I mean, at least she’s claiming it’s midterm concern?
Still creepy as hell but she’s either honestly concerned or feeling shame because she knows it’s creepy. Given the Faz comparisons, my standards are in fact that low.
You know, I did not at any point miss Faz, but somehow this manages to be more funny than creepy. (Probably because it’s not explicitly a sex thing the way so much of Faz’s stuff was. That, or I really miss Shortpacked. We could’ve had a comic mocking that one person who didn’t think Arcee/Aileron was foreshadowed!)
If I had a graph on how much I missed Faz it would be 5. Out of another, larger number. The 2nd number is unimportant because it’s at least 5 out of that number.
Lucy, if you’re gonna be the kind of weirdo who makes a list like this, you have to accept outside input. Obviously outside data is pertinent to this situation.
As it happens, I did that just now, right before writing up a dream journal entry. That entry is a bit too long, and it’s possible it would present nightmares to some people. As such, just the final paragraph:
I couldn’t, at that moment, imagine what a grub would actually feel like, or how grabbing it would affect what it was doing, and how that would translate into sensations I’d feel from my foot. So I didn’t actually feel anything as I attempted to do that. Clearly, this was a dream, and it was really *not* a good one, so I woke up.
Ok, I’ll admit, that didn’t really *feel* like a safe distance, but I woke up uninjured, so it pretty much had to be, by definition.
miri
Recent dreams of mine include the one where North Korea* invaded, I thought my children and husband were dead, was officially labelled a useless woman because nobody wanted to marry the pregnant, sobbing chick and of course women can’t have value outside of appearance and wifeliness, found out from a RL work friend I could under their laws choose to identify as male with no real impact on anything other than increased hirability, she then gave me a job and place to live and revealed she had managed to rescue my kids and officially rename and adopted them so they weren’t officially linked to my Enemy Rebel Husband… Then I discovered my husband was still actually alive. He snuck into the officially conquered zone, got a new black market identity, we re-adopted our kids, and basically were officially a gay couple.
*In my dream they were labelled North Korea anyway. Pretty certain in reality the totalitarian invading regime was quite different to North Korea. But yeah, massively misogynistic but totally OK with trans* and gay rights. No criticising the totalitarian regime. No keeping secrets from the State. Not dobbing in other people you suspect of keeping secrets counts as keeping secrets. No harbouring Enemy Rebels. You must keep the peace – you must be quiet, polite and not make scenes…
It was a pretty long, involved dream. I don’t know if it counts as a nightmare because it did turn out kinda OK in the end?
Some Ed
I generally rate dreams as nightmare or not based on peak fear level. On that scale, I rarely have nightmares anymore. It feels like that’s mostly a side effect of having kept a dream journal, or at least attempted to, for the past 40 years, and reviewing it irregularly. I think my last nightmare was nearly three years ago now. If that’s accurate, it’s the first time I’ve gone over two years without one this lifetime.
Therapy may have also been helpful, but I generally don’t talk about dream trauma in those. I did when I was much younger, but it didn’t go well – the psychologist didn’t seem to understand that I can tell the difference between nightmares and reality, at least while awake though also sometimes while asleep, but that just doesn’t make dream trauma go poof. Even that’s one of those things that I know better on, though – not only was he not a good psychologist, he was later found to be conspiring with his psychiatrist partner to get fat kickbacks from pharma for diagnosing a lot of people as psychotic. But it’s hard to take that understanding and convert it into a willingness to go on that roller coaster again.
I once woke my friend up by playing the trombone directly on top of him. I immediately realized it was a dick move, but I can’t say I regret doing it either.
One evening when I was a teen, my parents instructed me to get them up very early the next morning, “no matter what it takes”.
Boombox with Judas Priest’s “Turbo Lover” at max volume did the trick, but they were _not_ happy. I felt unjustly treated. I had tried other methods first, they asked for it.
One National Guard ‘summer camp’, we woke up an extremely hungover young soldier by lifting his bunk about three feet in the air and then dropping it back to the concrete. I swear, his eyeballs vibrated. And then, of course, he rolfed.
Seeing Billie’s “DRAGONS” cheerleader outfit in the background — did we ever figure out (or did Willis ever say) at just which school she was supposed to have been a cheerleader? Since we know the school’s colors and the team nickname, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
I mean, it probably is fictional but the reality is that Indiana has a nasty habit of shortchanging school systems, forcing many to consolidate. It could have been a real school when Willis started this strip but no longer exists as it has been swallowed by a larger school.
Walky and Sal from Evansville, so presumably Billie is as well. None of the Evansville high schools have the Golden Dragons as their mascot, and the only one with blue and gold is an extremely private preparatory school (though their mascot is the Eagles). I can see a rich Englishman sending his daughter to prep school, but ultimately I do think that the Golden Dragons are a fictitious high school team.
Unfortunately, any activity for which you are required to create a “Reasons this is not creepy” checklist is most definitely creepy. If it were not creepy, you would not feel compelled to make a list.
[] 1. This is an online forum, where people expect responses.
[] 2. The topic is checklists, so people have to expect checklists.
[] 3. There should be a third option.
[] 4. I’m having some trouble here.
[] 6. The very existence of the list shows I’m doing my best to not be creepy.
You wake her up without hovering by standing in the doorway and yelling that she’s going to be late for midterms. Waking her up without pissing her off is a lost cause but being direct sidesteps the creepy factor.
146 thoughts on “Skyrockets”
Ana Chronistic
74 Great Reasons Why This Is Not Creepy! You Won’t Believe #6!
Deanatay
#7 clearly demonstrates that I’m not being anal-retentive, either!
BarerMender
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t believe any of them.
Kaidah
Lists are so passe, the great Faz has several charts explaining why.
TemplarKnight
Yeah, that list is only 6 reasons long. You need at least 10 to be taken seriously.
11 if you like to go one step beyond.
Doctor_Who
There’s no way in hell this is a coincidence.
Screwball
That too, is somewhat creepy….
DrunkenNordmann
Thought the exact same thing.
Kamino Neko
Yeah…my reaction was ‘sneaky Willis…we still see the meme even if you flip it.’
Cholma
The man Rick-Rolled his own wedding; everything should always be suspect with him! 😀
Ryan
We Rick-rolled ours too.
ADD
I’m glad I’m not the only one who saw that.
Arianod
Heheheheh, YES xD
Needfuldoer
Yup! Recognized it immediately.
Keulen
I don’t know how I missed that when I first read this strip.
DarkoNeko
wait whaaaat
Kaidah
You magnificent bastard, I almost spit coffee on my keyboard. 😀
StClair
I missed it. 🙁
BBCC
Oh, Lucy. No.
Feeling Sarah’s pain yet, Billie? 😛
Regalli
I mean, at least she’s claiming it’s midterm concern?
Still creepy as hell but she’s either honestly concerned or feeling shame because she knows it’s creepy. Given the Faz comparisons, my standards are in fact that low.
BBCC
I guess it’s possible she’s kidding but this is a very Joyce move.
Savail
I’m confused. Faz isn’t tagged.
King Daniel
Mystery solved!
Doctor_Who
Faz does graphs. Lucy does checklists.
One day they will wind up working for the same company, and their powerpoint presentations will be top notch.
Keulen
I really hope Faz and Lucy don’t end up meeting at some point in the future. The combination of his charts and her checklists would be too powerful.
DarkoNeko
instant makeout
BarerMender
Ew!
King Daniel
Yyyeah, sorry, BarerMender, not according to this chart that Faz has.
foamy
This actually reminds me more of Dorothy, during the whole try-to-be-the-RA thing.
Regalli
You know, I did not at any point miss Faz, but somehow this manages to be more funny than creepy. (Probably because it’s not explicitly a sex thing the way so much of Faz’s stuff was. That, or I really miss Shortpacked. We could’ve had a comic mocking that one person who didn’t think Arcee/Aileron was foreshadowed!)
Yotomoe
If I had a graph on how much I missed Faz it would be 5. Out of another, larger number. The 2nd number is unimportant because it’s at least 5 out of that number.
Yotomoe
Lucy, if you’re gonna be the kind of weirdo who makes a list like this, you have to accept outside input. Obviously outside data is pertinent to this situation.
Nono
She’s creepy and she’s kooky
Mysterious and spooky
She’s all together ooky
The Forest Hall’s Lucy
Cholma
*snap snap*
StClair
*snap snap*
Stephen Bierce
Those first two panels–how memesque!
*plays “Cat Scratch Fever” on the hacked Muzak*
Sporky
Lucy totally dorothied it up
King Daniel
Forest Quad: The Re-Joyceing
DailyBrad
Buy a nerf gun, fire it at Billie until she wakes up from a safe distance.
There, not creepy, and no one misses midterms.
King Daniel
How do you wake up from a safe distance?
Tacos
With fearless aplomb and determination.
Delicious Taffy
Very carefully.
Some Ed
As it happens, I did that just now, right before writing up a dream journal entry. That entry is a bit too long, and it’s possible it would present nightmares to some people. As such, just the final paragraph:
I couldn’t, at that moment, imagine what a grub would actually feel like, or how grabbing it would affect what it was doing, and how that would translate into sensations I’d feel from my foot. So I didn’t actually feel anything as I attempted to do that. Clearly, this was a dream, and it was really *not* a good one, so I woke up.
Ok, I’ll admit, that didn’t really *feel* like a safe distance, but I woke up uninjured, so it pretty much had to be, by definition.
miri
Recent dreams of mine include the one where North Korea* invaded, I thought my children and husband were dead, was officially labelled a useless woman because nobody wanted to marry the pregnant, sobbing chick and of course women can’t have value outside of appearance and wifeliness, found out from a RL work friend I could under their laws choose to identify as male with no real impact on anything other than increased hirability, she then gave me a job and place to live and revealed she had managed to rescue my kids and officially rename and adopted them so they weren’t officially linked to my Enemy Rebel Husband… Then I discovered my husband was still actually alive. He snuck into the officially conquered zone, got a new black market identity, we re-adopted our kids, and basically were officially a gay couple.
*In my dream they were labelled North Korea anyway. Pretty certain in reality the totalitarian invading regime was quite different to North Korea. But yeah, massively misogynistic but totally OK with trans* and gay rights. No criticising the totalitarian regime. No keeping secrets from the State. Not dobbing in other people you suspect of keeping secrets counts as keeping secrets. No harbouring Enemy Rebels. You must keep the peace – you must be quiet, polite and not make scenes…
It was a pretty long, involved dream. I don’t know if it counts as a nightmare because it did turn out kinda OK in the end?
Some Ed
I generally rate dreams as nightmare or not based on peak fear level. On that scale, I rarely have nightmares anymore. It feels like that’s mostly a side effect of having kept a dream journal, or at least attempted to, for the past 40 years, and reviewing it irregularly. I think my last nightmare was nearly three years ago now. If that’s accurate, it’s the first time I’ve gone over two years without one this lifetime.
Therapy may have also been helpful, but I generally don’t talk about dream trauma in those. I did when I was much younger, but it didn’t go well – the psychologist didn’t seem to understand that I can tell the difference between nightmares and reality, at least while awake though also sometimes while asleep, but that just doesn’t make dream trauma go poof. Even that’s one of those things that I know better on, though – not only was he not a good psychologist, he was later found to be conspiring with his psychiatrist partner to get fat kickbacks from pharma for diagnosing a lot of people as psychotic. But it’s hard to take that understanding and convert it into a willingness to go on that roller coaster again.
Lingo
Kind of with Billie on this one.
Risky
We saw that last page. Lucy had An Expression.
Yotomoe
I once woke my friend up by playing the trombone directly on top of him. I immediately realized it was a dick move, but I can’t say I regret doing it either.
Bicycle Bill
How long did it take the doctor to get the slide of the trombone removed from where your friend put it?
BarerMender
Trombone slide removal is an outpatient procedure. It just takes a little WD40.
Illithid
One evening when I was a teen, my parents instructed me to get them up very early the next morning, “no matter what it takes”.
Boombox with Judas Priest’s “Turbo Lover” at max volume did the trick, but they were _not_ happy. I felt unjustly treated. I had tried other methods first, they asked for it.
He Who Abides
I did that with “X Gone Give It To Ya” once. After that, I was no longer in charge of waking people.
I regret nothing.
Some Ed
I would guess part of their annoyance was the disturbing dreams they had in response to “Turbo Lover” at 9.
Schpoonman
If anyone tells you “no matter what” then they have signed away any right to be angry.
You know, short of bodily harm or something like that.
Charlie Spencer
One National Guard ‘summer camp’, we woke up an extremely hungover young soldier by lifting his bunk about three feet in the air and then dropping it back to the concrete. I swear, his eyeballs vibrated. And then, of course, he rolfed.
Bicycle Bill
Seeing Billie’s “DRAGONS” cheerleader outfit in the background — did we ever figure out (or did Willis ever say) at just which school she was supposed to have been a cheerleader? Since we know the school’s colors and the team nickname, it shouldn’t be too difficult.
King Daniel
I think it was a fictional high school, but I could easily be mistaken on that.
BBCC
It was.
Jamie
I did a quick Google, got one hit (New Palestine), but the colors do not match. (NPHS is red and white.)
Dr. T
I mean, it probably is fictional but the reality is that Indiana has a nasty habit of shortchanging school systems, forcing many to consolidate. It could have been a real school when Willis started this strip but no longer exists as it has been swallowed by a larger school.
Cheshrin
Walky and Sal from Evansville, so presumably Billie is as well. None of the Evansville high schools have the Golden Dragons as their mascot, and the only one with blue and gold is an extremely private preparatory school (though their mascot is the Eagles). I can see a rich Englishman sending his daughter to prep school, but ultimately I do think that the Golden Dragons are a fictitious high school team.
BBCC
No word on high schools, but Billie went to a public elementary school, since she goes with Walky and Sal in flash backs.
Sirksome
I was maybe gonna give Lucy the benefit of the doubt on this but the list factor implies guilt on her part so she’s aware how creepy it is.
Kat
Unfortunately, any activity for which you are required to create a “Reasons this is not creepy” checklist is most definitely creepy. If it were not creepy, you would not feel compelled to make a list.
Some Ed
[] 1. This is an online forum, where people expect responses.
[] 2. The topic is checklists, so people have to expect checklists.
[] 3. There should be a third option.
[] 4. I’m having some trouble here.
[] 6. The very existence of the list shows I’m doing my best to not be creepy.
Clif
QED. Participating in an online forum is creepy.
timemonkey
You wake her up without hovering by standing in the doorway and yelling that she’s going to be late for midterms. Waking her up without pissing her off is a lost cause but being direct sidesteps the creepy factor.
Charlie Spencer
Isn’t that what super soakers are for?
Tacos
Yeah no, I’m gonna have to agree with Billie on this.
Van Jealous
“Skyrockets in flight!”, “No Mid-terms tonight” (with apologies to Bill Danoff).
Cholma