That’s not a crack ship, it’s fairly reasonable. Yes, they’re theoretically straight, but that’s the only issue. They like each other, spend a lot of time together, are a lot of fun when they share a scene…they’re even roommates. If there was more fanfic for this comic, there’d absolutely be a cadre of Joyce/Sarah shippers in the corner getting occasional flack from the more popular side of things.
There are people who are heterosexual but homoromantic. They don’t get laid very often, but the have lots of friends.
Z
I knew a guy like this in college. I felt kind of bad for him.
You can have enjoyable sex without sexual attraction, though, so it can still work out just probably with a strong side of porn and sex toys to fulfill that fantasy.
thejeff
I kind of wonder if this ties into the “bro” culture. All of your emotional connections are with your male friends and you go out with them looking to pick up women for sex, but not really relationships.
timemonkey
Joyce has also mentioned that growing up with Becky, a closeted lesbian who was in love with her, as her best friend may have coloured her view on how to be friends with other women.
Joyce has explicitly said that she doesn’t know where Jordan is or what he does, but she also said that her parents said they’d tell her when she’s older.
Although considering Joyce’s parents, they might consider anything from “plays Dungeons and Dragons” to “once voted Democrat” to be worthy of shame and ostracism, and something Joyce shouldn’t be told about.
Carol, anyway. Wonder if Hank would spill now that he’s more chill.
anonymsly
I think as far as the agreed-upon timeline is, Jordan left home at ‘maybe sixteen?’ He definitely wasn’t run out of town for voting wrong.
Z
Becky was nearly shot for being a lesbian by her own father and Carol supported her daughter being kidnapped and having a loaded gun pointed at her for supporting a lesbian. So honestly run out of town for voting wrong doesn’t feel that farfetched.
Ike
I’m pretty sure they’re saying he wasn’t old enough to vote.
Wizard
They kicked him out for trying to vote while underage.
When was this? I remember Jordan being mentioned, something along the lines of “he’s too Jordan to come for family weekend,” but I don’t recall any other snippet of backstory.
I’m sorry. I hope at least he recognises you as somebody who cares for him and who seems familiar even if it’s in a “you look like my [other relative]” sort of way ?
That’s tough, mr D. If memory is lost, the only thing you can hope to achieve is to brighten their day and I think you’re right on doing that. Stay strong, you may not notice it that clearly every time, but you are doing something great and good.
Who is worst member of the Brown family? We now know there’s an aunt and at least one alive grandparent close enough for Joyce to send a copy of her strip to. I’m gonna say John. Sure Carol would be the easy winner but John is younger and apparently embezzles church donations to buy cars. Overall worse longterm impact to me.
Eh, I find banal evil can often be more dangerous than the more extreme versions. There’s a great MLK quote that’s something along the lines of, “The greatest enemy to progress isn’t the KKK or the White Citizens’ Councils, but the white liberals who demand that progress only come at the proper time, in the proper way.” (Sorry, it’s late and I can’t be bothered to look up the exact quote.) Similarly, the cult leaders and the abusers may seem like the worst that organized religion has to offer, but all told they’re probably doing less damage than the run-of-the-mill grifters and scam artists. (Not that those are mutually exclusive, mind you.)
Andy
I get what you’re saying, but I want to draw a line between John’s bamal church had and Carol’s exemplary church evil. John skimming from the donations is obviously a bad thing but it’s almost expected for big churches (and I’m not entirely convinced he embezzled; I suspect from what Jocelyn said that the car may have been purchased for him by the church). Carol helped pay bail for and then made excuses for a kidnapper who was an accessory to murder. Thats pretty damn bad.
I’m not saying John is good or okay or whatever. But Carol seems to go out of her way to be the worst possible type of “Christian” .
Rabid Rabbit
Yeah, I’m not convinced by “embezzled” either. I mean, it ould be, but that feels a bit too much like making John an individually terrible person, as opposed to a hypocrite joining a hypocritical organization because they’d buy him a nice car. If Jocelyn was (accurately) accusing him of embezzling, that might make his refusing to give her a ride understandable, but that would be out of guilt. It felt a lot more like Jocelyn was pointing out the overall hypocrisy of the church. You can argue that the church embezzled the donations, in that the donors presumably assume that all their donations are going towards charity, and the church convinces itself that nice cars are just a necessary thing, for various reasons, and thus charitable in their own right, but suggesting that John does it on his own feels like less of an indictment of the whole organization. It’s the “just a few bad apples” argument. It seems pretty clear that John joined a church that Carol would approve of; we know that that church is rotten all around. Suggesting John is just a dishonest member is a bit too close to letting the rest off for comfort.
Sirksome
“Embezzle” admittedly might be a leading term since I didn’t 100% remember the strip, but I still think it implies a general disingenuine aspect of John we haven’t quite seen. Definitely comes off as a privileged guy using faith as a grift/enablement of his lifestyle that’s all too common and dangerous in organized faith. But maybe I’m wrong. I do think he has more potential than Carol to do horrible things than her upper middle aged divorcee stay at home mom status does.
Needfuldoer
Jocelyne says the church bought the Mustang for him, so it’s probably a kickback for the “mission work” he does overseas rather than him skimming off the top. Just your run-of-the-mill American fundagelical grift, nothing to see here!
Hey thanks! I didn’t feel like archive diving to find this and I guess it does imply more of the churches wrongdoing than his. But I actually think he comes off even worse, what with casually dismissing lgbt rights in front of his trans sister, while talking about Joyce and Becky. “Life is hard” I guess it’s too hard for gay people to exist according to John. Becky is so entitled. College did that!
Daibhid C
John sometimes reminds me of the televangelist in Good Omens, where the narration says something along the lines of he’s not exactly a hypocrite, because he really does spend most of the money on what he thinks God wants him to do.
Other times I think “Nope, he’s the other kind”.
thejeff
Carol wasn’t alone in helping pay bail though. That was a church effort. We didn’t see John, but that certainly doesn’t mean he would have objected. Given his reaction to Joyce at the lunch, I’d be surprised if he would have.
skeptible
It just occurred to me that Carol and her church get a lot of flak for posting bail but I don’t remember outrage at the court for setting bail.
Sarah talks about how they’re going to have to set bail. And it sounds like the court was trying to set an impossibly high bail, but then mob money made it possible.
Segnosaur
At the time of the earlier comic posting I think someone pointed out that by law, judges in Indiana HAVE to allow bail for all crimes except for murder.
The best they can do is set bail to be really high (which obviously failed here)
Al
Look I’m open to replacing the US constitution with something less scummy, but if you’re going to operate within that framework, there’s a *reason* you can’t require excessive bail.
Eighth amendment:
Excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed,
nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Wereg
Iunno. In my mind, “Vocally/Fiscally supports someone that repeatedly tried to abduct their child so they could ‘shelter’ the sexual deviancy out of them” is quite a bit worse than embezzlement.
misanthropope
liked *and* subscribed.
John is a prick, Carol is a monster. Give him time, i know, but right now it’s no contest.
Andy
Another thing I’ve thought of is that even if we accept the premise that those who allow evil or tacitly support it are more evil than those who actively do it, that still doesn’t mean John is the worst Brown. Hank would be.
Hank has spent decades married to Carol and failed to prevent her from abetting evil when it mattered. He agreed with and assisted in raising their children in ways that left them with trauma. He has probably done the least direct bad on screen of any member of that church, with the exceptions of Joyce and Becky, but he did not oppose nearly enough of the others’ actions. If we’re accepting banal evil as more damaging, Hank helped set much of the family’s evil into motion and then did almost nothing to stop it. Divorcing Carol and opposing her after the kidnapping is too little too late to truly mitigate that.
JBento
Hey, remember when Hank was upset that Joyce took the family car to get herself and Becky out of a house where a discussion about how terrible Becky was for being lesbian was undergoing? Good times, good times.
Spencer
yeh
Hank is making an effort to change because he got out of the loop long enough to realize the loop was fucky and destroying his daughter, and then his wife bailed out the guy who almost shot her in the face. None of this changes that Hank was also as willing and complicit in every single bad thing that went on in the Brown household because he got indoctrinated super hard like every fundie does. Carol is the same, Carol just didn’t recognize the same weight Hank did when Joyce defied them, and so she remained in the loop until she utterly ruined her relationship with Joyce.
Hank wants to be a good person now, that’s because he wasn’t one prior.
Andy
Thanks Spencer. That’s a good way of generalizing it that I was having trouble with
thejeff
Well, that’s cause it’s a dumb premise if taken literally.
Where it does work is the larger societal context, where there are generally a lot more of the banal evil types and their tacit support is necessary. That doesn’t mean that even MLK thought the average white liberal was worse individually than a KKK member, just that the cumulative effect was more of a problem.
And Hank’s a different case anyway, because Hank has changed. Old Hank was (nearly?) as bad as Carol, but he’s shifted to being much more supportive. That’s not quite the same as just a banal liberal. More someone who’d been in the KKK, but got outraged and switched to working for desegregation.
Like, nope. Carol is the worst one we know about, by far. It’s not even a contest.
Also, John isn’t embezzling. He didn’t skim funds to buy the car. It’s just that the Brown’s church thinks getting him a new car is a worthy way to spend the money. Shit, I’d have MORE respect for John if he WERE in the church to embezzle funds instead of being a true believer.
Of course, he’s likely in the church, doing that work, because he gets the fancy car out of it. He’s not skimming from the church. The purpose of the church is skimming from the populace for the leaders.
John doesn’t embezzle. The church, arguably, embezzles from itself but I think that’s fairly legal.
Carol hands down – she enabled a man who pointed a loaded gun ather daughter to then kidnap her daughter and a bunch of other people and defended this action to the hilt.
One of these days I will figure out a way to play those old pre-Roomies! “Walkerton” games on modern hardware.
I did find some playthrough videos of them on YouTube, if nothing else, on a channel called Ragey0. One of said games gives God a “Special Thanx” credit, and given everything Willis has written since then I’m not sure if that’s hilarious, depressing, or both.
I am just now fully appreciating that it’s quite likely that Joyce’s church, and almost certainly her mother, believes the pain of menstruation to be punishment for sins. Which, yikes, and which, also, Joyce, this is not standard, please see a medical professional about it. Get some relief and make sure you’re essentially okay.
173 thoughts on “Pick up”
Ana Chronistic
“is ‘dump in Radio Flyer’ not an option”
Ana Chronistic
Jordan is in Western Asia *badum tish*
Doctor_Who
She still has access to Carla’s Zoomr account, maybe see if they have someone with a moped that can handle stairs.
Thag Simmons
I don’t think that’s an intended use of the app.
Doctor_Who
And yet, if Sarah went to Carla and said the words “moped” and “stairs”, she would absolutely approve.
Thag Simmons
She would, but Carla would also probably approve of a lot of things that you can’t do with the Zoomr app.
not someone else
Evidence for the “Jordan is the internet pornlord expy” theory!
tbf
Or some variation on post-Shortpacked! Willis that’s incompatible with even the compressed timescale of Joyce’s personal growth.
Doctor_Who
Jordan IS Willis, he escaped through a wormhole into our reality, where time moves faster.
That’s why he says Joyce is autobiographical, they literally had the same childhood because they grew up as siblings.
Cyntalan
where time moves faster…
so reality then. XD
Cyntalan
and I realize late on rereading that that said “into our reality” rather than “into a reality”.
Ignore me. -_-
Jenn
Damn, beat me to it!
Sirksome
Aw! I wanna see Sarah princess carry Joyce to feed my Joyce x Sarah crack ship I just came up with right now!
Viktoria
That’s not a crack ship, it’s fairly reasonable. Yes, they’re theoretically straight, but that’s the only issue. They like each other, spend a lot of time together, are a lot of fun when they share a scene…they’re even roommates. If there was more fanfic for this comic, there’d absolutely be a cadre of Joyce/Sarah shippers in the corner getting occasional flack from the more popular side of things.
Switchchris24
There have been signs that Joyce might be Bisexual, or maybe Biromantic, if her comic has anything to say about it lol.
drs
Or much of her interaction with Dorothy, Sal, and Billie.
Opus the Poet
There are people who are heterosexual but homoromantic. They don’t get laid very often, but the have lots of friends.
Z
I knew a guy like this in college. I felt kind of bad for him.
You can have enjoyable sex without sexual attraction, though, so it can still work out just probably with a strong side of porn and sex toys to fulfill that fantasy.
thejeff
I kind of wonder if this ties into the “bro” culture. All of your emotional connections are with your male friends and you go out with them looking to pick up women for sex, but not really relationships.
timemonkey
Joyce has also mentioned that growing up with Becky, a closeted lesbian who was in love with her, as her best friend may have coloured her view on how to be friends with other women.
Meagan
Great points
thakoru
Oh my god they were roommates.
Yet_One_More_Idiot
If it was ever gonna happen, I bet Becky thought she’d be the girl someday picking up Joyce… ;D
The Wellerman
Poor Joyce!!!! ??
Yumi
Information about Jordan! Nice.
DailyBrad
I knew Jordan was out of the loop, didn’t know he was MIA. I wonder if Joss knows.
Thag Simmons
Joyce has explicitly said that she doesn’t know where Jordan is or what he does, but she also said that her parents said they’d tell her when she’s older.
Doctor_Who
Although considering Joyce’s parents, they might consider anything from “plays Dungeons and Dragons” to “once voted Democrat” to be worthy of shame and ostracism, and something Joyce shouldn’t be told about.
Carol, anyway. Wonder if Hank would spill now that he’s more chill.
anonymsly
I think as far as the agreed-upon timeline is, Jordan left home at ‘maybe sixteen?’ He definitely wasn’t run out of town for voting wrong.
Z
Becky was nearly shot for being a lesbian by her own father and Carol supported her daughter being kidnapped and having a loaded gun pointed at her for supporting a lesbian. So honestly run out of town for voting wrong doesn’t feel that farfetched.
Ike
I’m pretty sure they’re saying he wasn’t old enough to vote.
Wizard
They kicked him out for trying to vote while underage.
tim gueguen
“Your brother…your brother runs a record store. A secular record store!”
shylar
When was this? I remember Jordan being mentioned, something along the lines of “he’s too Jordan to come for family weekend,” but I don’t recall any other snippet of backstory.
Mr D
Ahh elder dementia. Not fun. Been taking care of grampa for a year now.
He doesn’t know who I am and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t known for a long time.
Laura
That is tough, Mr. D. You’re a good person for caring for him anyway. Everyone needs someone who will care for them if they need it.
Miri
I’m sorry. I hope at least he recognises you as somebody who cares for him and who seems familiar even if it’s in a “you look like my [other relative]” sort of way ?
Ron
That’s tough, mr D. If memory is lost, the only thing you can hope to achieve is to brighten their day and I think you’re right on doing that. Stay strong, you may not notice it that clearly every time, but you are doing something great and good.
Darkoneko
The comment section demands a princess carry !
Bicycle Bill
Just what IS a princess carry? Or is that the traditional “carrying-the-bride-over-the-threshold” maneuver?
Nevermaker
Yeah, that’s what it is: I think it’s called that because it’s how you’d traditionally carry a princess out of a tower after rescuing her or something
Needfuldoer
Exactly.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-8/02-this-is-the-way-that-we-love/effer/
Darkoneko
man, it’s weird seeing Joyce without glasses now
Sirksome
Who is worst member of the Brown family? We now know there’s an aunt and at least one alive grandparent close enough for Joyce to send a copy of her strip to. I’m gonna say John. Sure Carol would be the easy winner but John is younger and apparently embezzles church donations to buy cars. Overall worse longterm impact to me.
Andy
John is a normal banal type of church bad. Carol goes for extra credit.
thakoru
Eh, I find banal evil can often be more dangerous than the more extreme versions. There’s a great MLK quote that’s something along the lines of, “The greatest enemy to progress isn’t the KKK or the White Citizens’ Councils, but the white liberals who demand that progress only come at the proper time, in the proper way.” (Sorry, it’s late and I can’t be bothered to look up the exact quote.) Similarly, the cult leaders and the abusers may seem like the worst that organized religion has to offer, but all told they’re probably doing less damage than the run-of-the-mill grifters and scam artists. (Not that those are mutually exclusive, mind you.)
Andy
I get what you’re saying, but I want to draw a line between John’s bamal church had and Carol’s exemplary church evil. John skimming from the donations is obviously a bad thing but it’s almost expected for big churches (and I’m not entirely convinced he embezzled; I suspect from what Jocelyn said that the car may have been purchased for him by the church). Carol helped pay bail for and then made excuses for a kidnapper who was an accessory to murder. Thats pretty damn bad.
I’m not saying John is good or okay or whatever. But Carol seems to go out of her way to be the worst possible type of “Christian” .
Rabid Rabbit
Yeah, I’m not convinced by “embezzled” either. I mean, it ould be, but that feels a bit too much like making John an individually terrible person, as opposed to a hypocrite joining a hypocritical organization because they’d buy him a nice car. If Jocelyn was (accurately) accusing him of embezzling, that might make his refusing to give her a ride understandable, but that would be out of guilt. It felt a lot more like Jocelyn was pointing out the overall hypocrisy of the church. You can argue that the church embezzled the donations, in that the donors presumably assume that all their donations are going towards charity, and the church convinces itself that nice cars are just a necessary thing, for various reasons, and thus charitable in their own right, but suggesting that John does it on his own feels like less of an indictment of the whole organization. It’s the “just a few bad apples” argument. It seems pretty clear that John joined a church that Carol would approve of; we know that that church is rotten all around. Suggesting John is just a dishonest member is a bit too close to letting the rest off for comfort.
Sirksome
“Embezzle” admittedly might be a leading term since I didn’t 100% remember the strip, but I still think it implies a general disingenuine aspect of John we haven’t quite seen. Definitely comes off as a privileged guy using faith as a grift/enablement of his lifestyle that’s all too common and dangerous in organized faith. But maybe I’m wrong. I do think he has more potential than Carol to do horrible things than her upper middle aged divorcee stay at home mom status does.
Needfuldoer
Jocelyne says the church bought the Mustang for him, so it’s probably a kickback for the “mission work” he does overseas rather than him skimming off the top. Just your run-of-the-mill American fundagelical grift, nothing to see here!
/s
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/trendy/#comments
Sirksome
Hey thanks! I didn’t feel like archive diving to find this and I guess it does imply more of the churches wrongdoing than his. But I actually think he comes off even worse, what with casually dismissing lgbt rights in front of his trans sister, while talking about Joyce and Becky. “Life is hard” I guess it’s too hard for gay people to exist according to John. Becky is so entitled. College did that!
Daibhid C
John sometimes reminds me of the televangelist in Good Omens, where the narration says something along the lines of he’s not exactly a hypocrite, because he really does spend most of the money on what he thinks God wants him to do.
Other times I think “Nope, he’s the other kind”.
thejeff
Carol wasn’t alone in helping pay bail though. That was a church effort. We didn’t see John, but that certainly doesn’t mean he would have objected. Given his reaction to Joyce at the lunch, I’d be surprised if he would have.
skeptible
It just occurred to me that Carol and her church get a lot of flak for posting bail but I don’t remember outrage at the court for setting bail.
Nathan
Sarah talks about how they’re going to have to set bail. And it sounds like the court was trying to set an impossibly high bail, but then mob money made it possible.
Segnosaur
At the time of the earlier comic posting I think someone pointed out that by law, judges in Indiana HAVE to allow bail for all crimes except for murder.
The best they can do is set bail to be really high (which obviously failed here)
Al
Look I’m open to replacing the US constitution with something less scummy, but if you’re going to operate within that framework, there’s a *reason* you can’t require excessive bail.
Eighth amendment:
Excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed,
nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Wereg
Iunno. In my mind, “Vocally/Fiscally supports someone that repeatedly tried to abduct their child so they could ‘shelter’ the sexual deviancy out of them” is quite a bit worse than embezzlement.
misanthropope
liked *and* subscribed.
John is a prick, Carol is a monster. Give him time, i know, but right now it’s no contest.
Andy
Another thing I’ve thought of is that even if we accept the premise that those who allow evil or tacitly support it are more evil than those who actively do it, that still doesn’t mean John is the worst Brown. Hank would be.
Hank has spent decades married to Carol and failed to prevent her from abetting evil when it mattered. He agreed with and assisted in raising their children in ways that left them with trauma. He has probably done the least direct bad on screen of any member of that church, with the exceptions of Joyce and Becky, but he did not oppose nearly enough of the others’ actions. If we’re accepting banal evil as more damaging, Hank helped set much of the family’s evil into motion and then did almost nothing to stop it. Divorcing Carol and opposing her after the kidnapping is too little too late to truly mitigate that.
JBento
Hey, remember when Hank was upset that Joyce took the family car to get herself and Becky out of a house where a discussion about how terrible Becky was for being lesbian was undergoing? Good times, good times.
Spencer
yeh
Hank is making an effort to change because he got out of the loop long enough to realize the loop was fucky and destroying his daughter, and then his wife bailed out the guy who almost shot her in the face. None of this changes that Hank was also as willing and complicit in every single bad thing that went on in the Brown household because he got indoctrinated super hard like every fundie does. Carol is the same, Carol just didn’t recognize the same weight Hank did when Joyce defied them, and so she remained in the loop until she utterly ruined her relationship with Joyce.
Hank wants to be a good person now, that’s because he wasn’t one prior.
Andy
Thanks Spencer. That’s a good way of generalizing it that I was having trouble with
thejeff
Well, that’s cause it’s a dumb premise if taken literally.
Where it does work is the larger societal context, where there are generally a lot more of the banal evil types and their tacit support is necessary. That doesn’t mean that even MLK thought the average white liberal was worse individually than a KKK member, just that the cumulative effect was more of a problem.
And Hank’s a different case anyway, because Hank has changed. Old Hank was (nearly?) as bad as Carol, but he’s shifted to being much more supportive. That’s not quite the same as just a banal liberal. More someone who’d been in the KKK, but got outraged and switched to working for desegregation.
JBento
Like, nope. Carol is the worst one we know about, by far. It’s not even a contest.
Also, John isn’t embezzling. He didn’t skim funds to buy the car. It’s just that the Brown’s church thinks getting him a new car is a worthy way to spend the money. Shit, I’d have MORE respect for John if he WERE in the church to embezzle funds instead of being a true believer.
thejeff
Of course, he’s likely in the church, doing that work, because he gets the fancy car out of it. He’s not skimming from the church. The purpose of the church is skimming from the populace for the leaders.
Z
John doesn’t embezzle. The church, arguably, embezzles from itself but I think that’s fairly legal.
Carol hands down – she enabled a man who pointed a loaded gun ather daughter to then kidnap her daughter and a bunch of other people and defended this action to the hilt.
The Wellerman
On a more positive note, when you all reckon we get to see Joyce’s game dev phase? ??
RassilonTDavros
One of these days I will figure out a way to play those old pre-Roomies! “Walkerton” games on modern hardware.
I did find some playthrough videos of them on YouTube, if nothing else, on a channel called Ragey0. One of said games gives God a “Special Thanx” credit, and given everything Willis has written since then I’m not sure if that’s hilarious, depressing, or both.
Needfuldoer
Windows 3.1 runs inside DOSbox.
shellshockbp
Thanks for giving me something to do this morning. Those games are quite the time capsule.
pope suburban
I am just now fully appreciating that it’s quite likely that Joyce’s church, and almost certainly her mother, believes the pain of menstruation to be punishment for sins. Which, yikes, and which, also, Joyce, this is not standard, please see a medical professional about it. Get some relief and make sure you’re essentially okay.
crow