Maybe that’s what happened on Halloween (after midnight, when it was technically November).
Doctor_Who
She got magically pregnant on Halloween? I think she’s gonna give birth to Sam from Trick R’ Treat.
Or Michael Myers.
Kyrik Michalowski
If she gave birth to Sam, it would explain so much. Until told otherwise, this is now canon for me.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Surely if Joyce is pregnant it is with the reincarnation of Mike.
AGV
He’d be risen
Bicycle Bill
Since we don’t have anything to go on for two of those three months, MY take on the matter is that Becky figures once Joyce rejected her old religious upbringing, she REALLY kicked over the traces … and is counting three months into something that takes around nine months to come to completion. And Joyce IS looking a little bigger on top and thicker around the middle (although that could be explained as subtle changes in Willis’s style as the comic has progressed. Go back to the first few months of the comic and compare what Joyce, Walky, et al looked like then as opposed to now).
merbrat
Probably, “The Freshman 15”
King Daniel
Willis pointed out in the comments section a few days ago that they literally cannot do a pregnancy storyline in the comic, since at the comic’s pace any pregnant character would essentially be in a state of “I’m pregnant…now what next” for the rest of the comic’s run. Even with the Mother (heh) of All Timeskips a year ago, it’s taken the comic eleven and a half years>/b> to progress the plot by four months. Another six in-universe months of Pregnancy Storyline would, extrapolated from that, last the strip for eighteen years. Kids who aren’t even born yet would be going to college in real life by the time that’s done.
Yumi
Well, they could do a pregnancy storyline if they didn’t go through the whole pregnancy, but I’m not sure that’s something they’d want to do.
Lys
It’s Pregnancy!
Wraithy2773
…that’s all entirely rational, except that, as you said, Willis pointed it out.
I fully admit that I’m being paranoid, but is there anyone here that could honestly say that Willis wouldn’t fuck with us in precisely that manner?
Devin
Yeah, I think I would, because it would mean he’d still have to go through with that extremely long commitment in his story. I don’t think the short term payoff of messing with us would be worth that, so no, I don’t think he’d mess with us in precisely this manner.
ktbear
But isnt that perfect? Another 11 years down the track and the pregnant character would still be barely showing.
Steamweed
Nothin’ wrong with that. The Girl Genius webcomic has been goin’ on 20 years. I’m expectin’ another 5-10 years more.
Katherine
he also said he wasn’t gonna kill anyone off and look what happened…
King Daniel
Re: not killing anyone: first of all, he’d always left an explicit exemption in that rule for characters none of the protagonists would care about (he used Tony as a hypothetical when setting that rule down, but see also Blaine), and secondly he also announced the better part of a year in advance that he’d broken a major established rule of his–which almost everyone correctly assumed would be the “no-deaths” rule.
Carms
bloat is also a common menstrual side effect.
That shit can REALLY do a number on your Whooole situation.
Decidedly Orthogonal
To add something just because: pregnancy is typically 40 weeks after the first day of her last menstruation. While the confinement is on average 37-38 weeks the actual date of conception and the hankies-panky has less to do with with the due date
(aside from – y’know – actually getting the ball rolling).
That said, while my initial thought was also a “wait, wut?” I agree this sound far more like a long cycle than pregnancy.
Rose by Any Other Name
… is no one paying attention to the bolded text?
She isn’t counting back three months. She’s noting January and November specifically. That and the iron comment indicates she’s talking about heavy periods rather than pregnancy.
If it was a pregnancy comment, there would be no bolding and it would be a comment about Folic Acid.
keithcurtis
Not to mention that if the issue was pregnancy, Becky would be freaking out, not going on about spaghetti straps.
Yumi
I mean, a lot of us were joking around.
thejeff
Yeah, but what does that suggest? That she didn’t have a period in December? Or just a light one? Even with the emphasis, just going back 3 month names seems a weird way to refer to it being a period. Seems like the obvious answer, even so, but not really surprising people are questioning it.
Rose by Any Other Name
That Becky either wasn’t near Joyce at the right time in December or that she wasn’t crampy enough to exhibit symptoms.
I’m no expert, nor do I have a uterus, but aren’t there forms of birth control that can make it a quarterly thing rather than monthly? While Joyce’s parents seem of the religiosity that would make birth control an evil evil sin that only harlots and floozies partake in, it’s possible that it was medically necessary for her and her parents figured that she was probably not going to suddenly trip and fall onto any penises the instant she started.
Given a nonzero number of religious people also historically justified period cramps and/or childbirth as God’s punishment for Eve in the Garden of Eden and people are still hesitant to vaccinate their kids for HPV in case it encourages them to be sexually active, I suspect it would have to be REALLY serious – like, ‘sometimes she passes out and we’re not sure if that’s the pain or the periods being THAT HEAVY’ serious – to overcome the Religious Judginess. Hell, I’m not even sure some religious groups RECOGNIZE that hormonal birth control is used for basically any Period Disorder TM, given they’ve gone to court to keep company health insurance from having to cover it. (Almost certainly, some of them realize but don’t care because controlling uterus-havers is more important than us not being in debilitating pain, but ignorance about periods and disorders thereof is SO WIDESPREAD that I genuinely think a lot of assholes do not know that most disorders’ treatment B is surgery, assuming there IS a Treatment B.)
Norah
As an 18 year old, would Joyce have had to get her parents’ permission to see a doctor L
Clif
As a 17 year old, yes. As an 18 year old, no. Assuming she can pay for it herself or is otherwise covered.
Diane
Pharmacy tech here: Once you’re 18, you are an adult in the eyes of the law, and your parents can’t even touch your information without you giving approval that any medical professional can still speak to their parent(s) about anything regarding their health. It would be a violation of HIPAA to not do so. So yes, Joyce can go do whatever she wants without parent permission.
thejeff
She can theoretically do whatever she wants, but she’s still financially reliant on them and if she has insurance through them, I believe they’ll see the records.
Diane
Doesn’t stop her from doing it without their say so.
Uly
…18 year olds are adults.
Freemage
While pre-college Joyce might have had to suffer through that, I’m pretty sure that at this point, Hank, at least, would do whatever she asked on ‘womanly issues’ so long as she didn’t describe them in detail.
Either she’s got an IUD or pill (to regulate cramps of course!) that reduces the frequency of her menses to quarterly, or (more likely) Becky is noticing that Joyce felt ill at roughly the same time of the month for the past 3 months (or for the past 3 lunar cycles).
I used to have that privilege, but it was due to some fairly hefty problems and now it’s way too far in the other direction… Every three months is considered the bare minimum to be “healthy” but unfortunately it usually takes some weird hormonal or metabolic fuckery to get there. (I have both.)
I almost never have periods since I got my IUD, and everyone (medical professionals) I mention this to seem to be like, “Oh, then it’s fine!”
My periods were also highly irregular before I got my IUD, though, which I learned a couple years ago was likely due to some cool hormone shit.
not someone else
Oh yeah, if you have an IUD that’s different. Your body doing that without medication generally indicates something that would at least impact fertility, though, so it’s a yellow flag.
Yumi
Oh, okay, I thought you were saying something different above. Yeah, I used to be mildly concerned when I would go long stretches without periods, but not concerned enough to tell a doctor about it…for a variety of reasons, but one of which was the thinking, “What are they going to do, give me periods? Pass.”
Rectilinear Propagation
That was pretty much my thinking on it too. I didn’t want periods so I didn’t care that they went away. My oldest sister had horrifyingly difficult periods as well so I also didn’t think the pain I was still experiencing was noteworthy.
Given how heavy my ex’s periods were, and how very frequent, (and what I understood from school), the time between periods doesn’t dictate how much or how easily a period flows.
If this were actually a thing, no doubt it would be cited as a concern for women doing continuous-cycling (birth-control) to skip having a period completely.
not someone else
It is, or at least it used to be before they figured out that hormonal birth control also stops the build-up-layers part of the cycle. Amount of time in the preparing-for-baby state does impact heaviness.
I don’t know. Becky and Joyce have been close their whole lives. Becky would know Joyce’s cycle as well as she knew her own. But having Joyce pregnant would torpedo the premise of the strip, not to mention the time scale issue. Or maybe Willis wants to address abortion politics. Or maybe there’s another time skip coming?
And who’s the father?
I’m unlucky enough to have a menstrual disorder that i take the pill for, and lucky enough that now i get my period once every 2/3 months because of it. One day I’m gonna get an IUD and almost eliminate it
I mean chastity/virginity isn’t an actual tangible thing, it’s a concept made up to control people and assigned to the hymen breaking, so I don’t know how much danger it can really be in here
Ah, but Becky still clearly regards it as a thing that applies to her. She’s both yearning for some girl-girl action, and deathly afraid of it, and that obviously ties into her religious beliefs.
Chastity is such a fragile, vague construct that some nutjobs extend it to include fully inserting a penis into a vagina and leaving it there for a bit AKA “soaking”.
207 thoughts on “Ferbid”
Ana Chronistic
THREE months…? ?
I wish *I* as a uterus-haver had that kind of frequency (although it’s still pretty delayed as is)
[of course if this is a different kind of hemorrhaging, n/m]
Ray Radlein
Maybe she thinks Joyce has been rendered divinely pregnant
Yumi
Maybe that’s what happened on Halloween (after midnight, when it was technically November).
Doctor_Who
She got magically pregnant on Halloween? I think she’s gonna give birth to Sam from Trick R’ Treat.
Or Michael Myers.
Kyrik Michalowski
If she gave birth to Sam, it would explain so much. Until told otherwise, this is now canon for me.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
Surely if Joyce is pregnant it is with the reincarnation of Mike.
AGV
He’d be risen
Bicycle Bill
Since we don’t have anything to go on for two of those three months, MY take on the matter is that Becky figures once Joyce rejected her old religious upbringing, she REALLY kicked over the traces … and is counting three months into something that takes around nine months to come to completion. And Joyce IS looking a little bigger on top and thicker around the middle (although that could be explained as subtle changes in Willis’s style as the comic has progressed. Go back to the first few months of the comic and compare what Joyce, Walky, et al looked like then as opposed to now).
merbrat
Probably, “The Freshman 15”
King Daniel
Willis pointed out in the comments section a few days ago that they literally cannot do a pregnancy storyline in the comic, since at the comic’s pace any pregnant character would essentially be in a state of “I’m pregnant…now what next” for the rest of the comic’s run. Even with the Mother (heh) of All Timeskips a year ago, it’s taken the comic eleven and a half years>/b> to progress the plot by four months. Another six in-universe months of Pregnancy Storyline would, extrapolated from that, last the strip for eighteen years. Kids who aren’t even born yet would be going to college in real life by the time that’s done.
Yumi
Well, they could do a pregnancy storyline if they didn’t go through the whole pregnancy, but I’m not sure that’s something they’d want to do.
Lys
It’s Pregnancy!
Wraithy2773
…that’s all entirely rational, except that, as you said, Willis pointed it out.
I fully admit that I’m being paranoid, but is there anyone here that could honestly say that Willis wouldn’t fuck with us in precisely that manner?
Devin
Yeah, I think I would, because it would mean he’d still have to go through with that extremely long commitment in his story. I don’t think the short term payoff of messing with us would be worth that, so no, I don’t think he’d mess with us in precisely this manner.
ktbear
But isnt that perfect? Another 11 years down the track and the pregnant character would still be barely showing.
Steamweed
Nothin’ wrong with that. The Girl Genius webcomic has been goin’ on 20 years. I’m expectin’ another 5-10 years more.
Katherine
he also said he wasn’t gonna kill anyone off and look what happened…
King Daniel
Re: not killing anyone: first of all, he’d always left an explicit exemption in that rule for characters none of the protagonists would care about (he used Tony as a hypothetical when setting that rule down, but see also Blaine), and secondly he also announced the better part of a year in advance that he’d broken a major established rule of his–which almost everyone correctly assumed would be the “no-deaths” rule.
Carms
bloat is also a common menstrual side effect.
That shit can REALLY do a number on your Whooole situation.
Decidedly Orthogonal
To add something just because: pregnancy is typically 40 weeks after the first day of her last menstruation. While the confinement is on average 37-38 weeks the actual date of conception and the hankies-panky has less to do with with the due date
(aside from – y’know – actually getting the ball rolling).
That said, while my initial thought was also a “wait, wut?” I agree this sound far more like a long cycle than pregnancy.
Rose by Any Other Name
… is no one paying attention to the bolded text?
She isn’t counting back three months. She’s noting January and November specifically. That and the iron comment indicates she’s talking about heavy periods rather than pregnancy.
If it was a pregnancy comment, there would be no bolding and it would be a comment about Folic Acid.
keithcurtis
Not to mention that if the issue was pregnancy, Becky would be freaking out, not going on about spaghetti straps.
Yumi
I mean, a lot of us were joking around.
thejeff
Yeah, but what does that suggest? That she didn’t have a period in December? Or just a light one? Even with the emphasis, just going back 3 month names seems a weird way to refer to it being a period. Seems like the obvious answer, even so, but not really surprising people are questioning it.
Rose by Any Other Name
That Becky either wasn’t near Joyce at the right time in December or that she wasn’t crampy enough to exhibit symptoms.
Andy
I’m no expert, nor do I have a uterus, but aren’t there forms of birth control that can make it a quarterly thing rather than monthly? While Joyce’s parents seem of the religiosity that would make birth control an evil evil sin that only harlots and floozies partake in, it’s possible that it was medically necessary for her and her parents figured that she was probably not going to suddenly trip and fall onto any penises the instant she started.
Regalli
Given a nonzero number of religious people also historically justified period cramps and/or childbirth as God’s punishment for Eve in the Garden of Eden and people are still hesitant to vaccinate their kids for HPV in case it encourages them to be sexually active, I suspect it would have to be REALLY serious – like, ‘sometimes she passes out and we’re not sure if that’s the pain or the periods being THAT HEAVY’ serious – to overcome the Religious Judginess. Hell, I’m not even sure some religious groups RECOGNIZE that hormonal birth control is used for basically any Period Disorder TM, given they’ve gone to court to keep company health insurance from having to cover it. (Almost certainly, some of them realize but don’t care because controlling uterus-havers is more important than us not being in debilitating pain, but ignorance about periods and disorders thereof is SO WIDESPREAD that I genuinely think a lot of assholes do not know that most disorders’ treatment B is surgery, assuming there IS a Treatment B.)
Norah
As an 18 year old, would Joyce have had to get her parents’ permission to see a doctor L
Clif
As a 17 year old, yes. As an 18 year old, no. Assuming she can pay for it herself or is otherwise covered.
Diane
Pharmacy tech here: Once you’re 18, you are an adult in the eyes of the law, and your parents can’t even touch your information without you giving approval that any medical professional can still speak to their parent(s) about anything regarding their health. It would be a violation of HIPAA to not do so. So yes, Joyce can go do whatever she wants without parent permission.
thejeff
She can theoretically do whatever she wants, but she’s still financially reliant on them and if she has insurance through them, I believe they’ll see the records.
Diane
Doesn’t stop her from doing it without their say so.
Uly
…18 year olds are adults.
Freemage
While pre-college Joyce might have had to suffer through that, I’m pretty sure that at this point, Hank, at least, would do whatever she asked on ‘womanly issues’ so long as she didn’t describe them in detail.
Laura
Either she’s got an IUD or pill (to regulate cramps of course!) that reduces the frequency of her menses to quarterly, or (more likely) Becky is noticing that Joyce felt ill at roughly the same time of the month for the past 3 months (or for the past 3 lunar cycles).
Thag Simmons
Yeah I was definitely assuming she’s talking about a monthly pattern rather than three month intervals.
Tunasammich
That’s what I assumed, this whole comic section has blown my mind lol I don’t understand what’s going on at all
not someone else
I used to have that privilege, but it was due to some fairly hefty problems and now it’s way too far in the other direction… Every three months is considered the bare minimum to be “healthy” but unfortunately it usually takes some weird hormonal or metabolic fuckery to get there. (I have both.)
So, yeah, Joyce might have something like that.
Yumi
I almost never have periods since I got my IUD, and everyone (medical professionals) I mention this to seem to be like, “Oh, then it’s fine!”
My periods were also highly irregular before I got my IUD, though, which I learned a couple years ago was likely due to some cool hormone shit.
not someone else
Oh yeah, if you have an IUD that’s different. Your body doing that without medication generally indicates something that would at least impact fertility, though, so it’s a yellow flag.
Yumi
Oh, okay, I thought you were saying something different above. Yeah, I used to be mildly concerned when I would go long stretches without periods, but not concerned enough to tell a doctor about it…for a variety of reasons, but one of which was the thinking, “What are they going to do, give me periods? Pass.”
Rectilinear Propagation
That was pretty much my thinking on it too. I didn’t want periods so I didn’t care that they went away. My oldest sister had horrifyingly difficult periods as well so I also didn’t think the pain I was still experiencing was noteworthy.
Adam Black
I had an ex in hs ( a uterus haver ) with a 3 month cycle … it was Baaaaad.
Think a whole winter of wet sticky snow that cant slough, till an avalance or visit to Dr Plough.
the only ‘good’ that came from it was the order for teen contraceptives came directly from Dr.
( that and maybe Gynecologist horror stories to terrorize your teen boyfriend ‘they thought i was pregnant and miscarrying’ )
i hope Joyce doesnt have this.
Needfuldoer
Call Dr. Plough
That’s his name
That name again is Dr. Plough
Adam Black
Delicious Taffy
Ya don’t say.
Opus the Poet
You’re right, he didn’t say
King Daniel
You say?
Decidedly Orthogonal
Given how heavy my ex’s periods were, and how very frequent, (and what I understood from school), the time between periods doesn’t dictate how much or how easily a period flows.
If this were actually a thing, no doubt it would be cited as a concern for women doing continuous-cycling (birth-control) to skip having a period completely.
not someone else
It is, or at least it used to be before they figured out that hormonal birth control also stops the build-up-layers part of the cycle. Amount of time in the preparing-for-baby state does impact heaviness.
Ed Callahan
I don’t know. Becky and Joyce have been close their whole lives. Becky would know Joyce’s cycle as well as she knew her own. But having Joyce pregnant would torpedo the premise of the strip, not to mention the time scale issue. Or maybe Willis wants to address abortion politics. Or maybe there’s another time skip coming?
And who’s the father?
Decidedly Orthogonal
Well, every _two_ months. But yeah, *somebody* should be the counter-example to my ex-wife who was every 3 (or sometimes 2) weeks!
zee
I’m unlucky enough to have a menstrual disorder that i take the pill for, and lucky enough that now i get my period once every 2/3 months because of it. One day I’m gonna get an IUD and almost eliminate it
The Wellerman
? Looks like Becky’s chastity is in danger!!! ?
*plays “Watch Out Pikachu!!!”*
Doctor_Who
Becky’s chastity had a good run. Like the dinosaurs.
Kyrik Michalowski
So what is going to be our metaphorical meteor?
Proxiehunter
Spaghetti straps apparently.
The Wellerman
What I’m wondering is what a clone of Becky’s chastity would look like… and whether you can fit it inside a Pokeball.
AGV
Lawyers would definitely be threatened around it
Sarah might have to be alert
Roborat
If a Snorlax can fit in a pokeball, anything can fit.
milu
Spaghetti straps are the meteor, Becky’s head are the Deccan traps: ?
RassilonTDavros
I mean chastity/virginity isn’t an actual tangible thing, it’s a concept made up to control people and assigned to the hymen breaking, so I don’t know how much danger it can really be in here
Freemage
Ah, but Becky still clearly regards it as a thing that applies to her. She’s both yearning for some girl-girl action, and deathly afraid of it, and that obviously ties into her religious beliefs.
Delicious Taffy
Chastity is such a fragile, vague construct that some nutjobs extend it to include fully inserting a penis into a vagina and leaving it there for a bit AKA “soaking”.
milu
@Rassilon: just because something is made up doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
@Taffy: awww, good for them.
DarkoNeko
It’s that time of the month uh
RassilonTDavros
Okay so this is more related to yesterday’s comic than todays but I made a thing and whatcha gonna do. Spoilers for old continuity stuff
https://imgur.com/a/9BAGmU9
Sporky
This is great
Spencer
I mean, that’s basically canon.
Leorale
hahaha amazing
Regalli
Glorious.
milu
hahaha perfect XD
Ana Chronistic
Hahahahahah oh dang ?
(Is this thing posting?? I feel like my posting attempts are being throttled despite only posting basically once a day with the odd exception)
RassilonTDavros