163

Kenting
Posted on May 11, 2020 by David M Willis

163 thoughts on “Kenting”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    “DICKS”

    “oh… bored now”

    1. Lokitsu

      “Well, you asked!”

      1. Thursday Violist

        Nah, she’d be okay with that.

        After all, she’s *stealing* the dicks.

    2. Northamptonier

      Any details about the dicks? Of course Becky won’t care. The part about the less-inhibited, even horny Joyce? I bet Becks will still be ALL OVER that.

      (She seems to have channeled that years-old torch into wanting Joyce hooked up with someone else ASAP, which is understandable enough. At this point there may be few things she’d rather hear than more about Joyce expressing her sexuality in just about any way, except with the arch-rival Dorothy.)

    3. showler

      Who gets killed after that?

  2. CC

    Ahh, priorities 😛

  3. BBCC

    Becky knows how to get what she wants. XD

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Goddamn, these kids are casual about the corpse in the room. Imagine being such a piece of work, your own daughter barely acknowledges your death for more than a few minutes and then immediately uses it as leverage to get an embarrassing story out of her friend. Like, imagine fucking up so hard, so consistently, that by the time you die in somebody’s presence, the most important thing on their mind is an anecdote about drawing dicks.

      1. BBCC

        Right? That’s how you KNOW Ross made a mess.

        1. Johnny Austin

          To be fair, it was Blaine who made the mess…

          Too soon..?

      2. Chris Phoenix

        Have you ever been in a room with a corpse? It’s not like I would have expected it to be. There’s plenty of spare attention for other things… like self-care … like finding distractions from horrible things until you can afford to process them.

        1. Chris Phoenix

          That was supposed to be a reply to Delicious Taffy.

        2. Opus the Poet

          It did, somebody replied to another response before yours and the thread nested.

        3. Ed Rhodes

          In his book (either “The Glass Teat,” or “The OTHER Glass Teat,”) this was one of Harlan Ellison’s pet peeves about 60’s/70’s cop shows. A guy dies, the body is lying there, oozing life (Thank you for that image, “Threepenny Opera”) and the people in the room are just talking about odd stuff. However, you’re right, sometimes you have to prattle about nothing to get over the fact that you’re in a room with a corpse!

        4. Morleuca

          Harlan Ellison having pet peeves about something? no way!

        5. Foxhack

          They have no emotional attachment to the lump of flesh and bone that lies before them. They’re doing their jobs. Frankly I’d find it offensive if a stranger saw my corpse and started crying for no reason. I’d think they have better things to worry about than my dead ass.

        6. Agemegos

          The journalist David Simon spent a year embedded with a shift of homicide detectives in the Baltimore P.D. He went along on calls out, attended crime-scenes, autopsies, and interviews, and wrote a book that is well worth reading¹. In it, he recorded what actual homicide [some] detectives actually do and say at actual crime scenes. This is more informative than Harlan Ellison’s speculations.

          ¹ Note well that Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets records events in 1988, which was before violent crime in many countries started its precipitous decline (70% decline 1990–2005, give or take), and was also before the militarisation of American police (2002–2012, roughly).

        7. StClair

          Yeah, when my brother and I went to see to our dad in the foster home, it was sad of course, but also some relief… mostly it was like looking at a mannequin. 🙁

          And one of his old jobs (back in college) was night pickup guy for a morgue, so when they came for him, we told them to show him professional courtesy. :/

        8. HeySo

          As I recall, it’s mostly just an intense feeling of agitation.
          While bizarre, to my mind, I can nevertheless still see agitation turning into deliberate aversion and stress-relief-based humor rather easily. The main issue I see here is that Willis is deliberately avoiding framing/focusing on the dead body, as well as making the characters come across as overly carefree (rather than stressed), so the conversation comes across more flippant than based in stress.

      3. Marsh Maryrose

        Have you ever been with a recently-deceased corpse in the room? There’s nothing that prepares you for it. No matter how you think you’d behave in that situation, you don’t know. It’s a very weird situation even when you’ve had some hours to prepare.

      4. Huehuetotl

        Even when someone’s mourning someone they cherished dearly, it’s usually not overwhelming grief all the time.

      5. Bicycle Bill

        The five stages of grief are denial – anger – bargaining – depression – and finally acceptance.  Not everyone experience them all the same way, and some just sort of skim over one or more steps.  What we are seeing here is one of the ways Becky is denying this… by pushing it aside as if it never happened.

        1. Skelig

          Actually fun fact, the 5 stages of grief were invented by a psychologist addressing how people react when they are given news of their own terminal condition, not how other people react to losing someone. While in both cases the 5 stages are common (although not necessarily in that order) it is far more consistent when you are grieving your own life than someone else’s

        2. tyersome

          In my experience they aren’t linear stages, but parts of a cycle.

          You pingpong through those stages and if you’re lucky the ball stops on acceptance — until something kicks it into motion again …

          Over time it seems to take larger kicks to get the ball moving and eventually you’ve got enough other things to be sad about and that ball mostly stays put.

      6. Felian

        That’s how coping mechanisms work sometimes!

      7. AllyCatAussie

        I have been in room with someone who just died with his family. After the initial hysterics, grieving and tears ran their course, we sat around laughing and telling stories about him in his life while we were waiting for the undertaker to take his body away. Considering that they don’t feel good feelings towards Ross, they will spend this time telling stories about other things to help and distract themselves.

      8. Delicious Taffy

        Damn it, this wasn’t meant to be a reply.

        I know how corpse shock works, y’all. Been there, done that, not eager to do it again. My post was about Ross being a fuckup, not disbelief at unusual cadaver-side behavior.

        1. Geneseepaws

          I dunno, I think you made your point clearly. Conversations go where they want, mostly. They’re harder to steer than pushing a shopping cart backwards.

      9. Benwhoski

        It’s honestly probably a lot easier to focus on getting the story out of Joyce than it is dealing with undoubtedly conflicted and complicated feelings about her Dad in the moment.

        Her father both died and was involved in kidnapping all of her friends in one day; that’s gotta be overwhelming.

      10. JetstreamGW

        That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that Becky is suppressing hard right now because something like this fucks with your mind.

  4. Cheshrin

    “Look, I’m gonna hafta go to therapy for at LEAST the next fifty forevers, I need some Peak Joyce to blunt the edge of all this trauma a little.”

    1. Ron again

      That.. Might actually be a really healthy thing to do. All them kids should distract themselves to make sure their traumatic experiences dissolve a bit before going to sleep and letting your mind work itself through it.

  5. NinjaNick

    Whatever takes her mind off the current tragedy.

  6. danielle

    oh, right, becky didnt know

    1. JessWitt

      Yeah, happened just before she showed up at their dorm.

  7. Stephen Bierce

    Can’t have Truth and Reconciliation without the Truth.

    1. StClair

      Amazi-Girl, In Amber Clad

      1. Ron again

        Nice references

  8. Newllend(henryvolt)

    No hero is ever as well put together as they seem behind the mask. That aside Amber can act like her and Amazi aren’t one person all she wants. But at the end of the day that doesn’t discount that Amazi-girl originated from her psyche. Amazi-girl is everything Amber thinks superhero should be, reliable, tempered enough to have restraint , and driven to help others to far extent. All things Amber would never think she could be…even though she’s that exactly as her alter ego.

    1. King Daniel

      But that’s the thing about DID, innit? In a sense, Amber and Amazi-Girl are distinct individuals.

    2. Toricon

      When a rock is split in half, the halves were once part of the same whole, but they are not the same. So too is it with minds.

      Admittedly, minds are a lot more flexible and fluid than rocks are, but at least this part of the analogy holds. Amber’s in denial about a lot of things, and she is a lot better than she thinks she is, but she is not Amazi-Girl.

      1. Regalli

        I think once the point you’re dissociating enough that you no longer have all the same memories depending on who’s in control, and you’re having actual conversations, out loud, with your alter, about how you were so dissociated you weren’t sharing memories or otherwise communicating anymore… it’s pretty safe to say that you no longer have a single unified sense of self.

        And by all accounts from people who have DID, attempting to force yourself into having just the single unified sense of self again (like, say, Amber did after the stabbing because she claimed AG had ‘failed’ and was therefore unnecessary) works about as well as just trying to glue two halves of a rock together, to use Toricon’s analogy. There’s still a noticeable divide because brains are pretty flexible and fluid, but they also retain trauma. A lot. (To give one not-DID-related but fairly well-researched example, there are studies about how depressed brains have a physically different shape and makeup than non-depressed ones, and that early childhood depression can impact brain development.)

        1. Newllend(henryvolt)

          …Cleaved, there’s a slite split between the two but they’re still stuck together. Me not being a neuro physician shows here, but it’s still stands that though they might be different personalities one is still a part of the other.

        2. King Daniel

          They’re “stuck together” insofar as they share the same five-foot-two-inch meat vehicle (to quote Amber), but Amber is not Amazi-Girl is not Amber.

        3. King Daniel

          (In summary: they share an origin and have things in common with each other, but that doesn’t make them the same person.)

        4. Sam

          I’ve been watching a lot of content about DID on Youtube lately by people with DID so I can pretty confidently say:

          They are not part of each other, they are two pieces of a singular person that never formed because the brain thought it was safer to keep them separated.

          As a child, your personality and identity isn’t actually one big thing, it is made up of lots of pieces, then when you are 7-9, these meld together into one big thing and once it has done that, it stays one big thing forever. Like melting down sand to make a sturdy pane of glass.

          For someone with DID, the sand never melted. It stayed as sand and it was just put in a jar. They never became glass, they were always separate grains that could have become glass once, but never did. Amber is one of the grains of sand, AG is one of the grains of sand, and they are both in the same jar, but despite underlying similarities and some shared physical limitations, they have never been the same singular person and never splintered off from each other or split from each other as the full identity *never formed to begin with*.

        5. Regalli

          As far as AmbG have said, the precipitating incident for the split was when they were a bit older – Sal and Walky discuss her being sent to Tennessee (after the robbery) about five years ago, placing them all at about 13 when it occurred. But the incident that REALLY made them distinct was the ‘Amber flips out and stabs a subdued person in the hand’ after the hostage situation, and that was brought on by Blaine’s verbal abuse. You know, the verbal abuse that’s been going on all her life. Based off what you’re saying, I wouldn’t be shocked if AmbG had been vaguely dissociating and separated for a while and the stabbing (which feels very much like Amber was doing it in a dissociative fugue) was what crystallized it and made them aware this was a Thing, not just normal brain activity.

          (That said, that sort of explanation would be retconning – as originally written, AmbG was compartmentalizing because Willis was hesitant to make the vigilante with anger issues DID rep. It becoming clearer and clearer that’s what’s going on happened in conjunction with DID readers saying that yes, her experiences ring true to them, until I suspect the point where Willis was willing to do it because they were already writing AmbG that way and so may as well do the research/be more explicit.)

        6. Chris

          You might think of it as two separate accounts on the same computer. (And neither one has admin privileges.)

    3. Meagan

      Sometimes tricking our brains into thinking of things a different way can help us get around mental obstacles that are otherwise unsurpassable. I imagine there are explanations for this at the level of neuroscience but I am not yet educated enough in the topic to understand it (but working on it!).

  9. Lokitsu

    Amazi-Girl, now might be a good time to pull a Batman and disappear.

    1. Bathymetheus

      Maybe she did – we don’t see her after panel 1.

  10. Yumi

    Joyce, you’re…you’re not helping…

    1. Chris Phoenix

      Yeah, I kind of think she is.

      1. Diane

        Helping Becky? Oh yeah, best distraction 10/10. Helping Amber/Amazi-Girl? Uh, no, gonna have to disagree there…

        1. Regalli

          Joyce having to tell Becky this incredibly silly story WILL give AmbG some time to come up with a response. That’s helping. A bit. Assuming she doesn’t just freeze up and panic.

          I would not blame her for freezing up and panicking here in the slightest.

        2. Reltzik

          …. at this point, I have no idea at all what counts as helping Amber/Amazi-girl.

          … except I think Dorothy managed to, earlier.

    2. Marsh Maryrose

      I kinda think she is? Joyce just being Joyce is going to be a comfort to Becky.

      1. Yumi

        I was speaking in reference to Amber/AG, not Becky.

  11. Some1

    Joyce, the person who throws a table is exactly the type of person who would dress in a costume and beat people up.

    1. Reltzik

      Wielding a bullwhip and flogging villains through the streets.

      … no, wait, wrong fandom.

      1. Strangeshapes

        Well, maybe right fandom if that slipshine with AG and Danny scaling the school wall was canon …

  12. Hex Hornet

    That Amber is a complicated woman.
    Know this, Joyce. Embrace it, Joyce, as, you too are a complicated woman. Peens on whiteboards exemplify this.

    1. Chris Phoenix

      Peens on hammers, not so much.

      1. Strangeshapes

        The hammer is his peen.

  13. CC

    “Come on Joyce, tell the story!”
    “Over my dea- oh, oh no, oh dang”

    1. Tan

      If you can’t tell a story over the dead body you want, tell a story over the dead body you’re with?

      1. CC

        The dead body you want is never the dead body you’ve got?

        1. Deanatay

          You never go to a funeral for the person you WANT dead.

  14. Lawzlo

    Ding-dong Bandit, the Toe is dead.

    1. Professor Fate

      Which old Toe? The wicked Toe.

  15. Bathymetheus

    Lot of text tonight. Of course, that’s part of the joke: Joyce is asking a question, but not giving AG a chance to get a word in edgewise.

    1. Jamie

      Joyce has always been a talker. This isn’t a genuine inquiry; it’s finding a channel for her emotions and preferring to deal with surprise and mild betrayal around AG over grief and the as yet mild self-loathing on top of it around Toedad.

      It’s a good thing that helps keep her healthy.

      1. Needfuldoer

        Keep talking and nobody explodes cries.

  16. OtterBoy1

    All this with a corpse in the room

    1. Michael Steamweed

      No one wants to talk about the eleph..um, the corpse, in the room.

    2. Marsh Maryrose

      Well, it’s not like the corpse particularly cares.

      True story: my dad died a little after 5:00 PM on the Friday of the Labor Day weekend. It took four hours for the funeral home to pick up his body. (I didn’t think about it then, but afterward I thought about the poor schmuck who got that call on a holiday Friday evening.)

      Anyway, I don’t recall anything inappropriate being said in those four hours, but we were all stressed and sleep-deprived even before the death, and as the evening wore on, conversations, um, strayed a bit.

      1. He Who Abides

        When my two friends’ grandfather died, they ended up spending the night at my family’s house. Didn’t find out until years later that this was less “kids shouldn’t have to sit through a wake” (we were ~8-ish) and more “dammit, why’d you tell Dad how your people have wakes” (Irish, for the record). It explains why the funeral was so quiet.

  17. Bagge

    Becky does not know the depth to which Joyce has sunken.

    1. James

      She googled peens for reference, she’s beyond redemption.

  18. Michael Steamweed

    Amber grew up believing she was incompetent at everything. Amber made AG to be the competent one.

  19. Paul

    I had three people die within a few months of each other, the first being my dad. I was present at each death. It is amazing how quickly the family and others present just start talking about normal stuff — the dead person is just lying right there. My dad died the day before Halloween so we started talking about kids trick-or-treating the next day.

    1. Marsh Maryrose

      “And they, since they
      Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.”
      –Robert Frost, Out, Out–

      I’ve only been in that situation once, with my own dad, but I can corroborate your observation. You can’t just keep saying “he’s dead, he’s dead” for hours on end. You have to talk about something, and the death watch typically reunites people who may not have talked to each other about their own lives in years.

      1. StClair

        Yup. (See my own account, further up the page.)

    2. brute

      idle chatter is like the brain’s screensaver while it’s installing the new trauma, i just decided

  20. Passchendaele

    becky: the *real* tragedy is how I’ve never heard about the whiteboard dingdong bandit until now

    1. Regalli

      Joyce did mention how “drawing dingdongs was a gateway crime to grand larceny” back when they broke into Becky’s old house as a sisterly bonding activity, but when asked Joyce responded with “Nothing.” and no more was spoken on the subject.

      God, I love Joyce’s ridiculousness in that whole segment. So many wonderful faces. So many wonderful lines about how different foods touch each other in jail.

      https://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/gateway/

      1. BigDogLittleCat

        Joyce in that scene always makes me laugh.
        Her sense of humor about how ridiculous her neuroses are is why she’s my fav. As ignorant and naive as she is, she still has a better understanding of herself that a lot of the other kids.

        1. Regalli

          Joyce is wonderful in that respect, and she’s grown so unbelievably much since the comic started in the “ignorance and naivete” department.

          I’m so proud of her.

  21. Opus the Poet

    Becky definitely needs to hear about the whiteboard ding-dong bandit. Especially right now after her terrible excuse for a dad died.

  22. G97

    Little did we all know this was a flashback storyline to set up for DingDong Bandit:Year One. A young Joyce is isolated in her college’s library asking the lord for a symbol to commit harmless mischief when suddenly a whiteboard with a penis drawn on it comes crashing through a window and rests in front of her. “Yes my lord” she said “I shall become the whiteboard DingDong Bandit!”.

    1. DaveM

      “Bad doers are a cowardly, superstitious, and oft homophobic sort. To strike fear into their emotionally underdeveloped psychs I must become a symbol of terror! A whiteboard ding-dong bandit!”

      Sorry, I couldn’t resist playing the the quote (so to speak).

  23. Van Jealous

    I know I said this 6 years ago, but I’ll say it again…. “The Whiteboard Ding-Dong Bandit” REALLY should have been the title of Frank Zappa song!

    1. Needfuldoer

      With a backstory intro from Don Pardo.

      1. Van Jealous

        “It’s me, Frank!!!! I’M THE SLIME!!!” “That’s RIGHT Don!” 🙂

        1. Needfuldoer

          … You know what, why not!

          And now folks it’s time for Don Pardo To deliver our special Whiteboard Ding-Dong Bandit-type announcement. Take it away, Don!

          “This is a true story about a famous criminal from right around Bloomington. This is the story of Joyce Brown, a woman who got away scot-free for scribbling ding-dongs on everyone’s whiteboards. Apparently, there was no law against that; but her name lives on: Joyce Brown, The Whiteboard Ding-Dong Bandit!”

          The Whiteboard Ding-Dong Bandit
          I heard she’s on the loose
          I heard she’s on the loose
          Lord, the pitiful screams
          Of all them college-educated women…

  24. Regalli

    So um.

    Do they have to stay in the basement with the corpse until the EMTs arrive? Because I feel like going upstairs where there’s light, and not a corpse, might be a decent idea.

    After Joyce tells Becky about being the Whiteboard Dingdong Bandit, of course, because Walky’s up there and he will never let her live it down if and when he finds out about it. (Also as far as I know Dorothy never found out about it, either, and Joyce can’t let BOTH her best friends find out about her deep, dark secret.)

    1. Marsh Maryrose

      No one has to do anything, but…

      Becky is going to want to stay there until someone picks up the body (or until the cops kick her out of what is, after all, a crime scene), and Joyce and Dina will want to stay with Becky for support. AG…feels a sense of responsibility, I suppose.

      Brain Mike made an appearance for just long enough, then high-tailed it

  25. Katherine

    Tbf to Amber/Amazigirl, it is way easier to do things when you can pretend noone is watching you, because you can’t see them, because you don’t have your glasses on.

    1. Mydnyt

      I could swear at some point it was established that AG wears contacts. I could be wrong though

      1. BigDogLittleCat

        Amber has astigmatism. She told Danny she can get by without glasses.

        1. Regalli

          Yeah, we see her without for a bit in the post-car chase arc until her spares arrive (because she kept them tucked in the costume up to that point), and when they arrive she talks about how words are crisp again and she can read on the computer without getting eye strain. (“Internet comments are blurry!/Internet comments are readable!… >:(” is a punchline I completely forgot about until I was looking at that arc again, and I am so glad to have rediscovered it.)

  26. Kravis

    Hearing about how Joyce is the Whiteboard Ding-Dong Bandit is OBVIOUSLY much more interesting than ToeDead you know… Honoring his new name.

  27. DrWattson

    Remember when the stakes in this comic was “who’s drawing ding-dongs on everybody’s white boards”? It was a more innocent time.

    1. thejeff

      Not so much so. We’d already seen Ryan’s scarring and Amber beating Blaine into a pulp.
      The light moments and the dark ones come and go.

  28. DailyBrad

    That last panel was everything I needed and more.

  29. Reltzik

    Huh.

    I would have thought that between loss of sleep and adrenaline crash, these girls would have been super-tired and out of it.

    But no. It seems that they’re a wake.

    *flees for dear punning life*

    1. SuperFroakie82

      You’ll be a dead man (or woman) if you keep up with these puns.

      1. SillyGoose

        Don’t be such a killjoy.

        1. Needfuldoer

          Yeah, don’t suck the life out of the room.

        2. Reltzik

          Yeah, okay, that pun was a-pall-ing.

        3. King Daniel

          Stop making puns, this is a grave matter!

        4. Needfuldoer

          No! We are fully committed to this undertaking!

        5. King Daniel

          Well now, this is just tomb much for me.

    2. Segnosaur

      I don’t think everyone is that sleep-deprived (except for amber) .

      It hasn’t been that long since the kidnapping, and the fire alarm was pulled in the night, so most people got at least a few hours sleep before the ordeal. Granted they may be exhausted the next night, but one night of only 3-4 hours of sleep isn’t going to turn a person into a sleeping zombie

      1. Needfuldoer

        Yeah, Becky needs to keep the wacky momentum up, or she’ll fall into a million pieces. Remember other times her facade came close to cracking in-panel? (Once at Joyce’s dorm party, later remembering the blue outline ghosts at her parents’ house.) She deflected to levity as a distraction.

        1. thejeff

          Nobody likes a Debbie Downer.

    3. Icalasari

      They’ll probably crash once they get back to normality and their brains can be sure all threats are dealt with. The brain is pretty good at suppressing exhaustion if it thinks it might die if it loses alertness, and while the situation is calmer now, it’s not so much that the brain is willing to let its guard down

  30. Thulcandran

    It’s interesting that Joyce, of all people, seems to have made the same misstep in judgement that Blaine did. Yeah, Amber’s an awkward nerd; her strength is there as much as it is in Amazigirl.

  31. Chronos

    Can’t fault Becky’s logic in the last panel.

    1. Icalasari

      Yeah, of all the times to need to hear about a funny story and try to distance yourself from a situation with humour, now before the police arrive so she can center herself and be in a better position to handle all that is one of the better times

  32. abysswatcher1993

    Joyce sweeties, you need to realize something: badasses are people too. See the nice doctor risking his life to save patients? He is a douchebag to his parents and a horrible boyfriend. See the queen mobster that everyone fears? She is a good mother and wife. See the con man in the street? He is getting money to pay the therapy of his mom. See the nice professor that cares about her students and is an active feminist helping women in the streets? She cheats on her husband.

    Amber is Amazi-Girl, even if you don’t want to see it. Accept that she is an introverted rude girl and a badass vigilante too. Accept that Dorothy isn’t perfect. Accept that Walky is a human being. Accept that you can make mistakes and grow as a person, instead of being either the fake smiley girl your mom wanted, or the edgelord you pretended to be.

    1. Schro

      These sounded way too specific, and I was worried that I forgot about characters for a Moment.

      1. abysswatcher1993

        To say in universe examples instead of my own imaginary examples:
        -Sarah is a cynical jerk that seems to hate everyone, but she secretly cares about her friends.
        -Becky is a joyous person that is probably the best friend you can get, but she is a sell out that can do an Aaron Burr just to make her girlfriend happy.
        -Dorothy is a genius, a rationalist and an empathic person, but she dismisses personal relationships as obstacles in her career, and can be a tight ass that doesn’t know how to get allies in a non theoretical way.
        -Joe is a sex addict jerkass, but he is aware he has a problem and distances himnself from others to avoid causing harm.
        -Amber cares about other people, but she has rage issues and suffers from self hatred.
        -Amazi-Girl is a heroic badass, but follows a black and white morality and is delusional.
        -Walky is an obnoxious lazy privileged bastard that didn’t realize his sister has problems, but once shit hit the fan he becamne aware that he is trash.
        -Jason is good at math and cares about his students, but he has trouble reaching his students and lacks kindness.
        -Sal follows her beliefs until the end to do the right thing, but she is an extremist (in Walkyverse at least) and distrusts authorities to the point of telling a girl to not call the police after almost getting raped.
        -Roz is a progressive activist, but she is an annoying asshole.
        -Dina is a good friend and knows a lot about dinosaurs, but she can be a bit mean spirited at times, and material possessions can override any sense of morality if shaped like dinosaurs.
        -Joyce is a whole pandora box of madness.

    2. Ron again

      You’re asking a lot here. I mean, saying it is one thing, but acting upon this mentally is a feat I don’t believe I’ve seen. The human mind is used to thinking “you’re bad at X, then you must be bad at Y and Z”. It was very hard to start thinking of an adult that’s bad at grammar as “intelligent” and I’ve noticed people really having trouble acknowledging flaws in the ones they love. What you ask is not easily achieved, and even more so in a general sense.

      1. abysswatcher1993

        Humans are also known to try to do things that aren’t easy.

    3. BBCC

      Joyce never pretended to be an edge lord. She was angry and depressed about another lie her community taught her that ended up kneecapping any potential she had with Jacob (if not killed it entirely). For ONE evening.

      1. abysswatcher1993

        Saying pessimistic stuff, trying to steal the boyfriend of someone else, dismissing other point of views, etc. Maybe not an edgelord, but Joyce has problems she needs to acknowledge.

        1. BBCC

          Yeah, she was trying to get with Jacob and that was shitty. She knows it was shitty. She was used about yet another thing her community lied to her about and was pessimistic about it FOR AN EVENING. God forbid she be in a bad mood for a night.

    4. JBento

      And sometimes shitty people are just shitty people. The queen mobster is getting on with the poolboy and pimping her daughter for more profits. The con man in the street is just getting money to buy himself some nice jewelry to show off.

      1. abysswatcher1993

        You could have said any example before ruining my imaginary examples. I would have accepted your examples since I know shitty people that are just shitty people.

    5. JBento

      And some other times, they DO have good qualities, but those are meaningless compared to their shittiness, so they should be run over by a truck regardless.

      1. JBento

        RL example: Dick Cheney (you remember him, right? From the time you government was run by people who were just as evil as the ones now, but they were at least smart, competent, and far less petty) is apparently a great dad, but he is STILL partly responsible for the deaths of thousands of people and dehumanising millions more, so, y’know, fuck him.

        1. abysswatcher1993

          You could have picked any example and you choose Cheney? I know the movie Vice aknowledges it is a work of fiction, but the way it is presented Cheney wasn’t a good father, or maybe he was but we can’t know since he was a silent sociopath that soot someone in the face.

        2. abysswatcher1993

          Shoot*

        3. JBento

          We do know, actually (I never watched Vice anyway), because when his kid came out as gay he went full-on for gay rights, tanking whatever Republican career he may have had.

        4. JBento

          I can give you lots of examples, btw, like LITERALLY every college rapist that the lawyer then goes “but he’s such a good [practicer of a sport]”. I don’t give a fuck. I don’t care if he’s on the verge of discovering the cure for fucking cancer, let alone if he’s a good dolphin impressionist or if he can throw a football really well. Lock the fucker up for a decade.

  33. BenRG

    Amber and Mazie have to tell someone about their mental health issues at some point and I think that Joyce maybe the person they choose to do make this explanation. After all, if she can make Joyce understand something like this, she should be able to explain it to anybody!

  34. RacingTurtle

    I understand why Joyce is babbling right now, but I really hope Amber doesn’t take it too hard. If Amazi-Girl shares this conversation with her at all, I hope she does it nicely.

    1. Brumagem

      Judging from the color of the speech bubbles the last few pages, Joyce is definitely talking to Amber rn.

      1. Segnosaur

        Nope. Still tagged as Amazigirl.

        As has been mentioned before… Amazigirl probably isn’t doing “the voice” because 1) everyone there knows her alternate identity 2) her regular voice is probably more relaxing to Joyce&becky in a time of high emotion

        1. Needfuldoer

          3. The Amazi-Voice doesn’t come through on the 911 call.

      2. TheKelliestKelly

        No, cheeks tell us which alter is out. Amber has a blush. Amazi-Girl doesn’t. Amazi-Girl only pitches her voice down to hide her body’s identity – which is unnecessary right now

  35. Keulen

    Damn it Joyce, tell her about the Whiteboard Ding-Dong Bandit.

  36. Bottas Heimfe

    i don’t think Joyce gets it. Amazi-girl is Amber’s way of dealing with a traumatic experience where She couldn’t do anything and someone she cared about got hurt. it’s a sort of a case of multiple personality disorder. to Amber, she and Amazi-girl might as well be two separate individuals.

    1. James

      If Joyce has any understanding of DID at all, it absolutely comes from less than scientifically accurate sources. I am zero percent surprised she doesn’t actually understand Amber/Amazigirl’s situation at this point.

  37. WikiDreamer

    That alt-text got me. Also, yeah, I’m with Becky on that last panel. Nothing like a hilarious AF distraction to help with coping to a degree.

    1. Jamie

      Becky saves Amber from having to explain DID to the audience/Joyce!

  38. DSL

    Joyce is heading into Cat Grant (as played by Calista Flockhart) territory now, allowing overwhelming evidence to shove aside her biases. What is needed now is for a shapeshifter pretending to be Amazi-Girl to appear while Amber is appearing as Amber. Dina?

    1. Shell

      I was just thinking about the CW shows while reading this. At this point, Amazi-girl has as many holes in her secret identity as Barry Allen, who might as well introduce himself with “Hi, I’m Barry, and also the Flash.”

  39. Rabisch

    Joyce. BECKY HAS THE RIGHT TO KNOW!

    1. JBento

      She really doesn’t, but as she herself points out, it could totally do her a lot of good.

  40. bcb

    Oopsies, Joyce! Looks like Amber’s not the only one whose secret is being revealed tonight.

  41. Ivy

    I don’t know, Joyce, sometimes YOU have it together enough to kick a nook in the nuts or punch out your best friend’s daughter, and sometimes you’re reduced to a quivering mess over the concept of foods touching or your toenail finally falling off. Were you just faking that?

    1. Ivy

      That’s meant to be mook but spellcheck, I guess

      1. Alaric

        And, I assume, “father” rather than “daughter”.

    2. Human Bean

      Ha, good point.
      I guess an important factor here is the whole superhero mystique. In Joyce’s mind, Amazi-Girl is probably a real superhuman and, well, amazing in every possible way. She might not truly see her as a real person, but rather as the kind of superhero you see in kid’s shows, who always save the day and never need to rest (or have honest-to-god mental breakdowns). Kinda like the Forest Quad people used to see Billie The Cheerleader?

  42. ziggy78eog

    I completely forgot that Joyce drew schlongs, on people’s whiteboards. It feels like it was a long time ago, but in Walkyverse time, it is most likely just a few weeks ago.

  43. DarkoNeko

    Becky has a point there

  44. Vulcanodon

    Police report: “From the top of the stairs, we overheard suspects discussing a plot under the code-name ‘ding-dong bandit'”…

  45. Shell

    Arrgh! So I happen upon a link to Dumbing of Age last week. Binge-read all ten years in three days. When the time comes to start reading one strip a day, so I land on something light and fluffy! No, I get high-stakes action with serious potential outcomes leaving me desperate for the next update. My timing, in short, sucks day-old Taco Bell.

    1. SuperFroakie82

      I’ve been here for a few weeks now, and I STILL haven’t actually gone back and read through everything, I just know enough of what happens at this point to still understand what’s going on.

      1. Shell

        Well worth starting from episode one and working forward, although I did have to explain to my wife why I was bawling my eyes out because the story triggered all kinds of melancholy nostalgia for our long-past college days and friends we hadn’t seen in years.

  46. Sarpiedon

    I totes forgot about the White Board Ding-dong Bandit.

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