Though, honestly, I wouldn’t put a copy of HHGttG that could officiate weddings past the Walkyverse.
Alaric
I fully expect that, within the next decade or so, the phrase will be “officiated to” in both cases. Yes, that will make it harder to understand what’s being said.
…now that you mention her, Leslie might actually be the best person in the cast to help Joyce process this. She was raised by fundamentalists like Joyce was, utterly failed by the community that raised her like Joyce was, and– crucially– lost her faith like Joyce did. The circumstances weren’t identical, but they’re still similar in a lot of ways.
It definitely doesn’t work that way Joyce. 3% identify as atheists, does not mean 97% believe in magic. Around 4% are agnostic and around 20% (total?) are unaffiliated with a mix of faithful and faithless. Even among agnostics, there is a split. Although many consider them “fence sitters” the truth is they either believe or not, but their stance is formally one that proof of god is unknowable either way.
I honestly feel like more people are atheist than agnostic than are currently reported, it’s just that literally nobody understands what the word “agnostic” means. Tracing it back to its roots, Gnostic, to know and be certain of, and the a prefix, introducing the ‘not’ sign in front of it.
If we were to ask “Would you say you’re sure Joyce is wearing glasses today”, we wouldn’t say “well what are glasses anyway? How do I even know Joyce exists? You all might be fictional characters, how do we know FOR SURE it’s not all just solipsistic drivel. What does ‘to wear’ mean, here?”, we’d say “yes”. This isn’t how language functions.
Hard line atheism doesn’t need to prove even beyond solipsism that god is 100% not real to declare ‘god isn’t real’ as a known fact, but for some reason in the specific case of atheism, many people push “are you suurreee??” to a degree it isn’t used anywhere else in language.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
They aren’t glasses, they are highly advanced eyebrow curls.
huh, that’s a funny line of reasoning.
i disagree with your parallel. the existence of god is not like the question of whether or not Joyce is wearing glasses or not. spirituality is ALL ABOUT asking deep questions. that’s kind of the point, for a lot of people.
and while most people may or may not understand what “agnostic” means, i think the way people identify is not purely down to their actual belief, or lack thereof.
for instance, i may decide to identify as an atheist for reasons of political affiliation, and expediency, and to signal my unwillingness to anyone trying to proselytize to me, but actually be more of an agnostic if it comes right down to it (mostly because i’m sympathetic to the paradox of first causes, not that i care very much though).
Agemegos
Yep. I know a lot of people for whom religious identity is a key part of their family life, or even in some cases of their identity, but whose beliefs are strictly physicalist or even radically skeptical. They score their religious affiliation as Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, and Anglican, and are not being disingenuous when they do so. Christmas, Pesach, Diwali etc. really matter to them. One unbelievers I know still practises confession, believing it to be good psychology.
Agemegos
For “even in some cases of their identity” read even in some cases of their ethnic or national identity”.
Keulen
Yeah, I’ve never understood why some people feel like “I don’t know” is a good answer to a yes or no question. You either believe in one or more gods or you don’t.
Alex
What if you think humanity has no way of knowing or obtaining scientific proof? Like I’m pretty sure some very specific religion isn’t completely true in every detail, but could there be a god-like entity? Would we have any way of proving or disproving it?
khn0
the question is believe, or think?
I think there the absence of proof for god(s) isn’t favourable to god(s) existence
option A: I don’t believe in god
Option B: I believe there is no god.
Either way, the question is flawed anyway since you can’t survey religions appartenance and beliefs at the same time, or beliefs about existence of god and beliefs about which existence/ non-existence/non-proof-of-either
Clif
I wouldn’t appartenance any religion that would have me.
I don’t believe that Joyce exists in the same way you and I do. I believe that Joyce wears glasses. I have faith that Joyce will eventually do the right thing.
Do I believe in Joyce?
Clif
But I absolutely believe you can survey beliefs and group memberships at the same time. If that’s not what you’re really interested in though, you won’t.
Deanatay
I think demanding a “Yes” or “No” answer is part of the whole black/white thinking that gets us in trouble with religion in the first place. Accept that people are uncertain, even about themselves. Accept that people are ignorant, even of themselves. Accept that people may not WANT to give you the answer you seem to so desperately require of them. You need to open your mind to possibilities.
khn0
Well, I’m in a country with around 30% atheists, and around 30% agnostics.
I guess it has more sens to ask there.
But also, I know how people survey and how people answer to survey.
So yeah, if it’s not a yes/no thing it may be even more flawed.
Essentially, the answer should be free to give without choosing option A, B, C, D or else, and then regrouping with explicit criterias different answers in options A, B, C, D
Michelle
My reason for saying I’m agnostic is less “I don’t know” and more “it doesn’t matter”. I feel like calling myself atheist would mean I’d be willing to argue my point about how I see the universe working, and I’d rather just *not have faith be a part of my life*, whether siding with some version of it or arguing against it. (and I feel like Christian beliefs shouldn’t be a factor in politics and science both because there are people of *other* faiths as well as people with *no* faith)
Spencer
I think this is where I’m at? I call myself an atheist, but I don’t know if thinking the afterlife doesn’t exist, but willing to be proven wrong on that counts as atheism or not.
I guess I process it like, the biggest and most unanswered questions are ones I’ll never figure out in my lifetime. The supernatural, however you want to define that, could exist as something yet explored.
Agemegos
I think it does. The position of being unwilling to accept being wrong, or even contemplate being wrong, is not a valid one except perhaps in mathematics.
I do not believe in any god or gods, and I have concluded that there most likely are none, so “atheist” is the frank and straightforward term for me to describe myself by. If new evidence appears I will change my mind, and I could that, not its opposite, as a virtue. For a theist to insist that I cannot be an atheist because I do not have faith is a put-down, and I reject it as unreasonable.
Agemegos
Have you considered the term “apatheist”, denoting someone who just doesn’t care about the question of where any gods exist.
Psychie
I’m not sure agnostic is the correct word for what I believe, because I’ve had multiple different people be *very* insistent that given definitions for that word are correct, but disagree wildly on what those definitions are. However, what I believe is that there is probably some kind of higher power, I have no clear definition for what that higher power might be, and I am willing to accept the possibility that there isn’t one. Additionally, considering the presence of a higher power, or lack thereof, is impossible to prove one way or another short of direct, indisputable interference, like a voice from the sky announcing that it is god and suddenly answering prayers, even secret ones, all over the world simultaneously, I feel it’s just as irresponsible to assert there definitely is not a higher power as it is to assert there is one, because you are claiming knowledge of the unknowable.
Granted, so long as whatever higher power there may or may not be is not obviously interfering with life here, for all practical purposes there may as well not be a higher power at all, so really it’s a purely academic distinction, but I still assert that it is incorrect to say that I do not believe in a higher power, so I will not identify as an atheist. Some of the definitions I have encountered for agnostic sound like my position on the subject, so as far as I am concerned, I am agnostic if for no other reason than a lack of a better term.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Not to your main point, but to share: strictly speaking, agnosticism isn’t about having faith or not (unlike how some accuse agnostics of being ‘fence sitters’). Agnosticism is a different axis than faith/non-faith, and is actually about the question of knowability (gnosis). An agnostic position is that god/faith is ‘unknowable’ (a-gnostic), versus being able to ‘know’ the existence thereof (gnostic).
Most of the atheists I know are actually agnostic but hold the view that until we know we should act on a null hypothesis, or are uncomfortable enough with magical thinking that they are uncomfortable with religion and want to be unaffiliated with it in stronger terms.
I suspect that in common use there’s not a ton of difference between atheism and agnosticism as words and people just use the one that aligns with their comfortability conceding things to religion. Like I have met a couple hard atheists and I have met some very “defend all the possibilities” agnostics but they seem like the far ends of a spectrum, not the norm.
thejeff
I agree that most take it as a social position without really caring about the fine nuances of the argument.
Most of the time I’m willing to accept whichever label will get people to stop arguing about it, mostly theists claiming that atheism is just as much a matter of faith as religion. Sometimes I enjoy the discussion for a bit though.
Some also don’t want to be associated with the extremely online fedora tipping brand of rational skeptic atheists.
StClair
I have sometimes joked about being a “militant agnostic” – “I don’t know and you don’t either.”
(I’m actually a lot more laid back and not very confrontational in general.)
Agemegos
When Huxley coined the word, that is what he meant by it: that the existence of God was unknowable, so that anyone claiming to know was wrong.
The meaning has developed and changed since then, as is wont to happen to words.
Psychie
Personally, I’m a practicing agnostic, I might sometimes gather with some people who may share my views at some place that may or may not exist where we might or might not discuss anything at all, let alone anything relevant to the supernatural.
Eh… as cool as a cross-over reference to that game world may be, gate-keepimg access to (of all the gods) Pan’s worship seems, inconsistent with its nature.
No that’s cool. I also wasn’t meaning to gatekeep being able to make references to pan in pop-culture. That would _also_ not be cool in Pan’s faith I suspect. I mean, saying ‘not cool’ is about how seriously I imagine Pan would police such matters anyways. XD.
Yeah, if you want to run for thfe highest office in a manority christian country it’s an excellent choice to openly worship a god that inspired the christian devil’s visual aesthetic.
Declaring samesies while one party refuses to participate feels like a violation of the spirit of samesies. Only one of them doing it makes it literally not the same.
‘Knucks’, short for ‘knuckles’, is the bumping of two person’s knuckles together in an act of solidarity and support. ‘Samesies’ is an extension of ‘same’ indicating that there is a shared trait between them, as the purpose of the knucks between them.
… I did not expect to encounter the foul name of Ken Penders when I arrived to read tonight’s comic.
The Wellerman
How now, what do you have against Sonic’s chili dogs LOL.
No seriously I know literally nothing else about Sonic except for the gameplay and Robotnik memes.
Rose by Any Other Name
I have nothing against Sonic’s chili dogs.
I have plenty against Ken Penders. Awful person. Control freak. Total hack.
Regalli
I was just describing the latest Scourge Drama to someone earlier this evening and I was NOT expecting today’s comic to bring us to Knuckles the Echidna Cursed Archie Comics Lore, but I am appreciating the serendipity.
(Also, in case you haven’t heard, there’s Scourge Drama. Oddly enough, completely unrelated to the IDW comics. Complete shitshow, though.)
Spencer
Yeah.
The IDW comic has Surge drama now.
The Wellerman
Oh thank goodness, they’re delicious!
Now that I think of it, haven’t had one myself in quite a while…
Knuckles the Echidna’s ancestors are Furry Briitish colonizers who oppressed the indigenous Dingo population of Furry Australia, stole their land by rocketing it into the air with them still on it and never brought it back down, and when the Dingos used the nukes that the Echidnas just left lying around near them to defend themselves the Echidnas stuck them in their city’s ghettos.
The Dingos are the villains of the series and are also Nazis, despite the above mentioned.
This has been your unsolicited Sonic Comic fact.
James
You left out the part where Knuckles’ dad did super weird genetic experiments on himself and then microwaved Knuckles’ egg before hatching it so he’d be a super mutant cause he had a bad dream one time.
Regalli
Also, ALL OF KNUCKLES’S RACIST GRANDPAS (and the One Female Knuckles of the Group) are still alive and spy on Knuckles in their Secret Grandpa Spy Compound. Once, when he was being bullied by another kid, they all got together in the night and threw said kid off the edge of Angel Island without Knuckles knowing, which strikes me as somewhat disproportionate.
Also, his dad raised him out in the wilderness making him think they were the last of their species and then he randomly jumped into a wall of holographic flames before Knuckles’s eyes, making him think his dad was dead for years. This last part is apparently family tradition.
Oh, and the last time someone microwaved an Echidna to give them superpowers it produced the (alleged) greatest villain Echidnakind has ever known which really does make one wonder what Knuckles’s dad was thinking there.
I know Dr. Finitevus was supposed to be evil for throwing the entire Brotherhood into another dimension never to be seen again, but I’ve gotta ask: Was he? Was he really?
Spencer
Hey, Locke had to do it.
He had a bad dream, time to microwave the baby.
James
Finitevus was definitely pretty evil. Whether or not sending the Racist Grandpa Society to the Shadow Realm counts as part of that is less clear.
Thag Simmons
Wow, what were they thinking?
Spencer
Baby boomer lionizing his own abusive upbringing, basically.
385 thoughts on “Three percent”
Ana Chronistic
“I don’t believe it works that way”
“Sure it does! Check the book!”
“…atheists don’t HAVE a book”
Doctor_Who
Robin and Leslie’s wedding in the other universe was officiated with a copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Sounds appropriate to me.
Jon
Wait, the BOOK officiated?
The AI in the latest edition must be quite advanced!
Jamie
Eh. Marriage isn’t complicated. I could bang out that code in ten minutes.
John Campbell
Officiated with, not by.
It was officiated by Jesus.
Yes, that Jesus.
Though, honestly, I wouldn’t put a copy of HHGttG that could officiate weddings past the Walkyverse.
Alaric
I fully expect that, within the next decade or so, the phrase will be “officiated to” in both cases. Yes, that will make it harder to understand what’s being said.
Needfuldoer
Well, a guy in a giant book costume but you’re supposed to suspend your disbelief…
jeffepp
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
RassilonTDavros
…now that you mention her, Leslie might actually be the best person in the cast to help Joyce process this. She was raised by fundamentalists like Joyce was, utterly failed by the community that raised her like Joyce was, and– crucially– lost her faith like Joyce did. The circumstances weren’t identical, but they’re still similar in a lot of ways.
Decidedly Orthogonal
It definitely doesn’t work that way Joyce. 3% identify as atheists, does not mean 97% believe in magic. Around 4% are agnostic and around 20% (total?) are unaffiliated with a mix of faithful and faithless. Even among agnostics, there is a split. Although many consider them “fence sitters” the truth is they either believe or not, but their stance is formally one that proof of god is unknowable either way.
sauce
Rocket Relm
Philosophy nerding from me here:
I honestly feel like more people are atheist than agnostic than are currently reported, it’s just that literally nobody understands what the word “agnostic” means. Tracing it back to its roots, Gnostic, to know and be certain of, and the a prefix, introducing the ‘not’ sign in front of it.
If we were to ask “Would you say you’re sure Joyce is wearing glasses today”, we wouldn’t say “well what are glasses anyway? How do I even know Joyce exists? You all might be fictional characters, how do we know FOR SURE it’s not all just solipsistic drivel. What does ‘to wear’ mean, here?”, we’d say “yes”. This isn’t how language functions.
Hard line atheism doesn’t need to prove even beyond solipsism that god is 100% not real to declare ‘god isn’t real’ as a known fact, but for some reason in the specific case of atheism, many people push “are you suurreee??” to a degree it isn’t used anywhere else in language.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
They aren’t glasses, they are highly advanced eyebrow curls.
milu
huh, that’s a funny line of reasoning.
i disagree with your parallel. the existence of god is not like the question of whether or not Joyce is wearing glasses or not. spirituality is ALL ABOUT asking deep questions. that’s kind of the point, for a lot of people.
and while most people may or may not understand what “agnostic” means, i think the way people identify is not purely down to their actual belief, or lack thereof.
for instance, i may decide to identify as an atheist for reasons of political affiliation, and expediency, and to signal my unwillingness to anyone trying to proselytize to me, but actually be more of an agnostic if it comes right down to it (mostly because i’m sympathetic to the paradox of first causes, not that i care very much though).
Agemegos
Yep. I know a lot of people for whom religious identity is a key part of their family life, or even in some cases of their identity, but whose beliefs are strictly physicalist or even radically skeptical. They score their religious affiliation as Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, and Anglican, and are not being disingenuous when they do so. Christmas, Pesach, Diwali etc. really matter to them. One unbelievers I know still practises confession, believing it to be good psychology.
Agemegos
For “even in some cases of their identity” read even in some cases of their ethnic or national identity”.
Keulen
Yeah, I’ve never understood why some people feel like “I don’t know” is a good answer to a yes or no question. You either believe in one or more gods or you don’t.
Alex
What if you think humanity has no way of knowing or obtaining scientific proof? Like I’m pretty sure some very specific religion isn’t completely true in every detail, but could there be a god-like entity? Would we have any way of proving or disproving it?
khn0
the question is believe, or think?
I think there the absence of proof for god(s) isn’t favourable to god(s) existence
option A: I don’t believe in god
Option B: I believe there is no god.
Either way, the question is flawed anyway since you can’t survey religions appartenance and beliefs at the same time, or beliefs about existence of god and beliefs about which existence/ non-existence/non-proof-of-either
Clif
I wouldn’t appartenance any religion that would have me.
I don’t believe that Joyce exists in the same way you and I do. I believe that Joyce wears glasses. I have faith that Joyce will eventually do the right thing.
Do I believe in Joyce?
Clif
But I absolutely believe you can survey beliefs and group memberships at the same time. If that’s not what you’re really interested in though, you won’t.
Deanatay
I think demanding a “Yes” or “No” answer is part of the whole black/white thinking that gets us in trouble with religion in the first place. Accept that people are uncertain, even about themselves. Accept that people are ignorant, even of themselves. Accept that people may not WANT to give you the answer you seem to so desperately require of them. You need to open your mind to possibilities.
khn0
Well, I’m in a country with around 30% atheists, and around 30% agnostics.
I guess it has more sens to ask there.
But also, I know how people survey and how people answer to survey.
So yeah, if it’s not a yes/no thing it may be even more flawed.
Essentially, the answer should be free to give without choosing option A, B, C, D or else, and then regrouping with explicit criterias different answers in options A, B, C, D
Michelle
My reason for saying I’m agnostic is less “I don’t know” and more “it doesn’t matter”. I feel like calling myself atheist would mean I’d be willing to argue my point about how I see the universe working, and I’d rather just *not have faith be a part of my life*, whether siding with some version of it or arguing against it. (and I feel like Christian beliefs shouldn’t be a factor in politics and science both because there are people of *other* faiths as well as people with *no* faith)
Spencer
I think this is where I’m at? I call myself an atheist, but I don’t know if thinking the afterlife doesn’t exist, but willing to be proven wrong on that counts as atheism or not.
I guess I process it like, the biggest and most unanswered questions are ones I’ll never figure out in my lifetime. The supernatural, however you want to define that, could exist as something yet explored.
Agemegos
I think it does. The position of being unwilling to accept being wrong, or even contemplate being wrong, is not a valid one except perhaps in mathematics.
I do not believe in any god or gods, and I have concluded that there most likely are none, so “atheist” is the frank and straightforward term for me to describe myself by. If new evidence appears I will change my mind, and I could that, not its opposite, as a virtue. For a theist to insist that I cannot be an atheist because I do not have faith is a put-down, and I reject it as unreasonable.
Agemegos
Have you considered the term “apatheist”, denoting someone who just doesn’t care about the question of where any gods exist.
Psychie
I’m not sure agnostic is the correct word for what I believe, because I’ve had multiple different people be *very* insistent that given definitions for that word are correct, but disagree wildly on what those definitions are. However, what I believe is that there is probably some kind of higher power, I have no clear definition for what that higher power might be, and I am willing to accept the possibility that there isn’t one. Additionally, considering the presence of a higher power, or lack thereof, is impossible to prove one way or another short of direct, indisputable interference, like a voice from the sky announcing that it is god and suddenly answering prayers, even secret ones, all over the world simultaneously, I feel it’s just as irresponsible to assert there definitely is not a higher power as it is to assert there is one, because you are claiming knowledge of the unknowable.
Granted, so long as whatever higher power there may or may not be is not obviously interfering with life here, for all practical purposes there may as well not be a higher power at all, so really it’s a purely academic distinction, but I still assert that it is incorrect to say that I do not believe in a higher power, so I will not identify as an atheist. Some of the definitions I have encountered for agnostic sound like my position on the subject, so as far as I am concerned, I am agnostic if for no other reason than a lack of a better term.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Not to your main point, but to share: strictly speaking, agnosticism isn’t about having faith or not (unlike how some accuse agnostics of being ‘fence sitters’). Agnosticism is a different axis than faith/non-faith, and is actually about the question of knowability (gnosis). An agnostic position is that god/faith is ‘unknowable’ (a-gnostic), versus being able to ‘know’ the existence thereof (gnostic).
Here is the encyclopædic article on agnosticism as well as a more descriptive breakdown in quadrants.
AKP
Most of the atheists I know are actually agnostic but hold the view that until we know we should act on a null hypothesis, or are uncomfortable enough with magical thinking that they are uncomfortable with religion and want to be unaffiliated with it in stronger terms.
I suspect that in common use there’s not a ton of difference between atheism and agnosticism as words and people just use the one that aligns with their comfortability conceding things to religion. Like I have met a couple hard atheists and I have met some very “defend all the possibilities” agnostics but they seem like the far ends of a spectrum, not the norm.
thejeff
I agree that most take it as a social position without really caring about the fine nuances of the argument.
Most of the time I’m willing to accept whichever label will get people to stop arguing about it, mostly theists claiming that atheism is just as much a matter of faith as religion. Sometimes I enjoy the discussion for a bit though.
Some also don’t want to be associated with the extremely online fedora tipping brand of rational skeptic atheists.
StClair
I have sometimes joked about being a “militant agnostic” – “I don’t know and you don’t either.”
(I’m actually a lot more laid back and not very confrontational in general.)
Agemegos
When Huxley coined the word, that is what he meant by it: that the existence of God was unknowable, so that anyone claiming to know was wrong.
The meaning has developed and changed since then, as is wont to happen to words.
Psychie
Personally, I’m a practicing agnostic, I might sometimes gather with some people who may share my views at some place that may or may not exist where we might or might not discuss anything at all, let alone anything relevant to the supernatural.
Doctor_Who
Dorothy: That’s it, I refuse to be a part of this, even passively. I’m officially joining the church of…
(Pulls out mythology book, opens to random page)
Dorothy: Pan. Fair enough, it will complement my morning jog, I can get some cavorting in as well.
King Daniel
Dorothy’d better be discreet. Wouldn’t want to start a Pan-ic.
Concolor44
Thank you. I needed a Dad-joke this evening.
Thag Simmons
It’s not a dad joke if it’s the actual etymology of the word
Jeff K!
Which is the actual origin of that word!
Carl Muckenhoupt
On the contrary, I expect panache!
King Daniel
That’s just pandering.
Jamie
Better than panhandling.
Clif
We than the distinguished pan-el for their efforts,
Decidedly Orthogonal
A morning jog is a nice start before the day’s pandæmonium.
Bluewind
The mental image of this occurring brings me joy. Thank you ♡
Deadjolras
She better talk to Merle Highchurch first.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Eh… as cool as a cross-over reference to that game world may be, gate-keepimg access to (of all the gods) Pan’s worship seems, inconsistent with its nature.
Deadjolras
Sorry, I was just making a reference.
Decidedly Orthogonal
No that’s cool. I also wasn’t meaning to gatekeep being able to make references to pan in pop-culture. That would _also_ not be cool in Pan’s faith I suspect. I mean, saying ‘not cool’ is about how seriously I imagine Pan would police such matters anyways. XD.
Evil Fairy
That’s actually perfect, if she wants to be President! All of America’s cultural elite worships Pan, the Goat God!
Agemegos
Dorothy would not be the first president of the USA to be a pantheist.
Thag Simmons
Yeah, if you want to run for thfe highest office in a manority christian country it’s an excellent choice to openly worship a god that inspired the christian devil’s visual aesthetic.
James the Bruce
Pan is the GOAT.
Shadowsnail
Nice.
You can get your own personal Pan at Galasso’s.
(someone to hear your prayers / someone who cares)
Opus the Poet
The Church of Eris is an actual thing that exists, the religion is called Discordianism.
Clif
Hail Kalista!
Cattleprod
Declaring samesies while one party refuses to participate feels like a violation of the spirit of samesies. Only one of them doing it makes it literally not the same.
Doctor_Who
Dorothy: You’re violating the spirit of Samesies.
Joyce: I know! Violating the spirit of things is what atheism is all about! Because we don’t believe in spirits!
Dorothy: That is not what atheism is all about.
Joyce: Also, I rub dirt in my hair now, and spit on the floor! When do I grow my tail and extra toes?
Dorothy: Okay, I think you still have some deprogramming to go through.
The Wellerman
First of all, what the fuck are “Samesies Knucks”?
Second of all, is the beverage service at IU really THAT bad?!?!
Tan
‘Knucks’, short for ‘knuckles’, is the bumping of two person’s knuckles together in an act of solidarity and support. ‘Samesies’ is an extension of ‘same’ indicating that there is a shared trait between them, as the purpose of the knucks between them.
RassilonTDavros
“Samesies Knucks” is when all of Knuckles the Echidna’s ancestors look completely identical to him apart from clothing, and so does virtually member of his society.
Rose by Any Other Name
… I did not expect to encounter the foul name of Ken Penders when I arrived to read tonight’s comic.
The Wellerman
How now, what do you have against Sonic’s chili dogs LOL.
No seriously I know literally nothing else about Sonic except for the gameplay and Robotnik memes.
Rose by Any Other Name
I have nothing against Sonic’s chili dogs.
I have plenty against Ken Penders. Awful person. Control freak. Total hack.
Regalli
I was just describing the latest Scourge Drama to someone earlier this evening and I was NOT expecting today’s comic to bring us to Knuckles the Echidna Cursed Archie Comics Lore, but I am appreciating the serendipity.
(Also, in case you haven’t heard, there’s Scourge Drama. Oddly enough, completely unrelated to the IDW comics. Complete shitshow, though.)
Spencer
Yeah.
The IDW comic has Surge drama now.
The Wellerman
Oh thank goodness, they’re delicious!
Now that I think of it, haven’t had one myself in quite a while…
Spencer
Knuckles the Echidna’s ancestors are Furry Briitish colonizers who oppressed the indigenous Dingo population of Furry Australia, stole their land by rocketing it into the air with them still on it and never brought it back down, and when the Dingos used the nukes that the Echidnas just left lying around near them to defend themselves the Echidnas stuck them in their city’s ghettos.
The Dingos are the villains of the series and are also Nazis, despite the above mentioned.
This has been your unsolicited Sonic Comic fact.
James
You left out the part where Knuckles’ dad did super weird genetic experiments on himself and then microwaved Knuckles’ egg before hatching it so he’d be a super mutant cause he had a bad dream one time.
Regalli
Also, ALL OF KNUCKLES’S RACIST GRANDPAS (and the One Female Knuckles of the Group) are still alive and spy on Knuckles in their Secret Grandpa Spy Compound. Once, when he was being bullied by another kid, they all got together in the night and threw said kid off the edge of Angel Island without Knuckles knowing, which strikes me as somewhat disproportionate.
Also, his dad raised him out in the wilderness making him think they were the last of their species and then he randomly jumped into a wall of holographic flames before Knuckles’s eyes, making him think his dad was dead for years. This last part is apparently family tradition.
Oh, and the last time someone microwaved an Echidna to give them superpowers it produced the (alleged) greatest villain Echidnakind has ever known which really does make one wonder what Knuckles’s dad was thinking there.
I know Dr. Finitevus was supposed to be evil for throwing the entire Brotherhood into another dimension never to be seen again, but I’ve gotta ask: Was he? Was he really?
Spencer
Hey, Locke had to do it.
He had a bad dream, time to microwave the baby.
James
Finitevus was definitely pretty evil. Whether or not sending the Racist Grandpa Society to the Shadow Realm counts as part of that is less clear.
Thag Simmons
Wow, what were they thinking?
Spencer
Baby boomer lionizing his own abusive upbringing, basically.
Needfuldoer
Why is Sonic lore and fandom so… that?