412

Five seconds
Posted on October 8, 2021 by David M Willis

412 thoughts on “Five seconds”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    *insert fable of scorpion and turtle* YOU KNEW MY NATURE

    1. Usmagrad87

      This comment deserves an up vote ⬆️.

    2. EvilMidnightLurker

      Pretty sure the fable of the scorpion and turtle is going to end better than that of the scorpion and the frog. The scorpion keeps trying to sting the turtle all the way across the river, the turtle lets the exhausted scorpion off on the other side, the scorpion apologizes and the turtle forgives it.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Scorpion: *tink* *tink* “Stupid shell…” *tink*
        Turtle: “Stop that.”
        Scorpion: “But it is my nature!”

      2. Ana Chronistic

        Scorpion: *stings shell*
        Turtle: yo what
        Scorpion: …ah
        Turtle: *snaps scorpion in jaws* YOU KNEW MY NATURE

        1. Ana Chronistic

          Dang, I had JUST read a supposedly unabridged book of Aesop’s fables and I only remembered two that dealt with frogs, and neither had a scorpion… but apparently none of the others do, either ? (and it’s a pretty thick book)

        2. Clif

          Does Aesop’s fables say anything about popcorn that suddenly tastes better?

        3. milu

          if that book was unabridged the scorpion wouldn’t have needed help crossing the river

          …geddit

        4. Ana Chronistic

          Why if the bridge was far away and the [aquatic animal] was nearby?

          Tiny legs!

        5. milu

          the funny thing with this fable is that if enough scorpions get enough frogs to cross rivers and sting them midstream every time, the scorpion’s “natural” urge to sting animals carrying them across a river is gonna eventually be weeded out by natural selection.

          …or frogs will evolve to not trust scorpions. actually this is probably the case already. actually this fable is probably saying that this one frog was dumb. ok

        6. Reltzik

          Both are in the style of Aesop but long, long after Aesop. Scorpion and Frog is a modernish one out of Russia. The Turtle and the Frog was… Renaisance era, I think?

        7. maarvarq

          “A likely precursor to The Scorpion and the Frog is the Persian fable of The Scorpion and the Turtle. This earlier fable appears in the Anvaar Soheili, a Persian collection of fables written c. 1500 by Hossein Va’ez Kashefi.”

        8. Ana Chronistic

          I actually heard it from MacGyver (the Richard Dean Anderson one)

          Also read it with a farmer warming a frozen snake, in Usagi Yojimbo

        9. Ana Chronistic

          As fables within the actual story, not the fables being the actual story

        10. maarvarq

          “The earliest known appearance of this fable is in the 1933 Russian novel, The German Quarter, by Lev Nitoburg.” Wikipedia

        11. Psi Baka Onna

          I heard a version with a scorpion and a fox if that helps?

        12. Ana Chronistic

          It’s actually the ACNH villager and the scorpion
          https://mobile.twitter.com/jennote/status/1298824900736499714

        13. Geneseepaws

          I read it as a poem called the snake in the strawberries.

        14. Needfuldoer

          Don’t feel bad, I first heard it from Chakotay on Star Trek: Voyager.

          https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=skbmXIzxcZY

        15. Minu

          The Scorpion and the turtle is actually Persian in origin!

        16. Uly

          Aesop is really another oral tradition. There’s nothing “abridged” or “unabridged” about oral tradition.

        17. Ana Chronistic

          There’s a definite point where all the (popular) stories are collected, though! Any others are just lost/may as well not exist, bc by that point the oral tradition failed its job

      3. Steelbright

        this sounds like the either adorable or insidious plot of a great novel

      4. RowenMorland

        The scorpion in that fable was just more creative with where it put its stinger.

      5. a/snow/mous/e

        The Scorpion and the Turtle was the original version of that fable, according to Wikipedia.

  2. Sirksome

    Pffff. Wow Liz is not intelligent.

    1. Thag Simmons

      I’m sure she’s smart in some ways. She just doesn’t think too hard about things before she does them.

      1. Tan

        Or after. Or during.

      2. DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership

        And apparently, life isn’t too short for all the unforeseeable crud that can come from not thinking hard enough about what could go wrong if you ‘keep it real’ in just any old situation like you get to pick your consequences.

        That was left out of the ol’ ‘YOLO’ sales pitch.

    2. Doctor_Who

      But she doesn’t believe in God! That makes her a brain genius!

    3. Rose by Any Other Name

      I am conflicted.
      This comic again makes me like Liz less as a person… but I just fuckin love her antics.
      Like, panel 2-3, I wanna smack her, but panel six I loved. Although, to be fair, at least half of panel 6 was Sarah’s doing.

      1. Shade

        I mean she’ll probably grow out of the edgy atheist phase at some point. But that doesn’t change how annoying she’s being now.

        1. Thag Simmons

          She may not. I get the impression that she’s a guest character for this chapter, not someone who’s going to be a regular going forward.

        2. a/snow/mous/e

          OK, but were this not in a comic strip, she would probably grow out of this phase.

        3. Shitbird

          You would hope, sadly there’s some who never do.

        4. Uly

          I’m an atheist, and have known too many atheists to hold out hope that the “sky daddy” and “imaginary friend” phase is gonna be short-lived.

        5. Aethelred the Unready

          I’m an atheist, and have known too many Christians to hold out hope that the “sky daddy” and “imaginary friend” phase is gonna be short-lived.

          Perhaps you haven’t been paying attention, but Christian fundamentalists want to take away abortion rights, gay rights, religious rights from everyone except their particular faith…and you better believe atheism will be a target. As it is, a majority of Americans believe that atheists should not be allowed to hold public office.

          Hard core Christians pose an existential threat to many minorities in the US. Yet its the snarky atheists you complain about? To paraphrase the old saying about misogyny–“Christians are afraid atheists will make fun of them, atheists are afraid Christians will kill them.”

      2. a/snow/mous/e

        Really channeling Malaya there.

      3. BBCC

        Fun character, kinda ehhh as a person, at least right now.

      4. Geneseepaws

        Clearly the younger sister, … Being the older sibling is Much more fun. (oh, they Fall for it every time, you’d thing they’d learn – NOT!).

      5. DudeMyDadOwnsaDealership

        I’m going to have to give her points for owning up to being self-serving. I’ve known people who would wander into the pits in insanity to deny admitting to themselves that’s what they’re about…She’s friendly, too.

    4. Jason Rivest

      A lot of religious people whose experience of religion is repressive (doubting your faith is a sign of weakness, atheists actually believe in God they just pretend not to bevause they think it looks cool, etc. -real things I heard from in religion class), and then logic their way out of religious faith tend to swing to wildly in the other direction, and now assume ALL religious people had a similar experience with religion, and the same rapport to faith, and they become smug and dismissive.

      I was raised a catholic, I’ve heard a lot of really absurd things growing up, and I wasn’t even in that religious a household. I became an atheist at 15 years old, and became more vitriolic in my late teens, early 20s.

      Then, thanks to the Internet, I was exposed to how some people have a very different rapport to religion, one that never denies science, discourages doubt or puts down atheism. Also in some denomination Church is actually fun… I wonder if that had been my exposure to religion, if I might have kept my faith. It’s impossible to know.

      In any case, I think it’s more important to be kind than to be right. This is something Liz still needs to learn. I don’t think she’s a bad person, just a person behaving badly.

      1. Allandrel

        Unf. I have had to deal with far too many people like Liz, especially in college. Yes, yes, start telling me about how I’m a stupid child who think Sky Daddy makes it rain, and that you know my religion better than I do even though all I have done is identify my religion, because if I believe it I must be too stupid and ignorant to actually KNOW it.

        It is remarkably common for people to project their experience with religion onto all religions and religious people. Ironically, supposedly rejecting everything their family taught them, they continue to believe and and propagate “All people of Religion A believe X.”

        Can’t count how many times I had the following exchange:

        Atheist Jerk: “All Christians believe X.”
        Me: “That is not correct. I am a Christian, and I do not believe X. I believe Y.”
        Atheist Jerk: “No, ALL Christians believe X. Therefore you are lying, and you really believe X.”

        (This is remarkably similar to the exchanges that I have had with Real True Christians (TM), whose response to me explaining that I am a Christian who believes Y instead of X is “No, ALL Christians believe X. Therefore you are lying, and are not really a Christian.”)

        1. Twitcher

          My sister is an atheist. She says too many edgelord atheists transform a desire for a lack of traditional morality into a religion of assholism. She doesn’t think y’all need Jesus, y’all need humanism, more like.

      2. Some Guy

        I think leaving faith behind is at least partially analogous Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief, including an Anger phase. I suspect a lot of “edgelord atheists” are in that stage of their journey to acceptance, which helps explain why they’re such knobs about it.

  3. Schpoonman

    “I’ll cop to smart and mean.”

    1. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

      Best Sarah description. Would tow dad again.

      1. Rabid Rabbit

        Booo. (An impressed boo, but boo nevertheless.)

    2. Sunny

      That was my first thought as well.

  4. Nono

    Okay, Sarah makes a fantastic big sister.

    1. powerpowerpow

      Idk if Willis has any siblings but this strip hit it right on the money. Sometimes you gotta use expectations of unconditional love and support to trick your younger siblings into being responsible..And Sarah’s smile in that last panel just makes me so happy.

  5. Thag Simmons

    Somehow I doubt this will resolve in five seconds

    1. alongcameaspider

      No but an apology and an explanation can put it on track towards being resolved

      1. LetPeopleVent

        What does Joyce have to apologize for? She was venting about the abuse she suffered growing up in the privacy of Joe’s dorm room with exclusively atheists. If Becky gave her even the slightest bit of privacy for once there wouldn’t have been any issue

    2. MeghanTheDreamCrusher

      My money is on Joyce being catatonic for the next several strips

      1. King Daniel

        Define “several”.

        1. Reltzik

          Severable into separate states, say from some sudden and sadistic scene-switch.

        2. Reltzik

          *separate sets. Whatever, it alliterated, that’s what matters.

        3. Wraithy2773

          Smash cut to QC’s Steve eating cereal.

        4. DaveM

          A friend of a friend of a friend who knows someone that knows someone that says they know a bit about the author’s future strips says that Joyce snaps out her catatonia in a few hours (our time mid 2023), at the worst possible moment of course. So, you know, pretty soon given this comics pacing. 🙂 🙂

        5. King Daniel

          How strange. After reading all the evident signs, my own TruPsychic Senses™ are telling me that Joyce will be completely out of her current ghostly state…ah, hrrm…no later than 14 October 2021, shall we say.

          This has been a Certified Prediction®!

        6. MeghanTheDreamCrusher

          Between 3 and 3000

  6. Jamie

    Okay, I like Sarah more now.

    I mean, this won’t work in the slightest, but the effort is very much appreciated by me.

    1. woobie

      …EVEN more now.
      ftfy

      1. Jamie

        That is 100% accurate. Thank you.

        1. woobie

          🙂

  7. Buli-Buli

    Agreed. This is going to be ugly. At best, Becky puts on her PR face for the stranger.

    1. justin8448

      Ooof. That would hurt to watch.

  8. Katerly

    Ahhh Sarah, I love you so.

  9. BBCC

    Sarah is the best big sister, I will not accept alternative suggestions.

    1. DailyBrad

      Jocelyn’s a contender, I think you’ll find. Sarah’s pretty great, though.

      1. Doctor_Who

        I was gonna say that Joyce doesn’t yet know that Jocelyn’s her big sister, but what with the time skip I suppose it’s possible she does now.

        1. zee

          Given Joyce said “if i had a sister” when Liz came around i doubt it

      2. Kamino Neko

        Mmm. Joss is a big sister, but not so much a Big Sister.

        She does edge into Cool Big Sis a little when they did the heist on Becky’s documents, but shenanigans aren’t all there is to being a Big Sister.

        1. justin8448

          Jocelyn also gave Joyce excellent life advice when she discovered herself at odds with the rest of her family for the first time (“Keep yourself within reach of resources.”). It’s also heavily implied that Jocelyn understood immediately that Ethan was gay, but wisely chose to not tell anyone and let the kids sort it out for themselves.

      3. Jon

        Jocelyn is great, but she’s also working through a lot of her own stuff and has not really been there for Joyce as a result. Which is totally understandable, but Sarah has comparatively walked Joyce through a TON of stuff in this comic.

        1. Needfuldoer

          She also lives back near La Porte, and we don’t see them conversing over the phone very much.

      4. BBCC

        I AM NOT ACCEPTING ALTERNATIVES AT THIS TIME.

        1. milu

          accept no substitute.

  10. DailyBrad

    Pfft, okay, this was a much-needed dose of levity.

    1. milu

      yep

  11. woobie

    HA!

  12. Bagge

    Liz really should have known better

    1. JessWitt

      She would but she was so high from that multivitamin gummy she took.

      1. Bagge

        There is PSA material right there

        1. Deanatay

          Friends Don’t Let Friends Do Men’s Multivitamin Gummies

  13. Stephen Bierce

    The only way this could have been better is if Sarah put Liz in a half-Nelson and slammed her into the wall. But beggars can’t be choosers.

    1. Needfuldoer

      After the apology scene, Sarah throws her out the window and she plummets 16 feet through an announcer’s table.

      She passes Sal and Danny, climbing back up to his room like 60s Batman.

      1. DaveM

        Despite what may occur in the future I have decided that Sal & Danny doing an Adam west/Burt ward Batman climbing scene IS canon. It must be.

      2. Matticus

        She crashes through the table right in front of a visiting Jim Ross and the rest of the AEW commentary team.

        “GOOD GAWD ALMIGHTY, SHE IS BROKEN IN HALF!”

  14. not someone else

    Very much not the same energy as “pit you against anything else in my life, you’ll win every time”.

  15. Kyrik Michalowski

    I don’t think Joyce needs Liz’s help in apologizing but the effort is appreciated.

    As for burning bridges with religious folk, it is not something you have to do. Clearly Liz disagrees, and sees no problem in it.

    I mean is this sonething that people do? I never abandoned any friends when i became an atheist. Can anyone speak from experience of having done so and why?

    1. Sam

      I have never heard of people doing this but I imagine some would just like any teen that breaks off of a friend group because they start to feel they’ve outgrown it. If your friends were particularly preachy you might be forced to by lack of acceptance as well.

    2. Jamie

      Considering Liz was introduced as implicitly boyfriend-stealing, I think burning bridges is one of her go-to strategies for life. The atheism is an excuse.

      1. Decidedly Orthogonal

        Yeah. I mean, I’ve left bridges un-repaired, but setting up the burn on _other_ peoples brdiges is just fucking low.

        Liz is… less than impressive. I wish I’d been right in her first DoA appearance. (here and gone, but like, faster than this). Then again, maybe Willis was struggling with pulling off the Joyce/Becky band-aide

    3. A Red Balloon

      Not all of this is from direct experience, but I’ve known people who’ve done just this for various reasons.

      Sometimes it’s because they’re abusive, but the vast majority of the time it’s because they’re stubborn, afraid of difference or otherwise just unwilling to compromise.

      As hard and sad as it may be, sometimes it’s just best to let go. We’re not these people’s therapists, and we have to think about just why we’re even doing this. Are we trying to score points? Are we really willing to break people out of their mental prisons at ANY cost?

    4. Bladeglory

      I think Joyce needs somebody’s help apologizing (doesn’t necessarily need to be Liz) because I’m not sure Joyce is going to be able to speak for another 10 minutes or so. Pretty sure all she can hear is a high pitched whine whose intensity is almost enough to drown out everything she just said.

      1. Needfuldoer

        She just hears her own words replay in her head, with reverb, stacking up on top of each other until they build into a crescendo of tinnitus screeching.

        1. milu

          ouch, that’s an accurate description of my basic cognitive subroutine for “dealing” with the feeling of having hurt a friend. it’s so tiring to everyone involved. i don’t think i can help it, except by sometimes having enough self-awareness to tell the other person that i’ll need some time off from being convinced they hate me forever now.

        2. milu

          *time off from them

        3. zee

          I’m the same way, except if i don’t hear back from them within a day or so it’ll be cemented in my head that they hate me forever now

        4. milu

          high five! love that for us!
          but really, um. it’s not great huh? it lays this unfair burden on others, to reassure us. but yeah it’s an overpowering reaction. i haven’t found a way to not be like that.
          anyway. ugh. good luck i guess <3

    5. Regina phalange

      The only way this makes sense to me is analogizing religious people to, say Trump supporters. Lots of people have a similar burn-that-bridge attitude when they discover someone they know is a supporter.

      The thing is, Trump supporters broadcast a great deal about how they think of other human beings by virtue of being a Trump supporter, and a lot of it is very very bad. Religious people do not inherently broadcast anything simply by virtue of believing in something.

      1. Shade

        Most of the time I hear stories of religious family not being able to accept that their family member is an atheist which can end up in that bridge being burned. But that would be the more strict religious families I imagine.

    6. Jbluewind

      It depends on the situation.

      Warning: examples of bigotry and insults

      While now I have friends from from a diverse number of beliefs and cultures (my close friend group inclides two christians, a muslim, two witches, one undecided, two agnostics, an atheist, and myself) and it doesn’t trigger me to have someone speak about their faith (as long as they don’t try to convert), when I originally came out as “not religious” (I had been closeted about it for a long time and tried to conform) I was in a bad place both mentally and geographically. Things, events, and people connected to religion had traumatized me (rather than trigger others, let’s just say traumatic events and other bad shit happened including verbal and emotional abuse from many adults both as one time events and over long periods of time with varying degrees of severity). My town was also infamous for being strongly religious and close minded even for the area it was in.

      I had no safe space outside the internet to openly express my frustration, fear (like will my family still love me?), or beliefs. When news spread I wasn’t going to church or anything, I had people come up to me in stores, parking lots, the vet’s office, and everywhere else proselytising at me or just offended that I existed. Like…
      *Warning example of bad events ((accused of being possessed by a demon who was blocking god from my soul (more than once), followed to my car by a stranger yelling at me, religious pamphlets piled in front of my door regularly))*
      levels of excessive. I honestly stopped leaving my apartment unless it was absolutely necessary.

      Some people kicked me out their lives because I was “lost” or “might hurt”/”be a bad influence on” their kids. Some stayed only because they thought they could “fix” me because I was “too nice to go to hell” and then got frustrated when I didn’t change. Some ghosted. I could find friends online that would respect me asking them to not talk about religious stuff around me (I wouldn’t talk about my views as well), but real life people refused, saying it an integral part of who they were.

      I know I wasn’t perfect. I know when people threw Bible verses at me, I would either say verses that changed it due to the context of the verse OR ones that used the same language for level of importance (or more) that they ignored. Researched a lot on religion and science to be prepared if I had to defend myself. Laughed with a friend over my sister having over a dozen crosses in her livingroom alone (one several feet tall) on top of other religious items (she was one of the people I was afraid I’d lose if she found out, but still the sheer excessiveness in that moment reminded me of someone I knew online who was hardcore into a certain band). One time I vented to someone I thought was agnostic (rare there and had known her a long time) about some stuff going on, but she wasn’t (got yelled at by her coworker who I didn’t realize could hear as she agreed that I had “personally offended their god” and hurt their hearts) . People kept saying I would eventually get through the phase of “blaming god” for my pain (and get over the not cis het phase), so I got a broken infinity tattoo (I designed it myself to represent the importance of today and the beauty of a finite life) as both an act of validation and “proof” of how serious I was (which got a lot of “what will jesus say!” and general tattoo hate). In the end, the reason I walked away from people was either because the relationship was/became toxic (to the point of impacting my mental health) or they repeatedly didn’t respecting my boundries (which were so basic that it was almost laughable).

      My mamaw (southern for grandmother) is the reason I’m religious positive and still support it (as long as it doesn’t cause harm to the individual, cause the individual to hurt others, or hurts society as a whole). She was my example for what christian could be and gave me a positive example that contrasted the rest I had experience with. She was basically an anti-bigot, supporting religious freedom, gender and racial equality, LGBTQ+, nutritional assistance (she literally put a picnic table in her front yard to fed homeless people and hobos), and more. Goodness knows who I would be without her.

      Tldr and concludion: Religious trauma impacts if you can stay friends with those in that belief system or not as does mutual respect and setting clear boundaries. Those who survived trauma including religious trauma almost always go through a period of heightened negative emotions surrounding things associated with the event/thing. If any emotion or feeling towards it were suppressed, it either eventually comes out at a greatly amplified level (sometimes not even as the correct emotion), leaks out into unrelated things, causes certain emotions to become numbed/avoided at all times, and/or cause psychosomatic problems (physical pain, headaches, getting sick often…) and mental health deterioration. Some also experience various stages of grief. Working through it is best done with a trauma informed therapist, but some of the work can be done with a good support system.

      Comic
      What Joyce and Liz (as well as Becky) are experiencing and how they are expressing it is actually quite normal. Joyce has suppressed her frustrations and other feelings/thoughts and they’ve festered/amplified over time. She also hasn’t been seeing a therapist (as far as I can remember).
      While I’m unsure if Liz had any trauma, she very much is acting like the athiest equivalent of someone who recently came out and found a space to freely/safely/openly express themself. As anybody who knows someone who came out as [thing] which they were forced to suppress for decades can tell you, people like that can be quite insufferable for a while and are often guilty of polarized thinking.
      (I’d type up Becky too but I’m tired! XD )

    7. LordCirce

      Yeah, it is something that quite a few people do, especially when they hit the “uses-the-word-skydaddy” levels of edgelord. Because at that point, hurting other people as much as possible is the whole point for them. So they’ll basically be seeking out bridges to burn because they think the flames are pretty.

      1. thejeff

        Either that, or as others have said, because they’re coming out of abusive cult like churches and need to cut ties because all they get out of them is attempts to pull them back into the fold. If some of Joyce’s other friends from home had come to college and hadn’t changed their views, she’d need to distance herself from them. Even before she’d lost faith, really.
        Becky’s moved away from the nastier parts of their church already, so it’s likely they can stay friends, assuming they can get past this.

    8. Keulen

      It depends on how the religious folk react to finding out you’re an atheist. I’ve been lucky in that pretty much all of my more religious family, friends, and even one or two coworkers who found out didn’t seem to care. If anyone did start treating me badly as a result of learning I’m an atheist, I’d absolutely burn bridges with them.

    9. zee

      Due to where i live, i was harassed a lot by religious folk when i came out as atheist, physically at times, and it didn’t stop until i got quiet about it. It still happens sometimes if i let it slip in conversations about religion or random run-ins with kooks trying to “spread the good word” on the street. I couldn’t just burn bridges with religious people, also because of where i live- that would be everybody, but I’d be lying if i said it didn’t embitter me a lot. I still have a knee jerk reaction of distrust if i hear someone is religious beyond just a casual passive type of faith or a highly personalized, spiritual kind of belief rather than classic church and bible. Churches make me mad uncomfortable.

      1. Jbluewind

        Same. I eventually moved away though which turned out to be the best thing I ever did. Really had a positive impact on my anxiety and depression. Doesn’t mean I didn’t have more anxiety attacks than I could count up to the move though! Even a good many after. Small town in the deep south to a city that took me two days to drive with just what could fit in a car and my cat when I’m normally as adventurous as toast? Holy crap the anxiety dude. O_O

        1. zee

          Working on moving to the Netherlands now. I’m just looking forward to living anywhere where the churches don’t outnumber and double as the schools

    10. Uly

      Sometimes they go out of their way to burn bridges with you, and you have to do what’s necessary to protect yourself.

      It does not appear that Becky, for all her flaws, is going to turn out that way.

  16. StClair

    “Pret-ty sneaky, sis.”

  17. Madock345

    “she’s telling HER truth”

    I think I saw almost exactly this line in the comments yesterday. Comic being properly prescient about the excuses people will make for poor behaviour.

    1. Zach

      How would YOU suggest Joyce process her rage and indignation and frustration with herself and her raising? The lying to seem cool to a new friend is a separate thing from the mocking of religion.

      1. Jamie

        Well firstly, she could stand to take martial arts of some kind. A lot of rage can be dumped into a punching bag, and it would help a little with her feelings of helplessness and agoraphobia, I think. Especially with more philosophical martial arts, it may give her resources for thinking about how to balance her inner life, too.

        Having friends who can point out what’s great about her is also helpful. Learning to lean into your strengths and accept that your weaknesses simply exist is advice I share with everyone I mentor, because it helps you develop useful ways of specializing and interoperating with others.

        And then, when you’ve found ways of venting the worst of your rage and frustration, channel the rest into actively working against the things you’re angry about. In this case, asking Leslie for advice on what kinds of pro-LGBT activism she could spend her energy on, for instance.

        Always be building something. Creating something. Art can be good for this. Work through the pain by making the world better.

        And also, learning to punch in a way that doesn’t result in a sprained wrist is always worthwhile.

        1. King Daniel

          So what you’re saying is, Joyce should take up with the roller derby team.

        2. powerpowerpow

          I’m gonna come back and reply to this comment in 2036 if this ever happens in DoA Junior Year

        3. milu

          the comment section gets locked off after like a month. sorry

        4. King Daniel

          It wasn’t always this way (you can go back to some of the older strips’ comments and find examples of people commenting several years later) but that’s how it’s been for a couple of years now, yeah.

        5. powerpowerpow

          Well, I’ll link to this or something whenever that happens. If it does.

        6. A Red Balloon

          @Zack, @Jamie, Joyce engaged with Liz the way that she did, assuming it was private, not only for the sake of processing rage, indignation and frustration with the way she was raised, but also because she’s still actively trying to mentally break free from her indoctrination.

          Regardless of whether she’s already intellectually an athiest, thanks to years of conditioning to automatically defend her theistic beliefs, she still has the agony of knowing that her brain is constantly lying to her.

          What she’s doing is kinda like that one scene in Dragon Ball Z, where Majin Vegeta has to actively resist to stop Babadi from taking over his mind. Joyce is struggling constantly to fight back the ideology that has been and still is controlling her mind for far too long, and she needs all the support she can get.

          I don’t blame her for seeking Liz and saying all this under the premise that no one was listening; support for deconversion is very hard to come by in her environment, and beggars can’t be choosers.

        7. Jamie

          I don’t fault Joyce at all, frankly.

          I only said all that because Zach asked and that’s roughly the advice I’d give her if I was in-universe, not because I expected better or anything.

        8. BBCC

          “Well firstly, she could stand to take martial arts of some kind. A lot of rage can be dumped into a punching bag, and it would help a little with her feelings of helplessness and agoraphobia, I think. Especially with more philosophical martial arts, it may give her resources for thinking about how to balance her inner life, too.”

          Respectfully, as a former martial artist who went into it partially BECAUSE I was angry with someone, this is not good advice. Your brain associating rage with a good workout can backfire really, really easily, including on people you don’t mean it to and hitting harder because you’re angry is not always a good thing.

        9. JBento

          I can’t for the life for me imagine HOW making yourself associate “feeling better” with “throwing punches” could POSSIBLY EVER backfire.

        10. Fist_of_Life

          When I felt frustrated in college I loved going to open gym Judo. Not to throw other people, but to get thrown myself. There is a lot of rage you can let out while performing proper falling techniques.

        11. BBCC

          I can see that helping, although that’s a little different from learning one based around punching.

        12. milu

          can’t relate with developing healthy habits but i would imagine the point is that if you already have a strong pattern of needing to hit stuff to blow off steam, that’s a habit that’s easier redirected than deprogrammed altogether

        13. BBCC

          Sure, but that’s for a pattern that already exists. This is about avoiding new potential destructive issues.

          Personally, I always did better by actually letting those feelings out – write them, draw them, scream, yell, cry, go on a rant to your friend, etc. If you need to break stuff, find something its okay to break like taking a bag of ice and smashing it with a hammer. Martial arts involving striking can be a bad idea.

        14. thejeff

          I do agree with Joyce learning to throw a punch properly so she doesn’t sprain her wrist again though.

        15. milu

          that’s fair.

        16. BBCC

          thejeff – Yeah, agreed. Everyone should learn to throw a punch just in case they have to. Using it to blow off steam on the other hand, can be more fraught.

        17. JBento

          @thejeff – to be fair, she got that facepunching a dude with no neck, who is now dead. It’s a situation unlikely to come up again. Any potential further facepunching will probably be directed at people with necks, whose head has more give.

        18. milu

          upvoted because i’m tired and just had a belly laugh at this ^^

        19. BBCC

          Maybe it works for some people, but in my experience, giving an angry person an adrenaline shot because their brain now associates angry with workout time isn’t a good combo. There were a LOT of kids in my class I hit harder than I meant to in sparring. Some of that was just because I was older, and therefore bigger, but sometimes I wonder if ‘blowing off steam’ wasn’t part of that. Fortunately I don’t think I injured anybody, but a couple of the younger ones were afraid of me. Trust me, it’s not a fun feeling. At the time I wasn’t sure what to do when I was supposed to do the best I could – but in hindsight I probably could’ve done that WITHOUT punting other kids across the room.

      2. Sam

        Since we know she writes fanfiction, she could try writing her feelings out. Also, internet forums likely exist for this type of thing, they exist for everything, so it is possible to vent online and connect to people with similar experiences. Also, there is always the option of therapy.

        Like, she is allowed to be mad, but she had at least one person she didn’t want to ever overhear her and mocking a bunch of people, which includes a fair few of the people in Joyce’s hall that she likes, is still unkind to do and not something she has to do to process.

      3. zee

        Tbh I’ve been assuming the door was open this whole time so…yeah might not wanna say all those things in that scenario. Not really a private setting anymore

        1. Matticus

          Having once lived in a dorm, I can confirm that if you don’t want the entire floor to hear you, you close your door.

        2. thejeff

          Remembering my dorms and thin walls there, that mostly told people they should pretend they didn’t hear you, but the social norms must be observed.

        3. Matticus

          My dorm’s walls were a bit thicker, so that you would only be able to make out that talking or movie watching was happening, not any specifics. But the hallway’s acoustics were fairly crazy, so if you were loud out there or your door was open everyone on the floor was going to hear you.

          That’s not even getting into the fact that the hallway is a high-traffic area, so there was no guarantee that if you wouldn’t be seen if you did something with your door open.*

          *This was of special concern for my dorm, because it was co-ed and not split up by wings. Instead, each room alternated between guys and girls. It was one of the many reasons most doors were kept shut.

    2. King Daniel

      Along with “what does Joyce have to apologize for”, that cropped up a fair few times.

      1. Lauralot

        The ridiculously black and white thinking this comment section displays far too often is really tedious. Joyce was /venting/ therefore if Becky’s hurt by her best friend mocking the belief system that was comforting her on the birthday of her dead mother, Joyce can’t possibly be even slightly in the wrong. Or something.

        1. Nono

          Joyce was an asshole. We can understand why she was one, but she still was one.

        2. BBCC

          I don’t fault Joyce for venting the way she did, or even the words she used for it, but I also can’t fault Becky for being hurt by it, because yeah, the way it was worded could very easily have applied to Becky as well. I don’t think Joyce intended it that way, but without knowing Joyce meant it about herself, how else could Becky have reasonable interpreted ‘Look at me, I believe in god, I’m an idiot’?

        3. Billifer Jenningsworth

          Personally, I think if Becky were a better friend she’d be more understanding instead of mocking atheists all the time. She can dish it out but can’t take it.

        4. milu

          when did Becky mock atheists?

        5. Spencer

          Pft, oh please.

          The only black and white thinking on display is the idea that poor Smol Bean Becky getting inconvenienced by Joyce talking about herself is something Joyce has to own up to on the grounds of “well Joyce hurt Becky” as if Joyce stepped on Becky’s foot.

          Like you’re not actually responsible for someone getting hurt because they make a conversation about yourself into one about them.

          What does it mean to apologize for something that the person who’s upset about it is way, way more responsible for their current emotional state than the one who said it?

          Stop acting like contrite politeness is an automatic benefit! It’s okay to be angry about things! Anger is a valid feeling, it’s not something to bury on the grounds of inconveniencing someone else!

        6. Lauralot

          Like you’re not actually responsible for someone getting hurt because they make a conversation about yourself into one about them.

          Please explain to me how Becky was supposed to know that Joyce was specifically talking about herself and not people with faith in general, because all over today and yesterday’s comments you’ve been insisting that Becky is making this about herself, but you’ve never bothered to explain how she should know otherwise.

        7. Spencer

          Before I answer can I ask you, specifically, to phrase exactly what you want to ask me?

          Is it about Joyce’s responsibility to Becky? Is it that Joyce can hurt Becky, except that hurt is only caused because Becky invaded a private conversation and took Joyce’s words as a personal attack? Is it about how Becky would have a strong reaction to Joyce’s atheism regardless, and if so, is Joyce responsible for her feelings hurting Becky when Becky has nothing to do with them?

          I promise that’s not supposed to be condescending, but I’m realizing I’m having six conversations at once every time I talk about this and that’s probably where I’m getting tripped up so often.

        8. Lauralot

          I did phrase it exactly. “Please explain to me how Becky was supposed to know that Joyce was specifically talking about herself and not people with faith in general?”

        9. Spencer

          Okay sure.

          She doesn’t, and instead of hearing her lifelong best friend who’s fought for her every second since she came to IU out for even for a second she bailed.

          So Becky can be as upset as she wants, that doesn’t make her right.

        10. Lauralot

          Okay so there’s no point in continuing this conversation.

        11. Madock345

          Anger is a valid feeling. There are many ways to express anger. Condescension, toxic language, and other forms of destructive lashing out are not justified by feeling anger. Self-hatred is also not an excuse for poor behaviour. I don’t even like becky, I would have found Joyce’s behaviour here unacceptable even if she and Dorothy were never around. It’s not even about her friends for me, It’s about proper behaviour and not becoming a toxic person. I do not associate with people who act this way, in private or otherwise.

        12. Zach

          It sounds like you’re saying lashing out is always wrong. Becky isn’t wrong to take offense because what Joyce is saying is applicable to her, and more I think because Joyce went behind her back. That does not mean Joyce was wrong to do so. Joyce is lashing out at her upbringing. An argument could be made that these emotions are unhealthy but unpacking them definitely is healthy.

          I’m not clear on what action Joyce has taken that’s unethical. Lying that you slept with a guy as you barge into his room while putting on airs for a ‘new friend’ has all kinds of toxic behavior on it. As far as I can tell, she owes Joe and Sarah apologies. She and Becky need to have an honest conversation about a lot of things.

      2. Spencer

        Yeah that’s because Joyce has nothing to apologize for.

    3. Bryy

      She did tell her truth.

      Now she has to have a heart-to-heart with Becky about it.

    4. Spencer

      Yeah so here’s the thing “she was telling her truth” is actually super right.

      I know it’s really hard to believe but Joyce’s relationship with her faith isn’t contingent on Becky.

  18. Sirksome

    Okay question. How exactly is Liz supposed to fix any of this? Sure, she sort of created the opportunity for Joyce but credit where it’s do here. Joyce said that stuff and has to own up to it. I doubt she can actually serve much of a purpose apology wise.

    1. Segnosaur

      True. Becky has never met Liz, and as such her apology wouldn’t really mean that much.

    2. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

      I find it interesting that the last panel suggests Joyce dragging Becky to them. Not Sarah dragging Liz to Becky or Dorothy dragging Becky to them, but that the mortified person drag Becky back so other people can them help her with words? I feel like it would be easier for Joyce to apologize to Becky then drag her somewhere first.

      1. Sirksome

        I think that’s just a turn of phrase. It’s much quicker than saying. “Joyce go chase after Becky and apologize to her and if that’s not enough try to convince her to comeback here so Liz can take some responsibility for the situation she helped create.”

        1. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

          It’s a turn of phrase, and it’s quicker to not change subjects after “Joyce, I got her,” but I don’t read your “if apologizing on your own is not enough” as being there. Either way, those suggest Joyce talk to Becky on her own, which undermines the offer to help Joyce talk to Becky and seems to shift the priority to annoying Liz. I don’t think Sarah is entirely serious, though, so I’m waiting to see where this scene goes from here.

    3. Regina phalange

      Yeah…. It was very callous for Liz to just immediately bounce after that went down—especially since she claims to be Joyce’s friend—but I don’t see why she bears enough responsibility to be obligated to HELP Joyce apologize. And apologize to some random person Liz doesn’t even know. For something that Liz didn’t do. For something that Liz didn’t even know she would be causing when she brought this up. I wouldn’t want to stay either.

      1. Sirksome

        It’s not really that Liz shouldn’t apologize or help, she does hold some responsibility. It’s just why would that help? If I were Becky the explanation of some girl I’ve never met before would mean less than nothing to me. Joyce is who I’d want to hear from.

        1. Jamie

          Eh. She can pull blame onto herself and explain it with some bullshit like “I was daring Joyce to say those things!” or “We were playing a game to see what kind of atheist nonsense we could get away with.”

          It wouldn’t work, but she could try.

        2. Spencer

          Having Joyce lie about her completely honest feelings about her terrible religious upbringing is totally worth it on the grounds of making Becky not sad.

        3. milu

          yeah, this is a difficult enough situation, the less people are involved in the aftermath the better? would be my instinct here.

          But I guess Sarah’s reaction involves wanting Liz to take some responsibility and grow up. i don’t know if she even thought as far as to how this would help Becky, but she’s hoping it’ll do Liz some good. in a “for your own good” sort of way.

          or, and this is a bit darker but not incompatible, she’s annoyed with Liz for a variety of reasons (including boyfriend-grabbing) and wants her taken down a notch. relatable sibling energy.

    4. Spencer

      Here’s how I’m processing it: Sarah thinks Liz just needs to apologize and this will go away.

      Except Liz didn’t do anything wrong to Becky because Becky’s only hurt because Joyce is saying she no longer has faith, Becky’s only hurt through her own behaviour and inability to let Joyce change, and Liz being the kind of person who very clearly outright thinks poorly of Becky’s religious beliefs (as in Liz is the person y’all are insisting Joyce is) I can’t imagine she’ll have any sincere apology.

      I think Sarah just wants to help Joyce, and she’s clearly not resentful of Liz but more “now you apologize to the nice man for kicking a ball through his window”, and it’s not gonna work out like she wants it to.

      1. Fist_of_Life

        Becky is hurt because she saw Joyce with someone who was openly mocking religion, and Joyce was chiming in herself. We know Joyce was venting, but given the context clues of having Liz actually mocking Christianity, its easy to see how one could misinterpret Joyce’s venting as mocking as well.

        Also, I don’t think Joyce should HAVE to apologize for saying it, but she should definitely talk to Becky. Like it or not though, an apology would be a way better start and would probably make the reconciliation flow a lot smoother than without one. This is true even if the apology is “I’m sorry you heard that” and not “I’m sorry I said that.” If Joyce wants her friendship with Becky mended efficiently, she should apologize in some form. If she’s ok with it taking a lot longer, or possibly not even happening, she shouldn’t.

        1. thejeff

          I would say this it wasn’t a misinterpretation to see Joyce’s venting as mocking. She was venting through mockery, which understandable, but still hurtful.

  19. LiterallyJustSomeGuy

    “It’s a trap!” – Admiral Ackbar

    1. Wizard

      I’m amazed it took this long for someone to reference that. It was my first reaction.

    2. Keulen

      Glad to see someone made that reference, I was gonna do it if you hadn’t already.

  20. Andy

    Hey, Liz? It doesn’t matter if you’d be okay with burning that bridge. It’s not your bridge to burn. So when your friend, whom you supposedly like and care about, needs to apologize to someone so as not to burn a bridge she’s NOT okay with burning, and that apology doesn’t hurt you in the slightest, maybe you swallow your edgelordism and apologize.

    1. Segnosaur

      And should we point out in all this talk of “Bridge Burning”, that Liz is actively posting bible quotes just to keep relatives of hers happy. So obviously she isn’t trying to forgo all possible ties to religious people herself.

    2. Regina phalange

      Ok, but what is Liz apologizing for? Just generally not respecting religion and unknowingly egging on a girl going through a tough time? That seems a little much—if generally disrespecting religion was an apology-worthy offense, someone should have shut her up ten updates ago.

      Joyce is the one that hurt Becky, and Becky was hurt BECAUSE it was Joyce saying these things. Becky’s confident enough in her life choices that if she heard this anti-religious tirade from a stranger, she would just ignore it (or toss out a casually petty comment like “I’m religious and I’ve got the best life possible so your loss” or something). She’s hurt because it’s JOYCE, and all the baggage that comes with that fact.

      Hell, Liz’s involvement in any potential apology kind of takes away from Joyce’s responsibility.

      1. A Red Balloon

        Yeah, involving Liz to support some elaborate excuse around her loss of faith is more rude than the truth.

        The issue is between Joyce and Becky and no one else, and Becky needs to come face to face with the fact that Joyce isn’t a believer anymore and actually frickin respect Joyce’s religious freedom.

        If that means they can no longer be friends, so be it. Covering it up will just make it worse.

        1. Billifer Jenningsworth

          MY MAN! That’s what I’ve been saying! Becky really does come across like one of those toxic types that treat people like doormats until the person either gets wise and ditches their ass or they get bored and dump you themselves for someone more easy to gaslight.

        2. A Red Balloon

          Gaslighting? I dunno, Becky doesn’t come off to me as being someone THAT intentionally malicious. I mean, look at her relationship with Dina.

          When we are exposed to a behavior for a long enough period of time (i.e a whole lifetime in a toxic religious community), it just seems “normal” to us. Often times, we just borrow from what feels to us like a familiar reference model, without even thinking.

          I think this is what’s going on with Becky. The million dollar question is, just how will she react when she discovers that she’s denying Joyce’s religious freedom and needs to stop?

        3. thejeff

          Well, she’s just come face to face with hearing Joyce thinks she’s stupid for believing in God, so there’s a little more to unpack here than just that Joyce isn’t a believer anymore.
          Now, I don’t think Joyce actually meant that, but she came very close to saying it and it’s pretty clearly what Becky heard.

      2. Andy

        One of the things that makes religious humor a minefield, is that sometimes religions do have objectively strange beliefs that are easy to make fun of, but mocking the believers is generally not okay, unless their beliefs are harming or being used to harm others.

        For instance, I could talk about how weird it is that Catholicism has prayers to saints to intervene for the living. Like “So there St. Anthony is, in paradise, and he doesn’t even get to relax because every 5 minutes it’s someone else calling him up, ‘Hey, Tony, lost my car keys again, can you put in a good word with the Big Guy to make them show up? Kthxbye.’ What kind of heaven is that, if you gotta work for all eternity, right?” It doesn’t really mock anyone, it pokes fun at an odd ritual, but it’s overall pretty tame. It engages the belief from within the belief and doesn’t really tear anything down. No harm, no foul, as they say.

        Or you could mock believers. “I mean, holy crap, how gullible are these idiots? They think some all-knowing spirit gives a damn about their car keys? And what’s some guy who’s been dead a thousand years gonna do? He’s gone, kaput, finito! Bereft of life, he rests in peace! Might as well as that brick wall there. Heck, might as well bash your head on it; can’t be any worse than the brain damage they already got, right?” That’s a whole different story. It mocks the people because they believe. It comes out and says there’s something wrong with them for daring to believe.

        Too many people act like the first and the second are interchangeable. They’re not. And what Joyce and Liz were doing was the second. They didn’t mock the belief fby engaging with it from within, they attacked people for having those beliefs. Even if they were only mocking how they used to be, they were still strongly implying that anyone who continues to be that way has something wrong with them. And that’s what both Liz and Joyce need to apologize for. It’s not different than if they were mocking Becky for her fashion sense or her haircut, and it doesn’t matter that they never intended for her to hear them. It doesn’t even matter if they were “venting,” though once you cross the line into actually insulting people I don’t really consider it venting anymore. The things they said were a direct to Becky, and they owe her an apology for that.

  21. Lauralot

    I don’t like Liz.

    1. McMuffin

      She sucks. She doesn’t know Becky at all and she’s straight up saying she’s stupid and she’d cut ties with her if she doesn’t realize god isn’t real? I’m an atheist too and damn Liz needs to get off r/atheist

      1. Bryy

        Yeah, that’s totally dick behavior.

      2. Billifer Jenningsworth

        You can almost hear the fedora.

  22. RassilonTDavros

    And there it is, right there at the bottom of Panel 2. The line of thought I try really really hard to make sure I never slip into. The idea that anyone who doesn’t break out of the mental prison that faith can be is an idiot for not doing so.

    I’ll never not sympathize with the very real pain on display here, but that doesn’t mean the hurt Becky and Dorothy experienced from hearing Joyce say that was any less real.

    1. Rose by Any Other Name

      Faith isn’t a prison.

      Organized religious groups that attack free will to try to force people to avoid growing and changing – that’s the prison. Blind dogma may call itself faith, but it is the antithesis of actual faith.

      1. Rose by Any Other Name

        To elaborate: any religion that has to force, browbeat, or manipulate people into having faith has already failed to understand what the word faith means.

        1. Rose by Any Other Name

          … that should have been “religious organization” rather than religion in the previous post. No religion requires that – only groups that choose to practice a religion in a fundamentally flawed fashion.

          My kingdom for an edit button and all that.

      2. Jamie

        Yeah. For the last hundred years or two of American history, a whole lot of charismatic con artists have successfully hijacked religion into an excuse to hold power over others. It’s not accidental that a lot of this is rooted in the Civil War era: they saw exactly what would happen if slaves actually learned something about the liberation theology of the abolitionists, and they worked to find new chains that would maintain a hold over someone. They succeeded.

        It’s more complicated than that, but this bullshit in particular? That so many people are angry and lashing out about, the way Joyce and whole generations of atheists do? It’s not actually old.

        This prison is new. And it makes them money.

        1. Reltzik

          Not touching on the faith-as-prison metaphor (otherwise I’d be writing a gazillion paragraphs), and I don’t disagree at all about the American charismatic movement and its effects, but…

          … no. No, the prison (more literally, controlling organized religion heavily focused on worldly power) is not new. This particular section of the prison might be new, but the prison complex itself is very, very old. Christianity (or a large share of it, at least) has been cynically used in plays for worldly power for as long as it’s been big enough to be a good tool to that end. Other religions before that were used the same way. This is nothing new, it just feels new because we’d gotten away from it for a bit and got complacent.

        2. Shitbird

          The prison of corrupt religion has existed for as long as religion has, there’s always been someone who has used religion for personal power over others and used the faith of others to hurt, control and manipulate them.

        3. Jamie

          I mean, if you’re going to go that far, you’re gonna have to sweep literally the entire concepts of society and friendship into it.

          Like, this is what faith is. Faith is the belief in something other than yourself. First and foremost, that’s other people. Faith, at its core, is the reciprocal belief that someone else gives a shit about your well-being. That reliability is what provides you with the freedom to be something more.

          Yes. Literally every ideology that has ever existed makes cynical power plays for worldly power. Every one, including atheism, including agnosticism. If it has any following, money has been made from it and control can be exercised through it. That is not new.

          What’s new is redefining faith from a bond between a community to a “personal relationship” with a bullshit entity conveniently defined and interpreted by the elites who then convert it into donation drives. Never before was faith such an intensely personal affair, used to isolate fools so they could be further separated from their money, used to build cults for no purpose other than fleecing multiple generations and claiming dominion over them as you did so.

          The oldest established version of this was Western esotericism, the roots of which are merely in the Middle Ages, where you have charlatans ripping off the rich and widowed. And sure, there were Catholic priests were accepting indulgences. Yes, there were Daoists and desert monks who swore off society and went to find enlightenment in the wilderness, but they weren’t exactly getting rich doing this. And there was stuff like amulets of protection and love potions before that in prehistory, sure, but zero evidence that it was done in bad faith, in that the creators of these things were probably creating what they thought were genuinely effective devices or that there was any kind of widespread shift in societal behavior as a result. Even witches exiled into the woods were called upon discreetly for remedies the community needed. And I guess I may as well throw in the original, Biblically-acknowledge Messiah, Cyrus the Great, who got the Temple rebuilt as part of an empire-wide program of multiculturalism, which was obviously selfish but you can’t say it didn’t help the Jewish diaspora reclaim some of their heritage.

          This is new. It’s new precisely because it’s specifically American in its mercenary and independent spirit, and then hit its stride as a full-throated political operation a mere 40 years ago.

          This is very different stuff. And it’s precisely because it’s different that you shouldn’t be complacent about it and shrug it off as a same-old-thing, as if state control over farming the Nile is at all similar to the manufactured destitution currently prolonging a pandemic and exacerbating climate change. It’s not. Agrarian religion is deeply problematic and worth criticism, absolutely, but it’s very different from sanctioned magicians plying their trade on millions of people with no thought for their well-being.

          Personal faith has as much meaning as personal responsibility: some, but not much. Mainly, it is an isolation chamber, designed to cut you out from the herd for shearing, if you’re lucky. It’s not that old.

        4. John Neverpost, who never posts and is immortal

          breaking my never posting to say:

          please listen to Jamie. They know what they’re talking about. Yes, every other denomination, and indeed every religion, has much and more to answer for. Every Pope deserves a cadaver synod, to be very Frank. But there’s always been something good in there too.

          American Evangelicalism is not the same. It is the fruit of a poison tree. It is a cancer that eats away at the heart of Christianity and replaces some of its most time-honored, beloved teachings with a love of money and full-throated support of actual fascism. It is a death cult, and it is new and rapacious.

        5. Reltzik

          Just deleted a long, ill-tempered, intemperate reply from the comment field. You didn’t deserve a hot reply but you had meandered into a definition-minefield laid down by equivocating apologists that has been weaponized against people like me far, far too many times, so a hot reply almost came your way regardless.

          Short summary, hopefully without the heat: I’m not in agreement with your definition of faith, I agree roughly with you about where the problem is in society and many of the issues it’s causing but I disagree on the nature of the problem (which I think is more systemic and cultural than a matter of individual manipulators, though there’s plenty of those too), I don’t agree that these problems are as new as you say they are, but despite me thinking this is a very old thing I am not in the least bit complacent about it. If anything, its perennial nature makes me even more afraid of it.

        6. Roborat

          Atheism isn’t an ideology, it is simply the lack of belief in the existence of god(s).

    2. RassilonTDavros

      Okay… I worded my original comment poorly. To clarify:

      What I meant by the idea of faith as a prison was the way in which harmful aspects of one’s beliefs can hinder one’s chances at a happy, fulfilling life. I was thinking more of a prison within one’s own mind than a societal force— which, fair enough, is probably a reflection of my privilege.

      And no, faith doesn’t have to be like that, but it absolutely can be. I’m thinking of things like Becky’s belief, which she hasn’t gotten over yet, that premarital sex is, like, the worst thing ever. Something that we’ve seen, first-hand, has a negative effect on her ability to have a healthy relationship with the woman she loves. No, the fact that she has trouble overcoming that doesn’t mean that Becky is an idiot, but it’s still a part of her faith that is genuinely hurting her.

      Hope that makes a bit more sense, I don’t think I’m very good at conveying this stuff.

      1. A Red Balloon

        This is all actually very good. An A+ to you!

        But it kinda gets me thinking. If religious faith (as opposed to the metaphorical “faith” that just means “confidence”) by definition requires that no proof is supporting a belief, than what’s supporting it? Do you just know it for a fact?

        1. Sombrero

          You can “support” beliefs through the agreement of others in a community, codification (a holy book) and other procedures. This won’t get you to real knowledge, but it will allow to live your life on the basis of your beliefs. That’s how religions usually work.

        2. A Red Balloon

          So besides thinking that special documents are self-authenticating, they just do and think what they think everyone else is doing and thinking?

          As for the latter, I think Keynes referred to that as “herding”, and and one point was thought to be all you really needed to run a business. But then the Great Depression happened. And people still believe it.

        3. Sombrero

          Yeah, herding won’t get you far in running a business, the same as faith won’t get you far in solving real-life problems. This is more about your inner life, how do you deal with your own conciousness, which is kind of a funny thing, as it makes you feel kinda separated from the “external” real world.

      2. Rose by Any Other Name

        See, my issue with the use of faith is that faith isn’t what’s messing up Becky.
        Dogma is.
        Faith is her belief that a god yet exists and that said god loves her.
        However, the Dogma she was taught has led her to believe that premarital sex is bad.
        Many people use the word Faith when what they are talking about is Dogma, but that is a corruption, and a self-serving one for the creators of said Dogma.

        And it doesn’t have to be that way. One of my former lovers (and still a good friend, albeit long-distance) is Catholic. She had a long-time boyfriend who she slept with regularly. Additionally, she and her boyfriend sometimes fooled around with my wife and I.

        She could do these things because her church, while Catholic, saw how the world was changing and adapted. It encouraged learning about the historic context of rules, reading and interpreting texts directly rather than being told by others, and it had fully embraced LGBT individuals. Why? Because Jesus was a reformer – he wanted his church to be open and accepting to all, not shun people. He actively worked against that – and thus so did this particular church.

        And sure, this is a sadly rare example – but it is an example. It can be done. There’s no reason that even Catholicism, one of the Ur examples of using Dogma to control people, can’t be better – can’t choose to embrace learning and study rather than fear and Dogma.

        This friend of mine is also one of the reasons I find Christian mythology so fascinating – because she felt comfortable discussing it with me, and we got into the weird gnostic shit – and it was awesome!

        My point is, in most cases, it is less the religion itself that is the problem and more the institutions forcing their version of Dogma on their practitioners. Religion can be done better – it just takes some brave people to shine a light on problematic institutions and change them for the better.

        /soapbox

  23. Lumino

    Liz reminds me of Roz. Must be something about 3 letter names ending in z.

    1. Andy

      Might as well rename Mary “Maz.” She fits the pattern, if not on the same side of the spectrum.

      1. King Daniel

        Laz and Raz will be thrilled.

        1. Jamie

          Faz is into this.

      2. Wizard

        Justifies obnoxious behavior with self-righteousness? Yeah, I’ll give you that one.

      3. BBCC

        Nah, Mary’s a lot worse. I’ll put Roz and Liz on her level when they try to get someone to commit suicide and then ask to be ‘given’ someone else to do the same to the next day.

        1. Andy

          I was looking at their general attitude of being 100% certain they’re correct and that their correctness excuses bad behavior. The relative levels of their behavior or where they are on the religious/political spectrum didn’t enter into it.

        2. BBCC

          Fair enough.

  24. SweaterZach

    Predicting this now: Joyce does not apologize. She’s mortified that it came out this way, but she didn’t lie. And she’s not yet mature enough to know to know to apologize for tone.

  25. ADLegend21

    A+ Sarah. Though I don’t think Joyce is even capable of movement right about now, much less dragging Becky back in.

  26. Reltzik

    In this EFFORT to help Joyce apologize to Becky, I can’t help but notice a critical lack of any word from Joyce that she wants help apologizing to Becky.

    I mean, yes, it’s very likely that she will want to apologize, and yes, it’s very possible she’ll want help with that, and yes, lassoing Liz and holding her until Joyce gets a moment to process makes perfect sense, and yes, there might be something to be said for stepping up to do damage control for a friend if she’s too whiplashed to make coherent decisions in a time-critical moment, which, yes, this could easily be counted as…

    … but shouldn’t someone at least ASK Joyce if she wants help, and if so what kind? I feel like that step’s kinda being skipped.

    1. Reltzik

      …. why did I put EFFORT in all caps? … I mean, that’s not something that really needs correcting…. it’s just super weird and it bugs me. How did that happen?

      1. Agemegos

        You were trying for “aeffort” and hit caps lock instead of ??

        1. a/snow/mous/e

          I think it would need to be “aefforta” to explain turning caps lock off again.

        2. Agemegos

          Mystery solved!

    2. Sam

      I feel like Joyce having been silent kind of indicates that even if she asked, she may get no response, so Sarah is acting and directing as best she can until Joyce.exe resumes functioning.

      1. Bladeglory

        Yeah at this point I’d be asking Joyce if *she’s* okay because even before realizing that Becky was there Joyce was saying some very unJoyce things. Between throwing her religion under the bus and realizing she’d just be feasting on her own foot Joyce was obviously having some kind of mental break. Well at least obvious to Sarah (and Dorothy I would have thought.)

      2. Reltzik

        Very likely. But asking should be a step in the process just the same, even if the next step is “okay, she’s still rebooting, back to disaster control”.

    3. Thag Simmons

      I mean at this point Joyce is having a 404 error.

      1. Reltzik

        Most likely. But you only know it’s a 404 error after you send a page request to the server and get nothing back.

    4. Wraithy2773

      Willis has 4 panels a day to work with, sometimes he has to pick which bit to focus on first. Highlighting that Liz is an asshole atheist who is exactly who Joyce should avoid becoming seems important right now.

      1. Thag Simmons

        I get what you’re saying about limited space but Willis regularly (including today) fits in more than four panels a day

        1. milu

          and now i’m wondering what’s the most panels we’ve seen in a single DOA strip. probably some hyper action sequence?

          ok i got nine. it’s not a hyper action sequence

        2. Thag Simmons

          13 from this action sequence.

        3. milu

          classic! how could i forget

    5. Ed Callahan

      They may have to wait a while for Joyce’s input because her needle is stuck in the record grove.

  27. Agemegos

    What the thing in Of Mice and Men? “You don’t truth me, and I won’t truth you.”

    Or as Robert Heinlein put it: “Only a fool or a scoundrel tells the truth on social occasions.”

    Or in terms of the legal maxim: “the greater the truth, the greater the slander”.

    1. Jamie

      “Your own father said that artists use lies to tell the truth.”?

      Sorry.

      1. Agemegos

        Gough Whitlam, speaking about Billy McMahon: I’m very disappointed in the Primes Minister. I thought we had an understanding that he wouldn’t tell lies about me, and I wouldn’t tell the truth about him.

      2. thejeff

        An author friend of mine describes her job as “telling lies to strangers for money.”

  28. BlackScarabFilmZ

    Oh, come on! Any sibling knows that if there’s an unsolicited hug it’s clearly either a ploy or a distraction!

  29. Barf Ninjason

    It’s really sweet that Sarah gives a shit about this

  30. a/snow/mous/e

    Time to learn some responsibility, Liz…

  31. Varangian

    So I think I’m done commenting here, for reasons of it not being at all good for my mental health and I don’t really like the person I turn into, etc

    But I think I’ve unpacked some shit and I wanted to leave a final thought, as someone who identifies way more strongly than I probably should with Becky’s stance on faith

    I realize that Joyce was talking about herself, and was lashing out at herself, and why she’s angry, Evangelicalism is a violent death cult and she and Becky are lucky to be out and have survived

    and I don’t even necessarily want to tone police Joyce or whatever

    The thing that bothers me, I think, is that Liz is a smug little bigot and her shit is couched in exactly the sort of callous cruelty that Joyce doesn’t intend and it’s like, I wish you could’ve not associated with that. It’s not a one-to-one comparison, but it’s like finding out that someone’s legitimate grievances that they couldn’t talk about with you drove them to hang out with MAGAchuds.

    so of course I was excited to see Dorothy actually stand up against Liz’s bigoted nonsense*

    (*: it is that. Fuck you if you don’t think otherwise. I realize that there’s not a structural fuckin component here, I did not say Liz was specifically an Islamophobe or an antisemite, I know she’s not going after a marginalized group. But it’s bigotry. Fuck you.)

    but that’s the thing, I guess, isn’t it, like, if Dorothy wasn’t wrapped up in her own bullshit maybe she could’ve been the person Joyce came to, or if Becky wasn’t at the center of a hurricane of her own bullshit Joyce could’ve been brave enough to go “look I know I was a bummer back before winter break but uh we gotta talk about God and how I don’t believe anymore and I’m sorry”

    fuckin, maybe if Becky was less Becky she coulda talked to Dina about how to break it

    I don’t fuckin know, I guess that’s why it’s DUMBING OF AGE lol

    anyway, now I am become John Neverpost, who never posts and is immortal

    1. Amos Batista

      hey, you one, have some hugs…

    2. BBCC

      I think all of this makes a lot of sense and I appreciate your perspective. Thanks for the comment. I hope you feel better soon, mental health wise. If you ever do decide to come back, I’ll be excited to see you. If not, I get that. Take care. <3

    3. milu

      yeah, yesterday was eye-opening in terms of how harsh this place gets, simply by virtue of being public. i guess most things people say about Twitter and mental health apply here, although i wouldn’t know. i hang out here for the community, because of all the thoughtful and funny people here, and i can rely on Willis’s minimal moderation to extinguish the absolute worst flames.

      but this community isn’t beholden to its own members, because there is no formal member status, there’s no line between inside and out, there’s no “us” here. so people just drop out silently. i find it kind of disheartening. i’m glad you let us know you’re leaving, and let me say, i appreciate you and hope you decide to return. but yeah, look after yourself.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Yeah, there’s a lot of shitty behavior in these comments, sometimes. I’ve seen some really wild arguments that started based entirely on some irrelevant semantics gripe, where nobody involved was actually talking or saying anything. And then there’s the odd occasion where somebody simply mentions their disability/race/religion and it somehow gets twisted into a personal attack on some vague, hypothetical non-entity, and then said person gets treated like they said anything and everything under the sun about whoever-ya-please, which means it’s perfectly okay to accuse them of any other behavior the twister likes. And then it gets swept under the rug like the shitty accusations weren’t ever made and the person being accused of everything short of rape and murder is stuck feeling like this community maybe isn’t quite as safe as they thought.

        1. milu

          oh god, yeah. that was really bad. thing is this is actually not a safe place, not that anywhere really is a safe place in absolute terms, but this is not a safe place at all. again, if for nothing else because it’s entirely public. i think the absence of any sort of DM system doesn’t help? i wonder. some things might be better discussed privately.

          …let me test this, i’m adding a mailto: link in the url field to an email address i don’t care too much about; i’ll just get rid of it if it starts getting too much spam. let’s see what happens

        2. milu

          oh well.

        3. milu

          last try

        4. Spencer

          Your name’s glowing so I think it works.

        5. milu

          yeah that’s not convenient, but it is sort of included in my username now. except you have to right-click and “copy link”.

          so what i did, i just typed in my email address in the “website URL” field; now it’s automatically included in every comment i write, i guess.

          maybe i’ll post an update in a few days, whether i start getting spam or not.

          i know i wish i had a way of contacting people privately sometimes, of course not everyone wants to take that chance. but like i said this is an email address i don’t care about, it’s not tied to any accounts. i set it up to be notified on my “real” address if i get an email there but i can turn that off and forget about it or just delete it altogether at any time, so i don’t feel like i’m taking a big risk here. anyway, just an idea.

        6. Delicious Taffy

          That incident made it very clear to me that it’s not okay to be The Way I Am and share any part of my experiences with it, even in spaces that are generally accepting. Because there’s always somebody who’s gonna weaponise you against yourself, and they’ll pretend you’re the one doing it to them the entire time.

        7. milu

          yeah, the whole thing got really ugly because the other person was also talking from a place of strong feelings and vulnerability, and they were obviously not in a mental state where they could possibly hear and acknowledge that their original take that you reacted to was solid shite. they just felt attacked and moved into defense mode.

          there was no justification for what they said. but as i remember, it seemed like they were being unwarrantedly suspicious and ignorant. they really didn’t sound to me like an out and out bigot. again, not an excuse. it just made it extra sad because they were talking about their own painful history and were probably wrapped up in a suspicious mindset based on stories of abuse routinely being cast into doubt. which is not what you were doing, you were commenting on the strip, and they were commenting on the strip, you just went into two very different directions and they felt like their read was attacked by yours, when it absolutely wasn’t and they got vicious. is how i remember that snowball starting. let me know if you think my recollections or my interpretation are off.

          i wish i’d spoken up but the exchange got real heated real fast and my brain just shuts down in these situations. a couple people did stand up for you, Spencer for one, which was to their credit and a relief. i’m sorry and i hope i do better in the future.

  32. Kitschensyngk

    This chapter so far:

    “Danny and Sal on a date, this is too good to be real, I’m worried something will go wrong, can we go back to Joyce’s story please”

    a few days later…

    “AHHHHHHHHH THIS IS WORSE THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE DAMN YOU WILLIS I CHANGED MY MIND CUT BACK TO DANNY AND SAL”

    1. Eldritchy

      The Balance must be Maintained.

      1. King Daniel

        The universal scale tips toward balance.

    2. Thag Simmons

      I mean something did go wrong, just not with Danny and Sal.

    3. thejeff

      a few days after cutting back to Danny and Sal…

      “AHHHHHHHHH THIS IS WORSE THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE DAMN YOU WILLIS I CHANGED MY MIND CUT BACK TO JOYCE”

  33. Switchchris23

    There are a lot of people arguing about whether or not Liz needs to apologize, but that isnt really the big issue. Liz is mostly responsible for the situation they are in, even if not responsible for the words Joyce said. She got Joyce to skip class to spend more time with her, got her to vent about religion, and put her in the headspace to start mocking it openly. Even if her Apology to Becky would be near pointless, she needs to apologize to Joyce about the situation she put her in and for feeding the fire, and she needs to stay to help explain the situation to Becky so she isnt just handing a live grenade to Joyce and running away. Even if she doesn’t “Need” to do it, it would be the thing a decent human being would do.
    Im agnostic, and while I choose not to talk to most of my religious family members, its because I can’t talk to them without them constantly trying to convert me back to Christianity bordering on Jehovah’s witness levels of strictness. (They blame anime and video games for me losing faith, and not growing up in two different religions and studying others to see if one fits me better then others.) Cutting ties with somebody just because they won’t covert to not having faith is so fucking stupid and selfish, just like the other way around. Friends are Friends no matter what, belief shouldn’t matter.

    1. JBento

      I haven’t liked Liz from the start, but I’m gonna step in here to say that Liz didn’t “get Joyce” to do anything. She didn’t put a gun to her head and say “skip class, or else”. Joyce skipped class because she WANTED TO, and I wish people would stop attributing zero agency to SO MANY characters.

      1. thejeff

        There are levels in between “zero agency” and “put a gun to her head”. Liz’s presence and actions encouraged and led Joyce to this situation. That doesn’t excuse Joyce’s behavior (to whatever extent you think it needs excusing), but that Joyce has agency also doesn’t mean Liz didn’t influence her.

        1. JBento

          At that point, it never stops – is Joe to blame for the placebo effect of giving them vitamins under the guise of “edibles”? Do we blame Dorothy for encouraging Becky to be ridiculously possessive of Joyce for coming along instead of minding their own business?

  34. Amos Batista

    Oh, hello, Joe!
    Didn’t figure out you’re in the scene. If you haven’t your name tagged, I would never know.

    1. JBento

      Joe is taking the only sensible route available to him at this moment, which is staying silent and hoping everybody forgets he’s there.

      1. Delicious Taffy

        Stand still, stay silent. It might go away.

        1. King Daniel

          Now I’m just remembering how the creator of that webcomic turned all fundie antivaxxer conspiracy theorist out of the blue during the pandemic (having been openly atheistic before), and am sad.

        2. milu

          oh no first i hear about this.
          i stopped reading SSSS when the pandemic hit because, well, it’s about this plague that wipes out 99% of humanity lololol so i was like “ykw, i’ll pick this up later” and i was thinking about it lately and wanting to return to it. bummer

        3. King Daniel

          Yeah, sometime into Adventure II Minna started mentioning how she was working on a “lighter and softer” one-off side-comic “about cute bunny families”, titled Lovely People. Occassionally she’d even put up pictures of the art too to get people more interested.

          …then when the site for Lovely People finally dropped, you find out on page 1 that it’s set in a dystopian future-type society ruled by the megacorp Alizongle (“subtle name”, I thought, but kept reading), one of the protagonist rabbits is a stereotypical “vapid influencer”, another is a fundamentalist Christian, and the third is from a nominally-Christian family, and the comic rapidly descends from there into fearmongering about things like “media censorship”, “taking our Bibles away”, “social credits”, explicitly mocking nonbinary people and non-fundamentalist Christians in one particular scene, and culminates in the bunny protagonists abandoning their “technologically-obsessed” lives and fleeing the city to live out in the wilderness where they’d be free to worship the “right” way, finally ending with a literal Author Tract where Minna talked at length about how she’d converted during the pandemic, proselytizing her newfound beliefs as the “only way to Salvation for us worthless sinners”, and conspiracizing about “the true purpose of vaccine passports” and the like as the cherry on top.

          She posted in the author commentary beneath Stand Still, Stay Silent soon after that her conversion from atheism to fundamentalist Christianity “wouldn’t affect” the writing of the rest of Adventure II (though she also stated that she no longer had plans to write more adventures after II was over, contrary to previous statements years prior – and that she’d also canceled work on the SSSS video game City of Hunger that had been in development for years), but the whole thing still kind of cratered my interest in SSSS altogether and I stopped reading soon after. Which was really sad for me, since not only was the story in a very interesting place at that point, but the comic as a whole was easily one of my favorites – I can count the number of webcomics I have bookmarked on less than two hands, and that was one of them. The whole thing was a mess, frankly.

        4. milu

          oh shit. thanks for the summary. i went and read her march 2021 “final thoughts” tacked on to the story which i might read if i have the courage, it seems fairly short. the vaccine passport freakout i can get over, like politically it’s very weak but i sympathize with the impulse to be wary of social control, but then it segues hard into christian victim complex conspiracy drool and it’s just like… oh no.

          yep. i’d made it to the early chapters of the second adventure and really liked this story… shit that’s really sad.

        5. Delicious Taffy

          Aw, really? Goddamn it. Fuckin tired of things I like being ruined by the creators turning out to be pieces of shit.

        6. King Daniel

          Yeah, see above with my reply to milu for more of a detailed explanation.

  35. Heather

    ‘Telling her truth’ is a phrase that really seems to be used by less than logical people Liz. Since you seem to pride yourself on yours maybe drop it from your lexicon?
    (But seriously a lot of not great people I’ve seen online have used it to justify shitty political beliefs. I’m sure in the past more people used it in a not bad way somehow but it’s probably one of those phrases that the internet failed like the word gaslighting).

    1. Eldritchy

      Kind of like with Brutal Honesty, being more interested in being Brutal than Honest.

    2. BBCC

      Huh, that’s a new one to me. I’ve only ever heard it from people who were abused or otherwise mistreated telling their stories.

      1. Heather

        I’ve honestly heard the abusers use it more somehow in the past few years. Like so called parents of autistic children justify their hatred of their children (some seriously dark stuff) as ‘telling their truth’. It’s quite likely though abuse victims did use it correctly though and then abusers decided to steal it for themselves and mask/deflect. Wouldn’t surprise me.

        1. BBCC

          Wouldn’t shock me either.

    3. Spencer

      If an asshole says a phrase that phrase is forever tarnished and can never be used again, lest you too become an asshole.

      “Telling her truth” is actually what Joyce was doing. It is Joyce’s truth that her upbringing was bullshit, she no longer has faith, and she thinks of everything she believed as stupid. It’s okay that she thinks that.

      1. Thag Simmons

        Also that everyone who believed any of it was stupid.

        If that’s your truth, that friend of yours who still does believe some of it might feel a little hurt, might not want to hang around with you anymore

        1. Spencer

          Please refer to yesterday’s strip where I spent my entire day in this comment section explaining that Joyce was exclusively talking about herself.

        2. Thag Simmons

          No, she wasn’t. Maybe she only really meant herself, but just because you didn’t “really mean” what you said doesn’t make it not a thing you said

        3. Spencer

          idk fam if I say “this movie sucks” that doesn’t mean “you, who enjoys this movie, are a fucking idiot go fuck yourself and die.”

          Like I don’t actually know how Joyce can exclusively talk about herself and her relationship to her faith, as in she is specifically making commentary on all of her past beliefs like the sky sea and a God who had her be attacked at a party to teach her a valuable moral lesson, and for this to apply to anyone else.

          That’s actually the exact definition of “Joyce really meant herself.”

        4. Thag Simmons

          No but if you said “this movie sucks and people are idiots for liking it” someone who likes it might be a little upset by that. And if you replace the relatively inconsequential topic of movies with say religious faith, and suddenly a little upset becomes a lot upset

        5. Spencer

          So it’s a good thing Joyce was exclusively talking about herself and her faith and it had nothing to do with anyone else, least of all Becky.

        6. Thag Simmons

          Again, what you “really mean” and what you actually said aren’t always the same thing. In the bits we know Becky overheard, Joyce is specifically mocking herself for having believed things that Becky currently believes. If Joyce was an idiot for believing those things, what does that imply about Becky?

        7. Spencer

          Can we please stop mixing like six conversations into one?

        8. thejeff

          So, if someone walked out of a movie theater saying “Look at me. I loved this movie. I’m an idiot who actually thinks that plot made sense”, you’d actually think they were talking about themselves only, not the other people walking out happily chatting about the movie?

          Or am I just completely misunderstanding you?

          Now, if she’d said “I was an idiot for liking that”, then it’s an entirely different thing.

        9. Spencer

          Do I have a personal, life-defining relationship with that movie that might influence how I feel about it?

        10. thejeff

          Fair problem with the analogy, but it doesn’t help me understand you.

          My take is that her motivation for saying it is based on her feelings about that personal, life-defining relationship, but that what she actually said is about believers in general. You, if I understand you correctly, think that her actual words clearly apply to just herself, not anyone else. Or possibly, that because they come from her feelings about herself, they’re okay even if they apply more broadly, but I think you mean more the first.

          Does this apply to Liz’s words too? She’s also a recent deconvert and could well be thinking of her own former beliefs, though we don’t know her well enough to know what she’s been through. Or is she just mocking, despite using very similar words to Joyce’s?

        11. Spencer

          Well we don’t know anything about Liz and I’ll be charitable and not go “actually here’s the secret dark pain motivating her” because I don’t need to, she’s acting like a teenage atheist.

          Here’s the skinny: Liz and Joyce’s actions in this strip, the most important strip for why I feel the way I do, are widely contrasted.

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-12/01-sister-christian/lookitme/

          Liz is making wild cartoon faces and saying nothing of depth. She’s attacking the notion of belief itself.

          Joyce’s face is flustered, contemplative, and worried, the words coming out of her mouth are uncomfortable. She cites the sky sea, something no one at IU believes in but her and not even Becky, because Becky shed all that bullshit and just believes in the important stuff like God’s unending love for her. Then she talks about how bad things would happen to her, of which there have been many, in order to teach her a lesson. Joyce, someone we now recognize their belief came from authority rather than faith, thought it was fine that she was attacked, nearly shot, kidnapped, kidnapped ten minutes later, and betrayed by her mom, because God let it happen to teach her a lesson instead of it all being chaos at the hands of other people.

        12. zee

          Dude your analyses are usually spot on but the absolute reach of trying to say Joyce was obviously only talking about herself and Becky is self absorbed for taking any offence and everyone should be able to tell Joyce was exclusively talking about herself…
          This ain’t it chief

        13. Spencer

          Yeah sure, tell me why Joyce is talking about anyone other than herself.

          Because if you can’t, as chief I will have you arrested for bad opinion crimes.

          Anyway Becky’s self-absorbed yeah, that’s just not the crushing indictment of her character it probably sounds like. She is taking ownership of Joyce, except she’s doing that because she loves Joyce deeply and Joyce is the only part of her old life left, so she is naturally protective both of the idea of Joyce staying the same in perpetuity and not questioning Becky’s inerrant faith in the God who loved her enough to send a superhero after her to save her from her dad and who is currently chilling with her mom at the heavenly water slide.

          Also it’s literally been like two minutes, they can still hash it out.

        14. RedCat

          And not listening to a single person telling you that’s not the point.

        15. Spencer

          Please point to the part where Joyce comments on other peoples’ faith.

        16. RedCat

          Or ignoring the point, I guess. Good luck.

        17. Spencer

          Your point sucks.

        18. RedCat

          How would you know, though…

        19. thejeff

          We are clearly just reading the words that she said completely differently.

        20. Thag Simmons

          Joyce was doing a mocking pantomime of things that she used to believe and that Becky currently believes, and Joyce called herself an idiot for believing those things.

          This is a comment about Becky’s faith. Joyce may not be entirely aware of that, but it is.

        21. Spencer

          Becky doesn’t believe in the sky sea.

        22. thejeff

          That’s true. Now.

          She’s not specifically aiming at Becky.

          She’s lumping together a bunch of things that her old faith (and thus Becky’s old faith) taught and portraying people who believe those things as idiots. Some of them Becky no longer believes, like the sky sea. Some she still does. Joyce is mocking all of them.

          Or that’s how I read it.

        23. Spencer

          thejeff (the the is important) I’mma be real with you, when my honking big character analysis of Joyce gets approved below, I hope you read it.

      2. Heather

        A singular asshole? Nah. But enough terrible people can misuse something to the point that a word or phrase can get fucked over or be at the very least a red flag at least for a period of time. Sadly I guess, especially with the speed of the internet, one could argue that almost any phrase or term when popular enough can eventually be fucked over.

        Maybe we’ll see a turn around on this phrase being claimed back though. Could be that both it and phrases like gaslighting are unfortunately in that shitty stage of internet life where it s so widespread that people both unknowingly and knowingly misuse it until it falls out of their favour and it gets used correctly more often again. (Does that happen? I hope it does. Honestly though I am seeing gaslighting used less these days.)

        Maybe instead of completely shelving it as I suggested we actually do need people who are using it in better terms to actually use it more even though it will be a red flag for a while. People will also have to refuse any attention to/criticise those who use it to simply lie or an excuse to be assholes because like ‘it’s just my opinion man’.

        For a while though I will still have my mind jump to people who want their autistic kids dead. It is what it is.

  36. Florence

    Gonna be really interested to see what Joyce’s reaction. I hope Joe steps in and let’s Joyce know that the problem isn’t Joyce being an atheist because I fear that is the conclusion she will come to without guidance

  37. Queezle

    I really do not like Liz.

    It is very understandable why Joyce said the things she said especially the
    “I think anything matters and that any bad stuff happening to me is part of some grand design to teach me a life lesson instead of being friggin’ random bullshit” is really telling at how hurt she is. And meeting someone who gets that experience for the first time must have been really freeing. Still the things she said were kind of shitty. If I heard a friend talk like that I would probably take them aside later and ask them to tone it down and think of the implications.

    But I do not think that she had to talk to Becky about being an atheist before she talked to Liz about it. Talking to Becky about it is hard, she put a lot of weight on the religion in regards to their conenction. Talking to Liz about it is easy (and if Liz was not such an I am an freshly deconverted atheist edge-lord, she could have helped Joyce to figure out how to talk to Becky about it), but alas Liz is who she is.

  38. Needfuldoer

    Fuck you, Liz. You don’t get to unilaterally decide whether someone else’s bridges get burned.

    Maybe someday she’ll grow out of this Reddit Atheist mindset.

    1. Wraithy2773

      I like to call this sort of asshole “Evangelical Atheists”.

      Because they really do tend to become exactly what they say they hate so much: Assholes who push their view of faith onto others.

      1. Spencer

        Yeah there’s really no difference

        Except without the vast political and cultural power to enforce their views onto multiple countries across the planet

        Or the part where they have so much of that power you kind of have to argue your way out of the existence of conversion camps instead of seeing a grave injustice and bashing all their skulls in until they stop

        Or that this exact kind of person is constantly pandered to by right wing grifters in the name of seizing political power and it’s fine to take safe abortions from all of Texas because Baby Jesus or whatever

        Sometimes teenagers on the internet are really mean to the dominant religion of the entire planet in a private context, so really both sides are the exact same

        1. thejeff

          That much is certainly true.

          They remain assholes though.

        2. Spencer

          We need better standards for assholes.

        3. zee

          I mean let’s not pretend a lot of reddit atheists aren’t also anti abortion bc “facts and logic say women shouldn’t have rights” or whatever. Doubt Liz falls into that category but, yeah no a lot of these “reason” sucking edgelord atheist types loop right back around to being religiously oppressive, just without the god part. Amazing atheist, Sargon of Akkad, etc.

        4. Spencer

          I mean, like most things going on these last two days, those are separate conversations.

          Can an atheist be as bad as an evangelical in their beliefs and dogged hatred of their fellow man? Yep.

          Does an atheist have the existing power structures in any place in the world, let alone North America, to enact their beliefs of inherent superiority? Heckers no.

        5. Eldritchy

          [whistles while looking at all dead Priests in Communist countries] The Party in China quite literally subverted Christianity for their own use.

        6. Spencer

          I kinda meant more specifically “committing violations of human decency out of a sense of superiority through a lack of religious beliefs” but you know what that’s fair and true.

          It’s not like most religious conflicts aren’t motivated by power grabbing anyway.

        7. Eldritchy

          That very much was the reality in Communist countries. The Party members considered themselves morally and intellectually superior to the superstitious masses.
          And yeah Power is Power and religion is competition.

        8. thejeff

          Still fair to say they don’t have the power of the religious assholes, but then a lot of them dove wholeheartedly into Gamergate and following hate movements. And/or into the alt-right.

          A parallel would be TERFs, who don’t have the power of the patriarchy behind them like conservative transphobes do, but ally with it and provide cover for it anyway.

        9. Spencer

          Yeah but TERFs have the power of being fragile white woman who are Just Concerned So Much, so they get treated with kids gloves even though you and I are morally sound people and recognize their bullshit for what it is.

          TERFs are an extension of an existing transphobic status quo.

        10. thejeff

          As do the supposedly “rational skeptic” atheists taking on SJWs and feminism and LGBTQ activists. They don’t wield religious power, but they do wield the power of the patriarchal status quo.

          It is funny in a way that the supposed radical feminists rely on patriarchal “fragile woman” ideas.

          But all of this is far off from what’s going on in the strip at the moment.

  39. mrnoidea

    Whoa! Even the libertarians get it right, Liz! The premise is to do what you want, as long as it DOESN’T HURT OTHER PEOPLE—

    Including, well, the people whom you think deserve to be hurt.

    1. Nicoleandmaggie

      I thought that was wiccans? Libertarians seem ok with hurting other people so long as it doesn’t increase government expenditures and property rights are enforced.

      1. Wraithy2773

        I mean, there’s normal Libertarians, as in the actual philosophy that while super awful and inherently flawed by any rational neutral appraisal tends to be internally consistent among the members and they can be quite pleasant people and open to reasoned debate…

        …and then there’s “GOP Libertarians”, who are just bog-standard asshole Republicans who say they’re Libertarians to try to make themselves sound smart and sophisticated and morally principled.

        It’s weird. I find Libertarian ideals to be horrific and ugly and terribly thought out… but boy howdy would I rather have a discussion with one of the real Libertarians than even a lot of moderate Democrats. The Libertarian subreddit is one of the more insanely welcoming and open political subreddits out there, just because the mods and regulars really do want to practice what they preach, and at least they can’t do much harm when posting on reddit.

        1. mrnoidea

          +1

        2. Nicoleandmaggie

          With GOP “libertarians” hurting people is the point.

  40. Throwatron

    okay holy shit i love it when Sarah goes Big Sister Ultra Instinct.

  41. Segnosaur

    I wonder if one of the side-effects of this will be Becky holding a grudge against Dorothy (or even Dina).

    Becky has been… abrasive… to Dorothy in the past. (Questions remain about whether it was all just an act, or if she actually harbored some resentment over the Joyce/Dorothy friendship.) But now that Joyce has gone to the dark side (i.e. atheism), Becky might blame Dorothy (even though Dorothy did nothing to cause Joyce to reject religion, other than maybe showing how someone could be an atheist without also eating babies and kicking puppies). Remember her final words in an earlier strip… “she’s yours now”.

    It could make for a toxic living/roommate situation.

    It could even cause problem with Dina, if Becky gets too upset about losing long-time christian friend Joyce, so decides to distance herself from anyone who isn’t a believer.

    1. Billifer Jenningsworth

      Well, that’s my weekend ruined.

    2. Rabisch

      This is also my fear. But seeing Dorothy’s reaction from yesterday and how she probably went after Becky to try and talk about it gives me hope that they will be able to understand each other.

      1. Heather

        I think there’s a future panel on tumblr in less than a week that has Dorothy, Joyce and Joe (the latter speaking in said panel) all in this room together in their current outfits. If Dorothy is going after Becky she’ll probably be back soon.

    3. A Red Balloon

      Hopefully Becky won’t do anything stupid after her imminent freak out. But yet again this is Dumbing of Age, so she probably will.

      Who knows? Maybe she’ll go on some entertaining misadventure. Hopefully involving a zoo. That would be nice….

      1. milu

        can’t tell if that’s a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend reference, a 9CL/TwitterWillis reference, some other reference, or not a reference

        i mean tbf zoos are comedic gold

        1. A Red Balloon

          Not really a reference, honestly I just want to see Willis draw some cute animals!

          To have a few of them be openly gay/lesbian in front of the visitors would be optional, but highly appreciated. It’s only natural, after all!

        2. milu

          that is a very good idea and i endorse it!
          and so does this one cool German rapper.

    4. powerpowerpow

      This sounds realistically possible, but something about Becky’s reaction and the stuff she said in prior strips make me think that maybe the opposite will happen. Maybe I’m trying too hard to analyze this but from a storytelling standpoint, I think this might bring Becky and Dorothy closer together in the long run?

      I still can’t tell whether Becky’s animosity towards Dorothy is actually malicious or playful ribbing taken waaaaay too far. But Becky’s comments about Liz being Joyce’s “new atheist best friend” combined with Dorothy’s reaction to this whole incident, and with the context from that “He-Man and Skeletor” line from a few strips ago makes me think that this will, among other things, function bas a kick in the pants to make Becky realize that Dorothy is *not* in fact the spawn of Satan sent to steal her childhood best friend from her and is a *good person, actually.*

      But I think chances of that are like 50/50, this is DoA after all. It’s just as likely that the worst possible thing will happen, this turns Becky against Dorothy even further, Dina and Becky’s relationship falls apart, Liz sleeps with Joe, all while Danny and Sal enjoy a lovely date at Galosso’s.

      1. Spencer

        Here’s what I think: Becky was actually really resentful of Dorothy until Dorothy gave her a little heartfelt spiel.

        Now Dorothy is someone Becky likes. However that means Dorothy is someone Becky has to now prove that she is cool, unflappable, and admirable towards. Becky has to be a wacky goofball nutbar and do all of the things that made her endearing to Joyce and basically just Joyce, because Becky needs Dorothy to like her because Becky kind of needs everyone to like her and for everyone aside from Joyce, Dina and Leslie to never see her be sad otherwise they’ll stop liking her.

        Conversely, Dorothy kind of comes off to me (as in I also do this) where an asshole is someone you can easily reject, but a likable friend being really, really frustrating and annoying is harder to deal with. They’re doing something inconvenient to you but you don’t want to rock the boat, so you keep trying. You put up with it. She’s just trying to be funny, and instead of just letting out her anger to get Becky to stop, Dorothy just passively tolerates it and tries to make Becky the better person that she knows Dorothy can be.

        Which Becky totally misses, so Becky thinks she can keep ramping it up and being an obnoxious clown because she’s yet to hit her limit and realize she’s hurting Dorothy (as in I also also do this) because Dorothy won’t say it out loud so Becky assumes there’s no problem and she has to keep proving herself to Dorothy.

    5. cbwroses

      You’re misremembering.
      Becky didn’t say “she’s yours now.”
      She said “This one’s yours.”
      She was referring to the situation she had come to handle: ejecting Joyce’s online super Jesusy friend who had appeared in person to usurp her position.
      Since Liz is actually Joyce’s online atheist friend, it is Dorothy whose position is being usurped, hence “This one’s (this situation is) yours.” And also why the alt text said “not my purview”.
      That said, that doesn’t negate the possibility of your comment, especially since the misquote was a very small part of it.

    6. zee

      Tbh i kinda hope it brings her closer to Dorothy. Bonding over mutual disappointment in joyce

  42. AGV

    Ah but Sarah is being the best sister

  43. GUIGUI

    Devious, but effective.

  44. Mr. Random

    Sarah DOES know how to be a big sister.

  45. Sombrero

    You’ve gotta love Sarah’s face in Panel 5.

    Also, Joyce won’t have any of Liz “helping” her to apologize. That won’t help her deal with the intense feeling of guilt she’s feeling now.

  46. acher4

    I kinda love everyone in the last couple updates.
    Even if there is drama brewing, they are all so cute and trying.

    1. Daibhid C

      Except Liz.

  47. Rabisch

    GO SARAH! HUG HER STRONGER!!! Liz’s behavior was terrible, she seems unable to empathize with others or understand that they might be in a lot of pain because of what she does or causes them to do (which doesn’t surprise me, she’s a professional boyfriend stealer after all). But asking a traumatized Joyce to run after Becky is wrong. Right now she seems barely able to breathe… Time for Joe to do something! Something that will show everyone (or at least to Becky and Sarah) that he cares a lot about Joyce!

  48. Nicoleandmaggie

    When did Willis become so good at human nature? Seriously I think this storyline is the best yet. I guess the whole strip has been slowly leading to Joyce’s changing and processing but the side characters’ reactions are spot on, and thought provoking while still having room for a punchline. Everything here is so relatable and real without being preachy.

  49. Steelbright

    Sarah is being the best big sister right now. she’s being so good at it that she’s gonna have to pretend it didn’t happen later so it doesn’t ruin her image :3

  50. Pearl

    Have to agree about the notably improved quality of the writing in this arc. It feels very sharp and focused on the characters who need focus, and they’re written vividly and expressively without feeling flanderised. Elements of the comic pre-timeskip that were beginning to feel vestigial or risked oversaturation, like Amber’s vigilantism, have been tastefully sidelined or dropped to make room for the emotional development of characters who have needed it badly, especially Sarah.

    Extremely well-executed time skip. Good stuff.

  51. Vulcanodon

    Liz’ superhero power is burning bridges that don’t belong to her and weren’t hers to burn

  52. BenRG

    1) Sarah is not going to start a problem and then sneak off leaving her to fix it

    2) Liz, bad news: Your new bestie Joyce is the one who taught your sister the Hug-trap.

    I do wonder what Joe is doing whilst staying out of the Clinton Fraternal Collision. I suspect that the Clinton girls will look up to see him hugging a wailing Joyce or something similar. It is Joe’s nature with Joyce that he’ll quietly look out for her without precondition or fuss.

    1. Alaric

      We can actually see Joe in panel 4. Yeah, I didn’t see him at first, either.

  53. darkoneko

    All of the fun and none of the responsabilities eh Liz

    but… even if they apologize right now.. uh… man, this is looking bad

  54. Marrow

    There’s no need for an apology, there’s need for an explanation.

    1. Spencer

      No that’s not acceptable.

      Joyce was angry about her upbringing and exclusively talked about herself and her relationship with her faith that is now shattered after months and months of constant trauma.

      Becky is sad now.

      Therefore Becky just matters more.

      1. MrSmith

        Hopefully this teaches Becky to dial down her creepy and stalkerish behaviour a little

        I mean what was her plan once she got there, assert her rightful place as Joyce’s bestest friend or maybe casually insult Liz but play it off as a joke?

        Beckys jealous behaviour might finally get addressed and it’d be about time

      2. RedCat

        Is that really all you’re getting out of this? That this is a “one person is to blame and one person is the victim”-thing?

        1. Spencer

          Depends on how you define blame and victim.

          Becky can have her feelings hurt. She can still be wrong to have those feelings hurt because on one level they’re misinterpreting Joyce’s words, and on the other there’s no level where Becky would accept Joyce being an atheist and would get her feelings hurt regardless.

          More specifically I’m coming to understand “apology” as a term is getting mixed between “admission of wrongdoing” and “checking in on your friend who took something you said badly.”

          I think it’s weird that Dorothy and Becky can’t even take five seconds to process what would motivate Joyce to say this, but I don’t think it’s outrageous for Joyce to clear the air and explain herself, and that’s probably what you mean by “apology.”

        2. MrSmith

          Well no but as I’m typing this on a phone (I find it difficult and time consuming) I’m going for what I think is the main take.

          Beckys over the top jealousy is the problem here, she heard Joyce was hanging out with someone new (a Christian no less) and was, joyously, going to insert herself into the situation

          No texting to see what’s up, just strait up barging in and taking over

          It’s disrespectful to both Joyce and Dina and its also holding herself back in regards to much needed growth

  55. JediMB

    I have strong doubts about this doing much good, but it DOES give me a bunch of good feelings about Sarah! Heart in the right place and the willingness to take immediate action.

  56. Carla's #2 Fan

    Is the hover text implying that Liz is Wash or that Liz is the toy dinosaurs?

    1. BenRG

      No, Willis is Wash, all the characters in the strip are the toy dinosaurs.

      1. Carla's #2 Fan

        I approve of this interpretation!

  57. JBento

    “Her hugs are traps” DEFINITELY needs to be the book title.

  58. Chris (the other one)

    Damn you Willis! We see the truth now. That hovertext is a play on a saying more recently popularized by Wash in Firefly, made in 2002. You actually wrote these comics two decades ago(!) and are just now posting them.

    Well played! Very well played! Curse you and your sudden betrayal!

  59. Keulen

    Considering Liz usually has to sneak attack Sarah to hug her, she should’ve expected something was up with Sarah demanding a hug.

  60. Spencer

    I wish saying Firefly was bad was still a contrarian take like it used to be.

    It made me feel special.

    1. Thag Simmons

      Firefly has many endearing qualities and was influential for good reasons. It is also extremely problematic in many respects

      1. Spencer

        Yeah but those endearing qualities are nerd one-liners and pithy self-awareness that go on to deface writing for TV and film for all eternity.

        1. Thag Simmons

          It turns out everyone trying to copy the surface level stuff that was fresh and fun makes it not fresh and not fun anymore.

        2. Spencer

          It’s weird how that works!

    2. Sombrero

      Firefly was bad? OMG, I can play the contrarian now!!! Watch me how I soar, I aim to misbehave!… or something like that.

  61. Pylgrim

    So I take Liz is averse to dealing with conflict but happy to create it.

  62. auroki

    Glad that Sarah’s first action is to help Joyce and Becky sort shit out. She clearly read and figured out the situation immediately and took action. She already knows Joyce feels like shit and an “I told ya so” or equivalent ain’t gonna make peace come quicker.

    Kinda hoping she calls Dorothy out on the bullshit the comment section has been saying the past couple strips as well. She has been a lowkey shitty person to Joyce lately. And she don’t deserve that. Especially with her being an atheist herself. She should have some idea of the process of what one goes through when their whole belief system has been rearranged.

    1. milu

      Dorothy and Joyce’s religious journey have nothing in common. Dorothy grew up in a secular and open-minded household. But yeah, i do hope Dorothy does better by Joyce.

  63. Amos Batista

    I will be the Devil Advocate this time: Liz is right and I like her.

    Joyce’s friends talked to her, gave advices, but nobody gave the freedom to express she needed, like Liz did.
    Dorothy, Sarah, Becky, Jennifer, even Sal. They don’t gave to Joyce what she needed.

    And there’s nothing to Joyce apologize. Nobody want to see how Joyce is hurt by an entire life of chains and restrictions.

    I agree they could land a help to Becky. But not Joyce, because she is the one who was suffering, too.

    1. auroki

      Agreed. Even if she was being mocking, Joyce was finally able to cut loose with people she felt secure around.

      Joe has been helpful and accepting of Joyce’s change of beliefs and even tried to provide some advice on how to accept her new viewpoints. They were even texting back and forth for a while on a serious topic before the last kidnapping and Toedad’s death. Sarah has been present for most of the events Joyce has been involved in since Ryan tried to rape her. Both get annoyed by her antics and behavior but they understood why and still stayed by her.

      Liz provided something Joyce and quite frankly a lot of us need. An outlet, a source to let loose everything that bothers you without the fear of upsetting someone or judgment from those you hold dear. Someone else who far as we know went through a process of breaking away from something she thought was true but not anymore. Does she have some responsibility in this situation? Yeah, but it was also not her intention to have party crashers step in and get involved in a talk they weren’t the subject of.

      Joyce mocked religion, not Becky believing in religion. Making fun of a thing versus making fun of someone who likes that thing are two seperate arguments that unfortunately get grouped together a lot of the time. And it will lead to messes like this or worse.

      On a side note. I would say Becky was being an uninvited guest, given the fact that she didn’t alert anyone she was coming, knew Joyce was hanging with someone new to get to know them and they both weren’t in Joyce and Sarah’s dorm. Yet she still barged in anyway on what should’ve been a private moment because she wants to be all shock and awe all the time. Kinda just rewards in a messed up way.

      My best friends literally live in the apartment building next to mine and we hang all the time. But even after knowing each other for almost a dozen or so years we still contact each other before heading over to.hang out. Sometimes one of us has important things going on or maybe we need some intimate time with our loved ones a bit and don’t really want surprise guests coming in like Becky does.

    2. Spencer

      See for me I just kinda approach the idea that Liz and Joyce (assuming Joyce was being actively malicious) are doing wrong like so:

      Would any of us care if Walky said it? Because he’s been saying it the whole time. He acted to Joyce the way we’re saying Joyce acted to Becky.

      It’s just completely outrageous to me that Becky’s feelings matter so much that Joyce’s own are shit. Like of all the things we’re worried about, oh no Becky’s upset with Joyce for the first time since… oh wait that time Joyce questioned her faith and Becky told her she was going through a stupid phase.

  64. Spencer

    I wanna lay my cards on table, maybe that’ll help me understand why I’m seemingly processing this so differently from most of y’all.

    Becky can have her feelings hurt by this and still be wrong. It’s okay that she’s upset, but the specifics of what’s making her upset are a more complex conversation.

    Is Becky upset at Joyce for saying “hurr durr Becky stoopid”? Well Becky’s wrong there and Joyce of all people is entitled to the benefit of the doubt, but sure it’s okay to feel upset and she deserves to go mull over it before talking to Joyce.

    Is Becky upset at Joyce saying this about herself? I mean it’s still okay to be upset, it’s always okay to feel things, but that’s still wrong. It implies that Becky’s views of Joyce should influence her character.

    ‘Cause here’s the thing: I don’t think Becky would act any differently even if Joyce had calmly sat her down and rationally explained her new worldview.

    Becky isn’t just upset because she took Joyce’s entirely personal lashing out at her own upbringing as an attack on her, she’s mad because Joyce is different. Becky needs Joyce to be static and unchanging, to always be her perfect Joyce, and part of that is Joyce remaining as deeply religious and only cutting out the parts that hold her back like Becky has.

    But Joyce found a different answer. Becky relied on her faith to carve out the detritus, but Joyce needed all of it to be true or none of it is, and I don’t think Becky can accept Joyce finding a different answer.

    And, you know, there’s the part where Becky just learned the person she loves more than anyone in the world and who has been a constant rock amidst of a sea of chaos who has literally fought two evil dads to save her just admitted she doesn’t think Becky’s mom is in Heaven, meaning Becky won’t ever see her again and she’s gone forever.

    Becky’s allowed to be upset. That doesn’t make her right. That she’s this upset is because Joyce takes up such an important part of her reality that Becky can’t accept any deviation from who she needs Joyce to be to function.

    And that’s wack, and it’s time for this to change.

    1. milu

      thanks for your explanation, i sort of get where you’re at now, and i think my read is less interested in who’s right and who’s wrong, or maybe the rights and wrongs of this situation get too granular for my moral sensitivities i guess.

      for sure in good part it’s because i haven’t gone through anything like the absolute nightmare that Joyce is going through.

      maybe, it’s also a temperament thing? my overwhelming priority when getting into a fight with a friend is to de-escalate the situation, and i will go to dangerously self-effacing lengths to do so. other people put greater emphasis on standing their ground, and they might be more willing to put their friendships to the test. both attitudes present risks when taken to extremes. in any case, yes, getting angry is absolutely a good thing for Joyce. the reason i have a hard time rooting for her here, is because… i get the feeling she’s trying on an attitude here? she doesn’t feel completely in tune with herself if that makes sense? it’s intensely relatable for me (except maybe not so much about the religious stuff) but in a “grew out of it and glad i did” kind of way. you know? i think that’s where a lot of the judgment of Joyce probably came from yesterday?

      Besides that i think one of the things i don’t get, is what makes you believe that Becky can’t take Joyce losing her faith. like i get that this is hard on her, but you’ve said again and again that you “don’t think Becky would act any differently” if she had learnt of Joyce’s loss of faith in a better context. that sounds like a tall claim to me, and it also just feels a bit uncharitable? i don’t know. i don’t read her that way, but i think you know the story better than me, so.

      Also, Joyce seems so mortified. she went pale before Dorothy said anything. so she was reacting mostly to Becky having heard her, i think. of course that’s a conversation she was dreading. but she may still have wished it had gone differently.

      in any case, that band-aid’s ripped. that’s a good thing.

      1. Spencer

        Well one, never let yourself believe I know the story better than you do because I have never been right about anything about this comic.

        I made that bet yesterday because I think I’m right and I’m that confident we’ll see it, but I’m also perpetually high on my own cool supply.

        As for the argument itself, well, I think we’re too capitulating to the idea of an action causing pain without understanding where that action comes from, and that the pain caused is somehow more important than the pain that motivated that action to begin with. That it doesn’t matter why anger happens, what matter is that there is the Aggressor and the Victim, what matters is that Joyce said something and therefore she’s in the wrong and if she didn’t this conversation wouldn’t be happening even if it’s needed to happen, and the importance so many of us here are assigning to the idea that “Joyce caused Becky pain” is, to be perfectly frank, far too simplistic a take of the situation.

        ‘Cause yeah, factually speaking, Becky is now hurt because of something Joyce said. That’s technically accurate.

        Is that what we’re here for? We’re not processing feelings? We’re not reading a story? Are we just here to fact check?

        It ignores Joyce’s trauma with her upbringing, it ignores that for as understanding Joe and Sarah have been to Joyce Liz is the one who’s giving her the first chance to properly vocalize her anger, it ignores that this was a private conversation for Joyce where she was free to speak her mind, it ignores that Becky is only here because she’s wildly possessive of Joyce and felt challenged by Liz’s presence, it ignores that Becky is acting like this because she can’t accept Joyce not being the Joyce she wants her to be, it ignores that neither Becky nor Dorothy are giving her the slightest chance to explain herself because they’re more concerned with being hurt than their friend.

        It ignores that your pain matters, even if it someone gets hurt by it. It approaches all of this as if it’s as simple as “Joyce is acting out and it had a consequence, therefore it’s bad.”

        And the only defense is that maybe Joyce lashed out at all believers of religion for like five seconds and Becky overheard it, instead of Joyce talking about herself by bringing up a whole bunch of dumb bullshit she used to believe and now resents.

        Like realtalk here, even if I’m wrong and Joyce actually said “haha fuck the religious” I honestly don’t care in the slightest. I mean I’ll honour my bet, I ain’t no coward, but I’m not gonna tut tut over Joyce being angry and speaking out of turn because it had the consequence of making Becky sad.

        Relationships aren’t about accountability, life’s not about paying your dues. We hurt each other, we falter, the people we love cause us pain as much as we hurt them, that’s a fact of imperfection meeting imperfection.

        The idea that a mistake in a relationship requires immediate accountability regardless of context, not even a mistake, really, just something we decided was bad because Joyce did something and the end result out of her control was Becky being sad and the only way to avoid this was for Joyce to not say how she feels, is the most morally simplistic thing imaginable masquerading as empathy and nuance.

        1. milu

          i agree completely with your philosophy of relationships and how getting mad at someone is fine sometimes, and the fact that being hurt is not an argument.

          where the present situation feels not directly relevant to that discourse is the fact that this isn’t, like, a heated conversation that anyone has gone into head on. there’s something unfortunate about it. again, like i said, my emotional reaction to this sequence is coloured by Joyce being less “whatever, fuck it, i said my piece now y’all can just deal with it” and more “oh shit, what have i done, this is not how i wanted this to go at all”.

          now we know Joyce and we know she would absolutely NOT have ever done the adult thing of sitting her friends down for a proper convo, and again: relatable af. so, whatever the fallout, it’s good that this happened because one way or another something had to happen.

          for what it’s worth, i think you and others have made me look more compassionately at the way Joyce has been sniping at religion in this kind of clownish imitation of self-righteous atheist ranting Liz initiated. at first i saw too much of past me in it, but that’s unfair because as i said there’s just no comparison with my own history with religion.

          i do wish she grows out of it, mind, but i see now this is her way of grieving and processing and it’s good that she gets on with that, and now that it’s out in the open, hopefully that process is only gonna gather up speed and that’s refreshing.

          so, yeah. thank you for that!

          i still don’t agree with your take on apologies and whatnot, or i guess i don’t really understand what you’re trying to say, or on what level you’re saying it, because fictional characters, so like are we talking, what they ought to do? what we would do if we were them, because we relate to them and their insecurities? what we think they will do? what we hope the message of the story will end up being?
          but you know what, at this point, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        2. Spencer

          Something I had to have pointed out to me is that “apology” means more than one thing in this conversation.

          To me, for Joyce to apologize would be an admission of wrongdoing and responsibility, and for a number of reasons I disagree with this.

          To plenty of other people who I’ve probably misinterpreted, “apology” just means that Joyce goes after Becky and explains herself, which is completely sensible and normal. But putting aside the emotional context of these two BFFs, in a cold mechanical perspective this is something that’s happening because of Becky’s decision to chase after Joyce and then her misinterpretation of what Joyce is saying, but Joyce is the one getting handed the blame to dig herself out of. Which is to say that Becky is still completely allowed to be upset and feel things, and Joyce as a person would absolutely try to do right by her and that cold mechanical perspective isn’t something that applies to these two.

          And then there’s “Joyce needs to apologize because she called Becky dumb” which is a description of events I fundamentally disagree with, but we’ll see where that goes.

  65. Spencer

    Anyway I’ve got really strong feelings on the idea of other people taking ownership of my words and needing to argue my way out of something that someone else decided I said and felt.

    That isn’t in reference to any arguing I’ve been doing here, I mean the concept itself and how I’ve been in Joyce’s situation where someone decides what I meant, how I meant it, and whether I sufficiently conveyed it appropriately enough for them, and then I have to atone for the person they decided I am, and once I’ve sufficiently proven I’m not that person, well now all is forgiven and by “all” I mean me, and the other guy did nothing wrong and was just making sure I’m not a shitty person so he could act however he pleased and never has to own up to hurting me.

    Now that I think about it, it is actually the most infuriating part of my life and it happens too often to me.

  66. cbwroses

    I wonder how Becky would handle Joyce being selfish and unapologetic about this situation, especially since she was telling Dorothy to be selfish and claiming she herself would be unapologetic true to herself just a few minutes ago comic time.

    1. thejeff

      I’d say it depends on what Joyce is being unapologetic about.
      If she’s like “I stand by mocking believers and thinking they’re idiots for believing and yes Becky that includes you”, then I can’t see Becky handling it well. Nor should she.

      If Joyce can manage to explain that’s not what she meant and that she was just venting about her own feelings of being an idiot for being so blind to the problems of their church and somehow doing so without being apologetic, then the chances are better.

      1. Spencer

        Let’s say you’re right and Joyce was shittalking the idea of religious belief and, coincidentally, related all of that through personal trauma.

        Is it wrong that she said it, or is it wrong that she said it and Becky heard it because Becky couldn’t accept Joyce spending time with another cool Christian friend?

        Because Joyce knows she’s just a monkey now and only has meaning because Joe pat her on the head and said she did. If Becky walked by there, was she gonna take it better? Where does Joyce get to talk about this shit?

        And like, I really think y’all are being too charitable to Becky taking this well, considering Joyce huffed about her faith for like a minute at Dina’s birthday party and Becky told her it was a stupid phase she needed to outgrow.

        1. thejeff

          Would this all be different if Becky had just heard about Joyce’s Facebook friend showing up and wanted to meet her and hang out with Joyce and then stumbled onto exactly the same conversation?

          But again, I don’t think it was coincidental. I think she’s shit talking religious belief because of her personal trauma. I do think that’s bad behavior. It’s far from the worst thing possible, but I think it is a problem and something that it’s reasonable for Becky to be upset about, even if she overhears it by accident. Maybe especially if she overhears it by accident.

          We also differ on how much of Becky’s reaction is just finding out Joyce is atheist and how much is specific to what she heard.

        2. J. Spider

          I guess that becomes a more confusing premise to explore? Joyce went somewhat out of her way to try to find a place that Becky wouldn’t frequent. Granted it’s a comedically weak hiding spot and Becky is determined.

          If Joyce was willing to be unapologetic now then I can’t imagine why she would’ve been stopped by Becky shutting her down way earlier or sat on her real feelings this long.

          These were feelings left stewing inside that rightly or wrongly were going to come out. Joyce wasn’t just going to be a secret atheist forever and there was likely never a great time or way to inform Becky of what was happening because Becky was always going to tell Joyce that “she has no right” unless she goes through as much as Becky has.

          I think the real sad part is how this stuff does happen in real life and can absolutely destroy relationships even if there ought to be framework to save things it just doesn’t always turn out that way.

  67. Vulcanodon

    I still have the impression Liz was getting cheap laughs out of Joyce’s mixed-up thinking. If you want to burn bridges Liz, burn your own first.

  68. Deanatay

    Sarah’s spirit flower: Venus Flytrap

  69. Alex

    Sarah’s the best.

  70. Adept

    It’s not like Liz is wrong :/

    1. Lauralot

      Don’t cut yourself with all that edge.

  71. David Doty

    Silly Liz. ALL hugs are traps.

  72. egg egg

    Sarah is fantastic. Good job using your older sister role for the benefit of everyone, Sarah. You get all of Dorothy’s points this round.

  73. SomebodyOnceToldMe

    Funny thing about telling your truth is that you can do it without being mean and derogatory to other practices and people

    1. Vulcanodon

      With practice, yes.

  74. anonymsly

    A+ action-taking, Sarah, but not going to help or be effective, and not what’s called for here.

    I agree with other posters that certainly Joyce should explain herself, and that most likely for ease in facilitating a reconciliation (assuming she wants one) it should start with an non-apology like ‘I’m sorry you heard that’.

    What’s distressing me mostly is the prospect of a continuation of a low-key thread I’ve seen in the comic since the introduction of Becky, which is that Becky deserves (and gets) all the support and Joyce doesn’t need/get any. Joyce is the supporter, never the supportee. Even this, Joyce’s anger and frustration and self-hate bubbling out in public for the first time (albeit shittily and unhelpfully at the very least) has now immediately turned into ‘oh no, poor Becky, Joyce go apologize and fix things for her! Poor Becky!’

    I hope this DOESN’T happen. I hope Becky goes to Dina or considers things on her own, Sarah lets Liz go (good riddance, IMO) and Dorothy/Joe/Sarah help Joyce actually drain that spiritual abscess a little so it can begin to heal instead of continuing to swell up with gross stuff. And, coincidentally, so that Joyce can then use the right words, or at least careful ones, instead of anger-pain words when she talks to Becky.

    1. thejeff

      While my initial reaction was that Sarah’s corralling of Liz isn’t going to do any good, my second was that she’s Sarah’s sister and Sarah’s thinking about her and holding her accountable.

      Liz apologizing may not do Becky or Joyce any good, but pushing Liz to realize she screwed up may be good for her.

    2. Alex

      I think Joyce probably wants to apologize and try to smooth things over. She was mortified that Becky overheard her. I’m guessing Sarah knows her well enough to understand that.

  75. zee

    I’m LOVING this storyline but god is it making the comments even more of a cesspit than usual. 600 comments yesterday, fucking hell…

    1. Spencer

      To be fair like a tenth of them were mine.

      1. JBento

        Appropriate gravatar for trying to steal the show.

        1. Spencer

          I just finished Part 5 right now and it’s just

          Where has Lupin been all my life?

    2. Pringles Sweet Paprika

      Usually I enjoy a bit of drama but yesterday was too much even for me.

      I guess some people REALLY have trouble with the concept of someone reading a scene/character different from the way they’re interpreting it.

      The storyline really is great though! Plus it’ll be kinda fun for Sal to come back later all happy (presumably she’s still having a good time with Danny. I hope so!) like “Hey guys what’d I miss?”

    3. Alan in DC

      Gotta agree with zee. As much as we want to immerse ourselves in the moment, it’s still a webcomic, y’all.

      1. Thag Simmons

        People like discussing thing, and people love debating thing.

      2. Spencer

        I mean, it’s a sensitive, complex and highly emotional situation dealing with a long simmering conflict between two people who love each other very much.

      3. Vulcanodon

        I relate to some webcomics more than I ever will to most novels. This one has characters living with issues that are personal to me, experiences that resonate with me me, and explores them with relatable humor and moral depth that I can follow. Some days the comment section is more than I have time to read but I feel like it’s a table I like to join, usually with actual coffee.

    4. Deadjolras

      Yesterday reminded me why I stopped engaging with this comment section and today just confirmed it.

    5. Alex

      It’s a divisive development. Personally I love seeing everyone’s takes, but I know it’s not for everyone.

  76. Cattus99

    “Hugs are traps” – I’m keeping that.

  77. Spencer

    I have an essay brewing in the moderation right now and if you read it to the end once it drops I hope you know you are a Cool Person.

    1. milu

      does anything “waiting for moderation” ever get released? i think i’ve had comments waiting for moderation for having too many links in them or a typo in the email address that never saw the light of day.
      maybe yours got flagged for being Too Damn Long.
      post it as a few separate comments maybe??

      1. Spencer

        Well, it’s not like Willis just hangs out all day waiting for comments to approve.

        I’m pretty happy with what I wrote so worse comes to worst I’ll just try again with the next strip. I’d kinda rather doing that at this point

      2. Spencer

        Oh but yeah it’s loaded with links to other strips as references since it’s a big character analysis of Joyce and her faith in the last few years up until now. Like 15ish of them.

        1. milu

          ah, maybe that’s the thing then. let’s see if Willis clears it tonight, else i guess yeah, break it down or something

      3. JBento

        I can confirm it does – I remember posting comments that went into moderation for (I assume) having too many links, and they became public within the day.

        1. milu

          oh ok? so Willis just didn’t think my crazy bunch of links deserved to be published that one time. cool, cool.

  78. thumb

    Not gonna help, but this is the proper usage of sibling affection. Betrayal for (arguably) making them take responsibility for their actions. The degree of responsibility they are liable for is determined at random.

  79. AbacusWizard

    :–O deception!!!

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