I know of Penny Arcade but haven’t started reading it. This may be the tipping point for me. Go submit this post over there for your S&H Internet Green Stamps, and I will be glad to provide more testimony on your behalf should they ask.
Yet, as the linked post (old GamePro article by Leigh Alexander) argues, Bayonetta is a little different. She’s not just “sexy” in terms of showing skin or having impossible curves. She is *sexual*. Suggestive. Intentionally, as a theme that runs through the whole game.
RowenMorland
TY, I couldn’t see it and have now spotted where the news post is kept which should make it easier to know what the heck is going on in any archive digging I do.
I’m not actually sure that it is, like there’s a big difference between knowing information and processing it and understanding it to the point of actually incorporating it into your worldview. We know Joyce likes things to fit into rigid categories and boxes, and she doesn’t readily recategorize things in response to new information, even if it’s into a category that she technically knows exists. I don’t think those were things she had actually worked through yet. She still has a need for things to have strict, unchanging definitions, and for universal truths, she just learned to incorporate other sexualities into her worldview, and accepts gay people as they are because you can’t change their sexuality any more than you can change a straight person’s, and so she is missing the context that people can discover that they had mislabeled their sexuality as gay, when they were actually bi, or whatever, and just jumping to the assumption that one’s sexuality can just magically change. I’m not super surprised that this is her response to seeing someone she knows personally updating their identification, especially to a category that she previously didn’t have any practical context for.
Eolirin
Ruth isn’t even updating her identification. She’s had boyfriends before. Joyce was simply ignorant of that and is failing to change her conception of Ruth despite that conception never having been accurate in the first place.
Throwatron
I don’t even know that she specifically doesn’t know Ruth has had boyfriends. It’s knowledge she easily could have heard through an intermediary, or could have missed. But from her perspective, once Ruth started dating Billie, it was because she had a major epiphany about her sexuality, because that’s “the thing” that causes a person to do that, because in her sample size of one, that’s how that big important thing works.
In a literal sense, this is her trying to protect a surrogate of Becky from the harm that religion has caused Becky, because what she actually wants is to make up with Becky, but she literally can’t reconcile that the reason she thinks that her and Becky are angry with one another, isn’t the reason that she is willing to accept.
That, and Joyce is absurdly sheltered and interpersonally stunted, and she was heavily traumatized by her realizing her loss of faith, and similar to her character foil in Liz, she hasn’t fully settled with that, yet. She was, briefly, actually enjoying the implied ethical freedom that she believes her new paradigm shift had allotted her, and Becky happened to hear that and it triggered her specific insecurity that atheists will think she, a lesbian, is catastrophically stupid because of her religiosity, and that now her closest friend no longer respects her and has been lying to her face the entire time she’s been around. But Joyce is 100% lost in “not back-sliding into being dumb and unethical as a result of my religiosity,” and because of how poor she is at theory of mind and generally emotionally affected she gets, she cannot conceive of or construct any of that. From her, if Becky gets mad that she heard Joyce say all that stuff, Becky is wrong and being unfair to Joyce, because Joyce was just working through her religious trauma, and from Joyce’s perspective, she literally can’t conceive that Becky might take from hearing that, the belief that it would apply to her. So all she can hear from Becky’s argument is that the conclusions that led her to be an atheist, are wrong, and thus it triggers Joyce’s deep-seated religious anxiety, which has now rubber-band-snapped from needing to be Good with God to ensure her obsessive need for external moral validation, to needing to Be One Of The Good Atheists to receive exactly the same reassurance absolution that her trauma has left
her perpetually desperate for.
Becky is meaningfully sharper at this stuff, and I think has partially caught onto her part in this and Joyce’s. But holy shit, is she not ready to put in the work to fix this, yet, and she is so justified in that. Because she will have to put in all the work to spoon-feed it to Joyce, and just because Joyce is too dumb of age to realize how obviously hurtful she was through the veneer of her own (also justified) trauma, it doesn’t mean Becky deserves to be the one to take on all the additional work and trauma of doing 100% of the emotional labour with an actual emotional child.
Seconding Psychie. This seems like a gross but not malicious misunderstanding of the material on Joyce’s behalf. Thankfully, given her nature, I’m confident we’ll move through conversion torture in a strip or 5 and skip right over eugenics.
Honestly, I don’t know that it is – I think it’s a natural progression that all people go through when they start learning about gender politics and different sexual preferences. I mean, some of the people I know back in uni who were the most guilty of perpetuating Joyce’s current behaviour vis a vis Ruth were young LG kids who had either just come out or had never considered that bisexuality could be a thing (and sadly, this was the early 2000’s which meant it was most of them).
Then reappear to ask how everything is the moment your mouth is full of food!
The pieces are all falling into place, people…
Decidedly Orthogonal
Take smaller bites. Chew with your mouth closed. Don’t talk with your mouth full. Then, if that is when they ask, give the server the dead-eye stare of ten thousand lost souls, and keep their eyes locked on yours until you finish chewing your bite, in good time, swallow, and then answer. “Delightful, thank you.”
The Wellerman
Thanks for the tip, I guess?
But for the record, if I did that, I’d vomit my food right then and there and probably collapse on the spot. ?
Dina has the comedic power of having her presence made undetectable. Joyce has the comedic power of Teleportation to pop up where she needs to be. These two are easy to mix up though.
It’s a baby gay power. Once one leaves the closet, the will to continue actualising their identity allows them to manifest whenever it is called into question, anytime and anywhere.
The power tends to wane for most of us when we become more comfortable and relaxed in our lives and social groups, though we can still occasionally channel it when someone is being an absolute bellend.
I understand the fluidity of sexuality and gender but uh, I also kind of hate Jason so I’m a little with Joyce despite absolutely hating bisexual erasure and denialism.
That is not what it means Joyce. You can’t change other people. But it does mean they might realise they aren’t exactly what they said they were and acknowledge it. And you can change who you are in several ways. Some key traits will never go away, but there is plenty you can work on and change!
I literally forgot for a minute there that chickens and turkeys are birds that we eat and imagined you eating like, a blue jay or something randomly. My brain is not functioning today.
Yumi
No, that’s exactly what Clif meant. Seen him do it.
In terms of both gender and orientation, who we are doesn’t change. Our understanding of who we are and our expressions of that internal truth may change. Said understandings and expressions may even change multiple times over the course of our lives. BUT YOU STILL HAVE TO BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE WHO THEY SAY THEY ARE, BECAUSE THEY WILL ALWAYS BE THE BEST JUDGE.
Yeah. I was hoping she was just rooting for Ruth/Billie as a couple, but no, in Joyce’s head, bi and gay are the same thing.
What’s more concerning is that Dotty just let Joyce lead her down a fallacious path. Ruth is NOT being fluid – her sexual identity, of Bi, has not changed. Dating Jason actually supports her continued Bi-ness.
I think she was specifically countering Joyce’s last sentence. She said sexuality and gender can be fluid, but Ruth’s gender is not at issue. Also, I don’t know that Ruth was out as bi to anyone but Billie. Not that she was hiding it, just that she isn’t exactly sociable.
For all we know, Dorothy and Joyce don’t know what Ruth’s sexuality is. All they know is that she dated a girl before and is now dating a guy. Dorothy used this data to come to a reasonable conclusion(Ruth is bi or sexually fluid or something). Joyce, on the other hand, came to a bonkers conclusion(Ruth is Gay and is now backsliding because of God or something?).
Rose by Any Other Name
Huh. I hadn’t considered that they’re both guessing. Dotty seemed so certain about the bi thing previously, I just assumed it was common knowledge.
Dotty’s stance makes FAR more sense in that light. So does Joyce’s actually – if Joyce was under the impression that Ruth was a lesbian like Becky and had never been told otherwise, then her reaction isn’t that bisexuals don’t exist but that Ruth and Becky were both lesbians (come to think of it, Joyce didn’t react like this to Billie – so maybe Billie is her bisexual representation).
Spencer
I think Dorothy’s approaching the topic on a macro level (sexuality is fluid and defined by the person who has it) rather than a micro one (Ruth dated a girl and now she is dating a guy), which is probably why it’s not really getting anywhere.
I think Dorothy’s rebuttal in Panel 3 is off. She should have corrected Joyce that ‘no, Ruth isn’t gay. She’s bi.’ Sexuality being fluid, while true, is the wrong argument.
361 thoughts on “Determine”
Ana Chronistic
Joyce, you can’t change other people’s sexuality, only their diapers
…wait no
Ana Chronistic
Weren’t you at the mall?
…yes
ValdVin
I know of Penny Arcade but haven’t started reading it. This may be the tipping point for me. Go submit this post over there for your S&H Internet Green Stamps, and I will be glad to provide more testimony on your behalf should they ask.
RowenMorland
What game are they referencing in that?
Decidedly Orthogonal
DoA Beach Volleyball maybe? But given the male-
gays-gaze fan service baked into most games, they could be knockersing pretty much any game.Librain
Wait, Dumbing of Age has a – oh wait no, Dead or Alive. Never mind.
Big Z
Bayonetta, per the attached news post.
Ana Chronistic
Which is weird to me bc Bayonetta doesn’t even have “tits” to me
Not compared to Mai Shiranui
Kamino Neko
Or Ivy Valentine. Or Lulu.
Michael L
Yet, as the linked post (old GamePro article by Leigh Alexander) argues, Bayonetta is a little different. She’s not just “sexy” in terms of showing skin or having impossible curves. She is *sexual*. Suggestive. Intentionally, as a theme that runs through the whole game.
RowenMorland
TY, I couldn’t see it and have now spotted where the news post is kept which should make it easier to know what the heck is going on in any archive digging I do.
Bryy
Yeah, that’s….. that’s actually regression on Joyce’s part.
Psychie
I’m not actually sure that it is, like there’s a big difference between knowing information and processing it and understanding it to the point of actually incorporating it into your worldview. We know Joyce likes things to fit into rigid categories and boxes, and she doesn’t readily recategorize things in response to new information, even if it’s into a category that she technically knows exists. I don’t think those were things she had actually worked through yet. She still has a need for things to have strict, unchanging definitions, and for universal truths, she just learned to incorporate other sexualities into her worldview, and accepts gay people as they are because you can’t change their sexuality any more than you can change a straight person’s, and so she is missing the context that people can discover that they had mislabeled their sexuality as gay, when they were actually bi, or whatever, and just jumping to the assumption that one’s sexuality can just magically change. I’m not super surprised that this is her response to seeing someone she knows personally updating their identification, especially to a category that she previously didn’t have any practical context for.
Eolirin
Ruth isn’t even updating her identification. She’s had boyfriends before. Joyce was simply ignorant of that and is failing to change her conception of Ruth despite that conception never having been accurate in the first place.
Throwatron
I don’t even know that she specifically doesn’t know Ruth has had boyfriends. It’s knowledge she easily could have heard through an intermediary, or could have missed. But from her perspective, once Ruth started dating Billie, it was because she had a major epiphany about her sexuality, because that’s “the thing” that causes a person to do that, because in her sample size of one, that’s how that big important thing works.
In a literal sense, this is her trying to protect a surrogate of Becky from the harm that religion has caused Becky, because what she actually wants is to make up with Becky, but she literally can’t reconcile that the reason she thinks that her and Becky are angry with one another, isn’t the reason that she is willing to accept.
That, and Joyce is absurdly sheltered and interpersonally stunted, and she was heavily traumatized by her realizing her loss of faith, and similar to her character foil in Liz, she hasn’t fully settled with that, yet. She was, briefly, actually enjoying the implied ethical freedom that she believes her new paradigm shift had allotted her, and Becky happened to hear that and it triggered her specific insecurity that atheists will think she, a lesbian, is catastrophically stupid because of her religiosity, and that now her closest friend no longer respects her and has been lying to her face the entire time she’s been around. But Joyce is 100% lost in “not back-sliding into being dumb and unethical as a result of my religiosity,” and because of how poor she is at theory of mind and generally emotionally affected she gets, she cannot conceive of or construct any of that. From her, if Becky gets mad that she heard Joyce say all that stuff, Becky is wrong and being unfair to Joyce, because Joyce was just working through her religious trauma, and from Joyce’s perspective, she literally can’t conceive that Becky might take from hearing that, the belief that it would apply to her. So all she can hear from Becky’s argument is that the conclusions that led her to be an atheist, are wrong, and thus it triggers Joyce’s deep-seated religious anxiety, which has now rubber-band-snapped from needing to be Good with God to ensure her obsessive need for external moral validation, to needing to Be One Of The Good Atheists to receive exactly the same reassurance absolution that her trauma has left
her perpetually desperate for.
Becky is meaningfully sharper at this stuff, and I think has partially caught onto her part in this and Joyce’s. But holy shit, is she not ready to put in the work to fix this, yet, and she is so justified in that. Because she will have to put in all the work to spoon-feed it to Joyce, and just because Joyce is too dumb of age to realize how obviously hurtful she was through the veneer of her own (also justified) trauma, it doesn’t mean Becky deserves to be the one to take on all the additional work and trauma of doing 100% of the emotional labour with an actual emotional child.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Seconding Psychie. This seems like a gross but not malicious misunderstanding of the material on Joyce’s behalf. Thankfully, given her nature, I’m confident we’ll move through conversion torture in a strip or 5 and skip right over eugenics.
Felisd
Honestly, I don’t know that it is – I think it’s a natural progression that all people go through when they start learning about gender politics and different sexual preferences. I mean, some of the people I know back in uni who were the most guilty of perpetuating Joyce’s current behaviour vis a vis Ruth were young LG kids who had either just come out or had never considered that bisexuality could be a thing (and sadly, this was the early 2000’s which meant it was most of them).
DarkoNeko
She caught Dina’s ability to appear at any time, any where
The Wellerman
wondering how long it took for her to perfect Instant Transmission like that….
Doctor_Who
Or maybe she was there all along, and developed Dina’s ability not to be noticed.
Though that may just be a restaurant server trick. They can seemingly blend into the scenery when they don’t want to be found.
Needfuldoer
Then reappear to ask how everything is the moment your mouth is full of food!
The pieces are all falling into place, people…
Decidedly Orthogonal
Take smaller bites. Chew with your mouth closed. Don’t talk with your mouth full. Then, if that is when they ask, give the server the dead-eye stare of ten thousand lost souls, and keep their eyes locked on yours until you finish chewing your bite, in good time, swallow, and then answer. “Delightful, thank you.”
The Wellerman
Thanks for the tip, I guess?
But for the record, if I did that, I’d vomit my food right then and there and probably collapse on the spot. ?
newlland(Henryvolt)
Dina has the comedic power of having her presence made undetectable. Joyce has the comedic power of Teleportation to pop up where she needs to be. These two are easy to mix up though.
Decidedly Orthogonal
No, this is just mundane ultra-hearing and super-sprint.
Wereg
It’s a baby gay power. Once one leaves the closet, the will to continue actualising their identity allows them to manifest whenever it is called into question, anytime and anywhere.
The power tends to wane for most of us when we become more comfortable and relaxed in our lives and social groups, though we can still occasionally channel it when someone is being an absolute bellend.
Sirksome
I understand the fluidity of sexuality and gender but uh, I also kind of hate Jason so I’m a little with Joyce despite absolutely hating bisexual erasure and denialism.
Radiance
That’s fine, that’s just having an issue with Ruth dating that specific boy, rather than the fact that she is dating some boy.
Nono
Joyce really has an issue with the specific men that people she know choose to date, huh.
brute
to be fair she seems to have an issue with men that aren’t tall and muscular in general.
but it is entirely fair to dislike jason.
C.T. Phipps
Its okay to think Jason is awful.
So is Ruth!
And Bilie!
TROUPLE!
Alopex
Let’s get Asher in there for the campus’ worst polycule
StClair
all the makeouts will happen on Garbage Roof.
Dana
I don’t want Asher polluting Garbage Roof.
King Daniel
Polluting Garbage Roof is the entire point of Garbage Roof
a/snow/mous/e
asher: worse than garbage?
King Daniel
Remains to be seen.
Ana Chronistic
…if clear caskets become popular
Opus the Poet
Good one Ana Chronistic
Sam
That is not what it means Joyce. You can’t change other people. But it does mean they might realise they aren’t exactly what they said they were and acknowledge it. And you can change who you are in several ways. Some key traits will never go away, but there is plenty you can work on and change!
C.T. Phipps
I can see Dorothy trying to explain this to Joyce and failing miserably:
Dorothy: It’s like peas and carrots, Joyce. Some people can like both.
Joyce: Oh my God! Carrots are disgusting! No one can like them! Wait, you don’t mean together do you? Oh God I don’t believe in, I need to vomit.
Dorothy: Okay, that didn’t work…
Jamie
Maybe it’s like birds and bees?
Clif
Some birds taste okay, but bees are too crunchy.
Sam
I literally forgot for a minute there that chickens and turkeys are birds that we eat and imagined you eating like, a blue jay or something randomly. My brain is not functioning today.
Yumi
No, that’s exactly what Clif meant. Seen him do it.
Proto
No if anything birds are too crunchy.
… wait you mean I’m NOT supposed to eat the feet?
Opus the Poet
After you boil them into soup? Sure!
Tan
In terms of both gender and orientation, who we are doesn’t change. Our understanding of who we are and our expressions of that internal truth may change. Said understandings and expressions may even change multiple times over the course of our lives. BUT YOU STILL HAVE TO BELIEVE PEOPLE ARE WHO THEY SAY THEY ARE, BECAUSE THEY WILL ALWAYS BE THE BEST JUDGE.
Tan
(note: that all-caps portion is not intended as yelling at you. It is yelling at Joyce and the people in the back who may not otherwise hear)
Suet
And how far away is Galasso’s, anyway
More like 3.0 seconds or it’s free
Doctor_Who
Galasso’s is always near for it is within all our hearts.
Seriously, that shit’s loaded with cholesterol.
Thag Simmons
I checked google maps, and I think it’s less than half-a-kilometer’s walk away.
It’s a difficult trip to make in 3.0 seconds but it’s decently close by.
Lars
Just imagine the customer withe the pizza on his head as Becky flung it into the air to run towards IU.
Needfuldoer
Unless it’s still hovering in midair, held up by the Becky-shaped dust cloud she left behind.
brionl
Well, geeze Dotty. That’s just book learnin’. It don’t apply to real people.
Reltzik
SHUT YOUR BOOK-HATING MOUTH OR DOTTY WILL CUT YOU!
LiterallyJustSomeGuy
Oh, good! Becky and Joyce are talking!
Reltzik
Oh no… this won’t be good.
Needfuldoer
This just turned from bad to worse…
[Michael Jackson Thriller Popcorn dot gif]
C.T. Phipps
No, Joyce, that is NOT what it means.
At all.
Rose by Any Other Name
Yeah. I was hoping she was just rooting for Ruth/Billie as a couple, but no, in Joyce’s head, bi and gay are the same thing.
What’s more concerning is that Dotty just let Joyce lead her down a fallacious path. Ruth is NOT being fluid – her sexual identity, of Bi, has not changed. Dating Jason actually supports her continued Bi-ness.
Dana
I think she was specifically countering Joyce’s last sentence. She said sexuality and gender can be fluid, but Ruth’s gender is not at issue. Also, I don’t know that Ruth was out as bi to anyone but Billie. Not that she was hiding it, just that she isn’t exactly sociable.
Fay
For all we know, Dorothy and Joyce don’t know what Ruth’s sexuality is. All they know is that she dated a girl before and is now dating a guy. Dorothy used this data to come to a reasonable conclusion(Ruth is bi or sexually fluid or something). Joyce, on the other hand, came to a bonkers conclusion(Ruth is Gay and is now backsliding because of God or something?).
Rose by Any Other Name
Huh. I hadn’t considered that they’re both guessing. Dotty seemed so certain about the bi thing previously, I just assumed it was common knowledge.
Dotty’s stance makes FAR more sense in that light. So does Joyce’s actually – if Joyce was under the impression that Ruth was a lesbian like Becky and had never been told otherwise, then her reaction isn’t that bisexuals don’t exist but that Ruth and Becky were both lesbians (come to think of it, Joyce didn’t react like this to Billie – so maybe Billie is her bisexual representation).
Spencer
I think Dorothy’s approaching the topic on a macro level (sexuality is fluid and defined by the person who has it) rather than a micro one (Ruth dated a girl and now she is dating a guy), which is probably why it’s not really getting anywhere.
Opus the Poet
I think Billie is her “Boys and girls can be friends but not have sex” representation.
Ed Callahan
I think it’s more like unchangeable is unchangeable, and lesbian Ruth (and Becky) are eternal.
Ed Callahan
From Joyce’s point of view, of course.
AGV
That’s called me he lesbian constant
Nono
I think Dorothy’s rebuttal in Panel 3 is off. She should have corrected Joyce that ‘no, Ruth isn’t gay. She’s bi.’ Sexuality being fluid, while true, is the wrong argument.
Rani