JUNE VOTING INCENTIVE UP NOW!
More bonus car wash comic stuff! Good times!
VOTE TO BE SO VERY, VERY KIND!
As for this comic...
I believe that Puck here really does bring up a powerful moral question here: would you feel a desire to push wheelchair guy down the hill? Note that the crux is not whether you would push him down, but whether you would feel some modicum of desire to do so. I cannot hide the fact that I am fully on the Puck and Daphne side of the equation. I would not push the man down the hill, but I would entertain myself for the next long while with thoughts of doing so. I am not, as it turns out, a very good person. But at least I'm aware of that and make no attempt to hide it.
How about you? Would you feel the tug of cruelty pull at your collar or wouldn't you?
!["And then we could go back to our volcano lair and launch a few missiles. Not all the missiles, mind you. Just a few."](https://puckcomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/puck-498.png ""And then we could go back to our volcano lair and launch a few missiles. Not all the missiles, mind you. Just a few."")
Puck 498
JUNE VOTING INCENTIVE UP NOW!
More bonus car wash comic stuff! Good times!
VOTE TO BE SO VERY, VERY KIND!
As for this comic...
I believe that Puck here really does bring up a powerful moral question here: would you feel a desire to push wheelchair guy down the hill? Note that the crux is not whether you would push him down, but whether you would feel some modicum of desire to do so. I cannot hide the fact that I am fully on the Puck and Daphne side of the equation. I would not push the man down the hill, but I would entertain myself for the next long while with thoughts of doing so. I am not, as it turns out, a very good person. But at least I'm aware of that and make no attempt to hide it.
How about you? Would you feel the tug of cruelty pull at your collar or wouldn't you?
I cannot disagree.
Also what a save by Puck.
Being 600 years old comes with some wisdom.
I’m not sure this is wisdom, exactly. It’s more … acceptance?
Oooookay. That is a conversation that happened. Moving on, please?
And why would I want to make life harder for anybody? It’s freaking hard enough as it is.
You would not want to make life harder for anybody because you are a good person. See, fundamentally good people are presented with this question and their immediate reaction is an incredulous “What? No! Why would you EVER want to DO that?” Less good people are presented with this question and their immediate reaction is a diabolical chuckle. There is a broad, inexorable gulf of morality between the two that can never be crossed.
you can think to yourself it would be hillarious if i…,but they could die or get crippled so not fun
Here we are sing Illustrated the difference between Chaotic Neutral (Puck) and Chaotic Evil ( Daphne). I can’t imagine Puck with set out to harm anyone, but if the situation arose and it amused her she might do anything. On the other hand, Daphne would set the situation up, much as she did with the Schnorf debacle.
We may love them, but we must be aware of their nature. It is sort of like owning a cat.
Exactly. These characters will be who they are. Take ’em or leave ’em.
As the resident awful person, I’ll say what no one else will: he was already to crippled to begin with. 😉
DERIVING PLEASURE FROM THE MISERY OF OTHERS is the VERY DEFINITION of a horrible person!
nope, nope, I promised I wouldn’t preach….
You forgot the second part of that definition.
2) n. Noun, A person of French heritage, citizenship and popular schools of French comedy.
Well, no one here is pretending otherwise.
Please watch Wabbit Season. When Daffy pulls his head back down into the rabbit hole, it’s about the funniest thing on the face of the earth.
Is getting the feeling that you want to stab someone when you pick up a knife normal or am I just a wee bit off? How about pushing people off of tall buildings? I wouldn’t do these things, of course, but the thoughts do flicker.
ONE OF US! ONE OF US!
I’m pretty sure Puck once beat a Woman in a Wheelchair to death.
The woman wished to view Niagara Falls, and Puck was standing in her way.
When the woman politely requested Puch move aside for her, the assault commenced.
Sadly, she did it while visiting the American side of Niagara Falls, where I understand murder is legal.
No murder is not legal self defense(theres a difference) is legal if someone trys to stab or shoot you,Dont be a pompous #$&hole.
[SalemCat]:
“murder is legal”?!?
LIES!
Murder is NOT legal in America!!!
WhoIsThisLyingLiarWhoLiesToYouWithLyingLies???!?
IWillKillThemWithMyBareHandsThenDesacrateTheirGraveThenDigThemUpThenKillThemAgain!!!?!
( … caffeine suddenly wears-off … )
… or I could, you know, give ’em a dirty look or sumpth’n like that mebbe …
… I dunno …
… ZZZzzz …
@DMC_Run
““murder is legal”?!?
LIES!
Murder is NOT legal in America!!!
Note to self: Change plans for weekend.
😛
Murder may not be legal in America, but it seems to be very, very popular there.
Only shooting people is legal in the US. Pushing them over Niagara Falls is theoretically illegal, but if you are white, rich, and have a good lawyer you have an excellent chance of getting away with it.
This story is patently false because if you’re on the American side of Niagara Falls, you have a great view of absolutely nothing.
Since no one else has (yet) brought it up, panel 4 Daphne is possibly the cutest and most cheerful she has ever looked.
The fact that she is so cheerful while contemplating the theoretical murder of a handicapped person does make things a bit complicated, though.
Daphne does have surprising depth. Murky, disturbing depth, but depth nonetheless.
And like it or not, it’s times like this it’s most obvious that she is Puck’s daughter, in spirit at least.
It’s like Phoebe has never seen one single episode of “Four on the Floor”.
However, I would not be the person to push the person in a wheelchair down the hill.
I’d be the person in the wheelchair, with a couple of broomsticks to brake/steer with. Now, what kind of safety equipment would I have set up?
Packing peanuts.
Oh hell Gecko, I forgot to add this on. Hey, they have something else to bond over besides Norwalk.
Such a lovely Monterrey daughter bonding moment.
I think it’s awful to think of pushing a guy in a wheelchair down a hill. I would kick him out of the wheelchair and ride it down the hill myself 😛
How did ‘mother’ get changed to ‘Monterrey?’ What the hell is a Monterrey Anyway?
It’s a music festival? And a cheese?
That is ALSO an acceptable evil answer.
I guess they both have the same father—Richard Widmark in “Kiss of Death.”
It would never even occur to me to push anyone.
On the other hand, I’m not an especially good person, but am working on it.
So… how does that work out? I’m already a self-admitted bad guy (who is trying to become less bad), but also didn’t ever think about deliberately inflicting potential harm on anyone, despite the possible laughs.
If it would never even occur to you to push a dude in a wheelchair down a hill, I would submit that you are likely a good person who is very hard on yourself. And that agrees with most of the good people I know. The most morally upright people I’ve met will readily tell you that they are flawed. And they might be, but everything is very relative.
It would occur to me, but I would simply enjoy the mental image, possibly giggle out loud, then have to explain to my friends that I remembered a funny joke that I have to make up on the spot. My life is complicated enough without having to hide a handicapped person’s body.
Well, that’s all of us. I doubt that anyone beyond a true psychopath would actually push the guy, but it’s the amusing thought that marks us as low grade villains.
No intrusive thoughts? Phoebe has something wrong with her brain. I demand an evil Phoebe, if only temporarily!
There’s enough evil in this comic. Someone has to be the good one!
I have learned to appreciate the irony of the Devil’s Daughter being a respectful and kind person as opposed to others in this strip.
I’m glad you appreciate. A large number of other people just get frustrated by it.
What if she and Puck switched bodies?
I believe the issue of evil impulses has been looked at by proper researchers (I just cannot find the links). We do apparently experience horrible anti-social thoughts from time to time, such as telling the mother in law it’s so nice of her to drop by but to please close the door quickly as you’ve accidentally let the pet tarentulas loose in the house.
The purpose of these thoughts was to regularly exercise the higher-level social functions of the brain that are meant to prevent us from acting evil when we have the opportunity. Since the brain learns by repetition and by associating strong emotions, such thoughts are a sign of a morally healthy person.
If there is something broken in the way the brain learns, then these thoughts are another matter altogether. They may turn from warnings to temptation. The person who experiences may be safe until he starts believing Oscar Wilde: “the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it”.
Oh, the door is ringing. I hope it’s not the MiL. Where is my shotgun?
It is my opinion that the world of morality and brain chemistry are fundamentally incompatible. I mean, when push comes to shove, everything is just brain chemistry, but when you enter the realm of science, morality is irrelevant. For instance, is a lion eating a gazelle morally upright? Evil? Is a black hole a force of evil? Is a sun inherently good?
So when looking at the human mind, you can frame it from a scientific standpoint where we can look at “evil” people as chemically or genetically imbalanced, or outliers on a spectrum of behavior. That makes sense to me on an intellectual level. But on an emotional, creative level, I default to the classic good and evil. I think most of us do.
And good luck with the in-laws.
Sun isn’t good or evil. Sun just is. Sun was there when it was totally moral to kill slave who didn’t wanted to follow orders and it will still be there when our descendants would laugh at our morality.
And unfortunately, with the “right” upbringing, people can be completely balanced and yet evil.
Well, can’t argue there.
I’m going with “would probably not push it, though I can imagine it being amusing” personally. Most friends I have describe me as Chaotic Neutral so they can see me doing it.
However, I’m raised with “don’t be a complete jerkwad,” so… probably not? Even though it would be amusing.
So at your core, you are a malevolent force of chaos, like me. But also like me, society has carefully overlaid a generous coating of civility.
Yeah. Pretty much.
Daph has had a strong effect on Puck. And Phoebe not. Interesting.
I was not sure where this was going to go. But I think the important idea, the relevant one, would you try to ruin a nice pair of kids’ prom just because one of them did ask you, like you lead them not to?
And could you follow that thought?
And if you could, could you explain it to me?
No, no, stop, I could follow it. It was very clear. But the line was funny, man!
Well, the talk is not done yet. The real purpose is yet to drop. This is just the lead-in.
Ooh! Planning! Being an English major has its advantages!
There are advantages to being an English major? I’ve never encountered any!
Well the advantage is to us, your loyal readers. And the less loyal ones. And the people who’ve just started and are finding they like it. Most people aren’t going to notice, though.
Jokes about pushing disabled people down stairs: hilarious
Actually pushing disabled people down stairs: YOU MONSTER
Admittedly, there are some who call the first lot a monster, but also people who would be okay with the second lot so long as the disabled person was dislikeable enough.
Geeze, thats like the third time in a month that I almost wrote my password instead of my email address. Gonna check myself into assisted living, I swear.
It fundamentally comes down to whether you subscribe to an ancient Greek sense of morality or a modern moral construct. In the Greek morality, the good man is the man who feels no temptation at all. In the face of sin, he feels no desire to pursue it. In the modern moral scheme, we tend to view those who feel no temptation as suspect or weird.
Well, feeling no temptation would mean you’re a better person, or less imginative. But a person who felt it, but just didn’t act on it, is good enough for my purposes.
Does that mean Phoebe’s Greek? Put her next to some ouzo and see what happens.
Phoebe is not Greek. Though she does have a Greek name.
Awwww! Well, I suppose it wasn’t really in the cards. It would have had to have been through her dad and her dad doesn’t strike me as someone from that area.
That was close. For a moment, I feared that Daphne might have stumbled into a threat of character development and change. Thank Puck that was averted!
Well, there’s still that possibility. This is just the setup.
Maybe it’s time to seriously re-think your moral standards when the GIRL WITH THE HORNS IN HER HEAD is telling you that you’re a horrible person.
Just sayin’.
One cannot harbor prejudice against people with horns and a tail.
Three grown men smacking each other in a bar=socially not acceptable
Three grown men smacking each other in a short comedy film=the three stooges
Pushing an old man out of a non moving bus in las vegas who later dies=murder
Pushing a man in a wheelchair in a film down a hill=one of the naked gun plus a few other comedies that come to mind that I can’t name.
Conclusion…its the desire to do these things that’s funny, the actual action, not so much. We are all barely contained potential debacles just waiting to happen, and through the medium of this artwork are helped to be restrained. Therefore….
PUCK HELPS SAVE THE WORLD
Discuss among yourselves, I need a sandwich.
That is a wonderful rundown.
Welp it looks like we found dafeys enabler. Bad Puck your a bad mom.
Well, we’re only getting the start of her lecture here. It’s going somewhere.
I’m the kind of guy who will go back into a store to pay for something I unintentionally stole, even though I’d already gotten away from it.
So no, no looking at a guy in a wheelchair and feel a temptation to push them down a flight of stairs.
Uh oh. Good person in our midst!
Even a can of tuna fish, after asking the clerk to top off your slushee?
Hey. Only two yutes would ever do a thing like that.
I’ve done that. Typically Cadburry’s cream eggs.
Oh noes, Puck is encouraging Daphne to sin. Just look at D.’s reaction in the last panel. (Much more effectively than the illustrious mayor of Hamilton ever did.)
We’ll see. Sometimes you gotta fake left before you fake right.
I think when we experience such intrusive thoughts it’s called “Call of the void” it also happens when one stands on a ledge, just one step and you fall to death, and you actually imagine doing it.
Had something similar at work where I suddenly felt the urge to throw a hammer into a ceiling fan. Boy, that urge was strong.
So yeah, one is not necessarily evil for imagining evil actions and how fun they might seem. It’s the acting on it, that makes you evil.
Maybe the slight temptation is the call of the void. But feeling the temptation, mulling it over, laughing devilishly to yourself at the prospect and amusing yourself with thoughts of the act for a good while afterwards? Ennnnnnnhhhhhh… Might be something else?
The Call for Therapy?
Mother-daughter bonding at it’s finest.
“Finest.”
Awwww, they’re bonding
And such a bond is surely something terrible.
oh dang, a web comic just laterally called me out on being a little bit of a bad person.
Not bad. Just chaotic neutral.
50% of my Role playing characters are Chaotic neutral, 25% Are Chaotic good, maybe 5% are lawful Good, 20% are…..Lawful evil.
when i play evil i have codes and standards.
My DnD characters tend to be, at the lowest, Lawful Neutral, and only because I was asked to play a druid and the DM said I couldn’t play a Neutral Good druid due to the kind of Pathfinder game he was running. He said a Neutral Good wouldn’t get along with a mostly Evil party. And while I debated on how that’s not necessarily true, I did agree when he said his group was the one that asked for no Good alignments.
Yeah, I love to debate alignment, but not at the expense of the game. 🙂
i have gotten away with Lawful evil in games where the rest of the party is neutral or good…by nuking my money by buying a item that disguises my alignment as good, i regularly had players in parties i was in that wanted to be paladins so when we played i often started equipped very poorly. one time the gm part way through the game make me the new villian after we defeated the previous villian early and i took over most of the organizations power…for most of the game the party couldn’t figure out why i was always broke…..i was regularly using most of my wealth to invest further in the organization. not once did i directly do any pvp. I did hire a assassin to kill the paladin in her sleep. The gm when he noticed my private message about it was suprised, and later on when the assassin snuck in and succeeded had to pause the game due to uncontrollable laughter. the paladin was the only one who had any sort of suspicions about me but never spoke up about it she wanted to gather evidence before calling me out on it since i was a upstanding citizen, well liked, poor, and pitiable. me and the rouge led the investigation into who did it. the rouge said he figured out it was me and who i was, but was going to keep his trap shut about me in exchange for insuring his life and for me to misplace some of the dead paladins coins. i had him agree to a blood pact and that was that. the rouge was the only other party member that survived the campaign with their original characters. Coincidentally no one other than the rouge figured it out completely.
I hate alignment. The auto shop is always pushing it for my tires and I feel it’s a waste of money.
I would argue that a person who reacts to the thought of pushing a person in a wheelchair downhill is not necessarily good but instead either repressed or unimaginative. There are many comedic movies where far worse occurs to characters and yet folks find them hilarious (myself included). The important differance between most of us and Daphne is that the reality of pushing someone down a hill is horrifying. Its not evil to entertain violent thoughts, its only evil if you act on them. For the most part, I like the character Daphne because she’s not real. Her antics amuse me a lot in the same way Wile E Coyote amuses me. I also like that her schemes often backfire in a similar spectacular fashion.
Well, this is a fair breakdown.
Come to think of it, Daphne and Wile E. do share a certain resemblance…
Coincidence? Or was dumping Daphne on Puck’s doorstep his only plan that ever went right? 😉
Lot of fuel for the Nature vs Nurture debate in this relationship, isn’t there? 😛
Enough to power a Saturn V rocket.
Ok, let’s get back to the STAR of this comic: TRACEEE !
No one would ever imagine TRACEEE treating a Differently-Abled Person badly.
The only time we’ve seen TRACEEE become absorbed with any violent behavior was in response to a BULLY .
I’ll bet if Daffy was ever abusing a Blind Person in her presence, TRACEEEE would leave that Hyena bloodied and sobbing.
BTW, that blood on TRACEEE’s frock was not her own !
Tracee is in a different category. She is fiercely protective of her own space and place, but that comes from, well, coming from nothing.
That we’ve seen.
Only the Gecko knows what she did to get where she is.
I don’t know either.
Regarding the person in a wheelchair atop a big hill, I might imagine pushing, but I would not do it. (Unless the person in the wheelchair was Dr. Evil.) 😉
Not even for. . .
. . . $1 Million Dollars?
I mean… Yeah. I assume that impulse is similar to the one that people have that makes them randomly think about jumping off buildings or swerving into traffic. Call of the void I think it’s called. In this case though, I’d say “demon on my shoulder”
Haha 😀 Great minds think alike. I’m intrigued by The Call of the Void
I too entertain myself with morally questionable things. Also have you heard of ‘L’Appel Du Vide’ which roughly translates into The Call of the Void. It’s a fun phase, look it up if you have the time.
Just in case anyone forgot: the uncensored, pre-Disney faeries were JERKS whenever they could get away with it.
Puck is practically a saint by their standards because she refrains from acting on her worst impulses a lot of the time…
I’m keepin’ it pre-industrial up in this joint.
I mean, even a number of Disney faeries were jerks. Cinderella’s fairy godmother gave her a pretty damn narrow window of opportunity after leaving her to her step-family for YEARS, Tinkerbell had it in for Wendy, and the three faeries in Sleeping Beauty pretty much make SURE to piss off Maleficent even after she gave the King and Queen a way to avoid her ire for the snub of not inviting her.
Yeah, that’s valid. Tinkerbell was pretty on point, really. Selfish, potentially murderous, nasty.
Good call! I forgot about those… though I suspect Cinderella’s Fairy godmother was dealing with limitations of her own power and arcane rules.
After reading through all the comments, I have drawn the conclusion that Puck is going to drop a life changing bombshell on Daphne. I have no idea what Daphne is going to do, but I feel like ElectricGecko is toying with the idea of Daphne changing for the better.
I would also like to say that I am also the type of person who enjoys dark humour, which is what I consider the example Puck gave to be.
You may be right. I mean, comic #500 is coming up. That seems like a good point to have a bombshell.
but I feel like ElectricGecko is toying with the idea of Daphne changing for the better.
no No NO NOOOO !!!
I want Daffy arrested and incarcerated.
“changing for the better” my butt.
That might be a change for the better. Having real consequences would probably do the same thing you’re trying to avoid.
Where are you on the morality scale if you can make jokes about the hypothetical situation, but if presented in reality, it wouldn’t even be a passing thought? We threaten my grandma with removing the spokes of her future wheelchair if she keeps mouthing off, but there is zero thought going into actually doing it or not.
You are exactly 37.8% evil. Exactly.
Explains the urge to mix all the specialty m&ms into one bowl.
That’s just good taste.
@Pat, HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! 😉
Well, I’ll be doggoned. ;). In third panel, Daphne is making puppy dog eyes. (Or is just me who sees it that way?)
Enh, not sure whether I’d call them puppy dog eyes. I didn’t draw them that way. Though it’s hard to see them at this size.
Reminds me of something one of The Doctors said: “I am not a good person. If I was a good person, I wouldn’t need to place as many rules on myself as I do.”
I’m with the Doctor on that one.