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Can YOU tell?

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Whether or not that last panel is a fair point will vary by character.

Some characters know they can't tell sometimes, because they're not sure.

Other characters, like Ellen, think they know, and don't question their conclusions much. This does not necessarily mean they actually can tell, but they might!

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Comments

Anonymous

I wonder if Grace also sometimes does a thing that I sometimes do, which is when I'm unsure if someone is joking or serious, respond in a way that's trying to be in that plausible-deniability space between continuing the joke and taking them seriously. But, yeah, I also have plenty of times when my deadpan-continuation-of-the-joke doesn't get picked up on as joking, too. So I'm feeling a lot of empathy and commonality with Grace here.

jubs

I live for those times where deadpanning and carrying on with it goes totally unnoticed, and I get to see how far I can take it. I think my longest running one has been going on for 10 years with one person...

Anonymous

I learned the hard way, that you can't assume people will understand you're only *joking* about cannibalism.

Anonymous

GIven the length of the pause it was more of a "wait, is he joking? Please say he's joking." thing. To be fair though, in hindsight the jokes indeed were not funny.

Anonymous

Kinda know what you mean. Not necessarily cannibalism but a lot of stuff where people just look at me strange or begin debating the moral implications of my jokes.

Applestone

Well, in the first comic of this storyline I could tell that she wasn't serious. I wasn't sure if she was joking or if she was just clumsily trying to repeat what they said without really understand it, like what the kids from 3below do all the time. But in the 2nd comic, her joke about the shirt was not recognizable as a joke, because she looked depressed. But shouldn't Grace rather learn to change her tone of voice or add some words that make irony more obvious?

David Howe

Ah, but was that overreach, or did you bite off more than you could chew?

Daryl Sawyer

For some reason, I'm thinking of Worf, who can quite seriously threaten death to an enemy, and quite humorously threaten death to a minor rival, or even a friend, and if you don't know him and get him, you might have trouble telling which was which. At any rate, death to the opposition!