Dumbing of Age

Yeah, but I think it's just listening to this now made it click for me in a way it hadn't before. Mostly because while listening to this story I kept thinking of ol' Toedad.

Incidentally, the other story on that episode, which I'm still in the middle of, is Warren Jeffs, who took his branch of FLDS to truly cultish levels.

Edited by sgamer82 on Oct 6th 2019 at 11:20:31 AM

Turkeys

Edited by Yinyang107 on Oct 6th 2019 at 1:03:41 PM

I’m gonna be honest, the more insight we get into Malaya, the less I hate her. Which feels like the obvious intent, I know. But still, I can’t help but agree with her here, to an extent. Mary’s art is held back by the fact that she’s so dead set on a certain way of drawing. She can’t improve because she won’t admit there’s more than the rigid way of doing things that she likes.

And that isn’t just something that’s confined to her art. Everything about Mary comes from that same root problem. “This is the thing I like and everything outside of it is wrong and needs to be discarded at best or outright vilified at worst.”

Given that Malaya has expressed confusion over their gender identity I think Malaya is talking about themself more than Mary.

I think they’re talking about both. The body thing is absolutely describing how Malaya views their own body. But the digs at Mary have a very real point to them about how Mary views things she doesn’t like.

I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure what Malaya is trying to say with her turkey and memory of a face analogies.

I see her analogy on two levels. For one, it sounds like she errs on the side of drawing what is rather than drawing an idealized (for some ideal) image. Thus, rather than thinking of the model as a person, and then drawing them as such, you focus on all of the mechanics of anatomy and you draw those and thereby get a realistic portrayal. Secondly, it feels like a dig at Mary's Christian sensibilities, which probably think of personhood as involving a soul, something more than a series of electrical impulses driving the meatsack with no free will.

I hadn't thought of the gender identity argument, which kind of gets into some of the same arguments of personhood as being something separate from the flesh, the idea that even if your body is one gender, your mind might be another.

Welcome to reality, Joyce

I wonder who Jacob thinks Harrison will be more disappointed by.

I think Harrison would be too distracted by Jacob trusting him enough to confess to messing up.

Dammit thats the wrong Aesop!!

How far can they go before they can no longer play it off as an impulsive prank if caught?

Joyce in panel one is being really emotionally manipulative, albeit unintentionally. Jacob adores her and she's putting the impetus of her mistake on him, that she can spill the beans and reveal what she's done at the cost of destroying their friendship.

...and now I actually want Raidah to show up and blow this whole thing sky high. Joyce is already going all "yeah, but I want this, so I'll push the responsibility for this on you through manipulation" and refusing to accept that what she did was wrong.

Godammit, I actually like Dumbiverse Joyce, can we have her back instead of early Walkyverse Joyce? That one is an asshole!

It is weird, yeah, but it's not entirely out of character for Joyce when she wants a boyfriend given how she treated Ethan, though that came with a lot of caveats like her wanting a partner she was incapable of fearing would take advantage of her.

She fed into Ethan's self loathing of his sexuality because she wanted a partner, and now she's putting responsibility on Jacob because, in my interpretation of this at least, she wants him as a partner too. By pinning responsibility on Jacob to let her go (which Jacob doesn't want to do) she's securing herself a position next to him.

Yeah, but back then she acted that way with Ethan because she was scared. It was still a bad action, but she had a reason. Here she's just being manipulative and selfish for the sake of her own horniness.

She was kinda doing that with Ethan too. She had other reasons (scared of being outside alone, Ethan doesn't even have capacity to be sexually interested in her) but she was all in on trying to cure him of his sexuality to secure herself a boyfriend.

Yeah. She was also wrong then. Doesn't make her being wrong here now any better.

Well yes, but it's in-character, which is what I was trying to argue. Unless the comic gives Joyce a by on this I don't see it as a problem.

Wasn't her relationship with Ethan also before Becky came out and she had to reevaluate what she's been taught about sexual orientation?

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Oct 9th 2019 at 8:32:49 PM

Indeed, but the core of Joyce manipulating a bad situation to get a boyfriend has happened. She's done the thing before and never really faced actual consequence for it, and I think if this goes any further it will blow up in her face.

Baby fever time

I'm definitely getting the feeling that Jacob is starting to view Joyce as a potential romance.

I'm starting to get the feeling Joyce has a legitimate mental condition that turns her brain to mush whenever a baby is in the vicinity.

Edited by RebelFalcon on Oct 10th 2019 at 4:58:32 AM

Burst