This has always bothered me. Why is it that you take “god” as his name? God is a title, the reason you call him god is so you don’t say his name. How did that morph into “saying God=Blasphemy”?
you arent suppose to invoke your God for petty anger swears if you respect him. Its kinda like the religious equivalent of IDK blaming Obama because you squirted Ketchup on your shirt.
This is of course ruined by the fact that many people who are against this swear also will act like they know what God wants when its for their agenda.
I looked that up a while ago and it sorta resonates with me that if you shouldn’t call upon God to curse trivially, what about its opposite, “God bless you”? Pretty sure we know you don’t sneeze out part of your soul like it was thought!
anyway I think Sal’s mostly giving cool points for legitimate effort, why stomp out that hope
However, since sneezing is often a symptom of sickness, we can use ‘God Bless You’ as wishing that no illness befalls them. I mean, God was pretty big on the whole ‘kindness and caring’ thing, regardless of which God you happen to believe in.
I went to high school in the liberal town in North Carolina. The main street downtown, where we tended to hang out on Friday nights, was frequented by street preachers coming in to try to convert the heathen. So we, of course, being a bunch of smartass atheists and pagans and really actually heathens, would entertain ourselves, and perform the public service of keeping them from harassing other people, by messing with them.
One of my favorite tricks was, when they approached and stuck their hand out, to give them that little two-handed clasp-and-shake, and say, earnestly, “Hi, my name’s John. Have you been saved?”
That generally rendered them speechless for several seconds, because that was supposed to be their line, and they didn’t know how to respond to it.
And then I’d take advantage of that momentary hesitation to tell them that if they didn’t accept Eris Discordia into their hearts and beds, they would go to Thud when they died, which was a lot like Cary, but somehow even more boring, and carry on giving my best shot at converting them to Discordianism. This had the huge advantage that I was making everything I was saying up on the spot, including citations of chapter and verse in a holy book that had never been written, whereas I generally knew their holy book better than they did. (A lot of those churches strongly discourage any unguided reading of the Bible. (By which they mean “without a church authority present to tell you what it ‘really’ says, or better yet doing the reading of selected passages for you”.)) This made for very uneven footing in a debate.
Then there was the night that we exorcized them. They left, so I guess it worked…
One of the most fun things to do to actually make religious people think. I think my favorite was 2 people who were outside my apartment complex, I was on the balcony, and they approached me. I asked why they thought everyone else was wrong. I continued this line of questioning, while working on a 3D printer. Pointing out that in anything that the track record of churches saying anything which can be tested in the natural world has a really poor track record. So they’ve basically stopped doing it. I challenged them to point out something that had been shown to be true after observation. They said faith, and I pointed out that they thought everyone else was wrong, so was that really arrogance? (That sounds a bit rude when I write it, but nothing in the conversation was rude on either side.)
One of them seemed to actually be thinking about it, then the other one hurriedly pulled her away. I think that’s why they send them out in pairs.
Actually the whole Sneeze = Respond with “God Bless” thing SUPPOSEDLY started because sneezing let the evil spirits in. But I have no source other than a pastor whom I suspect of being present for the Resurrection (Cause he’s old)
a textbook I read said it started during the black plague and if you were sneezing a lot it meant you weren’t long for this world. So God had better bless you.
And that is, basically, because the “enlightened” eastern european countries believed that when you sneeze, you actually sneeze the devil out; it’sthe yawning that lets them in, thus the hand-over-mouth to prevent them jumping in.
I prefer to respond to sneezes with the much more puntastic “Gesundwidth”. 😛 Then again, I also respond to Jehovah’s witnesses with “thanks, but I’m an Atheist and happy”. 🙂
Mostly though, I’m currently happy for Joycy. YAY SHE MADE A GENUINE SWEAR! Now go you two, and save Becky! (I hope Ruthie gets there in time to help relieve Toe-Dad of his femurs, too)
And “Gesundheit”, in our family anyway, was always followed by “das ist besser als Krankheit” (translation: “it’s better than being sick”).
Which means that even we dumb Krauts knew that we were sneezing germs *OUT* of our system.
There’s a really interesting perspective on this in the Jewish faith.
So, you have the tetragrammaton, YHVH (yud-hay-vav-hay). This is the true name of God, according to the faith, but no one knows how to say it. Hebrew letters are all consonants, with implicit vowels, and the actual pronunciation of the tetragrammaton is lost to time. One possibility is Yahweh (pronounced more like Yah-veh), but there’s another, and it ties into the next point.
Often, God is referred to by Jews as “Hashem,” meaning “the name.” This stems from “Adoshem,” meaning “the lord’s name,” and that from “Adonai,” meaning “our lord.” When the vowels from “Adonai” are applied to the tetragrammaton, you end up with “Yahovah.” It’s not “Yahovai” because the “ai” is a combination of an “ah” sound and a yud, which makes a “y” sound. Anyway, you’ll notice that this looks very similar to Jehovah.
So either of those might be God’s true name, or it might be something else, but we don’t know. Stepping back a bit, why are there so many different ways to refer to God? There’s “Adonai,” which then gets abstracted into “Adoshem” and that into “Hashem.” There’s a philosophy among the more religious that, because we no longer know God’s true name, when we refer to God by one of these formal titles, it’s, to us, akin to using His true name. And so we abstract them for casual use.
So, akin to “God bless you,” you won’t hear a lot of “Baruch Adonai” someone wants to say “God bless.” You’re more likely to hear “Baruch Hashem.” A lot. Like almost every other sentence. It’s kind of creepy.
Christian practice seems to follow similarly in this manner. You have a lot of “The lord” this and “Our shepherd” that. You don’t get as much “God,” really, with “God bless you” seeming to be the notable exception. That said, I think even in Christianity, “God” really is seen as a title. After all, how often to you sneeze and here someone say, “Jesus bless you”?
Interesting indeed. I knew some of that, but not all of it, so like DarkVeghetta said, thanks!
At least among some Christians I’ve talked with, there’s a further elaboration on the Name of God, which runs roughly like this:
When God appears to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus chapter 3, Moses asks God what his (God’s) name is, and God replies in Hebrew with a phrase that’s usually translated into English as “I Am Who I Am” or “I Will Be Who I Will Be,” and he instructs Moses to tell the people, “I AM has sent me to you.” (The phrase “I AM” would be the yud-hay-vav-hay Tetragrammaton to which sreiches refers.)
The thing about names is that the main reason you even need a name is to distinguish you from everyone else. Like, if you’re the only human who exists, you can just call yourself “the human,” and anything else that might want a label for you can just call you “the human,” but if there are other humans around, you and the rest of them will need names so you can tell each other apart.
By that logic, if there are a bunch of gods, there’s a reason to call one Ra and another one Anubis and another one Set and so on, since it might be useful to know which one you’re talking about at any given time. But if there’s only one god, you can just refer to him* as “the god” or treat “God” as his name, even though it might function more like a title.
Likewise, again by the logic that names are used to distinguish their owners from other entities, when God says his name is “I AM,” he’s declaring that the difference between himself and all the other gods people worship is that he actually exists.
When the Hebrews were in slavery in polytheistic Egypt (as they were when Exodus 3 takes place), when the Israelites were surrounded by polytheistic Canaanites, Phoenicians, and other peoples of the ancient Near East (as they were when the story of the Exodus was being told and retold), and when the tribe of Judah was in exile in polytheistic Babylon (as a few scholars think they were when the story of the Exodus was finally written down), a story like that would have served as a reminder that there’s only one deity whom it’s worth their time to worship.
*Masculine pronoun used for convenience only; by many people’s reckoning, the God of the Abrahamic religions does not have a sex or gender.
Growing up amongst Christians (and in a Christian family – loosely Methodist, though I myself am an Atheist), I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say “God bless you”, just “bless you”. I tend to say “Gesundheit” instead when people sneeze, just because I like the way it sounds. Or something silly (“Gesundwidth” being my personal preference).
And in the case of my dad, I skip all that and just announce how many times he sneezed (he’s hopeless at sneezing, so instead of one good sneeze, he’ll often do about 10 small rubbish ones immediately after each other – I think his record is 12 or 13 without stopping)
Um, actually, the Jews had many names for their god. Actual names. That’s why they use “Lord” and “God” so that they WON’T use his name in vain.
It was a sin to call upon the Divine for petty matters. For example, asking the Divine to damn someone, or calling for help from angels because you lost your keys…….
And yet, I frequently see the use of “G-d”, often explained as “Out of respect, Jews do not write any Name of G-d out in full.” But if “God” is a title rather than a name, one would think that particular self-censorship would be unnecessary. Unless maybe God is so touchy about the subject that it’s considered best to be doubleplus safe?
There ARE a wealth of actual names, but only a few are considered so holy that, once written, they can’t be erased. The Tetragrammaton is one of these, and is both the most commonly seen in the Torah and the only one so guarded that the pronunciation has been lost. Other names of God show up fairly regularly, and are even integrated into Hebrew names. Any name ending with “-el,” for instance, such as Daniel or Gabriel.
I’ve been aware of that since Tim Burton’s Batman film. “Never rub another man’s rhubarb!” They got away with it in context, but even then it still comes off pretty damn filthy.
Does it promote Atheism? ‘Cos some people still can’t decide if Atheism is a religion or the lack thereof. If it promotes Atheism as well, then Atheism must be a religion right? xD
Then those people don’t understand the basic definition of ‘atheism’. Religions require belief and dogma. Atheism is the exact opposite thereof, requiring neither. It is a point of view. Heck, depending on the variant of atheism (there’s multiple), it can simply be a negation of someone else’s religion or religion in general.
Fervor is besides the point – you can still be fervent in your atheism and it not be a religion, just as you can fervently have any opinion and it won’t count as such.
I dunno about that – I’ll agree with the bit about dogma, Atheism definitely doesn’t have that (clearly). But there are, loosely, two types of Atheism as far as I know – weak and strong. Weak Atheism (sometimes overlapping with Agnosticism) is roughly defined as lack of belief in God or any gods. While strong Atheism is generally defined as a definite belief (on par with any strong religious belief) that God or gods most certainly do *not* exist.
But yeah, certainly no dogma, so even with the “strong beliefs” bit down, doesn’t count. Like my hair colour being “bald”. 😉
This situation is different, in that it is actively ongoing and the victim still needs immediate help.
Ryan (?) should be prevented from doing such things in the future, and should be helped. Joyce should probably have someone help her with that trauma.
But neither of those is an immediate necessity that requires immediate action.
Which doesn’t mean she’ll want to call the cops necessarily, but it is quite different.
Yes, it most certainly is. Being chased is going to make Becky’s dad desperate, and these three have no way of dealing with that.
Meanwhile, the police still need to know about Big Toe Daddy’s suicidal frame of mind and about Becky having Dina’s phone. They also need to know in what way Amazi-Girl and Sal are involved. On the basis of what the remaining eye-witnesses tell them Amazi-Girl, Sal, and Joyce could be accomplices, or they might be the kidnappers and BTD actually a rescuer (the shot being fired to intimidate Joyce into releasing Becky).
I’m still worried about Sal + cops. They are barreling towards the fountain as the above interaction is occurring. She has a record, and the cops’re probably in full ‘school shooter’ mode, so their trigger fingers could be seriously itchy.
It will, won’t it? Willis wouldn’t build all this excitement over Joyce really getting it and getting righteously angry, and Amazi-Girl on the case, and Sal rushing to help, and then have anything like cold hard reality blow through like a Cat 5 hurricane, right?
*fingers crossed*
You probably started to expand on the mental image to such an extent that your right hand, in a fit of self-preservatory reflex, jabbed your eye hard enough to trigger short-term memory loss. I HATE it when that happens.
Well he has the jugs for the job but he’d need to be a bare midriff version. Too hard to get all that into a one piece jumpsuit and less damaging to the psyche of whoever is now imagining toedad in a said costume doing “sexy” poses.
“Oh,hello! Don’t mind me,I just happened to land in the wrong universe to conquer,but don’t you worry,yours will be next and I will kill you!….Have a horrible day!”
They’re different varieties of nightmare father. There’s no need to rank them, they can both win Worst Father, we have lots of these little statuettes to distribute, everyone who deserves one can have one.
Exactly the post I was about to make. AmaziGirl is already onssessing over Sal and confusing her with Toedad. Not a pleasant convergence in the offing.
Cursing. Riding on Motorcycles. Not thinking authority figures will be the solution to this problem. Joyce has made a giant shift today and its reverberations will probably be felt for a long long time.
It’s in the buffer, it’s already cannon in the DoA-verse so it’s just as accurate to say that ‘Dorothy was walking’ or ‘Dorothy walked’ — if you take the Eye of God/Willis perspective.
“Oriental” isn’t necessarily racist per say. It is however, very archaic and outdated. To hear any one of East Asian descent called that, even benignly, is jarring to our ears to say the least.
When you feed it’s necessary to identify which of your adversaries isn’t white, you could use whatever benign language you like to do so and most of us will still win at “Spot the Racist.”
Archaic in the sense that you’d expect to here that from an embarrassing grandparent. Ross is at least 30-40 years too young to play the “I’m old!” card.
I recall hearing people applying the term “oriental” to people when I was in elementary school. This was the mid 1980’s to early ’90s. I live in a blue state, and I grew up with parents who are/ were liberal democrats. It wasn’t until the late ’90s that I first read on the internet that “oriental” is for rugs and food, not humans.
And having grown up around racists, I can’t wait to hear what’s going to come out of his mouth when he sees that a black girl is trying to take his daughter back to “the Oriental girl.” Just like good ol’ family gatherings all over again. :/
I think his sexism, homophobia, and bigotry are a lot more prominent and causing more trouble. However, that as I understand it is the answer to neeks’s question.
If you feel the necessity of identifying an adversary’s race, you’re probably a racist.
Besides, if you’re a misogynist, a homophobe, and white, you’re probably a racist–that kind of bigoted thinking doesn’t often arbitrarily apply to some groups and not others, so unless he’s a member of a racial minority group himself (which he ain’t) it was a decently safe bet that racism was part of the package without any evidence.
Yes. If someone identifies people by race in situations in which that is irrelevant, except that its relevant to the identifier, that’s racist, even if it’s not the frothing at the mouth variety of racist.
Ross would still have been in a racist mode if he had referred to Dina as “Asian”, rather than “Oriental”. “Oriental” is notable because it’s anachronistic as well as racist, meant, I think to signal Ross’ isolation from a whole buncha social developments
Whats the term for people from China/Japan/Korea these days, bearing in mind most westerners can’t identify each nationality / ethnicity on site? Asian means Indian/Pakistani here in the UK.
That guy, I tend to go with “South Asian” for what someone from the UK would call “Asian”, and “Asian” for East or Southeast Asian. My girlfriend is half South Asian and it seems appropriate for instances where her specific, rather small and obscure, ethnic group is less relevant.
OR you grew up in an all-white neighborhood, went to an all-white school, hung with an all-white crowd, in an environment so cloistered that literally anything unusual, different or NOT WHITE was so much of an anomaly that at the least you had no idea how to deal with it, and at worst, identified it as dangerous, bad or evil.
I’m gonna bet that Ross, religious zealot, born far before the age of internet and arguably too lacking in intelligence to know how to use it, is not so much racist as he literally does not know any better. Some people will argue that there is no difference – but there is, a crucial one: someone who literally does not know any better can be educated, can grow and learn and change, much more readily than the typical racist.
That is, y’know, assuming that the person in question isn’t someone like Toedad, who is pretty willful – not so much in racism or homophobia, per se – but is absolutely certain that he knows how the world works, and no one can tell him differently. That’s a different sort of wrongness, and there’s no disputing that it IS wrongness. But it’s not racism.
See, that’s ambiguous: do you mean that he’s a special variety of dbag OR that he’s a special variety of occidental OR that all occidental are dbag OR that he’s both occidental and a dgab, not that the two things have any necessary & sufficient relationship with each other OR was that a joke/comment on what Ross said OR
This is how Joyce deals with threats in the moment. Afterwards there’s the possibility of curling into a fetal position no matter what in public, but right now, she’s fully in breaking a glass on someone’s face mode.
Yup. This actually WOULD be a good time for Ryan to surface. Joyce wouldn’t see him. He would just open the door to whatever hole he has hid in, glance out, see Joyce in full KICKING!ASS-mode burn by on the motorcycle… and close the door again.
Ryan: “I’m sure enough time has passed, should be safe to go outside…”
*opens door, sees Sal and Joyce riding by on motorcycle*
Joyce: “RAAAAAAAH I’M COMING FOR YOU-”
*shuts door*
Ryan: “nope nope nopenopenope” *buries himself in backyard*
Joyce: “-BECKYYY!!!”
Exactly. And this IS Joyce doing it. If by a terrible oversight of God and the police ToeDad actually manage to get Becky all the way home Joyce will bring down the entire house if she has to. Hell, she will bring down the entire church . Joyce is NOT stopping and he is NOT taking her Becky.
Tune in next week, when Joyce says variations of “fuck” more often than in a typical Tarantino film scene. And thus her transformation will be complete.
Whiteness is not going to save Toedad when he pulls the rifle out. It might get you the benefit of the doubt walking around the walmart like some kid of asshole, but it won’t here.
No, whiteness will absofuckinglutely save Toedad when he pulls the rifle out. You know what happens to white guys with guns? In any situation? No matter how loud or threatening they get? The cops attempt to talk them down. To reason with them. And if, god forbid, he actually shoots someone, the cops will sooner attempt to wrestle him to the ground and get the gun away from him than they will attempt to actually put a bullet in him.
As opposed to if you’re black with a gun, in any scenario, where you’re shot on sight, regardless of whether or not the gun is the product of the cop’s imagination.
You can look up a dozen youtube videos or more recent instances of white guys getting taken down or taken in without having a clip unloaded into them first.
But if a black man has a knife, a gun, or no weapon and a bleeding headwound when he approaches cops, or cops approach him, there’ll be a headline about another cop killing a suspect or armed assailant.
There may be times when a white guy gets shot, but it’s far less common, statistically, than him walking away unharmed. And, in some instances, not even arrested.
Dude, armed white dudes DO GET shot and killed by cops sometimes, just like the police don’t kill every black man they arrest. You guys even know how to think for yourselves, or is crowdthink just easier?
You did notice that Steampunkette acknowledged that armed white dudes do get shot and killed by cops sometimes, right? Look at their last paragraph.
And you’re right, police don’t kill every black man they arrest, because usually the killing’s done before the arresting. If you’ve been arrested, as a black person, you’ve gotten off easy–except, y’know, maybe not, because they might stage your suicide in your cell.
But hey–you’re right! These cases are not universal and therefore the fact that they’re just on the right side of statistically probable means that there’s no problem whatsoever. Thanks for clearing that up.
Just so you know: When accusing your opponents of being incapable of having independent thoughts because they disagree with you, it’s time to reexamine your argument.
That’s no my impression. I hear about innocent white dudes getting shot by the police ALL THE TIME. That’s why I don’t get why white racists try to defend the cops all the time, pretending this is not something that would happen to them “because I’m white”. You have a COP problem, yes, your cops are ALSO racists, and TARGET blacks more than whites, but given the chance, they do tend to shoot first and ask questions later regardless of race.
And now that we’ve started to arm them here in Norway as well, we’ve already had a few shootings, in little under a year, and most of them were “native” Norwegians.
Just as native Norwegians have been put in hospital by the cops for decades, before we armed them. I think this is a dangerous fallacy, because it ignores the real problem, police training is not good enough at weeding out the psychos that get the job just to harass people. Which in turn ruins everything for the REAL cops, the ones that actually want to help people. Racism is just an “excuse” these cops use, because for some reason they believe that it makes it “better”, that “Oh, I thought he had a gun, he was black” is a GOOD excuse and not just stupid.
The training for police is designed to filter for psychopathic tendencies, just like Military Training.
The intent is to hire people with as little empathy for potential targets as possible while constantly drilling them on the fact that criminals are scum of the Earth -beneath- the cops, so that when the time comes to pull the trigger there will be minimal hesitation and the cop has a better chance to survive.
However, thanks to Institutionalized Racism and it’s bastard child Racial Profiling we wind up with a system designed to make cops view most if not all non-white individuals as probable, not just possible, criminals.
That’s why a Black Man in a lower income area walking with an ounce of weed gets stop and frisked before they fling him in the cop car while white folks in subdivisions trade prescription pills and pot with near impunity.
Charles Gunn said it best: “We’ll be the ones walking while Black.”
“The intent is to hire people with as little empathy for potential targets as possible while constantly drilling them on the fact that criminals are scum of the Earth -beneath- the cops, so that when the time comes to pull the trigger there will be minimal hesitation ”
Well, that’s the problem right there, and for some reason they tend to treat ALL people like potential criminals as well, not just “non-whites”.
They just use racism as an “excuse”, which explains why they target non-whites more often, but when they get the chance, (and by “chance”, I mean, every little misdemeanor they can think of, like jaywalking, walking “funny”, looking at them too quickly, etc.” they treat EVERYONE like that.
At least they do so over here, and from what I hear from other people, it seems to be similar in the States.
Not when shots have already been fired on a college campus. I don’t care what race you are — when you start shooting the time for talking stops.
I don’t disagree with you regarding institutionalized racism, and I agree wholeheartedly that non-white people get shit on by the cops regularly, but the idea that it’s a binary where white men always get off isn’t true, and arguing it as a binary undermines the very valid case you’re trying to make.
‘Tactics? We don’t need no stinking tactics!’ Nor training, nor situational awareness, nor none of that other fancy pants stuff, neither. (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “Mr. President, Delta Force is standing ready.” President Obama: “No, General, I want those kids from IU for this mission … I mean, ‘This FUCKING mission’.” President looks embarrassed.
A. Why is Sal going to trust cops?
B. Where is this negotiator when someone is driving away from them this very moment?
C. Please read the title of this comic.
A. What Sal? It’s Joyce who has the information the police need.
B. One place that he or she for sure is not is on the end of a phone, talking down BTD. Because the police don’t know that Becky has Dina’s phone, and they don’t know what is going on in BTD’s head. And they don’t know those things because Joyce has decided that she is better at this than the police department and is withholding information.
C. I read it.
A third of murders go unsolved. Most of the murders that are solved are solved quickly. The “first forty-eight hours” cliché exists because police basically don’t go to any lengths to investigate crimes, unless there’s prestige in it, and there may not be in this case. If a trained police negotiator gets to them, Becky will be safer than if they take it on themselves, but that’s a big if.
Plus, Becky will almost certainly be arrested, and Joyce and Dina may never see her again.
And we return to the earlier subject of “do you have superpowers?” The answer is “NO”. Leave this to the professionals.
Sal saying Amazi-Girl will escalate the matter is the pot calling the kettle black. Sal is not exactly a calming influence herself, and she’s hot-tempered too.
@Agemegos: I did see your earlier Champions reply, but I didn’t have anything to add. Your terminology was a bit different, but that’s to be expected since I’m used to the older edition. Figured that things changed over the intervening editions. (I do know that objects have resistance or Defense, so no more normals busting out of bank vaults bare-handed anymore)
Oh, Sal. If only you knew that the whole “escalation” thing was kinda because of you, not her (well, OK, it was also because of her, but it was in response to you). Who knows? MAYBE YOU’LL FIND OUT WHY. SOOOOOOON.
Well…she kinda can, actually. I mean, not completely, no. But it IS her fault, at least in Amber’s eyes. And…I mean, she’s basically the cause of the events on night when Amber’s brain done broke, even if they were all different people. Yeah, Amber really shouldn’t have reacted how she did, and she probably needs some trauma therapy to get over that night, but Sal’s not completely without fault.
Also, it’s not like Sal attempted to de-escalate the situation in the Wal-Mart parking lot, either. Just saying, Sal’s culpable, too.
…Fair enough. Modern-day Sals done nothing to Amber, so she can’t be blamed for her reaction to her. But…I still don’t think Sal handled the situation properly. She could’ve attempted to calmly talk her down, but she definitely didn’t do that. She yelled at her, then told the posse to “get ‘er.” Not de-escalating. At least, not de-escalating WELL.
Nah, Sal did try to de-escalate it. It was Malaya who re-escalated it and got her involved again.
And like, all I know is a lifetime of bullying by the same group of people so I have no idea what it feels to associate a face to trauma, but whenever I go into deer-in-the-headlights mode at seeing one of those people randomly down the street, that’s entirely on me. They’re the cause of it, but my reaction is entirely my own, and there’s plenty of ways I could condition myself to reduce them so it’s like doubly my own.
The only reason why you feel Sal is at fault is because you don’t want to offer sympathy to her. I wonder why that is.
Looking back now, Malaya definitely jumped right in to fight. But after she was almost immediately taken down, Sal started antagonizing Amazi-Girl pretty much with the first words she said to her. And, on that same page, she told her posse to “Get ‘er.” That is NOT de-escalating. True, she decided to leave rather than fight, but she was very ready to jump right into it. It took Marcie to get her to actually stop. Sal says as much in a later strip, when fighting Malaya.
And I LIKE SAL. Honestly, she’s one of my favorite characters in the strip, because I find her interesting. But I’m not gonna pretend that she was the pacifist in that confrontation. Sorry, but Sal, as interesting and fun as she is to read, IS VIOLENT. Not all the time, but she’s definitely not a peacemaker.
Also, I was a bullied kid, too. And I’m not defending Amazi-Girl’s actions. What she did was not only wrong, but stupid and impulsive in a bad way. BUT, she’s NOT the only one at fault. Sal’s responsible, too, sorry. Past Sal, maybe, but her past mistakes are coming back to haunt her in the form of a very psychologically bruised Amber.
And…I’m sorry, but your “I wonder why that is” comment SERIOUSLY rustled my jimmies, pal. WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN? You know what, actually…never mind. Now I’M escalating the situation, and I’d rather not make this forum an unpleasant place. I’m a legitimately nice guy, I promise.
Can we agree that both Amber and Sal were at fault? It was Amber’s choice to act the way she did, and in the end Sal did choose to pursue the fight. Poor choices were made all around that night.
I know right? And in my opinion it barely even was self defense. It took some dissuading from Marcie, true, but Sal left the fight without throwing a single punch at Amazi-Girl! For her established character and the buildup strips prior, Sal did nothing wrong. Which, you know, works because literary justice against a character who is kinda a deconstructive parody of superheroism. Amber deserves better but she is not going to get it until she starts letting go and choosing her fights, she can’t carry it all and especially if some of what she is carrying is no longer relevant.
Sal only chose to pursue the fight the 0.7 second it took Marcie to stop her. And that’s why I’m getting so defensive of her, you’re forcing her into the role of Amazi-Girl’s arch nemesis, much like Amazi-Girl herself does, when Sal so far has at most been a sour apathetic onlooker. But I’ll just leave it at that because, admittedly, I do feel that when it comes to dealing with her past, Amazi-Girl is a straight out villain, so I don’t have much patience for her.
@otusasio451 I’m sorry for implicitly calling you racist. I just don’t know how to deal with people when I wholeheartedly disagree with something they’re saying so I tend to take advantage that people fear prejudice terms. Throwing that question was very immature of me, and something I don’t always catch myself doing (working on it tho.) Sorry it got directed at you this time.
…Eh, no hard feelings. I wasn’t entirely sure if that’s what you were implying, so I didn’t outright respond to it. But a tip on arguing: don’t immediately go for the “racist” card, man. It IS effective at shocking people with potential shame, but it REALLY doesn’t reflect well on you. And with that said:
I STILL somewhat blame Sal. Yeah, sorry, but she’s not innocent in this conflict. You’re arguing self-defense when Amazi-Girl didn’t start the conflict. Malaya did. And then, when Amazi-Girl swiftly stopped the conflict, Sal could’ve walked away from it entirely. But, when Malaya attacks AGAIN, Sal tells her friends to “get ‘er.” She doesn’t let Amazi-Girl work it out with Malaya, and she’s not coming to Malaya’s defense. She’s being offensive AGAINST Amazi-Girl. And, OK, Amazi-Girl was DEFINITELY GOING TO ATTACK with the least amount of provocation. But she didn’t. If anything, SHE’S actually the one who acted in self-defense THE WHOLE TIME! If Malaya hadn’t been there, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. But she WAS, and so this conversation is taking place.
And I’m really not trying to make Sal out to be Amazi-Girl’s archnemesis, either. That’s CLEARLY Blaine. I also have faith that, if Sal were to know WHY Amazi-Girl acted the way that she did, she would understand. Like I said before, I LIKE Sal.
Oh, and for the record, I’m black. And that certainly doesn’t mean I’m not racist, but I’m definitely not. However, I DO hate Malaya. Because she’s obnoxious, and I’ve ALWAYS hated Malaya, since Shortpacked.
Sal may have been the catalyst, but it was the constant belittling by her primary abuser that finally broke Amber, not the random encounter with a violent juvenile delinquent .
This. Sal did a shit thing to Amber and Ethan, but it’s not why Amber’s the way she is today. Amber snapped, stabbed Sal, and pursued Amazi-Girl because of a lifetime of abuse. Sal’s just an easily identifiable point in time for Amber.
Hopefully, Amber’ll be able to focus on the more important situation at hand. But, given the fact that we saw a red Amber-flashback panel a couple of strips ago…yeah, this might get bad.
I dunno about broken. I’d say that she’s probably pretty badly chipped. You’ll KNOW when she’s broken. The word “fuck” wil most likely be involved. In all caps, even.
I think she is more likely un-broken. She seems to have found an inner core of strength (if not good judgement!), and I expect we will find when this is over that her traumatic stress reaction is noticeably alleviated.
^This. Sometimes, “breaking” someone means “fixing” them by breaking them out of old habits that are keeping them from being a constructive, functioning member of society. At this point, Joyce is baby-stepping into being able to make her own decisions based on her desire to do the “right” thing, rather than decisions her parents approve of based on her desire to do the “godly” thing. She’s figuring out how to function as an independent person with independent goals and feelings.
The way I figure it, Joyce will reserve the ‘fuck’ for her confrontation with Toedad (as in “Leave her the fuck alone!” or “FUCK YOU!”). That alone will either shock him to no end, or send him over the edge.
or just a single rage fuelled FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
I’m glad to see Sal came back, and this callback is adorable, as is Sal’s smile there… but this is a bad, bad combination of people all converging in the same place, especially since Amber was thinking back to the stickup.
Maybe Sal will keep her helmet on through this and Amber won’t know, but unless Sal has an extra helmet, I see her giving it to Joyce.
Absolutely anybody with long black hair and a motorcycle? The other confrontation happened at night, and I don’t remember if Amber has seen Sal in her whole biker chick ensemble during the day, so yeah, not so stupid??
I think it’s more than you’re confused about whether Sal will care if it seems like a crisis. She said that she heard the shot, so I suspect she came back to check on Joyce and at that point wasn’t worried about getting a ticket.
Not all campuses are fenced off (although mine was). I think this one is just part of the city, right?
Ross is driving on a road. Sal’s on the same road.
Amber does know that it’s Sal. She told Ethan (in her Amazi-girl persona) that she recognized her. Even if facial recognition wouldn’t have done it, combined with Sal’s voice and manner of speaking? She would have clued in sooner or later.
I realize now that the post I replied to explicitly mentioned Sal giving Joyce her helmet. I was thinking of Sal with her helmet on, I’m a dumbass. Yeah, one look at her face and Amazi-Girl will recognize Sal
Sal will be wearing her helmet; in fact, she’s holding it over her head and getting ready to slide it back on in the last panel. And in the other instances when we’ve seen Sal with her motorcycle I don’t recall ever seeing a second helmet.
Honestly, I didn’t know if the TV series THE FALL GUY used the original Steppenwolf version or a Mike Post session band knockoff on their biker gang episode.
Born to be wild works, but Looking at Joyce’s face, I’ve got George Thorogood singing “Who do you love”.
“I walked 47 miles of barbed wire,
I wear a cobra snake for a tie,
I got a brand new hose on the roadside,
It’s made out of rattlesnake hide,
Got a brand new chimney put on top,
It’s a-made out of demon skulls,
Come on take a little walk with me baby,
and tell me who do you love?
Well, we know Sal is right that someone is going to get hurt. We have the hospital preview panel after all.
So, Amazi-girl and Sal may be crossing paths again soon. I’m intrigued to see how that goes.
It’s funny, just a couple of hours ago, I was thinking about how the angry Joyce panel is coming up, and wondering if she would swear again. Now, I have my answer.
This whole god-damned turn of events is spinning increasingly out of control.
That is one thing I do not think you can fairly blame Sal for (also pretty much anything else about this situation since she only just got there, obviously).
She did not invite Joyce, she is yielding to a demand that she did not prepare for in an emergency situation.
Before the helmet law took effect, if there was only 1 helmet for 2 riders the helmet went to the passenger by law. Dunno about Indiana during comic time.
…doesn’t the driver kinda need it, though?
I’ve never ridden a motorcycle, but that seems like it would be important to, uh, see.
Both should have one, but Sal wasn’t intending to take a passenger while engaging in a high-speed chase with a dangerous criminal when she took it out this morning.
To quote an entirely unrelated movie: “The sleeper has awakened!” The new Joyce is about to kick some serious butt. Don’t worry about the G-bomb, she’ll ask forgiveness later.
-Becky hears a creacking sound, looks over her shoulder
-Sees AmaziGirl climbing onto hood of car. Behind her, Sal and Joyce on motorcycle. Behind them, fleet of Indianapolis PD cruisers, lights flashing
-Becky turns back forward. “Dad, you may want to pull over…”
(The cops are chasing Sal, but she doesn’t know that!)
(Mushu voice) Our little baby is all grown up and… and saving her lesbian
I so wanna see proper trained professionals get into this tho. I don’t know about the police, I don’t trust All American Cops at all, but at the very least Joyce is going to need some hardcore therapy after all this to her reconcile her growing nurture vs. reality duality. It’s not gonna be cute if she becomes another Girl running around campus in a jumpsuit kicking white men in the groin, no matter how needed that Girl would have been in her own situation back in in-comic August.
“Not gonna be cute if she becomes another Girl running aound campus in a jumpsuit kicking white men in the groin”. I’m unsure, but you might be in a minority on that one around here
😉 Seriously, though, how about she skips the spandex suit (Ala Sidekick Girl) and doesn’t go looking for trouble, but groin kicks trouble when it finds her, which I think includes going kinetic to rescue her best friend who was kidnapped in front of her. (Btw, I have a niece who, when two guys confronted her with bad intent, she kicked (?kneed?) one of em in his cha-cha’s & then escaped to safety, so groinings when appropriate.)
I mean, I’m all for deserved groinings, and hell, I’m even for some seemingly-undeserved-but-poetically-just groinings too. I cheered at Joyce cutting Ryan face, and I’ll cheer however Joyce helps Becky, even if it’s violent. Girls gotta do what they can to be safe, and realistically, being a Good Girl is rarely enough for that these days, so being bad like that is very good.
I just worry. I mentioned in another post how Amazi-Girl tries to carry the burden of everybody’s problems not letting go of what’s too old or small to be helped, y’know. I just want Joyce to be healthy and I worry she might be drawing in too close to a snapping point for her to be without help. I doubt she’d ever become a second Amazi-Girl, but that’s what I meant by becoming another Girl.
But yeah, right now, keep on going forward Joyce, work it out like only you can.
Willis is usually very good about drawing things true-to-life (look at some of the effort he has put into his backgrounds, for example) so this is probably a real and recognizable bike underneath the fairing; but Sal seems to me to be the sort of person who would do a little customizing to her ride so certain features may be altered, removed, or covered over.
I don’t have enough faith in Indiana police to say that the better idea would be to wait for them and explain that a Christian man kidnapped his lesbian daughter, so I’m just going to say “HELL YEAH, JOYCE!”
I mean they have been called. (Though Sal doesn’t know that, and Joyce might not either. Not that I would expect Sal to give any thought to calling the police).
Okay! I think I figured out who’s gonna’ be the one going to the hospital.
If Sal doesn’t have a spare helmet for Joyce then I predict that sometime during the chase Joyce gets thrown off the bike or they crash. Sal walks away with a few scratches, but Joyce gets a coma or some shit, I don’t know.
This in turn leads us to the actual confrontation between Amazi-Girl and Sal we’ve all be salivating over.
Also Walky gets run over in the process but that’s not important.
“Oh baby, let me in; I wanna be your friend;
I want to guard your dreams and visions.
Just wrap your legs ’round these velvet rims
And strap your hands ‘cross my engines!”
I took that stuff once. Came in a neat lead container. The guy who gave it to me went to the other side of the 20ft room and wouldn’t come near me after I took it. It was almost like I was radioactive or something. 😛
Recap: Becky’s in the car with ToeDad; Amazi-Girl is on the skateboard ski-joring behind ToeDad’s car; Dina is probably still lying dazed in the woods; and now Joyce is leaving the scene on Sal’s motorcycle. So who’s going to be left to give the cops the straight scoop?
Apparently we are all agreed that the police in Indiana are so unreliable that they will do less damage in an information vacuum than if they know who’s who and what’s what.
Hey #NotAllCops
lol
Anyway, I do hope that someone (possibly Sayid, since he could’ve heard some of the story from Joyce or something) can get proper info to the cops at least for the sake of paperwork.
What makes this moment even more powerful is that at any other time Joyce would have been wild with excitement at the chance to ride Sal’s motorcycle.
But right now she’s only interested as a way to get to Becky.
And Joyce has not only said Damn twice, she has now used God-damn, which for fundies is infinitely worse. No wonder Sal agreed so quick, if Joyce is willing to talk like that Sal knows it’s serious.
There’s the God Damn, BUT ALSO
Sal just left Joyce behind after escorting her because she was having a massive panic attack such she couldn’t even walk alone.
Now she’s not only had a gun pulled on her, but her best friend’s been kidnapped and her reaction is to cuss out Sal and -demand- that they ride straight at the gun-wielding madman?
Sal has got to respect that.
I mean, -I- respect that.
Am I the only one that noticed that a few of the comments from about a week ago said something along the lines of “Amazi-girl comes in. Sal joins in after the chase with Joyce” and now it’s exactly what’s happening?
I like to think that Willis read the comments, decided that are ideas were better then what he originally had and redrew the entire thing to encoperate this epicness
A lot of creators are easily annoyed by people saying those things because they hear it all the time, often in all seriousness, which is really insulting to the creator to suggest that they didn’t come up with their own ideas. Note the “Buffer Watch” which Willis keeps updated to ward off this sort of comment. So yeah, you were joking etc. etc. but now you know, eh?
Conditional apology is not apology. Don’t be sorry “if”, just be sorry because you dissed Willis, EVEN IF it was unintended and happened because a lame joke went off target. I’ve learned this myself the hard way.
And that fail BURNS kids, so learn from my experience and don’t try being clever unless you’re another Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker, or someone like that.
Anybody else worried that the police are about to encounter two girls on a motorcycle racing at high-speed away from the scene of a reported gunshot/gunman?
If they didn’t stop to pull over a car towing a girl dressed as a super hero on a skateboard, I doubt they’ll even look twice at two girls on a motorbike. Priority one will be getting to the scene.
We don’t know how recent their information is. They may still be responding to the first sighting, of ToeDad with a gun, some distance from the fountain. They probably dispatched ASAP upon hearing this. We don’t know who else contacted them since, or with what information.
Those might not have been the only two cop cars in Bloomington. Maybe one of the people who is at the scene and on the blower with a 911 operator will report that one of the people who was involved in the altercation has been collected by an accomplice on a motorcycle and is fleeing the scene of the crime. Maybe some of the other police in Indiana will hear about that on their cop radios.
is amazi-girl going to be able to prioritize helping becky over getting her revenge on sal cause i can see a lot of new ways this can go bad all of the sudden
HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT, JOYCE HAS GONE CRITICAL. EPICNESS WILL FOLLOW. Toedad is toast. Dina will show up at the critical movement and go full tyrannosaurus on his sorry ass. They will save their lesbian. In the climax Joyce will take a stand between Becky and Dina and the whimpering ToeDad who tries to crawl away, the scene lit by the flaming wreckage of his car. Sal and Amazie-girl will stand by the side and just stare, maybe share a weak fistbump in mutual awe.
I’m gayer than Elton John blowing Richard Simmons in the front row of a Lady Gaga concert while the ghost of Freddie Mercury flies overhead on a unicorn that poops rainbow-colored dildos, and yet Joyce just gave me a goddamn boner.
So, Sal is worried about Amazi-Girl escalating the situation, so she’s going to enable Joyce to do the same thing. Well, she wouldn’t be human if she didn’t apply to herself different rules that she applied to everyone else.
If Joyce has her first orgasm from finally riding Sal’s bike in this situation, she’s going to have so many years of therapy ahead of her…
Also, people are going on so much about the hospital panel that I’m beginning to suspect that Willis is trolling all of us, and that it’s actually just a random background as all characters walk back to campus entirely unharmed (except for Toedad, who is unharmed but under arrest).
Mostly I’m just looking forward to Amazi-Girl’s (further?) mental breakdown as she sees Sal appearing on the side of good. “But… what.. wait! You’re not allowed to be on the same mission as me!”
If Joyce has her first orgasm from finally riding Sal’s bike in this situation, she’s going to have so many years of therapy ahead of her…
————————
Not her first time — from Willis’ Tumblr.
I’m starting to think you might be right about that hospital panel. Right now I think it’s a bit more concerning that other previews show Joyce meeting her father in the parking lot, followed by a house in a residential neighborhood.
I think there’s supposed to be some sort of time skip after this storyline. (Like this chapter is Monday, and the next chapter will be something other than the Tuesday that’s the next day. I want to say a Friday because we see Leslie again, so it’s a gender studies day) Maybe Joyce is just going home for the weekend?
That is my theory. Also, Joyce going home the weekend after this makes sense, at least from her parents’ perspective. Daughter survived a traumatic, life threatening incident, you want to spend time with your daughter, both for her healing and yours.
Less positively, there will be a huge fallout in their church over this, and her parents may think she needs to be there to explain things/be prayed over/be there so everybody can praise God she survived. I am guessing that dealing with that will be more stressful than anything else, especially since you know there will be a large contingent (maybe even her parents) who agree that Toe Dad needed to “fix” Becky, even if he shouldn’t have used a gun to do so.
On the plus side, more Jocelyne, maybe? Get to meet Jordan? This could be a good time for Jocelyne to confide in Joyce.
Well, maybe not immediately (what I think is Friday) next, but Saturday or Sunday chapter? Oh yeah. More likely Sunday because of church drama, I think. I am also predicting cameos from certain obnoxious Shortpacked customers.
This is also backed up by the calendar – Willis has said that next chapter will be in October. Since Men Are From Beck, Women Are From Clark was explicitly set in August, the first possible day it could be is Friday.
Hang on. I had a very minor prang on my 650 once – it squirmed on a greasy road and over I went. If I hadn’t been wearing my armoured boots my right leg and foot would have been in a million bits. Sal’s worried about Amazi-Girl getting people hurt, but she’s willing to take Joyce on her bike to chase an armed man without any protective clothing for Joyce?
Joyce will save Becky as Sarah predicted. Sal will assist, but Joyce will handle it, probably without violence. I predict a crash at low speed hence the hospital.
AG will fail or she will cooperate with Sal. Either would lead her to some character development.
Joyce and Becky stay besties with awkwardness banished. Toedad goes to hospital and then jail. Hank realizes that the biggest danger to his daughter was his religious neighbor.
The time has come and past it for Sal and Amazi-Girl to be forced to deal with each other in a scenario where neither can run away. Maybe trying to stop Ross (or stop someone bleeding to death from a rifle wound) will be that moment.
AND Dina. I want Dina to be in at ‘The Kill’. speaking of which, does Toedad have to drive past those woods on his way off campus? Because that would give Dina a chance to get on scene.
So I was originally thinking “WTF, Sal, you heard a gunshot and went towards it?” then realized that she was heading back to the fountain because she was concerned about Joyce. Aww.
(Though telling her how Amazi-Girl is definitely going to get everyone killed does not seem like a good idea)
The obvious: Sal and Amazi-girl end up fighting each other instead of Toe-Dad.
The obvious with a twist: Above and Joyce ends beating the crap out of a confused Toe-Dad while cursing non-stop. (She has a lot of cursing to catch up on.)
The ironic: Sal takes the bullet to save Amazi-girl’s life. This causes Amber to have a complete mental breakdown. And of course, Dina shows up to beat the crap out of Toe-Dad with his now empty rifle. RRARRRGHGHL!
Yeah, the more comments I read, the more I realize that whatever resolution this does reach, it’s going to be a massive letdown for at least some people. 😛
though she didn’t say the F-word, I think it counts since she added a little extra blasphemy by making it “god damn” instead of just “damn.” After all, when you watch prime time TV and they say that they censor the “god” part, not the “damn” part.
Joyce has finally snapped. She’s gone coo-coo for cocoa-puffs.
She’s swearing now, and yelling, and being all assertive, but once she’s rescued Becky she’s going to suck a million dicks. IT HAS BEEN FORETOLD IN THE PROPHECY!
Sal is not black, first of all. She’s Walky’s twin sister, and Walky has already been described as ‘caramel’. And covered up by her leathers and helmet, how could anyone tell anyway?
Um. First of all she is black, but okay. It has been stated in the comic that she’s black. Secondly, I had made the assumption that she had given Joyce the helmet. Now that I look at it more closely, it does look like she’s putting it on her own head. *shrugs*
I’ve had family members pulled over for ridiculous reasons, and we’re Native American. The darker your skin, the harder it is to get away with shit. If her skin is showing, and she’s speeding, the cops are gonna take notice. If her skin ISN’T showing, it’s possible that they’ll ignore her like they ignored Amazi-Girl.
In a way, ‘goddamned’ is more extreme than the promised f-bomb. My mother has resigned herself to me occasionally dropping the latter, but still gets mad at me for taking the Lord’s name in vain by saying ‘goddamned’.
I hate to join the speculation of horror party, but my bet on who’s in hospital in the preview panels is currently Joyce. I mean, Sal’s only got one helmet, they’re getting into a car chase, and she’s not really thinking straight… not to mention Sal’s little, uh, foreshadowing there.
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“Ah’ll accept your GD-bomb in lieu of a proper F.”
HOSPITAL ROOMS ALL AROUND
*rebrands comic “SCRUBs“*
…
I prolly would’ve used that Joyce-face if I’d known it would be her SWEARDUMP
GD carries more weight when said by someone religious(normally Joyce would be worried about taking the lord’s name in vain), so she allowed a bonus.
This has always bothered me. Why is it that you take “god” as his name? God is a title, the reason you call him god is so you don’t say his name. How did that morph into “saying God=Blasphemy”?
you arent suppose to invoke your God for petty anger swears if you respect him. Its kinda like the religious equivalent of IDK blaming Obama because you squirted Ketchup on your shirt.
This is of course ruined by the fact that many people who are against this swear also will act like they know what God wants when its for their agenda.
I looked that up a while ago and it sorta resonates with me that if you shouldn’t call upon God to curse trivially, what about its opposite, “God bless you”? Pretty sure we know you don’t sneeze out part of your soul like it was thought!
anyway I think Sal’s mostly giving cool points for legitimate effort, why stomp out that hope
However, since sneezing is often a symptom of sickness, we can use ‘God Bless You’ as wishing that no illness befalls them. I mean, God was pretty big on the whole ‘kindness and caring’ thing, regardless of which God you happen to believe in.
What if I believe in Sithrak?
my bro likes to answer the door, if Jehovah’s Witnesses or whoever are there, with “I worship Crom.”
Then you believe in the angsty poetry of a teenaged god
I went to high school in the liberal town in North Carolina. The main street downtown, where we tended to hang out on Friday nights, was frequented by street preachers coming in to try to convert the heathen. So we, of course, being a bunch of smartass atheists and pagans and really actually heathens, would entertain ourselves, and perform the public service of keeping them from harassing other people, by messing with them.
One of my favorite tricks was, when they approached and stuck their hand out, to give them that little two-handed clasp-and-shake, and say, earnestly, “Hi, my name’s John. Have you been saved?”
That generally rendered them speechless for several seconds, because that was supposed to be their line, and they didn’t know how to respond to it.
And then I’d take advantage of that momentary hesitation to tell them that if they didn’t accept Eris Discordia into their hearts and beds, they would go to Thud when they died, which was a lot like Cary, but somehow even more boring, and carry on giving my best shot at converting them to Discordianism. This had the huge advantage that I was making everything I was saying up on the spot, including citations of chapter and verse in a holy book that had never been written, whereas I generally knew their holy book better than they did. (A lot of those churches strongly discourage any unguided reading of the Bible. (By which they mean “without a church authority present to tell you what it ‘really’ says, or better yet doing the reading of selected passages for you”.)) This made for very uneven footing in a debate.
Then there was the night that we exorcized them. They left, so I guess it worked…
Even now Sithrak oils the spit.
One of the most fun things to do to actually make religious people think. I think my favorite was 2 people who were outside my apartment complex, I was on the balcony, and they approached me. I asked why they thought everyone else was wrong. I continued this line of questioning, while working on a 3D printer. Pointing out that in anything that the track record of churches saying anything which can be tested in the natural world has a really poor track record. So they’ve basically stopped doing it. I challenged them to point out something that had been shown to be true after observation. They said faith, and I pointed out that they thought everyone else was wrong, so was that really arrogance? (That sounds a bit rude when I write it, but nothing in the conversation was rude on either side.)
One of them seemed to actually be thinking about it, then the other one hurriedly pulled her away. I think that’s why they send them out in pairs.
The god who hates you unconditionally!
Actually the whole Sneeze = Respond with “God Bless” thing SUPPOSEDLY started because sneezing let the evil spirits in. But I have no source other than a pastor whom I suspect of being present for the Resurrection (Cause he’s old)
I’d always heard because sneezing expelled your soul from your body, so the blessing was required to keep it in.
a textbook I read said it started during the black plague and if you were sneezing a lot it meant you weren’t long for this world. So God had better bless you.
I always used ‘Gesundheit’ (health) myself.
There are reasons I much prefer Gazuntite
“Gesundheit” to be pedantic, means basically “good health”.
And that is, basically, because the “enlightened” eastern european countries believed that when you sneeze, you actually sneeze the devil out; it’sthe yawning that lets them in, thus the hand-over-mouth to prevent them jumping in.
I prefer to respond to sneezes with the much more puntastic “Gesundwidth”. 😛 Then again, I also respond to Jehovah’s witnesses with “thanks, but I’m an Atheist and happy”. 🙂
Mostly though, I’m currently happy for Joycy. YAY SHE MADE A GENUINE SWEAR! Now go you two, and save Becky! (I hope Ruthie gets there in time to help relieve Toe-Dad of his femurs, too)
So does “wassail”.
I prefer “goes in tight.” To which proper response is “comes out loose.” I, of course, would then respond with “if you did it right.”
And “Gesundheit”, in our family anyway, was always followed by “das ist besser als Krankheit” (translation: “it’s better than being sick”).
Which means that even we dumb Krauts knew that we were sneezing germs *OUT* of our system.
? But there are tons of people who blame Obama for EV-ER-Y-THING.
Fortunately, very few people actually worship him.
Dammit, Obama, get your worshiper count up.
Sure, but that’s because his followers are all Muslim-Atheist-Satanists, right?
You forgot the alien lizardmen.
Dang, I always forget them!
There’s a really interesting perspective on this in the Jewish faith.
So, you have the tetragrammaton, YHVH (yud-hay-vav-hay). This is the true name of God, according to the faith, but no one knows how to say it. Hebrew letters are all consonants, with implicit vowels, and the actual pronunciation of the tetragrammaton is lost to time. One possibility is Yahweh (pronounced more like Yah-veh), but there’s another, and it ties into the next point.
Often, God is referred to by Jews as “Hashem,” meaning “the name.” This stems from “Adoshem,” meaning “the lord’s name,” and that from “Adonai,” meaning “our lord.” When the vowels from “Adonai” are applied to the tetragrammaton, you end up with “Yahovah.” It’s not “Yahovai” because the “ai” is a combination of an “ah” sound and a yud, which makes a “y” sound. Anyway, you’ll notice that this looks very similar to Jehovah.
So either of those might be God’s true name, or it might be something else, but we don’t know. Stepping back a bit, why are there so many different ways to refer to God? There’s “Adonai,” which then gets abstracted into “Adoshem” and that into “Hashem.” There’s a philosophy among the more religious that, because we no longer know God’s true name, when we refer to God by one of these formal titles, it’s, to us, akin to using His true name. And so we abstract them for casual use.
So, akin to “God bless you,” you won’t hear a lot of “Baruch Adonai” someone wants to say “God bless.” You’re more likely to hear “Baruch Hashem.” A lot. Like almost every other sentence. It’s kind of creepy.
Christian practice seems to follow similarly in this manner. You have a lot of “The lord” this and “Our shepherd” that. You don’t get as much “God,” really, with “God bless you” seeming to be the notable exception. That said, I think even in Christianity, “God” really is seen as a title. After all, how often to you sneeze and here someone say, “Jesus bless you”?
Interesting perspective. Thanks for elaborating.
Interesting indeed. I knew some of that, but not all of it, so like DarkVeghetta said, thanks!
At least among some Christians I’ve talked with, there’s a further elaboration on the Name of God, which runs roughly like this:
When God appears to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus chapter 3, Moses asks God what his (God’s) name is, and God replies in Hebrew with a phrase that’s usually translated into English as “I Am Who I Am” or “I Will Be Who I Will Be,” and he instructs Moses to tell the people, “I AM has sent me to you.” (The phrase “I AM” would be the yud-hay-vav-hay Tetragrammaton to which sreiches refers.)
The thing about names is that the main reason you even need a name is to distinguish you from everyone else. Like, if you’re the only human who exists, you can just call yourself “the human,” and anything else that might want a label for you can just call you “the human,” but if there are other humans around, you and the rest of them will need names so you can tell each other apart.
By that logic, if there are a bunch of gods, there’s a reason to call one Ra and another one Anubis and another one Set and so on, since it might be useful to know which one you’re talking about at any given time. But if there’s only one god, you can just refer to him* as “the god” or treat “God” as his name, even though it might function more like a title.
Likewise, again by the logic that names are used to distinguish their owners from other entities, when God says his name is “I AM,” he’s declaring that the difference between himself and all the other gods people worship is that he actually exists.
When the Hebrews were in slavery in polytheistic Egypt (as they were when Exodus 3 takes place), when the Israelites were surrounded by polytheistic Canaanites, Phoenicians, and other peoples of the ancient Near East (as they were when the story of the Exodus was being told and retold), and when the tribe of Judah was in exile in polytheistic Babylon (as a few scholars think they were when the story of the Exodus was finally written down), a story like that would have served as a reminder that there’s only one deity whom it’s worth their time to worship.
*Masculine pronoun used for convenience only; by many people’s reckoning, the God of the Abrahamic religions does not have a sex or gender.
Growing up amongst Christians (and in a Christian family – loosely Methodist, though I myself am an Atheist), I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say “God bless you”, just “bless you”. I tend to say “Gesundheit” instead when people sneeze, just because I like the way it sounds. Or something silly (“Gesundwidth” being my personal preference).
And in the case of my dad, I skip all that and just announce how many times he sneezed (he’s hopeless at sneezing, so instead of one good sneeze, he’ll often do about 10 small rubbish ones immediately after each other – I think his record is 12 or 13 without stopping)
Um, actually, the Jews had many names for their god. Actual names. That’s why they use “Lord” and “God” so that they WON’T use his name in vain.
It was a sin to call upon the Divine for petty matters. For example, asking the Divine to damn someone, or calling for help from angels because you lost your keys…….
And yet, I frequently see the use of “G-d”, often explained as “Out of respect, Jews do not write any Name of G-d out in full.” But if “God” is a title rather than a name, one would think that particular self-censorship would be unnecessary. Unless maybe God is so touchy about the subject that it’s considered best to be doubleplus safe?
There ARE a wealth of actual names, but only a few are considered so holy that, once written, they can’t be erased. The Tetragrammaton is one of these, and is both the most commonly seen in the Torah and the only one so guarded that the pronunciation has been lost. Other names of God show up fairly regularly, and are even integrated into Hebrew names. Any name ending with “-el,” for instance, such as Daniel or Gabriel.
It’s true. Religious people have an inherent +5 racial bonus to swears.
And it only took five years, give or take five days.
9 weeks in Willistime.
Yes! She finally gets to be on the bike!
Probably not the way she expected it to happen.
I was hoping we’d get something where Sal chases them on her motorcycle, now to queue up the Matrix car chase music.
Sal knows that Fuck is strong, but God damned is even stronger from someone like Joyce. I love this. So hard. Called it way back and I’m happy I did.
IT IS TIME.
YOU ARE FINALLY READY.
AND NOW WHAT YOU’VE ALL BEEN RUBBING YOUR RHUBARB FOR
That… is not a masturbation euphemism I had previously been aware of.
Maybe it’s a southern thing.
Not even close. We’ve got chicken choking but not rhubarb rubbing. Try like Cuba or the super-nednecks from the Florida/Georgia area.
Do super-rednecks have super redneck powers?
Having no necks & looking like a toe?
Waking at 4 am in the morning to feed the animals and tend the field has to be a superpower. I can barely wake up at 8 am!
(Oh my gosh, is this a Zombillenium profile picture.)
@Yugnat Yes it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FBQetJqAwk
I’ve been aware of that since Tim Burton’s Batman film. “Never rub another man’s rhubarb!” They got away with it in context, but even then it still comes off pretty damn filthy.
Because you NEVER rub another man’s rhubarb!
Jack…you….are….my….number one….guy!
I caught the Dom Fera reference!
Becky is about one F-Bomb away from going full-blown Super-Saiyan on Toedad.
IT FILLS YOU WITH DETERMINATION
something something card games on motorcycles
Joyce’s Blue Eyes are very effective.
but toedad’s special effect though
Toedad: Fool, you’va activated my trap card, Divine Retribution!
Joyce: Wait, shouldn’t you think that YuGiOh is Satanic?
Naw, it’s totally ok. It has Noah’s Ark as a card so it can’t be Satanic.
It isn’t Satanic. It does however, promote Eastern Religion.
It promotes all religions, if you think about it.
Does it promote Atheism? ‘Cos some people still can’t decide if Atheism is a religion or the lack thereof. If it promotes Atheism as well, then Atheism must be a religion right? xD
Then those people don’t understand the basic definition of ‘atheism’. Religions require belief and dogma. Atheism is the exact opposite thereof, requiring neither. It is a point of view. Heck, depending on the variant of atheism (there’s multiple), it can simply be a negation of someone else’s religion or religion in general.
Fervor is besides the point – you can still be fervent in your atheism and it not be a religion, just as you can fervently have any opinion and it won’t count as such.
I dunno about that – I’ll agree with the bit about dogma, Atheism definitely doesn’t have that (clearly). But there are, loosely, two types of Atheism as far as I know – weak and strong. Weak Atheism (sometimes overlapping with Agnosticism) is roughly defined as lack of belief in God or any gods. While strong Atheism is generally defined as a definite belief (on par with any strong religious belief) that God or gods most certainly do *not* exist.
But yeah, certainly no dogma, so even with the “strong beliefs” bit down, doesn’t count. Like my hair colour being “bald”. 😉
You can be my wingman anytime, Inkblot.
Well, now, this is totally going to make everything all better.
I know. Yeah Sal, you *could* just call the cops, but enough of that crazy talk!
Sal is reaaaaally not likely going to call the cops. She was against involving them last time, unlikely she’ll start now.
This situation is different, in that it is actively ongoing and the victim still needs immediate help.
Ryan (?) should be prevented from doing such things in the future, and should be helped. Joyce should probably have someone help her with that trauma.
But neither of those is an immediate necessity that requires immediate action.
Which doesn’t mean she’ll want to call the cops necessarily, but it is quite different.
Nobody who has been apprehended by cops will ever CHOOSE to go to a cop for help, unless there is absolutely no other hope – and even then, no.
Agreed. Besides, if I’m involved,I have a response time of less than ten minutes.
Yes, it most certainly is. Being chased is going to make Becky’s dad desperate, and these three have no way of dealing with that.
Meanwhile, the police still need to know about Big Toe Daddy’s suicidal frame of mind and about Becky having Dina’s phone. They also need to know in what way Amazi-Girl and Sal are involved. On the basis of what the remaining eye-witnesses tell them Amazi-Girl, Sal, and Joyce could be accomplices, or they might be the kidnappers and BTD actually a rescuer (the shot being fired to intimidate Joyce into releasing Becky).
Ah, serious tactical analysis…versus comic-book heroics … versus action-movie action … versus…
I’m still worried about Sal + cops. They are barreling towards the fountain as the above interaction is occurring. She has a record, and the cops’re probably in full ‘school shooter’ mode, so their trigger fingers could be seriously itchy.
It isn’t Sal + cops you should worry about. It’s Sal + Amazi-Girl.
And I don’t think either of them is going to be the one to get hurt by this.
It will, won’t it? Willis wouldn’t build all this excitement over Joyce really getting it and getting righteously angry, and Amazi-Girl on the case, and Sal rushing to help, and then have anything like cold hard reality blow through like a Cat 5 hurricane, right?
*fingers crossed*
Warm, mushy reality?
Mmm, reality oatmeal…
Riiiiight. Of course. Would never happen. Has never happened. Ever. Totally. For sure. … FUCK.
Nothing better than being on the back of a very fast motorcycle.
Actually there is, being on your own motorcycle at a comfortable speed.
at this rate she’s gonna sprout a jetpack and pull a BFG outta nowhere
something something old stuff reference
Uh…
Uh….
Giant calculator?
It’s funny because her calculator was big!
Backwards Polish Notation!
It’s cool, I can say that because I’m Polish-American!
Notation Polish REVERSE Is it!
Something something snide comment something something using a lame even older format for when someone can’t come up with an actual good line.
Toedad is going to be so surprised when Joyce blows up the front end of the car and Sal rips the door off with her bare hands.
At least until the panel in his chest flips up and some small purple guy jumps out.
Funny enough, if this was any other Willis comic, I’d buy that possibility. However, it isn’t.
and a week later she will have a Heroic BSOD while standing in a rainstorm.
and walky will tell her “it’s the rain”
and she’ll look up at him expecting a meaningful speech about beauty and hardship
and instead he’ll be like “you’ll catch a cold, come back inside you doofus”
And now I’m thinking of The Happening. GEE, thanks! >.<
Hail to the King, baby!
BATMAN AND ROBIN BATMAN AND ROBIN AN D BATGIRL (IS TOEDAD MISTER FREEZE OMG)
Now thats just rude. Why you gotta insult Mr. Freeze like that? That poor shmuck’s life is already cruddy enough.
Not enough terrible puns.
“Cool Party!”
I didn’t parse that right the first time and ended up with Batgirl is Toedad
Ah crap, mental image! It burns!
My right eye actually hurts after imagining that.
You probably started to expand on the mental image to such an extent that your right hand, in a fit of self-preservatory reflex, jabbed your eye hard enough to trigger short-term memory loss. I HATE it when that happens.
NOT that I… oh, who am I kidding
Well he has the jugs for the job but he’d need to be a bare midriff version. Too hard to get all that into a one piece jumpsuit and less damaging to the psyche of whoever is now imagining toedad in a said costume doing “sexy” poses.
For every fetish imaginable theres at least — at least! — one sick mo…I mean, one person who’s into it. Isn’t that a collary of Rule 34?
Corollary
I know theres a bunch of new comics after this but I honestly have no idea how your gonna top this.
Sal reveals that she is Ghost Rider in the next strip, her skull bursts into flames, and a heavy metal song starts playing. Audibly.
Yes, Willis somehow got a png file to emit heavy metal. It’s just that epic.
Im kinda hoping the final panel of the comic has a piece of Head Alien II landing next to Joyce.
“Oh,hello! Don’t mind me,I just happened to land in the wrong universe to conquer,but don’t you worry,yours will be next and I will kill you!….Have a horrible day!”
Robin: Sorry!
omg, that would be epic
Sal + Amazi-girl. This can’t end well.
Or be the DOA team-up of the year.
Temprary team up to beat the snot out of the worst father this comic has seen? I’ll take it.
Ross is pretty bad, but he’s got nothing on Blaine.
They’re different varieties of nightmare father. There’s no need to rank them, they can both win Worst Father, we have lots of these little statuettes to distribute, everyone who deserves one can have one.
Are the statuettes tiny, bullet-shaped, and moving at high velocities? ‘Cause I’d be happy to help distribute them…
I’d say time-fuse-ignited claymores.
Kind of messy, as I understand.
Wot? Blaine ain’t carried a gun onto campus yet.
YET.
Exactly the post I was about to make. AmaziGirl is already onssessing over Sal and confusing her with Toedad. Not a pleasant convergence in the offing.
I am nauseous. I don’t want something bad to happen. BUT GOD JOYCE IS SO PISSED I LOVE IT
I think Joyce has hit her “done” limit. Honestly, of the three, I think Toedad should be the most worried about what she will do to him.
The pain train is in motion and the breakpads are gone.
Cursing. Riding on Motorcycles. Not thinking authority figures will be the solution to this problem. Joyce has made a giant shift today and its reverberations will probably be felt for a long long time.
Her dad in that preview panel is probably going to be none too pleased.
I know there’s a Joyce yelling with angry face panel close to the fate of the one with her dad… I’m going to guess those two are somewhat related.
There’s also Dorothy walking along a hospital corridor with an angry-and-concerned-looking Walky, so I figure that Sal is injured.
Sorry. Tenses. For “is” read “will be”.
It’s in the buffer, it’s already cannon in the DoA-verse so it’s just as accurate to say that ‘Dorothy was walking’ or ‘Dorothy walked’ — if you take the Eye of God/Willis perspective.
No wonder I got confused.
Since Joyce is so devout, Sal probably assumes God damn is worse than fuck in her eyes.
Thank you. So glad I was not the only one thinking this.
Why wouldn’t it be ? Fuck is just vulgar, not a swear, and not really very rude either.
And from that moment Joyce was kicked of the list to get into heaven. I’ve been off it for years there’s just too many things that piss God off
And with this comic, a dream was fulfilled. Now lets just hope the same can’t be said for a nightmare.
That Joyce pose in panel 2
Now we need Walky and Dorothy in a golf cart and Mike in a stolen police car and the Wacky Races can truly begin
don’t you mean the Walky races?
Walky Races?
I can already hear the Benny Hill theme.
People,we need Walky Kart.
What about a xenoverse style Walkyverse fighting game.
Howard is the guy that no one really wants to play as.
Dina in a jeep painted in the Jurassic Park design, hijacked from a promotional stunt over the DVD release of Jurassic World.
Let’s not stop there.
Malaya riding on top of Carla as she roller skates.
Dina on a Carnotaurus.
Joe in the Pu-….Party Wagon.
Galasso in a delivery truck.
Walky in a car that looks like monkey master (unless dexter is a secret racer)
Mike in a monster truck.
Ethan on a scooter.
Danny on a trycicle.(someone has to take the most embarrassing ride)
Danny should obviously have a bicycle.
…..Well played.
I believe that’d be “wacky hijinks”
This ought to go over well when they catch up to the racist d-bag behind the wheel of that car. 😐
where has he been racist?
(I’m not arguing that he’s a decent human being, just don’t remember that particular ism coming from Ross.)
He did say “you and the oriental girl”
“Oriental” isn’t necessarily racist per say. It is however, very archaic and outdated. To hear any one of East Asian descent called that, even benignly, is jarring to our ears to say the least.
Lets not kid ourselves. He said it in an explicitly racist tone.
When you feed it’s necessary to identify which of your adversaries isn’t white, you could use whatever benign language you like to do so and most of us will still win at “Spot the Racist.”
Archaic in the sense that you’d expect to here that from an embarrassing grandparent. Ross is at least 30-40 years too young to play the “I’m old!” card.
I don’t know, I used to use it myself until informed it wasn’t appropriate, and I’m in my 30’s.
I learned it was inappropriate from Avenue Q. Of course I wasn’t actually using the word, wasn’t sure what it was for actually.
I recall hearing people applying the term “oriental” to people when I was in elementary school. This was the mid 1980’s to early ’90s. I live in a blue state, and I grew up with parents who are/ were liberal democrats. It wasn’t until the late ’90s that I first read on the internet that “oriental” is for rugs and food, not humans.
In the October 10th comic he called Dina “You, the Oriental girl.”
And having grown up around racists, I can’t wait to hear what’s going to come out of his mouth when he sees that a black girl is trying to take his daughter back to “the Oriental girl.” Just like good ol’ family gatherings all over again. :/
He referred to Dina as “Oriental”.
That’s a very thin reed to hang ‘racist’ on.
I think his sexism, homophobia, and bigotry are a lot more prominent and causing more trouble. However, that as I understand it is the answer to neeks’s question.
If you feel the necessity of identifying an adversary’s race, you’re probably a racist.
Besides, if you’re a misogynist, a homophobe, and white, you’re probably a racist–that kind of bigoted thinking doesn’t often arbitrarily apply to some groups and not others, so unless he’s a member of a racial minority group himself (which he ain’t) it was a decently safe bet that racism was part of the package without any evidence.
Yes. If someone identifies people by race in situations in which that is irrelevant, except that its relevant to the identifier, that’s racist, even if it’s not the frothing at the mouth variety of racist.
Ross would still have been in a racist mode if he had referred to Dina as “Asian”, rather than “Oriental”. “Oriental” is notable because it’s anachronistic as well as racist, meant, I think to signal Ross’ isolation from a whole buncha social developments
Whats the term for people from China/Japan/Korea these days, bearing in mind most westerners can’t identify each nationality / ethnicity on site? Asian means Indian/Pakistani here in the UK.
That guy–Eastern Asian is the typical term.
That guy, no real distinction is made in the states. We have a tendency to lump them all under ‘asian.’
That guy, I tend to go with “South Asian” for what someone from the UK would call “Asian”, and “Asian” for East or Southeast Asian. My girlfriend is half South Asian and it seems appropriate for instances where her specific, rather small and obscure, ethnic group is less relevant.
OR you grew up in an all-white neighborhood, went to an all-white school, hung with an all-white crowd, in an environment so cloistered that literally anything unusual, different or NOT WHITE was so much of an anomaly that at the least you had no idea how to deal with it, and at worst, identified it as dangerous, bad or evil.
I’m gonna bet that Ross, religious zealot, born far before the age of internet and arguably too lacking in intelligence to know how to use it, is not so much racist as he literally does not know any better. Some people will argue that there is no difference – but there is, a crucial one: someone who literally does not know any better can be educated, can grow and learn and change, much more readily than the typical racist.
That is, y’know, assuming that the person in question isn’t someone like Toedad, who is pretty willful – not so much in racism or homophobia, per se – but is absolutely certain that he knows how the world works, and no one can tell him differently. That’s a different sort of wrongness, and there’s no disputing that it IS wrongness. But it’s not racism.
He’s not racist, he’s just *describes being racist in detail*.
I mean, if you wanna go with that…
Not knowing better doesn’t actually stop you from being racist. Ignorance is not a shield.
Some people think Ross was racist when referring to Dina as an “oriental”.
Given the type, it’s a given.
Well Ross is an occidental d-bag.
See, that’s ambiguous: do you mean that he’s a special variety of dbag OR that he’s a special variety of occidental OR that all occidental are dbag OR that he’s both occidental and a dgab, not that the two things have any necessary & sufficient relationship with each other OR was that a joke/comment on what Ross said OR
He’s only a d-bag on the west side of the prime meridian. Sadly they are headed north.
As soon as I saw Sal in the comic, I was like it’s motorcycle time.
Didn’t expect this bravery from Joyce. Especially since she was already freaking out a little even before the gun.
This is how Joyce deals with threats in the moment. Afterwards there’s the possibility of curling into a fetal position no matter what in public, but right now, she’s fully in breaking a glass on someone’s face mode.
Yup. This actually WOULD be a good time for Ryan to surface. Joyce wouldn’t see him. He would just open the door to whatever hole he has hid in, glance out, see Joyce in full KICKING!ASS-mode burn by on the motorcycle… and close the door again.
Ryan: “I’m sure enough time has passed, should be safe to go outside…”
*opens door, sees Sal and Joyce riding by on motorcycle*
Joyce: “RAAAAAAAH I’M COMING FOR YOU-”
*shuts door*
Ryan: “nope nope nopenopenope” *buries himself in backyard*
Joyce: “-BECKYYY!!!”
This is now my personal canon!
As Sarah pointed out, Joyce isn’t the type to just stop when her friends need her.
She will do it.
Exactly. And this IS Joyce doing it. If by a terrible oversight of God and the police ToeDad actually manage to get Becky all the way home Joyce will bring down the entire house if she has to. Hell, she will bring down the entire church . Joyce is NOT stopping and he is NOT taking her Becky.
Are you kidding? This is the core of iron Joyce uses to keep going and being cheerful when life craps on her, exposed entirely to the world.
Joyce Brown, no matter the universe, is a determinator. We’re just seeing this version embrace it.
Tune in next week, when Joyce says variations of “fuck” more often than in a typical Tarantino film scene. And thus her transformation will be complete.
I’ve got a spot on the scoreboard ready for her!
No. This is not a good plan.
How can you idiot children think that you are going to be better at this than a trained police negotiator?
Going by recent news, police involvement ends up with Toedad and possibly Becky dead.
Nonsense, they’re white.
Whiteness is not going to save Toedad when he pulls the rifle out. It might get you the benefit of the doubt walking around the walmart like some kid of asshole, but it won’t here.
No, whiteness will absofuckinglutely save Toedad when he pulls the rifle out. You know what happens to white guys with guns? In any situation? No matter how loud or threatening they get? The cops attempt to talk them down. To reason with them. And if, god forbid, he actually shoots someone, the cops will sooner attempt to wrestle him to the ground and get the gun away from him than they will attempt to actually put a bullet in him.
As opposed to if you’re black with a gun, in any scenario, where you’re shot on sight, regardless of whether or not the gun is the product of the cop’s imagination.
Exactly what Wack’d said.
You can look up a dozen youtube videos or more recent instances of white guys getting taken down or taken in without having a clip unloaded into them first.
But if a black man has a knife, a gun, or no weapon and a bleeding headwound when he approaches cops, or cops approach him, there’ll be a headline about another cop killing a suspect or armed assailant.
There may be times when a white guy gets shot, but it’s far less common, statistically, than him walking away unharmed. And, in some instances, not even arrested.
Dude, armed white dudes DO GET shot and killed by cops sometimes, just like the police don’t kill every black man they arrest. You guys even know how to think for yourselves, or is crowdthink just easier?
You did notice that Steampunkette acknowledged that armed white dudes do get shot and killed by cops sometimes, right? Look at their last paragraph.
And you’re right, police don’t kill every black man they arrest, because usually the killing’s done before the arresting. If you’ve been arrested, as a black person, you’ve gotten off easy–except, y’know, maybe not, because they might stage your suicide in your cell.
But hey–you’re right! These cases are not universal and therefore the fact that they’re just on the right side of statistically probable means that there’s no problem whatsoever. Thanks for clearing that up.
Just so you know: When accusing your opponents of being incapable of having independent thoughts because they disagree with you, it’s time to reexamine your argument.
That’s no my impression. I hear about innocent white dudes getting shot by the police ALL THE TIME. That’s why I don’t get why white racists try to defend the cops all the time, pretending this is not something that would happen to them “because I’m white”. You have a COP problem, yes, your cops are ALSO racists, and TARGET blacks more than whites, but given the chance, they do tend to shoot first and ask questions later regardless of race.
And now that we’ve started to arm them here in Norway as well, we’ve already had a few shootings, in little under a year, and most of them were “native” Norwegians.
Just as native Norwegians have been put in hospital by the cops for decades, before we armed them. I think this is a dangerous fallacy, because it ignores the real problem, police training is not good enough at weeding out the psychos that get the job just to harass people. Which in turn ruins everything for the REAL cops, the ones that actually want to help people. Racism is just an “excuse” these cops use, because for some reason they believe that it makes it “better”, that “Oh, I thought he had a gun, he was black” is a GOOD excuse and not just stupid.
The training for police is designed to filter for psychopathic tendencies, just like Military Training.
The intent is to hire people with as little empathy for potential targets as possible while constantly drilling them on the fact that criminals are scum of the Earth -beneath- the cops, so that when the time comes to pull the trigger there will be minimal hesitation and the cop has a better chance to survive.
However, thanks to Institutionalized Racism and it’s bastard child Racial Profiling we wind up with a system designed to make cops view most if not all non-white individuals as probable, not just possible, criminals.
That’s why a Black Man in a lower income area walking with an ounce of weed gets stop and frisked before they fling him in the cop car while white folks in subdivisions trade prescription pills and pot with near impunity.
Charles Gunn said it best: “We’ll be the ones walking while Black.”
“The intent is to hire people with as little empathy for potential targets as possible while constantly drilling them on the fact that criminals are scum of the Earth -beneath- the cops, so that when the time comes to pull the trigger there will be minimal hesitation ”
Well, that’s the problem right there, and for some reason they tend to treat ALL people like potential criminals as well, not just “non-whites”.
They just use racism as an “excuse”, which explains why they target non-whites more often, but when they get the chance, (and by “chance”, I mean, every little misdemeanor they can think of, like jaywalking, walking “funny”, looking at them too quickly, etc.” they treat EVERYONE like that.
At least they do so over here, and from what I hear from other people, it seems to be similar in the States.
Not when shots have already been fired on a college campus. I don’t care what race you are — when you start shooting the time for talking stops.
I don’t disagree with you regarding institutionalized racism, and I agree wholeheartedly that non-white people get shit on by the cops regularly, but the idea that it’s a binary where white men always get off isn’t true, and arguing it as a binary undermines the very valid case you’re trying to make.
Do you think that Amber, Joyce, and Sal are going to prevent the police from getting involved? I don’t.
What Joyce is doing now makes sure that when the police intervene they will do so without vital, need-to-know information.
‘Tactics? We don’t need no stinking tactics!’ Nor training, nor situational awareness, nor none of that other fancy pants stuff, neither. (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “Mr. President, Delta Force is standing ready.” President Obama: “No, General, I want those kids from IU for this mission … I mean, ‘This FUCKING mission’.” President looks embarrassed.
And their dog shot to death. The cops might just bring a dog so they can shoot it.
The comic’s not called Smart People Making Smart Decisions.
When inertia has Amazi-Girl finally catch up to the Toemobile, it will definitely be *Smarting* of Age =p
“catch up”
Wait, what? (Checks title) OMG! No wonder I’ve been confused by what’s going on! Will it all now be clear?
Nobody ever said the comic was called “Smart Decisions of Age”.
Not even me.
A. Why is Sal going to trust cops?
B. Where is this negotiator when someone is driving away from them this very moment?
C. Please read the title of this comic.
D. That would be boring. Would you rather have them call the cops and tell them where Becky is gong or would you rather have awesome motorcycle chases
A. What Sal? It’s Joyce who has the information the police need.
B. One place that he or she for sure is not is on the end of a phone, talking down BTD. Because the police don’t know that Becky has Dina’s phone, and they don’t know what is going on in BTD’s head. And they don’t know those things because Joyce has decided that she is better at this than the police department and is withholding information.
C. I read it.
Joyce is not withholding information from someone she hasn’t even spoken to.
A third of murders go unsolved. Most of the murders that are solved are solved quickly. The “first forty-eight hours” cliché exists because police basically don’t go to any lengths to investigate crimes, unless there’s prestige in it, and there may not be in this case. If a trained police negotiator gets to them, Becky will be safer than if they take it on themselves, but that’s a big if.
Plus, Becky will almost certainly be arrested, and Joyce and Dina may never see her again.
…okay, why would Becky possibly be arrested?
Even if she was, how would that prevent anybody from ever seeing her again?
She’ll be black-sited, because this just the tip of the alien invasion iceberg.
Did you mean Walkyverse?
And we return to the earlier subject of “do you have superpowers?” The answer is “NO”. Leave this to the professionals.
Sal saying Amazi-Girl will escalate the matter is the pot calling the kettle black. Sal is not exactly a calming influence herself, and she’s hot-tempered too.
@Agemegos: I did see your earlier Champions reply, but I didn’t have anything to add. Your terminology was a bit different, but that’s to be expected since I’m used to the older edition. Figured that things changed over the intervening editions. (I do know that objects have resistance or Defense, so no more normals busting out of bank vaults bare-handed anymore)
Yeah, I’m mostly a 4th edition guy. I have 5th., but never played it.
Oh, Sal. If only you knew that the whole “escalation” thing was kinda because of you, not her (well, OK, it was also because of her, but it was in response to you). Who knows? MAYBE YOU’LL FIND OUT WHY. SOOOOOOON.
Sal can’t be blamed for how Amazi-Girl reacts to her.
Well…she kinda can, actually. I mean, not completely, no. But it IS her fault, at least in Amber’s eyes. And…I mean, she’s basically the cause of the events on night when Amber’s brain done broke, even if they were all different people. Yeah, Amber really shouldn’t have reacted how she did, and she probably needs some trauma therapy to get over that night, but Sal’s not completely without fault.
Also, it’s not like Sal attempted to de-escalate the situation in the Wal-Mart parking lot, either. Just saying, Sal’s culpable, too.
There does seem to be multiple situations where marcie tells Sal to calm the fuck down and not beat up the clearly unhinged girl.
Lemme rephrase: modern-day Sal can’t be blamed for how Amazi-Girl reacts to her.
How would you recommend she de-escalate with someone dead-set on trying to beat the crap out of her?
…Fair enough. Modern-day Sals done nothing to Amber, so she can’t be blamed for her reaction to her. But…I still don’t think Sal handled the situation properly. She could’ve attempted to calmly talk her down, but she definitely didn’t do that. She yelled at her, then told the posse to “get ‘er.” Not de-escalating. At least, not de-escalating WELL.
Nah, Sal did try to de-escalate it. It was Malaya who re-escalated it and got her involved again.
And like, all I know is a lifetime of bullying by the same group of people so I have no idea what it feels to associate a face to trauma, but whenever I go into deer-in-the-headlights mode at seeing one of those people randomly down the street, that’s entirely on me. They’re the cause of it, but my reaction is entirely my own, and there’s plenty of ways I could condition myself to reduce them so it’s like doubly my own.
The only reason why you feel Sal is at fault is because you don’t want to offer sympathy to her. I wonder why that is.
Looking back now, Malaya definitely jumped right in to fight. But after she was almost immediately taken down, Sal started antagonizing Amazi-Girl pretty much with the first words she said to her. And, on that same page, she told her posse to “Get ‘er.” That is NOT de-escalating. True, she decided to leave rather than fight, but she was very ready to jump right into it. It took Marcie to get her to actually stop. Sal says as much in a later strip, when fighting Malaya.
And I LIKE SAL. Honestly, she’s one of my favorite characters in the strip, because I find her interesting. But I’m not gonna pretend that she was the pacifist in that confrontation. Sorry, but Sal, as interesting and fun as she is to read, IS VIOLENT. Not all the time, but she’s definitely not a peacemaker.
Also, I was a bullied kid, too. And I’m not defending Amazi-Girl’s actions. What she did was not only wrong, but stupid and impulsive in a bad way. BUT, she’s NOT the only one at fault. Sal’s responsible, too, sorry. Past Sal, maybe, but her past mistakes are coming back to haunt her in the form of a very psychologically bruised Amber.
And…I’m sorry, but your “I wonder why that is” comment SERIOUSLY rustled my jimmies, pal. WHAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN? You know what, actually…never mind. Now I’M escalating the situation, and I’d rather not make this forum an unpleasant place. I’m a legitimately nice guy, I promise.
Can we agree that both Amber and Sal were at fault? It was Amber’s choice to act the way she did, and in the end Sal did choose to pursue the fight. Poor choices were made all around that night.
Agreed. That’s all I meant in the first place, although that admittedly didn’t come across at first read. Probably been a bit clearer initially.
Self Defense: Super important until actually pursued in the face of an unreasonable, violent attacker.
Seriously, people?
I know right? And in my opinion it barely even was self defense. It took some dissuading from Marcie, true, but Sal left the fight without throwing a single punch at Amazi-Girl! For her established character and the buildup strips prior, Sal did nothing wrong. Which, you know, works because literary justice against a character who is kinda a deconstructive parody of superheroism. Amber deserves better but she is not going to get it until she starts letting go and choosing her fights, she can’t carry it all and especially if some of what she is carrying is no longer relevant.
Sal only chose to pursue the fight the 0.7 second it took Marcie to stop her. And that’s why I’m getting so defensive of her, you’re forcing her into the role of Amazi-Girl’s arch nemesis, much like Amazi-Girl herself does, when Sal so far has at most been a sour apathetic onlooker. But I’ll just leave it at that because, admittedly, I do feel that when it comes to dealing with her past, Amazi-Girl is a straight out villain, so I don’t have much patience for her.
@otusasio451 I’m sorry for implicitly calling you racist. I just don’t know how to deal with people when I wholeheartedly disagree with something they’re saying so I tend to take advantage that people fear prejudice terms. Throwing that question was very immature of me, and something I don’t always catch myself doing (working on it tho.) Sorry it got directed at you this time.
…Eh, no hard feelings. I wasn’t entirely sure if that’s what you were implying, so I didn’t outright respond to it. But a tip on arguing: don’t immediately go for the “racist” card, man. It IS effective at shocking people with potential shame, but it REALLY doesn’t reflect well on you. And with that said:
I STILL somewhat blame Sal. Yeah, sorry, but she’s not innocent in this conflict. You’re arguing self-defense when Amazi-Girl didn’t start the conflict. Malaya did. And then, when Amazi-Girl swiftly stopped the conflict, Sal could’ve walked away from it entirely. But, when Malaya attacks AGAIN, Sal tells her friends to “get ‘er.” She doesn’t let Amazi-Girl work it out with Malaya, and she’s not coming to Malaya’s defense. She’s being offensive AGAINST Amazi-Girl. And, OK, Amazi-Girl was DEFINITELY GOING TO ATTACK with the least amount of provocation. But she didn’t. If anything, SHE’S actually the one who acted in self-defense THE WHOLE TIME! If Malaya hadn’t been there, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. But she WAS, and so this conversation is taking place.
And I’m really not trying to make Sal out to be Amazi-Girl’s archnemesis, either. That’s CLEARLY Blaine. I also have faith that, if Sal were to know WHY Amazi-Girl acted the way that she did, she would understand. Like I said before, I LIKE Sal.
Oh, and for the record, I’m black. And that certainly doesn’t mean I’m not racist, but I’m definitely not. However, I DO hate Malaya. Because she’s obnoxious, and I’ve ALWAYS hated Malaya, since Shortpacked.
Um, Malaya is NOT in any posse of Sal’s. Nor Carla, neither, I believe
Nope, they just wind up hanging out in the same places with her. All the time. For reasons.
Reason = Marcie
Sal may have been the catalyst, but it was the constant belittling by her primary abuser that finally broke Amber, not the random encounter with a violent juvenile delinquent .
This. Sal did a shit thing to Amber and Ethan, but it’s not why Amber’s the way she is today. Amber snapped, stabbed Sal, and pursued Amazi-Girl because of a lifetime of abuse. Sal’s just an easily identifiable point in time for Amber.
That’s… a really good point. Is Amber’s berserk button towards Sal going to derail this thing and make it even worse than it could otherwise be?
Hopefully, Amber’ll be able to focus on the more important situation at hand. But, given the fact that we saw a red Amber-flashback panel a couple of strips ago…yeah, this might get bad.
On the other hand, I can see Joyce unleashing a serious brow-beat on her if AG starts getting stupid.
This is true as well. If anything, Sal and AG might start getting into it UNTIL Joyce pulls them back into the actual conflict.
Guys, I think Joyce might have really broken at this point. I’m genuinely concerned.
I dunno about broken. I’d say that she’s probably pretty badly chipped. You’ll KNOW when she’s broken. The word “fuck” wil most likely be involved. In all caps, even.
I think she is more likely un-broken. She seems to have found an inner core of strength (if not good judgement!), and I expect we will find when this is over that her traumatic stress reaction is noticeably alleviated.
^This. Sometimes, “breaking” someone means “fixing” them by breaking them out of old habits that are keeping them from being a constructive, functioning member of society. At this point, Joyce is baby-stepping into being able to make her own decisions based on her desire to do the “right” thing, rather than decisions her parents approve of based on her desire to do the “godly” thing. She’s figuring out how to function as an independent person with independent goals and feelings.
You gotta crack the shell to get at the tasty insides!
Yes, Joyce has broken. Broken the shell of repression she’s dwelled in for most of her life. She’s not damaged – she’s HATCHING.
All the +1s.
Last panel Sal is adorable to the max omg.
God-Damn, Joyce just said God-Damn!
It’s no f-bomb, but Joyce is definitely giving zero fucks about Sal’s arbitrary rules for riding her motorcycle, so close enough!
Sal showing up is gonna make Amber even more crazy, isnt it?
This is almost exactly what I thought would happen, of course I thought Joyce would say fuck. Also I figured it wouldn’t happen until the finale.
The way I figure it, Joyce will reserve the ‘fuck’ for her confrontation with Toedad (as in “Leave her the fuck alone!” or “FUCK YOU!”). That alone will either shock him to no end, or send him over the edge.
or just a single rage fuelled FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
I’m glad to see Sal came back, and this callback is adorable, as is Sal’s smile there… but this is a bad, bad combination of people all converging in the same place, especially since Amber was thinking back to the stickup.
Maybe Sal will keep her helmet on through this and Amber won’t know, but unless Sal has an extra helmet, I see her giving it to Joyce.
Amber would have to be really stupid to not recognize Sal. Who could that chick on the motorcycle with long black hair be?
Absolutely anybody with long black hair and a motorcycle? The other confrontation happened at night, and I don’t remember if Amber has seen Sal in her whole biker chick ensemble during the day, so yeah, not so stupid??
I’m starting to question the legality of riding a motorcycle through a college liked that. Am i just confused on how the campus is set up?
I think it’s more than you’re confused about whether Sal will care if it seems like a crisis. She said that she heard the shot, so I suspect she came back to check on Joyce and at that point wasn’t worried about getting a ticket.
Not all campuses are fenced off (although mine was). I think this one is just part of the city, right?
Ross is driving on a road. Sal’s on the same road.
It looks from Google Maps like there’s a road right around Showalter Fountain. That’d be the same way butthole dad got the Buttmobile there.
Amber does know that it’s Sal. She told Ethan (in her Amazi-girl persona) that she recognized her. Even if facial recognition wouldn’t have done it, combined with Sal’s voice and manner of speaking? She would have clued in sooner or later.
I realize now that the post I replied to explicitly mentioned Sal giving Joyce her helmet. I was thinking of Sal with her helmet on, I’m a dumbass. Yeah, one look at her face and Amazi-Girl will recognize Sal
Add to that the fact that Amber already has seen Sal in her motorcycle outfit. Maybe not in “daylight”, but in an illuminated hallway.
Sal will be wearing her helmet; in fact, she’s holding it over her head and getting ready to slide it back on in the last panel. And in the other instances when we’ve seen Sal with her motorcycle I don’t recall ever seeing a second helmet.
Sal will probably give Joyce the helmet.
I’m not going to lie that’s exactly what’s going to happen, don’t know if CAN’T be escalated more than it already has been though.
*it can
So you’re saying things couldn’t possibly get any worse? :-j
No I’m saying things can’t get anymore Intense…..unless Ross really does die in a hail of gun fire from the police.
Oh…they can. Trust me, they can.
We still have so many characters for possible awesome entrances!
Dorothy breaks though the upper window and lands on a truck
Wait till Mike bursts through the steering wheel airbag of Toedad’s car.
And Danny appears out of nowhere in the trunk.
“How did I get in here?!”
BORN TO BE WI~I~ILD!
You’ve been saving that song for this occasion, haven’t you?
*thumbs up*
Honestly, I didn’t know if the TV series THE FALL GUY used the original Steppenwolf version or a Mike Post session band knockoff on their biker gang episode.
Born to be wild works, but Looking at Joyce’s face, I’ve got George Thorogood singing “Who do you love”.
“I walked 47 miles of barbed wire,
I wear a cobra snake for a tie,
I got a brand new hose on the roadside,
It’s made out of rattlesnake hide,
Got a brand new chimney put on top,
It’s a-made out of demon skulls,
Come on take a little walk with me baby,
and tell me who do you love?
Who do you love? Who do you love?”
Well, we know Sal is right that someone is going to get hurt. We have the hospital preview panel after all.
So, Amazi-girl and Sal may be crossing paths again soon. I’m intrigued to see how that goes.
It’s funny, just a couple of hours ago, I was thinking about how the angry Joyce panel is coming up, and wondering if she would swear again. Now, I have my answer.
This whole god-damned turn of events is spinning increasingly out of control.
Though on a worrying note:
We have an Amazi-Girl in complete “I cannot fail” mode which tends to hyper-escalate things and be less than a 100% on.
We have Sal likely complicating matters emotionally for her and not being the most delicate regarding bullshit authority figures.
We have Joyce in full-on murder stab death mode.
And we have a Toedad looking for an excuse to off his daughter and make himself a martyr.
Oh and there’s also a platoon of cops who’ll likely have itchy trigger fingers.
…
This will be an epic clusterfuck, too pure for this world.
Ya SOMEONE is going into that E.R after this.
That platoon of police will have not only itchy trigger-fingers, but also little idea of what is actually going on.
IF, they ever arrive at the scene of the action…
“Though the mills of Law grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience they stand waiting, with exactness grind they all.”
Sal, you better have another helmet for Joyce >:(
You know she doesn’t.
she sure DON’T
That is one thing I do not think you can fairly blame Sal for (also pretty much anything else about this situation since she only just got there, obviously).
She did not invite Joyce, she is yielding to a demand that she did not prepare for in an emergency situation.
Before the helmet law took effect, if there was only 1 helmet for 2 riders the helmet went to the passenger by law. Dunno about Indiana during comic time.
…doesn’t the driver kinda need it, though?
I’ve never ridden a motorcycle, but that seems like it would be important to, uh, see.
Both should have one, but Sal wasn’t intending to take a passenger while engaging in a high-speed chase with a dangerous criminal when she took it out this morning.
If they wreck, both would need one. If the driver does not have one, it might encourage safer riding.
Doesn’t the driver need it while driving?
Indiana is pretty much stuck in Comic Time, IRL, so-called.
Oooh, this getting good. Hand me the popcorn, Sarah, while you retrieve your bat.
https://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/2680/3368/original.gif
GAHHHHHHHHD-dammit.
🙂
To quote an entirely unrelated movie: “The sleeper has awakened!” The new Joyce is about to kick some serious butt. Don’t worry about the G-bomb, she’ll ask forgiveness later.
“The sleeper has awakened.” ?that’s what martens mom said when Claire turned out to be a savant about scotch?
Joyce Brown, Fearless Homophobic Fundie Hunter.
Joycey the Butthole Dad Slayer?
Bonus points if the cops pull over Sal.
-Becky hears a creacking sound, looks over her shoulder
-Sees AmaziGirl climbing onto hood of car. Behind her, Sal and Joyce on motorcycle. Behind them, fleet of Indianapolis PD cruisers, lights flashing
-Becky turns back forward. “Dad, you may want to pull over…”
(The cops are chasing Sal, but she doesn’t know that!)
I think “God-damned” would be worth more coming from Joyce.
(Mushu voice) Our little baby is all grown up and… and saving her lesbian
I so wanna see proper trained professionals get into this tho. I don’t know about the police, I don’t trust All American Cops at all, but at the very least Joyce is going to need some hardcore therapy after all this to her reconcile her growing nurture vs. reality duality. It’s not gonna be cute if she becomes another Girl running around campus in a jumpsuit kicking white men in the groin, no matter how needed that Girl would have been in her own situation back in in-comic August.
“Not gonna be cute if she becomes another Girl running aound campus in a jumpsuit kicking white men in the groin”. I’m unsure, but you might be in a minority on that one around here
😉 Seriously, though, how about she skips the spandex suit (Ala Sidekick Girl) and doesn’t go looking for trouble, but groin kicks trouble when it finds her, which I think includes going kinetic to rescue her best friend who was kidnapped in front of her. (Btw, I have a niece who, when two guys confronted her with bad intent, she kicked (?kneed?) one of em in his cha-cha’s & then escaped to safety, so groinings when appropriate.)
Hm. Speaking of Sidekick Girl & Sarah, Indiana has open carry for bats? Joyce could take to carrying a bat with her when crossing the quads.
I mean, I’m all for deserved groinings, and hell, I’m even for some seemingly-undeserved-but-poetically-just groinings too. I cheered at Joyce cutting Ryan face, and I’ll cheer however Joyce helps Becky, even if it’s violent. Girls gotta do what they can to be safe, and realistically, being a Good Girl is rarely enough for that these days, so being bad like that is very good.
I just worry. I mentioned in another post how Amazi-Girl tries to carry the burden of everybody’s problems not letting go of what’s too old or small to be helped, y’know. I just want Joyce to be healthy and I worry she might be drawing in too close to a snapping point for her to be without help. I doubt she’d ever become a second Amazi-Girl, but that’s what I meant by becoming another Girl.
But yeah, right now, keep on going forward Joyce, work it out like only you can.
I see what you’re saying and I expect that you’re right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZHqh19LQdo
*begins rapidly chanting yes*
Sal death flag.
Words have power when they’re swears.
Joyce’s sure do
VE HUNT!
HOKAY LET’Z GET HEEM!
MAKE SURE HYU DUN LOSE YOUR HAT
Is Sal’s bike modeled after a specific real one? The squinty-eye headlights give it a Ducati 1198 feel, but the big Ducati has an evil moustache …
Willis is usually very good about drawing things true-to-life (look at some of the effort he has put into his backgrounds, for example) so this is probably a real and recognizable bike underneath the fairing; but Sal seems to me to be the sort of person who would do a little customizing to her ride so certain features may be altered, removed, or covered over.
accidentally found the answer to that
In a previous comic someone found similarities to a Transformers figure, which i cannot denominate as improbable, given Willis known addiction!
Ducatis are hella ‘spensive.
I don’t have enough faith in Indiana police to say that the better idea would be to wait for them and explain that a Christian man kidnapped his lesbian daughter, so I’m just going to say “HELL YEAH, JOYCE!”
(Also, I called it.)
FUCKIN GODDMAN MIOTHERSHITTING CHRIST CALL THE COPS YOU IRRESPONSIBLE HOOLIGANS
I mean they have been called. (Though Sal doesn’t know that, and Joyce might not either. Not that I would expect Sal to give any thought to calling the police).
Cause, these cops got no sirens…
Holy shit, Joyce!!
Okay! I think I figured out who’s gonna’ be the one going to the hospital.
If Sal doesn’t have a spare helmet for Joyce then I predict that sometime during the chase Joyce gets thrown off the bike or they crash. Sal walks away with a few scratches, but Joyce gets a coma or some shit, I don’t know.
This in turn leads us to the actual confrontation between Amazi-Girl and Sal we’ve all be salivating over.
Also Walky gets run over in the process but that’s not important.
“Oh baby, let me in; I wanna be your friend;
I want to guard your dreams and visions.
Just wrap your legs ’round these velvet rims
And strap your hands ‘cross my engines!”
+1
Holy shit, Joyce. The GDI-bomb.
Gerbil…Death…Incarnate?
Geriatric Diabetic Insulin
German Dinosaur Implosion
Guarantee Demolished Intuition.
Global Death Inteface
Graves’ Disease Iodine.
Grave Dancers
UnionIncorporated?Graphic Disruptive Idiocy?
Gooey, Delicious Ice Cream
Gargoyle Diarrhea Inhibitor.
I took that stuff once. Came in a neat lead container. The guy who gave it to me went to the other side of the 20ft room and wouldn’t come near me after I took it. It was almost like I was radioactive or something. 😛
Grand Doucebag Insurrection.
Holy shit, Joyce! PHRASING!
So many people called this one I would say!
And in that moment, Joyce earned Sal’s respect.
Recap: Becky’s in the car with ToeDad; Amazi-Girl is on the skateboard ski-joring behind ToeDad’s car; Dina is probably still lying dazed in the woods; and now Joyce is leaving the scene on Sal’s motorcycle. So who’s going to be left to give the cops the straight scoop?
Apparently we are all agreed that the police in Indiana are so unreliable that they will do less damage in an information vacuum than if they know who’s who and what’s what.
So established wisdom on the subject of american coppers, then?
Hey #NotAllCops
lol
Anyway, I do hope that someone (possibly Sayid, since he could’ve heard some of the story from Joyce or something) can get proper info to the cops at least for the sake of paperwork.
Information?! We don’t need no stinking information! We have badges! And guns! To shoot people!
Dina MUST be in on the climax of this along with Joyce, Amazigirl, Sal … and Sarah … and Mr Bat.
lying dazed in the woods? My money’s on “in the back seat, completely unnoticed” because THAT IS DINA’S SUPER-POWER.
Heh, because Joyce finally dropped the GD word.
Gold Digger??
AND, Joyce and Becky exchanged the L-WORD at the fountain
Yes Yes Yes.
I knew Sal was going to show up I just knew it. Yay.
Don’t know what she’s going to do, but maybe she can save AG’s ass, along with Becky.
If Joyce lives through this, she is going to be so totally happy that she rode with Sal that she will never be afraid to walk alone again.
you know for someone named Idon’tcarenomore you really seem to care.
You know it.
So tsundere.
“YES SAL IS SO AWESOME!”
*Blush*
“NOT THAT I CARE OR ANYTHING”
Sal is altering the deal. Pray she doesn’t alter it further, or pretty soon Danny will be getting motorcycle rides.
Bad idea that would be: Danny riding pillion with his arms around Sal >> boner?
What makes this moment even more powerful is that at any other time Joyce would have been wild with excitement at the chance to ride Sal’s motorcycle.
But right now she’s only interested as a way to get to Becky.
You gave Dina a TARDIS beanie.
NOT SURE IF APPROVE
Yes. Yes I did. I have had disappointingly few opportunities to make references since I did, though. I really need to step up my game.
Well, one would be a chance to see dinosauria IRL.
Dina’s gonna pop out of the woods about 2 seconds after Sal and Joyce leave.
cue sequence of dina running alongside the motorcycle in jurassic world fashion
Dina is surprisingly fast
Those cereal have their benefits,Riley knows it too.
Willis, if I had money to throw at you to draw that, I would be throwing money at you to get you to draw that, because ALL THE GODDAMNED YES.
Hmmm,where did I put it..ahhh,there it is,he would probably like it.
Sal… you recognized that chasing after them was not a good idea. Like two panels before.
Sal: heh, ya’ll learnin’, kid. Maybe dere’s hope for ya yet.
…Oh…oh my….Joyce has officially lost any and all fucks to give for anything except Becky’s safe return. Get it girl!
And Joyce has not only said Damn twice, she has now used God-damn, which for fundies is infinitely worse. No wonder Sal agreed so quick, if Joyce is willing to talk like that Sal knows it’s serious.
Taking the Lord’s name in vain probably exceeds the F-word given Joyce’s upbringing so it’s nice to see Sal not be a stickler about the earlier deal.
Wait a minute, didn’t someone predict Sal joining the chase with Joyce on back?
There’s the God Damn, BUT ALSO
Sal just left Joyce behind after escorting her because she was having a massive panic attack such she couldn’t even walk alone.
Now she’s not only had a gun pulled on her, but her best friend’s been kidnapped and her reaction is to cuss out Sal and -demand- that they ride straight at the gun-wielding madman?
Sal has got to respect that.
I mean, -I- respect that.
Am I the only one that noticed that a few of the comments from about a week ago said something along the lines of “Amazi-girl comes in. Sal joins in after the chase with Joyce” and now it’s exactly what’s happening?
I like to think that Willis read the comments, decided that are ideas were better then what he originally had and redrew the entire thing to encoperate this epicness
I like to think folks would be aware of how insulting that is!
Sorry man,sometimes imagination gets the best(worse) out of us.
I’m really sorry if I offended you…I really was just trying to make a joke.
A lot of creators are easily annoyed by people saying those things because they hear it all the time, often in all seriousness, which is really insulting to the creator to suggest that they didn’t come up with their own ideas. Note the “Buffer Watch” which Willis keeps updated to ward off this sort of comment. So yeah, you were joking etc. etc. but now you know, eh?
Conditional apology is not apology. Don’t be sorry “if”, just be sorry because you dissed Willis, EVEN IF it was unintended and happened because a lame joke went off target. I’ve learned this myself the hard way.
But he didn’t diss, and he is probably not sure if Willis is joking himself, thus the “IF”.
I didn’t recognize that interpretation; it does seem plausible. I spose Ive heard Harry Shearer too often about apologies with “if” in.
yep
The fail state of clever is asshole.
And that fail BURNS kids, so learn from my experience and don’t try being clever unless you’re another Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker, or someone like that.
Joyce is just gonna pepper in “Goddamn” for everything.
“Thanks for the goddamn help on my goddamn homework.”
“Goddammit.”
Anybody else worried that the police are about to encounter two girls on a motorcycle racing at high-speed away from the scene of a reported gunshot/gunman?
Yes.
If they didn’t stop to pull over a car towing a girl dressed as a super hero on a skateboard, I doubt they’ll even look twice at two girls on a motorbike. Priority one will be getting to the scene.
We don’t know how recent their information is. They may still be responding to the first sighting, of ToeDad with a gun, some distance from the fountain. They probably dispatched ASAP upon hearing this. We don’t know who else contacted them since, or with what information.
The alt-text on yesterdays’ comic says they are heading for showalter fountain!
they already encountered a car and a caped vigilante on skateboard racing at high speed away from the scene of a reported gunman so not especially
Those might not have been the only two cop cars in Bloomington. Maybe one of the people who is at the scene and on the blower with a 911 operator will report that one of the people who was involved in the altercation has been collected by an accomplice on a motorcycle and is fleeing the scene of the crime. Maybe some of the other police in Indiana will hear about that on their cop radios.
Actually, Toedad seems to be taking Becky’s advice and stopping at stop signs and driving casually to avoid notice.
Exactly my thought.
Naw, what could go wrong?
Demons will run when a good woman goes to war. They’ll run quicker when she’s on the back of a motorcycle and has taken the name of her Deity in vain.
Was that GDX really “in vain”? This is not trivial, this is Becky’s life and persona at stake.
Someone called it~
That Sal smile tho 😀
Would you prefer the Illuminati version?
aaaaaaaaaaaaa
Best smile
is amazi-girl going to be able to prioritize helping becky over getting her revenge on sal cause i can see a lot of new ways this can go bad all of the sudden
Everyone rises to the occassion, and tag-teams Toehead: that’s what’s gonna happen … cause that’s what’s needed, and thats what I want.
FINALLY! A Joyce I can get behind.
Sal, driving towards gunfire like it’s no big deal.
Sal, are you sure you’re not a superhero? You’ve already got the primary color coordinating outfit and motorcycle…
USMC: “Run towards chaos!”
I so very much approve of this.
“I need your motorcycle”
“OK”
“I also need your clothes and your boots”
“That is some nice underwear, I’ll be taking that as well…”
“Sorry, Becky already went through my underwear drawer so you’ll have to catch up with her to…”
“THAT’S THE PLAN”
I like the cut of your jib! ^_^
Hastalavista, ToeDad.
”Arnold, why haven’t you upgraded to Windows 8?”
“Because I still love vista, baby!”
Now I imagine Ahnuld saying “homeslice”.
I sure hope Sal has an extra helmet.
Let’s kill Toedad, dammit!
But if you go, Becky, who will tell the cop exactly what happened D: ? with the proper circunstances and all ?
go TO Becky*
ok, i need more coffee.
I feel you,I ran out of Jacobs yesterday and didn’t have time to buy another pack. I can’t live without caffeine in my veins!
Break the glass on your Emergency Stash!
@DarkoNeko:You do realize, of course, that the way you originally wrote that works, but it’s very, very sad.
Not only did Joyce use the word damned, she said God-damned! And she’s about to get her wish of a motor cycle ride!
…probably without a helmet, unless Sal give her hers (which is kinda worse, she need the windshield it provides to drive properly)
Holy cow! If that happens, Joyce has gone totally rebel for real!
HOLY SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT, JOYCE HAS GONE CRITICAL. EPICNESS WILL FOLLOW. Toedad is toast. Dina will show up at the critical movement and go full tyrannosaurus on his sorry ass. They will save their lesbian. In the climax Joyce will take a stand between Becky and Dina and the whimpering ToeDad who tries to crawl away, the scene lit by the flaming wreckage of his car. Sal and Amazie-girl will stand by the side and just stare, maybe share a weak fistbump in mutual awe.
(Shortpacked spoiler)
Becky, in about five minutes in universe time: “I.. I have never been so lesbian in my entire life.”
Fixed the link
THIS,this…has to be animated. No,a full movie!
Anime or musical
also someday i hope to make an its walky! movie
[S] Joyce & Sal: Make him pay.
Oh man is Joyce/Sal going to get shot as they line up with Becky’s window? (if Sal, they’re both to hospital after they fall off, most likely)
(even if Joyce only gets scrapes I imagine she’d end up going in the chaos and to be checked on)
Well, the damn has broken, and the swears are just flooding out…
icwutudidthar
I’m gayer than Elton John blowing Richard Simmons in the front row of a Lady Gaga concert while the ghost of Freddie Mercury flies overhead on a unicorn that poops rainbow-colored dildos, and yet Joyce just gave me a goddamn boner.
…..What did you smoke?
Sausages?
(Sorry, saw the opportunity, had to take it)
Joyce? Not Sal?
So, Sal is worried about Amazi-Girl escalating the situation, so she’s going to enable Joyce to do the same thing. Well, she wouldn’t be human if she didn’t apply to herself different rules that she applied to everyone else.
Additionally: CALLED IT!
If Joyce has her first orgasm from finally riding Sal’s bike in this situation, she’s going to have so many years of therapy ahead of her…
Also, people are going on so much about the hospital panel that I’m beginning to suspect that Willis is trolling all of us, and that it’s actually just a random background as all characters walk back to campus entirely unharmed (except for Toedad, who is unharmed but under arrest).
Mostly I’m just looking forward to Amazi-Girl’s (further?) mental breakdown as she sees Sal appearing on the side of good. “But… what.. wait! You’re not allowed to be on the same mission as me!”
If Joyce has her first orgasm from finally riding Sal’s bike in this situation, she’s going to have so many years of therapy ahead of her…
————————
Not her first time — from Willis’ Tumblr.
Missed that Sarah was reading 57 varieties of catsup in that strip. Now I’m imagining her in 50 shades of Jacob.
I’m starting to think you might be right about that hospital panel. Right now I think it’s a bit more concerning that other previews show Joyce meeting her father in the parking lot, followed by a house in a residential neighborhood.
I think there’s supposed to be some sort of time skip after this storyline. (Like this chapter is Monday, and the next chapter will be something other than the Tuesday that’s the next day. I want to say a Friday because we see Leslie again, so it’s a gender studies day) Maybe Joyce is just going home for the weekend?
That is my theory. Also, Joyce going home the weekend after this makes sense, at least from her parents’ perspective. Daughter survived a traumatic, life threatening incident, you want to spend time with your daughter, both for her healing and yours.
Less positively, there will be a huge fallout in their church over this, and her parents may think she needs to be there to explain things/be prayed over/be there so everybody can praise God she survived. I am guessing that dealing with that will be more stressful than anything else, especially since you know there will be a large contingent (maybe even her parents) who agree that Toe Dad needed to “fix” Becky, even if he shouldn’t have used a gun to do so.
On the plus side, more Jocelyne, maybe? Get to meet Jordan? This could be a good time for Jocelyne to confide in Joyce.
So basically, you’re guessing what’s coming next is going to be the Big Brown Dramabomb? Because I’ve been waiting for THAT one for a looong time.
Well, maybe not immediately (what I think is Friday) next, but Saturday or Sunday chapter? Oh yeah. More likely Sunday because of church drama, I think. I am also predicting cameos from certain obnoxious Shortpacked customers.
This is also backed up by the calendar – Willis has said that next chapter will be in October. Since Men Are From Beck, Women Are From Clark was explicitly set in August, the first possible day it could be is Friday.
Does she know how many baby Jesuses (Jesi?) she made cry with more swearing?
Aww, Joyce. I’m proud of you, you badass little pottymouth.
Why? She’s just stating a fact. Sal’s bike has been damned by God for it’s sinful ways.
Language. It was DARNED BY GOSH.
Darned? Somebody knitted a motorcycle?
omg I just sobbed.
Don’t worry – I’m sure jeebus will forgive a little cursing in this situation.
Wow… Joyce’s body language. She’s ready to FIGHT.
Hang on. I had a very minor prang on my 650 once – it squirmed on a greasy road and over I went. If I hadn’t been wearing my armoured boots my right leg and foot would have been in a million bits. Sal’s worried about Amazi-Girl getting people hurt, but she’s willing to take Joyce on her bike to chase an armed man without any protective clothing for Joyce?
Sal’s aura of sheer coolness will protect them from accidents.
I’m kinda wondering if maybe Sal’s going to do something else entirely. Not sure what, though.
*Born to be Wild begins to play*
Ride of the Valkyries
That works too.
I was thinking this: https://youtu.be/xzNlmdOfWLA
That’d be more fitting as they approach The ToeMobile.
Cops got lost driving the last 200 yards to the Fountain …
Joyce will save Becky as Sarah predicted. Sal will assist, but Joyce will handle it, probably without violence. I predict a crash at low speed hence the hospital.
AG will fail or she will cooperate with Sal. Either would lead her to some character development.
Joyce and Becky stay besties with awkwardness banished. Toedad goes to hospital and then jail. Hank realizes that the biggest danger to his daughter was his religious neighbor.
The time has come and past it for Sal and Amazi-Girl to be forced to deal with each other in a scenario where neither can run away. Maybe trying to stop Ross (or stop someone bleeding to death from a rifle wound) will be that moment.
Do remember that Sal has baggage from the aftereffects of that burglary too – she may well too have things to prove.
So what’s the bet that, at least at one point, Ross is going to have Sal, Joyce, Amazi-Girl and Becky all trying to drag him down and pin him?
AND Dina. I want Dina to be in at ‘The Kill’. speaking of which, does Toedad have to drive past those woods on his way off campus? Because that would give Dina a chance to get on scene.
So I was originally thinking “WTF, Sal, you heard a gunshot and went towards it?” then realized that she was heading back to the fountain because she was concerned about Joyce. Aww.
(Though telling her how Amazi-Girl is definitely going to get everyone killed does not seem like a good idea)
From Joyce’s reaction, something tells me that Joyce has little patience for Sal’s issues with Amazi-Girl, at least right now.
Okay, now at least ONE person is ending up in the hospital after this.
Let us hope it is the toe.
ok, i was REALLY hoping this would happen. we need another amber/sal scene.
Oh the possibilities!
The obvious: Sal and Amazi-girl end up fighting each other instead of Toe-Dad.
The obvious with a twist: Above and Joyce ends beating the crap out of a confused Toe-Dad while cursing non-stop. (She has a lot of cursing to catch up on.)
The ironic: Sal takes the bullet to save Amazi-girl’s life. This causes Amber to have a complete mental breakdown. And of course, Dina shows up to beat the crap out of Toe-Dad with his now empty rifle. RRARRRGHGHL!
The tragically most likely: Amazi-Girl snaps and attacks Sal in the heat of the battle, and Joyce ends up killed in the crossfire.
Aside from the by-now-a-dead-horse ‘nobody dies’ canard, Joyce has been seen in multiple preview panels from next chapter.
Yeah, the more comments I read, the more I realize that whatever resolution this does reach, it’s going to be a massive letdown for at least some people. 😛
Hashtag drift compatible.
And thus is a beautiful friendship made.
“Joe, if – – if I ever say a dirty word, I want it t – to have *meaning*.
At least if or when I say anything like that, people will know I’m *actually upset*.
It will have *power*.”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/word/
You weren’t wrong, Joyce. You weren’t wrong.
I think Sal rides a Kawasaki Ninja 300 Blue Special Edition Motorcycle, like this one but Red trim instead of Black.
Here you go.
That’s a great bike. Though if you’re over 5″ tall you’d probably grow out of it pretty quickly. (I’d recommend its big brother, the 650.)
I hope Sal has a spare helmet, as I can see this ending with a crash and/or wipe out. Don’t want Joyce ending up brain damaged on a respirator.
I think she had one for Marcie, but I don’t know which of them keeps it (especially if it’s actually Marcie’s).
Sodding brilliant!
though she didn’t say the F-word, I think it counts since she added a little extra blasphemy by making it “god damn” instead of just “damn.” After all, when you watch prime time TV and they say that they censor the “god” part, not the “damn” part.
Welp, this is it.
Joyce has finally snapped. She’s gone coo-coo for cocoa-puffs.
She’s swearing now, and yelling, and being all assertive, but once she’s rescued Becky she’s going to suck a million dicks. IT HAS BEEN FORETOLD IN THE PROPHECY!
I predict Sal will get a DWB and Ross will be able to get away.
Sal is not black, first of all. She’s Walky’s twin sister, and Walky has already been described as ‘caramel’. And covered up by her leathers and helmet, how could anyone tell anyway?
Um. First of all she is black, but okay. It has been stated in the comic that she’s black. Secondly, I had made the assumption that she had given Joyce the helmet. Now that I look at it more closely, it does look like she’s putting it on her own head. *shrugs*
I’ve had family members pulled over for ridiculous reasons, and we’re Native American. The darker your skin, the harder it is to get away with shit. If her skin is showing, and she’s speeding, the cops are gonna take notice. If her skin ISN’T showing, it’s possible that they’ll ignore her like they ignored Amazi-Girl.
Sal’s not black? I know Walky identifies himself as generically beige, but I’m pretty sure Sal identifies as black.
Is she black? I always assumed she was latin american. Shows how little attention I’ve been paid, thanks for the correction. 🙂
Well, Joyce has some passion for her friends. I think I could get to like her.
Amazi girl is dumb and gonna get everyone killed chasing after them like that.
Let’s chase after ’em like that.
It’s not that Sal thinks that it’s wrong to get involved, it’s that she think Amazi-Girl getting involved is going to ruin everything.
Granted, they’re both wrong. This is not the time for an exciting motorcycle chase or extended homage to Back to the Future.
What can I say? That’s the power of love!
Next week:
Joyce: “Pull up along side them, Sal! I’ll jump on the roof!”
This is exactly what I wanted. The Willis giveth…
I signed up on Patreon just because I love this comic so much. All hail the Willis!
The deal may have been the f word but she just used God’s name in vain. That’s like… twice as badass to her.
In a way, ‘goddamned’ is more extreme than the promised f-bomb. My mother has resigned herself to me occasionally dropping the latter, but still gets mad at me for taking the Lord’s name in vain by saying ‘goddamned’.
I hate to join the speculation of horror party, but my bet on who’s in hospital in the preview panels is currently Joyce. I mean, Sal’s only got one helmet, they’re getting into a car chase, and she’s not really thinking straight… not to mention Sal’s little, uh, foreshadowing there.
I WAS RIGHT!