153

Places
Posted on October 1, 2015 by David M Willis

153 thoughts on “Places”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    Hyperventilating is a great way to keep cool!

    (not really)

    1. inqntrol

      She needs to chill out a little bit.

      1. who me?

        Easier said then done!

        Especially after what happened to her world view, and the recent assault, recall its not been that long for her a couple weeks at best right?

        1. Packy

          Right.

        2. Kelli

          Wet blanket, or didn’t get the joke?

  2. Doctor_Who

    Smoking is cool. Smoking will ruin your breathing. Therefore hyperventilating is a sign that you are cool.

    1. inqntrol

      Smoking will also ruin your lungs. Meh lungs are overrated anyway.

      1. Yotomoe

        Lungs are only like your 3rd most vital organ anyway. Maybe even 4th.

        1. tim gueguen

          Femurs are much more important.

        2. Someone

          Femurs arnt even an organ!

        3. No Name

          Actually, every bone is considered it’s own organ, so, yes, femurs aren’t an organ, but a femur is.

        4. poppaboo2electricboogaloo

          NERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDS!

        5. Opus the Poet

          You say that like it’s a bad thing… 😀

        6. Usayasha

          Or like your having an orgasm.

          I know which one I’m voting on.

        7. Willoughby Chase

          Ah, the siren call of my people.

        8. Rokushi

          Every avatar from tim to poppa was perfect for the comment they posted.

        9. Deanatay

          YOU SAY THAT WITH PRIDE!!

      2. Detective Boomwolf

        I know right. They’re just a part of the respiratory system. Just like, the most overated system. Not like it’s the digestive system. That’s where the really cool organs hang out.

        1. Agemegos

          There are some pretty cool organs in the urogenital system!

        2. Agemegos

          I’ve had kidney stones. Ureters rock the house!

        3. Kryss LaBryn

          I’ve sprained my damned colon. Ends up a functioning colon is pretty goddamned cool too! D:

        4. Kryss LaBryn

          –That… that’s not where I put my close tag. O.o

        5. Dana

          I hate it when my digestive system hangs out.

    2. Deanatay

      I thought it was the raspy, hacking cough that made you sound cool. All along it was the hyperventilating??

      Years of my life… WASTED…

  3. liahansen

    damn you alt text now that song is gonna be in my head

    1. Doctor_Who

      I had a special taped off television when I was a kid called “You don’t Look 40, Charlie Brown” which celebrated Peanuts 40th anniversary, and B.B. King sang that song. It was even more awesome than the original.

      Link.

    2. Cholma

      Let me (and Vince Guaraldi) help!

      1. de Combys

        Vince Guaraldi <3

      2. Willoughby Chase

        +1

  4. Plasma Mongoose

    Will Joyce spill the beans on the truth or is she too embarrassed to tell someone as cool as Sal?

    1. brumagem

      Sal already knows, she just wasn’t aware Joyce was not over it yet (like 90% of people wouldn’t be).

      1. Lawzlo

        To be fair, she is coming back to see what’s going on now that it’s obvious that there’s a problem, and “Joyce? Whaddya doin’?” is a much more natural way to start that conversation than “Madam, you have suffered an emotional shock. I will notify a rape crisis center.”

        1. Splooshy

          Ahhhhhhh Robocop. Nice.

        2. poppaboo2electricboogaloo

          Ooooh, I want Robocop Sal now.

        3. inqntrol

          I want a Terminator Sal with a ,,funky Hans and Franz accent”.

  5. Aislashu

    So glad Sal came back, I was sartin to feel bad

    1. Beoluve

      Wouldn’t be too cool of her to just leave.

  6. spriteless

    Sal, you give more sensitive to joyce than Allison over in SFP will be getting for another few hours.

    1. DarkoNeko

      Ouuuch.

    2. Spencer

      I just started reading that last week. It’s so good.

  7. Stephen R. Bierce

    …Running for the shadows/In these Golden Years…

  8. Leorale

    Try saying ‘hyperventilating’ in a thick, condescending, Tennessee drawl. It’s fun!

    1. zebrathinker

      … wow I need to read Sal’s lines out loud more often. 10/10 would recommend.

    2. Ana Chronistic

      doesn’t work, that’s apparently my normal voice =|

    3. Idon'tcarenomore

      I don’t think Sal’s being condescending.

      1. Disloyal Subject

        No, but her default tone is close enough.

  9. brumagem

    SAL. Don’t be a garbage person. I believe in you.

    1. Yotomoe

      Garbage people are the best people in the world. Where else would all my garbage go if not for them.

      1. who me?

        Just ask Oscar! He lives in a garbage can!

        1. de Combys

          Ha! Haha!

      2. Dean

        They are the unsung heroes of the modern world. Without garbage people, we might as well be living in Italy!

        1. No Name

          I, sir or madam, have lived in Italy, and would like to say, you are correct.

    2. Plasma Mongoose

      But garbage people are very important for keeping the sanitation up.

      1. JustCheetoDust

        Oh, that kind of “garbage person.” I thought this was about Grouches.

      2. de Combys

        And there I was thinking about favelas all this time.

    3. Doctor_Who

      Close enough?

    4. poppaboo2electricboogaloo

      Shit, the Garbage Pail Kids were the coolest little dudes on the block!

    5. ninja_jesus

      Take a look around and tell me that you don’t see
      Just a worthless pile of garbage and debris
      I SEE A KINGDOM

  10. cmd1095

    god damn it Joyce drop the act and admit you need help, you aren’t fooling Sal, let her get you somewhere safe at least

    1. Leorale

      She hasn’t got very much choice. It’s that or stand there and shiver til somebody she knows happens by. Or I suppose she could call Ethan. He’s a stand-up fellow in all universes.

      1. Blue

        I think she probably would call Ethan, but he may still be on Toedad-guard duty.

      2. Nightsbridge

        He’s watching for toedad though

    2. Regalli

      That one’s not an act, that’s freeze-mode of fight-flight-freeze. She’s panicking right now is what’s happening.

      1. timemonkey

        They’re refering to the act she’s putting on. Nothings wrong I’m fine, just practicing being cool.

        1. Agemegos

          Lying is a sin, for starters.

        2. No Name

          Ooooooh, I just remembered her conversation with Mike on that very subject.

    3. DarkoNeko

      Damn you DoA char, stop hiding things and opens up !
      *webcomic ends a week after*

  11. epershannd

    in my mind, from panel 4 to 5, sal just hovered over closer to joyce without changing her body position

    1. io

      You just increased thr entertainment value of this page by 10fold for me xD

  12. newllend(henryvolt)

    Guilt would not allow you to leave her like that.

  13. zebrathinker

    Take her under your wing, Sal!! just… take her… right under that wing. cmon.

  14. Triniking1234

    Wasn’t expecting Sal to do the about-turn. Incoming character development?

    *reads alt-text*

    We need more Joe!

  15. Lawzlo

    Joe didn’t want to be the first one to say it, but yes. Joe Cool.

  16. zmm

    I feel like Sal might go a asskicking. or at least teaching joyce some ass kicking

    1. Someone

      Who’s ass would they kick? I don’t think Ryan even goes to the school.

      1. Disloyal Subject

        Mike might volunteer, or someone could buy a heavy training bag.
        Not that training to kick asses requires actually hitting something. Drilling motions can be pretty effective.

        1. NotPiffany

          Mike might volunteer someone else (Danny), you mean.

  17. Heff

    Sal of all people is going to force Joyce to get the help she needs. That, or this is all leading to makeouts.

    I may have been reading this too long.

    1. DarkoNeko

      She ain’t doing that, no.

  18. Detective Boomwolf

    C’mon Sal, this is a chance for you to be cool. Ina different, but equally awesome way. In the words of Shire Labeef, “JUST DO IT!”

  19. Raen

    I have a horrible feeling we’re about to see the dark side of Sal’s not-giving-a-fuck.

    1. Kryss LaBryn

      Pretty sure if we were, she wouldn’t have turned back.

  20. Just Me

    Amazed that Sal even turned around and looked back instead of keep walking.

    1. NotPiffany

      She’s a loner. She has trust issues. She’s not a jerk.

  21. caesaria82

    I love that Sal came back. I hope she is intuitive enough to just walk with Joyce now and not ask too many questions!

  22. JessWitt

    Thank goodness Sal noticed. She may be aloof and distant, but she’s not uncaring.

  23. Nate

    This one made me feel for Joyce. I’ve been through what she’s going through. I was so glad when I reached the last panel and Sal had come back. Still, the line about hyperventilating drives home how affected Joyce really is.

    1. NotPiffany

      I hope things are better for you now.

  24. Palamdrone

    Quick! Give her a transformer! It worked for Amber.

    1. Deanatay

      That was generalized anxiety. This is PTSD (and, possibly, more).

      1. Gamaran Sepudomyn

        No, Palamdrone meant a real transformer. People tend to get a lot less scared of other people if they have a giant robot bodyguard.

      2. Palamdrone

        Isn’t it likely that Amber’s anxiety is PTSD caused by her father’s abuse?

  25. Arianod

    Do the math, Sal. Do the math.

  26. Idon'tcarenomore

    I knew Sal would not just walk away. So, she’s a bad ass, she isn’t mean, and she isn’t cruel. She is just very much a loner.
    Joyce has a serious case of hero worship on Sal, if anyone can get her to get help, or teach her to help herself, it may be Sal.

  27. Bagge

    No… No… No… Oh, she’s back. puh.

    For all the talk of Willis being Evil, he COULD have made this cliffhanger last until next strip. Imagine that, the third panel being the last.

    1. Someone

      The next week of strips is the third panel over and over again

      1. thejeff

        With Ryan occasionally walking by in the foreground.

        (At least in Joycevision)

  28. Splooshy

    The PTSD is real.

  29. Badgermole

    “Yer doin’ it wrong. Watch an’ learn, wonderbread.”

  30. miados

    poor joyce. The ones who know she needs to be walked aren’t there to and the ones who are there don’t know.

    1. horrorshow88

      Oof, so true and so sad.

  31. Arian

    Kudos to Cerberus, who said yesterday,

    “I doubt Sal would be so heartless to leave someone in the midst of a complete flashback meltdown and she’s historically been the quickest to notice things like that and the one to treat the issue the most seriously”.

    You nailed it.

    1. Bagge

      Kudos to Cerberus in general

  32. Dean

    All Joyce needs is the proper motivation. If Sal tells Joyce that she’ll meet her in her dorm room with a hairbrush, no-one will see Joyce for dust.

  33. takashid

    Come ON joyce, just fess up and tell her that you feel unsafe alone outside and that you need her to walk you back to the dorm. Sal was involved in the incident aftermath, so she has a frame of reference as to why you’d be feeling that way. And you could ask for no safer bodyguard then Sal. Just drop the “I’m fine, everything’s fine.” act and tell her.

  34. Rycan

    Well, points for noticing, at least.

  35. ninja_jesus

    At first I thought Sal came back because she thought Joyce would follow her anyway, but then I saw panel 3 again. Oh jeez. Thank you for noticing, Sal.

  36. Charles Phipps

    Please please PLEASE let the next strip be Amazi-Girl attacking Sal for smoking on campus. 🙂

    1. No Name

      A) As much as smoking is a nuisance, she seems to be the regulation distance form any outside doorway so Amazi-Girl would have no recourse or excuse.
      B) That would be the opposite of helpful to Joyce right now. I don’t think Sal is as bad as you think.

  37. BenRG

    Congratulations, Sal, you’ve realised that the pesky fangirl is having a serious panic attack. Now, what do you do about it?

    Sal likes to make out that she’s hard and dispassionate. The thing is that she’s really very hurt and frightened to open up. However, abandoning someone who is clearly in serious trouble isn’t part of her nature. Now she has to figure out precisely how she’ll handle this.

  38. NinjaNick

    Well, being cool in the shade is a start.

  39. acher4

    I am kind of sure some nice heartwarming scenes are coming, and I lvoe it!
    So excited! 😀

  40. Mr. Mendo

    Poor Joyce… 🙁

  41. BenRG

    I’m predicting at some point Becky is going to be saying: “Darn it, Joyce! Why do you always have to be the brave one?” I strongly suspect that Joyce has many demons but she feels she has to put up a brave front and be the one there for her friends instead of having them there for her when she needs them.

    1. Bagge

      Me to. I think their interaction at the sushi restaurant and when Becky learnt about the assault touches on that, but Becky simply has not had the stability to really help Joyce as she wants yet.

      Again, I’m so incredibly happy that they went to church together. That’s one thing Joyce has not been able to do properly since she got here, and that’s something they always had together.

  42. Jepmz

    I teared a little when I saw Sal peeked back

    1. Bagge

      I teared the panel before that.

  43. Deowai

    Any theories on why I might be feeling a growing sense of dread, by the way?

    1. Kryss LaBryn

      Because it’s a comic by Willis?

  44. Kavonde

    Sal is going to find out what happened at that party, and the next couple of weeks’ strips will be set to the tune of Mark Henry’s entrance music.

    1. SailorCakes

      Sal already knows what happened at the party she is the one who suggested not going to the police.

      http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/assault/

  45. SailorCakes

    I don’t understand why Sal resists a friendship with Joyce so much. I mean they already hang out a handful of times and she is her next door dorm mate(?). Also Marcie has a new friend one she totally has a crush on but still a new friend. Get yourself a new friend Sal.

    1. BenRG

      Friendship mean emotional openness. If you’re emotionally open with someone, you might get hurt by them. Sal has been hurt enough in her life; she doesn’t want that to happen again.

      Then she realises that turning your back on someone in need hurts more.

    2. DarkoNeko

      Joyce’s not a friend, she’s a fan, like a puppy marveling at everything and following you everywhere.

      1. BenRG

        And, like a puppy, almost unbearably cute. Sal must have a will of adamant to be able to resist her offer of companionship for as long as she has!

        1. Jen

          Not really. Having someone fan girl/boy you can be really annoying. They don’t deal with you like you’re an actual person. If someone hovered around me and kept making comments about how they wanted to pet my hair and liked me for my material possessions (clothes, bike, etc) but never actually engaged me as a person, I wouldn’t want to be friends with them either.

          In one instance, a woman told me how I looked just like one of her China dolls (I was dressed for a bellydance performance) and she wanted to put me on her shelf. She also talked multiple times about this deep connection she felt we had. Whenever I ran into her, I always felt like she wasn’t interacting with me, but this this archetype of god-knows-what that she assumed I was. You can’t really be friends with that.

          But don’t get me wrong, I do think that Joyce and Sal will become friends, Joyce just has to get over her hero worship of Sal first and start interacting with Sal-the-person, not Sal-the-hero-archetype.

        2. Jen

          And I am being literal. She actually said to me that I looked just like her china dolls and that she wanted to put me on her shelf with them. She actually said that to me.

        3. perlhaqr

          To be fair, you *are* only 16 inches tall, right?

        4. Jen

          Ha! Well, sure, I guess, give or take a few feet. 😉

    3. SailorCakes

      I think Sal had spent enough time around Joyce to realize how much friend potential she has by now. We now how badly Joyce wants a friendship with Sal maybe that’s why she acts like a puppy. Unrequited friendship means she can only be a fan girl.

  46. saki

    Oh thank gods Sal turned around.
    Also, could this be the thing that finally has Sal letting herself open up a little and become friends with Joyce? Fingers crossed. :3

  47. fogel

    A day or two back, someone said that only Ethan and Amazing Girl know about Joyce’s anxiety about being alone outside. So Joyce having someone to walk across campus with, including to lunch after math, has NOT been arranged? SO neither Dorothy or Walky knew about this when they spontaneously bailed on their usual lunch routine “today”? Really, this situation was inevitable. (GIVEN that she was assaulted at the party,) Joyce was very Lucky that she was with Sal when Dorothy bailed & Walky imploded. She clearly needs pro help. She also needs better “institutionalized” support from her friends.
    Totes sux. That’s the thing about ptsd, isn’t it: its The Trauma that Keeps on Taking, taking your ability to live the way you used to/could have. People talk about “letting go” of things, “getting over” things but I’ve decided that, for me, anyway, it’s not about me letting go of the trauma, or getting over it, it’s about me escaping the “intrusive memories” that don’t want to let go of me.

    1. Kryss LaBryn

      Hey, I have some AWESOME info for you: They can now remove the emotional component of traumatic memories. I have a good friend who suffers from PTSD as well, and, well, here’s what I told him back in August:

      Hey [Friend], heard a really, really cool thing on the radio today about how memories are formed–and can be erased: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91569-memory-and-forgetting/

      Basically, they discovered that when memories are created, there’s an actual physical component to them: certain proteins are laid down in the brain. If a certain drug is administered as the memory is trying to form, it blocks it from forming. The experiment they did was to play a particular tone at a rat and then administer a mild shock. The undrugged rat learned to anticipate the shock after the tone; the one injected with the drug when first exposed tot he tone didn’t make the memory.

      However, here’s the cool part: They found they could erase that specific memory in the rat by training it to expect the tone, then, some time later (many days), playing the tone again, and when the rat braced itself for the shock (showing that it was remembering what would happen next), injecting it with the chemical. The rat when then exposed to the tone again had forgotten about the following shock.

      But maybe it just damaged the brain a bit or something? So they trained a rat using two different tones, showed that it reacted to both tones, then played the one and injected it. Sure enough, it only lost the memory associated with that tone, and not the other.

      Ends up when we’re remembering, we’re actually re-writing the memory, so the process of those proteins getting laid down again can be disrupted. Also ends up that the more often you access a particular memory, the more inaccurate it gets, because when you rewrite it it’s as seen through the filter of who you are now and stuff. But that’s tangential.

      The important, relevant part is this: THEY TRIED IT ON A HUMAN AND IT WORKED. It didn’t remove the memory; but it took a deeply traumatic incident (a rape in the woman’s very young childhood, which she’d only ever mentioned to her mother, who’d dismissed it as her making it up) and while she could remember it, having her recall the specific memory and then administering this drug stripped the memory of its emotional hit. She was thereafter quite comfortable discussing it, even talking about it on national TV, because the memory had lost the power to hurt her.

      It holds a tremendous potential for treating, actually treating, PTSD. I think they said it was being done out of McGill University in Montreal but I was driving and may be mis-remembering the McGill part. Quebec I’m sure of, though. Anyways, dude, you need to listen to this episode and find out more about it, because holy shit. This could actually be some real help. OMG!! 😀

      1. Kryss LaBryn

        Aw, my title text didn’t work. Here it is for the curious:

        …Although they do now know the process of how false memories can work, which is kind of cool, and has been borne out in studies where they were able to change details a person was remembering, or even give them false memories completely. Say you witness a crime, and the cops ask if you happened to notice a red Camaro leaving the scene. You think about it, and didn’t, and tell them no, you’re pretty sure there wasn’t. However, the act of remembering the event rewrites it to a certain extent, and now you have the info “red Camaro” associated with the memory. So after a while the cops come back and say, “Are you SURE you didn’t notice a red Camaro?” And you think about it, and yeah, maybe there was one there after all. And you go into court the next day and the judge asks if you saw the red Camaro, and you will totally remember it, in detail: the way the light shone on the hood–except it wasn’t there; they just “implanted” the car by repeatedly talking about it while getting you to recall something that did happen. Seems to be the mechanism behind all the “I was abused by a Satanic cult!” ‘repressed memories’ from the Eighties. Some memories are legit and are legitimately repressed; but a lot of those ones were false, and that seems to be the way it happens.

        1. Gamaran Sepudomyn

          It really bothers me that no one has figured out a way to stop the memory overwriting thing, considering how many ways that can cause problems. Hopefully, there’s a relatively easy solution to that problem, and it isn’t something that would require post-Robocop levels of cyborgization to fix (by storing your memories in a system with the memory recall systems modified to prevent that).
          …
          I kind of went off on a complete tangent there, didn’t I?

      2. fogel

        Definitely something to know about. Thanks.

    2. Dragon_Nataku

      I’ve found that, generally speaking, people who tell other people to “get over” stuff have never had anything happen to them that they needed to “get over.”

      1. sjmcc13

        It is the same for extroverts dealing with introverts in my experience. Any deviation from the norm, and people will not accept it, assuming there is something wrong with you that needs to be fixed/medicated away.

        1. Dragon_Nataku

          Yeah, my dad kept trying to diagnose me with social anxiety disorder (disclaimer: my dad is an economist, not a psychiatrist/psychologist) just cause I’m an introvert. On the plus side this means that he’s totally willing to foot the bill whenever I take my friends out to lunch/dinner even if we ring up like $175 worth of food cause he’s just glad I’m being “normal” (where for him “normal” means “socialising”)

  48. hof1991

    I foresee a motorcycle ride coming up. It would be best if it was to somewhere Joyce could get help, but Sal is someone who avoids all help and authority figures.

  49. Toes14

    Well, this is depressing. I can understand her being nervous in crowds of strange people, but in broad daylight in a sparsely crowded open campus with grass & trees?

    (Then again, I am a middle aged male who’s never been traumatized by a sexual predator.)

    1. Apostate

      Yeah, feeling unsafe literally everywhere after an event like that is not an unexpected thing. I still haven’t recovered from something that happened six months ago. It’s hard not to feel helpless.

      1. Apostate

        (As a woman in her 20s who has)

    2. sjmcc13

      Someone could be sneaking up on/behind you…
      Also phobia’s and trauma do not need to make logical sense.

    3. Edupoet81

      Yeah, well, our emotional responses to situations aren’t always rational. I think and feel many things that don’t make sense on a rational level, and I know they don’t make sense. I still can’t turn them off.

  50. Airyu

    oh woah, Joyce CAN lie.

    1. No Name

      Only under EXTREME duress.

  51. Mr. Morningstar

    “Wait why is she freaking out over going by herself? What is she afraid- ooooooh”

    My thought process during these recent comics because im an idiot who forgot important plot details.

  52. Edupoet81

    I’m glad Sal turned around. This would be a really good time for Joyce to break out of the Stepford Smiler routine, and actually open up. Of course, that might be difficult for her when she’s most likely been taught that she should always keep smiling no matter what (I’ve ranted about that here before, so I’ll refrain). Of course, it doesn’t help that Sal basically just told Joyce that they aren’t friends. Joyce may not feel comfortable opening up under the circumstances.

    Sal knows what happened to Joyce. I hope she’s astute enough to put two and two together here.

  53. Saine

    So, I’ve read this comic, but someone tells me there’s a homoromantic asexual in it. Any idea to whom they are referring? Surely not Dina?

    1. Spencer

      Carla is confirmed to be homoromantic asexual.

  54. Ancient Mariner

    Is it just me wondering who the untagged person is in the last two panels?

    1. Ancient Mariner

      Hokay … never mind.

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