203

Hero worship
Posted on January 29, 2022 by David M Willis

203 thoughts on “Hero worship”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    “Don’t pounce until you see the whites of her eyes!”

    1. King Daniel

      “And smell the scent of her hair…”

      1. PirateTawnee

        so whose hair smells best, Joyce, Sarah or Liz?

        1. Needfuldoer

          Of the three, Joyce is the one who’s most likely to buy scented shampoo and/or conditioner. Sarah would roll her eyes at the unnecessary extras and choose based on price and practicality. Liz is a wildcard.

        2. Decidedly Orthogonal

          It’s the smell of the cbd-free cbd gummies!

        3. DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership

          For free spirits who aren’t inconsiderate, life is always very hard and taxing…

          Liz seems to be at that point in her life where Sarah is about to make a lot more sense than she did when they were younger…

    2. ValdVin

      Or her luxurious chocolate river of hair.

  2. Thag Simmons

    “Maybe I can drop out”

    I’m still not entirely convinced you haven’t.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      I kinda took that line to imply that she has dropped out. The “maybe I can” sounds less like planning a potential future action and more like justifying the current course, to me anyway.

      1. Nono

        Nah, I think Liz is still too scared to have actually done anything. She’s been waffling over leaving, she backed out over having sex, etc.

        If she actually had willingly dropped out, there would be that brief, exhilarating rush of freedom.

        1. Thag Simmons

          The thinking is she might have dropped out by accident.

        2. King Daniel

          i.e. how Willis ultimately stopped attending IU in real-life.

        3. StClair

          more by default and/or inaction, yes.

        4. Clif

          It’s possible, but that’s not the vibe I’m getting.

        5. Bicycle Bill

          “…that brief, exhilarating rush of freedom…”

          Followed by the panic-stricken realization of “My God, what have I done?” as the second-guessing sets in.  Kinda like me the first time I called a girl for a date and she accepted – “Ohmygod, NOW what do I do??”

        6. Schpoonman

          “I don’t know. I didn’t think I’d get this far.

        7. Needfuldoer

          Stop eavesdropping on my inner monologue.

        8. ValdVin

          Congratulations for keeping that monologue inner. Some of us actually say it out loud to others.

        9. The Wellerman

          [Practicing Hamon breathing]…
          [Assessing situation]…
          [Formulating plan]…
          [Maximizing odds of success]…

        10. Clif

          Good plan. Just don’t freeze up.

  3. The Wellerman

    So Sarah, she’s a fraud for not letting others decide who she is?

    BRUH, CHILL.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      I think Sarah has done so much good for Joyce, we sometimes forget that she truly utterly hates being there for people emotionally.

      She tattled on her roommate as much to get the weed smoking slacker out of her dorm room as to get her help.

      1. The Wellerman

        I dunno, although Liz might not have thought her plan through the most carefully, calling her a “fraud” for wanting people to respect who she wants to be is an awful discredit to both her and Joyce, you know?

        1. Archieve

          I think the fraud comment is more to point out that the put together version of Liz that Joyce idealized wasn’t something Liz had actually achieved. Like getting respect for a degree you don’t have.

      2. Spencer

        Okay, now you’re just doing it on purpose.

      3. Ava-Ann

        I mean besides the fact that her scholarship was on the line, wasn’t the roommate also dealing with some heavy ish and not coping well? Why would that be Sarah’s responsibility to handle? She didn’t even know her before college. Letting someone know who could help was the best thing for roommate

      4. Devin

        This kind of papers over the very real effect that rooming with someone like that can have on one’s ability to study. Dana went into a spiral, and setting aside the fact that Sarah knows she’s not good at helping people with emotional problems, it’s not a roommate’s job to do that. Sure you can try to help a friend, but when one’s roommate refuses to admit they’re having a problem to anyone else who might be able to help, one’s options become limited. When Dana refused to get help, and Sarah stopped being able to sleep, and her grades took a dive (endangering her scholarship, which ostensibly was the reason she was even able to attend college at all), she was also protecting herself, and that’s fair. Sometimes you don’t have good options, and you just have to work with what you have.

        1. Archieve

          I’m surprised it even has to be said that Sarah was in the right for getting Dana help. She tried to be there for her and tried to get her other well off friends to help get a psychologist for her. She only resorted to “tatteling” as a last resort when being there didn’t help and radiah and the rest ignored Sarah’s concerns while Dana an emotional wreck.

    2. Yumi

      I’m not sure that’s what Sarah means by calling her a fraud. My thinking was that she was referring to the way she was acting in front Joyce as being a fraud. There’s also the possibility that she’s referring to the way Liz has acted to her friends back at her university as being a fraud, but I see the first one as at least stronger in the moment.

      It’s still harsh.

      1. The Wellerman

        Hey Yumi, im sorry if this seems tangential and personal but,
        do you also sometimes feel conflicted about your alias and how it reflects your gender identity? It’s alright if you don’t wanna talk about it tho.

        1. Yumi

          Sometimes. It’s been a part of my online presence since I was twelve– I joined a casual forum to talk about TV shows (with the name “Yumi” coming from the character on Code Lyoko) and that led to joining a very close-knit forum dedicated to ATLA, but also with a lot of space for the members to talk on a more personal level. It was a key part of my early teenage years, and in that space, my name was “Yumi” (and in the iteration of it that continues today, my name still is “Yumi.”)

          It was nice at the time because I hated my birthname but hadn’t worked out the reasons why or what I might prefer in real life yet. Now my real life name considered more typically “masculine” (though I think there are an increasing number of girls given the name).

          Over the years I’ve considered changing my handle a few times for a couple reasons, one of which is the gender assumption it lends itself to. But it also comes with a sense of “me, on the internet” to me that has kept me attached enough to it that I’ve stuck with it so far.

    3. Keulen

      Yeah, that’s a pretty WTF line from Sarah to me. I definitely don’t think Liz is a fraud for what she said in the first panel.

      1. thejeff

        I think she’s saying she was a fraud for pretending to be the person everyone expects her to be. Which is kind of rough, especially with the comparison to Joyce, who has also been there.

        Of course, Liz is still being a fraud in the next panel, since she already knows she’s not up for the sex part of that yet (and has no clue about the drugs either). And that itself ties back into Joyce’s pretenses when they first met up – Liz is describing the college life Joyce was pretending to have.

  4. Stephen Bierce

    Backfield In Motion…I’m gonna have to penalize YOU…

  5. Kyrik Michalowskk

    I’m not certain the tackle was necessary at this point, but on the bright side we get to see Sarah tackle someone. Also I really want her to figure out the edibles were actually vitamins.

    1. Kyrik Michalowski

      Now my name is fixed, huzzah.

  6. Opus the Poet

    I gt here 5 minut3es before update time and Ana still has a comment posted. How is it possible?

    1. Opus the Poet

      And Liz is going to do Sex, Drugs, and Rock&Roll, gotta go with the classics.

    2. Reltzik

      Her commenting schedule clearly does not conform to the present time. If only she gave us some warning that she was temporally out of sync like that…

    3. Keulen

      Magic? I don’t know how they do it either.

  7. Kyrik Michalowski

    I guess I have to reprove who I am, over a typo.

    1. The Wellerman

      And typo. *sigh*

  8. Hazel

    Calling her a fraud, tackling her, insistence that they are half-sisters…truly they are family.

  9. Sirksome

    I mean you can still go to school AND do drugs and sex all the time. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive. Some would even argue they each make the other thing better.

    1. DarkoNeko

      especially if said school and lodging is paid by the parents

    2. Skater Girl

      Can confirm, that was my college experience.

      1. Ray Radlein

        Never had time for the drugs myself, tbh

    3. woobie

      I don’t think she has had drugs nor sex, though.

    4. Reltzik

      Depends on your major.

      … except caffeine, I think caffeine abuse is a drug habit that pairs well with any major.

      1. Clif

        Can confirm. Also with grad-school.

  10. Florence

    So much of Sarah’s walls are in that second panel, even as her sister is trying to be sincere and reach out Sarah is still shutting anything sincere down for fear of being vulnerable and getting hurt

    1. C.T. Phipps

      If Liz stayed, Sarah would have to deal with FEELINGS and SUPPORT.

      Things she doesn’t want to help with.

      1. Florence

        Yea, that instant level of exhaustion at the idea of doing all that is there. I definitely relate to it, not that I’m proud of getting exhausted so easily

  11. Nono

    So we’ve gone from Dorothy, to Sal, more Dorothy, and now Liz.

    Who will Joyce be in love with next?

  12. Nono

    Liz: I’m so sick of pretty, I want something true, don’t you

    Sarah: It just seems like your life’s been a… *tackle*

  13. Carla's #2 Fan

    Oh, oh I see! I’ve been looking at this all wrong! Joe doesn’t have to choose between Joyce and Liz. They can be a throuple! They’re clearly all into each other.

    1. DarkoNeko

      don’t hurt Joe like that

      1. AGV

        I think that he’d actually break

  14. BBCC

    Well NOW you’re getting Big Sister’d whether you like it or NOT, Liz.

  15. jmsr7

    Oh okay – Liz is exploring being a different person and wasn’t made homeless by her parents. Yep, college is for that too. As is “moving to a new city.”

    1. C.T. Phipps

      We’ve had so many horrifying tragedies, the more mundane is genuinely shocking.

      Even so, becoming a new person is also important and should be supported by Sarah.

    2. Thag Simmons

      Eh, it’s still very possible she dropped out of college and has no idea what to do now

      1. Needfuldoer

        Maybe she hit an anxiety feedback loop and couldn’t bring herself to enroll in the current semester.

  16. crow

    I always insult people when they open up to me

    1. Thag Simmons

      Yeah, otherwise they might do it again.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        What you said, but with mild sincerity.

  17. Rose by Any Other Name

    Sarah: “Grab her legs!”
    Joyce: **blush** “Okay! I’ll… do that.”

    1. RassilonTDavros

      And that’s the story of how Joyce became Sarah’s sister for realsies, according to a court of law.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Reminds me of a RWBY fan art I saw. Ruby and Weiss are walking and Weiss’s mom walks past and Ruby stares and says “Hey Weiss, how do you feel about being my stepdaughter?” I forget what happens after that.

        1. AGV

          First her team leader than then her step-mom? Ruby really trying to take over Weiss’ life huh

        2. Delicious Taffy

          Look, it’s not Ruby’s fault. All the moms in that show are absurdly hot and that’s just the reality the characters have to live with.

    2. Deanatay

      Sarah: Joyce, what are you doing??

      Joyce: *breaks lip contact with Liz* Um… keeping her from screaming?

  18. C.T. Phipps

    Liz is an adult and can make her own decision. I’m still leaning to the fact she’s just sick of being the “Old Liz” and wants to be the “New Liz” but I think that’s actually a very serious thing. Reinventing yourself is part of what college is and it’s clear her old college is a place that carries way too many memories.

    I do think that the previous drama means that people are thinking there’s something much deeper going on and it may be that’s the case. However, I think it’s just that she hates being Old Joyce.

    The only problem is Old Liz is someone she isn’t quite ready to escape as she can’t bring herseld to have sex (even if she’s trying to force herself) and can’t tell vitamens are non-high inducing.

    1. Needfuldoer

      She says wants to be “New Liz”, but what she actually wants to be is Liz Classic: different enough without completely abandoning her old self.

    2. thejeff

      Sure, reinventing yourself is a thing in college, but what’s she’s claiming she wants here is to jump from one extreme to another. Maybe she really would be happy with a life of sex and drugs, but she could easily get as trapped in that one as in her current “good Christian girl” life. Which can have real serious consequences as well. Maybe ease into it a little bit. Experiment. See what you actually like.

      I suspect she’s also partly working of a false picture of what atheists are like. Kind of like Joyce talked about earlier. The whole “without God there are no morals or consequences, so go wild” thing. It’s nonsense, but it’s a common idea among fundies.
      And sadly, backed up by what Joyce was pretending her life here was like. If Liz drew out the “edgy atheist” stuff from Joyce, Joyce drew out the “sex and drugs” lifestyle from Liz.

    3. Segnosaur

      The problem with people “making their own decision” is that sometimes the costs of those decisions are paid for by other people (especially when that person is as young as Liz).

      Did her family pay tuition for the term, and if they did can they get it back? How much time and stress will Sarah have to deal with if she has to deal with a potentially homeless Liz?

      I am not sayinlg Liz is wrong for wanting time to “find herself”, i am just saying others have a valid reason to be miffed.

  19. Angel

    On the bright side, their parents are guaranteed to handle the “my child’s had a dramatic shift in worldview, left college, and is sneakily living in someone else’s dorm room at a completely different school” issue infinitely better than Becky’s did.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      It depends. Is Liz’s mother crazy or not?

      1. Thag Simmons

        We know she performs piety to keep her step-mom happy, so presumably her dad and his new wife are the issue here

    2. Vukodlak

      You’d need a backhoe to dig below that bar.

  20. TemporalShrew

    Everything about Liz’s expression in the second-to-last panel screams “please stop me,” or “please tell me I’m mistaken,” but the tackle might be a *little* much.

    Just a little, though.

    1. mrnoidea

      +1

  21. brionl

    Tackle == High Impact Hugs.

    1. Geneseepaws

      Is that what those football players are doing?
      Got it!

  22. Yotomoe

    I’ve heard that it is often improper to do drugs and sex simultaneously. Having said that I have never done either so I can’t attest to that.

    1. The Wellerman

      That’s just the kind of gingerbread you’d hear from the balogna man!

      Although it really depends on the drug.

      I’ve never had sex myself, but I can tell you that on cannabis, orgasms are cranked up to level 100!

      Or at least 10x whatever level you can put on this one Shortpacked! strip:

      1. The Wellerman

        https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/deadly-petty-blow

    2. Yumi

      Idk, a decent number of people seem on board with that. It’s awkward when someone assumes you’re on board with those things happening simultaneously when you’re not, though.

    3. Delicious Taffy

      Long as everyone involved is cool with it and established such beforehand, I don’t see a problem.

      1. thejeff

        Basically that. It’s a really bad idea to do drugs and go out looking for sex (or even in places where others are looking for sex), but there’s nothing wrong with combining them if all parties involved agree up front.

        1. milu

          @Yoto, yeah, i think what you’re referring to is the talking point that has been repeated a lot lately, and for good reason, to the effect that an intoxicated person can’t consent. And that’s a really valuable thing to keep in mind. It’s what @thejeff is saying i think.

          otoh there are lots of situations where this doesn’t apply. when you’re in a relationship where you know and trust each other under the influence of drugs or alcohol for instance. but… if i look back on my own sexual history, i can’t not include some more borderline cases, where i’ve hooked up with someone i’d been flirting with for some time leading up to that point after i’d had a few drinks or joints. Maybe it was dangerous, idk. But i think it’s just too deep-rooted an element of my own life and the culture i’ve grown up in to feel comfortable strictly linking sobriety and consent.

          ultimately i think for me it’s not so much “intoxicated folks can’t consent” and more, “intoxicated folks can’t use that as an excuse”. Like, whatever you put in your body, you’re still responsible for what you do in that state. Saying “but i was drunk” should never be accepted as an excuse or mitigating circumstance. Is how i see it?

  23. sdrainbow

    I’m torn between happiness that Sarah is getting to take a lead role in an arc and irritation that this could have been a Lucy arc.

    1. Clif

      Lucy could have been tackled by Sarah?

    2. Hoboturtle

      This is funny now that I think about it. Lucy straight out called Joyce “a bisexual version” of herself.

      In the end Lucy has a much healthier religious balance then either Joyce or Liz and Joyce is here calling Liz the “best possible version” of herself.

  24. Otl1973

    So far this seems a combination of Joyce’s worldview revolution (and the reaction to it) and Becky’s escape from her previous school. I hope there will be something newer to this story rather than just a retread.

    1. Regalli

      Let’s start with ‘the title and character involved both suggest Sarah will be central, and therefore Liz’s motivations being familiar is less important than how Sarah reacts to her little sister’s questionable choices’? That seems new. So far, Sarah’s been approaching the idea of Liz with the same guardedness and allergy to feelings as usual, but that’s not sustainable. (No more so than Liz’s ‘I don’t want to go back to school and open myself up to my friends with the fact that I’m changing, so I’ll just stay here and be All New All Different Bad Girl Liz and have fun forever’ – both because she’s obviously not super-comfortable with All New All Different Bad Girl Liz anyway, and because her reaction when she asked Joe to stop suggests she does in fact genuinely value said friends, she’s just been putting on the Christian front as it started slipping and is afraid of how they’ll react when they find out she’s an atheist even as she resents being treated with kid gloves. I sympathize with the mortifying ordeal of being known, but this is clearly a terrible idea born of avoidance.)

    2. Jamie

      It’s pretty relevant that Liz has no actual support system in place here at IU. She’s a stranger to literally everyone, including the person who just called her a fraud. It’s not even clear how much of one she had at Ball State.

      Joyce was surrounded by people who knew and loved her, who she could fall back on, whether or not she chose to do so.

      As I said on a previous strip, the Joyce+Becky dynamic is massively different from the Sarah+Liz dynamic. None of this guarantees that the storyline will feel any different, but the initial conditions are different enough that Willis can definitely tell a different arc if he wants to.

      1. Thag Simmons

        Liz and Sarah are not strangers. An incomplete understanding of each other is not no understanding of each other

        1. Regalli

          Agreed. Sarah’s not being a GOOD support network now, in that she’s responding to this with Default Sarah Grump and not ‘wait holy shit my sister’s having a crisis,’ but she does care about Liz even if she’s not doing well in the ‘being a good sibling’ department. I think if Liz had a compelling reason not to want to go back, she’d have Liz’s back, and my hope is this prompts Sarah to reconsider the relationship she has with her sister and is this a dynamic she’s actually okay with?

          After all, Liz has been on campus since Friday afternoon/evening without Sarah knowing. Liz slept for two nights here and Sarah didn’t know, and at some point I expect it to sink into Sarah that, say, Liz needed a safe place to sleep on an unfamiliar campus in January, and she didn’t go to Sarah’s dorm room to crash and sort things out.

          An actual stranger isn’t going to find that realization troubling and reassess their relationship.

          (I’m also reasonably sure that, unless Liz DOES have another reason she hasn’t been willing to share yet, this arc seems more likely to end with ‘Liz goes back to Ball State and this story’s impact is primarily how she affected other characters’ than ‘Liz is here forever and needs a niche in the cast.’ The explicit parallels to Joyce and to some extent Becky mean there’s not much room for her as a main character.)

  25. Robbie

    Holding out for a helpful talk tomorrow but I get the impulse

  26. miz

    Sarah just really wanted to tackle someone today and she wasn’t gonna pass up the opportunity

    1. Abel Undercity

      The fact that it ended up being a sibling was just happy happenstance.

    2. King Daniel

      Sarah was just fishing for a tackle opening

    3. Delicious Taffy

      Nah, now the hug is actually a glomp. On very rare occasions, shoves may be a precursor to loves.

  27. Bagge

    She forgot Rock’n’Roll

    1. StClair

      No one cares about rock’n’roll anymore. The “sound of rebellion” has gone past inoffensively mainstream and well into oldies. Metallica is dad music now. I have no idea what the kids are listening to, but I’m sure it’s terrible. 😛

      1. Clif

        The kids are listening to oldies but goodies. Seriously. The Internet makes everything available and for the first time the majority of music sales (now streaming) are backlist. The newstuff is competing with the best of the oldstuff. All the big music companies are investing in backlist. Kids are listening to a diverse set stuff by musicians, some of whom are dead. But you haven’t seen a new genre of music in a while.

        1. Delicious Taffy

          I was about to say “Oh, what about dubstep” but… holy fuck, dubstep was a decade ago.

        2. milu

          @Taffy: If you’re interested in the rise and fall of dubstep, there’s an absolutely stellar documentary on Youtube called “All my homies hate Skrillex”. Can’t recommend enough.

          @Clif no new genre in a while? that’s a tall claim. for one, “new genres” are sometimes really discernibly distinctive and consistent only in retrospect. For two, trap has gone supernova over the last decade, and hyperpop seems pretty popular lately. Those are just two of the more mainstream “new genres”— there are others.

          The other thing that makes this question tricky is, what constitutes a new genre? sometimes a new genre is a subgenre, or a crossover. sometimes it’s a revival of an older sound. sometimes it’s not so much about how new the sound is, and more about the lyrical and esthetic content surrounding it. Sometimes the new genre has existed somewhere for a long time but just got “discovered” in the West. sometimes a new genre is pretty small, but elements of it nevertheless trickle into the mainstream.

          Regardless, just to me subjectively, music has never felt more lively, more diverse, more interesting.

        3. Delicious Taffy

          Is that documentary fairly pedestrian-level, (“Events A, B, and C happened in this order at these times”) or do I need to Know Things about music to follow it?

        4. milu

          right, i should’ve described it just a bit!

          it’s completely nontechnical, actually it’s more of a 1st-person narrative of coming of age in early 2000s London during the heyday of the dubstep scene, discovering your tribe, identifying with a counterculture that just speaks to you and your particular (urban, working class) zeitgeist. Then it talks about how dubstep was appropriated and stripped of its class consciousness and moody, nihilistic vibes by Skrillex and co.

          it’s beautifully written and edited, and i think it does a great job of capturing how central to someone’s identity and sense of place a music scene can be. I guess if you’re not especially interested in music it might not appeal to you, you might find it hard to get that someone could feel that strongly about it. I’d say maybe give it a few minutes? i was hooked pretty much instantly, so, if you’re not, maybe give it a pass =)

    2. Deanatay

      Liz is more into smooth jazz.

  28. ANeM

    I haven’t seen any evidence that Liz isn’t still just pretending to be what she thinks people expect her to be. Joyce and her have created a bit of a toxic cycle of aspiring to be like the fake, super confident, carefree person the other is projecting and neither of them actually are that person.

    1. Clif

      Nobody is that person.

      Mostly, someone needs to explain to Liz that there is a middle ground.

  29. mrnoidea

    Well dang, Sarah’s the judge, jury, *and* executioner for this storyline.
    If only she actually listened to Liz and acknowledged what needs mending.

    1. Needfuldoer

      She’s judge, jury, and executioner, not social worker.

      1. Clif

        Sarah is the judge, jury and executioner. Liz is the trial.

        Joyce is the defence attorney?

        1. JBento

          That’s irrelevant, because Sarah is just going to hold everyone in contempt anyway.

    2. thumb

      The defence, representing itself, loudly planned to indulge in drugs and sex. Judge, jury, and executioners are best embodied in different people, but they would all have the same reaction.

  30. Mojo

    Do people still say “Rad…”?

    1. Delicious Taffy

      People still say everything.

      1. Needfuldoer

        But do they still say “rad”?

        1. Delicious Taffy

          I say it, and I use (singular-)plural pronouns, so technically yes they do.

        2. The Wellerman

          Hey Taffy! Wanna check your Newgrounds inbox for something cool? ?

        3. Delicious Taffy

          Well, we do like checking inboxes from time to time.

        4. Clif

          We’re in the post information age. Everything from before is current on the Internet. See my previous rant on music. People are influenced by it all now. People say “rad” and everything now. The hep cats dig it.

        5. Spencer

          I deliberately go out of my way to say ‘rad’ as much as possible.

        6. Needfuldoer

          Rad.

        7. milu

          i mean, sure teens and young adults are trendsetters, language-wise and otherwise, but we don’t need to always refer to them when deciding what we do or don’t do. (Some) kids tend to be very opinionated about what is cool and what isn’t, and that’s fine but we don’t need to identify with their opinion. they have their own language community, and the reason why everyone (themselves included) focuses on them and their way of talking is because every generation sees a resurgence of the evergreen drama of “kids these days” and their abuse of “our” language. The conflict centers on the linguistic “othering” of one or the other generation. Older people either position themselves as gatekeepers of the status quo, or as embarrassing anachronisms; symmetrically this forces an adversarial role onto kids, who can either bend to the norm or be proudly subversive. But we never stop to think that maybe, we can let them be and let ourselves be, too. We can enjoy our different language quirks without thinking of them as being in competition. As i grew older i’ve discovered the pleasure of mixing and matching old-fashioned and newfangled expressions, and while it’s not the way i used to speak when i was 15, it’s also not merely a sedimented and set use of language. me and my similarly-disposed friends, we are still linguistically creative and innovative, just in a different way from when we were 15 or 20.

          Like, i’m kind of thinking about all this as i write, but there’s something that feels a bit unsatisfying to me about the framing of the question “do people still say X”.

          …and then as i reread the thread i’m responding to, i realize i’m not really replying to anyone in particular. I also realize that in this instance the question made sense in context (is it realistic for an 18-year-old to use this word).

          eh it’s ok, i was just rambling =)

    2. Deanatay

      I still say ‘dude’ and ‘man’ regularly, those things were “hip slang” not that long ago.

    3. temperaryobsessor

      I pretty sure people use the word mathmatical instead now.

      1. milu

        oooh i’m not sure if that’s what you were going for but there was a trigonometry joke to be made there. curse my nerdy treppenwitz!

  31. Joyfulldreams

    I get the feeling that, while of course this is rough for Liz and it’s perfectly valid for her to be apprehensive, she is probably over-inflating how negatively people will react a little. That doesn’t mean it’ll necessarily be easy, there may well be a rough or at least awkward transition period. But thinking that people will HATE her and being avoidant to the degree that she literally wants to drop out of school entirely is obviously a little extreme. The sort of catastrophizing that is pretty typical of teenagers, lol.

    Similarly, things aren’t going super smoothly with Joyce right now either, and there might end up being a few permanent paradigm shifts (like with her relationship with Becky), and almost none of her friends are being properly supportive, but it’s not like it’s going to be awful forever.

    Kids and teens rarely lack the ability to have that kind of perspective, though. How could they? Everything is Big and New and Overwhelming and it’s literally the biggest, scariest thing that’s ever happened to them before! How could anything ever go back to ‘normal’ afterwards???

    Honestly, Joyce is almost certainly handling this better than Liz precisely because she’s had to deal with a lot of Big, Scary things before this, and realized that even then, things can go back to feeling relatively normal.

    And yet she wishes she could be making a bigger fuss, because that would at least feel more ultimately cathartic than having to be, like, mature and realistic about things. And thus why she idolizes Liz, not because Liz is actually more mature than her (and is in fact, quite a bit less), but because she gives Joyce a glimpse of how she COULD be acting and feeling if she were just a little less bogged down by, uh. Well, trauma, I guess.

  32. Rikunda

    I am sure we have more multivitamins to get her high on but… Sex? We saw how THAT broke her. I think she is lying to herself. She is who she pretends to be, and feels imposterism.

    1. thejeff

      Well, she’s lying, but not necessarily to herself. She’s playing up to Joyce here, trying to appeal to how Joyce presented herself to her before.

      That doesn’t mean she’s who she pretends to be though. She doesn’t need to jump all the way to the other extreme to not be the pious Christian girl.

      She wants to establish a new identity because she’s not comfortable where she is, but she’s overplaying how far she’s really up for going with it.

  33. Reltzik

    And so we reach the culmination of Liz’s deceitful, manipulative, diabolical plan to extract TWO years’ worth of hugs from Sarah over the course of a single weekend.

    1. King Daniel

      No! She cannot imagine that amount of power, it would overwhelm her!!

  34. Rabisch

    GO SARAH!!!! DON’T LET HER ESCAPE! JOYCE, HELP HER!

  35. Spencer

    Dang, imagine doing that.

    Venting about a complex emotional problem brought about by emotional baggage related both to what this religious institution has done to you coupled with how draining it is to remain that person for the convenience of people who want you to stay that way, and someone you love and trust turns on you and refers to those feelings as invalid and fraudulent.

    Who could do such a thing. C’est impossible.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Why, I’m certain there’s never been any such silliness from any of these kids.

    2. Heather

      I sometimes wonder if this phenomena is down to ‘shoot the messenger’ vibes. Like you do see if in straight up abuse situations too, where the victim in bringing it up is treated more poorly than the person who abused them sometimes. Because if only they’d kept quiet: everything (seemed) fine before they opened their mouth.

      1. Spencer

        This is a thing that happens to me all the time, but I figured I was part of a fairly unique scenario of absolutely deranged, out of touch old people who grew up in a time and place of The Belt as the most optimal conflict resolution, I didn’t think it happened all over the fucking place.

        Like, I didn’t think it was actually a widespread phenomena of being allowed to have a problem so long as you don’t raise a fuss about it, but if you do then you’re actually the problem. I didn’t think my inconvenience was more important than someone else’s suffering.

        1. C.T. Phipps

          Having grown up in a terribly repressive environment, it is pretty much a cultural phenomenon that people do victim blaming as an alternative to questioning the institutions themselves. It doesn’t matter the situation or what’s being question, the divergent is the enemy. Even when not dangerous (and that’s never a given), it can be exhausting to constantly defend yourself and sometimes you conform just to not have to deal.

          Which is why Liz should be allowed to stay.

        2. Spencer

          people do victim blaming as an alternative to questioning the institutions themselves.

          Well yes this is an easily observed course of action even in this comments section. Folks cape for the status quo all the time, it’s how harmful majorities form thanks to toothless moderates.

          I meant, specifically, I didn’t think it was A Thing that a singular person being confronted with another singular person with a problem would lead to the former to constantly scrutinize and blame the latter for upsetting their peace and quiet. I just figured, for the most part, seeing someone with a problem and wanting to help them was A Normal Thing To Do, and that valuing your personal peace and quiet was a rare moral failing that got broader as it had to approach larger and more systemic problems.

        3. Delicious Taffy

          I’m not sure “valuing your personal peace and quiet”, at least in those words, is actually a moral failing.

        4. Spencer

          I mean yeah it is if your peace and quiet comes about at the expense of someone suffering quietly until they find a way to be a proper victim.

        5. Delicious Taffy

          Like, sure, I guess if you’re setting out to deliberately control other people’s behavior and/or victimise them, then it becomes a problem (more like an excuse, really). But you didn’t word it that way, you worded it much more broadly. I’m not inclined to think about stuff in such dire terms most of the time, so I think we’re just on different wavelengths here.

      2. Delicious Taffy

        Oh for sure, the victim speaking up is generally seen as a troublemaker who’s just trying to start shit, while the abuser is typically coddled and treated as the real victim. Or even if the abuser is treated cautiously, the victim still has to get their entire life put under a magnifying glass for an indefinite period, “just to make sure”. And then, sadly, even the slightest smile or hint they exist outside of that context gets criminalised and treated as “proof” they really were making it up all along.

        1. C.T. Phipps

          Yep. Just look at Ryan in this comic vs. Amber.

        2. Delicious Taffy

          I’d rather not. I get the feeling he’s pretty scabbed up, particularly in the face area, and I get squeamish.

    3. Amós Batista

      Sorry about that. Sometimes I wonder if people really believe religion could hurt the feelings of someone else.
      I still thinking how it could be solved…

  36. Zaxares

    Yeeeeaaaaah, I’m pretty sure that last remark of Liz’s probably cracked Joyce’s adoration of her. Joyce wants to be badass and independent and such, but I’m pretty sure she’ll draw the line at doing drugs and having wild, casual, probably unprotected sex. 😛

    1. Delicious Taffy

      She’s been aware that Dorothy enjoys wild, casual, as-far-as-Joyce-knows unprotected sex since like the first month of school, and she still Wants A Piece Of That. I doubt it’s gonna be a problem for Liz.

      1. Rabid Rabbit

        She knows that Dorothy practices safe sex. She just doesn’t trust birth control to work, due to her youth pastor, who as Walky pointed out (having just given her this information about Dorothy’s safety practices) needs to go die in a fire.

        1. Jamie

          I’m not convinced that Joyce understands anything about birth control yet, besides abstinence.

    2. thejeff

      I’m sure she actually would, just like Liz ultimately did draw the line at sex.

      But when they met Joyce was talking about “weeding it up” and “friends with a reward program”, because she was trying to impress Liz. Now I suspect Liz is doing the same to impress her.

  37. Rabid Rabbit

    I would normally not prescribe a dose of Malaya to anyone, but panel 2 really, really makes me want to see her let loose on Liz. What wonders could she achieve against someone who’s ACTUALLY fakey???

    1. Rabid Rabbit

      Also, last three panels: about what I was saying the other day regarding how if I didn’t know they were sisters, this could be the start of a beautiful lesbian romance…

    2. C.T. Phipps

      I think that Malaya would oddly be sympathetic and help Liz.

      Because Willis often zigs when we think he zags.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Malaya would specifically invite Liz to join them and Marcie for dinner.

        1. C.T. Phipps

          Part of why Malaya hates Sal is because Sal hates Malaya and they pick up on each other’s hostility.

    3. anonymsly

      I almost never want more Malaya, but damn if I don’t want more Malaya now. Well played, Rabid.

  38. Rabid Rabbit

    Actually, can I just say how much I love panels 4 & 5 for the differences between Sarah and Liz? The variation in skin tone, the way both have slightly messy hair at the moment (Liz obviously more than Sarah) but it’s still completely different hair, and yet they have the same eyebrow movement when they get emotional.

    It SHOULDN’T be remarkable, but honestly, how many white dudes are able to create subtle distinctions like that between Black people?

    (Disclaimer: Am also a white dude, actually Black people’s levels of appreciation may vary.)

    1. zee

      As a black girl i approve

  39. anonymsly

    Liz. Your feelings are valid and people are generally exhausting and awful as a rule, but that’s… not a good plan. Go meet Jennifer, see what she did. She wanted to be someone knew, so she fully cut everyone who knew Billie out of her life and exclusively interacts with people who know Jennifer.

    It’s not great, but it’s possible.

    And hey, maybe you have GOOD friends who’d actually support your efforts to grow and change into who you want to be. Joyce mostly doesn’t, but you should give yours the chance.

  40. Amós Batista

    Dropping a college couldn’t be a big issue, right? I mean, I don’t know if there’s a entrance exam, and how difficult is it, or you will waist all you loans if you drop college.. .
    Peharps it’s worthy drop out as soon you’d started, right?

    1. Raven

      She’d lose the money she’d spent on that semester, at least. And if she had taken on debt to pay for this or any previous semesters, she’d still have the debt but without the degree to make it all “worth” it.

  41. Sombrero

    No Liz! You can’t do drugs all the time! You’ll get diabetes!!

  42. Daibhid C

    You know what? So do I, Joyce.

    Okay, I hate her significantly less, but that’s something, right?

    I still don’t think I entirely get what her deal is — like, she presumably has the same background as Sarah, and I have never got the impression Sarah has a background remotely similar to Joyce, but it’s becoming clear her New Atheism nonsense is coming from a similar place.

    1. Spencer

      Sarah and Liz are half-siblings who share a mother, and it seems that neither of them live with her.

      Her stepmother is the one Liz feels compelled to engage in performative faith to keep her off her back, on top of how being as similar to Joyce as she is led to her friends at Ball State mocking her, much the same way the cast of this series indulged in treating Joyce as a silly fundie weirdo it was okay to repeatedly mock at their leisure and who always deserved it for thinking the Earth is 6000 years old.

      1. Spencer

        Although now that I think about it, we don’t actually know if Sarah doesn’t live with her mom, just that her parents are divorced. Then her mom remarried and had Liz and, presumably, got divorced a second time, since Liz does not live with her.

        Double checking when she was talking with Joe, Sarah says she didn’t live together with Liz that long, so maybe Sarah does live with her mother, but then Liz’s father took her in the divorce.

      2. Jamie

        I wonder how much performative faith Sarah engages in.

        1. Spencer

          Sarah’s only commentary was when we learned Joyce is an atheist, where she commented that if there was a god he wasn’t doing much to show it, so it’s not really a big deal either way.

        2. C.T. Phipps

          I imagine the answer is “none.”

      3. Daibhid C

        Okay, I don’t remember any of that stuff, thanks.

  43. thumb

    Honestly, good for Joyce. No hero worship. Learn to love bad people.

  44. Inbar Fink

    Liz is clearly mirroring all of Joyce’s anxieties right now. She’s just more comfortable with voicing them out loud because she’s around her sister (and despite all the bickering, she’s a lot more honest and comfortable around her than she would be for anyone else. There’s a reason why she came back for Sarah)

    Plus Joyce, who is a friend she made outside of all the baggage of her previous image.

  45. alongcameaspider

    So far Sarah is not coming off good here, Liz just opened up about her insecurities and why she doesn’t want to go back to her school only to be met with “lol ur a fraud”

    1. Victor Riley

      But it seems like the “fraud” would just be an act, anyway. Given her still-Puritan-ish ideas about sex, as we saw with Joe. She is NOT actually going to do sex and drugs all the time, because she hasn’t even done either once. The drugs were vitamin gummies.

      There’s a lot Liz is not admitting to herself, and I imagine we’ll find out what that is eventually.

    2. Axel_Grease

      Sarah’s heart is in the right place but she’s not great with deep feelings.

  46. Plaaaa

    Drop out and go to school. Ironic

  47. Fuzzy

    Be this as it may, the solution absolutely cannot be “Liz couchsurfs at a college she’s not enrolled to for an entire semester”. That’s a terrible plan. It was a terrible plan when Becky had to do it, but Becky HAD to do it. Liz does not.

  48. Deviant

    One thing has served me quite well during my time in school such.

    I stopped caring pretty early on about how people saw me and what they’d think.

    1. Plaaaa

      Sarah should be quick to tell her: “People hating you is the surest way of knowing you’re doing the right thing!”

      1. C.T. Phipps

        I mean, we hate Ryan so…

        1. Clif

          being stabbed in the face was absolutely the right thing to do.

  49. zee (laptop posting)

    some days i look at the strip and know the comments are gonna be way too stressful to participate in
    So anyway i stayed up all night drawing my oc in the doa art style

    (im praying this works idk how html works im sorry if its broken)

    1. zee

      It worked!
      Just gotta hope it passes moderation
      Sorry if this is too much like self promo Willis, i understand

      1. The Wellerman

        Eh, don’t sweat it!

        As far as I could tell from posting my fan-game a few times, as long as it’s DOA related, I don’t think it should be a problem!

        Now what I want to know is, how did you get multiple aliases like that? o3o

        1. Spencer

          You can change your name whenever you want, but it needs to be approved again.

        2. Secretly Clif

          You change the name field and leave the email alone.

    2. Spencer

      It’s a good pic!

      1. zee

        Thanks! :3

    3. milu

      wow very cool! congrats! it really does look very DOA-y!
      What is she an OC… of? do you have a writing or comic project?

      re: shading, if you haven’t seen it Willis made a Tumblr post about how his shading technique (you have to scroll down as the first half is about character outfits)

      1. zee

        I saw I’m just really bad at placing shadows. I usually use a more soft shading style that masks it better lol.

        Right now she’s just part of a personal arsenal of characters i make with my boyfriend (he made her brother) for theoretical rp with friends that will probably never actually happen. I am really tempted to write a story from her perspective though, her personal character arc is very much about like, self discovery and acceptance, new experiences in college, coming out of her shell and making friends. So perfect for a coming of age story.

        For funsies i like to think she and her brother are background IU students, far away from the main characters drama (with their own instead)

      2. Delicious Taffy

        Knowledge truly is power.

    4. Clif

      Nice, zee.

    5. Delicious Taffy

      That’s a fine-lookin’ OC ya got there!

      1. zee

        Thanks! Y’all are sweet :3

  50. Jammy

    Good news: at least 50% of the time when “Quit” seems like an easy option, “Get over yourself” is still on the board.

  51. C.T. Phipps

    Now I want Joe and Liz together! They can overcome!

  52. Kaffeeteria

    Would Joyce really say “Oh my god”? I’d think she’d be way too self-conscious for that now.

  53. Hinoron

    “…I’m going to do sex all the time!”
    (Tackles to the floor, wrestling clench)
    “…Big sis? This is kind of a mixed message. I’m really hoping this is an awkward segue and not a wordless but eager expression of intent to join me in my stated new lifestyle…”

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