Overprotective
on October 9, 2012 at 12:01 amChapter: Roomies!
Characters: Danny Wilcox, Joyce Brown
If I recall correctly, there had been reports of Nighttime Badness on campus shortly before writing this strip, which likely influenced me here.
Of course, Nighttime Badness is usually only news to the dudes. Realistically, Joyce would have already had this concept ingrained into her.
UPDATE: The Friday prior to this strip I was in Bloomington, and there was a front page story in the newspaper that day about an incident of Nighttime Badness…. involving only dudes. If I were a religious man, I’d think God allowed Nighttime Badness to happen to some fellow just to teach me a lesson. But I’m not, so I don’t. That would be a pretty awful God anyway.
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Have to admit, the experience you’ve had since would probably NOT have you write Joyce as thinking Danny was being over-protective here. You came to know female perspective a lot more over the years.
Then again, if you WERE writing this now, and were trying to indicate Joyce being sheltered, maybe you’d write the same response for her as is in this strip, but for a different reason.
Curious which you think it’d be.
Reading the commentary on these strips makes me realize I had created an entirely different set of motivations for many of Danny’s actions than Willis ever intended.
So, what would the real perspective of a woman be in this situation?
Well at least she’s not trying to hold his hand. I wonder, would she have a vice grip?
Of course! She has to be prepared in case her regular grip dies, resigns, or is otherwise unable to perform its duties.
I like the look of the second panel. In general I think silhouettes are neat.
It’s kinda funny how little your handwriting looks like the computer lettering of later strips, even though it’s supposed to be a handwriting font.
It’s a font of his handwriting that a fan made for him.
Really? And it’s still in use today?
Yeah. I think he swapped it out at one point in Shortpacked!, but it’s still in use today in the same form it was 2003-ish.
Yeah. I think he swapped it out at one point in Shortpacked!, but it switched back rather quickly and it’s still in use today in the same form it was 2003-ish.
I think Danny just wants to make sure that Joyce actually goes home.
But it’s to late, she already knows where he lives
It’s not unimaginable that Joyce would think he was being overprotective. I would have. But then, I walked across campus at night to walk another female friend back to the dorms from the computer lab at least once. And, no, I wasn’t naive (feel free to call me stupid if you’d like 😉 I knew there was a possibility of danger. I was just willing to risk it.
It is true that women are generally more aware of the dangerous we face out in the world. But plenty of us are still unafraid. I’m not making a value judgement on that, just commenting that I would have felt the same way as Joyce in the strip. Except for the boy chasing part. I was never nearly that forward.
In my experience, college campuses are generally very well lit. That doesn’t mean there can never be nighttime badness, but it’s intended to discourage it. No university wants to get a reputation for nighttime badness.
Heh. As a woman who constantly walks around at night and is mildly annoyed at the wide eyes this often elicits, most of the wides eyes elicited are from women. Or fathers. Young adult males, a lot less so.
….Yeah. TBH. Once I started dressing as my proper gender, I stopped being comfortable going out at night.
And I bought a taser at an LGBT pride festival. They had *two* booths.
Originally posted:
October 1, 1997
IU has Nighttime Badness a lot tbh