275

Touchy-touchy
Posted on April 9, 2022 by David M Willis

275 thoughts on “Touchy-touchy”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    why would that be scary, it would be FUCKING AWESOME

    1. Ana Chronistic

      how awesome would that be if Robin just dispensed superpowers via contact high like a gashapon dispenser tho

      and by awesome I mean the world being destroyed every ten seconds by everyone suddenly having superpowers dispensed via contact high

      1. Sirksome

        I’m not keen on the deep Walkyverse lore, is Robin somehow known for giving away superpowers or are you just spit balling a hypothetical?

        1. Teddae

          Tl;dr walkyverse robin has a knack for getting people into shenanigans (i.e giving them the sudden ability to fulfill their goals and them having no memory of it) by kissing them while drinking mountain dew. Or something of that equivalent. So…both?

        2. Chronos

          I thought it was Cadbury Surprise, or something like that crazy chocolate cereal thing she liked.

        3. timemonkey

          That Robin has alien given superpowers that are fueled by sugar. When she goes super overboard with the sugar it makes it so she can give a sort of contact high to others, while the effects aren’t clear and may vary from person to person possibly it does seem to give them powers for a bit.

        4. Amelie Wikström

          I’d recommend making a little time to read shortpacked.com
          If you’ve come this far with Dumbing of Age, it’s probably going to be right up your alley – a lot of the strips are just great in themselves – and it explains all the alternate universe gags I’ve noticed so far.

        5. Sirksome

          I’ve tried to read shortpacked from the beginning a few times. I just couldn’t get into it, it’s super long, and always stop before they get to the point of establishing super powers or maybe that’s a thing that carried over from It’s Walky which I also haven’t read. I do know I once looked at shortpacked and it showed Joyce fighting a cyborg Sal or something that I think was an April Fool’s thing but clearly the universe is way crazier than DoA. Now the April Fool’s day strips are the only one’s I’m current on.

        6. Amelie Wikström

          Well, it was just my, an internet rando,’s suggestion, you shouldn’t feel you have to. I did start rereading it now and boy the black and white strips are a chore to get through.

          (Aside compliment to Willis for sticking with comics for all these decades until this masterpiece came out.)

        7. Lys

          In Shortpacked!, Robin has the same powers as in It’s Walky!, but they’re expanded upon as she gets more screen-time. She starts as a very powerful speedster fueled by sugar, but “ultimate form” is when she makes cereal with Cadbury Creme Eggs instead of the cereal. Just… dumping that egregious amount of sugar in a bowl of milk and eating that, makes her vibrate and see far and basically, almost omnipotent, plot-wise. If she kisses someone in that state, they get a “contact high” which lets them do incredible things as well.

  2. Doctor_Who

    And now you all know why I hang around here. This was an origin story all along.

    1. True Survivor

      Are you saying All of Dumbing of Age is a gigantic temporal loop where Dina goes back in time, is mistaken by angle by Becky’s parents leading to their fanatical Christian beliefs, leading to them beating Becky. That would be crazy, twisted, and kinda cool.

      1. Regalli

        Of course not!

        Dina’s time machine is going to inadvertently lead to some purple-helmeted aliens making a deal with Walky’s mom, abducting a bunch of children and genetically augmenting them as a smokescreen to take attention away from her own genetically-augmented infants, and turning them into superheroes!

        IT’S WALKY REBOOT WITH BECKY AS AN ABDUCTEE. THE TIME IS NOW.

        … Probably not but I like my big action scenes as expressions of characterization and I miss Head Alien.

        1. Lion

          No, no, what they’re saying is that something going wrong with Dina’s time machine is the in-universe explanation for the sliding timescale. xD

        2. True Survivor

          Oh, that is clever. I like it.

        3. Regalli

          That’d do it.

        4. Khyrin

          We may already be seeing the effects: DoA!Joyce can teleport. Like, On-screen, we’ve seen her materialize behind a box. Dina has improbable hiding skills that extend to what (or who) she’s touching, so long as she (or they) don’t do anything to attract attention.
          I’m sure others can think of more examples.

          (yes, I know this is mostly rule of funny… but Dina herself invoked it, and SARAH mentioned that Joyce has some strange ability to just… suddenly BE wherever Dorothy is. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was foreshadowing.

        5. Clif

          In conclusion, Dina should definitely change her major to physics. As a side effect, the time machine would let her visit dinosaurs and study them close up.

  3. The Wellerman

    YEAH!!!

    Rock on SUPER SCIENCE GIRL!!!!

    WAAAHOOOOO!!!!!

    ???? ??? ????

    *plays “Techock” by Waterflame on Hacked Muzak*

    1. Stephen Bierce

      If I could save Time In A Bottle
      The first thing that I’d like to do…

      1. The Wellerman

        Hey cool, I actually first thought of using that one! ?

        BTW if I may ask, what do you honestly think of my song selections?

      2. Vulcanodon

        “…is to go back in time, and find you James Dobson, and beat the living crap out of you…”

  4. jeffepp

    Wasn’t this how the Walkyverse…

    1. Jamie

      Yes. Yes it was.

  5. Sirksome

    Give Dina a time machine and suddenly we have a Jurassic park situation and you know how many people died in that dinosaur theme park?! Sure she can beat up your dead parents but I hope your ready to pay that cost in human corpses Becky!

    1. Doctor_Who

      Jurassic Park AU where the park is founded by Dina.

      All the dinosaurs are 100% scientifically accurate, and nothing goes wrong at all because she’s a very responsible scientist. It’s just two hours of people visiting dinosaurs and learning.

      1. The Wellerman

        Hey if you like Jurassic Park, Dina, and video games, you’re gonna LOVE something I’m working on!!! ?

        Would you like a sneak preview?

        Involving…. your ol’ pal Psalty? ?

        1. RassilonTDavros

          …My God. Project Psalty.

        2. Delicious Taffy

          Dina: “Do I look like I need your scripture?”

        3. The Wellerman

          PEOPLE OF EARTH! BREAKING NEWS!!!

          Hymmel The Humming Hymnal JUST WET HIS PANTS!!!

          ???

          https://imgur.com/a/23J3PNx (SFW)

        4. The Wellerman

          Oh yeah and Dina’s in it too.

        5. The Wellerman

          Oh yeah and Dina’s in it too ?

        6. The Wellerman

          Oops. Comments mod code is on some had stuff right now.

        7. milu

          oh wow. that looks pretty sick Wellerman =D you’re a pretty talented artist!

          If i may advise, there is something weird going on with different levels of line thickness and detail sharpness, like you changed the size of some elements (Psalty’s face in particular) and it shows? you see what i mean?

      2. Sirksome

        It’s not really on Dina, it’s about the incompetent/greedy/idiotic people she’ll have to hire to run such an establishment. How do you stop the tech guy from trying to commit corporate espionage by sabotaging your security system so he can sneak vital dino embryos to the competition? How do you stop suit and tie types from ordering you to create a genetic frankensaur with near human intelligence and a cloaking ability because LOL they want to sell dinosaurs to the military!? You can’t!

        1. Doctor_Who

          They kinda glossed over it in the movie by making Hammond a sweetheart, but in the book all that stuff happened because he actually was a total cheapskate irresponsible jackass who skimped on vital systems and personnel.

          In the movie you just kinda have to accept that the state of the art park worth billions has one IT guy. Don’t know what their plan was if he ever called in sick.

        2. Regalli

          Incidentally, ‘weaponized dinosaurs’ is just SUCH a terrible idea as soon as even ten seconds of thought are applied. You have to make sure you can TRAIN the dinosaur. To like. NOT ATTACK YOUR OWN SIDE.

          I’m certain military-grade lions would look awesome too, terrible decision-making scientists, but for SOME REASON no one uses those! I wonder why!

        3. Thag Simmons

          The weaponized dinosaurs in Jurassic World are great because they’re the dumbest shit ever. Like, the Indoraptor is literally operated by pointing a laser from a gun, meaning that the operator has a choice between relying on an unstable monster the size of a tank or just *shooting* somebody.

        4. Sirksome

          This exactly. We humans have developed remarkably efficient killing tools. Guns, drones, tanks, ect. There’s basically nothing a dinosaur could do that wouldn’t be more effective by just shooting the problem away. There could arguably be some specialist role I can’t think of. The military do use dogs for tasks like bomb sniffing and such, but even that probably wouldn’t be worth the expense of creating the means for acquiring a dinosaur.

        5. Thag Simmons

          There are potential military applications for genetic engineering

          None of them involve making uncontrollable monster-dinos, because that’s unbelievably stupid. Like Colin actually has a dude say “dinosaurs are better than drones because drones are hackable”, which, yeah, definitely want a slightly harder to control lion rather than a flying remote operated missile launcher that can level a block from miles away.

        6. Regalli

          No, you can’t hack a dinosaur. You know what else you can’t do with a dinosaur? MAKE 100% SURE IT WILL ONLY ATTACK THE HUMANS /YOU/ DISLIKE, AND NOT YOUR OWN DAMN SIDE. Especially when you appear to have genetically engineered these dinosaurs to be actively sadistic and not just opportunistic.

          Dumbasses.

        7. Max

          The worst thing a dinosaur will do is eat you. When the robots go rogue the world is f-ed. (see the other movie series)

        8. Regret

          Dinosaurs come pre-hacked by their own biology.

        9. Thag Simmons

          The military possibility of dinosaurs is low, and a better designed and better staffed dino-zoo could have avoided the level of catastrophic failure that befell Jurassic Park.

          Unfortunately, the realistic failure states of Jurassic Park are much less dramatic. Less “we can’t stop the T. rex from eating people!” and more “we can’t get the T. rex to actually eat anything so it’s starving, and it’s keeps hurting itself on the barriers”

        10. Clif

          I viewed it as a metaphor for autonomous drones, tanks, and other AI based weapons of war. They too must be trained not to attack their own side. And yet, here we shortly are.

        11. Thag Simmons

          I do not think Jurassic World is smart enough to be employing metaphors.

      3. timemonkey

        If they’re 100% scientifically accurate then they’d also be 100% dead. Earth was very different back then and they wouldn’t be able to survive here.

    2. Thag Simmons

      I don’t know if it’d be a Jurassic Park situation. That implies having the resources necessary to both produce and house a large number of dinosaurs.

      1. Sirksome

        Dina could probably pull it off though. If she’s invented the time machine in this hypothetical the logistics of the dino park would probably come easy to her. In fact I wouldn’t doubt she’s thought of the prospect before, even as just a hypothetical.

        1. Thag Simmons

          I was going to list another piece of Dinosaur media with a time machine that I could use instead, but the only one that came to mind is Primeval, where the time travel is naturally occurring.

        2. Sirksome

          I remember one dinosaur show involving time travel that I really liked. I think it was on ABC like 10 years ago, but I can’t remember the name of it. The concept was that in the future Earth is basically fucked because of some environmental crisis or something so humanity invented a time machine and travelled back in time to colonize the past and it was the prehistoric era. I remember really liking it and being super disappointed cause it got cancelled after 1 season.

        3. Thag Simmons

          Yeah, Terra Nova, I remember that.

          I remember not being terribly impressed by it, didn’t like the creature effects and didn’t find their fictional ecosystem interesting or convincing, but I was a shithead teenager at the time and might not have been giving it a fair shake,

        4. Sirksome

          Terra Nova! That’s what it was! Thank you! Now I can go rewatch it to see if it holds up. The CG was a little cheap I remember not liking that but the concept was so unique. I don’t think they’ve done anything that interesting in some time.

        5. Regalli

          I mean, there’s also the least timestream- and ecosystem-intrusive option, assuming we ignore a couple logical implications.

          She can travel the world through sunshine and rain, and meet all the species on the

          DINOSAUR TRAIN!! (Dinosaur Train!)

        6. Thag Simmons

          fuck I absolutely should have gone with Dinosaur Train

        7. Regalli

          Good old ‘things that only occur to you AFTER you said the thing,’ huh.

        8. StClair

          Asimov’s A Statue for Father. Basement inventor (a very common type in classic SF) tries to build a time machine of the fixed-portal type, only ever gets it really working once, acquiring a clutch of dinosaur eggs in the process. Does he get famous for the machine, or his research? No, to his immense disappointment and bitterness, he’s remembered as “the man who gave us dinochicken”, after one of the hatchlings electrocutes itself on a live wire and turns out to be incredibly delicious. (They start farming the things, eventually scaling up to industrial quantities. Genetic bottlenecks lol?)

        9. Thag Simmons

          Also probably could have gone with Sound of Thunder, since that’s a pretty famous one. Don’t know how cool Dina would be with trophy hunting dinos though.

      2. crow

        She could go back in time and steal some stuff. What are historical cops gonna do, move forwards in time?

    3. Devin

      Jurassic Park had practically no animal enrichment and absolutely terrible enclosures. (Just electrified fences? Come ON.) I trust Dina to hire people to study the dinosaurs to learn their needs and provide adequate enrichment and appropriate enclosures.

  6. Pinkie

    Get ‘em Dina.

    Heyyyy… I’m pretty sure Michael Pearl is still alive.

    1. Pinkie

      omg another pinkie……. :handshake:

    2. Lanie

      Oh gosh, he is, isn’t he? He’s a frightening man, and I really wonder how much a dad like Ross would’ve found him to be a ‘good’ role model for child rearing…

    3. Allandrel

      Sadly, he is.

  7. alongcameaspider

    Dina no, introducing time travel in a story not specifically about time travel always ruins the story

    1. Nathan

      The way to do it is the classic Star Trek method of having a time travel episode every few seasons but it has no impact on anything else and is never brought up again.

      1. Opus the Poet

        You never watched Enterprise after the first season.

        1. Nathan

          I’m still working my way through Voyager and I am not at all sure I will bother watching anything after that tbh.

        2. Agemegos

          Nor Discovery at all.

          Nathan did write “classic Star Trek”…

        3. Spriteless Auntie

          The third season has some gems. Maybe it’s like TNG. Or maybe I, personally, give too many chances to any story which shares a name with something I have fond memories of.

      2. Regret

        The only way to do time travel: Don’t.

        1. JBento

          Or do it like everyone else: forward, moment by moment.

        2. Azhrei Vep

          The only way to do time travel: Make Miles O’Brien do it.

          He hates it too much to do anything irresponsible with it.

        3. Azhrei Vep

          Y’know what, I’m not feeling that grav after all. Let’s roll up a new one!

        4. Azhrei Vep

          Well that was implausible.

        5. Azhrei Vep

          Really? AGAIN? Does the roulette work differently now?

        6. Azhrei Vep

          There we go. Now we’re talking!

  8. Darkoneko

    it’s not worth it, Dina.

  9. Juanoku

    I REALLY wouldn’t put it past Dina to actually do that

  10. BBCC

    These two are adorable and I fully believe Dina CAN and WILL invent time travel omg.

    1. woobie

      DID

  11. Delicious Taffy

    Great. Now Dina’s planning to literally break reality just to hurt someone. And Becky’s just… okay with that? Sure, whatever. These two are gonna have a lot of time to reflect when the inevitably bend up in prison.

    1. Viktoria

      1: Clearly in universe a joke. Like, she is talking about time travel.
      2: No seriously, what. It’s literally the punchline.
      3: Yes, always hurt child abusers.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Sometimes, I piss in the sink just to feel alive for a few minutes. Does that answer your question?

        1. hazel

          Piss in the sink if you want, but ime, destruction never feels better in the long run. Take care of yourself. Really, genuinely.

        2. Delicious Taffy

          How hard do you think I piss, that the sink is in serious danger of being damaged? I’m not a pressure washer, over here.

        3. Clif

          I hear the acidic wit condensate can etch away the basin enamel over time.

        4. Delicious Taffy

          Maybe if you do it every time you’ve gotta go, I guess.

      2. zee

        Dude taffy is very obviously memeing

    2. Delicious Taffy

      Also I’m just going to assume James Dobson is some evangelical scumbag who advocates for some whackadoo shitfuckery that’s relevant to their conversation, and live in the relative bliss of not learning about whatever it is.

      1. Pinkie

        I read a review of his child-beating manual and didn’t even buy it to use for cat box liner. Allegedly it begins with a “hilarious” story of him beating an elderly sausage dog.

        1. Delicious Taffy

          See, that’s the kind of heinous shit I don’t need to know about, and if I could I’d probably remove what you just said from my brain.

        2. Clif

          Well now, see, I’m interested. Did he title it James Dobson’s Hilarious Guide to Beating Small Children and Defenseless Animals for Fun and Proffit?

        3. Clif

          And was it Mike writing under a pseudonym?

        4. not someone else

          The titles are “Dare to Discipline” and “The Strong-Willed Child”, so no, but only because the man might spontaneously combust in the presence of a sense of humor.

    3. CJ

      I don’t think Becky looks like she’s ok with that.
      I totally get Dina‘s emotions here. Not as something she should actually act on, but yes.. I once wondered if bombing the grave of my gf‘s grandfather would help me calm down. (No, I didn’t do it, but the idea of doing it was helping).

      1. Delicious Taffy

        All we had to do, was follow the damn train.

  12. Username Taken

    Well if these two are ever going to have a fight, Dina calling Becky’s mom a child abuser would do it… I guess we’ll see if it goes that far. 🙁

    1. Delicious Taffy

      I really get the feeling that this is It for them. I think Becky is about to flip the fuck out on Dina for this, and they’re gonna have a huge fight. Probably it’ll get physical, knowing Dina and her tendency to be violent with people who upset her.

      1. Z

        But it’s okay because she’s a small female and small females are allowed to physically assault and abuse whoever they want.

        It certainly couldn’t put people in the hospital or anything. (Side eyes Amber)

      2. Gizen

        I can’t tell if you’re just trolling to get a rise out of people, or if you genuinely believe that that’s a realistic outcome to this scenario.

        1. Delicious Taffy

          Trolling would be a waste of my time, and I was never any good at it anyhow. Yes, I genuinely believe that this conversation could lead to a breakup. How is that not realistic?

        2. Gizen

          I mean, I guess it depends on how little respect you have for Becky as a character? Considering their relationship has been the least problematic and healthiest in the comic, by a wiiide margin, with zero real problems between them up to this point, it would take an EXTREME overreaction on Becky’s part for this to result in an breakup, ESPECIALLY after they just had sex for the first time. Like, I won’t deny the possibility of this triggering a fight between them, but the idea that that alone would be an instantaneous breakup is… questionable to say the least.

          But even moreso than that, thinking that an argument between them would become physical, and that Dina in particular would be the one to get violent, when literally the crux of why she’s upset is the idea of somebody getting violent with Becky, is such a severe misreading of the character that my first instinct is to assume it’s intentional, hence why I’d think it’s a troll comment.

        3. Delicious Taffy

          Sure, but consider the following:

        4. Gizen

          Yeah, that’s about what I thought.

        5. Delicious Taffy

          Think whatever you want, it’s a free country. Arguing against “you’re probably a troll” would just be exhausting and a waste of both our time, and I don’t know you well enough for it to matter anyhow.

      3. Blue

        Becky doesn’t seem all that mad to me. She does her usual joking in the face of uncomfortable situations, so next I would expect her to change the subject.

    2. timemonkey

      She may be totally on board with the idea that getting hit was a shitty thing that shouldn’t have happened. If it was encouraged by the community then she could be angry about it and acknowledge the problems with it while still not fully blaming her mother.

    3. Heather

      Oh god what a car crash that would be. Granted preview panels I think have them still together for a while longer so maybe they don’t have that discussion yet or they make up.

      1. Username Taken

        I mean, I hope they don’t go down that road. It would be a bummer, even if it would make for interesting drama story-wise. I want a happy ending for pretty much the whole cast except the obvious heels like Mary.

  13. CrazyJ

    So James Dobson is long dead in this universe because of Dina’s time travel?

    1. Wack'd

      gottem

    2. BBCC

      Sliding timescale.

      And google pulling up the wrong James Dobson.

      1. Bicycle Bill

        Google only pulls up one James Dobson:
        James Clayton Dobson Jr. is an American evangelical Christian author, psychologist, and founder of Focus on the Family, which he led from 1977 until 2010. In the 1980s he was ranked as one of the most influential spokesmen for conservative social positions in American public life.
        Born in 1936, he’s still alive.

        There are four other James/Jim Dobsons when you access “James Dobson (disambiguation), but they are a British engineer (deceased), two sports figures (one deceased), and an actor.

        1. BBCC

          When Willis googled it, he got the death date of Dobson’s father, who shared his name.

    3. ahecht

      It’s canon: https://mobile.twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1512775934981853184

  14. Spencer

    I need to stop hoping for horrible plot revelations like “Becky’s mom was hitting her too” when I feel bad as they happen.

    It’s like sickos.png but while crying.

    1. alongcameaspider

      An optimistic take was she did it whenever she could out of fear that if Toedad did it he’d go way overboard

    2. Deadjolras

      “Yes… Ha ha ha… I mean, no… Wait, I mean, yes!”

    3. Heather

      I mean it’s a much more interesting story idea then just having Toedad do it, but because the writing is also engaging you also feel for the characters after all.

    4. Z

      The thing to be really sad about is that I’m pretty sure she didn’t want to and solely did it to save Becky from worse beatings from Toedad – and I suspect it’s part of what drove her to suicide.

      I base this on it being a pretty common dynamic in abusive family relationships.

      1. Andy

        The thing is, spanking is such a common form of child discipline, even with implements like a spoon or a belt, that I’m not sure Becky’s mom even saw it as abuse. Becky and Joyce both clearly think it’s normal and that they’re okay. I would guess there was a very distinct line in their households: spanking was okay but hitting outside of that was not.

        We have to realize that we have so little information on Mrs. MacIntyre that canonizing her the way Becky does is likely to disappoint us. She stayed in that marriage for around 20 years and I don’t recall any hints she was mistreated. I also don’t recall any hints that she wanted to leave the church they were on for another or disagreed with Toedad on Becky’s raising. It is very likely to me that she was complicit in, if not willingly and actively assisting, spanking Becky and all the rest.

        And I base this on a very close friend I have who grew up in a similarly conservative household and long thought her dad was the selfish bastard only to later realize that her mother was also emotionally abusive because she wanted a perfect family.

        1. Spencer

          Yeah, that’s a good point.

          All we know about Bonnie is that Becky liked her. I know she’s one side ponytail away from the Good Dead Mom checklist, but we don’t actually know anything about her as a person.

          S’kinda why I like to think she was Robin~esque, though that’s a headcanon I came up with based on a single line of dialogue from Becky about her being a slob, and who knows if it was actually true.

        2. Viktoria

          Oh no. I’d missed that line about her being a slob. I suspect that actually means she was perfectly clean, but was emotionally abused by Toedad into believing that she was a slob because that kept her subservient and Becky never processed that that was a lie.

        3. Blue

          Bonnie doesn’t appear in the comic much, but I find it a bit too much of a coincidence that she has an abusive husband, but her suicide was completely unrelated.

        4. Andy

          Part of the problem is we don’t know just how abusive Ross was when Bonnie was alive. Did he beat her and Becky? I suspect he didn’t; Becky doesn’t seem particularly uncomfortable with him prior to being forced out of the closet. It’s entirely possible he was emotionally abusive to both Bonnie and Becky, but her suicide could just have easily risen from garden-variety untreated depression. There’s too little to say that it’s more than coincidence just as there’s too little to say it’s not. We have so little information about Bonnie and why she committed suicide, and 90% of that comes from the very biased Becky, that all we can do right now is guess. My guesses come from situations I’m familiar with, just as Z based their guess on the situations they’re familiar with

        5. BBCC

          We do know that, in Hank’s opinion, Bonnie was nice and Ross was an asshole even before Bonnie passed away. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was an asshole at home too, but we don’t know how much.

        6. Spencer

          Well, he said “bless her heart,” which the yanks among us has informed isn’t always a positive.

        7. Delicious Taffy

          It’s great, it can mean anything from “Thank you, all the best and safe travels” to “Begone and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.”

  15. RassilonTDavros

    Had to look up who James Dobson was, and uh, assuming he’s the same one who founded FOTF, he’s apparently still alive, unfortunately. Or at least I can’t find anything saying he’s dead.

    Eh, I’m sure the sliding timescale will see to it eventually.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Also, fuck James Dobson:

      When asked “How long do you think a child should be allowed to cry after being punished? Is there a limit?” Dobson responded:

      “Yes, I believe there should be a limit. As long as the tears represent a genuine release of emotion, they should be permitted to fall. But crying quickly changes from inner sobbing to an expression of protest … Real crying usually lasts two minutes or less but may continue for five. After that point, the child is merely complaining, and the change can be recognized in the tone and intensity of his voice. I would require him to stop the protest crying, usually by offering him a little more of whatever caused the original tears. In younger children, crying can easily be stopped by getting them interested in something else.”

      Fuck him to Hell and back, and then to Hell once more.

      1. Gangler

        Oof, that’s rough stuff.

      2. Amós Batista

        Cursed shit. Hope somebody hit this idiot in this face before he dies.

        1. Spriteless Auntie

          Pretty sure he got it before he was an adult. <_<

      3. thejeff

        Leaving aside the argument over whether even mild spanking is abuse, one of the biggest problems with these extreme Christian parental advice spanking books is that there’s no acknowledgement that spanking might ever fail. If it does, it’s because you didn’t spank enough, so you need to do more, because the advice is always right and spanking will always succeed.
        Like in that example: if the kid cries too long because of the spanking, spank them more.
        It becomes a contest and there’s no off-ramp for the parent.

    2. Reltzik

      At least he’s dead to Becky.

    3. Keulen

      Yeah, sadly James Dobson is still alive.

  16. Raen

    I hate love to be “that guy,” but according to Wikipedia…

  17. Imogen

    I do appreciate the clarification that both of Becky’s parents did it. I said this the other day, but it’s really important to me to emphasize that spanking is bad even when “nice” parents do it. There is no good type of child beating. Becky’s mom was probably a wonderful person, but she also hit Becky, because she was probably raised to think it was okay just like Joyce and Becky were.

    1. Imogen

      Also, wrt the Spanking/Trauma Discourse from a couple days ago:

      Not all abuse victims suffer trauma. They’re still victims of abuse. They are not defined by their victimization, and neither are those of us who do suffer trauma. Joyce was physically abused by her parents.

      If she was willing to admit that it was abuse, nobody would be questioning her “I’m fine” narrative… but she’s not. She’s refusing to admit it “counted” as abuse because it was normalized to her. THAT is why she’s not fine.

      1. Imogen

        Last addendum. There’s a phrase a lot of people were throwing around the other day: “If you say, ‘I was spanked as a kid, and I turned out fine,’ you aren’t actually fine.”

        Some people criticized that because they felt like they were being told they HAD to feel trauma from being spanked, or else they were just in denial, which felt insulting. But that’s not what the phrase is about. To expand the phase to its actual normal context:

        “If you defend spanking by saying, ‘I was spanked as a child, and I turned out fine,’ you clearly are not fine.”

        Being convinced that child abuse is normal and okay is a very common result of being abused as a child. If you think it’s okay, THAT is when you are definitely, absolutely not fine.

        1. Yotomoe

          o3o I get what you’re saying. I’m just not altruistic enough to agree. Luckily I will literally never reproduce so you don’t gotta worry about me.

        2. Gangler

          Yeah, I haven’t been dipping my toe into the spanking discourse, but that’s kind of the conundrum for me.

          I’ve heard all the arguments for why it’s bad, and even counterproductive towards its intended goals. I can rationally wrap my head around why it shouldn’t be done.

          And yet, I never feel any kind of upset or shock or what have you when these sorts of things come up. It just kind of feels normal, which leads to a weird sort of internal dissonance when reading arcs like these. Some disconnect between what I feel and what I think I probably should feel.

        3. thejeff

          I can see that applying if you’re actually defending spanking as a good thing that should be done.
          If it applies to anyone saying they’re fine or not being willing to agree that their parents were abusive, I think it’s overblown. Partly it’s semantic I guess. If something like Sarah’s “got my ass with an open palm once or twice” is abuse, it’s way down on the scale of abuse. When we label someone a “child abuser”, the connotations that come with the term are far more extreme than that. So someone not wanting their parents labelled as monsters for what they see as relatively minor flaws can still really be fine.

          It’s also, as I argued before, a logic trap. If you say you turned out fine, you’re implicitly defending spanking and thus aren’t fine. Obviously if you admit you’re not fine, then you’re not fine. There’s no defense.

        4. Blue

          The part that is “not fine” is the person defending spanking. “I was spanked and I didn’t suffer trauma” is okay. Just don’t extrapolate to “therefore all spanking is fine”.

        5. thejeff

          I agree. But it often seems to be pushed beyond that to “Agree your parents were child abusers and if you don’t that’s just because of the abuse.”

        6. Spencer

          I mean yes, it’s an act of abuse.

          You can also have a more nuanced understanding of the act and a healthy and personal relationship with the parent who did it. It’s an act of abuse because hitting your kids is abusive and has zero positive outcome to their development, and also it doesn’t have to be the sum totality of your relationship with the parent who engaged in it. It’s actually okay just to say “it didn’t bother me” as long as that doesn’t lead to “and that’s why it’s not abuse.”

          I feel needing to worry super hard about the feelings of someone going “well I was spanked so that means you’re saying my parents are abusers” is, well, silly. If I smoke all my life and don’t die of lung cancer that doesn’t mean “I smoked and I was fine.” We used to line houses with asbestos and plenty of people survived that but we don’t do it anymore just because “my house had asbestos and I’m fine.” The Olds among us probably had parents who thought Dungeons and Dragons was a gateway to the occult, but we don’t hold that against them. It’s weird that “being hit by your parents” is this thing you have to couch and politely, timidly frame as non-confrontational as possible, or else someone who “was spanked and turned out okay” will take umbrage.

          Like if I were spanked and had “come out of it fine” then that doesn’t mean whether or not it’s okay is up to interpretation or that my folks were Nice Spankers who hit me for Nice Reasons, it means my parents had a culturally accepted failure that we’ve since recognized as an act of abuse.

      2. Rogue 7

        While I’m with you that spanking is a) never justified b) never productive and c) always harmful, I still don’t like saying that it’s always abusive behavior, specifically because of the heavy connotations we give to the word. Shouting at your kids can be abusive behavior if there’s a pattern of humiliation, fear, or what have you. But I don’t think anyone would say that a parent who yells at akid for, say, drinking at a party is committing abuse.

        It’s similar to how I don’t like the “racism is power+prejudice” definition despite pretty much 100% agreeing with the conclusions because it muddles a conversation. Too often people who don’t get that meaning hear “only white people are racist” as “only white people act in a discriminatory manner” and get defensive. Better to say “systemic racism only favors white people”.

    2. Jamie

      It’s just a parallel to sexism/racism/et.al. discussions. There are really bad cases that are flagrantly wrong. There are milder, forgiveable cases that muddle the discourse. The problem is somewhat less of a problem at the level of individual cases and a bigger deal at the institutional level. (Though in the case of spanking, the institutional cases are easier to fight in America because we generally privilege the parent with the right to violence.) A common deflection is to reframe the person doing it as a defining feature (i.e., “you’re a racist!” rather than “that was racist”), making it hyperbolically polarizing and thus difficult to actually make progress on improving things at a personal level. A large number of the people defending the practice are doing so with the best of intentions and are driven largely by personal relationship rather than a cold reading of data and society-wide effects.

      We’ll get there. Probably.

      If China can do it, so can we.

      1. thejeff

        And a lot of people here aren’t even defending the practice, just the personal relationships. You can agree with the data that shows it’s not effective and usually harmful and thus shouldn’t be used, while still not agreeing that your parents were abusive and it’s only the effects of the abuse that keep you from seeing it.

        1. Blue

          As the previous poster mentioned, there’s a big difference between “your parents were abusive” and “hey maybe that one thing was abusive but they didn’t know better at the time”. Hell that applies to much more than spanking.

        2. thejeff

          I’d agree again. In fact, I suspect with almost all parents if you narrowed it down to specific actions and examined their whole time as parents you could find something that could be labelled abusive.

        3. Imogen

          Yeah, this is exactly why I think it’s important to acknowledge that Hank and Bonnie DID commit acts of child abuse, and they CAN still be overall kind people who meant well and who Joyce loves. That contradiction can be very painful to reconcile, but it’s important to reconcile.

          (For Sarah, since it was not a “systemic” thing in her family’s rules, I think it’s fair for her to say “my parent/s did a bad thing one or two times and then never did it again because they realized it was wrong”.)

    3. Regalli

      Yeah, the thing about Bonnie is that while we know very little concrete about her, we can make quite a few guesses looking at Ross and Becky and filling in the blanks. She married Ross. We have no reason to believe that he got radicalized over time the way Jocelyne’s implied happened with Carol. (And a fair bit of evidence he was like this for years – the Six Flags flashback, Becky not being allowed a phone in college, the bit about her having to make an excuse to cut her hair…) We know Bonnie was, ultimately, suicidally depressed and her circumstances probably played a role there, but that suggests the scope of her ambitions was just as narrow as Joyce and Becky’s. Either she didn’t see another means of escape, or she truly believed she was the wrong one for being dissatisfied with it.

      It’s possible Bonnie wasn’t an active participant – that Ross was the one hitting Becky, but based off Bonnie telling him she broke rules or something – but that still makes her complicit, and it’s the less likely option by far. Because I REALLY don’t think Becky’s been willing to entertain the idea that it wasn’t just Ross, that it was all the adults in hers and Joyce’s lives that failed them, and it wasn’t just her gayness that made this untenable because it was ALWAYS broken. She had to start heading towards that conclusion eventually. I don’t think she’ll react to this much better than Joyce did, but it’s a first step nonetheless.

      1. Florence

        Hard agree on all of this, you can see that denial in this strip with how she included Bonnie in who spanked her. I’ve been in a place where I had to accept a big fact about my life around 19 and while necessary it still hurt to go through.

      2. JBento

        I mean, Becky is very explicitly saying “both her parents” here, so I don’t know why you’re putting up the possibility that everything is uniquely at Ross’s feet and not tossing Bonnie in with him.

        I’m not sure on the “She married Ross.” being a point of accusation – if Bonnie was raised in that sort of community, I don’t know how much of a choice she actually had in practice.

        1. Andy

          It’s brought up because other commenters are bringing it up as a serious possibility. That Bonnie was, at best, complicit because she knew Ross’ spankings would be worse and this was a way to protect Becky a little or something. And yeah, it’s possible that she didn’t know what Ross was like when she married him or she thought it was normal and then was stuck in a marriage she didn’t know how to leave for over a decade and a half. It just doesn’t seem likely to me. I just don’t see it as likely.

        2. thejeff

          Both is possible. That she approved of spanking, but thought Ross went too far and thus took most of the burden on herself to keep it at a level she thought appropriate.

          Or she could have been the “wait until your father gets home” type, but that’s worse in a lot of ways.

        3. Andy

          That’s definitely a possibility as well. The whole spanking thing is part of a spectrum of abuse and we know way too little about the elder MacIntyres to pinpoint where they fell except to know that they were both at least at one point during Becky’s childhood and that Ross was at a much worse point after Bonnie’s death.

        4. Regalli

          I assume ‘thought it was normal,’ myself. She was raised thinking a woman’s proper place was in fact in the home, homeschooling the kids, and so Ross seemed perfectly reasonable and right and proper. And if she eventually realized that wasn’t the case – and she may have instead decided her feeling miserable about this was a her problem, we don’t know – she couldn’t figure out a way out, because the community they lived in would side with him over her if it came out, the way Becky got after the first kidnapping. Speculative, but thinking of Bonnie as ‘how Becky and Joyce could have grown to be if the plot hadn’t happened’ makes a lot of sense to me.

          Which isn’t blaming Bonnie, to be clear. I get how she got to that point, and I sympathize. But it does suggest that at least when Becky was young, Bonnie probably would have found this a normal prospect. And I don’t think she felt like she could stop it, even later. Tragic… but Becky’s a victim here too, and Bonnie could be complicit in Becky’s abuse while still being a victim herself, and I do unfortunately think that was the case.

          (On my assumption Becky hasn’t totally unpacked the ways her community was screwed up and that it applied even to the ‘good ones’… I mean, it’s not explicitly textual, but her fight with Joyce suggests that in addition to ‘There is only one way to experience faith and react to trauma and it is MY way,’ she’s got some ‘Obviously you can jettison the really bad parts but leave the rest, it’s normal to feel shame about having a sex drive’ mixed in. I don’t think she’s grappled with how pervasive the toxicity really was, especially since Joyce was the only one present for things like ‘we prayed the other children would learn from your obedience.’ Not explicitly stated, but it’s a very easy case to make.)

        5. Imogen

          You misunderstand me. I’m praising the comic for being explicit about it. This is not a complaint post.

        6. Florence

          This comment chain is confusing me, but I thought you were praising the comic if it’s directed at me 🙂

        7. Imogen

          Sorry, I got confused too! I realized that after rereading. ><

  18. Pocky

    Time Traveling to kick ass for her girl. . . nice.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Sure, until she gets arrested for assault and battery, and then none of her identification is applicable because she’s in the past and she gets in even more trouble.

  19. lia

    im changing my major to SEX with physics

    1. Clif

      Physics is a jealous mistress.

  20. Yumi

    Willis trying to manifest something with that fourth panel dialog…

  21. Alex Boston

    Isn’t James Dobson still alive? Or is this a different person? Or is this an example of the comic taking years to go through a few months so he will be dead by the time this is collected and sold on dead trees?

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dobson

    1. Yumi

      Willis has tweeted about what happened/the decision to leave it:
      https://mobile.twitter.com/damnyouwillis/status/1512640703750414336

      1. Thag Simmons

        Alas, evil people just don’t seem to die

        1. JBento

          *Mitch McConnel has entered the chat*

        2. Keulen

          Somehow Henry Kissinger still is alive, so yeah I’m gonna have to agree with you.

      2. Gangler

        Interesting. I just assumed it was an attempt to make the comic “timeless”, since it’s not set in any one year, and the man will presumably die eventually.

    2. Yotomoe

      Maybe Becky just had a Doctor who was also named Dobson who spanked her sometimes.
      Oh. That’s worse.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        As long as the dentist isn’t asking you to turn your head and cough, you should be fine.

    3. Wack'd

      james dobson’s in hell
      at least he will be when he’s dead
      right now he’s still alive and guesting on fox news

      1. UnDrewsual

        Maybe she means James Dobson Sr?

      2. Regalli

        Mandelbrot’s Set is a very good song, and assuming it’s what you’re going for that line filk is FANTASTIC.

        1. Wack'd

          how absolutely wild would it be if i had never heard the song “mandelbrot set” and managed to pull that out of my add

        2. Regalli

          If so, congrats, wild indeed and that last line scans PERFECTLY.

        3. Wack'd

          the lack of two syllables on “hell” is bothering me but every synonym i know is pilfered from some other culture’s largely benign death myths, so

        4. Regalli

          Ugh, right? The best I can come up with is some kind of modifier and everything that’d realistically fit in ruins the next-line punchline.

        5. Clif

          My sister coached volleyball for a while, and there was an official cry often used by the team, “Hail , Hail, Yes!!! Except in practice it often became “Hell , Hell Yes!!!” And so at practice once, my sister cautioned them about it and talked a little about the difference in pronunciation. The team reassembled and as one gave the cry, “Hay-ell , Hay-ell Yea-yus.”

          So hell pronounced hay-yell is two syllables, just saying.

        6. Clif

          And I forgot it at angle brackets. Trying again:

          My sister coached volleyball for a while, and there was an official cry often used by the team, “Hail [team-name], Hail, Yes!!! Except in practice it often became “Hell [team-name], Hell Yes!!!” And so at practice once, my sister cautioned them about it and talked a little about the difference in pronunciation. The team reassembled and as one gave the cry, “Hay-ell [team-name], Hay-ell Yea-yus.”

          And hey-yell is still two syllables.

        7. thejeff

          Apparently so is “Yes”.

        8. Thag Simmons

          It’d be pretty incredible

      3. BigDogLittleCat

        I will cheer and raise a glass when Dobson kicks it. The sooner the better.

    4. Amós Batista

      This mistake is only a breach Willis put, to set a time traveller setup. Fucking genius .

  22. Yotomoe

    Knowing what happens, it feels kinda weird to hear Dina imply she’d hurt Becky’s mom.

  23. StClair

    also note that Becky says what they did a few hours ago was sinful.

    yeah, there’s no way this ends well.

    1. timemonkey

      Pre-marital hanky panky is sinful by Becky’s beliefs, they both know that, they both know Becky never stopped believing it.

      1. Wack'd

        right now becky’s stated stance is that it is a sin but it’s also fine because jesus forgives

        1. Nathan

          I think expecting Becky to sort through her many very conflicted emotions and opinions in just a few hours is a bit much.

        2. Heather

          I think Becky at the moment is doing her jokey facade thing and deflecting a bit here. Like Joyce mentioned like a day or two ago in their in universe time. Like it’s fine for a temporary fix for now until she processes but Becky tends to go a bit far with it.

          I’m also pretty sure Becky has, further back, talked about how people wouldn’t want to be around someone who is a massive downer and all that and it may have even been in front of Dina. I’m struggling to remember but I think it was before the time skip. But maybe it also came up not long after the skip too? Maybe she’s a bit nervous even because they’ve had a heavy conversation post sex already: there’s a limit or threshold so back to jokey fun times next time she sees her!

          Makes me wonder if Joyce being considered a textbook downer now and all that with her own issues will have that come up again. I mean like I said it DID come up during Joyce and Becky’s ‘guess we’re strangers’ conversation.

        3. thejeff

          Way before the timeskip. Back when Becky and Dina first got together (after the initial kiss at the party.

        4. Heather

          Ah, thanks!

        5. Andy

          One of the biggest problems with being a Christian and engaging in sin is thtlat you know Jesus forgives, but the church and bible both tell you that he only forgives repentant sin. And if you keep engaging in sinful activity, you’re generally judged not to be repentant. This will either cause Becky a crisis of faith at some point, or we’ll learn that she doesn’t consider repentance necessary for forgiveness

  24. AbacusWizard

    Dumbing of Age, Book –1: Wait What Universe Is This

  25. Darkoneko

    It’s hard to have anger and nowhere to direct it to, but I’m sure a big hug would help

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Hugging in anger? That violates at least a few of the Ten Commandments, I’m pretty sure.

      1. Clif

        Thou shall not kill, if you hug hard enough.

  26. Gangler

    You know, David Willis did good work then, and he does good work now, but I’d be lying if I said strips like these didn’t make me wonder what kind of sci-fi he could put together with his current creative abilities. He’s grown and changed a lot as an artist since It’s Walky.

    1. Sol

      Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if he like, retooled It’s Walky! from the ground up based on his current regrets on how storylines went and all the experience he has now.

      I doubt he will, but I do sometimes find myself missing the It’s Walky universe, even though I didn’t get into it until long after it was all finished.

      1. RassilonTDavros

        Part of me is still hoping for the next-generation-vs-the-Martians story that was teased back at the end of IW!, if only because I’d like to see some of those kids fleshed out as characters, though it might be hard to work around knowing how parts of it go thanks to Joyce and Walky!

        1. Regalli

          Agreed. Plus, the toybox as it was set at the end of J&W is still VERY intriguing.

        2. Wack'd

          I used to want more It’s Walky! sequelizing but given some of the underlying structural issues–the casual murder of mostly harmless Alien footsoldiers, the fact that literally every character’s fatal flaw is violent anger issues–I’d be more than satisfied with just a brand new sci-fi thing that happens to have Head Alien and his team in it.

        3. Sol

          I mean, that could be the benefit of a sequel feature the kids over the parents. Make it a sort of soft reboot sort of deal. Though then you’d have to figure out why the original cast isn’t involved, and “rocks fall and everyone dies” kind of getting them out of the picture would be kind of a downer.

          Though ngl the thought of the original cast going “hmmm no thank you we did this already your turn kids!” made me audibly laugh.

        4. Gangler

          Honestly, whatever he’d do I’m sure it would be great just because he made it. It’s easy to get up in the different tropes and plot devices and stuff but the skill doesn’t come and go based on what genre conventions you chose to make use of this time.

          At the risk of probing into the author’s personal life, do we know why he made the switch from Sci-Fi? I seem to recall it was either him or the hijinks ensue guy or both who stopped doing comics based on pop culture references because they were gonna have kids, and staying on top of all the pop culture was really time consuming. Not that he owes us that kind of information of course, and if he’s never given a reason that’s fine.

        5. Sam

          I think Willis mostly moved away from Sci-Fi because he matured and wanted to tell particular stories and he enjoyed killing off characters less. And Head Alien and the Sci-Fi elements would just… detract from the type of storytelling he has cultivated and wouldn’t really allow for the stories he wanted to tell. And any benefit he got from them in the story, he could get in other ways like bad parents fit just as well from cruel lines and fight scenes.

        6. King Daniel

          On the flip side: the likes of Blaine, Ross, Carol, etc. probably aren’t very fun as characters. Head Alien is fun to play with, per word of Willis.

    2. Spencer

      I’d definitely love another sci-fi series by him, yeah, though mostly just Dexter & Monkey Master as an actual thing since it’s the only way I’ll ever get more Head Alien.

      1. Spencer

        Or maybe I should take that back.

        Head Alien’s not really Head Alien if he’s not a vicious little bastard an equal amount of time he’s a funny screwball. If he can’t explode Sal’s parents and use the recording of her saying she didn’t care what happened to them as emotional leverage every single day for the rest of his life, directly after trying to recruit her to his side with a comically oversized Apply Within sign, he’s a lot less effective.

  27. Nejireon

    And that’s how Dina came up with the Q-Rex from Time Force.

  28. Barf Ninjason

    Dobson is one sick fuck; he encoyrages parents to beat their children with implements because “hands should be associated with loving touch” or something like that. On like page 3, and it only gets worse from there. It is likely that Dobson is a repressed spanking fetishist; as semi-famous heroic pervert Jillian Keenan notes: “Yahoo
    HuffPost Opinion
    Hey Christian Parents, Spanking Kids Is Sex Abuse
    Jillian Keenan
    August 5, 2018, 4:00 am

    Last week, the trial of the Rev. Thomas Chantry, a Baptist pastor from Arizona who has been accused of multiple counts of child molestation, began. The survivors’ accounts are graphic and sickening ― and more often than not, they feature spanking. In one case, Chantry allegedly told a little boy that he needed to be “punished for sins not yet committed” before ordering him to drop his pants and underwear. When a parent finally questioned Chantry about the beatings, he admitted to spanking children in his care but denied the other allegations, which include molesting children as young as 9 years old.

    Chantry felt comfortable acknowledging the spankings because our culture still refuses to recognize spanking as a sex act when inflicted on little kids. But the spankings were every bit as sexual as the other abuse.

    For some people, spanking is sex. I know because that’s what it is for me. My whole life, I’ve been obsessed with spanking. Spanking occupies the place in my life that sex occupies in the lives of most people: As a child, it’s what I was curious about; as an adult, it’s the only thing I fantasize about and the only thing that satisfies me. My fetish is my sexual orientation, and, like any other healthy sexual orientation, only happens between consenting adults. For fetishists like me, consensual spanking is just our version of consensual sex.

    But, like any other sexual orientation, we also have our version of predators. And it’s time for the Christian community to confront them. They’re hiding among you.

    According to research, born-again Christians are 15 percentage points more likely to approve of spanking than the rest of the population. That’s saying something, because support for state-sanctioned child battery is already high: More than 60 percent of the overall population supports it.

    Like any other sexual orientation, we also have our version of predators. And it’s time for the Christian community to confront them.

    Beyond the statistics, fundamentalist Christian communities have a disturbing history of obsessing about spanking their kids. “The rod must come wherever there is disobedience. Let’s not ever use the rod unless it hurts. It should be that the child would never want another spanking. He won’t want it to be repeated if it hurts. This is love,” one Christian parenting guide advises. Later, it concludes: “It’s better to go to heaven with welts than to go to hell without welts.”

    Chantry would be far from the first minister to put this theory of “Christian discipline” into practice as a cover for sexual assault. In 2016, Howard Curtis, an evangelical pastor in South London, was convicted of sexually assaulting an adult woman in his church after he ordered her to strip naked in front of her husband while Curtis spanked her. Apparently, Curtis had been engaging in similar assaults against children for half a century, including one instance in which he allegedly spanked a 13-year-old girl with a slipper until she “was black and blue.” Curtis got away with decades of abuse because his victims were kids, and he was able to sexually assault them in a way that our society insists is neither sexual nor assault.

    I can go on. In 1994, Michael and Debi Pearl, the Christian ministers behind No Greater Joy Ministries Inc., published To Train Up A Child. Ostensibly a parenting guide, the book quickly became popular among evangelical Christians ― Michael Pearl claims it sold more than 670,000 copies. The book encourages parents to use a piece of plastic tubing to spank kids as young as six months old long enough to “break their will.” The Pearls advise parents to wear the tubing around their necks, like a necklace, as a constant visual reminder of the consequences of disobedience. Displaying a spanking implement on a regular basis, as the Pearls recommend, is a fetishistic level of obsession. Trust me: It takes one to know one.

    To Train Up A Child ― which, even today, has a terrifying three stars out of five on Goodreads ― was eventually linked to the deaths of at least three kids. In response to one death, Michael Pearl, in his own words, laughed. He wrote: “I laugh at my caustic critics, for our properly-spanked and trained children grow to maturity in great peace and love.”

    Adult survivors of evangelical spanking abuse don’t describe it that way. I think often of one email I received from a reader, who gave me permission to share it anonymously. She wrote: “I suffered physical and sexual abuse as a child and that act [spanking] was a part of both. And in fundamentalist Christian homes, like mine, there is more than a little sexualizing in those acts. That’s part of the draw of it. They love it and it turns them on in a big way. It took me a long time to untangle this. … I do not have that fetish, but I know it is sexual behavior.”

    Every Christian should be outraged. There are too many examples of people who are, to my eyes, obviously repressed spanking fetishists using evangelical Christianity as an excuse to exorcise their fantasies on kids. Sections from any book by Dr. James Dobson, the evangelical Christian author responsible for bestselling child-torture manuals like Dare to Discipline, are indistinguishable from adult fetish erotica ― except, unlike Dobson, fetish erotica does not encourage parents to assault real kids.”

    1. Barf Ninjason

      Dammit, sorry was only trying to quote this part:

      There are too many examples of people who are, to my eyes, obviously repressed spanking fetishists using evangelical Christianity as an excuse to exorcise their fantasies on kids. Sections from any book by Dr. James Dobson, the evangelical Christian author responsible for bestselling child-torture manuals like Dare to Discipline, are indistinguishable from adult fetish erotica ― except, unlike Dobson, fetish erotica does not encourage parents to assault real kids.

    2. Amós Batista

      Until they don’t rip those verses advocating spanking children on Bible, it will be hard christians stop doing it.

  29. BigDogLittleCat

    Alas, James Dobson is still alive. He is an evil, sadistic, authoritarian sociopath. Burning in Hell would be too good for him.

  30. Romanticide

    The dumbing of age universe might have one point over the one we live in by having Dobson dead, though Michael and Debi Pearl are very much alive… just saying.

  31. JepMZ

    What the heck, so someone was spoilering it yesterday >:(

    1. Amós Batista

      Where? ?

      1. JepMZ

        Either it’s been deleted already or I was hallucinating, but I read a reference of Dina time travelling in yesterday’s first few comments since I have a habit of scrolling down to read people’s reactions after every update. But not a big deal I guess. But still!!

  32. NinjaNick

    Go back in time to smack them all with a wooden spoon…with splinters! Mad genius!

  33. Bicycle Bill

    Dina said, “Then I shall change my major to physics so I may devise a time machine.”

    One suggestion, Dina… just make sure you keep a connection to Carla, as she and her family:
    1) can provide the funding you will need to be able to construct one, once you discover the principles of the flux capacitor, and
    2) probably already have one anyway.

  34. Ray Radlein

    No one point out to her that with a time machine she could vastly improve the state of knowledge of dinosaurs or she will definitely do it

    1. Gangler

      Honestly, I suspect that would only ruin the fun for her.

      There are present day animals she can study if she wants to do it that way, but piecing together records of long dead life forms is part of what makes Dinosaurs different and special.

      You can see it contrasted against Walky’s love of dinosaurs. Walky likes the dinosaurs basically as glorified fantasy monsters, doesn’t like any deviation away from what makes them cool in his head. Dina’s more interested in the pursuit of learning about these creatures, regardless of how it shifts our understanding of them. The pursuit of studying dinosaurs, is special to her in a way that the pursuit of studying tigers isn’t, though of course she values all scientific pursuits in principle.

      1. The Wellerman

        All good points!

        I wonder though, are dinosaur reconstructions being terrifying and them being scientifically accurate really all that mutually exclusive?

        Would anyone mind pointing me to ones that are both?

        1. eh, whatever

          Right here.

        2. Andy

          I mean, modern animals are pretty terrifying even as we talk about how cool or cute or whatever they are. An accurate dinosaur reconstruction of a T-Rex is only not terrifying because we don’t have to deal with them. Similarly, we know there’s actually dromaesaurs that were the same size and some that were actually larger than the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

          Even the herbivores are terrifying. Think how many people are killed by hippos, then imagine that the hippo in question has a tail with a thagomizer on the end. Or that a rhino has a trio of horns and a bony ridge to protect its neck. Fully accurate dinosaurs would have been just as dangerous to humans as modern animals are.

        3. thejeff

          People hear about dinosaurs with feathers and shift immediately from thinking about giant dragon like lizards to thinking about chickens and the fear vanishes.

          People should learn more about Terror Birds.

        4. Andy

          Terror Birds are cool as heck both because they’re basically surviving dinosaurs and also because the earth was full of megafauna so anything that could survive was pretty cool

        5. The Wellerman

          Yeah I wanna make a game that shows people just how TERRIFYING scientifically accurate dinosaurs can be! ?

        6. Clif

          Make it a virtual reality game that has a small percent chance of refusing to turn off for some period of time.

        7. Andy

          Because science fiction never shows any negative sides to virtual reality that decides not to turn off when it should.

      2. JBento

        Dina DID say that one of the things she liked about dinosarus is that they were a fixed thing that let her learn about them at her own pace, unlike people.

  35. Koms

    I love how these two are absolutely smitten with each other

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Sure, for about five more strips, tops. There’s no way they’re gonna get through this oncoming argument and still be together.

      1. Reltzik

        Disagree.

        I give them at LEAST another 311 days.

        (Measured by our calendar, not theirs.)

      2. Lexi

        Odd assumption that Becky, the established “Wild Child” who was hit with a wooden spoon until she associates “I enjoyed this a lot” with “I did something wrong, and should probably feel bad”, and whose father once shot a gun on campus AND slapped her face so he could kidnap her, is in support of spanking.

        Like, in my experience, the kids who were spanked maybe a handful of times are the ones who think that it’s probably fine cause they turned out okay. I propose the conversation will go something like this.

        Becky: “It’s fine, it’s just what parents have to do.”
        Dina: “Why would you think hitting a child is fine?”
        Becky: “Uh…. Shit… No good answer.”

        1. Andy

          More likely it would be like

          Becky: “It’s fine, it’s just what parents have to do.”
          Dina: “Why would you think hitting a child is fine?”
          Becky: “What? No! It’s not hitting. It’s spanking.”
          Dina: “But it involves striking a child?”
          Becky: “On the butt, yeah”
          Dina: “So it is hitting.”
          Becky: ” No, hitting is different”
          Dina: ???

        2. Lexi

          I mean, the other thing is that spankings worked on Joyce, but they clearly didn’t on Becky. So she’s probably in a really good place to actually realize that it’s not a great answer.

          If it had actually been a decent deterrent, then Becky may fall into the pro-spanking realm. But it’s probably not that hard for her to realize that it was a pretty short path to her Dad slapping her in the face as an adult, and not just a smack on the butt as a 5 year old.

        3. Andy

          Possibly, and the fact that her dad was so shit after she was an adult will help on that too. However, I think there may be some significant resistance from Becky since it was something her mom did too, and she kinda idolizes Bonnie. It’s really hard to square “my parents both did something abusive to me” with “yeah, dad was terrible but mom was the epitome of good moms.”

      3. Blue

        I don’t yet see any point of contention. She knows Toedad was abusive. The only possible sticking point is Bonnie, and hopefully Dina knows to be gentle in regards to Becky’s dead mother.

  36. Brasca1

    I just checked and James Dobson is still alive, but maybe Dina should still build a time machine since beating up an 85 year old is hardly fair.

    1. Vulcanodon

      Neither is beating a child.

      1. Uly

        Or a dachshund, because Dobson is the absolute *worst* and that’s what he’s done, repeatedly.

  37. Amelie Wikström

    Revenge is a long road that has no ending, especially with a time machine. . .

  38. Alanari

    I like that becky is not trying to reframe it as something not as bad. She’s fine with hitting being something worth being furious about.

  39. Arianod

    Relationship goals right there.

  40. karishi

    Dina, the answer is too obvious: David Willis is the one who caused her to be hit by a wooden spoon. (Dina starts down literature track until she finds out Death of the Author isn’t as literal as she’s hoping for)

  41. Reltzik

    No, Dina, no!

    Keep your major as paleontology! Devise the time machine anyway, but do it so you can STUDY DINOSAURS.

    …. okay, fine, maybe hurt a few dinosaurs as well. But keep your major!

  42. TheHabbadasher

    In a shocking twist, Dina continues to be great.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Yeah, great at threatening people with bodily harm.

      1. Amelie Wikström

        I think to be a threat, you have to threaten people who are in the same city as you, or at least alive. But in that case, yeah, I’m sure they would go “I hurt my child, and you want to hurt me, an adult? How dare you?”

        1. thejeff

          I don’t know. If they’re in a different city, but your threat includes “I’m going to drive over there and …”, I think it counts.

          Dina has a plan.

  43. Needfuldoer

    Dina excels at everything she puts her mind to.

    We’re lucky she hasn’t devised a way to participate in the comments.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      She’d make like 2 comments, get severely uncomfortable, and never post again.

      1. eh, whatever

        The one thing she’s not is anxious.

      2. thejeff

        Until someone posted something wrong about dinosaurs.

  44. Amós Batista

    Still disappointed for discover Bonnie spanked Becky too…

    1. Vulcanodon

      We are all of us prisoners of our culture, until we find an escape…

      1. The Wellerman

        ☝️ THIS

  45. Rabisch

    Dunno if I like this ultraprotective side of Dina. It could become a problem.

    1. Raptorofwar

      When you’re told your partner was beaten as a child, wishing to hurt the people who did it is not a novel reaction.

      1. Sam

        It is usually also just said as a way to expression frustration/anger that it happened more than a serious line of thought with intent to really act.

  46. Vulcanodon

    (Holding enormous wooden spoon) “Doctor James Dobson! My name is Dina Saruyama! You hurt my Becky. Prepare to cry!”

  47. Thomas O.

    Dina’s following in Cassie’s footsteps… how touching. :’)

  48. Macunaima

    Now I want a one-shot strip of Dina popping out of a Tardis to whack Dobson with a wooden spoon while he says “Clever girl”.

  49. Bagge

    I expressed concern that time when Dina tried to bite ToeDad’s face off, but as time goes by it’s pretty clear that her only regret in regards to that is that she didn’t bite harder.

  50. AbelUndercity

    The first thing Dina would do with a time machine is travel back to the age of dinosaurs.

    The second thing will be to ride into the recent past astride a triceratops like a Jurassic angel of vengeance against all who would do harm to Becky.

  51. Ray

    “Doctor” Dobson is still alive…. he’s available for immediate torture…

  52. hof1991

    1Devil Dinosaur paired with a young genius girl is a thing. Which is great.

    2. Blanket training is a thing which is the logical extension of Dobson. That is horrific.

    3. Dobson has a doctorate in child psychology. Which makes me want to burn down that university.

  53. Devin

    Nothing makes me wish I could draw more than wanting to draw a fanart strip that’s a montage of Dina making this happen.

    1. The Wellerman

      Would you settle for helping me make a game featuring her?

      And scientifically accurate dinosaurs?

  54. Cyrus Draegur

    Nothing says romance like “i will violate causality for you” ?

Leave a Reply to Raen Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

*

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.