Peter started that because he was scared spitless, and it helped hide that from the bad guys. After a while, it became a habit. Now, if he’s quiet, it’s the bad guys who are terrified.
I remember in one issue, Daredevil listens while Spider-Man is reading a list of fat jokes to Kingpin. Daredevilcould barely hear the jokes because all he could hear was how hard Spidey’s heart was pounding the whole time.
On one hand it is good but on the other it could be argued its enabling Walkys behavior and thus keeping him from some much needed personal growth and maturity
Yenklette
This is a really weird thread because Walky got kidnapped and traumatized and he managed to keep his cool and keep joking around and I don’t understand why we hate Walky so much.
Sirksome
Just being honest here for me, I’ve said how much I hate Walky multiple times *it might even be a little irrational on my part* so him cracking not very funny jokes that didn’t distract anyone doesn’t really impress me. I’m more confused why everyone gives him so much credit for doing so little. But that’s just me. I feel like Sal’s being nice because Walky defended her. Not sure if everyone else in this thread has beef with Walky though.
Regalli
Walky reacts, in the last storyline, like a pretty average person would when faced with incredible danger. I don’t dock him points for behaving like an average person.
Multiple other people besides me have also pointed out that things like his not standing up to Linda to this point – or in general, since she has actively discouraged that tendency, though also not when HE WAS BEING PHYSICALLY THREATENED as a roughly six-year-old – are the result of Linda’s active emotional abuse of both her children. (Being the golden boy with the crushing expectations and the waiting threat if he disappoints her? Still a form of abuse, though a distinctly different one from Sal’s.) I afford Walky (and Sal, though she tends to have her emotional shit a bit more together) the same sympathy and hope for growth I do for Joyce, Amber, Ruth, Becky, and most likely Ethan as kids who are coming out of their shells after years of abuse from a parent. Walky’s the least far along on this path, except again maybe Ethan – who’s doing a lot of the casual sex specifically because he’s terrified of Naomi’s response if he has a boyfriend, but casual sex can be hidden – but Joyce is only now starting to grasp the fullness of How Fucked Up Carol Is, and she’s actively avoiding that conversation. (I do not blame her at all, granted, but she’s also in the very early stages of ‘Man my childhood was deeply fucked up and my mom’s kind of evil’ and as we just saw, her view on things like divorce is still very sheltered and messed up in anxiety.)
I probably cut Walky a bit more slack on the whole than I might otherwise BECAUSE I see a lot of the points where he gets shit for being a pretty normal 18-year-old or is clearly freaking out because he was abused, and go ‘… wait, seriously?’ I have some degree of sympathy for most of the cast (I don’t like Raidah as a whole but think the Seduce Jacob plan of Joyce and Sarah’s was actively wrong, and it’s clear Rachel went through some shit to prompt the Redemption Is A Myth speech but she went WAY farther than I can condone saying to someone you know is JUST out of the hospital for suicidal ideation and didn’t recognize she had splash damage as she was saying it, Jason is just an Objectively Terrible TA on every level,) which means I’m gonna come to Walky or Malaya’s defense if I see a lot of criticism for them being pretty normal teens. I find this is a pretty well-rounded comic with well-rounded, believable characters, and that means in a lot of these situations where things are complicated I’m going ‘oh god, you fuckup, I get why you’re doing this but you fuckup.’ If everyone’s focusing on the fuckup part, I will go to ‘I get why you’re doing this.’
(I also am very much in the sympathy corner for Walky with regards to grades, because dear God I see EXACTLY myself in junior year of college there. Avoidance spiral? Check. Undermanaged disability impacting your ability to do things? Check – it’s been pretty heavily implied Walky’s storyline there is heading towards ‘yeah, he has ADHD and the methods Dorothy was using COULDN’T work on him, much less Jason’s.’ Never learned to study because you had years of being a Gifted Student and learning the material was easy so even if teachers tried to teach you, you didn’t see the point of this overly-complicated setup? Hoo boy, check. Honestly he’s handling it better than I did, though mine only reached its peak in the last couple weeks of class. By all accounts he IS turning in his assignments, that puts him ahead. College while Neurodivergent is NOT an easy thing.)
Puckish Rogue
(Yes I have a beef with Walky)
Exactly this. Wheres the praise the for Dina, Joyce, Dorothy or Sarah (did I miss anyone?) or actually tried?
Nope its for Walky getting praise for doing nothing, if you want an example of a culture of mediocrity then this is a pretty good one
Puckish Rogue
(Goddamn work keyboard)
Wheres the praise for Dina, Joyce, Dorothy or Sarah (did I miss anyone?) all who actually tried?
thejeff
Well the praise here is partly for standing up to Linda, which doesn’t apply to the others and partly in response to trashing Walky in response to Sal’s comment.
Praising others right now would be kind of out of the blue. They got their share when they actually did the things – and it’ll probably come up again in the comic refers to it.
This is off topic, but I sure wish there was a way to stop Trump ads from showing up on here. There is one that doesn’t even have an “x” in the corner to get rid of it.
Yeah, given what Willis said (yesterday? Two strips ago? *shrug*) about them lying to cheat the system that is both unsurprising and So Much Suck. God, fuck that dude.
I don’t hate you for adblocking, but when pages that give me something I value for no cost are supported to some degree by ads, I feel a moral obligation not to block them as long as they don’t actually block the content I’m there for. And I kind of feel that others should feel that obligation as well.
Why yes, I fast forward through the TV commercials; why do you ask?
Regalli
I try not to use adblock unless I know the site in question has ads that are INCREDIBLY intrusive and/or seem like they could have malware. (Autoplay videos with sound? Incredibly intrusive. Completely takes over the page? Same. Horribly disturbing jump scare? Fortunately haven’t seen one of those in ages but if they did show up again, that’s an issue. Animated banner ad but no sound? Eh, totally doable.)
Dumbing of Age has occasional Extremely Intrusive ads but they usually last, at most, a few days before Hiveworks removes them and all’s well.
(That said, while I’ll gladly watch through short Youtube and other video site ads, anything longer than about two minutes is a no. I’ve gotten one or two on Crunchyroll that promised to be ten minutes or more. NO ONE is gonna sit through that one.)
Delicious Taffy
Two-minute ads? He’ll, you’re way more generous than I am with that shit. I figure if you can’t sell me your product in 45 seconds or less, you deserve the Skip button.
vlademir1
I’ve never seen any that long on Crunchy to my memory, but I haven’t watched without access to a paid account in years now. Sometimes, however, YouTube will randomly give me an ad that, when I check it’s run time, is actually a full hour long infomercial. The best of those instances was five minutes into a ten minute SciShow video
Chris
I just bought all the books. I feel no guilt about blocking the ads.
Now, see– I LIKE Walky.
I don’t want him all Peter Parkerin’ it up all the time.
That would be BAD!
It’s not his schtick… YET.
Let’s avoid that, shall we?
I think I could make a case that courage is a defense mechanism. It’s not a common one, and maybe not even a natural one, needing to be learned, but it can be a useful one, letting you accomplish things you otherwise couldn’t. The drawback is that sometimes it’s fatal.
thejeff
Sometimes what gets called courage is just the “fight” part of a fight or flight mechanism.
Sometimes it’s more complicated though.
134 thoughts on “Thick”
Ana Chronistic
“how about matching capes””NO”
“masks?”“AH SED NO”
clif
But matching Joyce grin masks.
Dean
Tthey could get a theme song!
Deanatay
“And I could grow my hair out!”
“Then we’d look exactly aliak, bro!”
“Nah, I’d grow me a beard and a cool moustache!”
“Great then you’d be mah evil twin…”
“*shrug* Pretty much already am…”
Ana Chronistic
HA Walky grow a beard and/or moustache
Tarnish
I too, am ready for Walky to start leathering up.
Chaucer59
You misspelled “lathering.”
Cholma
Some people just don’t know the proper use of the silent “e”, or when to use it.
clif
The proper use of the silent e is to indicate drawn out eeeemphasis. Wheeeeen to use it is neeeever.
(Was I close?)
Jhon
When you need to make a hug huge.
Delicious Taffy
Or turn your pin into a pine.
brionl
Pour que no los dos?
Meagan
Al mismo tiempo?
Doctor_Who
Matching pajama jeans and butt-taco shirts or bust.
JessWitt
They’ll compromise with leather jackets emblazoned with butt-tacos on the back.
Formerly Glenn
I’ll do you on better.
Pajama top leather jackets, with pajama jeans, butt tacos all around.
JessWitt
And of course the butt-taco motorcycle helmets.
Nono
Does Joyce like bacon? I mean theory says yes, but it’s Joyce…
Mra
You don’t have yo mix it with anything to make it, just meat and frying oil
Doctor_Who
Don’t even need oil, bacon cooks perfectly well in its own fat.
Can’t get more Joyce-approved than a single ingredient!
SonicHowling
Sure, Joyce likes bacon. AS A BREAKFAST FOOD, AND NOT SPRINKLED ON DINNER
Chris
I don’t think leather is really his style.
Chaucer59
Leather pajamas?
butts
i mean, that’s not what they’re usually called, but you do you i guess
Newllend(henryvolt)
Being able to laugh in the face of danger is in it of itself heroic, why do you think Spider-Man is always quipping.
Stephen Bierce
007 too.
Bicycle Bill
007 usually delivers his quips AFTER the action is over, though.
Jon
Peter started that because he was scared spitless, and it helped hide that from the bad guys. After a while, it became a habit. Now, if he’s quiet, it’s the bad guys who are terrified.
Delicious Taffy
As they should be.
PB
I remember in one issue, Daredevil listens while Spider-Man is reading a list of fat jokes to Kingpin. Daredevilcould barely hear the jokes because all he could hear was how hard Spidey’s heart was pounding the whole time.
Sirksome
It was not heroic! Sal is being so generous with him right now!
Puckish Rogue
Maybe Sal got mixed up and meant to say gutless
Wereg
Yeeeaahhh I agree with you here. Still, I think Sal being supportive is good for both of them and I can respect it.
Puckish Rogue
On one hand it is good but on the other it could be argued its enabling Walkys behavior and thus keeping him from some much needed personal growth and maturity
Yenklette
This is a really weird thread because Walky got kidnapped and traumatized and he managed to keep his cool and keep joking around and I don’t understand why we hate Walky so much.
Sirksome
Just being honest here for me, I’ve said how much I hate Walky multiple times *it might even be a little irrational on my part* so him cracking not very funny jokes that didn’t distract anyone doesn’t really impress me. I’m more confused why everyone gives him so much credit for doing so little. But that’s just me. I feel like Sal’s being nice because Walky defended her. Not sure if everyone else in this thread has beef with Walky though.
Regalli
Walky reacts, in the last storyline, like a pretty average person would when faced with incredible danger. I don’t dock him points for behaving like an average person.
Multiple other people besides me have also pointed out that things like his not standing up to Linda to this point – or in general, since she has actively discouraged that tendency, though also not when HE WAS BEING PHYSICALLY THREATENED as a roughly six-year-old – are the result of Linda’s active emotional abuse of both her children. (Being the golden boy with the crushing expectations and the waiting threat if he disappoints her? Still a form of abuse, though a distinctly different one from Sal’s.) I afford Walky (and Sal, though she tends to have her emotional shit a bit more together) the same sympathy and hope for growth I do for Joyce, Amber, Ruth, Becky, and most likely Ethan as kids who are coming out of their shells after years of abuse from a parent. Walky’s the least far along on this path, except again maybe Ethan – who’s doing a lot of the casual sex specifically because he’s terrified of Naomi’s response if he has a boyfriend, but casual sex can be hidden – but Joyce is only now starting to grasp the fullness of How Fucked Up Carol Is, and she’s actively avoiding that conversation. (I do not blame her at all, granted, but she’s also in the very early stages of ‘Man my childhood was deeply fucked up and my mom’s kind of evil’ and as we just saw, her view on things like divorce is still very sheltered and messed up in anxiety.)
I probably cut Walky a bit more slack on the whole than I might otherwise BECAUSE I see a lot of the points where he gets shit for being a pretty normal 18-year-old or is clearly freaking out because he was abused, and go ‘… wait, seriously?’ I have some degree of sympathy for most of the cast (I don’t like Raidah as a whole but think the Seduce Jacob plan of Joyce and Sarah’s was actively wrong, and it’s clear Rachel went through some shit to prompt the Redemption Is A Myth speech but she went WAY farther than I can condone saying to someone you know is JUST out of the hospital for suicidal ideation and didn’t recognize she had splash damage as she was saying it, Jason is just an Objectively Terrible TA on every level,) which means I’m gonna come to Walky or Malaya’s defense if I see a lot of criticism for them being pretty normal teens. I find this is a pretty well-rounded comic with well-rounded, believable characters, and that means in a lot of these situations where things are complicated I’m going ‘oh god, you fuckup, I get why you’re doing this but you fuckup.’ If everyone’s focusing on the fuckup part, I will go to ‘I get why you’re doing this.’
(I also am very much in the sympathy corner for Walky with regards to grades, because dear God I see EXACTLY myself in junior year of college there. Avoidance spiral? Check. Undermanaged disability impacting your ability to do things? Check – it’s been pretty heavily implied Walky’s storyline there is heading towards ‘yeah, he has ADHD and the methods Dorothy was using COULDN’T work on him, much less Jason’s.’ Never learned to study because you had years of being a Gifted Student and learning the material was easy so even if teachers tried to teach you, you didn’t see the point of this overly-complicated setup? Hoo boy, check. Honestly he’s handling it better than I did, though mine only reached its peak in the last couple weeks of class. By all accounts he IS turning in his assignments, that puts him ahead. College while Neurodivergent is NOT an easy thing.)
Puckish Rogue
(Yes I have a beef with Walky)
Exactly this. Wheres the praise the for Dina, Joyce, Dorothy or Sarah (did I miss anyone?) or actually tried?
Nope its for Walky getting praise for doing nothing, if you want an example of a culture of mediocrity then this is a pretty good one
Puckish Rogue
(Goddamn work keyboard)
Wheres the praise for Dina, Joyce, Dorothy or Sarah (did I miss anyone?) all who actually tried?
thejeff
Well the praise here is partly for standing up to Linda, which doesn’t apply to the others and partly in response to trashing Walky in response to Sal’s comment.
Praising others right now would be kind of out of the blue. They got their share when they actually did the things – and it’ll probably come up again in the comic refers to it.
BBCC
Too much twinning, Walky. Dial it back.
It’s sweet seeing them support each other though.
butts
he’s, y’know, coping
Chaucer59
Leather, yes. Matching—that’s a hard no.
P!enapple
I agree with Sal on both counts- it was very heroic, and NO. Lol
ProjectXa3
I detect them both getting some matching Upper Lip Shading, which I am down for.
Norah
This is off topic, but I sure wish there was a way to stop Trump ads from showing up on here. There is one that doesn’t even have an “x” in the corner to get rid of it.
Regalli
Yeah, given what Willis said (yesterday? Two strips ago? *shrug*) about them lying to cheat the system that is both unsurprising and So Much Suck. God, fuck that dude.
Solenoid
This nonsense is why I adblock everything.
clif
I don’t hate you for adblocking, but when pages that give me something I value for no cost are supported to some degree by ads, I feel a moral obligation not to block them as long as they don’t actually block the content I’m there for. And I kind of feel that others should feel that obligation as well.
Why yes, I fast forward through the TV commercials; why do you ask?
Regalli
I try not to use adblock unless I know the site in question has ads that are INCREDIBLY intrusive and/or seem like they could have malware. (Autoplay videos with sound? Incredibly intrusive. Completely takes over the page? Same. Horribly disturbing jump scare? Fortunately haven’t seen one of those in ages but if they did show up again, that’s an issue. Animated banner ad but no sound? Eh, totally doable.)
Dumbing of Age has occasional Extremely Intrusive ads but they usually last, at most, a few days before Hiveworks removes them and all’s well.
(That said, while I’ll gladly watch through short Youtube and other video site ads, anything longer than about two minutes is a no. I’ve gotten one or two on Crunchyroll that promised to be ten minutes or more. NO ONE is gonna sit through that one.)
Delicious Taffy
Two-minute ads? He’ll, you’re way more generous than I am with that shit. I figure if you can’t sell me your product in 45 seconds or less, you deserve the Skip button.
vlademir1
I’ve never seen any that long on Crunchy to my memory, but I haven’t watched without access to a paid account in years now. Sometimes, however, YouTube will randomly give me an ad that, when I check it’s run time, is actually a full hour long infomercial. The best of those instances was five minutes into a ten minute SciShow video
Chris
I just bought all the books. I feel no guilt about blocking the ads.
tim gueguen
Sorry, Walky. Sal is Priss. You’re closer to being Daley Wong, and not very close at that.
tim gueguen
Thinking about it Walky is actually Mackie, minus the mechanical skills.
Reltzik
Carla approves of this plan. All three of them can wear Rutten jackets.
Hornet
Now, see– I LIKE Walky.
I don’t want him all Peter Parkerin’ it up all the time.
That would be BAD!
It’s not his schtick… YET.
Let’s avoid that, shall we?
Hazel
Yay siblings! n_n
clif
And thus was born the dynamic duo.
LordTorian
Lmao Willis nails the sibling dynamic
DrWattson
I imagine Walky “leathering up” would be similar to when Tobias Funke “leathered up”.
Opus the Poet
If you can laugh in the face of Danger, that’s true courage.
thejeff
Or a defense mechanism.
clif
I think I could make a case that courage is a defense mechanism. It’s not a common one, and maybe not even a natural one, needing to be learned, but it can be a useful one, letting you accomplish things you otherwise couldn’t. The drawback is that sometimes it’s fatal.
thejeff
Sometimes what gets called courage is just the “fight” part of a fight or flight mechanism.
Sometimes it’s more complicated though.
Kravis
Not so fast, Walky!
This story ALREADY has a “Robin”!
regina phalange
Alright, this is just the definition of wholesome content.
TemporalShrew
This is cute and I like it.
Juanoku
Having them have matching outfits would be a dream come true
poofdepoof
They’re already kind of matching 🙂