Early update for May 26, 2023
Added 2023-05-25 03:55:01 +0000 UTCjust plagiarizing a conversation my pal steve had with me once
Comments
Yeah, now I'm thinking her sister might have been trying to give her a heads-up about Carol selling the house. I'm wondering if Joyce has missed calls from her dad as well.
Harold
2023-05-25 14:02:32 +0000 UTCMaybe. I certainly wouldn't put it past Carol, but we don't really have enough context yet to know what it is. For instance, my first thought was that the divorce is resulting in changes of living space, and there's less room for Joyce's old stuff to be stored with her parents. Maybe I'm just projecting because that's the reason my mom recently started bringing me boxes of my old junk, but the point is, we don't know what's happening.
Gabriel Burns
2023-05-25 13:45:29 +0000 UTCWoah, this is a super narcissistic manipulation move on her moms behalf.
Xandra
2023-05-25 11:38:33 +0000 UTCThis seems like such a brutal attempt to regain the upper hand in their parent / daughter relationship, by ambushing her at school with boxes of old, emotionally potent belongings.
Anna Phylaxis
2023-05-25 10:56:19 +0000 UTCAnd nothing about Sarah's mom?
Amós Batista
2023-05-25 07:20:34 +0000 UTCMan, Linda and Charles showing up made my skin crawl, but Carol is a full on horror-game jumpscare. God. This impromptu family weekend is starting off a BANGER.
Sajuuk-Khar
2023-05-25 06:47:16 +0000 UTCHey, remember that phone call from Jocelyne Joyce ignored? I’m thinking it might have been relevant to what’s going on here.
C-Cubed
2023-05-25 06:16:52 +0000 UTCI for one am glad to see a little empathy for the “villains” and support your Carol empathy. There’s a lot of grey area between characters being either perfect, saintly paragons or virtue and them being detestable supervillains we should hate with every fiber of our being. Carol isn’t the kind of person I’d hang out with, I don’t care for her intolerance or fundamentalism and I can see how it hurt Joyce. But I also think you’re right…her entire world is probably hanging on by a thread. She was told probably her entire life that if she was good and obeyed God and was a good wife that surely God would enter into a covenant with her and bless her. And surely marriage was a God sanctioned construct that would never fail for the faithful. All that’s crumbling. Joyce’s dad understandably had to tap out when the cult as good as sanctioned and provided cover for a kidnapping. I’m guessing Carol is either getting kicked out of her church for being a suspected heretic, or given a ton of side eye and being pushed to the very edge of social standing as a pariah. Given fundamentalism and patriarchy tend to go together, I suspect she is being blamed for the divorce, another heresy, and it’s strongly being implied that if only she had prayed harder and been less of sinner maybe God would have fixed the whole marriage situation. She’s down an economic, social, and romantic partner and her primary social group. Her kids aren’t exactly clamoring to spend quality time with her for a variety of valid reasons. And she’s down literally a place to live. Plus a major source of self esteem and understanding of her place in the world. Let’s say she’s praying to God for forgiveness to fix this whole situation- and nothing’s getting fixed. That’s a lot to take in all at once. I saw a scale of psychological stressors. Losing a partner for any reason was like 80 points. Moving was like 40 points. (Moving sucks!) Becoming unhoused could be like 75. Legal troubles such as a divorce was, eh let’s say 25. Let’s say uncertainty with a social network was 25 and each individual acquaintance lost was 15. If 50 is enough to feel majorly stressed and 100 would merit talking with some kind of counselor, Carol could be at 200+. And it’s doubtful that she has the skills to make sense of why any of this happening. It’s not like Joyce can say “Oh! It makes sense once you realize that God doesn’t exist and a lot of people act like jerks”. So agreed, she could be a stiff breeze away from being a sobbing mess. There could be something going on where if she doesn’t say things like “divorce” out loud, she doesn’t have think about it all at once and maybe it’s not quite real. We’ll see!
Shane Wegner
2023-05-25 06:09:02 +0000 UTCI wonder if Carol will eventually admit what's going on with the house, or if Joyce just has to figure it out for herself. Is it weird that I find myself feeling sorry for her? Like, I don't approve of her choices, but she seems like she's struggling. The blatant way that she's avoiding Joyce's questions about what's going on reads to me like someone who's barely holding it together (or like, not holding it together but trying to look like they are).
Lisa
2023-05-25 05:02:36 +0000 UTCWay back on move-in day, Joyce had multiple loads of stuffed animals: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/lobby/
Dan Rabin
2023-05-25 04:53:40 +0000 UTCIs it weird that my first instinct is to call out the bomb-sniffing dogs?
Uniquitous
2023-05-25 04:47:48 +0000 UTC+1 Ruth suplexing
Morgan Byrd
2023-05-25 04:34:53 +0000 UTCShe can stay with her dad. I imagine she wants nothing to do with her mom, since Carol helped fund the kidnapping of Joyce and her friends a few months ago.
Grace Kieser
2023-05-25 04:23:28 +0000 UTCDamn, it is Carol, I was hoping for a small chance. My guess is she is moving for the divorce, and is literally getting rid of ALL of Joyce's stuff, which is going to be awful for Joyce when she realizes she now has no home to go to on break.
Onyx
2023-05-25 04:19:53 +0000 UTC
