Mary’s gonna abort everyone in that car!
I’m trying to figure out the logic of Mary being pregnant. Did she really not know what a condom is or something? Did she lie to Eric about taking birth control pills since apparently he didn’t seem to notice a lack of protection otherwise. Did he just not care? Ah well. I guess the likelihood of getting pregnant when you’re evil and having dramatically hypocritical sex is about 1:1.
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Wait… I’m first… Sweet Jesus!
Anyways… I like seeing Danny call Mary out like that. It’s just so fun to see evil like that get its comeuppance.
Well, I suppose this would solve Mary’s problems. In the same way that the end of the world would solve a lot of the world’s problems.
Jehovah’s Witness: We, like many people, believe God will end the world shortly. How does that idea strike you?
Tales of the Black Freighter caption: The notion fascinated me. It was terrible, and yet terribly convenient.
— Alan Moore, Watchmen
Maybe she’s one of those dumb people who thinks you can’t get pregnant if it’s your first time (assuming that was her first time).
Or if you do it standing up…
Or if you jump up and down after…
Or if you stand on your head after…
Or if you put vitamin C pills in your vagina after…
Or if you do it under the covers so Jesus can’t see…
Or if you just pray really, really hard…
Or if you just ignore the fact that you had sex and do some weird cognitive dissonance and convince yourself that you’re still a virgin…
(All things I’ve actually run in to with friends and acquaintances)
A Poem:
Getting Pregnant, by Lorna Crozier
You can’t get pregnant
If it’s your first time.
You can’t get pregnant
if you do it standing up,
if you don’t French kiss,
if you pretend
you won’t let him
but just can’t stop.
You can’t get pregnant
if you go to the bathroom
right after,
if you ride a horse
bareback, if you jump
up and down on one leg,
if you lie in the snow
till your bum feels numb,
if you do it in the shower,
if you eat garlic,
if you wear a girdle,
if it’s only your second time.
You can’t get pregnant
if he keeps his socks on,
if he’s captain of the football team,
if he says he loves you,
if he comes quickly,
if you don’t come at all,
if it’s only your third time.
You can’t get pregnant
if he tells you
you won’t.
Or if you’re on your period.
I’m starting to feel Howard was better off with the bullies than being in that car.
Well I mean, on the one hand, there’s a quick and probably fiery certain death. On the other hand, slow and painful probable death.
What I’m saying is I guess it really all depends which you prefer.
Eh…not likely death with the bullies… he’s too ‘valuable’ for them to kill him….intentionally.
Considering they’re throwing him head-first at doors and making him mop up vomit (and other carpet-staining materials, which encompasses a wide variety of nasty stuff) with his FACE, I don’t think intentionally is the thing he should be worried about.
No kidding. Especially since they apparently wedged him into that tiny space between the driver’s seat and the door.
In this episode, everybody dies! 😛
Abstinence-only sex ed and hypocritical views on sex and subsequently birth control, I guess. Same reason you hear about pro-lifers getting abortions in the real world. Having some form of birth control means you’re thinking about having sex and is even more sinful, I suppose? Who even knows.
Why Danny would assume pregnancy, true or not (it’s true in this case), as being the reason for the vomiting when a concussion is far more reasonable given the fact that she was punched in the face so hard that she was knocked unconscious… quite a leap.
I’m just saying that Danny coming to that conclusion offhand doesn’t make sense plot-wise.
Once again, on the nose for my past interpretations, and I didn’t even know much about concussions at the time. Really, it seems as though the punch triggered Mary’s morning sickness and since that… doesn’t make any sense… I just assumed it was caused by the blow until it became too obvious it wasn’t.
I have had over a dozen concussions in my life and have never had any nausea, I have however had light sensitivity, motor function problems, slurred speech, and a complete destruction of my ability to focus on anything among other things. But I know that concussions can have nausea… I just never got it along with any of the concussions I’ve received throughout life.
No, but at the time this was written, the Great and Powerful Willis was still heavily influenced by his hardcore Christian upbringing. Mary is pregnant because that’s what happens to girls who have sex before marriage, they are punished. There’s a political theory that says that the current rash of far right politicians trying to ban birth control is an extension of this, as birth control allows unmarried women to have sex without consequence.
Wait, there’s a plausible alternative explanation?
It really doesn’t.
But I guess plot-induced backbone gave Danny access to the secrets of the universe. Lucky him.
Billie told Danny she’d caught Mary having sex, Mary denied it, and Danny tried to ride the fence. His implying that she’s pregnant (whether he knows her to be or not) is a way of telling her he now believes Billie and not her.
She could be pregnant AND have had a concussion. Also food poisoning, an inner ear disorder, and dengue fever, just for good measure.
And to think Willis originally introduced Mary as, in his own words, “someone cheerful to replace Joyce and […] someone with a strong sense of moral rightness to replace Danny’s sudden lack of it.” How relatively quick the journey from that to sour, hypocritical and, ultimately, mentally unbalanced.
Maybe the condom broke. I dunno.
I seem to recall her mentioning in an “It’s Walky” comic about having really bad luck with birth control. A friend of mine and her three kids can relate.
Now you mention it, I remember that too. But I guess I always figured that first pregnancy of hers happened because college-agekids can be reckless and maybe they just took a chance and didn’t use protection at all. I mean, just from the people I know around me and all the accidental pregnancies I have been around in the last few years, that’s the impression I get.
Eric Schtuppenstein’s seed cannot be constrained by mere latex.
Oh that reminds me of an LRR skit: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/loadingreadyrun/6666-Efficiency
Statistically, there isn’t a lower rate of sex among youth and young adults outside of marriage who have made purity pledges. However there is a drastically lower rate of birth control use, and correct use of birth control when it is used. (I’m writing a paper on this for a Women’s Studies conference right now)
TLDR: Mary’s lack of birth control knowledge isn’t that surprising considering her background. So… yay accuracy
Also, how the hell was it DANNY who figured it out first?
Danny’s the only one who cares.
He’s known her the longest.
Depending on when you start taking it in your cycle the most common birth control pills aren’t effective for about a week, and I’ve known other women who totally didn’t realize that. And while they certainly should, birth control providers don’t necessarily provide you with that information; when I started getting depo shots I wouldn’t have known they take two weeks to start working if I hadn’t done my own research first.
She could have gone on the pill in preparation for the party if she expected to sleep with him there, and been ignorant of the fact it was too soon to be effective.
From her background, it’s actually extremely likely she just didn’t use any.
I doubt she’s pregnant. I think Danny woke up to the fact that he’s been a wonker and wants Mary to know he thinks she’s a bitch and he believes Billie.
What’s the best way to tell here without saying it outright. That’s easy. Tell the whole car you think she’s suffered morning sickness.
A double whammy: One, he’s saying he knows she had sex because Billie caught her at it and that he thinks it was not the first time (because she couldn’t have morning sickness so quickly otherwise.) So she is a liar.
And second, a hypocrite, she preaches abstinence, and then has sex.
Pretty good double whammy for formerly clueless Dan.
She is. I guess you’re reading this for the first time, so I’ll spare you exactly how I know this, but she really is pregnant.
Over the past few strips, Mary has really started to look more and more like a Lego figure. Just look at that third panel.
Maybe the nausea is not actually morning sickness, but caused by the concussion, and Danny is just assuming that it’s morning sickness because he’s also a hypocritical fundamentalist Christian and “knows” that premarital sex means you automatically get pregnant, and heard something once about pregnancy causing morning sickness. And Mary’s making the same assumptions for the same reasons, and because she does know that she’s actually pregnant.
I’d hypothesize that Mary’s not even actually pregnant at all, but a later scene in IW! shoots that down.
Has a woman in this universe ever thrown up without being pregnant?
Answering from my own experience, there were a fair amount of guys in that time at that age who seemed to think it was more important that ‘it feels better without a condom’ than to worry about birth control. A lot just assumed the girl was on the pill and didn’t really think they needed to ask. Like if she’s not saying anything, she must either be on the pill or if there’s consequences then that’s her problem. And I can’t remember/don’t know there relationship status at the time of boinkage but really I’m thinking all scenarios: Fairly decent dude. Total sleazeball, somewhat to quite serious about the relationship, just gettin’ while the gettin’s good, wait who’s this chick again? I know the Roomies years follow my own college years so I’m thinking as basically their age in their time. Looking back, I feel like it can largely be explained that it was a time where we late teens/early 20s all KNEW there was disease and babies and things like that (ha. I know, I say that like past generations didn’t know there were babies.) but I feel like we were maybe as much as 50/50 – or at least the male sector was – in still KINDA thinking that we were untouchable and still that “yeah, but it won’t happen to ME” thought process.
Sorry!
Overly long explanation just to address why I read the commentary today and thought “…Is this even a question? I thought it was practically a given!”
their relationship
Somehow manages to be both my most hated and most common grammatical error 😛
Teen pregnancy is something that happens to poor people. Everyone knows that.
Godamnit’ Danny, couldn’t making fun of Mary wait?
Fuck yo-Actually, I can kinda understand that.
Maybe Mary was hypocritically drunk and didn’t remember whether he wore a condom? Maybe that’s why he led her upstairs with his hand around her without trying to put the moves on her?
I’m going to say right now, the number of dudes who literally do not give a shit about protection is pretty damn high. I don’t see why this is even a question of how it got by him.
Protection doesn’t always work, either. Even if they were all doing their job.
I would say the only sure way is abstinence, but isn’t the entire basis of Mary’s religion the virgin pregnancy?
Shame there’s no Historical Jesus to take the wheel.
I need an upvote button.
Originally posted:
December 11, 1999