The headline here is that these are 18 year olds who were raised with no conflict resolution skills because the prospect of causing intracommunity conflict was off-limits, especially along faith lines, with serious consequences for violations. Neither of them are evil or awful or abusive, and failing to win a friend-of-the-year award is not the end of the world. So keep that in mind.
I don’t believe Joyce’s failing was keeping secrets or privately venting. It’s that when Becky discovered what was happening, and had her feelings hurt, Joyce did not approach it from an emotional angle. She didn’t tell Becky why she felt she needed to abandon her faith. She didn’t tell Becky why she didn’t feel safe opening up. She framed it in terms of pure intellectual rigor. Becky asked Joyce how Joyce felt about Becky and Joyce didn’t answer any of those questions. Instead Joyce tried to talk Becky into sharing Joyce’s opinions while Becky was feeling hurt and vulnerable. And I understand why it happened–Becky being hurt did not gift Joyce the ability to magically become emotionally honest with her. But by taking this tact, Joyce sacrificed the ability to gain forgiveness, because Becky has absolutely no insight into Joyce’s thought process that would convince her forgiveness is warranted. Joyce insulted her, and then when Becky called her on it Joyce tried to convince her those insults were right. Why would Becky forgive?
But equally, Becky has no insight into why Joyce would be upset with her, or why Joyce might be owed an apology. As far as Becky was concerned, things were fine for months, and then it turns out Joyce hates (and doesn’t even understand) Becky’s beliefs. Becky can’t apologize to Joyce for overstepping, for creating an environment where Joyce can’t be honest with her, or for any of a thousand tiny things that brought us here, because she doesn’t know Joyce has an issue with any of that. Hell, Joyce has a long history of being exactly as clingy and overbearing as Becky is! Why would it be a problem? Joyce has only, in this moment, expressed issues with Becky’s beliefs, and Becky can’t and won’t apologize for those.
Joyce didn’t just need to talk to Becky about atheism. She needed to talk to Becky about a whole bunch of behaviors, some of which Becky might not even be cognizant of (or think of as fun quirks/Dorothy irritants), most of which Joyce has preformed herself at some point, some of which even Joyce herself might not realize were barriers to productive conversations. That’s a lot of work, with absolutely no guarantee it’ll go well. So Joyce avoided it, and then when Becky saw just the tip of the iceberg and thought it was the whole, Joyce doubled down on that perception to keep avoiding that work.
These are, frankly, some really benign mistakes when boiled down. Joyce needs to figure out what’s really bothering her, both about Becky and about faith. Becky needs to exercise some self-awareness. Both need to learn how to have open, honest conversations, because eventually they become unavoidable–keeping secrets is morally neutral, but secrets don’t last forever, and this is an eventuality Joyce could’ve been preparing for. None of these are skills these kids were raised to have. (Not even necessarily because they were raised fundie–I’d wager most 18yos can’t do any of this shit. I couldn’t!) That doesn’t make them monsters or evil or abusive. They made mistakes, and now they’ll learn from them. After all, nothing prepares you for the outside world except being stupid over and over and over.
And neither needs to convert the other. Fuck’s sake.
A+, in particular with the emphasis on Joyce and Becky’s closeness and inability to meaningfully communicate here being something deliberately molded into them.
This is also the sad area where many old friendships end up dieing.
Even adults struggle with the skills you’ve listed and while they seem simple to list its actually really hard for people to break out of old habits and patterns.
It’s kinda sad to look back sometimes on people and relationships that can be lost due to these factors. I think back to some of my early ex’s and realize I’ve been on both sides of similar situations and it just comes with both teenage and early adult years.
Excellent manifesto– I think too many people have been focused on who deserved to win the argument, not on how Joyce or Becky actually treated each other. This is the empathy they needed, I’m happy to see it
Thanks for taking the time to write this out @Wack’d. Neither of them are 100% at fault. The issue isn’t even really about fault, and neither of them have experience recognizing that. Responsibility does play _a_ role, but it is not the central role here. The central role is their changing world views, and both needing to learn that their friend is a different person than the idea of their friend that is in their heads. I think they can work through this, but it will take them both time and individual development. (laying off attacking each other, and instead just *listening* will help too.)
I’m curious how this arc will turn out in a way. I can’t see a formalized path towards this this resolution. Neither of them has a friend that is a conflict resolution expert especially not in this area.
Best I can imagine is them growing through individual arcs and only becoming friends at some point later down the road. It’s weird because as much as I feel sad seeing a friendship end I am curious how this will play out for both characters now.
Tired of It
“Friend who is a conflict resolution expert” Booster? I mean, not exactly a friend, but…
This put the major issues into words really well. I especially appreciate that you are acknowledging Joyce’s mistakes without also saying her venting or beliefs about theism are wrong. You don’t even say that Joyce should apologize, just that she needed to come at this with empathy and understanding and didn’t. Which is exactly how I’ve felt, though it can get lost in these discussions sometimes.
I think some of what Becky said was worse than the picture you paint, but at the end of the day, that was still learned behaviors that she can’t be blamed for too much given her upbringing. So that’s really just details.
I don’t think Joyce should apologize for venting or being overheard but everything that happened on the stairs after 110% requires copious apologies. .
Spencer
Honestly? I think the best possible thing for both of them is to just feel some raw, ugly-ass emotions without trying to kiss and make up, because for the reasons you listed as well as their own relationship where Joyce doesn’t ever seem to want to rely on Becky and Becky doesn’t seem to really know how bad her possessiveness of Joyce really is, they kind of need to be mad at each other long enough for them to learn it’s okay to be mad at each other and that things can still be okay later on. Just get wildly, outrageously, stupidly wrong and hate each other’s fucking guts for a bit.
‘Cause right now, neither of them would have any idea on what it is they’re even apologizing for.
a/snow/mous/e
Yeah, I agree. Clearly there’s much to learn, but hopefully after stewing over things for a few days… or maybe a week or two… they’ll figure some things out about themselves and the other person, and be able to talk things out once they realize religion isn’t the real issue here.
i think it was @Airyu who recently said something like, “i’m starting to feel like everyone here is a better person than me, because i don’t think i would’ve done any better than either of them.” and i thought that was a lovely thing to say and i subscribe to it whole-heartedly <3
Am I the only one here who feels that she *didn’t* insult Becky? Becky took umbrage with Joyce’s generalized statements about religion and the religious. Becky’s choice to take that personally may be understandable, but it was still her CHOICE to lace that shoe up and wear it.
I mean, even in my most narcissistic moments, I still think my younger self was a dumb little shit. Joyce is looking down on Christians, and her past self was also a Christian, so if anything, this reinforces the idea that she was shitting on herself.
Personally I think she WAS talking about herself. She feels stupid for ever believing these things.
But if she thinks herself stupid for ever believing them, then confronted with the reality that Becky *still* believes them, she can’t find a way around coming to the same conclusion about Becky.
Yeah, that’s where I stand too. I think she wasn’t thinking about Becky at all when she said those things, but when somewhere between when she saw Becky was there and when Becky made it about her (“do you really think I’m an idiot for believing in God”), it became about Becky too.
The other possibility I’ve been entertaining is that she was thinking about Becky. But if it was about Becky, I think it came out of a place of jealousy. She really really wishes for the comfort of knowing that there’s some ineffable Plan for her, that she’ll get through all the trials set for her stronger on the other side instead of more and more broken with every hardship that she stumbles across. She really really wishes for the comfort of knowing that _someone_ loves her unconditionally and infallibly. But she doesn’t have that, so she’s mocking someone who does to try to make herself feel better about not having that.
(Or maybe that’s just my ignorant almost-atheist raised-to-distrust-organized-religion self projecting real hard onto this fictional raised-fundie-now-struggling-with-atheism character when I honestly probably don’t have enough relevant cultural context to understand her struggles.)
And if she condemns it really aggressively now, it will retroactively remove some of the shame she still harbors for believing those stupid things for so long.
Imagine ever being so confident that Joyce was solely talking about herself to the point of believing that she still deeply respect and admired Becky’s faith and thought of her atheism as a personal failing, that you take an avatar bet with yourself when you’ve never been right about anything that has ever happened in this comic before.
(this is much more interesting than what I thought would transpire, really. If Becky and Joyce are going to come to blows it should be over an actual conflict and not just Becky being sad at misunderstood Joyce)
Does that mean that we shall see the blursed gravatar for the full month now?
Spencer
I feel that the situation’s complexities (Joyce was referring to everyone who believes, except she has never once thought anyone thought differently than her and assumed the whole world ran on slavish adherence to rules) made me not totally wrong, in that Joyce’s beliefs are self-aimed but she thought the whole world was Joyce, but wrong enough that trying to back out would be an act of cowardice.
So two weeks and then back to Sneaky Crime Man getting bonked.
Thag Simmons
Sneaky Crime Man the Third, if I’m not mistaken
Spencer
I like how they’ve never tried to justify Lupin still being the grandson of Arsene Lupin even though the franchise is 52 years old. I guess both he and his son waited until they were like 70 to have kids.
This obviously will never matter but I like to think of it as Lupin being so good that he’s the third person to deserve the name of Lupin.
Thag Simmons
Pretty sure if you’re passing names down from father to son you keep the numbering going even if it skips a generation or two
“Becky is smart, she’ll come around to my side when she sees it makes more sense.”
King Daniel
Yeah, she’s echoing Liz’s line from a few days ago here almost verbatim. “Becky’s SMART, so it’s only a matter of time until she becomes an atheist like me!”
626 thoughts on “Bethlehem”
Ana Chronistic
I hear dat Double Down is amazing
…ly bad for you
Thag Simmons
It’s the best Neil Breen movie.
MightyPinto
Ah yes, the movie that broke Rich Evans…
Doctor_Who
Anyone remember when Joyce’s nascent atheism took the form of Rich Mullins?
She’s just cranky because the sound of a hammered dulcimer is constantly ringing in her head.
Wack'd
and now all these skeletons are attracted to it and following her around
brute
.well, tis the season.
for us, i mean. not for her
Wack'd
Everyone else is writing manifestos so why not.
The headline here is that these are 18 year olds who were raised with no conflict resolution skills because the prospect of causing intracommunity conflict was off-limits, especially along faith lines, with serious consequences for violations. Neither of them are evil or awful or abusive, and failing to win a friend-of-the-year award is not the end of the world. So keep that in mind.
I don’t believe Joyce’s failing was keeping secrets or privately venting. It’s that when Becky discovered what was happening, and had her feelings hurt, Joyce did not approach it from an emotional angle. She didn’t tell Becky why she felt she needed to abandon her faith. She didn’t tell Becky why she didn’t feel safe opening up. She framed it in terms of pure intellectual rigor. Becky asked Joyce how Joyce felt about Becky and Joyce didn’t answer any of those questions. Instead Joyce tried to talk Becky into sharing Joyce’s opinions while Becky was feeling hurt and vulnerable. And I understand why it happened–Becky being hurt did not gift Joyce the ability to magically become emotionally honest with her. But by taking this tact, Joyce sacrificed the ability to gain forgiveness, because Becky has absolutely no insight into Joyce’s thought process that would convince her forgiveness is warranted. Joyce insulted her, and then when Becky called her on it Joyce tried to convince her those insults were right. Why would Becky forgive?
But equally, Becky has no insight into why Joyce would be upset with her, or why Joyce might be owed an apology. As far as Becky was concerned, things were fine for months, and then it turns out Joyce hates (and doesn’t even understand) Becky’s beliefs. Becky can’t apologize to Joyce for overstepping, for creating an environment where Joyce can’t be honest with her, or for any of a thousand tiny things that brought us here, because she doesn’t know Joyce has an issue with any of that. Hell, Joyce has a long history of being exactly as clingy and overbearing as Becky is! Why would it be a problem? Joyce has only, in this moment, expressed issues with Becky’s beliefs, and Becky can’t and won’t apologize for those.
Joyce didn’t just need to talk to Becky about atheism. She needed to talk to Becky about a whole bunch of behaviors, some of which Becky might not even be cognizant of (or think of as fun quirks/Dorothy irritants), most of which Joyce has preformed herself at some point, some of which even Joyce herself might not realize were barriers to productive conversations. That’s a lot of work, with absolutely no guarantee it’ll go well. So Joyce avoided it, and then when Becky saw just the tip of the iceberg and thought it was the whole, Joyce doubled down on that perception to keep avoiding that work.
These are, frankly, some really benign mistakes when boiled down. Joyce needs to figure out what’s really bothering her, both about Becky and about faith. Becky needs to exercise some self-awareness. Both need to learn how to have open, honest conversations, because eventually they become unavoidable–keeping secrets is morally neutral, but secrets don’t last forever, and this is an eventuality Joyce could’ve been preparing for. None of these are skills these kids were raised to have. (Not even necessarily because they were raised fundie–I’d wager most 18yos can’t do any of this shit. I couldn’t!) That doesn’t make them monsters or evil or abusive. They made mistakes, and now they’ll learn from them. After all, nothing prepares you for the outside world except being stupid over and over and over.
And neither needs to convert the other. Fuck’s sake.
BBCC
^^^^^^^^^
StClair
Well manifested!
Fart Captor
Exactly
Gojira007
this is 1000% where i’m at. VERY well said.
justin8448
This was fun to read! Thank you for your manifesto-writing services Wack’d.
Hazel
Some very good analysis!
Tandel
Thanks for this post. I’m glad it’s near the top of this update.
Clay
So yeah, college students are college students. It’s almost like they’re dumb, and they’re coming of age.
Wack'd
everyone does the “it’s not called smarting of age” thing so for my penultimate sentence i went for a real deep cut
King Daniel
Bravo.
milu
that phrase needs to be an abbreviation already.
Commenter 1: ugh!!! these characters are so immature!!!
Commenter 2: incsoa, my dude
Jimmy
That’s (almost) the name of the comic!
Doctor_Who
Well said.
Spencer
A+, in particular with the emphasis on Joyce and Becky’s closeness and inability to meaningfully communicate here being something deliberately molded into them.
J. Spider
This is also the sad area where many old friendships end up dieing.
Even adults struggle with the skills you’ve listed and while they seem simple to list its actually really hard for people to break out of old habits and patterns.
It’s kinda sad to look back sometimes on people and relationships that can be lost due to these factors. I think back to some of my early ex’s and realize I’ve been on both sides of similar situations and it just comes with both teenage and early adult years.
TomInBigD
…and middle adult years…and later adult years…
EpochFlame
Well put.
Diner Kinetic
Excellent manifesto– I think too many people have been focused on who deserved to win the argument, not on how Joyce or Becky actually treated each other. This is the empathy they needed, I’m happy to see it
RassilonTDavros
Wack’d wins!
DUMBINGTALITY
Decidedly Orthogonal
Thanks for taking the time to write this out @Wack’d. Neither of them are 100% at fault. The issue isn’t even really about fault, and neither of them have experience recognizing that. Responsibility does play _a_ role, but it is not the central role here. The central role is their changing world views, and both needing to learn that their friend is a different person than the idea of their friend that is in their heads. I think they can work through this, but it will take them both time and individual development. (laying off attacking each other, and instead just *listening* will help too.)
J. Spider
I’m curious how this arc will turn out in a way. I can’t see a formalized path towards this this resolution. Neither of them has a friend that is a conflict resolution expert especially not in this area.
Best I can imagine is them growing through individual arcs and only becoming friends at some point later down the road. It’s weird because as much as I feel sad seeing a friendship end I am curious how this will play out for both characters now.
Tired of It
“Friend who is a conflict resolution expert” Booster? I mean, not exactly a friend, but…
Thulcandran
You said it all! Absolutely.
PB
(Applause)
Florence
Thank you for this!! ??????
Ludaire
This put the major issues into words really well. I especially appreciate that you are acknowledging Joyce’s mistakes without also saying her venting or beliefs about theism are wrong. You don’t even say that Joyce should apologize, just that she needed to come at this with empathy and understanding and didn’t. Which is exactly how I’ve felt, though it can get lost in these discussions sometimes.
I think some of what Becky said was worse than the picture you paint, but at the end of the day, that was still learned behaviors that she can’t be blamed for too much given her upbringing. So that’s really just details.
Wack'd
I don’t think Joyce should apologize for venting or being overheard but everything that happened on the stairs after 110% requires copious apologies. .
Spencer
Honestly? I think the best possible thing for both of them is to just feel some raw, ugly-ass emotions without trying to kiss and make up, because for the reasons you listed as well as their own relationship where Joyce doesn’t ever seem to want to rely on Becky and Becky doesn’t seem to really know how bad her possessiveness of Joyce really is, they kind of need to be mad at each other long enough for them to learn it’s okay to be mad at each other and that things can still be okay later on. Just get wildly, outrageously, stupidly wrong and hate each other’s fucking guts for a bit.
‘Cause right now, neither of them would have any idea on what it is they’re even apologizing for.
a/snow/mous/e
Yeah, I agree. Clearly there’s much to learn, but hopefully after stewing over things for a few days… or maybe a week or two… they’ll figure some things out about themselves and the other person, and be able to talk things out once they realize religion isn’t the real issue here.
milu
moustache gracias.
i think it was @Airyu who recently said something like, “i’m starting to feel like everyone here is a better person than me, because i don’t think i would’ve done any better than either of them.” and i thought that was a lovely thing to say and i subscribe to it whole-heartedly <3
Vulcanodon
Manifest! Oh.
Bravo.
ktbear
TLDR. Well ok, I read the last sentence which summed things up nicely.
Rose by Any Other Name
I’m late to this because I was otherwise occupied last night.
**suggestive eyebrow waggle**
But yeah. I will jump on this bandwagon with whole hearted approval. Excellent Manfesto. Beautifully said.
milu
you were… tweezing your eyebrows?
a/snow/mous/e
one doesn’t tweeze and tell~
Delicious Taffy
Joke’s on you, rookie, some of us continue to post during sex. It helps keep the mind focused.
Rose by Any Other Name
Your comment is particularly good matched with your current gravatar.
Reltzik
Have an internet.
Vinter Nacht
Am I the only one here who feels that she *didn’t* insult Becky? Becky took umbrage with Joyce’s generalized statements about religion and the religious. Becky’s choice to take that personally may be understandable, but it was still her CHOICE to lace that shoe up and wear it.
Joshua Kronengold
This is good stuff!
But of course what Dorothy really did wrong was have her triangle mouth pointed in the wrong direction (ok, no).
Joshua Kronengold
Joyce! Joyce’s mouth is pointing the wrong way!
GBHPrime84
All my yes
King Daniel
Oh yeah, Joyce TOTALLY was just talking about herself
Sporky
Hey, I’ll cop to it, I was wrong.
Seventh-Sandwich
I mean, even in my most narcissistic moments, I still think my younger self was a dumb little shit. Joyce is looking down on Christians, and her past self was also a Christian, so if anything, this reinforces the idea that she was shitting on herself.
Suzi
Wow, I didn’t know you were a yoga instructor.
Delicious Taffy
I don’t get it
Clif
Unless you were yoga instructor, no way are you going to be limber enough to shit on yourself.
Thanks for the mental picture Suzi.
thejeff
“Some say he is a holy man, others say he is a shithead.”
Hearing this, the man was enlightened.
Delicious Taffy
Y’all are gross. Ew, potty humor.
bejouled
Personally I think she WAS talking about herself. She feels stupid for ever believing these things.
But if she thinks herself stupid for ever believing them, then confronted with the reality that Becky *still* believes them, she can’t find a way around coming to the same conclusion about Becky.
Rose Red
Yeah, that’s where I stand too. I think she wasn’t thinking about Becky at all when she said those things, but when somewhere between when she saw Becky was there and when Becky made it about her (“do you really think I’m an idiot for believing in God”), it became about Becky too.
The other possibility I’ve been entertaining is that she was thinking about Becky. But if it was about Becky, I think it came out of a place of jealousy. She really really wishes for the comfort of knowing that there’s some ineffable Plan for her, that she’ll get through all the trials set for her stronger on the other side instead of more and more broken with every hardship that she stumbles across. She really really wishes for the comfort of knowing that _someone_ loves her unconditionally and infallibly. But she doesn’t have that, so she’s mocking someone who does to try to make herself feel better about not having that.
(Or maybe that’s just my ignorant almost-atheist raised-to-distrust-organized-religion self projecting real hard onto this fictional raised-fundie-now-struggling-with-atheism character when I honestly probably don’t have enough relevant cultural context to understand her struggles.)
Jon
And if she condemns it really aggressively now, it will retroactively remove some of the shame she still harbors for believing those stupid things for so long.
That one, at least, I can identify with.
Theozilla
I mean this doesn’t mean she wasn’t talking about her pet self, just that she wasn’t *only* talking about herself.
Spencer
Imagine ever being so confident that Joyce was solely talking about herself to the point of believing that she still deeply respect and admired Becky’s faith and thought of her atheism as a personal failing, that you take an avatar bet with yourself when you’ve never been right about anything that has ever happened in this comic before.
(this is much more interesting than what I thought would transpire, really. If Becky and Joyce are going to come to blows it should be over an actual conflict and not just Becky being sad at misunderstood Joyce)
King Daniel
Does that mean that we shall see the blursed gravatar for the full month now?
Spencer
I feel that the situation’s complexities (Joyce was referring to everyone who believes, except she has never once thought anyone thought differently than her and assumed the whole world ran on slavish adherence to rules) made me not totally wrong, in that Joyce’s beliefs are self-aimed but she thought the whole world was Joyce, but wrong enough that trying to back out would be an act of cowardice.
So two weeks and then back to Sneaky Crime Man getting bonked.
Thag Simmons
Sneaky Crime Man the Third, if I’m not mistaken
Spencer
I like how they’ve never tried to justify Lupin still being the grandson of Arsene Lupin even though the franchise is 52 years old. I guess both he and his son waited until they were like 70 to have kids.
This obviously will never matter but I like to think of it as Lupin being so good that he’s the third person to deserve the name of Lupin.
Thag Simmons
Pretty sure if you’re passing names down from father to son you keep the numbering going even if it skips a generation or two
JepMZ
She says Becky is smart tho on the same page
Needfuldoer
In a very backhanded way, though.
“Becky is smart, she’ll come around to my side when she sees it makes more sense.”
King Daniel
Yeah, she’s echoing Liz’s line from a few days ago here almost verbatim. “Becky’s SMART, so it’s only a matter of time until she becomes an atheist like me!”
Spencer
Yeah but that doesn’t count.
Thag Simmons