Once more I can feel myself speaking through Joyce, but probably not so transparently.  A passionate anger is directed at, essentially, God.  Bad things have happened to good people, but God is dispassionate.  He’s too detached to really care.  The dead are still dead, despite our pleas.  The Cheese would stand in as an expy for The Almighty a few more times as It’s Walky! continued, primarily as Joyce battled her faith.

Which is thankfully another small reason to be glad Joyce showed up in the final version of this story, rather than staying topside.  This was a good relationship to establish, going forward.

Otherwise, you can kinda tell that she wasn’t originally planned to be here by asking… what did she really accomplish by joining the story?  The Cheese does what he wants and leaves.  Joyce kind of yells at him a bit but everything would have happened the same without her being there, sans the revival of Hooper and his teammates.  Despite my need for an infusion of positivity, I still needed the storyline to end with certain things in certain places, biding their time for later developments.  And so, despite Joyce’s Big Heroic Return, the storyline ends the same as it would have.

All said, I think the take-away is to layer even your darkest storylines with some happy breather moments.  I felt forced to here, but I think it ended up better in the long run.