Well…yes, but not percentage of pitches. Percentage of at-bats. Then we’d have to define at-bats, because not every plate appearance is an at-bat. And then we’d have to define plate appearance. Baseball is the sport for statistics nerds (like me). There’s a simpler way to understand the idiom, though. Substitute “success rate” for “batting average”. That’s all it means.
On-Base Percentage, or OBP for short, is probably a more meaningful statistic anyway, to say nothing of OPS
I wonder if the role of head cheerleader meant that Billie needed to familiarize herself with sports terminology so she’d know when the team did something impressive?
As an evolution nerd and Stephen Jay Gould stan i have had to learn about baseball and batting averages in particular to be able to read through his book “Full House” which is a fascinating essay studying and comparing both batting averages over the decades and trends in species diversity through geological time. It’s about… um… the philosophy of statistics? The ontology of averages? A plea for distributions? Boy this book is tough to, um, pitch.
it's a great read, especially if you’re a baseball geek =P that section was fairly indulgent (but that’s fine, it’s SJG, he’s allowed <3) and after fastidiously getting the gist i skipped a good bit. i did gather that Joe DiMaggio was a statistical anomaly any way you looked at it?
but the basic argument is simple, yet goes against a really ingrained bias: that we like to look at averages and think they are informative, but that they don't… exist. they're a mathematical artefact, useful in specific situations but really bad at describing many phenomena. they skew our perception and make us draw some bafflingly unearned conclusions, such as the idea that evolution has an innate tendency towards complexity, or larger sizes. a lot of theorizing has actually gone into explaining why this dubious fact may be occurring, when a more literate statistical analysis makes it clear that what evolution predicts is not any sort of special trend but simply an increase in diversity over time, and because most groups of life start small (for trivial reasons), the average size of the species in that group will slowly drift big-wards.
so Gould insists, if we are to understand distributions, we need to give up the fetishization of averages and instead try, quite possibly in the face of hard-wired neural patterns, certainly cultural ones, to look at the history of life in terms of its overall diversity. the figure of the normal distribution (and its parameters of width, tail-length, and hard cut-offs corresponding to physical limits) is what we need to have in mind, not single-figure artifacts like averages and medians.
he makes the case for batting averages and for trends in evolution, but shifting that perception can have profound consequences in many arenas of (the production of) knowledge.
Is it possible that even though Sal and Wally know how their mom is they also don’t want to admit to themselves how bad it is, and therefor it’s not registering why Lucy would be fourth?
i think it’s in-group out-group stuff. being put in a position to need to apologise for your ingroup (and you always need to apologise for your ingroup) is unpleasant. ‘Mum’s racist and she’ll be shit to you but she’s not that bad, really, you know, she loves us…’. You Have to defend behaviour that isn’t really defensible, you Have to account for like, how you personally maintain a relationship even tho she’s gonna be Like That, and Dad’ll go along with it. you probably don’t HAVE to, but you feel like it. That’s family! That’s OUR horrible ditch witch and her dad-shaped familiar.
Honestly, there’s an easy answer for defending their mom: Don’t. At all. Don’t defend it, don’t apologize for it, don’t excuse it. Lay it out for what it is like an oncologist giving a cancer patient their prognosis. It’s shitty, but it’s here, and here’s how we’re gonna try to deal with it.
The real problem is defending their conclusion when on the surface it’s a “ridiculous” accusation. After all, she’s married to a black guy, and she’s so nice to Walky. “Obviously” it’s something else. That’s fucking exhausting. And Sal already had to go through it with her own brother (and who knows how many other times before with others). Gonna be Walky’s first time.
Sal knows. She said her mom has always liked Walky better because he came out whiter. Can Lucy pull her head out of the clouds long enough to figure this out? Surely she knows about practical things like colorism and racist bias. Her parents must have given her The Talk.
Probably. I mean, black kids unfortunately don’t get to remain ignorant to that reality for long, and Lucy’s steeped in a lot of pop culture that has at least passingly acknowledged the subject of bigotry.
I think the biggest issue she’s got here is that she probably is predisposed to wanting to give the Walkertons the benefit of the doubt, and they are unfortunately not wholly deserving of that grace.
Also that bit where Mrs Walkerton married Mr Walkerton and had adorable kids with him! It’s the sort of thing that’s going to prime Lucy to assume that she’s not racist. Somebody suggested that maybe she fell accidentally pregnant and felt that she HAD to marry him; it doesn’t explain why she was seeing/sleeping with him in the first place (proving she wasn’t racist to somebody she wanted to impress?) but it is a hard thing to explain otherwise and also helps to explain the vitriol Sal felt from pretty much the moment she emerged “Blacker”…
Imo it might be more something along of a ‘form your own conclusions first from your interactions before we tell you things that’ll distort your perceptions and might cause you go read into things that aren’t exactly the way they might seem.’
Walky has a point, Billie’s being insensitive about it. Billie has a point, there’s no malice toward anyone present in what she’s saying. Everyone has a point. Joyce, you have a point, too, where is that Asher guy? Walky needs someone to match with.
I think Linda’s racism is subconscious she probably thinks “I can’t be racist I have a husband and children who are people of colour” But she subconsciously engages in racist behavoir towards Sal and Lucy.
Made a comment this afternoon on yesterday’s comment that was probably missed. In response to someone else saying Jenifer had probably heard racial slurs from Linda.
“I slightly disagree. I’m sure she’s heard a shit ton of racially charged microaggressions but I would put money on Linda not using racial slurs because that helps her delude herself into thinking she’s not racist.
She wouldn’t use the N word because that would be racist but she’ll say out loud that the “urban” fashion someone is wearing makes him “look like a thug” and make sure that all her car doors are locked and windows rolled up when driving through a primarily black neighborhood.”
And for now I’m standing by that. Microaggressions and dog whistles seem more her speed than blatant racial slurs.
Oh, she’s literally said the thug thing, like. On page. I can’t remember the exact page but it was way back when Sal was little and Marcie had the accident.
I agree with your assessment. Linda loves to think she’s a good person as much as Carol does.
Linda seems less concerned with being “a good person” and more with being “a good parent” but doesn’t spend a whole lot of time interrogating her own feelings & perceptions.
…
That just gave me a mental image of Linda sleeping with the classic cartoon snoring, honk shu honk shu, but instead of “mimimimimi” it’s just the hard r
Could be! She must have been worried about this terrible secret she was keeping from her mother and now it’s all out there. Her atheism, her hatred of the church, no longer believing her mother is infallible and perfect and always right.
unfortunately Joyce didn’t tell her mother about “her hatred of the church, no longer believing her mother is infallible and perfect and always right.” because they didn’t have a conversation at all, Carol walked away. Joyce’s new hatred of the church was IMPLIED, but given that Carol didn’t accept what was outright stated to her, she’s highly unlikely to think of the further implications about Joyce
Still though, even being able to say what you are feeling and not have the world crash down around you, regardless of how much the other person actually accepted the truth of what you said, can be relieving.
I think she is sidelining the whole “I’m homeless and have all this stuff cluttering up my room and my Mom is crazy” line of thought in favor of the “Joe is a wonderful guy who really loves me and supports me!”
This thing about Joyce being homeless keeps coming up from different people. Did I miss the strip where Hank, Joyce’s father, disowned her and forbade her from living in his home that one would assume he has either rented or purchased with the money he makes a a dentist?
Carol may be homeless if she’s crazy enough to have sold the home she got in the divorce without making prior arrangements but Joyce has a whole second parent who presumably found a place to live when his wife got the house in the divorce and there’s currently no reason to believe Joyce isn’t welcome at his place.
Why not? Don’t you think he’d get a place big enough for the two of them? He knows his ex wife is crazy and that Joyce doesn’t want anything to do with her, and he never seemed like the type of parent to be like “welp you’re no longer my legal responsibility so go figure it out yourself or be homeless idc.”
That and “I don’t want my many “mom” friends to worry about me so better pretend everything if ok or else they will force me to confront this scary new reality on their terms and not my own without even realising they’re doing it” in which case all I can say is “mood”.
Honestly though, Becky’s gonna freak out & Dorothy will go full helper mode and that sounds super exhausting after just receiving the news yourself…
I agree, she seemed to be matter of fact about it. I didn’t register any approval of Linda, or glee at anyone’s discomfort. It’s just how Linda is, and Lucy deserves to know. It’s not a fun conversation, sure, but that’s not Jennifer’s fault.
Yeah she is bashing on the others while deliberately being vague in a hurtful manner herself. If she actually was a semi-decent person, she’d go ‘look, the point is, their mom is racist and she even judges her own kids based on how black they are, so she’s going to hate you and hate Walky for dating you’. Not this whole ‘oh I’m not doing this to be mean’ nonsense while leaving Lucy in the dark. It’s just pretending to be a decent person while still lashing out and hurting people.
Linda is not Jennifer’s family, she’s their’s, they (mostly wally) should be the ones to tell her the truth, because she might not believe it coming from someone outside the family, and also because having an outsider shit talk your family instead of you telling the truth about it is also not very comfortable for others and feels very gossip-y.
And it’s entirely plausible that Jennifer is doing this to get Sal and Walky to do the straight talk with Lucy, because it would be best and most helpful if it comes from them. She’s doing it somewhat abrasively because she’s Jennifer.
you dont need to be trying to hurt someone to be hurtful. i agree that she wasnt trying to be hurtful (mostly) but she was still horrible in how she went about it.
I’m real confused on where this expectation for Jennifer to be nice to Walky and Lucy comes from? Or why she’s considered rude here. We can’t pretend Walky doesn’t act the same way to her. Maybe Lucy deserved a bit of a gentler conversation but then Walky should be the one warning her instead of Jen. This feels like a double standard.
Oh yes we can, because he doesn’t act the same way.
The issue in difference isn’t rudeness.
It’s hurtfulness.
Walky almost never purposely hurts people, and I can’t think of a moment off the top of my head where he purposely tried to hurt Jennifer.
Jennifer has purposely tried to hurt Walky multiple times during the series.
As for Walky warning Lucy, he has warned her twice now that this lunch will not be cool.
Should he be more upfront about it?
Sure.
But Billy is also not being upfront about it, so she’s not warning Lucy any better while adding the potential hurt to it.
Even Sal, who is the most blunt about this topic, isn’t outright saying it.
None of them want those words spoken into the ether.
Sal and Jennifer have experienced racial prejudice (for being half-Black and Asian/part-Asian respectively – she seems to identify as being Asian, was at least partially surprised Ruth’s grandfather didn’t target that about her for criticism, but she acknowledges otherwise she’s reasonably white-passing). They know how much it sucks. Acknowledging that somebody who is supposed to be a figure of love and support can cut people down like that is probably kinda painful.
And Walky… Hates confrontation. Is still working on being better at standing up for his sister to his parents. KNOWS his mother’s love is conditional. Finds it hard to talk about emotions… Saying the words aloud to an emoter like Lucy who will react, and be shocked, and then hurt and outraged, and make him actually address how he feels about all this..? Where someone like Dorothy would sense he was out of his comfort zone and step back (then probably journal about it to process her own emotions), I think Lucy would (Joyce-like) obliviously smash through all the barriers he’s put up so he can keep on functioning in the here and now and unwittingly really hurt him. (Some of those barriers might be restricting him and unhealthy long-term, like his dependency on his mother’s approval, but they’re kinda still his to work through in his own time.)
y’all are giving walky the same treatment sal complains her parents give to him, but here he’s a golden boy not cuz of skin color but because when he’s being a dick he’s funny about it, or funny to us at least, cuz if I got told dickish shit, I’d be more pissed if he was trying to make it funny cuz that’s just pouring salt in a wound you just opened.
he’s not a baby, stop treating him with softer kid gloves than any other person in these comics
Nah.
Motive matters.
If you have two jerks and one of them means to be hurtful and the other doesn’t, you can acknowledge both are jerks while also acknowledging that the jerkiness is not the same.
Delivery matters, too.
And in this particular instance, on this particular subject, Walky isn’t being a dick or making a joke.
But Jennifer is still coming off as hurtful in Walky’s opinion and a number of commenters.
So what you’re claiming as me babying him isn’t even a factor in this strip, and instead comes off as a general complaint about Walky vs an observation about this specific situation.
He’s never gonna see this alleged kid glove treatment anyway, so people may as well treat him however. I choose to treat him as just a guy who shows up sometimes.
There are several examples of Walky being a jerk or purposefully annoying to Jennifer, especially post winter break. The difference between Jen and Walky is just subtle differences in presentation and justification. We don’t like Jennifer’s shallow, popularity and status obsessed motives or her vindictiveness and pettiness. Doesn’t mean Walky following her all day against her wishes, annoyingly calling her “babe” was okay. Or being a smugass at their breakfast group date while feigning innocence or obliviousness is okay. He is aware of Jennifer’s trigger and pulled them anyway.
I’m not even trying to bash Walky. This is just their dynamic. To me Jennifer wasn’t even being mean. This is how she interacts with Walky and Lucy. They all know this. We all know this. It’s their unique dynamic. Justifying it for Walky because he’s less blunt, has more tact, or is even just more likable does feel like favoritism.
Lucy should work on reading between lines. Not everyone’s going to be upfront about their behavior, there’s going to be some passive aggressiveness here and some two faceness there from some people.
But surely she knows about racism right? She couldn’t have grown up in America without figuring out this subtext of systemic racism that underlies our whole history and political system. Why Republicans can be manipulated into voting for anything they think will hurt Black people even if it hurts them too. Surely schools used to teach actual history even in the confederate states?
Thing is, she’ll probably figure it out when she hears Linda with the mask off. Billie being abrasive about it makes Walky, who she knows has never been the savviest at navigating tense social situations, completely misinterpret her intentions.
It’s not that she doesn’t know about racism, but that it hasn’t entered the conversation yet because everyone (Billie included) is dancing around the topic.
No. American schools have NEVER taught actual history. American schools teach silly, made-up stories to make children proud of their country. History doesn’t enter into it.
Yeh being proud of being American is sick honestly. I realize lots of people have that feeling instilled from a young age and were not given a choice but at some point it’s on you to realize that to be proud of having randomly beenborn in an imperialist hegemonic worls power is NOT something to be proud of. If anything it comes with a historic debt.
(Same applies to other extremely rich, colonialist nations, obviously, such as mine, France, where i was also brainwashed in school to feel proud of the brutal, genocidal past and neocolonial present of french institutions)
This is not at all true everywhere. My high school did a pretty good job of tackling the complexities of American history. Now I work in a school district where the vast majority of both teqchers and students are PoCs, and I assure you that there’s more nuance than “rah rah America”.
I will also point out that automatically assuming America is in the wrong can lead to situations where people defend truly heinous things simply because they were done by people who make noise about how bad America is.
Oh definitely.
Reflexive anti-americanism is no more rational. I’d say it’s a step in the right direction but still only a small step. It’s also a really essentialist view of history. We need to actually change the framing, not just accept the original mythos while switching the roles around
Aren’t several states currently trying to ban the teaching of history that makes “white kids feel bad”, or like trying to instill a “teach both sides” thing for things like slavery and the Holocaust? The whole crt thing whenever anyone mentions black history?
Yeah. It’s not everywhere; there are a lot of states, and a lot of variety in school districts throughout those states. Still, all it takes is one ugh parent in your school and it can become a piece in a national debate.
Still, lots of schools are explicitly expanding their curriculum in Black History and investing in it more.
I’d like to point out that, even though all Black folks in America experience systemic barriers and prejudice due to anti-Blackness and racism, not every Black person understands it or recognizes it. I know it gets thrown around to mean “anything conservatives don’t like” or “anything liberals do” these days, but the term “woke” is actually a term in AAVE to describe Black folks who broke through that unawareness and realized the realities of racism and anti-Blackness in America rather than continuing to internalize anti-Blackness. It is entirely possible that Lucy won’t recognize or acknowledge Linda’s insidious level of racism, even if it’s pointed out to her.
I mean, I don’t know why she would glean that from a cryptic conversation about a woman who she knows is married to a black man, I don’t see how it would be remotely obvious that’s what is being said here, to anyone
The book Lies My Teacher Told Me is very interesting for this. Essentially, even if a particular teacher is doing good work helping students learn about history with accuracy and nuance, most major history textbooks are shit at this and have been for a while (possibly always). Factored with teachers who have their own pro-America biases, teachers who are tasked with teaching history when it’s not actually their specialization, and classes being taught by substitutes who don’t have much to go on beside the textbook and some worksheets… yeah, I wouldn’t just assume someone in America, even a good student, had received a strong education in history.
And then she pretty much immediately saw Sarah being super mean to an alleged friend and said ‘wow, you really are mean to everyone including your friends, huh?’ If Sarah hadn’t been in the process of actively being a dick to Joyce, Lucy probably would have been ‘huh, I guess Raidah’s full of it.’
Tl;dr Sarah made a bad impression herself. That it was in line with what Raidah said was just the cherry on top.
I doubt this is her first time being met with microaggressions, but I think it’s certainly possible the “OOH MEETING THE BOYFRIEND’S PARENTS!” factor is blinding her to the issue. Even to the trained ear, some dogwhistles can be missed.
Lucy like most people also assumes of others what she knows of herself. She is all loving and doesn’t dislike anyone so she can’t fantom someone else being like that.
It’s also a little weirder to think of coming from your black boyfriend’s parents. Not impossible of course, but it’s not really the first thing anyone thinks of with conflict between parents and their kids.
Look okay, I kinda liked Asher and Jen as a couple but if they broke up like the alt text implies I can’t be against it. Dude could not be trusted. Better a breakup now than be attached whenever that mob connection/blackmailed into aiding your friends kidnapper shoe drops.
If they did break up wonder if Asher will continue with radiahs group? If mob connections do become a plot it could effect everyone in his social circle.
I’d be down for that, honestly. Asher’s trying to nope out of the mob thing (and failing at least somewhat so far) and Raidah’s social-climber group would encourage that continuing failure. Walky and his friend group are way more likely to encourage the ‘good’ rather than enable the ‘bad’, and Sal’s in it too and would Watch Him.
Yeah, I’m not surprised Lucy doesn’t understand and that Jennifer utterly fails to realize that she doesn’t understand. And then goes on to not want to engage with the possibility that she might not understand something about another person.
You’ve dropped your wisdom, Jennifer. Flee into the night!
I think Jennifer realizes Zluct doesn’t understand but reeeeally thinks Walky or Sal need to be the one who actually says it out loud. ‘We are ranked by color from whitest to blackest, and now you are the blackest.’
I wanted to trademark “Lord High Pubah and Rightful Ruler of the Asmovian Spaces and all Lesser Orbs Therein” but it was already taken. Either that or it cost too much; I forget.
If so it’s weird that she thinks it’s okey to insert herself in the conversation and to be the one to tell Lucy she’s personally responsible for her boyfiends parents liking him less but thinks explaining herself is out of line.
it also gives Billy a power over Lucy, a thing a social climber like Lucy cant stand. Lucy did everything she could get one over, multiple times socially over Billy. Then let Billy knew she wouldnt abuse it and welcomed her back.
Lucy desparately craves authority but is too passive to admit thats what shes doing.
Billy Knows better. With her new social group falling apart, Billy is likely to play the part of #1 daughter so Lucy can see she is in charge ,and lUcy cant game it this time.
Lucy will be Lucy and and try to hurt Billys standing with Walkys parents, in order to be the one who fixes things. and THAT will be the thing that Walky dumps her over. ( maybe ) . Not because his parents are racist but because Lucy is acting like Raidah. and Walky will question how fast and artificial their romantic relationship is. Billy will urge walky to follow his actual feelings ( something she doesnt normally do ) and that Dorothy told him to fake it. This will probably all backfire on everyone , maybe with Asher role getting exposed. and Lucy wll be dumped and end up in Raidahs crew, where Fake nice and Toxic Positivity are rewarded.
I don’t think Lucy is a full blown social climber it seems to me she was probably in a “outgroup” or nerds in high school and may have been bullied by people who resemble Jennifer and Radiah’s group so called “cool people” so Lucy is likely eager to please them in order to gain some form of validation it’s not social climbing its more likely Lucy is a people pleaser, hence why Mayla cant stand her.
Exactly.
Lucy wants to be liked by everyone, but she doesn’t want to be better than anyone.
She’s genuinely nice, just a bit too worried about her personal popularity.
But that only makes her want to appeal to more people, not undercut people.
Even when Jennifer’s presence made her floor mates give up on her movie watch party, what she wanted to find out was how to get Jennifer to come, not how to make her less popular.
Yeah, the assumption that one interaction with Raidah where she didn’t immediately see through and challenge Raidah’s tactics makes Lucy a social climber – and granted, I’m assuming that’s the logic here, because otherwise it just seems like pure personal dislike – is giving me the ick. And calling things “the ick” gives me the ick, so that says something about how much that take is bugging me.
I don’t know Lucy’s high school background so I’m speculating. Given her hobbies and love of comics and cartoons and her excitement that Jennifer was a cheerleader and her excitement that she and Walky were invited out to brunch with the “cool kids” I’m guessing she wasn’t popular with certain groups who are stereotypically popular in high school and likely longed to be associated with said group in high school. but Lucy has shown that she likes to please people.
I mean. I think it’s kind of logical that a sheltered, churchy nerd who probably got bullied a ton would think herself boring… And romanticize the kind of adventurous, take-charge character Jennifer was projecting since she moved in. And hey, confirmation bias! We’re outright shown how she’s tried to reach out to people individually andgroupally, to no avail.
She goes about pleasing people because she’s desperately lonely. That’s easy to take advantage of by manipulative jerks, and on a certain level, I think she’s realized her doormatting is hurting her; but making it about power, social climbing, and taking Jennifer down a peg is really making me wonder how can we have such different reads.
Maybe she’s being set for a corruption arc, but in that case she’s not there yet.
Considering Lucy’s comments about how a good Christian woman wait until the third date, her acceptance of Becky, and her willingness to regard Jennifer as a Christian ( even though she doesn’t go to church and such), Lucy seems like a pretty chill, non-legalistic kind of religious.
I would not assume that Jennifer doesn’t understand. Based on her actions so far giving a cryptic and useless warning instead of just saying “hey Walky’s mom is super racist” lets her claim she told everyone this would happen and be technically correct. It may be building towards her getting called out for liking to pull the I-told-you-so play rather than actually helping and thereby character growth. It may not.
Well yeah, Sal, Walky, and Billie have all commented on it. I am just providing some red flags that we’ve been shown for anyone who hasn’t seen or who are holdouts on the idea.
Specifically that Marcie’s parents (and possibly her) are, or were at least at some point in the past, undocumented immigrants. (Source: flashback strip where Marcie was in the hospital and Charles was searching online to see if undocumented immigrants could get insurance). That undoubtedly informed/informs Linda’s disdain for her.
Unless, of course, Charles was just assuming Latina = undocumented, which is a WHOLE can of worms to unpack, but I don’t think that was the implication.
That last possibility isn’t so unlikely. My wife’s parents were born in Cuba but immigrated to the US when they were young children and have been US citizens almost their whole lives. My wife was born here and has never been anything but a US citizen. That didn’t stop my Fox News grandma from asking her if she had her green card during their first meeting. A certain class of people just sees “vaguely brownish person” and immediately thinks “illegal immigrant”.
I am shocked, absolutely shocked, I tell you, to learn Linda’s all-encompassing racism encompasses Asian people (or at least, those who can’t “pass”) as well as everybody else it encompasses
Yeah, I think Jennifer means well here but the way she says it isn’t helpful because A) She hasn’t actually come out and said it and B) It makes Walky think she’s just giving him and Lucy a hard time.
It’s so nice to see him stand up for Lucy though. He’s a good boyfriend.
Is it actually Jennifer’s place to say this though? How else do you bring this topic up? Saying outright “Hey, you know your parents are racist and you need to warn your black girlfriend.” Can be seen as just as rude for lacking tact and forcing an unpleasant conversation. I don’t think Jen can win here.
It depends on what she wants to accomplish, really. If she wants Walky to say it out loud, then mean to Lucy isn’t going to work since he’s just gonna interpret it as that, with no deeper meaning.
If she wants Lucy to actually know, then yeah it’d be her place to say it if only because Sal will do anything to get out of it, and Walky will probably say make a TV reference to explain. Worst part is, that might actually work.
By that logic though is it really Jennifers place to drop these bombshels to begin with? to tell Lucy she not only the least favorite but also hurting walkys relationship with his parents just by existing? Oh and that she Jennifer will always be liked more then her, a sore spot she knows Lucy is hurt over? Jennifer could have “won” by telling walky to be honest with Lucy and letting Lucy know there was something she needed to hear from her boyfriend without saying anything herself.
Yes. it is her place. No, only Lucy can damage her relationship with walky.
and she will do it on her own if she tries her normal passive aggressive status seeking one upmanship games against Billy.
( and you can bet she will) .
Billy and Lucy are a lot a like. She also cant tolerate walky and Lucy having status over her to her primary friend group.
Lucy doesnt have a godgiven right to the most liked in every group. Shes already reclaimed this on her floor and then Billies old floor. Shes moved in on Billies friend group, and Lucy being Lucy will want to decrown Billy with walky parents. This is actually a vice , not a “sore spot” .
Lucy used to be my favorite,until i saw the obnoxious and over the tops lenghts she would go be to have her niceness validated. Most charcters in this strip cant grow until they are humbled for going too far. Dorothy and Lucy are next.
Hey, if we get strange and bizarre interpretations of Jennifer’s character and motivations, it’s only fair that we get strange and bizarre interpretations of Lucy as well.
I do wonder, though. Sal hasn’t voiced an objection to it, so maybe she’ll be the one to spell it out. It’s not like Sal’s uncaring (nor is Jennifer, in truth), but she also isn’t one to sugarcoat, and has had a lot of time facing her parents’ bullshit. So yeah, Lucy’s the only one of them who isn’t at least half white. (Sal and Walky are 3/4s white, Jennifer’s half-white, half-Chinese.)
Sal has also brought it up before and Walky has dismissed it because “how can our parents be racist, dad is black”. Maybe Jennifer affirming the same thing will help get the point through
Walky’s since acknowledged this, for what it’s worth. He joked to Dorothy that his mom was going to be pissed he was dating a black girl.
Granted, I think it still probably did not feel good to see his mom assume Joyce was his girlfriend and be warm to her, and then when corrected, be only passingly pleasant to Lucy. Like, it seemingly went over Lucy’s head, but Walky looked to pick up on that.
I actually interpret this as Walky knowing exactly what Billy is referring to but not wanting to address it directly because it’s unpleasant. She’s not dumping on Lucy, she’s dumping “it” on her, which I predict refers to Linda’s racism.
My long-term prediction for this plotline is pretty much the same- that if Sal, Danny, Walky and Lucy go to lunch with the parents the racial differences of the Walkerton kids’ partners will upturn their preferential status which everyone will hate. It’d either lead to big bad energy between the kids (possibly including Sal acting out) or them teaming up to take on Boss Enemy Linda.
If Walky doesn’t give Lucy a headsup then she’s going to be blindsided which is another potential conflict because he’s thrown her in a Get Out scenario. In Billie’s shoes, I would consider it his prerogative to warn her, but knowing he’s chickenshit about uncomfy situations I’d press him on it. Not quite like this, since I’m not inclined to speaking in riddles, but there’s not a lot of good-feeling ways to do it, either.
I’ve been thinking that this lunch is when Charles finds his voice and (gently) calls out Linda’s behavior. A progressively hotter discussion ensues, with the younger generation looking on in horrified fascination, and they (and we) learn a lot of matters on which there has been much imaginative speculation here.
Ii agree that’s what she’s doing but the way she’s doing it isn’t helping here.Lucy isn’t getting it and Walky thinks she’s just making it about ranks to shit talk him and Lucy.
Yeah and Jennifer is being obtuse to give Walky (and possibly Sal) the opportunity to explain what she means to Lucy. “What does she mean by that?” well Walky you’re the one trying to be a good boyfriend now’s your time to shine!
No. She mentions nothing about being in comparison to anyone.
And if she is thinking about the ranking versus thinking about being disliked in general, given her nature, she’s most likely talking about how their parents will hate her so much that they’ll also dislike Walky.
Though Lucy does want to be liked, she doesn’t seem to want to be better than anyone.
Yes, she does.
She asks where she’d slot into the rankings after hearing Sal say that she was a distant distant third. You can still think she’s very nice, but I’m not going to because (in part) of the reason I already stated.
So all 3 of the children acknowledge there is a ranking, all 3 of them acknowledge they are ranked, Lucy asks where she’d be on the ranking, and you assume that not only does she immediately want to be ranked better than Sal, but ONLY and specifically better than Sal.
If you’re going to judge her based off something unsaid and assume she wants to be better than any of them, why wouldn’t you assume Jennifer?
We already know Lucy wants to be popular like Jennifer specifically.
And we haven’t seen her have any negative thought about or toward Sal.
Also, since this is her first boyfriend, she thinks she loves him, and she’s big on family approval as seen by how she views the interactions with her own brother and with Sal, you’d think she’d want to be the best, not number 3.
I think you brought some head canon into her thought process.
I’m not going with your head canon, please stop trying. And you’re putting words into my mouth.
I find her character flaws annoying. You don’t have to.
You’re the one who said she wanted to be better than Sal.
You said that.
Not better than any of them.
Better than Sal.
Lucy didn’t mention Sal.
Lucy didn’t mention being higher than anyone (asking where someone exists on a ranking does not equal wanting a specific placement on said ranking nor that they want a specific person below them).
So no, I haven’t put any words in your mouth.
You can disagree with my viewpoint, but your viewpoint is clear to see.
Your reasoning, less so.
You have a strawman of what I said, and some scenario where she was responding to what Sal said, but it had nothing to do with Sal even indirectly. I suppose that’s why my reasoning escapes you. I don’t know what you expect me to do. Not going to pretend I said the words you’ve put in my mouth though.
Are you serious?
She’s not responding to what Sal specifically said.
She’s responding to the conversation that all of them are having.
You can’t take that entire conversation and then assume that because Sal spoke last before Lucy asked the question, her concern is Sal specifically.
What I expected you to do was to hopefully realize that you made it about Sal and the character of Lucy didn’t.
But as for putting words in your mouth, please tell me what I claimed you said that you didn’t say.
You said “ She’s talking about how she hopes she’s ranked higher than Sal, in front of Sal.”
I said “Lucy asks where she’d be on the ranking, and you assume that not only does she immediately want to be ranked better than Sal, but ONLY and specifically better than Sal.”
Her question was asked immediately (check), we haven’t been given access to her thoughts which means we both are assuming her motivation (check), and you were the one who brought up Sal and have only mentioned her wanting to be ranked better than Sal forgoing several opportunities to clear that up if you didn’t mean that (check).
I mean, she already knows Sal’s ranked last. So either she’s ranked fifth, or she ranks better than Sal (who gets pushed down to fifth); there’s literally no third ranking option here.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean she’s specifically concerned about her placement in relation to Sal as opposed to her placement in relation to any of them.
It’s just a weird take to say Lucy is concerned about Sal when that’s never said and then use that as evidence of Lucy’s negative traits.
Like if the previous strip was about Joe’s Do List instead of Linda’s racism, with every word about the ranking being exactly the same, would anyone assume Lucy wanted Joe to find her specifically more attractive than Sal because she asked where she’d be placed?
You can twist it to mean “she hopes she’s ranked higher than Sal”, but she’s really just asking what they’ll think of her. We know she’s concerned about being liked in general and probably more so in the meeting the bf’s parents specifically. “Ranked” would be a weird way to put it, if they weren’t already talking about rankings.
I think it’s even simpler than that: she doesn’t know what’s going on here, and she’s trying to get some kind of handle on things are weird and where she fits into that.
She may have been sheltered, or maybe she’s just too willing to give people the benefit of doubt. She should spend some more time with Sarah, so she can learn the ways of the misanthropic.
She told Sarah once that she was being mean in an interaction that was actually kinda mean. A lot of commenters definitely thought so. Walky let her in on the dynamic and we haven’t seen them interact since so who knows how that’ll go?
The way she jumps into the conversation but won’t clarify anything for Lucy Is honesty really grating, if Jennifer wants to play at being the blunt voice of honesty she should either explain fully or not at all. While her ranking might not be wrong I also don’t think Walky is wrong about her motives.
Blunt though she is, and still “correct” in the technical sense. The “blunt voice of honesty” only really has impact if you’re not being a bongo the other 90% of the time. and her sass back at Joyce there at the ending panel shows me at least that she’s just on a warpath to either seem like the coolest person in the room, or just overly angry at everyone for no real reason.
Given the alt text of dumping dumpin dumping she may have dumped or been dumped by Asher which may explain her current mood though Jennifer has been a bit of bongo in the past.
Her being a bongo definitely takes away any of the good she’s trying to accomplish. She’s angry about her personal issues, trying to regain self esteem by appearing aloof and cool and reaffirm thst she knows people and gets angry when reminded she doesn’t have everything under control in her life.
I don’t know, I think Billie has a point. She wants to make Walky say it himself, to make him acknowledge it out loud to Sal and Lucy. If she says it, he could conceivably brush it off. But forcing him to explain it to Lucy means it’ll be more direct. He’ll have to deal with her reaction to him making excuses for her.
I’m not sure there’s some kind of grand “look deep down and see for yourself what is true, rather than hear it from me” undertone to what Jen is saying here.
It’s obvious both twins know the favouritism of David over Sal, and Jen doesn’t want to or feel she has to explain what the root cause of Linda’s favouritism is. It’s shitty enough that it exists, without saying it out loud.
Yeah, this was absolutely Jen going like, “I’m going to BIG HINT at the issue” and assume it was either enough for all three of them to get it, or that either of the twins would actually explain – Look at Sal and Walky, their eyes are twitching. Sadly (?) enough, Lucy didn’t get it.
It could’ve been because she thought the ranking thing was an in-joke (despite the :/ faces); actively wants to see the best in people; or she’s just that naïve. Joyce’s arrival stops what could’ve been the useful part of the (awkward but necessary) conversation she’d kickstarted 🙁
I’d ask for Lucy’s notes if I were Joyce. She’s probably a diligent note-taker. Jennifer’s notes are either good because of her intelligence or shit because of her arrogance, which probably makes no exception for the teacher.
I do not know this word… I am pretty sure learning it will not broaden my vocabulary in a meaningful way because this is not a word with connotations I will wish to refer to nor invoke..? My “I like words though” brain is twitching at NOT KNOWING THINGS though…
All right, for you I’ll type it. Either American History has failed you or you’re in a jurisdiction that wouldn’t have learned it. It was from especially the late 19th century, if a black person and a white person had a child, they’d be a “mulatto.” (c.f., Nirvana’s most famous song) If a “mulatto” (like Walky and Sal, in Linda’s eyes, I was implying) and a white person had a child, they would be a “quadroon.” (The next would be an “octoroon,” and sometimes that after that they’d be white – but it would depend on state. Not a shiny part of our history.)
(Although I feel like every single post of any length I make on American education should be ended by posting out that I was homeschooled by Catholics in a quasi-hippie commune.)
I originally spoke way too long, as I suppose my race is wont to do: I originally said that A: we DO NOT USE THOSE WORDS IN THE STATES. I mean, they’re not as bad as THAT OTHER WORD, but they’re still pretty bad.
B: Hippie was the predominant epithet there. Catholics just meant my own parents.
I feel moved to observe that this is not confined to US English. New-world Spanish (maybe Spanish in general, I dunno) has equivalent words for similar concepts. I have no idea of their specific connotations, just pointing it out.
I had come across all three of these words, though not in history classes, but lost them over the years. This sort of thing always leaves me thinking, “do we need a word for that? do we need a concept for that? why?” Weird.
More common in Spanish, I think. Not heavily used in even the pre-Emancipation South. I think largely in Louisiana, thanks to the French influence. The rest of the US moved to a more binary black or white classification.
It’s a bit weird to imply that not knowing how to insult others is a failing of American history. Like, there are a lot of ways US history is taught poorly, I wouldn’t say that one of them is that people aren’t familiar with enough slurs.
The Mendoza line was what the French used in WWII to keep out the Germans. Unless this is the universe in which they mistakenly went with his younger brother, Maginot
Is it too soon for a Questions thread? I’m sorry, I know we’re supposed to keep it all on topic, but I could really benefit from some community right now…
Here’s the Q: “How did your day go? Or how is it going so far?”
It’s been decent. Cooked some tempura-batter chicken with curry sauce and veggies, drank some Arnold Palmers, played a little D&D. Spent the majority of it stoned, which is always nice.
Well, I woke up at 3pm, played games for an hour, got ramped up to work on a submission to an anthology of disabled writers, realised I needed paper to print/edit my submission, went to the shop, broke down, just missed seeing my shop-assistant crush, and told a fun “did you know” to the girl at the bottelo I think has a crush on me, came home to work on said submission and got caught up in the comments here.
Soooo…. good?
It’ll probably be fine if you wait a while for these things. If the Q gets posted immediately at midnight, than all of this will block the comic-relevant posts, but if this is buried further down, it won’t impact the comic-related postings? Just be aware that Mr. Willis has shut down this kinda thing before, when we were off topic. Also, I’m doing fine. Buried in paperwork though.
Nah Willis don’t really care about o/t threads, they only grumbled that one time, afair, after several days of very early (midnight on the dot pretty much, hence top of the section) big o/t threads. So by posting this even a couple hours after the update you’re def fine.
My best friend woke me up (at like 11.30am lol) (I’m in europe), they’d just had a Conversation with their current Romantically Entangled Person and so they had some venting and thinking out loud what needed doing, then i went back to bed with a cup of coffee intending to go on reading this absolute banger of a novel by Equatorian author Mónica Ojeda, “Mandíbula” (“Jaw”), just incredibly riveting exploration of the subtle horrors within mother-daughter bonds, the potential violence of an adolescence repressed by catholic misogyny and homophobia and general fear of sexuality, it’s an awesome book, also maybe doing a duolingo lesson or two, I’ve been learning the korean script lately, not sure if I’m gonna learn any Korean though but i was curious about the writing,
Anyway, i ended up writing this comment instead, haha!
Thanks, milu! Wow, what a culturally and emotionally rich and varied and deep day you’ve had so far!
Love that little “<3" emoji, too.
I really appreciate you all.
…Today's the deadline to apply for a job I'd really enjoy and would be perfect at… but it requires lots of travel and mingling with crowds. Not so sure I'm ready for all that just yet.
Maybe she saw Asher on the way over and is looking back in his general direction. Or more likely she’s just not making eye contact. Or even most likely she saw a wren, and wrens are neat.
Honestly Jennifer it’s not weird for a friend to check in about why your boyfriend isn’t with you at a time he normally is.
Maybe accept the friendly concern in the spirit it’s intended, even if it’s slightly more public than you’d like.
I’ve never been to that part of the Midwest, so I can’t comment on Lucy’s level of naivety here, especially after the very thinly veiled racial conversation of the last strip.
Jen’s attitude here seems a little hot even for a rage monster like her but losing Asher explains a lot. Since she and Ruth both tried out me6, is it time for them to get back together?
Ruth’s still with Jason. And Jennifer’s entire character build swap was done in response to Ruth breaking up with her. Not to mention they haven’t had a civil conversation since Halloween.
Why are we trusting Jennifer’s assessment of the problem? She might have the right input data, bad parents, but her conclusions are often wrong when it comes to social interactions. I wouldn’t be surprised if the twist will be that Jennifer is now at the bottom of the hierarchy. Or that Danny and Lucy are both above Wally and Sal.
It’s close enough to sound plausible but I could definitely see Jennifer being dead wrong especially since the comic narrative seems to have her get the opposite of what she wants lately.
Because it matches what we’ve seen from them before? They’ve got no known reason to change their take on Jennifer.
Partly though I do think she’s wrong. That Sal’s closer. I don’t think Lucy will actually rank in the hierarchy. Not at first at least. Maybe if she and Walky stick together for the long term. It’s a family hierarchy. Jennifer counts because she’s the reasonably white-passing daughter they always wanted. A new girlfriend doesn’t hit family status on day 1.
As such, she’ll probably be seen as a negative, pulling Walky downwards, but not enough to pass Sal. Much like Danny might get a nod of approval and make them think Sal might start to sort herself out, but he wouldn’t remove their problems with her entirely.
They have different perspectives, Sal knows how she’s been treated, the thousand cuts. Jennifer is familiar with what Linda has said when Sal’s not around, maybe even when Walky hasn’t been around. There may be a conversation or two she overheard that really stick in her memory. I don’t know who is right, whose has better understanding of the nuances that will come into play, but I don’t think that’s important.
The important issue is that their racism/colorism is messed up.
Oh Jennifer. For someone who claims to not want to hang out with any of these people anymore, you sure do enjoy showing up and ranting at them under the guise of giving “advice”
Their also the only ones she feels she can pull it off with right now, radiah talks down to her, shes angry with Asher and Ruth directly called her out on lacking both people skills and tact. Don’t think there’s anybody else she can give “sage” advice to right now.
It’s true. Joyce has never put on a cape and cowl meant to instill fear into criminals who are craven and cowardly lot. Her batting average is currently zero.
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trading old awkward for new
The only reason we have for doubting Jennifer’s analysis is that Jennifer is the one making it.
Oh no, baseball terminology ! my only weakness
i suppose you could take out the word ‘batting’ and it’d still be the same?
Recognizing and being able to use appropriately the miscellaneous sports-based vernacular terms isn’t in my wheelhouse… XD
I’m pretty sure batting average is just the percent of pitches to them that a player hits, but honestly I know about as much as you probably.
Not just hit, hit and made it to at least first base.
This is based on my extensive experience dating women who play sport while having no direct experience myself. I’m more an X-Games girl myself.
Well…yes, but not percentage of pitches. Percentage of at-bats. Then we’d have to define at-bats, because not every plate appearance is an at-bat. And then we’d have to define plate appearance. Baseball is the sport for statistics nerds (like me). There’s a simpler way to understand the idiom, though. Substitute “success rate” for “batting average”. That’s all it means.
On-Base Percentage, or OBP for short, is probably a more meaningful statistic anyway, to say nothing of OPSI wonder if the role of head cheerleader meant that Billie needed to familiarize herself with sports terminology so she’d know when the team did something impressive?
I’m sure, but for (American) football, and maybe basketball? Baseball generally doesn’t have cheerleaders
Hot-dogs! Get yer red-hots! Hot-dogs!
As an evolution nerd and Stephen Jay Gould stan i have had to learn about baseball and batting averages in particular to be able to read through his book “Full House” which is a fascinating essay studying and comparing both batting averages over the decades and trends in species diversity through geological time. It’s about… um… the philosophy of statistics? The ontology of averages? A plea for distributions? Boy this book is tough to, um, pitch.
Nah, you hit a home run.
haha nerddd <3
it's a great read, especially if you’re a baseball geek =P that section was fairly indulgent (but that’s fine, it’s SJG, he’s allowed <3) and after fastidiously getting the gist i skipped a good bit. i did gather that Joe DiMaggio was a statistical anomaly any way you looked at it?
but the basic argument is simple, yet goes against a really ingrained bias: that we like to look at averages and think they are informative, but that they don't… exist. they're a mathematical artefact, useful in specific situations but really bad at describing many phenomena. they skew our perception and make us draw some bafflingly unearned conclusions, such as the idea that evolution has an innate tendency towards complexity, or larger sizes. a lot of theorizing has actually gone into explaining why this dubious fact may be occurring, when a more literate statistical analysis makes it clear that what evolution predicts is not any sort of special trend but simply an increase in diversity over time, and because most groups of life start small (for trivial reasons), the average size of the species in that group will slowly drift big-wards.
so Gould insists, if we are to understand distributions, we need to give up the fetishization of averages and instead try, quite possibly in the face of hard-wired neural patterns, certainly cultural ones, to look at the history of life in terms of its overall diversity. the figure of the normal distribution (and its parameters of width, tail-length, and hard cut-offs corresponding to physical limits) is what we need to have in mind, not single-figure artifacts like averages and medians.
he makes the case for batting averages and for trends in evolution, but shifting that perception can have profound consequences in many arenas of (the production of) knowledge.
It’s like that classic quote, I forget who said it, possibly Mark Twain,
“There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I think Mark Twain is the most famous person to have said it, but he was quoting someone else.
Ya know, it wasn’t until your comment that I realised they would be talking about baseball.
What with batting averages also being a thing in cricket…
I hope someone bothers to DIRECTLY warn Lucy what’s coming.
Is it possible that even though Sal and Wally know how their mom is they also don’t want to admit to themselves how bad it is, and therefor it’s not registering why Lucy would be fourth?
i think it’s in-group out-group stuff. being put in a position to need to apologise for your ingroup (and you always need to apologise for your ingroup) is unpleasant. ‘Mum’s racist and she’ll be shit to you but she’s not that bad, really, you know, she loves us…’. You Have to defend behaviour that isn’t really defensible, you Have to account for like, how you personally maintain a relationship even tho she’s gonna be Like That, and Dad’ll go along with it. you probably don’t HAVE to, but you feel like it. That’s family! That’s OUR horrible ditch witch and her dad-shaped familiar.
I love the term “horrible ditch witch and her dad-shaped familiar”.
Honestly, there’s an easy answer for defending their mom: Don’t. At all. Don’t defend it, don’t apologize for it, don’t excuse it. Lay it out for what it is like an oncologist giving a cancer patient their prognosis. It’s shitty, but it’s here, and here’s how we’re gonna try to deal with it.
The real problem is defending their conclusion when on the surface it’s a “ridiculous” accusation. After all, she’s married to a black guy, and she’s so nice to Walky. “Obviously” it’s something else. That’s fucking exhausting. And Sal already had to go through it with her own brother (and who knows how many other times before with others). Gonna be Walky’s first time.
I don’t think either Walky or especially Sal are interested in defending her. As for maintaining a relationship – college and homelessness
Sal knows. She said her mom has always liked Walky better because he came out whiter. Can Lucy pull her head out of the clouds long enough to figure this out? Surely she knows about practical things like colorism and racist bias. Her parents must have given her The Talk.
Probably. I mean, black kids unfortunately don’t get to remain ignorant to that reality for long, and Lucy’s steeped in a lot of pop culture that has at least passingly acknowledged the subject of bigotry.
I think the biggest issue she’s got here is that she probably is predisposed to wanting to give the Walkertons the benefit of the doubt, and they are unfortunately not wholly deserving of that grace.
Also that bit where Mrs Walkerton married Mr Walkerton and had adorable kids with him! It’s the sort of thing that’s going to prime Lucy to assume that she’s not racist. Somebody suggested that maybe she fell accidentally pregnant and felt that she HAD to marry him; it doesn’t explain why she was seeing/sleeping with him in the first place (proving she wasn’t racist to somebody she wanted to impress?) but it is a hard thing to explain otherwise and also helps to explain the vitriol Sal felt from pretty much the moment she emerged “Blacker”…
I mean some people think that black people are hot but don’t respect them. Or like, “the good ones” happen to include her husband. Etc.
I meant to capitalize Black oops.
Imo it might be more something along of a ‘form your own conclusions first from your interactions before we tell you things that’ll distort your perceptions and might cause you go read into things that aren’t exactly the way they might seem.’
I think that Lucy can figure it out from context clues and this is a really delicate subject as is?
Oh hey, perfect timing.
Now Joyce can trade notes with Sal and Walky regarding terrible parents.
And class. That’s important too.
Walky has a point, Billie’s being insensitive about it. Billie has a point, there’s no malice toward anyone present in what she’s saying. Everyone has a point. Joyce, you have a point, too, where is that Asher guy? Walky needs someone to match with.
Anyone present *currently*, I should clarify.
Yeah I know what you talkin about Jennifer, Linda such a racist bongo, probably mutters the N-word in her sleep 😤
Unlikely, unless her husband has hearing problems. Of course, that may put a whole different kind of strain on the marriage:
“She keeps muttering Tigger in her sleep. That bouncy bastard better hope I never manage to figure out where the 100-acre wood is.”
Like Moms Mabley’s joke that, when she visited the South, everyone kept comparing her to Roy Rogers’s horse: “Hey, Trigger!”
I think Linda’s racism is subconscious she probably thinks “I can’t be racist I have a husband and children who are people of colour” But she subconsciously engages in racist behavoir towards Sal and Lucy.
Made a comment this afternoon on yesterday’s comment that was probably missed. In response to someone else saying Jenifer had probably heard racial slurs from Linda.
“I slightly disagree. I’m sure she’s heard a shit ton of racially charged microaggressions but I would put money on Linda not using racial slurs because that helps her delude herself into thinking she’s not racist.
She wouldn’t use the N word because that would be racist but she’ll say out loud that the “urban” fashion someone is wearing makes him “look like a thug” and make sure that all her car doors are locked and windows rolled up when driving through a primarily black neighborhood.”
And for now I’m standing by that. Microaggressions and dog whistles seem more her speed than blatant racial slurs.
Oh, she’s literally said the thug thing, like. On page. I can’t remember the exact page but it was way back when Sal was little and Marcie had the accident.
I agree with your assessment. Linda loves to think she’s a good person as much as Carol does.
Well… “Hoodlum” but yeah, right vibe.
Linda seems less concerned with being “a good person” and more with being “a good parent” but doesn’t spend a whole lot of time interrogating her own feelings & perceptions.
Charles also has his own set of similar biases (”You[Sal] look so pretty when it’s [your hair] long and straight”)
…
That just gave me a mental image of Linda sleeping with the classic cartoon snoring, honk shu honk shu, but instead of “mimimimimi” it’s just the hard r
Joyce seems remarkably cheery.
Yeah, that is strange. Maybe she’s just happy she told her mother the truth without it turning into a giant fight?
Could be! She must have been worried about this terrible secret she was keeping from her mother and now it’s all out there. Her atheism, her hatred of the church, no longer believing her mother is infallible and perfect and always right.
Also, she probably appreciates Joe for his support.
That was a decent couple moment in an unfamiliar, unexpected, and unromantic situation.
unfortunately Joyce didn’t tell her mother about “her hatred of the church, no longer believing her mother is infallible and perfect and always right.” because they didn’t have a conversation at all, Carol walked away. Joyce’s new hatred of the church was IMPLIED, but given that Carol didn’t accept what was outright stated to her, she’s highly unlikely to think of the further implications about Joyce
Still though, even being able to say what you are feeling and not have the world crash down around you, regardless of how much the other person actually accepted the truth of what you said, can be relieving.
Maybe she’s happy mom is outta there?
I think she is sidelining the whole “I’m homeless and have all this stuff cluttering up my room and my Mom is crazy” line of thought in favor of the “Joe is a wonderful guy who really loves me and supports me!”
This thing about Joyce being homeless keeps coming up from different people. Did I miss the strip where Hank, Joyce’s father, disowned her and forbade her from living in his home that one would assume he has either rented or purchased with the money he makes a a dentist?
Carol may be homeless if she’s crazy enough to have sold the home she got in the divorce without making prior arrangements but Joyce has a whole second parent who presumably found a place to live when his wife got the house in the divorce and there’s currently no reason to believe Joyce isn’t welcome at his place.
Welcome, sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t have a whole lot of room for her.
Why not? Don’t you think he’d get a place big enough for the two of them? He knows his ex wife is crazy and that Joyce doesn’t want anything to do with her, and he never seemed like the type of parent to be like “welp you’re no longer my legal responsibility so go figure it out yourself or be homeless idc.”
Joyce is actually negative homeless because both her parents have their own separate apartments, as that’s double the home versus before
That and “I don’t want my many “mom” friends to worry about me so better pretend everything if ok or else they will force me to confront this scary new reality on their terms and not my own without even realising they’re doing it” in which case all I can say is “mood”.
Honestly though, Becky’s gonna freak out & Dorothy will go full helper mode and that sounds super exhausting after just receiving the news yourself…
Either that or she’s putting on a show to deflect any concerns.
Gaah, this avatar! It makes everything I say come out smarmy!
change the capitalization of your email to get a new avatar here! 😉
Thanks!
She’s putting in a show to deflect any concerns, ladies.
Crappy mom left, hot bf stayed.
I think Jen gotta lot of hate yesterday for no reason. I like this strip cause she clearly wasn’t being intentionally hurtful.
I agree, she seemed to be matter of fact about it. I didn’t register any approval of Linda, or glee at anyone’s discomfort. It’s just how Linda is, and Lucy deserves to know. It’s not a fun conversation, sure, but that’s not Jennifer’s fault.
Jennifer could be a whole lot nicer about it though. It’s clear she doesn’t like Lucy one tiny bit.
Me either.
Yeah she is bashing on the others while deliberately being vague in a hurtful manner herself. If she actually was a semi-decent person, she’d go ‘look, the point is, their mom is racist and she even judges her own kids based on how black they are, so she’s going to hate you and hate Walky for dating you’. Not this whole ‘oh I’m not doing this to be mean’ nonsense while leaving Lucy in the dark. It’s just pretending to be a decent person while still lashing out and hurting people.
Linda is not Jennifer’s family, she’s their’s, they (mostly wally) should be the ones to tell her the truth, because she might not believe it coming from someone outside the family, and also because having an outsider shit talk your family instead of you telling the truth about it is also not very comfortable for others and feels very gossip-y.
And it’s entirely plausible that Jennifer is doing this to get Sal and Walky to do the straight talk with Lucy, because it would be best and most helpful if it comes from them. She’s doing it somewhat abrasively because she’s Jennifer.
you dont need to be trying to hurt someone to be hurtful. i agree that she wasnt trying to be hurtful (mostly) but she was still horrible in how she went about it.
I’m real confused on where this expectation for Jennifer to be nice to Walky and Lucy comes from? Or why she’s considered rude here. We can’t pretend Walky doesn’t act the same way to her. Maybe Lucy deserved a bit of a gentler conversation but then Walky should be the one warning her instead of Jen. This feels like a double standard.
Oh yes we can, because he doesn’t act the same way.
The issue in difference isn’t rudeness.
It’s hurtfulness.
Walky almost never purposely hurts people, and I can’t think of a moment off the top of my head where he purposely tried to hurt Jennifer.
Jennifer has purposely tried to hurt Walky multiple times during the series.
As for Walky warning Lucy, he has warned her twice now that this lunch will not be cool.
Should he be more upfront about it?
Sure.
But Billy is also not being upfront about it, so she’s not warning Lucy any better while adding the potential hurt to it.
Even Sal, who is the most blunt about this topic, isn’t outright saying it.
None of them want those words spoken into the ether.
Sal and Jennifer have experienced racial prejudice (for being half-Black and Asian/part-Asian respectively – she seems to identify as being Asian, was at least partially surprised Ruth’s grandfather didn’t target that about her for criticism, but she acknowledges otherwise she’s reasonably white-passing). They know how much it sucks. Acknowledging that somebody who is supposed to be a figure of love and support can cut people down like that is probably kinda painful.
And Walky… Hates confrontation. Is still working on being better at standing up for his sister to his parents. KNOWS his mother’s love is conditional. Finds it hard to talk about emotions… Saying the words aloud to an emoter like Lucy who will react, and be shocked, and then hurt and outraged, and make him actually address how he feels about all this..? Where someone like Dorothy would sense he was out of his comfort zone and step back (then probably journal about it to process her own emotions), I think Lucy would (Joyce-like) obliviously smash through all the barriers he’s put up so he can keep on functioning in the here and now and unwittingly really hurt him. (Some of those barriers might be restricting him and unhealthy long-term, like his dependency on his mother’s approval, but they’re kinda still his to work through in his own time.)
y’all are giving walky the same treatment sal complains her parents give to him, but here he’s a golden boy not cuz of skin color but because when he’s being a dick he’s funny about it, or funny to us at least, cuz if I got told dickish shit, I’d be more pissed if he was trying to make it funny cuz that’s just pouring salt in a wound you just opened.
he’s not a baby, stop treating him with softer kid gloves than any other person in these comics
Nah.
Motive matters.
If you have two jerks and one of them means to be hurtful and the other doesn’t, you can acknowledge both are jerks while also acknowledging that the jerkiness is not the same.
Delivery matters, too.
And in this particular instance, on this particular subject, Walky isn’t being a dick or making a joke.
But Jennifer is still coming off as hurtful in Walky’s opinion and a number of commenters.
So what you’re claiming as me babying him isn’t even a factor in this strip, and instead comes off as a general complaint about Walky vs an observation about this specific situation.
He’s never gonna see this alleged kid glove treatment anyway, so people may as well treat him however. I choose to treat him as just a guy who shows up sometimes.
There are several examples of Walky being a jerk or purposefully annoying to Jennifer, especially post winter break. The difference between Jen and Walky is just subtle differences in presentation and justification. We don’t like Jennifer’s shallow, popularity and status obsessed motives or her vindictiveness and pettiness. Doesn’t mean Walky following her all day against her wishes, annoyingly calling her “babe” was okay. Or being a smugass at their breakfast group date while feigning innocence or obliviousness is okay. He is aware of Jennifer’s trigger and pulled them anyway.
I’m not even trying to bash Walky. This is just their dynamic. To me Jennifer wasn’t even being mean. This is how she interacts with Walky and Lucy. They all know this. We all know this. It’s their unique dynamic. Justifying it for Walky because he’s less blunt, has more tact, or is even just more likable does feel like favoritism.
Don’t worry, people are continuing to give her unwanted hate today too.
Now I’m going to lose the whole day wondering what wanted hate is like.
Think Mike.
If it helps that should have read unwarranted.
The concept of someone being two-faced is apparently completely alien to Lucy, so Jennifer is being kind by not being midwest nice.
She’s not good.
She’s not bad.
She’s just right
She’s a witch?
Someone has to be the Satan.
Or. Hear me out. People like to analyze characters.
I agree.
Asher was damaged in transit.
Asher is packed by weight, not volume. Some settling may have occurred.
But is Asher dumped by weight or volume.
Both, depending on the particular recipe.
Oh nooo, not no Asher! 🙁
Not no how!
See guys? Billie is innocent*
*this time
Billie have you ever considered
You might be a bongo?
She DOES march to the beat of her own drum.
She would absolutely consider herself Head Bongo In Charge, a title of honor and distinction
Head Cheerleader shit
You don’t march to bongoes, you sashay, you shimmy, you wiggle, you twirl, you clap your hands, you move your body, you shake your money maker
Lucy should work on reading between lines. Not everyone’s going to be upfront about their behavior, there’s going to be some passive aggressiveness here and some two faceness there from some people.
There’s something sweet about her stubborn refusal to see anything but the best in people. Laughably naïve, but sweet.
But surely she knows about racism right? She couldn’t have grown up in America without figuring out this subtext of systemic racism that underlies our whole history and political system. Why Republicans can be manipulated into voting for anything they think will hurt Black people even if it hurts them too. Surely schools used to teach actual history even in the confederate states?
Thing is, she’ll probably figure it out when she hears Linda with the mask off. Billie being abrasive about it makes Walky, who she knows has never been the savviest at navigating tense social situations, completely misinterpret her intentions.
It’s not that she doesn’t know about racism, but that it hasn’t entered the conversation yet because everyone (Billie included) is dancing around the topic.
No. American schools have NEVER taught actual history. American schools teach silly, made-up stories to make children proud of their country. History doesn’t enter into it.
Yeh being proud of being American is sick honestly. I realize lots of people have that feeling instilled from a young age and were not given a choice but at some point it’s on you to realize that to be proud of having randomly beenborn in an imperialist hegemonic worls power is NOT something to be proud of. If anything it comes with a historic debt.
(Same applies to other extremely rich, colonialist nations, obviously, such as mine, France, where i was also brainwashed in school to feel proud of the brutal, genocidal past and neocolonial present of french institutions)
Hey I’m proud of being randomly born in the BEST best imperialist hegemonic world power through no effort or blame on my part.
Mythology is important. If you teach the right mythology in schools, people may occasionally try to live up to it.
…not a conversation i want to be having with you Clif, no offense >.>
long story short, teach superman, he’s a good egg
This is not at all true everywhere. My high school did a pretty good job of tackling the complexities of American history. Now I work in a school district where the vast majority of both teqchers and students are PoCs, and I assure you that there’s more nuance than “rah rah America”.
I will also point out that automatically assuming America is in the wrong can lead to situations where people defend truly heinous things simply because they were done by people who make noise about how bad America is.
Oh definitely.
Reflexive anti-americanism is no more rational. I’d say it’s a step in the right direction but still only a small step. It’s also a really essentialist view of history. We need to actually change the framing, not just accept the original mythos while switching the roles around
Aren’t several states currently trying to ban the teaching of history that makes “white kids feel bad”, or like trying to instill a “teach both sides” thing for things like slavery and the Holocaust? The whole crt thing whenever anyone mentions black history?
Yeah. It’s not everywhere; there are a lot of states, and a lot of variety in school districts throughout those states. Still, all it takes is one ugh parent in your school and it can become a piece in a national debate.
Still, lots of schools are explicitly expanding their curriculum in Black History and investing in it more.
I’d like to point out that, even though all Black folks in America experience systemic barriers and prejudice due to anti-Blackness and racism, not every Black person understands it or recognizes it. I know it gets thrown around to mean “anything conservatives don’t like” or “anything liberals do” these days, but the term “woke” is actually a term in AAVE to describe Black folks who broke through that unawareness and realized the realities of racism and anti-Blackness in America rather than continuing to internalize anti-Blackness. It is entirely possible that Lucy won’t recognize or acknowledge Linda’s insidious level of racism, even if it’s pointed out to her.
I mean, I don’t know why she would glean that from a cryptic conversation about a woman who she knows is married to a black man, I don’t see how it would be remotely obvious that’s what is being said here, to anyone
The book Lies My Teacher Told Me is very interesting for this. Essentially, even if a particular teacher is doing good work helping students learn about history with accuracy and nuance, most major history textbooks are shit at this and have been for a while (possibly always). Factored with teachers who have their own pro-America biases, teachers who are tasked with teaching history when it’s not actually their specialization, and classes being taught by substitutes who don’t have much to go on beside the textbook and some worksheets… yeah, I wouldn’t just assume someone in America, even a good student, had received a strong education in history.
“There’s something sweet about her stubborn refusal to see anything but the best in people”
Not Sarah. The popular people told her Sarah was bad.
And then she pretty much immediately saw Sarah being super mean to an alleged friend and said ‘wow, you really are mean to everyone including your friends, huh?’ If Sarah hadn’t been in the process of actively being a dick to Joyce, Lucy probably would have been ‘huh, I guess Raidah’s full of it.’
Tl;dr Sarah made a bad impression herself. That it was in line with what Raidah said was just the cherry on top.
I doubt this is her first time being met with microaggressions, but I think it’s certainly possible the “OOH MEETING THE BOYFRIEND’S PARENTS!” factor is blinding her to the issue. Even to the trained ear, some dogwhistles can be missed.
Lucy like most people also assumes of others what she knows of herself. She is all loving and doesn’t dislike anyone so she can’t fantom someone else being like that.
It’s also a little weirder to think of coming from your black boyfriend’s parents. Not impossible of course, but it’s not really the first thing anyone thinks of with conflict between parents and their kids.
Look okay, I kinda liked Asher and Jen as a couple but if they broke up like the alt text implies I can’t be against it. Dude could not be trusted. Better a breakup now than be attached whenever that mob connection/blackmailed into aiding your friends kidnapper shoe drops.
OH is that what the alt-text means because (100% serious) I am completely confused and was going to ask
I’d assumed dumping was some baseball or other sports slang.
Dumping on the pitcher for any loses is traditional.
I assumed it’s because it’s a funny sounding word.
u forgot ordering a muder
Asher is still coming off the better of the two right now.
No, no. Walky is still better than Asher.
they’re broclones! they’re both equally better than the other.
Jennifer gets away from an untrustworthy guy and Asher doesn’t have to put up with Jennifer’s bullshit anymore, win-win
If they did break up wonder if Asher will continue with radiahs group? If mob connections do become a plot it could effect everyone in his social circle.
I’m kinda wondering if he doesn’t end up hanging out with Walky soon. The two seemed to vibe pretty well, unless that was all a really good act.
I’d be down for that, honestly. Asher’s trying to nope out of the mob thing (and failing at least somewhat so far) and Raidah’s social-climber group would encourage that continuing failure. Walky and his friend group are way more likely to encourage the ‘good’ rather than enable the ‘bad’, and Sal’s in it too and would Watch Him.
…. for some reason, I’m surprised that they broke up.
Unpleasent conversations ahoy!
Yeah, I’m not surprised Lucy doesn’t understand and that Jennifer utterly fails to realize that she doesn’t understand. And then goes on to not want to engage with the possibility that she might not understand something about another person.
You’ve dropped your wisdom, Jennifer. Flee into the night!
I think Jennifer realizes Zluct doesn’t understand but reeeeally thinks Walky or Sal need to be the one who actually says it out loud. ‘We are ranked by color from whitest to blackest, and now you are the blackest.’
*LUCY doesn’t understand. Autocorrect fails me again!
im caLLIN her Zluct now
Wasn’t Zluct some Batman villain?
Goes off to register Zluct in the Sky with Diamonds.
Zluct is a dimension cop who’s always drawn standing horizontally. Her speech bubbles are also sideways.
yeah the Zleatlts wrote that song while tripping on ZSD after all
Unfortunately, titles can’t be copyrighted.
But they can be trademarked.
I wanted to trademark “Lord High Pubah and Rightful Ruler of the Asmovian Spaces and all Lesser Orbs Therein” but it was already taken. Either that or it cost too much; I forget.
Autocorrect??? What does autocorrect know about Zluct?? Is he in the room with us now?
If so it’s weird that she thinks it’s okey to insert herself in the conversation and to be the one to tell Lucy she’s personally responsible for her boyfiends parents liking him less but thinks explaining herself is out of line.
it also gives Billy a power over Lucy, a thing a social climber like Lucy cant stand. Lucy did everything she could get one over, multiple times socially over Billy. Then let Billy knew she wouldnt abuse it and welcomed her back.
Lucy desparately craves authority but is too passive to admit thats what shes doing.
Billy Knows better. With her new social group falling apart, Billy is likely to play the part of #1 daughter so Lucy can see she is in charge ,and lUcy cant game it this time.
Lucy will be Lucy and and try to hurt Billys standing with Walkys parents, in order to be the one who fixes things. and THAT will be the thing that Walky dumps her over. ( maybe ) . Not because his parents are racist but because Lucy is acting like Raidah. and Walky will question how fast and artificial their romantic relationship is. Billy will urge walky to follow his actual feelings ( something she doesnt normally do ) and that Dorothy told him to fake it. This will probably all backfire on everyone , maybe with Asher role getting exposed. and Lucy wll be dumped and end up in Raidahs crew, where Fake nice and Toxic Positivity are rewarded.
I don’t think Lucy is a full blown social climber it seems to me she was probably in a “outgroup” or nerds in high school and may have been bullied by people who resemble Jennifer and Radiah’s group so called “cool people” so Lucy is likely eager to please them in order to gain some form of validation it’s not social climbing its more likely Lucy is a people pleaser, hence why Mayla cant stand her.
Exactly.
Lucy wants to be liked by everyone, but she doesn’t want to be better than anyone.
She’s genuinely nice, just a bit too worried about her personal popularity.
But that only makes her want to appeal to more people, not undercut people.
Even when Jennifer’s presence made her floor mates give up on her movie watch party, what she wanted to find out was how to get Jennifer to come, not how to make her less popular.
Yeah, the assumption that one interaction with Raidah where she didn’t immediately see through and challenge Raidah’s tactics makes Lucy a social climber – and granted, I’m assuming that’s the logic here, because otherwise it just seems like pure personal dislike – is giving me the ick. And calling things “the ick” gives me the ick, so that says something about how much that take is bugging me.
I’m sorry, I. I’m here like… I’m not sure where you got this from.
I don’t know Lucy’s high school background so I’m speculating. Given her hobbies and love of comics and cartoons and her excitement that Jennifer was a cheerleader and her excitement that she and Walky were invited out to brunch with the “cool kids” I’m guessing she wasn’t popular with certain groups who are stereotypically popular in high school and likely longed to be associated with said group in high school. but Lucy has shown that she likes to please people.
I mean. I think it’s kind of logical that a sheltered, churchy nerd who probably got bullied a ton would think herself boring… And romanticize the kind of adventurous, take-charge character Jennifer was projecting since she moved in. And hey, confirmation bias! We’re outright shown how she’s tried to reach out to people individually andgroupally, to no avail.
She goes about pleasing people because she’s desperately lonely. That’s easy to take advantage of by manipulative jerks, and on a certain level, I think she’s realized her doormatting is hurting her; but making it about power, social climbing, and taking Jennifer down a peg is really making me wonder how can we have such different reads.
Maybe she’s being set for a corruption arc, but in that case she’s not there yet.
Thanks, Adam Black. I knew I didn’t like Lucy, and you’ve explained why.
I’m waiting to see just HOW religious Lucy is, personally.
Why is everyone calling Zluct Lucy?
THANK YOU lol
Considering Lucy’s comments about how a good Christian woman wait until the third date, her acceptance of Becky, and her willingness to regard Jennifer as a Christian ( even though she doesn’t go to church and such), Lucy seems like a pretty chill, non-legalistic kind of religious.
Can’t drop what she never had. Jennifer has always been bad with confusing her personal feelings and opinions with objective facts.
I would not assume that Jennifer doesn’t understand. Based on her actions so far giving a cryptic and useless warning instead of just saying “hey Walky’s mom is super racist” lets her claim she told everyone this would happen and be technically correct. It may be building towards her getting called out for liking to pull the I-told-you-so play rather than actually helping and thereby character growth. It may not.
Wait so walkys mom is racist?
She dislikes Sal’s natural hair texture, preferring when she straightens it.
She objected to Sal’s being friends with Marcie, who is either hispanic or latina.
She immediately assumed Joyce was dating Walky, and neither Sarah or Lucy.
It’s not like she popped at Charlottesville’s protest or something, but there are definitely a lot of worrying signs.
And then there’s the part where it’s been explicitly stated before including by Sal.
Well yeah, Sal, Walky, and Billie have all commented on it. I am just providing some red flags that we’ve been shown for anyone who hasn’t seen or who are holdouts on the idea.
I’ll have to double check to make sure I’m not forgetting a Linda strip, but pretty sure the preference for the straightened texture was Charles ( https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/appointment/ )
(the colorism & effects of white supremacy on perception comes from every angle in the Walkerton house.)
Ah, true about Charles. I forget if Linda’s directly commented on the hair issue, herself.
Specifically that Marcie’s parents (and possibly her) are, or were at least at some point in the past, undocumented immigrants. (Source: flashback strip where Marcie was in the hospital and Charles was searching online to see if undocumented immigrants could get insurance). That undoubtedly informed/informs Linda’s disdain for her.
Unless, of course, Charles was just assuming Latina = undocumented, which is a WHOLE can of worms to unpack, but I don’t think that was the implication.
Yeah, but she objected to Marcie from the very beginning. Before they knew Marcie’s parents.
That last possibility isn’t so unlikely. My wife’s parents were born in Cuba but immigrated to the US when they were young children and have been US citizens almost their whole lives. My wife was born here and has never been anything but a US citizen. That didn’t stop my Fox News grandma from asking her if she had her green card during their first meeting. A certain class of people just sees “vaguely brownish person” and immediately thinks “illegal immigrant”.
And that certain class of people are racists.
That is the class of people I was referring to, yes.
I guess, like Billie, Walky, and Sal here, I’m finding it hard to explicitly say “my family member is racist.”
I am shocked, absolutely shocked, I tell you, to learn Linda’s all-encompassing racism encompasses Asian people (or at least, those who can’t “pass”) as well as everybody else it encompasses
Really need some kind of Jon Stewart type to interview Linda on the internal calculus that let’s Jennifer rank higher than her own kids because Asian.
I assumed she ranked higher because rich and popular and merely didn’t lose any points because Asian.
Imma guess a bit of model minority myth. Racism can be hierarchical in terms of severity of stigma for various races/racial features .
I did a uni subject on Identity with a strong focus on culture, but I really don’t feel like writing about it now.
I would very much like to get Linda’s own honest exposition on her relationships, behavior and values.
That would require her to be honest with herself about them, which I really doubt she’s willing or even equipped to do.
Which is funny because Jennifer seems fairly obviously at least half-Asian (given that she is).
Am I missing something that shows that here?
Skintone.
Joyce is a pitcher in National League.
Let’s dump her.
aaaaaaaaah the shame, THE SHAME.
We forgive you. Just don’t let it happen again.
Yeah, I think Jennifer means well here but the way she says it isn’t helpful because A) She hasn’t actually come out and said it and B) It makes Walky think she’s just giving him and Lucy a hard time.
It’s so nice to see him stand up for Lucy though. He’s a good boyfriend.
Is it actually Jennifer’s place to say this though? How else do you bring this topic up? Saying outright “Hey, you know your parents are racist and you need to warn your black girlfriend.” Can be seen as just as rude for lacking tact and forcing an unpleasant conversation. I don’t think Jen can win here.
It depends on what she wants to accomplish, really. If she wants Walky to say it out loud, then mean to Lucy isn’t going to work since he’s just gonna interpret it as that, with no deeper meaning.
If she wants Lucy to actually know, then yeah it’d be her place to say it if only because Sal will do anything to get out of it, and Walky will probably say make a TV reference to explain. Worst part is, that might actually work.
By that logic though is it really Jennifers place to drop these bombshels to begin with? to tell Lucy she not only the least favorite but also hurting walkys relationship with his parents just by existing? Oh and that she Jennifer will always be liked more then her, a sore spot she knows Lucy is hurt over? Jennifer could have “won” by telling walky to be honest with Lucy and letting Lucy know there was something she needed to hear from her boyfriend without saying anything herself.
Yes. it is her place. No, only Lucy can damage her relationship with walky.
and she will do it on her own if she tries her normal passive aggressive status seeking one upmanship games against Billy.
( and you can bet she will) .
Billy and Lucy are a lot a like. She also cant tolerate walky and Lucy having status over her to her primary friend group.
Lucy doesnt have a godgiven right to the most liked in every group. Shes already reclaimed this on her floor and then Billies old floor. Shes moved in on Billies friend group, and Lucy being Lucy will want to decrown Billy with walky parents. This is actually a vice , not a “sore spot” .
Lucy used to be my favorite,until i saw the obnoxious and over the tops lenghts she would go be to have her niceness validated. Most charcters in this strip cant grow until they are humbled for going too far. Dorothy and Lucy are next.
Wow.
That is a…very different view of Lucy than I have.
I’m just gonna put a pin in that and continue scrolling the comments.
I think if Lucys one-sided rivalry was that extreme and toxic she never would have talked the rest of forest quad into giving Jennifer a start over.
Hey, if we get strange and bizarre interpretations of Jennifer’s character and motivations, it’s only fair that we get strange and bizarre interpretations of Lucy as well.
I genuinely admire your tact and diplomacy.
If it’s her place to bring it up at all, then yes, she can tell the truth.
He is a good boyfriend, indeed.
I do wonder, though. Sal hasn’t voiced an objection to it, so maybe she’ll be the one to spell it out. It’s not like Sal’s uncaring (nor is Jennifer, in truth), but she also isn’t one to sugarcoat, and has had a lot of time facing her parents’ bullshit. So yeah, Lucy’s the only one of them who isn’t at least half white. (Sal and Walky are 3/4s white, Jennifer’s half-white, half-Chinese.)
Sal has also brought it up before and Walky has dismissed it because “how can our parents be racist, dad is black”. Maybe Jennifer affirming the same thing will help get the point through
Walky’s since acknowledged this, for what it’s worth. He joked to Dorothy that his mom was going to be pissed he was dating a black girl.
Granted, I think it still probably did not feel good to see his mom assume Joyce was his girlfriend and be warm to her, and then when corrected, be only passingly pleasant to Lucy. Like, it seemingly went over Lucy’s head, but Walky looked to pick up on that.
3/4s?
Walky has state that his dad is “half black.”
Ah. OK, thank you.
Oh, I’d forgotten that – thanks!
I actually interpret this as Walky knowing exactly what Billy is referring to but not wanting to address it directly because it’s unpleasant. She’s not dumping on Lucy, she’s dumping “it” on her, which I predict refers to Linda’s racism.
My long-term prediction for this plotline is pretty much the same- that if Sal, Danny, Walky and Lucy go to lunch with the parents the racial differences of the Walkerton kids’ partners will upturn their preferential status which everyone will hate. It’d either lead to big bad energy between the kids (possibly including Sal acting out) or them teaming up to take on Boss Enemy Linda.
If Walky doesn’t give Lucy a headsup then she’s going to be blindsided which is another potential conflict because he’s thrown her in a Get Out scenario. In Billie’s shoes, I would consider it his prerogative to warn her, but knowing he’s chickenshit about uncomfy situations I’d press him on it. Not quite like this, since I’m not inclined to speaking in riddles, but there’s not a lot of good-feeling ways to do it, either.
I’ve been thinking that this lunch is when Charles finds his voice and (gently) calls out Linda’s behavior. A progressively hotter discussion ensues, with the younger generation looking on in horrified fascination, and they (and we) learn a lot of matters on which there has been much imaginative speculation here.
It’s possible, but we’ve never seen any evidence suggesting he’d do so.
Ii agree that’s what she’s doing but the way she’s doing it isn’t helping here.Lucy isn’t getting it and Walky thinks she’s just making it about ranks to shit talk him and Lucy.
Yeah and Jennifer is being obtuse to give Walky (and possibly Sal) the opportunity to explain what she means to Lucy. “What does she mean by that?” well Walky you’re the one trying to be a good boyfriend now’s your time to shine!
For someone so obsessed about social hierarchy, Lucy is obnoxiously oblivious
She’s very nice, and intelligent, but unfortunately naive, much like Joyce was.
I still love their first meeting, where Joyce initially thought Lucy was mocking her by virtue of being that damn chipper.
She’s talking about how she hopes she’s ranked higher than Sal, in front of Sal.
No. She mentions nothing about being in comparison to anyone.
And if she is thinking about the ranking versus thinking about being disliked in general, given her nature, she’s most likely talking about how their parents will hate her so much that they’ll also dislike Walky.
Though Lucy does want to be liked, she doesn’t seem to want to be better than anyone.
Yes, she does.
She asks where she’d slot into the rankings after hearing Sal say that she was a distant distant third. You can still think she’s very nice, but I’m not going to because (in part) of the reason I already stated.
So all 3 of the children acknowledge there is a ranking, all 3 of them acknowledge they are ranked, Lucy asks where she’d be on the ranking, and you assume that not only does she immediately want to be ranked better than Sal, but ONLY and specifically better than Sal.
If you’re going to judge her based off something unsaid and assume she wants to be better than any of them, why wouldn’t you assume Jennifer?
We already know Lucy wants to be popular like Jennifer specifically.
And we haven’t seen her have any negative thought about or toward Sal.
Also, since this is her first boyfriend, she thinks she loves him, and she’s big on family approval as seen by how she views the interactions with her own brother and with Sal, you’d think she’d want to be the best, not number 3.
I think you brought some head canon into her thought process.
I’m not going with your head canon, please stop trying. And you’re putting words into my mouth.
I find her character flaws annoying. You don’t have to.
You’re the one who said she wanted to be better than Sal.
You said that.
Not better than any of them.
Better than Sal.
Lucy didn’t mention Sal.
Lucy didn’t mention being higher than anyone (asking where someone exists on a ranking does not equal wanting a specific placement on said ranking nor that they want a specific person below them).
So no, I haven’t put any words in your mouth.
You can disagree with my viewpoint, but your viewpoint is clear to see.
Your reasoning, less so.
You have a strawman of what I said, and some scenario where she was responding to what Sal said, but it had nothing to do with Sal even indirectly. I suppose that’s why my reasoning escapes you. I don’t know what you expect me to do. Not going to pretend I said the words you’ve put in my mouth though.
Are you serious?
She’s not responding to what Sal specifically said.
She’s responding to the conversation that all of them are having.
You can’t take that entire conversation and then assume that because Sal spoke last before Lucy asked the question, her concern is Sal specifically.
What I expected you to do was to hopefully realize that you made it about Sal and the character of Lucy didn’t.
But as for putting words in your mouth, please tell me what I claimed you said that you didn’t say.
You said “ She’s talking about how she hopes she’s ranked higher than Sal, in front of Sal.”
I said “Lucy asks where she’d be on the ranking, and you assume that not only does she immediately want to be ranked better than Sal, but ONLY and specifically better than Sal.”
Her question was asked immediately (check), we haven’t been given access to her thoughts which means we both are assuming her motivation (check), and you were the one who brought up Sal and have only mentioned her wanting to be ranked better than Sal forgoing several opportunities to clear that up if you didn’t mean that (check).
But I’m putting words in your mouth…right.
I mean, she already knows Sal’s ranked last. So either she’s ranked fifth, or she ranks better than Sal (who gets pushed down to fifth); there’s literally no third ranking option here.
Au contraire! You forget about the much-maligned tie! It’s horribly unlikely, but not technically impossible.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean she’s specifically concerned about her placement in relation to Sal as opposed to her placement in relation to any of them.
It’s just a weird take to say Lucy is concerned about Sal when that’s never said and then use that as evidence of Lucy’s negative traits.
Like if the previous strip was about Joe’s Do List instead of Linda’s racism, with every word about the ranking being exactly the same, would anyone assume Lucy wanted Joe to find her specifically more attractive than Sal because she asked where she’d be placed?
You can twist it to mean “she hopes she’s ranked higher than Sal”, but she’s really just asking what they’ll think of her. We know she’s concerned about being liked in general and probably more so in the meeting the bf’s parents specifically. “Ranked” would be a weird way to put it, if they weren’t already talking about rankings.
I think it’s even simpler than that: she doesn’t know what’s going on here, and she’s trying to get some kind of handle on things are weird and where she fits into that.
*why things are weird. Sigh.
If she weren’t so oblivious, the weirdness of the ranking would be raising some flags other than the green one.
She may have been sheltered, or maybe she’s just too willing to give people the benefit of doubt. She should spend some more time with Sarah, so she can learn the ways of the misanthropic.
She wasn’t willing to give Sarah the benefit of the doubt because the “popular” people told her Sarah was bad.
She told Sarah once that she was being mean in an interaction that was actually kinda mean. A lot of commenters definitely thought so. Walky let her in on the dynamic and we haven’t seen them interact since so who knows how that’ll go?
There are a lot of terrible people in this comic, but Billie is really trying to do a “hold my beer” moment for me lately.
The way she jumps into the conversation but won’t clarify anything for Lucy Is honesty really grating, if Jennifer wants to play at being the blunt voice of honesty she should either explain fully or not at all. While her ranking might not be wrong I also don’t think Walky is wrong about her motives.
Blunt though she is, and still “correct” in the technical sense. The “blunt voice of honesty” only really has impact if you’re not being a bongo the other 90% of the time. and her sass back at Joyce there at the ending panel shows me at least that she’s just on a warpath to either seem like the coolest person in the room, or just overly angry at everyone for no real reason.
Given the alt text of dumping dumpin dumping she may have dumped or been dumped by Asher which may explain her current mood though Jennifer has been a bit of bongo in the past.
Her being a bongo definitely takes away any of the good she’s trying to accomplish. She’s angry about her personal issues, trying to regain self esteem by appearing aloof and cool and reaffirm thst she knows people and gets angry when reminded she doesn’t have everything under control in her life.
+1 agree
Absolutely
I don’t know, I think Billie has a point. She wants to make Walky say it himself, to make him acknowledge it out loud to Sal and Lucy. If she says it, he could conceivably brush it off. But forcing him to explain it to Lucy means it’ll be more direct. He’ll have to deal with her reaction to him making excuses for her.
That’s a very generous interpretation. Not sure if Jennifer deserves that much credit.
Yeah, if Jennifer is doing that, it’s not for altruistic reasons.
I’m not sure there’s some kind of grand “look deep down and see for yourself what is true, rather than hear it from me” undertone to what Jen is saying here.
It’s obvious both twins know the favouritism of David over Sal, and Jen doesn’t want to or feel she has to explain what the root cause of Linda’s favouritism is. It’s shitty enough that it exists, without saying it out loud.
Sal has nothing to say and she is saying it.
Now I’m hoping this is exactly what she says in the next strip. It’d tickle my tetanus
I really do wonder where this is going to go. There are many potential outcomes here.
The alt text is ‘dumpin’ repeated a couple dozen times, so my guess is there will be poop at some point.
It’s a shitty job, but someone’s got to do it.
Yeah, this was absolutely Jen going like, “I’m going to BIG HINT at the issue” and assume it was either enough for all three of them to get it, or that either of the twins would actually explain – Look at Sal and Walky, their eyes are twitching. Sadly (?) enough, Lucy didn’t get it.
It could’ve been because she thought the ranking thing was an in-joke (despite the :/ faces); actively wants to see the best in people; or she’s just that naïve. Joyce’s arrival stops what could’ve been the useful part of the (awkward but necessary) conversation she’d kickstarted 🙁
Being shitty under the guise of telling it like it is is still being shitty
I’m not sure her trying to warn / prepare Lucy for further Linda interaction is being “shitty” to her, exactly.
If she’s really trying to help, why doesn’t she just come out and say that Walky’s parents are racist instead of dancing around the subject?
and yet, even after he’s gone, people here still fall over themselves to make excuses for Mike.
Why would Mike need excuses? He never made any.
I’d ask for Lucy’s notes if I were Joyce. She’s probably a diligent note-taker. Jennifer’s notes are either good because of her intelligence or shit because of her arrogance, which probably makes no exception for the teacher.
Lucy’s probably a good note-taker, yeah, though I think it might just be because she knows Jennifer quite a bit more.
Jennifer’s the journalism major. She knows how to take notes.
Also true. It’s not like Jennifer’s an idiot or anything, easy as it is sometimes to call her judgment into question.
…I feel like there’s a word I shouldn’t use now, one that starts with “Q,” that is definitely in Linda’s head.
Queer?
The one for someone who’s 1/4 Black.
Honestly, given Taffy’s avatar, and the posts I’ve seen of his (going quite wrongly by av) so far, I think he got that, as well.
Wait was it Queer? pika pika?
“They”, please. I like to keep it voidish. I’m curious what you mean about my avatar and posts though,.
Is that an agender flag? I hadn’t noticed before.
At the time of this reply, yes.
I do not know this word… I am pretty sure learning it will not broaden my vocabulary in a meaningful way because this is not a word with connotations I will wish to refer to nor invoke..? My “I like words though” brain is twitching at NOT KNOWING THINGS though…
All right, for you I’ll type it. Either American History has failed you or you’re in a jurisdiction that wouldn’t have learned it. It was from especially the late 19th century, if a black person and a white person had a child, they’d be a “mulatto.” (c.f., Nirvana’s most famous song) If a “mulatto” (like Walky and Sal, in Linda’s eyes, I was implying) and a white person had a child, they would be a “quadroon.” (The next would be an “octoroon,” and sometimes that after that they’d be white – but it would depend on state. Not a shiny part of our history.)
(Although I feel like every single post of any length I make on American education should be ended by posting out that I was homeschooled by Catholics in a quasi-hippie commune.)
I originally spoke way too long, as I suppose my race is wont to do: I originally said that A: we DO NOT USE THOSE WORDS IN THE STATES. I mean, they’re not as bad as THAT OTHER WORD, but they’re still pretty bad.
B: Hippie was the predominant epithet there. Catholics just meant my own parents.
I feel moved to observe that this is not confined to US English. New-world Spanish (maybe Spanish in general, I dunno) has equivalent words for similar concepts. I have no idea of their specific connotations, just pointing it out.
I had come across all three of these words, though not in history classes, but lost them over the years. This sort of thing always leaves me thinking, “do we need a word for that? do we need a concept for that? why?” Weird.
More common in Spanish, I think. Not heavily used in even the pre-Emancipation South. I think largely in Louisiana, thanks to the French influence. The rest of the US moved to a more binary black or white classification.
It’s a bit weird to imply that not knowing how to insult others is a failing of American history. Like, there are a lot of ways US history is taught poorly, I wouldn’t say that one of them is that people aren’t familiar with enough slurs.
Though you can learn a lot about important historical concepts by knowing what slurs they used and why.
From the UK. Have come across the term “mulatto” in books but the others are new to me…
Apparently though Mr Walkerton is half-Black though, but I didn’t realise until somebody said here?
Dumpin? I mean, yeah, Joyce would somehow rank #2 in the theoretical Walkertons list.
Batting averages are odd. Even if Joyce’s is considered terrible, she’d still be above the Mendoza line.
Depends if the Walkertons favour money over race. Joyce is white, so she would rank above Jennifer.
I only know about the Mendoza line because I learned it from an episode of Game Grumps.
The Mendoza line was what the French used in WWII to keep out the Germans. Unless this is the universe in which they mistakenly went with his younger brother, Maginot
Also, obligatory joke: “is that some Midwestern version of…”
America runs on dumpin’.
Well, I mean, it does…
Look at the divorce rate.
I’ll take a you-don’t-know-what-a-regular-means-even-though-I’m-a-vegan.
Is it too soon for a Questions thread? I’m sorry, I know we’re supposed to keep it all on topic, but I could really benefit from some community right now…
Here’s the Q: “How did your day go? Or how is it going so far?”
Ok, here’s the tie-in: “Joyce, Sal, and Walky are having a mostly lousy day so far. How’s yours going?”
It’s good. Completed a commission, also did more audio code for a gay platformer game who’s dev team I’m a part of.
If I may ask, how have you been?
Congratulations, NG! Really glad you got that. Your skills are shining!
Thank you for asking, NG. That’s sweet of you. :’}
awe no problem 😊
It’s been decent. Cooked some tempura-batter chicken with curry sauce and veggies, drank some Arnold Palmers, played a little D&D. Spent the majority of it stoned, which is always nice.
Yourself?
That sounds dish delish! :-9
…I’m having a hard time. TBI is worse. Not getting better. It’s dispiriting. Going to work and not being able to work.
Oh no!!! 🥺
So sorry to hear that, that must be awful!
Brain injuries are scary. Without getting overly personal, I do hope you can get some relief in some way.
Thank you both.
Oh no, I’m sorry to hear that. Hugs if wanted.
Thank you, BBCC. Hugs right back atcha! (( <3 ))
Well, I woke up at 3pm, played games for an hour, got ramped up to work on a submission to an anthology of disabled writers, realised I needed paper to print/edit my submission, went to the shop, broke down, just missed seeing my shop-assistant crush, and told a fun “did you know” to the girl at the bottelo I think has a crush on me, came home to work on said submission and got caught up in the comments here.
Soooo…. good?
Wow, good luck! 👍
It’ll probably be fine if you wait a while for these things. If the Q gets posted immediately at midnight, than all of this will block the comic-relevant posts, but if this is buried further down, it won’t impact the comic-related postings? Just be aware that Mr. Willis has shut down this kinda thing before, when we were off topic. Also, I’m doing fine. Buried in paperwork though.
Nah Willis don’t really care about o/t threads, they only grumbled that one time, afair, after several days of very early (midnight on the dot pretty much, hence top of the section) big o/t threads. So by posting this even a couple hours after the update you’re def fine.
My best friend woke me up (at like 11.30am lol) (I’m in europe), they’d just had a Conversation with their current Romantically Entangled Person and so they had some venting and thinking out loud what needed doing, then i went back to bed with a cup of coffee intending to go on reading this absolute banger of a novel by Equatorian author Mónica Ojeda, “Mandíbula” (“Jaw”), just incredibly riveting exploration of the subtle horrors within mother-daughter bonds, the potential violence of an adolescence repressed by catholic misogyny and homophobia and general fear of sexuality, it’s an awesome book, also maybe doing a duolingo lesson or two, I’ve been learning the korean script lately, not sure if I’m gonna learn any Korean though but i was curious about the writing,
Anyway, i ended up writing this comment instead, haha!
Take care Laura, i’m sending strength and love 🫀
Thanks, milu! Wow, what a culturally and emotionally rich and varied and deep day you’ve had so far!
Love that little “<3" emoji, too.
I really appreciate you all.
…Today's the deadline to apply for a job I'd really enjoy and would be perfect at… but it requires lots of travel and mingling with crowds. Not so sure I'm ready for all that just yet.
Thanks, Allison! Good luck on all your paperwork!
I’m happy that Asher appears to be moving on after Jennifer treated him like crap just because she has issues and he’s trying to improve himself.
Where on Earth did you get that from?
The alt-text, one presumes.
I thought it was a Niel Cicierega reference.
Joyce in last panel is like, not looking directly to Jennifer, but to fourth wall. She’s talking about Asher, poking Jennifer to see her reaction.
If it wasn’t intentional, this effect was very funny.
That’s the look of a serial killer who knows /exactly/ where Asher’s body is
Maybe she saw Asher on the way over and is looking back in his general direction. Or more likely she’s just not making eye contact. Or even most likely she saw a wren, and wrens are neat.
She’s still looking around, trying to find Asher, whom she expected to be found in Jennifer’s vicinity.
You know, I never had Joyce’s blinding cheerful optimism, but the lack of social awareness is definitely an autism thing I identify with.
Who is dumping who?
Gonna go with Asher decided Jennifer’s ultimatum was enough and pushed the eject button.
He is now parachuting down into the College Mall parking lot.
Danny is going to show up and everyone is going to have to redraw their favoritism flowcharts.
Honestly Jennifer it’s not weird for a friend to check in about why your boyfriend isn’t with you at a time he normally is.
Maybe accept the friendly concern in the spirit it’s intended, even if it’s slightly more public than you’d like.
Oh, hey, I didn’t even notice Asher not being here yesterday. I never figured him out, but I feel bad for Jen.
so much dumpin’ you’d think this were a dumpin’ donuts
Having worked (having every man woman and child over 16 worked, with state-enforced limits) for their sister location… you got something to say to us?
I’ve never been to that part of the Midwest, so I can’t comment on Lucy’s level of naivety here, especially after the very thinly veiled racial conversation of the last strip.
I feel like I might be missing a bit of the Midwestern subtext here, but I’m pretty sure Jennifer got kicked to the curb.
I don’t know if there’s a part of the US that isn’t passive aggressive, but if there is, it’s not the midwest.
Indiana was once controlled by the kkk.
How’s her free throw percentage?
Oh no, I hope Asher doesn’t go through a jilted, sexual experimentation phase with the menfolk of IU. That would be ever so hot– I mean, tragic😔😔😔
Jen’s attitude here seems a little hot even for a rage monster like her but losing Asher explains a lot. Since she and Ruth both tried out me6, is it time for them to get back together?
Ruth’s still with Jason. And Jennifer’s entire character build swap was done in response to Ruth breaking up with her. Not to mention they haven’t had a civil conversation since Halloween.
What does sal have to do with Asher? After walky decked him their business was basically over
Right now, essentially nothing. Nobody said anything about the two of them here, so we don’t have any new info either.
I always stop awkward conversations with “Did you know I had a tuba solo in marching band?” It’s such a non-sequitur it resets the conversation
A tuba solo? How did you swing that?
I would assume you aren’t supposed to swing a tuba whilst playing it during a marching formation… Or possibly at all?
yeaaaa i had a bad feeling this was gonna be an issue. you would THINK having a black husband would make white ladies lest racist and YET
Laura Ingraham has an adopted black child and she is still racist as hell
Poor Lucy. 😔
Why are we trusting Jennifer’s assessment of the problem? She might have the right input data, bad parents, but her conclusions are often wrong when it comes to social interactions. I wouldn’t be surprised if the twist will be that Jennifer is now at the bottom of the hierarchy. Or that Danny and Lucy are both above Wally and Sal.
It’s close enough to sound plausible but I could definitely see Jennifer being dead wrong especially since the comic narrative seems to have her get the opposite of what she wants lately.
Because it matches what we’ve seen from them before? They’ve got no known reason to change their take on Jennifer.
Partly though I do think she’s wrong. That Sal’s closer. I don’t think Lucy will actually rank in the hierarchy. Not at first at least. Maybe if she and Walky stick together for the long term. It’s a family hierarchy. Jennifer counts because she’s the reasonably white-passing daughter they always wanted. A new girlfriend doesn’t hit family status on day 1.
As such, she’ll probably be seen as a negative, pulling Walky downwards, but not enough to pass Sal. Much like Danny might get a nod of approval and make them think Sal might start to sort herself out, but he wouldn’t remove their problems with her entirely.
They have different perspectives, Sal knows how she’s been treated, the thousand cuts. Jennifer is familiar with what Linda has said when Sal’s not around, maybe even when Walky hasn’t been around. There may be a conversation or two she overheard that really stick in her memory. I don’t know who is right, whose has better understanding of the nuances that will come into play, but I don’t think that’s important.
The important issue is that their racism/colorism is messed up.
Oh Jennifer. For someone who claims to not want to hang out with any of these people anymore, you sure do enjoy showing up and ranting at them under the guise of giving “advice”
some people just can’t let go of that sweet sweet feeling of sage-ness
Their also the only ones she feels she can pull it off with right now, radiah talks down to her, shes angry with Asher and Ruth directly called her out on lacking both people skills and tact. Don’t think there’s anybody else she can give “sage” advice to right now.
I would definitely want my partner to let me know if their parents are racist tbh
It’s true. Joyce has never put on a cape and cowl meant to instill fear into criminals who are craven and cowardly lot. Her batting average is currently zero.
I wonder if the dumpin really will happen…