To be honest, I once had a situation where a crazy dude held a knife to my throat. Afterwords, someone made a dumb joke about it and it was the first thing that brought me back to being myself. It was stupid and made me chuckle.
Idk, I just don’t think this is all that much Danning it up as it is what he was trying to do didn’t work.
Yeah, sometimes you have to laugh about a terrible thing, or it starts to chip away at you internally. Which is why I’m in therapy, because somethings there just aren’t jokes for.
Jesus walks into a motel, hands the manager 3 nails & asks “Can you put me up for the night?”
I’ve watched The Crow. Both versions actually, original with Brandon Lee was awesome plus gave me that line, remake-to-link-to-TV-series sucked so much exhaust, I’d happily hand it to Megatron & tell him it said he was a whiny bongo…
yea, but that’s exactly why most people don’t attempt it. trying something that doesn’t work is nerve-wracking and no one wants to be responsible for making things worse
I was in my 20s when my grandfather died. Me, my brother, and our parents were going through his apartment, seeing if anyone wanted his stuff (I got a hat and an umbrella, the umbrella broke last month after ~10 years of my use, I replaced the hat about a year ago after the first fell apart eventually).
I pointed out it felt a bit surreal, like a D&D “loot the corpse” session.
I’m *really* glad we 4 were the only ones there. It was very much “a bit tasteless, but a fair comparison, and it helped us all address how it felt rather…off.”
I’m very much the sort who tends to enter a “spiral of sad” where I start feeling bad about feeling bad, and attempting to crack a joke kinda jostles me out of that spiral, to settle on the appropriate level.
That does *not* go over well with folks who are not the same.
According to a map tunneling thing I found on google (gods I love the Internet), digging from Bloomington definitely gets you in the middle of the ocean.
Here is a handy map. North America is antipodal to the Indian Ocean, except for small parts that are antipodal to islands such as Kerguelen, and its in the extreme north that are antipodal to parts of Antarctica. The antipodes of Australia are in the Atlantic.
I stand corrected. Apparently ALL of the US would land you in the Indian Ocean. Except for Hawaii which gets you into Africa. And nowhere will land you in Australia. And China is only possible for parts of South America. Apparently nobody had it right…
I’d recommend using a Tanto instead. Much easier. Give the Samurai sword (assuming you mean Katana) to your Second, so he can then cut off your head before you have a chance to moan in pain.
Depends on circumstances, I say. In civil life, yes, the wakizashi is the appropriate utensil for the job. But on the battlefield strict etiquette requires that one ought really to be wearing ones tachi and tanto rather than one’s katana and wakizashi. So there, naturally, the tanto would be appropriate.
Mike confuses Joyce: first he says something that sounds like he supports her, then he says something that Joyce half realizes/suspects is sarcastic or ironic at the expense of her beliefs.
I too have trouble being sincere and serious. So if you’re going through a situation and you want respectful insight and not terrible jokes, don’t come to me, because I’m a jokey fool.
Dorothy: You said WHAT about the hurricane and its victims?!
Walky: I just explained, I got wind of what was happening when security stormed in to inform me of current events and- Imsorryimsorryimsosorrypleasedontkillme.
Still, he’s lucky he doesn’t do the nervous smile thing. When I’m in serious situations my mouth twists into a ridiculously uncontrollable grin that I have no choice but to hide with my hand.
Oh god yes. One time I told a coworker about the boss’s husband getting killed in a traffic accident earlier that day and he didn’t believe me because my face was doing the wrong thing. 🙁
I’m happy at your happiness as well
Your anger makes me mad
Though you can’t tell
Believe me when I say
I’m with you in my private way
And though you think I’m trying to blow you off
It’s only that my frown is upside down
Ah, saying something wrong and inadvertently offending people. Been there, done that too many times. Interacting with people is hard. I’ve wondered if I should be locked up in a cage by myself where I can’t accidentally do any damage. Maybe Walky could have a cage next to mine. We could subsist on scraps of food that are slipped to us between the bars.
Oh, and it’s dark out now. There does tend to be a lot of waiting around and paperwork at hospitals when the police aren’t involved, and I would imagine that the process would be even longer when the police are involved.
I know that this story-line ends on the 25th (unless my memory is failing me) so we’re nearing the end of this in-comic day. What a day it has been! David Willis hinted that there might be a time skip after this chapter. That makes sense to me. I can see that the characters might need some time to process all that has happened before the story can really move forward.
Time skip or not, I’m sure repercussions from this story-line will carry over into future chapters.
The degree to which Joyce is not her normal self has made me uncomfortable all week. I guess I just didnt get enough focus time on her thought process that ass these atypical joyce behaviors are just weird and I cant connect. Bleh.
I generally feel a bit bad when I can’t react to other people’s misfortune with more than an awkward “oh, that’s a shame,” but I guess it’s better than a failed joke.
She and Ethan are still friends, and he wasn’t too involved with this clusterfuck. He should still be a safe spot – a rock in the storm. If not him, I don’t know who Joyce could lean on.
Yes, Ethan always gives me the feeling that he would be a really good person to lean on.
I imagine Joyce could lean on Dorothy now that they’ve made up, though Joyce might still feel like she needs to apologise to Dorothy and therefore not be able to lean on her.
Sarah probably would not be much better at this than Walky seems to be (though in a different manner).
I can’t think of anyone else Joyce is close enough to (if I’m forgetting someone major, please forgive my incompetent brain), so Ethan does seem like the best option.
Because he knows she doesn’t appreciate his humor. This isn’t something he does for her regularily and just mistimed the joke, he’s never made her feel anything but worse.
I don’t think Walky’s trying to make Joyce feel better but more that he approaches every remotely difficult concept by deflecting it with humour until he gets a negative response. He wasn’t joking for her sake; he was joking because telling jokes is what Walky does.
We learn by doing, Walky. You will learn the social graces in time, young padawan. Until then, it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, then speak and remove all doubt.
That’s the worst aspect of political correctness, oversensitivity.
There is nothing wrong with gallows humor. While resulting in failure, Walky had the right idea trying to get Joyce to release some of her tension with a joke. He wanted to make her feel better with a joke.
That’s the result of gender studies and other such courses, the loss of humor and logic.
It’s less of a slur and more of a word used in a historically negative light. Kinda like Negro. I wouldn’t say Negro is a slur but it’d probably offend people if you called them that today. Even I didn’t realize it was offensive to some until a few years ago.
Given that the term “mulatto” hasn’t been in common usage for at least 30 years, I think you might wanna get with the program already. This isn’t something new and arcane. The current term is “biracial”.
I must say I like Alexandre Dumas Pere’s take on it when some git tried talking down to him because of being colored: “My father was a mulatto, my grandmother black, my great-grandparents apes. Summing up sir, my pedigree starts where yours ends.” Now that’s not exactly promoting politically correct speech but still was rather likely effective in shutting up people trying to play the race card on him.
Point of order: A generally accepted breakdown of mulatto roughly translates it to “little mule.” People of mixed race were called mulatto reflecting their general social status as *mostly enslaved* laborers (gee, let’s compare these people to beasts of labor!) As well as the idea that people of mixed race were somehow genetically inferior and unnatural (mules– the cross between a horse and an ass–cannot reproduce). There are some people like author, Mat Johnson, who are questioning this orgin of the word and are on a mission to reclaim it. According to Johnson, the word may be derived from an Arabic word meaning mixed, with the word for mule coming later. He has a compelling article on it, found here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/matjohnson/kiss-my-mulatto-ass#.bjZWYWW3RQ
It IS a slur. It literally means “Mule”
“1585-95; < Spanish mulato ‘young mule’, equivalent to mul (o) mule1+ -ato of unclear origin " Young Mule of Unclear Origin.
its literally saying "They are lucky enough to have a white parent to water down all that African"
I honestly did not know that. And it wasn’t until later that I realized that I Eat Cheese did not actually write what was in brackets.
There’s an enormous difference between being courteous and forcing people to walk on eggshells. And what the heck is this about white supremacy? Being frank and direct is not exclusive to one race.
but honestly, have you ever had a friend go through any kind of trauma? this is like that 101. Of course I’m not opposed to gallows humor but we’re not talking about theoretical humor or a political scene, we’re talking one-on-one interactions and you simply do not tell jokes like that to someone who’s literally just been through a traumatic experience. it’s plainly insensitive, and our friend walky is learning that here
I should give you a proper reply, now that I realize Willis censored what I said.
You’re right about how it’s courteous to wait for the right time to use humor and mind the mentality of the person you’re addressing. But it’s also courteous to help people in need. Joyce had been mulling stressful thoughts for hours; while failing, Walky attempted to distract her from these with a joke.
What bothers me here is how nearly everyone here demonizes Walky, ignoring that he honestly tried to help, in the best way he knows how.
How did this become about “gallows humor” (which its not), and other people trying to take away peoples right to be hilarious & rude & edgy and comforting–and what does gender studies have to do with Walky being humor-impaired and emo-challenged (tho hes shown he cares and worries about Billie, at least). This started out about Walky doing a Danny, trying to say something funny to help Joyce, but failing big — screwing the pooch, as it were (“slang for doing something very much the wrong way,” Wiktionary).
well yeah obviously it was a genuine mistake and it wasn’t even a big one either, but walky still did the wrong thing. then he recognized it and corrected it before it actually got out-of-hand, which is to say walky shouldn’t be demonized at all, but not to say that his original action wasn’t kind of insensitive (on accident though!).
At a bare minimum you wait for the person with the dead grandma to crack the first joke.
Like, if Joyce had given Walky some indication that she wanted his “gallows humor” as a part of her recovery process but the PeeCee Police just wouldn’t let him crack a joke I’d get the argument, but geeze, that’s a hell of an assumption to make. It’s not weird or unreasonable for Walky to try and exercise just a little bit of tact in the immediate aftermath of a potentially traumatic incident.
Especially considering that they have a pre-existing relationship. Walky knows full well that Joyce doesn’t really appreciate his particular brand of humor on the best of days, let alone today.
People still say its “to soon” for jokes about things that happened decades ago. The thing is, you dont get to decide if what one says is offensive to other people.
This reminds me of how because of the way we brainwash our children into thinking boys are suppose to learn how to, and glorify being violent and killing each other that when people hear someone served in the military they stupidly ask stuff like “Did you send any assholes to their 72 virgins”. Like even if the soldier felt morally justified into killing some really evil people they can still be horribly traumatized by having to literally murder people and view their decayed corpses, ect ect ect.
It may be physically possible to be “overly sensitive” but the case of not making jokes about someone and their friends almost dying and escaping an abusive household will never be one.
Actually, I grew up in different parts of latin america and the only time I remember hearing “mulato” and “mestizo” with any regularity was in my Latin American History class in fifth grade where it was going to be on an exam.
Although maybe it’s an older generation thing, I dunno. Just sayin, didn’t really hear it outside of the one history class.
P.S. People can have “internalized Racism” (for the most recent example view all the black people calling out Raven Symone for her hypocrisy ) And though Walky may be mixed race D.W. has accurately used his parents as an example of how just because you have loved ones of a certain race doesnt mean you cant be racist about them. People like Walky’s dad grew up in an overdone version of our era, were “beauty” meant pale skin and straight hair, hence why Sal freaked out about getting her hair “fixed” for her parents coming over. Even in african countries black people with “paler” skin are seen as more appealing because the entire world is affected by western media….Which tells us that to “look good” you want pale skin, straight hair, and being thin or athletic.
Incidently ALSO why White Supremecy is a great general term. In white supremecist society value “traditional” values(the majority of the propoganda I see from decades ago AND now is the idea that other cultures and races and religions are going to “ruin” our culture) like sexist Ideals(women exist to make babies and raise children freeing men from being human and just violent workers who impregnate them) WHICH in tern makes them volatile to anything that breaks those stereotypes such as effimenent men, working women, men and women with the “wrong” gonads , and girls who dont find a D to impreg them or boys who get D’ed instead of D’ing someone else. Its-all-a-part-of-the-same-culture
P.P.S. I did a bad job of calling out our society for our racism on how people are “suppose to look and act” when i meant to say “our society is horrible this way and middle aged and older people grew up in an era where this happened and it was STRONGER and More crazy”
I think you’re both right. There certainly is a time and place for everything and Humor is certainly not always appropriate. Knowing your audience is especially important for such a situation. That being said, “hurting people’s feelings” is a very subjective thing. You can tell “black guy” jokes to me all day and as long as I know you’re joking it won’t really bother me. But it MAY be very bothersome to someone else. In a similar fashion, my tendancy to curse and shit talk when I play video games may be fine with some people and may be a turn-off for others. It’s all about making adjustments and sometimes you just have to weigh your relationships vs. your personality. If you care more about one over the other then you should distance yourself from the other. Sacrifice your humor to make others comfortable or sacrifice your social for your own comfort It’s a balancing act to be sure.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The mentality of forbidding someone from empathizing just because they’ve never experienced what the victim did.
Walky, as far as we know, has never faced an insane man with a gun; but he still knows it’s a terrifying situation. He knows that Joyce is feeling awful and attempted to help her as best he could.
By saying something terrible a mere few hours after she experienced it, after having a history of opening his mouth and saying rude, insensitive comments to her, yeah he’s totally empathizing.
How was his behavior terrible? He didn’t mention being her held at gunpoint or Becky being kidnapped. He didn’t mock the fear and betrayal she felt. Mentioning that some classes were cancelled in practically unrelated to what Joyce went through.
You truly don’t know what you’re talking about.
I believe that all situations can be made better with humor rather than just leaving the victim to suffer. Then again I’m terrible with regular sympathy preferring to tell jokes to calm down the victim.
You know, this is a cheap as fuck cop out and a refusal to accept responsibility. One of my acquaintances who I despised recently killed himself. This didn’t affect me, but it did hurt my friends. I, personally, have some suicidal urges at times, and black humor about suicide is one of my mechanisms for coping. Two of my friends deal well with gallows humor, so suicide jokes (currently in the form of Radical Freedom, because dammit Sartre) continued to be a thing I did with all of us, until I noticed it was hurting one of my friends (the one most affected by the suicide). Gallows humor helped some of us (with different things, granted), and hurt others. I’m not mad at walky here, but I’m not going to pretend he isn’t danning it up. Especially since it’s Joyce – He KNOWS gallows humor isn’t how she does things. If it were Sara, I wouldn’t even consider it danning it up, since it’s a pretty valid guess (Maybe wrong, but valid).
Also, the problem isn’t that he’s empathizing, the problem is he picked a way to try to help her deal that he has every reason to believe won’t work, and it didn’t work. Different people do respond to things in different ways, so minding your audience is EXTREMELY important when you’re doing something you know could be harmful.
my favorite part here is that you aren’t talking about empathy at all, because you don’t care what anyone thinks of your jokes, you just want to keep making them, regardless of whether anyone else wants to hear them, regardless of whether they hurt anyone, because their feelings and their situation do not matter to you. it’s all about you, and you want to keep making jokes, and if someone doesn’t laugh and find you very funny and pat you on the head for being such a funny little thing, they are the problem.
protip: complaining that people don’t react the way you want them to is not empathy.
…Gallows humor relies on time and place, and on the target. There have always been people disturbed by it, and there always will be. For some absurd reason, I thought you were being uncharacteristically self-aware for your whining, not that there was an auto-replace forcing it on you.
But the problem isn’t ‘omg gender studies ruined humor’. Also, it’s kind of funny to say this about a webcomic that is generally pretty funny!
Which is to say, dark humor mined from tragedy is a key part of healing and commiseration (get 2 trans people together and its a matter of time until you get to the dark jokes about bigotry), but that needs to come from the people affected and can’t be inserted from the side.
And that doesn’t make that a white-supremacist dog-whistle for being nice (nice autocorrect, Willis) conspiracy against free speech or whatever. It just makes it something that will get you a few well-deserved nasty stares from people who’ve actually gone through shit.
You really think favoring basic human decency over dirty jokes is a bad trade? Consider this: If I kicked you in the balls in front of a group of your peers, many of them would laugh at the way fell to the ground whimpering in pain.
No, that wasn’t a metaphor. I just really feel like kicking you in the balls right now.
So you’re saying that freedom of speech is indecent.
Attempting to help someone in distress is the decent thing to do, and that’s what Walky attempted to do. He failed, but his intent was to distract Joyce from thoughts that had been stressing her for hours.
And just what was dirty about the joke that Walky made?
Freedom of Speech just means the Government can’t silence you, we however can say “Shut up, you’re being an asshole” without damaging your freedom of speech
It’s only not freedom of speech if you’ve confused that concept with Freedom from Criticism (as a result of your speech), or Freedom from Consequences (as a result of your speech)
Only Amazigirl should have freedom from criticism. Oh, except for Sarah who can do no wrong because she sent Da out as the cutest spy in the history of
I think if you’ve been lucky enough to have a certain type of life (with a lot of privileges), then you may very well have grown up believing that no one was objecting to certain words, plotlines, or jokes before the modern day. Because you were not hearing from people who were affected or they were essentially silenced from any type of conversation you might stumble on.
As those groups have gained visibility, voices, or rights (especially in the age of the internet), it’s no longer an automatic thing that one can go on thinking people don’t exist or be unaware of how certain people are affected by certain things. And worse, it might mean realizing that you know less about a subject you were presumed to be the most knowledgeable about simply because of said privilege (minority groups learn two cultures growing up, their own and the dominant; dominant groups only have to and often would only get easy access to information about their own).
And so this loss of feeling of automatic superiority and the loss of ignorance about things that affect others feel like losses of actual power, simply because they are used to a world where they could ignore it.
Which is why the word oversensitivity is a buzzword for “your feelings are inconvenient, stop it”. Because that used to be a “normal” request and they are scared that what they are used to isn’t “normal” anymore and may get you nasty stares.
And yeah, it still makes it super douchey, because life is change and growth and that doesn’t change simply because you are used to society telling you you would never have to change or grow because of who you were.
When feelings are highly favored over reason and logic, yes feelings are a great inconvenience.
Take, for example, how Adria Richards got two individuals fired over a joke she over heard and disliked. Or how about what happened at Yale recently? Where that one student screamed at how the school staff was obligated to make her feel as comfortable as she did at her home?
Funny thing, of course, is you’re the one arguing against reason and logic and for not hurting your poor feelings by making you accountable for your bad behaviour.
We’re not talking about a situation in which someone is getting fired because someone overheard a joke they didn’t like. We’re talking about someone who has just been through a traumatic event not stopping to show ample appreciation for an unfunny, tactless joke.
It’s “gallows humor” when the person with the rope around their neck makes a joke. It’s just being an asshat when the person watching the execution shouts “Play Freebird!”
(Sark warning)
Benwhoski: You’re right! Joyce is the insensitive one here for going all PC on Walky and making him feel bad, instead of appreciating his attempt to ease her trauma with a joke which made it all about him getting the afternoon off. (DAMN Gender Studies! CHICK’S didn’t give Bros so much but hurt before them Femina profs told em to do it.) But don’t you think that Walky should man-up and tell Joyce — everyone together — “Jeez, lighten up! It’s only a joke!”
What happened at Yale recently:
Ire is misdirected towards a professor rather than the students. The ire is totally justified, but it’s on the shitty students. ‘logic and reason’ don’t have anything to do with it, since it’s not like the students were giving shitty opinions (I find the odds are about 60/40 in favor of shittiness when ‘logic and reason’ are invoked as animist spirits), they just wore shitty costumes.
What happened with Adria Richards: She said a joke was gross. Because the joke was made by actual company representatives at a conference, and because large companies are generally not interested in having shitty representatives, they got fired (by their seperate companies), and rehired by people who really dislike the idea that teh pcz are taking over the tech industry. Richards, incidentally, didn’t ask for firing; IIRC she just wanted censure, which is a completely valid request when people fuck up.
FREEZE PEACH morons really don’t like there being consequences to what they say, at all. Like, yeah, in theory one can chill freedom of speech, but in practice, y’all caterwaul over the smallest fucking things. Like now.
Oh wait, no, you aren’t talking about the /professor/.
Yeah, talking about any individual student is a wash – college is full of yoofs, and some of them are indeed as dumb as you. ‘Logic and Reason’ still ain’t got shit to do here. We’re talking about people wearing shitty costumes, not even airing shitty opinions. But the general sentiment doesn’t seem to be “You need to make us feel like we’re in our homes”, but rather, “at home” – as in, that the university is a home to them, just as it is for countless others. Funny how you ‘logic’ types can’t work out language.
Comedy is inherently about feelings more than reason and logic.
Literally the goal of comedy is to instill certain feelings in its audience. It’s downright bizarre to argue that feelings shoudln’t be highly favored over reason and logic where comedy is concerned.
“Joyce, Joyce, I know that seemed like a bad joke, since it didn’t make you laugh, but have you considered logic? Listen while I explain in depth the objective values of gallows humor and then maybe you’ll see that your subjective response to my joke was incorrect.”
Dorothy takes a deep breath, reminding herself that she has come to terms with the fact that she is in love with an idiot. Really she has. Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. Signed up for this. Must not dump his caramel ass.
I have grown to like Joyce’s courage over the past year (yes YEAR) as she has faced challenges and tried to accept them.
However, I can not understand why all the concern at this point is on Joyce.
She made a major breakthrough in courage when she rode with Sal on the bike to help her friend (and fulfilled a long time dream of doing just that with her idol Sal).
Joyce helped Sal counterbalance the load when they caught AG, which is good.
Joyce then proceeded to sucker punch Toedad with a beautiful roundhouse right.
And that’s pretty much all she did.
Meantime, Becky has fled across campus from her father, with Dina, she has been kidnapped at gun point, survived a car accident caused by her idiot abusive father taking time out to slap her when he should be driving.
And during all that, she was keeping her head and trying to slow Toedad down and keep him talking when she flipped on the cell phone.
Dina actually attacked 4x bigger than she is Toedad, and ‘bit him in the face’, to try to protect Becky.
Amazi-Girl screwed up the rescue attempt, but she was Amazing while she tried to rescue Becky. And she is now God knows where, maybe lying under a tree in a coma, from the injuries she has sustained.
And …….when all is over and done: it is Becky comforting poor little Joyce who is having….omg…..a major life crisis, she is facing the fact that her ‘fundie homelife’s teaching’ sucks, and she doesn’t like it at all.
Gee, that’s really rough.
Yes, I am aware that Joyce was nearly raped and that she has major stress over it (yes I’m female, I feel for her): BUT, right now there are people around her who have been going through a really horrendous experience of their own.
I think Joyce needs to get her self absorbed head out of her ass, and look to helping her best friend Becky and also Dina. Then she can have her nervous breakdown when things calm down.
Issue with that is that Joyce is still hurting and may be incapable of helping others. I’ve been there before, where it all gets too much and even things like your grandmother facing bankruptcy or people dying or any number of things just… Fail to even register, your brain just refusing to function at even a basic level
Plus, Willis admitted that Joyce is a slightly autobiographical character in this universe.
Makes sense that she’d be a bit more of the focus when that’s a thing.
I have to say that I wonder why Walky thinks it was Joyce who got the classes cancelled, rather than Becky, Amazi-Girl, Sal, Dina, or Toedad. I understand that for Joyce this was the culminating incident in a larger issue involving her promise to Becky, her phobia, and her relationship with her religious community and god, and that she appreciates that she marshalled Amazi-Girl and Sal to effect Becky’s rescue and thus has the central role. But Walky doesn’t know about most of that.
Why, from Walky’s point of view, is it Joyce who got the classes cancelled?
I think it might be from Joyce calling Dorothy to contact Amazi-Girl. Dorothy asked the teacher to excuse her, so she could follow-up on why Joyce needed AG. (I think it was a behind-the-scenes panel of Dorothy at the door to her classroom?) The shot was heard shortly after that, I surmise. Walky is pretty good at adding up the co-inkydinks.
Because Joyce is there? And he feels he has to say something and he’s really bad at this.
Also because it works better this way: If he’d made the same joke to Becky, she would have appreciated it, thus not making the character point that he is horrible at this.
It’s worth noting that most of these characters know Joyce. Becky’s only recently showed up in their time, so they’d have a hard time gauging whether behavior was normal for her, especially under her facade of cheeriness. Joyce, on the other hand, is clearly not herself in their eyes.
As for Amazi-girl, people expect superheroes to be fine. Amazi-girl isn’t a superhero, though – she’s a college kid in a jumpsuit. What’s more, neither she nor Sal is there right now.
Also…. “Then she can have her nervous breakdown when things calm down.”? That’s… not really how it works.
Yeah, this. Also most people tend to care more about people they actually know, rather than some random girl who showed up out of nowhere and has been mostly kept hidden away from most people so she wouldn’t get kicked off campus and therefore has had limited interactions with the others.
It’s something I appreciate about her, actually. She’s not just a sad perfect victim; she’s a real character with flaws and a personality and doesn’t just exist as an accessory to Joyce’s story.
So, I can’t claim to have been through Joyce’s upbringing, but I DO know what it’s like to revolve yourself around helping others to avoid your own problems. She hasn’t allowed herself ANY breathing space, and has been pursuing toxic coping methods to avoid confronting her trauma, with varying degrees of failure; the whiteboard incident, the recent psychotic episode where she saw Ryan’s face everywhere, trying to help Sarah, her relationship with Ethan, Becky’s arrival, and now this incident. You might not think what she’s going through is a big deal, but I do, and I think your statement is completely callous.
And it’s funny you should mention Amazi-Girl. Amber has been pursuing equally bad, if not worse, coping methods for her own mental trauma; dressing up as a vigilante, throwing herself into dangerous situations without regard for her own life, pursuing unhealthy relationships, beating the hell out of her own dad in disguise. These are all actions of a person trying to avoid directly confronting the source of their trauma, the same as Joyce. Both of them have revolved their lives around helping others to ignore helping themselves.
Why should Joyce have to put her issues on hold, again? They’ve been on hold so long that they’re gathering dust. They need to be addressed. Becky and Dina have each other; Amazi-Girl/Amber is a completely different can of worms that Joyce has no involvement in. When does Joyce get a chance to heal?
Also, in what strip is Joyce being comforted by Becky? Do you mean the one where Becky kept Joyce from beating toedad to a pulp? Similar to how Danny stopped Amber from beating her own dad to death?
The reason Joyce is the one being comforted is that she is the one signalling distress. Dina has low affect, and generally doesn’t project strong emotions, and Becky is the kind of “always afloat” person who seldom signals distress of any kind. They may both be hurting, but it isn’t quite as evident to the surrounding people.
That is why Joyce is the one getting the attention. Because she is the visible victim.
a) pulled out a gun to threaten her and Becky
b) pointed said gun at her face: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/troopers/
c) fired said gun (into the air), but given her face, I’m pretty sure she thought she was about to die
d) kidnapped her best friend who surrendered herself quietly on her behalf (talk about a recipe for guilt)
e) and then nearly killed said friend getting into a fight with a superhero
f) and then still tried to talk down to her like a little girl and block her reuniting with said friend
g) and also represents yet another ostensibly fellow traveler who has hurt her or those around her.
Joyce may not be the most central to this tragedy (that is definitely Becky), but she’s definitely had a series of traumatic events happen to her as well. And she even got a moment of awesome when she punched him out. She also probably has been through a lot along with Becky seeing as how they were the ones who had to report to the cops about what all had happened and when (which means reliving that and putting up with ignorant cop questions (which are the fucking worst)).
Today somebody commented that their friends were safe in Paris and I, not knowing, joked about how they’d been Takened. And, after learning about Paris, apologized profusely, and trying to defuse the situation, joked that I was really just embarrassed of doing a low-hanging joke like Taken.
Oh, I hear you. I was largely unaware of the events in Paris until pretty late in the evening, and felt like an ass at my cluelessness in conversations earlier.
Based on Dorothy’s expression: Walky, couch; couch, Walky. Get used to eachother; you’re going to be spending the night together a lot for the next few weeks!
In Walky’s defense, he is self-aware enough to realise that he’s messed up and he is making a stumbling effort to identify how, as well as to extract his foot from his mouth! FWIW, though, it doesn’t say much for his social intelligence, does it?
Joyce is still staring off into the middle distance and isn’t fully with the rest of her surroundings… I don’t think Joyce is resting easy tonight and might be seeing not only new trauma tissue being formed, but also the beginning of her complete break from the faith of her raising.
Yes, unfortunately the night is far from over for Joyce. While Becky is giddy with her newfound freedom, Joyce is in the middle of understanding just how much has been lost.
I actually sympathize with Walky on this one. Oh the number of times in a stressful situation I’ve let the absolute worst possible thing slip out or nearly slip out…
Brain Commander: “Who the HELL authorized those verbal abortions?! I want their cytoplasmic ass in here now!”
Brain Technician: “Sorry sir, we tried to get Context and Situational Awareness to review it, but both departments were shut down due to a virulent case of nerves; vocal launch sequences had already been initiated, so we had to go with what we had”
Brain Commander: “What you had, soldier, was fly-buzzed HORSECRAP, and the next time you make that kind of call, I’ll bust you so hard you’ll be lucky to have a job remembering fart smells!
Alright people, we are in full retreat from this social interaction! Prepare to jettison the dignity and engage Hoodie Survival Mode!”
My guess is that Becky had to answer a bunch of questions for the police. How will this effect her living situation? Plus, whatever happened to Amazi-Girl?
Loading ...
“ARGH MY HOODIE IS EATING ME ALIVE BECAUSE I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON”
I know Walky’s pain.
Walky’s the kind that can’t stop talking when he starts to panic eh ?
With rare exception where talking was replaced by action, I think, yes.
yup, he does intermittent talking too much and shutting up. see him interacting with depressed billie
Or he just shuts down entirely. See: the courtship of Dorothy
Walky is the Felicity Smoak of DoA.
WOW HE TOTALLY IS
If he’d just stopped with that first sentence…
Classy Walky.
Yeah, Walky is being quite a Danny here but at least he’s aware of what he’s doing.
My thoughts also.
At least he is aware of the fact that he’s eating his foot.
You could even say he’s…
…walking it back.
He is danning it up quite spectacularly, isn’t he?
Walky, no.
Walky, stahp.
Stahp using words, Walky. Please stahp. 😛
To be honest, I once had a situation where a crazy dude held a knife to my throat. Afterwords, someone made a dumb joke about it and it was the first thing that brought me back to being myself. It was stupid and made me chuckle.
Idk, I just don’t think this is all that much Danning it up as it is what he was trying to do didn’t work.
Campfire time?
Yeah, sometimes you have to laugh about a terrible thing, or it starts to chip away at you internally. Which is why I’m in therapy, because somethings there just aren’t jokes for.
There are always jokes. We just need to go darker.
Crucifixion joke, go!
Oh, I have one. If only I could get out alive afterwards.
Jesus walks into a motel, hands the manager 3 nails & asks “Can you put me up for the night?”
I’ve watched The Crow. Both versions actually, original with Brandon Lee was awesome plus gave me that line, remake-to-link-to-TV-series sucked so much exhaust, I’d happily hand it to Megatron & tell him it said he was a whiny bongo…
yea, but that’s exactly why most people don’t attempt it. trying something that doesn’t work is nerve-wracking and no one wants to be responsible for making things worse
I was in my 20s when my grandfather died. Me, my brother, and our parents were going through his apartment, seeing if anyone wanted his stuff (I got a hat and an umbrella, the umbrella broke last month after ~10 years of my use, I replaced the hat about a year ago after the first fell apart eventually).
I pointed out it felt a bit surreal, like a D&D “loot the corpse” session.
I’m *really* glad we 4 were the only ones there. It was very much “a bit tasteless, but a fair comparison, and it helped us all address how it felt rather…off.”
I’m very much the sort who tends to enter a “spiral of sad” where I start feeling bad about feeling bad, and attempting to crack a joke kinda jostles me out of that spiral, to settle on the appropriate level.
That does *not* go over well with folks who are not the same.
At least someone’s had a good day
WALKY, THIS WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO, YA KNOW, TAKE A VOW OF SILENCE.
Goddammit, Walky.
Turns out the Kenny trick doesn’t work as well outside of South Park. I should know, I tried it a bunch as a kid.
Maybe some bastard will kill him, so he’ll achieve his goal of shutting up.
But then he’d just get reborn from his mom because she took part in some Cthulhu ritual.
This why I carry around my shame shovel.
So I can just keep digging that hole deeper and deeper
Until you reach China.
From the U.S., assuming straight through the core, it would actually be Australia
I’d assume that if you could tunnel through the core there would be no australia.
Australia will outlive us all.
The Drop Bear Uprising will ensure it.
I for one, welcome our now Drop Bear Overlords.
*new
I like it this way better. It sounds like they used to not be drop bears, but now that they are…
Until they land on ya & eat ya. Then it hurts, unless you got armour like mine. SO GLAD I GOT MY ARMOUR< those things can get SCARY…!!
Depends on where in the US. Most of it would just land you in the Indian Ocean…
According to a map tunneling thing I found on google (gods I love the Internet), digging from Bloomington definitely gets you in the middle of the ocean.
curved through the core, then
(dangit ’80s edutainment LIED to me!)
Yeah, you’d have to make it curved as most of the core is liquid, so you’ve got nothing to dig through. Stick to the mantle.
Here is a handy map. North America is antipodal to the Indian Ocean, except for small parts that are antipodal to islands such as Kerguelen, and its in the extreme north that are antipodal to parts of Antarctica. The antipodes of Australia are in the Atlantic.
Thank you. That’s quite helpful.
Apparently to reach China I’d have to dig at an angle.
My pleasure.
That’s a cool map. (Interesting how so little land is opposite other land.) Thisvlvapp is a good compliment to it: lets you find tge exact opposite point to your particular location http://www.labnol.org/internet/find-the-exact-opposite-point-on-planet-earth/5065/
I stand corrected. Apparently ALL of the US would land you in the Indian Ocean. Except for Hawaii which gets you into Africa. And nowhere will land you in Australia. And China is only possible for parts of South America. Apparently nobody had it right…
Indian ocean for a lot of the US…
Straight lines are boring though.
Brachistochrone!
Don’t think we don’t see what you did there.
It took me a few seconds, but then I got it.
Actually, from most of the US, it’d just be ocean. Miles and miles of ocean.
I carry around a samurai sword sow I can just commit Seppukku.
I’d recommend using a Tanto instead. Much easier. Give the Samurai sword (assuming you mean Katana) to your Second, so he can then cut off your head before you have a chance to moan in pain.
I’ve always been fond of the wakizashi. Capable of either task, though less specialized, and non-nobles were allowed to have them.
Depends on circumstances, I say. In civil life, yes, the wakizashi is the appropriate utensil for the job. But on the battlefield strict etiquette requires that one ought really to be wearing ones tachi and tanto rather than one’s katana and wakizashi. So there, naturally, the tanto would be appropriate.
You’re all sword nerds. I like you.
God help him, he’s trying.
He’s terrible, but he’s trying.
So very trying…
+1
Bravo, good sir, bravo.
Excellent!
Indeed…
Trying all the time~ in this institution~
I can’t help but wonder whether that’s been Sarah’s constant expression since she heard what happened.
Walky’s not good at adulting, yet.
Is that anything like adultery? 😛
If it’s even half as fun… 😉 LOL
He’s not even kid-ing well.
I award you ALL the points!
Is anybody? Truly
Oh, Walky. Bless you for trying, but you should probably stop trying.
That’s our Walky!
Walky needs to stop shooting off at the mouth.
Good thing he dodged that bullet by not saying it
Yeah, it might have triggered an unfortunate response.
He’s gunning for mood-lightening lines and failing.
I dunno, he’s kinda barrelling down the path of no return with his responses already…
I think Walky is hesitating too much to accuse him of going full-bore boor …
Well I’d say he’s really shooting from the hip…
More like he’s shooting from the lip, eh? Get it? I’ll just show myself out…
Or shooting from the lip? But I think he had a mis-fire.
He just didn’t gauge the situation well.
An error of enormous caliber!
He should have scoped out the situation before he started talking.
I dunno, I think he’s already barreling into trouble.
Really shot himself in the foot there.
It’ll definitely be a bullet point for a conversation later.
I’d suggest that he was going around half-cocked, but I assume someone would have mentioned such a notable sight after the Dorky slipshine …
He clearly does not handle strong and serious ammo-tions very well.
Well, they can’t all have big enough calibers……sorry, lamest pun ever, i will see myself out and chill with a shot of gin>_<
He should aim to be more thoughtful.
He set his sights high, though?
or was that off the marks, man
He really should bite the bullet and grow up
Eh, there’s worse things than blind-firing jokes.
For example, a fusillade of puns.
Just when I’ve rifled through the worst gun puns, I run into this one. Time to find a bar and get loaded.
Shots fired
Eh, don’t get too tanked.
Oooh Walky, honey. You’re lucky you’re adorkable.
Oh, so that’s what the preview panel was about.
My reaction exactly.
no, it was from tomorrow when walky realizes that his hoodie is sentient and eating him
Like Becky’s hair is actually an alien beast that is eating her head?
WHY AM i THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES THIS?
Too soon Walky Damn!!
I know he’s just trying to lighten up the mood but he’s fucking up so bad it’s worse than trying to get Mike to cheer her up.
“Good thing your dad’s aim sucks.”
Dying of laughter.
Getting Mike to cheer her up is easy:
“Mike, there’s some very expensive liquor in the fridge that I got for my birthday. Make sure no one gets into it, okay?”
I’m convinced Mike is sweet on her, so he’d do the honorable thing like he did at the party and stay the hell away.
Agree. I’ve always thought that Mike treated Joyce a Hell of a lot easier than anyone else at all.
She let him punch someone repeatedly in the face. I think that has earned Mike’s vague attempts at loosely supporting her.
Mike confuses Joyce: first he says something that sounds like he supports her, then he says something that Joyce half realizes/suspects is sarcastic or ironic at the expense of her beliefs.
like with the hotel room after prom.
For a nickel. In the face.
*plays “Ain’t Even Done With The Night” on a radio in the parking lot*
I too have trouble being sincere and serious. So if you’re going through a situation and you want respectful insight and not terrible jokes, don’t come to me, because I’m a jokey fool.
It’s moments like these where I seem to deeply connect with Walky.
And then I want to kick my own throat out.
Speaking from experience, I can’t recommend striking yourself in the throat with your leg. It hurts.
you, my friend, are an octopus
And Dorothy realised that Walky, no matter how good in bed he might be, was not someone she should spend her life with.
Being awkward at support in terribly serious situation is hardly a life-partner disqualifier.
Especially at that age. And at least he realized that what he almost said was the wrong thing.
Agreed.
Seriously, and we all shove our feet down our throats occasionally. Especially in hard situations like this one, it’s difficult to know what to say.
But she wants to be President, and spouses of Presidents get interviewed on the regular.
… honestly I want to see this happen just cause it’d be hilarious.
Ahaha, I can just picture it! XD
Dorothy: You said WHAT about the hurricane and its victims?!
Walky: I just explained, I got wind of what was happening when security stormed in to inform me of current events and- Imsorryimsorryimsosorrypleasedontkillme.
See? It would be GLORIOUS.
… glorious for us anyway. Dorothy? Not so much. ^^;;
Too true. ^.^
Walks would prolly prefer butts disease to foot-in-mouth right now.
stuffin’ his face with foot like a cow
Oh, Walky, I love you.
“I DON’T HANDLE SERIOUS SITUATIONS WELL”
In which Walky is me.
Oh, Walky. You really shot yourself in the foot this time.
At least he’s outside the emergency room. Perhaps somebody there can extract his foot from his mouth.
ah! so that’s why his foot’s in his mouth: to stop the bleeding after he shot it!
Even if he isn’t capable of being tactful at least he’s capable of recognizing when he should be tactful.
Still, he’s lucky he doesn’t do the nervous smile thing. When I’m in serious situations my mouth twists into a ridiculously uncontrollable grin that I have no choice but to hide with my hand.
I do the same thing. =/ It makes it hard to convince people that I am being sincere about serious subjects.
Yeah, it’s really annoying when you’re trying to show genuine support and your mouth insists on making it seem as though this is funny to you.
Oh god yes. One time I told a coworker about the boss’s husband getting killed in a traffic accident earlier that day and he didn’t believe me because my face was doing the wrong thing. 🙁
I’m happy at your happiness as well
Your anger makes me mad
Though you can’t tell
Believe me when I say
I’m with you in my private way
And though you think I’m trying to blow you off
It’s only that my frown is upside down
Walky, you know that hole in your head that noise is coming out of? Best shut it… soon.
“
JayneWalky, your mouth is talking. You might wanna look to that.”“Ya know that hole in yer face? Where you put pie?”
“Yew mean my pie-ho-”
“SHUT IT!”
Ah, saying something wrong and inadvertently offending people. Been there, done that too many times. Interacting with people is hard. I’ve wondered if I should be locked up in a cage by myself where I can’t accidentally do any damage. Maybe Walky could have a cage next to mine. We could subsist on scraps of food that are slipped to us between the bars.
Oh, and it’s dark out now. There does tend to be a lot of waiting around and paperwork at hospitals when the police aren’t involved, and I would imagine that the process would be even longer when the police are involved.
I know that this story-line ends on the 25th (unless my memory is failing me) so we’re nearing the end of this in-comic day. What a day it has been! David Willis hinted that there might be a time skip after this chapter. That makes sense to me. I can see that the characters might need some time to process all that has happened before the story can really move forward.
Time skip or not, I’m sure repercussions from this story-line will carry over into future chapters.
Ah, something is going to drop with Joyce. I don’t know what or how and I feel uneasy about it. It isn’t happy ending yet… O.o
I replied before seeing this. Yes! When is our dramatic Joyce gonna rupture?
Its time for Anti-Joyce
The degree to which Joyce is not her normal self has made me uncomfortable all week. I guess I just didnt get enough focus time on her thought process that ass these atypical joyce behaviors are just weird and I cant connect. Bleh.
They make narrative sense to me. I think she’ll have as much trouble in retrospect as you’re having in the moment.
Did he zip and hoodie himself or did Dorothy do that to him?
Himself. (He’s still pulling on the strings.)
though if you look back closely, dorothy has been pulling the strings all along…
I generally feel a bit bad when I can’t react to other people’s misfortune with more than an awkward “oh, that’s a shame,” but I guess it’s better than a failed joke.
Joyce looks more and more like she needs to just break down, let go and cry. I hope she can do it on someone’s shoulder.
She and Ethan are still friends, and he wasn’t too involved with this clusterfuck. He should still be a safe spot – a rock in the storm. If not him, I don’t know who Joyce could lean on.
Yes, Ethan always gives me the feeling that he would be a really good person to lean on.
I imagine Joyce could lean on Dorothy now that they’ve made up, though Joyce might still feel like she needs to apologise to Dorothy and therefore not be able to lean on her.
Sarah probably would not be much better at this than Walky seems to be (though in a different manner).
I can’t think of anyone else Joyce is close enough to (if I’m forgetting someone major, please forgive my incompetent brain), so Ethan does seem like the best option.
Every time someone other than Danny Dans it up, the real Danny sneezes.
Somewhere, Danny is wondering if he’s allergic to something, or if he’s coming down with a cold.
“There’s a disturbance in the Force.”
It’s not quite related, but I hope anybody reading this in Paris, that you guys are okay.
Yeah. Thinking of you.
I for one am still alive.
The gun puns above kinda hurt, but hey. Not their fault.
I’m so sorry. I would not have made those if I’d known about what happened.
walky what the fuck
He tried to make Joyce feel better with humor. How does that make him a bad person?
Except that there’s such a thing as humour coming “too soon”
Because he knows she doesn’t appreciate his humor. This isn’t something he does for her regularily and just mistimed the joke, he’s never made her feel anything but worse.
I don’t think Walky’s trying to make Joyce feel better but more that he approaches every remotely difficult concept by deflecting it with humour until he gets a negative response. He wasn’t joking for her sake; he was joking because telling jokes is what Walky does.
Walky rocking the Willis pose.
I identify far too much with Walky for my own comfort levels…
We learn by doing, Walky. You will learn the social graces in time, young padawan. Until then, it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, then speak and remove all doubt.
That’s the worst aspect of political correctness, oversensitivity.
There is nothing wrong with gallows humor. While resulting in failure, Walky had the right idea trying to get Joyce to release some of her tension with a joke. He wanted to make her feel better with a joke.
That’s the result of gender studies and other such courses, the loss of humor and logic.
nah bruh telling jokes that don’t hurt people’s feelings is basic courtesy, not “political correctness” or anything like that
White supremacy? You do know that Walky is mulato, right?
you do know that’s an offensive racial slur right
It’s less of a slur and more of a word used in a historically negative light. Kinda like Negro. I wouldn’t say Negro is a slur but it’d probably offend people if you called them that today. Even I didn’t realize it was offensive to some until a few years ago.
Either way, I wouldn’t use the word unironically while I smugly take someone else to task while assuming I have the moral upper hand!
(Especially since they’re actually taking the website’s auto-word replace plugin to task.)
Fair enough.
I have no idea what word is being replaced. There ought to be a list or something.
PC. But you know. The word and not the personal computer.
Given that the term “mulatto” hasn’t been in common usage for at least 30 years, I think you might wanna get with the program already. This isn’t something new and arcane. The current term is “biracial”.
I must say I like Alexandre Dumas Pere’s take on it when some git tried talking down to him because of being colored: “My father was a mulatto, my grandmother black, my great-grandparents apes. Summing up sir, my pedigree starts where yours ends.” Now that’s not exactly promoting politically correct speech but still was rather likely effective in shutting up people trying to play the race card on him.
Point of order: A generally accepted breakdown of mulatto roughly translates it to “little mule.” People of mixed race were called mulatto reflecting their general social status as *mostly enslaved* laborers (gee, let’s compare these people to beasts of labor!) As well as the idea that people of mixed race were somehow genetically inferior and unnatural (mules– the cross between a horse and an ass–cannot reproduce). There are some people like author, Mat Johnson, who are questioning this orgin of the word and are on a mission to reclaim it. According to Johnson, the word may be derived from an Arabic word meaning mixed, with the word for mule coming later. He has a compelling article on it, found here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/matjohnson/kiss-my-mulatto-ass#.bjZWYWW3RQ
It IS a slur. It literally means “Mule”
“1585-95; < Spanish mulato ‘young mule’, equivalent to mul (o) mule1+ -ato of unclear origin " Young Mule of Unclear Origin.
its literally saying "They are lucky enough to have a white parent to water down all that African"
I honestly did not know that. And it wasn’t until later that I realized that I Eat Cheese did not actually write what was in brackets.
There’s an enormous difference between being courteous and forcing people to walk on eggshells. And what the heck is this about white supremacy? Being frank and direct is not exclusive to one race.
o you used the PC word first so I used it as well
but honestly, have you ever had a friend go through any kind of trauma? this is like that 101. Of course I’m not opposed to gallows humor but we’re not talking about theoretical humor or a political scene, we’re talking one-on-one interactions and you simply do not tell jokes like that to someone who’s literally just been through a traumatic experience. it’s plainly insensitive, and our friend walky is learning that here
I should give you a proper reply, now that I realize Willis censored what I said.
You’re right about how it’s courteous to wait for the right time to use humor and mind the mentality of the person you’re addressing. But it’s also courteous to help people in need. Joyce had been mulling stressful thoughts for hours; while failing, Walky attempted to distract her from these with a joke.
What bothers me here is how nearly everyone here demonizes Walky, ignoring that he honestly tried to help, in the best way he knows how.
How did this become about “gallows humor” (which its not), and other people trying to take away peoples right to be hilarious & rude & edgy and comforting–and what does gender studies have to do with Walky being humor-impaired and emo-challenged (tho hes shown he cares and worries about Billie, at least). This started out about Walky doing a Danny, trying to say something funny to help Joyce, but failing big — screwing the pooch, as it were (“slang for doing something very much the wrong way,” Wiktionary).
It’s not like Walky told a rape “joke”, after all.
well yeah obviously it was a genuine mistake and it wasn’t even a big one either, but walky still did the wrong thing. then he recognized it and corrected it before it actually got out-of-hand, which is to say walky shouldn’t be demonized at all, but not to say that his original action wasn’t kind of insensitive (on accident though!).
He can walk on eggshells for a few hours, it literally just happened, you don’t make dead grandma jokes the hour AFTER they wheel the body out.
At a bare minimum you wait for the person with the dead grandma to crack the first joke.
Like, if Joyce had given Walky some indication that she wanted his “gallows humor” as a part of her recovery process but the PeeCee Police just wouldn’t let him crack a joke I’d get the argument, but geeze, that’s a hell of an assumption to make. It’s not weird or unreasonable for Walky to try and exercise just a little bit of tact in the immediate aftermath of a potentially traumatic incident.
Especially considering that they have a pre-existing relationship. Walky knows full well that Joyce doesn’t really appreciate his particular brand of humor on the best of days, let alone today.
^^^ Yes.
People still say its “to soon” for jokes about things that happened decades ago. The thing is, you dont get to decide if what one says is offensive to other people.
This reminds me of how because of the way we brainwash our children into thinking boys are suppose to learn how to, and glorify being violent and killing each other that when people hear someone served in the military they stupidly ask stuff like “Did you send any assholes to their 72 virgins”. Like even if the soldier felt morally justified into killing some really evil people they can still be horribly traumatized by having to literally murder people and view their decayed corpses, ect ect ect.
It may be physically possible to be “overly sensitive” but the case of not making jokes about someone and their friends almost dying and escaping an abusive household will never be one.
In the USA it is. In Spain and most of Latin America it’s used neutrally.
Yeah, but saying “it’s not racist in Spanish” whilst speaking English on an Americna English based web-site is not really much of an excuse.
Indeed not. Nevertheless it is not clear that Leon Real did know that “mulatto” is offensive in America now.
Actually, I grew up in different parts of latin america and the only time I remember hearing “mulato” and “mestizo” with any regularity was in my Latin American History class in fifth grade where it was going to be on an exam.
Although maybe it’s an older generation thing, I dunno. Just sayin, didn’t really hear it outside of the one history class.
P.S. People can have “internalized Racism” (for the most recent example view all the black people calling out Raven Symone for her hypocrisy ) And though Walky may be mixed race D.W. has accurately used his parents as an example of how just because you have loved ones of a certain race doesnt mean you cant be racist about them. People like Walky’s dad grew up in an overdone version of our era, were “beauty” meant pale skin and straight hair, hence why Sal freaked out about getting her hair “fixed” for her parents coming over. Even in african countries black people with “paler” skin are seen as more appealing because the entire world is affected by western media….Which tells us that to “look good” you want pale skin, straight hair, and being thin or athletic.
Incidently ALSO why White Supremecy is a great general term. In white supremecist society value “traditional” values(the majority of the propoganda I see from decades ago AND now is the idea that other cultures and races and religions are going to “ruin” our culture) like sexist Ideals(women exist to make babies and raise children freeing men from being human and just violent workers who impregnate them) WHICH in tern makes them volatile to anything that breaks those stereotypes such as effimenent men, working women, men and women with the “wrong” gonads , and girls who dont find a D to impreg them or boys who get D’ed instead of D’ing someone else. Its-all-a-part-of-the-same-culture
P.P.S. I did a bad job of calling out our society for our racism on how people are “suppose to look and act” when i meant to say “our society is horrible this way and middle aged and older people grew up in an era where this happened and it was STRONGER and More crazy”
I think you’re both right. There certainly is a time and place for everything and Humor is certainly not always appropriate. Knowing your audience is especially important for such a situation. That being said, “hurting people’s feelings” is a very subjective thing. You can tell “black guy” jokes to me all day and as long as I know you’re joking it won’t really bother me. But it MAY be very bothersome to someone else. In a similar fashion, my tendancy to curse and shit talk when I play video games may be fine with some people and may be a turn-off for others. It’s all about making adjustments and sometimes you just have to weigh your relationships vs. your personality. If you care more about one over the other then you should distance yourself from the other. Sacrifice your humor to make others comfortable or sacrifice your social for your own comfort It’s a balancing act to be sure.
Gallows humour is fine when it’s you on the gallows. Not so brave and stoic when the other guy is.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. The mentality of forbidding someone from empathizing just because they’ve never experienced what the victim did.
Walky, as far as we know, has never faced an insane man with a gun; but he still knows it’s a terrifying situation. He knows that Joyce is feeling awful and attempted to help her as best he could.
By saying something terrible a mere few hours after she experienced it, after having a history of opening his mouth and saying rude, insensitive comments to her, yeah he’s totally empathizing.
How was his behavior terrible? He didn’t mention being her held at gunpoint or Becky being kidnapped. He didn’t mock the fear and betrayal she felt. Mentioning that some classes were cancelled in practically unrelated to what Joyce went through.
You truly don’t know what you’re talking about.
yeah for realz it wasn’t really bad
I believe that all situations can be made better with humor rather than just leaving the victim to suffer. Then again I’m terrible with regular sympathy preferring to tell jokes to calm down the victim.
You know, this is a cheap as fuck cop out and a refusal to accept responsibility. One of my acquaintances who I despised recently killed himself. This didn’t affect me, but it did hurt my friends. I, personally, have some suicidal urges at times, and black humor about suicide is one of my mechanisms for coping. Two of my friends deal well with gallows humor, so suicide jokes (currently in the form of Radical Freedom, because dammit Sartre) continued to be a thing I did with all of us, until I noticed it was hurting one of my friends (the one most affected by the suicide). Gallows humor helped some of us (with different things, granted), and hurt others. I’m not mad at walky here, but I’m not going to pretend he isn’t danning it up. Especially since it’s Joyce – He KNOWS gallows humor isn’t how she does things. If it were Sara, I wouldn’t even consider it danning it up, since it’s a pretty valid guess (Maybe wrong, but valid).
Also, the problem isn’t that he’s empathizing, the problem is he picked a way to try to help her deal that he has every reason to believe won’t work, and it didn’t work. Different people do respond to things in different ways, so minding your audience is EXTREMELY important when you’re doing something you know could be harmful.
my favorite part here is that you aren’t talking about empathy at all, because you don’t care what anyone thinks of your jokes, you just want to keep making them, regardless of whether anyone else wants to hear them, regardless of whether they hurt anyone, because their feelings and their situation do not matter to you. it’s all about you, and you want to keep making jokes, and if someone doesn’t laugh and find you very funny and pat you on the head for being such a funny little thing, they are the problem.
protip: complaining that people don’t react the way you want them to is not empathy.
Oh, believe me, it’s a lot funnier when it’s someone else on the gallows.
Nah, you’re wrong.
…Gallows humor relies on time and place, and on the target. There have always been people disturbed by it, and there always will be. For some absurd reason, I thought you were being uncharacteristically self-aware for your whining, not that there was an auto-replace forcing it on you.
But the problem isn’t ‘omg gender studies ruined humor’. Also, it’s kind of funny to say this about a webcomic that is generally pretty funny!
Isn’t the point of gallows humor that the people going to the gallows are making it?
If it’s from outside, then its just the jeering of the crowd at their expense.
Which is to say, dark humor mined from tragedy is a key part of healing and commiseration (get 2 trans people together and its a matter of time until you get to the dark jokes about bigotry), but that needs to come from the people affected and can’t be inserted from the side.
And that doesn’t make that a white-supremacist dog-whistle for being nice (nice autocorrect, Willis) conspiracy against free speech or whatever. It just makes it something that will get you a few well-deserved nasty stares from people who’ve actually gone through shit.
Just so.
You really think favoring basic human decency over dirty jokes is a bad trade? Consider this: If I kicked you in the balls in front of a group of your peers, many of them would laugh at the way fell to the ground whimpering in pain.
No, that wasn’t a metaphor. I just really feel like kicking you in the balls right now.
So you’re saying that freedom of speech is indecent.
Attempting to help someone in distress is the decent thing to do, and that’s what Walky attempted to do. He failed, but his intent was to distract Joyce from thoughts that had been stressing her for hours.
And just what was dirty about the joke that Walky made?
Freedom of Speech just means the Government can’t silence you, we however can say “Shut up, you’re being an asshole” without damaging your freedom of speech
It’s only not freedom of speech if you’ve confused that concept with Freedom from Criticism (as a result of your speech), or Freedom from Consequences (as a result of your speech)
Only Amazigirl should have freedom from criticism. Oh, except for Sarah who can do no wrong because she sent Da out as the cutest spy in the history of
What the heck?
I find “oversensitivity” to be a buzzword for “Your feelings are inconvenient to what I want. Please stop having them.”
I think if you’ve been lucky enough to have a certain type of life (with a lot of privileges), then you may very well have grown up believing that no one was objecting to certain words, plotlines, or jokes before the modern day. Because you were not hearing from people who were affected or they were essentially silenced from any type of conversation you might stumble on.
As those groups have gained visibility, voices, or rights (especially in the age of the internet), it’s no longer an automatic thing that one can go on thinking people don’t exist or be unaware of how certain people are affected by certain things. And worse, it might mean realizing that you know less about a subject you were presumed to be the most knowledgeable about simply because of said privilege (minority groups learn two cultures growing up, their own and the dominant; dominant groups only have to and often would only get easy access to information about their own).
And so this loss of feeling of automatic superiority and the loss of ignorance about things that affect others feel like losses of actual power, simply because they are used to a world where they could ignore it.
Which is why the word oversensitivity is a buzzword for “your feelings are inconvenient, stop it”. Because that used to be a “normal” request and they are scared that what they are used to isn’t “normal” anymore and may get you nasty stares.
And yeah, it still makes it super douchey, because life is change and growth and that doesn’t change simply because you are used to society telling you you would never have to change or grow because of who you were.
That is a great explanation. I think I’m gonna save if for if I ever need to explain this to someone. I could never be as eloquent. ><
When feelings are highly favored over reason and logic, yes feelings are a great inconvenience.
Take, for example, how Adria Richards got two individuals fired over a joke she over heard and disliked. Or how about what happened at Yale recently? Where that one student screamed at how the school staff was obligated to make her feel as comfortable as she did at her home?
Funny thing, of course, is you’re the one arguing against reason and logic and for not hurting your poor feelings by making you accountable for your bad behaviour.
What do either of those have to do with Walky being a pooch screwer?
I think I missed that strip. Was it a slipshine?
Alternate response: That’s not a nice thing to say about Dorothy.
We’re not talking about a situation in which someone is getting fired because someone overheard a joke they didn’t like. We’re talking about someone who has just been through a traumatic event not stopping to show ample appreciation for an unfunny, tactless joke.
It’s “gallows humor” when the person with the rope around their neck makes a joke. It’s just being an asshat when the person watching the execution shouts “Play Freebird!”
(Sark warning)
Benwhoski: You’re right! Joyce is the insensitive one here for going all PC on Walky and making him feel bad, instead of appreciating his attempt to ease her trauma with a joke which made it all about him getting the afternoon off. (DAMN Gender Studies! CHICK’S didn’t give Bros so much but hurt before them Femina profs told em to do it.) But don’t you think that Walky should man-up and tell Joyce — everyone together — “Jeez, lighten up! It’s only a joke!”
What happened at Yale recently:
Ire is misdirected towards a professor rather than the students. The ire is totally justified, but it’s on the shitty students. ‘logic and reason’ don’t have anything to do with it, since it’s not like the students were giving shitty opinions (I find the odds are about 60/40 in favor of shittiness when ‘logic and reason’ are invoked as animist spirits), they just wore shitty costumes.
What happened with Adria Richards: She said a joke was gross. Because the joke was made by actual company representatives at a conference, and because large companies are generally not interested in having shitty representatives, they got fired (by their seperate companies), and rehired by people who really dislike the idea that teh pcz are taking over the tech industry. Richards, incidentally, didn’t ask for firing; IIRC she just wanted censure, which is a completely valid request when people fuck up.
FREEZE PEACH morons really don’t like there being consequences to what they say, at all. Like, yeah, in theory one can chill freedom of speech, but in practice, y’all caterwaul over the smallest fucking things. Like now.
Oh wait, no, you aren’t talking about the /professor/.
Yeah, talking about any individual student is a wash – college is full of yoofs, and some of them are indeed as dumb as you. ‘Logic and Reason’ still ain’t got shit to do here. We’re talking about people wearing shitty costumes, not even airing shitty opinions. But the general sentiment doesn’t seem to be “You need to make us feel like we’re in our homes”, but rather, “at home” – as in, that the university is a home to them, just as it is for countless others. Funny how you ‘logic’ types can’t work out language.
^
Comedy is inherently about feelings more than reason and logic.
Literally the goal of comedy is to instill certain feelings in its audience. It’s downright bizarre to argue that feelings shoudln’t be highly favored over reason and logic where comedy is concerned.
“Joyce, Joyce, I know that seemed like a bad joke, since it didn’t make you laugh, but have you considered logic? Listen while I explain in depth the objective values of gallows humor and then maybe you’ll see that your subjective response to my joke was incorrect.”
Leon? Is that you?
I like how even Dorothy is clearly thinking, “I can’t deal with this shit Walky, just stop.”
Dorothy takes a deep breath, reminding herself that she has come to terms with the fact that she is in love with an idiot. Really she has. Yes. Definitely. Absolutely. Signed up for this. Must not dump his caramel ass.
I’m thinking Dorothy is torn between feeling annoyed and being amused.
I think tomorrow’s Slipshine gives us a reminder of why exactly she doesn’t dump that caramel ass.
Foot, meet mouth. Repeatedly.
I have grown to like Joyce’s courage over the past year (yes YEAR) as she has faced challenges and tried to accept them.
However, I can not understand why all the concern at this point is on Joyce.
She made a major breakthrough in courage when she rode with Sal on the bike to help her friend (and fulfilled a long time dream of doing just that with her idol Sal).
Joyce helped Sal counterbalance the load when they caught AG, which is good.
Joyce then proceeded to sucker punch Toedad with a beautiful roundhouse right.
And that’s pretty much all she did.
Meantime, Becky has fled across campus from her father, with Dina, she has been kidnapped at gun point, survived a car accident caused by her idiot abusive father taking time out to slap her when he should be driving.
And during all that, she was keeping her head and trying to slow Toedad down and keep him talking when she flipped on the cell phone.
Dina actually attacked 4x bigger than she is Toedad, and ‘bit him in the face’, to try to protect Becky.
Amazi-Girl screwed up the rescue attempt, but she was Amazing while she tried to rescue Becky. And she is now God knows where, maybe lying under a tree in a coma, from the injuries she has sustained.
And …….when all is over and done: it is Becky comforting poor little Joyce who is having….omg…..a major life crisis, she is facing the fact that her ‘fundie homelife’s teaching’ sucks, and she doesn’t like it at all.
Gee, that’s really rough.
Yes, I am aware that Joyce was nearly raped and that she has major stress over it (yes I’m female, I feel for her): BUT, right now there are people around her who have been going through a really horrendous experience of their own.
I think Joyce needs to get her self absorbed head out of her ass, and look to helping her best friend Becky and also Dina. Then she can have her nervous breakdown when things calm down.
Issue with that is that Joyce is still hurting and may be incapable of helping others. I’ve been there before, where it all gets too much and even things like your grandmother facing bankruptcy or people dying or any number of things just… Fail to even register, your brain just refusing to function at even a basic level
Plus, Willis admitted that Joyce is a slightly autobiographical character in this universe.
Makes sense that she’d be a bit more of the focus when that’s a thing.
I have to say that I wonder why Walky thinks it was Joyce who got the classes cancelled, rather than Becky, Amazi-Girl, Sal, Dina, or Toedad. I understand that for Joyce this was the culminating incident in a larger issue involving her promise to Becky, her phobia, and her relationship with her religious community and god, and that she appreciates that she marshalled Amazi-Girl and Sal to effect Becky’s rescue and thus has the central role. But Walky doesn’t know about most of that.
Why, from Walky’s point of view, is it Joyce who got the classes cancelled?
Maybe because he heard that Joyce hurt her hand punching the gunman, he thinks she somehow is responsible for cancelling classes.
She’s also the person responsible for Becky being there.
I think it might be from Joyce calling Dorothy to contact Amazi-Girl. Dorothy asked the teacher to excuse her, so she could follow-up on why Joyce needed AG. (I think it was a behind-the-scenes panel of Dorothy at the door to her classroom?) The shot was heard shortly after that, I surmise. Walky is pretty good at adding up the co-inkydinks.
Because Joyce is there? And he feels he has to say something and he’s really bad at this.
Also because it works better this way: If he’d made the same joke to Becky, she would have appreciated it, thus not making the character point that he is horrible at this.
It’s worth noting that most of these characters know Joyce. Becky’s only recently showed up in their time, so they’d have a hard time gauging whether behavior was normal for her, especially under her facade of cheeriness. Joyce, on the other hand, is clearly not herself in their eyes.
As for Amazi-girl, people expect superheroes to be fine. Amazi-girl isn’t a superhero, though – she’s a college kid in a jumpsuit. What’s more, neither she nor Sal is there right now.
Also…. “Then she can have her nervous breakdown when things calm down.”? That’s… not really how it works.
Yeah, this. Also most people tend to care more about people they actually know, rather than some random girl who showed up out of nowhere and has been mostly kept hidden away from most people so she wouldn’t get kicked off campus and therefore has had limited interactions with the others.
And let’s keep in mind that many of those limited interactions were passive aggressive attacks on Dorothy and Ethan.
Yeah, Becky’s a bit of a butthole.
It’s something I appreciate about her, actually. She’s not just a sad perfect victim; she’s a real character with flaws and a personality and doesn’t just exist as an accessory to Joyce’s story.
So, I can’t claim to have been through Joyce’s upbringing, but I DO know what it’s like to revolve yourself around helping others to avoid your own problems. She hasn’t allowed herself ANY breathing space, and has been pursuing toxic coping methods to avoid confronting her trauma, with varying degrees of failure; the whiteboard incident, the recent psychotic episode where she saw Ryan’s face everywhere, trying to help Sarah, her relationship with Ethan, Becky’s arrival, and now this incident. You might not think what she’s going through is a big deal, but I do, and I think your statement is completely callous.
And it’s funny you should mention Amazi-Girl. Amber has been pursuing equally bad, if not worse, coping methods for her own mental trauma; dressing up as a vigilante, throwing herself into dangerous situations without regard for her own life, pursuing unhealthy relationships, beating the hell out of her own dad in disguise. These are all actions of a person trying to avoid directly confronting the source of their trauma, the same as Joyce. Both of them have revolved their lives around helping others to ignore helping themselves.
Why should Joyce have to put her issues on hold, again? They’ve been on hold so long that they’re gathering dust. They need to be addressed. Becky and Dina have each other; Amazi-Girl/Amber is a completely different can of worms that Joyce has no involvement in. When does Joyce get a chance to heal?
Also, in what strip is Joyce being comforted by Becky? Do you mean the one where Becky kept Joyce from beating toedad to a pulp? Similar to how Danny stopped Amber from beating her own dad to death?
The reason Joyce is the one being comforted is that she is the one signalling distress. Dina has low affect, and generally doesn’t project strong emotions, and Becky is the kind of “always afloat” person who seldom signals distress of any kind. They may both be hurting, but it isn’t quite as evident to the surrounding people.
That is why Joyce is the one getting the attention. Because she is the visible victim.
Um… it’s worth noting that Toedad:
a) pulled out a gun to threaten her and Becky
b) pointed said gun at her face:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/troopers/
c) fired said gun (into the air), but given her face, I’m pretty sure she thought she was about to die
d) kidnapped her best friend who surrendered herself quietly on her behalf (talk about a recipe for guilt)
e) and then nearly killed said friend getting into a fight with a superhero
f) and then still tried to talk down to her like a little girl and block her reuniting with said friend
g) and also represents yet another ostensibly fellow traveler who has hurt her or those around her.
Joyce may not be the most central to this tragedy (that is definitely Becky), but she’s definitely had a series of traumatic events happen to her as well. And she even got a moment of awesome when she punched him out. She also probably has been through a lot along with Becky seeing as how they were the ones who had to report to the cops about what all had happened and when (which means reliving that and putting up with ignorant cop questions (which are the fucking worst)).
Also, I figure that Becky’s talking to the police right now. The gang can’t comfort her right now.
Today somebody commented that their friends were safe in Paris and I, not knowing, joked about how they’d been Takened. And, after learning about Paris, apologized profusely, and trying to defuse the situation, joked that I was really just embarrassed of doing a low-hanging joke like Taken.
So I feel you, Walky. I feel you a lot.
Oh, I hear you. I was largely unaware of the events in Paris until pretty late in the evening, and felt like an ass at my cluelessness in conversations earlier.
Also, wow. This comic (written and uploaded months in advance) is *not having a great run* in terms of unfortunate real-world correspondence.
Yeup.
I blame the world. It has provided enough unfortunate occurrences to result in a surfeit of unwitting correspondence.
DoA is beautiful. It’s the world that’s ugly.
Based on Dorothy’s expression: Walky, couch; couch, Walky. Get used to eachother; you’re going to be spending the night together a lot for the next few weeks!
In Walky’s defense, he is self-aware enough to realise that he’s messed up and he is making a stumbling effort to identify how, as well as to extract his foot from his mouth! FWIW, though, it doesn’t say much for his social intelligence, does it?
Dorothy is quite familiar with his social intelligence. His way of saying he liked her was to throw a toy at her if you recall.
Bless your heart, Walky, you are trying.
Poor Joyce. I’m really glad Dorothy and Sarah is there for her. This is NOT the time for her to be alone or to be without her Big Sis.
Okay, Joyce, repeat after me: “Shut the fuck up, Walky.”
Walky, you’re not helping. 😛
Hoodies may rule.
Internets may be earned.
Weird. I seem to be having two different viewing experiences of the site through PC and Mac.
Wait, something on my end. Nevermind.
Walky’s gonna have a bad time.
Joyce is still staring off into the middle distance and isn’t fully with the rest of her surroundings… I don’t think Joyce is resting easy tonight and might be seeing not only new trauma tissue being formed, but also the beginning of her complete break from the faith of her raising.
Yes, unfortunately the night is far from over for Joyce. While Becky is giddy with her newfound freedom, Joyce is in the middle of understanding just how much has been lost.
Not that she wouldn’t do it all again, if given the choice. She chose right and she knows it, but it still hurts.
Man he’s a real pistol AH FUCK
I actually sympathize with Walky on this one. Oh the number of times in a stressful situation I’ve let the absolute worst possible thing slip out or nearly slip out…
Right? It’s always like the first thing that pops to mind.
Walky is giving Joyce extra propulsion for catching up to Sal.
Why tho
Shut up already, Walky
Brain Commander: “Who the HELL authorized those verbal abortions?! I want their cytoplasmic ass in here now!”
Brain Technician: “Sorry sir, we tried to get Context and Situational Awareness to review it, but both departments were shut down due to a virulent case of nerves; vocal launch sequences had already been initiated, so we had to go with what we had”
Brain Commander: “What you had, soldier, was fly-buzzed HORSECRAP, and the next time you make that kind of call, I’ll bust you so hard you’ll be lucky to have a job remembering fart smells!
Alright people, we are in full retreat from this social interaction! Prepare to jettison the dignity and engage Hoodie Survival Mode!”
You get an Internet.
Saved, for Great Justice.
Well, he might need a boot to the head.
Walky, stop being such a banjo.
Can this be the filter for “bastard” now?
Not for any particular moral reason but more because it’d be funny.
My guess is that Becky had to answer a bunch of questions for the police. How will this effect her living situation? Plus, whatever happened to Amazi-Girl?
I say stuff like that, sometimes.
Then I have a moment of of panic and say “Oh, sorry…”
And then the other person always looks at me and says “Why would I be upset about that? I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”