I mean, at least she’s claiming it’s midterm concern?
Still creepy as hell but she’s either honestly concerned or feeling shame because she knows it’s creepy. Given the Faz comparisons, my standards are in fact that low.
You know, I did not at any point miss Faz, but somehow this manages to be more funny than creepy. (Probably because it’s not explicitly a sex thing the way so much of Faz’s stuff was. That, or I really miss Shortpacked. We could’ve had a comic mocking that one person who didn’t think Arcee/Aileron was foreshadowed!)
If I had a graph on how much I missed Faz it would be 5. Out of another, larger number. The 2nd number is unimportant because it’s at least 5 out of that number.
Lucy, if you’re gonna be the kind of weirdo who makes a list like this, you have to accept outside input. Obviously outside data is pertinent to this situation.
As it happens, I did that just now, right before writing up a dream journal entry. That entry is a bit too long, and it’s possible it would present nightmares to some people. As such, just the final paragraph:
I couldn’t, at that moment, imagine what a grub would actually feel like, or how grabbing it would affect what it was doing, and how that would translate into sensations I’d feel from my foot. So I didn’t actually feel anything as I attempted to do that. Clearly, this was a dream, and it was really *not* a good one, so I woke up.
Ok, I’ll admit, that didn’t really *feel* like a safe distance, but I woke up uninjured, so it pretty much had to be, by definition.
Recent dreams of mine include the one where North Korea* invaded, I thought my children and husband were dead, was officially labelled a useless woman because nobody wanted to marry the pregnant, sobbing chick and of course women can’t have value outside of appearance and wifeliness, found out from a RL work friend I could under their laws choose to identify as male with no real impact on anything other than increased hirability, she then gave me a job and place to live and revealed she had managed to rescue my kids and officially rename and adopted them so they weren’t officially linked to my Enemy Rebel Husband… Then I discovered my husband was still actually alive. He snuck into the officially conquered zone, got a new black market identity, we re-adopted our kids, and basically were officially a gay couple.
*In my dream they were labelled North Korea anyway. Pretty certain in reality the totalitarian invading regime was quite different to North Korea. But yeah, massively misogynistic but totally OK with trans* and gay rights. No criticising the totalitarian regime. No keeping secrets from the State. Not dobbing in other people you suspect of keeping secrets counts as keeping secrets. No harbouring Enemy Rebels. You must keep the peace – you must be quiet, polite and not make scenes…
It was a pretty long, involved dream. I don’t know if it counts as a nightmare because it did turn out kinda OK in the end?
I generally rate dreams as nightmare or not based on peak fear level. On that scale, I rarely have nightmares anymore. It feels like that’s mostly a side effect of having kept a dream journal, or at least attempted to, for the past 40 years, and reviewing it irregularly. I think my last nightmare was nearly three years ago now. If that’s accurate, it’s the first time I’ve gone over two years without one this lifetime.
Therapy may have also been helpful, but I generally don’t talk about dream trauma in those. I did when I was much younger, but it didn’t go well – the psychologist didn’t seem to understand that I can tell the difference between nightmares and reality, at least while awake though also sometimes while asleep, but that just doesn’t make dream trauma go poof. Even that’s one of those things that I know better on, though – not only was he not a good psychologist, he was later found to be conspiring with his psychiatrist partner to get fat kickbacks from pharma for diagnosing a lot of people as psychotic. But it’s hard to take that understanding and convert it into a willingness to go on that roller coaster again.
I once woke my friend up by playing the trombone directly on top of him. I immediately realized it was a dick move, but I can’t say I regret doing it either.
One evening when I was a teen, my parents instructed me to get them up very early the next morning, “no matter what it takes”.
Boombox with Judas Priest’s “Turbo Lover” at max volume did the trick, but they were _not_ happy. I felt unjustly treated. I had tried other methods first, they asked for it.
One National Guard ‘summer camp’, we woke up an extremely hungover young soldier by lifting his bunk about three feet in the air and then dropping it back to the concrete. I swear, his eyeballs vibrated. And then, of course, he rolfed.
Seeing Billie’s “DRAGONS” cheerleader outfit in the background — did we ever figure out (or did Willis ever say) at just which school she was supposed to have been a cheerleader? Since we know the school’s colors and the team nickname, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
I mean, it probably is fictional but the reality is that Indiana has a nasty habit of shortchanging school systems, forcing many to consolidate. It could have been a real school when Willis started this strip but no longer exists as it has been swallowed by a larger school.
Walky and Sal from Evansville, so presumably Billie is as well. None of the Evansville high schools have the Golden Dragons as their mascot, and the only one with blue and gold is an extremely private preparatory school (though their mascot is the Eagles). I can see a rich Englishman sending his daughter to prep school, but ultimately I do think that the Golden Dragons are a fictitious high school team.
Unfortunately, any activity for which you are required to create a “Reasons this is not creepy” checklist is most definitely creepy. If it were not creepy, you would not feel compelled to make a list.
[] 1. This is an online forum, where people expect responses.
[] 2. The topic is checklists, so people have to expect checklists.
[] 3. There should be a third option.
[] 4. I’m having some trouble here.
[] 6. The very existence of the list shows I’m doing my best to not be creepy.
You wake her up without hovering by standing in the doorway and yelling that she’s going to be late for midterms. Waking her up without pissing her off is a lost cause but being direct sidesteps the creepy factor.
Speaking of comic birthdays, this year is gonna be DoA’s 10th. If this comic goes on for four more years, then when I’m 30 it’ll have been running for half my life almost. Wild.
And yet Lucy managed to both be creepy and not wake Billie.
When I lived on campus, when people wanted to wake me they “played” a vuvuzela outside my window. But that wasn’t for mid-terms, it was so that I “could” go and watch their cretinous boyfriends play idiotic games of intra-mural Rugby at sparrow-fart in winter.
It’s not super early, since Danny and Amber are walking to class. If it’s early enough for people to be out and about, it’s early enough for people to have noticed any bodies that may be lying about.
Either everyone is fine, or things have been hidden away.
Walky wasn’t in his bed, so he couldn’t notice Mike was missing. and they usually don’t track down frinds first if something happened to someone. The only ones who’d probably know at this point are the parents and school officials (it was school ground, wasn’t it?)
He’s probably fine. Amber woke up in bed with no noticeable injuries even to her. That means Amazi-Girl left the situation feeling well enough to actually go to bed and not stay with Mike or tell the cops/paramedics what happened.
That doesn’t rule out the possibility she beat the shit out of them and HAD to flee when the cops showed up. She could have even stuck around from a stealthy vantage point to make sure they were arrested and Mike was taken care of.
Alternatively – she knew it was too late to do anything for him and left then.
Okay, that tears it, next time we have one of these “maybe someone died” cliffhangers that goes on and on, I’m going to start making comments describing the state of the Schrodinger Corpse.
……not as an act of protest or anything, mind you, the slow burn on it really works well outside of the strip-a-day format and does a good job emphasizing that individual tragedies don’t stop life from going on for everyone else around.
I think that Billie needs to come to terms with the fact that she’s going to spend her college career mostly around people who are struggling to do ‘neurotypical’.
I think that she is. Even more interestingly, this makes Joyce possibly Starlight Glimmer (weak to non-existent understanding of boundaries combined with a ‘the ends justify all possible means’ mindset), which might mean that Joe is in for some interesting times today.
Dorothy is Applejack of course – Honest soul who only ever lies to herself.
Rarity’s niceness isn’t hidden, the ego and vanity are second to her friendly and giving spirit.
Honestly Billie is probably closer to Starlight Glimmer: lots of potential, totally screwed up her life, hates herself and needs to rely on her friends to claw out of the hole she dug.
So this list of reasons why my actions aren’t creepy, totally is admission that at first glance, your actions are creepy. You wouldn’t need the list otherwise. Having said that, Billie should actually be thankful, having lived through Joyce’s literal hovering on numerous occasions. Also midterms.
Hold up. The Slipshine image has changed to Abmer, but there hasn’t been a new porn on that site in a brief while. I wonder if it’s significant to the plot in some way?
Either that or she took her eyeballs out before going to bed. Although if somebody has two glass eyes I’m not sure that glasses/contacts would do much good.
At least Lucy cared enough to try to figure out how to wake her up. I had not one but TWO roommates who, on the first day or almost first day of classes, turned off my alarm when I was only half-awake because it apparently didn’t occur to them that I’d just fall back asleep, and then they left, and then I missed class. I had to explain to them why that was a terrible idea in both cases so that they wouldn’t do it again
I was about to ask whether this counted the old slice-of-life strips, but I know I was reading them before then. When would the fifteenth anniversary have been if those did count?
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74 Great Reasons Why This Is Not Creepy! You Won’t Believe #6!
#7 clearly demonstrates that I’m not being anal-retentive, either!
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t believe any of them.
Lists are so passe, the great Faz has several charts explaining why.
Yeah, that list is only 6 reasons long. You need at least 10 to be taken seriously.
11 if you like to go one step beyond.
There’s no way in hell this is a coincidence.
That too, is somewhat creepy….
Thought the exact same thing.
Yeah…my reaction was ‘sneaky Willis…we still see the meme even if you flip it.’
The man Rick-Rolled his own wedding; everything should always be suspect with him! 😀
We Rick-rolled ours too.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw that.
Heheheheh, YES xD
Yup! Recognized it immediately.
I don’t know how I missed that when I first read this strip.
wait whaaaat
You magnificent bastard, I almost spit coffee on my keyboard. 😀
I missed it. 🙁
Oh, Lucy. No.
Feeling Sarah’s pain yet, Billie? 😛
I mean, at least she’s claiming it’s midterm concern?
Still creepy as hell but she’s either honestly concerned or feeling shame because she knows it’s creepy. Given the Faz comparisons, my standards are in fact that low.
I guess it’s possible she’s kidding but this is a very Joyce move.
I’m confused. Faz isn’t tagged.
Mystery solved!
Faz does graphs. Lucy does checklists.
One day they will wind up working for the same company, and their powerpoint presentations will be top notch.
I really hope Faz and Lucy don’t end up meeting at some point in the future. The combination of his charts and her checklists would be too powerful.
instant makeout
Ew!
Yyyeah, sorry, BarerMender, not according to this chart that Faz has.
This actually reminds me more of Dorothy, during the whole try-to-be-the-RA thing.
You know, I did not at any point miss Faz, but somehow this manages to be more funny than creepy. (Probably because it’s not explicitly a sex thing the way so much of Faz’s stuff was. That, or I really miss Shortpacked. We could’ve had a comic mocking that one person who didn’t think Arcee/Aileron was foreshadowed!)
If I had a graph on how much I missed Faz it would be 5. Out of another, larger number. The 2nd number is unimportant because it’s at least 5 out of that number.
Lucy, if you’re gonna be the kind of weirdo who makes a list like this, you have to accept outside input. Obviously outside data is pertinent to this situation.
She’s creepy and she’s kooky
Mysterious and spooky
She’s all together ooky
The Forest Hall’s Lucy
*snap snap*
*snap snap*
Those first two panels–how memesque!
*plays “Cat Scratch Fever” on the hacked Muzak*
Lucy totally dorothied it up
Forest Quad: The Re-Joyceing
Buy a nerf gun, fire it at Billie until she wakes up from a safe distance.
There, not creepy, and no one misses midterms.
How do you wake up from a safe distance?
With fearless aplomb and determination.
Very carefully.
As it happens, I did that just now, right before writing up a dream journal entry. That entry is a bit too long, and it’s possible it would present nightmares to some people. As such, just the final paragraph:
I couldn’t, at that moment, imagine what a grub would actually feel like, or how grabbing it would affect what it was doing, and how that would translate into sensations I’d feel from my foot. So I didn’t actually feel anything as I attempted to do that. Clearly, this was a dream, and it was really *not* a good one, so I woke up.
Ok, I’ll admit, that didn’t really *feel* like a safe distance, but I woke up uninjured, so it pretty much had to be, by definition.
Recent dreams of mine include the one where North Korea* invaded, I thought my children and husband were dead, was officially labelled a useless woman because nobody wanted to marry the pregnant, sobbing chick and of course women can’t have value outside of appearance and wifeliness, found out from a RL work friend I could under their laws choose to identify as male with no real impact on anything other than increased hirability, she then gave me a job and place to live and revealed she had managed to rescue my kids and officially rename and adopted them so they weren’t officially linked to my Enemy Rebel Husband… Then I discovered my husband was still actually alive. He snuck into the officially conquered zone, got a new black market identity, we re-adopted our kids, and basically were officially a gay couple.
*In my dream they were labelled North Korea anyway. Pretty certain in reality the totalitarian invading regime was quite different to North Korea. But yeah, massively misogynistic but totally OK with trans* and gay rights. No criticising the totalitarian regime. No keeping secrets from the State. Not dobbing in other people you suspect of keeping secrets counts as keeping secrets. No harbouring Enemy Rebels. You must keep the peace – you must be quiet, polite and not make scenes…
It was a pretty long, involved dream. I don’t know if it counts as a nightmare because it did turn out kinda OK in the end?
I generally rate dreams as nightmare or not based on peak fear level. On that scale, I rarely have nightmares anymore. It feels like that’s mostly a side effect of having kept a dream journal, or at least attempted to, for the past 40 years, and reviewing it irregularly. I think my last nightmare was nearly three years ago now. If that’s accurate, it’s the first time I’ve gone over two years without one this lifetime.
Therapy may have also been helpful, but I generally don’t talk about dream trauma in those. I did when I was much younger, but it didn’t go well – the psychologist didn’t seem to understand that I can tell the difference between nightmares and reality, at least while awake though also sometimes while asleep, but that just doesn’t make dream trauma go poof. Even that’s one of those things that I know better on, though – not only was he not a good psychologist, he was later found to be conspiring with his psychiatrist partner to get fat kickbacks from pharma for diagnosing a lot of people as psychotic. But it’s hard to take that understanding and convert it into a willingness to go on that roller coaster again.
Kind of with Billie on this one.
We saw that last page. Lucy had An Expression.
I once woke my friend up by playing the trombone directly on top of him. I immediately realized it was a dick move, but I can’t say I regret doing it either.
How long did it take the doctor to get the slide of the trombone removed from where your friend put it?
Trombone slide removal is an outpatient procedure. It just takes a little WD40.
One evening when I was a teen, my parents instructed me to get them up very early the next morning, “no matter what it takes”.
Boombox with Judas Priest’s “Turbo Lover” at max volume did the trick, but they were _not_ happy. I felt unjustly treated. I had tried other methods first, they asked for it.
I did that with “X Gone Give It To Ya” once. After that, I was no longer in charge of waking people.
I regret nothing.
I would guess part of their annoyance was the disturbing dreams they had in response to “Turbo Lover” at 9.
If anyone tells you “no matter what” then they have signed away any right to be angry.
You know, short of bodily harm or something like that.
One National Guard ‘summer camp’, we woke up an extremely hungover young soldier by lifting his bunk about three feet in the air and then dropping it back to the concrete. I swear, his eyeballs vibrated. And then, of course, he rolfed.
Seeing Billie’s “DRAGONS” cheerleader outfit in the background — did we ever figure out (or did Willis ever say) at just which school she was supposed to have been a cheerleader? Since we know the school’s colors and the team nickname, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
I think it was a fictional high school, but I could easily be mistaken on that.
It was.
I did a quick Google, got one hit (New Palestine), but the colors do not match. (NPHS is red and white.)
I mean, it probably is fictional but the reality is that Indiana has a nasty habit of shortchanging school systems, forcing many to consolidate. It could have been a real school when Willis started this strip but no longer exists as it has been swallowed by a larger school.
Walky and Sal from Evansville, so presumably Billie is as well. None of the Evansville high schools have the Golden Dragons as their mascot, and the only one with blue and gold is an extremely private preparatory school (though their mascot is the Eagles). I can see a rich Englishman sending his daughter to prep school, but ultimately I do think that the Golden Dragons are a fictitious high school team.
No word on high schools, but Billie went to a public elementary school, since she goes with Walky and Sal in flash backs.
I was maybe gonna give Lucy the benefit of the doubt on this but the list factor implies guilt on her part so she’s aware how creepy it is.
Unfortunately, any activity for which you are required to create a “Reasons this is not creepy” checklist is most definitely creepy. If it were not creepy, you would not feel compelled to make a list.
[] 1. This is an online forum, where people expect responses.
[] 2. The topic is checklists, so people have to expect checklists.
[] 3. There should be a third option.
[] 4. I’m having some trouble here.
[] 6. The very existence of the list shows I’m doing my best to not be creepy.
QED. Participating in an online forum is creepy.
You wake her up without hovering by standing in the doorway and yelling that she’s going to be late for midterms. Waking her up without pissing her off is a lost cause but being direct sidesteps the creepy factor.
Isn’t that what super soakers are for?
Yeah no, I’m gonna have to agree with Billie on this.
“Skyrockets in flight!”, “No Mid-terms tonight” (with apologies to Bill Danoff).
“Rubbin’ sticks and stones together makes the sparks ignite,
And the thought of punchin’ Lucy is getting B so excited…”
I wish I could upvote the two of you.
Speaking of comic birthdays, this year is gonna be DoA’s 10th. If this comic goes on for four more years, then when I’m 30 it’ll have been running for half my life almost. Wild.
The first panel makes me think of the meme of a woman angrily pointing at a cat.
Lucy, have you heard of, like… making noise?
She doesn’t want to be rude
I ship Lucy and Dorothy
Joyce doesn’t quite understand why she’s so furiously offended, but she is.
Yeah yeah, appropriate gravatar is appropriate, must there be a comment every single time?
appropriate gravatar is appropriate
also: Yes.
And yet Lucy managed to both be creepy and not wake Billie.
When I lived on campus, when people wanted to wake me they “played” a vuvuzela outside my window. But that wasn’t for mid-terms, it was so that I “could” go and watch their cretinous boyfriends play idiotic games of intra-mural Rugby at sparrow-fart in winter.
Kudos to you for having either the restraint to not murder any of them or the skill to hide the bodies really well.
I was wondering which end of a human one forcibly inserts a vuvuzela into, whilst avoiding prosecution/expulsion…
The closest end, of course.
Where was this? Very few places celebrate sparrow-fart.
Australian National University.
Basser College, to be precise. But in Commonwealthese, so the college was a dorm.
Sorry! What idiocy am I writing? At ANU it as Burton & Garran Hall. Basser College was where I lived on campus at UNSW.
Enough of the silliness, what happened to Mike???
The two halves of your sentence can never be reconciled.
I was about to say that he’s probably okay since no one misses him, then I remembered what character we’re talking about.
Or… it’s so early in the morning that nobody realized that something happened to him yet?
It’s not super early, since Danny and Amber are walking to class. If it’s early enough for people to be out and about, it’s early enough for people to have noticed any bodies that may be lying about.
Either everyone is fine, or things have been hidden away.
Or already taken away.
Yeah, there should be cop cars and reporters.
But not necessarily visible from the dorms or en route to the class Danny & Amber were walking to.
It is a pretty large campus after all.
Walky wasn’t in his bed, so he couldn’t notice Mike was missing. and they usually don’t track down frinds first if something happened to someone. The only ones who’d probably know at this point are the parents and school officials (it was school ground, wasn’t it?)
If anybody knows at all! My hunch would be that Blaine and Toedad either disposed of the body or abducted a living Mike.
I don’t think anyone at uni would have noticed yet; you don’t keep that close taps on acquaitances or even (not so close) friends.
While AG just decided to go home and go to sleep?
We’ll find out in March. Or April. Or May. Maybe.
Pretty much this.
No telling how long he took to climb out of the him-spread-eagle shaped crater he made, though.
He’s probably fine. Amber woke up in bed with no noticeable injuries even to her. That means Amazi-Girl left the situation feeling well enough to actually go to bed and not stay with Mike or tell the cops/paramedics what happened.
Amazi-Girl and cops don’t mix; remember that she’s a known vigilante, and vigilantism is – for obvious reasons – illegal.
And if Mike’s health was significantly compromised then what’s she gonna do. run off and leave him with the two guys who were trying to kill him?
That doesn’t rule out the possibility she beat the shit out of them and HAD to flee when the cops showed up. She could have even stuck around from a stealthy vantage point to make sure they were arrested and Mike was taken care of.
Alternatively – she knew it was too late to do anything for him and left then.
Mike who?
There was no fight. It was a dream. Right after Mike fell, Amber woke up in bed.
Mike is fucking Blaine’s mom.
Okay, that tears it, next time we have one of these “maybe someone died” cliffhangers that goes on and on, I’m going to start making comments describing the state of the Schrodinger Corpse.
……not as an act of protest or anything, mind you, the slow burn on it really works well outside of the strip-a-day format and does a good job emphasizing that individual tragedies don’t stop life from going on for everyone else around.
But just because it’d be amusing >_>.
“He’s either alive or starting to attract flies. Soon they will lay eggs”?
He’s not dead because the sheer amount of horror and grieving would trap the comic for several years.
yeah, but this is Mike
The sheer amount of cheer and rejoicing…
I think that Billie needs to come to terms with the fact that she’s going to spend her college career mostly around people who are struggling to do ‘neurotypical’.
The sub-message” you will fail midterms if you do not wake up and attend them” is being covered up by indignation on creepiness.
It’s still creepy. Get out, Lucy. 😛
But it’s her room.
This avatar combination…
Still creepy. She could just make some noise instead of silently watching them while they sleep as she tries to think of a way to wake them up.
The important thing is that she’s sitting in the chair backwards. Someone who can do that is clearly the devil.
Checklists? Are you sure you’re not Twilight Sparkle, Lucy?
I think that she is. Even more interestingly, this makes Joyce possibly Starlight Glimmer (weak to non-existent understanding of boundaries combined with a ‘the ends justify all possible means’ mindset), which might mean that Joe is in for some interesting times today.
Dorothy is Applejack of course – Honest soul who only ever lies to herself.
Dorothy has had some Twilight Sparkle moments as well.
I kinda want to make Sal Applejack (
for reasonsokay yeah, it’s the accent), which would make Dorothy, um, Rarity?(this is a dangerous road)
Surely Billie is Rarity? Actually nice, but it’s hidden under a thick layer of ego and vanity?
Rarity’s niceness isn’t hidden, the ego and vanity are second to her friendly and giving spirit.
Honestly Billie is probably closer to Starlight Glimmer: lots of potential, totally screwed up her life, hates herself and needs to rely on her friends to claw out of the hole she dug.
Gonna have to agree with Billie here, the more you try to justify how it isn’t something, the more likely it really is.
So this list of reasons why my actions aren’t creepy, totally is admission that at first glance, your actions are creepy. You wouldn’t need the list otherwise. Having said that, Billie should actually be thankful, having lived through Joyce’s literal hovering on numerous occasions. Also midterms.
that’s the joke.png
Sooo ain’t ya gonna be late if you keep arguing ?
Hold up. The Slipshine image has changed to Abmer, but there hasn’t been a new porn on that site in a brief while. I wonder if it’s significant to the plot in some way?
Table Cat!!
DANG, Willis!!!
checks out
Well, if the #6 say soooooo……
My affection for Lucy continues to grow.
Get the hammer and stake, Billie!
By the way, people without their glasses on still have their eyes, you know. We don’t resort to nonstop squinting.
I assume it’s at least in part to convey that sleepy, just woke up feel.
Either that or she took her eyeballs out before going to bed. Although if somebody has two glass eyes I’m not sure that glasses/contacts would do much good.
Yeah, we’ve seen Billie sans glasses before.
At least Lucy cared enough to try to figure out how to wake her up. I had not one but TWO roommates who, on the first day or almost first day of classes, turned off my alarm when I was only half-awake because it apparently didn’t occur to them that I’d just fall back asleep, and then they left, and then I missed class. I had to explain to them why that was a terrible idea in both cases so that they wouldn’t do it again
. . . if she starts smelling babies I think she’d be even creepier
I spot the cat meme!
Did anyone else spot the cat meme?
I spot the cat meme….
*shyly lifts hand*
Took me a day to spot it. 🙁
I was about to ask whether this counted the old slice-of-life strips, but I know I was reading them before then. When would the fifteenth anniversary have been if those did count?