Honestly in a weird way, Robin is kinda one of the best influences she could’ve gotten when first coming away from all of the fundie stuff that prescribes how she should live? Like obviously being gay was already a big step from what she was “supposed” to be, but Robin’s kind of… flippant nature around expectations and external pressures (even if she still would play as she’s “supposed” to a lot of the time) was a great model for Becky, letting her see that she can kinda just do… whatever?
Needfuldoer
Robin is almost at Walky’s level of “not as dumb and/or oblivious as they play themselves”.
It’s a well-known phenomenon that the Grindr servers get overloaded whenever there’s a Republican convention or other MAGA gathering.
Last time was for the Horst Wessel Charlie Kirk memorial thing. Grindr crashed due to the huge spike in connections at the event.
The core of conservative thought is hypocrisy. Those who make the most performative shows of being patriots are traitors; those who make the most performative shows of being Christian are selfish, greedy, and spiteful instead of selfless, generous and forgiving; those who make the most performative shows of being fiscally responsible are embezzlers; those who make the most performative shows of wanting to release the Epstein files are on it; those who make the most performative shows of being for “traditional family values” are closeted.
Honestly, I disagree. This issue isn’t going to be resolved by lying to Hank.
Hank feels alone and confused with how his life has shifted. Now he has the feeling that he’s losing everything left of his family as well. Sure, Joycelyn needs to be safe and respected, but Hank needs to feel loved and supported as well. Those two needs are equal.
Hiding them from one another denies them both the opportunity to redefine their relationship as parent and child.
It’s not really “hiding them from one another” as much as it is “give Jocelyn time to be prepared, if she even wants to have this interaction right now”. I’ll also say that Jocelyn’s need to be safe actually IS more important – the stakes are just wayyyyy higher on her end.
Lumino
The male suicide rates make me concerned that this might very possibly be an issue of Hank’s safety as well. He lost everyone in his life. His wife, his community, everyone except his children. If he feels like he lost his children as well, things could turn really ugly, really quickly.
I hope not, because Hank doesn’t deserve that, but I don’t feel like Joycelyn is the only one with ‘safety’ as a primary concern.
Bryy
wait you’re seriously siding with Hank on this
k
Dave
You know that characters with shitty views can still be characters that people are invested in the stories of, right? Otherwise no one would’ve been invested in Joyce when she was still a fundie and pulling shit like, say, trying to 9 Chickweed Laneify the only gay man who existed in the comic at the time. (With the important distinction that, unlike 9CL, doing conversion therapy to Ethan wasn’t treated as Joyce having the mandate of heaven by the narrative. I mean there are a bunch of other important distinctions such as shared dreamscapes and a cat and really bad sex but shhh let’s not dwell on it)
LiamKav
“I am worried about Hank’s mental health” is not the same as “I am siding with him”.
Allen Alberti
Hank may be completely misguided and wrong about almost everything, but he’s a good guy. You don’t have to have the right opinions to be a good person. There are many COMPLETE s-bags with the right opinions.
noisy
I think you raise a really good point regarding Hank likely lacking a support network right now. Losing his wife, leaving his church, and discovering that Joyce and Jocelyn don’t share his beliefs all at once could be a really rough time. But I feel that learning about Jocelyn could just as easily make things worse. Even if it did make things better,, and even granted that his safety is as big a concern as Jocelyn’s, she still has the right to make that decision for herself. There’s no reason why Hank’s support should fall on her shoulders, when she’s probably in the worst position to take that on.
Leorale
This exactly. When I had a baby, I was basically signing a blank piece of paper: whoever you are, whoever you’ll become, I’ll support you. I’ll love you, no matter what, forever and ever.
Kids — including adult kids — didn’t make any agreement like that.
Sure, I’ll hope that my kid(s) eventually help me too, when it’s my turn to be more needful. But, in our culture, they get to choose, and they might choose not to help (esp if I’m a jerk to them, but for any reason really). Progeny didn’t promise to support their parents, or even to love us. Their love and support are far more conditional.
It’s not equal, but, that’s the way it goes!
Hank may highlight that wives are often automatically put in charge of social networking, and churches are a major place that people get support, and with neither wife nor church, Hank is suddenly without support. And that’s super hard!! But that doesn’t mean that anyone in particular should step up and shoulder the entire support system herself. Hank is gonna have to gather support, himself, even though he might not have any idea that he needs it, or how to do it. Again not equal, again, that’s the way it goes.
Veronica
Oh dang, I forgot the entire church community sided with Toedad
As a parent, I don’t think those two needs are equal, because one person is the parent of the other. Also safety needs are more important than emotional needs. Also Becky has agreed to help Jocelyne. But mainly that first one.
Freemage
In what sense is Hank a {potential} threat to Jocelyn’s safety? He ain’t Toedad, and never has been. The only threat here is emotional–the threat of rejection. Which is exactly what Hank is feeling right now.
lev
Just because Hank isn’t among the worst of the worst doesn’t mean he can’t be dangerous to his transgender daughter.
Freemage
Again, what danger? Physically, I can’t see Hank striking his own child, period. I’m not denying that many trans kids face danger in their homes, but this is not one of those situations, and claiming it is is actually bad for talking about these issues.
Why wouldn’t taking a step back and getting your kids pizza instead jumping to assumptions about the protest and getting upset about it be a bad idea? Isn’t Jocelyne a fully capable adult at this point? I could see her dad being concerned about her safety at a protest like that, but acting confrontational about your adult child’s different beliefs is not how you keep that relationship going. Not to say that you can’t have a discussion with your child about it, but asking them to explain and then actively listening and trying to understand their point of view is a good step.
As for a support network, please don’t only rely on your children for that. Generally, parents chosd to have kids while kids can’t help having parents. I thought that being the support network for your child was understood to be part of what you signed up for when you became a parent. I have, unfortunately, known people who have had kids in order to feel better about themselves and use them as support. It doesn’t tend to end well. Hank would be better off making a new support network by finding a group to join that does a hobby he enjoys or wants to try. Join a theater or reenactment group, a musical group, a sport, photography, sewing, etc. He would probably enjoy doing volunteer work, like food distribution or at an animal shelter. The point being, Hank should really be some form of stable before he tries to handle what he thinks is going on with his kids. If your mind and life is a mess, you’re probably only going to dish out a mess to everyone, especially if your end purpose is to get them to be what you perceive as “under control” or “on track”. To me, that feels like trying to do a controlled burn in the middle of fire season. You’re more likely to end up with everything burning down around you than the nice clearing of debris to make the relationship stronger.
Also, if you want to control something’s life completely, get a plant.
tbf
If you did a good job raising your kids, they’ll still want to have a relationship with you when they’re adults. Not the same kind of relationship, more one of equals. Hank could be a supportive dad and have a good adult relationship with Jocelyn and have a good faith disagreement with her about the Bulmerian crisis. Let’s see if he nails it.
eh, whatever
Isn’t Jocelyne a fully capable adult at this point?
Fundies lack that concept. To them, you’re never a fully capable adult without your superiors (your father first of all) all the way up to God.
Sorry, no. Hank’s need to be loved and supported is NOT actually equal to his trans daughter’s need to be safe. Hank is a parent, not a friend, it isn’t his children’s job to support him through a divorce, that is a job for his friends and other family members. Your kids are not crutches and they certainly don’t owe it to you to put themselves in danger for your comfort or happiness.
Any good parent would rather be in danger themselves than put their child in danger, and there are other options and resources for support that he can access which wouldn’t put Joss in the firing line at all.
ALSO also – You have no idea what his reaction will be to finding out his daughter is trans. He might just off himself over that, viewing it as a “failure” of some kind. There’s no way to predict that, but there IS a way of predicting that Joss wasn’t ready to tell him she’s trans yet. Because she hasn’t yet.
They both have phones, she isn’t answering for him. Or texting him. It’s actually really easy to tell she doesn’t want to be confronted with him right now, and that the best thing to do is distract him while someone tells Joss he’s here so she can decide for herself.
Freemage
My big issue with this is the idea that Jocelyn telling Hank the truth, or otherwise being outed to him, would somehow put her ‘in danger’, or threaten her safety. She’s living on her own, supporting herself, and generally doing just fine. And Hank, for all his retrograde views, is not Toedad. He never does anything more offensive than take a little while to adjust to new information that runs counter to the cult programming he’s been dealing with his entire adult life.
This is NOT to say that Jocelyn is obligated to come forward. Merely that any notion that doing so would place her ‘in danger’ is hyperbolic, at best.
Yes, maybe it would. What’s driving me up the wall in this convo right now is everyone else assuming that Jocelyn is refraining from outing herself to Hank because of concerns about her own safety, rather than just not wanting to deal with the emotional drama it would cause right now.
Again, whatever her reason is, that’s fine. I’m just disliking the ‘safety’ mantra in the comic which bears no relation to the existing situation in the comic, or any aspect of Hank’s characterization.
Freemage
She was talking about the still-very-financially-dependent Joyce, there. She might have been also talking about herself, but that would be in a past-tense way–perhaps when she first started drifting from the fundie mold, Carol persuaded Hank to cut off financial support for Jocelyn. But she’s independent, even if she’s not financially secure, right now.
Nymph
It does put her in danger. That danger might not come to fruition, but the unfortunately nightmarish fact of life is that you are in potential danger when you come out to people. Maybe Hank will be great, maybe he’ll suck, that doesn’t change the concerns in this moment given his background.
He’s “not Toedad” but until recently, they were members of the same community which is anti-trans and anti-queer.
Also, if you read my post, you’ll see I wrote “the best thing to do is distract him while someone tells Joss he’s here so she can decide for herself.” which is absolutely NOT a point I’ll ever back down on.
Not sure how accurate this still is, but according to Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs (specifically set up to answer those questions), Safety is actually more important than relationship needs. You can read up on the theory here here.
Laura
Huh. Interesting.
Guess I’m somewhere between a 1 and a 3 on there. Somewhere with a little red, a little orange, and a little yellow, maybe.
I remember getting really mad at the health teacher who taught us about that, in high school, and getting in a big argument with him in class. He was saying you needed to have basic needs met before self actualization, but I was saying that sometimes people don’t pursue all those needs in the same order. Folks might find one answer to meet a need or rwo, but not all of them in a row. Certainly not in a solid-foundation pyramid.
I suspect we’ll find if Hank is about to discover his own, personal “Limits to Growth”. Sure hope not — my dad died a pain-filled death because he was an unreconstructed racist. Wouldn’t have a Philippina home care nurse in his house (or any brown-skinned person) to administer the requisite narcotics.
The physician recommends a veggie pizza with reasonable amount of cheese.
Everyone else recommends.things the physician is not happy about.
Either way pizza is a great idea, because at least everyone starts in a good mood, there are always possible diversions, and people tend to behave better in public places. Also pizza is in and of itself a great idea.
deliverything
What’s a “reasonable amount” of cheese, anyway?
Big Z
Enough cheese to make the melty mozzerella stretch happen but not so much that you can’t taste the other toppings, obviously.
deliverything
…which means that the more intense the taste of the other toppings, the more cheese is reasonable.
Wonder what toppings you’d need to have to justify adding an entire wheel of cheese?
Big Z
See, if you’re REALLY clever you realize this means the Cheese Pizza is functionally allowed infinite cheese so long as you can still perceive tomato sauce in there.
The pizza place near me used to make good, and sometimes great, pizza, until they went down the three-cheese road. The their pizza got too salty to eat.
A+ navigation from Becky. Hank clearly doesn’t want to do this anyway, he’s just doing what he thinks he’s ‘supposed’ to be doing, but we already know he’s cool with letting his kids have their own beliefs and make their own choices.
Yeah, it’s hard not to read him as conflicted between thinking his beliefs are right and straying from them necessitates intervention and his genuine belief that his children are their own people and deserve to make their own choices and have their own beliefs, even if that takes them away from his own. There’s hope for him yet.
Plus he seems to be anxious about his kids slipping away from him, post-divorce. His status as dad of the family isn’t so assured now that the family isn’t a unit anymore.
It’s left over from the evangelical anti-Christian ideology. A father is the… let’s say patriarch… of all his children, no matter how old. Or, more precisely, those kids are supposed to do as he tells them, for as long as they live.
This logic is to apply to the leader(s) of their church, who are the father(s) of all the congregation. Meaning, everyone MUST do everything they say, because God said so.
I recently watched Season of the Witch a Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman movie free on youtube and weirdly the first part of the movie was kind of all about this.
I’m going to amplify what Adeptus said — there’s a fairly wide semantic gulf between “my kid is a terrorist” and “my kid is siding with terrorists”, and (especially in the mindset that a lot of Christian conservatives tend to operate in) there’s a vast gulf between “who you are” and “what you do” in terms of what it all means.
Hank could still make some pretty damn harmful choices and say some harmful things here, but he’s so far still acting like someone who a) isn’t convinced his kid is evil and b) can be taught — after all, he’s being super chill with his kid’s best friend who is not only a lesbian but the underlying cause of his marriage and church community blowing up in his face.
The fact that he chose to side with Becky and Joyce during the Toedad incident and continues to do so without any apparent resentment directed at her in these strips is the main reason I think Hank has a shot at being ultimately being led to being 100% a decent human being.
256 thoughts on “Lefty ledge”
NGPZ
*facepalm*
they’re FUCKED X-X
M!a
…as are we all.
Daibhid C
It’ll probably be fine if he only has a couple of slices.
Ana Chronistic
YTMND
You’re “The MAN” now, Dad
Shiro
If anyone in this friend group, Becky should be the politician
Clif
That’s what Robin said.
Doctor_Who
Oddly, I think Robin was kind of a good influence on her. If only accidentally.
IntangibleMatter
Honestly in a weird way, Robin is kinda one of the best influences she could’ve gotten when first coming away from all of the fundie stuff that prescribes how she should live? Like obviously being gay was already a big step from what she was “supposed” to be, but Robin’s kind of… flippant nature around expectations and external pressures (even if she still would play as she’s “supposed” to a lot of the time) was a great model for Becky, letting her see that she can kinda just do… whatever?
Needfuldoer
Robin is almost at Walky’s level of “not as dumb and/or oblivious as they play themselves”.
anon
I’m sure there are ‘conservative queers’ but i can’t imagine someone like becky talking up reagan lol
then again this is au niverse where Robin got into office
Lars
There are even far right-wing queers. People are weird.
Mravac Kid
I mean, Blaire White is a straight up right-wing trans woman…
Freemage
Not the only one, either. Caitlyn Jenner, like most super-rich white people, supports the Republican party.
Shiro
Oh this is definitely telling Hank what he wants to hear and a solid gambit to defuse the situation/stop him from demanding to see Jocelyne
someone
It’s a well-known phenomenon that the Grindr servers get overloaded whenever there’s a Republican convention or other MAGA gathering.
Last time was for the
Horst WesselCharlie Kirk memorial thing. Grindr crashed due to the huge spike in connections at the event.The core of conservative thought is hypocrisy. Those who make the most performative shows of being patriots are traitors; those who make the most performative shows of being Christian are selfish, greedy, and spiteful instead of selfless, generous and forgiving; those who make the most performative shows of being fiscally responsible are embezzlers; those who make the most performative shows of wanting to release the Epstein files are on it; those who make the most performative shows of being for “traditional family values” are closeted.
TheScreenJockey
The people who should be politicians almost invariably have too much conscience to be successful politicians.
Dot
Nearly had him!
Lumino
Honestly, I disagree. This issue isn’t going to be resolved by lying to Hank.
Hank feels alone and confused with how his life has shifted. Now he has the feeling that he’s losing everything left of his family as well. Sure, Joycelyn needs to be safe and respected, but Hank needs to feel loved and supported as well. Those two needs are equal.
Hiding them from one another denies them both the opportunity to redefine their relationship as parent and child.
perpetual summer
It’s not really “hiding them from one another” as much as it is “give Jocelyn time to be prepared, if she even wants to have this interaction right now”. I’ll also say that Jocelyn’s need to be safe actually IS more important – the stakes are just wayyyyy higher on her end.
Lumino
The male suicide rates make me concerned that this might very possibly be an issue of Hank’s safety as well. He lost everyone in his life. His wife, his community, everyone except his children. If he feels like he lost his children as well, things could turn really ugly, really quickly.
I hope not, because Hank doesn’t deserve that, but I don’t feel like Joycelyn is the only one with ‘safety’ as a primary concern.
Bryy
wait you’re seriously siding with Hank on this
k
Dave
You know that characters with shitty views can still be characters that people are invested in the stories of, right? Otherwise no one would’ve been invested in Joyce when she was still a fundie and pulling shit like, say, trying to 9 Chickweed Laneify the only gay man who existed in the comic at the time. (With the important distinction that, unlike 9CL, doing conversion therapy to Ethan wasn’t treated as Joyce having the mandate of heaven by the narrative. I mean there are a bunch of other important distinctions such as shared dreamscapes and a cat and really bad sex but shhh let’s not dwell on it)
LiamKav
“I am worried about Hank’s mental health” is not the same as “I am siding with him”.
Allen Alberti
Hank may be completely misguided and wrong about almost everything, but he’s a good guy. You don’t have to have the right opinions to be a good person. There are many COMPLETE s-bags with the right opinions.
noisy
I think you raise a really good point regarding Hank likely lacking a support network right now. Losing his wife, leaving his church, and discovering that Joyce and Jocelyn don’t share his beliefs all at once could be a really rough time. But I feel that learning about Jocelyn could just as easily make things worse. Even if it did make things better,, and even granted that his safety is as big a concern as Jocelyn’s, she still has the right to make that decision for herself. There’s no reason why Hank’s support should fall on her shoulders, when she’s probably in the worst position to take that on.
Leorale
This exactly. When I had a baby, I was basically signing a blank piece of paper: whoever you are, whoever you’ll become, I’ll support you. I’ll love you, no matter what, forever and ever.
Kids — including adult kids — didn’t make any agreement like that.
Sure, I’ll hope that my kid(s) eventually help me too, when it’s my turn to be more needful. But, in our culture, they get to choose, and they might choose not to help (esp if I’m a jerk to them, but for any reason really). Progeny didn’t promise to support their parents, or even to love us. Their love and support are far more conditional.
It’s not equal, but, that’s the way it goes!
Hank may highlight that wives are often automatically put in charge of social networking, and churches are a major place that people get support, and with neither wife nor church, Hank is suddenly without support. And that’s super hard!! But that doesn’t mean that anyone in particular should step up and shoulder the entire support system herself. Hank is gonna have to gather support, himself, even though he might not have any idea that he needs it, or how to do it. Again not equal, again, that’s the way it goes.
Veronica
Oh dang, I forgot the entire church community sided with Toedad
Leorale
As a parent, I don’t think those two needs are equal, because one person is the parent of the other. Also safety needs are more important than emotional needs. Also Becky has agreed to help Jocelyne. But mainly that first one.
Freemage
In what sense is Hank a {potential} threat to Jocelyn’s safety? He ain’t Toedad, and never has been. The only threat here is emotional–the threat of rejection. Which is exactly what Hank is feeling right now.
lev
Just because Hank isn’t among the worst of the worst doesn’t mean he can’t be dangerous to his transgender daughter.
Freemage
Again, what danger? Physically, I can’t see Hank striking his own child, period. I’m not denying that many trans kids face danger in their homes, but this is not one of those situations, and claiming it is is actually bad for talking about these issues.
Kimi
Why wouldn’t taking a step back and getting your kids pizza instead jumping to assumptions about the protest and getting upset about it be a bad idea? Isn’t Jocelyne a fully capable adult at this point? I could see her dad being concerned about her safety at a protest like that, but acting confrontational about your adult child’s different beliefs is not how you keep that relationship going. Not to say that you can’t have a discussion with your child about it, but asking them to explain and then actively listening and trying to understand their point of view is a good step.
As for a support network, please don’t only rely on your children for that. Generally, parents chosd to have kids while kids can’t help having parents. I thought that being the support network for your child was understood to be part of what you signed up for when you became a parent. I have, unfortunately, known people who have had kids in order to feel better about themselves and use them as support. It doesn’t tend to end well. Hank would be better off making a new support network by finding a group to join that does a hobby he enjoys or wants to try. Join a theater or reenactment group, a musical group, a sport, photography, sewing, etc. He would probably enjoy doing volunteer work, like food distribution or at an animal shelter. The point being, Hank should really be some form of stable before he tries to handle what he thinks is going on with his kids. If your mind and life is a mess, you’re probably only going to dish out a mess to everyone, especially if your end purpose is to get them to be what you perceive as “under control” or “on track”. To me, that feels like trying to do a controlled burn in the middle of fire season. You’re more likely to end up with everything burning down around you than the nice clearing of debris to make the relationship stronger.
Also, if you want to control something’s life completely, get a plant.
tbf
If you did a good job raising your kids, they’ll still want to have a relationship with you when they’re adults. Not the same kind of relationship, more one of equals. Hank could be a supportive dad and have a good adult relationship with Jocelyn and have a good faith disagreement with her about the Bulmerian crisis. Let’s see if he nails it.
eh, whatever
Fundies lack that concept. To them, you’re never a fully capable adult without your superiors (your father first of all) all the way up to God.
Nymph
Sorry, no. Hank’s need to be loved and supported is NOT actually equal to his trans daughter’s need to be safe. Hank is a parent, not a friend, it isn’t his children’s job to support him through a divorce, that is a job for his friends and other family members. Your kids are not crutches and they certainly don’t owe it to you to put themselves in danger for your comfort or happiness.
Any good parent would rather be in danger themselves than put their child in danger, and there are other options and resources for support that he can access which wouldn’t put Joss in the firing line at all.
ALSO also – You have no idea what his reaction will be to finding out his daughter is trans. He might just off himself over that, viewing it as a “failure” of some kind. There’s no way to predict that, but there IS a way of predicting that Joss wasn’t ready to tell him she’s trans yet. Because she hasn’t yet.
They both have phones, she isn’t answering for him. Or texting him. It’s actually really easy to tell she doesn’t want to be confronted with him right now, and that the best thing to do is distract him while someone tells Joss he’s here so she can decide for herself.
Freemage
My big issue with this is the idea that Jocelyn telling Hank the truth, or otherwise being outed to him, would somehow put her ‘in danger’, or threaten her safety. She’s living on her own, supporting herself, and generally doing just fine. And Hank, for all his retrograde views, is not Toedad. He never does anything more offensive than take a little while to adjust to new information that runs counter to the cult programming he’s been dealing with his entire adult life.
This is NOT to say that Jocelyn is obligated to come forward. Merely that any notion that doing so would place her ‘in danger’ is hyperbolic, at best.
Fuzzy
I think there’s financial concerns? Jocelyne was concerned about being cut off from potential resources. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/resources-2/
deliverything
Regardless, Jocelyne would probably be the best person to determine if Jocelyne feels safe coming out to Hank. Maybe it’d be good to ask her first.
Jon
What? Grant the person at the center of the question agency??
Taffy
That’s not very Christian behavior.
Freemage
Yes, maybe it would. What’s driving me up the wall in this convo right now is everyone else assuming that Jocelyn is refraining from outing herself to Hank because of concerns about her own safety, rather than just not wanting to deal with the emotional drama it would cause right now.
Again, whatever her reason is, that’s fine. I’m just disliking the ‘safety’ mantra in the comic which bears no relation to the existing situation in the comic, or any aspect of Hank’s characterization.
Freemage
She was talking about the still-very-financially-dependent Joyce, there. She might have been also talking about herself, but that would be in a past-tense way–perhaps when she first started drifting from the fundie mold, Carol persuaded Hank to cut off financial support for Jocelyn. But she’s independent, even if she’s not financially secure, right now.
Nymph
It does put her in danger. That danger might not come to fruition, but the unfortunately nightmarish fact of life is that you are in potential danger when you come out to people. Maybe Hank will be great, maybe he’ll suck, that doesn’t change the concerns in this moment given his background.
He’s “not Toedad” but until recently, they were members of the same community which is anti-trans and anti-queer.
Also, if you read my post, you’ll see I wrote “the best thing to do is distract him while someone tells Joss he’s here so she can decide for herself.” which is absolutely NOT a point I’ll ever back down on.
KSavage
Not sure how accurate this still is, but according to Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs (specifically set up to answer those questions), Safety is actually more important than relationship needs. You can read up on the theory here
here.
Laura
Huh. Interesting.
Guess I’m somewhere between a 1 and a 3 on there. Somewhere with a little red, a little orange, and a little yellow, maybe.
I remember getting really mad at the health teacher who taught us about that, in high school, and getting in a big argument with him in class. He was saying you needed to have basic needs met before self actualization, but I was saying that sometimes people don’t pursue all those needs in the same order. Folks might find one answer to meet a need or rwo, but not all of them in a row. Certainly not in a solid-foundation pyramid.
Robert Amman, case in point.
someoneElse
I suspect we’ll find if Hank is about to discover his own, personal “Limits to Growth”. Sure hope not — my dad died a pain-filled death because he was an unreconstructed racist. Wouldn’t have a Philippina home care nurse in his house (or any brown-skinned person) to administer the requisite narcotics.
RassilonTDavros
This is either gonna go horribly wrong or horribly right. Not sure which my money is on…
Nono
Depends on what toppings are on the pizza.
Slartibeast Button, BIA
IT WILL ALL SERVE THE WILL OF GALASSO!
Bryy
West Wing: “We’ll see how the pizza turns out.”
SillyGoose
The physician recommends a veggie pizza with reasonable amount of cheese.
Everyone else recommends.things the physician is not happy about.
Either way pizza is a great idea, because at least everyone starts in a good mood, there are always possible diversions, and people tend to behave better in public places. Also pizza is in and of itself a great idea.
deliverything
What’s a “reasonable amount” of cheese, anyway?
Big Z
Enough cheese to make the melty mozzerella stretch happen but not so much that you can’t taste the other toppings, obviously.
deliverything
…which means that the more intense the taste of the other toppings, the more cheese is reasonable.
Wonder what toppings you’d need to have to justify adding an entire wheel of cheese?
Big Z
See, if you’re REALLY clever you realize this means the Cheese Pizza is functionally allowed infinite cheese so long as you can still perceive tomato sauce in there.
Freemage
Habanero pepper slices, freshly minced garlic, anchovies, broccoli.
BarerMender
The pizza place near me used to make good, and sometimes great, pizza, until they went down the three-cheese road. The their pizza got too salty to eat.
Animedingo
I swear 2 god we need a group huddle with every character and just rip off every bandaid at once
Astariel
Carla will do it for cookies.
Sirksome
Too bad this Hank isn’t 6 foot 1 and tons of fun and dressed to a T!
Freezer
He’d be a rapper’s delight, for sure. #IUnderstoodThatReferencee
Nono
A dadly premonition…
Airyu
Wonder if Hank would end up liking that game
apricot
A+ navigation from Becky. Hank clearly doesn’t want to do this anyway, he’s just doing what he thinks he’s ‘supposed’ to be doing, but we already know he’s cool with letting his kids have their own beliefs and make their own choices.
Summer
Yeah, it’s hard not to read him as conflicted between thinking his beliefs are right and straying from them necessitates intervention and his genuine belief that his children are their own people and deserve to make their own choices and have their own beliefs, even if that takes them away from his own. There’s hope for him yet.
Anna Grant
Plus he seems to be anxious about his kids slipping away from him, post-divorce. His status as dad of the family isn’t so assured now that the family isn’t a unit anymore.
jeffepp
It’s left over from the evangelical anti-Christian ideology. A father is the… let’s say patriarch… of all his children, no matter how old. Or, more precisely, those kids are supposed to do as he tells them, for as long as they live.
This logic is to apply to the leader(s) of their church, who are the father(s) of all the congregation. Meaning, everyone MUST do everything they say, because God said so.
Sirksome
I recently watched Season of the Witch a Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman movie free on youtube and weirdly the first part of the movie was kind of all about this.
Bryy
He’s literally been calling his kid a terrorist for two strips.
Adeptus
”Siding with terrorists”, so not quite. No need to add more hyperbole to an already unpleasant statement.
deliverything
He likely knows nothing about the situation other than what was claimed by Faux News or whatever. Hopefully he’ll be willing to listen to other viewpoints, as he has before.
See also these strips:
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/02-that-perfect-girl/humility/
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/quarters/
Big Z
I’m going to amplify what Adeptus said — there’s a fairly wide semantic gulf between “my kid is a terrorist” and “my kid is siding with terrorists”, and (especially in the mindset that a lot of Christian conservatives tend to operate in) there’s a vast gulf between “who you are” and “what you do” in terms of what it all means.
Hank could still make some pretty damn harmful choices and say some harmful things here, but he’s so far still acting like someone who a) isn’t convinced his kid is evil and b) can be taught — after all, he’s being super chill with his kid’s best friend who is not only a lesbian but the underlying cause of his marriage and church community blowing up in his face.
The fact that he chose to side with Becky and Joyce during the Toedad incident and continues to do so without any apparent resentment directed at her in these strips is the main reason I think Hank has a shot at being ultimately being led to being 100% a decent human being.