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Decorations
Posted on March 15, 2019 by David M Willis
We did it!  The Dumbing of Age Book 8 Kickstarter has hit its next stretch goal, so here are NASH – everyone’s favorite screwball over at Forest Quad – and FAZ – nobody’s favorite Amber’s little brother. You can pledge for them all by themselves, or you can grab either of the PICK THREE or PICK FIVE MAGNETS tiers and choose them to be in your squad after the surveys go out!  And, as always, if you’ve pledged for COMPLETE MAGNET POWER, these have been added to your pile. The next stretch goal is unlocking RACHEL at $40!  Not OTHER RACHEL, that’s a different person, but just plain ol’ RACHEL.  And be on the lookout for other surprise reveals along the way!

266 thoughts on “Decorations”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    SNAP, got told by JOYCE

    1. LookingIn

      and she’s not wrong either- they are LONG and BORING despite countless action scenes…

      1. BSLangley

        Long, yes, boring, not really. The damn books on the other hand…shudder. I read them once and that was enough. For comparison, I will gladly and enjoyingly read Robert Jordan’s Wheel Of Time series multiple times before subjecting myself to Lord Of The Rings ever again. And, in fact, I am currently reading the Wheel Of Time series for the third time!

        1. Xenocide

          I found both the books and films boring. I saw Return of the King in the cinema with my friend, and pretty much fell asleep.

          I enjoyed the Wheel Of Time more, but the middle books of that were hard to get through as well. The first few and last few were great though.

        2. Sunny

          Nynaeve tugged her braid.

        3. Sam

          All of it was far too much of a boring slog for me. My dad loved the LOTR and the Hobbit movies and knew about the parts they cut out and cut in because he had read the books. But I fell asleep during the LOTR movies and I wish I could have during the last Hobbit movie because it was all weirdly paced and took three hours to tell you… I don’t even know. A war is happening now because we killed the dragon in the first ten minutes of this movie so there has to be more fighting added somehow?

        4. MatthewTheLucky

          See, the issue there is that it’s all in like two scenes in the book, and the explanation is just ‘Those goblins finally caught up and the humans and elves are making a play for the gold’ and then Bilbo goes home because Eagles solve everything forever.

        5. thejeff

          Obviously tastes vary. 🙂

          The LotR books are classics that I’ve loved for decades. I’d agree they’re not really fast-paced, but for me they have great depth and plenty of exciting moments.
          The movies I’m much less fond of. Much of the depth removed and papered over with action sequences and I don’t even like Jackson’s action sequences. There were certainly some good bits, especially in Fellowship.

          WoT on the hand I read and enjoyed, but damn did it drag for entire books. Really felt like it had grown out of the author’s control.

        6. Lucy

          Yeah, de gustibus and all that. I haven’t watched the movies in a while, but I loved them when they came out. I’ve read the books a few times, and like them okay, but the language is not to my taste. I think that’s a large part of what drew me to King’s Dark Tower series (which I often describe as my Lord of the Rings): epic quest, snappier prose.

        7. Pylgrim

          Heh, what you call “snappier” in King’s prose I call “dry as hell”. I mean, Tolkien’s IS excessively, wastefully florid and arcane, but surely, a balance can be struck between using 10 pages to describe how the ancestors of a tertiary character fell in love and basically saying “Look, stuff happened like an era ago or whatever, who cares. Let’s just talk about how someone just got his ankles blown off instead.”

          For me, that balance is found in Brandon Sanderson, especially his Mistborn trilogy.

        8. Ana Chronistic

          Dude loved his flavour text

          No really, it was a love letter to made-up language

        9. Xenocide

          I started reading Sanderson because he wrote the last 3 Wheel of Time books, and all of his books are of consistently high quality. Love his stuff.

        10. Liliet

          HELLO FELLOW LOTR BOOKS APPRECIATOR.

          Sounds like I should read Wheel of Time.

        11. Emperor Norton II

          Wheel of Time starts strong, then gets sluggish… and I gave up before the end, so no idea if it picked up again. According to another comment, the end was good.

          My thing was that in the beginning, it was a fairly straightforward plot written well; including well done action sequences. Nothing particularly new, but well done. And I like well done better than I like new for the sake of being new. (Although if you can pull off both new -and- well done at once, then damn, you will officially have my interest.)

          Gradually, though (from around book five or so); the books got more and more focused on “political intrigue”…. Which is something Jordan was -not- good at. At all.

          And it was around this time that a certain other book series actually started happening which did political intrigue about a gazillion times better; because -that- series mainly based itself on pretty much everyone being nearly complete bastards, thus being rather realistic for a fantasy series. You may have heard about it. Some musical event about hot and cold stuff or something.

          Anyway, you might absolutely find yourself enjoying the first few books of Wheel of Time. Just know that there is a middle to slug through before you start committing to what is quite a big bit of time and emotional investment.

        12. Xenocide

          In terms of them picking up at the end, I think it’s at least partially because the last three books were written by Brandon Sanderson from a huge amount of notes that Jordan left behind, rather than Jordan himself.

          As you say, the middle became something of a mire of political intrigue, once the narrative was forced to move towards the ending it picked up somewhat!

        13. Michelle J. Caboose

          See, that’s why YMMV. I first read The Hobbit and LOTR around 5th grade, and I loved them. I’m not even sure anymore how many times I’ve read them (and I’ll be 50 in May). The Silmarillion, OTOH, I couldn’t get past the first 10 or 20 pages. I found it more boring than the “begat” section of the book of Genesis. Or Dune (which I read several times because I kept forgetting how tedious it was).

        14. Michelle J. Caboose

          The LoTR movies, though… Eh. I’ve seen them each once (Well, 1 1/2 times for The Two Towers, because I fell asleep somewhere around the “Theoden is possessed by Wormtongue” BS that wasn’t in the book, and added nothing to the story (other than additional runtime).

        15. Daibhid C

          This.

          Haven’t even bothered with The LOTR Appendices Trilogy That Has The Hobbit Buried Inside It Somewhere.

        16. Liliet

          Yeah, the Silmarillion requires a very special brand of “it’s this or encyclopedias” boredom to get through.

          I can testify because I read it.

          And never, never reread, no matter how bored I was.

        17. thejeff

          I actually enjoy the Silmarillion, but I understand it’s not for everyone.

          There are some really good bits in it, but it was never actually a finished work, so the quality is very uneven and it’s not really a coherent narrative. There are basically 2-3 main stories embedded in it (Turin, Beren/Luthien and maybe Tuor) and all the build up and background necessary to set them up.

        18. MatthewTheLucky

          I find the Silmarillion is best enjoyed as a walk through the LotR wiki.

    2. Chronos

      …well played, Joyce.

  2. AnvilPro

    Damn, so Joyce has been using sarcastic religion to get out of boring stuff.

    She’s become too strong.

    1. Regalli

      Quick. Use the tiny pumpkins to trap her.

    2. chris2315

      Did you… did you just call The Lord of the Rings boring? FOOL OF A TOOK!

      1. Doctor_Who

        A Lord of the Rings movie is never too long, nor is it too short. It ends precisely when it means to.

        1. Khantalas

          And they always mean to end four hours later than was strictly necessary.

        2. Clif

          But they left out endings and the ending showing how Merry and Pippin had grown was important dammit. Killing off Sauraman too early – grumph!

        3. Bagge

          Right, so what we need is four ADDITIONAL hours.

        4. Icalasari

          Just make it an HBO series

        5. Felix

          Exactly right! Except it doesn’t have enough edgy adult content for HBO…

        6. Khantalas

          Just add the Arwen / Aragorn erotic flashbacks that JRR was too prudish to write about.

        7. Kinoko

          Just make it an Amazon series.

          …Oh right.

        8. Pylgrim

          Netflix original it is, then.

        9. Emperor Norton II

          Khantals: Why stop there? Obviously they should also add in the romance of Gimli and Legolas. I mean, the two of them left the rest of the party to spend some quality time alone on their way to their respective homes.

          And the reason Legolas was speechless about the caverns near Helm’s Deep was not because of the caverns themselves. Let’s just say that he did not expect Gimli to have such sensitive hands….

        10. Joshua Kronengold

          No, what we need is four -different- hours. Drop the gratuitous falling masonry (fragile dwarven workmanship–if they didn’t use magic, their stuff wouldn’t last for centuries only to fall apart when the plot demanded it), the unnecessary Theoposession, False-Hearted Faramir, the random Arwen rescue scene, the Frodosack at the ford–etc, and drop in points of rest between the artificially non-stop action scenes, as well as a brief reclaiming of the shire scene that makes the early “burning of the shire” palantir scene true but incredibly misleading and the films would be far better, tighter, less boring, and as an unnecessary side effect, closer to the books.

        11. Kryss LaBryn

          I’m still holding out hope that the fans who made The Hunt for Gollum and Born of Hope do a Scourging of the Shire one as well.

          Seeing as they came out in 2009, though, that’s an increasingly forlorn hope… :/

        12. thejeff

          It’s an inherent problem with fantasy movies. They are by necessity special effect heavy expensive movies, which means they have to be blockbusters, which generally means doubling down on the action sequences. The books weren’t “action-adventures”, but the movies have to be.
          In Hollywood think you can’t have big action sequences without making it fully a big action movie. The action sequences will drive away movie goers who don’t like action movies and those who want an action movie will get upset there wasn’t enough action. Sadly, they might be right.
          The formula worked. They were blockbuster hits.

        13. FacelessDeviant

          Honestly, I could live without seeing Sauruman reduced to a maffia boss over mobster hobbits.

        14. chris2315

          What? Is that what happens in the books? I wanna see that! I wanna see a whole five season Emmy award winning TV drama starring Bryan Cranston about that!

        15. MatthewTheLucky

          That’s the final act of the series, yes. Including Sam as the Resistance leader.

        16. Andrusi

          Hobsters, if you will.

        17. LookingIn

          let’s be realistic, it was six hours later…it’s just a lot of filler that doesn’t add much to the main storyline and could have been whizzed over fast without harming the epicness of the movie

        18. Pylgrim

          “Many movies that last long deserve to be cut. And some that are cut short deserve to be longer. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out editing in judgement.”

    3. abysswatcher1993

      Calling TLOTR boring is HERESY! CAN I CALL EXTERMINATUS?! I DON’T CARE THAT WARHAMMER 40K HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS!

      1. ktbear

        As a Kiwi you have my authority to do whatever it takes to defend the awesomeness that is TLOTR.

      2. nobilis

        Nobody called TLOTR anything. People are just talking about those weird moving pictures thingies pretending to adapt the books.
        Remember, JRR never wanted a movie.

        1. abysswatcher1993

          But the movie has validation as an interpretation from Peter Jackson, in the same way the version by Ralph Bakshi also is valid. It like the fanarts we made in our childhood about things we love.

        2. Joshua Kronengold

          It does! It’s totally commercial fanart, and as such, we are totally entitled to talk about the things they got amazingly right (The Balrog! Intorducing Saruman early so he’s harder to confuse with Sauron! Making Boromir -likable-) as well as the things that could have been better.

          (we generally need to be more polite about non-commercial fanart, because things people are making for love, not fame or money are less legitimate targets for criticism)

        3. thejeff

          Agreed. Especially the Boromir bit. There were a couple of minor scenes of him interacting with the hobbits that really added a lot of impact and did it subtly and without distracting from anything else that was going on.

        4. Kinoko

          Hard same. I adore movie Boromir. A lot of that is Sean Bean acting the hell out of the extra stuff they gave him. And the flashback scene from Two Towers extended edition where he’s shown being awesome for his people and a good big brother to Faramir melts my heart.

        5. BBCC

          Plus, with fan art/fanfiction/etc. if you don’t like it, I think it’s important to talk about it somewhere the author doesn’t necessarily have to see it. It’s one thing to talk about things you liked or didn’t like on your personal blog where you analyze things you like or don’t like or a comment section of a different site with a relevant topic and putting it in somewhere where it goes directly to the author’s inbox.

      3. Kinoko

        IMO, those films are cinematic masterpieces. I literally just rewatched all of the extended editions last week. Granted, I’m currently unemployed, so what else am I gonna do? Still masterpieces!

      4. FacelessDeviant

        40k is ALWAYS relevant to ANY subject!

  3. Dark

    Damn, girl. You go with that personal growth.

  4. CleverTrousers

    BEWARE THE BRIDES OF FRANKENSTEIN!

    1. Doctor_Who

      Beware!

  5. Yotomoe

    I can’t watch Lord of the rings because it’s NERD TRASH. I’m too busy being cool.

    1. BBCC

      Billie, give Yotomoe his account back. 😛

      1. Clif

        ♡

      2. abysswatcher1993

        Every cool kid that mocked nerd stuff is now an adult that casually watches the MCU and doesn’t consider themselves nerds. Hypocrites.

        1. BBCC

          The key word there is ‘casually’. 😛

        2. MatthewTheLucky

          Also, it’s Cinema Geek not Cinema Nerd. Nerd is for the comics.

        3. OBBWG

          I am very fortunate to have landed in a weird alternate universe where nerdy stuff like superheroes and LOTR are cool and mainstream.

  6. Madock345

    Damn Joyce, that’s cold XD

    1. Stephen Bierce

      Must be the lowest heat setting on the hair blowdryer.

      1. Lily

        The lowest heat settings on dryers are groooss

        1. Delicious Taffy

          Amen to that. Yeah, I’d like clammy hair, please?

  7. Nono

    Who’s ‘us’? Sarah has someone she’s willing to watch movies with?

    1. Danielle

      dina maybe

      1. Pablo360

        Headcanon accepted

    2. Yotomoe

      No they were watching the movie “US”. Sarah has 5 on it.

    3. Deathjavu

      This was my exact thought. The big twist here is not that Joyce is ok with Halloween, it’s that some unspecified non-Joyce group was ok with spending 9 hours watching movies with Sarah. And that Sarah likes things, at all.

      1. Makkabee

        But when you’re watching movies, people shut up for NINETY WHOLE MINUTES. Continuous minutes! And when you watch LotR they shut up for twice as long! Hell yeah, Sarah would be into that.

        1. Seregiel

          Look! I can be social! (When I don’t have to say anything) – Sarah always.

        2. Goshii

          But every watch party i’ve been at is constant talking and discussion during and after the movie

  8. Danielle

    minus the extended editions!

  9. Sol Karas

    I recall that David himself was allowed to celebrate Halloween, and seeing as how Joyce is anecdotal, not surprising she’s fine with it.

    1. BBCC

      Well, sort of. One difference between Willis and Joyce is Willis was the oldest while Joyce is youngest. Willis has said his younger sister (the youngest) was NOT allowed to celebrate Halloween.

      1. Uly

        That is the complete opposite of how privileges are supposed to trickle down from oldest to youngest sibling.

        1. BBCC

          I dunno, I’ve known plenty of people whose older siblings were allowed to do things they weren’t because their parents changed their minds or only set rules based on what worked or didn’t work with the older ones (or sometimes deciding they didn’t like something but too late to stop oldest kid).

        2. Bagge

          “We thought this activity was OK, but when se saw how your older sibling turned out we changed our mind.”

          “…thanks, dad.”

        3. Touchfuzzy

          My older brother was given a lot more leeway than I was, and part of the reason I wasn’t was because he abused the hell out of that leeway.

        4. Bluesnake462

          my parents used to be pretty strict about what we got to watch on tv, but I got to watch a lot more stuff than my older sister did. Like I actually got to watch Spongebob.

        5. Kinoko

          Being the oldest, I was the kid that my dad showed cool violent movies to because he was excited to share them with his kids and couldn’t wait until we were “old enough”. My little brother, being more prone to violence than me or my sister, was prohibited from the same things for MUCH longer than our 4 year age difference.
          For example, I saw Fight Club with my dad when I was 14, and it’s still in my top three favorite movies.

        6. thejeff

          The Christian Right has also been getting stricter and weirder over the years, so it might have been a change in their church’s teachings rather than anything internal to the family dynamic.

  10. Achallenger

    That tooth dryer is too powerful, it’s blowing her hair all over the place

    1. ValdVin

      Eh, it’s not even blowing her eyelids open.

    2. Yumi

      She needs to permanently style her hair like that, starting immediately.

      1. ValdVin

        She could spend all her time on Garbage Roof until her hair stays that way.

      2. Tacos

        Have her hair stick straight up. Become Super Saiyin Joyce.

      3. Tawdry Quirks

        Agreed. I’m digging her blowdryer hair as well.

    3. Amazi-Stool

      Eh! It’s not even it’s final storm!

  11. BBCC

    I mean, tbf, I’d believe it too. We’re talking about a family that wouldn’t let her watch Scooby Doo because it was a gateway to witch craft and prays for the souls of Pokemon fans. I put nothing past them.

    That said, I wonder if this sort of thing will come up in conjunction with her faith crisis later.

    1. Yotomoe

      Turns out that they truly hated ScoobyDoo for besmirching the sacred act of putting on silly ghost costumes. They loved halloween so much they couldn’t stand anyone making a mockery of it.

      1. Yumi

        Or they just hated Scooby-Doo. “Ugh, another kid, what do we do when she wants to watch friggin’ Scooby-Doo?” “We tell her she’ll go to hell, Hank.”

        1. Regalli

          I remember Willis talking about how Scooby Doo is subversive because it encourages critical thinking and the supernatural being faked*, and that probably hitting too close to home. Frozen (or Tangled, don’t remember quite which) was also banned specifically for presenting authority figures as fallible back at movie night. So that makes a… disturbingly calculated amount of sense.

          * This being pre-Zombie Island, Mystery Inc., and pretty much all the stuff with real monsters.

        2. ValdVin

          Frozen is the movie in question.

          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/backlog/

        3. BBCC

          See, you’re probably joking, but I can see Carol and early Hank doing that. And Joyce believing them. Ugh, Carol and Hank why, she looked up to you jackasses.

        4. Yotomoe

          She was really short at the time. She probably had to look up to a lot of people.

        5. Needfuldoer

          Scooby-Doo also shows the almighty land-owner (the only demographic Republican fundamentalists care about) as the bad guy.

    2. timemonkey

      Although, much like in this strip, how many of her restrictions were genuine and how many were just because the parents didn’t want to have to deal with it?

      1. BBCC

        I mean, if the parents were using religion as an excuse not to let Joyce watch something and she believes the reason, does it really matter if its legit?

    3. Seregiel

      Awww – you mean like she believed it when she said it, but she’s being flippant about it now because she’s trying to distance herself from past Joyce? Wait – just read what you actually meant. Either way, how did such a good example of normal dormmate interaction become so sad and disillusioned. 🙁

  12. Yumi

    Now I have to wonder more about the level of fundamentalism of people I’ve met who object to Halloween. Most seemed less fundie than Joyce, but I guess I didn’t get as in-depth a look at their views. And also, could just be different types of religion and not necessarily reflect on the intensity.

    1. Regalli

      I mean, Joyce is still ahead of the ‘dancing is sinful’ crowds, so there is that. But there’s also a lot of teeny points where sects differ that have nothing to do with intensity and more to do with minutia.

      1. Agemegos

        She was allowed to dance by herself in solitary, right?

        1. Regalli

          They’re apparently fine with dancing in general. Some religious colleges still only allow square dancing, and that’s a fairly recent concession.

        2. Geeky Warrior

          To her own music, locked in her room, with adult supervision.

          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/04-time-keeps-on-slippin/regret/

    2. Jamie

      Fundamentalism isn’t, like, on a linear scale. It’s just a list of things you care about because you say they’re “fundamental”.

      I mean, how many fundies do you know who do St. Patrick’s or Valentine’s?

      1. Yumi

        To be fair, my associations with fundamentalists is pretty limited and rarely included contact around the time of BOTH Halloween and St. Patrick’s/Valentine’s.

      2. Khyrin

        I know the answer to this one for my local environs.

        None! because saints are Catholic, and therefore tools of the Pope, who is the antichrist. All Catholics are secret Devil worshipers, with their eating fish on friday as a religious observance ritual of the time Jesus was being tortured by the Devil. They’re all secret Alcoholics too, as they use real wine in their communion ritual, and many forgo alcohol during Lent. Everyone knows giving something up for a set period of time means you’re addicted to it!

        *Am Catholic, and had most of the above said to my face.*

        1. BBCC

          I mean, there’s Catholic fundamentalists who hate Halloween too. For Satanic reasons, not because of it’s pagan roots.

        2. Minotaur

          Wait, Khyrin, do American protestants not use real wine in communion?
          In Dutch protestant churches grape juice became an option when children were allowed to take communion and awareness of the problems of alcoholics was raised, and in Danish Lutheran churches they give you port at communion.

        3. thejeff

          Some do, some don’t. We went into this in more detail than I remember when Joyce went to church with Jacob.
          Her church used grape juice. His used wine. She was distraught.

          His was high church Episcopal, which shares a lot of ritual with Catholicism.

        4. King Daniel

          Fun fact: the Welch’s brand of grape juice was originally created for the specific purpose of being used in communion.

  13. Jed!

    I love the implication of Joyce/Sarah movie nights.

    1. Bagge

      After Sarah had to watch Frozen with her, I’d say Joyce owes her one.

      Buuuuuut, maybe not the entire Lord of the rings trilogy. Let’s be reasonable here.

      1. abysswatcher1993

        If she shows her the Hobbit Joyce would make porn about Bilbo and Thorin.

        1. Bagge

          EVERYONE WINS

        2. Schpoonman

          Excuse you, it’s “literature.”

          In increasingly absurd and fancy lettering.

  14. Doopyboop

    TFW even Joyce is more normal than your grandma. The ‘devil’s birthday’ thing must be more of a Southern thing, because even in my local neighborhoods we had people slipping papers and brochures about the dangers of Halloween and how they must repent and yada yada yada…

    Also, those long ass hours are so worth it, I was a big nerd for Lord of the Rings when I was a kiddo.

    1. Agemegos

      I read [i]The Lord of the Rings[/i] every September from 1974 to 1984. I was well and truly over it by the time Jackson’s movie versions came out. I’m not even quite clear on whether I saw the third instalment or not.

      1. jmsr7

        It’s worth watching the whole thing. Not the hobbit though, that’s absurdist trash.

        And if you like LotR and DnD, may i suggest
        DM of the Rings?

        1. Agemegos

          I’m an ex-fan of Tolkien, and never really got into D&D. I tried it in 1980–81, moved on to The Fantasy Trip in 1982, then to generic RPGs {starting with Justice, Inc (an instance of the Hero System)} in 1984. I’ve been fooling around with Fate and Gumshoe variants a bit lately, but my favourite RPG remains an obscure Australian SF/fantasy pair called ForeSight/HindSight. I get my fix of D&D-based humour from Order of the Stick.

          I might have seen the whole LotR film trilogy. I probably did. It’s just that I find Jackson’s direction and Walsh’s and Boyens’ dialogue so bland and featureless that I’m really not sure. I saw a bit in which Legolas did parkour on a dire elephant. I saw the mull they made of the death of Théoden. I probably saw the last third. But I might have just seen clips.

        2. Agemegos

          By the way: if you’re fond of D&D satire in sequential art you might like the Fantasy theme of David Morgan-Mar’s Irregular Webcomic.

        3. jmsr7

          Yep, i read that too. It’s very hobbit-forming. 😀

    2. Bagge

      …devils birthday?

      Poor sod

  15. Reltzik

    ….. wait Joyce is the level-headed one here?

    1. BBCC

      I think Sarah was more concerned for joyce freaking out. TBF, I would be as well. I mean, the girl couldn’t watch friggin’ Scooby Doo because witchcraft.

    2. BarerMender

      Joyce just realized there is no god. It must be a huge relief. I know it was for me.

  16. Yotomoe

    Becky just watched Joyce take off her head covering. For her that’s probably hotter than her just being in a towel.

    1. newllend(henryvolt)

      Hat fetish, head towel fetish, You know if Becky met a gorgeous lady wearing a hajob Her Imagination would probably go freaking wild.

    2. Bagge

      She kinda does seem lost in happy, smiley thoughts in the last two panels

    3. thejeff

      I think that’s more Dina-specific and because Dina always keeps it covered.

      She’s seen Joyce’s naked head often enough it’s no big deal.

  17. Yotomoe

    Aren’t Christians all ABOUT glorifying death. I mean if anyone has made dying seem really damn glamorous, it’s the Christians!

    1. Marsh Maryrose

      Like, on Valentine’s Day, we celebrate the execution of St. Valentine, who was beaten nearly to death with clubs and then beheaded.

      1. Yotomoe

        Y’know, I’d have assumed he’d had an archery related death.

        1. Marsh Maryrose

          Although Valentine and Cupid are both associated with love, the archery-related martyr is St. Sebastian. He actually survived his human pincushion experience, only to be cudgeled to death later.

        2. MatthewTheLucky

          Wait, then who’s the cudgel-related martyr?

        3. Marsh Maryrose

          You need more search terms if you’re looking for a specific martyr. Lots of cudgeling going on in the Roman Empire circa 200 CE.

        4. Bagge

          Fun times, fun times…

        5. ValdVin

          Ahh, now Hippolytus–there was a good martyrdom.

        6. King Daniel

          How can you forget Saint Lawrence? “I’m well-done on this side. You can turn me over now!”

        7. Ike

          St. Edmund was also martyred by archery.

        8. Bagge

          That would have been appropriate.

          The saint that’s REALLY associated with archery related death is st. Sebastian, popular gay icon.

        9. Bagge

          Heh, I love how both of us went with St Sebastian.

        10. Marsh Maryrose

          The search term “martyr arrows” pretty much gets you St. Sebastian, just like “martyr stoning” gets you St. Stephen and “martyr flayed” gets you St. Bartholomew.

          Much to my surprise, if you google “martyr beheaded,” St. John the Baptist isn’t even on the first page of results. Lots of decapitated martyrs.

        11. Bagge

          I always felt there was an unhealthy focus on just how the saints died.

        12. Marsh Maryrose

          I agree, but we are talking about a religion which has, as its focal point, a crucifixion — which, at the time it happened, was not a particularly unusual method of execution.

        13. Abel Undercity

          And then comes the time to wheel out St. Catherine…

        14. vlademir1

          Archery is purely associated because of the use of Eros/Cupid in relation to the date which has associations with his emotional domain of love. That in turn is a throwback folk tradition from the date of Lupercalia which was a Roman purification and fertility festival that happened in mid-February. Anecdotally, the date of St. Valentine’s feast day was set in the late Roman Empire to forcefully supersede the existing pagan celebrations.
          The association of the date with fertility was never fully forgotten but slowly fell out of phase with social norms for centuries. That association was largely revived during the period of the Neoclassical movement in the 17th and 18th centuries with an interpretation associated with courtly love leading to the beginnings of the modern secular practices of celebrating the holiday in the 19th century’s romantic period, when the Eros/Cupid imagery started to be commonly visually evoked as part of all this.

  18. SUGauthor

    So she’s just not going to acknowledge the life altering dream she had at all? Ok then.

    1. Yumi

      Joyce walks into the room like, “GUESS WHO’S HAVING A CRISIS OF FAITH!”

      1. Clif

        Besides, that was before she hugged Ruth and had a near death experience. (That was the logical projection from what we saw, right?)

      2. Khantalas

        It’s Dina, right?

        1. Yotomoe

          “Maybe…they didn’t have feathers…Oh GOD what if I am wrong”

        2. MatthewTheLucky

          No, no, it’s the Joyce who is wrong.

        3. Khantalas

          A scientist losing their faith would be starting to think they can never be wrong, and that all knowledge is set in stone.

    2. Yotomoe

      I don’t mention my life altering dreams very often. The other day I had a dream where Bill Clinton taught me to play the sax. But you don’t see ME bragging.

      1. BarerMender

        I once had a dream where Simon and Garfunkel joined me while I was singing. I bragged about that, you bet.

      2. Marsh Maryrose

        Let me guess. You watched a lot of Animaniacs? (And you didn’t think to mention the dream where you have pay for play contracts. Tsk tsk.)

  19. mrnoidea

    ok im high right now what’s going on here

    1. MatthewTheLucky

      Joyce just dunked on Sarah, that’s what

  20. TrueVCU

    Joyce is coming along NICELY

  21. y3k

    They’re four hours each if you’re watching them the CORRECT way.

    1. Reltzik

      Taking a sip every time someone uses a word that Tolkien made up?

      1. Clif

        No one can handle that much alcohol.

      2. Zach

        No, are you mad?
        Someone in your drinking party will die, probably all of you!

    2. Keulen

      I will always prefer the extended edition versions.

      1. Roborat

        My preference as well, you can leave to use the bathroom, mow the lawn, write your doctoral thesis, whatever, and when you return, you haven’t missed anything.

  22. Tacos

    Joyce is getting snarky.

    1. Bagge

      Of all the Joyce’s, snarky Joyce is one of the best.

  23. Agemegos

    I thought Joyce really hated lying. I guess it doesn’t count as a lie if you’re getting out of watching a long and boring movie.

    1. Clif

      Does it count as a lie if you’re reasonably sure it’s so ridiculous that no one would actually believe it?

      1. BBCC

        It does if it’s not actually ridiculous compared to true stuff like not being allowed to watch Disney because it promotes happiness without God’s love.

    2. AntJ

      She said she really hated lying in the same strip as saying she really hated homsexuality. She’s grown a lot since.

    3. Seregiel

      This might have been the best Joyce could summon in retaliation after Sarah lied about using her to break up Raidah and Jacob. She’s been working on cursing too. All the good college life lessons one needs to join the heathens!

  24. Bagge

    Heh, crafty lil’ Sis.

    There can’t be a single person in the cast that hasn’t at one point wondered if Joyce is setting them up or not (Parasaurolophus breathes fire, for God’s sake).

    One day – she is!

    I would also have fallen for it SO HARD

    1. Bagge

      I also REALLY love Becky’s told-you-so smile. She knows her Joyce.

    2. Bagge

      Tiny little detail, but I love that added “Sarah” in the end of those two sentences in a row. Very condescending.

  25. sunflowerofice

    More deceptive than we usually see from her. Not bad.

  26. JessWitt

    Uh-oh, Joyce is gonna go way overboard with Halloween decorating in their room – and maybe the whole side of her dorm too.

  27. Bagge

    So, if I get Joyce right – if it’s adorable it’s not a sin.

    There are some dangerous loopholes right there.

  28. Vukodlak

    Not only did I watch the full trilogy extended edition…. I watched them once with directors commentary on. And all the other extras.

    In an unrelated note behold the Doompumpkin
    https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img921/9981/YxZmDJ.jpg

    1. Bagge

      DOOOOOOOOOOM

    2. Rabid Rabbit

      So did I… then spent half an hour bongoing at Peter Jackson for no catching what the problem with the apple when Pip was bongoing about not getting second breakfast.

      1. Bagge

        To be fair, Tolkien himself spent a non-trivial amount of time bongoing about having Bilbo and Gandalf smoking, and then deciding to not include tobacco in the available fauna. Thus, pipeweed.

        1. MatthewTheLucky

          It is entirely in character for the Hobbits to have been raising weed.

        2. Bagge

          Especially since that term comes from Lord-of-the-ring-reading hippies.

          I hope language professor Tolkien is happy with how that turned out.

        3. thejeff

          I don’t think so. “Weed” apparently dates to long before LotR (or hippies) and didn’t become a dominant term for pot until the 90s. “Grass” or “dope” was more common in the 60s and 70s.

          I’m also not sure of the source for him “deciding to not include tobacco in the available fauna.” In the LotR prologue “Concerning pipe-weed”, he says it is “a variety probably of Nicotiana” and mentions “the tobacco of the Southfarthing”.

        4. Bagge

          Sigh. Another myth I have to distance myself from.

          But I’m pretty sure of that second thing. That prologue was him taking steps to glue the Bilbo story into the larger mytos of Middle Earth (partly, because while his publishers wanted him to write a sequel to the Hobbit, Tolkien wanted to write Middle-Earth-stuff. Cue a very different “sequel divided in three parts published MANY years later and many frustrated letters from publishers who just wanted another children’s book).

        5. thejeff

          Yeah, that’s fair. I think he mostly just didn’t want to use the word.

        6. Bagge

          It tied into that whole “writing a possible mythology for England” thing. Can’t have american plants.

          …such as potato, but you can’t have everything.

        7. thejeff

          Though he threw in a bit about “probably brought over from Numenor” as an excuse. Maybe the potatoes came too and he just didn’t mention that. 🙂

        8. Bagge

          Heh, we totally do the same thing at LARPS.

          “Behold, in my latest travel we have brought these exotic beans that we roast and yadayadayada let’s have coffee.”

        9. Tan

          Flora, not fauna.

        10. Bagge

          …fun fact, I have a PhD in biology…

          Today is not a great day for Swedish higher education.

  29. Bagge

    I love seeing Joyce snark Sarah and even make fun of her old beliefs. Between this and her finding an outlet for certain… urges from fanfiction, I feel she does a lot better.

    1. abysswatcher1993

      New atheist Joyce is great, but she SHOULDN’T MOCK TLOTR!!!! I need to read those books and not just base my opinions on the movies.

      1. Potatamoto

        Oh, you really should. They are, bar none, my favorite books. I’ve read them every year since I was in 3rd grade, usually in early September, when Summer really begins fading into Autumn. If you can get into the flow of the writing, I’ve always found them captivating.

    2. Seregiel

      I forgot about the fan fiction! What if she loves Halloween because of all the marriages that happen due to the holiday? Cue long lines about biting into a piece of brambrack and finding the ring (squee!). Later, while refilling her cup of punc, she sees a Cute Boy handsomely lit up by the glow of the jack o lantern and knows he’s The One and it is True Love. Then he separates all the skittles in a bag of minis for her and they lived happily ever after.

  30. abysswatcher1993

    HERESY!!!! THOSE MOVIES ARE AWESOME JOYCE!!!! However, I think Joyce would be more scared about the fact that the creator of the story was Catholic and that all the books and the movies have references to his beliefs in redemption… something Rachel hates.

    1. BBCC

      Eh, Rachel’s hangups are her own. They’re not Joyce’s problem.

      The Catholicism will make her break out in hives though. 😛

      1. thejeff

        It’s subtle enough in the books that I doubt she’d pick up on it. I mean, it’s easy enough to read them without even picking up on Christianity and Joyce’s understanding of theological differences isn’t exactly subtle.
        Now if Tolkien actually depicted Jesus with the wrong color sash or something serious, then she’d freak out. 🙂

        1. BBCC

          Now I’m imagining her reading the books and liking them and then learning about the Catholicism and breaking in hives. 😛

  31. jmsr7

    Um, is this the morning after Joyce had that dream?

    She seems to be moving on a little quickly.

    1. timemonkey

      For all we know she’s been having dreams like that a lot lately.

  32. Beef

    Joyce looks like she’s she’s singing into the hair dryer and I’d absolutely make that my gravatar if I didn’t need to keep this one for a class

  33. PB

    (THE SQUEEING IN MY HEART IS NOT HUMAN BUT IT IS JOYFUL AND PURE)

    1. PB

      Also HAHAHAHA Joyce is a smart gal and I love her.

      And again, words cannot express how happy I am that our dear precious crusty grouchy Sarah loves Halloween. ?

  34. Tilt

    I love that Sarah is becoming more considerate and Joyce is becoming a bit more sneaky. They’re rubbing off on one another. 🙂

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Oh, Becky would just love that.

      1. Tilt

        I think she does love that. XD

  35. geno

    So Joyce is just outright lying now. Something she previously said she HATED

    1. bleh

      yes. in reference to the pastors son who she perceived to be lying to her in order to drug and rape her. When she said that about lying, it was not long after that event and it was heavily implied that it was weighing on her. She was actually saying that she hates rape, but she didn’t have the language to describe it yet.

      She has never been shown to be someone with a weird hangup about white lies before. If anything, what she was communicating on that strip says the opposite.

      Usually when fundies say something along the lines of “gayness is only as bad as lying!” what they’re really implying is that under normal circumstances they see themselves as “tolerant” of both, but in reality aren’t (or don’t know how to be) really accepting of either. It’s terrible but there it is.

      Sticking strictly to the lying thing and ignoring the uncharitable implications towards gay people (because she’s drastically changed her opinion since then), if someone told you “I care about you even though you need to tell the truth more.” then you wouldn’t say they HATED lying.

    2. Seregiel

      Part of me wonders how much of it was straight lying and how much of it was returning the serves Sarah makes towards her on the subject of her religion. Oh? Going to tease me about going to college to find marriage material? I found a marriage/faith joke to make on your movies. Took me seriously? Now whose ridiculous? Haaaaa

  36. DailyBrad

    Joyce CAN be taught, huh. hehe

  37. DailyBrad

    Sarah wanted to watch LOTR? I am kinda surprised, but she is one of the older ones in the cast, maybe she saw them in her formative years and can get past the length problem.

    1. Nicolette

      Oh I thought Sarah was only like a sohpmore. Is she older?

      1. BBCC

        Yeah, she’s a sophomore. Most of the others are freshmen.

  38. BenRG

    I’m now counting down until Sarah freaks out and shouts that she’s fallen into the Mirror Universe!

  39. Keulen

    The LOTR movies are about 4 hours each if you watch the extended edition versions.

  40. CJ

    I can never figure out if the books really consist mainly of fighting scenes and I somehow overlooked them a reading, or if all films just take the fighting scenes and leave out the rest (so basically all I found interesting about the books).

    1. BenRG

      The LoTR books seem to have a disproportionately large amount of elvish poetry as well as discussion about bloodlines and prophecy. Tolkien was heavily into Norse mythology and all his books read like Dark Ages Scandinavian sagas.

    2. Bagge

      Replace about 50% of the fight scenes from the movies with scenes about walking/looking at ruins/talking about elvish poetry about ruins in the books and you are about right.

      The amount of time spent on Frodo being sad is spot on, though.

      1. thejeff

        Or you know, character development and plot. 🙂

        But yeah, the movies added more fight scenes and extended some of the existing ones, while removing much of the “boring” stuff. And I don’t even really like Jackson’s action sequences.

        1. Bagge

          Most of the time I don’t mind. It gave us fun stuff like the olympic-torch-orc in Helms Deep or Legolas being mean to a poor oliphant in Pelennor Fields.

          But one scene I HATE is the orc chasing Pippin and Merry into Fangorn. What should have been an atmospheric scene of wonder and awe turns into a lame chase-scene followed by a slapsticic ent-stomp. LESS IS MORE, JACKSON!

        2. thejeff

          “Less is more” pretty much sums it up.

          Jackson had a tendency to follow up climactic fight bits with another mini escalation: Eowyn’s moment of awesome with the Witch-King is followed by her being attacked by some random orc. There’s no need and it just distracts from the climactic moment we just had.

        3. Bagge

          EXACTLY!

          “Wow… Eowyn just took out the Witch-King of Angmar, fulfilling a prophesy he was too arrogant to think anyone could ever beat and pretty much turned the battle right there. She’s so coo… wait, did she just… YES! She ALSO took out that random orc-dude. She must be REALLY cool.”

        4. Bagge

          Or why not

          “Wow, Aragon just was dragged over a cliff. I wonder if he’s OK. Yup. He is OK. I’m sure glad we spent time on that. I wouldn’t have wanted to see more of the ents or anything.”

        5. thejeff

          Worse actually, she couldn’t take out the random orc, Aragorn and Gimli came by and knocked him off in passing.

        6. Bagge

          “Wow Eowyn is so coo… wow, Aragon and Gimli are so cool.”

          Yeah, that’s not optimal.

    3. CJ

      BTW: The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are the easiest to read works of Tolkien. I read all of it before I was 20, but only the hobbit and LotR more thank once.

  41. Joanna

    I think I must be alone in thinking that this maybe isn’t a good thing from Joyce, unless this is not connected to that dream. I don’t know.

  42. Peter

    Who is this stranger, and what has she done with the real Joyce?

    1. Bagge

      She went to visit Forrest Quad and they got to her. She is replaced by a pod replicant, always sunny, always smiling…

      1. Piotr W

        So, Lucy would surely be the hive’s queen, then?

        1. Bagge

          Well, she thought so.

          Turns out she was wrong.

  43. Piotr W

    I admit I actually surprised by this development…

  44. Nenja

    But its three WONDERFUL hours each, Joyce! … I get that they might seem long tho, when my family watched the first one for the first time, my mom started reading the newspaper and my dad fell asleep. 13-year old me was so obsessed I guess we balanced each other out. At least it’s not the extended edition, that would be FOUR hours each

    … says the person who bought the extended box set for all the money she had saved up moving the lawn and only watched those versions from then on, still watch them or read the books almost every year and have the one ring inscription TATTOOED on her skin.

    Yeah, kind of a fan.

    1. Zaxares

      When I first bought the Extended box set I watched them all back to back in a single sitting. That was FUN, but never again. XD

      1. Lori

        My family traditionally does an extended edition marathon every other year at christmas.

        Eleven and a half hours, lotta chip dip, bathroom breaks when you have to get up and change the dvds, and by the end you’re like ‘ah yes I’m ready to not do this again for two entire years’

        The REALLY fun thing is to watch through the extended special features, it’s like 7 hours each of some of the most INCREDIBLE costume and set and narrative building, and walks through every step of the creation of the films. So long. So worth it.

  45. kilgaen

    It’s true, they are a serious commitment.

  46. DarkoNeko

    She probably didn’t, back then. Nice change ?

  47. Sazazezer

    Man, Becky’s eyeballs just do what they want, huh?

    1. Deanatay

      They are unfettered by the limitations of your patriarchal viewpoints. They are Liberated Lesbian eyeballs.

  48. Delicious Taffy

    I own the whole trilogy, but at this point it’s basically so I can turn people down when they ask to watch it.

  49. FacelessDeviant

    Psh, Joyce would LOVE LoTR if she gave it a chance.

    1. abysswatcher1993

      She would be more invested in shipping Bilbo and Thorin and posting drawings on deviantart.

  50. wakeangel2001

    ha, you see, you just need to be honest with people. Tell someone you don’t want to sit through a 3 hour movie and they’ll accept it, make up some BS religious excuse not to watch it and they won’t invite you to their Halloween parties.

  51. ziggy78eog

    People who cannot watch a, “Lord of the Rings”, movie, are weak!

  52. Tree

    I would be pretty upset if someone did this to me. Like, I am going out of my way to be respectful of their process and perspective and they are lying to me about it instead of just telling me they don’t want to see a movie. If I had this conversation with someone I would have trouble trusting that they were telling me the truth in the future.

    1. Bagge

      By the look of last-panel Sarah, she agrees with you.

    2. BBCC

      That’s pretty fair. I thought this was funny, but in Sarah’s shoes the next time she asked to not watch a movie because of her religion, I might hesitate to believe her at best (at worst I might say ‘Yeah? Well suck it up, I’m watching it anyways. Put in your headphones if you wanna skip it.’

    3. Axel

      I feel like that might have been what Joyce actually thought at the time (like, in the first week or two of school) and that now she has a) chilled out and b) decided she wouldn’t want to watch them anyway. Especially if she initially echoed what someone in youth group said, then googled the movies after Sarah had mentioned it.

  53. PSadlon

    Who is she and what did she do with Joyce.

  54. Liliet

    I hear you on this, Joyce. I really do. Any excuse works to get out of a movie marathon that you just really aren’t interested in ;u;

  55. Random commenter

    As someone who once tried reading Lord of the Rings and failed (but did succeed in watching the movies), Joyce is undoubtedly right here.

  56. Toes14

    Why is Joyce blow drying her mouth?

  57. DT

    Joyce is speaking my language.
    Good lord those LOTR films are long. And boring.

  58. KieranJML

    I assume the blow dryer is on because of Joyce’s gravity defying locks, but where can I find a blow dryer quiet enough to have a conversation over?!

    (Yes, I know, it’s the limitations of single panel posing and showing action, but let me dream of this magical hair dryer OKAY??)

  59. Kensou

    The LotR is a great novel, paving the way for a LOT of fantasy novels that followed. I reread it every few years. The Silmarillion is, uh, considerably dryer, but I’ve still managed to get through it three or hour times in my life.

    The movie adaptations of LotR are pretty good. Flawed, for sure, but good for what they are, and even manage to improve things here and there. The movie adaptations of The Hobbit are mostly boring crap, ruined by the studio. Two movies at best, dammit.

    Naturally, of course, they’re not for everyone, so my own take on them isn’t worth much.

  60. Danielle

    low hanging fruit: sarah’s boned

  61. Sarpiedon

    I think Joyce is giving herself too much credit there.

  62. Dinomatrix21

    Holy shit it’s only Halloween. They’ve only been at college for like. Three months. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.

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