140

Leave
Posted on December 22, 2018 by David M Willis

140 thoughts on “Leave”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    FISSION MAILED!

    wait no

    SISSION MUCCESS!

    1. butts

      Comglaturations! Wou Yon!

      1. chris2315

        YOU’RE WINNER !

        1. Tacos

          A winner is you!

        2. King Daniel

          Achievement get!

        3. keithcurtis

          Lovel Urp!

        4. Solenoid

          Shine!

        5. JustcallmeSoul

          Kol?

    2. Batman

      Snake, you caused a time paradox

  2. Doctor_Who

    “No Joyce, I meant that you would leave and my laptop would stay here. Security!”

    “Rarr.”

    After an intense round of negotiations and dinosaur facts, Joyce agrees to depart with a 4TB external hard drive labeled “Vol 1: A-Ae”, with further editions available upon its return.

    1. Bagge

      LOL!

      Alternatively:

      “We have decided to hire an external security consultant with expertise in cases like this.”

      “Yo, Joyce. Have you scared poor Dina with our fundy background? Now, what do you have there… um… oh…”

      New round of negotiations. Becky agrees to keep Joyce out of Amber’s hair in exchange for links to the Yuri selection of Amber’s favorite fanfic site.

  3. Meta

    It’s walky???

    1. Doctor_Who

      I see it too. Either you’re not crazy, or we both are.

      1. Meta

        Oh good

    2. Meta

      Did anybody else see the it’s walky strip for today attached to this comic?

      1. Cattleprod

        I did, but now it’s already gone.

      2. Pinkie

        Yep, but now it’s gone.

      3. Yumi

        Yeah, definitely spent too long trying to figure out what it had to do with today’s DoA strip.

      4. jeffepp

        Ye, I mean, NO! No, and you can’t prove I did! I’m not going back! You can’t prove a thing!

        1. Clif

          I know a lawyer.

        2. Thorn

          It’s Walky!

          He’s not a …great… lawyer…

    3. Bagge

      But IS IT Walky?

      Amber doesn’t yet know the answer.

  4. JetstreamGW

    I’m confused about the old Its Walky! strip being here too…?

  5. AnvilPro

    Uh, I don’t get it. Assuming there is something to get.

  6. shadowcell

    Joyce was so proud of herself she went off with Walky to go yell at a lawyer in New York

  7. Jupiterror

    Joyce taking away the important info

  8. newllend(henryvolt)

    Am I the only one seeing this? Okay I’m not so special itswalky end game post I guess?

    1. Yumi

      Willis was just flexing on his improvement in comic making.

  9. Stephen Bierce

    Only When You Leave I need to love you…

    1. ValdVin

      Now Joyce has t leave and make her own journeys to glory.

    2. FacelessDeviant

      I was expecting Rolling Stones with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

      1. Needfuldoer

        Either it was too obvious (it was namedropped in the comic), or it’s played on the hacked Muzak before.

  10. Nono

    Every day I find myself liking Joyce less and less.

    Yes I know she has growing up to do. But it’s frustrating having a flawed central character remain in stasis for a very very long time.

    1. Caroline Hewitt

      On the other hand, she’s maturing really fast when you think of it in terms of the progression of time within the comic. It’s been, what, three months? But yeah, I mean, I love this comic, but I don’t disagree with what you said.

      1. timemonkey

        One month.

      2. Lingo

        About half that!

      3. Kamino Neko

        We haven’t even hit Halloween, yet!

        1. Peter

          As near as I can tell, it’s currently October 17 or 18, in the DOA-verse.

        2. Needfuldoer

          Move-in day was the last week of August, so it’s been almost two months.

    2. timemonkey

      She hasn’t remained in stasis, she’s one of the most changed characters in the comic. She just hasn’t had a reason to change this specific behaviour.

      1. AntJ

        Also, it’s only been a month and a half. She isn’t going to rewrite eighteen years worth of personality before midterms.

      2. Emily

        Every character in this comic is practically in stasis just because of how glacial the pacing is. Like, in pretty much any other coming of age story the protagonist would not still be displaying the same major flaw after nearly a decade of writing.

        1. Roger

          especially since we’ve been stuck in this Specific Arc for Joyce for about two actual real world years, with even very large major plot threads like the thing with Jacob that very well could have at least pushed her a to confronting that change, and then it just. Not doing that.

    3. Clif

      Joyce isn’t the central character, she only thinks she is. The real central character is Mike.

      1. AntJ

        The real central character is Fuckface.

        1. Clif

          I stand corrected.

    4. FacelessDeviant

      I mean, she managed to read slash-fic. Thats progress, kinda?

      1. Reltzik

        LITERATURE.

  11. butts

    joyce learn to read the room (and smut)

    1. Clif

      Something you would never have to say to Mike.

    2. Falcon

      Joyce has recognized smut to be literature. She has learned to read smut.

      1. Bagge

        That’s one out of two. Not so bad, right?

        1. Reltzik

          For batting, that’s good.

          For general life skills, that’s bad.

          Especially if the one she got is smut-reading and the one she missed is room-reading.

  12. Badgermole

    Joyce gtfo, seriously the way this girl makes me swing from amused to insanely irritated is unreal.

    1. Meta

      For real…

      1. MatsuoTanuki

        Like a piece of sickly sweet taffy stuck between your teeth…

        1. Delicious Taffy

          I would like to state for the record that I am not, nor have I previously been, stuck between any combination of teeth in the mouth of any known organism.

        2. MatsuoTanuki

          The court recognizes your testimony and has been added to the record.

        3. Roborat

          I think the discussion was about your sister, Sickly Sweet, not you.

    2. Keulen

      Same here.

    3. Bagge

      Then imagine how Sarah feels…

  13. newllend(henryvolt)

    Anyway uh…..So how is this going to get resolved this time, is Amber going to mention this to Sal and then Sal is going to kick Walkys door this time and tell him to stop being stupid and make up with his girlfriend?

    1. Zee

      I really hope not. Amber needs to actually face some consequencesl

      1. Clif

        Yes, how dare she not face the consequences of an action she was snapped and took when she was barely a teen. Heavens knows there haven’t been any consequences to her mental health.

        1. Clif

          Where did that extra was come from?

        2. Vulcanodon

          The extra ‘was’ might be accidental but some truth; her snapping wasn’t all on her. In some respects it was something that happened to her.

      2. Reltzik

        You mean like being forced to fight through PTSD complicated by dissociative disorder in order to talk it through with her victim like mature kinda-adults and mutually comping up with a rational prospective coping mechanism to try out? Because that’s a sensible consequence to have to be forced to face.

        A romantic interest is not some prize to be awarded for good behavior or confiscated for bad behavior, and doubly not when he is also part of the support network that’s helping her grow out of the bad behavior in the first place. If Walky leaves over this it’s because he isn’t going to love someone who hurt his sister, REGARDLESS of whether Amber deserves to have bad stuff happen to her.

    2. Reltzik

      Actually, I think that Sal will be a bit touched by Walky’s loyalty to her. She hasn’t had much of Walky taking her side in her life and the times he has recently have made her feel better.

      …. and then she’ll tell him that she’s made peace with Amber and to go ahead and do whatever with her if that’s what he wants for himself.

      1. jeffepp

        Or…

        “If y’all ain’t gonna date’r, then I be plan’n ter step out wit ‘er.” Or how ever the mangling of the language goes.

  14. GenJen

    Maybe Joyce didn’t hear you.
    Say it again.
    Look her straight in the eyes.
    Make your voice loud and monotone.
    Hold up a picture of Jacob.

  15. Mollyscribbles

    My best guess is Joyce’s brain is still 90% focused on the smut and the remaining 10% is having trouble processing beyond “Yay offline shipping!”

  16. Tacos

    Sometimes I feel like Joyce really needs a smack upside the head.

    1. AntJ

      I dunno, I really like this moment. Even though Amber and Walky are garbage, Joyce’s point IS valid. They like each other, so despite grade-tampering and sister-stabbing, maybe they can make it work. Or maybe they won’t. Amber tends to beat herself up over the damage she causes (some of it deservedly so) and occasionally needs a reminder that she can have a positive effect on people’s lives.

      1. Tacos

        My problem is Joyce’s relentless shipping of people irrespective of their own personal feelings.

        1. AntJ

          but they literally have feelings for each other

        2. Tacos

          Yeah but that was just fortunate this time. She can’t always be lucky in her shipping turning out to be true.

        3. timemonkey

          She can, because she’s fictional.

        4. Nono

          She already failed trying to ship Walky and Billie.

        5. thejeff

          Except this isn’t really shipping in the normal sense. This started with her realizing Walky was interested in Amber and trying to help out.
          It was based on her reading his personal feelings correctly, not just deciding that two random people belonged together.

          Unlike some of her previous shipping statements, but with those she didn’t really do anything.

          Mind you, her tactics for getting them together were horrible

        6. Nono

          Considering she stated herself that fobbing Walky off on Amber would get him off Dorothy’s case, she’s hardly doing this out of altruiusm.

        7. thejeff

          Fair, though I think it’s clear from her giddiness here that wasn’t her only motivation.
          Nor would that be shipping in the usual sense either.

  17. Kern Wallace

    You know what they say, always look on the bright side of life!

    1. Yumi

      For life is quite absurd
      And death’s the final word
      You must always face the curtain with a bow
      Forget about your sin
      Give the audience a grin
      Enjoy it – it’s your last chance anyhow

      1. ShinyNeen

        *whistles cheerily*

        1. abysswatcher1993

          Now I just need Joyce, Walky and Amber tied to crosses and whistling.

  18. newllend(henryvolt)

    Hey maybe if Amber wants Walky back maybe she can boombox the “Your eyes” outside his dorm window.

    1. Clif

      Um.

    2. Tacos

      She’d need to actually find a boombox first.

    3. Keulen

      I wonder what the present-day equivalent to that boombox scene would be.

      1. Needfuldoer

        The tinny sound of a smartphone speaker shrieking its heart out, or maybe one of those little portable speakers.

        Side note: a cassette adapter in a boom box makes a better speaker than just about any Bluetooth speaker or dock I’ve ever heard.

  19. stoodmuffin

    I’m Amber from her last panel on THIS specific strip on my low days, and Joyce on my high ones.

    1. stoodmuffin

      Like, her last panel

  20. DailyBrad

    Joyce, ohmygod cute.

    That said, I’m… decently optimistic. Amber tends to fear the worst, but guessing Walky needs to think, maybe talk to Sal as well.

    I am reminded of Duo Maxwell on the topic of Quatre Raberba Winner.
    “Oh man, Quatre loves to blame himself for everything if you let him. Sooner or later, he’ll start saying that it’s because of his lack of effort that there’s no air in space.”

    1. AntJ

      I wouldn’t be so sure. The storyline title suggests that lots of things will go wrong, and it will end 15 strips after Valentine’s Day, so it’s likely the climactic scene involves some form of heartbreak. Although I hope that Sal will chat with Walky about Amber, and I’m not sure where that will go. Maybe Sal will ask that he stays with her to keep her from her AG shenanigans, or maybe Sal will warn him that she’s dangerous.

  21. Undrave

    Wait…not tag for Windblade?!

    1. Jhon

      I’ve been wondering when someone would notice the Transformer in the room…

  22. Kazumi

    If it were anyone but Joyce, the face in the last panel would be the second most punchable face in the series. The current leader is Faz’s normal face.

  23. abysswatcher1993

    Joyce’s naive romanticism is going to be her doom one of these days.

    1. MatsuoTanuki

      It’s already burned her a few times before. The whole train wreck that was her “romance” with Ethan, the one-sided feelings from her best friend from childhood, and everything with that whole incident with a pastor’s son…

      1. abysswatcher1993

        But she hasn’t touched rock bottom yet. She will keep repeating this mistake over and over until she realizes love isn’t a magical predestined thing, but something you make with other person over time and with patience and kindness, and that love and lust are two separate yet related things.

  24. Dave

    And that last panel is the “why” the “Dope Slap” exists.

  25. MatsuoTanuki

    Just give her a few minutes Amber, she’s locked in Shipper Mode, all she’s gonna see are hearts and shoujo bubbles for now. She’ll come back to reality in a bit, so just let her dream till then. Just geeeently poke her with a broom handle out the door…

  26. Victor Riley

    Okay, Joyce being so blissfully ignorant and in her own world without regards for what other people actually feel… it’s not endearing.

    1. Fart Captor

      She’s blissfully ignorant in part because they WANTED it that way.

      Right now she’s simply not perceptive enough / paying enough attention to realize something is wrong, certainly not right away

      1. Emily

        She’s not perceptive enough to listen to the words that are being spoken directly to her at this very moment? I think the term you’re looking for is “She’s very self-absorbed and is more interested in her own preconceptions and fantasies than in real people’s feelings.”

        1. Peter

          She wants her ship to sail. This is hardly unusual behaviour, and I’m pretty sure that Amber the fanfic writer will have a lot of sympathy for that.

          But sure, it’s annoying when people don’t listen.

        2. Emily

          Don’t ship real people.

        3. Clif

          Well, technically …

        4. Emily

          I knew this comment was coming and I knew it would come from you.

        5. Clif

          Thank you for thinking of me.

        6. thejeff

          What does “don’t ship real people” even mean?

          Is it really completely unacceptable to think two friends would make a good couple?

        7. Roger

          it means Don’t Do What Joyce Is Doing Right Now dude this isn’t a hard leap. There’s thinking two friends would make for a good couple and finding their relationship adorable and even playing matchmaker a lil, and then there’s obsessively organizing every member of your even tangentially defined social circle into a sort of predestined flow chart, ignoring what’s actually happening around you in favor of your own narrative.

          Like I struggle with not letting my OCD turn me into a control freak and affecting the people around me and even I’ve never stooped to that level.

        8. thejeff

          Except what Joyce is doing right now is the first. She didn’t even conceive of this until she saw Walky’s interest.

          She’s talked about shipping people before, but I don’t think she’s acted on any of it without some sign they were interested.

        9. Danigami

          Yes it can be quite annoying , talking from experience

  27. RicardtheDragoon

    Joyce should really have listened to Amber’s last line in the strip. That’s the kind of wisdom she needs to hear and understand.

  28. foducool

    and this is one of the times I wanna punch Joyce in the face

  29. Geneseepaws

    Squeeee! Indeed. So high on endorphens? or que-sera-sera-tonens? One of them brainy chemicals.

  30. Bagge

    Another successful case for Joyce Brown: Lesbian Lovesleuth

    1. Needfuldoer

      (“Lesbian” only modifies “love” in that descriptor.)

      1. ShinyNeen

        This has been Joyce Brown: Lesbian Love Sleuth in: The Case of the Goofball, the Dark Secret, and the Very Good Literature

        (fans of the series would go on to complain that this one contained a minimal amount of lesbians, but it would still sell fairly well overall)

        1. Bagge

          For her biggest fan, that is a constant complaint.

  31. newllend(henryvolt)

    Also way to forget about your initial goal of finding out whether or not math class was canceled.

    1. Bagge

      But this was much more important: It was löööööööööve

      1. Geneseepaws

        I like your use of umlauts.

        1. Clif

          Umlauts are cool.

        2. Bagge

          I’m a Swede, I’m allowed 🙂

          Fun fact – the metal band TROJA once made a band T-shirt, and added an umlaut to be cool. Sadly, no one seemed to have told them that TRÖJA is a word for “T-shirt” in Swedish…

        3. JBento

          So, not really a band t-shirt as much as a labelled t-shirt?

        4. Bagge

          Yup.

          An EPICALLY labelled t-shirt, but a labelled t-shirt no less

          https://tshirtslayer.com/files-tshirt/styles/shirtview/public/user-21302/82867553b9b75878be605278221e33b4.jpg

        5. ǝ snow ʍousɐ

          hah!

  32. Stoney Breyer

    As the poet says, “But sometimes you find if you try you get what you need”.

  33. ego

    this whole reveal would have been much Aye Emm Oh better if it had started by walky seeing amber and sal doing roller derby and deciding he had been dumped for his sister.

  34. Vulcanodon

    Joyce is gonna go out and find herself some more, um, “Literature”

  35. Eldritch Gentleman

    Sooo… where is Mike who’ll tell Joyce that the two have been making out since before Joyce even learnt of their affection for each other?

    1. Betty Anne

      Waiting outside the door, because he realized that Walky went to find help rather than just stew in a distressed mental state the rest of the day. He can’t have THAT happening.

  36. BBCC

    Joyce, baby, priorities.

  37. WHATTT

    k, i’m not gonna judge Joyce ‘cus i have a ship list too (ranked from unlikeliest to “they’re gonna bang any second now”)
    walky+amber
    mike+ethan
    sal+bowtie guy
    joyce+joe
    DON’T JUDGE ME.

    1. Mordecai

      See you in 2 years when that joe/joyce slipshine comes out

  38. wakeangel2001

    Is that one of the Takara Windblades on her desk or just one of the RID ones?

  39. Reed

    oh joyce….

  40. DarkoNeko

    Joyce, just hush.

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