487

Vacuum
Posted on January 8, 2016 by David M Willis

487 thoughts on “Vacuum”

  1. DJ_Professor_K

    Fun fact friday: the first time I came across the acronym NSFW was on a Dumbing of Age slipshine advertisement, and for the longest time I assumed it stood for No Sex For Walky.

    1. shadowcell

      not at work, anyway

    2. neeks

      the first one, “walky performs a sex,” could have been “noob sex for walky.”

    3. a4lbi

      ahahaahh this is hilarious!

    4. Buhzim

      Or it tells what happened when Walky met the Soup Nazi.

      1. inqntrol

        I bet he did Nazi that coming…..( I feel horrible)

        1. Mishyana

          Good day, sir. I SAID GOOD DAY.

      2. MagenDavid1991

        You post comment without permission. No soup for you!!!!

    5. Rowen Morland

      Or ‘No Sex or Willis’ (He is too busy drawing porn).

    6. TachyonCode

      I appreciate your comment just as much as I appreciate your username. JSR ftw :3

      1. DJ_Professor_K

        Thank you kind TachyonCode! JSR 4 LEIF. *bumps rollerskates*

  2. Spencer

    goddammit joyce

    1. Inkblot

      Like a throwback to old Joyce, but she’s angry this time.

      1. I Write Monsters

        That’s her secret, Captain. She’s always angry.

        1. begbert

          Oh god, you reminded me of *that*.

          The one line took me from “he’s rather stocky for Banner” to “They’re just screwing with us.” Thank god he turned from terrible Banner to awesome Hulk and let me forget for a while. Until you commented, anyway…

        2. AutoButt

          TBH He’s kind of like a modern scientist combined a little with the dishevelment of David Banner from the TV series.

          Comic Book Banner hasn’t really changed from his typical slim superscience look, which is quite a disconnect for modern film trying to bring people in with modern ideas.
          If Marvel could get Fantastic Four film rights, Richards would be fine to keep mostly the same. He’s superscience through and through, but Banner is more human than that.

        3. AutoButt

          Also Richards is more arrogance and success vs Banner’s anger and failure.
          Both smart men making supersmart stuff, each situation’s different.

    2. Durandal_1707

      It’s called “Vacuum” because the situation sucks.

      1. ozzi

        badum tish

    3. Gigafreak

      Wait… is this the reason for the chapter title? Joyce has to go be “that perfect girl” for her parents, an obedient daughter and housewife-in-training that doesn’t think for herself or question the things she’s told. Now that she’s seeing more and more flaws in the old ways, Joyce can’t genuinely be that perfect girl anymore; at most, she can merely put on a mask and pretend to be one. (Plus she’s terrible at deceiving authority figures, so the mask approach can easily fail, if it is even attempted.)

      And now I can see a few more reasons why Sal might be willing to warm up to Joyce.

      1. Lord Stoneheart

        I think it’s one of the reasons for the chapter title.
        (I think the Amazi Girl/Amber situation also fits the chapter title)

        1. Spencer

          I’m not entirely sure. In Amber’s case, the Perfect Girl would be Amazi-Girl, and she’s not going anywhere at least until March.

          If it’s a Frozen reference, then the eponymous character is almost certainly Joyce.

  3. AnvilPro

    I’m sure everything will go well when they get talk. They’ll all have Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and everything will be great. Totally.

    1. JetstreamGW

      I cannot wait ’til Joyce inevitably gets her revelation about her sister. That’ll be gold.

      More mind shattering! More more more!

      1. NoHeart6265

        I have awaited that day since Jocelyn was first introduced and I shall continue to wait patiently.

        1. Cerberus

          NoHeart-

          Ditto. I know it’s probably a long way’s away, especially since it looks like poor Jocelyne might be living at home with her parents at the moment, but I so can’t wait for her to come out, at least to Joyce as a sign of trust.

        2. TheNinthShader

          We all know she is trying her best at learning how to make Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese. She’s already a fighter pilot.

        3. Freemage

          I was so giddy yesterday when Joyce picked “fighter pilot” as her pretend-life occupation. Today gives me a sad.

        4. altalemur

          ah, i thought Jocelyne was living by herself and working as a writer. but yes, i also can’t wait until she’s back in the comic. not because i want to hurt Joyce, but because i think Jocelyne coming out to Joyce would be a far less traumatizing and far more loving one than Becky’s coming out.

        5. Captain Button

          Why do you think Jocelyne might be living at home? I just reread all of the Jocelyne-tagged strips and the only thing I see addressing the question at all is her remark about ramen. If she is living at home she’d be eating her mother’s cooking, not ramen.

          I’d assume she was living on her own somewhere, starving artist style.

          I’ve also got a vague unsupported feeling that Jocelyne may something she only expresses online so far.

          (Wrote this with the wrong pronouns throughout and had to go back an fix them.)

        6. Cerberus

          That’s a really good point. And makes me feel much happier to know that at least Jocelyne isn’t dealing with the ‘rents day in and day out.

        7. Amazi-Stool

          She’s not living at home, but there had been a preview panel with her in the timeframe of Joyce’s visit to her parents.

          IIRC she was in a car with her Dad – which may mean that he picked her up for Joyce’s visit.

      2. trlkly

        Oh! I was confused by your post, since I remembered David saying that Joyce only has three male siblings, but then I remembered what her ex-“boyfriend” found out about the one “brother” who came on parents’ day.

        So I just want to add that, even as a fundie, I actually had less of a problem with trans sexuality. Sure, dressing in the “wrong” clothes was forbidden, but there was nothing in the Bible about actually changing your sex.

        Heck, I was so clueless that I thought all gay people should change their sex so they wouldn’t be in sin. I thought trans gendered people were just more honest.

        And let me stress again that this is an old belief. I’m very much a “Born this Way” and “God don’t make no junk” type of guy now.

        1. Psychotic Mantis

          Off-topic, but I remember there was this one Fundie guy I knew back in high-school (during the apex of my ‘fuck the system’ phase, no less) that hated my GUTS. He seemed to be an ‘eh, okay’ guy, but I swear he wanted to skin me alive and then baptize me.

          I had/have a habit of dressing and styling myself in an extremely androgynous fashion, you see. Well back then, I did it constantly. Sometimes I would switch during the school day. But back to the story.

          So, one day I come to school and the aforementioned prick (whom I shall refer to as Dick) came up to me. I remember him stating very clearly: “What on GOD’S EARTH are YOU supposed to be?” Okay, quick note, this guy was a grade below me.

          I just looked down at him square in the eyes and said, with a bit of hesitation because I didn’t want to get into a massive argument, “I’m me. Why, is that an issue?” I can’t really remember what he said next, but soon we were in a rather big debate.

          We had attracted a rather large amount of attention, and I was starting to get a bit embarrassed. So I said the most, to this day, offensive thing I’ve ever said to any kind of religious person. “Your Bible’s pretty strict on gender roles, yeah? So what’s it say about this?”

          Keep in mind this was very heat-of-the-moment. I took my hand, clenched it into a fist, raised a VERY SPECIFIC FINGER, and put it over my crotch. Then I walked away. I got sent to the office about 10 minutes later though.

          Fondest memory of dissing someone’s religion, right there.

        2. NoHeart6265

          I…I think I would like to be your friend

        3. Psychotic Mantis

          Thanks! That’s nice to hear.

          (Though, for the record, I’m way less vocal about my…individuality as I was back then.)

        4. NoHeart6265

          I don’t really care about how vocal a person is, more that the person is an interesting individual

        5. Disloyal Subject

          Eh, sounds like the fucker forced your hand. Being polite is good, but sometimes it won’t accomplish anything.

        6. TheNinthShader

          Sometimes, you just gotta go in full force. BOTH fingers.

        7. ischemgeek

          Reminds me of the fundie who, after she’d staged a months-long harassment campaign in which she would remind me that I was going to burn in hell on a regular basis (and that she’d be in heaven laughing) for the triple “crime” of being a bisexual atheist evolutionist (and also the only one who would call her on creationist BS in biology – “Hey, we’re here to learn science, not religion. Can you shut up so I can learn the course material please? You’ve been going on about your God stuff for a good five minutes. I don’t care if you don’t want to learn, I actually find this stuff interesting, so if you don’t want to be here, why not drop the class so the rest of us can actually learn something?” Tact not being my strong suit in high school). Anyway, long story short I eventually ended up telling her that everything she’d said about her God made him sound absolutely vile and that I would rather burn in Hell while being true to my morals than ascend to Heaven on bigotry and false pretenses, and that if God really was the One True Fountain of All Morality, God would care much more about whether I was a good person than whether I said Abra Cadabra and twiddled my fingers the right way.

          That wound up with me being the one getting sent to the office for “religious intolerance.” Because my school was big on the “What did you do to make them bully you?” thing and it was typical that the victim in a bullying situation got punished more than the abusers – which they justified with the fallacy of the golden mean and BS like “Well, So-and-so fully admits their contribution to the situation, and I want you to admit yours.” (“I was there and they thought it would be fun to hit me” was never considered a good enough answer, even though it was true a lot of the time). Me and a few others who were bullying victims at that place were convinced they just wanted victims to shut up about victimization so they could be all “WE don’t have a bullying problem HERE.” and just re-classify all cases of bullying as “fights” so they could continue to pretend that there’d been 0 cases of bullying in the past year. See also how getting sexually harassed by a kid twice my age and three times my weight in third grade ended up with me getting an in-school suspension for “encouraging” his misbehavior.

          Also, while my school was pretty terrible to me, I should point out that I’ve heard absolutely nothing that suggests to me most other schools aren’t at least as bad to their bullying victims (there’s a case that hit the news in my city – living in a different part of the country from when I was a kid – about a kid whose parents ended up having to pull him from school entirely because the school kept blaming him and refusing to take action against his bullies, who were doing things like bringing knives to school to threaten him and encouraging him to kill himself on a daily basis). Very often institutional administration machines the easiest way to deal with complaints of abuse is to discourage complainants from complaining rather than deal with the problem. It’s part of why I tend to make a knee-jerk assumption that any institution, no matter how well-meaning the staff, if given a choice between being awful and decent will pick awful if the institution judges awful is less work, and that getting an institution to be not-awful to you is an exercise in making it more work to ignore you than to give you what you need from it.

        8. Psychotic Mantis

          Damn. That’s some EXTREMELY well-written shit.

          Good show, my friend, good show.

        9. altalemur

          you’re right in that your school wasn’t the only one to do that. most of the other autistic adults i know, and a lot of the transgender and gay adults, say that they were bullied pretty hard and the school always tried to blame the bullying victim for starting the fight, usually just by existing. my school certainly acted that way regarding sexual assault and other bullying.

        10. Commoner

          Reminds me of my high school on the bullying thing: except with mine they threatened to expel me for creating an “environment hostile to Catholics” -beat- when I am/was a Catholic. I pointed out that the church has changed their stances on faith and morals several times and when asked to give proof, I gave proof.

          There was also the girl that said I didn’t count as a man because I’m gay, but counted because I have a penis, all so she could forward her intense burning hatred of men onto me, but that didn’t get me a threat of expulsion for getting in a shouting match.

        11. Psychotic Mantis

          Wait, they actually threatened to expel you for that?

          SERIOUSLY?
          Jeez, that’s not even funny.

        12. Lex

          I’ve had mixed experiences with bullying and how it was handled, although I never had to take anything to principals. Usually it was teachers. Some were ineffectual and one was flat out victim blamey – “Nobody likes a tattletale”.

          But on the other hand, I had one teacher who cracked down hard on a girl who was going out of her way to make my life hell. I also had an art teacher who didn’t send me to the office for backhanding a guy on the football team who started going through my bag without my permission and then loomed threateningly over me and asked “What are you going to do about it?” when I objected. She just told me to sit down and calm down, told the guy to take a short walk and come back, and basically diffused the situation without involving the school administration.

        13. Khyrin

          I have a story of Zero Tolerance taken to its extreme, but cushioned by sane teachers.
          I was talking with a friend outside of the school door before they were unlocked to let us enter. Another student came over and socked me in the gut while in full view of a security camera. I went down like a sack of noodles, no retaliation occurred. ten minutes into my first class, I was called to the office. we were both put into the HAL ( Alternative Learning) room for in school suspension. however, all the teachers knew me, and knew I wasn’t in any way the aggressor, even in a “well you had to do SOMETHING to provoke him” way. I was given my classwork and homework for the day, finished it all in two hours, and was allowed to read a book for the remainder of the day, whereas the one who punched me had to write lines the rest of the day. I wasn’t allowed to choose WHICH book, since i was SUPPOSED to be punished, but hey.

        14. ischemgeek

          I’ve met some who think that way (including some of my younger relatives on my mother’s side of the family who do some very bizarre mental gymnastics to reconcile their fundamentalist religion with their progressive politics) and have an easier time reconciling trans people with religion than gay people or people who just enjoy non-gender-normative gender expression (I’m probably in that category – I dress up girly for business and professional events, but I’m at my most comfortable and feeling the most “me” when passers-by have to double- or triple-take to tell I’m a woman, if they can figure it out at all).

          Onnn the other hand, there are also some fundamentalists I’ve met who use, “God doesn’t make mistakes” as a way of condemning trans people. Soo. Yeah.

          Increasingly as I get older and meet more and different religious people, I am coming to realize that someone’s politics informs their interpretation of religion a heck of a lot more than the other way around. Someone who wants to will be able to justify anything they already believe with their scripture.

        15. Beef Jerky Guy

          That last thought was a puzzle piece I have been missing for a very long time. Thank you.

      3. Emily

        Coming in maybe April? (based on the recent preview panel)

        1. Marvelman

          What? Where?

        2. Psi Baka Onna

          http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/136838934767/april-7-2016

          I saw it and got really excited for April.

        3. MackDad

          FYI – the teaser for today

    2. Doctor_Who

      The Joyce will fly away in her jet.

      1. Captain Button

        She’s leaving on a jet plane?

        1. Needfuldoer

          Or a jet airliner.

        2. TheNinthShader

          Hold me like you’ll never let me go
          ‘Cause I’m leavin’ on a jet plane
          Don’t know when I’ll be back again
          Oh babe, I hate to go
          (I accidentally deleted the ‘l’ in gmail and accidentally had the same post under moderation, so, just ignore that willis xD)

  4. spriteless

    hooo boy.

  5. Cheshrin

    Oh, right, the visit’s this month.

    That’ll be fun.

    1. Cholma

      How often do parents visit campus? It’s only been a month, and they’ve been there twice. (Move in day & that weekend)

      I chose the Army instead of college, so I’m not familiar with college culture.

      1. Boxilar

        Same here. What MOS?

        1. Cholma

          98G Korean language. This was back in the 1980s before Gulf War I.

        2. Boxilar

          88M “light wheeled vehicle operator”. Which means I drove trucks. Basic was 87 in Lost In The Woods. Basic was still very much gender segregated. AIT was co-ed as was my main duty station in Ft Carson. Got out in April of 90, went back for Desert Storm in January 91. I only spent four days in Iraq, and then only driving a fuel tanker around in the boonies in support of the war. Most of my time was in Saudi Arabia, where I got a good up close look at what 7th century Patriarchal culture looks like when applied to a wealthy 20th century society. We had a weird arrangement with the Saudi Government and religious police over how female soldiers were treated. We avoided all the rules regarding women for our female service members by a decree from the king. As long as the women were in the uniform, they were men, and male rules applied. The minute a woman took of her uniform and wore something else in public, she was suddenly a woman in the eyes of the religious police. For most folks in the Army, this wasn’t a problem, since all we wore over there were our combat uniforms. Some of the Air Force women got into trouble, since they had some civilian clothes and wore them a few times in public. After that, no one was allowed to wear any civies in Saudi.

      2. Doctor_Who

        I imagine this isn’t an official visit like the last one, but rather a reaction to their daughter being held at gunpoint.

        1. Cerberus

          This. They’re picking her up for the weekend to reconnect with her after the horror of the attack (but probably mostly to minister to her about her angry phone call home and “how worried” they are about her “spiritual health”).

          And that pretty much happens all the time. Especially when family is close by. When I was a college student, I went to school in the same city as I grew up, so I often did weekend jaunts up to visit the folks (this was back before I realized I was trans so they still loved me) or visit friends.

        2. Emily

          Wow the first paragraph made me pretty angry but the second made me absolutely furious. I hope you’ve found a family that isn’t trash.

        3. Cerberus

          I have. And a lot of good friends and other connections.

      3. Emma

        Parents can visit whenever they feel like. My mom visited me a lot since we were in the same town.

      4. Captain Button

        Not a visit at school, Joyce is going home to see her parents and hopefully convince them that she isn’t a satanic atheist lesbian yet.

        Becky is coming along to dump more gasoline on the fire.

        Jocelyne may also be there as a charge of dodgy thermite.

        1. Boxilar

          It takes considerable heat to ignite thermite. Of course, Becky will be there…

        2. Yet_One_More_Idiot

          Maybe more like sweaty gelegnite then? xD

        3. TheNinthShader

          Chlorine and brake fluid anyone?

        4. Boxilar

          I’m thinking good old fashioned dynamite. It’s very stable when it’s New, but as it ages the nitroglycerin sweats out of the suspending agents and becomes more and more unstable to the point that a sudden unexpected impact can set it off.

        5. Cerberus

          Joyce in two days: We don’t need no water, let the motherfudger burn. Burn, motherfudger. Burn.

        6. Bagge

          It won’t take long until Becky is the one that needs to hold Joyce back.

        7. Cerberus

          Oh, I’d say it’s a pretty safe bet to predict at least one panel of Joyce getting upset and Becky pulling back on her shoulders a little bit like “hey now, it’s cool, we’re all cool”.

        8. No Name

          That already happened, remember?

        9. Bagge

          Oh, right. Let’s hope it won’t get to punch out any more parents.

        10. TheNinthShader

          Timmy play the trumpet.

      5. Lucretiel

        I got the impression it was the other way around- Joyce visiting her parents

        1. Needfuldoer

          Her dad is coming to pick her up. There’s a preview panel coming up that shows them in a parking lot next to a teal Blazer.

          Hopefully they can have a long talk on the ride back. It seems like Hank would be more open-minded than Carol when it comes to questioning doctrine.

      6. Paul

        Her parents may not let her go back to college. They will point out how dangerous it is, and they wouldn’t exactly be wrong…

        1. Leorale

          Except that the whole gunpoint-kidnapping thing came from their own community, not from college.

        2. Tacos

          I’m sure her parents wouldn’t let something as inconvenient as details get in the way of their argument.

        3. Cerberus

          Yeah, I can see them trying out that argument, especially if she tries to stand up for herself or if she has an angry shouting match with them. Like it was the school’s fault he turned violent rather than the teachings of their church.

          I also worry about the games they’ll try and play with Becky as Joyce will be feeling fiercely protective about her and is more likely to blow up if they’re going after her than if they’re going after Joyce.

        4. Leorale

          True, plus if they’re really horrible, they can blame Toedad’s antics on Becky’s lesbianism, and Becky totally learned/chose to be a lesbian in college. It all fits!

        5. altalemur

          nope…. they can blame Toedad’s actions ON JOYCE. i really hope i’m wrong, but they can very much blame all of this on Joyce. if Joyce hadn’t LIED to a PATRIARCH then Toedad would have peacefully taken his daughter back and none of that gun waving would have happened. i want to crawl into a hole and die now.

        6. NotPiffany

          Of course, they’ll ignore that Becky “learned” to be a lesbian at the Christian college.

        7. ischemgeek

          ^^ This.

          My religious conservative relatives have this view that bad things in life are God trying to tell you something. They might take the tack that it was God’s way of trying to tell Joyce and Becky that they’re getting tempted by the Enemy.

        8. ischemgeek

          ^ (Think of the story of Job, if you’re wondering how they would justify that belief – if you’re on the wrong path, God will make it harder for you to keep going type of thing)

        9. Fred

          Ah, but that’s just an ordinary run-of-the-mill idiot with a gun. College is far more dangerous because it can change their daughter! (And honestly if you don’t have at least some of your opinions challeged [contrast with changed] while you’re in college, you’re doing something wrong.)

        10. Cerberus

          Definitely. First you grow as a person and learn how the world works and then you’re joining in Satanic orgies, believing the Earth is over 6000 years old, becoming a super lesbian, and voting Democratic.

          True Fact.

        11. thejeff

          Well, her parents may consider not letting her come back to school, but given that the comic is set there, one way or another she’ll be back.

        12. electromagneticDestroyosaur

          The meta-logic police won’t be happy with you at all.

      7. Fred

        I was Air Force, so I get this. Of course I’m attending college now (in my 40’s) and work in the technology services department. For a long time, I worked the help desk and I did note a fair number of parents visiting campus, particularly in the fall semester, even past the first few weeks. I don’t know if this is typical or not, but there you go.

        Honestly once I got out of the AF, I settled about 900 miles from where I grew up specifically to get away from my relatives. That might give some idea how I would have felt about them dropping in to visit me, had I been in a similar situation.

        1. ischemgeek

          ^^ See also why I went to school 700km away from my parents. Close enough to still be able to connect with my siblings, far enough that I don’t have to put up with them being them 24/7.

      8. Znayx

        It seems that there is not yet another parent visit on the campus: Instead, there’s a weekend coming up, perhaps a long weekend (but it’s not specified) and Joyce plans to visit her folks. I think the students are obligated or encouraged to head home every so-and-so amount of weeks so their entire life isn’t in their dorms, away from their family? My friend drives home from college every few weekends. I think it’s a regular thing, no special college occasion. Here’s what Joyce says: “Was thinking about how I have to visit home this weekend. I’ve… I’ve never been nervous about going home before.”

      9. ischemgeek

        Depends on the parents and the school. At my uni, the uni staff generally encouraged care packages but discouraged visits before Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend on the basis that kids who’d never been away from home before needed at least a month for homesickness to wear off and for them to get into the swing of things.

        (I never felt homesick, but I will admit I was definitely the exception among my peers in residence.)

        Other unis encouraged visits on average once a month. My uni culture generally expected at least first-year students to visit home every long weekend and every break, and possibly go home during exam period if their schedule was agreeable (none of which I did, but generally that was what most first-year students did and most professors assumed you’d do). The uni also encouraged parents to call weekly to “check in” on their kids and do things like nag them to do homework etc.

        Community colleges (basically like trade schools in the States, I think? Focus mainly on skilled trades and 1-3 year diploma and certificate programs, don’t offer any four-year degrees or professional degrees), from what I can tell, encourage less visits home and less basically acting like a child away at summer camp and seem to have a culture of, “You’re an adult now. Act like one and treat this as a full time job and you’ll do fine. Don’t and you’ll flunk out.”

        1. LordHaw

          Yup…that’s about right. I went to three different community colleges for different programs (I really was wishy washy about what I wanted my career to be and my OSAP loans I had to pay back at the end proved that!) and never once did I see parents actually visiting their kids, nor was their any encouragement about visiting. I saw parents picking their kids up occasionally for a weekend but that’s it. We were independent and proud of it! Course my aunt and uncle came one time to bring me to their place for a weekend (my parents were about a 6 hour drive away while my aunt and uncle were about 1 hour away) and kind of frowned on the pyramid of beer bottles we had decorating our residence room but they never actually SAID anything about it, nor did they report it to my parents. And to be honest, they weren’t MY beer bottles. I didn’t, and still don’t, drink beer. I was into the hard stuff 😉

          I very much approve of the “work hard or you’ll flunk out” method. Prepares you for the real world.

        2. ischemgeek

          Engineering programs tend to actually go too far the other way (60hrs/wk of school work, with work-work on top of it to make ends meet is not an uncommon workload, at least for graduate engineering students, IME), but they’re the exeption.

          Where I took my undergrad, a business student was considered full-time if they were taking 10 credit hours (i.e., three and a third classes) and they got Fridays off. And their program seemed to be 3/4 partying and getting drunk and generally being a nuisance to students whose programs required two or three times the course load “networking.”

      10. JQuire

        Exactly as often as their children are involved in armed hostage situations + family day + move in.

  6. Mr. Mendo

    Joyce is at that part of the movie where Johnny Protagonist has had enough of the wacky adventurers and gone home at the beginning of Act Three, only to realize that he loves adventuring too much and rejoins them just in time to rescue everyone before the final battle.

    1. Stephen R. Bierce

      Peculiar how the conversation on Facebook overday was about The Last Starfighter.

      1. Mr. Mendo

        It’s all starting to come together! 😉

        1. Captain Button

          It’ll be a slaughter!

        2. Disloyal Subject

          SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE

        3. Deanatay

          THAT’S The Spirit!

      2. Dana

        Victory or death!

    2. Adept Arcanist

      “I’m not in this for your revelations.”

    3. I Write Monsters

      Now I want fanart of Joyce as a chipper Solomon Kane.

      1. davidbreslin101

        Wierd character, Solomon Kane. Not really the hero you’d want on your side. He never saved anyone’s life because he was all about the vengeance, which is cold comfort AFTER you’ve been ripped apart by harpies.

    4. MM

      Or it could be Star Wars, and she’ll come home to find the stormtroopers have already passed through.

      1. Mr. Mendo

        Does that make Atheism the Force? ^_^

        1. Tenzhi

          Ironically powered by minichristians.

        2. Mr. Mendo

          I’d prefer mini-pizzas, myself!

          No, wait, I take that back. Mini-pizzas suck…

        3. Disloyal Subject

          How about nachitos?

          …wait, what even ARE nachitos? Tiny nachos?

        4. Mr. Mendo

          I always thought they were nachos made with Doritos!

        5. Deanatay

          Nacho-cheese-flavored Doritos, I think. Dunno, Willis came up with them a WHILE back, they’ve always been Walky’s favorite snack.

      2. Captain Button

        Well her parents may well now think IU is a wretched hive of scum and cragged shame pits of the lustwolves.

        1. Raul tsi

          cragged shame pits of the lustwolves

          noice, veddy noice

          I shall be purloining that phrase and adding to my lexicon

          muy gracias

        2. Captain Button

          It is from this DoA comic, and also the title of Dumbing of Age book 2.

  7. Zaidyer

    It sure is a great feeling to not want to get kicked out, pulled from school, or damned to hell for changing into someone who can’t follow the script anymore!

    Yes indeed, it sure is

    (no it’s not)

  8. Ana Chronistic

    “Joyce, it would be optimal if you changed”

    “OPTIMUS JOYCE: OPTIMIZE!”

    *transforms into jetpack*

    1. Jay Eff

      In “Beast Wars,” Optimus Joyce transforms into a squirrel.

      1. Tacos

        What would everybody else transform into? At least we all know what Dina would transform into.

        1. inqntrol

          Mike turns into a fist, that’s for sure.

        2. neeks

          or a nickel.

        3. TheNinthShader

          Or your mom, for a nickle.

        4. ninja_jesus

          Would that mean she’d be the leader of the Predacons?

        5. Captain Button

          For some reason I see Becky as a cheetah.

        6. Disloyal Subject

          I see it too. Could be her lanky build; those long limbs would suit a cheetah altform well.

        7. inqntrol

          Joe would probably be a wolf.

        8. kelticat

          Sal would be a honey badger. Cause a honey badger don’t care.

        9. electromagneticDestroyosaur

          Honey badger from accounting don’t give a fuck.

        10. Disloyal Subject

          What do you mean, “we know what Dina would transform into”? Sure, some variety of raptor is more probable than a ceratopsian or tyrranosaur, but that still leaves options. Deinoneichus? Utahraptor? She might even surprise us and go eith Archaeopteryx, granting the Dumbibots the tactical advantage of a flier.

        11. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          Dina = velociraptor, because she’s too small to be a Dakotaraptor.

        12. Captain Button

          Saurornithoides Mongoliensis

        13. Boxilar

          My vote is Deinonychus, since that’s what the “raptor” in Jurassic Park really were.

        14. altalemur

          Walky is a monkey!

      2. davidbreslin101

        SKOOTER NOT SKWIRRL

  9. Stephen R. Bierce

    I’m sorry I missed yesterday’s action. Head crud and all.
    *looks in the fusebox to try to get the hacked Muzak going again*

    1. kelticat

      Hacked the Muzak: plays Hell to Pay by Five Finger Death Punch.

    2. a4lbi

      HACK THE PLANET–

      Wait. Muzak. Hack the Muzak.

      1. Lawzlo

        Hack the Gibson.

  10. Doom Shepherd

    For just a split second there I thought Joyce had done a full sex-preference pendulum swing. Which I would know was crazy to even think, if I hadn’t once seen it happen to someone over the course of a semester.

    1. Spencer

      A what?

      1. Originalslugboy

        A semester. It’s like a quarter, only 25% longer.

    2. Captain Button

      Jocelyne swings like a pendulum do.

    3. LeslieBean4Shizzle

      Heh. I was going to post “clearly Joyce needs to be a lesbian now” but I think what you wrote captures it better, even if it was a misunderstanding.

      1. Cerberus

        Final comic: Fine, bigots, now everyone’s queer and making out. Willis out.

        1. Emily

          If being called a bigot is the price I have to pay for everyone to be queer it’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.

        2. Idonea

          Gonna hazard a guess that she meant Willis doing it spitefully at all the people being shitty to lesbian ships, not calling lesbians bigots for making the heteros upsetero yet again. ^_^;;

  11. Plasma Mongoose

    Joyce was exposed to Kryptonite mixed with tar and will split very soon.

    1. neeks

      no, you’re thinking of the walkyverse

  12. Lia47

    every conversation with joyce is rly intense these days

    1. Jupiterror

      too intense

  13. dailybrad

    Joyce is a lonely being right now.

    1. Cerberus

      She’s really scared.

      She knows where her morality is drifting and she’s starting to doubt the moral clarity of how she was raised, but A) she has been told that this doubt is Satan corrupting her mind and one of the worst sins you can commit against mind-reader God (not to mention that she believes all her families will know all of her sins when she gets to Heaven and thus will be able to see her anger towards them and her doubt and be appalled). B) She’s going home this weekend and knows that if she doesn’t play the dutiful daughter, she’s in for some nasty passive-aggression at best. C) She’s going home after this:
      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/honkin/

      Based on that final panel, I’m going to bet that Mama Brown had a few choice words to say about that “outburst” and laid a bit of a guilt trip over it. Even if she hasn’t mentioned it, there’s the issue of it looming in the background threatening to pop up in a future argument.

      And that means Joyce may be starting off feeling she’s on thin ice and specifically being “worried over” regarding her changing.

      Also, D) she’s losing her faith. Which means the remnants of that faith and that raising are going to desperately clutch at the shreds hoping to push it all back in. In her faith, the faithless are literally fallen, doomed to Hell where they will suffer for all eternity separated from everyone they have ever loved. And Joyce is not quite ready to go full Huck Finn over that yet.

      1. ScarvesandCelery

        The last panel’s particularly telling, I think. She knows that Dorothy’s making a perfectly good point, and that she isn’t really trying to change Joyce, just make it clear that she has more options for her life than she grew up thinking there were. But that’s enough to call Joyce’s remaining faith into doubt, and she can’t doubt, not for this weekend. She knows that Dorothy is right, but is afraid that acknowledging that will make it harder to be the model Christian she (probably rightly) thinks she needs to be to satisfy her family this weekend. So she’s unfairly lashing out at her best friend for being supportive and kind. Because she’s scared, of losing her fragile faith, and the goodwill and love of her parents.

      2. ischemgeek

        Also, she’s aware that she’s changed enough that it’s going to be very hard for her to stay silent on stuff she used to think was good but now thinks is bad. Like gay and trans rights, and whether or not atheists are agents of Satan.

        Joyce has a very strong sense of fairness, and a very strong internal moral compass – we’ve seen this before in her. She can’t just sit back and let it happen when she thinks someone’s doing something wrong. She’s tried, and she can’t. It’s not in her nature. Even when she’s torn on whether something is wrong, she’s torn between the impulse to do something to stop it and the impulse to do something to stop those who would hurt someone doing that (which includes the side of her that wants to do something to stop it). So that’s how she ends up doing stuff like freaking out about premarital sex one minute and freaking out on someone being judgey about it the next.

        So she’s worried that if her parents say something that she now realizes is really bad, she might freak out on them and end up the child who curses their parents and thus is damned and should be put to death. Her morality tells her she should honor and obey her parents, but it also tells her that she should challenge them if they do something bad. Morally-speaking, in her worldview she’s caught between a rock and a hard place.

        Then add in Dorothy making a (very gentle and kind) suggestion that Joyce add yet another thing to the ever-growing list of core tenants of her previous worldview that should maybe be re-evaluated and it’s too much pressure, so Joyce snaps at her, hoping to avoid the issue. She knows it’s something she really should re-evaluate (and it’s something she probably has been grappling with on a subconscious level for quite a while now, since we know she likes boyish things and probably always has despite parental disapproval so she probably already knows which way she’s leaning on it), but it’s just too much pressure and too much stress, and probably just plain too damn scary because if her parents are wrong about that, too, what else is their world view wrong about? How much of it was a lie? Was everything lies?!

        I think this freak-out over gender roles is very similar to her evolution freak-out and comes from the same place of this-is-so-core-to-my-belief-system-that-if-it’s-wrong-everything-is-and-I’ve-been-living-a-lie. With a nice heaping dash of I-don’t-like-the-implication-that-my-parents-hamstrung-my-development-and-discouraged-my-interests-without-a-good-reason-the-implications-hurt-too-much-and-I-don’t-want-to-think-about-it thrown in for good measure.

        1. Cerberus

          All of this.

          I think you’re dead on on what she’s scared of and the risk she’s running with her family and everything.

          She’s a very moral person and now that morality is turning its head towards the lies she was sold as a child and she’s really scared of what it’s turning up and what she’s scared she will do in defense of her morality (in terms of screaming out her parents). And she feels like she can’t handle any more potential axes of conflict before this already stressful meeting.

      3. Steve

        When Joyce’s awful mother says ‘bless his soul’ in the next day, does it mean the same thing as a Southern lady saying ‘bless their heart’?

        1. thejeff

          To some extent, I think it does. Or even more so – he’ll need blessing for those sins. The “bless his soul” part certainly isn’t complimentary.
          But then she immediately ruins it with the “at least he thought he was doing the right thing. He was just worried about his daughter.”

  14. Just Me

    Joyce is confused and isn’t ready to travel down that road any further. I can understand that.

    Though Dorothy was well intentioned.

  15. TheGrammarLegionary

    When today’s preview panel first went up, I thought “Ooh, I get angry Joyce for my birthday!” A few months later, angry Joyce makes me sad.

    1. M-M

      Happy Birthday!! Maybe by next year, we’ll be at a whole new phase of Joyce!

      1. TheGrammarLegionary

        I hope so, because angry Joyce is fun in small doses, but I REALLY get Billie’s thing about bringing back sunshine-and-rainbows Joyce.

        1. begbert

          Next we’ll get yandere Joyce. There will be blood. Like, everywhere.

        2. Captain Button

          All shall love her and despair!

        3. thejeff

          No. Joyce will pass the test.

  16. Kay

    ;;;;;;;;;;;;;; No, Joyce. You haven’t. ;;;;; But you’re making progress.

  17. Regina Phalange

    I’m sorry Joyce, it’s hard to take your anger seriously when Angry Joyce is so damn adorable.

    1. Princess Consuela Bananahammock

      I agree.

    2. -Sentinel-

      Toedad begs to differ.

      1. Disloyal Subject

        Fuck him, he doesn’t get a vote.
        Angry Joyce is awesome and adorable, if not particularly healthy. Still probably better than repressed Joyce.

  18. Shiro

    I commented recently to my boyfriend that Joyce was due for a total breakdown any time now. Looks like we’re starting to see the cracks…

  19. Jupiterror

    geez joyce, bipolar much

    1. Eolirin

      Not even remotely.

      1. Jupiterror

        quick to anger, meant to say

        1. zoelogical

          then say that, please.

  20. Doopyboop

    Holy shit Joyce. I understand why and honestly this reaction is a long time coming but–

    Holy shit, Joyce. Bit of an over-reaction when Dorothy has been very kind and patient regarding Joyce and her beliefs. I feel like this is the first time Dorothy has literally said “you know Joyce things don’t have to be that way” instead of “hey this other option exists but this is also good”. After Joyce dating Ethan, Dorothy wants to be more…proactive, partially due to what Roz said. She barely gets her foot in the door and Joyce just slams it.

    I don’t know who or what Joyce needs, but she needs SOMETHING.

    1. Solenoid

      A second look at that business card Roz handed her a few weeks (in-comic time) back.

    2. DR_GONZO

      Joyce has just had her world view shattered. Dorothy doesn’t realize that her help isn’t the help Joyce needs right now.

      1. Doopyboop

        I think that’s kind of the issue with everybody in Joyce’s circle of friends. Because the ones that do realize something is wrong, they just don’t know what to do for her. They wanna help, and do try but…it’s the wrong help or the wrong time. Or they’re like Sal and don’t see a problem.

        It’s very human, because people don’t just automatically understand another’s mind like that and Joyce ain’t in a talking mood. It just hurts to see them flounder like this. It’s a sad situation.

        1. TheNinthShader

          She needs batman.

    3. Cerberus

      I’m pretty sure it’s not even about Dorothy or her words. I mean, does anyone believe that Joyce thinks Dorothy is just trying to change her? I think that angry growl is mostly at herself.

      She feels herself changing and it’s been confirmed by Becky that this place has changed her:
      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-5/01-when-somebody-loved-me/sleepover/

      And she’s been told all her life that the path she’s changing from is the one and only path to Heaven and the only real morality anyone can ever have. She has been raised to believe she is not a good person unless she lives this self-sacrificing life where she is a future meat object for her future husband.

      So, she’s snarling here, because she knows Dorothy is right and is terrified that she’s on the cusp of agreeing… and that is the scariest feeling she has ever known.

  21. Adam Black

    “Stop Trying to Change Me”
    Says the girl who’s done almost nothing but shame and try and change people since Day1.
    Hypocrite.

    Why did she even take this class?

    1. Psychotic Mantis

      That…Is actually an excellent question.

    2. Paul

      It might be a freshman requirement.

      1. neeks

        i feel like the class roster and room size would be larger if that were the case

    3. neeks

      perhaps she felt it would be an easy A because she’s very good at performing to her God-given gender

      1. TheNinthShader

        Plot twist, joyce is a transgender.

        1. Cerberus

          I would so love to see a trans dude show up in the comic at some point. I’ve got half a hope open for the never depicted Guns based on a joke character sketch Willis did once for April Fools.

        2. TheNinthShader

          But what would the story go with that, there’s not much to it.. ¨Oh, I was a guy before, but now I’m not.¨ I suppose willis could go with a gender identity crisis of sorts but I don’t really see how it would end up stemming out for more than 2 or 3 strips

        3. thejeff

          Trans dude = “I was a girl before, but now I’m not.”

          As for what would the story do with that? What would the story do with either of the two transwomen who’ve appeared? (Carla & Jocelyn.)

          Honestly, it would be kind of cool if the story didn’t do much with it. Kind of like Carla’s being trans hasn’t been a major plot point. Trans people can be cool characters even when the plot focus isn’t on them being trans.

        4. Amazi-Stool

          Unfortunately Willis has already strongly expressed that there will be no Guns in DoA.

          Maybe that was the reason that Toedad brought a rifle?

        5. Adam Black

          Plot twist, Joyce is a Transgender Transforming Robot.

    4. DinaWho

      Says the girl who knows she’s changing and is scared to let that happen.

      Gender Studies, according to Leslie in the first class, is a requirement for the education major, apparently. So that’s why.

      1. neeks

        ah, that would do it.

        also, good.

      2. Adam Black

        Thanks.
        Thats doubley-ironic.
        Shes taking a class she doesnt like , about a subject she doesnt like, so she can take a major, for a career she doesnt really want on her own determinism.

        And the class, ( but mosltly Dorothy ) is making her face this pointlessness. No wonder she is irritated.

        1. thejeff

          But oh boy is she learning and growing from it.
          She never would have taken the class if she had the choice and had known what she was getting into.
          I’ll bet 10 years down the road it’s the only class she remembers from freshman year. And she’ll be really glad she took it.

    5. Historyman68

      Because she’s a human being.

    6. Disloyal Subject

      Think about her upbringing’s rigid gender norms for a sec. Then consider her initial naïveté.
      I doubt she had any idea what she was getting into.

      Also, required for her major.

    7. Griffin

      Look, I’m not saying it makes her actions or her statement okay, but please everyone realize that converting people is super engrained in people in some areas of Christian culture. I grew up convinced I needed to get my friends and little sister ‘saved’ so they wouldn’t go to hell, and that it was right to try and convert people, because I was Right and they were Wrong and they wouldn’t be better for it.

      Yes, it’s horrible. But you don’t realize it’s horrible until you wake up.

      1. Griffin

        *would be better for it.

    8. Emperor Norton

      I disagree that it’s as simple as calling her hypocrite, for two reasons:

      First of all if you Truly Believe in the whole “people need to be saved through Christ” (which Griffin just gave us a little glimpse of), then you don’t really have any choice: You are -compelled- to try and save them. Because if you do not do that, then how can you really live with yourself? You cannot. You should not. It would be Evil to -not- attempt with all your heart, with all your soul, to save them from the eternal doom that awaits them if they do not repent.

      It is like Granny Weatherwax said in Carpe Jugulum: If you truly believe, then the belief must burn like a fire in your heart and it will seep through every single action that you do. And there should be sacrifices. Every day, you should sacrifice your life in service of your god. Every. Single. Day. Everything else is just playing nice and a way to keep in touch with the neighbours.

      And when you sincerely believe that you’ll try to change someone for the better, while they are trying to change you for the worse… How can the two even compare? How can it possibly be hypocritical to try and save someone and at the same time resist them destroying you? To such a believer, it’s like trying to grab someone hanging from a cliff to pull them up, while they are grabbing you to pull you over the edge. The action of pulling in itself might be the same action, but the consequences are so wildly different, nobody would call it hypocritical to say that one type of pulling is worse than the other.

      So, you need to realise what it is you are actually doing to other people. Joyce did not. She could not know, not with her upbringing. She’s only now, in college, getting her first real glimpse of what it is she’s been doing to other people all this time. She’s finally getting to feel how it must be to be on the receiving end. And she resists being on that end, because -of course- she does. Almost all of us do resist trying to be changed by “outsiders”. It’s a rather strong instinct we have. It takes deliberate effort to overcome. I’m not good at making that effort. I try, but I’m not good at it.

      Now, if she realises what it really is she’s been doing all along… and then keep doing it “because it’s me doing it”; now that’s true hypocricy. I’m willing to bet she won’t, though. More likely, she will stop doing what she’s been doing (which she’s already on her way to do). And nobody’s done as much growing up in this entire strip as Joyce has (granted, we’ve seen no other character as much either, but still).

      And right now, she’s between a rock and a hard place that also is spinning like a whirlpool. She wants a moment of stability, something, anything, that will stay the same as it always was -and still be good-. And she strongly suspects she’s not likely to get it soon. In such a scenario, even the slightest and gentlest of pushes only adds up to the heap of stress, and must be avoided at all costs.

      1. Adam Black

        Youve redefined the word Hypocrite to safely ensconce Xtian Fundamentalist Apologetics. But thats isnt what the word means. The issue youve raised is tangential at best.

        Hypocrisy involves having a doubles-standard for self and others.
        Thats it.
        A person is not immune from being called a Hypocrite, if they were trained that their hypocrisy was good. It doesnt matter.

        A person doesnt have to discover that their terribly justified double-standards are not really justified well . The Golden Rule Exists. Its in the Bible. This behaviour violates it. Its actually pretty clearcut.

        She tried to change Ethans sexuality. She wanted to Dorothys souls from the ‘shame pits of the lust wolves’ . She manipulated Dorothy ( an atheist ) into going to Church with her . She didnt want becky learning science or dating an “evilutionsist” . She knows. Shes already faced many of these things.

        You are saying a person has to realize they are a hypocrite,
        and realize that their self-justified hypocrisy was wrong. Or they are not a “real hypocrite” …These steps are unnecessary.

        You re thinking of something deeper: like insincere, passive-aggressive, phony, self-righteousness ; on top of garden-variety hypocrisy. Your basic Mary.

        1. Peduncle

          Oh boy, do I disagree.

          Joyce isn’t perfect.

          Sure, she briefly tried to change Ethan’s sexuality. And then she encouraged him to attend that meeting and come out. And remained his friend.

          Sure, she got Dorothy to go to church. And when it came to a showdown between Dorothy and her own parents, who did she stick up for, both in public and in private?

          Sure, Becky’s lesbianism distresses her. But she has been helping Becky from the moment Becky showed up at IU.

          Most of the characters haven’t changed a bit since they arrived at IU. Joyce has — a lot.

          Just my two pennies.

  22. Jay Eff

    Yes, Dorothy is good at folding. Quite good.

    A bit too good, in fact.

    Just ask her parents about the giant origami cranes made from bath towels that were strewn about their house before she left for college..

    1. Cerberus

      Heh. Nicely played.

      Honestly, though, I think Dorothy is still trying to figure out the right politician blend between standing up for what is right, showing empathy, and not pushing people to the point where they reject her or what she’s saying entirely.

      Right now, she’s leaning towards letting people be and not pushing too hard, but she’s worried about that, because she feels partially responsible for Joyce’s “I’m going to date a gay guy and help him fix himself” thing.

    2. TheNinthShader

      I’m sad you didn’t reference poker Cerberus, so here we go. I ONLY GOT A 2!!

  23. ninja_jesus

    Only vaguely related, but I remember a time when anything I did that was outside of my parents’ realm of normalcy was, according to them, “something your friends told you to do/think”. It’s really difficult to try and figure yourself out when relatives, especially parents, criticize you for it and say that your decisions aren’t truly your own.

    1. Marie

      Very much the same here! That or I was explicitly doing it to bother them (and I guess therefor had picked up the idea from them and reversed it? idk), which I guess sounds normal to hear (or maybe both are) in retrospect but this applied to like, crying.

      1. ninja_jesus

        That reaction is the worst; as if me trying to be myself was something to spite them with. Fuck that bullshit.

        Could you elaborate on the “crying” bit? Not sure if I understood that part correctly.

        1. Silamy

          Not sure if what my mom’d do was the same thing, but this may be along those lines -if I was in tears (or trying not to be) about something, I’d often get yelled at to “put a cork in it” or “stop sniveling or I’ll GIVE you something to cry about”. Displays of negative emotions were (and are) treated as something I was faking, or exaggerating or creating just to make her life more difficult. They were never justified. She’d decide what I was supposed to be feeling and when, and react accordingly. It… it doesn’t go so great.

        2. Just Saying

          As a person who endured quite a lot of fairly brutal abuse as a child…those phrases are familiar and I tend to associate them with abuse. Parenting via terror and threat rather than respect and love…not really parenting at all.

        3. ninja_jesus

          Okay, I understand that. It’s something I never experienced, but I know people who have. It’s terrible.

        4. Marie

          That even crying (when they didn’t want me to? I guess?) was something I was clearly doing to make them upset. My mom would get mad because apparently crying = mad at her = not telling her the truth of why I was mad at her (lying) = punishable.

          Also, along with Silamy said, the maybe more overtly emotionally abusive “why are YOU crying?! I should be crying since you [whatever*]”

          *although I wasn’t a perfect kid, I didn’t act out much, so while this is never acceptable, it also was definitely not ‘understandable,’ eg ‘you’re crying because you broke the thing? I should be crying, it’s my thing,’ which at least is sort of logical

        5. Silamy

          Those definitely sound familiar, although I also had it taken to …rather bizarre extremes -to the point where, after I was hospitalized for medical problems, I’d be comforting my mother for having a sick kid and how that made her feel like a failure of a parent. Not wanting to (again, WHILE IN THE HOSPITAL) meant that there was something wrong with me emotionally for my refusal to be supportive and understanding.

      2. Disloyal Subject

        Yeah, the “You’re doing this just to spite me” mindset seems pretty common even among people who manage to be parents instead of just genetic progenitors. I count myself lucky that it’s the worst I got; the abuse some parents dish out is sad.

    2. neeks

      for some reason this reminds me of my mom, immediately after she and my dad got divorced, being convinced that anytime she did something and i objected to it, my objection was a result of my dad poisoning me against her and not because i had my own opinions about…anything, i guess?

      1. ninja_jesus

        That’s terrible, I’m sorry you went through that shit. :\

        1. neeks

          thanks. it blew over pretty quickly. i can be, uh, rather assertive, and my mom’s basically a doormat, so….she figured out that my disagreements were, in fact, all me. probably helps that i was like 17 when they split.

          that being said it took her several years to stop thinking that certain basic behavioral aspects of my personality were 100% to spite her.

          (and then there’s the time she drunk dialed my brother and his then-fiance to express her concern that the reason they hadn’t gotten married yet was because the fiance’s mother didn’t approve.

          like, mom. look. fiance’s family is from and for the most part *IN* **POLAND**. it’s gonna take time to sort out travel and financial logistics to get them over here. it took me a while to stop laughing when my brother called me to vent about it and express concern over whether mom had a drinking problem. (not really, she just didn’t have the best judgment even when she WASN’T impaired, lol…))

        2. ninja_jesus

          Hah! I’m glad you overcame that, though hearing your describe your mom as a doormat doesn’t really give me a comfortable feeling, no offense.

          How is your relationship with her now? Is she still wary or more trusting now?

        3. neeks

          she’s just very non-confrontational, to the point where her bathroom hasn’t had hot water for several months but she doesn’t want to trouble the landlord to get it fixed. i do my best not to walk all over or berate her–which is helped significantly by the fact that we’ve both mellowed quite a bit in the past fifteen years (as one does with the passage of time)–and she’s learned to pick her battles when it comes to complaints about me, and vice versa. for example, i went with her to her church’s christmas eve service to be there with/for her. (i’m not a religious type, but she is, and family is important, so…yeah.) i TRIED to dress up, but my cat is a piss monster, and i had to choose between finding a replacement “nice outfit that fits” at goodwill or actually being on time to dinner, so i ended up wearing blue jeans. she didn’t say a word about it. ten years ago? it would have RUINED CHRISTMAS FOREVER.

          our relationship is pretty good now. i actually think our frequent bickering when i was in my early to mid twenties strengthened it, because we would argue about whatever and then basically shrug it off thirty seconds later. nothing was life or death dealbreaker level, really, and if either of us had(/have) a complaint we could voice it instead of bottling everything up and constantly wondering what was going on inside the other’s head while they did the same. (my brother was so baffled by our relationship; maybe he thought squabbles=actual antipathy?) i lean on her financially more than i deeply wish i had to, but she doesn’t hold it against/over me, and she certainly has room to do so. but the bottom line is we’re there for each other, and i’m very glad that we can be (metaphorically and also literally–her house is within walking distance from mine, lol).

          i suspect part of the mellowing has something to do with the fact that she’s a senior citizen and has had to accept that mortality is, like, a thing. her body isn’t working as well as it used to (even taking into account that some of those parts never worked that well to begin with), and her peers are starting to die off or become infirm. so like….time is not NECESSARILY of the essence, but neither is it infinite, so we make use of the time we have. hopefully it’s years and years and years.

          TLDR version: we’re comfortable with each other and accept the other for who they are now.

        4. neeks

          also, to clarify, she’s not really a doormat around me because i give her room not to be, haha. we can disagree with each other about something, and that’s all it is. a disagreement.

          plus for all that she’s involved with the background stuff of her church (which has gone through some shakeups recently), there are certain members who also help run the show of whom she is not really a fan (there’s no escaping office politics, ESPECIALLY when it comes to church admin), and i’m her outlet when she needs to vent or ask for input.

          i’m sure her church buddies see her as a sweet and slightly daft old lady (she’s smarter than she looks, i swear), but she’s my bitter little pill. XD

    3. Psychotic Mantis

      This, so much this.

      I remember back in high-school, I intentionally went out of my way to stand out. I dyed and styled my hair (I basically looked like a blonde Ziggy Stardust with purple roots), wore casual clothes to very formal events, stepped so far out of my gender roles that I swear my ‘counselor’ wanted to strangle me…

      And when my parents blamed it on the books I’d been reading, and the people I’d been talking to? Hoo boy. That was an argument to shake the Earth.

      1. ninja_jesus

        I wish I had the courage to stand out to that extent in high school. What books were you reading that would lead to them suggesting that they’d influence you? O_o

        1. Psychotic Mantis

          An old, beaten-up copy of 1984 that I LOVED, Animal Farm, and a lot of rather…intensely-worded articles in the newspaper.

          I’m really not sure how that made them (not really my dad, ESPECIALLY my mom) jump to that conclusion though.

          And courage was definitely an issue I had. At first, most of my friends didn’t want me to get my hair styled ), and I was scared to do otherwise. But I eventually decided that if they were my friends, they wouldn’t give two shits and did it anyways.

        2. ninja_jesus

          Those are some pretty radical books, haha. For me, it was removing religion from my life and questioning my sexuality that they criticized, or whenever I disobeyed them over something small.

          I didn’t have a lot of courage in high school either, and it’s kind of what kept me from cutting my hair. I used to have a huge afro and that’s what people knew me for, but I always felt insecure because it’s like, do I not have other defining traits?

        3. Psychotic Mantis

          Eh, religion was actually never much of an issue, which actually surprises me a bit in retrospect. But I get the feeling regarding your afro.

          Before I got my Ziggycut, I had this long mane of blonde hair that I was really proud of. I’d been cultivating that thing for YEARS since birth. It felt like that was the only noticeable thing about me. Without it, I was just some tall-ass kid.

          It hurt at first, but I came to accept it eventually. Hell, it’s grown back now, so I’m not complaining.

    4. StClair

      Because the idea that the child themselves could have some free will and agency, why, that’s just absurd.

      1. ninja_jesus

        Oh certainly. Parents know best, since their individual experiences 100% apply to their children’s.

        1. Silamy

          But that’s because a child is just an extension of their parents. Their function is to provide emotional validation for their parents by existing and behaving exactly as predicted and told, for exactly the reasons the parents decide are true!

    5. Cerberus

      Ninja-jesus –

      Oh very much this. To my parents, I wasn’t trans, I only believed I was because I was passively following my partner’s wants and becoming a woman in order to fulfill her bisexuality and was too brainwashed to see her abuse and sorcery for what it was (yes, my supposedly atheist dad once accused my partner of the time of being a sorceress who can turn people trans… somehow).

      They believed this because there was a particularly awful night with them where they were saying a lot of shitty stuff so I kind of shut down and so my partner of the time tried to stand up for me and point out what was so fucked up about their statements. This somehow “proved” that I was only believing this delusion because of her and my shutting down was really just a sign of her speaking over me and for me to hide her sorceress control over me.

      And at the time it hurt the most that they wouldn’t just believe my words about my life instead of believing that I was so weak-willed and devoid of personality as to accept huge amounts of social disenfranchisement and disapproval just to fulfill my partner at the time’s kink (also a real statement, though that was probably because I had stupidly told them we had been exploring kink together a few years prior to that).

      1. TheNinthShader

        Wait. Is ninja jesus a thing?

        1. Lord Stoneheart

          Well if ninja Jesus is not a thing, it would raise questions as to how they’ve been posting here.

    6. Very Good Karma

      My mother always just claimed I was being mind-controlled by evil spirits called “dark force energies” whenever I did anything she didn’t like.

    7. ischemgeek

      Yeah.

      Also if you had controlling helicopter parents in high school, it’s really hard to grasp that you’re genuinely free now, that they can’t take away your privileges or whatever else have you anymore. I didn’t realize it until halfway through the second semester that I didn’t have to ask their permission for every little thing anymore, and that it didn’t matter if they “didn’t approve” of someone or wouldn’t approve of someone because they weren’t here and what they didn’t know couldn’t hurt me.

      Joyce is just starting to appreciate the fact that at uni, she has a level of freedom she’s never even considered existed before, and she’s realizing that she doesn’t want to go back to the safety of her parents’ gilded cage, even temporarily.

  24. Tenchan

    That fourth panel* of Joyce could be applied to the Street Fighter II character selection.

    *And I would include those sections without borders as “panels”.

  25. John

    “I enjoy signing bills into law, you like landing your fighter jet on the Mission Accomplished carrier…”

  26. MatthewTheLucky

    This is very concerning. Unlike Amazi-girl/Amber, who has “superhero split-personality”, Joyce actually seems to be having a dissociative episode.

    1. Just Saying

      What is dissociative about her behaviour? What she is going through is usually called a “crisis of faith” and if you grew up in a very religious family and really REALLY believed it, that can be one of the most painful and horrific sensations.

      It feels like the world is slipping out from under you. Like someone told you time and gravity and space never really existed. You’re also terrified of EVERYTHING you think and feel suddenly because you spent your whole life being threatened with an eternal torment you REALLY believed. I think she’s dealing with it admirably so far.

      1. MatthewTheLucky

        It’s a dissociative episode because she’s being wildly inconsistent in her emotional state. It doesn’t matter that her worldview is being messed with, she still needs help. This kind of extreme, illogical mood swing is indicative of serious mental issues.

        1. Just Saying

          My point is that it isn’t an illogical mood swing. It is a very reasonable reaction to a lot of intense stress. Being upset and in a spin sometimes does not indicate serious mental issues. It indicates a bad time in her life.

    2. Historyman68

      Jeez can’t somebody just be angry and then apologize for it anymore without it being a disassociative episode?

      1. neeks

        not according to webmd

    3. TWAC

      Is a dissociative episode really as serious as y’all are making it out to be? I mean I’ve had that happen before under extremely stressful situations and I don’t have any mental issues more serious than depression/anxiety

  27. Wublub

    Actually, Joyce, you really should change just a bit more. For your own sake.

    I mean, I can understand wanting to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s a valid choice. But does she actually think that her future husband should really make ALL the decisions just because he’s a man? Of course her friends are going to be worried about that. She could get stuck in an abusive relationship. And even if she doesn’t, she’s still stifling her own desires to be the perfect little –doormat– housewife.

    I imagine Joyce would change her tune about accepting all your husband’s decisions and doing all the housework and all that junk real quick if, say, Dorothy and Walky were getting married. I don’t think she’d want her smart, competent, responsible, super awesome friend to let some lovable but incredibly childish guy boss her around because “Well, he IS the husband.” Or at least, I hope she wouldn’t.

    1. I Write Monsters

      Joyce is scarily close to a prospective convert to the Quiverfull movement

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        That would be terrifying.

      2. DinaWho

        Joyce’s upbringing has a lot of similarities with Quiverfull.
        Fundamentalist Protestantism? Check
        Homeschooling? Check
        Chaperoned dates? Check

        While Joyce’s family isn’t ‘large’ relative to Quiverfull families, she is the youngest of four kids, which is a big family compared to the general US population.

      3. thejeff

        I’d say Joyce is scarily close to a prospective convert away from the Quiverfull movement. Scary because of where she’s coming from and how hard it is to change.

        Though I don’t think her folks are quite that bad, they’re definitely off in that direction.

    2. Paul

      Actually, Joyce, you really should change just a bit more. For your own sake.

      I think she deserves a change break for a little while. She can do more changing after the confrontation with her parents.

      1. Cerberus

        The evil side of me feels she can take a break from changing until during the confrontation with her parents.

        1. Disloyal Subject

          Evil? Nah. It’s just a darker shade of courage.
          If she sticks to the song’s lyrics, and I hope she does, I think “don’t you bow to the abuse” will force her to keep changing once her parents start talking. We shall see.

    3. Cerberus

      Sadly, this was, to use the Becky vernacular, “the danged extent of her allowed aspirations”:
      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/aspirations/

      She’s been told all her life that the role that God has personally chosen for her, the only role any woman could possibly fulfill is to be a man’s property, caring for his house, raising and educating his children, filling his hanky-panky needs under the bounds of holy matrimony, performing her “holy duty” to keep him from straying or becoming immoral.

      She does not have a future that she can dream for. She has a fate she feels resigned to.

      And yes, these twisted viewpoints lead to all manner of abusive behavior, because well, anytime you have poorly educated on relationships and consent people, fill them with the idea that women are property whose sole role on this Earth is to obey all their orders, it makes it a hell of a lot easier to justify all manner of awfulness.

    4. Historyman68

      Many times, people can have a lot more empathy for someone else than themselves. So Joyce probably would be more willing to say Dorothy shouldn’t have to submit herself to Walky than to stand up for her own marital rights.

      1. thejeff

        Well obviously Dorothy shouldn’t submit herself to Walky. Walky isn’t worthy of that. Dorothy needs to find a better man who will be worthy of her and submit herself to him.

  28. Edupoet81

    Joyce has changed. Change can be frightening and unsettling, even when said change is a positive one in the long run. I suspect Joyce has reached a point where she really can’t go home again. She can return to the house where she grew up, and be with the family who raised her. It’s never going to feel the same as it did before, though. Joyce has a rough weekend ahead of her.

    We do know Jocelyne will be showing up soon, and I’m hoping to see that particular bond strengthen. After everything that’s happened with Becky and Toedad, I hope to see Jocelyne reach out to her sister. I am curious about the latest preview panel. http://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/136838934767/april-7-2016

    I wonder if Jocelyne is speaking to Joyce there, out of the earshot of their parents. Perhaps she’s coming out to Joyce, or educating her on the LGBTQ spectrum. I’m intrigued and curious. Of course, we won’t be finding out the context of that panel until April. Eh, it’s still fun to speculate.

    1. Cerberus

      It’s Jocelyne using her magical trans powers to turn Joyce gay so she no longer has to end up in a soul-crushing marriage to some dude who views her as property. To be fair, it is at Joyce’s request. Becky will be looking on in that panel feeling bitter as she knows that switch is for Dorothy, not her.

      /thiswillnothappen,whateventhehelliswrongwithme?

  29. Cizak

    You know what, Joyce? No. Fuck that. You don’t get to play the victim anymore today. You’ve used up your minutes. I’m sorry you got a gun pointed at you. I really, truly, am. That has never happened to me and I hope I will never have to share that experience with you. But you do not get to go around spouting your 2000 year old backwards women-degrading bullshit and then pretend everything’s fine because you spent two minutes playing gay relationship. It’s time for you to go get a goddamn therapist and work this shit out, because I am not sitting down and listening to your six years too late emo phase that’s caused by you realising your ideology is shit.

    Jesus Christ, I think I’ve been awake for like 28 hours and been angry for 26 of them. Imma go sleep now and I when I return I fully expect to read this and find it way too harsh.

    …A christian going “Stop trying to change me”!? For real? “Depression is a God-pertunity”?? FUCK!

    1. Psychotic Mantis

      ^

      I feel bad for Joyce, but this shit is unacceptable.
      She needs a therapist. Bad.

    2. ninja_jesus

      Nevermind the whole “your parents basically condoned toedad pointing a gun at her and parroting the same thing he said”, almost getting raped, revelations about gay people in general, standing up for her atheist friend, dealing with Becky coming out.

      Yeah, just those two minutes were the tipping point for her. Not like anything was built up throughout the whole series.

      Having said that though, I agree with the therapist. And don’t say that they don’t exist in webcomics, Willis! Jeph Jacques did it and it worked just fine!

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        I’m not saying nothing built up to this at all, but she could really be working through this a Hell of a lot better.

        Sure, it wouldn’t be EASY, but lashing out at Dorothy for trying to help is the aforementioned ‘unacceptable shit’ from earlier.

        Sorry if I came off sounding like an arse.

    3. NoHeart6265

      While you certainly seem a lot angrier than I am, I certainly agree with your sentiments. Joyce needs to stop acting like a victim. She needs to stop lashing out at those around her, especially those like Dorothy, who are genuinely concerned about her. She needs to understand that change is constant and that it’s good. The fact that she cries out against people trying to change her is hypocritical considering how much she has tried to change others
      . Perhaps what she needs most though is to understand that the person she is now, the person who doesn’t just dismiss homosexuality as wrong without a second thought, is a better person that she was before, even if she isn’t a happier one.

    4. Torra

      Like, it’s literally been what…. a day since Joyce went through all that shit? Jesus give her a break. I’m sure the last thing she wants is MORE questions about her world view that’s already been broken again and again and if anything just wants to hide up in her room instead of socialising with people.

      She did have a gun pointed at her and her best friend nearly taken away from her by a psycho and then after all that have her parents tell her ‘well we do see where he’s coming from tho’. So. Yeah I think Joyce deserves a break from her angry outlashes.

      1. Cerberus

        This.

        Dude pointed a gun at her face and shortly thereafter pulled the trigger, right before kidnapping her best friend while she sat full of freeze trauma response unable to do anything to save her until she was already being taken away.

        And then in the evening, she had her mom tacitly support and excuse Toedad’s actions of abuse.

        Also, Joyce is the type of person who gets more fucked up when bad things happen to friends versus when bad stuff happens to herself, so there’s that piling on her as well.

        Honestly, it’s pretty impressive that she’s up and out of bed. No shit, she’s going to snap and have mean outbursts where she’s lashing out at friends. It’s not right, but she’s got so much rage at how she was raised welling up inside of her that it is starting to leak everywhere and she’s scared shitless that this time it might really be so broken as to not be fixed (in its original shape).

        And yes, girl needs therapy. Girl needs infinite therapy. Hell, all the characters do. But I don’t think we’ll see that or if we do we’ll see a typical college psychologist (which means absolutely awful and super-victim-blamey).

        Honestly, she’s making good strides. She’s told all her friends about the not being able to walk alone outside thing, she’s disengaging from situations she knows are toxic, and she’s resisting topics of discussion that are spiking her anxiety because of how much they make her question her faith.

        That last one might seem odd to include, but this is a big change she’s on the edge of and so, her being able to protect her boundaries to what she’s comfortable when she can be comfortable with it is an important part of healing. Is she being disproportionally rude and angry to Dorothy and Becky in the earlier scene about evolution? Yeah. And true that isn’t a good thing.

        But it’s very much a trauma thing. And you don’t just get over trauma that happened less than a week ago. Fuck, I still have flashbacks from time to time over an incident that happened 5 and a half goddamned years ago. Brains are stupid heads.

        1. ischemgeek

          THIS.

          Trauma responses are a thing. I’ve nearly hit people because they accidentally made me feel like someone was going to attack me from behind (happened quite often in HS to me, my bullies were fond of the sneak up behind you and slam your head in your locker when it’s too noisy for you to hear me tactic). See also why I won’t use lockers if there is anyone within a 20-ft radius of me, constantly checking behind me. Also why I can’t sit in a table with my back to the room. I want my back to the wall. That way I can see what’s coming and I can’t get sucker-punched. I could go on. But basically if someone comes up behind me in a way I’m not expecting, I’m going to panic and there will be either screaming or cursing or violence or some combination, none of which the innocent party behind me deserves. But at the same time, it’s a trauma response and genuinely speaking it’s not something I can prevent happening without a shitload of desensitization therapy I can’t afford. So I cope by preventing the trauma response from getting triggered because as much as my frontal lobes know I haven’t been bullied in years, tell that to my lizard brain. And this is over 12 years after I got out of the school where I was being physically abused on a regular basis.

          I think a lot of people who are being all harsh on Joyce don’t appreciate exactly how badly trauma messes with your head. Should Joyce be snapping at Dorothy? No. But frankly, given what she’s been through? She’s showing huge strength of character just staying functional.

          Remember that she was incredibly sheltered before she came here. In the matter of a few weeks, she’s had to almost completely revise her moral world view, deal with her best friend coming out (which her religion says is worthy of damnation but which she’s realizing it’s not), deal with serious and repeated challenges to her religion (which I’m told from people who’ve lost their faith is a very painful and traumatic process), deal with the fact that she’s learning things that are completely inconsistent with her morality, revise her entire moral fabric and then deal with the emotional fallout of regret and guilt over past-her doing things than now-her thinks is reprehensible.

          And that’s without even considering that she’s been the victim of not one, but two serious, violent crimes that were genuine risks to her life (date rape drug overdose can kill, fyi – a person I know ended up in ICU on life support for 3 days after getting roofied and would have died if her friends hadn’t acted quickly), one of which calls into question the fundie world view of “nice girls don’t get raped” (they won’t say as much outright but in the religious-right circles it’s what they believe) and the other of which calls into question the judgement and morality of her elders.

          Then one of the crimes she can’t tell her parents about probably because she (rightly) fears their response would be to preach at her that she should’ve been more modest and what did she expect, going to a party anyway? Good girls don’t go to parties. Plus the fact that the guy was a preacher’s son = exactly the kind of guy she was groomed to think of as “safe” and incapable of doing wrong. Plus the fact that fundie culture blames girls for rape culture and thinks if a boy or man “misbehaves” toward a woman or girl, it’s because the woman or girl was not modest enough and was tempting him like Jezebel. But Joyce knows she wasn’t being Jezebel, so what if the other girls she was told of were harlots and temptresses actually weren’t but were instead victims, too? And so she has to reconcile trauma and guilt and shame with her self-worth and her changing morality and how she was raised and at least one of those things is not consistent with the stuff she’s learned from that trauma.

          And then the other crime, the one where a guy showed up with a gun and threatened to kill her and her friend and took her best friend hostage literally at gunpoint while she just stood, frozen in terror? That one, her parents sympathize with the guy who held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her friends, who hurt her and who hurt or tried to hurt her friends more than they sympathize with their daughter who had someone hold a gun to her head and threaten to kill her. They value more the fact that he was trying to “save” his daughter from Satan than the fact that Joyce was trying to save Becky from real literal death. And Joyce’s mother took it one further and basically all-but said in so many words that she’d do the same thing if she thought Joyce was falling to Satan. And the words of willing sacrifice she’d been brought up to view as a comfort suddenly sounded like the threat they were all along. Plus she has to deal with guilt over her freeze response (guilt over freezing is a thing that happens, I’ve been there and it’s not pretty) and the fact that increasingly, she’s starting to realize that everything she was ever brought up to believe was true was actually a lie.

          In the black-and-white world view where she was raised, it’s kind of like finding out that the being you thought was an angel was actually the devil in disguise. She’s starting to realize the real world has shades of grey, but she’s not used to thinking in those terms so her brain is telling her “If my parent’s world view is not good like I thought it was, it’s actually evil. Which means they’re evil.” And she can’t reconcile thought of parents-might-be-evil with the affection and love she feels for them, and that’s without even throwing in all the more complicated stuff she’s got going on like betrayal and guilt and anxiety and stress and so on.

          Joyce is in a headspace right now where everything seems broken and wrong and dangerous. She’s clinging to whatever feels familiar to help re-gain her sense of emotional equilibrium (one of which is the gender roles she was brought up with). And then her friend kindly and gently suggests the life preserver she’s hanging on to for dear life might not actually be a life preserver. Meanwhile, over in Joyce-land, all she knows is that if she loses what precious little she still has to hang on to, she’s going to drown. And here someone is telling her (and maybe even being right about it) that it’s in her best interest to let go of the few things that still feel safe and comfortable.

          No wonder Joyce blew up.

          Again, I don’t agree with the blow up, I don’t think Dorothy deserved to be blown up at, but I find it hard to condemn Joyce for it given her headspace. Demanding that she remain her bubbly-cheery self despite everything is ignoring the effect that ongoing trauma is having on her psyche, and the effect that her real and probably well-founded fear that her visit home is going to add even more trauma to an already-heaping pile of it is probably also having, coupled with the guilt she’s probably feeling about dreading rather than looking forward to a visit home.

        2. Cerberus

          So much everything you said. Like, wow, that’s a really good breakdown.

          And yeah, especially want to echo the guilt for freeze response being a thing. I blamed myself for my sexual assault for years because I locked up and froze during the act itself.

          For Joyce, she did totally participate in many ways in Becky’s rescue, but I’m sure she’s got some self-blame swirling around for having frozen at the fountain, especially since Toedad exploited her trauma response and PTSD to bully Becky into surrendering to him.

          I mean, it’s not her fault in any shape whatsoever, but that’s one of those things that can be difficult to keep yourself from blaming yourself for it.

      2. Falcon

        Four days. It has been four days since the incident.

        Joyce has had to stretch herself psychologically *alot* in a very short period of time since arriving at the university. She’s coped remarkably well, given her background. Not only was what happened with Toedad traumatic, but the trauma landed squarely on the areas she was already stretched most. Unsurprisingly, her mental fabric tore.

        Joyce has had time to try to sort it out on her own, and if anything she’s gotten worse, withdrawing into what’s left of her comfortable space.’ Her behavior is all too human, but it’s also at a point where her inability to deal with what she’s going through is disrupting and hurting those around her. She needs to either get it sorted or get help, because she is not a functional member of society right now and is harming both herself and those around her with her behavior.

    5. TheNinthShader

      Mike grav=making this best comment.

    6. altalemur

      It Is LEGITIMATE For Joyce To Feel What She Feels.

      as already stated, it has been but 4 freakin days. a traumatic experience like Joyce’s can last AN ENTIRE LIFETIME for someone. on top of NOT getting support from her parents? and already being a survivor of sexual assault? yeah. she does need to see a therapist. but it takes a MASSIVE amount of courage and often times support from friends just to get to the point where you think about talking to someone. she was just starting to consider talking to Amazi-girl about her sexual assault when what do you know, gun to the face and best friend kidnapped. do you know the average time most psychologists expect someone to take to recover from a traumatic event before they are willing to put a label like Depression of PTSD? 6 months. Six Months of soul searching, fluctuating feelings, and extreme reaction to normal stimulus is what is Expected and within Normal Parameters for everyone experiencing traumatic events.

      now that doesn’t excuse her if she’s being real horrible to her friend, but so far she hasn’t. she snarled once. so far she is clearly sad (possibly depressed) and quick to temper, and that’s only been today.

      1. Ettel

        I actually found Becky less beliable than Joyce in the sense of how well she seems to have taken everything till now. I know maybe she isn’t showing everything but… I don’t know.

        1. Cerberus

          Oh, she’s burying her emotions like fuck:
          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/04-walking-with-dina/downer/

          Largely because play-acting super silly “nothing can keep me down” Becky is her means of not collapsing into the painful realities of all that has happened to her. She’s been shown a lot to hide her feelings away (running away when Joyce rejected her romantic overture so she wouldn’t cry around other people, confronting her dad without any friends’ backup so that she could just be “grateful, happy” Becky around them, and so on).

          And sadly, I’ve also been in that zone, where you’re just keeping moving and trying to cling to every shred of optimism because your household can’t afford both of you collapsing into “can’t get out of bed” depression.

          And I’ve pretty much been stuck in minimizing mode with a lot of the awful that happened to me recently, because as Becky says, no one likes a Debbie Downer. But the person who can make a dark joke out of their past in a light-hearted way on occasion tends to be thought of as more or less all-right so long as they don’t push it.

          So yeah, Becky feels rather familiar to me on that score.

        2. ischemgeek

          Yeah what Cerberus says.

          Becky strikes me a lot as being in “Laughing is more fun than crying, and it’s one or the other for me right now so I’m gonna take the piss out of ALL OF THE THINGS so I don’t have to deal with it,” headspace with a heavy dose of “I won’t give that jerk the satisfaction of knowing how badly he broke me. F*** that guy.” thrown in for good measure.

          I’ve been there, too. Frankly, spite is a big part of why I survived high school. You do what you gotta do to make it through, and that’s what Becky’s doing right now – keeping busy and just not thinking about anything upsetting because if she feels anything she’ll feel everything and it’ll all go to hell.

      2. Falcon

        She was also furious at Joyce for talking about evolution and extinctions.

        No one should be expected to recover from the trauma of what happened in four days. But when voluntarily inserting yourself back into school and public interaction, there’s a minimum, obviously subjective, standard of decorum beyond to be met. To me, Joyce is on the edge of that minimum standard, one side of it or the other, and if she can’t treat people around her reasonably in day to day normal interaction then she needs to get something done about that.

        Not that I expect her to actually seek out help or take self-corrective measures in that regard. In Joyce’s mind, she’s got bigger worries right now, like her fear of her own changing morality and the reaction of her parents.

    7. Griffin

      She’s a child…she’s been indoctrinated…cut her a little slack.

      Besides, it’s not like she EVER meant to hurt anyone. Conversion is about helping people, protecting them. Because in that world, if you’re not a Christian, your life sucks and then you go to hell. It’s terrifying to love someone and be under the delusion that you’re partially responsible for their eternal fate, that if you don’t convince them somehow they’ll be in torment. No one wants that to happen to their friends and family.

      Joyce isn’t evil. She’s been fucked over and convinced she needs to spread the gospel at any cost.

      As for her behavior right now, yeah it’s a bit shitty, but she’s trying desperately to hold on to her deepest held beliefs??

    8. Emperor Norton

      “You don’t get to play the victim.”

      “Joyce needs to stop acting like a victim.”

      Spoken about someone who IS AN ACTUAL VICTIM OF VIOLENCE AND MENTAL ABUSE.

      Gee, and people wonder why it’s often so difficult for victims of abuse to come forward…

    9. TWAC

      Oh hi Roz

  30. Psychotic Mantis

    Oh, dear. That isn’t a good response at all.

    I mean, yeah, okay, you’ve been through some shit. I get that. But this goes back to what I said a while ago on one of the Becky strips.

    Joyce, don’t lash out like that. I mean, you can be angry, but deal with it effectively. What you just did isn’t that.

    1. kelticat

      Joyce needs a communication class. When my sister took one, she found out how screwed up her “good fundie doormat” responses were when her husband was lashing out at her.

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        Hopefully she’s doing better now!

        But I do think that Joyce could definitely use a more…friendly, conductive approach to her anger. Someone who she could CALMLY discuss this with without lashing out.

        Problem is, people don’t stop lashing out just like that. She’s probably going to do it a good deal more before the visit.

    2. Leorale

      I have a hard time believing that anyone taught Joyce a productive way of dealing with anger. (She’s a girl, girls don’t get angry, they just have to stifle it and turn it into depression instead.)

      1. Cerberus

        This. Girls and those raised as if they were girls tend to get slammed really really hard on the anger thing, due to it “not being a feminine trait” or being viewed as signs of b-wordiness.

        And that’s only more pronounced when you grow up with Joyce’s particular sect. Getting angry there is not only “not feminine”, it can also be viewed as a great sin, a violation of calls to “honor and obey” parents and romantic partners. Something that will make one unmarriable trash.

        1. Leorale

          Mhm. Often, women aren’t allowed to be angry and men aren’t allowed to be sad. It hurts everyone.

          I’m curious how those rigid rules translate towards nonbinary people. Do people try to enforce the limitations of the assigned gender, the limitations of the expressed gender(s), or do their brains just explode way before it comes up?

        2. Cerberus

          Oh very much so. The “boys can’t cry” crap makes it a lot harder for men to get help for things like depression or to show emotional vulnerability.

          As far as non-binary… I’m not entirely sure. Most of the non-binary people I know are younger and most of their parents and the like just try and enforce the gender expectations of their assigned at birth sex, sometimes even more strenuously as if remembering their gender roles will suddenly make them realize this non-binary thing was “just a phase”.

          Based on a couple of non-binary stories I’ve heard about workplaces, it sounds like there might also be a “let me find a box and enforce its gender” thing that can happen. Like, the workplace or person chooses whether or not they see the non-binary person as “one of the guys” overall or “one of the girls” and then tries to enforce those gendered expectations (like, okay, we’re having difficulty viewing you as a girl, so you’re a lad now, so you’ll be okay laughing along to our sexist jokes).

          I don’t know. Anyone who identifies as non-binary want to share for this one?

        3. Lord Stoneheart

          This is outside my experience, but I have the feeling that people who wish everyone adhere to strict gender roles refuse to acknowledge that non-binary people even exist. Not so much brain explode as brain will ignore info to avoid having preconceived notions challenged.

        4. ischemgeek

          Yes, this.

          Men in conservative communities get righteous fury. Women? Are nagging, b-words, crazy, hysterical, etc, if they show even a hint of anything that isn’t sunny joy. I know so many women back home who are completely incapable of direct and frank communication or effective conflict resolution, it’s not even funny.

    3. Liz

      If everyone dealt with their anger effectively, it would be a better world. With lots of flowers, and sunshine, and puppies.

  31. Zagreus

    Change doesn’t stop. Change NEVER stops. You’re never a complete person, you’re never whole, you’re never done changing no matter what you do to yourself, you’re nothing but a shitty flawed person born into a shitty flawed system and you have to fight and scrape and exhaust yourself for every second of your entire goddamn life just to try and be marginally less shitty, and it’s never enough. It will never BE enough.

    We’re broken, all of us. We’ve been hurt and abused and pushed and pushed and pushed until nothing matters anymore but the pain and what truly hurts is that we know we could have been so much better than this.

    Social progress is inevitable. A better world will be made someday.

    But it’s not for us.

    1. Leorale

      Strongly disagree! We are always changing, but we are also whole and complete.

      1. Lord Stoneheart

        I remember really liking a metaphor that Leslie used in one of the gender studies classes, but I’m too tired to dig up the link. It was about our beliefs being like a sculpture I think. In the morning I’ll find it I swear.

        1. Captain Button

          A three strip sequence starting here and the two days following.

        2. Disloyal Subject

          Augh. Archive diving from that made me notice how much harsher this one is in hindsight.

        3. TheGrammarLegionary

          http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/sculptor/

          This one, right?

    2. Cerberus

      Hear hear. I’m a super big fan of change and how critically important it is to growing and becoming better as a person.

  32. Uniqueantique

    Indeed. Joyce has been forcing her concepts and opinions, as facts, since day one, attempting to change others to her way of thinking.

    The thing that I have wondered about is this scene: a couple thousand students in freshman year, many taking mind blowing classes exposing them to new ideas.
    A good many of these students have had their own trama’s in life, near rapes, real rapes, religious conflicts, facing new sexual concepts…

    Each and every one of them reacts like Joyce: whoo boy.

  33. Nono

    Joyce actually being angry at Dorothy is a first though. She’s changing.

    1. Psychotic Mantis

      But probably not in a good way in this particular instance.

  34. IRL Name TBD

    So… My question:

    Is Joyce just mad because she doesn’t want to change?

    Or is it fear due to the timing of everything with her parents?

    Though she’s certainly resisted change in the past, she usually does so by acknowledging logical inconsistencies within her belief system to loophole the changes in.

    This time is different: she’s aware that she can’t justify it against what she has known to be right her entire life without acknowledging how fucked up that belief is, which would explain her resistance.

    1. Nono

      My take on it is that in the first month or so, Joyce’s change was discovering the good in people she’s never had to interact with before.

      In this second month, it will probably be discovering the ugliness in people she’s interacted with before.

      Even talking with her parents had caused her to slowly pierce the facade of perfection she’s built around them her whole life. She might have even had flashbacks to her childhood and slowly realizing how messed up it was.

    2. Buhzim

      It’s one of the last vestiges of her original life plans as of when she arrived at the university, so she probably wants to cling to it even if it’s not what she really wants anymore.

    3. DinaWho

      My take on it is that Joyce is aware of how much she’s changing. At first, she didn’t realise it at all. Then first, Parents’ Weekend, then the arrival of Becky, and especially her conversation with her mom on Monday.
      And now she’s going home for the weekend. She’s probably scared that if she can’t keep up the appearance of ‘old Joyce’ that they’ll pull her from school (in addition to what she knows the Toe did to Becky, she’s been afraid of being pulled out since at least the party at the end of the first week).
      In addition, she probably feels torn about her background and how much of it she wants to keep or abandon.

    4. Cerberus

      Yes.

      She’s mad because she doesn’t want to change. Because changing means she goes to Hell. Changing means she becomes a sinner against her own God. Changing means she may lose her family forever. Because changing is scary and she can feel herself falling more and more into it and feels like she can’t stop.

      And she’s also scared of what’s going to happen with her parents. After all, she’s realized for the first time that her mom is kinda awful and she has no way to process that yet. She’s snapping and cursing and full of so much rage and she knows how her family will react to even things that are vaguely in the same ballpark as that.

      She’s afraid like Jocelyne that she might say something she can never take back.

      And she’s afraid she might like the change better than who she is now.

  35. trlkly

    Oh! Now her anger makes even more sense. I mean, I got being upset because something horrible happened and the disillusionment that someone could be a “good Christian” and yet be such a horrible human being. And I understand that she’s seeing the damage her long held beliefs can cause (even if I didn’t have that reaction.)

    But if she’s worrying about talking to her parents about this? Sure, her dad seems more like my parents. But her mom? Ugh, I’d not be so much angry as absolutely terrified. If she loves her mom as much as she loves mine, losing her would be the worst thing ever.

    I actually wonder if finding out about her sister (as mentioned above) would help more than hurt in that situation.

    1. Psychotic Mantis

      I dunno. Even if Joyce SEES it as hurting, I think that finding out about her sister would actually help a LOT.

      See, my thinking is that if Joyce learns that change on such a physical level is going on in her own, God-fearing, ‘right-minded family, she’d end up being MORE OPEN to smaller amounts of change.

      Or, worst case scenario, she rejects Jocelyne and shit goes down. Hard.

      1. Silamy

        It might help Jocelyn, but Joyce? That’s a HUGE shift from what she was raised to think of as okay -it’s a secret she’ll have to keep from her parents and brothers -which is another wedge from the only support network she’s known for most of her life… in the short-term, that’s going to hurt a LOT, no matter what, and enough stress and pressure on ANYONE, and the long-term stops being relevant.

  36. CommanderIke

    I’ve seen this happen before, not to such an extreme of course, but still. My friend believed something for a long time, then began to see its shortcomings. However, it was happening too fast for her, so she defaulted to what she knew before and shut out any other possibilities.

    Reality, however, has a tendency to shatter ignorance over time.

  37. Leorale

    Joyce knows that visiting home will be very difficult because she has changed. Change = difficulty = threat.
    Also, she needs a break from her worldview crumbling beneath her feet. Change = stress = threat.

    That’s why she’s lashing out at Dorothy. Encouraging change is a threat.

    1. Leorale

      Oh yeah, and change also means going to Hell. That’s bad, too.

  38. Ridureyu

    But Joyce HAS to change. She’s wrong, and she has to be turned right, whatever it takes!

    1. zalf

      lol

  39. Buhzim

    Panel four makes for a good avatar.

  40. Derek

    Joyce, I get that you’re upset and nervous right now, but don’t fucking snap at Dorothy.
    Look, I do the same thing when I’m frustrated or nervous so I can tell you from experience it’s the Asshole Thing to do.
    Go watch seven hours worth of Monkey Master to unwind.

    1. Spencer

      People, on occasion, fall short of themselves.

      Everyone’s an asshole sometimes*. Shit, Dorothy was going to dump Walky over pajama jeans and tried to steal from her ex, and she’s still one of the most caring and understanding members of the cast.

      *Except Mike. Mike is an asshole all the time.

      1. Cerberus

        It’s exhausting when you’re trying to be perfect all the time. Eventually you’re going to fuck up and so the question is whether or not that fuck up is going to be something big or something small you can easily apologize for later.

        1. Spencer

          The relentless need to be perfect is something that’s creeped into most of the cast members, isn’t it?

        2. Leorale

          It is. I think it may be part of the human condition, or at least, it is among college students.

  41. Arianod

    Can only handle so much change at a time.

  42. Shiro

    Re: the general sentiment: I agree, Joyce’s mindset here is wrong. But mayyyyyybe now, when she’s already visibly depressed and tense and about to go see her parents, maybe not such a good idea to ask for miracles?

    1. Spencer

      This. Joyce has been through severe trauma and worldshaking since she came to college. In a better time she’d be able to actually address Dorothy, but right now she’s doubling down and trying to hide back in her shell to avoid confronting her problems.

      1. Shiro

        Yeah. Like, rightness but also compassion, you know?

      2. Cerberus

        All the this. Yeah, she’s on rocky ground, feeling the maw widening under her splitting legs. In another time she may have sadly mulled over the words, using them as a cudgel against herself. Now? She’s as you point out doubling down and trying to force the glass shards of her faith back into their proper place.

  43. Owlmirror

    I kinda wish that instead of apologizing, Dorothy had said something like:
    “Do you really think that opposing the possibility of more egalitarian relationships between men and women is an essential part of who you are?” And we could see how the response to that leads to a conversation about beliefs and values with respect to identity.

    I have sympathy for Dorothy’s actual response, because I’m not usually that argumentative in person. But still.

    1. Leorale

      Nah, you have to meet people where they’re at. When Joyce is this adamant about not wanting to talk about it (maybe until she’s a little more grounded, for example) then pushing her wouldn’t have any good results.

  44. ninjazaku

    There are so many bad things going on right now I can’t even–

    Like, I want to bop Dorothy on the head for pressuring Joyce when she’s upset, but Joyce had no right to snap either. Joyce is also reaching out for people to reaffirm things that she’s been learning all her life- she’s trying to rubber-band back into her old mindset.

    But you can’t unlearn things that you’ve already learned. This is only going to lead to more conflict and I just am really worried for poor Joyce.

    1. Emily

      I can’t really fault Dorothy for testing the waters and trying to give Joyce a little push in the right direction because Joyce has shown pretty much universally that she does not move without pressure. She does not change her views until the immorality of them is basically shoved down her throat by life.

  45. Dana

    Panel 1 Joyce face feels good to see.

  46. Kraken

    Poor Dorothy, she’s really being a super cool friend about Joyce’s really fucking terrible views.

    As for Joyce, I can understand her desire to halt change while she still has to deal with a family that definitely won’t accept those changes. However, the concept of ‘having changed enough’ doesn’t make sense. It’s incredibly arbitrary. Should she have not allowed her world-view to grow to the point where she can accept an atheist friend? Should she have not accepted the concept of homosexuality and lost Ethan and her best friend forever in Becky?

    It feels like she’s trying to return to her life before she had interactions with all these other viewpoints. It’s hard to evaluate your views and admit you’re wrong and advance, but I honestly feel like Becky should be enough proof for Joyce to continue to let new ideas in.

    1. Psychotic Mantis

      I agree. Joyce is having a huge crisis of faith, which is important to remember, but she is handling it almost in reverse at this point.

      She started out rather strong, coming to accept Becky for who she was. Then Toedad happened, which started throwing shit out the window onto the pavement of the religious masses below.

      Now Joyce is angry and bitter. Her religion is being turned upside down before her eyes, but she’s starting to close back up after doing so well at first. And I understand her anger completely. But she needs to remember what matters most right now.

      1. Halcyon42

        Everything we want to do takes practice. Everything. Not just, like, riding a bike. Other things too. Challenging your own worldview? Takes practice. Learning to accept that the things you took for granted growing up for wrong? Takes practice. Allowing yourself to change? Takes practice.

        You don’t pick up a bike for the first time ever on a Monday and ride the Tour de France on Tuesday. At least, not without almost certainly some pretty spectacular sprains and injuries. This is the first time Joyce has been allowed to change, and probably the first time she’s allowed *herself* to change. She’s earned a rest.

        And not just a rest, but the chance to practice. She also doesn’t know, because she hasn’t had much chance to do it before, that she can change without it necessarily meaning it’s the end of the world. And just as importantly, knowing how to figure out who you can trust to help you better yourself is *also* a skill that takes practice. Throwing away your entire world view is just as dangerous as keeping it, if you don’t yet know who you can trust to help you replace it. That’s the path that leads to people joining creepy cults just because the leader is charismatic and promises that he has the answers, for real this time though.

        I don’t think she’s closing up again. She’s just still finding her balance after her entire worldview shifted underneath her. That, too, takes practice. This is probably the first time she’s even had to deal with the fact that it *can* shift, and hers has been a pretty spectacular shift.

        1. Kraken

          I agree with a lot of the replies in this comment thread, but I don’t think it changes my core opinion of what Joyce is doing.

          Change is very difficult and hard to accept, and it will be hard enough for Joyce to deal with how much she has changed so far in front of her parents. I removed the former idea from my post before making it, replacing it with the line about dealing with family, my mistake.

          But I have to go back to the idea that Joyce thinks her beliefs are good and sound. Especially her belief in the bible, which has supported her being friends with Dorothy and supporting Becky. She didn’t have to do those things alone, because she had support of this key text that, in her mind, overrides the shitty behaviour of christians adjacent to her. It’s very possible that what we think of as change to being more progressive, is, from Joyce’s perspective, a better understanding and relationship with the bible.

          Change fatigue may have been the impetus that lead her to that end, but that doesn’t explain her angry looks towards both Becky and Dorothy, her two best friends, because they differ from her on ideals. This is clearly important to her, and trying to make her budge, or even professing to be christian while not holding those ideals is enough to make her mad. Not conflicted or adamant or determined, but legitimately angry. It’s enough that I believe her when she says she’s changed enough.

          This isn’t to say that I think Joyce will be like this forever, or come through her next conflict of religious values vs acceptance on the religious side. I just think, right now, this is what she’s doing to cope with all that she’s been through and all that she’s going to have to go through as she continues to try and keep the faith and depend (emotionally and financially) on a christian family for support.

    2. Tacos

      I sorta read the “changed enough” part like she’s trying to -at least temporarily- prevent anymore change from occurring before she goes visit her parents because of some perceived notion that if she changes anymore, it’ll somehow become real apparent to her folks and cause either more drama than she already has and/or her parents will want to pull her out of school.

      1. davidbreslin101

        I’d say that’s definitely part of it. Also, she’s finding it hard enough to deal with her rapidly shifting worldview right now without having both “sides” shouting at her at once.

    3. EvolutionistX

      Change is emotionally draining. Seeing your best friend abducted at gunpoint is emotionally draining. Seeing one’s parents, who are not cool with one’s changes, is also emotionally draining.

      I don’t think Joyce is consciously trying to stop changing so much as she is out of energy and is critically in need of support. Joyce needs to know that she can change and still be a Christian, and no one has bothered to even mention that possibility to her. Dorothy, while a good friend, can’t even convincingly argue that position since she isn’t a Christian to start with.

  47. leosapiens

    yes it all works great but what do you do if you both hate vacuuming and dishes and folding? 🙁

    1. EvolutionistX

      No one really likes cleaning. You just have to do it, anyway, because otherwise you’re living in filth.

      1. Disloyal Subject

        You don’t have to. Filthy squalor is an option.

        Some people do enjoy certain cleaning tasks, though, or at least take satisfaction in being good at it. I like that cleaning is a good time to listen to music.

  48. David D. Davidson

    Are we supposed to dislike Joyce’s comment? Because that is exactly what I wanted her to say. Forcing people to change is something that both sides do and it’s incredibly stupid. People can change on their own. Don’t send a homosexual to Prayer Camp and don’t send a Christian to Space Camp.
    Not wanting to be forced to be changed does not mean she’s figuratively crawling back into her figurative safe space, it means she doesn’t want Dorothy to be immediately trying to figuratively sell her a figurative condo on the Upper East Side.

    1. Huttj509

      What’s wrong with Space Camp?

      1. David D. Davidson

        Nothing, I was just trying to make an apt comparison to sending a closeted teen to one of those prayer camps, so I came up with sending a creationist Christian to a space camp full of science that conflicts with creationism.

        1. Joseph Green

          we’re not all creationists. just the ignorant ones.

    2. bryy

      um…. there’s a flaw in your logic.

      I’ll let you figure out why sending a gay kid to a re-education camp is a bit different from sending a Christian to space camp.

      1. David D. Davidson

        And exactly what is different?
        Try saying “God made the Earth 10,000 years ago” at any kind of science camp and see how many people there laugh and insist that you’re wrong and here’s why. Is that not re-education?

        1. David M Willis

          generally at space camp they don’t electrify your genitals if you disagree with the curriculum

        2. David D. Davidson

          And?
          It’s not a perfect side-by-side comparison.
          It can still be considered re-education.
          Killing one person is different from killing thousands but you still shouldn’t do either.

        3. David M Willis

          the fuck is wrong with you as a human being

        4. Cerberus

          As a person who has actually had to radically change a lot of my life to avoid being sent to one of those “reparative” camps, I’m going to have to echo all the this.

          What the ever loving fuck is wrong with you?

          Like, seriously, dude? You don’t see the difference between sending a kid to an abuse camp where they will be sexually and physically and emotionally abused until they choose to bury themselves into a deep closet of shame and self-loathing until they finally manage to off themselves in the bathroom and Space Camp.

          Hell, you don’t see the difference between the fact that there is a codified system where parents are encouraged to “fix” their child’s very nature and the amount of betrayal and suffering that entails for that kid and… “people might laugh and say you’re wrong”.

          Like, holy fuck, I’m glad this argument is being made in bad faith, because otherwise, you are so completely devoid of any amount of perspective that you think being forced to hate yourself to be allowed to sleep in your own bed again is the same as facing someone who might hold a different opinion than you.

          Like, I… I can’t even.

        5. ninja_jesus

          You’ve earned the award for worst commenter of the day.

        6. Buhzim

          In case you guys do battle, I’m rooting for David.

        7. DarkoNeko

          Hey, don’t make him battle, he needs his drawing hand !

        8. EvolutionistX

          “It’s not a perfect side-by-side comparison.
          It can still be considered re-education.”
          No, it’s called “education,” or even just “conversation.”
          If it’s not a good comparison, you shouldn’t make it.

          Look, “re-education” is a politically loaded term associated Communist Vietnamese, North Korean, and Chinese prisons, (“reeducation camps” or “re-education through labor.”) The Vietnamese system murdered over 100,000 people for siding with the South Vietnamese side during the war; the North Korean camps are known for their brutality, starvation, and slave labor. And who even knows how many have died in the Chinese camps, especially during the Mao era?

          Laughing because you disagree with something someone believes, or even telling them you think they’re wrong, is not the equivalent of locking them up and torturing them to death. Plenty of people laughed at me when I thought the world was 6,000 years old, and none of them murdered me or made me felt even remotely like I was being murdered or persecuted for my views. I had to learn mainstream science in school and had teachers and textbooks telling me that my views were wrong, and not a single one of them was equivalent to being murdered. I was, and remain, happy to hear different opinions (and facts) bearing on the nature of reality.

          You can’t morally compare two things if they really just aren’t comprable.

        9. ninja_jesus

          You can compare them if you don’t operate under the false logic of heathens and robots. ):<

        10. Kryss LaBryn

          As a Heathen who knows full well that science is right, I take exception to being lumped in with this idiot.

          I expect my robotic brethren feel the same.

        11. Disloyal Subject

          This. The comparison made sense until re-education was brought up and it was clarified that ‘Prayer Camp’ meant one of those gay/trans-correction hellholes and not just what it sounded like.
          For those not especially into Christian faith – which obviously includes nonChristians – prayer camp would be alienating and probably boring, much like Space Camp might (might!) be for a hardline fundie. But if “prayer camp” isn’t? The metaphor didn’t just fall apart, it crash-landed with no survivors.

        12. Kryss LaBryn

          Yeah, I think he might be thinking “prayer camp”/”re-education camp” and “Bible camp” are the same thing.

          Trigger warning: Let me tell you, Bizarro!David, about a little boy, about the same age as my son (so in his pre-teens) whose parents figured he was gay. They sent him to conversion “therapy”, where they played this 11, 12-year-old boy explicit gay porn while electrically shocking his fingers, hard enough to hurt badly. Amongst other things. It was supposed to engender a deep revulsion for gay sex in him.

          The actual effect on the adult he grew up to be is that he now has an aversion any kind of emotional or physical closeness at all. He wants to be close to people; he craves relationships to other human beings; but thanks to the conversion therapy and the massive betrayal of trust of his parents, he has PTSD surrounding it and can’t go near any kind of sex at all.

          Is he actually gay? I don’t remember because it isn’t relevant. His parents knowingly sent their little boy away to be tortured by strangers. After that, does their reason why really fucking matter?

          The apt comparison would be a Christian kid sent to a science or space camp, and an atheist kid who knew (not “believed”; because when it is physically possible to conclusively prove something, it is not a matter of “belief,” dammit) that Creationism was idiotically wrong being sent to Bible camp.

          “Oooh no, the other kids and the camp councillors might make fun of the kid for the things he says!”

          The equivalent to sending your gay kid to conversion camp is sending your kid (gay or straight) to fucking Syrian prison.

          –You’re a troll, aren’t you? You have to be a troll.

        13. Leorale

          Those gay camps cause serious harm to real human beings. Space camps don’t do that. This isn’t just imperfect, apples and oranges style of thing. Space Camp, where people might say you’re incorrect and here’s why and now let’s look at the stars, that’s harmless at worst. Anti-gay camps, where people say you’re incorrect because God Hates How You Are, those do real damage, they make real people kill themselves. Please be way gentler with this subject.

        14. Leorale

          Reread your comment, maybe you meant something different by ‘prayer camp’ than ‘hey let’s force this kid to stop being gay camp’? Like, basically boyscouts, but a bit less secular? …I really hope so.

        15. Cerberus

          I’m pretty sure he knows exactly what he said.

          And yeah… no. Just no. I honestly feel a little sick reading that crap knowing that fuckers like that view the crap I went through avoiding those shithells as some tiny little thing I should “shake off”, because “it’s just like any other summer camp”.

          Yeah, pretty sure, I’m on the cusp of vomiting, so I’m going to jump down a bit to conversations that aren’t this one.

        16. davidbreslin101

          He made that comment AFTER the “electrify your genitals” bombshell, so no. Sadly.

        17. Leorale

          Damn. There goes a little more of my faith in humanity, then. David D., a true apology would be the literal least you could do, towards the folks on here who survived or know somebody who went through that horror, but I’m not sure you know how to apologize without digging in even deeper… Much more importantly, please go become a human who doesn’t say cringingly stupid and incredibly awful bullshit.

        18. Bagge

          “That is… not equal”

        19. Ethan

          Boy, this guy is getting quite the “re-education.” *womp, womp, waaaaah*

          Seriously though, terrible comparison. Clearly did not understand what goes on at Christian re-education camps. I motion we maybe let this guy go, hope he comes away with something.

          One (probably only) point he does make: change all at once is disorienting. Let’s try not to spew vitriol at someone trying to grasp understanding.
          Even if it is hilariously misguided.

        20. Gaiash

          This comparison doesn’t work either. This time in both scenarios someone is being killed. But in your original comparison one is a place where people learn while the other is where people are forced to change who they are through torture. If a Creationist went to space camp the worst they’d have to deal with is not believing in the things being taught.

        21. EmbraceEvil

          geez what a piece of shit

        22. ThatGuy

          Joyce would totally be ok with goign to space camp. God made space and the heavens for people. She can even deal with scientists” quaint” notion of how the universe was created so she gets to go among the stars to be closer to God.

          There is a big difference between being in a group with views you find blasphemous, and what often happens in which people shun you and make you fear being tortured forever. One is gaslighting, one is talking about a subject you dont care about and finding annoying. a more apt comparison to space camp would be sending my literature friend to a Twilight convention.

          Its not wrong to change someone’s mind. That is what rehabilitation is. the problem is some people think that taking normal healthy gay people and gaslighting them is “rehabilitating”.

        23. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          There’s a difference between correcting someone after they say something stupid and abusing someone into self-denial.

        24. Shiro

          I mean…God aside because unprovable, that’s factually incorrect, though. Everything we know of natural science contradicts that. Is it also oppressive, in your opinion, when teachers correct kids’ misconceptions in school? Say, if the 10 thousand years thing was thrown out in science class?

        25. TWAC

          You realize, right, that there’s “re-education”…

          and then there’s this other thing that we usually call “education”

    3. EvolutionistX

      I was a devoutly Christian kid who believed all sorts of Christian things (including that the Earth was only 6,000 years old), and I would have LOVED Space Camp. OMG, more Space Camp for everyone, Christians included.

      By contrast, I don’t think *anyone* likes pray-the-gay-away-camps. People don’t attend them voluntarily. (I assume that’s what you meant by “Prayer Camp,” but that name seems awfully generic and I wouldn’t want to implicate some totally innocent, enjoyable camp. There are innocent, fun Christian camps that gay Christians would enjoy just as much as I’d have enjoyed Space Camp.)

      There’s a big difference between “don’t try to aggressively change people against their wills” and “don’t ever present an opposing argument to someone.” The latter has to be permitted because without it, you basically can’t have any conversations or ever correct any mistakes, and all humanity would fall apart. Dorothy is not aggressively trying to force Joyce to change, thus her actions don’t fall into the “inappropriate” category.

    4. Buhzim

      Non american here, I have no idea what those things are but Space Camp sounds more entertaining than a Prayer Camp.

      1. EvolutionistX

        http://www.spacecamp.com/ Space Camp!
        “Each year, thousands of trainees from around the world arrive at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for a week of fun, new friends and amazing adventures at Space Camp.”

        I dunno what “prayer camp” is, either.

      2. ninja_jesus

        Correct me if I’m wrong anyone, but this is my understanding of what prayer camp is.

        1. ninja_jesus

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac Whoops, the link didn’t post.

        2. inqntrol

          ……It pains me to see such a thing. This is wrong in so many ways.

        3. Kryss LaBryn

          Well, and now I’m just depressed. Plus I wasted time arguing with idiots. Go me. :/

        4. EvolutionistX

          *whispers* psst your “this” doesn’t have an antecedent.

          Googling “prayer camp” gets me this website: http://theprayercamp.com/ which looks pretty innocent. “CHOSEN camp is a holy gathering for the whole family, where God’s heart comes alive through the music and the message. … When we find a quiet place to settle we allow God to speak. Worship changes everything and God’s goodness fills the atmosphere. ”

          I attended plenty of religious camps as a kid, and they were all pretty fun and no one got their genitals electrocuted. I don’t remember anyone talking about homosexuality one way or another. Mostly we did things like sing and run around in the woods. There’s probably a big difference between the camps, say, run by fundamentalist churches and those run by the Unitarians.

          “Pray away the Gay” camps or whatever are a whole ‘nother matter.

      3. Cerberus

        Reparative therapy: https://www.yahoo.com/health/what-is-conversion-therapy-exactly-175829634.html

    5. Granite

      I read this and went for dinner not expecting to comment on it, but something kept bothering me.

      There is a fundamental difference in the purposes. One seeks to change something the attendee has expressed as a part of themselves, the other seeks to reinforce a subject that the attendee is interested in.

      I would instead compare conversion camps to “fat camps”. Both have histories of brutal abuse. They stem from parental shame and the belief that there is something deeply flawed with the child.

      If you wanted to use religious persecution for your comparison, I guess you could compare conversion camps to interment camps, where people were actually persecuted for their religion. At least the parents that were supposed to protect and live their children didn’t send them to internment camps, though.

    6. Lord Stoneheart

      Normally I’d just point out that the “Both sides do it!” rhetoric isn’t really applicable here because I don’t think Dorothy is trying to force change on Joyce. She’s just making a suggestion, and it wasn’t well received.

      But then the rest of your comment went off into… I’m not even sure what. What the hell? What the hell kinda of comparison is that? That doesn’t even make sense on any level.

      1. Cerberus

        I’ve found that “both sides do it” is the preferred argument for individuals who are part of the dominant class who want a cheap and easy method for ignoring the complaints of the marginalized class.

        Just invent a quick false equivalence and then it’s all just “two sides” and you become super moral by just being a privileged asshole who “stays out of it” by riding on your ability to do so and refusing to grow or change to make things less unequal.

        Hmm, reparative therapy is awful and a lot of people I agree with think it’s awesome, but these peons are making me feel sad by saying its awful, so, something something gays do it too so I can justify slipping back into my comfortability without having to think about the system of inequality I am deliberately defending.

        Honestly, I blame cable news for allowing this tactic to become as popular as it has. So many talking head segments where “two sides” debate an issue and who can say who is right and who is wrong or even which arguments were even true.

  49. bryy

    I, for one, cannot wait for her parents to try to pull some “Ross was wrong… but he was totally right” bullshit like they did on the phone.

    1. AgentKeen

      “It’s such a shame Becky drove him to this.”

      Eesh, I feel terrible just typing that.

      1. Psychotic Mantis

        If that happens, I will crawl into my computer screen, find Joyce’s parents, and start hitting them with a textbook on evolution.

        1. Disloyal Subject

          If they seriously lay the blame at Becky’s feet, I don’t think a flanged mace would be inappropriate.

        2. kelticat

          And I will join you, you want the mom or the dad?

        3. Psychotic Mantis

          Dibs on the mom. She seems to be the most…rigid in her religious beliefs, and if she tries to pin that shit on Becky, I’m going to thumb her eyes out slowly and painfully.

          And then ask her to read the Bible.

    2. HorchataShake

      Dude that totally happened, remember

    3. Cerberus

      I don’t think she’ll even be out of the car before that shit comes out again.

      Hell, I think by the time her weekend is done, we’ll be looking at that conversation as Joyce’s mom’s best moment.

  50. AgentKeen

    Oh crap, Joyce has a seriously angry face when talking to Dorothy!

    This is serious!!

  51. Spencer

    “Character X is being such a jerk and I hate them” always struck me as a weird complaint. Like, it’s real. People get angry, people lash out, people are dicks for good or bad reasons. It’s bizarre that characters being more complex and real makes them less likable and enjoyable to some folks.

    1. Psychotic Mantis

      Just because they’re more real doesn’t make them more pleasant to be around when they lash out like that, though. I think that’s the main point that a lot of people are making.

      1. Spencer

        A character can’t always be pleasant to be around, though. That’s as boring as a character who’s always a jerk.

        Like, I’m kind of ambivalent towards Dorothy, because Dorothy is always the nice understanding one, and I fucking hate Mike, because Mike is just always terrible at all times without fail.

        1. Torra

          Yeah I get this, especially with Dorothy. Even her flaws are… good flaws. Joyce is one of my favourite characters, even at the beginning, and I’m no straight Christian lolol. Mike is all right to me, because I just see him as the one-liner jerk. If he became a character with some sort of plot…. mehh

        2. Psychotic Mantis

          I actually really want Mike to get some development. A small sideplot, even. I think there’s probably a pretty good reason he’s such an asshole all the time, and I’ll be damned if we don’t get an explanation for it by the time this is over.

        3. Cerberus

          She’s the straight man… er, woman. She’s the sensible caring one the others bounce off of.

          Though honestly, I find her interesting largely because she is so often in friendly politician trying to do right mode that it’s really impactful when she reveals her vulnerabilities, fears, or insecurities. She’s just as fucked up as the rest of them, but because she’s practically the grown-up of the group, she doesn’t really feel she has the space or time to collapse or get off pace for a second.

        4. Spencer

          Yeah, the parts where Dorothy lets the mask slip and she expresses those vulnerabilities are when I like her the most.

          Like, that part where she talks with Walky about how she does genuinely love him but it will have to end, and she’s just going to have to force herself to believe that it’s something she can just let go of so she can continue her dream, and no mistake; the dream is non-negotiable, that was heavy. I loved it.

          Or when she first interacted with Danny after their break-up, invading his personal space, and got pissed at him for maybe having a new girlfriend, and when she realizes that Danny is actually hurting she gives up the platitudes and just apologizes, acknowledges that she fucked up by him, and then tries to gives him some advice.

        5. Cerberus

          Yeah, all of those. Plus the conversation in the bathroom with Joyce on the social cost of being a sexual woman. Or the freakout at the party about how she was incapable of really relaxing because she was always working on something proven by the fact that she was writing essays on her phone.

          And what’s interesting is that Dorothy doesn’t really have anyone she feels she can collapse to, because the whole nature of collapsing is one she sees as fundamentally toxic to her unnegotiable dreams.

        6. Clif

          Are you seriously arguing that Mike is boring?

        7. Spencer

          Mike is totally one note. Daisy has more character and literally every single appearance she’s had ends with a joke about how she’s horny.

        8. Silly Name

          On the other hand, Mike gave us such splendid memories as Joyce and Joe’s “Punch-Date”, and The Great Porno Photos of Walky and Dorothy.

        9. Spencer

          That would be a ridiculous cartoon moment I just kind of ignore due to it being completely divorced from reality, and another example of Mike’s gross behaviour that still had people defending it regardless.

        10. Silly Name

          Oh, I do agree Mike is an horrible, horrible human being, but dammit if it isn’t _fun_ to watch him being horrible.

        11. Cerberus

          Opinions may differ on that and it may have a lot to do with whether or not you’ve had the type of creeper who likes to try and use images or admissions of being sexually active or having a non-normative identity to try and hurt you via social media.

          After having a lot of friends be targeted by a harassment campaign and having been targeted myself. Mike’s “photo project” wasn’t so much “fun” to watch as the thing that pushed me 100% into the nope camp with regards to him and his antics.

        12. Spencer

          Yeah, that really sums up a lot of my problems with Mike. In the Walkyverse he could get away with really over the top plans like dressing up as his dead boss for Halloween or talking about how four clones of the dead Pope have risen to take the name, because of how cartoonish the entire verse was. DoA!Mike just does gross, real harassment as his plots. It’s too real to be funny.

        13. Cephalo the Pod

          Mike himself was mich cartoonier. Like you said, he does shit like dressing up as his dead boss, and throwing the fresh corpses of fallen comrades into Monkey Master’s cannons. It’s bonkers, and fun.

          I seriously don’t get what people mean about him being too cartoonish to take seriously in DoA. There’s nothing cartoonieh about him, he’s just spiteful and annoying. He’s a Malaya who readers like for some reason.

        14. Spencer

          Heck, Malaya’s not even that Malaya anymore. She’s still kind of a jerkass but she’s a lot nicer in this verse.

          As for Mike being too cartoony, I meant that him and Joyce being able to beat the hell out of Joe in public with absolutely no repercussions was over the top. Otherwise he’s just been, as you said, spiteful and annoying, and at times genuinely harmful.

          Also Mike clogging up Monkey Master’s cannons by throwing dead SEMME agents into them was seriously one of the best moments of It’s Walky!.

        15. Emperor Norton

          I believe even Willis himself has said that he’s not using Mike much precisely because of how he’s a one-note kind of character, and therefore isn’t good to work with as a central plot character. Or something to that effect.

        16. Spencer

          Indeed. Walky and Carla are better at being nuisances, and Sarah’s better at delivering harsh truths.

          Mike’s been boxed out of his niches and only has total asshole left as a character trait, and that’s not fun.

  52. Aeromechanicalace

    I really feel like Dorothy should have stood her ground a bit here and not backed down in the face of anger. Joyce has done pretty much nothing but try to change people since she arrived at college, and honestly? she NEEDS calling out on that sort of thing. Better to have someone who actually cares about her feelings than someone who’s a lot more adversarial, like last time.

    1. Madock345

      There’s a time for everything, Joyce isn’t in a place where she can have that conversation at the moment. She’s backed herself into a mental corner and if Dorothy were to keep pushing her right now it would just be counter-productive.

      1. Kryss LaBryn

        Yup, this.

        Plus with her comment in the last panel, it sounds like she’s less concerned about finding Dorothy’s statement of value that she can apply to her own marital expectations, and more that she knows spending time with her family is already going to be difficult as hell and she doesn’t need to have another worldview spun around 180 degrees right before she heads home.

        When she gets back to college, though, I would be surprised if she doesn’t pull that out and re-examine it. I mean, honestly, it just doesn’t make any sense to divide up roles within the household by gender instead of strengths (and weaknesses). Making someone who is terrible at [task] do it instead of the other person in the marriage who is better at it because their genitals are [internal/external] instead of [external/internal] seems just… silly and overly-focussed on genitalia.

        In fact, that’s honestly how I would define fundamentalist Christians as a whole: “Silly and overly-focussed on genitalia.”

  53. Liz

    Hey, Joyce’s losing her entire belief system piece by piece. Maaaybe she shouldn’t be snapping at Dorothy, but I’d be more worried if she was smiling and chipper — that would mean she still wasn’t letting herself feel or express negative emotion. She’s scared and angry and honestly, that’s progress.

  54. KSClaw

    Oh Joyce, sweetie, you’re still young. It’s okay though, because you just took some massive leaps, and you need to allow those to settle in a bit, before taking the next steps. It’s part of growing up.

    1. Silamy

      Thanks for making this point -I don’t see it made much when people are talking about a character’s reactions in the comments. The DoA cast is made up primarily of adolescents; kids away from home for the first time, flooded with hormones, tasting freedom and responsibility and variety and wider diversity for the first time -kids with still-developing brains. I’m not saying they get a free pass for doing shitty or stupid things, just that, well, it’s not because they’re trying to or because they’re necessarily bad people, it’s because they’re just starting to learn how to adult, and sometimes, they need refreshers on how to human first -especially when the “how to human” they were raised with doesn’t mesh right with the “how to human” of someone else they’re interacting with.

      1. KSClaw

        It’s something that’s been pointed out before, but people seem to forget it just as quickly. They’re all kids growing up from different backgrounds, and Joyce, again, has had her world view go through what’s probably equal to an earthquake. Going home to her parents is not really going to help (especially after her call with her mom).

  55. chris73

    Ok so Joyce is being a complete hypocritical bongo and, once again, Dorothy just lets it slide

    However more importantly I’m very impressed that Mr Willis is willing to show how much of a hypocrite his proxy is and, by definition, how much of a hypocrite he was

    I don’t know if I’d be able to be as honest with myself (and the readers) if I was in the same position

    1. Griffin

      I think a little more sympathy is in order here.

      But maybe I’m biased because I too used to be a Joyce.

      1. Emperor Norton

        I was never a Joyce and I agree with you, Griffin.

  56. Dongus

    I love when people only criticize Joyce acting unethical when it comes to a refusal to accept particular political beliefs. I’m in no way defending her here- she’s clearly in the wrong (and besides, there’s nothing wrong with debating with your friends about the moral particulars of each other’s behavior, and there’s a difference between trying to change their beliefs or specific behaviors and trying to change the person themselves), but seriously. People were defending her when she punched joe in the face. When the political positions an individual holds are more important to your moral judgement of that individual than the way they actually treat other people, there’s something seriously wrong.

    1. Li

      Okay, sure, let’s go ahead and pretend that acceptance of LGBTQIA people and equality between the genders are just “political positions” that never affect, you know, how someone actually treats other people.

  57. Pecker Holder

    That felt a bit awkward.

  58. Bagge

    Good call, panel five Dorothy. I would back off it Joyce made that face to me too. But Dorothy still made a lot of important things today. She reached out to Joyce, she helped her discuss the issue at hand, she made her vocie another horrible part of her beliefs and went as far as she could before Joyce slammed the door.

    And Joyce… poor, poor Joyce. She KNOWS that this is another part of her beliefs that may be a lie… probably is a lie… but it hurts so much to acknowledge that. This is not some “yeah whatever” doctrine that really doesn’t affect her, like feathered dinosaurs or gay marriage (until she learnt about Ethan and Becky). Marriage – this specific idea of marriage – has been central for Joyce’s life for a LONG time, and to admit that it’s flawed is to change a large part of herself.

    And that’s even before factoring in her parents…

    1. Cerberus

      This. Dorothy played this assignment incredibly well. She got Joyce to engage seriously with it, got her out of her funk for a few minutes, gave her an excuse to dream a life other than the one she was told to follow (if only for a little bit), encouraged some egalitarian ideas and laid track work for the future, and she even showed her empathy and care as well as her respect for her boundaries.

      Joyce will continue to give Dorothy’s points on morality weight (even though she doesn’t want to), because Dorothy is the kind of person who backs off when needed and who does everything with genuine platonic (I know, I’m sad about it too) love.

      Honestly, there have been so many moments in the last month where I’ve just been filled with pride for how well they handled a situation.

      1. Bagge

        For me, the central draw of this comic is Joyce and her two ladies. We have seen a lot of her and Becky for a while now, and now get see a bit more of her and Dorothy, and every moment of it is awesome.

    2. Willoughby Chase

      She gets her idea of marriage from her parents. They’re her role models.

      Now that the idea of equality in a relationship has been planted, that her fantasies are coming out (something else that her parents encouraged her to suppress I suspect), she’s seeing other ways of living, it’s inevitable she’ll see her parents in a different light.

      I hear the long lonesome whistle of trouble down the track
      That train is calling me but I ain’t never going back

  59. Pedantic Peanut

    Wonder if Joyce’s new perspective will clue her in about her elder sibling.

    1. Kryss LaBryn

      I’m hoping Jocelyn will inquire about Ethan, and Joyce will confess they broke up, and then why they broke up, and then tell her about Becky, and how her views of gay people have changed, and then Jocelyn will come out as trans, and Joyce will realize this means she’s got the sister she always wanted… Hugs all ’round… That would be awesome.

      For, you know, about five minutes before Willis takes it all away again, but still.

      1. Cerberus

        I hope that doesn’t happen largely because if it did, the last panel while they hug would be their parents standing in the door looking shocked because they heard everything.

    2. Silly Name

      Honestly, I’d be surprised is Joyce even knows what trans people are.

      1. Buhzim

        “Ah, transformers? Walky has some DVDs in his room. I like the truck guy. I’m not sure how I should feel about their robot god, though.”

      2. Cerberus

        Those are the ones with the fangs, right?

  60. Rob

    I’m with Joyce. I mean these changes are good, she’s matured much these last few comics and has a new understanding on life, but it’s noticeably overwhelming her. I feel like she’s just going to snap soon.

    1. DarkoNeko

      or regress back

  61. Raen

    Mehercle, I just realized Joyce still doesn’t know Jocelyne’s living as a woman… somehow, I suspect she’s going to find that out at the worst possible moment, whenever that is.

    1. Bagge

      I rather think it will be good for her to learn that she is not the only sibling who is changing.

      1. Captain Button

        That’s one of the only two possible upsides I can see to Jocelyne coming out this weekend.

        The other one would be Joyce realizing that at least she doesn’t have to worry about losing her whole family. Worst case scenario still leaves her with a brother sister.

        And a sorta upside where if things go really badly outing herself would completely derail things and take the pressure off of Joyce.

        But in general I think Jocelyne outing herself or getting outed this weekend would make a bad situation catastrophic.

        1. Captain Button

          Argh! HTML fail:

          That’s one of the only two possible upsides I can see to Jocelyne coming out this weekend.

          The other one would be Joyce realizing that at least she doesn’t have to worry about losing her whole family. Worst case scenario still leaves her with a brother sister.

          And a sorta upside where if things go really badly outing herself would completely derail things and take the pressure off of Joyce.

          But in general I think Jocelyne outing herself or getting outed this weekend would make a bad situation catastrophic.

        2. Cerberus

          All of this. I want to see the eventual Jocelyne coming out comic because I’m super excited for it, but I also really don’t want to see it because of how shitty and hard that will make things for her.

        3. Commodore Jeep-Eep

          I’m honestly expecting a toedadesque affair, but more tactical espionage style escape rather than action move.

        4. Bagge

          I agree on it all… except for any kind of scenario where Jocelyne takes heat from Joyce. If shit goes down Joyce will place herself smack in the middle of it. ESPECIALLY if she has a sister to defend.

    2. Emily

      As long as she doesn’t lash out at her if she does that Imma have to break through the 4th wall to yell at her in person.

      1. Kryss LaBryn

        She did always want a sister…

        1. Emily

          Basically my kid sister’s reaction to my coming out. Well more like “I always wanted a sister who actually gives a damn about traditionally feminine stuff.”

  62. Willoughby Chase

    So I pick up my harmonica and guitar, the Times they are a-changing

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7qQ6_RV4VQ

    Safe journey, Joyce. There be dragons there.

  63. JessWitt

    Visit back home to the parents, after a college shooting by arrested and deranged father, with the newly out best friend and said shooter’s daughter. What could go wrong?

    But really, don’t lose your sunny side, Joyce.

  64. Kamino Neko

    I hope Dorothy has time-rewind powers, because I feel like we’re getting to an ‘end of episode 2’ situation here.

    1. vlademir1

      What a Strange comment… but I honestly can’t see Joyce going that direction.

  65. skdk

    well actually the way joyce behaves here shows that she knows that shes wrong and stuff bt shes just scared of changing right now. yes i got really mad at joyce once i read this strip but i always tend to analyse things deeper than my own feelings. though i think it would be good for joyce to meet religious people who arent assholes. most churches where i live contain people who support lgbt and hate racists and stuff like that. they might not be the most gender equal but they still oppose the really bad parts about sexism. like beating your partner or things like that. so theyre good people overall. and i think joyce needs to meet them

  66. A

    Ugh, Joyce.
    Just, ugh.

    1. notlegato

      bluh bluh joyce.

      exactly my reaction. bleeehhhhhhhh.

  67. DarkoNeko

    Oh Joyce, they’ll think you have changed way too much already.

    1. TheNinthShader

      Nanananana batman!

  68. Liliet

    I hope Dorothy realizes that was Joyce-ian for “I AM PERFECTLY AWARE THAT YOU ARE ABSOLUTLY RIGHT”. Because it absolutely was.

    @people who are saying Joyce deserves to have some change forced on her because that’s what she’s been doing from the start: SHE ALREADY HAS. She already has so much change forced on her, she can barely stay functional.

    I also hope Joyce realizes that was a really really bad way of phrasing “I am not in a mental place to discuss this right now” and apologizes to Dorothy. In fact, I hope that’s what happens next strip.

    1. Spencer

      I don’t think Joyce has had choice “forced on her”, but more that she’s confronted by challenges and questions that conflict with trying to be a good person and also being completely faithful to her interpretation of her religion.

      It’s just that Joyce always chooses to do right by her loved ones, because she’s a good person and can’t reconcile a vision of her faith that insists she block out people she genuinely loves.

      1. Cerberus

        I think Becky and Joyce are very interesting when it comes to encountering this inherent challenge the reality of the world made on the faith of their raising.

        Joyce seems to brace into each wave, letting it crash into her, knock her off balance as she shifts her feet a little, but hesitantly so because she’s seeing herself getting knocked back so far from where she started.

        Whereas Becky just rode the wave and let it take her where it would and has built a faith that accommodates and reflects reality as is. She’s not bothered by how much she’s “changed” because she lost the part of her that made her fearful to be washed to a new place.

        It’s understandable why Becky felt more comfortable with the overhaul, but it’s why Joyce is going to be in baby steps mode for a lot of her personal growth and why there’s going to be a lot of anger and sadness as she lets go more and more toxicity of how she was raised.

        1. Spencer

          Yep. Becky was abused and denied by practitioners of her religion, and she can very clearly look at them and flip the double bird. That’s not my religion. My God answers Lesbian Prayers.

          I think it’s pretty telling that Joyce’s crises of faith always come when her religion does harm to those she loves. If it’s getting in the way of her desires she tends to suck it up, but when her parents tell her that Dorothy is a corrupting atheist and Becky’s kicked out of college, Joyce leaps to their defense.

  69. smooti

    Dorothy is a wonderful person, but it’s obvious in this strip that she’s never had to do anything remotely like what Joyce is going through. Having the foundation of your life and the main thing you have as a bond with your whole family suddenly start to shatter is… not something that’s going to go well. In the end Joyce will probably be a better person for all of this, but it’s going to HURT.

    So while I think both of them know what Dorothy said is “right”, Joyce isn’t in a position to take in more information that she knows her family will hate. And Dorothy isn’t in a position to fully understand how hurt Joyce already is.

    1. Gigafreak

      Dorothy may not have experienced or fully understood Joyce’s pain, but it’s probably pretty clear to her that Joyce is IN pain. Empathy may not be possible, but sympathy certainly still is.

  70. Lan

    Wow Joyce. Save the rage for the machine not the ally. That’s like rebellion rule number 2. Rebel rule one is either “Fuck the system” or “Eat some weird food”. I forgot.

    1. Psychotic Mantis

      It’s both.

    2. TheNinthShader

      Its ¨Fuck some weird food¨ And ¨Eat the system¨

  71. Griffin

    Nooooooo Dot don’t apologize. You’re doing the right thing.

    1. Griffin

      I want to clarify that she should definitely back off, but she doesn’t need to apologize just because Joyce is (understandably) over emotional, because it’s not her fault.

      1. joy2b

        This seems appropriate to me.

        Just like dance partners issue small apologies for stepping on each other’s toes, friends issue small apologies for stepping on each other’s pride, and then the moment is forgotten.

        When the courtesy and respect isn’t mutual, that’s the time to stop apologizing, and keep a tally of small points of pride.

        1. Griffin

          I don’t necessarily mean that it’s inappropriate to apologise at all, but in both words and body language she’s admitting guilt, not just ‘I understand you’re bothered and I want you to understand I meant no ill will.’ As I said, I believe Dorothy did nothing wrong. A polite sorry =/= a guilty sorry; one is appropriate here and the other is not. Dorothy is guilty and she shouldn’t be.

  72. anonymsly

    Somehow I’m reminded of Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest: “Look, I have ONE JOB on this ship. It’s STUPID, but I’m going to do it!” Also said in tones of anger and frustration to people who didn’t deserve being yelled at.

    I’m pretty sure that’s where Joyce is. “I have ONE JOB in life. It’s STUPID, but I’m going to do it.” Because it’s all she has left to hold on to, or so she thinks.

  73. Ashley

    That feel when you’re happy to see someone change but also sad that change isn’t easy.

  74. JA

    Hate to break it to you Joyce, but you’re outside of the cave, and there’s no going back in once you’ve stepped outside.

    1. Captain Button

      Joyce and Becky in the LGBT-friendly remake of Logan’s Run?

  75. Noclevername

    Let the python digest the wild boar before stuffing a goat into its mouth, Dorothy.

  76. Heavensrun

    Nooooo she was smiling again whyyyy?

  77. JackPoint

    Of all the useless things to tell/demand/ask of somebody “Stop trying to CHANGE me!” ranks up near the top. Poor Joyce =\

    1. Bagge

      I suppose “Never change” is up there as well, as Becky learnt the hard way. (or at least the ironic way)

  78. Akiosama

    I think one thing to take away from this – at least how I’m reading it – is that while Joyce seems really angry in panel 3, in panel 5 she seems regretful and sorry she came across to Dorothy the way she did. Definitely feels like “You may be right, but I’m not going to deal with it right now because… parents.”

    Poor Joyce.

    Granted, I think once stuff settles down, Joyce needs to take a step back and really look at who’s been there for her and who hasn’t, and rethink stuff. Not an easy task, but in light of this interaction with Dorothy, necessary.

    After all, the scary atheist has been a better person to Joyce than most of the other people who share her same worldviews, and that should be a pretty significant realization.

    Mostly the “I’m sorry…” in this conversation should be pointed in the other direction.

    Poor Dorothy.

  79. Jack Faire

    Man I sympathize with Joyce. No matter why if you have been raised a certain way and you realize you don’t have to be that way and you can change it’s scary especially when you think of your parents and you think “Will they recognize me will they love me am I the person they raised”

  80. Sarah

    There’s a part of me that is…genuinely scared… Joyce wants so badly to be the kid her parents know and raised, and that any change that brings her further away from her ideologies probably reminds her of Becky and her father. Joyce’s parents, despite their worldviews, seem too sweet and loving to wave a gun at their own daughter, but that’s what Joyce thought about Toedad until he did just that.
    Is she afraid of being punished or even abandoned by her parents?

    1. Captain Button

      At the risk of sounding sympathetic to Toedad, I’ve got a headcanon forming.

      Becky’s mom was good at the kind of passive-aggressive manipulation that wives are supposed to use in their sect. She kept Ross under control and really did all the work of raising Becky by herself.

      Then she dies of cancer. Ross has to deal with suddenly having an energetic teenage daughter without any real experience at parenting. While also dealing with grief. And wondering why God did this to him when he’d tried so hard to do things right.

      Unfortunately he decided to double-down on religious inflexibility. God killed his wife because he was weak and sinful*. So he took God’s message to heart and got more rigid and determined to stick to God’s rules. He tried to clamp down on Becky and it went badly because he didn’t know how and Becky wasn’t used to that kind of harsh parenting.

      He knew Becky was at great risk of falling into sin, so he insisted she go to Anderson, a proper godly school. But is wasn’t enough. God was punishing him again. God was telling him he had to be even more stern, harsh, and unyielding.

      So he did what he thought God wanted him to do.

      * Of course it was all about him.

  81. Harry

    Joyce’s angry face is straight up chilling.

    1. Peduncle

      The whole progression of three Joyce faces is moving. Kudos to Mr. Willis.

  82. Bagge

    Spouse took one look at THIS blogpost and said:

    “Awwww, twins… They are trying to eat each other. Now I want twins. DAMN YOU WILLIS!!!!”

    She got into the spirit of things quickly.

  83. Micki

    The alt-text made me giggle. 🙂

    1. Micki

      On another note, after I read this I went to go read today’s Dinosaur Comics. The first line? “FACT: people change! I mean, OBVIOUSLY. If we didn’t we’d be these weird 30-year-old babies, pooping wherever we like instead of worrying about business stuff and whether or not strangers like us!”

      Clearly this is relevant.

  84. Tenn

    Again, I have almost nothing in common with Joyce, but I kind of know that feeling. She wants to change, because staying the same would destroy her. She wants to stay the same, because changing would destroy her.

    Having two seemingly equally horrible options is bad enough when it’s just you agonizing over which one is slightly less horrible. When someone tries to push you in one direction or the other, no matter how well-intentioned they are, they’re effectively 1) telling you something you already know (that one of the options is horrible), as if you were stupid, 2) telling you to pick an option that is horrible (the other one), and 3) criticizing you for not being able to choose. It’s completely irrational, but that’s what we are.

    Joyce will keep having misdirected anger until she’s got herself figured out. And if Dorothy keeps being the absolutely excellent friend she is, she will be rewarded for it, eventually.

  85. motorfirebox

    “…and I’ve changed eFUCKINGnough, GODDAMMIT.”

  86. dailybrad

    Unsolicited advice is rude, even if I agree with it in this instance.

  87. Josh Spicer

    “Stop trying to change me.”

    Valid point.

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