But this is filth! And you’ve got your debauchery mixed in with your unmentionables.
“I came in her for smut” is the perfect typo, assuming it was a typo.
Otherwise, it’s simply perfect.
Happy accident.
Also what we call what comes nine months after she got came in for smut
Feels like Dorothy giving good sounding mediocre advice is going to happen imminently.
I mean, he ain’t wrong. You can’t go into the sin den and then complain about it. 😛
Well, you can, it’s just rude because what did you expect. A sin den to not contain sin?
Nah, you got exactly what you expected, but you still have to complain about it so everyone knows you’re not a dirty sinner like the dirty sinners that frequent this den of sin.
Maybe my frame of reference is shifted or something, but normally when I go into a sin den, I find Cos.
*glare*
Well you CAN, if they accommodate that particular kink.
Came here to sin, stayed for videogames and gummy vitamins.
Gonna be real interesting when Becky’s roommate asks Becky later why she wasn’t interested in an apology.
Dorothy is a smart person who communicates very clearly, and I don’t think she’ll just repeat the exact phrasing Joyce told her (especially when it’s that loaded).
I’m sure she won’t, but it’s going to be an interesting conversation anyways.
I mean, I think Becky would just say “because Joyce’s apology wasn’t very good” and Dorothy would respond “okay yeah that checks out”. Dorothy can almost certainly read between the lines here, and if she can’t, I don’t think she’d be shocked when Becky gave her perspective.
Oh, sure. I’m not saying it’s gonna turn into a knockdown dragout fight between Dorothy or Becky or anything. The interesting part to me is how Dorothy will respond to Joyce when she learns the truth. Right now I think she suspects, but having it confirmed and confronting Joyce will be an interesting thing to see.
I think the conversation Becky and Dorothy will have is also going to be interesting. Dorothy is at enough of a remove to talk to Becky without being upset by the situation, and she’ll be able to help explain Joyce’s issue and walk Becky through accepting it. It actually kinda sucks for Dorothy that she’ll probably have to play mediator, but I don’t think she’d even think of backing down from that role.
Mario Cart is a sin?
Yeah. You remember the eight deadly sins right? Pride, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Mario Kart and Sloth
When you want to play Mario Kart, you are committing Lust. When you hog the best character to yourself the entire time, you are committing Greed. When you taunt others for losing, you are committing Pride. When you play Mario Kart for hours and hours past your bedtime, you are committing Gluttony. When someone finally beats you and you ragequit, you are committing Envy and Wrath. When you’re too tired to go to class the next morning because you played Mario Kart all night, you are committing Sloth.
Thus, to play Mario Kart is to sin.
Upvote to King Daniel‘s comment
So Becky/Dorothy DID track Joyce down to a place they weren’t invited, a place Joyce had zero expectation they’d randomly show up (a place both of them tend to avoid). They weren’t “looking around” or “randomly walking by” so Joyce did have a reasonable expectation they wouldn’t be there.
Also interesting to note for all Liz’s talk about “not caring about burning bridges” she’s still posting on FB like she’s devout. Hm…
I suspect that ‘Hm’ from Joyce is her realizing that exact thing re: Liz and burning bridges.
Properly managed, Facebook is less of a bridge and more of an outward-facing mask that keeps people from realizing that the bridge is no longer intact.
Yeah, it’s a public-facing facade that looks good enough to keep parents from asking any questions while all her actual friends, presumably, know because she’s contacting them through literally any other means of messaging that religious family members AREN’T on.
And dang, I’m assuming she’s been doing the dry sarcasm and counting on being indistinguishable as parody from what people actually say so said religious family members don’t expect for a while now because that is… not particularly subtle. Everyone who’s in on the joke sees that one and snickers.
One thing I am curious about….
How did Joyce know Liz was actually an atheist?
After all, Joyce was a fundamentalist Christian when they met, and stayed that way through half the first term. Liz was supposedly maintaining a christian facade to many/most people at the time. In those circumstances why would either of them assume that they were no longer believers?
I suppose it’s possible they had talked about it in private messages
Yeah but how would they have broached the subject?
I mean, maybe Joyce could have made a comment about “ever have doubts about god?” after the kidnapping, which might have caused Liz to open up with a “Of course… I don’t think he exists”. Or maybe Liz opened up with a “you had some bad things happen… that must make you doubt god”.
Just curious how it actually happened.
I also have the question but maybe Sarah scoffed at seeing Liz’s fake feed herself (it is a bit heavy handed even if people like that do exist) and Joyce took note of it.
No Liz just straight up told her after leaving the dorm:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/onetoast/
I had assumed that they already knew they were both atheists before hand and were just playing up the fact. (Just from the way they were smiling during the conversation, and the way they both feel into the “don’t have patience” arguments… didn’t seem like it was any sort of big revelation.)
This gives me a thought experiment.
If this is where Becky and Dorothy found Joyce, would the reaction be different?
She’s been posting like that, as explained earlier, to keep her stepmom(s) off her case.
Which suggests to me, taken with the specific variety of Campus Christian Group she was allegedly in, that she might well have some religious trauma of her own from her upbringing.
I figure that Liz’s performance was just as performative as Joyce’s. She is obviously a bit more worldly, but maintaining a fake Facebook of such aggressive religiosity suggests consequences if she doesn’t. Probably since it is a parental figure probably married to her Dad, financial ones? (Since we know Sarah needed her scholarship.) It is what a lot of people do when they feel forced to act/hide in a certain way – explode messily in all the ways they feel they can’t normally in the rare moments they aren’t over-looked.
Not all that much more worldly, since she seems to have bought the gummy “edibles”.
But yeah, I suspect she’s got her own religious trauma to unpack. Hopefully not as extreme as what our main cast has been through.
I hope someone told her that wasn’t an actual edible. If she actually does find someone willing to give her one in the future and she expects it to be like taking a male vitamin, she could have a real bad time.
She’ll take an actual one and spit out because it didn’t hit like Joe’s stash.
At the very least, I’m pretty sure that if Liz had been kidnapped last semester, it would’ve come up in conversation. So hey, at least there’s that!
(These poor kids.)
The important thing about Liz is that she is someone Joyce thinks is cool and approachable.
Which is to say she is a slightly worldier Joyce, in that she knows that edibles exist.
Yeah. There’s a great line from Jocelyne back when she was talking to Ethan: “You kidding? I’m their [her parents’] favorite. Precisely because they know the least about me.”
Yes, they relentlessly tracked Joyce and Liz all the way to… their mutual friend’s dorm room, using information that Liz freely posted to the general public.
What even is this take.
I mean, personally I would find it pretty weird if a friend tracked me down via facebook instead of just texting me.
Yea, it’s still Facebook stalking just cause they’re close. I’d also be pretty peeved if I was trying to have some seperate friend hangouts and my other friends decided to intrude
Yeah this is actually cyberstalking, it’s just something we can do with the veneer of respectability because it’s incredibly normalized. There was a whole arc of Lupin III about this in the last anime!
Like a text wouldn’t kill them. They’re zoomers, they should only communicate through those anyway.
No, it’s not cyberstalking. That’s ridiculous.
Checking a Facebook account is a thing that could be part of cyberstalking, so it superficially resembles it, but at this point it’s just extending the definition to make it sound so much worse than it is.
You can’t “cyberstalk” with a single act. It’s a pattern.
I mean I don’t know how else to describe a scenario wherein you find someone who does not want to be found by you using a social media account.
Like, why is it not cyberstalking to go “I need to see Joyce right now even though she has not indicated she wants to see me, here’s her Cool Christian Friend’s facebook account, and then that Cool Christian Friend just posted that she is in this room right now, so that’s where Joyce is.” Just because it’d be something I’d react to in a normal and well-meaning context (as in not one where the person doing it admitted to thinking claiming ownership of me in front of another friend is funny) with “okay don’t do that again please just text me” or probably not think about it at all if it bothered me enough to get unpleasant feelings about it.
Because “Go looking for your friend” isn’t stalking.
Stalking and cyberstalking are real problems. In many cases serious crimes.
Much like gaslighting, these things have actual definitions and the overbroad usage just confuses things.
It kind of is because of the specific circumstance and Becky’s motivations.
To be clear for as completely unwilling to acknowledge healthy boundaries Becky is, she’s not doing anything that in another circumstance Joyce wouldn’t find hilarious. That’s kind of the root of the problem and it was inevitably going to break.
But searching someone’s info so to can find them to show that your friend belongs to you is wack. Meeting Liz wasn’t for Becky, even if Becky has never been given a reason to think it’s wrong.
The only reason Joyce wouldn’t have been happy for Becky to meet Liz is because she didn’t want Becky to see how she was behaving around Liz, which wouldn’t have been the case if Liz was the Jesusy friend they both thought she was. Even if Becky had come in doing her “I’m Joyce’s bestest friend” shtick.
Mind you, I don’t take that shtick nearly as seriously as you do. It’s obnoxious, but I don’t think it’s Becky’s real motivation.
Becky called it her real motivation. Joyce can actually meet Becky without needing to introduce her to Liz, it doesn’t involve Becky.
Anyway there’s a conversation around how Joyce does not need to include Becky, as in Becky inserted herself because Dorothy told her she was being over-possessive and then Becky smirked and said it made her realer than Dorothy, and another conversation about Becky would obviously expect her arrival to be met with cheers because there’s never been a point where Joyce and her learned how to establish boundaries or have a conversation the other didn’t need to be around for.
Like, “Becky’s actions would have been fine if the scenario played out in a way that she did the same things with the same dialogue but there was no dialogue questioning it” isn’t really a great defense of Becky’s intrusion, because there was finally one point in time where Joyce did not want Becky in the room and here she came.
I know Becky said that’s why, but that’s part of the shtick and I don’t think the schtick is her real motivation. That’s part of the wacky Becky armor.
That’s not an excuse for the schtick, but it means to me that you can’t use what she says about that to get to why she’s actually doing something.
I understand that you don’t agree. That you think the “I’m Joyce’s bestest friend” bit is real and important to Becky.
If nothing else, the conversation Joyce and Becky inevitably have will need to include this. Becky and Joyce have both had problems with boundaries in the past so it would be good to talk about it and how it relates to their upbringings.
I’d be weirded out if a friend tracked where I was via Facebook as well, particularly since I don’t normally post where I am on Facebook.
Are they mutual friends?
I dont know if Dorothy has any thoughts on Joe outside of “my exes friend/roomate” and I’m pretty sure Becky doesn’t like him
Sarah has also expressed dislike of him too
I’m pretty sure Joyce is the only one present who would qualify as “Joe’s friend”
I think they are, if only because inertia. Dorothy having been longterm involved with Danny means a lot of hanging out with Joe. I don’t think Joe and Dorothy are particularly close friends, mind, but I think they’d both agree if someone called them friends.
Becky definitely doesn’t like him though.
They are friendly acquaintances. But, yeah, I don’t expect Dorothy to visit him in his room often so Joyce’s question is a valid one, I think.
Joyce didn’t post it. Joyce didn’t know it was posted. Joyce assumed her friends would be in class and that her conversation was private. Coming to check on her instead of going to class themselves is a bit smothering.
Dorothy and Becky didn’t have class, near as I can tell. They came back from earlier class, ran into Walky and Lucy headed to calc without Joyce, found out she was skipping and went to find her. Their next class is their shared poli-sci class coming up soon.
OTOH, it’s still perfectly reasonable they would have walked by, so the expectation of privacy seems pretty minimal to me.
I’m actually surprised that Willis seemed to feel the need to explain how they found Joyce. Didn’t seem like anything that was needed.
It could be just a way to set up the joke in the final panel.
Or it might tie into the textual acknowledgement of Becky being wildly over-possessive.
He didn’t say it was helpful, he said it was “of service”.
A part of me right now is just pondering given Liz and her social media face how Joyce found out Liz was an atheist. Did Joyce randomly vent to her in an ill advised way at a bad moment which miraculously (heh) worked out for her? Did Sarah mention it to Liz? (I somehow doubt it).
Maybe Sarah saw the feed and scoffed about Liz being a bit too obviously fake/disbelief in Liz’s stepmother not being suspicious and Joyce found out that way?
No, it was literally during the walk from her room to Joe’s room. Liz just sprung it on her.
Joyce didn’t seem the least bit surprised at the information though? Seems more likely she knew before hand too.
Liz, you a*****
Joyce had NOT expected Becky to overhear any of what she said.
To be 100% fair Liz had no actual way of knowing there was anyone at IU that Joyce was hiding her atheism from
I do hope that this firmly fixes in Joyce’s mind that Liz is a two-faced hypocrite who she doesn’t want or need to know. Basically, the only service Liz has provided is a massively-exaggerated version of Joyce’s faults turned up to eleven and an insight on just who she could become if she isn’t honest with herself.
I would love to know where this take on Liz is coming from.
People seem unreasonably vehement in their hatred of a young woman who seems to only be hiding things from her parents and otherwise just didn’t want to be involved in drama with people she doesn’t know at a college she was only visiting to be around her big sister.
If there’s an actual reason for that aggression I would love to know it.
She presented herself to Joyce as a religious girl and created an online friendship with her on that pretence. This is not covering her beliefs from her parents (I don’t think that has been mentioned in the strip); it’s setting out to deceive a wide number of people and keeping that deceit going even after developing a personal connection with some of them.
She explicitly said back when it first came out that she was an atheist. <a href="https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/onetoast/"Keeps my step moms off my case.
I don’t have a great opinion of Liz, but this is way off the mark.
Damnit. Bad html.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/onetoast/
I don’t really have a problem with how Liz expressed herself beyond the general “bad atheist take” bits. My problem with Liz is that she’s happily watching Joyce’s world burn and, without missing a beat, is proud of whatever small part she had in that.
Like, the FB post is weird but also I don’t care. The “how to be an asshole” contest was stupid but also whatever. It’s not even doing something as small as offering to stick around or helping mend what was broken. And I’m not saying she could, but she should try to do something else with herself than hurt everyone she comes into contact with, and I’m judging her for not even trying.
Joe at least tries. Unsuccessfully, clumsily, toxicly, etc. But he tries. His heart’s in the right county. Liz’s is trying for escape velocity.
Best punchline in a while. thanks, Joe.
So I’m guessing last panel Dorothy is annoyed at Joyce’s scolding if Joe bbrcayse it sounds like avoiding responsibility. Getting the sense that Dorothy is gonna blow up at Joyce about this and Joyce will come back with “why we’re you stalking me?”
So I’m guessing that Dorothy is gonna be less neutral than expected, which I think lines is up the split in cast as:
Becky: Dina, Dorothy. Joyce: Sarah, Joe
I’m assuming a prank war based on what all college movies have taught me.
*because
God, I hope so.
The prank war will be epic
And Carla will win it, naturally. Even though she wasn’t involved.
“I join…….beckys side”
“You dare have a prank war without me? I will defeat you both for you are but pitiful bugs.”
Yeah I was gonna say.
Carla would rather crush everyone on either side because they didn’t invite her.
I want Mary to be invited, just to see how much she’d hate both sides.
Oh, interesting. I saw Dorothy’s face as a response to what Joyce said, “It was not helpful.” That she now feels awkward about the choices that led her here. Well, hopefully we’ll see what that’s about tomorrow.
That was my read, too.
I think your right that she doesn’t like the choices that got here and will try to understand what Joyce did. Dorothy always looks for sensible solutions but Joyce kind of failed at what to Dorothy seemed like a slam dunk. Maybe she’s hyper reasonable like always but that last panel indicates a bit more emotional response to all this.
Why would Dorothy blow up and/or side with Becky at all?
Even if she thinks Joyce made mistakes (over the apology, etc.):
– Dorothy isn’t known for outbursts
– Becky has been hostile to Dorothy since they met. (Jokingly maybe, but its still something she has to put up with), so why side with someone who treats you like that?
– Dorothy recognized before this all happened that Becky might be overposessive, and as such might think “why are you stalking me?” as a valid question Joyce might ask
– She is probably smart enough to recognize the problems atheists have in navigating a world full of christians, and would be forgiving of Joyce as a result
I’m just following what seems to be Dorothy’s emotional state here. She previously said she was disappointed in Joyce and I don’t think Dorothy values being an atheist as much as civility and then kindness(in that order). Dorothy also isn’t necessarily as bothered by it as say I would be by beckys bullying.
It’d be nice if she’s reasonable like always but that last panel says to me that Dorothy does not like this, also probably cause it’s a choice Joyce is making that doesn’t fit in with Dorothy’s “make Joyce better” mindset
Dorothy wouldn’t have to value being an atheist herself… just recognize the struggles involved with being one in a world dominated by christian dogma.
And even if she isn’t necessarily bothered by becky’s bullying, if she really does value civility/kindness, then Joyce (i.e. the person who doesn’t bully, and who isn’t overly possessive) would be the logical person to side with.
Idk, to Dorothy, Joyce was handed the solution: apologise to Becky and everything works out. To Dorothy Joyce was being a bully when she mocked Becky’s beliefs, it doesn’t matter about personal histories. Again maybe Dorothy chooses to listen and understand Joyce’s struggles but from her perspective Joyce is being an unreasonable jerk who won’t work with her. I get the sense she’s gonna be a little annoyed with that. Could also be guilt cause she did help Becky find Joyce through stalkerish means, we’ll see
I don’t necessarily think Dorothy would think Joyce was being a bully.
After all, it WAS supposed to be a private conversation. (One that Becky wasn’t supposed to hear.) And Joyce was probably raising points that Dorothy agrees with herself (even if she wouldn’t necessarily be that blunt in her statements.) And the fact that Joyce DID make the effort to at least go after Becky suggests a wilingness to “work with her”.
I mean I agree with all that, they really should have respected Joyce’s boundaries but I don’t think Dorothy is in a logical state right now. Usually this is the part where Dorothys plan is followed or no one follows it and either way Dorothy did what she could. But here Joyce did do it and it didn’t work. Again, I agree with your logic, I would do that just not sure about Dorothy would
The very fact that Joyce followed Dorothy’s plan and it didn’t work is what makes me hope that Dorothy will stop trying to “fix” the situation long enough to hear Joyce out. After all, by Dorothy’s logic and POV now, Joyce is the one who did all she could (as far as Dorothy knows), and Becky is the now the one refusing to accept an apology. I’m hoping the fact that they’ve veered off the script Dorothy planned is enough to snap her out of the black and white “Becky = victim, Joyce = aggressor” mindset, especially now that the fact that Becky was in this situation in the first place because of her overpossessiveness is being indirectly highlighted.
@Regina phalange (there isn’t a reply button on my screen)
I hope so, there’s some new info coming to light that could change her perspective. It all depends on what final panel Dorothy face means. Like the lip bite could be guilt or frustration. I initially assumed frustration but it’s possible it could be guilt.
Actually weird thing to remember Dorothy has never not been an atheist.
So she, like many of my atheist friends who were never religious previously, does not understand the weight of the existential crisis of losing faith having never valued Faith to begin with.
That’s a good point, really explains why she’s more interested in civility than respect to her beliefs. She doesn’t really need the validation because she never needed it
Why would Dorothy be concerned about her roommate facing more trauma and loss? She knows better than others just how fragile Becky is.
I’m actually curious at how Dina will take this
On one hand Joyce has upset Becky
On the other she’s done so by doing the exact thing Dina has wanted from Joyce since they met
And that’s assuming Becky is completely honest with Dina about the reasons for the fight (she better be if she’s not a hypocrite)
I can see Dina stumbling into a conflict with Becky over this.
Becky: “I am upset with Joyce. She thinks its dumb to believe in god”
Dina: “It is.”
Becky: “But we love each other”
Dina: “That does not mean I do not think your belief in god is dumb”
Maybe not that direct but I do think it will either be like this or Dina feeling uncomfortable as she tries to support Becky.
I feel like it would be more like
Becky: “Dina do you think I’m an idiot cuz I believe in god?”
Dina: “I believe you are misguided. However, you believe I am misguided as well.”
Dina is a wonderful character. But, she does have problems with various social situations. Expecting her to put forward such a diplomatic answer might be a bit much.
This is why I worry that things between Becky and Dina will ultimately blow up in a very messy way. People CAN make it work, but more often than not my experience is that couples who have major disagreements over BIG LIFE GOALS (such as whether or not to have children) wind up eventually splitting over it. How big a role religion should play in the lives of the couple is one of those. For instance, while I don’t know if gay marriage is allowed in Indiana, I am very certain that Becky will at least want to have some sort of ceremony, and she will want God and her faith to be represented somehow. Dina might also very well draw the line at asking some “magical sky fairy” to bless their love, or at least make it clear to Becky that she’s only going along with it because she loves her but deep down she thinks it’s all hooey. That sort of knowledge can really wound a person, deep inside, knowing that person you love most is only going along with something for your sake, not because they share in it with you.
Absolutely, it’s been fine up until this moment but even if Dina is fully supportive of Becky, she’s gonna struggle defending her girlfriend when she kind of agrees with a lot of Joyce’s takes. Not in an edge lord way but as a personal view of life.
This is why I’m a bit concerned Becky might not be completely truthful
I can see that “I believe the same as Dina” statement sticking with her and while Joyce didn’t intend it that might increase her insecurities about their relationship
It would be hypocritical but I can see a scenario where she avoids telling Dina the reason for the argument in order to protect her own feelings out of fear that Dina would agree with Joyce
Becky will be naturally biased so I guess it depends on how Dina responds to the bias
Dorothy seems more likely to try and play peacemaker to me, probably unsuccessfully
Yea I think she would, but seeing her first attempt fail might get on her nerves. That being said, depends on what the final Dorothy face reads as
Joe comin’ out with the bars. Haven’t laughed that hard at DoA in a while.
Here is a question…. How did Joyce know that Becky/Dorothy were actually looking for her (as Joyce says “…how did you even know to look for us in Joe’s room”) as opposed to just stumbling across them by accident? There was nothing in other comics to suggest she was told “we were trying to find you”.
It is possible that Joyce just assumed such (since Becky wouldn’t normally have any reason to be in the boy’s section of the Dorms otherwise), but Dorothy knows some of the residents (Joe, Danny, Walky).
Because when looking for Joyce while hanging out with her cool new friend who is Sarah’s sister, you wouldn’t think to look in the room of a guy that everyone involved has a reasonable assumption of disliking.
Yeah but Dorothy is sort-of friends with Joe. So its not out of the realm of possibility that they could have come to the room on a non-Joyce reason. (Not to mention the possibility that they were on the floor to see someone else… like Walky, and just stumbled on the conversation in Joe’s room.)
…nnnno, she’s not? Dorothy has never gone looking for Joe in the entire history of this comic.
They know where Walky is. They left him.
Because they were supposed to be in class. The only other possibility is that they both skipped and were wandering around the male wing of the dorm together. Which seems highly unlike both of them, for different reasons.
I didn’t think Dorothy/Becky were supposed to be in class. (Remember, before they went on their Joyce-searching mission, the alternative presented to Dorothy was that she go with Walky/Lucy to lunch.)
Everyone comes to Joe for the punchline but then they’re always mad at him that he delivers it.
Does Dorothy feel partially responsible for this? After all, she was unable to stop Becky. Now what? Will Sal and Danny walk into the room all happy and in love bringing more confusion into everyone’s minds?
No? Why would or should Dorothy feel any sort of guilt for not stopping Becky who wouldnt listen to her anyways??
Sometimes people feel guilty for things they can’t control.
Because unfortunately She seems to be that kind of person.
oh no Dotty is thinking of banging Walky again
This was more or less my reading on Dorothy biting her lip. Except that if she went to Joe’s room for sin, her options would be Joe or Danny.
She’s going to get back together with Danny, then immediately dump him, then Walky’s all hers again.
That’s how it works, right?
Dorothy learns to manipulate the dramedy beats to he benefit would be a great genre shift.
May be something to do with the Joe/Roz thing. We know she saw the video, and it was her first story for the paper
The real question is why was Liz even sharing that she was going to Joe’s room?
I have two possible reasons.
(A) She was bragging to her in the know friends.
(B) Her parents have some gps tracking app on her phone and nothing better to do than figure out what locations are.
(C) Some combination of the above.
Personally, I think it’s just A. Liz has already proven she’s more than willing to spill she’s atheist in face-to-face conversation. And we have strong evidence she’s big onto performative acts of edgyness.
And not every person needs a traumatic history. Unless Sarah says something, I’m going to assume Liz’s parent situation is normal.
Sarah doesn’t seem to need to appease condition B.
Define “normal”. We know Liz has a stepmom, so that’s either a dead parent or a (potentially messy) divorce.
Actually, I’ve re-read and it’s stepmomS, plural? So that’s… multiple divorces?
Short answer? Not abusive. As opposed to most parents in this comic.
If Liz feels like she needs to fake-christian to keep the stepmoms off her back, that’s definitely abusive.
Or it could just be she, despite her talk of burning bridges, wants to avoid a confrontation.
God knows I lied to my Mom about my grades often growing up.
I don’t really see B as a possibility, because that’s not something you’d brag about to your controlling parental figures. You’d make up a lie about how you were hanging out with your new Christian friend and leave it vague until questioned for details.
I agree that Liz posting that primarily for her step-mom(s)’s sake doesn’t make sense.
This is why (B) hypothesizes her parents are GPS/social network stalking her. “Liz, honey! Why did your phone location say you spent half an hour in the same dorm as where that disgusting sex tape was filmed!”
An extreme set of behavior that you would think would have been alluded to by Sarah or Liz if true.
This is a stellar point from Joe. I mean, I don’t stand in front of a lit fireplace and then go “goddamn it, why is it so HOT here?”.
That’s also how Joyce reacts when visiting Joe.
Yep, I was just headed down here to say Joe actually has a pretty good point today. I know Joe kind of made his own bed here (get it? ’cause it’s his room?), but I think as the reader we’ve seen him make far bigger strides in his personal growth than the other characters have, and in situations like this one here I kinda feel bad for him. I’m curious to find out if his quip today was actually in relation to Joyce seeming to immediately associate his room with debauchery (and likely sin!) when she needed cover for the lies she was telling Liz.
And here comes Joe with the amazing freestanding line; folks, that’s just incredible.
Okay, this is the first time I’ve picked up that “Liz is Joyce’s Christian friend from Facebook” isn’t based on old information, but on Liz still pretending to be Ultra-Christian online while mocking Christians behind their backs, and I didn’t think it was possible for me to hate her more than I already did, but here we are.
And with that “Hm”, I think Joyce is kind of thinking “Wait, is this reallyHm someone I want to be like?”
Would you feel the same if she were gay and had to fake being ultra-straight online?
While I don’t hate Liz nearly as much as a lot of people do (tbh I don’t actually think she’s done anything wrong besides be an edgelord, which Joyce was actively egging on), I think these situations are pretty different. I don’t see anything wrong at all with pretending to be a Christian (or straight) but mocking Christians (or homophobes) behind their backs because saying your true feelings would be a threat to your way of life.
Posting stuff as described here is actively putting down the group Liz claims to truly be part of. It would protect her enough to just post loving Jesus memes all day—just as it would protect a young gay woman to present as straight or even post about an opposite-sex relationship—so why go out of her way to post fake hate? This is more like a closeted gay kid posting about how he’s going to be protesting a school drag event (even though the truth is he’s there because he likes drag shows).
I think this depends on exactly WHAT the stepmoms situation is. Even in your example, I could certainly see ultra-christian parents chastising their child and saying they were disappointed in them for not protesting the drag event and “standing up the devil” or something.
Christianity can be quite toxic, and that could include shunning people who are no longer faithful, or strong-arm attempts to drag them back to church. (Not all christians act that way, but some do.)
Imagine trying to have a nice family holiday dinner, when every spoken word is some variation on “Why don’t you believe anymore? Come to church with us!”
Anything can be quite toxic if you’re using it to hurt people.
I don’t know what you mean. It’s not like I’ve occasionally gone trolling “but chemicals” forums by pointing out true facts about dihydrogen monoxide and have everyone there go “my god, this is terrible”!
Btw, did you know 320 THOUSAND people die of dihydrogen monoxide inhalation every year? And the government keeps pumping this deadly chemical into our homes!
People can very easily come away with scalding burns from contact with the chemical. It’s the principal cause of erosion, and yet it gets dumped into our waterways all the time!
Prolonged exposure to dihydrogen monoxide causes dramatic expansion of the epidermis, because it infiltrates natural keratin.
It’s true. Though the fact that sticks in my brain after the 20 years since I first heard this joke is that a single thimbleful can kill a baby.
I’m not gonna make deep character reads in a character who has potentially vanished now they’ve sewed chaos, like it could just be petulant young adulthood and nothing else, but you don’t go out of your way to pretend you’re a devout Christian if you fucking hate Christians so god damn much unless something is making you do so.
It just seems like she is laying it on a little thick with the den of sin stuff. Is posting Bible verses not enough? Does she need to track her every movement and explain how it is deeply Christian?
I kind of want to see more of Liz now, rather than just have her blow up things for the main cast and vanish into the night.
I suspect her hatred of Christians is at least partly performative. It seems to me she was playing up to Joyce at least as much as Joyce was playing up to her. Newly atheist, not really comfortable with it, not willing to confront her moms on it, whether that’s a real threat or just an unpleasant confrontation. Tempted by all the bad girl sex and drugs stuff, but not nearly as experienced as she’s pretending.
Not at all sure I like her, but I’m interested.
As always, a bad character isn’t one people dislike, it’s one that people are “meh” about.
Eh. For major major characters, this is a good sentiment, but I’m not sure I entirely agree with it as it applies to Liz. I think Liz is a good character, because she served her purpose well. Sure, most people are probably pretty meh about her, but she also probably wasn’t supposed to evoke any strong emotions from readers.
Yeah.
I like Mary now because she’s lowkey enough that seeing her get hompfked to the death by Dina or annoying the fuck out of everyone with sloppy makeouts with her boyfriend is funny, and it’s also funny when Joyce had Fuckface on her head and when Mary pointed it out Dorothy and Joyce just started roasting her and Mary stared incredulously before noting that it is an iguana on her head and she’s not the weird one, and then she whines to Ruth that Joyce called her a tattler.
Like, that’s just actually funny. She’s not at all sympathetic or likeable and she never will, but she’s small and annoying enough that you can put her into plenty of comedy scenarios at her expense and have a laugh.
Yeah, Mary is a good heel at the moment. She’s malicious enough that her misfortune is funny but not threatening enough to be a cause for concern
Part of this is an ensemble cast thing, too. Like, Amber’s completely irrelevant to this storyline, but no one would say she’s a bad character.
I mean she already said outright she still christposts on Facebook to keep her mom off her back, this isn’t new information
It’s stepmomS, so I guess there’s a couple of divorces hanging around in the background? We don’t have any solid intel on the family situation, but it might be… fraught? Yeah, let’s go with fraught for now.
It may just be the one stepmom. Apparently using the plural when you mean the singular when talking about a parent is a thing now, which is cool and good and not needlessly fucking confusing in the slightest
This wins my Weirdest Shit trophy for this week.
It confuses us, precioussss, oh yes it does, these uses of pluralses! Why can’ts they just uses the singularses, precioussss?
I used to be with it, then they changed what “it” was! Now what I’m with isn’t “it”, and what is “it” is new and scary to me!
(I don’t get it either. I thought unnecessary plurals was a Toki Wartooth thing.)
That’s been a thing since before I was a kid. I am 28 as of 9 days ago. It’s nothin’ new.
Happy birthday as of 10 days ago!
I thought that said “Chrisposts” and then my next thought was “what does knocking up Claire Redfield have to do with this comic?”.
Joe’s last panel has big “Because that’s where the money is!” energy.
In regards to the alt text (pardon my yelling)
WHY ARE YOU SHOPPING FOR CLOTHES AT THE SOUP STORE
Joe is not wrong.
For as much arguing as there’s been the past few days, i think we can all agree the worst part of the comments in this storyline has been the reddit “Joyce shouldn’t apologize BECAUSE she’s RIGHT and all religious people are DUMB and EVIL” atheists. It’s only a couple but whoo boy so they just. Keep posting.
Yep. When even Willis remarks on Twitter about it, you know it’s bad.
I want to agree with you, but I think I find the comments saying “Joyce’s apology counts” more aggravating.
Just because she didn’t say the exact words “I’m sorry you were offended” doesn’t make Joyce’s apology any less of an insincere politician’s apology.
I know one leads to the other, but I find the latter more aggravating because I know these people would not have accepted such an apology as real or sincere in Becky’s shoes regardless of the topic.
True true
A lot of people are discussing Liz’s religious facade on Facebook and why she has to pretend to be religious when she’s not. I figured I’d throw in some details from my (extremely minimal) Facebook experience to show why that’s important.
Back in community college (so around ’11-’14) I was still using Facebook to connect with peers. I had updated my bio to mention that I didn’t believe in a personal god, along with some Sherlock quotes or whatever I was interested in at the time. No one ever checks my Facebook bio, really. It hadn’t caused me problems in the past, even though that is probably the only way my mom would know I was bi and she does a lot of Facebook stalking as a hobby.
Some random family member from Florida, who I don’t even remember or really know, decided to send me a DM. They introduced themselves and in the first message demanded to know why I didn’t believe in a personal god.
Like, this person was family. But they didn’t have any reason to deserve an answer to that. And I didn’t give them one. But the thought of any family member coming and harassing me over something like a little blurb in my bio was ridiculous.
So I can totally understand why someone like Liz might need to put up barriers and pretend to be religious online. Even if it’s not your immediate family, people still might get the bright idea to come bother you about your Facebook facade.
Of course, I’ve also had work experiences where the entire department was full of little old religious ladies. They would expect me to provide the correct answer to their. not quite proverbs? but two-part sayings? it felt like a password LOL. but they’d say their bit, and my coworker around my age would nudge me and tell me the correct answer. and i’d just be like a deer in headlights. my facade was nowhere near as good as Liz’s, probably because she works at hers lol.
I think there’s a difference between updating your bio to show you no longer believe and actively keeping up a facade of posting Jesusy stuff you no longer believe. Like pretending to be in the Campus Crusade for Christ.
It might be necessary, if your immediate family is extreme enough that not continuing to publicly affirm your beliefs would make them come after you, but that’s heading in a troublesome direction. Especially when Sarah seems to make no such pretense – though we don’t know she actually shares stepmoms with Sarah, I think.
Today’s bit about posting to pray for her since she’s entering the “sinful realm” is just weird, since not letting her stepmoms know she was entering the sinful realm at all seems easier.
Somebody else mentioned that it might be a covert brag about meeting Mr. Sex Tape and hanging out in his room for her in-the-know friends. Otherwise it doesn’t make any sense to post it.
That was me.
I guess the real question would be, “Why is someone Liz’s age using Facebook (home of senior citizens and businesses to cheap to make a real website) of all things to connect with people?”
The fact Liz posted this means it was posted during her visit. Unless she considered the whole campus the “sinful realm”? But if she doesn’t believe in God or prayer anymore, why is she posting it at all? Especially as it happens? She’d have to be working hard to “keep up appearances” if she’s going to this level of detail to post life happenings as they happen. I think she’s speaking one way around Joyce and still questioning at other times in her life. Just as i think Joyce is still cringing just a little bit when she says some of these anti-God comments during the visit.
Probably posted it to be edgy.
As another poster suggested, she gets to let her atheist friends know she’s visiting the sex tape guy, while at the same time she gets a bit of a thrill pulling the wool over the eyes of the more religious people in her life.
Hm, is that “Hm.” annoyance of Becky’s evasion of privacy?
I was thinking it was Joyce Hming about Joe and Roz’s sex tape (because she’s watched it and then felt super ashamed), but that could actually be about Becky.
Like, “wow that thing you do all the time and I’ve never thought about it and always loved having you here, it actually blew up in my face, huh.”
I’m thinking the “hm” is her considering the content of the post. Asking for prayers? What does that mean? Why would she do that?
I’m leaning towards this, too. She seems to be looking at the room, and it makes Joe’s comment a sequitur.
…Oh right, Roz is a character.
Out of the many strange takes I find in the comments section, the claim that looking at your friend’s Facebook is cyberstalking is one of the weirdest. That looking for your friend at university without texting/calling ahead is somehow rude. That dropping by unannounced is apparently bad and a transgression.
Looking at your friend’s facebook or dropping by unannounced is fine. If your friend skips class so you decide to track them down using someone else’s facebook feed, that is a bit clingy.
Yeah that.
Like it’s not all or nothing, and whatever I think on Becky’s actions and thought processes an important thing to remember is that she and Joyce have no idea how to establish boundaries. Becky’s actions and thought processes would still be questionable at best, but if she didn’t walk in on that specific conversation Joyce would be cheering Becky on for being a cool unflappable rebel as she has done all her life.
Like, it’s a number of things that would be completely sensible in another context.
Does Becky want to meet Liz even if Joyce is alone with her? Why wouldn’t she? They’d get along great! Except we know Becky did it because she is Joyce’s Cool Christian Friend (as in Dorothy didn’t just say as much, Becky laughed about how it made her awesome) and Liz is unneeded, as in Becky has declared herself as filling a role for Joyce that Joyce herself might not even care about, and Dorothy, who has already committed the great crime of being a School Misser, voiced objections that Joyce skip a class to hang out with a cool online friend (and then the other half of the motivation was getting away from Walky and Lucy).
Are Becky and Dorothy stopping by Joyce’s room, that place they’ve been given unfettered access to? Super! Except they aren’t just walking to Joyce’s room to say hi, they aren’t checking a usual haunt to bump into her, and that they didn’t just text her feels so bizarre as to be a deliberate beat (which is weird but “ha! surprise!” does seem like a Becky move that, again, Joyce would never otherwise question).
And while I touched on this one above I do want to give it its own focus: Dorothy and Becky can want to meet Joyce’s Cool Christian Friend Liz for their own sake, but that they couldn’t just say they were doing it, letting Joyce know they wanted to, and instead made it a thing about Becky asserting her dominance, yeah that changes things.
Like I do actually think this is a pretty good example of cyberstalking, in that Becky and Dorothy tracked Joyce down using social media instead of just directly talking to her, as in they didn’t want her to know they were coming (and granted this might just be a way to get the plot rolling, because if Joyce had been texted and she told them they were at Joe’s, this drama bomb would have dropped) and both of them didn’t really have Joyce’s best interests in mind or the forethought to just check that pressing their desires onto Joyce couldn’t go wrong, but just kind of feel innately wrong (but, again, something these three have never really had to think about).
If it were any one or two things about this, as in something a regular person could do without much moral fuss, then it wouldn’t really be a thing to talk about, but that it’s got all of them send it into sus territory.
I’m glad you mentioned that, be ause I was confused, too. Stuff that my friends haven’t even posted ends up on my feed because a friend was tagged or the algorithm thought my friend might’ve been in a picture. FB is in the business of making sure you connect with as many people as possible so you want to use the site more, which ups the amount they can charge. The end result is that you don’t have to be a creeper to see stuff like that.
I mean, I rather doubt that Dorothy was sitting back thinking “this is okay and normal” as Becky tied red string to pins on a board or something. If anyone is going to be the voice of reason there and dip out when things get a little too I sessive and weird, it’s Dorothy.
I legit want Joe to date Joyce :C
I would like joyce to decide “i want to try sex now”, approach joe, and have joe turn her down because he wants a relationship wuth her rather than casual sex
Joe: Look Joyce, I’d rather not just be a notch on your bedpost.
Joyce: What the fuck is happening righ now
More accurately, “Why the fuck is not happening right now?”
Given that Joyce’s sex ed probably consists only of what she’s gleaned from conversations with her friends and from Amber’s fanfiction, she may mean that literally.
(Or maybe she watched Joe and Roz’s sex tape and has some idea, I dunno, I can’t find anything I’m looking for around here)
” I can’t find anything I’m looking for around here”
Title of Joyce’s sex tape*Sigh, I miss B99.
*let’s see if I can make this work correctly
I think she knows the basics…
– There was a comic quite a long time ago that showed Joyce watching the Joe/Roz video
– She does write her own adult stories, so she probably knows at least the basics of how things fit togethers (even if she doesn’t know about the more… exotic… stuff.)
There was also a disturbing dream sequence.
Joyce has the same understanding of the mechanics of sex as all teenage self-insert fanfic writers.
I thought she brought up the video on her screen but ended up not watching it.
She watched a little before slamming her laptop shut and sparing herself from the cragged shame pit of the lust wolves.
According to a bonus strip she also writes porn about Captain Julia Gray and then deletes them at the end.
I’d like the final panel of this strip to be Joyce and Joe on a date. Just sharing a pizza and talking normally.
I love you, Joe.
Well, Joe, maybe you’re not doing it right.