353

God-strings
Posted on January 22, 2022 by David M Willis

353 thoughts on “God-strings”

  1. The Wellerman

    So much for respecting your best friend’s religious freedom.

    Worse yet, we don’t know Sierra’s Ultimate Secret to Barefoot Treading! ?

    1. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      “No, your bodies would crumble as your minds collapsed into madness.”

      1. The Wellerman

        “Nah, it’s easy. You just start with parallel lines that intersect and just work your way from there.”

        1. Arianod

          “But first, let’s talk about parallel universes”

        2. someone

          Parallel lines that intersect are called “meridians”.

        3. Psi Baka Onna

          To create the bare-foot-in-snow walking technique you must first create the universe…?

        4. Decidedly Orthogonal

          No need. You can start with any common oblate spheroid. There are so many laying about around here, we’re literally tripping over them.

        5. Mr. Random

          Tthat’s some non-euclidan geometry right there.
          I’m not sure we all have the constitution for math to handle that.

        6. Delicious Taffy

          For non-euclidian? Isn’t that just geometry where the lines aren’t always even?

        7. Miles

          Well sorta but not really? Geometry still has a bunch of rules to it like which way lines go they’re just not Euclid’s set of rules

        8. Songbird

          8-Bit Theater will never stop being good.

      2. Hazel

        As someone who wore shoes as little as possible as a child (though in a subtropical environmental) eventually your feet just toughen up. Back then I could run uphill on gravel no sweat but now I have weak adult feet.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Basically this, it’s more about perception than physics. If walking barefoot on berber carpet makes you wince, Sierra is performing a superhuman feat of the impossible here.

          It’s really not that bad if you’re just walking on cleared blacktop, or even light dry snow. Salty puddles are the worst.

      3. Doctor_Who

        Her feet do not entirely exist within this dimension.

        She’s unknowingly stepping on fey as we speak. They’re…sorta into it.

    2. Deathjavu

      There is a patreon bonus strip that answers this question. Pay and find out!

      1. The Wellerman

        Basically Hazel’s answer, just shear rough conditioning, presumably from a young age.

        Plus, let’s just say that when it comes to the cold, she didn’t even have to lift a toe to turn lemons into lemonade!

    3. C.T. Phipps

      Yes, I believe everyone is entitled to persuade everyone else to another position. If you believe atheism is correct and true, you absolutely should tell people why. If you believe Christianity, Buddhism, or the Jedi way is true then you should share it.

      Don’t try to do it sideways, CS Lewis. That pissed Neil Gaiman off so much.

      1. alongcameaspider

        Even after you had a conversation with said person where both of you make it clear your not going to budge on the issue?

        1. C.T. Phipps

          Being annoying isn’t exactly a good way to forward your argument. However, I did have a friend who bugged me constantly about why I was being an asshole and eventually talked me out of toxic conservatism.

          So I owe him big.

        2. Joyfulldreams

          Not every topic is something that requires constant debate over where you must convince everyone around you to think exactly the same as you, y’know. And sometimes you have to like. Read the room. Know your audience. Have tact. Etc. etc.

        3. Clif

          Be sneaky and manipulative.

          Use web cartoons to get around their defences.

        4. The Wellerman

          And video games!

        5. Leorale

          Agreed. I’m an atheist myself, but I recognize that belief can be a force of good for many folks, such as Becky, and my mom, and many people on earth. Nontoxic belief can be helpful, comforting, and can empower people to do good works. Plus the religion around the belief can include ethics, history, and community, and I’m into those things. Bonus, I like being around and learning from people who are different from me.

          My pro-religion atheism does not extend to Becky and Joyce’s community-of-origin, because it was clearly harmful AF. But it does extend to post-cult Christian Becky, whose belief gives her joy, and confidence that she can become a scientist, and enough comfort to get through the day.

          Obviously I think my opinion is correct (that’s what an opinion is, if I thought my opinion was incorrect, it wouldn’t be my opinion anymore). But even if I could, I wouldn’t particularly want to sacrifice Becky’s happiness and empowerment so that she now agrees with my opinion about the nature of the universe. Why would I do that? Seems like a crappy thing to do.

        6. C.T. Phipps

          Eh, I have a different opinion. I think if people believe objectively wrong things that they should be corrected. I don’t think if a religion is untrue that it is harmless.

          Either you believe in it because you believe its true or you should discard it.

          Truth has a value in itself.

        7. molochmachine

          I’m fine with religious debate in and of itself, but I also believe Christian evangelism is ultimately an evil enterprise for the way it ties its teachings to access to important resources such as clean water, communications tools and medicine in poor isolated communities. In doing so, it often goes to the extent of undermining other avenues of development and self-sustenance, making it so that entire communities become dependent on institutional religious groups’ resources rather either developing their own or campaigning for access from their own governments.

        8. alongcameaspider

          So to be clear had Joyce called Becky stupid to her face from the get go she wouldn’t be doing anything wrong in your eyes

        9. C.T. Phipps

          Versus lying to her and saying she respects her? Yes. I’d much rather know where I stand with someone.

          Wouldn’t you?

      2. Spencer

        Okay so lying is bad and means you don’t respect your friends, but not attempted conversion.

        1. C.T. Phipps

          So…attempted conversion is a hostile act to you, Spencer?

          That explains a lot.

          I don’t consider atheist or evangelist friends being hostile to me by trying to talk to me about their beliefs. I’d be a shitty person if I did.

      3. Arian

        I really don’t think he was trying to “do it sideways”.

        Narnia wasn’t written as evangelism; Lewis said it was because the imagery had got stale through familiarity, and by putting it into allegory, he wanted to reinvigorate Christians’ reactions to it.

        I’m surprised Gaiman thought Lewis thought anyone *wouldn’t* notice the parallels. I certainly did when I first read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a child, and my parents are atheists; it’s not as if I had any more than the usual general acculturation.

        The way I saw it, he wasn’t trying to sneak anything in while his readers weren’t looking. The Anything was hung up in neon lights.

        1. Carla's #2 Fan

          I actually didn’t notice when I was little, but then, I’m Jewish.

      4. hof1991

        For more on Gaiman writing about Lewis, the reference is The problem of Susan. Can’t link to it but this describes it. https://www.tor.com/2021/05/12/the-problems-of-susan/

        1. Decidedly Orthogonal

          Thank you for sharing this.

        2. Leorale

          Yes, I love it.

        3. Jflb96

          It’s based on a misunderstanding of the text, though. The problem with Susan wasn’t that she liked lipsticks and nylons and parties, it was that she was trying to rush ahead into adulthood and acted like she thought herself too good for anything ‘childish’.

        4. Twitcher

          Sarah might’ve been the would be protagonist of a bildungsroman chronicling her Journey back to Christianity, a la CS Lewis himself.

    4. ValdVin

      i love the sight gag with Sierra’s feet in panel one.

    5. Stifyn Baker

      Obviously part Hobbit.
      Which means she’ll be around a long time.
      Because, you know, old Hobbits die hard.

      1. Roborat

        Argh, that was awful. Much kudos from me.

    6. Twitcher

      I really wonder if Dina’s and Becky’s relationship will become strained/fall apart because Becky has the same plan for Dina as she does for Joyce.

      1. Joshua Kronengold

        Don’t see why she would.

        Dina is Becky’s -skeptic- girlfriend. Joyce is Becky’s -Christian- definately-not-a-girlfriend.

        She is very much not a “everyone should be Christian” Christian, but a “people should stay in the boxes that are comfortable to me” person.

        In fairness, as we see on Joyce’s side, she’s not nearly as stable an atheist persona as she presents. Her Christianity was apparently bound up with fear, imposter syndrome, and toxicity, yes (to a degree Becky is certainly not aware of), but also very much of her habits and tastes. She’s still a bouncing ball, and it’s not -entirely- unreasonable friends to try to influence where she lands.

    7. Miles

      It’s not much of a secret. It’s just… shoes are worse than cold feet

    8. RowenMorland

      It’s like flying in Hitchhiker’s guide, you go to put your foot on the floor and just miss the cold.

  2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

    Now I wonder what part of the spectrum gaydar uses.

    1. butts

      that’s the secret, it’s the whole rainbow, baby

  3. butts

    ah, I see we’ve got Backup Joyce on call

  4. Hazel

    Sierra is dedicated and I applaud her for it.

    1. Hazel

      Replying to my own message to try and get a avatar that doesn’t make my comment look skeevy.

      1. Hazel

        you can’t be Hazel, I’M Hazel!

        /j

        hazels unite

        1. Amós Batista

          Clearing a hack into the system hahaha

        2. Hazel

          The Hazeling comences!

  5. Suet

    Becky… Lucy… Now this is just something akin to attrition.

    I’m also averting my thinking of how Sierra gets home barefoot in extreme conditions

    1. Reltzik

      Well she’s not rushing to immediately retaliate against a raid, so she enters the dorms cold trod.

      (I’d be surprised if more than -5 people got that pun.)

  6. seen2much

    Here’s a weird techno remix of awesome god.

    https://youtu.be/Wdo4Eyw4DqM

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Oh Cheese, is this gonna be the one I think it is?

      …okay, no it’s not. There was one that we used as part of a Vacation Bible School one year that was… annoyingly catchy? Catchily annoying? Eh, memorable in its try-hard “cool”ness, and hard to get out of your head once you heard it. There was a music video that came with the kit too, it was so 2000s-y it’s not funny.

    2. Delicious Taffy

      Yessss, its the one I was expecting. A very funny streamer called Joel had this remix on his stream once.

      1. The Wellerman

        Joel G. or are you talking about another one?

        1. Delicious Taffy

          Vargskelethor, from the Vinesauce crew. If you’re unfamiliar, look up his Windows Destruction videos.

  7. alongcameaspider

    And here we have confirmation that her playing Christian music was an attempt to pull her back to Christianity

    And it seems Lucy was in on it? That’s disappointing

    This is exactly why half the commentary was angry at Joyce these past couple storylines, I wonder if they’ll show that same anger towards Becky

    1. The Wellerman

      Lucy? SHE WHAT?!?!?! ?

      1. alongcameaspider

        Maybe I’m misinterpreting the comic, but she certainly doesn’t seem to disapprove of Becky trying to push Joyce back towards Christianity

        1. The Wellerman

          For now I guess that just like Sarah and Dorothy, Lucy also seems to have a vested interest in keeping Joyce the same old “naive Christian weirdo girl” for the sake of their own convenience.

        2. The Wellerman

          On second thought, “you represent everything she fled FOR” may suggest otherwise, so eh, inconclusive.

          I should really increase my ping time after staring at code for 8 hours straight ?

        3. Booyahman

          I think Lucy just likes to tell people what they wanna hear and then what they need to hear, kind of depending on what she feels they can handle. She’s great at solving anyone’s problems but her own, like an emotionally intact Amazi-girl.

    2. SuperZero

      This isn’t all why anybody was mad at Joyce, and I dunno where you’re getting that about Lucy.

      1. thejeff

        It is however why some people think we’re mad about Joyce. Not that most of us are actually mad at Joyce, but anything that suggests she’s not behaving perfectly is taken that way.

        But yes, I am also “mad” at Becky for the Rich Mullins. Again, in the sense that I think she’s being a jerk about it, even though I understand why she’s doing it and can sympathize with her motivations. Just like Joyce.

    3. Viktoria

      Lucy seems like she was probably aware that Becky wants to get Joyce back to being Christian, and approves, but didn’t know specifics until just now. That’s a lot more forgivable.

      Also, Becky, QUIT IT!

    4. Sporky

      Commenters have been angry at Becky the whole time already! From what I’ve seen there’s been no double standard in the comments. The amount of anger about Joyce and anger about Becky have been roughly equal as far as I can tell.

    5. Thag Simmons

      I think she’s just being non-confrontational

      1. Needfuldoer

        Honestly, that tracks.

        “Lucy also wants to keep Joyce pigeonholed in the role she played at the beginning of the school year” would be completely out of left field.

      2. pope suburban

        I agree. Lucy has shown herself to be a peacekeeper, and the way she handled Jennifer’s admission of drunk driving shows that she’s tolerant and believes in giving people chances to work things out and improve. I think she’s doing that with Becky here-letting Becky talk, getting the lay of the land, and giving her best advice. Her best advice might not be perfect, but hey, she’s a teen on her own for the first time, that’s okay and to be expected. Though I think she’s going to hit the mark with this one, in the end.

    6. Pylgrim

      In all fairness, remember that from their point of view, they are “rescuing” Joyce. (Not justifying their actions, only the purity of their intentions).

      1. The Wellerman

        “The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

        How insidiously ironic…. ?

        *flowey laugh*

      2. temperaryobsessor

        Yikes.
        That describes the phycho who pulled a gun on his own daughter.

        1. Comic.phile

          Yep.

        2. Bryy

          Yuuuuuuuuuuuup. Waiting for this shoe to drop.

          Neither Becky nor Joyce have acknowledged the literal situation, just the outcome.

    7. Spencer

      This is exactly why half the commentary was angry at Joyce these past couple storylines, I wonder if they’ll show that same anger towards Becky

      Nah, of course not.

      That’s a thing you do if you don’t live in a Christian-dominated culture where a lack of failure on the part of the majority is the same as doing good.

    8. Z

      I was mad at Joyce for calling everyone stupid, insulting Dina to Becky’s face, trying to “fix” Ruth’s sexuality, and generally being an ignorant dickhead.

      1. anonymsly

        How exactly did Joyce insult Dina? Dina IS an atheist, as Joyce is now, and Dina and Joyce’s entire antagonistic relationship has been based in Dina being aggressive at Joyce because Christian v atheist. Of COURSE it was a weird moment for Joyce to realize that difference, that enemy-ship basis, doesn’t exist anymore. How exactly is it insulting?

      2. Spencer

        I wonder why Joyce has opinions about fixing the sexuality of a queer person

        As if, perhaps, she used to date a gay dude in the hopes of making him straight, but it’s fine because she was a silly fundie weirdo

        (I for one am extremely enthused at the prospect of getting to dunk on people who get mad nettled upon finding out Ruth is bisexual. Be a shame if that happened all the goddamn time here or something)

        1. thejeff

          Yes and that’s why this whole conflict is interesting.

          We can understand why Joyce freaked out about it without approving. Like we can understand why Becky feels threatened by Joyce’s loss of faith without approving.

          Or we can decide that Joyce’s behavior is completely justified by her trauma and not extend that to other characters.

        2. Spencer

          Joyce’s behaviour is completely justified by her trauma because her behaviour is lashing out at the institution that subjected her to a lifetime of lies, manipulation and then outright attempted murder, and then Becky took ownership of her trauma because it’s inconveniencing her, yes. Spewing stupid stuff at Ruth and getting immediately defanged strikes me as a lot less of a deal than that time she fed Ethan’s self-loathing over his sexuality, let alone in a strip that felt like pointed mockery of the kind of poster that argues at length about how it’s not fair that Ruth kissing a girl means she’s not a lesbian, but I understand that being an Edgy Atheist means “being wrong about The Queers” is much more sinful than at the hands of silly fundies who are really looking forward to criminalizing our existence.

          Joyce going “Christians are stinky” after she privately expressed for the first time in her life resentment against the beliefs that defined her and then her tried to murder her actually means nothing to me. Maybe being a Good Christian means doing right by the people Christianity in America oppresses all the time, maybe I’d be more of an Edgy Atheists if my dad actually disowned me instead of now where I concern myself with the consequences of one kind of person thinking they’re good as long as they don’t go out of their way to ruin lives as opposed to merely existing in a system that ruins lives, who knows.

          None of you can even define what Joyce has done wrong other than “made Becky sad after Becky hunted her down*” and “being mean to the most oppressed group of all, Christians.” I don’t actually give a shit about the feelings of people who benefit most in a culture defined by a surface level read of a book fed to an ignorant populace through right-wing populism that taught North America to oppress anything that strayed from their definition of right and wrong.

          *I’m aware that you don’t think there’s anything weird about tracking someone down through facebook because they have a friend over and you need to insert yourself in their day because you need to vet who they hang out with. It’s cool, you’re still wrong.

        3. Regalli

          Okay that lengthy aside in my megacomment was definitely a subtweet, but just so we’re clear: Just because Joyce got defanged in the biphobia doesn’t mean Ruth wasn’t considering Doing A Violence. Just because she didn’t intend it maliciously doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It’s lesser harm than her previous homophobia, but that still equates to harm and she was lucky she said that to someone who knows where she started, with Dorothy willing to pull her aside. The ‘I’m smarter because I’m an atheist’ was doubling down after the previous day, but she does seem to believe it on some level and that’s disrespecting several of her friends. Yeah, Christianity has significantly more cultural cache than atheism and uses it to do harm. Yeah, Joyce has every right to be traumatized and bitter by Christianity. But we’re not talking on a systemic level, we’re talking about how, personally, ‘thinking you’re smarter than and superior to your friends by virtue of holding a specific philosophy’ does not lead to healthy friendships. Becky and Joyce both need to learn to respect the other’s belief if they want to maintain their friendship – and I genuinely think they do and will – but if Joyce starts pulling that around Jennifer*, Jennifer will be well within her rights to tell Joyce to fuck off. Thinking she knew more than Dina and refusing to respect her viewpoint has definitely impacted Joyce and Dina’s relationship. It would do the same in any relationship with one of Joyce’s Christian friends. I hope Dorothy helped her unpack it, but if not, it’s an issue. Yeah, Christianity harmed Joyce, but trauma’s not a free pass to be a dick to people whose opinions you do value. Even when they have a specific axis of privilege over you, they’re perfectly entitled to decide ‘if you’re gonna be a jerk I don’t want to deal with you.’ And eventually she’s going to meet people who don’t know anything about the traumatic religious upbringing. She’s allowed to be deeply put off by Christianity, and if she doesn’t want to keep any friends that are Christians, that’s her right… but at the moment, if her Christian acquaintances don’t want anything to do with her in return, well, why SHOULD they have patience for someone working through her trauma by insulting them? If Joyce deems that consequence worth it, that’s her choice, but it is still a consequence of her actions.

          * Jennifer: Completely unrelated to religious trauma. Has no idea whatsoever any of this is going on. Mildly Christian but like, meh about it. Queer even if she’s in denial. Someone Joyce has genuinely respected in the past. Distancing herself from the old friend group, but doesn’t seem to be on the outs with Joyce specifically. To stretch the metaphor, Jennifer might have been depressed and probably the parental neglect contributed to it when she got that DUI, she may genuinely have changed for the better, but Alice is never going to want anything to do with her again because Jennifer nearly got her killed and didn’t realize how much of a problem that was for MONTHS, and didn’t notice Alice distancing herself. Jennifer didn’t mean anything malicious by it, but Alice was still harmed and Jennifer’s problems traumatized Alice in turn.

          It’s also worth noting that, among our prominent Christian castmembers, for whom being Christian ACTIVELY MATTERS to them, you have Becky who shares the white fundamentalist cult upbringing, and then you have Lucy and Jacob, who are both Black. This isn’t remotely my lane so I’m not going to go TOO in-depth about it, but it is worth bringing up how American Christianity has done a lot of harm, including branches of it in upholding white supremacy, but Black churches were and are significant rallying points for community and organization, particularly during the civil rights movement. Like, we can absolutely have a big long discussion about Christianity’s cultural impact and the harms it’s committed against marginalized people, evangelicalism as a form of imperialism, all of that and I will not disagree, but it is disingenuous to claim even American Christianity is a monolith that has always and exclusively done harm against the marginalized. Many branches have consistently sucked! (Again, white Christianity is very much invested in upholding white supremacy, by and large.) Lateral oppression still exists, even in groups meant to fight oppression! But there are absolutely branches of Christianity, including American Christianity, that have been critical in fighting AGAINST oppression and for whom that was considered part and parcel of their Christianness. Ignoring them is bad, and as a white exvangelical Joyce dismissing all Christianity as exactly as harmful as her branch would be, at best, deeply ignorant. Not every Christian has unilateral privilege over every atheist on every axis. Privilege doesn’t work that way.

          And now, dropping the pretenses of discussing the comic entirely: There are gay pastors who are pushing to change their denominations and willing to schism if necessary, and their congregations are helping with that push. There are Christians who think that unionizing is exactly what Jesus wanted. Catholics for Choice just did a huge publicity thing in response to the March for Life pointing out that no, in fact, not all Catholics are opposed to abortion. I have a lot of issues with a lot of other things the Pope says and does, but it does in fact MATTER that he is vocally and vehemently against the US’s mistreatment of immigrants. Writing off Christianity as a whole as inherently harmful dismisses the genuine good communities can do and alienates allies in those communities. It keeps us divided when we should be working together towards common goals (which we do way better when working collectively rather than separately with the same goal and no communication). We can still criticize the harmful aspects of Christianity, but going in assuming hostility helps no one but the people who benefit from the status quo. You can point those things out to Christian allies without being adversarial. Yeah, the personal hostility isn’t the same as the harm cultural Christianity has done and is still doing, and privileged people tend to be defensive about their privilege, but again: more gets done when those who share a common goal work together as a group than when they all work separately. You can call them out when they say something harmful, you can matter-of-factly explain the issues you’ve been through that make it hard to trust, you can decide this particular group’s more trouble than it’s worth, you can be too traumatized right now to do the work of educating, all of that’s fine, but you do yourself and your goals no favors when you dismiss any chance of collaboration and common goals out of hand.

        4. thejeff

          You are on a roll today. Each of these big comments has been really insightful. Thank you.

        5. Regalli

          Thank you! Some days I wake up and go ‘nope, actually this IS all I’m doing with myself today.’

          Probably not the best idea when I actually have things to do, and I can’t do it often, but occasionally it’s doable and I am getting what I need to done, so, worth it.

        6. Spencer

          (Just gonna do that thing again where I snip parts of the comment for better readability on what I’m discussing from it)

          Just because Joyce got defanged in the biphobia doesn’t mean Ruth wasn’t considering Doing A Violence. Just because she didn’t intend it maliciously doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It’s lesser harm than her previous homophobia, but that still equates to harm and she was lucky she said that to someone who knows where she started, with Dorothy willing to pull her aside.

          Yeah it’s harm, it’s just not Literally Dating A Gay Dude harm, it’s the harm this comments section routinely indulges in to the point where a whole three strips was made dunking on them. It’s the kind of harm that would have been laughed off at any other point in the series’ history because Silly Fundie Joyce is just Like That, and now she’s saying stupid bullshit taking ownership of Ruth’s sexuality because the person she used to be, apparently, totally could have made Ethan stop being gay.

          Look, I’m not saying there’s Good Biphobia, I’m saying maybe the character motivations matter more than whether or not a character is being morally right. Amber was an actively creepy motherfucker to Danny, but it matters more to me why she is, and while it didn’t play out this way I thought Becky would engage in that typical Gold Star Lesbian standards of biphobia, and if she had I’d still be more interested in why she thinks that way than I would in going “I fucking knew this Problematic Lesbian would do this!”

          But we’re not talking on a systemic level, we’re talking about how, personally, ‘thinking you’re smarter than and superior to your friends by virtue of holding a specific philosophy’ does not lead to healthy friendships.

          That systemic level matters on a personal level because it’s where those personal views are formed from in the first place. And, y’know, you’re totally right that Joyce and Becky are gonna come to understand each other again, Joyce is gonna mellow out, but maybe she’d not have to mellow out in the first place if she wasn’t dragged into a conversation she was unprepared for in the name of defending beliefs she couldn’t even call atheism until yesterday.

          Joyce’s Problematic Atheism was not brimming under the surface, it is something that only rose when her own trauma became something she had to justify to Becky and Dorothy. Even if it hadn’t I think the people around her can survive someone who had her mom bail out the dude who tried to shoot her in the face getting real fucking mad in the same way that we like the rest of the cast, especially when doing things that are of actual harm.

          Like maybe actually it really isn’t that big a deal that Joyce is raging at her life being irrevocably fucked. Maybe it’d be cool if she got helped out there by someone who was concerned about her as opposed to her being too loud or too problematic.

          but at the moment, if her Christian acquaintances don’t want anything to do with her in return, well, why SHOULD they have patience for someone working through her trauma by insulting them?

          They didn’t have a problem associating with her when she was convinced they were the wrong kind of Christian and were all going to Hell. Plus, and I recognize this is more of a pipe dream than a Will Definitely/Not happen thing, we still haven’t ever seen her interact with someone who was not, specifically, from the exact branch of fundamentalism that hurt her. The part where Joyce says something harmful to someone who’s not a part of the most culturally significant religion in North America is probably gonna matter, but we haven’t had the chance to even see what Joyce’s views are because she’s been lectured by Dorothy and kept having personal twisted-ass fights with Becky that’s more about their shared trauma than it is the text of a book.

          but it is disingenuous to claim even American Christianity is a monolith that has always and exclusively done harm against the marginalized.

          It’s not about whether or not it exists exclusively as a cause of marginalization, it’s that the means of marginalization are meted out at their leisure with no one to keep them in check, much like every single other powerful organization in the world. Nah, a Christian dude can’t do the shit a cop can, but it didn’t spring from the ether what led to the last president gassing protesters to hold a bible upside down for a photo shoot because American Christianity is intrinsically tied to imperialist white supremacy. A black Christian church isn’t going to be capable of causing the same macro-cultural damage that white Christianity has, this is because they lack the power of white supremacy that’s defined North America for centuries.

          I don’t need to consider the positive qualities of an institution that’d consider me acceptable losses, that their own are given enough free reign that fucking cults get to pop up and get waved off as “not really Christian.” I really fucking don’t.

          And now, dropping the pretenses of discussing the comic entirely:

          Okay but maybe it’s effed that these people are rebelling against the status quo. Maybe these people being the Good Christians, because they are doing good out of an ardent belief in the goodness of what they represent is what it means to be a Good Christian.

          you do yourself and your goals no favors when you dismiss any chance of collaboration and common goals out of hand.

          Maybe it’s weird that I have to have this goal in the first place. Maybe it’s weird that this goal is something I have to convince any of them should happen.

          Like actually maybe it’s fucked that my government is playing hide and seek with the skeletons of children we murdered and Quebec can selectively enforce what religious symbols it wants to bar like everyone with half a brain saw coming. The status quo doesn’t deserve to exist if I have to convince the one who benefits of its wrongdoing.

        7. Regalli

          Believe me, the status quo is fucked. But y’know it’s kinda noticeable that a lot of regular commentators ACTIVELY AVOID THE COMMENTS on days like today and draw back from longer comments themselves in general? Because they feel antagonized? Because they’re willing to acknowledge Christianity as a whole does harm and the particular branch this depicts is a deeply-fucked-up one, but they don’t want to have to argue about how Joyce is kinda being an ass here and it turn into a referendum on Christianity as a whole. Which it is inevitably doing right now. I agree with you that her comments are born of trauma and Christianity as a cultural force has done massive overwhelming harm. I still think she’s being an ass and that neither she nor Becky is right in this conflict, and I have to qualify that every time unless it becomes A Big Long Duelling Walls O Text in which we agree on all but one key point. (And characters are annoyed because they expect better of her now. They didn’t, back at the start of this comic. They weren’t thrilled then, they just weren’t always up to wasting their time on what they perceieved as a lost cause. They’re bothering to express frustration to her face so she can do better.)

          Yes, in very many ways, Christianity is broken. We don’t fix society without acknowledging the ways its brokenness harms everyone. But there are in fact people who, like Becky, found something of value despite being harmed by it and are trying to build something new out of it. I can encourage them away from the bits they don’t recognize are harmful to other people if I see them, but I’m not going to tell them there’s nothing worth saving. That’s their trauma to grapple with. And if they decide to make what they’re building and use it AGAINST the people who hurt them? Even fucking better. That Catholics for Choice thing? The statistic I saw them citing yesterday was that 67% of Catholics support abortion. I don’t know if that was generally or under certain circumstances, I don’t know ‘in the US’ or worldwide, I don’t know the sample size, but nonetheless, that does matter. Because ultimately, who benefits most from the perception of Christianity as its absolute worst beliefs being the norm of the religion as a whole? Christianity doesn’t need defending, and it needs to clean its own house, but I refuse to let the death cultists claim they speak for all Christians and push the us vs them mentality, either. Even if I’m never going back to Christianity myself because it just does not mesh with my brain safely. Fuck that moral majority nonsense.

        8. milu

          Amen.

        9. Spencer

          I dunno what it is you read into me, but the ongoing drama of actual cartoon character Joyce Brown and my beef with the repeat defense of an invincible cultural majority are two very separate things, the former is just really easy to get started talking about the latter when this comments section pretends that angry children on the internet are actually just as bad as the thing that has an unwarranted and destructive level of sway over the lives of the marginalized, and if it means anything I’m typically this outraged at the kind of person who thinks white privilege doesn’t exist, that they weren’t being hurtful when they used autism as a pejorative, that poor people should just work harder, and that it’s a personal choice to get vaccinated. I don’t need to be kind to enablers of destructive and prejudiced thought processes, I really don’t, they’ve got people around them doing that, which is what lets them keep doing it.

          Look, I’m Canadian, and we like to pretend it’s the nice apartment over a meth lab but, nah, we’re just slightly less fucked than the States. I love my country, I don’t really know what it means to love a country but I sure do all the same, and the people it has hurt do not have to love it back. Maybe if I want to take pride in it I should help make it a place for them too.

          Christianity as a cultural institution is polluted. I’m fine saying that, and I’m always going to be completely calm saying it, but the Christians who make strides to undo the damage their institution has caused, because their faith motivates them to change that institution into what it says it is? They’re good in my book. I dunno what that’s worth, but they are, ’cause you’re not part of a poisonous cultural institution if you’re striving to make it better.

          But I ain’t causing a god damned lick of harm by saying it’s fucked up that we’ve got institutions and ideas big enough that they’re allowed to continue at the expense of society’s undesirables.

        10. Regalli

          Okay the thing is, and I was trying to be diplomatic here and then got caught up in the theological debate and it’s clearly a ‘why the fuck do I bother’ thing? You are, in fact, doing harm, in that people IN THIS COMMENT SECTION have said they do not like commenting when Joyce is being a bit of an asshole, because when they say Joyce is being a bit of an asshole, and she is objectively being written as a bit of an asshole, you have big long comments that read like, essentially, ‘People’s reactions to Joyce being an asshole are wrong because Joyce is traumatized by Christianity and you can’t be a dick to individual Christians because of systemic Christianity.’ And then everyone else, even people like me who AGREE WITH YOU ON EVERY POINT EXCEPT THAT SPECIFIC THING, have to weigh whether or not we’re willing to get drawn into this debate, and so a lot of people have stopped replying, and some of us have scaled back when and how much commenting allow ourselves, and some people clearly avoid the comment section on days this argument is likely to come up. And I have seen MULTIPLE PEOPLE point this fact out to you before scaling back their interactions. I have tried to argue how you cutting Joyce infinite slack to be an asshole because she’s traumatized and allowing Becky no room to be an asshole because she’s traumatized and still Christian and Dorothy to be uncomfortable with Joyce’s very aggressive atheism comes off as jarring and unpleasant. I didn’t intend in the first comment to get worked up enough that I ultimately wanted to tell you ‘you make my DoA commenting experience less pleasant,’ but ultimately, that’s the thrust of it.

          It ties into the Christianity thing because people keep going ‘hey could you maybe scale back the aggressiveness here?’ and then you say no, and when you’re arguing that no one can ever be a dick to individual Christians because Christians wield systemic power it kind of comes off like you’re arguing you’re not being a bit of a jerk to other people here. I don’t know anyone else’s religion here offhand, I don’t make a point of it, I enjoy the commentary’s presence but I don’t consider you friends that way, but at least one person who finds this argument offputting (me) is an atheist who nonetheless thinks that yes, you can in fact individually be a jerk to individuals from a dominant religion by insulting that religion. Unnecessary hostility is still unnecessary hostility. Plus, the insults are rarely only hitting the religious in the process, because the insults tend to include comparing the insultee to something undesirable, and that way lies… Issues. In particular, ‘If you’re smart you’ll become an atheist like us’ is a jerkish opinion that, when it pops up in the real world, is tied into ableist views of intelligence. I don’t like its subtext and I tend to find the people who believe this unpleasant to deal with because they’re usually ableist in other ways, and I don’t care why they came to that conclusion, I want them to reassess their underlying belief that intelligence is a thing that can be measured as an objective standard of worth. Doesn’t matter if I’m religious or not, as a bystander with a developmental disability it still reminds me that those deemed ‘unintelligent’ are also deemed lesser.

          I enjoy analyzing with you a lot of the time, and I frequently enjoy your insights. I enjoy debating. I don’t think you’re a bad person or anything like that, I get rejection-sensitive dysphoria too so this is my preemptive telling the brain weasels to not spiral if you’re prone to that. But this subject has become deeply unpleasant to discuss because it gets so fucking big, and I don’t have the energy to wall of text that much, and even if I did I want to be considerate towards the rest of the comment section even if I’m incapable of short comments. But I don’t like having to anticipate this subject coming into play whenever I do write analysis and adding a lengthy aside relitigating my views on the subject in advance, and that does impact my willingness to comment (or at least come back and continue a conversation) at all. I’m going to try and avoid getting drawn into this in the future, because clearly neither of us will change the other’s mind and I don’t want to get aggravated enough to get personal in this comment section. I’ll probably stay away for a few days just to break my own thought cycle, not out of offense, just to recalibrate. But it still feels worth saying: this subject is THAT unpleasant.

        11. Spencer

          I’m not being a jerk in saying “this cultural institution, one plenty of people willingly ascribe to, causes harm to people to like me.”

          I can’t even fucking do anything to meaningfully retaliate against that harm, I sure as fuck can’t accept that saying it happens is harm. I don’t know what it is I am supposed to do if saying it happens is causing harm nor do I know why I am supposed to give a shit about the kind of person who is harmed by that.

          If it means anything, I’m joining you in taking a sabbatical and then I’m probably not gonna do this shit again either. The last time I had to think about how I comment here it was “I should stop arguing interpretations about this cartoon character so much” and ykw sure, that was actually pretty fucking pathetic because I was deciding the feelings of actual people on complex topics through little blobs of text on a webcomic. I don’t know how to kindly say that I very much do not feel the same on this topic.

        12. Spencer

          Dorothy to be uncomfortable with Joyce’s very aggressive atheism

          Oh right, I wanted to talk about this part too, but I wasn’t sure how to work it into that above.

          So without trying to pick a fight: yeah it’s a scenario that reads to me as pretty binary. Joyce is being wronged by her friends because they need her to exist in a little box, that’s what this story is to me. It’s cool that it’s not to you, I think it’s motivated by the both of us having extremely different views on the harm Joyce is giving back, in that my view is she’s not giving back anything meaningfully damaging to the two of them where her Sky Wizard commentary to Becky has happened like twice in an argument that’s inevitably going to be resolved if that scene in Galasso’s wasn’t the resolution itself (that’s not really me saying it is so much as it might be, but probably not). They’re “the villains” to me in that I think they’re doing wrong and Joyce isn’t to them, but their motivations still come out pretty strongly to me where Joyce’s breaking of their existing status quo is a good thing to me and it’s something the both of them are making worse by refusing to accept.

          tbh I’m already regretting saying “I’m probably not gonna do this shit again” because I feel like I’ve put myself in a position where I’m gonna stop myself from talking about shit the matters to me, or how that shit that matters to me influences my feelings on a story about the shit that matters to me happening. I can at least try to be more concise and constructive in my word choice here, if only because I’m not talking to people who cause harm, but I’m still talking to people who exist in systems that cause harm and I’m not gonna feel guilty if they want to defend a system that lives at my expense. I really, truly cannot.

        13. Spencer

          Anyway it bugs the shit out of me that you brought up ‘enlightened atheist’ thinking and outright ableism in relation to that part about me “arguing that I’m not being a bit of a jerk” or whatever. I dunno if you meant I was engaging in that or that I was getting there, I think you meant more in relation to the idea of dismissing religious belief, which is a thing I have not done at any point I’ve talked about this because a personal relationship with faith is completely irrelevant to the problems I’ve been talking about. I don’t insult Christians for being faithful, I insult the people who are fine with a ruinous status quo.

          It’s been three hours and I wouldn’t stop mulling over that part, so here’s me saying it made me angry. I like talking in big ol’ word piles with you in better circumstances too and I’d rather do that again when I come back.

        14. milu

          I think Regalli meant that Joyce, not you, used ableist language.

          Anyway, let me just say i subscribe to every single word they wrote. i really wish you would try to hear what we’ve been trying to communicate in various ways. I too feel that hanging around here has become less fun because of how heated you get on this one issue.

          i also wonder what you think your pugnacity achieves. in the comment section to a webcomic no less. i get being incensed by a bad opinion every now and then and trashing the holder of said opinion, it’s cathartic, it’s satisfying, it’s hilarious. But multiple times a day, every day? is this really the most effective forum for anti-christian activism?

        15. Spencer

          That’s cool. This place is less fun for me to hang around with because you want to defend the integrity of a massive cultural institution that made me think coming out to my dad was gonna ruin my life.

        16. milu

          it would seem that you think being aggrieved makes you entitled to be unpleasant and unfair. i just hope we get to either talk about this constructively at some point or just bury it and forget about it, because i genuinely enjoy your contributions around here, you’re funny and thoughtful and always willing to call people out on their bullshit. which is precious and i really appreciate.

    9. zee

      The comments have been very mad at Becky this whole time, they’re never not mad at Becky, what do you mean?

    10. Alaric

      I don’t see anything in that exchange that indicates that Lucy was in on it, or even approves. At most, she’s less angry with Becky than a lot of the people in the comments are, but that’s hardly the same thing.

  8. Rakeesh

    Well, Joyce certainly wasn’t a fan of people being *sneaky* about religion.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      Has anyone ever been anything but loud and overt over religion to Joyce?

      1. Reltzik

        Dorothy’s been relatively subtle, most of the time. Yes, she’s drawn a few explicit personal boundaries and she’s called out Joyce for crossing the line into sheer dickitude (whether as a Christian or an atheist), but otherwise she’s not provided much of any pressure on the topic. … and she proved half of Joyce’s old dogma about atheists wrong by simply existing. … that counts as subtle, right?

  9. Dr. Gonzo

    Nice to see that Becky, Lucy and Sierra seem to own their faith rather let dogma dictate it to them.

  10. tim gueguen

    I saw a guy a few years ago walking in bare feet when the temperature was, if my memory was correct, 10 degrees Celsius below freezing.

    1. Delicious Taffy

      That’s like -4000°F, right?

      1. The Wellerman

        Wait, should I put the correct answer or another funny answer?

        This guessing game stinks. ?

        1. Dana

          My immediate not funny impulse is to point out that Fahrenheit and Celsius cross at -40, so whatever it is it has to be higher than -40.

        2. BarerMender

          Calculating in my head, I get 14 F

    2. anonymsly

      F = (9/5)C + 32
      F = (9/5)10 + 32
      F = 50

      Pretty comfy temperature, if not IMO bare foot weather. Freezing is 32F.

      1. anonymsly

        Oh, -10C ! I misread. Yes, well below freezing. WHOOPS!

    3. Keulen

      I’m not sure what that is in Fahrenheit, but while I can understand walking around barefoot inside buildings where there’s heat, I don’t get how someone can walk around barefoot outside in below zero temperatures. I’ve seen people wearing shorts in below zero temperatures where I live and that doesn’t make sense to me as well.

      1. thejeff

        I’m okay with doing it briefly – like running out to get the mail or something, where the hassle of putting on shoes outweighs the minute or two of discomfort.

        Even when I did go barefoot regularly, I wouldn’t have been going cross-campus in the snow.

  11. RassilonTDavros

    Growing up, I remember singing “Awesome God” at church, but looking up the lyrics to double-check what I was going to say has made me realize that the only part we ever sang was… the chorus? Like, I thought maybe that part was verse 1 or something (because I definitely didn’t remember anything about Sodom being in it), but no, we only sang, like, a tiny little bit of the song.

    Anyway even as a kid I thought it was crap because a) nobody used “awesome” in its literal “awe-inspiring” meaning in my house, since my parents thought of it as a boomer* thing and I associated it with TV commercials, and b) the implied follow-up always seemed to be “your god is lame, neener-neener!” like the singer was a kid arguing with another kid over whose dad could beat the other’s up.

    (*the church I grew up in was increasingly boomer-run and -oriented as time went on, who completely ignored feedback from families with kids regarding basically all issues this was causing in our community)

    1. tim gueguen

      Years ago I was briefly the tape operator for a religious show on a local radio station. A religious song being called “Awesome God” struck me as cheesy, and I didn’t listen to the lyrics.

      1. Laura

        Anyone notice how similar the tune of “Awesome God” is to “The Wellerman,” the traditional Sea Chanty? (If you haven’t yet seen the Longest Johns Community Project, with 6,500 voices singing the Wellerman song in harmony, you are in for a TREAT!)

        1. The Wellerman

          Barnaby Dixon’s puppet version will ALWAYS have a special place in my heart ???

          https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SuCohvn0wqA

        2. Laura

          AWESOMESAUCE!!!

        3. The Wellerman

          SAUCE!!! ?

        4. Queezle

          That was amazing. Thank you.

        5. Amós Batista

          Damn it it’s so similar. Is there some christian song that aren’t a copy of other song?

        6. thejeff

          I can’t really comment on those specific songs, but I know there was a lot of crossover between traditional church songs and folk music back in the old days. Either one taking popular catchy tunes from the other and putting different words to them.

        7. Laura

          Only ~40 tunes in all of folk music, with variations. Less, if you just stick to chord progressions. Most of the old Wobbly labor songs (and even many of Woody Guthrie’s songs) were based on the tunes of old hymns. And then Dylan pinched Guthrie’s songs and other traditional music and made it popular. So it’s all part of the folk tradition process.

        8. thejeff

          To paraphrase I believe it was Utah Phillips: the union folks took the tunes of the old hymns because they were pretty and put words to them that made sense.

    2. Arian

      It is the chorus, yeah. It’s always really annoyed me that the chorus (refrain) of a song with verses got pinched and turned into Just Another Mindless Worship Chorus.

      No wonder so many people who remember it hate it.

      I mean, you might not like the theology either; I disagree with the theology as well these days.

      But they might at least have given you guys the chance to hear the whole thing.

    3. Mark

      Yeah, I read today’s strip and thought, “wait, Awesome God has VERSES? When did that happen?” We just sang the chorus about a hundred times.

      1. temperaryobsessor

        I’m as surprised as you.

  12. electriccombines

    I am very for Becky bonding with Lucy? Like I’m wondering if Becks might just feel that she wants someone who she can talk to about faith who won’t think she’s stupid for it. Not saying her approach has been great, but the comic is literally called ‘Dumbing of Age’ and I’ve seen nastier fights between friends.

    But the Becky/Lucy dynamic is very satisfying to me! Also! Sierra! Holy crap!

    1. Kim

      Yes! Becks and Luc’ togerher seems like a great friend-pair-up! I looove it!

      1. Eyebrow

        The final frame seems to be a hint that Becky’s kind of wondering if they could be more than friends.

    2. Rose Red

      I think it’s also good for Becky to have more friends that aren’t Joyce.

      1. DailyBrad

        Right. Like I think that it’s to everyone’s benefit to have a more varied friend group than 1-2 people when possible. Besides, Lucy could use more buddies, herself.

  13. Dr. Gonzo

    I’d kind of like to see a conversation between Willis and Minna Sundberg (of Stand Still, Stay Silent fame). Not a debate or anything like that but just a conversation about different life journeys (Willis: Christian to atheist, Sundberg: Atheist to Christian) and cartooning.

    1. Tarnagh

      That would be well worth seeing, yeah.

    2. Drakkin the Alien

      was she and atheist thou? i think she was some kind of spiritualist pagan… her older stories touched the after life and such… but with an old nordic gods/myth feel… Now she’s like, got scared about the pandemic theme in her last work or something and bounced into some flavour of christianity. Shes a great and gifted artist, anyway. Her bunny comic is great too, although seems like it rubbed wrong with some of her “fans”… Alas, I would have loved more nordic myths and stuff from her, instead of generic christian metaphors… But still eager to see what come next… and who knows what happens some years from now, maybe she will come back to the trolls and spirits of the north, just like some vampire lady that wrote some jesusy novels for a little while 🙂

      1. Jflb96

        Not sure that the inverted commas are necessary there. Are you not allowed to be a fan of someone if you disagree with them taking a running jump into the purest black-tar ‘all that is good comes from God and we worthless sinners cannot hope to even come close to his majesty’ Christianity?

        1. JBento

          I’d argue that anyone who thinks like that should have no fans.

        2. Jflb96

          Her earlier work is good, although with weird leanings that possibly would’ve been explored and explained if she hadn’t chosen extreme Christianity instead, so it’s not like a certain wizard author where they say somethings and you look back and Oh Crap The Bigotry Was There All Along. It’s just that she’s gone really, really, deeply into the ‘you are bad because you’re human but you just have to believe and your soul will be OK in the next life’ type of Christianity, which is obviously worrying because she doesn’t deserve to think that of herself and the people selling that belief deserve as few followers as possible.

        3. Drakkin the Alien

          there are many flavors of christianity… some are open minded… Ann Rice bounced back to Catholicism for a few years, wrote a few Christian novels, and then returned to the vampires… 🙂

  14. Stephen Bierce

    If Shortpacked! were still around we’d see some commentary on Hasbro yoinking the G.I. Joe and Transformers licenses from IDW. Do I miss it?–not sure at this moment.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      I mean you never know, a new Shortpacked! will occasionally just show up out of nowhere.

    2. Delicious Taffy

      Hmm, I wonder if that’s related to Transformers and G.I. Joe being part of the lineup for the new Essence20 tabletop system.

    3. Thag Simmons

      There have been a few times when I’ve seen a bit of toy/media news and though there would definitely have been a Shortpacked! about this if that comic was still updating regularly.

  15. AntJ

    wow, the dialogue in panel 4 is excellent

  16. Imogen

    I’m not sure if the intention here is to point out how evangelism is inherently disrespectful at best and colonialist at normal, but the comic’s doing a pretty good job of that right now. Seriously, Becky, Lucy, WTF?

  17. Kagimizu

    On the one hand, Becky is 100% in the wrong here and so is Lucy for enabling her. At the most generous they’re well-intentioned in wanting to restore Joyce’s faith (and perhaps believing it’s been shaken rather than truly shattered), but the passive-aggressive route is undermining Joyce’s decision making and that’s not okay. On the other Becky values her friendship with Joyce, religion or not, and seems scared that Joyce’s newfound atheism extends to a newfound vitriol towards her. Which by all accounts is unfounded, but Becky hasn’t seen what we the readers have seen.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      [[Which by all accounts is unfounded, but Becky hasn’t seen what we the readers have seen.]]

      I was with you here. Joyce has made it clear she thinks religious people are stupid.

      1. C.T. Phipps

        Until here. CURSE YOU, TYPING!

      2. FGarber

        I disagree. Joyce has been “hardcore! Total Atheist!” for what, a couple of weeks? I think Joyce has thrown out the Loving, Kind, all Forgiveness and Gentle Pacifistic Jesus along with the Authoritarian Jesus, Church and Communities she’s grown up with. I feel she’s saying “Old Joyce and my Mom and my Dad and one of my Brothers and Toedad and everyone I associated with in the past were stupid and believed in some obvious lies.”
        Lucy and Becky and Sierra and Jacob still going to a church would break her brain again because she can’t reconcile these good people with the kind of Judgmental Hatred she associates with Church now. Joyce still wants an Absolute Authority to tell her what is Truth, and the One Route To Happiness On Earth, and she’s not going to find that in Rationalism and Atheism, no matter how hard she thinks she will.

        1. Rose Red

          It’s been barely 2-3 days, assuming 1 chapter = 1 day, as the fandom seems to have done here: https://walkypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dumbing_of_Age_Timeline

          IRL, in my experience people take much longer than that to grow out of the “I just made this change and I’m doing so much better, you should make this change too” phase. Like six months to a year? And I’m not waiting 6 DoA months for it, but I can definitely give Joyce more than a couple days to settle down and grow out of that phasez

        2. King Daniel

          It’s not a “fandom assumption” that 1 chapter = 1 day, we have actual word of Willis in that regard; unless a timeskip is specifically denoted immediately in-comic, one chapter is always one day, and the chapter always ends precisely at midnight in the rare cases where our characters’ immediate stories carry over into the next calendar day (e.g. Book 6 Chapter 4 “It All Returns” > Book 7 Chapter 1 “Glower Vacuum”, or Book 10 Chapter 1 “Birthday Pursuit” > Book 10 Chapter 2 “To Remind You of My Love”).

        3. anonymsly

          Joyce never had the former, ever. Not really. She just said she did so as not to be consigned to Hell and exiled from her family and community as a filthy false believer. So she’s only throwing out Authoritarian Jesus, Church and Communities. There’s nothing else to go out with that.

        4. C.T. Phipps

          I mean, we have the panel where Becky asks if Joyce thinks she’s stupid and then Joyce starts explaining why Christianity is stupid.

          If there was any doubt she DIDNT think Becky was stupid, she would have said so.

        5. thejeff

          To be fair, she did later say that “She’ll come around. She’s smart.”

          So she doesn’t really think Becky’s stupid. She thinks she’s smart enough to figure out that Joyce is right.

          Which isn’t really better.

        6. thejeff

          Not sure what you’re actually disagreeing about.

          Though her actual word on the subject for Becky is that she knows Becky is smart and will stop believing all those stupid things and come join her on the atheist side. Which isn’t really less obnoxious than thinking she’s stupid.

          Both of them are wrong, because they’re both staking their friendship on making the other believe what they do. In this strip we’re talking about Becky’s actions, but they’ve both made it clear that’s their intent.

        7. Imogen

          I think what yucks me out here is that Becky is colluding with Lucy on this. Also because this is, like, what evangelism DOES, and as annoying as Christian atheists can be, it’s never going to be as unpleasant as actual Christians trying to pressure others into the majority religion.

        8. C.T. Phipps

          I mean, the religion says you should spread it.

        9. Spencer

          wowzers its almost like thats a problem or something

        10. C.T. Phipps

          How bizarre you think it’s a defense. It’s not. It’s a statement of fact that the Christian faith requires individuals to go out and try to spread Christianity because it maintains that it is an objective truth and makes lives better. It’s why as an atheist if you honestly believe that something like God doesn’t exist, you should absolutely spread it.

          Because truth should be spread. Tolerating lies is evil and helps no one.

        11. Spencer

          Nah, I’m more of a live and let live kinda guy. Religion should be sought, not spread, especially when your spread is centuries of imperialism.

        12. Spencer

          I seriously can’t believe you wrote something is absurdly depraved like it’s an actual defense.

          “Oh yeah we’re supposed to go around and convert people, but if anyone does that to us then that’s no good bad wrong prejudice.”

        13. Sombrero

          Well, that’s how you get to be a majority.

        14. Spencer

          And as history has taught us, nothing bad ever happens when a large enough majority is convinced of their own innate righteousness against savage heathens who act in knowing defiance of true justice, because if they were good then they’d fall in line as I try to save them from burning in Hell.

          I can’t think of more of a funnel towards outright dehumanization than a belief that the other guy needs to think exactly like you or his soul is forever tainted. Wonder if that fun little social experiment ever went wrong.

        15. Imogen

          Yeah, “That’s how you get to be a majority” is actually incredibly telling. Because, like, yeah. Imperialism and genocide *are* how Christianity got to be a majority, and evangelism is a particularly insidious branch of imperialism and genocide.

        16. Clif

          And if you knew (or thought you knew) that someone was destined for an eternity of torment if they didn’t take the same actions you had, what kind of horrible person would you have to be in order to not try to convince them?

        17. Imogen

          Yup! Evangelical faiths are basically awful, disrespectful and inherently imperialist. The best Christian is a quiet Christian.

        18. C.T. Phipps

          Honestly, the fundamentalist, “All non-Christians go to Hell’ thing is such a vile heresy that it warps much of the fabric of the religion. Jesus’ whole appeal was that he wanted to spread God to everyone and accepted people that Jews traditionally did not accept as members.

          The religion of tolerance made to be the religion of Rome.

          Fuck Rome.

        19. Imogen

          This is Jesus’s religion I’m criticizing. Evangelism is basically at the core of Christianity–“spread God to everyone” is always going to be imperialist. “people that Jews traditionally did not accept as members”–this is a very questionable framing.

        20. JBento

          I’m glad you admit the problems are baked right into the basis of the system.

        21. thejeff

          It’s interesting to see how we shift this from Becky and Joyce to Christians and Atheists in general, losing the actual character motivations and making the people just stand-ins for their broader groups.

          This conflict is about these specific characters and their motivations are very much tied to their relationship. Becky is being shitty here, but she’s not just evangelizing because that’s what Christians do. Or do we think she just doesn’t care if Dina goes to Hell?

        22. C.T. Phipps

          I don’t think Becky think atheists go to Hell.

        23. JBento

          We know she doesn’t, because she said Dina would be mad when she got to heaven.

        24. thejeff

          Of course she doesn’t. That’s the problem with stepping away from the actual characters to “christians vs atheists”.

        25. Sombrero

          It has been established that Becky believes that good people go to Heaven no matter what.

  18. RassilonTDavros

    I’m hoping that Becky’s failed attempt is enough to dissuade her from trying to re-convert Joyce again, but I’m guessing probably not.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      Joyce had a spiritual visitation from Rich Mullins ghost. I doubt anything less will succeed where that failed.

      1. Jflb96

        The ghost visit was part of her conversion, since it made her realise that she’d only ever cared about the material trappings rather than the actual godliness

    2. Bryy

      Becky is going to get her ass handed to her.

    3. anonymsly

      Oh, definitely not. Why would that be the last try? It’s not like she cares about Joyce’s feelings or pain in any significant way (where significant means that it influences her behavior), when her response to ‘I fought to be who I am and it’s been unbelievably painful, and I value me’ is ‘well, let me just twist that knife a little more and dig around in there until you realize that what I want matters more’.

      1. Keulen

        Yeah, so far it seems like Becky cares more about trying to push Joyce back to how she was before she became an atheist than about Joyce’s actual feelings.

        1. Kaos

          yeah. one of the comments in here did say “Dina can be whatever she wants to be. But Joyce is not allowed to because i say so.” mentality.
          Boy… she is in for another slap from reality.

      2. thejeff

        It’s funny because Becky said the same thing and Joyce hasn’t given up on deconverting her either.

        1. Rose Red

          Joyce seemed to be able to at least shut up about it for the less than 24 hours after that conversation, though, and let Becky deconvert on her own schedule for now (she’s not going to because she processes faith differently, but I don’t think Joyce has figured that out yet).

    4. JBento

      I, too, have high hopes that someone doing a bad thing and getting no consequences for it will just spontaneously stop doing it, because I like being disappointed all the time. /s

      1. Clif

        I am pleased you lead a happy life.

        I think.

        1. JBento

          Therefore, you are.

  19. DarkoNeko

    Lucy and Becky are getting good friends eh

    1. Amós Batista

      when that happened? What is this church? Have it showed in the past?

      1. DarkoNeko

        It was mentionned at least for Sierra & Lucy on a previous week but I don’t remember for Becky. Well, i don’t have the best memory

  20. Elle L

    Ok so- the concept of someone trying to gently nudge a person back into a religion that they had to go through an emotional wringer to break from is A-too close to home. B- makes me deeply uncomfortable- C- always makes me feel like a family trying to encourage their daughter to get back with a boyfriend who they liked and she made clear didn’t work out with her

  21. Ereb

    reminds me of the last time we saw Joyce and Becky at their (former) church, singing a hymn, which triggered Joyce into memories of Toedad

    https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/amazinglove/

  22. LuniasM

    That comment in the final panel feels like the sort of foreshadowing that’s gonna feel extremely obvious in hindsight.

    1. The Wellerman

      I don’t know why but this is making my parasite senses go CRAZY ?

    2. RassilonTDavros

      “Heh, no. I’m not actually gay.“

    3. Sporky

      I don’t think it’s foreshadowing, it’s just a callback to when Joyce, y’know, rejected Becky because she’s not into girls.

      (Although Joyce might be into girls, but that’s a whole other subject)

      1. Thag Simmons

        Callbacks and foreshadowing aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive

      2. Sprite less Auntie

        She just thinks of Becky like a sister.

        1. Sporky

          One of the reasons I like the idea is if Becky finds out that Joyce does like girls that way, just not her, it’s gonna be devastating for her. (I like that because it’s interesting character development, not for any sadistic reason, I swear.)

        2. Regalli

          See, I like it because interesting character development is FREQUENTLY sadistic. Suffer, fictional creations! Suffer for our amusement!

          The trick is to make up your own fictional creations as well, and then even if you never finish anything you’re still like ‘no I’m a writer too, this is PERFECTLY NORMAL writer behavior.’

        3. Spriteless Auntie

          Please people, finish your hurt/comfort flicks. I hate it when they are left hanging. Even handplates has gotten to the comfort part.

        4. Sporky

          I think you mean “fics”, although I wouldn’t mind seeing that fanfiction genre make its way to the big screen.

  23. Wereg

    On one hand, I’m very much here for Becky and Lucy becoming friends.

    On the other, trying to subtly manipulate your “friend” is incredibly shitty.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      I made a reference to Neil Gaiman and CS Lewis above. The former used to love the Narnia books and considered them deeply personal and close to his heart. Then he found out that they were, especially the latter books, being published as part of CS Lewis’ missionary work. Neil actually felt personally betrayed and angry at his mentor for it–which he applied to Christianity as well.

      1. Arian

        And I commented that I don’t believe it *was* missionary work, unless you want to call it missionary work to try to revivify the faith of people who have found the Christianity they were taught flat and uninspiring. It wasn’t evangelism.

        1. 00A86B

          This is a silly distinction when the reader can’t know without additional context going in that the work is one of heavy christian allegory. The books weren’t printed with a “For christian readers only” label on the cover.

      2. thejeff

        Unless he’s said more than in his On Lewis, Tolkien and Chesterton speech, that’s exaggerating the effect I think.
        He read Narnia starting when he was 6, which I think excuses missing the allegory at first.
        “For the next four or five years I continued to read them. … For good or ill the religious allegory, such as it was, went entirely over my head, and it was not until I was about twelve that I found myself realising that there were Certain Parallels. … I was personally offended: I felt that an author, whom I had trusted, had had a hidden agenda. I had nothing against religion, or religion in fiction … My upset was, I think, that it made less of Narnia for me, it made it less interesting a thing, less interesting a place. Still, the lessons of Narnia sank deep. ”
        He also says he kept reading Narnia as a teenage and came back to read it to his children, so while that aspect certainly bothered him, it doesn’t seem to have driven him away from the work.

        I kind of agree with him here. The parallels are obvious as an adult, but the books are intended for children and thus that it’s an allegory would slide over their heads while still imparting the message. It’s certainly not for people “who have found the Christianity they were taught flat and uninspiring”, unless that counts kids bored in church.

        1. temperaryobsessor

          Well kids do get bored in church.

        2. Clif

          It’s because there’s not enough angel/demon wrestling.

  24. Heather

    Wonder if Lucy approving of this means problems with Walky down the line. Or is it because Joyce is an apostate?

    1. C.T. Phipps

      I think there’s probably a middle ground where Becky is blaming HERSELF for Joyce’s atheism and probably does think of it as a negative because faith is such a thing that brings HER joy. So she’s viewing the loss of faith as a problem to be fixed because it was losing something that gave Becky comfort as well as inspiration.

      Its clear now Joyce never had the same feelings about God or religion. It was all the structure and community for Joyce while for Becky it was a defense against them.

      At least that’s my 02. They never shared the same faith, especially when Joyce talks about a personal connection to God she never felt.

  25. Bryy

    …. holy shit. Not only am I super disappointed in Becky…. but Lucy wtf.

  26. Joyfulldreams

    Man, people are lambasting Lucy here. What do you want her to do, immediately crucify Becky for doing something problematic? Like that’s even remotely something Lucy would do? She’s just rolling with it and asking questions. Asking which song Becky played to try and manipulate Joyce is not necessarily tacit approval of her actions, it feels. Neutral??

    I guess the point of view is that anything other than outright confrontation is inherently enabling Becky’s behavior? IDK.

    Unless y’all are reading the line “did you do Awesome God” as like, Lucy suggesting she thinks that that song is DEFINITELY the go-to when trying to convert people against their will?

    1. Rose Red

      That was my first reading. My second reading was along the lines of “uh, some of his songs are not particularly friendly choices”. My third reading was, we definitely haven’t seen enough Lucy for me to be able to tell which of the first two it was closer to, I’m happy to take a wait and see approach here.

      1. Psi Baka Onna

        My reading added “I don’t know anything about Rich Mullin’s music to know if this is problematic or not and I’m afraid to google it in case the almighty algorithim decides that’s my new favourite music and starts thrusting christian rock in my face at every oppurtunity…”

    2. Segnosaur

      Plus she did try to run some interference by suggesting Joyce does not hate becky because of the church.

      We would need to see more interaction to know if lucy is actively supporting becky’s attempts to re-christianize joyce or just listening in as a bystander.

      1. Spencer

        This is the first time we’ve ever seen these two talk theology, so Lucy’s position, let alone the amount of knowledge she has or if that knowledge is truthful to Joyce’s circumstances, is extremely vague.

        If I had to guess, I think Lucy is processing it in a way where “Joyce comes back to God” is a positive ending, in that I think it’s less binary for Lucy as it is for Becky and “a positive ending for Joyce” is what makes her happy. She’s probably gotten closer to Becky over the timeskip if she gets the meaning behind Becky thinking Joyce hates her, that Becky assigns herself to what Joyce was fleeing, and that Joyce started changing for Becky’s sake.

        The idea of Lucy being knowingly and totally on-board with “pulling the ol’ God strings” is deeply weird to me as a character trait, so I’m assuming she’s just running with what Becky is telling her, which isn’t gonna have the whole picture.

        1. Clif

          Lucy’s theological position is that she’s a Christian woman and that means no fooling around till the third date.

  27. Rose Red

    Dear Becky,

    Even if Joyce wants you to change your religion, she seems to respect you enough to let you do it on your own time without pressuring you about it. Yes, she did say join me and Dina in no-Jesus-land, but you had just complained that she was going there without you and leaving you behind. Also, that was before you both talked about how you had both fought to be where you are. Did you choose to ignore her when she said that, or did you just not hear her? I have no idea whether she’ll be able to continue it, but Joyce has been able to understand that you have your religious identity for the less than 24 hours since that conversation. Why couldn’t you? Why are you being so stubborn about her changing hers on your schedule?

    I was interpreting your actions in the best way I could. She just needs more screen time, I told myself, we’re only seeing the worst parts of her actions because we’re only seeing her during Joyce POV scenes. Most recently, I convinced myself that, last night your time, you didn’t see how uncomfortable you were making Joyce, and that you were putting on music that you thought she’d like because she liked it when you were younger. But I was wrong and I don’t know how to begin to try to not be angry with you now. I’m continuing to try to understand you to be someone who isn’t defined most prominently by her selfishness, especially because I know I have biases against your religion and your approach to religion in particular, but now I’m completely failing at it and I don’t know how I can do that with regards to you. Maybe I just need to see you get more POV screen time. I guess. I don’t know.

    Love,
    Rose Red

    PS Other commenters, I’d appreciate help to understand and empathize with Becky better. Or at least feel sympathy for her.

    PPS Willis, this is the most emotionally invested I’ve been in any fictional characters since, oh, probably around when the pandemic began? Definitely the angriest I’ve been with a fictional character in a long long time. So thank you for putting your art out here for us to read. I can’t wait to see where it goes.

    1. Regalli

      So, my read on Becky, with the caveat that this is SYMPATHETIC to her but not ‘did nothing wrong’ (much like my read on Joyce, BOTH girls are reacting to deep trauma and BOTH girls have the right for that to reflect in their views on faith but wrong to keep pushing the other to their point of view after they’ve both established they aren’t moving.)

      Becky was never going to take Joyce losing faith well. We had hints about that as early as the evolution/‘everything has to be literal because if there’s no original sin, that means God chose to create a world that’s deeply fucked-up when I think about it’ talk, it was reemphasized shortly before the timeskip with the birthday party scene where Becky tells Joyce she’s been at odds with their parents for like five minutes (unspoken: so what right do you have to get angry about this when I’m holding tight to premarital sex being bad, even as it’s clearly causing me deep anxiety?) Finding out about it while Joyce and Liz were egging each other on in a shared trauma-venting/maybe lowkey hating their past selves that caused them to conclude ‘religious people aren’t as smart as us atheists’ guaranteed it would be a blowout fight, but Becky was never going to take this well. (An aside: Yes, Joyce and Liz have every right to be traumatized and bitter about their religious upbringings. Yes, them saying mean things about Christians doesn’t compare to the systematic harm Christianity does. I’m a queer disabled atheist who’s planning how to get a hysterectomy in a political hellscape, believe me, I know. Nonetheless, trauma does not give you a free pass to insult your friends. You want them to keep being friends with you, bare minimum, you don’t say in the cafeteria you think you’re smarter than them specifically because you’re an atheist. Intent does not erase impact, and while Joyce and Liz weren’t expecting to be overheard and needed a safe space to vent, that attitude was one Joyce would have to reassess if she wanted to stay friends with Becky regardless after that talk occurred, because it’s not very friendly to think less of your friend’s intelligence because she’s still religious. This is also one of the reasons why I don’t think Joyce and Liz were the best people for each other sorting through their trauma, at least without a qualified mediator – I don’t think either of them alone would have gone down quite the same paths, and I think they needed someone to gently redirect away from that towards the ‘it sounds like you’re insulting your past self. Do you really think that’s fair to your younger self?’ path. Lengthy aside about Liz and Joyce over!) Becky and Joyce never experienced their faith the same way, despite their shared upbringing, but the big fight was their first real glimpse to that fact and how it means they’ve reacted to the religious trauma differently. Even so, I don’t think either of them has actually comprehended it yet, despite articulating their viewpoints pretty clearly – Becky believes in the God who saved her from kidnapping; Joyce needed to believe literally everything they were taught was true to justify the ills of the world to herself, and once itnstarted breaking it all crumbled.

      The thing is, I’m pretty sure the reason WHY Becky would never take this well is wrapped up in her trauma. Her mom is dead, under deeply traumatic circumstances, and we know that at least her best friend was told a lie about why (we don’t know if that was just the Browns or the public line that Bonnie died ‘of cancer,’ but either way, Joyce was not available to talk to). Her dad tried to kidnap her and force her straight, went to jail, teamed up with a mobster and kidnapped her friends to kidnap her again, and was murdered by said mobster. Her childhood home has either been sold or is being prepared to be sold, because she can’t pay the mortgage and utilities as an eighteen-year-old college freshman working at the local pizza place. She was at college for a month, was betrayed by her first reciprocal romance/roommate, and her dad proceeded to see point above. (Caitlin got off with a warning and changed rooms after telling her parents and the school that Becky started it.) There was a significant stint of time last year that she was actively homeless, and even after she got a stable living situation and college tuition it was by tying herself to a politician whose policies she loathes, and a major she doesn’t care for. The community she grew up in will not help her and in fact agrees with her father, and this was clear to Becky BEFORE they bailed him out. And all of that happened in the last YEAR – this was Bonnie’s first birthday after her attempt and subsequent death in the hospital, three in-strip days ago.

      To put it mildly, Becky’s been through some shit, and a recurring theme of that is people leaving her and safe harbors being lost. (Her mom left her by trying to commit suicide. Her roommate sold her out to save her own skin. Her childhood home contains only ghosts, and even those won’t be around much longer. Her community turned their backs on her. Leslie will get tired of her eventually.) Joyce is the last real tether Becky has to the community they grew up in – Hank’s an ally, as is Jocelyne, but they both go through Joyce first. Leslie is sympathetic and had very similar experiences, but Leslie didn’t know Becky’s mom. (To our knowledge, Becky has no living family. If she does, they’re either diehard believers – and thus, like Ross and the congregation, unsafe – or they broke away long enough she doesn’t know she can go to them for help, and thus they aren’t good outlets for the ‘your mother would be proud of you’ stuff either.) This has put a lot of emphasis on Joyce in Becky’s world. Joyce is the one familiar thing she can keep of her childhood. Joyce is the necessary link to an adult who’d help Becky open a bank account, or gave her a place to stay and social group in those first days she was on her own. Joyce who knew all her Bible verses (the adults were all so proud of her and wanted the other kids to take after her) thinks being gay is fine, and of course BECKY knows God answers lesbian prayers but if Joyce says it it HAS to be true, right? Note that none of these really emphasize Joyce as a person, because yeah, the pedestal all this requires means she really can’t be. And then add in years of unrequited gay pining on top of that, too – Becky seems to mostly be over the crush, or at least recognizing Joyce is straight and she’s genuinely happy with Dina, but there was no time between ‘Joyce is my hope for safety AND love’ and ‘Joyce doesn’t love me back that way but she will accept and protect me unconditionally’ for Becky to really break the idealization.

      Becky’s also not one to acknowledge her trauma, because she thinks if she stops being goofy people won’t like her. And she’s jealous that Joyce has an all-new Cool Worldly Atheist best friend who Joyce idolizes the same way Becky idolizes Joyce, so she gets insecure, but she can’t say that because if Joyce knows any of this then she’ll DEFINITELY dump Becky for Dorothy. And meanwhile Becky also can’t talk about any of her other traumas. No one likes a Debbie Downer. But so long as Joyce and Becky were Best Friends In Christ, that was something THEY had and Dorothy didn’t, and so Becky could feel secure. Now that Joyce is an atheist, there’s no reason for her to keep Becky around, right? (Note: Literally ALL OF THIS, of course, is bullshit. But it’s clear BECKY isn’t secure in the friendship and counted on shared Christianity as a thing to keep them bonded, and not being able to have a frank talk about the jealousy made all of this worse.)

      And I think, finally, that there is in fact an element of Becky not just not understanding she and Joyce always processed faith differently, but not understanding she and Joyce have experienced trauma from the same fucked-up events differently. For Becky, it was ‘my dad kidnapped me at gunpoint’. Obviously and self-evidently traumatic! But she can in many ways condense most of her trauma to Ross instead of the community as a whole. (And in some ways she NEEDS the community as a whole to be less complicit in her trauma, because if she acknowledges their upbringing was inherently fucked-up that means her mom screwed up, too.) Immediately after Ross pointed a gun at Becky and Joyce and said he would die for Becky, Joyce heard her mother saying the exact same thing while justifying his actions. Joyce realized her parents were wrong about atheists – both Carol AND Hank, who only changed his mind because Joyce started forcing it. And Joyce had to worry after overhearing a fight where Carol wanted to pull her out of school, and said they ‘should have squeezed harder’ with Jordan. Joyce is realizing that maybe there’s something weird about having a sibling you Don’t Talk About and know nothing about. Joyce knew the entire congregation helped bail out Ross, not just Amber’s Evil Dad with an Evil Plan (I’d actually have to go back and check if Becky DID hear onscreen that the congregation helped.) And Joyce was told, during the kidnapping, that the thing the adults were proud of her for wasn’t being well-socialized but her OBEDIENCE, and that they never thought she’d question them. Joyce has experienced a LOT of trauma where their community as a whole was the issue. Where Becky can find comfort in the hymns they grew up with, Joyce is actively triggered because the idea Jesus died for their sins, because he was perfect and knew better than us humans, directly reminds her of Ross with a gun at them. And all of this happened AFTER Joyce trusted a pastor’s son at her first ever college party and ended up drugged and nearly raped, because he knew all the Bible verses too and she assumed that meant he was safe. (And instead she was saved by a bunch of women who don’t stay in their proscribed places, an atheist and a party girl and a superhero and her grumpy roommate with a baseball bat, all the kind of people Joyce was warned NOT to trust.) I don’t think Becky comprehends the degree of trauma Joyce has been through, because obviously Becky had the worst of it, right? It was HER dad doing the kidnapping. I’m pretty sure Becky doesn’t know half of this, because it happened while Joyce was alone on the phone with Carol or before Becky came to the Basement of Doom, and even if Joyce wanted to talk about it Becky clearly had it so much worse because it’s her dad, right? (Understandable positions in both cases, but still leads to a divide.) So Becky doesn’t get that Joyce’s faith was different, and doesn’t get that her flexibility let her keep faith where Joyce crumbles, but also she DOES think on some level that Joyce hasn’t been directly traumatized and doesn’t realize how much the whole community was in on it, not just bad actors. You can’t win the Trauma Olympics, but Becky and Joyce are eighteen and had EXTREMELY sheltered, controlled upbringings so I wouldn’t expect them to get it just yet.

      In conclusion: Joyce is different from any other atheist friend because Becky lost everything else and needs Joyce to be the same; Becky’s afraid of losing Joyce to Dorothy so atheism represents a threat to their friendship; Joyce and Becky are deeply, deeply traumatized and Becky can’t quite recognize how Joyce’s trauma makes her unable to remain Christian yet; neither Joyce nor Becky realized they experienced faith differently.

      Incidentally, my read on Lucy is that she evidently knows Joyce is having a bit of a crisis of faith, but she has NO reason to know Joyce is actively an atheist now because I’m not even sure she’s seen Walky since the newspaper meeting. If she’s heard, it was offscreen and likely secondhand. So as far as she can tell, Becky was trying to ‘pull the old God-strings’ in cheering Joyce up and reaffirming still-existent faith, not Becky trying to reconvert her.

      1. The Wellerman

        Yo, I don’t have the spoons to read this right now, but I’m so happy and relieved to see that you got some of yours back spite it all ?

        1. Regalli

          Thanks! Lately it’s been more ‘I don’t feel the need to write a huge comment’ more than anything, but today I was like ‘okay yes it’s 2 AM and this will take me AGES to write, but it’ll be worth it sooo…’

        2. Laura

          Booyah! Amazing deep dive! Thank you!

        3. The Wellerman

          I too, lost my spoons of hyperfocus, and I feel AWFUL ?. I hope to find them again, and I wish you the best of luck in finding the rest of yours ?

      2. Florence

        This is a mic drop of a comic, agree with everything, especially taking the upbringing stuff into focus ?

        1. Florence

          *comment dang it

      3. hof1991

        Joyce is confused and feels betrayed. Becky has been fighting for her life for a decade. We can cut them both some slack. They’re taking two paths away from a toxic church. Becky is headed to a supportive church. Joyce is leaving churches for good.

      4. Rose Red

        Regalli, I need some time to process this. Thank you for writing it for me. I think it will help.

      5. Rose Red

        Also good luck with the hysterectomy stuff. I don’t know if you’re in the USA, but if you are, extra good luck, I know it’s not easy here.

        1. Regalli

          Appreciated! Sadly, I am. Yeah, that hasn’t reached ‘active bringing up to my OBGYN’ stage yet, but like. I know I don’t want kids. I know I have endometriosis and some kind of secondary hormonal bullshit, and birth control hasn’t proven adequate in managing either. I know I’m looking at surgery for the endometriosis either way, and that I will have no patience whatsoever for dealing with birth control fuckery when we inevitably lose Roe v. Wade and attention turns to that. The math is not difficult. The question is merely one of timing, logistics, and ‘how much systemic ableism are we willing to exploit to get there, knowing that we CAN?’ Not a fun question to ask yourself or your family, who at least recognize why that’s a loaded issue.

        2. Viktoria

          “St Anthony of Padua came to me in a dream and told me that I have been called on to serve god in other ways than having kids, and all of my medical issues are clear proof of this, god has a plan, etc, etc.” That won’t work with everyone, not by a long shot, but it has the advantage of being very hard to argue with.

        3. Laura

          Caring and hoping for you!!!!

        4. BBCC

          All the appropriate gestures of support in the world. Godspeed, Regalli.

      6. Catullus

        Excellent comment, thank you for the detailed analysis!

      7. Spencer

        Dang, I think I gotta leave the word piles to you from now on. You’re way better at them than me.

      8. C.T. Phipps

        @Regalli

        I don’t think Becky has any care what the community thinks because Ross and company are all people she recognizes as hypocrites who hate her. Joyce was the one invested in their church. Becky is invested in GOD. Which is very different.

        1. Regalli

          It’s hard to verbalize, but while I do think there’s some inherent sting in ‘rejected by your entire community since childhood,’ I agree that she’s probably written them off by now. More that, obviously Becky knows God’s on her side, but can you IMAGINE how wrong you have to be to disagree with JOYCE, who everyone thought was the Perfect Christian Girl who knew everything, on a matter of religion? If Joyce had sided with Ross that would have killed Becky but she’d eventually moved on, because that would be loss of her best friend, (also because Becky would genuinely have been FUCKED without Joyce and her friends’ help keeping her sheltered and away from Ross,) but BECAUSE Joyce sided with Becky she now has unimpeachable Rightness on her side in a form the congregation has to undermine their own position to dismiss. Even if Becky would have survived without that validation, it still feels good to have it.

          Basically, despite her comments during the fight, I think Becky has some elements of feeling superior in or because of her faith that she accused Joyce of. See also her comment about Dina in heaven. She’s not MALICIOUS about it, usually, and she won’t keep her from being friends with someone she deems ‘wrong,’ but I think there is sometimes an element of Knowing She’s More Right Than You. Which is benign when she’s using it against other evangelicals like Mary or the congregation, because Becky knows God loves her, concretely, so fuck them. But as people have pointed out, it’s a potential point of tension with her atheist girlfriend that Becky thinks her deeply-held belief is wrong and she’ll be SO ANNOYED when she finds out, and I think it’s maybe fueling her tension with Dorothy (more than it already would be) and her willingness to reconvert Joyce. And I think Joyce’s golden child status helped fuel that, so it’s another reason why Joyce being an atheist is hard to accept. The least-important one compared to ‘what if she loses Joyce as a best friend’ and ‘Joyce as last tether to her ENTIRE CHILDHOOD, and also incidentally her surest adult ally and large chunks of their social group’ (more secure now than it was pre-timeskip, but I still don’t want to see a ‘her or me’ ultimatum,) but nonetheless a reason.

          (Seriously, I cannot stress enough how ABSOLUTELY FUCKED Becky would have been, logistically, if she didn’t have Joyce and thus all of Joyce’s friends in her corner those first couple weeks. Hank helped her open a bank account, Jocelyne helped her get what identifying information they could find and navigate not having the rest, but also Joyce’s adjoining room buddies who gave her a place to sleep and clothes to borrow, Joyce’s friends who picked up the phone and derailed from the ‘have you seen Becky’ buying them time, Joyce’s connections to Amazi-Girl and Sal who saved her in the car chase. Can’t blame Becky for forming a dependency when that was literally the case for a while there – and that assumes the dependency formed then and not some point in their childhoods, where JOYCE might also have needed BECKY for an escape from The Jordaning or something.)

        2. Laura

          What’s the story with Jordan? I couldn’t find him in the cast or tags. I know he’s an older brother but that’s all I know.

        3. thejeff

          He’s never actually appeared and we don’t know the full story.
          He broke with the family (or was pushed out?) and Joyce doesn’t know the full story. Hank said early on that he was a good kid.
          The other main clue was was when Joyce was home after the first kidnapping.

          There’s been a lot of speculation.

        4. thejeff

          Much of that speculation centers on how I forget to close tags.

        5. Regalli

          Yep. We also have indication (per one Patreon strip where he appears, Halloween-costumed, and the more recent strip at the end of Sister, Christian where Jocelyne is in Joyce’s contacts as ‘Big Brother #2’) that Jordan is between Jocelyne and Joyce in age, rather than second-oldest after John. We’re not sure how to make sense of the implied timeline there – specifically ‘how much older is Jocelyne than Joyce’ and ‘how old was Jordan when this went down’ – but that particular fact implies that it was probably… deeply unpleasant. Given how little Joyce seems to know about the situation and how little she seems to think of her next-closest sibling, it either occurred when she was too young to process things (and thus Jordan was probably Joyce’s age now or younger, which has no non-horrifying explanations,) or she was trying to avoid the biggest fights. (Thus my suggestion she was maybe staying at the Macintyres’ a lot. We know Joyce’s response to trauma tends to be Be Absolutely Perfect So No One Suspects A Thing… much like Jocelyne… up until she can’t stay quiet anymore, also much like Jocelyne, so if she does know anything it’s something she still doesn’t question, but I think she genuinely tried not to know. Unlike Walky, Joyce doesn’t try to use her Golden Child status to defuse tension, probably because her goofing around wouldn’t go over as well as the only girl in a Good Christian Family as Walky’s did as the smart funny boy.)

        6. thejeff

          We do know that even at a fairly old age, it was possible to keep things from Joyce – she never knew how Becky’s mom died and that was only last year, so it’s possible it was kept from her at an older age than we might think was reasonable at first glance.

          I’d be surprised if it happened when he was much older than Joyce is now. Hopefully not much younger.

        7. Leorale

          He’s the absent brother of Joyce’s family. We don’t know why.

          *Columbian music breaks out*
          We don’t talk about Jordan, no no no

        8. Regalli

          Jocelyne: ‘Yeah so it turns out Jordan actually had the gift of prophecy and he told our parents they’d get divorced someday before leaving forever. Weird, huh.’

          I’d buy it.

      9. milu

        REGALLI DOES IT AGAIN ?
        that was MFing epic Regalli ?

    2. C.T. Phipps

      I mean, Joyce doesn’t respect Becky at all in terms of religion.

      She LOVES Becky.

      But she doesn’t respect her.

      1. alongcameaspider

        Interestingly enough you can swap the names and it’d be just as, if not more accurate

        So far Joyce has at least respected the line in the sand drawn at Gallasso’s, Becky has now

        1. alongcameaspider

          Not*

          Stupid thumbs…

  28. DailyBrad

    Oh nice. I’d seen Willis talk about some of this re: Mullins possibly being gay in the past on tumblr, and was wondering if it’d come up.

  29. BBCC

    Dude, I’ve been to church so few times I’m pretty sure I’d still have fingers left over, but even *I* know Awesome God is a fucking ear worm. That would’ve been plain evil, Becky.

  30. Bagge

    “You represent everything she fled for”
    ?

    1. AGV

      I mean, true

    2. Queezle

      yes, Becky needed to hear that I think.

      1. Reltzik

        But did she actually hear it?

        1. Queezle

          good question. Kinda does not seem like it does it?

    3. Bobcat

      I love Lucy.

  31. Reltzik

    Huh.

    …. I THINK this is the first confirmation we’ve got that Becky’s actively trying to bring Joyce back to Jesus. Everything before that’s been mostly been: (1) insulted by Joyce’s characterization of Christianity as stupid; (2) unhappy about losing something they had in common; (3) that passive-aggressive Christian music, which I initially took to be less trying to draw Joyce back to the faith and more needling Joyce and not letting the grudge die.

    Was there previous confirmation?

    1. Florence

      That’s the tricky part with the storyline, it’s there but it’s subtle enough that it’s open to interpretation. I had this problem previously with Carla bothering Mary in the hallway with pranks, some people got that Mary was truly bad but at least I was bothered by rude behaviour that I didn’t pick up the signs.

    2. thejeff

      I think it’s been obvious that she wanted Joyce back in the faith and in that context it seemed obvious that the Rich Mullins was tied to that.
      This is I guess confirmation.

      Of course, Joyce seemed equally committed to Becky coming over to her side, even if she hasn’t done anything direct to bring her over yet.

      1. Reltzik

        Oh it struck me as the most likely scenario of the bunch, but I’m the sort that holds off on being sure until I get confirmation.

      2. Reltzik

        Also, the music bit seemed…. kinda weak as an actual reconversion attempt? So much that I had trouble wrapping my mind about the possibility that it was. But on reflection, it might have worked on an emotional “expose her to the stuff she liked about the culture” level, hoping to appeal to feelings of comfort, familiarity, etc.

  32. Laura

    Trigger warning…

    Story of Sodom is interesting. Lotta interpretations (pun intended) that aren’t about homosexuality.

    Some consider it a story about the perils of xenophobia, the imortance of harboring refugees, and the danger of misogyny. (A condemnation of Lot’s treating his daughters as property he could offer like currency, and the subsequent intergenerational violence between Lot and his daughters.)

    Some see it as a story of compassion — that Lot’s wife Edith cared so deeply for her older daughters and her sons in law that she risked the blast just to turn back to see them one last time. These days (when visiting older parents is so fraught with risk) I think many can relate to that kind of heedless, reckless, fierce love, for family members forced apart by caution and circumstance.

    But the most interesting take on the story of Sodom that I have come across recently is that it was the oral history of an asteroid strike delivering the equivalent of a nuclear blast, like the strike at Tunguska, that covered the city in a 5-ft. layer of salt and ash:
    https://theconversation.com/a-giant-space-rock-demolished-an-ancient-middle-eastern-city-and-everyone-in-it-possibly-inspiring-the-biblical-story-of-sodom-167678

    I visited the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a youth. I do want to be mindful of triggers, so I won’t describe it, but it reminded me a lot (no pun intended) of the story of Edith and her daughters, and the city and community that Edith’s daughters loved too deeply to abandon.

    For me, these are all just stories, of course. But history and stories are just as real for me. Like Utah Phillips said, “I can pick up a rock that’s older than the oldest song you know, and drop it on your foot. The past didn’t go anywhere.” Or, as my mother (who spent her childhood in US-occupied Japan, under the radioactive rain) put it, “All stories are true. And some of them actually happened.”

    1. Laura

      …Edith’s story is very similar to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The Orpheus myth is itself a retelling of many much, much older myths, from various world cultures, about people and beings who descend into death and earth, and even turn themselves to dust, to try to rescue the people (and otherworldly beings) whom they loved. It’s a story as old as the disappearing and reappearing moon or the cycle of the seasons.

      …Speaking of earworms, the “Hadestown” musical will stick in your brain for days! On the topic of xenophobia (from the story of Sodom) the stage song, “Why do we build the wall?” will shiver your timbers…

      1. Thag Simmons

        Hadestown is really goddamn good

    2. Pilgrim

      My weird Hiroshima story is driving a busload of Japanese schoolgirls past the gates of Pease AFB (home of the 509th bomb group) on the 50th anniversary of the bombing. Back in 1985 everyone (or at least the cyberpunk authors I was reading) thought Japan was going to take over the world. And there I was sitting at that stoplight I looking from the American protestors outside my windshield to the happily clueless Japanese children in my mirror wondering if they were right.

      1. Laura

        Hm. Wow. Interesting story! Thank you for sharing it!

    3. thejeff

      I looked into that asteroid strike story awhile back and while I don’t remember the details now, it was at best controversial in mainstream archeological circles, with a lot of the supposed evidence being heavily disputed.

      1. Laura

        Oh, wow, interesting! Thank you — I didn’t know that. What were the alternative hypotheses?

        1. thejeff

          Mostly I think that there didn’t really need to be an alternative hypothesis. That there’s nothing really out of the ordinary that needs to be explained.

        2. Laura

          Fascinating! Yes, I just looked it up myself. What an epic hoax! So much people want to believe. I enjoy watching “Ancient Aliens” because of its references to ancient religious history, but it’s good to remember that much of its “science” may be just as made up.

  33. Florence

    Well well well, if it isn’t Becky confirming that she’s got a problem with Joyce being atheist

    I’m any case I’m curious to see how say Dina feels about this seeing as we haven’t got her input yet, definitely some uncomfortable conversations to be had there. Cause while this is definitely about Joyce specifically, I do think Dina would still have a problem with her girlfriend who seemed so respectful of her lack of beliefs trying to manipulate an atheist into being a part of her religion.

    Also Becky’s own struggles with the cult logic of her upbringing are showing here, it’s subtle but you can see a difference between her and Lucy. It’s good to get Beckys perspective away from Joyce cause I really do feel like the negatives of their upbringing gets ignored a lot.

    Also also Beckys need to put people in boxes showing itself here, she’s still not accepted that Joyce isn’t the version that Becky has in her head and is pushing back against it.

    1. Needfuldoer

      Yup. In Becky-land, Dina can be an atheist because she always has been, but Joyce can’t because She’s Not Supposed to Be.

      1. Florence

        Exactly, it’s all about the boxes and how people can’t change once Becky has a strong idea of them. I get it though, change is dangerous in Becky land, nothing says “I’m leaving you Becky” like change does

    2. thejeff

      I think it’s much more tied to Joyce being an atheist than to Joyce being an atheist, if you see what I mean.

      And not just because it’s a change, but because it’s Joyce and Becky has always leaned on Joyce through her traumas and she’s afraid that this change will mean she’ll lose that. For anyone else it wouldn’t matter nearly so much, but this strikes at the core of what little Becky has left.

      Now, that doesn’t mean Dina won’t call her on it, but I hope she’d be able to dig a little deeper than the surface layer of it being bad form to try to push an atheist back into faith.
      I do think it might be significant that we haven’t seen her talk to Dina since. Not that she’s avoiding her necessarily, but that conversation is being saved until it’s more dramatically appropriate.

      1. Florence

        I hope it’s not too dramatic for there sake but yea, it’s definitely more specifically Joyce with how Becky operates, all of what you said covers it well.

        Also agree with Becky not necessarily avoiding in an aware way, more she doesn’t see anything wrong with what she’s doing way(same as Joyce). She might reveal it in a casual not even thinking way to realise while talking to Dina what it all means. To be more clearer while I do think there’s some uncomfortable conversations I don’t think it means ending relationship bad, I just mean they need to talk about faith cause it means a lot to Becky and nothing to Dina, and while not necessary to solve When they’re this young, it feels like some elements are haunting Becky

        1. Regalli

          It could potentially be dramatic without being a blowout fight – one of the reasons Dina’s probably being held in reserve (along with Leslie) is that they could both give Becky a reality check about how she’s being an ass to her best friend and Joyce is allowed to lose faith, and they can’t reconcile TOO quickly. Same reason Jacob can’t be around for Joyce to process things with and Joe hasn’t weighed in beyond ‘don’t put this off until it becomes a big awkward THING no one can escape from.’

        2. Florence

          That sounds so narratively good, any version of it is I think. Dina is usually there to serve the jokes so it gonna be fascinating to hear her perspective on all this. We’ve seen Dorothy as a nice atheist and Joyce as a culturally Christian atheist but where does Dina land? Nice probably but the deeper thought will be cool. I’ve heard Willis tease that Dina will get better focus in the future so maybe that’s a part of it.

  34. Bagge

    I LOVE Becky and Lucy being church-buddies. They are even color coordinated.

    1. Florence

      They are colour coordinated! And it’s good that Becky has someone to be religious with that isn’t so locked in the social group

  35. Spencer

    I can’t believe “Becky was thoughtlessly playing Rich Mullins as she was running with the old script and didn’t really consider the effect it’d have on Joyce” was the less assholish answer than “deliberately trying to drag her back to God after being told it was like tearing her organs out.”

    I’m actually outraged by this cartoon character.

    1. The Wellerman

      “Sorry about your arm. I ate it…”

      1. The Wellerman

        All this talk about ear worms and ripping arms off makes me think of the Trolli Worm commercial LOL ???

        Joyce’s brain be like this

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mGeSlNyNCi4

    2. Thag Simmons

      I feel like “BECKY NO!” is going to be a very applicable statement for the foreseeable future.

    3. Needfuldoer

      That was always intentional. Remember her shit-eating grin when she started playing it?

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2022/comic/book-12/02-ill-leave-you-a-phantom/dinnermusic/

      1. Spencer

        I do! I just thought she was being a callous moron like she usually is, I didn’t think she was caping so hard to stick Joyce back in a box after she called her a total stranger!

        1. The Wellerman

          R.I.P. good faith

        2. Lone Duck

          I wonder if Becky believes in Hell. Usually, that is the switch between Christians accepting other faiths or lack thereof, and Christians going off the deep end trying to bring you back into the fold. And it logically follows that if someone is going down a path of self-harm, you would try to reach out to them. As an atheist, I don’t believe atheism is a path of self harm. But back when I was a Christian, I did. I’d love to see a conversation between Becky and Dina about this.

        3. The Wellerman

          I bet they also thought they were “saving souls” when colonialism happened, so yeah.

        4. Heather

          There’s almost certainly, like Christians who believe they are saving souls, people who believe in the White Man’s Burden as a legitimate thing and necessity, not using it as a simple excuse for their monstrous actions like some but wholeheartedly believing it to be true. They still have to be stopped right a long with all the others committing horrible crimes against humanity of course but it’s almost fascinating in a horrifying kind of way.

          The most dangerous villain is probably the one who thinks they’re a hero. Or at least the one leading such people.

        5. Twitcher

          What about asshole atheists? My atheist sister says that there’s a strict difference between humanists and atheists who use a lack of a deity to hate on religion and do whatever they fucking want, ethics be damned.

        6. Spencer

          It’s okay to be an asshole at institutions of cultural misery at the expense of society’s undesirables.

        7. temperaryobsessor

          There are asshole athiests who make a point of hating on religion. And there are asshole’s who happen to be athiests who do whatever they want ethics be damned. And I’m sure they intersect sometimes.
          But what you described is more a TVtrope than an actual thing in my opinion.
          Religious people who describe people who use logic to determine whats right and wrong instead of an arbitrary ruleset that way are far more common.

        8. thejeff

          I don’t think so. Or at least not hell and saving atheists doesn’t seem to be her motivation. She’s talked about expecting Dina to be surprised to find heaven real, so she expects her to make it there, not be punished for her disbelief.

          If it was really about saving Joyce from Hell, I’d expect that to be aimed at Dina as well and we’ve seen no sign of that.

          In my read, this is far more a personal conflict than a traditionally religious one in that sense. Becky’s afraid of losing Joyce, since she’d recast their niche as best Christian friends rather than just best friends. Joyce becoming atheist threatens that. Becky’s insecure enough she thinks she’ll lose Joyce if they don’t have that in common anymore.

    4. Keulen

      I’ve been annoyed with Becky for some time, and her behavior in pretty much every new strip keeps reinforcing that.

      1. Spencer

        See, the actual punchline for me is that I’ve always hated Becky, except now the comic’s giving me a reason to and it rules, and I mean that as an actual, genuine positive to me.

        Becky’s always been like this, except the reason I couldn’t stand her is that she was a perpetual victim the universe just kept heaping stuff onto that other people solved. Becky never really fought, other people did that, she’d get boons handed to like a job at Galasso’s and then her thing with Robin where there’s no real struggle (and with the latter I do think there could have been more emphasis on the reality that Becky was in a position where compromising her morals was a matter of survival, but then I think Robin doing anything to make Becky compromise her morals would make Robin irredeemable so I can see why that was more or less glossed over) and then other people surrounded her with love, compassion and safety in a way that she couldn’t really give back, and that’s the source of a much larger and more complicated conversation I’m not sure how to work in here, but cliffnotes; no actually it’s cool that the homeless kid didn’t grovel in thanks all the time, it’s cool we skipped over that and just had Becky privately mull over the weight she added to Joyce’s life with occasional flaring to the surface. I’ve also been in the position of taking in a homeless best friend and you’d betcher ass I’d do it again. That’s love, baby.

        Getting a little Authorial Intent for a second, I think that’s because prior to the timeskip, Becky was in a position where focusing on her negative traits as a person was harder for two reasons:

        One is that Becky’s dependency on Joyce happened as a result of massive amounts of world-shaking trauma. I called her a perpetual victim above and that’s correct, she was being victimized by her dad, her old life, and then, y’know, the cruel realities of homelessness. She was suffering enough bullshit that “being annoying to Dorothy and not apologizing” didn’t really feel like a big deal, it just got tiresome as it kept happening. Which is why their rejigerred dynamic by way of them both acting the exact same but with what I theorize to be a mutual attempt at earning each other’s friendships is doing things for me.

        Two is that prior to now, we had no reason to think of them as negative traits. Becky has always been Like This, but Joyce was always Like That and it was an accepted standard for the entire cast that treating her like a dad-punching, emotional constipation resolving teddy bear that it’s okay to repeatedly laugh at because she’s a fundie weirdo who believes dumb things. Then Joyce stepped out of her box and the entire status quo has crumbled, and that’s great because the existing status quo was total bullshit. Becky’s just the character who relied most on that existing status quo and, without an actively antagonistic force in her life feeding her dependency on Joyce, we’re in a position where she can start coming out of it as she realizes her wrongdoings without, y’know, having to think about sleeping on other peoples’ couches.

        Six years after her introduction, Becky’s been put in a place of stability and forward momentum where she doesn’t have an evil dad hanging over her ginger noggin that we can start delving into her darker traits, which is catnip for me as I only like characters in this series if I viscerally hate their guts every once in a while.

        TLDR: Dating Dina used to be Becky’s only redeeming feature and now I wrote big ol’ word piles on what makes her tick, and that’s gucci.

        1. C.T. Phipps

          Wow, Spencer, you have got a very big set of issues with Becky teasing Dorothy.

          And yes, light teasing apparently really ticked you off.

        2. Spencer

          “She was suffering enough bullshit that “being annoying to Dorothy and not apologizing” didn’t really feel like a big deal”

          – Spencer the XIIth, 833 BC, addressing the senate and finding them in contempt before his execution.

          As an aspiring author, it’s good to know that I don’t gotta read too well before publishing my own work.

        3. smolgrlboi

          for what it’s worth I am an avid reader and 100% agree with you on Becky. very often conflicts between good friends like her and Joyce are not pretty, and I actually appreciate the comic for showing this. someone using not-so-nice wording doesn’t mean they’re wrong, and someone being (seemingly) polite does not mean they are correct. I feel like a lot of people focus too much on the tone of the arguments characters make over the intent and meaning. sure, Joyce is kind of annoying in her atheism right now… cuz it’s stemming directly from violent trauma caused by her belief system. of course she’s not going to be perfectly eloquent right outta the box. it’s like people forget this is a cast of college students who are figuring out how to be functioning adults or something, and that shit ain’t always pretty.

        4. Doongus

          Spencer… this is a Wendy’s and I’m a week late.

  36. Acher4

    That fourth panel.
    It’s so nice seeing them talking normally and some good sense being spelled out. 🙂

  37. Thag Simmons

    It feels significant that Becky has yet to discuss this with Dina in any capacity

    1. Florence

      It’ll be interesting to see how Becky talk about this with Dina too, like Becky clearly doesn’t perceive this as wrong

      1. Mr.Morningstar

        It’s weird. She has no issues with Dinas atheism, like at all. In fact she appreciates it since it Dina does not dumb down scientific explanations to placate her upbringing. It just Joyce being an atheist now thats bothering her alot. I get the idea that people dont like change but this is just pure hypocrisy.

      2. alongcameaspider

        It seems like it’s pretty clearly leading to a big fight between Becky and Dina, like I dont see Dina reacting to “Joyce is Atheist now” any way other then “holy shit this is AWESOME” and Becky clearly doesn’t think Joyce being Atheist as something that’s acceptable

  38. Amós Batista

    You know one thing that’s bothering me about the history of Rich Mullins? In this week, some people posted articles here in comments, arguing the singer could be gay. And today strip, Lucy’s bringing it to Becky.
    This theory exist, at least. And, again, I would love he’s beening homo. BUT at same time, I hate when everybody supposed his sexuality only because he didn’t had an default male role.
    Not engaging with someone until your 40’s? You’re gay. Playing delicate instruments, like harp? Gay. Do you cry often? Ops, homo. Are you into dancing, tarot, or like purple shirts? Haha gay.
    Look, what I’m complaining is not about homossexuality. Is about masculinity. Is about what they expecting a guy should be. About everybody expecting our boys looking for been real machos, that are gross and stupid.

    1. Laura

      I hear that! It’s just a confluence of hints though, not all about gender roles.

      1. The Wellerman

        The gender binary can suck my octagon!!!

    2. Spencer

      I agree at least conceptually wrt the impact toxic masculinity has on what constitutes male gender roles, but on the flipside, a lot of what gets talked about when we float “this famous artist was queer” is just about the only expression that’ll ever exist, because they lived and died in a time where they weren’t allowed to say it out loud.

      At a base level I am a little uncomfortable playing Guess Who with the sexualities of the dead, but then maybe they coulda been open about it had they not lived in the mid-20th century and we’re catching up. It’s not like the secrets of past icons have ever been sacrosanct in any other circumstance.

      Freddie Mercury’s going down in history as a gay dude even though he wrote a romantic love song for a woman that he referred to as the love of his life. We’re never gonna get the chance to ask him, and so a man who loved men and women is going to have one of those erased, because erasing it is what led to the straights liking him in the first place, and now that heteronormative Straight/Gay binary has successfully downplayed that he loved women.

      1. The Wellerman

        Bi-Erasure like that is why I now find the Bohemian Rhapsody movie especially cringe-worthy at those parts.

    3. Arian

      I don’t recall ever hearing that he might have been gay, but I did hear he was talking to a Catholic priest and might have been considering becoming a Catholic, except he was killed first. That would *really* have infuriated his fundy fans.

  39. Florence

    As someone who is not a fan of Beckys ACTIONS I don’t think Lucy is that bad. I mean it’s bad but it’s the same level of normal bad conflict avoidance that Dorothy does. Unless she can confirm she knows more about the situation I think it’s safe to say that Becky is misleading her, maybe even herself

    1. thejeff

      That line about “You represent everything she fled for” does a lot to make me feel better about Lucy here.

      1. Florence

        Yea, unless I see something showing Lucy being in the know it just seems to be a supportive friend who doesn’t have all the info. Like Lucy ain’t playing that big a part here, she’s just suggesting songs

  40. Eldritchy

    Lucy is earning lots of MVP points here.

    1. Queezle

      MVP points?

      1. Eldritchy

        Most Valuable Player

        1. Queezle

          ah thank you

  41. Lone Duck

    When you’re a new atheist, at least in my experience in a predominantly Christian society, there is a trying period where people assume “Joyce is only an atheist because of this”, “If I could just say the right thing, her soul could be saved”. And churches repeat this idea, that bringing people to the Lord is a duty. And so people will try to convert you, some more than others, but especially people who were close to you as a Christian. What didn’t help was that Joyce, in that fundamentalist mindset, switched to Atheism, tried to convert Becky to atheism. Both Becky and Joyce have been bad actors here. They’ll understand each other more when they stop trying to use understanding as a tool of conversion.

    1. thejeff

      More I think they have to accept that they don’t have to agree on faith to be best friends. Especially since it’s becoming clear that they never really did, even if it looked that way superficially.

  42. Rabisch

    Nice to see that Lucy and Becky are friends and not only colleagues. Them both seem to have difficulty to make friends, this is reality a good news.

  43. anonymsly

    Becky, if you want Joyce not to be mad at you… maybe DON’T ignore what she told you flat-out at the amount of pain (like ripping out her own organs) she’s been experiencing and maybe try being loving to your friend instead of digging a knife into the gut-hole and twisting it around just in case ‘knife’ is an acceptable replacement for ‘kidney’.

    1. Spencer

      yeah but like

      Joyce totally said ‘invisible sky wizard’

      and that’s just as bad

      you need to be nice to the thing that caused you misery or else you’re problematic

    2. Keulen

      Becky pretty much ignored what Joyce said months ago about how if one of the things their church told her was wrong then everything their religion taught them was a lie, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s ignored this more recent important thing Joyce told her too.

  44. hof1991

    Of course Becky and Lucy are buddies. Lucy is just Joyce from the other dorm.

  45. Adept

    He was definitely gay.

  46. Diane

    Poor gaydar, just like Amber. Maybe living in the state of Indiana messes with it.

  47. Thomas O.

    Sierra’s feet are probably petrified, much like Adam Sandler’s version of Mr. Deeds.

  48. RedComet

    I don’t think we really have to feel mad at anyone here. They’re all figuring things out, talking out loud. Being honest with each other about their feelings. It’s fine if they’re messy for literally two days.

    I like this a *lot* more than Joyce painfully pretending and Becky being ignorant.

    It’s really cool seeing this conversation between Lucy and Becky, offering an outside religious perspective. Of course Dorothy isn’t helpful here – It’s outside of her wheelhouse. But Lucy has religion, and most likely has non-religious friends.

  49. Reaver

    How do I unread that hovertext…

  50. Jennifer Bak

    “Please, Skydaddy, step on me” would make an excellent album name!! XD

  51. temperaryobsessor

    Either Becky or I misunderstood what Joyce inviting Becky to mac and cheese meant.
    Cause to my it sounded a lot like. Okay your still a Christian and I’m an Athiest now but hey we can still give each other a chance now that its out in the open.

    1. Daibhid C

      Reminder that Joyce is waiting for Becky to come to the same realisation she did, as all intelligent people must, and has flat-out said so to her.

      These two are doing exactly the same thing, just in opposite directions.

      1. thejeff

        It wasn’t entirely clear – and still isn’t.
        Joyce did say that, multiple times, but the invitation to KD came after they both passionately defended their current beliefs and agreed they really were like strangers, so it can be read as a “Can we be friends anyway?” gesture.

        We’ll see if Joyce doubles down again in the aftermath.

        1. alongcameaspider

          Yeah, at least thus far Joyce has respected the line in the sand drawn when they talked at Gallasso’s

          Becky has not so at this moment Becky is coming off worse to me

      2. Spencer

        Yeah that’s the difference.

        Joyce is waiting, and she’ll be waiting forever. She’s wrong, God doesn’t mean the same thing to Becky as it does her, but the only time she’s outright said “become an atheist, like me” to Becky was when Becky started tearing up at the prospect of Joyce leaving her behind forever.

        Becky’s trying to manipulate her back by yanking at the ol’ God strings.

  52. Daibhid C

    Okay, so Becky wasn’t playing Rich Mullins just to needle Joyce, as I thought.

    This is … not better.

  53. Undead Hippo

    NB: Sierra has not had her feet on panel in the comic since 2016. Is she still barefoot? Or has she been wearing shoes for the last 7 years, making a hollow sham of her rep?

  54. Dr. T

    Well, I can state definitively that if I were in Joyce’s place I certainly would resent someone who knows that I had an issue with having someone force a religious ideology on me growing up then try to force their own religious ideology on me after learning that I finally made my own choice on that front. Maybe don’t do that if you want to maintain some relationship with Joyce.

    Conversely, Joyce needs to respect Becky’s choices, which she really has not.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      I admit this is really crappy of Becky.

      Becky can resent Joyce smacktalking her behind her back and lying to her but this is just manipulative.

  55. Florence

    I think what I love the most about this arc is that it isn’t actually about religion but that 2 people experienced traumatic revelations about their childhoods, families and communities that they could connect on but won’t because that same upbringing has forced them too view their relationships in how it relates religiously. And while they both can make that leap with everyone else, they can’t do it with each other cause their the last good thing they have from their original homes

    There’s a whole lot of cultural baggage that follows the specifics but there’s something beautifully tragic about this all

  56. Inbar Fink

    Man, I have a LOT of different thoughts and feelings about this page. I’m gonna try and list them.

    1. Becky’s “Operation Emotionally Manipulate Joyce Back to Christianity” is a huge Dick Move – but I do understand what’s happening with her emotionally as a character. She has become super-emotionally-dependent on Joyce after the emotionally tumultuous few months and she had already convinced herself that Joyce being an atheist automatically means Joyce drifting away from her. Joyce herself has made Mistakes regarding the matter, such as *not actually assuring Becky that she doesn’t think she’s stupid for being a believer* but it’s also kinda a self-fulfilling prophecy on Becky’s part. By not accepting Joyce’s atheism, Becky IS ruining her friendship with Joyce.

    2. But what about Lucy? Lucy shouldn’t have any emotional stake in Joyce’s faith or lack therefor. Is she actually trying to help Becky out of same vague cultural notion of “losing your faith = bad”? Just her general Niceness pushing her to try and help and comfort Becky? Or does she understand that what Becky’s doing is pretty Bad and she’s trying to gently nudge her away from there by assuring her that Joyce doesn’t hate her?

    3. So Becky DID choose these songs intentionally and didn’t just pull a Rich Mullins Essentials playlist on Zoomer Music. But also it seems like her main mindset for selecting was “songs that don’t have the ‘fire and brimstone stuff fo the fundies’ stuff in them”. That helps explain the strained awkward smile when Joyce explained what “Elijah” is about. Just “Oh no this song is actually way heavier than I wanted it to be help!”

  57. Mr.Morningstar

    Oh Becky, trying to emotionally manipulate you’re longest friend into regressing into a belief system she has made plainly clear has cause her no end of pain because you dont like that she doesnt believe the same things as you anymore.

    Honestly can people just call Becky out for her shit please, this is getting extremely frustrating how everyone is just

    Kind of okay with it. She could get away with murder and no one would bat an eye at this rate

    Becky needs to seriously re evaluate herself.

    1. Spriteless Auntie

      I mean, it’s shitty, but it’s also so typical I feel it’s boring to comment about. You know, it’s not just Becky who does this. In the military I had a lot of conversations about “athiests in foxholes” and asked, is that true? Let’s get all the people who’ve been shot at that we know and ask them if it’s true. Upon asking them, it became clear that people making the “athiests in foxholes” had the ability to very selectively decide what counted as what. Like they had been gaslit on the affair so much they thought that kind of thing was the normal way a community dealt with athiests. It’s so very normal that even Lucy, who’s drama armor, does it.

      And it makes people boring, because they don’t adapt and change in certain ways.

  58. Axel_Grease

    I’m not crying you’re crying.

  59. JBento

    Sooo, I know the world has pretty much gone to shit, but hey, there’s a spot of great news:

    https://gizmodo.com/hell-yeah-knives-out-for-2022-baby-1848405067

    1. milu

      oh hey Jaybee i watched Clue last night after you shamelessly BULLIED me into it, and i’m pleased to announce i am now officially allowed back on the internet! yayyyy \o/

      …oh and it was delightful, thank you =P

      1. JBento

        Welcome back! \o/

        And of course it was.

  60. Amós Batista

    Just telling everybody, specally Milu: the DoA mega-strip video montage will be lauching tomorrow.

    1. Amós Batista

      Just telling everybody, specially Milu: the DoA mega-strip video montage will be lauch tomorrow.

      1. milu

        hallelujah! B)

        1. The Wellerman

          Hey is it OK if I also release a big project of mine that same day?

        2. milu

          Fine by me, thanks for asking, what do you say Amos?

        3. The Wellerman

          By the way check your inbox!

        4. Amós Batista

          No problem, but it will be funny if we got the same idea.

  61. Carms

    Hahah lookit Becky just being a walking lesbian flag, good onya Becks

  62. Carms

    also it’s looking more and more like Joyce was a closeted atheist for a LOONG time. She felt like a fraud every Sunday. She put her brain through absolutely wild, convoluted gymnastics to make her church’s teachings make sense, because faith was insufficient. In the same way the internalised homophobia can cause the closeted to especially outspoken in their homophobia, Joyce’s overbearing godbotheringness was fuelled by desperate denial that atheism made more sense to her.

    I’m sure this take was spaken several time under the ‘Sunday morning Wisdom’ pages. but w/e

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