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LorennaCleary.bsky.social @lorennacleary.bsky.social ⋅ 20h
Al Ewing Writes Comics @al-ewing.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Gwen @finalgwen.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
Michael P. Breen @mpbreen21.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Katie C @spiffykt.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
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(Jim Lee Era)
Me, thinking of a comment for today’s DoA strip: hahaha it’s like Walkyverse!Joyce being a nap vampire, where is that strip
Me, checking the It’s Walky! front page: oh
I was about to point out, that you obviously forgot to refresh the It’s Walky! front page, but then realized that for the first hour of this strip the nap vampire had still been there.
Still, that It’sWalky comic is innacurate – Joyce isn’t being a nap _vampire_. Vampires drain something from others to make them stronger. Joyce is infecting Walky with nappiness – she’s more of a nap plague zombie.
Sarah, OTOH, is being a literal smile vampire – she drains people’s smiles to fuel her own. No ‘reverse’ about it.
She doesn’t feed off the smiles, though; smiley people leave her in a foul mood.
Smiley people who ceaseto smile are what lift her mood, and the causal link is in that specific direction.
The smiles are not stolen, nor are they even given; when they are discarded, they find their way to Sarah.
I guess she’s more of a smile raccoon? …Which, while not a vampire, is technically still a creature of the night, I guess?
Booster backed right out of the comic.
They’re gonna just keep backing away and wind up in a toy store staffed with weirdly familiar people.
Getting out of the blast radius.
They got their pic, I figure, or are offscreen still trying to get it.
They went for a wider angel.
They moved on there was probably a bag caught in a tree that caught their eye.
Indeed. This does seem like a conversation to Nope out of.
I’m… not really sure what’s going on with Dina here. Sarah used a fairly common turn of phrase that is not generally to be taken literally.
If someone said “I was looking for my keys for an hour and then they magically turned up on the coffee table” would Dina jump down their throats about implicating her in Wizardry? Cause that seems… extreme. Dina defends her stance if directly challenged (ie, people arguing against evolution or for non-feathered dinos), but generally doesn’t go picking pointless fights over common parlance for no reason.
In fairness to Dina, Sarah DID mean it literally is my take on it.
I don’t see how she’d normally accept “Sarah is happy because Joyce is miserable” at face value unless she also thought Sarah is an asshole. More likely she just got caught up in the moment, and that caught her off-guard.
What ktbear said, plus I think Dina wouldn’t be so upset if Sarah’s initial explanation for what was happening wasn’t such a straight forward cause and effect.
IIRC, their relationship has also largely been about being straight forward with each other too (I’m thinking of that scene in the cafeteria where they agreed they could eat together in silence and still be friends) but maybe that was more with Amber?
So far Dina’s only ever had to deal with Joyce saying something completely outrageous with no basis in reality, maybe the “worst” Dina’s ever gotten about it would be that time Joyce asked her for a birthday present and Dina responded that Joyce “renounce magical thinking”, which could either apply to faith as a concept or just the fact that Joyce is, well, Joyce.
Now though, with the fact that Sarah using a turn of phrase has clearly incited Dina into a fit of genuine anger, we might have to consider the idea that is how Dina responds to anything that is, for lack of a better term, magical. If it can’t be rationally explained, triple cited, and demonstrably replicated then Dina isn’t interested in hearing it.
I don’t know how right I am and I am batting like 0/10 in predicting plot twists in this series, but if I’m right I actually really dig it? I’ve got a terrible problem getting out of my own head, accepting that my own lived experiences and how I would react to things don’t apply to everyone and shouldn’t, and I’m interested in seeing that in Dina, especially since so far a lot of her character focus has been growing and maturing instead of any negative traits she might have.
They may be an ass, but they aren’t stupid…
That wouldn’t have worked on her even if she WERE pissy, Joyce, C’mon.
*plays Swing Out Sister’s “Twilight World” on the P.A. speakers*
Nothing’s gonna stop Sarah now. The sight of Jacob, maybe.
C’mon now, there’s lots of friends to go around. Talk about cold shoulders.
I really appreciate the healthy communication here, where Becky checks in with Dina to make sure everything is okay and Dina provides an honest answer. Communication with your romantic partner! It’s important! (And it’s important in friendships/other relationships too of course)
Wait, is this a cameo from “Smartening Of Age”?
Of course. Happy Sarah and grumpy Joyce obviously came from the mirror universe.
Mirror Walky has a plate of carrot sticks in one hand and a textbook in the other. That’s the only way we know it’s Mirror Walky, because he can’t grow a goatee either.
No, but Mirror Walky is still irrationally proud of the exactly two hairs on his chin.
Communication is just important in everything most of the time!
.. I suddenly regret typing this 5 seconds later.
We thank you for communicating that.
Reverse Smile Vampire should be a book title
Sarah Clinton – Reverse Smile Vampire … Of DOOM
A spin-of about Julia Gray’s Arch Nemesis.
Thus I am Betrayed would make a good title as well.
I like it, but it’s too short. That’s like 5% of a DoA book title.
Yeah, a better book title would be something like “I Have Been Unwittingly Wrangled Into Role-playing Superstitution by a Good Friend, Thus I am Betrayed”.
How did I misspell superstition?
“Superstitution” sounds like an even worse injury to the laws of causality
Have we seen Becky’s outfit here yet? Either way love how she incorporated her hair color into her Lesbian Flag Attire.
It first appeared here, I believe.
I love it, too: it would have been a pretty clever Easter egg for most characters, but Becky is definitely the type to plan her winter look around announcing she’s a lesbian to anyone who will listen.
I really want to see Becky act towards Sarah the way she acts towards Dorothy
I don’t think Sarah will let that last long and it’ll be good to see
What do you mean “reverse” smile vampire? She’s taking the smiles from other people, that’s textbook normal smile vampire behavior.
I think that may just be a “frown vampire.”
I think emphasis is on “reverse smile”, Joyce’s word for a frown? (meaning people’s frowns make Sarah smile)
The Reverse Smile Vampire was my favorite X-Files Monster of the Week
Wait? How did Joycebecome the straight woman in this insanity?
Because Sarah has ratcheted up her nonsense factor. A balance must be maintained.
…did you think it’d be Becky and Dina?
…fair
She has by default…she’s the least over the top at the moment
Reverse Smile Vampire would be a good name for a indie post-punk revial band. Just saying
I feel like Dina and Becky are going to break up soon. Dina won’t be willing to compromise her anti-religion views and while Becky doesn’t really care about other people’s religious beliefs or lack thereof, she won’t be willing to give up her Christian views.
It’s not like dina respecting becky’s religion has ever been an issue before. Literally even once. Even when Becky was like “i wanna smash but God won’t let me” dina backed off immediately and respected her choices without a word
Dina generally has expressed no desire to conflict with Becky as long as she doesn’t use it as an excuse to disbelieve science or use her views harmfully. And Becky was more than willing to shed the scientifically impossible parts so there is no reason for Dina to really care if Becky believes in a God or not just because she isn’t able to make herself do the same. She’s more against people that are anti-science rather than being anti-religion.
I wonder how much of this is venting, because she bites her tongue around Becky?
OK Dina, enough is enough. Are you really going to act like a jerk because she mentioned magic as a joke? Are you so incapable of stopping your scientific obsession that you can’t take a friendly joke for what it is?
trying this again…not a fan of BJC
I want to know how Dina can be so anti this yet have a girlfriend that believes in God
This, yes! How does ‘how DARE you mention magic playfully around me?’ match up with having a girlfriend who steadfastly and unironically believes in God, Jesus, miracles, etc.
Because Becky accepts that Dina doesn’t believe in that stuff, and they agree to disagree.
Sarah (from Dina’s perspective) got her to go along with her irrational beliefs by not properly explaining that that’s what they were. It’s like she tricked Dina into believing in magic herself!
Dina probably doesn’t get that it is a turn of phrase/joke and is overreacting uncontrollably to it because she is autistic so it feels like 1) Sarah believes in magic and 2) tricked her into participating in her beliefs.
Like. If you take what Sarah said completely literally, as Dina seems to be doing, she has implied a belief in magic by saying that is the cause, and she got Dina to take part in it, knowing that with her scientific mindset and lack of other beliefs that would indicate otherwise, she very likely doesn’t believe in magic. Which would feel like, to Dina, a betrayal, like if you tricked someone non-religious into doing a religious ceremony with you by not explaining that it was one.
Dina isn’t even expressing annoyance at the idea of Sarah potentially believing in magic itself, but at the idea of feeling like she was deceived into PARTICIPATING in beliefs she herself does not believe in.
And with science being so important to her, she may be feeling uncontrollable anger about it (like not so fun fact, I have had a meltdown over a small thing before, that I didn’t feel deserved that level of reaction even during it but had no ability to stop, where I felt deep anger and hatred as well as overwhelmingly crushing sadness). So it’s entirely possible she’s not doing it on purpose and is trying to contain it but it is still coming out.
If you are autistic, as Word of Willis has pretty much stated Dina is, you can’t always tell if someone is joking and if no one has explained to you what a turn of phrase actually means, you might take it literally. It likely isn’t a turn of phrase that her parents use and Amber had to teach her about jokes, sarcasm, to script what to say at a party, what an appropriate level of comforting contact is and how to recognise when it is needed.
And you expect her to just ‘know’ that the use of ‘magically’ here isn’t literal? To just know it is a turn of phrase or ‘joke’? When it very well could be the case that no, she can’t take it as the ‘friendly joke it is’ if she isn’t able to read it as one and she might not be in full control of her reaction?
Like, this reads to me personally like some of the not so fun parts of autism of not having the experience to recognise this specific word usage isn’t literal and a surge of uncontrollable emotion in response to a minor thing (which sucks to be stuck in and unable to stop).
Something about all of this worries me. I wonder if Sarah has started like… Therapy and medication offscreen? It wouldn’t be strange after the past semester.
Meanwhile there has to be a BIG reason Dina is being so sensitive about a harmless turn of phrase. “Magically” isn’t a particularly obscure idiom. Me thinks it has everything to do with Becky’s belief in god creating friction between them… That Dina swallows down because despite this nice show of communication in this panel, nobody’s talking about it. Becky has likely found a new church. She’s also probably dragging a newly-atheistic Joyce to it (whom is NOT telling Becky she’s not into it); and has been evading her girlfriend because she’s… Too hot and tempting to sin before marriage?
There’s trouble in paradise here and Booster’s getting a front row seat to watch it.
Yes. Awesome comment.
Dude! Put up a spoiler warning at least!
(Jk
“Ooh, relationship drama. Neat!” *Camera shutter*
Yeah… Dina and Becky are walking towards a full blown religious debate ain’t they? And the really sad thing is that Becky’s gonna look at Joyce to back her up, and that’ll probably be the moment she find’s out Joyce is an atheist too
I know it’s unlikely but I really do get the impression that Sarah is somehow getting a positive charge off of Dina, Becky and Joyce’s anger. I’m sort of looking forwards to how the three of them try to explain this in their own heads.
Dina, seriously, it may be unscientific but, if it actually happens, then that means that science hasn’t caught up yet, not that it’s impossible.
Nnnnyeah but “magic” doesn’t mean “unexplained by current science” it means “blatantly violating established scientific laws”
Yeah, Dina doesn’t have a problem with the idea that Sarah is somehow getting happier from other people’s negative emptions, she just has a problem with it being magic.
On the other hand, I – looking at the strip from the outside, and knowing the ultimate explanation for everything is “Because that’s how Willis wrote it” do kind of have a problem with it, but that’s my issue.
I’m surprised Joyce knows about the “evil eye”. I wouldn’t have thought it would be something she would have been exposed to when growing up, or at least it wouldn’t have been named as such. Maybe named something else.
Maybe she meant “evil eye-stares” as in eye stares that are menacing, not “evil-eye stares”.
Then again, Carol…
I don’t know who has already suggested this, as I missed a lot of comments lately. But maybe this is Sarah’s way of cheering up Joyce?
When we apply “reverse” to a phrase, we implicitly clarify that the following phrase is an existant, default form of the version of the phrase.
…ergo, I simply must ask.. what are smile vampires? And how concerned should I be that, apparently, they’re a whole thing?
The first rule of Smile Vampires is that we don’t talk about Smile Vampires.
Given the Joyce and Walky’s strip for today (nap vampire), I just think that Joyce doesn’t know how vampires are supposed to work: it seems that to her, a nap vampire is a creature that forces its prey to nap, which makes them nap too.
Following this logic: a smile vampire is a creature that forces their “prey” to feel happy (their smile being the tell-tale sign), which makes them happy too.
And a reverse smile vampire makes others unhappy, which makes them happy.
Smile vampires. Ok. You know what a pot stirrer is, right? Someone who is so emotionally broke (or broken) inside that their method of feeling alive, or feeling better is to watching two others get emotionally wound up. Sometimes it is called “Let’s You And Her Fight,”. There’s lots of drama, they get to observe it, feed off the emotions, but then they get to walk away and not pay for the fallout. People who really get off on that are emotional vampires. The feeding off others’ strong emotions. A smile vampire gets their kicks, feels better, by surrounding themselves with happy folks.
A reverse smile vampire gets their joy from others’ misery.
…Sarah. Dina may be angry at you for longer than you’d expect.
Ok, it definitely seems like Dina is making way too big a deal out of the fact that Sarah, probably in jest, used the word “magically”.
Dina: “she said magic I’m so mad”
Joyce: “blah blah evil blah blah blah vampire”
…Uh oh
I cannot get enough of the reverse smile vampire story arc
Those border ads for Slipshine got my attention … are seagulls such a rare sight in Bloomington that just the mere appearance of them in winter is distracting enough to cause interruptus?
I hope they never see a space station flyover after sunset — their heads will explode.
My joy comes from seeing Sarah happy, as she may have been (my supposition) the first part of her first frosh semester. I’m sorry if it is charged against the accounts of the other characters, but Sarah is so good and noble and so traumatized by what happened her 1st-year. Sarah’s joy, even if forced on her by magic from Joyce’s misery, even if it is just temporary, makes me so appreciative of DYW’s storytelling. ‘Tis genius, I say!
I just realized this version of Dina’s hat is a toque. Great, she’s more sartorially set than I am.
Sarah has evolved. New she’s to powerful!!!
Now that’s an explanation Dina can get behind!
Silly Joyce. If Sarah was a vampire, she would have trouble in sunlight. If she were Bizzaro Sarah, she would talk backwards and look like she was made of white stone. Alternate universe Sarah would have a goatee.
Maybe she’s like actor Robert Mitchum, who, when told he had to grow some scruffy face hair to play the part of the villain, growled: “I’ll _act_ the beard!”
No it’s fine.
Sarah is wielding the Red Stone of Aja, which will soon empower her into the Ultimate Life Form.
Group dynamics like this are why I remained a loner throughout much of college. Now that everyone’s reunion-ing on social media, people are telling me how fondly they remember me and I have no kcuffing idea why.
I took a couple month break from this comic (to give it time to build up some pages) and the situation with Billie has given me so much anxiety please god I need more information.
Did you miss the panel where she said “I’m in trouble with the law for running over a family in Ireland, so I have to keep a low profile for a few weeks.”? It was right after she suddenly turned bright red and grew horns and started laughing diabolically about how much she hates Walky.
Honestly, can the whole thing be Inexplicably Happy Sarah just cruising by the other plotlines to recharge, for a while?
I was only a few comics off with my energy, I mean “reverse smile” vampire call-out. But I like to see Sarah happy, so whatevs.
I really don’t think Dina seems all that upset, here. She hasn’t been harsh with Sarah or anything. I figure she’s just momentarily miffed and this will just pass by like the tiny wrinkle it is.
Yeah, guys. Use the Care Bear Stare instead.
I think Dina is exaggerating how angry she is about this in order to further improve Sarah’s mood because she’s a good friend and wants her to be happy.
Dina’s a lot sharper on social behavior than we give her credit for. She is a scientist, after all. She studies. She learns.
She’s a clever girl.
I’m sorry, but I would have been thinking it all day if I hadn’t written it down.
Dina Saruyama: Reverse Smile Vampire Hunter
What…what’s a reverse smile vampire?
A vampire feeds on blood.
A smile vampire feeds on happiness.
A reverse smile vampire feeds on misery.
She’s technically green energy. If we could point her at social media and then harness her power, the world would forever be changed.