111

Nervous
Posted on March 12, 2020 by David M Willis

111 thoughts on “Nervous”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Panel 2: posting at midnight

    Panel 3: posting at midnight with a Patreon subscription

    Panel 4: everyone who didn’t know about Panel 3 and is seeing it for the first time and is all, “WTF I WAS HERE AND THERE WAS NOTHING HOWWWWWWW”

    Panel 5: whoever happens to randomly FIRST one night after knowing about Panel 3

    1. Khantalas

      So I’m guessing you keep this on the clipboard while waiting for the RSS to update?

      1. Proto Persona

        I think patrons are able to comment on comics before they go live for everyone else.

        1. Khantalas

          I somehow doubt Ana Chronistic is the only Patreon supporter that comments on individual strips, and I also doubt that Patreon supporter comments would be uploaded one by one over time instead of all at once if they were able to comment before the comics are uploaded here.

        2. Casi

          Obviously Ana has a program set up to automatically post their comments.

        3. Roborat

          She has her own, super secret, Patreon level.

        4. Needfuldoer

          Unless they’re all in on it…

        5. Geneseepaws

          I think her name reveals all; she has awesome temporal powers.

        6. TachyonCode

          Shush, we don’t talk about that.

        7. Slartibeast Button, BIA

          The comic is posted a day earlier on the Patreon website, and patrons can comment on it there, having the same arguments as her a day earlier.

  2. Doctor_Who

    Of course Dorothy knew, Becky! She’s your archnemesis. Who do you think staged the daring jailbreak as part of her evil plan to keep Joyce all for herself?

    1. abysswatcher1993

      Dorothy isn’t that cheap. She wouldnt pay to free a fanatic. She would pay to build a mecha powered by secular music and patented by the MIT. Only Blaine and Carol are cheap villains.

  3. BBCC

    Good on you, Joyce.

    And oh boy, wacky-as-coping!Becky is back.

    1. Regalli

      Yep, this is gonna hurt.

      Please let Leslie hugs return soon. We need more Leslie hugs.

      1. Freemage

        Eh, Wacky-as-coping! is probably her best strategy right now–she needs to keep an even keel going into the interview, and she’s good at this particular mechanism; also, it will let her disarm the situation if it DOES come up in the interview, and good job on Dorothy of spotting that particular disaster looming on the horizon. Now, afterwards, once she’s out of the interview, she needs to drop it, and that’ll be where we see if she can find some better means of coping.

        1. Mags

          That and “hey, the chance to imply my best friend has a crush on her new college friend, and maybe it’s true and we’ll realize we’re both gay and can commiserate/navigate this all together, even if I don’t actually want to date her anymore” is a thing a lot of baby queers would love.

          Plus that is 100% the face I make every time I’m teasing a friend I love about their crush that they’re trying to deny.

          She might be distracting herself to cope but I cannot blame her at all.

    2. Dana

      We all love wacky-as-coping!Becky. Except for the annoying majority.

      1. Meagan

        Of which I am a part

      2. StClair

        I think it’s about as healthy as Amber’s coping mechanism(s), which is to say, not at all.

        1. Andrew_C

          As long as she doesn’t snap and turn into Amazigirls Joker I’m OK with it.

  4. Mra

    What is with that last expression?

    1. JetstreamGW

      I choose to interpret it as Becky imagining what Joyce and Dorothy are getting up to in their spare time, as filtered through her complete lack of filter.

    2. Valerie

      I’m wondering, too. I can’t really figure out what she’s doing with her mouth.

      1. RicardtheDragoon

        Biting her lower lip? Or half of it?

        1. DailyBrad

          Yeah, it’s definitely a lip bite.

        2. MaddMaxx

          Yeah, she’s fuming and tryna keep her composure by biting her lip.

    3. Foxhack

      >:3

      A smug, feline like grin.

    4. DailyBrad

      I took it as a look of a bit of spite, due to her “rivalry” with Dorothy that she treats with varying degrees of seriousness.

    5. Tan

      That is the face of giving your best friend a hard time just to get a rise out of her and to break the tension because humor is your coping mechanism.

      1. Kim

        Exactley this! ^_^

      2. Kinoko

        Yup!

      3. Geneseepaws

        You are wise, and I think yer right.

      4. Shariku

        As coping mechanisms in this series goes, it’s one of the healthier ones.

        1. StClair

          That bar is subterranean.

      5. Deanatay

        Yep, AKA tweaking your straight crush

  5. Kyoulkoa

    You’re not my supervisor

    1. Kaidah

      Wait, who is my supervisor?

      1. MrBookBoy

        Wait, what is a supervisor?

        1. Stanistani

          It’s a visor that fell into a vat of unobtanium and acquired secret powers.

  6. Khantalas

    Meanwhile, the person who actually did something to fight off Mr Toehead is nowhere to be found.

    1. Risky

      His ghost is around though.

      1. clif

        His body is stashed in Amber’s closet along with Amazigirl’s uniform.

        1. Icalasari

          I now half expect the very last strip of this chapter to be a very groggy, beat up Mike wandering out of Amber’s closet as she is changing. She is startled and freaked, and Mike just goes, “Don’t care” as he drags his half dead ass out

    2. Agemegos

      Dina? Amazi-Girl? Both missing.

      1. Khantalas

        Dina was there like an hour ago should we consider her missing so soon?

        1. MrBookBoy

          We haven’t seen Dina since she woke up with Becky, but then again, we haven’t seen any sort of plot stuff that would indicate she’s in trouble. Without any sort of clue, it’s safer to assume she’s fine.

        2. Liquid Len

          Didn’t we see Dina in her room with Amber and Walky?

        3. Diane

          Yes, and many (self included) got very angry at Amber/Walky for treating Dina as a object and not a person, when they tried to stop Dina from going to her midterm so they wouldn’t have sex.

  7. Keulen

    I have no personal experience with either, but I’m pretty sure a live interview is very different from being the lead in a teen church musical.

    1. clif

      Not if you played Zachary Zewicky.

  8. Sirksome

    I’m hoping none of this matters cause Ross and Blaine both caught Corona virus. They both seem in the age range where it starts to get dangerous.

    1. Norah

      They’re way too young. They’re barely 40.

      1. Icalasari

        Hey, maybe their lungs are bad enough that they end up at risk anyways?

        1. Plasma Mongoose

          Are they heavy smokers?

        2. Freemage

          Blaine’s a mob goon; that generally means spending a lot of time in smoke-filled rooms, even if you’re not a smoker (and in general, Asian immigrants have high levels of smoking, culturally; since Blaine is, I believe, working for the Korean mob, yeah, his lungs are probably tar city, even if he never lit up himself).

          Toedad is a bit harder to guess. He could go the “My body is a temple” route, in which case he regards smoking as a sinful vice to be avoided at all cost, and assumes that anyone who does smoke is unclean (and, in the case of a female, probably sexually licentious), or he could go the “Evil liberal conspiracy” route, in which case he smokes like a chimney out of spite.

        3. Miles

          Toe strikes me as someone whose faith is more about finding an easy wife and keeping others in line than about doing anything mildly inconvenient.

          “What’s that? The second commandment forbids being all bling and no substance about God? Naw it just means you can’t say the ABC’s of words like ass and butt. Except when I say them because do as I say not as I do.

          The fifth forbids killing? Naw she doesn’t count as a person, she’s helping a .”

          You know, that sort.

    2. Norah

      Ross may be late 40s, but still not in the danger range.

      1. Sirksome

        Man I’ve grossly overestimated how old they are. Blaine looks reasonably young I guess but I was sure Ross was at least 50 by now.

        1. Sunny

          Coming from the fundie end of evangelical christianity in the USA he likely married some time in his twenties. Becky is 17 or 18, so I can’t see Ross being any older than 45 at most, and likely closer to 40. Blaine might well be somewhat older than that, but it’s anyone’s guess really.

  9. DailyBrad

    I find it interesting Becky doesn’t seem that alarmed about the Ross situation. I know that she’s seemingly stopped being afraid of him for a while now, given how thoroughly she shut the door on that chapter of her life, but even before she latched onto the Dorothy bit, she really seems to be no-selling it almost entirely.

    1. King Daniel

      Remember, “wacky” is her coping mechanism.

      Now go look back at Panel 4 again.

      1. Icalasari

        To be fair, it’s still amazing she didn’t just snap right then and there

  10. Robbie

    I actually kind of love Becky’s deflection when she’s anxious.
    It’s generally endearing and always relatable.

  11. bcb

    Who’s Zachary Zewicky? Google turns up nothing.

    1. Vyse

      Apparently, he was a lead performer in a Christian musical
      https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/35773020?q&versionId=45088481

    2. clif

      Now try teen church musical productions.

      1. clif

        Not to be confused with Becky Zewacky.

  12. Hazel

    Yay for Joyce being honest even if she wasn’t sure it was the right thing due to timing, etc! Smarting of Age!

    1. Freemage

      Kudos to Dorothy for spotting the potential disaster, too. “So, Becky, tell me, how do you feel about your father being out on bail and at large again?” “Who the what now?”

  13. ValdVin

    Now I’m trying to figure out what musical theater lead Becky would be the best in.

    1. MrBookBoy

      I would say Elphaba (they both dropped in on a college, they both have best friends they’re sorta kinda in love with, they both have terrible dads), but then I don’t think Becky would go full villain on everybody if provoked.
      I sort of think Angel, from RENT. What do you guys think?

      1. Freemage

        My loathing for RENT makes it a poor candidate to transfer any character I like into it.

        1. Roborat

          So you have 525,600 reasons to loathe it?

  14. Bryy

    So, bets on what the curveball question is gonna be?

  15. abysswatcher1993

    Of course Becky will use comedy to deal with existential dread. She can’t waste a chance to tease Joyce and cvontinue her imaginary feud with Dorothy.

  16. Needfuldoer

    It’s tonight already? Huh, looks like the evil dads fight and Mike reveal could be ‘tomorrow’ after all!

    Also, what kind of small market TV station would send an MMJ* with just a couple lights and a little camera to a planned interview? This usually calls for two shooters, three cameras (interviewer, interviewee, wide shot), and a good light kit. They’re usually shot and edited ahead of time too; if not then this would have to be switched in the field on a little video switcher. (good luck getting three paths back to the station in perfect sync to do it there.

    Sorry, just my inner TV production nerd screaming.

    *MMJ – Multimedia Journalist. A reporter who writes, shoots, and edits all their own material with no cameraperson.

    1. BBCC

      They’re not at the interview yet. That’s Robin’s stuff.

    2. showler

      Did they ever say it was for TV? Given Becky’s sphere of influence I was thinking more of an online news site kind of thing.

      1. showler

        Never mind. They did say “TV interview”

    3. Tan

      I was assuming it was a remote interview. Becky here in her apartment, some cable news guy at their studio, possibly one of Manley’s people remoting in from their campaign headquarters or such as well for opposing view.

      1. Needfuldoer

        They wouldn’t have to send a crew out for that; there are Skype appliances that tie in with the rest of a station’s systems.

        The ‘sat delay’ of having a debate between both candidates remotely through the station though… oof.

        1. Tan

          Where do you see a crew?

        2. Needfuldoer

          Out of frame, where we belong.

  17. BenRG

    It probably tells you a lot about how much growing up Becky has been forced to do that her biggest concern at this point it to tease Joyce about how everything seems to need to go through or at least be cross-verified with Dorothy! Panel 5 definitely seems to say: “So, time to tease sis!”

    1. thejeff

      Says a lot about how ingrained her defense mechanisms are, I’d say.

      “So, time to tease sis, because that’ll keep me from a complete breakdown.”

  18. Agemegos

    Well done Joyce! Telling Becky was the right thing to do.

    Now tell her that Robin hired security for her.

  19. Shane

    I’d like to up the bidding to “Your dad IS out of jail and was within 100 meters of you last night with PLANS”.

    1. Agemegos

      Mike or Amazi-Girl would have to be the one with that news, and Mike is busy in the basement with the lotion and the hose.

  20. JediMB

    Joyce and Becky are so gosh-darn cute.

  21. CJ

    Priority: not be angry with Joyce.

  22. Heavensrun

    That grin is fantastic.

  23. CJ

    @Willis: I know it’s problem not created by you, could you find a different way for opting out of personalized ads (living in Europe, so DSGVO)? It’s really annoying to have to do 20 klicks every few days to re-state that I still don’t want personalized ads. (On every comic I read). I don’t understand why I have to re-enter my choices every few days and why there are so many different things to opt out of. Does anyone really want to be tracked by one or two out of the 50 odd companies listed?
    I‘m on patron, so it’s not like I‘m cheating you out of money, I just don’t wanna be tracked.

    1. BBCC

      Talk to Hiveworks about intrusive ads. They’re the ones who delete them, not Willis.

      1. CJ

        This is not about intrusive ads. This is about the „Do you want cookies“ dialogue that was invented because of European Law which states that setting cookies without user approval is illegal. The problem is that advertising networks want to set hundreds of cookies to track your behaviors across all the sites you use, with the aim of presenting personalized ads.
        If each site once presented me with a dialogue „ do you want personalized ads“ and when I answer „no“, they and they ad partners do not set tracking cookies and that’s it, that would be great.
        But the damn dialogue has 8 or 9 screens with long lists of companies who want to set cookies and track me, and it pops up every 3-7 days AGAIN.
        So it would be much easier for me to use an ad-blocker, which would reduce the ad revenue Willis gets even more than non-personalized ads do.
        Hiveworks did not react to a mail on the topic, they didn’t even explain why the thing appears every other day (and at least tries to enable google cookies if you don’t go through all the screens to disable it again).

        1. BBCC

          It might be an issue with the company in reaction to European law then. Hiveworks and Willis may not have any control over it.

        2. CJ

          It is actually the responsibility of the individual websites to ask for permission for any cookies that are set when I visit the site, so it’s either Willis or Hiveworks responsibility.

  24. He Who Abides

    Yes, Becky, Dorothy knew. So did Robin, except Robin had no plans to tell you this.

  25. Bagge

    Trust Joyce to do the right thing.

    Eventually.

    also trust her to tell her friend in the most adorable, nervous way possible.

  26. DarkoNeko

    aw.

  27. hof1991

    Panel 4 Becky. Sad. Worried. Dismayed at the shite sandwich which she’s busy eating.

    Panel 5 Becky. Trolling Joyce.
    Thank you Willis.

  28. Diane

    I’m glad Joyce did the right thing eventually, and sooner than planned.

    Also, I too text vomit like that when I get nervous about telling someone anything vaguely unpleasant. Except it’s all one big text cause I know nothing about spacing.

  29. Juanoku

    Of course that’s what she’s attached to

  30. MrBookBoy

    I find it fascinating that over the past couple of years the comment count has dropped dramatically over time. I know I’m new here, but strips like this of about the same caliber and tone in 2015 would have like twice the comments. What happened?

    (Also I think I’ve gone through the archives like 5 times since discovering the comic. Perhaps i need to find a new hobby.)

    1. Sam

      Some people stop reading, some people don’t feel like commenting, and some are likely waiting for 6 months to go past so by the time they return, what happened to Mike will be known. Some people have likely shifted to being binge readers.

    2. Yumi

      There’s also Patreon now, where some people– likely some of those who are the most into the comic– can support it and read and comment a day early. I’m not sure when that was introduced, but I imagine it impacts the number of on-site comments.

  31. Rabisch

    I love how little the information has impressed Becky. She’s truly a strong, powerhouse woman.

    1. StClair

      Actually, no (IMO). She’s fucking terrified (you can see it in the middle panels), and resorting to her usual means of deflecting/pretending otherwise.

  32. Amphibianlass

    Very unrelated but i would die on the hill for shipping dorothy and joyce together, it is very much fruitless as their both very likely straight but my heart ships what it must ship

    1. Delicious Taffy

      Don’t worry, we’re in the same boat.

    2. Raptorofwar

      O7

  33. liliaeth

    They’re not wrong, if there was any chance that the interviewer would bring it up, it’s better for Becky to know what’s going on ahead of time.

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