And that’s why Grace and Mandy are roommates in Dumbing of Age.

A lot of characters are going to start dying very, very soon, and very few will have your attention more than Mandy and Grace here do.  I’m not sure what caused me to pause and give them this much panel time after them rating as essentially nobodies for a few years.  Before this, what did we know about them?  Vanishingly little.  And now, using the most horrific means, we know too much.

Scenes like this are a large part of why I don’t strive to kill characters anymore, even beyond the “dude you write a college comic strip” element.  I don’t have the heart or the stomach for it.  At some point in your life, your brain flips from “I’m gonna murder everyone off at the end like it’s Evangelion” to “aww jeez these are people with families.”

UPDATE: oh WAIT

That’s right, I was a little fundie kid still at the time of this.  Faltering, but all the trappings were still there bouncing around in my brain.   Remember, I was a little baby Joyce.  And so here I am, slowly coming out of my conservative upbringing, taking time to make sure that it was understood that the relationship between these two women was meaningful and real.  It was real love.  I was making a statement to myself (and the readership).  By…. fridging them, but, uh, baby steps.

oof