233

Life-alterin’
Posted on December 27, 2021 by David M Willis

233 thoughts on “Life-alterin’”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Hey, I didn’t order any feels with my pizza!

    =C

    1. Kyrik Michalowski

      Those come free when you sit in Be ky’s area.

      1. Kyrik Michalowski

        Becky*

        1. TemplarKnight

          Oh no, there’s no taking it back now. Be ky’s epic rap career starts NOW!

      2. ValdVin

        I’d at least Becky to take the feels off my pizza and serve them to me on a separate plate.

        1. Ana Chronistic

          That seems like a health code violation

  2. Kyrik Michalowski

    Oh boy, this is going to be depressing. Just what I needed around the holidays.

    So who thinks this is going to turn into a shouting match before long?

    1. RassilonTDavros

      Honestly, I think we’ve had the shouting match out already. It’s gonna be an uncomfortable conversation, sure, but personally I don’t think it’s gonna go back to yelling again.

      1. Kyrik Michalowski

        I certainly hope not, I don’t want Becky to lose her job over this.

        1. TrueVCU

          I dunno I can see Galasso being low key into absorbing 3rd party drama

        2. Bladeglory

          *scribble scribble*
          *scribble scribble*
          “…Boss, what’re ya doin’?”
          “Do not mind Galasso! Continue having your ‘words’ while Galasso hides behind this wall with his notepad surreptitiously”
          “um… you were saying, Becky?”
          “…honestly can’t remember now”
          “Curses! My own overwhelming presence has interrupted my subjects of research!”

        3. Concolor44

          The Uncertainty Principle strikes again! Observation of the event alters the event.

        4. eh, whatever

          Interaction with the event alters the event. Whether the interaction is an “observation” is wholly irrelevant.

        5. The Wellerman

          Right! Say, are you a physicist? ?

        6. Ryek Hvek

          Every baby boomer was a Fizzies-cist. ?

        7. Fay

          Galasso said in the past that he had no problem with Sydney Yus shouting at customers, he only fired her for intentionally bringing people the wrong orders.

        8. Needfuldoer

          Galasso fired Sydney for failing to intimidate customers, leaving them merely baffled.

          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-7/01-glower-vacuum/prattering/

        9. Regalli

          If a customer fears you enough they don’t ask for the order to be corrected, THEN it is acceptable. You don’t pull that move unless you, like the mighty Galasso, are too overwhelming to be challenged.

          This is how we know Sydney Yus has much to learn before they can challenge Galasso for control of the pizza parlor. They’re probably hoping Connie’s an easier target. They are, of course, wrong.

        10. Thag Simmons

          Eh, if Sydney Yus is still working there…

      2. justin8448

        I agree. This conversation is already several levels deeper than I was expecting, and many more levels deeper than their previous argument. We’re getting almost immediately into some deep truths of both of their characters, and they both seem prepared to not only engage each other, but to take a self-aware look at themselves too.

        We’re in uncomfortable-but-necessary territory.

    2. The Wellerman

      I dunno. I mean honestly, “definitely words said by a super adult person” is kind of open to interpretation.

      But i can’t shake the feeling that this exchange is gonna have a bittersweet end at best ☹

    3. newlland(Henryvolt)

      I prefer that than another heated conflict.

  3. brute

    she’s gonna be so upset when she finds out about those edibles

    1. Kyrik Michalowski

      Does Becky know what edibles are? She just used “doobie” which is hilariously old.

      1. Kyrik Michalowski

        For anyone curious, “doobie” was popular in the late 60’s to 70’s.

        1. The Wellerman

          Thank you. I will now see the Doobie Brothers in a whole new light. ?

        2. Opus the Poet

          The light which they desired. The choice of name was deliberate.

        3. The Wellerman

          And to think almost nobody knows about this light. Care to guess why?

          #LegalizeIt!

        4. Thulcandran

          I mean, mostly because slang has marched on? When they were popular, the vast majority of their audience got the reference. But it’s been 50 years; it wouldn’t make sense to expect people who grew up with the references of joints/weed to get references to roaches/doobies.

        5. StClair

          Whaddyamean, slang has marched on? I’m just as hep as I’ve ever been, daddio.

        6. Needfuldoer

          I saw them live a couple years ago. They’ve still got it!

    2. Fay

      I think even Joyce knew those “edibles” were fake, lol.

  4. Hazel

    WELP.

    Unhealthy!

  5. alongcameaspider

    Becky is placing a lot of emotional burden on Joyce’s shoulders without any regard for Joyce’s well being

    1. C.T. Phipps

      I mean that’s what happens when you are traumatized and need comfort and find out your closest friend thinks you’re a moron.

      1. alongcameaspider

        Traumatized? needing comfort? That sounds like Joyce as well you know, trade the moron bit for “friends condescendingly treat you like a naive child” and it describes her to a tee

        1. alongcameaspider

          Also Becky’s implying here that she’s been using Joyce as an emotional crutch since she ran away from her old college, possibly the entire time she’s known Joyce, long before the argument they had

        2. Clif

          I think it goes a bit beyond implying.

        3. alongcameaspider

          Ultimately they both deserve a healthier relationship then the one they’ve had and hopefully this storyline leads to that

        4. Fay

          I feel like that was already implied for a long time, this is just the first time Becky has explicitly said it. Her friendship with Joyce is probably like the one source of stability in her life. That and her form of faith are probably the only things from her upbringing she’s really been able to keep.

        5. C.T. Phipps

          Basically, Becky can’t be a rock to Joyce right now because she’s devastated.

          Which is perfectly normal.

        6. alongcameaspider

          But Becky has never been a rock for Joyce

          Remember the last time Joyce expressed anger at their upbringing to Becky Becky told her it was a stupid phase she needed to grow out of

          When do Joyce’s problems get to matter?

        7. C.T. Phipps

          Yes, TWICE has Becky not been there for Joyce and only related to her atheism.

          But EVERYTHING ELSE doesn’t count?

        8. keoShine

          When has Becky ever, unselfishly and unprompted, been there for Joyce in the ways Joyce has been expected to be there for Becky..? Joyce stood up to Becky’s father at gunpoint to protect her because Becky needed her.. Becky, in response, tells Joyce to grow the fuck up when she expresses the slightest bit of anger at the fact that the people whomst raised them (which includes and supports the aforementioned father that held them at gunpoint) were the fucking worst and maybe the cult they were raised in actually was fucking awful..

        9. Psi Baka Onna

          There’s also the stint in the opticians. Becky kept undermining Joyce’s need to fix her eyesight until Dorothy pointed out Becky was being a brat. Eye sight is important, Dorothy shouldn’t have needed to guilt trip Becky to make her support her friend. Even then it’s hard to tell how much of Becky’s behaviour changed because Dorothy made good points and how much was because of Becky’s desire to out perform Dorothy in regards to friendship points…

        10. Keulen

          This. Seems like Joyce always has to be there for Becky no matter what, while Becky almost never even tries to be there for Joyce when Joyce needs a friend to help her.

        11. thejeff

          And Becky went back home with Joyce, into the maw of that cult, to support her.

        12. Spencer

          Doing a quick check, Becky definitely tells Joyce that she’s coming with because she doesn’t want Joyce to face her parents alone, but I dunno if Becky was strictly aware she was at “maw of that cult” levels yet.

        13. thejeff

          Well, she knew enough to know that Joyce was traumatized by the thought of going home and needed support. She waited to see Hank’s initial reaction before revealing herself. She knew their old church. She pretty clearly knew what she was getting into.

          After Hank’s positive reaction she might have hoped Carol would be the same, but I doubt it was more than hope.

        14. Spencer

          Becky has been a rock to Joyce one time.

          Which is a shame, since that one time she did, Becky was really good at it.

      2. Mr.Morningstar

        Except it’s clear that Becky is more upset about the Atheism then the condescension.

        And, yeah bad Joyce for being an isufferable ass about the Aetheism, but I can forgive that since that is very common for new Aetheists, especially those who grew up in suuuuuper religious homes, and most grow out of it.

        1. thejeff

          But we also see a glimpse into why Becky is upset about the atheism and it’s not as simple as it might seem. Can we also have some forgiveness for the other girl who grew up in that super religious environment and is scared of loosing the last tie to her childhood.

        2. LaBelle

          This. Absolutely this. No one but Dorothy has shown Joyce any grace for finding where she’s supposed to be an atheist. No one gave her a guide, she’s just trying to figure out how this works. I feel for her, as someone who also became an atheist during college (though I had a MUCH less aggressive upbringing).

    2. anonymsly

      Becky does a lot of things that put burden on Joyce without reciprocating by taking on some of Joyce’s. With a few exceptions (the thankfully unseen for a while game of ‘lean on Joyce’s neuroses until she goes briefly catatonic because her face is funny that way’ being a big one) they’re not cruel so much as thoughtless. Becky doesn’t actually think much about Joyce’s needs, thoughts, feelings, or desires on her own. Once someone straight-up shows her a line (Joyce can’t walk alone or she’ll panic) or tells her the best thing to do (Dorothy coaching her during the glasses thing) she’s a champ at following directions. But left to it, she doesn’t really think about Joyce at all.

      At this point, I’m betting it’s because basically Joyce is Becky’s teddy bear, not a friend. Not a real person or a real relationship, like Becky and Dina or even at this point Becky and Dorothy. So long as Becky could still see the same Joyce as when she was little, Becky felt safe. But She can see that less and less now: Joyce has glasses. Joyce eats pizza without the sausage picked off. Joyce is an ATHEIST.

      To Becky, this is like coming home and finding the old shabby patchy bear is wearing a red beret, smoking a joint, and plotting the downfall of the military-industrial complex via strategic cookie delivery. Like okay, there isn’t actually anything WRONG with any of that, but it’s not your bear. You can’t imagine cuddling with this weird plush baking revolutionary. And it’s been happening for weeks or months and you didn’t know, so you actually lost your bear a lot longer than you think.

      And like, the solution for Becky is: treat Joyce like a person and trust that if she’s loved you since she was a toddler she ain’t stopping now. Joyce is still Joyce, she is a human bulldozer who never stopped loving someone just because it was hard for a minute. Accept that she’s going to grow, use those excellent communications skills you’ve developed with Dina, and be prepared to share in turn. You will both be happier and stronger.

      1. StClair

        Agreed, IMO.

      2. Ereb

        Your comment is both hilarious and insightful. Agreed!

      3. The Wellerman

        ? That was beautiful.

        *sniff*

      4. Keulen

        This is a really good description and analogy of how Becky seems to treat Joyce.

        Also, I would love to have a weird baking joint-smoking communist plush teddy bear.

        1. The Wellerman

          Yeah, I’d like one of those too!

          It’d make a neat toy story ?

      5. The Wellerman

        ” All that is solid melts into air,
        All that is holy is deconsecrated,
        And the human at last is compelled to face the reality
        Of their condition,
        Of their relationship with other mortals,
        Under sober circumstances. “

      6. Josie

        I need the ability to ‘love” this comment….

    3. thumb

      It’s a conversation. Between people who are/were close and are having a falling out. What do you expect that to be like?

    4. Amelie Wikström

      Well, now maybe Joyce can tell Becky if she needs some support instead of going on like a seventh grader’s Atheism textbook. That could help.

    5. justin8448

      And Joyce also showed up at her workplace to confront her about a personal matter.

      Sure, we the audience know that Joyce intends to make amends. But that still doesn’t make it ok.

      Don’t confront people at their place of work Joyce!

      1. Nova

        Everyone who says this seems to be conveniently forgetting that Joyce was pressured to go fix this right-now-or-no-mac-n-cheese.

        Joyce just can’t win with this comment section, I swear.

        1. alongcameaspider

          I mean, she could have waited til after Becky’s shift to do this

          But also maybe that was her intention, get lunch, ask Becky if they can talk when she gets off of work, but then Becky decided to force the conversation

          Is that likely? I don’t think so, but it’d be a reasonable course of action

  6. RassilonTDavros

    …Ow.

    I guess this confirms that Becky had suspected something all along, maybe? “I knew, one day, you’d leave me behind?” I wonder if Becky’s understood Joyce’s faith– or rather, the fact that she never really had any– from the very beginning.

    1. Kyrik Michalowski

      Joyce clearly had faith in god for a while, but ironically Becky is probably the number 1 reason she became an atheist.

      Between her mom trying to justify Toe-dad doing what he did, hearing the phrase “I would die for you” after Toe-dad says it, and the reaction from her church. I would be reconsidering god too.

      1. C.T. Phipps

        I think Joyce might very well have never believed in God in any active sense. Just was part of the God believing culture.

      2. ischemgeek

        Tbh I don’t think Joyce had faith.

        I think she knows how to memorize and parrot what she’s been told, but that’s not the same as faith.

        Like, fuck. I was raised in the libertarian prepper scène (Canada has one too) and brainwashed to think my country was going to break down into civil war any five minutes from now. I knew very well how to parrot those beliefs and values because they were necessary for survival, but those values weren’t and aren’t my values. I just didn’t have enough mental space and safety to figure it out till I went away for university. I think Joyce is in the same boat: what she’s been brainwashed to think hasn’t ever been a good fit for her own values since she’s been old enough to have values, but it’s only after going to university that she had the space and experience to question it.

        1. Spencer

          I read recently that here in Canada, the ability for right-wing beliefs to propagate through online misinformation happens extremely fast here in comparison even to the States.

          Which is alarming, but not at all surprising.

        2. Thag Simmons

          It really doesn’t help that Canadians can be pretty smug and assume we’re immune to or somehow above the problems ailing the States.

        3. Spencer

          Oh, god, tell me about it.

          We are not the nice apartment over a meth lab, no matter what the incredibly pleasant and wonderful Robin Williams had to say.

        4. PhoenixBoi

          I may be biased because this is what I was, but I think she may have convinced herself she had faith when she actually didn’t. Maybe with some faith Actually manifesting sometimes.

    2. Jamie

      It kinda puts that “Don’t change” in a different light, yeah.

    3. tim gueguen

      I think it’s more a case of Becky thinking that Joyce is a better person than her, with more potential for a happy life.

    4. Nathan

      I think less in the specific “you will leave Christianity” sense and more “You are going to leave this world and go to college/move away/make new friends/etc and I am going to be left behind in this life I hate.”

      1. Nono

        But Becky didn’t hate Christianity. She didn’t hate the Browns. She didn’t even hate college til she got busted for being a lesbian.

        1. Regalli

          She did, however, hate the expectation that she’d marry a dude and homeschool their kids Proper Christian Teachings and that was the danged extent of her allowed aspirations. Even if Becky had been straight, the way she took to biology the MOMENT she had access to real textbooks suggests that she wouldn’t have been happy as a housewife at all. (Neither would Joyce, for that matter, who when allowed to REALLY IMAGINE what she wants to do with her life goes straight for the wildly adventurous and aspirational fighter pilot.)

          Becky’s managing now, but her living situation has consistently been pretty precarious (or her being unable to recognize that, for example, Leslie almost certainly WOULD prioritize the homeless lesbian who reminds her of her younger self over a new relationship if it had come to that.) Even now, her scholarship is dependent on declaring a major she doesn’t actually care about. She’s handling it pretty well on the whole, but it is still a balancing act. If Sal desperately needs to, she can live with her parents after graduation until she can move out. It’d be terrible for her, but she can. Becky doesn’t have even that deeply flawed safety net anymore, and her closest parental equivalent is Joyce’s dad.

    5. Regalli

      Not necessarily. Remember, Becky’s been in love with Joyce since strip 1, most likely, and I suspect she has the same kind of pedestaling adoration for Joyce that Joyce has for Dorothy. Like, of COURSE everyone at IU would love Joyce, because how could you not? Loving Joyce is the good and sensible thing to do. (I think she also has some pedestaling of Dina going on, given the asexuality discussion.) But so long as Joyce was Christian, and their particular brand, then they had this shared upbringing and shared faith that would keep Becky as Joyce’s best friend forever with the strongest and best bond. Then Becky comes here from Anderson and Joyce has a cool new college best friend, and Becky gets jealous and scared (especially because Becky’s running away and all.) But Dorothy’s an atheist, so even if Becky’s still jealous and scared and possessive, she still has the Christianity Bond to Joyce that means in Becky’s mind, she’s still number one. Only now Joyce is an atheist too and so I suspect Becky’s worried about losing number one best friend status to Dorothy because they’re atheist friends together. (Of course, A: Joyce’s best friendship doesn’t work that way, she loves Becky and Dorothy in different ways for different reasons, and B: even without the Christianity, they’re still childhood best friends and the ‘so in hindsight we grew up in a cult’ aspect is a shared experience none of their other friends can truly understand. Except possibly Liz, who has left the strip for Facebook frienddom once more. Even then I suspect her upbringing was at least slightly less cultish, if only because then Sarah would likely be a bit more familiar with things like ‘Frozen was banned because it promotes the idea that parents can be fallible.’)

      1. Rose by Any Other Name

        … agreed. I too thought that comment was about the torch that Becky has carried for Joyce since forever.

      2. Fay

        Yep, I feel like Becky feels like she losing the last thing that made her friendship with Joyce “special”. And after losing so much else in her life, that hitting extra hard.
        I know Becky acts happy-go-lucky, but that girl needs a buttload of therapy, probably even more so than Joyce.

        1. Regalli

          I do not rank who needs therapy most in this strip except in terms of ‘who is a simmering pot of trauma that will eventually boil over but hasn’t quite yet versus who is currently and actively imploding and needs immediate intervention.’ Because dear god, all of them need competent trauma-informed therapy, none of them are getting it, and at least one of them has been actively traumatized by therapy itself. (Sal apparently had some TERRIBLE experiences after the convenience store holdup, recall.) These poor kids.

  7. Nono

    Y’know, just wondering, who first introduced the term ‘hanky-panky’ to them? I can’t imagine any adult saying ‘yes kids, that’s what it’s called when two adults get together. Hanky-panky’ with a completely straight face.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      I could see Mr. Brown doing it.

    2. Jamie

      Or “canoodle”. Which is a term I hadn’t heard before this comic.

    3. Paradoxius

      Almost certainly within a phrase like “I don’t want anyone getting up to any hanky-panky”

    4. khn0

      Kids introduce each others to this kind of terms, especially when there are slighty older kids around. So certain terms, songs or gimmicks slide all the scale from teens in their 20 until kindergateners.

  8. Stephen Bierce

    *the reprise of “Vesti La Giubba” from the score of Pagliacci plays from the jukebox*

  9. BBCC

    Well, at least they’re talking to each other in semi-productive ways. Yay!

  10. Rocket Relm

    I wasn’t expecting this angle of strike, and we can hit the very core of a lot of the issues they have. Before this comic I didn’t see a way it *could* get in some way resolved by the bookend, but now I do.

  11. Suet

    You could still google what a kegstand is, you two

    1. thejeff

      You don’t college properly by googling.

    2. KiaStirling

      Joyce isn’t falling for that again. She knows Urban Dictionary holds the forbidden knowledge.

  12. newlland(Henryvolt)

    Well I guess Becky did spend how long being in love with Joyce and picked a moment in time that was a major turning point for both of them.

  13. The Wellerman

    ☹ This just went really……..

    A lot of emotions are going on right now. I don’t even know if some of them have names.

    You know what? I don’t have nearly enough energy to process this right now.

    So unless somebody here wants to tell me what they like on their sausages, or what horror movies they’re gonna watch soon, I guess I’m just gonna see myself out for now.

    1. PirateTawnee

      I don’t like things *on* my sausages, I like things by the side, so I can dip. Similar to the condiments on fries argument, which is usually good for a “oh no people have stronger opinions than me” thread.

      1. The Wellerman

        Alright then. What do you like to dip it in?

        1. Agemegos

          *ahem*

        2. The Wellerman

          Yes Chef?

        3. Agemegos

          Phrasing.

        4. The Wellerman

          Uh… I was talking about sausages and condiments?

    2. alongcameaspider

      Sausage is best crumbled up in gravy and poured over biscuits

      1. Kyrik Michalowski

        That sounds delicious except for the part including sausage. Sausage should be served on the side as a sausage patty. NEVER put sausage in gravy and then serve it, have some humanity on the world.

        1. thejeff

          Biscuits in sausage gravy are delicious. One of the few bits of traditional Southern cuisine I actually like.

          Of course, like a lot of folk cooking it likely originated as a way to stretch the little meat available. Everyone gets some sausage flavor spread out through the gravy even when there wasn’t enough sausage for everyone to get a decent sized piece.

          Of course, now I’m also longing for bangers and mash.

    3. anonymsly

      If it’s like a bratwurst in a bun, I like chopped onions sometimes. (I am not fond of hot dogs, polish dogs, or most kielbasa, but I can choke them down with ketchup.

      If I can successfully win a tasty sausage not wrapped in bread, I like to slice it up and dip slices in a nice sharpish spicyish brown mustard. I think it’s German. My dad buys it somewhere and I steal it.

      1. Ed Callahan

        Hot dogs with ketchup?! You’ll never be allowed in Chicago again. Also, deep dish pizza forever.

    4. Rose by Any Other Name

      Fuckin’ love me some chori pollo.

      Is the chicken on the chorizo, or is the chorizo on the chicken?
      Nobody knows. That’s the magic.

    5. not someone else

      The only sausage I like is breakfast sausage, so I like an over hard fried egg, some sliced cheddar, and a round croissant or biscuit on mine.

    6. milu

      re: horror flix ^^

      oh my god, i have soooo many films on my to-see list. i’m very meticulous about writing down recommendations from trusted critics and friends, but then the list just languishes, so this week is me actually making an effort to cut it down some. (which never works because every time i watch a movie and like it i then go online to read/watch reviews and analyses and am inevitably exposed to comparisons to other movies i must now watch, so the list actually keeps growing, also new movies are made all the time, it’s exhausting/exciting.) So, not sure yet what tonight’s movie is gonna be, but one of these probably:
      – Saint Maud
      – Don’t Look Now
      – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
      – Black Water
      – The Thing
      – It Follows
      – Profondo Rosso (deep red)

      What about you then?

      1. The Wellerman

        Eh, I thought it’d be cool to watch the same one as you!

        Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Thing sound like good picks though!

        1. milu

          Both absolute classics, or so i’m told =) It’s not that late, i might still watch both. OK! I’m starting with The Thing!

      2. JBento

        YOU HAVE NEVER WATCHED THE THING?!

        WHAT EVEN IS THIS?!

        HOW ARE YOU EVEN ALLOWED ON THE INTERNET?!

        1. milu

          you’re one to speak, i know for a fact that you’ve never watched [insert that cult classic that you’ve been meaning to get to forever and just never got the chance, you know the one], so hush

        2. JBento

          I swear, if the next thing you post is “Guys, I’ve been hearing a lot about this movie called Clue, is it any good?”, I’m disowning you.

        3. JBento

          Or The Evil Dead trilogy.

        4. milu

          Oh I just watched Evil Dead II for the first time yesterday! I had a blast. Never heard of Clue, is it any good?

        5. JBento

          *eyetwitch*

          *breathes*

          Congratulations, you now have homework. You can thank me later, like Bagge has.

        6. milu

          well gee would you look at that, I’ve just finished watching The Thing and my list of must-sees is already longer than when I started two hours ago =)

    7. june gloom

      As is my yearly tradition, I’m gonna put on The Terminator this NYE!

      1. milu

        ooh, that’s a good one. i haven’t seen it since, i don’t even know if i’ve seen it. Somehow i know i’ve seen the 2nd and 3rd installments but i can’t remember seeing the original one. Onto the list =)

        1. The Wellerman

          You’re not missing much in the original Terminator, IMO.

          Personally I think Terminator 2 is at least 10x better.

        2. june gloom

          I disagree completely. The original is an incredible film that succeeds at being multiple things at once. The sequel is also fantastic but it’s a very, very different beast.

        3. The Wellerman

          Eh, I guess I like the second one because I think it feels faster-paced and more action-y, also the moments with the T-800 on crying and bonding with Sarah’s son are really, REALLY deep.

          Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

        4. june gloom

          I will forever bang on the “slow burns are good actually” drum.

    8. Amelie Wikström

      For my brother’s and my christmas dinner, we had some six different kinds of sausage fried with a little bit of thyme and truffle oil, and cottage cheese and spinach leaves. It was delicious.

  14. Opus the Poet

    Becky and I have the same buffer, separated by over 45 years. Whodathunkit?

  15. Bagge

    She left GOD, not YOU

    1. C.T. Phipps

      Actually, I 100% say she left Becky the moment she said Becky was a moron for believing in God.

      If you think your friends are fools and talk behind their back behind it: YOU ARE NOT THEIR FRIEND.

      1. C.T. Phipps

        I mean, its a core part of her identity.

        The people who mocked Joyce for being religious were not her friends.

        Joyce is not a friend to Becky for mocking her belief.

        1. Arawn

          You can’t boil down friendship to one part of a relationship. Friends, real friends, make fun of things their friends do sometimes. You can’t lay ultimatums on it like that. Like, “My friend peed on my carpet while he was drunk so we’re not friends.” Or, “My friend is a raging alcoholic and that’s not good for me so we’re not friends.” There’s a lot of middle-ground from being upset with a friend and making a mistake and not being friends.

        2. Arawn

          oh, and I can 100% degree with my friends religion and ‘still’ be their friend. I do that ‘every’ day. I had a friend who believed dinosaurs were the devils tool to fool people into thinking the world was older than 5000 years old. His belief is nutso. Still his friend.

        3. not someone else

          Real friends sometimes make fun of their friends depending on the relationship and the level of communication. Not everybody does that because not everybody can take it, and some people who think they’re just ribbing their friends wind up losing those friends. (Also, some people say they’re just making light fun and are in fact douchebags who are intentionally or subconsciously reinforcing an in-group.)

          I’m not sure Becky and Joyce have the kind of actual honesty in their relationship where they can dick with each other like that. Evangelicalism tends to frown on actual emotional closeness, or any kind of honesty.

        4. Spencer

          That’s a shame, because all of Joyce’s friends did that.

          ‘Cept Dorothy, she just passively tolerated it.

      2. Fuzzy

        Becky talked behind Dina’s back saying she’ll be mad that heaven is real. She thinks Dina is foolish for not believing in God and heaven. It’s kind of hard to vehemently believe something about the entire fabric of existence and NOT think the people with the opposite vehement belief are a little bit foolish.

      3. Mewzard

        I feel 100% certain that she wasn’t referring to Becky when she was saying all of those things and didn’t know the others arrived. She was slamming herself, feeling foolish after all the horrific things that happened in her life during that rough first semester.

        Joyce felt she had no safe outlet for her emotional venting…and she may have been right given what happened the one time she tried to vent in a semi-private scenario. Yeah, she could have clarified things up front to avoid the brunt of this mess…but anger is seldom rational, sadly.

        She’s hurting emotionally. There’s no awesome girlfriend waiting for her at the end of her pain (..yet, we’ll see how the Kraft Mac n Cheese goes), the faith that once shielded her is now shattered.

        I really don’t envy her position, but I do hope both her and Becky can work things out…having a friend to help you through the rough times is often all you have.

        1. C.T. Phipps

          The problem was when Becky asked, “Do you think I’m a moron?”

          Joyce started explaining why God was stupid.

          Which is an answer in itself.

          Joyce may have been talking about herself but when confronted if she meant Becky, she double-downed.

      4. Big Z

        Oh, you mean like Becky did to Joyce when Joyce tried to express she was having doubts and Becky’s response was that Joyce hadn’t been traumatized for for long enough to change her faith?”

        Whether or not you care to see it, THIS particular street is two-way.

  16. alongcameaspider

    Ultimately this strip only solidifies my opinion that both Becky and Joyce deserve better then what their friendship has been

    1. Sporky

      Dorothy has been in close proximity with both of them for quite a while, let’s throw her in there too. Dealing with these two must be exhausting for her

      1. Falcon

        The Encanto song “Surface Pressure” very much applies to Dorothy, I feel.

        1. RassilonTDavros

          Encanto is the best movie I’ve seen all decade.

          (Admittedly that’s out of a sample size of, like, 3, but holy shit it’s good)

    2. Sombrero

      I happen to disagree with that. Their friendship has been and still is great for both of them. Maybe it won’t be like that in the future, but that’s how life works.

  17. anonymsly

    Jeezum Crow, Becky! Joyce leaving religion does not equate to leaving you! Not everything us about you! Can’t ONE thing in your friendship be about Joyce and not about you?

    1. newlland(Henryvolt)

      …Can you really say that when like 20 or 30 strips ago Joyce straight up said her doubting her religious beliefs started with her refusing to believe Becky deserved to go to hell over her sexuality?

      1. Cerusee

        I kinda feel like it’s significant that when Joyce connected her exit from fundamentalist Christianity to her learning that Becky was gay, she explicitly said that the first thing that shook her faith was the idea that Becky would burn in Hell for eternity for liking girls. Uhhh, like, she pretty much said, right there, even more overtly than she’s said before, that she chose Becky over Christianity, even though Christianity has been her lifelong identity.

        Nobody can make anyone do anything, or think anything, or feel anything, but that’s something worth keeping in mind, in the larger context of Becky feeling deeply, personally abandoned and betrayed that Joyce is no longer her BFF-in-Christ, and feeling that Joyce is leaving her behind and scampering off to some trendy, Dorothy-influenced heresy. Not only has Joyce spent the past few months jumping up and down with sparklers announcing that she’s always going to be Team Becky even if being Team Becky means she’s been seriously rattled and had to do a lot of soul-searching and she’s not sure where her towel is, *yesterday* Joyce told Becky *again* that Becky rates higher in Joyce’s personal value system than just about anything else in the world.

        We don’t get to choose how people love us. I mostly think Becky doesn’t fully understand the mental process that links Joyce’s newfound atheism to Becky’s lesbianism, and I think she wouldn’t want to accept it even if she did, since to Becky, there’s no conflict between being gay and loving and being loved by God. Becky is quite rightfully taking the stance that no one who loves Becky can really love Becky if they don’t accept her being gay. She is also, less justifiably, insisting that Joyce has to love her the way she’s always wanted Joyce to love her: as a proud, openly gay woman (Joyce is doing great on this one), and as a best-friend-in-Christ, who shares all of Becky’s religious values, but specifically Becky’s personal interpretation of those religious values (Joyce has fallen down so hard on this front she’s gone full-on into apostasy, and Becky is not okay with this at all).

        There is a degree to which all these elements of religion and belief and atheism are kind of muddling the conflict Becky is really having with Joyce, which is that she wants to dictate the terms of their friendship for her own badly needed sense of control and comfort in an ongoing period of massive upheaval and stress. And Joyce, who is very compassionate and empathetic, and who places a high priority on Becky’s needs, but who is also incredibly stubborn, once she makes up her mind about something, is refusing to go along with it, and that’s fucking Becky up on a couple of different fronts.

    2. C.T. Phipps

      It was one thing they shared, though, or so Becky thought.

  18. mrnoidea

    With all the times Becky has gone straight to jokes or anger, Panel 3 hits hard. Especially as Joyce recognizes it for the coping mechanism it is, without blame. Sounds like this will go better than last time, but also…in a depressing way.

    Hug your loved ones this holiday season if you haven’t already, folks.

  19. bemisawa

    Called shot: to the feels

    It’s a crit

  20. WanderingLynx

    [hEAVILY, wIT INTENT.]

    O O O F F

  21. Meagan

    I haven’t read all the comments so maybe someone already spoke to this, but ironically (or predictably?) it’s that attempt to keep people around by not being open and honest with them that can make you lose them, Becky.

    1. Rocket Relm

      Though to be absolutely clear, in a *lot* of cases, not being open and honest is the only way to not lose your friendships and/or loved ones. It’s just a matter of telling which is which.

      1. Sam

        While sometimes it obviously is not safe to be open and honest about everything and there are plenty of things you can keep close to your chest as you wish, a fear that you’re going to lose someone founded in insecurity is definitely one of the things that are on the side of if ‘you aren’t open and honest about this and act jealous, selfish, controlling or otherwise unpleasant about it, people will react based on the information you have presented and you may lose them because of how you acted, not because your fear had an actual founded basis to start with’.

        There’s plenty of stuff you don’t have to be open about, but if it is something making you act out, you probably should be open that something deeper is going on at least.

    2. Fay

      With how much fallout there was from her coming out, I get the feeling that that might be something Becky will struggle with for awhile. With a dad like Toedad, Becky probably learned that hiding parts of herself was the only way to make life tolerable.

      1. Fay

        I feel like, both Becky and Joyce, based on their upbringing, have/had repressed a lot of stuff, but they go about it in different ways. I feel like Becky hid things from other people while being relatively honest with herself, but Joyce hid things from herself while still being honest with others about the feelings she *did* understand.

        1. Cerusee

          Ooooh, that, I think. Joyce is SO uncomfortable with lying, especially lying to authority figures. She pretty much never does it except under duress! This is a person who, at the outset of the series, believes she’s right with God (she’s…humble, right? sure! kinda. Deffo needing to constantly prove herself; subservient to God’s Will, but she’s doing everything right! She was raised right!)

          Joyce *avoids*, when she spots a conflict coming between what she’s doing and how she thinks a person she’s assigned moral authority will react to her behavior, and she can keep up a small lie for a little while, but she’s not built for long-term deception, and Joyce’s shenanigans don’t last very long under any kind of scrutiny. Joyce has only recently learned how to lie and hide her thoughts and feelings because she’s only recently *needed* to.

          (One of the most enjoyable aspects of Joyce as a protagonist is that she doesn’t try to keep a lie going after she’s been called out on it. Clearly, the part where she doubles down on the new thought she’s been trying out in secret, instead of giving in to the people telling her she’s not supposed to think that at *all* pisses some people off. But people liked it when she was quoting Scripture to her parents to support why she should be allowed to be friends with atheist Dorothy, so I kind of think it’s not the attitude itself that annoys people, just where Joyce is aiming it on any given day.)

          Becky, in contrast, has been consciously lying and hiding her identity for YEARS, because she HAD to. The parts of her that were in open, even violent conflict with the religious society that controlled her life meant she didn’t have a choice about being honest, or that she risked her own physical, mental, and emotional safety by being honest.

          (I suddenly wonder if Becky’s extreme hurt/projection onto Joyce about “lying” is coming from Becky’s awareness that she, herself, has been lying for *years* to everyone she loves, including Joyce, about who she is and what that might mean for her relationships with those loved ones. It’s one thing to stand outside of that situation and have the perspective and the clarity to say “you did nothing wrong by protecting yourself in a dangerous situation by lying/staying quiet”; it is another thing to be the person who lived that experience, and made those choices, and whose relationships were affected by those choices.)

  22. Twig the Troll

    Oh.

    Oh poop.

    *cries*

  23. chuckroast

    Okay, okay. This is good. Heading in the right direction, I hope.

  24. chuckroast

    Okay, okay. This is good. Heading in the right direction, I hope!

    1. chuckroast

      First comment seemed to fail, guess it didn’t. That’ll show me!

  25. DailyBrad

    I’m glad they’re getting into the meat of it. Like, yeah, barbs are being traded, same as past talks, but they’re also getting to the heart of the matter. This is progress.

    1. thumb

      They’re talking TO each other this time.

      1. Spencer

        Very tellingly, the minute they stop fighting with the imagined specter of Joyce the Edgy Atheist Liar Traitor and Becky the Willful Mark for a Lying Cult, it’s an immediate leap into trying to be good to each other.

  26. Wereg

    Woo! Finally some open, mostly non-hostile communication!

  27. acher4

    aaawwwwwwwww.
    You effing stupid young adults you!
    Just make up already 😛

  28. Ludaire

    Becky… Joyce is dedicated enough to her friends to stand up to her parents, jump on a motorcycle on a crazy quest to save you, punch your dad, give up a faith of 18 years, and a whole lot more. You haven’t lost her.

    1. Keulen

      Becky’s probably gonna lose her if she keeps treating her like she has so far for becoming an atheist and for the various other ways Joyce has changed since she started going to college.

  29. Tan

    Joyce, if this were Smarting of Age:

    “Becky… I said I would always be on your side and I will. I love you as my sister. I’m not leaving you. And I didn’t mean you were stupid. I meant I was stupid. I let the church tell me how to think, and if the damage that can do hadn’t suddenly hit so close to home, I eventually might have ended up just like my mom, willing to make excuses for a kidnapper and attempted-murderer just because the church says so, and that scares me. It scares me how I could’ve hurt people, could’ve hurt YOU, how I DID hurt people. And once I started questioning the church… I found I just don’t have a connection to God. It was scary and painful and lonely, but that’s the answer I found for me, no matter how hard I tried to avoid it. I was scared to share it with you because I know you have your faith and I didn’t want this to be another thing that changes things between us. But now you know. So I’m not leaving you… And I hope you’re not leaving me. And I do want the sausage pizza with the sausage picked off.”

  30. Rocket Relm

    I’m not sure this is a complete explanation of why Becky uses her goofball coping tactics, despite this being her voicing a big worry I think she truthfully has. I think she just got blindsided by the statement, because she probably genuinely hadn’t thought about the hypocrisy, *or* about how aware of it Joyce was. Which leads to her just blurting out the first thing that came into her head.

    Which, I should emphasize, is good. I see this conversation having a very healthy trajectory going forward.

    1. Zaxares

      We do also know that Becky still has feelings for Joyce, and I suspect that, deep down, part of her still hopes that Joyce will one day magically return her feelings. But with Joyce’s conversion to atheism, that’s yet another “BIG COMPATIBILITY FACTOR” that went bye-bye, making it even harder for the two of them to be together. Becky IS hurt that Joyce apparently now derides her for her Christian beliefs and refusal to abandon God, but I think a large part of her anger/resentment is also from the realization in that last panel that her and Joyce are inexorably starting to move down different paths in life.

  31. Heather

    While being a jerk in it, Becky in the first panel is very pretty.

  32. Spencer

    It’d be cool if everyone around Becky didn’t have to keep taking responsibility for her terrible coping mechanisms and how they make her act out.

    That feels like an undercurrent to her three main relationships. With Dina it’s much healthier and more reasonable where Dina cuts through it in no uncertain terms, but I think while Dina makes Becky feel safe, she’s still unable to forthright with it, and thus when Becky has a problem Dina isn’t knowledgeable about (Becky’s mishmash of sexual hangups where she’s never going to be comfortable enough to have it while still feeling guilty that Dina’s not horny on main for her, whereas Dina’s response is a clear “let’s have sex when you feel ready”), Dina gets stonewalled.

    With Dorothy and now Joyce, both of them kind of have to carry the weight of the emotional labour for Becky, and most often when Becky’s being a big stupid jerkface. Becky’s insulted Joyce here, in the last strip, in their last interaction, and then during the Faith-Off, but it’s not like Joyce is ever gonna tell her not to. I don’t even think she can, and I feel that comes not just from being her best friend, but that Joyce never lets herself rely on Becky for anything because she views her as a victim to be protected. The comments above saying that Becky doesn’t give back to Joyce are correct, but I think that’s more rooted in how Joyce never offers anything to give, and the one time Joyce did have to rely on her (when Becky learned about what happened at the party), Becky was immediately and genuinely supportive and didn’t crumble upon realizing that kissing Joyce may have triggered a trauma response, and then she set the dorm party up. Becky can be a supportive friend, but Joyce doesn’t try with her.

    With Dorothy, it’s in-character. Dorothy is slavishly compromising and her entire spectrum of morality is defined by “just be nice and likeable.” We could find out that Dorothy actually thinks Becky’s behaviour is funny, but it strikes me as more true to Dorothy’s character if Becky has been annoying Dorothy this whole time, but Dorothy likes Becky a lot and genuinely wants to be her friend, and so thinks Becky’s “funny pranks” are something to passively tolerate, and from there I think Becky acts that way to Dorothy for a reason that’s changed over time: Becky hated Dorothy for being a friend-stealing hussy, and when Dorothy cut through her anxieties, I think Becky started wanting to be her friend, but she only knows how to make friends by being an obnoxious butthole because she thinks it makes her a funny, charming rogue even though that only worked on Joyce, and Joyce is the least cool human being alive.

    In the great holy war of “motivated by trauma!” vs. “just because you can explain it, doesn’t mean you excuse it!” I take the cowardly centrist route of “you should be as loving as possible, but part of that is loving yourself,” which is to say that, yeah, it’s wrong to hurt the people you care about because of your trauma, but it’s just as wrong to keep hurting yourself. More so, in fact; it’s got a permanent residence for you, everyone else just has visitation.

    1. Wraithy2773

      It’s amusing to read this comment after seeing weeks of people slamming Dorothy for not doing a good enough job managing Joyce’s coping mechanisms and how they make her act out.

      Because you’re not wrong. These are characters that have a lot of trouble figuring out how to cope with the awful shit that been hitting them over the course of the comic, and they need to work on that and improve that and not be so heavily reliant on other people.

      That takes time, of course, as well as honesty and openness about how the emotional labor does weigh on people. But because this whole storyline has been a conflict between two well-liked main characters, with a third well-liked main character getting caught in the crossfire as well, it’s caused readers and commentators to figure out which group they side with first and foremost. Hence the drama in the comments for the last while.

      What’s going on now, though, is good. We’re getting into a thing that I… well, “love” doing isn’t the right word, but have always felt helped by doing: Sometimes, when you find yourself in a hole, the best thing to do is to keep digging until the hole goes all the way through or, put less pithily, until you get a full idea of how bad things are.

      Before this scene, the foundation for Becky and Joyce’s relationship was heavily cracked and eroded by events. You can’t just layer on some spackle and call it a day, you need to get down into the mud there and figure out how deep it all goes if you’re going to have a chance of repairing it long-term.

      1. Spencer

        Dorothy’s been able to manage Joyce in the past because it was always extremely simple: Dorothy recites a textbook explanation on why Joyce is doing something wrong, and Joyce accepts the explanation and stops doing the thing that makes someone miserable.

        But this issue is too complex for Dorothy, and she doesn’t get that yet. She’s always been able to handhold Joyce into learning because Joyce was learning things with a morally binary answer. Dorothy thinks Joyce needs to stop being so danged edgy when Joyce’s edge is rooted in massive amounts of trauma that she’s damn well allowed to express at her stupid death cult, but Dorothy only accepts Joyce’s anger when it’s directed in a positive direction because Dorothy grew up with overwhelmingly kind and understanding parents and thus doesn’t have any kind of foothold to understand what Joyce is rebelling against. She recites a textbook explanation of gender and sexual fluidity, not understanding that Joyce’s beef with Ruth dating a boy is rooted in how she’s been told that Girls Dating Girls is bad, therefore it has to be good, and if sexuality is fluid that she means she actually could have turned Ethan straight by dating him. Finally, Dorothy can’t get Joyce to settle down and stop being so angry, so bitter, and so she drops the pretenses and just threatens Joyce into making up with Becky or else Becky will never be Joyce’s friend again.

        Dorothy is bad at this, and that’s a feature, not a bug. She’s just never been meaningfully challenged in that regard the whole series.

        Otherwise, I fully agree with you on digging holes. Becky and Joyce gotta get rip roaring pissed at each other for as long as they need to be. They can’t go back to that old status quo because it was that old status quo that made this happen to begin with.

        1. Wraithy2773

          The point of the comparison to Dorothy is just that… well, Joyce was doing the same thing that Becky’s been doing: Using someone else to manage her coping and be a counterbalance to their acting out that tries to repair things after the fact.

          And people were sneering at Dorothy for not managing Joyce’s trauma well enough for her, as though its her responsibility.

          Dorothy going “Nope, I’m done, nothing I can do here, you two need to sort this out or kill each other or something” is certainly a high-risk move, but it is at least forcing them to deal with this directly, instead of it other people blunting the efforts.

          Because it’s not about the two getting rip roaring pissed at each other, although that’s certainly a possible (nay, somewhat likely) outcome. It’s about them both lowering their guards and self-restraint a bit. There’s a bottom to the problem between Becky and Joyce, maybe a multifaceted bottom, but it’s been covered by decades of the detritus of life, and you gotta get a lot of that shit out of the way in order to reach that core.

        2. Spencer

          Dorothy’s still interfering, though. Joyce is here, explicitly, because Dorothy threatened her that Becky would stop being her friend if she doesn’t clean up her act, and then Joyce was convinced because Dorothy would eat Kraft Dinner with her. Despite the fact that they’ve fought all two times they’ve been near each other since and then this one only started getting any mileage when Becky was openly mocking Joyce so Joyce decided to ignore that and start lionizing and protecting Becky again.

          Dorothy, being a little white kid with big ideas for fixing the system by endlessly capitulating, only knows how to deal with this crisis on her terms. Which is to say that the only thing she knows how to do is lecture Joyce to go fix it right now. That didn’t work the last time Dorothy told her to go do that, it led directly to the Faith-Off, I will be very confused if it works here.

    2. Rose Red

      which is to say that, yeah, it’s wrong to hurt the people you care about because of your trauma, but it’s just as wrong to keep hurting yourself. More so, in fact; it’s got a permanent residence for you, everyone else just has visitation.

      me, at therapy two weeks from now after the holidays are over
      hi doctor, this week I need to talk to you about something that some stranger I don’t know on the internet named spencer wrote in the comments section of a webcomic that I’ve never brought up in our sessions before

      (but also it’s like – obvious to me that I need to do my best to not hurt others because trauma. but it does not follow that I need to do my best to not hurt myself*, because I’m consenting to myself hurting myself and other people can’t really consent to that? I guess that means I’m on the “explains not excuse” side of this holy war I never knew existed, but your spot looks a lot more healthy and I think that’s where I want to end up)

      (*emotionally/mentally, not physically; I’m not in any danger and I have time to work this shit out)

      anyways, happy winter holidays, thanks for giving me some stuff to think about, and I hope your life is going as well as it can in today’s world

      1. Spencer

        I have a very simple philosophy these days: I am beautiful bongo and I will give myself the treatment I deserve at all times.

        Selfishness is some kinda curse word, and I don’t get it. It’s good to love, it’s noble to love while in the throes of hating yourself, and yet applying a fraction of the love you dole out to everyone around you because you don’t want them to feel like you do all the time? Well, that’s selfish.

        I don’t think it’s love to only be able to care for someone when it’s convenient for yourself, or that you can ever really love someone without knowing them enough to hate something about them. Which, that’s probably as good as any an explanation for self-loathing: I know me better than anyone, meaning I am keenly aware of everything that annoys me about myself.

        We’re more than the pain we cause. I know I am, because I hurt myself all the time and I still found out how to like myself.

        1. Axel_Grease

          I understand how an excess of selfishness is bad, but I think more harm has been done in the pursuit of selflessness.

        2. Spencer

          The way I see it, how the hell can I treat anyone kindly if all of it is being filtered through a total lack of self-worth? What does it mean to be good when your pieces are all strewn across the ground? What does it mean to be selfish if to be selfish is to tell myself the same things I tell everyone else?

        3. Sprite less Auntie

          I’ve had abuse come in the form of calling any boundaries or self care ‘selfish’ so I can feel you here.

        4. The Wellerman

          Me too ?

  33. Rabisch

    This looks like the end of a friendship.

    1. Wraithy2773

      At the very least, it’s the ending of a bad friendship built upon deception, trauma and co-dependence. Hopefully, it’s also the start of a much healthier friendship.

  34. Rabbit

    This feels… not. Natural. Joyce has to suffer and deal with stuff, and then throws it in her face, and is now unloading her own emotional baggage onto Joyce on top of all that. Joyce cannot rely on Becky most of the time, and Becky is constantly using Joyce as a crutch/for comfort.

    It feels icky to me.

  35. june gloom

    It never ceases to amaze me the way people bend over backwards to say Becky is the victim no matter what. Even when she’s doing this.

    1. Bryy

      Becky is guilt-tripping Joyce for being kidnapped. “Over-reacting”. WTF is that shit. That is abusive and toxic as hell.

  36. JBento

    Also, fuck you, Becky, neither Joyce nor anyone owe you goddamn life updates.

    1. Wraithy2773

      You mean, when she’s finally opening up about why this whole situation is hurting her so much, something that’s easy to agree that she should’ve done months ago, but is a good step forward because they’re both approaching this like adults now instead of hyperbolic sneers and insults?

      1. JBento

        I mean that if “I don’t tell you every goddamn thing that’s going on in my life” hurts Becky, fuck Becky.

      2. Spencer

        Part of the problem is that this is the only way Becky knows how to open up; when someone takes all the emotional labour and sidesteps the pain she causes to coax her into opening up.

        She bullied Dorothy until Dorothy affirmed she’d be her friend (whereupon she’s kept up similar behaviour but I view that as something she thinks makes her funny and cool to Dorothy), and this whole entire mess is her fault for dragging Joyce into an argument she was not at all prepared to have by tracking her down through Liz’s facebook because Becky needed to assert her dominance. We’ve got two strips in a row of Becky taking control of who Joyce is supposed to be and making fun of her, and Joyce still has to reach out and tell Becky her own feelings so Becky will admit them.

        I don’t actually think Becky is a good friend, but she’s never really had the opportunity to be much of one. She’s basically the Amber to Joyce and Dorothy’s Ethan; everything you do is good, everything bad you do we’ll forgive, and we’ll do all the emotional labour for you.

        Like, to be as blunt as possible: yeah, I do actually want someone to tell Becky to shut the fuck up for the first time in the series, because she’s doing wrong and it’s okay to acknowledge that, and maybe things can get better for everyone if it’s said out loud. How the hell can you be friends with someone when you hold them to absolutely zero standards?

        1. Seregiel

          I think Becky’s belief in Joyce is the same as Joyce’s original belief in the church. Gotta check the boxes to make it real! If one thing is out of place the rest is a lie! I can be a number one supporter and proselytize my love!

        2. The Wellerman

          Makes a lot of sense.

          Is this what is called “co-dependence”?

  37. Adept

    Ouch. That got real.

    This feels like a healing moment though. Being honest and vulnerable with each other.

  38. Florence

    I think for Becky Joyce being atheist is another loss to the parts of her past she holds onto. It’s like becky has this version of this childhood that she’s been losing certainly since running away to Joyce if not earlier with her mother’s death. This picture in her mind that I would say is how she conceptualises her faith. Joyce was the last remaining living part of that childhood that would help Becky hold onto ideas like her mother being in a very specific version of heaven as an uncomplicated person with nothing similar to the community she grew up in, but now that’s gone, all she’s left with is herself to depend on and keep this belief solid. This is normal for most people as belief but Becky much like Joyce is escaping cult logic so it makes sense that she needs Joyce so she doesn’t have to conceptualise her beliefs in more adult terms singular terms. Of course Becky could have these convos as a part of church but her beliefs aren’t really any specific group, they’re the Becky awesome version, which I respect but much like agnostics means she doesn’t have a massive group behind her. Being an agnostic I understand some of the difficulty in figuring out feelings in regards to belief(not saying beckys an agnostic, only that her beliefs are more individual than communal)

    Now I don’t know what Willis is gonna do with all of beckys past and future so who’s to say how deep the rabbit hole goes but I would say that beckys mother being a member of a bigoted community might not be so nice and cool to think about when you stop assuming she was obviously progressive. Dina does not do beliefs, certainly not the way Becky does, there’s gotta be a convo at some point considering Becky clearly values some Christian traditions still.

    And yea, atheism, Becky is iffy about atheism as a perspective. Mostly with Joyce but there’s a wacky way she runs around without facing atheist perspectives as a general concept.

  39. hof1991

    Becky had an abusive dad, a suicidal mother and a community that would reject her as evil if they knew her. She’s been living with this for her while life. Joyce and her family were her only stability. Then she lost Carol, then Hank.

    She’s been drowning her whole life. Drowning people can be selfish.

    1. StClair

      Drowning people are panicky and flailing and can drag you down with them if you’re not careful. That’s why, when you do go to their aid, you go in with a plan and some tools and don’t let them grab onto you.

    2. Spencer

      Yeah but can’t she learn how to swim instead of having everyone around her throw her life rafts ’cause she can’t stay out of the pool?

      ‘Cause like, Jennifer’s drowning, but it’s really funny to watch her head bob up and down outta the water, mostly because people exist in her orbit who are willing to tell her to stay out if she can’t swim.

      That’s not a “Becky can’t have flaws” thing so much as a “it’d be neato if Joyce could deal with her beef without needing to run it by Becky” thing. Like, no one’s asked how Joyce is feeling yet. Becky found it more appropriate to make fun of her the last two strips while Joyce geared up for a Dorothy style “it’s okay that you’re hurting me ’cause you’re sad” spiel. That’s wack.

      (This isn’t intended to come off as “I can’t believe Dumbing of Age is definitely canonically taking Becky’s side and blaming Joyce for everything,” I dunno if it comes off that way in the first place, but it reads like that if I squint and tilt my head)

      1. JBento

        Unfortunately, the United States appears to have been set up in such a way that anything you might want to do you need to run by any nearby christians first and get their approval.

    3. drs

      “then Hank”? Hank Brown has stepped up as Becky’s alternate father figure.

    4. alongcameaspider

      Thing is though, Joyce is also drowning

      Sure she hasn’t been drowning as long as Becky (or maybe she was and mistook it as swimming, this analogy is confusing) but that doesn’t make her issues any less valid

  40. Heather

    I am now feeling for Becky and rather like when people were once tearing Joyce apart getting a bit weirded it out by the level of vitriol hurled at her by the comments.

    Like they are both victims of abuse not reacting well to how the other is reacting to things generally in this fight overall. I think the only two defensible options are they are both wrong/both right in the polls really.

    1. Heather

      Granted a possible reason for this is frustration bubbling over: because some characters have been behaving pretty unfair with regards Joyce (like Sarah at points Dorothy has been a mix) or other comments seem to think what Becky says when angry in her judgment is factual when it comes to Joyce.

      So perhaps it all feels a bit like a cherry on top of the crap sundae but it’s still a bit eyebrow raising to me.

      1. Spencer

        I mean, yes, that is it.

        Or it is for me, anyway, because I finally got to wear my “I Was Right” hat and dab victoriously on everyone who insisted that Becky had no problem with Joyce being an atheist and that she’s definitely not possessive of Joyce and needing to keep her in a box for Becky’s own security.

        1. Mr.Morningstar

          I was in the same boat too until Joyce was being extremely consdescending.

          Neither is right in this situation honestly

        2. Spencer

          I feel like we’ve been far too willing to ignore the part where Joyce only started acting like this after the Faith-Off. Today when she first saw Dorothy was the first time she went “how do you do, fellow atheist” openly and aggressively, and yesterday she’d only bring it up when Sarah kept poking the bear.

          Like, Joyce doesn’t really need to redeem herself for a behaviour she’s engaging in because her idiot children friends can’t take five seconds to ask what brought it about. She doesn’t need to learn how not to be an Edgy Atheist when she only started being one because of them.

    2. Florence

      I think there’s definitely some intense language around Becky but I would say there was pushback for a while that Becky doesn’t care about atheism, so the previous page confirming it might have given some commenters a chance to vent. I agree with you that they’re both messed up and are having to reconfigure a massive part of their lives and relationships. Escaping cults will do that to you and I wish the cult part of their childhood was mentioned more when Becky’s perspective comes up.

      1. Regalli

        Yep. Like, it cannot be overstated that they’re BOTH emerging from a deeply fucked-up upbringing that, among other things, taught them that there is Only Ever One Right Answer, all else is Wrong. I’m not super-shocked that they’re both being insufferable to each other because they haven’t broken out of that binaristic mindset, and if one of them lost their faith in response to trauma and the other didn’t then one of them has to be reacting wrongly to said trauma.

        1. The Wellerman

          I can tell from personal experience that religious or not, the “only one right answer” thing is a pattern that occurs in all kinds of abuse.

          Regardless of whether there are multiple correct answers, the answer the target of abuse gives is ALWAYS wrong to the abuser, even if that means they contradict themselves or become downright hypocritical.

          The abuser often has a psychological NEED for the target to fail, for the target to be incompetent / immature, for the target to be reprimanded and condescended to — ultimately, to reduce the target to a human stepping crutch with which to compensate for their own unmet psychological needs.

  41. Beau Kirin Maysey

    people have been talking about how insufferable becky and joyce have both been in recent history so y’know, this is really good

    (as for me personally, i still love them even when they’re being challenging…)

    1. Mr.Morningstar

      I like Becky on a… theoretical level.

      My only problem with Becky is that she keeps saying and doing shitty things but no one calls her out on it.

  42. Amelie Wikström

    Aww, it was much easier to get angry and shout past each other, let’s go back to that. (Not really.)

    1. Amelie Wikström

      Ironically, Becky is the one who’s already grown to recognize you can believe in the God the priest talks about without believing the priest; who’s got a job, who’s got a girlfriend, and who hasn’t for the last several days acted like her half-baked philosophies are more important to her than people.

      Well, I’m guessing that’s what she wants to get at with the final line. Time for Joyce to decide if she wants to leave Becky with the man in the sky like her actions has suggested, or not.

      1. drs

        Joyce doesn’t need a job and getting a good SO is as much luck as anything else; seems pretty wrong to hold those up as moral superiority on Becky’s part. Besides, her jobs have been narratively ridiculous (Robin’s manager) or food retail (not hard to get).

        Conversely Becky has been massively insecure and stalking of her best friend despite being called on it by multiple characters (Sarah and Dorothy), and a petty bully to her roommate and friend’s friend (Dorothy).

        1. Amelie Wikström

          I’m not talking about moral superiority, I’m talking about ability to function as an independent human within society.

        2. Amelie Wikström

          How do you even begin to read “I’m scared to be left alone” as some kind of challenge of moral righteousness. . .

  43. Arianod

    Well, this is turning out better than I expected…

  44. DarkoNeko

    I don’t want Galasso to interrupt them, unless at a opportune moment

  45. JBento

    Just wanted to tell everyone happy holidays from the Mesozoic Era.

    https://imgur.com/Hb6jhSX

    1. JBento

      Well, that’s not a very good one, is it?

      Here’s another one, not via imgur, because for some reason it fails to upload:

      https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2696807745

  46. davidbreslin101

    This is still about the sausage pizza, right?

  47. Mr.Morningstar

    Joyce was wrong for her condescending attitude. But NOT for becoming an Atheist, that is HER choice to make and if she no longer identifies with the religion then she is entitled to that.

  48. Josie

    Becky has some serious cognitive distortions going on and needs to talk to a therapist about how to stop mind reading and jumping to conclusions.

    Joyce is being a dick and needs to talk to other atheists about how to see that theism is helpful to many and as long as that theism stays within healthy boundaries, should not affect Joyce’s opinions of the theist.

    And both of them need to get over themselves, apologize, and start down the path of figuring out what this new phase of friendship will look like.

    Sooner rather than later please. This story line is painful for me to watch.

  49. Bathymetheus

    I hope Joyce doesn’t say “you can come with me . . . if you give up your belief in a sky wizard”.

    1. alongcameaspider

      It’d be exactly as kind as implying that Joyce leaving Christianity behind is somehow “leaving Becky behind”

  50. Mr. Random

    “Why do you think me changing my faith means I’m leaving you?”

    1. thejeff

      Because she’s scared.

    2. Amelie Wikström

      Maybe because since Becky found out about Joyce’s new faith, up until this strip, the idea that Becky’s beliefs are wrong and bad and have to change is literally the only thing Joyce has talked about?

      1. JBento

        Well, at one point she talked about her comic, but when she did that Sarah and like three-quarters of the commentariat jumped down her throat for not going to Becky instead, so.

  51. Sombrero

    So will the next poll be about who gets to hanky-panky first?

    1. Sprite less Auntie

      Good avatar for canoodling there sombrero

  52. zee

    Aw, poor Becky 🙁
    I hope this ends well for both of them

  53. Hydrohead

    Well that was sad.

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