366

Comeuppance
Posted on October 29, 2021 by David M Willis

366 thoughts on “Comeuppance”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    a college comic strip disproves God?

    who knew it was that easy!

    1. Doctor_Who

      Loss.jpg has already been created, Joyce.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        https://twitter.com/jennote/status/1446706655329202176

    2. C.T. Phipps

      I wonder if Joyce is going to get cancelled by complaints once she gets to the God stuff.

      “BUT I’M SHARING THE ANTI-GOSPEL!”

      “People don’t want to be lectured about God not existing.”

      “It’s important to proselytize!”

      1. thumb

        More likely, not enough people will be reading it to care.

    3. StClair

      Hopefully she’ll avoid getting run over at the next crosswalk.

      1. Bicycle Bill

        That was the result of proving that black was white.

        1. Geneseepaws

          And that Julius Caesar had an infinite number of arms and legs.

        2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          I thought that was Alexander The Great.

  2. C.T. Phipps

    No, Joyce. You will get your comeuppance because God is real.

    He’s a porn lord and Transformers fan.

    So you shall sea the light of the Second Ethan.

    1. King Daniel

      I thought the whole Second Eaton business was Word-of-Willis’d to be a King Josiah parody

      1. C.T. Phipps

        I mean it was hilarious from beginning to to end. That was some Life of Brian quality satire.

    2. Tan

      The comeuppance will be when Walky’s comic goes viral on Twitter

      1. Needfuldoer

        I have a feeling that’s where it’s headed.

        Watch Joyce try to play catch-up, but never achieve the same kind of following he accumulates with his non sequitur gag and poop reports.

        1. James

          Can’t wait for the poop jokes and non-sequiturs to turn into Jojos style action and cosmic horror.

    3. Nicoleandmaggie

      But is he benevolent?

  3. Yotomoe

    I mean Comeuppance even sounds kinda sexy.
    Like “Cum up pants”.
    I’ll see myself out.

    1. a/snow/mous/e

      amazing

    2. The Wellerman

      Speaking of which, I made a little something last night.

      You said you liked bondage, Rose mentioned something about balloon penises, so here you all go:

      https://imgur.com/a/tj3OShq

      1. Thag Simmons

        I am not clicking that. My curiosity has it’s limits.

        1. The Wellerman

          It’s not what you think it is.

        2. Thag Simmons

          I haven’t thought about what it is, because I figure that is a question I don’t want to have answered

        3. King Daniel

          It is…technically safe for work.

        4. Moonie

          Really depends on your line of work

        5. ktbear

          Good choice. Unfortunately I only know that because I clicked on it.

        6. The Wellerman

          It might be an acquired taste, but you really think it’s THAT cursed?

        7. zee

          No don’t listen to them it’s very good

      2. Yotomoe

        Pretty competent. Definitely looks more like she’s crushing a ballon between her thighs tbh.

        But I’m into that so it’s all good.

        1. The Wellerman

          Thanks! That means a lot coming from you. I really like your art, and you inspired me to give it a go at this kinda stuff!

          Have any suggestions as to what I should try next?

        2. Yotomoe

          o3o something with Jennifer probably!

        3. The Wellerman

          More bondage?

          Should her hair be pre-timeskip or the way it is now?

        4. Yotomoe

          Post timeskip, bondage optional. I’m much more into elaborate ropes with designs and patterns .

        5. The Wellerman

          Elaborate? Care to point me towards some examples?

        6. Yotomoe

          Look up Shibari

      3. A Red Balloon

        Is that ME?!?! And is that my…..

        BWA HA HA HA!!! ? ? ?

        1. auroki

          The guest of honor themselves shows up!

      4. Rose by Any Other Name

        Well I’m sure as fuck clicking it!

        **does so**

        ….

        I…

        …I feel so honored to have been a part of this.

        1. A Red Balloon

          Me too!

          Between this and the bonus comic that just came out, today’s been my lucky day! ?☺

      5. milu

        Awww there’s something so wholesome about it ^^
        Congrats on getting rule-34’d ARB!!!

  4. Sirksome

    Well it is a hard to argue against that. Doesn’t mean Joyce has to be smug about it.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      No, it’s like that South Park episode where Cartman gets his own amusement park. It’s all set up for making the downfall even worse.

      1. Sirksome

        Downfall? I think she already had it. Becky has been her friend for near a decade and now it’s been strained potentially to its breaking point. Her being obnoxiously smug right now only proves how far she’s fallen.

        1. King Daniel

          Yeah, but Joyce is like Wile E. Coyote right now. She hasn’t looked down yet, so she doesn’t realize she’s already running over the cliff’s edge.

        2. Needfuldoer

          That’s a perfect analogy.

        3. nothri

          So by extension the road runner is becky?

        4. Needfuldoer

          She is fast…

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

    2. Wraithy2773

      Yeah, it’s hard to argue with people who think that everything’s about them.

  5. Prince Mech

    God is busy setting up Danny to fail with Sal right now, check back in a week comic book time for your scheduled karmic punishment, thanks.

    1. Doctor_Who

      Honestly, I’m thinking the Sal thing works out because having a nice guy (note: not a Nice Guy™) also represents things going right for Sal for a change, and I don’t think she has any particular comeuppance on the way.

      1. alongcameaspider

        If anything I’m expecting self sabotage on Sal’s part

        I’m expecting her mom to approve of her dating a nice safe white boy (even if she doesn’t use those exact words) and for Sals dislike of her parents to cause issues after that

        1. Khyrin

          Extending your given scenario, I hope for Danny to give Sal the space and understanding for Sal to find her way to realize that Linda’s approval causing her to throw Danny away is still letting Linda dictate her behaviour.

      2. Decidedly Orthogonal

        *decent or kind guy?

        1. SillyGoose

          A good egg.

    2. Yotomoe

      God is making sure Sal and Danny work out. They’re his OTP.

      1. King Daniel

        Next up, he’s finally gonna bring back Star Trek: Enterprise.

        1. Roborat

          Before or after Firefly?

      2. Spencer

        Dumbing of Age is actually God’s fix-fic to prevent Danny and Billie from getting together and restoring his OTP.

        (God in this case being 1997 Willis where Danny/Sal was supposed to be endgame)

        1. Suzi

          Even if they go through difficulties here, I really hope they’re endgame cuz they’re just so nice for each other.

  6. Cmasta1992

    Oh the other shoe is gonna drop and it is going to be delicious

    1. King Daniel

      Time to bake this delicious pie? https://whatever.scalzi.com/2006/09/26/how-to-make-a-schadenfreude-pie/

    2. Thulcandran

      Yeah, good grief.

      The universe is random, stuff does just happen, and also, people have feelings and can be hurt. I am one-thousand percent with Sarah on this one. And I suspect Joyce’s comeuppance might well be the slow, sad realization that you can’t hack other people with logic and, I dunno, right-ness (any more than she could hack other people before with righteousness).

      1. John Smith

        This, I agree with.

      2. StClair

        unless your name is Booster, apparently.

        1. Thulcandran

          I think Booster hacks other people with emotions, not logic. Like Mike did, but in more benevolent ways (so far).

      3. Spencer

        It’s weird how none of Joyce’s closest friends are considering her own pain and trauma.

        I mean, of course they aren’t. She’s not being herself. She’s not being the dumb fundie they all got to laugh at all the time.

        1. Fist_of_Life

          To be fair, Joyce isn’t doing a great job of showing that she is going through pain and trauma. Here, for instance, Sarah probably sees this as her basically saying how great her life is, now that she’s atheist. The pain and trauma are definitely there, but Joyce is putting up the façade of having pushed past the trauma and everything is awesome now (I suspect more for herself than anyone). Eventually that façade will crumble, and all of her friends will feel terrible for not noticing. That’s going to suck, but its also the sort of thing that happens.
          We all go through life not knowing what even those closest to us are truly feeling. If we miss something, it can suck, really bad. That doesn’t make it our fault though. It doesn’t make it that person’s either. Its just part of what makes life what it is.

        2. Spencer

          Yeah it’s because Sarah and co. are real fucking bad at this on the grounds of being idiot children who relied on a specific status quo where Joyce is a silly lovable moron who never causes them any fuss and they can pull her out of being a fundie and then laugh about it behind her back on their own time.

          “Joyce isn’t doing a great job of showing that she is going through pain and trauma” is remarkably on point because if Joyce was crying and sad about it, if Joyce was huddled in her room sobbing about how she has no God anymore, they’d be more willing to help, because at least Joyce’s trauma wasn’t causing any ruckus.

          But she’s expressing her complex feelings on being born to a death cult that raised her to have no self-worth in ways that don’t make her an appealing victim, so it’s her fault.

        3. Fist_of_Life

          That is a very nihilistic view of all of the characters in this comic, and maybe even just people in general. They’d be more willing to help because they could actually see and realize what’s going on, not because its causing them an inconvenience.

        4. Spencer

          Yeah I get that, that’s why they’re idiot children in a series that’s a pun on the phrase “coming of age.”

          They’re bad at this. They had Joyce in a nice box and she stepped out of it in a way they don’t understand, so it’s easier to blame Joyce for raising a fuss, reacting in the immediate aftermath of that perception of her changing in a way that’s been bubbling for a long time, that is the endpoint of what they wanted of her, but without the part where she gets mad about it. She’s supposed to outgrow being a fundie moron, but she was supposed to end up like Dorothy.

          You know, like how we treat actual real life human beings in the same way on the grounds “I don’t care how traumatized you are, there’s no need for rude language!” which is merely unethical from outside observers, substantially less from people who say they care about you and then stop when it gets inconvenient.

          It’s harsh for them, it’s unstable, it’s fucked and they don’t get it because Joyce has been This Way and now she’s That Way. That’s fine, that’s why they’re idiot children. They’re Joyce’s friends, they’ll figure it out because they care about her. They can in fact come to the realization that Joyce is worth caring about even when her existential trauma is kind of annoying I guess.

          They’re only human, which is to say they’re bad at this. They’re contributing to Joyce’s pain by pinning it on her and holding her responsible for it inconveniencing them, and if they give a shit about her they’ll learn.

          And they will, because it’s a coming of age, and they’re dumb.

          *sitcom end credits music*

        5. Serendipity

          But I don’t know what to do with these tossed salads and scrambled eggs.

        6. Thulcandran

          Eh, Joyce isn’t considering theirs either. And more importantly, pain and trauma doesn’t give you carte blanche to be a jerk.

        7. Spencer

          Eh sure I’ll bite. When Joyce is processing the utter destruction of everything she used to believe in, including:

          – the origin of life

          – the idea that random chaos was overseen by a benevolent deity

          – her morals

          – her own personality

          …whose trauma is she ignoring, and what trauma is that? What part of “Joyce thinks God is dumb” is traumatizing to Dorothy and Sarah, the latter whom is so shaken she had to… deliberately mock Joyce here for it by saying she doesn’t deserve her new cartoonist job that makes her happy. Why does it not matter that all this shit happened because Becky and Dorothy are dipshits and tracked Joyce down using Liz’s Facebook because Becky needed to assert herself as Joyce’s Cool Christian Friend?

          Anyway: “pain and trauma doesn’t give you carte blanche to be a jerk” is a woefully simplistic, binary view on what suffering that much does to a person, masquerading as empathy and righteousness when in reality it’s an excuse to pat oneself on the back for dropping relationships on the grounds of cannot be assed but in a way that still feels heroic, and I don’t feel any need to entertain it.

          If friendship is only caring about someone when it’s convenient, that’s not friendship, that’s a hobby.

        8. Thulcandran

          whose trauma is she ignoring, and what trauma is that?

          Becky is a lesbian from an abusive family – emotionally abusive, if not physically – who was kidnapped at gunpoint in order to take her to conversion therapy, to FIX her. After her mother committed suicide, her dad was killed in his second violent attempt to kidnap her. She has stated that a deep conviction that God loves her regardless of her sexuality is a core belief of hers that trumps every other trapping of church or sect. i.e., an anchor amidst trauma and pain.

          I don’t think Sarah is triggered by Joyce mocking Becky behind her back, but I do think she has enough empathy to see how fucked up it is, and there’s nothing wrong with her calling Joyce on her behavior.

          “pain and trauma doesn’t give you carte blanche to be a jerk” is a woefully simplistic, binary view on what suffering that much does to a person, masquerading as empathy and righteousness when in reality it’s an excuse to pat oneself on the back for dropping relationships on the grounds of cannot be assed but in a way that still feels heroic, and I don’t feel any need to entertain it.

          Ngh, this is actually especially infuriating because I grew up in a household strikingly similar to Joyce and Becky, mine just broke younger than theirs. And it didn’t give me carte blanche to be a jerk to my friends, and when I WAS a jerk to my friends, they called me on it, and I sulked for a few days and then apologized. “I can’t be assed to bother with this relationship” is a VERY cruel way to parse “You are actively hurting me and so I’m putting some distance between us.”

          I don’t think Becky is an uwu innocent lil lamb! Yes, she did have an unhealthy relationship with Joyce, and yes it WAS fucked up that she chased Joyce down out of jealousy! I’m not contesting any of that. But when she asked Joyce if she really thought she, Becky, was stupid for believing in God, Joyce doubled down. She had a chance to say “I’m working through a lot, but I don’t think you’re stupid, and I’m sorry I said it like that. I used to believe that, and I realize that your belief was different than mine, but I’m having a hard time compartmentalizing the beliefs from the abuses in our background.” Y’know, in so many words. She didn’t. She doubled down. She does think Becky is stupid, or at least not as smart as her.

        9. Spencer

          Becky is a lesbian from an abusive family – emotionally abusive, if not physically – who was kidnapped at gunpoint in order to take her to conversion therapy, to FIX her. After her mother committed suicide, her dad was killed in his second violent attempt to kidnap her. She has stated that a deep conviction that God loves her regardless of her sexuality is a core belief of hers that trumps every other trapping of church or sect. i.e., an anchor amidst trauma and pain.

          Joyce was also nearly shot in the face and then was kidnapped while her mother and congregation went “oh that Ross meant well.”

          Joyce doesn’t need to factor Becky into why constant, repeat trauma tore her belief from her, and she wouldn’t need to even if the events that tore from it weren’t absurd violence from people who were supposed to love her.

          I don’t think Sarah is triggered by Joyce mocking Becky behind her back, but I do think she has enough empathy to see how fucked up it is, and there’s nothing wrong with her calling Joyce on her behavior.

          There is when Sarah cannot be assed to empathize with Joyce even for a second when she’s lashing out at her traumatic upbringing for the first time in her life, and then when Joyce was enjoying herself here with an accomplishment tried to drag her down not even with any kind of lecture, but specifically stating Joyce deserves to suffer for her hubris, because Sarah would get off on it.

          Ngh, this is actually especially infuriating because I grew up in a household strikingly similar to Joyce and Becky, mine just broke younger than theirs. And it didn’t give me carte blanche to be a jerk to my friends, and when I WAS a jerk to my friends, they called me on it, and I sulked for a few days and then apologized. “I can’t be assed to bother with this relationship” is a VERY cruel way to parse “You are actively hurting me and so I’m putting some distance between us.”

          Nah I’m not talking about having a friggin’ fight, that normal, human thing you do with other normal humans because sometimes you clash over shit.

          If pain and trauma motivated you to do something you regretted, and your friends couldn’t deal with it in the immediate moment, did they not come back later? If you patched things up, is that not an acknowledgement that your pain and trauma was worth putting up with, because you were worth more than it?

          Because that’s not how it shook out for me. I’d be so fucking blessed to have friends who’d come back, because all I’ve got is an immediate family who get offended when I tell them they’ve done anything wrong to me in between the constant emotional abuse.

          I don’t have a second to spare for anyone who can’t hear me out anymore.

          She had a chance to say “I’m working through a lot, but I don’t think you’re stupid, and I’m sorry I said it like that. I used to believe that, and I realize that your belief was different than mine, but I’m having a hard time compartmentalizing the beliefs from the abuses in our background.” Y’know, in so many words. She didn’t. She doubled down. She does think Becky is stupid, or at least not as smart as her.

          This is a lot of constructive thinking to expect of someone who has openly admitted she doesn’t think the person she is even exists anymore and was just a creation of her death cult, when her friend’s ability to parse through that death cult and find meaning in her faith is something she can’t understand the way her friend can’t understand why she lost it, so she blamed it on her.

        10. Thulcandran

          I guess I just don’t understand why Joyce is the only one who gets to be like this and her friends are supposed to, what, smile and pretend it’s fine for her to insult them?

          If pain and trauma motivated you to do something you regretted, and your friends couldn’t deal with it in the immediate moment, did they not come back later?
          Not until I apolgized for hurting them. Because my reasons for lashing out did not invalidate their pain, nor absolve me of responsibility for causing it. I also have a shitty immediate family, and I minimize my time with them, even my traumatized siblings, because they have explicitly said “I get to act like this because I’m in pain.” Joyce gets to act out, sure, but nobody is obligated to sit there and take it with a smile.

          I know Joyce was traumatized! But so were all of her friends? Sarah was also kidnapped! And Dorothy! And Becky! Why is ONLY Joyce allowed to lash out in response? Joyce is dealing with her whole belief system crashing in a nightmare, and Becky is dealing with that plus her mom comitted suicide, her dad tried to put her in conversion therapy and her church pretended she didn’t exist after she came out! I completely get that Joyce is Going Through It, but I don’t understand why we’re expected to empathize with her and not anyone else who’s ALSO dealing with trauma.

        11. Spencer

          We’re talking two different definitions of “hurting someone while lashing out due to pain” and I think I’ve made this too weirdly personal for the both of us. Sufficed to say, the kind of thing I’m talking about isn’t “I hurt you, but it’s fine, I was sad”, it’s the acknowledgement that hurting someone while lashing out due to horrible pain isn’t something that invalidates everything else about that person. Trauma responses aren’t rational, they aren’t something you’re doing because you want to, and I don’t think it’s real compassion for a loved one to not attempt to help them through it once when it’s both healthy for oneself and productive to reach out to the one who’s suffering.

          (That last bit isn’t directed at you, but the topic itself. I’m clarifying that since I feel like if I don’t it’s drawing on you, specifically)

          Anyway, I’m not comparing them in the Trauma Olympics.

          I am asking why, specifically, Joyce needs to validate everyone around her regards to the trauma she’s undergone. Why does Joyce’s trauma response in a private conversation need to factor Becky into it? When Joyce goes “fuck this, this is all bullshit, I hate it”, can’t say that to Becky because the last time she did Becky lost her shit, and so does it in a private conversation with a sympathetic audience, why does Becky get to take ownership of that like she has? Furthermore, if I can acknowledge that this is an emotionally driven fight between two best friends, and I can, I have already done that, why do Dorothy and Sarah get to smugly postulate at Joyce instead of attempting to reach out to her?

          Is Joyce going “fuck Jesus” traumatic to them? Is Joyce expressing anger at her fuckhead mom something that affects them? Of course not.

          How is Joyce lashing out at her faith troubling to those two? How is she acting out to them? Dorothy’s only here because she helped Becky stalk Joyce to Joe’s room through Liz’s facebook.

          Because Becky isn’t “dealing with her whole belief system crashing in a nightmare”, that’s actually pretty clear, that’s why she told Joyce her atheism was a personal failing, because Becky’s assured in her faith and that Joyce did it wrong.

          But, I’m getting away from my point: In lashing out at her entire previous worldview, why does anyone else factor into it? Why do I need to get cross with Joyce talking smack about Becky in the immediate aftermath of a painful fight where they were tearing into each other? And why can’t I look at the strip right there with Sarah seeing Joyce happily walk into the room and telling her she should be fired in the name of suffering for her hubris, and because Sarah thinks suffering for her hubris is funny?

          Sarah and Dorothy have made Joyce’s trauma into a problem because it inconveniences them. Becky can be mad, this is most directly her fault for cyberstalking Joyce because she’s a possessive weirdo, but she can be mad, it’s a painful conversation she never saw coming.

          The other two can pound sand, because Joyce doesn’t need to validate her trauma through them, especially when neither of them have any reasonable cause to get this friggin’ judgmental of her.

        12. Thulcandran

          I’ll cop to also making it weirdly personal, fair.

          I think I’m seeing the disconnect here. My reading of Sarah and Dorothy is less that they’re smugly postulating at Joyce for self-righteousness’s sake, and more trying to get Joyce to see that she’s hurting her best friend. But, as I think you’ve pointed out elsewhere, they’re bad at it, because these are a bunch of kids dumbing of age and emotional intelligence/maturity is earned through mistakes, not miraculously granted at sixteen.

          But I can see the frustration with the two of them telling Joyce to stop acting out, without actually trying to empathize with her or offer her any other outlets or help. That is shitty, and your point is fair.

  7. Rainhat

    I would think, if it were me, that if someone who charged into a room with a bat to protect me started rooting for me to fail, I’d reconsider something about my behavior.

    1. LetPeopleVent

      You’re right, Sarah _is_ acting very out of character

      1. Nono

        How is she out of character? She immediately noted that Joyce didn’t really apologise, so she was already cottoning into Joyce’s mindset.

        And just because you would go to the ends of the Earth to defend someone, doesn’t mean you’re above calling them out when they need it.

        1. mecklejay

          Nono, I think LetPeopleVent was pulling a switcheroo joke.

        2. LetPeopleVent

          How does she need it? What did Joyce actually do _wrong_ that she needs to apologize for? If Becky had just minded her own business none of this would ever have been an issue. And, as Joyce correctly points out, she’s not the one on the side of lies. Becky stormed off and refused to hear Joyce out. Sarah is being weirdly controlling and demanding on this issue.

    2. C.T. Phipps

      Seymour Skinner: Is it me? Am I the one out of touch? No. It is the children who are wrong.

    3. Rainhat

      Also, in the space of about half an hour we’ve gone from “I will literally oppose everyone for you” to “in your face, Becky?”. Wow.

      1. Yotomoe

        It’s easy to lord your superiority over people when you think they’re objectively wrong.

      2. C.T. Phipps

        Joyce is now entering her full Mom zone. For the first time she has the sweet-sweet taste of self-righteousness.

        1. Andy

          She learned more from her mom in homeschool than math, sexual repression, and prancing.

    4. Doctor_Who

      Having Sarah think you’re being too cynical is like having Eeyore tell you to lighten the fuck up.

    5. J. Spider

      I don’t think I really get anyones behavior on this plot anymore. I thought I could relate to Joyce and some of her calous nature but she’s doubled down in a very weird way. I get feeling right or frustrated but this doesn’t quite feel natural.

      I also don’t quite get Sarah’s investment in having Joyce apologize and that it’s so much that she’d still be asking about it now. Sarah can’t even vocalize why Joyce apologizing “properly” or whatever is important to her (Sarah).

      I do get that everyone in the comic IS a cartoon character and I’m very much in for the ride the comic will be. It’s just this is a type of angry atheist page that doesn’t actually match up at least from my experiences with the youtube athiesum fad that passed through years ago.

      1. Clif

        Wait for it.

      2. milu

        “I mean, who even is this cartoonist, like what do they know about any of this? …What’s that? Joyce is autobiographi-what?”

        1. Thulcandran

          Yeah, it IS super unfair of Becky to have a problem with her best friend since childhood saying her belief in God is stupid and therefore so is she. That anyone who believes in God is a gullible moron. To the face of someone who believes in God.

          Becky is being a TOTAL jerk for taking any offense at any of that and should just tell Joyce she’s right.

        2. milu

          i was reacting at J. Spider saying they find Joyce unrealistic? (in fairness they were only saying they personally can’t relate to her, then again my own reply was not all that serious)

          i’m not sure if you meant to reply to me but if so i must be missing something. sorry! i can be a bit dense

        3. milu

          ftr i agree that Becky’s reaction makes absolute sense =)

        4. Thulcandran

          Oh! Yes, this was meant to go to someone else. I should really just stop trying to comment on mobile. It doesn’t go well for me. I’m sorry.

      3. C.T. Phipps

        I think Sarah is pissed because Joyce was the “nice” one and now she’s being angry and dismissive to her friend. Basically, Sarah is seeing a lot of Radiah in Joyce.

      4. James

        I’ve seen exactly this type of angry atheist all over the internet.

    6. V

      In fairness to Joyce, she’s still coming to terms with a huge betrayal by her parents and entire community. She’s not just going to accept that something is wrong because someone who loves and protects her says it is- it’s kind of been her downfall up until now. Of course Joyce is overcorrecting in a way that’s really hurting people, but I think it does track for her character in this moment.

      1. Thulcandran

        This, completely. It’s painful to watch, but it rings pretty true.

  8. Kravis

    Comeuppance “‘s better than sex” and you still come… Uppance.

    1. Clif

      DOA Book 12: S’Better Than Sex.

      1. milu

        DOA Book 12: “S’Better Than Sex.” — Sarah Clinton

  9. Sirksome

    Also as far as comeuppance is concerned having Joyce lose a comic strip contest is a very strange choice of karmic punishment for trash talking religion. The two don’t really have much to do with each other.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      Well it’s starting to merge as Joyce apparently sees her avatar losing her faith as a major plot arc. Which, again, will very likely lead to complaints and her getting her strip pulled.

      Because, well, it’s a college paper.

      1. Rainhat

        Im betting on “literally nobody cares”, also because its a college paper.

      2. V

        It’s not a religious school, I can’t imagine there being that big of a backlash. Besides, student papers still have freedom of speech.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Watch, Mary and Peter will flood the office with complaint letters signed with randomly generated pen names.

        2. C.T. Phipps

          I see it less as an actual issue and more as Daisy is likely to hate any sort of controversy. Mostly because I think an artist discovers their work is not something personal when controlled by others is a right of passage.

        3. Thulcandran

          I regret to inform you the college is, in fact, in Indiana. Know how you can tell you’ve crossed over into Indiana when you drive down from Michigan? The billboards go from insurance, car sales, and restaurants to 75% Christian messaging. Everything from “Do YOU know where your soul is going?” to “Every Life Is Precious To HIM [baby photoshopped onto a pregnant woman]” to “THE WAGE OF SIN IS DEATH” if there’s a porn store nearby.

          I strongly suspect there’s going to be some backlash.

      3. thejeff

        A major plot arc yes, but one that should be a ways off. She’s got some 16 characters to introduce and should really take some time to show her character’s Christianity before showing the gradual change. Done well, that’s not likely to happen this semester.

        Of course, judging by what we’ve seen of her writing ability at this stage, the “arc” is likely to be a couple of strips where she comments on being Christian and a week or so later she says she’s atheist. 🙂

        1. Spencer

          The first week of the Saga of Captain Julia Gray involves Julia’s friend Betty getting hit by a bus, attacked by mountain lions, slipping into a manhole, dying and becoming a zombie, struck by lightning,going through a plane turbine, and then getting hit by another bus.

    2. crow

      I thought Joyce’s comeuppance was losing Becky, and maybe also going to Hell eventually

  10. Nayann Martinelli

    If everything is random and sucks, Joyce, you should definitely not be smug, because the probability that’s something is gonna go wrong and someone will rub it in your face is pretty high

    1. Suzi

      Also, if the world is random bullshit that sucks, that’s even more reason for us to care about each other and try to help everyone along, cuz why make something as random and shitty as life even worse?

  11. RassilonTDavros

    “If I’m wrong, then me winning disproves the existence of a benevolent God!”

    So if she’s wrong, then… she’s right. Hrm. Not sure if that’s a proof by contradiction or just smugly nonsensical.

    1. RassilonTDavros

      The moral of this story is don’t capitalize your email address incorrectly, or you’ll turn into Jennifer

      1. Thag Simmons

        Eh, there’s worse things.

      2. Kyrik Michalowski

        That’s a good lesson, and not being Jennifer means you have a better chance of it being the best one, Carla.

        1. Clif

          That’s hard logic to argue with.

        2. milu

          Everything is random and sucks, except for avatar assignation which is random and sometimes doesnt suck.

      3. Ana Chronistic

        do you not have cookies? I only have to enter my email once, unless I accidently clear my cookies

    2. Needfuldoer

      She’s applying her community’s old fundagelical playbook to her newfound anti-theism.

      1. Bryy

        yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup. both becky and joyce are still heavily brainwashed.

      2. James

        Yeah, the issue here is not so much that she’s realized a lot of things in the Bible are impossible or silly, it’s that she’s failed to actually realize that the behaviors which made her family’s church awful and culty aren’t actually connected to religion.

    3. Spencer

      She’s saying that:

      – She’s right, ergo she is morally correct.

      – She’s wrong, ergo there is no benevolent God and life is random and chaotic and she suffers for no reason.

      As in the current root of Joyce’s suffering is that every existing structure she’s relied upon from the existence of a loving God who let bad things happen so she’d be a better person to the existence of Joyce’s personality as something belonging to her are all gone forever.

  12. Regalli

    Sarah’s kerchief today is very aesthetically pleasing. Orange and dots. Love it.

    I have no idea WHAT outside intervention is going to break Joyce’s Insufferable Atheist mode (only that it’s narratively inevitable,) but I’m still holding out hope for the ‘you’re acting like Walky’ option.

    1. Nono

      It’s probably gonna be Becky having an actual crisis (maybe breaking up with Dina) and when Joyce comes to offer condolences she’s gonna get a ‘yeah yeah you were right, are you happy now’.

      At some point, Joyce is gonna have to decide which is more important, being a friend or winning an argument.

      1. Regalli

        I don’t expect the Dina-Becky crisis QUITE so soon, or the Joyce-Becky reconciliation to take QUITE so long, but we’ll see. If Becky is having issues with ‘Joyce is an atheist’ and not just ‘Joyce thinks I’m stupid for believing in God,’ (and there definitely seemed to be both of those issues mixed into the fight,) I could see that prompting a fight with Dina.

        1. Rose Red

          I hope it happens relatively soon in in-comic time, if only because I’d like to see how this plays out within a decade in out-of-comic time.

        2. Spencer

          Broke: Becky and Dina have a fight

          Woke: Dina starts dating Joyce.

    2. BBCC

      I know, right? Sarah’s bandana is gorgeous. She always did have a nice set of them.

    3. Needfuldoer

      I like the contrast with her purple tank top.

      1. Regalli

        Purple and orange is an excellent color pairing and she’s been rocking it this storyline.

  13. Yotomoe

    I mean I do think everything is random and everything sucks but i don’t think those things are correlated. Everything being random is actually pretty reassuring for me. Everything sucking has more to do with my inability to change the world for the better and my frustration with everyone and also myself. Hell truly is other people.

    1. Rose by Any Other Name

      This very much.

    2. bogeywoman

      Everything is random: today I found wild onions!

      1. A Red Balloon

        Be careful!

        Those could be Fool’s Onions, and they’re very poisonous!

        1. Geneseepaws

          Fool’s Onion is a beautiful white wildflower with a sweet, edible corm. Edible Uses. Fool’s Onion is a perennial wildflower that is native to the Pacific Northwest. This native food has edible corms that have a delicious allium flavor. They can be eaten raw or cooked in any way that you would use an onion – in soups, stir fries or raw on salads.

    3. milu

      I also love it that the universe is a random place. But also, random does not mean chaotic necessarily. The qualified possibility of predicting and explaining some things is another thing I generally find soothing and satisfying.

      That said, many things also do suck. And not even in a surprising way most of the time! Things very often end up sucking in broadly predictable ways!

    4. Keulen

      I’m gonna have to agree with this.

    5. thejeff

      Yeah, everything sucking at random is definitely less scary than there being purpose behind it all and it still sucking. What would that say about reality? God is actually malevolent? Or possibly worse, we really deserve all the bad things that happen to us?

    6. James

      The universe is random, things sucking very often lies at the fault of people one way or another.

  14. Vivvav

    “In your face, Becky!”

    Wow Joyce is just doubling-down on being an asshole over this, ok. Becky’s not even in the fucking room and that’s how she perceives this divide between them, as a contest to be won, she’s really gonna damage their friendship if she keeps this up.

    1. Wraithy2773

      No, see, don’t you understand? Joyce is *right*, and Becky is *wrong*, therefore Joyce isn’t doing anything wrong here! That’s just logic, that is!

      1. James

        Being smug and self-righteous and completely assured of your own correctness is only bad when it’s about things that are actually false. If you’re being a dick about things that are provably true it’s a-ok!

    2. Jamie

      Yeah. I’m worried about how this’ll go, but Willis hasn’t let me down so far.

    3. Spencer

      I mean their friendship’s probably done for the time being, but I think the real meat to chew on is that we learned it wasn’t a particularly healthy friendship to begin with.

      Boundless love for the other where you’d tear down the sky to keep them safe? I mean, yeah. Joyce has actually done that and I’m pretty sure Becky would do the same. I do actually think if Joyce were the homeless lesbian running to Anderson for Becky to keep her safe, the outcome would be reversed; Joyce would find comfort in God’s miracles because Becky saved her life, and Becky would start getting real fucked up that the person she loves more than anyone is suffering at the hands of the institutions she was told were always right.

      But we just kinda sorta found out that Becky and Joyce are absurdly codependent and the only reason we never noticed is that it never had consequence, and that they’ve never actually talked about their respective faith in God and just assumed the other processed it the same way.

      1. MrSmith

        Sounds about right

  15. Kitschensyngk

    Soon, Sarah….soon you shall feast to your heart’s content.

    1. Azhrei Vep

      And yet, as satisfying as it usually is, I expect this time, it will be as ashes in her mouth.

  16. Robbie

    Personally I found leaving a religion I had believed was the kindest, most loving, most scientifically accurate thing ever before realizing it wasn’t and it was hurting me and those around me really shook up my confidence, in a way I think was really good for me. (I got married and had kids super young and spanking them was The Issue I left over. I refused to continue. Our super conservative Baptist church was sort of an all or nothing thing. They preached a whole sermon about how important it was to spank children so they and you don’t all go to help. Probably AT me – it was a tiny church with fewer than ten families. I’d had it. I left and never went back)

    1. Regalli

      … That is disturbingly petty on their part. I suppose it makes sense with a small congregation, though. Glad you left and did right by your kids.

    2. Jamie

      That’s courageous of you. Respect.

    3. C.T. Phipps

      That’s awful.

    4. Ana Chronistic

      Holy hell, that’s abominable! Good on you for getting out!

    5. Delicious Taffy

      Just gonna remark that you made the right choice. Spanking kids is literally worthless and never okay.

  17. DailyBrad

    I wonder if Sarah’s going to rethink this when she sees how much the cartoonist gig actually kinda sucks for Joyce.

    Granted, maybe it all works out for her, and she’s the next Jim Davis, but it isn’t going to be a fun road to get there.

  18. Dave Van Domelen

    “Everything is Random and Sucks!” is a future volume title.

  19. Nobonesforever

    Joyce no! You’re learning correct things but in horrible ways! This isn’t positive outcomes!!!

  20. King Daniel

    Dumbing of Age Book XII: Comeuppance Is, Hands-Down, The Tastiest Thing In The World To Me

    1. OBBWG

      Dumbing of Age Book XII: S’better than sex.

      1. Keulen

        DoA Book 12: Guess What, Everything’s Random and Sucks!

  21. BBCC

    Look, I was sympathetic earlier but right now? Your attitude certainly does suck, Joyce.

    1. Jon

      I am certainly hoping this stage of her character arc is short-lived

  22. Yotomoe

    Something I realized recently about Joyce is that. Well…there’s 2 types of athiests. People who stopped believing because…it just didn’t make any sense and they just made a decision to leave it behind or people who either had a bad experience or a moral issue with the church and that caused them to lose their faith.

    Like for me, I became an atheist…because I was no longer a believer. It wasn’t some nasty divorce I had in my early 20s. Around the time I realized santa wasn’t real I was like “oh, god doesn’t make sense either. That’s probably made up.” I mean I went along with it cuz everyone else was but eventually I had to stop lying to myself and say “naw that’s silly, I don’t believe”. And that was it. No traumatic event, no moral outrage. I just stopped. I don’t even think half of my family knows. I say that to say, I think because of that discrepancy there’s things people are more or less likely to feel extreme feelings over when it comes to religion. Even though I’m an atheist I can’t say I truly get the atheists who’s separation was a huge change in their status quo.

    1. Huehuetotl

      For Joyce too, it wasn’t the trauma she’s been through. It’s because she tried to make sense of doctrine around homosexuality. Not even, “this doctrine is immoral,” but “this doctrine is inconsistent, people just make it fit what they want.”
      She’d been trained not to question her religion, and when she was prodded to, she realized it didn’t make sense.

      I didn’t have a traumatic event, I didn’t have a moral outrage. But it was a huge change in my status quo (I was around 19-20). The traumatic event deconversion is mostly in fiction, especially when implying that atheism is pretense.

    2. John Smith

      Sort of?

      So despite what a lot of people said during last week’s little dustup said, I actually had quite uneventful departure from chistianity as well. Pretty standard stuff, really. Went to university, met a bunch of people, said, “This doesn’t make a lot of sense,” started calling myself agnostic, went merrily on my way. No trauma, no irritation with believers, just a shrug and move on.

      It was only when I was deep into my science education that the whole thing started to grate on me, and I realized damaging the whole thing was.

      1. John Smith

        I guess to express a bit more about how I’m feeling about the comic at the moment. I don’t think Joyce is wrong (we’ve been over that!) but I do NOT agree with being an asshole to your friends about it. And Joyce… hasn’t actually studied anything? She knows that her family lied, and she’s rejecting it all, which is great. But she pretty explicitly doesn’t know how the scientific method works, and doesn’t seem to have taken too many steps to rectify that? So she’s arguing for something she doesn’t actually know much about.

        1. Jon

          I mean she’s literally in a Bio class right now. She’s taking active steps to learn these things.

        2. thejeff

          Yeah, but she’s just barely starting. A week into a science class doesn’t really give you the foundation to tear anything down. It’s a good start, but at the most at this point she’s using one authority to dispute another. She hasn’t gotten deep enough to really get how it works and thus how it conflicts. Nor does she have any conception of versions of Christianity that don’t adhere to her cult’s strict version of literalism.

        3. Spencer

          Correct.

          Joyce does not have a belief in the non-existence of God, the non-existence of God means she has nothing to believe in.

          Joe helped her figure out that she is a monkey (and hopefully that part where even though Heaven and Hell aren’t real, Joyce was), but that’s about it so far.

      2. Lumino

        I find this fascinating because my own studies in STEM only reinforced my faith.

        It truly is a question where everyone’s answer is different and works only for us. I don’t believe because I can prove it, I believe because I chose to believe. That’s the only thing that matters, our choice.

        1. John Smith

          I… am not going to bite that bit of bait.
          But I do wonder, are you an engineer? That’s where most “STEM Field Religious” seem to be.

        2. Jamie

          It’s certainly true that engineers are the most in-touch with reality out of the four groups.

        3. John Smith

          … the people who design based on approximate functions… are more in touch with reality than people who study reality…

          Oh. You mean they trend more conservative? Yeah, it’s true.

        4. Fist_of_Life

          something something spherical cow. Seriously though, in my experience the approximate functions are just a guideline. Engineers don’t rely on them for more than their initial designs. Once they have that done, they test their prototypes into the ground to make sure they can withstand (most of) the rigors of reality before they release it into the world.

        5. Songbird

          Yeah, as someone who put themselves through five years of his own literal personal hell to get that engineering degree and as a left-leaning atheist, John Smith’s comment not only came across as inaccurate, but all kinds of insulting.

        6. John Smith

          @Songbird
          Why are you insulted by the idea that scientists who study a field know more about how reality works better than engineers? It’s literally their job.

        7. John Smith

          Good GOD I cannot proofread lately. I apologize to everybody for all the mangled sentences. Let’s try that again:
          Why are you insulted by the idea that scientists studying a field know more about how reality works than engineers? It’s literally their job.

          Oh, wait. Do you mean the “trending more conservative” bit? That’s certainly been my experience. Not that engineers ARE conservatives, just that as a group they tend more that way than scientists or STEM professionals at large.

        8. Lumino

          If it came off as bait, I apologize, that wasn’t my intent. Though yes, I am an Engineer.

          How to explain it? Like, one of the central laws of science that we build everything on is the Law of Conservation of Energy, right? Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed from one form to another.

          We know that entropy, inside a closed system, can only increase over time.

          We know that the universe, as massive as it is, is a closed system. There are a limited number of planets, stars, etc. The physical space the Universe takes up is expanding, but the matter in it is not changing.

          We accept that, as Entropy slowly increases, we will move towards what we have defined as ‘Heat Death’. When all matter is equally distributed across the entire universe, when there is no atomic movement, and therefore no further energy generated by that movement. When all energy in the universe has been converted into matter and is frozen in pure equilibrium.

          We accept, therefore, that the Universe has an ‘end’. A point at which nothing will change and it will be considered ‘dead’ for lack of a better word. But the standard rule of physics is that anything that has an ending must have a beginning.

          If we accept that there was a point where the universe ‘began’ (The Big Bang, or whatever point you wish to establish as the start) then the question becomes, where did all the energy/matter of our universe come from? It couldn’t have ‘always been there’, because it has an ending therefore it needs a beginning. Something started the marble rolling. Something unbound by the laws of our reality.

          Whatever that entity is, that is God. That’s the only explanation that balances the equation and makes any sense to me. Does this mean any religion is right with all the specifics and nuances they describe? Certainly not, that’s all merely a matter of faith.

          But from my scientific understanding of the universe, I see no other alternative than the existence of some kind of creator god.

        9. thejeff

          Anything before the Big Bang is by definition outside of our universe and unbound by the laws of our reality. You can choose to call that a creator God, but that thing doesn’t have to share any of the characteristics we normally associate with God. It could, for example, just be a larger universe that spawns little universes through some process of its own – no being or intelligence at. It could in fact just be something that happens in the nothingness.

          This is really just the ultimate version of the God of the Gaps argument: We don’t understand this, so it must be God. With the added benefit that it’s quite likely we never will understand it.

        10. Lumino

          My ‘proof’ there (for lack of a better term) was merely used to explain the existence of something not bound by the laws of our reality causing the start of our reality.

          What traits that something has is a complete matter of faith and personal belief, I simply find the scientific evidence we possess suitable to establishing its existence.

        11. eh, whatever

          I’m afraid that’s a failure of your imagination. Start here.

          Also… if you’re choosing, you’re not believing.

        12. Rabid Rabbit

          The problem I’ve always had with Pascal’s Wager, which seems to be more or less what you’re describing, is that it makes no sense. As Aquinas pointed out, you can’t argue someone into faith, because faith is literally defined as something that can’t be proved and that you have or don’t. Admittedly, I’m a non-believer, but “choosing” to believe sounds… incredibly weird. I mean, as I understand it, theists are theists because it’s just blatantly obvious that a deity exists. But you don’t “choose” to believe in gravity, do you? I didn’t choose to believe in gravity either, it’s just that the gravity I perceive has no gods in it.

        13. Yotomoe

          My inability to “choose” what to believe in things is part of why I’d rather be described as agnostic. It’s not that I don’t…want to believe in certain things. I literally can’t make myself without feeling like I’m lying to myself. Though sometimes it’s helpful to at least try to understand people who do believe differently.

        14. Jamie

          Eh. You can think critically about the stuff others believe, weigh up your feelings on the matters, and deliberately decide to agree or disagree. That’s a choice.

        15. Yotomoe

          Whatever keeps you content. I think my mom is rediscovering her faith now that my grandma died, though I’m not sure if it’s necessarily Christianity.

        16. Jon

          It’s also a question of whether your beliefs were constructed to bend or whether they were constructed to be rigid. The first one can withstand a lot. The second one’s a house of cards waiting to fall.

        17. thejeff

          Not just bend, but there are plenty of Christian denominations whose beliefs are compatible with modern science. Note that Lumino didn’t say that their STEM learning confirmed their YEC, just their belief in God.

          Plenty of scientists belief in God. Fewer are Biblical literalists.

    3. Rabid Rabbit

      There are also the people who never believed in the first place, but that’s a detail.

      1. Yotomoe

        Yeah I was sorta counting them in the first group.

        1. khn0

          It’s a matter of perspective. If you never believe but majority of people is believing, then it’s around what you say. If you never belive but also never were supposed to believe, it doesn’t really work the same way. It’s rather like not believing in the Ghost Ship of Northumberland Strait when you never went to Canada

    4. Chris (the other one)

      My mother was 19 and a half, in college, when she had fully consensual sex with my agnostic father. Being a good, devout Catholic girl, no birth control, and they both acknowledged it. 6 months later they were married by a JotP. 9 months later, little me was babysat by my father’s frat brothers.

      My mother was ex-communicated. I was never baptized. I was brought up not attending church. Once, when I was 12, I attended a Baptist church and Sunday school for about 2 months. I realized they were telling stories less interesting than Andre Norton and Isaac Asimov. They were also telling me how I was a horrible person doomed to hell unless I embraced Jesus.

      I was an atheist until I was 20 and in the Army. I did not ‘find God’ or even Jesus in a foxhole, but I did find that I was now agnostic and not atheist.

      There may be a supreme creator out there, but if so, they have a lot to answer for and men in dresses or wearing fancy collars DON’T get to tell me their morals are better than mine. Especially when the man who ex-communicated my mother was one of those found to have been molesting young boys (am *I* glad I was never Catholic) and the Baptist minister was the father of 3 young bastards while having a family of his own.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        Daaaaaaang, but also they aren’t really selling the whole organised religion thing very well, are they

        I do believe Something started everything, bc we’re here, but it’s more likely a small Something, like a tiny raindrop that turns into a snowflake that turns into a snowstorm that turns into an avalanche, bc I understand simple things creating complexity

        If God is all-powerful, all-mighty, etc. but can only create lesser things? Just making inferior products, weak… humans can definitely surpass themselves (look at cars and planes, which do what humans can’t by themselves… a lovely argument I presented to a vitriolic Christian and received no response)

    5. Spencer

      In what you’ve written here I think we share a similar dissolution of faith. It just kind of happened, faith was something that disappeared not really due to a harsh change, but enough apathy to realize it wasn’t really there.

      You and I had faith, Joyce, and anyone like Joyce, had rules. Inerrant facts of the universe that defined its creation, history and the terms of morality.

      It’s a huge and terrible upheaval because Joyce’s rules getting broken enough that she no longer thinks they’re true means:

      – Joyce no longer has a comforting presence who controls all the chaos.

      – Every verifiable fact from her bible is wrong, and those facts have not been filled up with anything new, discovering to her horror that she is a monkey.

      – Every good thing Joyce ever did was God moving through her, the Joyce that existed was someone God drew up on an etch-a-sketch, and now that God is gone, Joyce is faced with the realization that the person she’s lived as is as fake as Heaven and Hell.

      And with respect to the commentariat, I think most of us atheists/agnostic-types lost our faith the way we did: Eh, whatever.

      Consequently, if you and I were to start acting like Joyce it’d be pretty fucking lame, because we’re getting real loud and angry over something that doesn’t really matter to us and never did, which… is not the case for Joyce.

    6. Keulen

      I had a similar experience as you. I was never very strongly religious, but I believed in a god for a while, and when I became an atheist it was after I realized that my belief in that god just didn’t make any sense.

    7. Twitcher

      My sister became an atheist not because of a big to-do, but because around middle school she questioned her religion. There’s a study out there that Rebecca Watson looked at once that says you’re more likely to be an atheist if your parents were religious hypocrites. My sister took a look at it and said that that’s probably sometimes true, Willis being an example, but that she herself, issues with her parents though she had, never thought of them as being hypocrites. I myself was initially upset with Joyce’s journey to atheism because it seemed too cliche: Religious parents ally themselves with asshole because Jay-sus, Child in response says fuck you not only to the parents, but religion too, because God is apparently the ultimate parent. My sister got mad at me when I expressed that sentiment: “How can you say it’s cliche when it’s fucking [i]real[/i]?

  23. plasticwrap

    Truest words ever spoken.

  24. Huehuetotl

    I get not wanting to cede her realization, but she’s really using their fight to project her issues onto Becky. This doesn’t feel like “inevitable insufferable atheist stage”. That’s bollocks. This feels like post-fight memory revision.
    She started her coming-out-atheist venting with “I guess it was silly”, and calling herself a “brain genius”. She was mortified when Becky heard her mocking the religion that had hurt her, because it’s still part of Becky’s life.
    But the post-fight memory revision has made it “Becky was trying to argue the existence of God.” She wasn’t… what Becky was expecting wasn’t exactly fair, but she wasn’t making that argument.

    She’ll have more time to think about the fight. She’s not actually an edgelord [quasi?]nihilist. Yes, things are ‘random’, and a lot of them suck, but she also believes that how people treat other people matters, and not in a supernatural way. In my experience, apostasy doesn’t change a person that much. It helps you shed the cognitive dissonance bullshit, but you don’t stop caring about other people.

    1. MisterJinKC

      I doesn’t seem to believe how someone treats someone else matters anymore. She never apologized to Becky for hurting her, only that Becky heard her. When she had the opportunity to share the comic strip with Walky by splitting the week she refused and demanded hers be the only one. When Walking was clearly upset she didn’t give a shit. She just gloated and said God doesn’t exist. She is in full on fuck anyone who doesn’t agree with everything I think and want mode. She’s turned into the atheist Mary.

      1. AKP

        I feel like Joyce got pressured into saying words before she had processed enough to know what they should be and now she is just doubling down uncritically on her prematurely birthed worldview, because having words to say instead of dread feels freeing and it feels like thinking anything else would be going backwards. The only thing there is is momentum.

        EVENTUALLY she will run out of momentum and have to think. And then she will be mortified and conflicted and unhappy all over again but worse.

        1. justin8448

          Thank you for this. I think it sums up what’s going on very well.

      2. Spencer

        Nah she did apologize for causing Becky pain, Becky had none of it.

        The problem is that Becky wanted an apology for the things Joyce said, and what Joyce said was “believing in God is stupid”, and she’s correct. It’s stupid to believe in a 6000 year old Earth and fire-breathing dinosaurs, which are just as factual as God.

        Y’all gotta understand, Joyce never had faith. She never processed her religion as faith. Shit was real, now it’s not. You can’t apologize to someone who can’t figure out binary.

    2. Needfuldoer

      Yeah, she’s using Becky as a stand-in for the person she used to be herself.

    3. Spencer

      excuse me please fall in line

      joyce is an angry atheist now and any attempt at the slightest nuance doesn’t matter because she is being problematic and annoying

      (You are completely correct btw)

      1. thejeff

        Well, it’s either that or we’ve got to fall in line with you and treat Joyce as completely innocent and Becky as the only one at fault.

        That’s the way it is in this comment section. Pick a side and come out swinging.

        1. Spencer

          I’m sorry, thejeff, but it’s a personal policy not to respond to posts where I have to go “nah here’s what I meant.”

  25. Barf Ninjason

    See, this is why I don’t like Sarah. I would genetically engineer the desire for revenge out of existence if I could. That “sheep following the wolf” are the worst aspects of humanity.

    1. BBCC

      Meanwhile this is one of the reasons I love Sarah. When someone’s being an asshole, I know it’s not cool to get up and hit them in the face with a chair, but it’s still satisfying when the universe (usually metaphorically) does it.

      1. Spencer

        smh at Joyce walking in through the door being happy she has a job to draw her comic

        hit her with the stone cold stunner, sarah

        1. BBCC

          I wasn’t specifically talking about Joyce, just generally.

    2. Eldritchy

      Taken to extreme it certainly is but then you’d be removing the desire for justice. Because that is what revenge very often is, a desire for justice after being wronged. The Judicial system is essentially a codified and restrained form of revenge. One that allows people to get their justice without having to bathe their hands in blood.

      1. BBCC

        Depending on how you define revenge, justice and punishment, even rehabilitative and transformative forms of justice can qualify.

  26. Bagge

    …bonding?
    …yay?

  27. Jay

    Can we retroactively give Walky the strip just because Joyce is being a dildo right now

    1. MM

      I think Joyce’s karmic comeuppance is Walky’s about to become Twitter famous.

      1. Jon

        Honestly that would make a ton of sense

    2. Yotomoe

      And like a dildo she’s really screwing over a lesbian.

  28. PB

    I mean “everything is random and sucks” still isn’t proof that God doesn’t exist. It might just prove that He’s kind of an asshole.

    1. newlland(Henryvolt)

      Which you know some people might assume is worse so it’s easier to believe that there can’t be a God that isn’t a benevolent one.

    2. Heather

      Yep. I’m an atheist now but honestly when I became one it was somewhat a relief in some ways even if there was some anger there too.

      I’ve always been a bit confused at no longer believing because the Christian god is evil. I mean he could be real and just be… bad. Of course he’s a being who makes little sense beyond rampant deranged pride as is depicted in the bible. He is terrible but I still believed and was deeply deeply afraid because of that. It was only when I realised that remarkably little of it had any chance of being true (creationism was bunk, there was nothing remotely concrete and the way the bible was actually put together while fascinating wasn’t some perfect divine inspiration) that a weight was lifted.

      Like honestly I could even still be wrong. Maybe a la ‘god/satan put dinosaurs and fossil records to trick you’ because given how arbitrary and unfair he is it does seem sometimes like something he’d do. Maybe Christianity is real. But a part of me wonders how great heaven would even be if it was like entirely biblical. Worshipping that thing forever.

      Granted many religions had an entire pantheon of asshole gods anyway.

      1. Ana Chronistic

        I grew up in a nonreligious household, so I never had the loss of faith experience (though I had MANY existential crises and a bit of paranoia about the one fluorescent light in my parents’ guest bathroom, for complicated reasons)

        but my understanding of the “real” Heaven and Hell is the former is being near God while the latter is… not being near God

        which sounds perfectly Win/Win to me, why complicate that

    3. Sam

      Could also prove that if such a God did exist, their concept of morals may not align with human ones or they have no concept of certain human experiences or that they play around with other galaxies and planets and don’t watch over Earth 24/7. Like it is very self-centered to think a God is just watching us in particular always and never gets bored and never just spends time thinking or vibing or looking at other galaxies.

      I don’t believe in any higher power, but if I did, ‘things are random and suck’ can easily be explained without undermining the faith remotely.

    4. Wraithy2773

      Or it could just be a sign that a divine being is treating us like adults and not micromanaging the world to baby us. It’s like the whole “why doesn’t god save us from viruses” thing, where the theistic response can easily be “he gave us brains and the ability to use them, we can come up with ways to protect ourselves from the viruses”.

      Benevolence doesn’t mean nanny-state-god, after all. Goes for the faithful as well as the atheist and, like me, agnostic: Want shit to get better, work to make it get better.

      1. Buli-Buli

        Agreed. People say “If God was All-Good, then there would be Evil in the World”. But they also say, “Screw ‘God’ for trying to dictate Right and Wrong to me”.

        Though I admit I’ve always found the “I don’t worship because I think God is immoral” argument silly. Like really? That’s the reason. You accept that God, Heaven, and Hell all exist but you actively choose Hell for the sake of telling yourself you are superior during Judgement?

        1. JBento

          If I believed they existed and had to pick between god and Lucifer, Lucifer wins, hands down, on account of not being a shit.

        2. Yumi

          If I believed there was a God who was going to send billions of people to suffer for eternity for not worshipping him, I wouldn’t be his number one fan either.

      2. PB

        See, that right there is how I actually believe. I just felt like playing devil’s advocate for a bit. Thanks for putting it so eloquently. :3

      3. JBento

        This is just a bullshit rationalisation.

        If I saw a rape in progress, knew with absolute certainty that I could stop the rapist without any danger to myself, and shrugged and kept on going, you wouldn’t say that I was just “respecting free will” and “not nanny-state-ing”. You’d say I was a fucking monster and you’d be right.

        And that’s literally every rape to an existent, omniscient, omnipotent entity.

        1. Ana Chronistic

          hmm

          oddly enough, I understand the Dan Brown argument:

          Do you want to protect your children? Y/N

          If yes: Would you let them skateboard?

          The difference between you observing the rape in process and doing nothing, and a benevolent God/deity doing nothing, you are affecting only a single instance, vs. literally everything ever.

          Let’s put that in Willis terms for purposes of illustration:

          Willis can make every character in the comic not be a little shit. But what if he did? Would we be reading it? It seems to me that *if this was all intentional* then pushing decisions onto us is overall better than all evil is thwarted ever by a Supreme Being.

          although it still makes more sense that no one has the wheel than an asshole does

        2. Spencer

          I honestly find the philosophical part of talking religion more fascinating than the literal “made the universe” stuff. The latter’s easy to mold in, if you need physics to explain something then you can say God invented physics, but the former kind of strikes me as the most interesting part to talk about, that human spirituality came about to form rationality in the face of things we didn’t understand, and from there discussing the moral implications of the results of that spirituality.

          I’m pretty sure I’ve been calling myself an atheist incorrectly, though, since I think I go with “not opposed to the idea of a God, just don’t think it or live by it” and I think that’s agnosticism?

          Like if I died and went to the pearly gates with St. Peter passively aggressively drumming his fingers, I could shrug and give a “my bad.”

        3. JBento

          I believe that to be a false analogy.

          Letting your kids skateboard is leaving the choice to the kids, who, if they fall and get hurt, are the affected ones. Presumably, they learn how to skate better? Or decide they don’t like skating? Or… something?

          The feelings of the rapist on “stopping rape” are irrelevant. I literally couldn’t give less of a fuck. The rape victim, i.e., the one affected by the rape, has, by definition, no choice in the matter. What are they going to learn? “Don’t get raped”? “I don’t like being raped”?

        4. Ana Chronistic

          Prob gonna regret following up on this bc I’m writing on mobile and idk why, I’ll either lose track of the threads in my head or lose the draft to it being mobile

          It’s not a direct analogy to your statement, but a general view of the world. Do you protect everyone from each other as a blanket rule? Then what exactly is going to happen in the Universe?

          Perhaps the problem is your argument that someone who knowingly can stop the rape but won’t is a monster. Ok, take Tarzan literally out of the jungle, put him in that exact place you were in, and he doesn’t stop the rape, why? He knows it’s hurtful to the victim, but he just doesn’t. Is he a monster? Oh no, you might argue, he doesn’t really grasp the moral reasoning behind it bc he was raised in the jungle. But what about people who have similarly been raised by negligence or w/e to just Not Care what other people are doing?

          On the point of what the rape victim is supposed to learn: nothing. Absolutely nothing. What the victim was supposed to learn was not a point in your argument. It was about the superuser of the Universe preventing all bad things ever. Thing is Morality is a completely human thing; animals rape all the time (mind you only SOME animals–it’s impossible to rape a porcupine, for instance). If we consider any of them monsters, it’s in terms of what we want from them and if they’re obedient or at least not obstructive to how we want them to behave.

          …here’s where mobile sucks bc I can’t tell if I caught all the threads or how to wrap up ??‍♀️ normally I don’t even read most comments here but I was SO BORED at work

        5. Ana Chronistic

          Nobody:

          Me: So the thread I dropped is what I believe I object to is the claim that someone who knowingly ignores a rape in progress they KNOW they can stop is a monster, one of the worst things a person can call someone else. Semantics, maybe, but I would accept calling that person a coward. Monster? Surely that’s the rapist, who is actively causing the harm, not the bystander, who is the only person absolutely certain they could stop it but don’t.

          I say this bc maybe YOU know YOU could stop it (where exactly is this happening, is another point, and how do you KNOW it’s a rape vs. you walked in on two consenting adults going at it [if child rape, then ok, stop that shit]), but I, personally, would never be certain I could without great harm to myself; therefore, I cannot judge anyone else for not taking action when I wouldn’t, not even the burliest cis-lookingest dude, bc what if the rapist has a gun? I will cop to cowardice, but to me monsters are the ones who actively hurt vs. hurt via inaction.

          There is also a curious phenomenon where being in a crowd will actually make peopleLESS likely to act when someone bad happens. Here I would call peer pressure the monster, vs. any individual onlooker. Sure, it’s easy to criticise them, but like with any emotionally charged event, it’s so easy to say what one would do in the same situation, but actually being there is a different story. Is this a movie? Is it really happening? Especially in current times, people are much more disconnected from reality than we should be. Does this make us all monsters?

          … totally derailing from the God is a Jerk point, but again, the rules are different for the DM than for the players, I think. Not that I think there’s a DM in charge (or they’re having a right laugh at our expense)

        6. David M Willis

          The Bystander Effect is a police narrative employed to justify their existence. It’s not a thing that actually happens.

          https://twitter.com/karengeier/status/1451600464965890048
          https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/witness/

      4. thejeff

        Sure, we can eventually. And that’s almost an argument that makes sense now when we’ve finally got the technology to do something about it, despite the idiots who won’t use it and the larger structural issues that keep us from spreading it as widely as we need to.

        It’s harder to argue in the face of thousands of years of history and hundreds of thousands of prehistory. The prospect that someday our distant descendants might be able to use our big brains to fight diseases that are devastating our village right now isn’t really a good answer.

        1. khn0

          Well, you can always launch a big brain to smash a virus, it’s so small.

          Or, I don’t know, block a prehistoric door with it.

    5. zee

      Well, she did specify benevolent

  29. newlland(Henryvolt)

    Wow ok I was trying not to be to hard on Joyce’s new attitude but I got to admit she been a butt all day that day.

  30. NinjaNick

    “Everything’s random and sucks!”

    Those are words to live by.

  31. Francoinblanco

    Ok if there are God Becky become new Press directory, Walkys comic will be hit on Twitter and in cantine no separator food and the and only them Sarah will laugh and laugh or not

  32. Qube

    how would sarah know what sex feels like

    1. Agemegos

      She hasn’t always been grumpy and reclusive. She isn’t naïve and seems pretty open about sex, not burdened by religious or other hang-ups. So I suppose she knows by direct experience.

      1. A Red Balloon

        Wait, has she ever been confirmed to have sex with anyone?

        1. Amós Batista

          she got a boyfriend, that was stole by Liz

        2. Spencer

          Eh, maybe. Liz shot back that Sarah said she wasn’t seeing him, which if Liz was a serial Sarah Boyfriend Stealer you’d think would sweeten the deal.

          Given what Sarah’s like, I find it likelier Sarah wanted that guy, didn’t say anything, and then Liz took her shot.

        3. thejeff

          I mean, I guess it wouldn’t have been an outright lie, but “Note she didn’t say ‘and single'” really implies he wasn’t single and the rest of that exchange doesn’t do anything to dispel the idea that Sarah was misleading Liz about it. You’d think Liz would have responded with something like, “He was single, even if you had a crush on him”, rather than implying Sarah lied about it.

        4. Spencer

          The exact line from Liz is “you told me you weren’t seeing him!” so I think that’s pretty clear that whatever went on, Liz chased after that guy (and most likely that singular guy) thinking Sarah wasn’t involved.

        5. Agemegos

          I don’t know. But since she could very well have had a boyfriend or boyfriends, or casual hookups and there no reason I know of to suppose that she hasn’t, her implying that she knows how good sex is doesn’t seem to be much of a mystery. She implies that she’s had sex, there would be nothing strange about that if she had, nothing (that I can recall) established in continuity implies that she hasn’t. It seems polite to believe her.

        6. Spencer

          I think Sarah’s probably done some casual hook-ups, that’s what she wanted with Jacob or said as much, but so far the only indication of history is that when Lucy asked about it Sarah got rueful and quiet for a second before dismissing that she’d gone through some CW drama bullshit.

          (my money is on Carl)

    2. Yotomoe

      I’ve never had sex but I can probably imagine something in the ballpark of what it feels like.

  33. ADLegend21

    I have never disliked a protag more than this Joyce right here. Kudos Willis, a fantastic heel turn.

    1. C.T. Phipps

      *Joyce bodyslams Becky*

      1. Fist_of_Life

        “Oh no! Not the steel chair!”

        1. JBento

          “This match is going to be HELL IN A CELL!!!”

          Joyce: “Actually, hell doesn’t exist, just like god.”

  34. Rabisch

    I love to see Jayce so self confident and happy. Now she has to work at her strip and need to feel happy, because the task will be long and difficult. Maybe tomorrow, she will try to do something for Becky

    1. milu

      …you are SO not the dark side ^^

  35. Amós Batista

    Comeuppance. Never listened this word in my life

  36. Bluewind

    Random question, but about how often do his kickstarts happen? I finally got enough of a cushion that I wanna buy a few of his books and a magnet or two and thought that might be a good time. Kinda wanna thank him for making a comic that means so much to me. Been reading for 5 or 6 years now. I might just reach out and see if I can get a couple magnets with an order instead of a set if he’s not too low.

    Recently reread it and BOY do some of the strips hit different now. I moved away from my biological family about 3 years ago and the me that first read Dumbing of Age is so very different from the me now. It’s a real trip. About 5 years ago, I started commenting and running across my old comments makes me fluctuate between wanting to strangle past me and wanting to hug past me (dear god why). XD

    I showed the woman who has claimed me (and that I now call Mom) one of my oldest posts. I had a birthday a couple weeks back, so I thought it was very appropriate. She hugged me tight and told me nobody would ever forget again.

    You see, in the old post I was talking about how everyone always forgot my birthday save my mamaw (southern for grandmother) and how lonely I felt. When Mamaw was alive, she made me a strawberry cake every year until she got too old to bake and then she would always find a way to get me a strawberry cake, even if it was just a snack cake. It hurt more than I can describe for so long because she had been the only person who cared about me for most of my life and what followed were some of the hardest years of my life. Once she was gone, there was nobody there to remember my birthday (except my best friend then and now who I met online but she was a thousand miles away). Nobody who cared when I got hurt, save for using it o insult/shaming me or cast doubt. Nobody who made me feel loved without a cost.

    Fast forward to my birthday this year, three years after I had packed everything I could in a small SUV and moved over a thousand miles away to be close to my two best friends. Three birthdays with my new family. Mom had made a spread like every year, everything safe for me to eat despite my food allergy. This year was chicken quesadillas with corn and candied sweet potatoes on the side. My two beasties couldn’t be there (one went back to college and the other can’t travel right now), but we all talked later that day. Mom and Dad were there as were my brother and his two aids (he’s severely disabled, also everyone is fully vaccinated and we all take precautions with them in my limited bubble). The aids are husband and wife and adore me as well. I think of them as family too. Mom brought out the strawberry cake and we all got a laugh at how ugly it somehow turned out without her daughter there to ice it. I smiled saying that the ugliest cakes always taste the best. We were going to make mochi with mango sorbet, but decided to keep it simple. I tapped my foot over how good it turned out. The wife aid really loved the sorbet which went well with the cake while dad made a face over somebody liking mangos as we laughed. I never will get used to the gift part and am always surprised. Two mugs (I love tea), one with pictures of my cat and the other with Mama Bear on it with a bear, some new herbal teas, and a t shirt with a promise to tie dye it together. Later, a friend (she’s wanting to move here too) surprised me with a beautiful artwork of me and my cat that now makes me smile every time I unlock my phone.

    They love me. I am loved and safe and care for. Being disabled doesn’t make me a burden to them. Having PTSD doesn’t make me broken. To them, I’m brave and strong and worth it. I’m kind. Caring. Goofy. My voice isn’t annoying, it fills the room. My curiosity is infectious. My info dumping is endearing. Cooking for me gives mom an excuse to try new recipes and gives her an excuse to nudge her lactose intolerant husband away from dairy (I’m allergic to whey). They’re here for me when I’m sick. They’re here for me when I’m not. They’re here because they want to be. They’re my family. I’m the person I am today because of them. ♡

    1. Bluewind

      Oh dear god why do I always post emotional walls of texts in the middle of the night?! Swear to god I just meant to post a question! XD

    2. Human Bean

      Thank you for sharing this story. I don’t know you, but I’m very happy to hear that you found a loving and welcoming family. You deserve good things <3

      …can't answer your question about kickstarters, though ^^'

      1. Bluewind

        Aww. That’s so sweet! And yeah. They are pretty awesome huh? Mom and I started watching Doctor Who (I have some seasons tht she doesn’t) because I was kinda lonely with her daughter (who was my roommate) away for the semester (taking classes that aren’t online). She was watching them with Dad, but now it’s somehow become our thing. We watch one or two episodes together every weekend.

        She doing great at college by the way AND joined a D&D group she really likes, so I get weekly detailed shenanigan updates. She’s really good and puzzles and thinking sideways, so the DMs have been forced to adapt in a good way and everybody is having fun. It’s honestly been great at keeping her stress down. I’m so proud ^_^

        Dude, it’s no big! You don’t know what you don’t know. It’s still pretty cool that somebody replied B)

    3. milu

      Awww, that was heartwarming, good for you 🙂

      I think there’s like 1 kickstarter a year, and the last one was fairly recently I think? Or is it just that time flies maybe

      1. milu

        (In any case you do know you can just buy books and magnets from their store at any time, yeah? There’s a link above the comic

      2. Bluewind

        Thanks for the idea! And yeah. I know about the store but didn’t want any of the full sets of magnets. Just a Dorothy, maybe a Joyce, and I’m pretty sure I require a Danny after naming my cat after him.

        Btw, cat Danny is 4 1/2 years old now! He still follows me around everywhere (like he did as a kitten which inspired the name) and is the weirdest little dude (my cat loving friends agree). For example, he somehow became friends with a snake, leads visiting pets to his food bowl so they can eat (even though he only gets so much per day), thinks musicals (including disney ones) and Jacksepticeye are the shit (also has artists and creators he hates like Markiplier or edm), he can unlock doors, he likes to pretend to type on my laptop, he will follow around new animal acquaintances at a distance until the agree to be his friend (even if it takes months or they slap him), and often lays on my chest with his hip on my cheek, has the patience of a saint, grooms my hair, and can be passive aggressive XD

        1. milu

          why my response from last night didn’t get posted. grrr this happens randomly every twentieth comment or so, maybe it’s when i post a quick comment right on the heel of having just posted another one??? anyway, i just wanted to say that Danny sounds awesome!!! haha

    4. Ana Chronistic

      ahh, I don’t birthday, but your story was so sweet! I wish I had a Mamaw like yours!

      Kickstarters: search for Dumbing of Age Kickstarter and add about a year to the latest one, idk… you can sort of gauge the timeline by when the past campaigns were run

    5. BBCC

      I’m so glad you’re doing well. I’m glad to hear from you. Happy belated birthday. <3

      Kickstarters are usually around February-March each year, but if you want, you can also order books and leftover magnets on Willis' store linked in the toolbar above the strip. It's the main store section.

      1. Bluewind

        Thanks! Great to see a familiar name. It’s been a long time hasn’t it? ^_^

        Do you know if there’s a way to order single magnets instead of the full sets? Do I need to use the contact form?

        1. BBCC

          It has, but it’s always nice to hear from people!

          I don’t know much about ordering magnets, but I THINK you can pick which ones you get, depending on what’s available. I know Willis has mentioned they sell out at different times, so I assume you’d get to pick from what’s listed on the store as still in stock.

    6. Kaiyalai

      Thanks for sharing ♡

      DoA Kickstarter campaigns tend to start in March, or April. I think one of the oldest ones as late as May,

  37. timemonkey

    Remember back when Becky showed up and was being super obnoxious and a jerk to Joyce for seemingly no reason and a bunch of us reasoned that it was because Joyce was the only available outlet from their lifestyle around so Becky was venting her anger at her situation at her? Seems now Joyce is doing the same thing. She’s not really mad at Becky it’s just Becky’s the only one around that represents what she’s angry at and so is being a jerk to vent that built up frustration.

    1. Spencer

      I mean she’s mad at Becky at the same level Becky’s mad at her: You’re wrong, because you’re taking belief as I perceive it, and so do you, and screwing it up. That’s why Becky’s an idiot who believes the Earth is 6000 years old even though Becky got over that with Dina and why Joyce lost her faith being a smug asshole even though the catalyst for Joyce’s faith crumbling was in how all her beloved friends, and specifically Becky, would go to Hell.

      Also I get the feeling this is gonna keep being ignored, but Joyce didn’t get like this until Becky dragged her into a conversation she wasn’t prepared to have, as in Joyce’s atheism that she still can’t call atheism isn’t a belief in a lack of God but a lack of belief in anything because her death cult told her she has no worth and can only do good through God and that filtered to the point where Joyce doesn’t know what her personality is anymore.

      Joyce is doubling down because being right is the only stability she’s got.

      1. Yumi

        I wouldn’t say Becky “dragged her” into that conversation, personally… Becky got upset at what Joyce said and removed herself from the situation, then Joyce (at everyone else’s urging) went and followed her. I thought even at the time it was probably not the best advice, to immediately follow Becky, but it is something that seems to come up a lot (inn media and real life) where people treat these things like they have to be dealt with immediately, and sometimes it makes things worse.

        1. Spencer

          Dragged. Actually dragged. Don’t worry, I blame the rest of Joyce’s friends too, they’re all extremely bad at this, but at least Becky’s got a sensible reason for that.

          Joyce was having a private conversation that let her be good and angry at her death cult for the first time in her life with someone who would validate that anger.

          Becky learned Joyce had a friend over and being a wildly over-possessive nutbar cyberstalked her to Joe’s room in the name of asserting her dominance as Joyce’s Cool Christian Friend.

          Joyce wasn’t ready to have this talk with Becky. She doesn’t even know what these feelings mean, because they’re based on a rejection of everything she’s known instead of a belief in something new. She eventually accepted that she is a monkey, she’d probably be able to square loving and respecting Becky with her newfound lack of faith. Actually, squaring that newfound lack of faith would probably be easy for Joyce if someone said “oh but Becky, this might hurt her” because Joyce defied all her rules that said she should turn on Becky in the same way that if a mathematical formula proved the objective immortality of homosexuality, Joyce would kill math with a gun to protect Becky. That’s kind of what she already did.

          But Becky swaggered on in the way she’s done a thousand times to the cheers of an awed Joyce, and it finally went wrong.

        2. Yumi

          Yeah, honestly, none of that sounds like dragging into this conversation for me, even if I agree that Becky was being over-possessive of Joyce. But I’ve been reading the comments for the comics even when I haven’t been posting, and I don’t think we’ll ever see eye to eye on this, so I’ll drop it here before it gets to intense.

        3. Yumi

          *too intense

        4. Spencer

          Maybe “confronted”? Like, Joyce wasn’t ready to do this with Becky, and then Becky made it happen anyway not realizing what she was walking into. “Dragged” probably implies a level of premeditated and active involvement in making it happen as opposed to it happening as a result Becky being clingy.

          I wrote that to try and better express my intent but it’s also cool if you want to drop it.

      2. C.T. Phipps

        Becky doesn’t believe the Earth is 6000 years old. She believes in evolution, the Big Bang, and science. You know, like 99% of all Christians on Earth.

        1. Spencer

          even though Becky got over that with Dina

  38. Spencer

    My dilemma at the moment is that I wanted to start this with something bold, spicy, and deliberately inflammatory like “Sarah is an emotionally abusive friend” but the problem there is that it’s so inflammatory it immediately derails any positive conversation I could have, except even if it’s not completely true, it’s true enough.

    Sarah’s an introvert, that’s gucci. Sarah’s bad with people, that’s totally acceptable, so am I. She only knows how to show she cares in big, sweeping moments and then those blow up in her face; one time she let herself be vulnerable and supportive of Joyce and just hug her and let her sob in her arms, and then Becky and Dina rolled in, saw it, and Dina grinned about it in her face like a smug motherfucker. When Sarah tries to do the right thing, she pays for it.

    But, she leverages it. Unintentionally or not, and the answer is somewhere in the middle, but Sarah’s aware that she’s around friends who know she’s “bad with people”, and she makes them earn her friendship.

    Sarah knows she does not have to try more than once in a while, because “Joyce knows she cares.” Sarah can do or act as she pleases, because she’s a pissy misanthropic killjoy and you’re not supposed to put up with it, you’re supposed to be annoyed and leave her alone. Sarah can call her sister and Roz by extension a big smelly hussy in a crowded auditorium because no one has standards for Sarah, she’s just like that. Despite herself, she has Joyce, who wouldn’t know how to avoid someone she likes if she tried.

    Consequently, Sarah knows she can do or say anything, and Joyce will let it go because Joyce knows deep down she really cares. Joyce could learn that Sarah and Jacob bonded by laughing about how Joyce was going to snap and suck a billion dicks and other fundie fun facts, and Joyce would forgive her.

    Joyce has made it expressly clear that she’s always going to love Sarah, and, natch, that also leads to Joyce causing a whole lot of loud, terrible noise and throwing Sarah into uncomfortable situations. That ain’t Sarah’s forte! She’s actually bad at that! Joyce is accommodating to Sarah in this way the same way that Sarah is to her: they love each other, but oh my god stop it.

    But what it means is that Sarah can do or say anything, and Joyce will forgive her.

    This whole strip starts with Sarah noticing Joyce being happy and forcing her to drudge up the first fight she ever had with her best friend and how that innately means Joyce doesn’t deserve to feel good and she needs to be punished, and she needs to be punished because Sarah thinks it’s funny.

    Look, folks, I dunno what kinda people you hang out with, but that’s real fucked up. It just doesn’t seem as fucked up because we’ve been trained with this kind of character: huge dickbag but with a “heart of gold.” Han Solo can be a roguish dickhead all he wants, as long as he saves Luke in the finale.

    Except Han’s gotta redeem himself that one time. Sarah always falls back into this routine, of being spiteful and cruel and hurtful, and she can do it because her friends don’t hold her to standards. Sarah’s like that, but she cares deep down.

    And she does. It took a week of being near Joyce for her to follow her to a party with a baseball bat out of concern something terrible would happen, and it did. Sarah was right, everyone should have listened to her, and she solved it. And Joyce still couldn’t believe she liked her, Sarah was offended by that, and Joyce spelled it out that Sarah can’t just show she cares in big ways, she needs to show it in little ways too.

    Here’s the thing, folks. Friendships are about showing you care in ways you can. For Sarah, her ability to do that is severely limited and that means two things: She has to try her best in her limited capacity anyway because you still have to show you care in ways that don’t involve a baseball bat, and anyone who cannot appreciate that limited capacity doesn’t really respect her and isn’t worth being her friend.

    But Sarah as she is now is someone who comfortably rests in a status quo where she only has to try when it matters, so she falls back on her juvenile misanthropy and she can just say whatever is on her mind no matter how unwarranted and aggressively cruel, because she and everyone around her know she’ll step up “when it counts.”

    1. Spencer

      or TLDR: it’s probably relevant that the chapter after next one is called Trial and Sarah.

    2. Sam

      This is also treated as a fairly casual conversation as well so it’s pretty easy to brush off that Sarah kind of expects and wants Joyce to meet consequences to learn a lesson. Instead of just saying what she should be saying which is ‘you’re being a dick about this and if you keep doing that, it will blow up in your face and I don’t know what to say to convince you to listen’.

    3. milu

      All I’m gonna say here and not ruin a perfectly average day for me, is, points for consistency Spence

      1. milu

        Bad phrasing again probably, sorry. What would ruin my day is getting into a lengthy argument about Sarah’s moral fiber, it’s nothing to do with you specifically. (You just seem to be a regular publisher of takes I find myself at odds with with ^^)
        As I have said before, I just hate getting into arguments, I’m just spineless and anxiety-riddled like that)

        1. Spencer

          You’re way too good and nice a person to need to worry about upsetting me on the grounds of disagreeing with my consistently and inevitably proven wrong takes.

          It’s cool, you can’t cause me grief on that. My ego is quite well-fortified at this point.

        2. milu

          haha you’re sweet. i’m not so much nice as wimpy, but oh, i’ll take it ^^

  39. thumb

    Happy to see what will be called back in real time when shit hits the fan.

  40. Leah

    Oh, no. I like Joyce, so this is cringy for me.

  41. nightshade

    saddest thing is joyces last line about the world in general is pretty much fact..

    1. Common sense

      naaaah, most people just take everything for granted and have forgotten how it is to be thankful for what you have. If you got food, 4 walls and a roof, heat and water, then the world cant suck so much for you. everything above that is something we should cherish and not take for granted.
      i personnally have seen people helping out strangers when they got some heavy to carry or when they suddenly collapsed on the street.And yet the Pessimistic people always ignore the fact that such kind people exist.
      With everyone being so negative in todays society you could say a realist is someone who realizes that things arent so bad as everyone paints them and that they could be ALOT worse then they actually are.

      its honestly the Twitter crowd and people who believe they need to protest everything that imply that everything sucks always.

      1. Serendipity

        I don’t know how you can look around at the world today and not see that it is on fire, but okay.

        1. Ana Chronistic

          so

          a Twitter person (I know who but don’t feel like dragging up the exact thread) proposed, paraphrased, “What if WE are the magical Narnia for another world?” I mean, indoor plumbing that takes away human waste with no fuss! Artificial lights so it’s daytime even at night! We can look at a rectangle and have the knowledge of the world almost whenever we want! AMAZING!

          I shared that Tweet, and someone responded, “This neither excites nor amuses me.”

          One, this perfectly exemplifies the problem with Affluenza, a deliberate raising the bar so normal everyday pleasures are “beneath” oneself, and it’s much harder to find joy than if one had realistic standards.

          Two, and I say this absolutely in horror that climate change is where it is, the world doesn’t give a shit about the state it’s in. Earth has no problem if we run the human race to extinction. So from that perspective, yeah, the world’s fine or w/e

          This is a roundabout way to say everything is fine AT THE SAME everything sucks, and everyone has a completely different bar for suckage

      2. Delicious Taffy

        Yeah, the garbage disposal in my sink isn’t so loud when I plug my ears.

  42. Common sense

    I am not on the side of Religion or anything.
    but am i the only who gets tired by Joyce new attitude by now?
    We get it, you dont need to go on and on about it.

    1. Spencer

      Yeah it sucks that Joyce is reaffirming herself after her only, and extremelyy painful, argument with her best friend where after returning to her dorm happy about her now job as a cartoonist Sarah tells her she deserved to fail for her hubris on the grounds that Sarah would think it’s funny.

      Extremely problematic.

      1. Common sense

        i think you kind of missed my point here. its not about THAT she is reaffirming herself but HOW she does it.
        it was more about the “everything that happens in the World disproves that there is a god” attitude something she showed before the confrontation and which led to said confrontation. like i said i dont disagree in general but she just dont need to go on about that point.its getting old.
        Also, Joyce really has herself to blame for the “pain” she got from the argument since she was unable to take her friends feeling into any consideration..

        1. Spencer

          It’s okay that Joyce was angry at her death cult in a private conversation that Becky stalked her to.

      2. BBCC

        In Sarah’s defence, I don’t think it’s so much ‘because Joyce is angry’ as it is because of the last conversation she had with her, where she said ‘Becky’s smart, she’ll come around’. She fundamentally isn’t respecting Becky’s religious views anymore. Which, given the circumstances, I think it understandable – she’s not in a good place where she can respect healthy religious beliefs. She’s still in ‘burn it all’ mode. BUT it’s still a jerky thing to say. It doesn’t make Joyce some irredeemable monstrous asshole. It’s just a thing. Sarah likes seeing karma for stuff like that. It’s not a very supportive thing to say but I don’t think it’s as harsh as that.

    2. Alex

      Her smugness is starting to be annoying, yeah. She IS right about a lot of things but that’s going to make her insufferable in the short term.

    3. RedCat

      She’s compensating.

  43. torrent29

    While I get that Joyce is being a bit spiteful, perhaps defensively, Sarah is just plain awful. Joyce has a right to be angry, maybe not at Becky, but she does have a right to be angry at what she feels was being lied to. Becky has a right to her opinions regarding religion as well.

    Sarah secretly, or not so secretly, hoping for a comeuppance on Joyce is yet another example of her being an awful selfish person.

  44. Jason

    Great. I can’t believe I prefer fundamentalist, attempting-gay-conversion Joyce. I hope something snaps her out of this soon, but given that her upsetting Becky not only didn’t do it but resulted in *gestures to comic* I think it might take some time.

    I really thought the best of her with her ranting with Liz. I feel incredibly let down by her.

    1. Spencer

      I also can’t believe you prefer a fundamentalist trying to convert a gay dude into heterosexuality.

      1. C.T. Phipps

        I point out the atheist one is abusing a recently homeless gay teen so I think we can say New Joyce is pretty awful too.

        1. Spencer

          I can’t even with this post. Well played.

      2. Jason

        Don’t get me wrong, what she was doing back then was more reprehensible- but she was also more likeable despite it. She believed what she was taught to believe- Ethan was going to hell if he lived life as a gay man, so she was helping him, and also he was a sanctuary from her PTSD. As someone who has lived with PTSD- it’s not okay but it is very understandable and sympathetic to me.

        Whereas now she’s just being… not likeable, to me. She’s not acting out of concern for someone else, nor is she acting out of fear. She is, I’ll admit, acting out of anger- and managing anger is a learned skill, and I suspect the closest she got was suppression, which is going to be the opposite of helpful here. I recognise her need to work through the trauma of her upbringing being what it was (as well as the feelings around everything tied into it since coming to college, ranging from and in no particular order kidnapping, murder of a peer, murder of a parent she knew most of her life, “suicide”, realising another parent she’d known most of her life had committed suicide aaaaand the divorce of her parents). And I recognise her need to work through a lot of very painful emotions, likely including anger, bitterness, betrayal, grief, and more. But right now she’s lashing out and being, imo, unbearable and I find her inherently unlikeable while she does so.

        1. Spencer

          I don’t know how one is supposed to be nice about lifelong, existential trauma that she’s now been forced to confront in the worst way possible.

          Like maybe if she continued her “I’m just a monkey!” lessons with Joe on her own time, this would have been more mellow.

        2. Joyfulldreams

          I’m sorry but all I’m really hearing here is that you can tolerate a woman being abusive and regressive but god forbid she ever be ANGRY. A woman being angry is just utterly intolerable.

          (I know this is kind of a bad faith interpretation but god damnit this is just the vibe I’m getting from the comment section. It really does feel like people just can’t tolerate Joyce when she dares to be angry on her own behalf for like literally half a day.)

        3. Jason

          The issue with anger is that if not managed it hurts people. Joyce is not only hurting people, but she’s being completely callous, unpleasant and disrespectful about it. If she’d gone on a yelling tirade about everything she’d been through I’d be on board- but she’s being nasty instead, completely disrespecting anyone who isn’t in her exact camp. For me it’s not remotely the anger (anger is, as I implied, probably something she’s been denied the expression of and she deserves the chance to let it out- but she doesn’t seem angry right here, implying it’s not the anger that’s the issue) but how she’s viewing other people.

          I will say that it hits a particularly sore note for me at this exact moment, as I’m processing my own baggage with someone whose attitude is “my point of view is the only valid one” so there’s definitely some projection. But also I’ve been talking about my own feelings towards Joyce, rather than anything detached.

          (Also I’m talking about Joyce’s likeability, not about how acceptable her behaviour is, which- being able to watch the characters from a distance- isn’t necessarily directly related.)

  45. Amós Batista

    All chars in DoA are kind of asshole (except Joyce). Just let Joyce be one in at least one book.

    1. Spencer

      We’re angrier at Joyce for saying God is dumb than we are that she dated Ethan so he could force himself to become straight.

      1. Amós Batista

        https://media.giphy.com/media/voOhKPgzYsyPu/source.gif

    2. torrent29

      Lucy, Dina, and Dorothy seem to be very much against that type. I can’t recall any of them ever doing something that was ‘ass-holish’ so to speak. To a lesser extent – Faz came off first as a jerk, but then actually kind of sweet and nice.

      1. Spencer

        See what I’m forward to is Dina finding about Joyce is an atheist.

        Because Dina’s actually been that Angry Atheist type, it’s just it never had dramatic consequence so it was a funny quirk. Dina’s the one who said Joyce’s greatest birthday present would be to “renounce magical thinking and embrace empirical evidence”, started raging at Joyce on the way to the first bio class about the Garden of Eden, and was legitimately pissed off that Sarah made her engage in wizardry by making snow angels, because Sarah only did so thanks to absorbing Joyce’s good mood. Otherwise she was pretty happy to egg Joyce on whenever Joyce used her upbringing to justify a false belief.

        And thinking about Dina in relation to Joyce, they process belief the same way: it’s not worth taking on faith. Dina modifies her understanding of dinosaurs in accordance with new information, that’s where she started hompfking, and the important thing to Dina is being as up to date as possible and rolling with anything new as long as it can be reasonably proven.

        Dina can do that because she actually knows what she believes in: the non-existence of the supernatural and an insistence that there’s a factual explanation for what’s in front of her, or will be in due time.

        And Joyce doesn’t have that right now. She’s got the ardent confidence in her beliefs (or she does now, anyway, since she got challenged on them), but no actual foundation. Her beliefs are being formed out of a void of what used to be there.

        I hope Dina becomes Joyce’s mentor in atheism but then spends most of it on lessons on dinosaurs.

        (also maybe Lucy joined the main cast because Joyce was gonna start going through to it and we needed someone to be sunny)

  46. Smooti

    Man, Joyce, just because you think you were factually “right” in an argument (you weren’t, because the argument wasn’t actually about whether or not God exists, it was about whether lying to your friend and then saying her beliefs are idiotic behind her back was a good thing or not.) doesn’t mean you get an excuse to be a jerk. Hopefully she grows out of the asshole-atheist phase soon.

    But I guess Sarah ain’t the one to give that lesson, given that Sarah is. Yknow. Sarah.

    1. Spencer

      I mean, no, actually. The argument Becky and her had was about the factual existence of God that Becky and Joyce process in different ways and assumed the other did exactly as they did.

      Like, the stakes are kinda higher than “Joyce insults Becky by association”, when that association was in Joyce raging at her death cult upbringing.

      Also not telling your friend you’re an atheist isn’t lying, and if it is, then judging it as wrong is way, way more repugnant than the lie itself. I don’t actually need to tell people what’s in my head.

      1. Smooti

        Verbally they were arguing about that, yes. But Joyce had been pretending to still be a Christian in front of Becky for months. Becky walks in on Joyce saying that believing in God is something only dumb people do. While we as the audience know Joyce is talking about herself, Becky has no way of knowing that, nor does Joyce say that during the argument. She is the one who reframes the argument from “Hey, that was a dick thing to say” to “We’re now debating whether or not God is real, and I’m gonna bring up your dad during this.”

        Becky doesn’t have a problem with atheism. She is dating an atheist. If Joyce had come up to her and admitted to being an atheist now in a way that wasn’t harsh, I don’t think there would have been an argument. But Joyce decided that pretending to still be Christian in front of Becky and then venting to someone else later was easier.

        So, yeah, I still think Joyce is in the wrong here. Not because atheism is wrong, but because being an asshole and implying your friend’s beliefs are bad/dumb is.

        1. Spencer

          Becky had a problem with Joyce questioning her faith in front of her for the first time in her life. She treated it like a tantrum. We do, actually, have reason to believe Becky has a problem with atheism when the atheist in question is Joyce.

          And I’ll say this till I’m blue in the face and then some: Joyce doesn’t think Becky’s dumb for having faith, she thinks Becky is dumb because she believes in a 6000 year old Earth and fire-breathing dinosaurs, because Joyce only processed belief as verifiable facts. She doesn’t understand faith because she never had it, the same way Becky decided Joyce is now godless because she only ever had faith to make herself superior.

          Anyway Joyce is actually allowed to vent her complex personal feelings about her death cult upbringing to a sympathetic party, yeah. Becky learning about them thanks to stalking isn’t actually her problem.

        2. Spencer

          Becky had a problem with Joyce questioning her faith in front of her for the first time in her life.

          Oh sorry I should clarify, this is in reference to Dina’s birthday party, not the recent Faith-Off.

        3. JBento

          Kudos for Faith-Off.

          Now a movie starring Saint Nicholas (Cage) and the Apostle John (Travolta).

        4. King Daniel

          But thing is, Becky doesn’t “believe in a 6000-year-old Earth” or “fire-breathing dinosaurs”. She hasn’t for the past half-year, and Joyce knows that, because Becky was talking about it in front of her.

        5. Spencer

          why’re’y’all doing this to me

        6. Joyfulldreams

          How many times does Spencer have to say that “thinking that the earth is actually 6000 years old” is *what Joyce thinks Faith is*, and the idea that Becky might believe something else just literally does not compute? The argument is about the fact that both of them have a fundamentally COMPLETELY different understanding of what faith actually is, and now those two conflicting views are clashing because *neither* is currently willing or even ABLE to understand where the other is coming from.

          Joyce does not, in fact, ‘know that’ just because Becky was talking about it in front of her, because Joyce still heard all that and didn’t process it, doesn’t know HOW to process it. Just like Becky heard Joyce talking about how ‘if original sin isn’t real that means everything we were taught was a total lie’ and still doesn’t understand where Joyce is coming from either.

        7. Spencer

          You’re my new best friend.

          I’m sorry, BBCC, but Shipper Besties are over.

        8. BBCC

          Wow. Rude. 😛

        9. Spencer

          Joyfulldreams ships JoJo

          we’re simpatico like that

        10. BBCC

          I ship JoJo too! It’s just not my FAVOURITE ship because I’m more invested in the ones with my favourite characters! It’s not my fault JoJo doesn’t have Sal, Marcie or Carla in it.

        11. Spencer

          You gotta understand.

          I know you want these cartoon characters to smooch and hold hands.

          But to be a Shipper Bestie you have to want them to smooch and hold hands as much as I do.

        12. BBCC

          I do for Sal and Danny! Don’t I get credit for that?

          I also very much am interested in JoJo smooching, we just have our order reversed. 😛

  47. Username Taken

    Ah, to be 18 and positive you have all the answers every time you discover a new “truth” in how the world works. Most of us have been there at one point or another. Dumbing comes before the fall, Joyce!

    1. Username Taken

      Oh boo, I thought my gravitar was changed. Let’s try this again.

  48. Throwatron

    Man, Joyce is gonna be just mortified when she’s willing to let herself realize that she has latched on to the wrong part of this disagreement and completely failed to understand how she was being upsetting, lmao.

  49. egg egg

    As someone who’s never really had any faith at all, it’s been interesting to watch how Joyce & Becky interact with each other and see the world. Especially since Joyce is meant to be pretty autobiographical.

    I’ve also watched Midnight Mass recently and thought that was very interesting regarding faith, interpretation of the scriptures, and death. It’s been on my brain non-stop since I finished it, lol. How do other people feel about this show? And for funsies, which DoA character would be which character in Midnight Mass?

    1. C.T. Phipps

      I really liked the show but I also feel like it was just a retelling of Salem’s Lot. The big thing was that it seems a LOT stronger for people of either ex-religious, religious, or Catholic background. Some people also think its very pro-faith and others think its very anti-faith.

      One article I read was someone who was outright ANGRY that a lot of the religious people were shown to be genuinely good people despite the fact the priest has, uh, well, made a very incorrect theological assumption.

      My take is its just a horror movie. Also, that vampirism and religion have always been linked.

  50. Rani

    Hot take: Joyce did nothing wrong. This comment section has been annexed by the People’s Republic of Beckystan.

    1. Spencer

      I agree but with the caveat that Becky didn’t really do anything wrong either.

      Well okay this whole thing happening because Becky invaded a private conversation to assert herself as Joyce’s Cool Christian Friend because she’s a clingy weirdo, yeah that’s her b, but she’s only a clingy weirdo in hindsight and at any other point in time Joyce would have been absolutely delighted for Becky to drop on in, because Joyce has no idea how to form boundaries with her and the biggest takeaway of the Faith-Off is that Joyce and Becky’s friendship was all love and no structure. Otherwise the only ones whose cases I am willing to get on are Dorothy and Sarah, for being smug, posturing jerks in something that has no meaning to them other than how they’ve decided Joyce needs to be.

      But you couldn’t pay me to tut tut at Joyce’s anger at her abusive, death cult upbringing because someone else made it a lot more public than it needed to ever be, and her argument with Becky, the first argument they’ve ever had and on the most damaging subject possible, well it’s a fucking argument about every single facet of their lives all at once where they doesn’t understand what the other is saying. That’s a bit beyond the level of “I need the thermostat set to this temp only!” Neither of them gets it, they’re angry, they’re hurt, they’re betrayed, and all in the worst ways. That’s feelings, y’all, sometimes they’re bitter.

      I like both these characters, I just can’t wrap my brain around these “Joyce is the villain because she’s problematic” takes. I don’t get how it’s about “Joyce being shitty” when that shittiness has a million asterisks and isn’t even that particularly shitty to begin with, as if the only possible story to tell about Joyce losing her faith and how that’s completely crumbled her in a way that atheists from casually religious families never experienced is gonna end with “Joyce learning to respect religions.” She’s probably gonna do that, actually, just maybe not in the immediate aftermath of dissociating from a life in a death cult! Maybe the part about Joyce Brown Going Through Feelings is the important part and not the resolution where she stops being so dang edgy!

    2. C.T. Phipps

      Whether you think it’s wrong boils down to the larger issue.

      Joyce doesn’t respect Becky or her beliefs anymore.

      She thinks it makes her stupid and deluded.

      1. Spencer

        Question: if you tell me 2 + 2 = 5, am I an asshole for not humouring that?

        Joyce didn’t have faith, she had binary. Everything sensible people recognize as biblical parables she thought were objective facts.

        Joyce fundamentally doesn’t understand that Becky dropped the unimportant bits because Joyce fundamentally doesn’t understand faith, the way Becky doesn’t understand Joyce never had faith and so treated her lack of belief as a personal failing

        1. J. Gawain

          I mean. It depends on how you go about not humoring it. It would seem to me that many people here think Joyce went about it the wrong way. I would argue that taking pot shots at Becky like she is here is kind of an assholish way of going about it.

        2. Spencer

          Was she taking potshots at Becky, and Becky specifically, before they had the first fight of their lives that displayed how they never understood each other’s faith and Becky told her that Joyce is to blame for being godless since she only believed to be superior?

          Because that’s actually way more in the description of “mocking faith”, in that Becky is mocking Joyce for faith she doesn’t have, while Joyce mocked her for rules she doesn’t believe in.

          And, y’know, it’s not like Joyce has been acting any different to how Wally, Sarah, Joe, Jacob that one time, and Dina treated her religious beliefs: an unending source of mockery.

        3. J. Gawain

          Joyce, literally in this comic: “me winning disproves the existence of a benevolent God. In your face Becky.”

          I’d call that a pot shot. You’re right, the others had previously mocked her religious beliefs. Incidentally, I had $200 stolen out of my car a few years back. Does that make me less of an asshole if I break into someone else’s car to steal $200?

        4. Rose Red

          No, but it does make it weird that so many people are calling you an asshole for breaking into someone else’s car when so few people called the person who broke into your car an asshole when it happened (granted, there were fewer people around back then, but a lot of the same people were definitely watching).

        5. J. Gawain

          That may be true, but I only started reading a few months ago, so I don’t know what it was like in the before times (I didn’t read any of the comments from earlier strips).

          Without going back and reading all of those comment sections, I wonder if there has always been an anti-Joyce bias. I’ve noticed that, at least in recent strips, there has been some heavy anti-faith sentiment, so I could easily see that bias occurring. Then when Joyce became atheist, the bias stuck, even though she wasn’t Christian anymore. I myself love Joyce, but I still think that she is acting fairly boorish here.

        6. Spencer

          That would be why I asked if she was taking potshots previously and not in this immediate strip that we are observing right now.

          Also, y’think there might be some slight moral differences between Joyce here and the act of premeditated theft of $200? You wanna give that a once over?

        7. J. Gawain

          Why would you shift to before their fight? I was specifically talking about how Joyce is acting right now. How she acted around Becky is irrelevant to whether or not she’s acting like an asshole now.

          I’m sorry that my analogy wasn’t perfect, but I’ll boil it down to the point for you: two wrongs don’t make a right. Just because someone was an asshole to you doesn’t justify being an asshole to other people.

        8. Spencer

          What the heckers do you mean “shift to before the fight” that’s actually really relevant!

          Do you think the part where Joyce is feeling all this confused, angry shit about her death cult, has it out with her lifelong best friend who she loves more than anyone in the world and has never fought with where both of them have no idea what the other is saying, like do you think that might have changed things?

          Is that seriously all this series is about? Whether or not a character is “being an asshole” in the immediate moment?

          What the fuck even is a “wrong” here anyway? Joyce had a fight with her best friend and they’re mad at each other. She’s only having this conversation now because Sarah saw she was happy and told her that she deserved to be punished for her hubris because Sarah thinks it’d be funny.

          That’s not “two wrongs”, that’s you holding one character to absurd standards of conduct that you don’t hold anyone else, when said character had her baby steps into understanding what a total lack of belief in everything she used to think as factual tossed out all at once because her two best friends are possessive douchebags.

        9. J. Gawain

          Whelp, now I think we’ve hit the point that we can’t actually reason with each other. Good day to you, sir.

  51. Deadjolras

    Oh, we’re circling back to this again, aren’t we?

  52. Arianod

    Well, that’s something they both can agree upon ^^

  53. Wendy

    The problem with Joyce here is that she’s acting like Becky AGREES with the stuff like, “Earth was made in 6 days,” “dinosaurs were on the ark,” etc.

    But Becky has made it clear that she doesn’t think that stuff is important; it’s likely she doesn’t even believe those things; she’s shown that she values actual science. And Joyce is acting like believing those things is the only way to be a Christian. She’s wrong about that.

    1. Rose Red

      I don’t think Joyce is acting like Becky agrees with that stuff. She knows that Becky doesn’t agree with that stuff – that’s why she led with that during their big fight. But Becky still believes in God. All of that was One Singular Package to Joyce, so since she threw out the young-earth creationism, she also had to throw out the belief in God.

      The part she’s frustrated about in this strip is the benevolent/omniscient/omnipotent God that Becky seems to still believe in (and also heaven and hell, except maybe not hell because Dina’s going to be in heaven with her and her mom). Becky feels like God is there for her – he sent a superhero to save her, he wouldn’t give her anything she couldn’t handle! Joyce does not and has not for a long time.

      Joyce doesn’t understand why Becky didn’t also stop believing in God, because she’s what, nineteen? and she still hasn’t quite fully learned that not everyone sees and interprets the world the same way she does (everyone else she’s interacted with could be explained by a different upbringing, but Becky’s was so similar, of course they must understand the world in the same way.) She’ll figure it out eventually, that not everyone understands the world in the same way, but it’ll take at least a few weeks, which is going to probably be several long and agonizing years for us.

      Side note, I’m also not so certain that Becky has shown she values actual science. I’m not saying she doesn’t value it, just that she hasn’t shown it on-screen. She’s shown she values things that Dina, who was at first a cute girl she wanted to put the moves on who represented the world outside her screwed-up upbringing and later became her girlfriend, tells her are true. But I haven’t seen her get enough screentime for me to agree that she’s shown she values actual science.

      1. Wendy

        Sure she is acting like that – so far whenever anyone’s tried to talk to her about what she’s said, including Becky, Joyce’s defense is always something like, “The earth isn’t 6,000 years old! A guy didn’t get brought back to life from the dead!” and she totally disregarded when Becky tried to assert that those weren’t things that were even important to her.

        “The part she’s frustrated about in this strip is the benevolent/omniscient/omnipotent God that Becky seems to still believe in-” again, Joyce has so far ONLY focused on the irrational parts the faith she grew up in; she hasn’t addressed or shown any indication that she’s considering what you’re saying here at all. So no, I don’t buy it.

        And we’re just gonna have to agree to disagree that Becky hasn’t shown she values science.

        1. Rose Red

          You’re right. She’s not considering it. That’s her defense because to her, it was all the same thing. A God that loves me (Joyce) is in the same category as the Earth being only 6,000 years old. She doesn’t understand how it could possibly not be all the same thing for anyone, especially Becky, even though she knows other Christians, because she’s young and she still thinks, like every young person, that everyone is fundamentally like her, that her viewpoint is the same way everyone processes the world. She’ll grow out of it, like most people do. It’s not something she’s considering or working towards, but she’ll grow and learn to understand other people better because that’s what people and protagonists do. But that’s a process that takes a lot more than the one afternoon since the fight.

          I also have to disagree that she’s only focused on the irrational parts, because they’re all the irrational parts, including the parts that Becky has kept. Faith and religion by its nature is irrational. You don’t logic your way into believing it. You just… have faith.

    2. Joyfulldreams

      Becky is acting like the only way to be Christian is to just believe in God and the ‘important stuff’ and not put any value in anything else, and that if you DO put stock in any of the ‘unimportant stuff’ then your faith is ‘only about being superior to others’. She is ALSO wrong.

      1. Spencer

        Yeah that.

        If Joyce is “being shitty” for not “respecting Becky’s beliefs and faith” then oh boy can we acknowledge that Becky told Joyce to her face that the reason she’s an atheist is because she was an asshole Christian who failed at doing it right.

        1. Wendy

          Becky did not say that.

        2. Spencer

          I mean, the exact line is “maybe your faith should have been less about who you’re better than”, as in, the reason Joyce has lost her faith is that she did it wrong because, unlike Becky, she cared about “the unimportant stuff.”

          Again, big complicated Feelmobile off the rails argument, Joyce and Becky are completely talking past each other. Becky’s saying it because she thinks Joyce had faith and that Joyce’s faith was based in the literal text of the bible, rather than Joyce processing that text as inerrant facts of the universe that could not be contradicted, and once they did enough times, predicated on how Joyce could not morally compromise with Becky going to Hell and all the authority figures in her life betraying her (because God and Authority are the same thing to Joyce), the whole thing collapsed.

          How do I put this: if Becky said this to Mary, it’d be true, because Mary picks out what she wants to assert her own righteousness. As in Mary has given herself enough authority to decide what’s important and that everyone else is wrong, and she does that completely reliant on her faith to decide that since her faith is an extension of her self-righteousness.

          Becky also picks and chooses, but what she’s picked are “God’s unending love for me that I’ve felt through his miracles” and “don’t have premarital sex with Dina.” Every other aspect of her faith that can be countered by facts is something she rolls with because if it can be contradicted by facts then it has nothing to do with faith, ergo it’s unimportant.

        3. Wendy

          “the exact line is “maybe your faith should have been less about who you’re better than”, as in, the reason Joyce has lost her faith is that she did it wrong because, unlike Becky, she cared about “the unimportant stuff.”

          Uh, no, Becky said that because Joyce was making fun of Dina. And Becky was pointing out, rightly, that Joyce had in fact been using her faith to see herself as superior to Dina – and she still does, hence the “ew, I believe the same thing as DINA” attitude on Joyce’s part.

        4. Spencer

          Aight then.

      2. Wendy

        Becky is not acting like that is the only way to be Christian, she doesn’t even have a problem with atheism. Her beef is with Joyce implying very deliberately that SHE PERSONALLY is an “idiot” for believing in God at all. So no, she is not wrong.

        1. Joyfulldreams

          How does her not having an issue with atheism have anything to do with her thinking that there’s only one way to be a ‘proper’ christian?

          And that’s clearly not the only beef she has. If that were the only beef she had, then all of that stuff about “the important parts” wouldn’t have even been brought up, now would it have?

        2. Wendy

          Where exactly does she imply that there’s only one way to be a “proper” Christian? The only reason she even brought up that there were certain parts of her faith that were more important to her – which, by the way, is a totally valid way to feel – is because *Joyce* was foisting things on her and Becky was clarifying that the things Joyce was trying to ascribe to her were not actually legitimate things to ascribe to her.

          And sure, okay, you’re right, her beef is with Joyce “lying to her and making fun of her behind her back.”

        3. Joyfulldreams

          Y’all it is possible for Becky to also be wrong while not having actually done anything wrong. They are both wrong. It is okay for them both to be wrong, they are fighting, there are no sides, this is a rough thing to have come out in this way and they’re gonna be at odds for a bit while they figure this out. They still love each other, they just need to learn to understand each other more deeply and like, have actual boundaries.

        4. Wendy

          So she didn’t do anything wrong yet is…still…wrong. Right. Got it.

  54. GeekRyuu

    Please don’t become a smug, online atheist, Joyce. It’s really, REALLY not a good look.

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