342

Fought
Posted on December 29, 2021 by David M Willis

342 thoughts on “Fought”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    We don’t know each other AT ALL except for every single little quirk about each other

    Dotty <a href="https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/02-ill-leave-you-a-phantom/fixthings/"prescient with that mac & cheese, huh

    1. Ana Chronistic

      GRR

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/02-ill-leave-you-a-phantom/fixthings/

      1. Clif

        The power of Kraft Dinner compells you.

        Surprise twist. Dorothy has only fixed enough Mac’n cheese for two and so winds up with no supper as, once again, no good deed goes unpunished.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Joyce is cooking and she has multiple boxes at her disposal. She can always make two batches. (Of course, keeping them separate if they’re different types of macaroni.)

        2. Clif

          She already has a date with Dorothy, with Dorothy cooking. See the link in Ana’s second post above.

          I suppose that Joyce could have two separate Mac and Cheese dinners, running back and forth between them to keep both Dorothy and Becky unaware she is also having diner with the other, but I’m not sure how the logistics of that would work.

        3. Jason Rivest

          The link has Dorothy saying “Fix it and I’ll let you cook us macaroni & cheese in the kitchenette tonight”.

          So Joyce is cooking, and “us” could very well include Becky.

        4. Needfuldoer

          Thank you.

        5. Thag Simmons

          I think you’d have to feign a lot of bathroom breaks

        6. ValdVin

          Becky and m&c? That’s a big yes. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/mortgage/

    2. ElectricBlue

      Oh dang, thanks for the link bc I somehow skipped over that update. I guess I wasn’t missing anything too earth-shattering but the Joyce/Dorothy conversation does feel a lot more resolved now that I’ve actually, well, read the resolution

      1. Decidedly Orthogonal

        Woah, woah, woah! Three cheese!? But that means they must be _touching_.

        1. Tricia

          Don’t put it past Joyce to somehow make 3 batches, one for each cheese.

        2. TheScreenJockey

          In the world of boxed mac & cheese, “three cheese” is just code for one particular flavor of cheese sauce, and I’m sure Joyce knows this.

        3. thejeff

          It’s not like there’s only one ingredient in that fake cheese powder anyway.

  2. Ana Chronistic

    dangit code

    1. Ana Chronistic

      dangit, reply threading

  3. Doctor_Who

    Later:

    Becky: “Wait, I’m mad at you about something.”

    Joyce: “I became an atheist and didn’t tell you?”

    Becky: “No, that’s not it.”

    Joyce: “I mocked your faith behind your back?”

    Becky: “Nope.”

    Joyce: “I inadvertantly cheapened our memorial for your mother by secretly being insincere?”

    Becky: “Nah.”

    Joyce: “…I only bought six boxes of Kraft Easy Mac?”

    Becky: “YEAH THAT’S IT WHAT THE HELL JOYCE?!”

    1. alongcameaspider

      Truly the most unforgivable crime

    2. Needfuldoer

      Has Easy Mac improved at all? I remember it paling in comparison to even mediocre store brand macaroni and cheese.

      Maybe the instructions tell you to use too much water and nuke it for too long?

      1. Psychie

        I dunno, I stopped getting it when A, my stomach grew too big for one pack to be enough for even a light snack, and B, when I got over my crippling fear of the stove and thus was able to upgrade to the REAL stuff (read, kraft mac&cheese, not mac&cheese from scratch, I did that for the first time the other day and while the end result was definitely worth the effort, 99% of the time I can barely wait the ~10 minutes it takes to make the kraft stuff, having the patience to wait over an hour or two between prep work and cook time is waaaaay outside what I’m willing to put up with).

        1. Tricia

          You’re making it wrong if homemade mac and cheese takes you two hours. It can be done in just a few minutes longer than the boxed stuff. Watch the video Binging with Babidh did on YouTube for a good tutorial.

        2. khn0

          We don’t all cook at the same speed… even with techniques (that you often need practice for)… I can assure you that even if cooking one to four meals a day (depending on the kids eating the same) every day, I cannot cook anything in less than 45 minutes, most of time it will take me around one hour, whatever I make, from lasagna to maki, from basic pasta + sauce to homemade individual patty case with bechamel leak and -also homemade- seitan….
          So congrats to Psychie for advancing toward culinary autonomy!

        3. Psychie

          Eh, I only did it ’cause my Mom was too sick to cook Christmas dinner, as far as I’m concerned cooking is easy, you just follow the recipe, and the recipe I had took nearly 2 hours (I think, I wasn’t exactly timing it). Technically speaking I have cooked full meals before on a number of occasions, this was just the first one that included the greatest of all foods, as far as I am concerned actual cooking outside of special occasions is a waste of time and energy, when so many convenience foods are available and taste at least as good.

        4. maarvarq

          offers several alternatives of various degrees of time and effort.

        5. maarvarq

          I totally meant to format the link like that…

      2. zee

        Easy Mac is absolutely delicious if you make it with milk, especially if you use a full cup so it’s like cheese soup. Man i want some easy Mac now

      3. Paradox

        In my experience, all microwave foods’ instructions tell you to nuke it for too long

        Probably a safety thing, as far as I know, eating overcooked food doesn’t risk food poisoning

        I usually microwave things for about 30-60 seconds less then recommended (unless the recommended time is under 2 minutes to begin with) and haven’t ever had any problems, but then again I’ve always had a string stomach

        1. King Daniel

          That’s kinda the opposite of my experience, where for me it’s more often that I need to microwave things for longer than instructed. 😛

        2. Azhrei Vep

          Which is why most things have a disclaimer about microwave strengths varying so you need to adjust your times accordingly.

  4. RassilonTDavros

    Huh, that’s weird, I appear to have gone to smartingofage.com by mistake

    1. Doctor_Who

      What do you mean, this comic has always been about people resolving their issues in a rational and mature manner.

      …So how do you plan to observe the anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s tragic death in prison? I’m going to reflect on his life while reorganizing my shelf of Berenstein Bears books.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        I’m reminded of a tweet that went something like “The Mandela Effect? You mean forgetting things and/or being kinda dumb?”

        1. Doctor_Who

          Yeah, it’s a reference to that. Some people consider it proof that they’ve slipped into a parallel universe at some point, because they have vivid memories of Mandela dying in prison, or of it being spelled “Berenstein” and insist that their memories can’t possibly be wrong, so the universe must be wrong instead.

          But that’s clearly silly. As silly as not remembering that 90s Sinbad movie where he was a genie, Shazaam 😉

        2. Delicious Taffy

          I feel like you’re making a joke about that movie, but I haven’t knowingly seen anything with this “Sinbad” person so if you are it’s going over my head.

        3. OBBWG

          From American Dad, Jeff kidnapped by aliens meets Sinbad:

          Jeff: So this is where you’ve been the last 15 years.

          Sinbad: What?!? I just got here a couple of months ago.

        4. Needfuldoer

          Do yourself a favor and go watch Good Burger.

        5. Delicious Taffy

          That’s the one with the burgers that are good, yeah? With those two guys?

        6. Needfuldoer

          Yeah! The two guys from SNL For Kids, Sinbad, and Abe Vigoda for some reason.

          This may just be my nostalgia goggles, but it’s a fun watch as long as you remember it’s a Nickelodeon take on a corporate espionage movie.

        7. The Wellerman

          Who likes orange soda?

        8. Clif

          No one, unless the good stuff is gone.

        9. mrnoidea

          Hi, welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger, may I take your order?

        10. Rainhat

          Yeah. It takes a special kind of person to not consider that they remembered wrong, but instead that the universe shifted so IT’S wrong.

        11. Robbie

          The actual idea is that it’s weird a bunch of people remember things the same wrong way.
          … I don’t think any of the weird false or inaccurate memories are that unlikely though, considering that there’s billions of humans and not too many variations on how to spell Berenstain that are still really similar

        12. Doki

          Also, like, stein is a word in German. And part of a well-known phrase in English (beer stein). I’m not at all surprised a bunch of Americans misremembered a niche last name as a version more similar to a word they actually would have known. My only surprise is that they didn’t flip the e/i and remember it as Berenstien haha.

          (Source: grew up in Germany, misremembered it as Berenstein for that very reason LOL)

        13. Andrusi

          Americans would also likely be familiar with the name “Frankenstein.”

          Honestly, in this case, I suspect it’s not even people remembering wrong, so much as they got it wrong to begin with as kids and now correctly remember what they thought it was back then.

        14. Needfuldoer

          Yeah, I hope think at least 95% of them are tongue-in-cheek about it.

        15. Clif

          You should always go with the simplest explanation.

          What kind of complicated cockamani universe would it be if things I remember clearly were actually wrong? Much easier to simply realize the truth that I’ve slipped universes again.

        16. Needfuldoer

          We are surrounded by the Principal Skinner meme.

          (I mean just look at American politics!)

        17. Bicycle Bill

          People can remember all the weird names and spellings current-day celebrities use for themselves, but they are excused from knowing the proper last name of the husband/wife cartoon team?  Sorry, but I’m not willing to give a pass under those circumstances.

          Incidentally, before they hit it big with the bears, Stan and Jan Berenstain had an earlier career drawing … well, shall we say, somewhat ribald cartoons? … back in the 1950s and 60s, similar to the way Shel Silverstein was a regular contributor of art, cartoons, and poetry to Playboy before becoming known as a children’s author.

        18. Spriteless Auntie

          Everyone is pornlords, David Willis is just more upfront about it. ^_^

        19. NickG

          Not ot mention the songs Shel wrote for Dr Hook, including the classic ‘Don’t Give A Dose To The One You Love The Most’.

        20. khn0

          It is one of the subject of Baru’s comics “Bella Ciao”, about how most people, including italian families, recreated memories of the song they stuck to, when it wasn’t possible to happen that way – and argued in good faith they were right…
          There also is a capeletti recipe int that book, to stay with mac and cheese in the pasta domain.

        21. misanthropope

          feel you are underestimating the frequency of that reaction quite dramatically. eliding the required miracle and finding a way to express “the universe is wrong” in a way that saves face, is practically the primary function of the brain.

    2. Rocket Relm

      If you find your way to the comic we were reading make sure to get us an update cause my bookmark brings me here too.

    3. Thag Simmons

      eh, let’s not get hasty, this can still go all sorts of sideways

    4. Keulen

      They’re still putting off actually having a reasonable discussion about their issues until later. It’s nice to have a temporary (mac and cheese filled) break from them fighting though.

  5. Nono

    This is… better?

    1. powerpowerpow

      I mean it’s clearly not fixed all of their problems but this is certainly major progress.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        If they could fix all their problems in the span of a weekend, they’d be in a Saturday morning cartoon for toddlers.

        1. Nono

          Hey Scooby-Doo was watched well past toddler age.

        2. Delicious Taffy

          Those kids were basket cases behind the scenes, make no mistake about that. Makes for better TV.

        3. Thag Simmons

          Scooby-Doo tends to be a lot more mystery than character drama though, which are easier to resolve in a single episode. For the most part the plotlines are more “the Gang figures out who is dressing up as a pterodactyl to do crimes” and less “Fred realizes his dad is an abusive narcissist” or “Velma struggles with compulsory heterosexuality”.

          I mean both of those did happen but Mystery Inc. was an outlier and should not be counted here

      2. alongcameaspider

        It was never going to be solved in one day no matter what Dorothy wanted to happen

        1. Rose Red

          They’ve established that they are both not backing down on the religion/atheism thing.

          They’ve also established that they’re still talking and that they still want to spend time with each other. (And I assume that they still care about each other.)

          This is as solved as it can get in one day, and it makes me really really happy.

        2. alongcameaspider

          Yeah I’m hoping that now that it’s about as solved as it can be for the time being that can allow Joyce to really talk to Dorothy or Sarah about some of her issues

        3. Delicious Taffy

          I like it. Neither of them is gonna throw away their beliefs just to placate the other, and that helps them understand each other.

        4. The Wellerman

          Beliefs are FAR from the only way to placate!

          One of the best ways to the heart is through the stomach!

        5. NickG

          If you use a long enough knife.

        6. thejeff

          “Quickest way to a man’s heart is between the second and third ribs.”

        7. Needfuldoer

          This is about what I expected for the short term: détente while they figure out what their new normal looks like.

        8. Wraithy2773

          Honestly, this outcome is probably something among the outcomes that Dorothy was hoping for. It’s not about one person fixing the other or anything, just that the two need to accept where each of them are and that it’s not a thing that’s going to change anytime soon.

          Just accepting it and cutting the sniping out is kinda just what’s needed. It’s not about healing anything really, just staunching the bleeding to prevent things from getting worse. This is a good sign that they’ve done that.

    2. ThunderNight

      It’s a start
      A deliciously cheesy start

  6. Suet

    This is some weird tug-of-war, when the only thing being tugged upon is spirituality and religiousness.

    On the other hand, anyone got some better recos for mac & cheese besides Kraft? ?

    1. Laura

      Trader Joe’s Mac and Cheese is da bom dot com.

      1. Laura

        Oh, and Prince macaroni and cheese! Classic comfort food!

        Back when I lived in a vegan co-op, we made “Macaroni n’ Trees” with broccoli for “trees” and made “cheeze” out of margarine, salt & pepper, garlic, and nutritional yeast. DI-VINE!

      2. Lux

        EXTREME agree there!

    2. Diner Kinetic

      If you’re lookin’ for stove top macaroni and cheese, Annie’s white cheddar has a lovely sharpness IMO. I prefer kraft most of the time but both are pretty good representatives of their food genre.

      1. Annika

        Second vote for Annie’s white cheddar! It’s been my favorite for years.

    3. Delicious Taffy

      Great Value mac and cheese, with a little chipotle, some hamburger, and a can of peas. If you don’t wanna eat cheap, eat something that’s not cheese-adjacent macaroni. If you’re getting fancy with your mac, you’re doin’ it wrong.

      1. Clif

        Chipotle is kinda cheating since it makes almost anything better.

    4. Jamie

      If you want expensive, Beecher’s Handmade Cheese sells a “World’s Best” that I think highly of.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        I assume “expensive” in this case is about $5 a box? Anything more than that and you’re basically serving McDonald’s at a fancy banquet.

        1. Bicycle Bill

          Well, we’ve seen in in the movies…. — and in real life, the Clown Prince of the USA did it a couple of times as well.

        2. Bicycle Bill

          Grrr…. First link should have gone here.

    5. woobie

      Chick-Fil-A

    6. not someone else

      Easy as Kraft Real Mac

      Take boiled macaroni, remove from pot. Take an amount of shredded cheese that you want- if you make too much, I mean, it’s cheese sauce, eat it, half a bag to one bag good- plus about half the cheese-amount of flour, half the cheese-amount of water, and a pat or two of butter.

      Put in the butter and about two or three spoonfuls of flour. Stir such that the flour gets all sticky in the melty butter, then add a little water- again maybe two or three spoonfuls’ worth. Stir, making the flour and butter mixture a little thinner. (It won’t be completely mixed up by this time and that is fine.) Then add cheese- same amount. Stir until that is melted.

      Keep adding the flour then water then cheese *not* until you use all of it but until it seems like it’s a reasonable sauce-like consistency and there are no chunks of just flour, just cheese, or watery bits. (This is also why you add a little at a time and never stop stirring.) Then dump the rest of the cheese in, just the whole-ass thing, stir that, and if it’s too sticky after many stirs, add a tiny bit more water at a time and stir like hell until it’s normal again.

      When it is a sauce, first stir in a little salt and pepper- to taste, but like, a teaspoon of each is fine- and any other herbs spices or whatever you particularly like. I like my maccy cheese a little spicy so I usually add red pepper, and broccoli and (cooked) hamburger usually makes a good meal.

      Then, stir in macaroni, or stir cheese sauce into macaroni in a different pot if you made WAY too much, and nom.

      1. electriccombines

        The award for best comment goes to you. I’m gonna make the HELL out of this. B)

        1. The Wellerman

          Yeah, that’s the SAUCE

      2. Doki

        Yesss, thank you for posting a real recipe! I was just coming here to leave a comment saying that homemade is way better AND also not difficult to make.

        For the non-kitchen people: what you’re basically doing here is making mornay sauce from scratch, and it really is as easy as this comment. I’d really recommend giving it a try if you haven’t! 😀

        As for toppings/add-ons, my roommates and I can never resist adding paprika to stuff OMG

      3. thejeff

        It’s been awhile, but I think I used to use milk instead of water.

        I know that’s what a mornay sauce is, since that’s just a bechamel with cheese.

        1. not someone else

          Yeah, milk is superior, in the end; we run out of it really quickly so I wasn’t thinking of that. 😛

    7. mrnoidea

      I once got a couple boxes of Mac and Cheese that came from Turkey. Wasn’t even written in Turkish; it was half-English, half-Arabic.

      The noodles had a different, thicker texture, but the cheese packet was pretty good.

  7. alongcameaspider

    Honestly about as well as things could have gone, maybe not what either hoped but maybe a reset on their relationship is what they need

  8. The Wellerman

    ??? SO BEAUTIFUL!!!

    1. The Wellerman

      I know what I’m voting for as the Best Moment in Comic History!

      1. Bicycle Bill

        It’s a good one, of course, but there’s a lot of others out there — like this one, which I have framed and hanging over my desk — that are definitely worthy of the title as well.

        1. khn0

          Given the warmth these decembre days, I find it actually quite depressing…

      2. Clif

        The best moment in comic history was the Rain speech.

        I’d give a link to the lead in, but am passing on account of being lazy.

  9. Hazel

    Temporary peace! I’ll take it!

  10. Delicious Taffy

    Huh. Whaddya know. Two friends might actually potentially not have a catastrophic break-up after talking about their conflict in a non-optimised way. What a fucking concept.

    1. The Wellerman

      NEVER underestimate the power of food!!! ?

      1. OBBWG

        More accurately: Never underestimate the power of (Kraft Macaroni &) cheese.

        1. The Wellerman

          I dunno. Some kinds of Ramen are so good at bringing people together that their power would supersede that of God himself.

        2. Clif

          But who created the Ramen?

          Hint. First letter G.

          Second letter L. It’s part of his plan, for world domination.

        3. Clif

          second letter A. Slipped universes again.

        4. mrnoidea

          This genuinely confused me because my real-life initials are GLA.

  11. EpochFlame

    dotty’s shirt holds the menu

    1. Clif

      Dorothy would never cheat by writing notes on her shirt.

  12. Bryy

    I’d feel better about this if they actually talked about their issues instead of pretending they don’t exist.

    1. Diner Kinetic

      As someone who wants the fighting to resume (and ideally be more painful), my only hope is that the not talking makes things worse instead of somehow fixing the problem

      1. The Wellerman

        Is that so?

        If you want there to be SOME kind of fighting to resume between them, click my name for some fan art!

    2. alongcameaspider

      I hope that managing to at least bring the Becky thing down to “we can be civil with each other” will allow Joyce to properly talk to Dorothy or Sarah about it

    3. Delicious Taffy

      Like I said the other night, there’s no reason this has to be “instead of” anything. Now that they’ve got things out in the open, it’ll be easier to talk moving forward. We see about a minute or so of their interactions every 24-ish hours, so I don’t understand the drive to treat every single new strip as the end of them and come to a final conclusion each time.

    4. Rainhat

      I dunno. To me, the best way to stop fighting is to stop fighting. The rest follows the action.

    5. The Wellerman

      Honestly it couldn’t have realistically or BEAUTIFULLY gone any better than this.

      If I were you, I’d take it and run.

    6. Needfuldoer

      I think that’s what Joyce was getting at the other day. “You expect me to be your emotional rock but you never open up to me about anything, so I felt like I couldn’t be upfront with you.”

      Their old status quo relied on a lot remaining unsaid.

      1. Fox

        Random segway, but for some reason everyone time I read your user name, my brain says it as needle f*cker before correcting it. No idea why, but thought you might find it interesting.

        1. Needfuldoer

          I know I can be be a prick sometimes, but jeez. 🙁

          (I work in tech support, so I do the needful. That’s where it comes from.)

  13. Mr. Random

    Why you gotta believe in the same afterlife to be friends?

    1. Diner Kinetic

      You’re asking the big questions now, but Joyce and Becky haven’t quite gotten to that point yet

      1. Mr. Random

        Nah, Joyce accepted Dorothy and Becky accepted Dorothy (in her own way).

        But it’s different because it’s someone they’ve known their whole lives. That I get.

        Maybe it’s because I wasn’t raised in a fundie group, but would it really matter that much to the base relationship?

        1. Gigafreak

          The problem stems from the “I am superior to you because I believe in the correct god and afterlife” attitude that Becky alluded to, a few days ago– massively amplified by Fundie cult exclusionism (which goes beyond sharing the same god and into also sharing the same hatreds).
          Remember that Joyce tried bringing Dorothy into to church; remember the face Joyce made when Dorothy mentioned she was an atheist. It absolutely upends the base relationship with a cultist, because they are taught that non-cultists are Wrong On An Intrinsic Level. Ever hear folks shitting out the “without God, who is stopping you from being a serial killer” argument? …Yeah, this cult sees everyone outside it as a potential serial killer.
          Nobody outside the cult is even worth treating as human, let alone befriending. The friendship becomes a charade when they find out you’re not a fellow cultist– remember Carol’s interactions with Becky and the thinly-veiled hatred all over it.
          It’s a bit of a miracle that Joyce lived in this mess for so long but internalized only the superiority complex and not the hatred. …Not all the way, anyway. (“Homosexuality is… no [worse] than lying!” “And how do you feel about lying, Joyce?” “I HATE IT.”)

        2. thejeff

          And even the superiority complex was tied to wanting to wanting to bring others in so they’d be “right” like she was, rather than to sitting back and enjoying being superior. Which has its own problems certainly, but isn’t as toxic for the person doing it.
          That’s what the theology for most such cults is supposed to be, but far too many sink directly to the gloating about being superior level.

  14. Stephen Bierce

    *plays Wings on Galasso’s jukebox*
    Well the rain exploded with a mighty crash
    As we fell into the sun
    And the first one said to the second one there
    ‘I hope you’re having fun!’
    Band On The Run…

    1. Bicycle Bill

      I don’t believe Galasso would allow a jukebox in his restaurant.  In fact, I can visualize the scene when the coin-op vendor even suggested installing one, with Galasso drawing himself up to his full height and declaring/dictating, “You FOOL!!  I shall install my own sound system, and the rabble will listen to what GALASSO will allow them to hear!!”

  15. DailyBrad

    Mac and cheese diplomacy. You know what? It’s a good step.

  16. Amelie Wikström

    Arundhati Roy: “The choice before us is to reach out to each other in imperfect solidarity or to isolate ourselves from each other in our separate bomb shelters, curled up in self-controlled notions of unsurpassable righteousness.”

    1. Delicious Taffy

      That’s a good quote. I’m gonna put it on a T-shirt next to a picture of Jar Jar Binks, attributing it to Susan B. Anthony.

  17. DEAD MEME

    Easiest. Conflict Resolution. Ever.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Talk about the problem, openly acknowledge the conflict, eat some fuckin’ noodles. Humanity solved, everyone put the guns down.

  18. Kravis

    Just two strangers in the night.

  19. Golden Yak

    I love these dumb idiots.

  20. Florence

    I love these dorks so much

  21. Joyfulldreams

    Howwww does this make you strangers who don’t know each other very well? I mean, I get Becky could PERCEIVE this as meaning she doesn’t know Joyce very well, but like…JOYCE had to adjust to Becky coming out and changing very rapidly as a person, and so Joyce changed too. You change when you grow up, kids, that’s just a part of life. It doesn’t make you suddenly strangers now, it just means you gotta update your understanding of each other a little.

    1. chuckroast

      My thoughts exactly.

    2. Regalli

      Unfortunately, eighteen-year-old dumbasses raised in a cult who refuse to believe they could be wrong, and that must mean the person who thinks differently must be the wrong one (because ‘raised in a cult where all who disagree are Forbidden and Bad.’ Jordan could be a perfectly normal dude who just doesn’t expect his eventual romantic partner to be a stay-at-home wife and still be a subversive element if he was opinionated about it enough, especially while Joyce was impressionable and might decide SHE doesn’t want to, either. From what we can intuit of the Brown kids’ birth order, I suspect he left worryingly young and that suggests it was something big, but like. He’d get disowned if he converted to Catholicism.)

      1. Joyfulldreams

        I just don’t see how thinking someone is wrong means you’re now strangers. It…you just disagree on something, it doesn’t mean you don’t KNOW them. It might mean you want to make the choice to cut them out of your life, and THEREFORE you no longer know them, but…that’s like, a whole step removed?? And is an active choice.

        Are you saying that it’s simply ingrained in them that you MUST cut someone out of your life the moment you have a fundamental disagreement, to the point that the two things are now essentially one and the same? I guess I could see that, but it doesn’t really gel with what we know of…BOTH characters. Becky has a fundamental disagreement with Dina but doesn’t feel the need to cut her out of her life, and Joyce dealt with accepting Dorothy on freshman family weekend…

        1. Rocket Relm

          I think with Becky and Dina a lot of it is that they don’t *talk* about religion. I’d be willing to bet that, aside from Becky clearing the anti science cobwebs out, they literally haven’t mentioned it once. It isn’t important to Dina, and Becky’s too conflict averse to push the issue. Becky *is* established both to have significant beef with Atheism, and to have no idea what Dina’s conception of religion is.

          I think it’s realistic that Becky absorbed at least *some* of the toxic ‘fuck the non believers’ righteousness unintentionally. Given the toxic atmosphere they grew up in, she’s lucky to only have been affected to that extent.

        2. Wereg

          IMO it’s perfect writing for the fresh college students they are. That’s the kind of thing an eighteen year old would say in an argument, thinking it sounds deep, and the other person would go “Shit, that’s deep.” Three years later Becky will be lying in bed trying to get to sleep, get a flashback of this moment, and think “Oh god that was the dumbest thing I could have said. Why did I think that was a good thing to say?”

          They’ve gone through this entire ordeal and only really gotten some quips, some angry banter, and an acknowledgement that they’ve changed a little bit. This hasn’t actually resolved any part of their issue. They’ve really resolved this like young idiots and I kinda love that.

        3. Spencer

          yeh

          Becky can’t actually accept that Joyce has changed, so she said something dumb that contradicted that she really, really wants everything to go back to normal, but she’s having a hard time accepting that “me and Joyce love each other” was what mattered about normal, not the part where Joyce said she believed in God.

    3. Rose Red

      I’m probably just projecting, but I think Joyce is in “appeasement mode”. She’s saying yes to what Becky says not because she’s thought about it and agrees, but because she’s supposed to be fixing things and maybe that’s one of the few tools she has. She hasn’t even had time to think about it, so because it wasn’t an immediate NO YOU’RE WRONG, she went to yes, you’re right, because that’s how you fix things (or at least keep them from blowing up into another huge fight).

      Anyways, all that to say, I don’t think (given a minute to think about it) Joyce actually thinks they don’t know each other well.

      As for Becky I’m learning that I really don’t understand her at all, so I don’t know if she meant it when she said it. I’m assuming she did mean it, because otherwise that’s a really cruel thing to say to your closest friend.

      1. Spencer

        Yep.

        Joyce just vocalized how much she knows Becky relies on her to cope, and then offered the branch all over again.

        Joyce doesn’t know how to actually be mad at Becky.

    4. Needfuldoer

      They both have to learn to accept who the other actually is, not their mental image of who they think they are.

      1. svenman

        I think that seeing the other as a “stranger” might open up a pathway to exactly that.

    5. thumb

      Or you don’t. The ways that people you know change doesn’t mean you’ll always be able to follow that change. Becky was always gay. She was gay before she came out. What’s changed is that she came out. She really was the same person otherwise.

      Joyce wasn’t always atheist. Relatively speaking, that’s a recent development. There’s ways in which she’s the same, but her change is more (ahem) fundamental. In that a core of what she once was isn’t what she is anymore. And it manifested itself to Becky by initially calling her a moron. And then looking for her in order to double down. And then finding her in her place of work to push it at her again.

      Every attempt to reconcile has been bad. Not attempting to reconcile seems like a good thing to try out. It’s okay. People drift. It happens. Actually vocalising it is probably the best way it happens. I assume they’ll process that loss later.

      1. Schpoonman

        Part of Joyce’s atheism arc was textually that she never believed in god. There was a whole dream sequence where she met Rich mullins about it and came to the conclusion she’d never “felt” god.

        Is there a reason you’re ignoring the text of the comic to chase a thread that isn’t backed up by what’s on the page?

        1. Spencer

          Well, she believed, but she believed because her parents told her God existed.

          She never had faith, though.

        2. thejeff

          I’m not so sure that’s textual, but I was never a believer, so some of that may have slipped by me.

          Is not being sure she “heard God’s voice” the same as not having believed? Or not having faith? What do these words even mean?

          I’m not even really sure what believers mean by “heard God’s voice”. As an atheist, I’m pretty sure they’re not actually hearing God talking to them because I don’t believe there is a God to do that, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think they’re feeling his presence. Nor do I really get how someone who loses their faith could continue to believe that they used to hear the God they now don’t think exists. That doesn’t even make sense. Even if they remember the sensation, they can’t still think it was God. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t use to. That doesn’t mean they didn’t use to believe.

          (I’m mostly using “believe” and “had faith” interchangeably here. Not drawing the distinction Spencer is making.

  22. Kitschensyngk

    So we’re square, right?

    Agree to disagree?

    ‘Cause otherwise I’m expecting this to end with someone scraping caked-on mac and cheese off the walls.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      ….they’re gonna turbo-fuck in the macaroni?

      1. The Wellerman

        NEVER underestimate the power of SAUCE!!! ?

        1. King Daniel

          I think that’s how yeast infections came into existence.

      2. Rocket Relm

        … that is not at all what I imagined but it is now my headcannon and nobody can stop me.

  23. WanderingLynx

    It’s weird. I should be happy this “we aren’t backing down, we don’t know each other well anymore, but we still wanna hang out” is happening but it’s–

    It’s great narrative, don’t mistake me. I’m just super convinced this is a temporary fix and it makes me anxious?

    1. alongcameaspider

      I dont think it’s completely solved right now, but its as solved as it can be at this very moment

      1. Clif

        And besides, when has Willis given us any reason to be anxious.

    2. The Wellerman

      I think the way this has gone is really beautiful, and a little saying comes to mind —

      “Agree to disagree.”

    3. Lordhaw

      . The power of Kraft Dinner I guess? Bonding again over KD. Well they’ve been friends a long time and this shouldn’t destroy that unless they let it. Maybe it’s temporary, maybe not. Maybe they won’t be as close as they once were. But so long as they can still be friends with differences then things should work out OK.

    4. Dara

      I’m reading it more as “okay, we’re strangers… but we really like each other already, let’s hit reset and get to know each other for real this time” and… that’s kind of healthier than anything else I couldn’t expected here?

      1. The Wellerman

        “get to know each other for real this time” ?

        Now it’s even more beautiful.

    5. thumb

      It’s not a fix. That’s the point. There’s nothing to fix. It’s just the way it is. It’s not going to be anything else. They’ll probably butt heads again, but that’s what happens when two people with differing viewpoints interact. It’s not something that requires a solution.

  24. Laura

    Oh man and boy oh boy and land alive, tho’, yesterday’s comics section got pretty heady! Is it always this fraught? … Guess when you’re dealing with ish such as “losing my religion,” I guess it is.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Yeah, that’s why some of us stick to jokes and lighter comments. It gets… A lot.

      1. Clif

        Besides, you should hear us argue about Danny.

        1. justin8448

          Or Mike!

        2. The Wellerman

          Or sausages!

        3. Clif

          Or Mike and Danny’s …

          Oooo. Donuts.

        4. Delicious Taffy

          Danny can fuck right off, the murderous little prick. Everyone is soooo quick to forget that after Ethan left the hospital room, Danny scrabbled up the wall like a spider and melted Mike with his horrible acid, ON PANEL.

        5. King Daniel

          Was that before or after he snapped Mike’s neck and smothered him with a pillow?

        6. Rocket Relm

          After, obviously. Once Mike was melted there wasn’t enough left to do the snapping. The acid was just there to clean up the evidence.

        7. milu

          look i’m not saying you’re not allowed your opinion but some of us relate to Danny being the literal spawn of Satan with irresistible murderous urges and find comfort in finally being represented, so i just want to say could you please just tone down the hate a notch? it’s a bit insensitive.

        8. Delicious Taffy

          You’re right, I’m sorry. I got carried away, and should not be condemning Danny for his actions or for his subsequent absorption of Mike’s amino acids and fats via the suction cups in his pores.

        9. Clif

          But it was Mike, so a clear case of self defense.

        10. zee

          Let’s not forget the time Becky beat Dorothy to a bloody pulp and spat on her face, just for insult. Or how booster introduced themselves by unleashing their psychic powers and unleashing everyone’s innermost thoughts and secrets, before breaking into their homes and slapping their mothers. Truly evil

        11. Spencer

          Or how booster introduced themselves by unleashing their psychic powers and unleashing everyone’s innermost thoughts and secrets

          this part actually happened tho

        12. Axel_Grease

          Ah yes, Roz’s deep secret that she’s a middle child.

        13. Spencer

          grav roulette was on point with your pick realtalk

        14. Needfuldoer

          Booster is a Betazed confirmed.

  25. Steamweed

    REGULAR, THREE CHEESE, OR SPIRALS?!?!

    1. Keulen

      Yes.

      1. Needfuldoer

        But in separate batches; let’s not get too carried away.

        1. Steamweed

          If we serve the three batches on the same plate, is it okay if the portions touch each other? Or do we need to keep them separated?

        2. Needfuldoer

          Only on Joyce’s plate. It’s recommended but technically optional for everyone else.

  26. PB

    … This went better than I expected!

  27. not someone else

    I feel as if this is going to go swimmingly until some third party comes in and shit positively explodes.

    1. thejeff

      Liz.

      Who mysteriously hasn’t left yet.

      1. justin8448

        She lives in a storage closet on the 2nd floor of the residence hall. This is her home now.

  28. Rani

    Anyone who says this isn’t a horrendous case of narrative blue balls is either lying or just that tired of the drive-by pace of character assassinations in the arc.

    1. StClair

      yeah, I’m kind of tired of resolution being postponed for the sake of drawing this out and/or a daily punchline.
      maybe I should take a break and come back when this is resolved. sometime in 2024. maybe.

    2. Spencer

      Nothing can possibly go wrong with Joyce hanging out with Dorothy, who told her that this was only gonna get dealt with if Joyce went over and took responsibility for everything, and Becky, who just stated outright that Joyce is now a stranger to her.

    3. zee

      No i don’t actually care, sounds like a you problem

      1. King Daniel

        Like the poster a few days ago who said “everyone ships their real-life friends sometimes and if you say you don’t then you’re lying”, I think this might say more about the initial commenter than who they’re talking about.

        1. Rani

          Yes, I do in fact think this is horrendous case of narrative blue-balls AND I’m tired of the drive-by pace of character assassinations in the arc. Great read. Well done. Fucking Sigmund Freud over here.

        2. King Daniel

          Valid, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone must view this development the same way as you.

        3. Rani

          Most of the people lauding this beat are doing so almost always because it means Joyce is no longer being an asshole. Because fundamentally, and this is one universal claim I’ll definitely make: almost everybody on this thread on some level understands that the way Joyce is behaving is the worst possible depiction of the arc you are reading, and it isn’t true to her character, values, or development over the course of Season 1.

          Yeah, that’s the reason everyone is actually fighting. Joyce-defenders know what’s supposed to be on the page to support the storyline and have to retrofit the psychological and emotional depth the writing is missing. Joyce-critics are calling bullshit because what’s literally on the page isn’t a story about Joyce’s trauma and the craziness of post-cult survival, it’s the strip dunking on shitty atheists and attacking the people accusing a certain author of biphobia because their avant-garde time-skip broke up every queer romantic angle.

          For fuck’s sake, if we gave @Spencer the strip and had *him* rewrite the past month of the Joyce storyline I guaran-fucking-tee a lot more of y’all would be sympathetic to Joyce, because goddammit he gets what’s supposed to be going on here.

        4. Rani

          *redact biphobia-I meant to say the writing is accusing the critics of being biphobic

        5. Spencer

          As for this part, Joyce’s behaviour towards Ruth is a pretty tongue-in-cheek lampooning of Ruth repeatedly being misconstrued as a lesbian rather than a bi woman by the commentariat, pretty much every time it comes up.

          Like Ruth would spitefully retort at her granddad that she’s not going to forget about Billie and then he goes “yeah you will, like that punk from Kaladar” and Ruth quietly goes “and his name was Ciaran” to indicate that, yes, Ruth still thinks about him and that was important to her.

          Joyce’s actual motivations, I feel pretty strongly, are rooted in guilt over her own past behaviour dating Ethan and how everything she was told was bad is now good, but as for the kind of thing that prompted that strip in the first place; yeah, it was a constant white noise ’round these parts.

        6. Spencer

          Okay, that’s actually very flattering, but Joyce is Willis. Dumbing of Age is a story intimately shaped by his life experiences, he knows the score here.

          I certainly have my own take on what’s happening but I wouldn’t dare presume I’d do this better than Willis, because that’s like saying I’d be better at writing his own life than he is.

        7. Andrusi

          For a minute I thought you meant that Willis is writing the part of his actual real life that he’s currently living, like we’re in a sprite comic circa 2003 and he’s the author self-insert character.

        8. Spencer

          Y’all don’t want me to write Dumbing of Age because it’d be the same comic but there’d be a non-zero amount of conversations about Sonic the Hedgehog comics.

        9. Rani

          It’s either that or Transformers, and at least Sonic was relevant to my childhood. Adventure 2 Chao raising, anyone?

        10. thejeff

          I disagree. I think Joyce is being an asshole and that it’s in character and part of her necessary growth. It sucks because it feels like regression and it sort of it, but it’s more like falling back to come around at the same basic problem from another angle. Painful to live through – even as a reader, but not bad writing. (I mean it could be if he doesn’t stick the landing, but that’s always true and there’s no reason to think it’ll happen this time.)

          Nor do I think it’s actually directed at any critics, even the biphobia part.

  29. Yotomoe

    This is good. I’m happy.

    1. The Wellerman

      Me too! ?

      By the way, stay tuned! I promised Schpoonman a little special something, and I’m almost done!

  30. BBCC

    Well, now you get to know each other all over again.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      [Inappropriate joke containing the word “Biblical”]

      1. Clif

        What does Mr. Inappropriate call a small bib?

        1. zee

          Mr. Inappropriate is Jamaican?

        2. Clif

          No, he does not call it Mr. Inappropriate is Jamaican. He calls it a biblical.

  31. Risky

    A new line from canon to borrow for my future slashfic.

    “Wanna come after work?”

    1. Delicious Taffy

      I assume the response will be the same.

  32. Cholma

    Kraft Dinner solves all.

  33. NinjaNick

    Thank the Heavens for mac and cheese truces.

  34. Deadjolras

    and to think I came here prepared with torches and pitchforks

    where’s the bloodshed, willis

    1. The Wellerman

      Would you settle for fanart of a Super Saiyan Joyce?

  35. LordCirce

    Here’s hoping they can both learn one of the most important aspects of “cross-religious” friendships: You do not need to fix, save, enlighten, or otherwise change your friend to be a good friend. And, if you try to set an ultimatum to force your friend to be fixed, saved, enlightened, or otherwise changed, you are being a bad friend.

  36. Kirtro

    Order something or get out, Joyce!

    1. Rose Red

      Now I’m wondering whether she’ll actually end up ordering and eating a non-deconstructed sausage pizza.

  37. Bluewind

    Instead of saying anything remotely useful or on topic, I would like to say that I was out of ADHD meds a couple days and ended up impulse buying a reusable bag full of fidget toys that I purchased from three different places because they make brain go burrrrr

    1. The Wellerman

      Money well spent, IMO ☺

    2. Spencer

      I bought a cube on a lark and it actually really works!

      I’ve never been able to focus in seminars, let alone web ones, and then I just had that thing in my hand and it drained enough of my battery that I could actually listen.

  38. Amós Batista

    Congratulations, Joyce. You made peace with Becky, but lost a date with Dorothy.

    1. Florence

      Dang it! I love this moment but that would have been so lovely to watch Joyce be obliviously gay

      1. Needfuldoer

        It’s going to happen, she’s bound to see Dorothy again at some point.

    2. JBento

      I mean, the date still exists, it’s just that now it has a third wheel.

      1. Florence

        Is it funnier if Becky is smuggly watching Joyce be gay unknowingly or seething that Joyce is being gay unknowingly?

        1. JBento

          My money’s on us getting the latter regardless of what would be funnier.

        2. Florence

          That’s true, the idea that it’s not sexuality but just you is gonna be hard for Becky to accept, especially considering when she tried to hook up Leslie with who she viewed as an obvious choice only to see that dating isn’t all logic

  39. Ludaire

    D’awww. This is one of the most Joyce moments that Joyce has ever Joyced. She may have some very harsh words to say about the institutions that hurt her and those she loves. Those words may even extend to those who believe in them to some degree. However, she will always choose her friends and compassion over hatred and alienation in the end. That love and humanity has been at the core of her being since the very beginning, and it’s only burned brighter since.

    The cultural tendency to judge harshness towards religion as 100x worse than harshness towards atheism or anything secular has made many judge her harshly, but you really have to cling to your pro-religious biases to not look at this moment and love Joyce’s response. Becky may as well have burned the bridge and walked away dramatically, yet Joyce invites her back in, hardly missing a beat.

    1. Rabbit

      I love this for Joyce, but I hate that she had to, yknow?

  40. miz

    “But seriously are you gonna order something or not because we need these tables for paying customers”

  41. Rabbit

    And once again, Joyce is the one who has to bend and offer and ask Becky.

    If she hadn’t this would have been where it ended. It just rubs me… wrong? Like you’re not strangers Becky. Joyce just related to you on her having to fight and struggle with her belief and instead of actually doing anything helpful, Becky immediately bailed out.

    I love both these characters but I can acknowledge their flaws. But this arc despite having Becky act like kind of a bongo, consistently, feels like its still trying to say Joyce is the one in the wrong.

    Maybe this just feels icky because it just seems like it’s reaffirming that everyone else who spoke to joyce was ‘right’.

    1. Rocket Relm

      As somebody who was critical of how the comic treated Joyce over the course of this arc, I think if one is to be fair then it has to be said that the last scene between these two, in isolation, seems pretty evenly handled and well done. You do have a point about the fact Becky’s behavior has been overall worse (even if both made mistakes) and that despite that things have been playing out as if the reverse was true. I’m just chalking that up to overcorrecting in the “make sure this doesn’t come off too pro-atheism” vector, and that we are trying to get to an evenly split resolution.

      Within the scope of her own universe though this is worrying for Joyce, because her closest friends are now all characterized as not being empathetic or trusting of her, willing to put much any effort into helping her solve her own dilemmas/traumas, and in a lot of ways basically triggerhappy to drop her at the drop of a hat. But that’s a whole separate matter.

      1. Rabbit

        Oh, I mean more in the universe scope. Outwardly, the arc message feels a bit confused atm from what we have so far, keeping stuff balanced, but thats on a comic-to-comic basis.

        Cuz the whole kickoff for this arc was Becky going to someplace she hadn’t been invited to and overhearing Joyce more or less venting. It was definitely portrayed as “oh im smarter now cant believe i believed this stuff” which is really common for people coming out of cult-like religions.

        But the point is Becky was never meant to overhear it. she wasn’t even meant to know it, because Joyce wasn’t ready to discuss it in a mature way cuz she’s been traumatized like 4 times in the span of what was like. 8 months.

        1. Spencer

          I mean, the arc message” feels confused because it’s only barely started.

          From beginning to end, Sal and Amber’s beef took five years. Danny and Ethan’s WTWT lasted four. Joyce’s crush on Jacob started in Jan. 2017 and took until Jan. 2020 for Jacob to have his so-far final appearance where we found out Joe was carrying a torch for her, and Joe himself’s been around Joyce’s orbit since mid-2016, learned what his actions meant to her a year later, and then kinda faded in and out while Joyce/Jacob was happening until, this year, they’ve got a status quo where they hang around with each other and then we get a textual admission that Joe is deadass in love. Becky’s unrequited love for Joyce that motivated her to “use Dina as a rebound” has not, technically, been finally dealt with, unless Dina telling Sarah she was wrong is all it took.

          We’re focusing on Joyce because Joyce is the main character, but that focus on Joyce doesn’t mean the comic will never get around to acknowledging:

          – That Dorothy’s friendship with Joyce isn’t really even, and Dorothy is finally faced with Joyce problem that can’t be patiently lectured away, because Dorothy isn’t as good as this as she thinks she is.

          – That Becky openly engaged in wild over-possessiveness of Joyce that, when told it was such, thought it was hilarious.

          – That Sarah’s in a position where Joyce needs emotional support in a way that Joyce constantly doles out to her, and all she can do is whinge about how Joyce is being annoying.

    2. JBento

      “Bending over backwards to accommodate christians” is USAmerican SOP, so this isn’t surprising.

    3. Wraithy2773

      Yes, the person that multiple times has said or implied that the someone was stupid for believing in God and would refuse is also the one that generally needs to offer a hand of friendship first.

      I’m by no means saying that Becky is blameless in this arc here, but their interactions were mostly Joyce going “You’re an idiot for still believing in God after everything” and Becky going “You’re an asshole for saying that”, with an undercurrent of Becky wishing that Joyce was still an Atheist but not going as far as Joyce ever did in insisting on the other party change.

      Becky was acting mean, yes, no question. But Joyce was unquestionably acting worse.

      1. Wraithy2773

        Gah: “…and would refuse to be friends with them is also…”

      2. Rabbit

        What Joyce said at the start of the arc was not meant for Becky to hear. Sure, she did anyway, because plot. But she had made it clear multiple times she was not a safe person to go to with that discussion before that point.

        Joyce apologized but Becky’s biggest issue was that Joyce didn’t rescind her belief. The insults hurt, yeah. But Becky has been acting like a bongo for a long time prior to this.

        I love both these characters but it is much harder for me to give becky the benefit of the doubt currently. Joyce is literally always the person bending over for becky so she doesn’t make her unhappy.

        1. Daibhid C

          Joyce apologised for letting Becky hear her say religious people were stupid and gave her an opportunity to prove she wasn’t stupid by renouncing religion, which Becky totally failed to take her up on! What more could she possibly have done to mend these fences?

        2. Spencer

          Why do you think, specifically, Joyce chose the phrase “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”?

          (Becky, natch, is upset because that exact thought process is what lets her cope with her mom’s suicide and how tumultuous her life’s been, but that’s the cost of barging in on a private conversation)

        3. Wraithy2773

          …sorry, are you saying that it was, in any way, shape or form, acceptable for Joyce to tell Becky that she’s dumb for being a Christian? To make friendship contingent on Becky changing her faith?

        4. Spencer

          To make friendship contingent on Becky changing her faith?

          …did you miss the part in this strip where Becky hears Joyce express the first instance of how becoming an atheist was painful, and then goes “we’re total strangers now”?

          That happened. That happened right now.

        5. Rabbit

          That was never the case though. Becky overheard Joyce angry venting when she wasn’t invited. Then apologized. But she does think the stuff she was talking about was dumb, she feels dumb for believing it. That was the whole point of that.

          Putting someone on the spot like “do you think IM dumb” when they werent even in a place to dissect it beyond feeling stupid themselves, when they’re in that headspace, is never gonna go well.

        6. thejeff

          And she thinks believing is dumb and that since Becky is smart she should stop believing and join her in atheism.

          I mean she was thinking about herself, but she’s still extending it to believers in general. Which means Becky is being dumb for still believing, just like she was, but since Becky is smart like her, she’ll show it by changing.

    4. Keulen

      I’ve felt for a long while now that it’s kinda unfair that Becky can act like a jerk for ages and gets a pass for that bad behavior, while Joyce losing her religion and acting badly for a couple days results in almost everyone treating her like she’s become a monster or something.

      1. Big Z

        This is the answer to most of the snark above.

      2. Spencer

        *whistles*

        *kicks this strip into the open*

        https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/stings/

        1. Rabbit

          I’ve been rereading a lot recently, and this is another one that stuck out to me. It definitely hurts to see Joyce struggling so much tbf.

        2. alongcameaspider

          God I want her to talk to Sal about all this soon, I think Sal is probably the best primed to empathize with Joyce rebelling against her upbringing while also nipping any toxic mindsets Joyce might be falling into in the bud

  42. foducool

    mac’n’cheese gotta be the universal solution to battle racism and religion wars

  43. Rabisch

    So sweet. Something has ended, but just for beginning again in a better form♡.

  44. Arianod

    Love wins! ^^ <3

  45. Bicycle Bill

    Entirely off the subject, a “Noodles & Company” location just opened in my community of almost 50K.  Seems like a rather narrow niche to operate in, and at roughly $8 – $10 for a plate of fast-food like noodles and sauce, sounds overpriced to me.

    1. Diane

      Noodles and CO is actually very good for being fast pasta. I get it often when I can, it’s better than wasting time at Olive Garden.

  46. june gloom

    I really, really hate Becky here. Joyce just laid out, in no uncertain terms, how hard it was for her to reach where she is now, and Becky just took that to mean they can’t be friends.

    At this point I’m no longer even willing to criticize Joyce for the way she’s been lashing out in this arc. With a friend like Becky I can’t even blame her.

    1. Pearl

      you should read the rest of the strip

      1. Rabbit

        Which part, the part where it was Joyce who had to concede and invite her somewhere after Becky decided it meant they couldn’t be friends?

      2. june gloom

        You mean the part where Joyce winds up bending to satisfy Becky’s ego once again? Yeah, I read it.

    2. Keulen

      This arc has made me feel like most of Joyce’s friends really are more concerned with keeping the peace (mostly with Becky) than actually making sure their friend is ok and trying to understand what she’s been going through.

      1. june gloom

        Yup. Such is always the case for people who don’t process their trauma in a way that’s convenient for others.

    3. Big Z

      I’m kinda right with you there. I remember being as forgiving to people as Joyce is being now.

      Spoiler alert–it never ended well.

      1. Spencer

        I used to hate myself pretty badly, really deep, viscerally self-loathing.

        I learned to like myself, and then found out I hated myself so much because my only self-worth was in fruitlessly trying to fix the problems of people who only wanted me around while I was compliant.

        It was a curious sensation. I’m still trying that, mind, and it’s where I lapse back into that deepest loathing. It’s a hard thing to vocalize, where the thing I want to do most, helping the people I love stop suffering through their own problems, is what makes me the most miserable.

      2. june gloom

        Yup. Being forgiving like that put me in a position where I got kicked out of my home in the middle of a pandemic, blizzard, and while disabled from excruciating chronic pain.

    4. Shanunu

      I mean, its kind of weird to me that this argument ended like this. Both of them trying to convert the other to one way of thinking like this. I guess it’s partly the way both of them were raised, but for me if I heard one of my friends calling me an enormous idiot behind my back to someone “in the heat of the moment” I would probably also not want to be friends with that person considering Joyce never said sorry for it. Maybe they both just forgot? Like here they’ve both unequivocally said they’re not going to change their way of thinking, so I guess Joyce is always just going to be thinking Becky is incredibly stupid lowkey and that’s just… going to be part of their friendship going forward?

      1. Spencer

        We’re gonna be going with “Joyce called Becky stupid” until the end of time, huh.

        And she did say sorry, Becky just told her she was sorry she got caught.

        (A line her dad definitely used)

        1. Diane

          But Becky is stupid. :p

      2. june gloom

        You know, it’s not on Becky to accept Joyce’s apology, but considering they’ve been friends for this long you’d think she’d be more willing to reason this out. But then again, Joyce has been lashing out for like, what, a few days, and Becky’s whole-ass personality is being annoying and childish 24/7.

  47. Reltzik

    I guess you’re still friends if you can break bread boiled, cheese-drenched noodles together.

  48. Spencer

    I’ve got two posts I want to make: this one, and a read on Becky.

    So this definitely looks like a good time for everyone involved, but I feel pretty confident (but not horrible monster gravatar confident) that this is gonna be the final nail in the coffin for Joyce’s friendships for the time being, and I think that Dorothy being there is going to motivate it.

    Extremely Smart and Cool Poster Wack’d put it real nicely on patreon that Joyce and Becky have never really learned how to disagree, and we’re seeing that here: There’s no possibility that Joyce can be an atheist and still be Joyce, and likewise, there’s no way Joyce as she is now can accept Becky as a Christian because Joyce can’t accept her upbringing as anything but a traumatic nightmare. Which it was.

    They’re total strangers now, everything is new, and I feel like the clearest place to go here is that Becky’s gonna treat Joyce the way she always does, and it’s suddenly not going to be funny anymore. Joyce isn’t arguing with Permanent Best Friend Becky, who uses humour as a coping mechanism, who needs to be protected from everything, she’s now dealing with Becky the Stranger telling her that it’s funny force her to make Joyce faces, that she lies all the time about everything (two pages ago) and that tracking her down was totally badass and cool.

    Two strips ago Becky was mocking her, that everything Joyce ever did was a lie, and Joyce just cut through and went “I understand you, Becky :)” and I feel like that’s the natural endpoint for Joyce; her feelings don’t matter, Becky needs to be happy, what matters is what Becky says, and Joyce would rather push through and be friends again.

    And Becky here? Can’t even acknowledge what Joyce said. Panel 2 is the first time anyone’s acknowledged this is actually a Huge Fucking Deal to Joyce, and it was Joyce herself.

    So what we’ve got is a situation that Joyce rushed into because Dorothy threatened her that Becky would never forgive her, where she put up with what is, frankly, verbal abuse so she could empathize with Becky’s hangups, frankly stated for the first time that becoming an atheist came at the end of a long line of deep emotional trauma to which Becky replies that this means they’re just strangers now, and then Joyce invites her over to hang out.

    Nothing has been resolved, Joyce is the only person willing to acknowledge her own pain, and now Becky’s hanging around a Total Stranger alongside Dorothy, someone who’s convinced everything that’s transpired is Joyce’s fault and she just needs to stop being so danged problematic.

    I will be genuinely floored if this is resolved with Joyce apologizing for being an Edgy Atheist, and the big happy ending is that Joyce goes back to friends who treat her like a housepet.

    1. Rabbit

      I agree with a lot of this, though I have faith somewhat that all the stuff Willis has been laying down isn’t going to lead to that and will instead lead somewhere productive- maybe with Dina talking to Becky about it and putting aside the clashing heads with Joyce and pointing out that while she loves becky, Becky isn’t the only one who suffered.

      Cuz Dina’s whole thing is evidence and logic. and Dorothy sort of plays at that, but her maneuvering is all social and political with little actual looking at the facts at the moment. And Sarah is Sarah. I love her, but she does assume a LOT about Joyce regardless of what the truth might be.

      So my guess would be that the resolution might involve Dina in some way after possibly a second blow up after a tenative ‘truce’ period trying to feel out the other and Becky finally gets her wakeup call.

      Cuz we’re seeing Joyce’s rampant heel-digging on being a brain genius dying down already, and hopefully she’ll be able to resolve this and get some actual empathy from someone.

      I’m not sure who the best candidate would be but my gut is going with either Joe, causing his own continuance of brain meltdown, or- possibly even Jacob. Who is another person of faith, Joyce definitely thinks is intelligent, who Joyce could potentially talk through some stuff with, and generally seems to thinks highly of Joyce, even after her stunt. Cuz other than maybe venting and Becky overhearing when she shouldn’t have been there, I think the biggest thing Joyce needs is first comfort, and then some actual guidance that’s not just dogpiling blame on her in terms of navigating big disagreements in friendships.

    2. Heather

      Very interesting. I had some mixed feelings on this strip but yeah it will be a lot more interesting if what you predict happens. I was a bit leery of the fact Dorothy’s weird ass demand of Joyce was almost validated (and rushing through a resolution seems like it’d be a recipe for a disaster, and I was kind of baffled at Dorothy insisting she had to ‘fix it today’ or else the friendship with Becky was lost forever. I mean really? I think it’d survive a week even if it would probably be a nightmare given the comics pace).

      I’m also wondering if Sarah is going to get blown up at. A possible thing is that Joyce is going to put up a fake smiling front on just with the atheism out of the bag. But Sarah who lives with her will notice something wrong. With Joyce pointing out that punching bag naive smiler Joyce is the only version of Joyce people seem to care about. Like what Sarah said to Joyce in the comic saga was kind of fucked up honestly and I want that looked at.

      1. Rabbit

        Oooo, I second that whole second thing. It’d be an interesting turn on the fact that it seems like as the comic goes on Joyce just doesn’t. Want to upset people, or for people to think she’s stupid, or wrong. Which, is a big thing and was a driving force of why she let Ethan go early on. Because it was pointed out to her as Very wrong, and someone she cared about would think less of her.

        Her letting Ethan go was definitely good, but in general she just wants the people she cares about to be happy and it seems like sometimes it’s even at her own expense. So an arc about smiling happy goofy joyce being the only one people care about, not when she’s hurting, would be GREAT.

    3. Rocket Relm

      “I will be genuinely floored if this is resolved with Joyce apologizing for being an Edgy Atheist, and the big happy ending is that Joyce goes back to friends who treat her like a housepet.”

      Regarding this, I think this is exactly how it will be resolved… today.

      I fully expect this to show up as a conflict again later, but that will be irl years down the line (and days down the line for them). So for a while I think that’s how it will come *off*.

      1. Spencer

        No, see, it’s perfect.

        Now Joyce can not only totally sink things with Becky, she can sink it with Dorothy at the same time! Because this thing is their fault!

        More seriously, they’re three people who are endlessly capitulating and understanding towards each other, the undercurrent here to Dorothy/Joyce and Becky/Joyce is that they’ll be as angry as they want until an opportunity comes along to vocalize or otherwise express how much they care about the other, which is to say that all of them want to go back to the status quo, and they can’t, because that status quo was a load of old bullshit where they took advantage of Joyce as an unending source of comfort and positivity they could do whatever the hell they wanted with, and now that Joyce needs them (and Sarah too), they can’t even fathom the possibility of stepping up themselves.

        They want Joyce to sit down and shut the fuck up, and I don’t think they really get that yet. It’s easier to blame her.

    4. Daibhid C

      When will people who aren’t Joyce realise the world doesn’t revolve around them?

      1. JBento

        It FEELS like you’re being sarcastic, but “the world revolves around me” is literally Becky’s stance.

        “God answers lesbian prayers”, but only if they’re her prayers, and every lesbian ever that got fucked just wasn’t loved enough by god, I guess.

        “God sent me a superhero and girlfriend”, because AG’s and Dina’s existence are about Becky.

        “Joyce is MINE and nobody else’s and I’m the only christian friend she’s allowed to have and she’s MINE”, because Joyce, too, must be about Becky.

        And this is exacerbated by everyone enabling her on this, because when Becky harasses two students in the middle of class to the point they storm out Leslie’s response is “wow, such a great manipulator you are, kudos.” When Becky constantly picks on Dorothy, Dorothy’s response is to let her do it, because nothing is ever allowed to not go Becky’s way. When Becky wants to hunt down Joyce, Dorothy goes with her. When Joyce says something that upsets Becky, Dorothy immediately goes “how dare you upset Becky? Fix this NOW, and your whys and feelings don’t matter because them doing so might upset Becky, and that’s unacceptable.”

        1. Rose Red

          Now I’m wondering. Does Becky actually know any other lesbians (or other women who love women) that got fucked (in the not-fun sense of the word)? Like, Leslie’s backstory is pretty rough, but Becky only knows Leslie after she’s reached stability in her life. And she probably doesn’t think about whats-her-name from Anderson after being thrown under the bus by her, and probably doesn’t know what happened to her after anyways.

        2. JBento

          If she doesn’t know them, there’s no way she doesn’t know OF them. She ran the social media account of a state-level politician, “aware of what’s going on” is definitely true.

      2. Spencer

        “Moral superiority doesn’t default to you” – Dorothy Keener, who did nothing wrong, definitely not asserting moral superiority

        1. Wraithy2773

          …she said in a scene where Joyce doubled-down repeatedly on “all religious people are idiots”, demanded that Ruth stop dating a boy because in her view she was a lesbian and directly mocked Becky for her faith.

          Yeah, Dorothy was asserting moral superiority over Joyce there, because Joyce had displayed several different flavors of asshole in a matter of minutes. Seems valid.

        2. Spencer

          This is definitely a take on a scene where Dorothy tries her textbook explanations on a topic not understanding why Joyce is saying it (because she thinks she could have turned Ethan straight, or that Becky could stop being a lesbian and all the suffering they both went through was meaningless), and then just goes “fix it, now” because she can’t conceptualize her own culpability in what’s gone wrong.

        3. Wraithy2773

          Having vaguely understandable reasons for acting like a giant asshole does not, in point of fact, excuse someone for acting like a giant asshole. Joyce does not have the right to inflict the results of her trauma on everyone around her, and someone who got a goddamn A in Gender Studies does not have any excuse for performing bisexual erasure in the most open and brazen manner possible.

        4. Spencer

          Okay but consider the following: why is Joyce engaging in bi-erasure?

          (also Becky is “inflicting the results of her trauma” on Joyce right here, because she’s absolutely tilted out of her gosh-danged mind that Joyce is an atheist and not the Joyce she relies on for stability)

          What is Joyce’s objection? Ruth is with a girl. Why is that objectionable? Because people need to be One Thing and Ruth’s One Thing is that she is a Girl Who Likes Girls, that thing her parents told her was inherently sinful, therefore Ruth is obviously only dating a boy now because she’s afraid she’ll burn in the Hell that Ruth definitely believes in since, obviously, the only reason Ruth can date a boy is being afraid of Hell, so Joyce boldly steps forward and proudly proclaims that Hell is not real.

          Joyce knows what bisexuality is, and then Dorothy goes with the textbook explanation for a problem Joyce doesn’t have, so then Joyce starts panicking that she, specifically, could have turned Ethan straight by dating him, that thing she absolutely wanted to do.

          Also the part where Becky being a Girl Who Likes Girls is the thing that’s motivated two separate kidnappings that Joyce has been part of. It’s a big deal, and so Joyce can’t process the idea that Becky will somehow stop being a lesbian.

          I know twitter has told us otherwise, but morality doesn’t begin and end with pointing at something and going “that’s problematic,” let alone in fiction!

        5. Regalli

          Yep. Joyce is traumatized! But she’s still being an asshole, and the people who she’s being an asshole to and around are allowed to be going ‘what the FUCK, Joyce.’ Ruth doesn’t know or care what Joyce is going through, she just knows Joyce said some profoundly biphobic garbage and she wants to respond with violence. Dorothy recognizes that Ruth wants to respond with violence, and she is justified in doing so.

          And Dorothy and Sarah and Joe all recognize that Joyce deeply values her friendship with Becky, and vice versa. They’re not going to reconcile right away because they’re hurting too much, and the friends aren’t really equipped to recognize that, but they DO know Joyce and Becky care deeply about each other and they know letting it stay on ‘I believe in God, I’m an idiot!’ while they anxiously avoid each other would make it fester, whereas at least now it’s out in the open. I don’t think they recognize how deep the rift goes and are less equipped to recognize the depths of Becky’s issues, but they have recognized that Joyce is being an asshole. It doesn’t matter if being a rude atheist doesn’t hold a candle to the cultural garbage Christianity as an entity does, because they know Joyce specifically cares about Becky specifically, and Joyce saying she thinks she’s smarter than Becky because she abandoned their faith is a dick move to her friend that will make her lose a friend. And they don’t want her to lose said friend. They’re still doing the wrong things because they aren’t equipped to handle Joyce’s trauma, much less Becky’s, but they’re not wrong that Joyce’s attitude is going to cost her Becky and she needs to be told it’s a dick move.

        6. Spencer

          Aight, I gotta ask: what does it mean for Joyce to “be an asshole” in this scenario?

          Because she kept her Edgy Atheism to herself until Liz showed up, and then had the first chance to properly vocalize how much she hated her death cult to anyone, and then Becky and Dorothy took ownership of her feelings and made her justify beliefs she barely has. This only started with Becky, with Joe she was introspective and kind of timid about it, she was nowhere near the level of confidence she has now because that confidence is something she’s forcing onto herself.

          Like, am I the crazy one? Because this speaks to me way more as Joyce going full-hog into Edgy Atheism because no one can ask her how the fuck she’s feeling. No one’s given her a damn chance to explain herself or approached her in a way even resembling compassion.

          Hell, she only ever goes “lol dumb Becky” when either Sarah picks a fight or earlier today where Becky materialized from thin air having heard her name show up, so they started fighting again. She’s here now still trying to capitulate to Becky because Dorothy fucking threatened her into thinking Becky would stop being her friend, and she is correct: Becky just told her, after hearing that becoming an atheist was akin to tearing her organs out, that this is not her Joyce anymore.

          Like, is that really what this is about? Joyce redeeming herself for behaviours she only started engaging in when her idiot children friends barged in on her privately expressing vitriol towards her upbringing for the first time in her life? I don’t even view this as some kind of equal conflict where Joyce’s Edgy Atheism is a problem she has to atone for, because she only started it when Becky and Dorothy kept on treating her like a kewpie doll they could invade whenever they felt like.

        7. Regalli

          Well for one thing, Joyce being biphobic? Unambiguous assholitude.

          My read on Joyce’s smugness about being an atheist is 100% that Liz and she were egging each other on to a position they probably wouldn’t have come to on their own. And yes, Sarah and Dorothy aren’t being empathetic towards the ‘Joyce was not saying this with an expectation of being overheard, Joyce has a fuckload of trauma to unpack (as does Liz,) and Becky was never going to take this well even if she found out in the worst possible way.’ That said, they really shouldn’t be expected to know how to deal with that trauma – this is way out of the friend paygrade. What Dorothy heard was Joyce saying something deeply insensitive about a faith that her oldest, dearest friend still believes in. That’s worrisome. On some level Dorothy seems to recognize it’s a trauma thing, but the intent does not change the impact – Becky heard her oldest, dearest friend say she thinks religious people are stupid, and when she asked Joyce point blank ‘do you think that about me?’, Joyce did not say ‘no.’ Joyce has been trying to get Becky to deconvert just like Becky’s trying to get Joyce to remain Christian. NEITHER of them is right to do so, because religion meant different things to them all along, but they’re not equipped to recognize that difference or that there isn’t only one right answer to how you unpack the trauma of your upbringing and how religion was used as a tool of abuse. Becky needs to learn to respect Joyce’s atheism, but Joyce will end up alienating A LOT of their friends if she’s trying to aggressively push them towards atheism. (This is not the same cultural harm as Christianity on a macro scale, but if she started saying this shit around Sierra, Sierra’d be perfectly justified in telling Joyce that it’s deeply rude. It was insensitive when Walky was making IIRC unprompted digs at the concept of religion around Joyce, it remains insensitive when Joyce is doing it unprompted around others. On a personal level, being a dick to religious people because they’re religious, regardless of their specific beliefs towards your marginalized group, is a good way for those people to want nothing to do with you and think YOU are the dick for doing this unprompted. And those observing your interaction. Christianity as a cultural force has proven to be harmful, but Christians are not a monolith in their beliefs and assuming the worst of any random religious person as a justification for unprompted attacks makes you the asshole. You might be the traumatized asshole, but while trauma explains responses, it doesn’t excuse any harm done on a personal level.)

          Could Sarah and Dorothy be more sensitive to Joyce’s trauma? Yes. Should they? Yes. Does this make pushing her and Becky to hash things out wrong? Not necessarily! Even with how this conversation is ending, it’s doing so on better terms than the initial overheard remark OR the fight yesterday – they’ve both made it very clear they’re not backing down, they’re not actually insulting each other, and while I think they do need some space from each other to process this and Dorothy’s ‘fix this today’ was misguided (and while, yeah, I totally see this exploding again, or passive-aggressive insults,) this conversation DOES put them in a better position if and when they start actually thinking about what the other said to go ‘wait, if she means this, then…’ and eventually come to an understanding.

          I also have a lot of sympathy for Sarah and especially Dorothy on the sidelines of a fight where they have to live with the people fighting. Dorothy, as the roommate of one and other best friend of the other, is going to be in an especially tricky situation. I hope pushing too fast to fix this will backfire on her, but I do not blame her for not wanting to be stuck in the middle of this if it potentially festers and goes on for weeks or months. It’s not great towards Joyce, but they’re both justified in recognizing this has the potential to make their lives a living hell and want to try and head it off even if it is ultimately a mistake. Joyce isn’t the only one whose needs matter in this situation, and she is not the only one allowed to behave less than perfectly in the course of a situation none of these teenagers are equipped to weather. Everyone else in their friend group has a vested interest in not wanting this to become a ‘it’s her or me’ scenario. In an ideal world, they’d be pushing Joyce and Becky both to competent therapy, but as it stands, they’re allowed to screw up in wanting this smoothed over. Your comments come off as allowing VERY little leeway for Dorothy, Sarah, and Becky to act less than perfectly while trying to justify everything Joyce does, even when you acknowledge what she’s doing is a dick move. Intent isn’t meaningless, but if I accidentally step on your toe, I still owe you an apology because the impact I had on you was, y’know, painful. If Joyce weren’t so on edge about her atheism, I suspect she would have and eventually will genuinely apologize to Becky for ‘I didn’t know how to tell you and I’m sorry you found out in the worst possible way, but I hope you understand why I didn’t feel safe to tell you given how you did react. If you can respect that I don’t believe, I can respect that you do.’ (And I suspect at that time, Becky will eventually say ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t a safe person for you to tell, I still don’t totally get it but you’re allowed to deal with our effed-up families and what the church taught us however you need to.’ At the end of the day, they DO care about each other deeply and this fight is laying the groundwork for a stronger friendship to emerge from the ashes. That means first, they both have to fuck up.)

        8. Spencer

          I don’t really know how to approach this all at once, especially with how nested this comment’s gotten, so I’ll try to briefly approach the broad strokes. I read the whole thing, I just don’t think I can tackle all of it in one go.

          I agree that any expression of biphobia is assholitude, but I also think the crooked expression of that biphobia matters. Joyce only has an opinion on Ruth dating a guy because of her own hangups regarding not just “bi people should commit!” but that she specifically would be culpable if Ethan’s “fluid sexuality” meant that she turned him straight, and it strikes me as extremely important that Joyce insists Ruth be true to herself because “Hell isn’t real,” like Ruth only dates a guy because Hell awaits as opposed to failing the Gold Star test.

          I very much enjoyed those strips because the role of Joyce Brown was played by the comments section, but I don’t think it was just a rousing game of dunking using Joyce, I think it matters a lot where it came from, on top of her aggressive “I need to be right!” mood.

          —

          With Joyce’s friends, I view their inability to really empathize with Joyce as a “feature, not a bug” thing. I do actually think they’re being tremendously wrong to her in different ways for different reasons, Becky’s both the most aggressively wrong and the most sympathetic because this is actually world-shaking to her in a way that it isn’t at all to Dorothy and Sarah, but the latter two are fine with telling Joyce to fix it without doing any emotional labour, and that speaks to me as intentional to their status quo with Joyce that she’s now broken by, bluntly, not being quiet anymore.

          —

          I do think to shape “what does Joyce being an Edgy Atheist mean?” requires seeing how she acts not just to other faiths, but to Christians who aren’t Becky. Until then, this kinda strikes me as a “Joyce throwing hands at her old life” deal, because that old life is all she really knows about faith. I am very open to being proven wrong about this one, however, like say Joyce saying this to Asma, Sierra, Agatha or Jacob is a prompt for her to go “oh shit, this is actually serious” and so she refocuses on where her trauma comes from.

          But it’d be really funny if she went “of course Islam’s cool, my parents told me it was bad and they were wrong about everything!”

          —

          Your comments come off as allowing VERY little leeway for Dorothy, Sarah, and Becky to act less than perfectly while trying to justify everything Joyce does, even when you acknowledge what she’s doing is a dick move

          This is technically true in that I think I think Dorothy/Sarah/Becky have done wrong, but more so that their doing wrong is a bridge to them going through the same chaos Joyce is feeling right now.

          I do think, at the core of this story and the characters it involves (Joyce’s three closest friends and her husband the guy who’s been the most healthy about processing her atheism and has actually seen how big a deal it is to her), what we have is a reevaluation of Joyce’s status quo and her friendships. It’s a story where the people who relied on Joyce in one specific way now see her differently, and they can’t handle it, and I feel that’s bled pretty hard into every interaction she’s had with Dorothy and Sarah since, and here she’s still needing to cater to Becky even while Becky is mocking her, specifically, telling her that everything Joyce used to be could be a lie too.

          (Which, come to think of it, that’s the opposite of what Joe told to Joyce! She’s real even if Heaven and Hell aren’t)

          I don’t particularly recognize Joyce as doing any kind of real wrong at the moment so much as she’s responding poorly to her three closest friends being idiots, but I think me not really recognizing Joyce as doing wrong is that I don’t think of her behaviour as meaningfully harmful in any real regard yet, and that meaningful harm she can and probably will cause is still something rooted in having to cannonball into “of course atheism is right!” after a fight where no one can ask her how she’s feeling.

          I guess the way I see it, I’d be more willing to hold Joyce accountable here if anyone else could take five minutes to empathize with her. Even here, Joyce had to do the emotional labour for Becky, and that’s all in-character! Everyone involved loves Joyce to pieces, but I don’t think they respect her, and I think that inability to respect her is entirely textual.

  49. milu

    @Wellerman: hey! horror films! let’s talk! (Non-Wellerman peeps out here: I’m trying not to seriously spoil anything, but if you haven’t seen either movie maybe skip this thread?)

    Well The Thing was a lot of fun =)
    yeah there’s this intense paranoia throughout, like you never know who’s it or not, it’s so thrilling. I can’t help trying to parse it as a take on masculinity, because, well, 100% male cast. And they do get into fistfights a LOT, at the slightest provocation. and there’s this baseline aggressiveness between them from the start, even before shit starts going down. they’re just kind of mean with each other all the time, like this is how men are supposed to behave. Here’s a thought, maybe you can read it as being about homophobia. Like every dude is constantly wondering who else has it, and it might be anyone, and the fear is that they will invade his body. There’s specific moments in the movie that map onto that reading. Of course in that reading the gays are textually an evil thing from outer space, but i mean, that’s not far off from how some men think about homosexuality. i don’t know, change my mind =P

    Now The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a whooole different beast, like oh shit 9_9 also really good, in a relentlessly bleak and gritty 70s horror sort of way. it’s intense. I think it verges pretty close to hilarious at some of the more grotesque moments, but it stays firmly on the disturbing side for me by being so minimalist and lo-fi. And the soundtrack, omg, fire. Yeah… that was an experience.
    It does rely on classist and psychophobic tropes though. so… that’s not great

    1. JBento

      Huh, I always attributed The Thing’s initial aggressiveness to cabin fever, but yours is certainly a non-discountable take.

      1. milu

        I mean, i’m not even convinced Carpenter was deliberately making a movie about masculinity, this being the 80s and so on. Also themes of toxic masculinity and homophobic panic are actually pretty rampant in the horror genre i think.

        But yeah cabin fever certainly works as a Watsonian explanation, but it still feels very deliberate. this atmosphere of hostility is established in the first few minutes, and it colours the rest of the movie. The horror of the situation is compounded by the fact that the men already didn’t trust each other. This would have been a very different movie if the dudes had strong bromantic bonds of mutual respect, like in so many war movies for instance, that were put to the test by an invisible threat. It’s a choice, and i think it’s interesting why that choice was made.

        1. The Wellerman

          I haven’t seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre Yet, but interesting take on The Thing!

          Re: homophobia, there’s actually a very similar setting in an even older film that I’ve seen, Invader of the Body Snatchers (1956), only the paranoia is about communism (or maybe the paranoia about it IS the infection?). Anyway, I think this brand of paranoia against some perceived alien or foreign threat has been a trope throughout history, and is more than anything else a HUMAN thing (if you’re interested in the psychology behind it, see the works of Emile Dirkheim).

          Anyway, I like The Thing mostly for its production, especially the visuals for the supernatural horror. Seriously when I first saw The Thing turn a wolf and a human into fleshy alien abominations it scared the living SHIT out of me.

          These kinds puppeteered kinds of monsters are what I miss the most about old horror movies really, where they’re made with real supplies and goo and stuff. Today, most just use CGI, and make them feel less like a horror movie, more like a crappy haunted house ride. For instance, a week ago I saw a rerun of Krampus, and near the end when the protagonist got thrown into a fiery pit by gang of demons, I could have sworn the fire CGI looked like something that belonged in a children’s movie like Sharkboy and Lavagirl, not a horror flick :/

          Anyway, if you want any more recommendations for horror, might I suggest a Nightmare on Elm Street or Phantasm? You WON’T be dissapointed! Hopefully.

        2. milu

          Oh god yes, the monster effects are incredible in The Thing. I have nothing against CGI, it’s just a different toolkit, it produces a different esthetic. And while bad CGI can be offputting or unintentionally comical, so can bad puppets.

          of course you’re right that there’s an extremely common theme of fear of the other in horror (and throughout the culture, and possibly humanity) but that’s not what i’m saying. or rather, ok sure it falls under that very broad umbrella but i think there’s some specific elements in The Thing that make it read as a gay panic metaphor specifically, that wouldn’t apply to all and any works relying on “fear of otherness”. First as i said the all-male setting. The aggressivity. The emphasis on manliness. The mistrust. The fact that the threat is indetectable and drive the infected to “penetrate” (unnaturally, monstrously) other men. There’s a scene where two characters are going to one of the guys’ cabin, and one of them runs back, convinced that the other guy is infected. There’s this whole weird fixation on having the right kind of masculinity, and it is one with distinct undertones of aggressivity to the point of self-destruction (see: that time one guy threatens to blow up the whole place if he can’t be in charge.) I’m not sure how far that reading carries, possibly not that far, and there’s clearly aspects that don’t really work (like the fact that it infects the dogs first).

  50. RedCat

    It’s a start?

  51. Rocket Relm

    It’s only occurring to me now that in panel 5 that’s no a general “I’m upset about this topic or how I feel”, that’s probably a “I was being sarcastic you were supposed to *challenge* me on that statement” stare. Which is still sympathy baiting and not ideal, but it’s better than her actually believing it.

  52. Spencer

    As for what I want to say about Becky, and in writing this I am genuinely trying to word this as carefully as possible, since the rough summary is that I think Becky’s a lot more like her dad than we give credit, and “victim of parental abuse is exactly like their parent” is the kind of thing that drove me absolutely fucking bonkers putting up with it here when it was getting said about Amber and it took me a long time to find the right headspace to process those feelings in a way that let me say “yes being abused by my mother has effed me up, I’m not doomed to be an abuser, but I also don’t have to constantly remind myself of how abusive I could be Or Else,” and so if I’m approaching this I need to do so in a way that does not invoke in anyone those feelings I had that made me so miserable.

    So a brief summary would be that I don’t think Becky is capable of accepting disagreement as a result of growing up in a household with one ultimate authority figure, and that’s been carried so far because she’s surrounded by people who unconditionally love her, and Becky’s childhood was nothing but conditional love.

    There’s a post someone made around the time Becky tried embarrassing Ruth and/or Jennifer into dropping out of Gender Studies, where they read Becky as someone who got really good at reading cues and social manipulation to keep herself safe in her home. Becky rebelled, but she rebelled in ways that made her a funny, kooky rogue to Joyce but still within the acceptable parameters of being a good daughter. She got grounded staying up late to watch Seinfeld, she hated her haircut so she “accidentally” got glue all over it. Still wasn’t enough, though, and she was sent to Anderson and everything went to hell.

    Becky’s understanding of how to process conflict is to shut it down. I am the Wronged Party, I have been Defied. You, Joyce, have failed me by becoming an atheist; at the start of this conversation she is still insisting that Joyce’s atheism is an overreaction, and once Joyce affirms that it’s as real as Becky’s faith, that’s it; we’re strangers. She holds herself to these standards as well, where she’s judgmental of Dina not being horny on main for her until Leslie tells her about asexuality, whereupon Becky declares that it’s her Sinful Horniness that’s truly ruining everything.

    Leslie’s another port of call here, in that, like Dina, she’s a new person to Becky who endlessly dotes and praises Becky and put all the effort into making Becky feel wanted and loved. Becky can trust Leslie, she still keeps her at some arms’ length (I remember Regalli putting it that Becky kind of expected she’d be kicked out once Leslie started dating Anna), but Leslie has already done majorly wrong in her endless fawning of Becky, where Becky admitted she embarrassed Ruth and Jennifer and Leslie just called her devious instead of chastising her for doing to them what Roz did to Joyce.

    Dorothy has stolen her Joyce, and Becky is only capable of relaxing around Dorothy once she takes the emotional responsibility of Becky’s actions for herself, giving Becky a sign that Dorothy doesn’t hate her and that she does actually just want to be good and kind towards her, whereupon Becky continues being a butthole but I feel the context has changed in that Becky’s trying to reenact making friends with Joyce; Becky is going to be a funny, charming, goofy badass by acting like Poochy the Dog, and Dorothy will be so wowed that she will fawn over her the way all her closest relationships do. At this point, Becky will feel safe enough to be open around her, but since Dorothy is endlessly capitulating to Becky, Becky doesn’t get the signal of “I’ve annoyed this person but they still like me!” and so she keeps it up.

    Becky had to navigate a childhood where she was constantly judged by the standards of Ross’ perfect godly daughter. She had to be obedient the same way as Joyce, but what Becky figured out is how to play-act the perfect daughter in a way that Joyce completely bought. From there, I think Becky has proven to be extremely desperate for people who will love her without holding her to standards. She had to learn how to maneuver around her dad, but I think what she also learned was his uncompromising sense of Father Knows Best, and Becky has been indulging in that too because it’s how she learned conflict was resolved. Joyce cannot be an atheist, Dorothy cannot take her Joyce, Ruth and Jennifer will date and kill themselves if Becky does not intervene, she is to blame for her sexual problems with Dina. Hell, in a way, her selection of what is or isn’t important of her faith is a bit of an expression of this: Becky learned, either beforehand or through Joyce saving her, that God loves her and will perform miracles for her, and so anything that got in the way of what she wanted was “the unimportant stuff” where the only part that’s staying is her views on sexual purity.

    In short: Becky is like Joyce pre-timeskip. She’s yet to vocalize how completely, utterly messed up she’s been, and so she makes silly jokes and funny faces and we tell ourselves this is fine, and we’re gonna be as shocked when she finally bursts.

    1. Rani

      tl;dr she’s an asshole, but her circumstances make her sympathetic.

    2. Rani

      Also I didn’t say Amber was exactly like her dad, just that she was developing a number of his more anti-social tendencies. I will admit that was more me taking shots at her out of frustration for where her arc was going.

      1. Spencer

        Oh, no, that wasn’t in reference to you.

        Back when Danny and Amber broke up in 2016, the hot topic was to go “she’s just like her dad after all,” which, as someone who was in the worst kind of self-loathing brought about from spending my teens and just about all my 20s being emotionally abused, did not sit well with me. As in my self-worth started getting tied to a character that a bunch of people I didn’t know we’re insisting that she was just like her abusive parent, and that she was always going to be like this unless she fought hard enough to earn her Not Shit degree.

        Sufficed to say I can approach the topic with a more level head, in that anyone who went “she’s her dad after all” was stupid and shallow and should shut the fuck up, but also it’s healthy and necessary to acknowledge how a consistent lifetime of abuse does murder on a person and leads them to coping mechanisms that cause harm to others but most of all to themselves.

        I am capable of causing harm to people, no shit. I could pick up a baseball bat and kill someone I don’t like, so can you and so can everyone. I just don’t fucking want to. I’m not an innately violent person, I’m not waiting to snap, I just don’t try to hurt people, and I don’t judge my entire worth as a person based on the harm I do end up causing, because you cause harm by interacting with people enough times that it slips out.

        1. Rani

          Oh come on, people were comparing Amber to Blaine over the break-up?! That’s stupid!

          Blaine would have made Danny stay, and then tortured him for the rest of the poor bastard’s life.

          If anything, you just made me realize dumping Danny was one of the most non-Blaine things Amber ever did.

        2. Needfuldoer

          I think it was more about Amber’s short fuse, which Danny inadvertently set off because he didn’t understand the Amber/Amazi-Girl split (which she in turn didn’t adequately explain to him). She wound up to get verbally abusive with him at least a couple times, but she restrained herself (or just didn’t go there) when he cowed to her.

  53. Keulen

    Mac and cheese fixes everything, at least temporarily.

  54. Bagge

    Those dofuses

    1. Deanatay

      Dragon eggs?

  55. Beau Kirin Maysey

    literally the building blocks of our society

  56. thumb

    Everything’s fine once you’re on the same page.

  57. hof1991

    The last couple days have been bantering so it was time to resume their deep friendship. Both of them need it.

  58. Spencer

    Aight so maybe this is the result of me being high on my own cool supply at the moment since I was finally able to successfully predict a character moment, but nobody actually thinks this is over and resolved, right?

    Like, they aren’t BFFs again, they haven’t accepted anything, they’ve made things worse by affirming that they’re now total strangers before forcing another interaction they are absolutely not prepared to have.

    Is it me? Am I the crazy one? Am I simply too blinded by my bloodthirst in wanting to see Joyce hit Becky with a Stone Cold Stunner?

    1. Thag Simmons

      I can see this being a resolution. They’ve still got a lot to work through but maybe they’ll be able to do it on more amiable terms, rather than the previous open hostility.

      But, y’know, ‘s not called Smarting of Age. I’d say you’ve got a pretty decent chance of being right on the money here

      1. Spencer

        Becky whiffs a Volcanic Viper so Joyce counters with the Heavenly Potemkin Buster.

        Afterwards they’re friends again.

        This is the only resolution I will accept.

      2. Rani

        Every time someone appeals to the damn title to explain a character arc I die a little inside.

        1. Spencer

          It’s a comic about college freshmen being wrong and stupid all the time. I dunno what you were expecting.

        2. Rani

          It’s also a comic where a pair of the college freshmen’s dads formed a legion of supervillains, kidnapped the cast, almost killed several of them, and then proceeded to either die by the other’s hand or get executed by the local police to cover up the involvement of the Korean mob. After getting chased down by the super-heroic alter of a DID system that had not a few days prior stabbed a rapist to death in front of a workaholic who seems utterly unfazed by either that or the kidnapping.

          I wasn’t expecting that, and I would argue that redefines what this comic was about.

        3. Spencer

          Blaine was extremely wrong and stupid, yes.

          That’s kinda why that arc was a bit of a bummer. He was an absolute cuckoo bananas nonsense person convinced of his own greatness, but it’s still scary to be held hostage by an absolute cuckoo bananas nonsense person.

          DoA’s action segments, more specifically the two that ended in car chases, tend to be the weakest material for me, so they don’t really shape my perception of the comic as a Slice of Life about getting out from under your parents’ trauma. The good actiony bits like Amber beating up her dad in the parking lot, AG and Sal teaming up to fight Ryan, and Amber carving him into lunchmeat stick out to me more as what I want, as they tend to be messy, punchy, and not at all good for anyone involved.

        4. Khyrin

          Not to mention the not-well-explored fact that Joyce can apparently teleport. ( Joyce materializing BEHIND a box Malaya was setting down while moving in, could have been just a joke… but then Sarah makes a joke about ‘why didn’t you just teleport‘, meaning it’s a phenomenon that has been witnessed multiple times.

    2. Rose Red

      The only way I see that it could have been resolved in the same day (in-comic) or this calendar year (for us) is by them basically breaking up and never talking to each other again.

      So you’re right, it’s not resolved- but it’s putting a rock in the doorway to keep it open. It’ll be easy enough to kick the rock out of the way, intentionally or not, but the door is no longer actively swinging shut, which is as fixed as the relationship can be in a day. Which makes me happy. I’d be sad if they broke up over religion without having even really talked about it.

      1. Regalli

        Yeah. For all that the ending’s not ideal, ‘I guess we’re strangers… but okay we still want to hang out’ means they’re at least willing to accept that neither of them is going to convert the other. That’s progress after their last interactions. There might still be another blowout fight before they make up for real, but they do at least seem to get that the religion thing is non-negotiable on both sides so it’ll be a DIFFERENT fight.

        1. alongcameaspider

          I want to see Dina’s reaction to Atheist Joyce, and depending on that Becky’s reaction to Dina’s reaction

          Could reignite the drama bomb if Dina wants to spend more time getting Joyce up to speed with science and stuff and Becky gets jealous of that

        2. Rose Red

          I really want to see that too. The only time we’ve really seen Becky and Dina talk about God was in a teasing flirty sort of way. I can’t wait for a more serious conversation.

    3. Axel_Grease

      I see this as a truce from open hostilities, not a return to the way things were.

      1. Spencer

        I agree with the former, but as for the latter, I think they’re trying to force it back to status quo.

    4. Icalasari

      I can see it rearing up again and leading to more arguments in the future. Just that the two are talking and friends again

      May lead to Dorothy snapping and forcing the two to sit down and stop skipping over the hard stuff, or some other character going, “Ok you two keep saying you’re friends now then blow up at random SIT HERE AND FIGURE THIS SHIT OUT!”

  59. zee

    Friendship saved by the power of Kraft©

  60. JasonAW3

    THIS! This is how people get over their differences!

  61. Username Taken

    How does Joyce not know Becky very well? This “agreement of non-understanding” makes no sense to me. 🙁

    1. Spencer

      They do understand each other, they just don’t understand the impact their upbringing has had on the other and assumes they have it should process it exactly as they did.

    2. alongcameaspider

      I mean my read on this whole thing is a root cause is neither knew each other as well as they thought they did

      1. thejeff

        Right.

        “If you can do this thing I don’t understand, then I obviously don’t know you as well as I thought I did.”

        1. alongcameaspider

          “Strangers” is obviously hyperbole but the wounds are still fresh, I think they’re entitled to some hyperbole

  62. Axel_Grease

    Everything can be solved with Kraft Mac’n’Cheese.

  63. Florence

    If I’ve got any analysis in the tank it’s mostly that I can’t wait to watch Joyce and Becky actually talk about what their different perspectives were and how growing up has destroyed the fantasy. It’s a kind of pain that I live for in fiction, people understanding each other and it still hurting.

    Also also I’m excited for potential Mac and cheese gay shenanigans based on how Joyce has continued to act around Dorothy

  64. Wakeangel2001

    now you have an opportunity to get to know each other all over again!

  65. GeekRyuu

    Kind of seems like a silly reason to dump a lifelong friendship, but maybe that’s just me.

    1. Lori

      When I came out as gay, my friend told me, ‘oh, that’s fine, as long as you don’t leave the church.”

      I was like ‘uhhhhhh yeah about that’, because there is no place in my former church for a gay woman

      That friend never talked to me again ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      1. Rocket Relm

        Yeah and it’s unlikely they’d accept an answer of “I didn’t leave the church, the church kicked me out”.

      2. C.T. Phipps

        My sympathies for you having to deal with someone who missed the distinction without a difference.

        *internet condolences*

    2. Sam

      If it isn’t a core to your being, then yes, it seems silly. But religion can be an irreconcilable difference if your friend insists on trying to convert/deconvert you and neither of you are willing to accept that you are allowed to be different from each other in this way or in this case, to process trauma in two different but equally valid ways.

    3. Amelie Wikström

      They’re both reevaluating how they relate to each other after finding out neither they nor the other one are the same person as when they were children. They’re just putting it in absolutist polarized terms because they’re teenagers. But you can see their genuine feelings in the last panel.

  66. Rikunda

    I get the comic but my mind doesn’t want to accept the level of stupid between these two. You are not two strangers who don’t know each other! You two now know each other so intimately and the only thing that changed is Joyce being a prick about religion because she has to have a black and white world.

    1. TylerTheNonCreator

      I mean.. I kinda get why she changed religion though, everything she believed was wrong tremendously. Look what happened when she believed in her religion:

      1. She became so sheltered she didn’t even understand that hitting a person regardless of gender/bio sex is wrong.

      2. She almost got sexually assaulted by trusting a youth pastor church’s kid.

      3. She’s so shelteredly incline in her own world, she didn’t finally biked out of her own subdivison until she graduated high school.

      4. She also dealt with a very dementend and mentally ill person she knew as almost as close as family to killing her with a firearm.

      I don’t blame Joyce for not realizing that Christianity/Religion in general is shitty, doesn’t excuse her being a dumbass however. Come on dude, just because you’re an atheist doesn’t give you an higher IQ points.

      Also I don’t understand why the fuck isn’t Becky more of an atheist than Joyce, shitty religion kinda almost killed her and literally most of the said religion supporters want to kill people like Becky for their own sexuality identity. I am so stumped on this one. I don’t need Becky to be a burning church fanatic, but fuck me dude. I’m surprised she’s not gonna put the rosary down for a moment.

  67. Mada

    I just read that “DO I?!” in Freakazoid’s voice; the way he’d respond whenever Cosgrove would roll up with something like “wanna go out for a mint?”

  68. DarkoNeko

    There’s always a way to strart anew and make it better \o/

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