You knew the whole time?!
on November 24, 2016 at 12:01 amWhen writing this, it was important to me to show that Joyce’s parents were smarter than she. I dunno, at the time I felt like a lot of parents are written as idiot foils to their incredibly savvy children, and so I wanted to subvert that.
It was a quality that I wanted to preserve, somehow, when I started writing them in Dumbing of Age. It is admittedly a little harder to pull off there, since Joyce’s parents can have some terrible ideas, but still you figure these guys are pretty old and seasoned in their ways, regardless of what those ways are. FOR EXAMPLE, today is American Thanksgiving, and maybe some of you are going to have dinner with your Trump-voting parents. You might have a few zingers prepared from your own experiences, and you might even be able to bring, like, charts and graphs to the party, but your parents aren’t dumb, even if they might have dumb ideas. And so, for example, if you tell them, “um, my atheist friend isn’t the ‘REAL Nazis,’ she can’t even be a secret Nazi, she’s Jewish” and they’re all “I think I read on USASUPEREAGLEPATRIOTISM.NEWS.LIZARDPEOPLE from Facebook that Hitler was Jewish so CHECKMATE” then, look, I don’t know, just remember there’s pie afterwards.
Anyway, the snarky parental condescension you see here I made sure still manifested in her parents in the Dumbiverse, but it takes a less sitcommy tone over there. Joyce’s story in Dumbing of Age is a specific one, and her parents had to kind of present themselves differently in order to better support that narrative.
Originally posted:
March 8, 2002
Joyce’s parents in the Walkyverse are definitely better than her parents in the Dumbiverse, though DoA Hank has been gradually improving.
I’m glad that my family is pretty liberal, Thanksgiving would be really awkward if any of my relatives living nearby were Trump voters.
The only one producing the next gen is super-libertarian so that’ll be fun watching the newest white supremacist spawn
(hoping the kid rebels, this’ll be too depressing otherwise)
I’m going to just presume the person you’re speaking of is Libertarian (as in the US Libertarian Party or worse “Libertarian-Republican” which seems to be the modern term for “Neocon”) as opposed to libertarian (the socio-political philosophy which the Libertarian Party is the only prominent organized national representative group of in the US despite representing the views of only the largest minority of us who would describe as libertarian) otherwise the rest of that makes a lot less sense.
That aside, my experience has been that the majority of people reject their parents’ political views for the “other” extreme (“other” here being which ever of the parental views leaves them feeling most disenfranchised so in this case it’d be either adopting very cosmopolitan social views, extreme state controlled market views or a combo of the two) during their teens then settle somewhere in the “middle majority” by their thirties (be that centrist Republican, centrist Democrat or swing vote of some flavor here in the US).
I was closely aligned with my parent’s politics, but started leaning less racist and militantly atheist and more tolerant and radical.
the “literally said ‘I don’t want other people telling me how to spend my money’ after muttering words about non-whites and even ‘EYE-talians'” type
they were only mildly racist today tho, nothing in specific to call out, and I didn’t feel like it was worth arguing with them over the merit of Ghostbusters: Answer the Call when they aren’t even major “original” Ghostbusters fans in the first place to claim “legitimate” butthurt
Same here, but after Lincoln Chafee dropped out I’m the only one who thought “woo Bernie”, they all went “meh Hillary I guess” right away. Positions we disagree on aren’t that far apart in the first place.
The only Trumpettes are off in the extended family, and they always do their own thing for the holidays anyway. Thankfully they’re only supporting him because he has the letter they like next to his name, but we share a natural gift for trolling. (Political memes everywhere!) Usually if conversation starts getting heated I’ll just play the “nothing either of us says will change the other’s opinion” card. There’s plenty of common ground, and a lot to talk about, outside of politics! Remember that.
Wait wait wait. There are people who cared about Lincoln Chafee?
he is excellent to draw
I’d love to see a Willis-style Lincoln Chafee.
There were dozens of us! Dozens!
Funny, I was “woo Bernie” from the beginning but figured he’d be considered “too extreme” by the main Dem party view so was prepared to accept O’Malley only to end up with “meh, Hillery is at least better than Trump, if only because she’s at least actually qualified for the job” after Bernie left the race. Meanwhile the least distasteful GOP candidate was bloody Jeb Bush… it was a real cluster on that side this cycle.
I notice the gigantic chins didn’t survive the shift to DoA either.
That’s because the Walkyverse versions of the characters are much older. They’ve had two more kids and Joyce is 23 here instead of 18. So, um, yeah, their faces are gonna be a little more rough around the edges.
(plus, like, dumbiverse carol demonstrably HAS that same chin (http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/remembrance/) so i dunno what you’re contrasting with, really)
You’re right. I was mostly thinking of Hank.
The change is an improvement, IMO. It doesn’t make a lot of sense that Joyce’s parents would both have prominent chins when Joyce does not. It’s not like it’s totally impossible, but you know.
“All your letters were postmarked from Colorado.” Yep, definitly Semme’s mistake.
SEMMF usually just fakes the abductees’ deaths. That Joyce is able to mail her parents at all is all due to Walky’s cunning plan.
ugh, now SEMMF sounds like a Drumpf