Dumbing of age. Doa

Tonight's strip. Becky channeling the word of God.

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>Jakes
One letter away and I could have made a semi-obscure reference.

Also, is anything even happening in this strip? All it makes me think of is the part in that one MST3K episode where the movie they're riffing stops everything to let the comic relief monologue for a few minutes. And I don't see Becky going "Hi-keeba" and doing a flip.

Who even invited Becky here? Herself? Again?

Would have been nice if the last panel had a damn background. Like did we just jump cut to a unknown time and place?

>I'm not what sure
what accent is this

wait, who crapped on the sofa?

>Becky stealing the cunt spotlight from Joyce
Can't have anyone else being more obnoxious than Becky!

Apparently Becky grew up crapping on the sofa.
No wonder her mother killed herself.

So, we get strip after strip of Joyce freaking out at the slightest, most superficial differences between her church and Jacob's, all of which is played for comedy...and now we're supposed to read this as JACOB being the one who's out-of-touch and doesn't understand because, what, he dared to think that the surface details of religion are less important than genuine, honest faith?

Fuck's sake, Willis, even if we don't agree with what you're saying, at least be consistent with how you say it.

>it's a freak-show resents people who have their shit together episode
Wouldn't be Willis if resentment wasn't somewhere in there.

>If someone has a different lifestyle from me they are weird and deserve to be mocked.

Wow, it's like a kettle that's been coated with Vantablack is calling the pot black.

Why are these people who want to be accepted for who they are so fucking judgemental of others? Like, fuck man, stop being what you hate in others. It's not that hard to be a decent person.

This strip is cramped as fuck, he's depicting a conversation with 3 people but only 1 or 2 of them are in any given panel because he tried to fit 6 panels into an image sized for 3-4 panels. And then the last panel cuts to an unrelated scene for a dumb joke about how an autistic character who isn't related to the conversation acts autistic sometimes. This is made all the more jarring by the fact that the characters in this panel are floating in an empty void despite it being a completely new scene, so the reader's imagination has nothing to go on.

This dude should honestly just quit drawing comics. He has no talent for this.

Agreed, although I gotta say I see a lot of that these days.

>Why are these people who want to be accepted for who they are so fucking judgemental of others?

TUMBLR
U
M
B
L
R

Also, because, as it turns out - they want to be accepted for who they are, and who they are is shitty fucking people. Shockingly, well adjusted "normal" people who are "boring" also tend to be nicer and more accepting of others because their every waking moment isn't a bundle of shrieking neurosis and existential dread covered up with manic pixie antics

How is this not grounds for Jacob to tell them both to fuck off and never speak to his God or his God's son ever again?

I'd rather if God came down and told them not to speak to his son or his mothers son again

fucking trinity is a hell of a drug

>God's mother's son
God has a mother? And a (half) brother? Which version of the Bible do they appear in?

Some claim that God, Jesus, and the holy Spirit are all parts of the same entity. That would make God his own father.

Yes, it's confusing. Yes, people have been breaking their heads on that one for millennia.

see
The idea of the Trinity is that God is Father, Son, AND Holy Spirit. Meaning God fathered himself off of Mary, as well God is in everyone via the Holy Spirit. Furthermore Jacob is metaphorically Gods son as we are all God's children.

Thus, Gods son and Gods mothers son- Jacob (the guy in the comic), and Jesus, who is the Son of God's Mother (Mary) via himself

>Some claim

that's official Catholic Dogma, you heretic. Schism's have been exterminated for less.

I don't think that's quite how the Trinity works. I get the idea they're all supposed to be parts of the same whole but I'm pretty sure that doesn't make Mary God's mother, since God existed before he was born as Jesus.

I see it more like God just inhabiting a physical avatar he created temporarily for the purpose of toning down all the old testament shit, because he'd grown up a bit since then and was embarrassed about the edgy stuff he did as a teenager.

Father
Son
And Holy Spirit

Father and Son
God is his own father of his mortal manifestation on earth, Jesus, his Son

Also if you read the scripture Jesus was part of a long line of prophecized lineages and it was all according to Keikaku

Gosh they're lucky Jacob isn't Catholic, at this point he'd be declaring them all heretics and saying they were condemned to Hell.

I'm never entirely sure why I hate Becky, but boy do I fucking hate her.

>It's not that hard to be a decent person.
How do you expect Willis' characters to not be terrible when being terrible is all he knows?

...

You gotta admit, that's pretty confusing stuff for the average filthy heretic like me.

There's this entity called God, and God manifested itself in reality through three avatars. The father, the son and the holy spirit. It used the father avatar to create the son avatar. Then it made the holy spirit avatar just so it'd be a trinity and the weird father/son thing would stand out less.

The purpose of the holy spirit is to redeem mankind, the Holy Spirit is gods blessing on humanity. Previously, The Holy Spirit was limited to a few people God sent it to "the holy spirit came upon him", etc.

When Jesus sacrificed himself, it was so that all peoples could be redeemed and receive the Holy Spirit - the autistic rules that required a commiserate sacrifice to absolve a sin being satisfied. That is why Jesus is referred to as the Lamb of God, because the traditional sacrificial animal was a Lamb, the White Lamb being considered most Sacred. Only a perfect and innocent being without blame, IE God himself, could ever match against all the Sin humanity had or ever would commit. After Jesus death (and depending on which version of events you proscribe to, about three days and nights of Jesus just wandering through hell kicking the ever living shit out of Satan in a half-week long epic beat down called The Harrowing like this was wrestlemania and Jesus was JOOHNNNN CENNNAA) all of humanity received the Gift of the holy spirit which, among other things, entitles them to not burn in a giant trash heap for all the shit they did when they were alive - but only if you redeem the coupon by asking for it

Cool story bro.

But I always wonder why you need this post hoc explanation for a proposed messiah being unexpectedly executed?

I mean, why did God need this autistic setup if he wanted to remove autistic setups? Why not just snip his fingers and change the rules?

>Why not just snip his fingers and change the rules?
The thing about faith is the acceptance that things are not entirely within your control but your fate is in good hands provided you follow the right path. Changing the rules arbitrarily like that makes faith seem unstable, as though God may just change his mind eventually so why bother committing. A good way to interpret doctrine is as a case study in how God deals with people and teaches them, with a lot of the stories having a meta application towards the faithful themselves. The sacrifice of Jesus was, in a way, a meta narrative about the cycle of dark ages and reillumination present in all religions. A period of too strict adherence to doctrine and rules is followed by an upheaval and return to spiritual roots. Jesus wiping the slate on original sin with his sacrifice brings the faith back towards promoting love rather than displacing shame, ushering in a new light. They're teaching tools and stories and stories have to follow narrative rules. Sacrifice was established too much not to get a good payoff, and we get a lot of metaphors out of it.

Sure, sure, I get all of that from a narrative standpoint.

But why do people that actually believe that story always seem to be unable to think about it logically. So why in logical terms use a sacrifice to end all sacrfices if I could just end them without all the hassle. And the sacrifice didn't even stick. What sacrifice is it if the sacrificial lamb just gets up afterwards and is better than before?

Fuck off, Willis.

The last two panels have nothing to do with with the first four. I'm pretty sure panel 3 is just shipping bait, and panel 4 has elements of it too.

Why is Joyce dressed up like a Pikachu doesn't she know that shock attacks won't work against diglett?

She's low-key trying to reveal her sub fantasies to Jacob through an opaque pokemon metaphor.

That's hot. Why is she wasting such an exotic fantasy on a boring chad?

She wants to get GROUND TYPED.

>faith
>logic
Pick one bruv.

> Picking one
Brainlet detected.

>use a sacrifice to end all sacrfices if I could just end them without all the hassle.
Because the sacrfice is more important, people learn from it.
>the sacrifice didn't even stick.
According to the church, yeah it did. All sins are absolved for all of time.
>What sacrifice is it if the sacrificial lamb just gets up afterwards and is better than before?
The Holy kind.

>people learn from it.
People learn from it if I split off a part of me, let it be born as some random Jewish peasant in a backwater town and then torture him to death? What stupid message is this? As far as messages go I can think of thousands of better ways to do this and reach more people.

>let it be born as some random Jewish peasant in a backwater town and then torture him to death?
You realize that Jesus traveled throughout the Hebrew lands preaching and the whole crucifixion thing occurred in Jerusalem, right?

So is Becky being subtly racist here?
>Claims to find it strange that he's so civilized and structured, and disciplined.
>Literally ask him what he thinks about fucking grape juice for no reason.

Also I'm pretty sure black guys still beat out white lesbians in the "I'm less privileged than you" scale.

Some one hasn't been keeping up with SJW thought.
Black guys are still cis-gendered maled and therefore privileged rape machines.
Rich white women (who happen to the be ones constantly updating the SJW rulebook) are women and therefore the eternal victims, and therefore always right.

But user, Jacob's a light skinned black guy, he's hated by both sides.

And he's bi.

why is its hair inside half of its face?

>protestants

>Joyce attempts to indulge in her gay fetish by clumsily trying to get Jacob and Ethan to make out in front of her

I have a feeling I know Jacob's opinions on grape juice.

Who's supposed to be crapping on the sofa???

She was doomed to be hated from the start. I had the exact same feeling from reading the earlier chapters and knew it wouldn't change. Her character is the homeschooled Christian that just can't understand how the "real world works". What I believe makes her grating is that she never learns social cues. She spent to long in college and still act like she can't use a computer to figure these stuff out and actually not be passive.

It doesn't matter. In the end, Willis is going to put Joyce and/or Becky through a massive revelation that God doesn't exist or something.

This isn't the first time he's tried cramming in as many characters as possible into a tight space.

I give Willis a round of applause if he makes Joyce a Christian to the end, but since Joyce his past self, her becoming atheist is the end game.

...

Sexually confused Joyce awkwardly trying to indulge her fetishes is my fetish.

Of course. But by Roman and certainly by world standards of that time those ares were still total backwaters. It of course makes sense for a local religion of a local people as it was back then to locate such a fictional story within their area. But Christians believe their god to be the god of everything and everyone everywhere, so why not put his "son" in a major metropolis?

Dina's so goddamn cute.

I was kinda hoping we'd get more of Becky's thoughts on church given her preference as stated in the las strip, but Willis managed to present it in the most obnoxious way possible.

She likes it because it's like Joyce, basically, and also like herself, because they're messy and/or rebels. Which is incredibly dumb.

And then she lays down all these ideas on Jacob based on him being dressed up (when she is also really dressed up and has done so on her non-church days) and then says that she doesn't know him. Well, bitch, if you don't know him don't make assumptions.

And she says all this in service of bragging about how cool and rebellious she is and did she mention she has a girlfriend??? (A girlfriend who is pretty tame)

>Yer church matches yer personality Jakes [fucking hell with this over familiar nickname]
>And it's fucking boring
>An' that's fine [because you suck and I'm awesome also Joyce, whatever]

And Joyce just wished death upon a dude (a really bad dude, don't get me wrong) I think she might still have some rough edges.

Here's a nice table of proposed populations of Roman cities in the first century:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empire#Urbanization

Jerusalem was nothing.

And I honestly wonder how fine Becky is with the idea of showing up at the church she went to her whole life and being pretty much entirely ignored by all the leadership. But instead Willis glossed over that completely. And instead of even addressing those aspects of being at a church with "bad rough edges" she does this self-aggrandizing spiel.

It really sucks.

>And I honestly wonder how fine Becky is with the idea of showing up at the church she went to her whole life and being pretty much entirely ignored by all the leadership
Don't you see? Once you show that they're bigots, the rest is self-explanatory. Just be sure to show Becky taking communion as smugly as possible.

I'm seriously hoping Jacob just snaps in the next strip and tells Joyce and Becky they've been incredibly rude, he invited them to his church because he thought it would be somewhere Becky would feel more comfortable yet they've done nothing but shit on his church and by extension his faith (and finishing off with Becky personally insulting him based on his appearance) and that they can fuck off.

Seriously, no reasonable person would take this level of shit from someone, especially not someone they were trying to HELP.

This arc should be the death of the Jacob/Joyce ship.

The only reason we're given for Becky to act this way is because MUH DEAD MOM. And nobody cares about her dead mom.

Well, I don't, at least.

Yeah, but based on this strip she wants to go to a church full of bigots and smugly participate in worship every week. That seems like a bad way to spend Sundays, especially when you factor in that her life was literally threatened by someone who opposes her identity.

I would appreciate any push back at all from him. But I've learned that I don't get what I want from this strip.

> I don't get what I want from this strip.
You get a bad comic to bitch about every week. That's what most anons want and it's what they get.

>She was doomed to be hated from the start. I had the exact same feeling from reading the earlier chapters and knew it wouldn't change. Her character is the homeschooled Christian that just can't understand how the "real world works". What I believe makes her grating is that she never learns social cues. She spent to long in college and still act like she can't use a computer to figure these stuff out and actually not be passive.
She was at a strict Christian school. They might not even have computers there. Plus, she was only there for less than a month. Now she's just squatting.

No one does, because we got two strips of pathos a few years ago and Wacky Lesbian Hijinks nonstop before and since. There's been no exploration of her character or personality, she just says inappropriate things and keeps it real ha ha that's our Becky!

Oh, but it's all a facade for what's going on inside her! Well then, maybe that's something that should be touched on more than in a handful strips and never brought up again?

Yes, please. Jacob has been extremely well-mannered throughout this whole affair. Joyce has been acting like a child - and not a particularly clever one and Becky has been smarmy and insulting. He was trying to do something nice for them and all that's happened is that he's been insulted, his preferred form of worship has been treated as some sort of alien voodoo ritual. Like, he doesn't need to go on a rant like Quagmire or anything, just make it clear that he was trying to be helpful and supportive and the pair of them have been, well, awful.

But I want to get everything *I* want, user!

So she lived most if her life till age 17 or 18 with no computer? I'll bite, but even then, Joyce has been hear for over a year now in a non-Christian collage and she still haven't used a computer for over a month? And you would think being surrounded by people like them wouldn't have given a clue? Come on.

>>Literally ask him what he thinks about fucking grape juice for no reason.

The grape juice is because Joyce's fundie church used it instead of wine at communion.

Just the opposite. SJWs think that being black trumps being a white woman any day.

I'd like to point out that every time Dina is showing her something new in terms of knowledge, it's always on a phone or in a physical book. Dina should be the type of person who's always on a computer.

Wait, when have we even seen them use computers at all? It's always a phone or DS. I can't recall a laptop or desktop computer in this comic at all, despite at least two characters being computer majors.

I know we heard Amber saying she was on a raid on WoW, but did we even see her computer then?

I know Walky's mentioned his laptop, but have we ever seen it? All these wealthy individuals but no computers? It's weird. Billie should have one.

That would be something a reasonable person might do. If Jacob ends up knuckling under, that can be construed as either racist or combined misogyny AND misandry.

Amber has used her computer, I think it was a laptop, and when various combinations of Walky, Dorothy, Ethan and Joyce watch cartoons it's on a laptop one of them owns.

...

>for you

>If I broke you up from Raidah, would you die?
>It would be extremely painful.
>You're a big guy.
>For you.
>Well, you're also just really big in general. Like, seriously, your shoulders are five heads wide. Was it painful when you were birthed?

Also, why is Becky acting so smug? She's not the one being tasked to break up Jacob. Or does she just have resting smug face? She should open her eyes when she walks, too, or else she might walk right into oncoming traY'know on second thought, Becky should risk everything and walk around blindfolded.

>smugly participate in worship every week
I'm from the South so that sounds pretty spot-on for like 1/3 of the people there, honestly.

Why Becky being a little shit? Why do artsy types of people tell themselves that structure is bad?

Becky is...very punchable. she's being a smug cunt for basically no reason.

Postmodernism, I assume. But Becky's hair is the most postmodern thing about her, given how she got a haircut that made her hair grow longer.

what part of willis is becky supposed to represent?
the part of him that feels the urge to shit on everything for no reason?

This doesn't really flow from the last strip at all.

Also Becky really should have noted that her last attempt at hooking someone up led to Leslie having coffee with someone who will increase the domestic abusers statistics in the future.

Or we've been all wrong and JoycexRaidah has been endgame this whole time.

>It's a Becky is smugly right about someone she doesn't know at all episode
I won't waste more words, but it really sucks.

I really don't want to be able to see part of the outline of Becky's face through her hair. It's bad enough to see her eye and her mouth. But freckles? Facial structure? Heck no. That's absurd.

Why in the world is Becky being so aggressive and smug toward a person who has been nothing but kind to her? She keeps acting like she's on friendly terms with him, what with the nickname and all, but they are too early in their alleged friendship for her to be reaming him out like this.

Also, Jacob's tie is a nonsense blob.

>Becky is...very punchable. she's being a smug cunt for basically no reason.
I've never agreed with that statement more. I've never liked Becky, but this is the kind of person I would avoid as much as possible.

I don't even know what argument Becky/Willis is making that she's being so smug about. Apparently religion is unnecessary if you're uptight and structured?

lmao what the fuck is Becky trying to get at

It'd work if Becky was characterized consistently as an overly familiar/chummy type of person. Becky's personality also seems very artificial, like a cartoon character.

Has Becky ever even met Jacob's girlfriend?

She never even properly met Jacob before this Dumbiverse day.

She wasn't even supposed to be at the church, I don't think. She invited herself while abandoning her autistic girlfriend in a formless void. Probably because Becky wanted to get Joyce alone in the church bathroom so she could rape her.

Seriously, if "Dumbing of Age" ends and never touched upon Becky's repressed and unrequited feelings for Joyce in the form of some kind of lesbian sexual assault, I'm going to find Willis at some kind of convention and deliver him a complete collection of "Dumbing of Age" trade collections, soaked in piss and vinegar.

Nothing ever came of Becky ditching Dina at school to go with Joyce and break into her old home.

BECAUSE it was all based on covenants God
had already entered into with the line of Abraham. God was under existing contract. In order to create the NEW Covenant, one that would save all mankind, God needed to fulfill the existing one.

>I'm seriously hoping Jacob just snaps in the next strip and tells Joyce and Becky they've been incredibly rude, he invited them to his church because he thought it would be somewhere Becky would feel more comfortable yet they've done nothing but shit on his church and by extension his faith (and finishing off with Becky personally insulting him based on his appearance) and that they can fuck off.

This, holy shit. The dude has been like, Super Christian about this. I would already have gotten mad at them for interrupting service

That too.

Seriously, Willis keeps setting up Becky as trying to get herself alone with Joyce, yet nothing ever happens.

>it's a we make the normie feel uncomfortable for being well adjusted, happy, and having a stable relationship with someone who loves them

Jesus mcfucking poudan christ how does he not go off?

This, church is a social club to feel superior at in the south. Then immediately after (or before) you get drunk and watch the football game