“…Eventually I agreed to meet him for lunch. He asked me to wear a red hat to our date because he couldn’t remember what I looked like. I was a tall, slender blonde with waist-long hair in 501 button-fly jeans and cowboy boots (not beautiful, but hard to miss). But he didn’t remember that. He only remembered how I made him feel (funny, important, interesting). …
He’s probably had a really complicated life, and is aware of Linda’s flaws. Think about being a mixed-race couple in the 70s-80s or potentially earlier. There’s probably a lot of emotional stuff mixed-in with the obvious racial bigotry stuff. If anyone is going to understand “this person is willing to go to bat vs. the family, for you” it’s him.
I can’t speak on marriages but I feel like saying inflammatory stuff in front of your already emotionally agitated wife is a quick trip to divorce town. Not saying it’s right or wrong to contradict her behind her back instead of to her face, in front of their kids, just that it’s probably smarter if he still cares about her.
Sometimes you gotta pick your battles i guess, marriages should be about compromising, but i would think he’d still care enough about his kids to eventually take their side publicly
Probably presents a united front in company, then in private proceeds to try and talk her down. He certainly appears to be the more reasonable and diplomatic of the two.
I think it’s more stuff like going along with making up a excuse to ditch Walky and Lucy for lunch that makes Charles complacency toxic. He’s polite to people’s faces but it never translates to action. Kind of wish Walky called Charles out on that, his assurance rings hollow here.
As far as we’ve seen, he hasn’t even had the inclination to pull *Sal* aside and speak to her like an adult, despite the fact that Linda has repeatedly treated Sal much, much worse than this, so still shitty to me. Possibly makes me think he’s *more* shitty, considering—IIRC—the only time he’s ever spoken to Sal one-on-one he was lamenting the state of her natural hair. He clearly picks favorites as readily as Linda does, he’s just less overt about it.
Sadly, this. I have sympathy for Charles. I think he’s brow-beaten and feels he can’t speak up, but still wants to give encouragement in his own way so as to not let their kids go entirely without love or understanding. But he’s also stood by – or argued and failed – in any case, allowed, Sal to grow up barely knowing her parents and being treated as third to Walky’s best friend in child ranking terms, Walky to be totally unsupported with his obvious focus issues, and both of them to basically discard half their heritage. He also seems to have been swayed by Linda’s views on their kids and what they have to do to be acceptable, in many ways, if not just internalising those views totally. He’s an enabler until proven otherwise in my eyes.
She robbed a grocery store at knife point….. that kind of moves them into extreme parenting territory that makes it difficult for any parent to know the best way to proceed. Willis points out that they felt that they had to take extreme measures to course correct at that point. Im kind of curious why so many people are so quick to condemn them given that Sal herself doesnt seem to hold it against them.
It’s less that they sent her to boarding school -that was reasonable given the circumstances- more that they basically cut her off from the family during that time. At the beginning of the comic Walky either implied or outright said he hadn’t seen her in five years. Extreme measures were necessary but she was 13, and healing from a traumatic injury. She needed her family at that time and it sounds like Chuck and Linda made no effort to support her. If that isn’t internalizable for a child as “we don’t love you anymore” then I don’t know what is. Yes they kept her out of jail, but they also kept her out of her own family
Also it was a gas station convenience store, not a grocery store.
Well there is still racism and colorism within the black community as well. I think she looked fine with either but unfortunately there’s also been times where ppl have gotten backlash for ‘natural’ black hair not looking ‘professional’ enough in an office setting (tho i doubt sal would settle down into some office job unless it’s some indie artsy hippie thing where you can do/wear whatevery ou want more or elss)
Even if that’s the case (and I don’t think it is—in the words of Jennifer, “it’s not like being mixed is a get-out-of-racism-free card”), it’s still an incredibly shitty thing to say to your kid. “Oh, you’re doing that with your hair/clothes/style? Shame, you looked prettier the way it was before.”
Nope.
Not when it’s your kid, they don’t ask and it’s the first thing you say the first time you see them after they go to college (Or maybe longer).
At the very least, don’t be surprised when they then take the excuse of a hair appointment to blow you off.
And that’s without all the fraught racial politics around black women’s hair.
If the second was the case then that’s still shitty since for all he knew she was trying something else out, and Charles has to know she’s had it done since she was a kid.
@ MisterJinKC – That comment can’t be divorced from the context of how black people’s natural hair is treated, intent or not.
I feel like there’s a lot going on there and while it cannot be divorced from the racial elements, I think there’s something to be said for how Charles probably associates Sal’s straightened hair with when she was younger, and before his little cowgirl, from his perspective, went down a dark path.
Now, does he regard Sal’s natural hair as a reminder of that time? She was apparently letting it revert, as a reminder. Or does his internalized racism actually see it as a warning sign like the smoking and staying out late? Honestly, probably a little of both, IMHO.
It’s not fair, he shouldn’t have said it, and he’s really not acknowledging the role Linda had in forcing her in that direction, but I can at least get it.
We know her hair wasn’t straightened when Marcie was first being picked on by Leland, but it was when Leland disabled her when they were 12. The robbery was a year later and her hair was curly again. That’s a very brief period of time for him to remember her with straight hair and to associate her curly hair with her misbehaving.
I wrote basically an essay about this a week or two back and I’m not gonna retype all that so, tl;dr “your hair is prettier straight” is an extremely loaded statement in the black community with years of history, oppression, and internalized racism imposed by colonial society (or pre civil rights movement for the US). Its on the same level of You Just Dont Say That as “aw, you looked prettier before you gained weight”
Hair is always political – though black woman’s hair is more obviously so.
Think of the discourse here about Becky getting her “lesbian haircut” and Ross’s “your hair is your womanhood” bit.
Personally while I appreciate the sentiment of “don’t date someone just because they’re who Linda would like” I can’t divorce that from the context of the hair comment (and with it, the fact that Charles has some internalized bias himself) and the fact that Lucy is black and Amber is white.
Like. There’s layers to this and I have to admit I’m conflicted.
Same. Even if that is exactly how it’s meant to be seen, I just can’t see this with totally good intentions. In the end he’s still kinda getting exactly what he wanted for Walky.
In many ways, that’s actually the thrust of this whole arc–Walky and Sal’s parents, as bad as they are in some ways, are more complicated than the caricatures of Blaine and Toedad. They’re human beings and, for all their faults, it can legitimately be said that they are actually trying to be good parents (even when it’s obvious that they have no clue how to do that).
Charles and Linda are both people, good and bad, even if Linda’s certainly the easier person to hate. Both do care about their kids, but Charles is definitely the one more like Walky and warmer with the kids.
Of course, that last line is telling, too. I wonder if he’s told himself the same about Linda, that Linda’s stuck her neck out for him and that’s why he doesn’t shrink away from her shittier aspects.
My read is that Lucy absolutely nailed it in assuming that Charles would windmill high-five Walky if they’d gone with the plan of presenting as a polycule with Lucy and Amber.
Sometimes when you don’t see someone important to you for a while, you work up the courage to say something you feel like you have to say to them beforehand, and then put that statement into context after you actually hit the ground. Sometimes that means realizing that your son is under a lot of pressure to live up to other peoples’ expectations—especially yours and his moms—and so you get ready to tell him something about how he should do what makes him happy. Then he shows up with his weird girlfriend who makes a bad impression and seems to feel like he has to defend in front of you.
Well, it’s pretty obvious in that situation how to carry out operation supportive nonjudgmental father…
Is it possible that Charles didn’t actually mean anything with his hair comment other than “I know that’s what you usually do with your hair and I want to be supportive of what you like”? I mean, she was wearing her catholic school outfit at the time, he didn’t know the hair was coincidental, he might have been trying to hint at her he’s fine with whatever (just like he’s doing now)?
I’m aware that’s the general consensus around here, and it’s a logical conclusion, but do we have proof of that?
Case in point: The entire rest of Sal’s appearance at university isn’t exactly “parent approval optimized”. And on parent weekend, she scheduled her hair appointment for AFTER she met her parents, when she probably could’ve done things the other way around with fairly little trouble.
And, if that is indeed the reason Sal straightens her hair – would Charles be aware? Maybe she did it to appease her mum and her dad is just blissfully unaware.
My interpretation of Sal’s hair appointment scheduling was that she scheduled it for a time when she would otherwise have been expected to hang out with her parents. Like, she was trying to bail on them and used her hair as an excuse because she thought it would be important to them that she “fix” it (when she brought it up, she similarly leaned on the fact that they like it when she’s punctual or keeps her appointments or something like that). I think it’s pretty clear that she only straightened her hair out of parental/societal pressure to look whiter—whether that pressure was intentionally inflicted or something she perceived—and that episode was a turning point for her where she decided she would rather look like herself than what she thought her parents wanted her to be (she stopped wearing the Catholic schoolgirl clothes around them at that point too).
Speaking of proof, though, I think it’s worth noting that we’ve seen nothing to suggest Sal’s hair straightening was about her mother. Linda didn’t seem to give one solitary crap about Sal’s hair (or Sal, in that moment, but that’s a whole other mess), and we’ve never seen her comment on it. We’ve only seen Charles comment on Sal’s hair. Also worth noting that when Sal talked to Walky about the racism in their family, she pinned it on *both* their parents without singling out Linda, despite the fact that we’ve seen more conflict between Sal and Linda in flashbacks. Idk why people are so eager to give Charles a pass.
I agree that she absolutely scheduled the hair appointment to have an excuse to bail. I also think that if they hadn’t reacted the way she was expecting them to, she would have blown off the hair appointment instead.
That was actually the only time we’ve seen the Catholic schoolgirl outfit – though they probably saw it if they visited her in boarding school.
Dunno, for me it’s just that Charles’ potential situation kinda reminds me of my dad, who is a really decent human being as long as he’s not around my mother – then he just tries to not get on her bad side. She’s always been abusive to him, too – but the difference between us was that I could count the years till I’m finally 18 and able to move out, and he has given up on finding a life for himself a long time ago.
So, yeah, Charles might be indeed an ass in his own right, but for the time being I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I also totally get why other people don’t.
I don’t think it is possible. He had limited contact with her while she was in Tennessee and so he can’t know that’s how she did her hair. We’ve only seen her with straight hair during the time Marcie was attacked when she was 12 and it was curly again by the time she was 13. Every time before that we see her with curly hair. If anything, his ‘usual’ for Sal would be curly hair.
And well….intent doesn’t divorce his comment from the context of how black people’s natural hair is treated by society. It’s a racist comment whether he means it as one or not.
Given Sal talks about both their parents being racist and told Amber she envies her ability to reject her dad’s claim over her, I’m not inclined to be so charitable to Charles.
I’d go even further and say that, even if they stayed married for alleged home stability or other reasons, it should still be obvious if the other parent is *actively trying to undo the damage* the first one causes. They might be deluded that the AH’s behaviour isn’t a constant, irrational or unchangeable thing, for example, but still indefatigably defend the kids from criticism despite that and constantly shut such things down. And they’d still basically be allowing harm to happen in that case. But they may not end up a full enabler, or eventual departure or at least pressure caused by that threat on the AH parent to change may still be in the works. Possible shades of grey.
This is *not* what we have seen from Charles. He has acted til the above strip as a full enabler – whether bullied into it himself or not. He seems to buy into what Linda insists on about their children and to see her and him as a team despite their disagreements. At best, that is. At best he shores their kids up in private after Linda tears them and/or him down, and he still allowed one to be sent away. He might believe he’s doing his best for them, but I agree, they would have been better off if he’d been willing to stand up for their health and happiness and moved out a long time ago.
Sure, I can get behind that, and I’ll retract my own statement enough to allow that people who are the victim of abuse may not be able to leave (or may not feel able to leave safely, which is much the same thing).
I don’t think that applies to Charles either. He’s just an enabler.
I concur. My mom was and remains a monster. My dad had and still has the means to leave. He did not, and broadly failed to protect me at all when I was a child. He wasn’t the one hitting me or telling me he’d get a second job (unnecessary) just to get rid of me by shipping me off to school, but he was the adult with the knowledge and power to spare us both. His failure moves him squarely into asshole territory. Though I guess he’s going to serious therapy now, at least some of which is probably dealing with the residual catholic guilt that factored into him staying, so change may be possible. It certainly is possible as a broad concept; people can always learn and do better if they put in the work. But I don’t think we’ve seen that with the twins’ dad yet, so…two asshole parents.
I mean, Danny was of author avatar, but maybe intentionally we haven’t had a whole lot of detail on his parents except that both Dorothy and Danny’s parents may be kinda creampuff people, so that’s pretty good anyway, but may also be because dumbiverse Dorothy and Danny backgrounds are not as developed for the dumbiverse, but also because it kinda makes sense to be done that way, not everyone has to have a lot going on with their parents.
Danny’s parents spent most of their appearance over FFW putting him down. They’re not as overtly evil as Linda or Carol, but Danny’s self-esteem issues likely started with them.
i’m not sure if he’s rly shown to have had a disappointing relationship with linda but who knows, maybe he secretly regretted never marrying an ‘offbeat weirdo’ who was int ohim
I think Linda was the offbeat weirdo. This whole chapter has been making subtle and not so subtle comparisons between her and Sal, from similar body language to similar thought processes and problem solving. Linda was likely a troublemaker type his parent’s didn’t like. Maybe. There are at least hints at it. I can even see Linda growing up poor which would explain why she’s so obsessed with status.
I’d honestly see this the other way around and see him warning Walky about not going for the woman his parents wanted for him in Linda – but then that would be a very charitable position, and both are definitely still possibilities.
I can even see Linda growing up poor which would explain why she’s so obsessed with status.
Huh. I actually feel like this would explain a lot. Would it justify her? HELL NO, but it’s an actual Real Life phenomenon of some people that, once they “overcome” their former social class, they become allergic to anything that remembers them having been poor.
Given how universities treat plagiarism and anything along those lines like first degree murder, con. Definitely con. I’m glad it worked out because the plot can’t have walky getting kicked out and banned, but she coulve ruined his whole academic career right there
The biggest weakness to his relationship with Lucy is he’s never seemed to have had strong feelings for her at all, he just seems to feel obligated to think he should.
Yup, as if Lucy meets his checklist the way Raidah’s guy did for her. Bloodless and clinical. Or perhaps just because she was there, available. Personally I feel like Lucy is half-baked, still figuring out who she is and what she wants other than to be “popular.” She’ll do anything, become anyone. She feels like a landmine about to go off when you least expect it, a simmering pot of resentment, ambition, and repressed feelings. Her weird “nice Christian girls don’t have sex on the first date” is so performative. And Walky is performing loyalty in a way that could see him being a tool for any purpose just like his dad.
That last line hit me hard. Lucky and Walky is like Linda and Charles, and Charles is trying to caution Walky away from doing something just because he feels like he should.
I dislike Lucy as a whole but I think we are forgetting that they do have shared interests, so it isn’t just a flavorless proposition for Walky. She accepts him where he is, but she doesn’t see it as garbage roof-worthy (Amber). She helped him with the comic and believed in that. She’s not pushing the academics (Dotty). She’s supporting him in the areas that are important to him and she’s at his level of maturity around relationships. She has a lot of pros for him.
I sympathise with Lucy because I’ve basically been there in her place. Coming to university half-formed and with a whole bunch of moral hang-ups, much like she seems to have, not at all helped by being undiagnosed ND. But equally benevolent and with the hope of making friends – plus an open acceptance of changing and an unwillingness to judge quite so openly as she did Sarah working in my favour. There was also a small dose of Amber in the unhandled neurotype and related struggles plus some childhood cPTSD. I found my own Walky, in some ways, though he was older and a lot more accomplished in many as well. He liked me the way this comic’s Walky likes Dorothy and Amber rolled into one. We’re going strong still a decade-and-bit later, but not without a lot of work. The main concern I have about Lucy is whether she can find herself separate from who she’s dating and/or friends with, and prioritise things properly rather than in a romantic storyline mainly in her head, in time for both of these things to not fall apart.
Conservative and/or basic in regards to physical relations.
Or a nicer way to say it, polyamory (and probably some other fun things) would seem to be outside her comfort zone.
while it can still happen and 50% of marriages ending in divorce (ddi that statistic ever get updated? lol), it would still be a mess/i imagine they probably wouldn’t rush into it without more without a lot more problems between them unless he’s had a plan to be divorcing all along and his bags packed and a new living place setup for himself and such
I think you meant start a polucule. Polyamoury is the type of love/relationship style, where someone loves multiple people. A polycule is a polyamourous group in a relationship with each other.
Dude still married Linda, and they weren’t college sweethearts or anything she had a previous marriage under her belt. I can’t imagine he didn’t know what he was getting into.
I’m betting Linda did a crime or otherwise pulled an unethical string for him. So now he feels obligated to put up with her worst aspects. IE she might have convinced him she was ride or die for him and he feels compelled to reciprocate that sort of commitment.
Eh… Charles is a lot more laid-back than Linda but I think they agree about a lot of things. I’ve gotten a social climber vibe from both of them, and I think that what’s motivated a lot of bad parenting choices
well, they’re still friends so i imagine they’d hang around even if amber doenst tag along to their future kid-parent mealtimes but it would be funny if dad started texting with amber
That is a very specific 30 Rock reference in the alt text. Also does that make Amber Floyd in this situation? So Dorothy was Dennis and Lucy is Dr. Drew?
In other news after a huge crash the Amber x Walky ship is showing the kernels of a small upturn. Smart investors should buy in now while the stock is priced so low.
That last panel is interesting. It also says a lot that Walky says he LIKES Lucy, but doesn’t say he LOVES her. Walky does need to sit down and really think about his relationships, because just because Amber was willing to commit a crime for him, nice as the gesture is, doesn’t have to mean he NEEDS to date her or that somehow her feelings for him are somehow… more?
Honestly I think Walky needs to THINK, regardless of whatever Amber and Lucy feel for him, and think about what WALKY feels about these women. As we know, though, Walky isn’t one to really understand his own feelings all of the time.
He was apparently single for most of the timeskip (broke up with Amber at Halloween -> only actually started seeing Lucy in a romantic light post-skip,) but yeah, I think a bit longer would be good for him.
I mean, we already knew he didn’t love Lucy.
He just had a conversation with Dorothy about it like 3 days ago in story.
Also, while feelings of love can develop quickly, it usually takes longer than the 8-10 days they’ve been dating.
He hasn’t had enough time to love Lucy. A lot of people here, me included, think that Lucy would find that she really hasn’t had enough time either, after pondering the difference between “loving” and “being in love.”
They may get there. They have a lot going for them, and a lot still to discover.
Part of the difference it that while they’ve only been dating a week or so, they’ve been hanging out a lot for months and Lucy’s been thinking of it romantically all along. She has had time to develop those feelings.
I mean, of course he isn’t going to say that he loves Lucy. While we have observed them for a long enough period of time to get engaged and married, in their world he has been friendly with her for a while and only very recently started dating her. By only a loose interpretation of what “dating” is, they’ve had 3 total dates. Sure, that might be enough to get to bone town but not enough to get to actual “love”, at least not yet.
Why do you think he should he *love* her already? It may feel to us that they’ve been together for a long time, but in-universe I think he’s known her a few weeks. Even by Lucky’s somewhat generous calculations, they’ve been on 3 dates. I think a problem with Willis’s very slow passage of time in this comic is that it sometimes feels like relationships have gone one much longer than they actually have, so perhaps should be deeper than they really have time to be. (That’s even ignoring that these are teenagers.)
I see several people mentioning the love thing, and I’m gonna go ahead and just reply to myself instead of trying to address every person who brings it up. It makes total sense why Walky isn’t in love with Lucy yet. The reason it is more significant HERE for me, is that if you’re in a situation where you introduce your partner to your parents, and they reject that partner, usually that has a way of intensifying your feelings for the person. Like, the conflict makes you double down, or makes you realize just how much you appreciate your partner. You think or say ‘fuck you parents, this is my partner and I love them. If you can’t accept that, fuck you.’
We don’t get that from Walky. Walky and Lucy came up with this hairbrained idea and when confronted with his feelings for Lucy… the best he can conjure up is still LIKE. He LIKES her. He doesn’t LOVE her. It’s one thing when you’re early into dating, and you’re still navigating stuff. It’s another if the parents cause a stink and in defense of your partner the best you can come up with is ‘I like them’… Eh, to me, it just makes it clearer just how short-lived their relationship is gonna be.
Some people are also just honest with where they are and think that their opinion should be good enough without basing it on the person themself. I’d go to bat to have my relationships be as it is and still say “like.” They make me happy and I enjoy spending time with them should be enough without anything else.
“Like” and “love” are orthogonal. I’d guess that Hank still loves Carol, and only split with her because he can no longer like her and that hurts so much.
well they’ve only been dating for a week and a half or two weeks at most? So ‘love’ might be soon even for that age (i mean lucy thinks he said it but he didn’t retract it) but lucy is stable in comparison for now even if he does move on
I think the final panel isn’t conflicting advice; it is more of a “this woman was willing to commit a crime for you. So if you are conflicted on who you love more, keep that in mind.” Which is actually good advice. I’m not saying he should dump Lucy just because she hasn’t committed a crime for him, or whether she would be willing to. I’m saying don’t date someone just because you think you should. Dating someone because they fit “your type” is fine, but there should be more.
Of course, when considering “was willing to commit a crime for you”, you also have to factor in how willing they are to commit crimes in general, If criming is an everyday thing for them, it’s not really a point in their favor.
It’s not conflicting advice.
What he’s saying is don’t CHOOSE a girlfriend to fit your parent’s image of you.
It’s all about the reason for getting with a particular girlfriend and nothing about when to get a girlfriend.
I don’t completely absolve Charles for his complicity in seemingly following Linda’s lead, nor his own biases.
BUT…
He has consistently appeared in this storyline to be a decent person (so far).
And he’s team Garbage Skowl!
Hard not to like him.
i imagine he’s been a backseat kinda parent and let linda be in charge for most of it so sal/walky probably don’t have resentment towards him but not necessarily confide in him
Possibly, but I’m not sure how many parents would be ok with their teenage/early 20’s daughter dating a marrying a man who seems like he’s a decade older (and potentially had authority over her).
I’m sure some would, but I’d like to imagine they’re in the minority.
Thanks to the floating timeline, Linda’s birth year can’t be nailed down. She is, for now, older than I am, and I think a lot of women older than I am had parents who would not have objected to the relationship on the grounds that Anthony was a Respectable Professional Man
Hard to say if the Dean was that much older than Linda. She and Charles are both probably in their fifties at least, and I don’t think it’s hard to imagine the Dean as late fifties/early sixties
He’s older to the point that Walky doesn’t want to think about their age difference, and I think that probably means his parents are in their 40s and the dean is in his 50s (also, being in their 50s would mean they didn’t have kids til their 30s, which is entirely possible, but I never got that feeling).
I feel like if they were all in their 50s, he wouldn’t feel weird about it, but that’s just me.
Funny thing, I could not care less who Wally ends up with. Wally is an overgrown infant, and he likely will be for the rest of his life. Sal and Danny are the interesting characters. They learn, grow, and develop. I WANT to know where their relationship goes. Same for Joe and Joyce. Yes, Joyce is still childish, but she learns and grows—she fucks up, falls down, gets up, and moves forward.
Oh, come on. Walky has shown character development. It might not be adequate for your tastes, but he has absolutely changed and grown since this comic started.
He is still basically a sit-com character, that’s the way he sees himself apparently.
I had thought he had undergone some character growth before this recent idiotic scheme but apparently being Hot addled his brain, I can’t wait until he and Sal have Some Words about his shenanigans.
I think the problem with Walky is that he’s too afraid to change and so resists it so much he seems to “revert” back into “lovable goof”, much like how Joe thought that “if I always act like a garbage perv then no one will expect anything different from me and I won’t have to think of myself as anything other than a lovable lech.”
Lucy, unlike Amber and Dotty, seems more unwilling to challenge him to NOT be a cartoon version of himself. Even encourages it, somewhat.
This. He’s also very strongly typified as neurodivergent and one literal translation of a term for ASD is “in your own time”. We tend to reject mass societal presumptions about how to present, function, work, relax, and enjoy life, when those haven’t worked for us or been seemingly examined in any way other than simply being traditional. Due to this we often go for entertainments and pastimes others consider “childish” simply because we actively enjoy them most and aren’t as easily put off. We also grow and mature in our own time. I don’t like watching people dumping on Walky for being childish in his tastes, interests, or mannerisms, or even just growing at his own pace. What bothers *me* about him is his all-too-slowly cracking ingrained sense of entitlement (almost certainly in part Linda’s doing) alongside a repeated difficulty in observing how his actions harm others. If there’s any area he ought mature in before seriously dating, that’d be the one.
Walky found out he liked girls for the first time.
He found out that he can’t breeze through life like he did for the past decade.
He realized his parents have treated him and his sister significantly different and it had little to do with the choices she made at 13 years old.
He has started to stand up for, get along with, and get to know his sister while also realizing the part he played in their estrangement.
He has confronted significant failure for the first time, as well as heartbreak, and when given the easy way out, has rejected it both times.
Walky has shown a lot of character development through the years in real time and 6 months in story, with even more that I haven’t mentioned.
It’s fine not to like him and to not be interested in him, we all have characters we prefer and others not so much, but it’s a bit unfair to act like he has made no changes/has had no growth.
I’d also add he’s stood up for Sal even when it would’ve been risky to do so. He sought out Asher with the specific intent of punching him for having ruined Sal’s life, while knowing the dude had been at the very least a tween criminal.
This, and that he’s been unlearning the trappings of toxic masculinity to the point he’s comfortable casually mentioning liking guys may be a possibility that can’t be discarded outright; and of racism (as much as he joked about learning he had “privilege”, he meant what he said.)
(PS: The kid is like a posterkid for untreated ADHD, so honestly, the fact that he tries to make sense of the world through media, tropes, and humor is 100% neurodivergence.)
I think Walky is comfortable with possible bisexuality, but he’s still unnerved by the idea of not being masculine (see: his aversion to having ‘feminine’ hair).
Which is neat to see because fiction often treats “toxic masculinity” as one big homogenous thing. Walky’s got a few of the traits, but mostly the least toxic of them. He’s got some weird ideas about performative masculinity (the hair thing, having only one pair shoes, a few others).
But as you say he’s comfortable with at least hints of bisexuality and none of the toxic parts seem to be directed at women. He’s supportive. He’s perfectly comfortable with strong women.
Just in general, I’d love more “yeah, I’d be okay if I were bi, but I’m not” characters. Feels like the options are either “gay/bi” or “never considers attraction to the same sex”.
Some folks are just comfortable and secure in their heterosexuality, ya know?
I can see how people might not like Walky, but to me he has shown enormous character growth. He was an absolute goof at the start of the comic, and while he maintains some of that playful attitude he has made enormous strides in maturity and responsibility. It’s not just that he learned to study, he learned to face his problems instead of running away. He’s trying to do the right thing by Lucy instead of taking the easy way out. He was scared when Linda was yelling at him, but he stood up to her and said he wasn’t a kid anymore. I can’t imagine early Walky doing any of those things.
Walky: “… so here’s your costume.”
Lucy: “This is just pajamas!”
Walky: “Because NightGirl rules the night!”
Lucy: “And why is there this cutout over the chest? It’s cold out!”
Walky: “Because NightGirl… Just because, OK?”
i’d hope walky would’ve been in leslie’s class enough to not have a boob window lol, but i’m sure thre are pre existing costumes like that lol. maybe they’ll ge ttraining from amber too
It’s unlikely that her racism evolved in a vacuum, so she likely burned bridges with her parents by dating and marrying Charles. I think he still remembers that even as he sees her become more like her parents as she gets older.
But that’s because he made a crass joke about Mike’s death (because of his own issues with that) iirc, so while Amber’s violence isn’t justified, it wasn’t entirely uncalled for either
“Willingness to commit crimes for” is super not a great bar to measure compatibility by. It’s like those people who think Joker x Harley is the gold standard for relationships when it’s just unhealthy codependency and narcissism.
Far as the Walky and Lucy dynamic went it always felt like Lucy resigned herself to being Walkys cling on, which she should be more than that because she shouldn’t be anyone’s accessory.
It’s why everyone says “she deserves better” it’s not because of Walky it’s because of the role she’s trying to give herself.
We’ve seen plenty of times by now that he is into her, though, not the least of which example being when her turned down Dorothy without any hesitation.
Meanwhile
Linda: Now that your father ain’t here…
*Do date someone ‘cause you think your parents will like them.
*Keep trying to meet the image of who you think we want you to be. *And nothing matters more than what your mother says.
*If you find some offbeat weirdo, then dump em fast.
*Okay. And don’t date anyone who wouldn’t commit a crime for you. Lamo alert.
I’m glad Charles is trying to support Walky regardless of who he chooses. That being said, I wish he had to backbone to say it in front of Linda. I do agree with him to some degree about Amber though. I’m not saying Walky should immediately dump Lucy and get back together with Amber, but I do think he needs to figure out whether he likes Lucy or loves her.
What do y’all think about whether he loves Lucy or not?
I think he likes her, and she is a “safe bet(meaning she is unlikely to dump him,)” but I don’t think he loves her.
I think Lucy loves Walky and Walky just likes Lucy. And honestly if they have sex I think it’ll only complicate things and make shit hard down the road.
I think Lucy actually doesn’t love Walky, or rather, not the way she THINKS she does. She’s just super horny for him and thinks that means she must be in love with him, because in her Teen Series view of college, she MUST meet and date her one true love on the first try.
I actually used to have that back in Uni, thinking that any person I fancied was actually love even though we’d had exactly one conversation which wasn’t even romantic. Takes a bit to grow out of it.
We know he doesn’t love her.
He had a conversation with Dorothy about it several days ago.
And in comparison to his other two relationships, he fell for Dorothy pretty much at first sight, giving the impression that he never had romantic feelings for a woman until then.
As for Amber, they related to each other over the course of a couple days, and she made him feel a lot better when he was down about Dorothy, and they both felt turned on enough with each other to immediately start making out the next time they were in each other’s presence.
Dorothy made him feel new things.
Amber ignited physical passion in him that, while there with Dorothy, we didn’t see them fall into so quickly and easily (either because it wasn’t as powerful or because they were trying to keep some decorum).
With Lucy we see neither.
It may be because time has passed and he has changed, neither falling instantly nor feeling the desire to wallow in physicality.
It may be because Lucy doesn’t get his motor running like they did.
Or it could simply be the dynamic they have with each other.
I think it’s the second option, but I don’t feel we have enough info to decide.
I also think the reason Lucy hasn’t really generated those sorts of feelings in Walky is because I think he is depressed. Which, if he is written to be depressed, I gotta applaud Willis for writing depression in a very not stereotypical way. It’s kinda hard to really describe or pull specific examples for why I think Walky is dealing with depression during this semester, but I do think that’s how he’s feeling.
“Committed a crime for you” is not a green flag. It’s a very big red flag at any stage of a relationship, but especially in the first six months of knowing a person. Shame on you, Charles.
To be fair, I don’t think “committed a crime for you” would be a very strong argument here if that crime was something like jaywalking. “She briefly parked in a no-parking zone because she saw you and wanted to stop and say hi! So devoted, she must be the one!”
Unless you asked them to commit the crime, in which case it should be a red flag for them. Or maybe you just both like crimes. I mean, I guess supervillains need love too.
Thank you for bringing up this point because I also thought of that. Like, it certainly sounds nice on paper, ‘oh man so and so loves me so much they committed a felony for me’ but in practice that can get pretty yikes real fast.
That’s what I think is interesting about it. Charles isn’t telling Walky that Amber is the better choice. Committing a crime is NOT a selling point, even to a relaxed parent. He’s pointing out that Amber liked him enough to do something stupid and reckless. He’s not telling Walky who to date, he’s pointing out that he still has options. Amber is the “offbeat weirdo who makes him happy”, not Lucy.
Exactly. It can be read as positive or negative, or both at the same time. The comment can be taken as a roundabout way of asking, “what do you want? have you thought about that?”
I mean, sal committed that original gas station crime because of malaya, does that mean he indirectly/retroactively approves of what she did for her sake?
If I had to bet on one of the Walkertons becoming better, it’d be Charles. This is solid advice, as involved or uninvolved his own biases may or may not be.
some ppl marry right outta high school sometimes it can last but it can be hard, other than a shot gun pregnancy idk why ppl would rush, other than being young/dumb and hormonal but the person you are at 18 isn’t the same at 35 unless you never grow/change at all but life/everything else around you would probably def affect you
i can see dina and becky lasting in the long run, it’d be a shame if they didn’t given everything they’ve been to
I’m thinking he did: she’s either the one who committed crimes for him, or the respectable one he thought his parents would like (and for whom he dumped the interesting weirdo.)
I think Walky needs to not date anyone for a while. Amber he her own issues she needs to work through. He was pushed into a relationship with Lucy by Dorothy so she wouldn’t be tempted to get back together with him. And Lucy is pressuring him into sex.
Walky needs a friend right now he can talk to more then he needs a girlfriend.
well he does have a psych major as a current roommate so hopefully he could open up to them (tho being skilled in that might not necessarily help as opposed to being experienced yourself or even experience as a teen/young adult as opposed to analyzing, since i imagine even if psych is a requirement, a couples/marriage counselor therapist is prolly diff to an overall therapist youd see versus like, a criminal psychologist)
Maybe he needs a girlfriend he can talk to? Someone who will listen without trying to fix him until he asks for help? Even if it’s about misgivings regarding their relationship?
Talk to Dorothy and you get an action plan that would suit her, not you.
Talk to Lucy: no, you can’t talk to Lucy, she’ll be shattered if it’s about her, or ahem distracted if it’s about anything else.
It would be messed up if Walky, having refused Dorothy, now breaks up with Lucy, tries to get back with Amber to be refused in turn, and then have Amber start dating Booster, who outright stated they were interested in her and have recently started communicating with her.
I don’t want to see things get messy, but it’s hard not to expect some messiness to come from this.
i don’t know if she’d consider going with booster even as a hookup but i imagine amber would get fulfillment helpign booster hook ethan up with asher or someone else
I wonder if that’s actually a real possibility since they did make a joke about it. I don’t see Lucy as the polycule type of girl though. But I could be wrong on this.
she did refuse but maybe she’d consider it as an ultimatum or so if walky rly wanted it but other thans omething casual it seems like it’d be a pain to balance lol
Ummm… giving a sexual ultimatum to someone who already refused would be a very mean and inconsiderate thing to do. Especially as poly stuff requires mutual trust and can affect the non-poly partner’s health directly, for example, with risk of infectious illness. I would question the consent of someone who merely “accepted” a sexual arrangement and only after being given an “ultimatum”.
Charles: When it comes to dating, you don’t just need to do what your parents want.
Walky: Okay, I want to date Lucy
Charles: Okay but hear me out. What about Amber instead?
He doesn’t really know Lucy at all at this point, and he just witnessed some pretty heavy romantic tension between Amber and Walky. So I think he’s trying to give Walky his blessing if he decides to date Amber, even though at this point Linda now prefers Lucy. The “okay” in the last panel implies that he respects Walky’s decision and his approval isn’t contingent on Walky doing what he wants.
……. So between this comment and everyone saying the last days that “one of the things Linda hated of Sal” (apart from being an immensely racist hag) is “she reminded of herself”…
Yeah yeah, we’ve all seen the Charles and Walky parallels. But I wonder if we should also pay attention to Charles and Danny’s.
Somewhat related, but I also kind of felt while Olin a meta way this comment makes a lot of sense, in practical in-universe reaction to this series of events it seems strange to me that this advice was given to Walky rather than Sal. If my daughter who’d always had a difficult relationship with her mom suddenly showed up with a boyfriend completely different from her usual interests that my wife loved, I would definitely worry she was dating someone just for her mom’s approval. I don’t think that’s the case with Danny and Sal here, I do think Sal is legitimately charmed by Danny but struggles to articulate why.
Oh, ABSOLUTELY. I actually love Danny!! (He’s such a good egg, he’s grown so much ;;) And I love Sal!! Linda on the other hand is unredeemable imho. But her thing with Charles is starting to feel like a distorted mirror of them? In specific if she was the “delinquent” to his “easygoing nerd”, as some hints point at.
I think I said it then and I’ll say it again now, but in terms or Walky shipping I feel like it’s still either Joyce or Dorothy for me, maybe the Amber thing felt out of left field and just shoving them together but they still don’t feel like they really Get Along the way Dorothy and Walky did, and their meaningful moments haven’t been super meaningful the way they felt for Joyce and Walky in It’s Walky (part of that being that it was against the backdrop or a lot of sci-fi world ending level drama which intensified things for sure). If it’s a choice between Amber and Lucy, I still think I prefer Amber for Walky because they do have some depth while Lucy and Walky this strip does hit home that almost everything they’ve done together has been performative. I think if we’re talking about who for Amber, either we haven’t met someone really suitable for that yet or it feels like she just needs supportive friends, at least for right now.
Really? I always felt like they got along the best out of any Walky pairing. He and Dorothy had that shared interest in cartoons, but otherwise they were very different people and it caused a lot of tension. Walky and Lucy do seem to get along, but mostly because Lucy is a people pleaser. She likes Walky a lot, and any attention from him is a good thing for her. Amber and Walky flirted on twitter, they had meaningful conversations on garbage roof, and they helped each other out. Walky distracted Amber when she was having a panic attack about Sal, and she helped him realize he needed to take responsibility for his math grades and not just look for an easy fix.
I personally do think that Amber is actually the best match for Walky. Dorothy and Walky do have genuine attraction to each other, but their personal real life goals are too mismatched. Dorothy has grand ambitions, but all Walky wants to do is coast through life and enjoy a geeky, loving relationship with somebody who shares his passions. The two of them will ultimately grow apart because their visions of what they want out of life are too different. (In particular, we already saw how stressed Dorothy was on having to take time out from her schedule to help tutor Walky. Now imagine what happens when she finally becomes Prez or a similar high-ranking, high-responsibility role. She simply will not have time for Walky anymore, and the two will inevitably grow apart.)
Meanwhile, I think Lucy is caring and considerate, does also find Walky attractive and wants what’s best for him, but here’s the rub… What does SHE want out of Walky? As you mentioned, she’s a people pleaser and while a relationship can survive like this for a considerable amount of time, I think eventually Lucy will reach a point where she feels drained being the giver all the time, the one making sure that Walky keeps up on his appointments, his responsibilities etc.
That leaves Amber, and again, the two of them have mutual attraction, adore similar hobbies, but perhaps more importantly, what they want out of life is pretty similar. They just want someone with whom they can be themselves together. They don’t have big dreams or big goals. What’s more, Amber’s neuroticism and desire for control means she probably won’t mind being the responsible one in the relationship because it’s something she would have done anyway.
i know he and dorothy had a connection but joyce would be a bit odd in comparison even more so than billie/jen, even if tehy were together in itswalky/walky and joyce or whatever the chemistry is diff i think even tho lucy once described herself as a white bisexual version of herself lol
I actually don’t love either of them that much as characters, but I do like Walky and Amber as a pairing. I think they’re both more honest with each other than they tend to be with their other peers. That said, I don’t think either of them are quite ready for it yet, with the big trauma they both share (maybe Amber could be ready but not that sure about Walky). And I do think there’s still a lot of interesting stuff to explore with the Walky/Lucy dynamic.
Charles is biased in favor of Amber, I personally wouldn’t ship them right now but I do believe Walky should cultivate that friendship for the same reason Charles is biased. Amber has proved so far she is a good friend for Walky and would help him out in any way she can.
People might not believe in the future of Walky and Lucy and relationship, but both are young, both are growing and there are some points they get along and help each other. Even if they mature on lasting love or fall out I think it will be worth it.
Oh no, tactical understanding right in the unresolved parental issues. I’m so moved that Charles would understand and emphasize with Walky enough to say something like this. I know some people have a problem with the last panel but to me this is 10% good dad mode.
A lot of tolerance and acceptance for their golden boy, despite the initial outburst, and praise for their daughter only because she behaves like they want her to currently.
Nothing has changed on the parents front except for the optics.
And Lucy has agreed to follow an absurd plan to convince two racist parents that she wasn’t a bad girlfriend to their son, showing how strong her trust in Walky is. But Charles don’t knows this.
Y’know Charles, I think that before you gauge just how touching of a gesture that is, you should first gauge just how much the person committing it likes doing crimes in general.
Counterpoint: Committing a crime for someone is often a negative more than a positive.
There are exceptions obviously e.g. stealing to provide food for someone who would starve to death when there are no viable options otherwise.
But a lot of crimes can land people in jail for years. It could show passion… but it can also show a lack of morals, lack of respect for others, disregard for law and authority and a lot of other negatives. So you know, not much of a selling point.
In between Linda being nice as long as the kids fall in line with her expectations and Charles trying to sort of counter her behind her back, together they make up like 1.25 non-abusive parents?
Not entirely related to the topic of the strip, but I’m pretty sure Charles was stated to be only half-black. I only bring this up because everyone keeps saying he’s full black.
legacy of slavery and segregation.
Combined with almost no one in America other than recent immigrants being “full black” whatever that would actually mean.
She hacked the university to change his grades, this is an offense, possibly even a felony as the university in question is a government institution or w/e, I don’t remember the exact wording.
It’s a federal crime to hack protected computers in order to cause harm. Changing the grades would count as fraud. It’s the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
I think this comic nails down the problem with Walky x Lucy. Walky can say he really likes Lucy all he wants, but the fact is, even with this being a dumb scheme they concocted together, if Walky really liked Lucy in a way that mattered he would’ve brought her to this dinner regardless of what his parent’s thought. Even if they’re racist he could’ve defended her and walked out or any number of things, but he didn’t even bring her cause what mattered more was their perception of her than Lucy herself. To both of them. I think this relationship needs some real conversations soon or it might sink.
Eh, it was a mutual plan that they hatched together. This kind of ignores that this is as much *her* hijink as it is Walky’s. Honestly them coming up with a scheme together to make Walky’s mom regret rejecting her is kind of the most earnestly couple-y thing they’ve done.
The fact it was a mutual plan makes it worse to me. That’s why I said it mattered more to both of them what Walky’s parent’s thought then what they think of the actual relationship. The irony is in the fact they both really connected as a couple over this scheme. If they actually care about each other the parent’s opinion wouldn’t matter. The whole plan to use Amber to make Lucy look better kind of backfired to me. At least they would’ve known who Lucy is. Right now they only know who Amber is and that she still likes him despite alienating Linda.
Right now this all feels very shallow. I mean their relationship is barely a week old so maybe it should be, but it’s more about how good they look together, or how hot Walky is, or how nice and smart Lucy is. That’s nice, but I feel like Lucy should have been at this get together if she was gonna last. We don’t know if they’ll get another chance.
amber’s committed crimes for or against potentially a majority of the campus and definitely most of the main cast, yeah
charles has a point though, she was actually trying while lucy was… kind of friendzoning herself
It can involve trauma, yes. The Sunken Place I feel is a metaphor for being put into a state of vulnerability, of being mentally/spiritually displaced and subsequently controlled by the power of someone or something, be it an abuser or systematic bigotry, an experience of oppression that is kept in the black by very design (hence, systematic unseeing).
I actually had this very internal experience during a meltdown when I attended a middle school which unbeknownst to me was controlled by the Unification Church. Not fun.
I feel like given the dates they brought, this is a conversation that would have made more sense for him to have with Sal (the one who showed up with someone incredibly unlike their image of her or anyone else she ever dated), but I guess he’s just too relieved she’s with a ‘nice white boy’ :/
I’d give him the benefit of the doubt that he was going to say something when he gets Sal alone a moment, but his reaction to Sal showing up with Danny doesn’t give me much hope
Here we go again with the parents who suddenly turn out *not* to be an unseperable parental unit. It’s nice to see some nuance in parenting.
Me & my coparent are also trying to find ways in which we can teach our kids “yeah, i do this differently from your other dad. and that’s okay. he has different needs, so he makes different rules.“
It doesn’t have to be a war between the parents whose rule gets done, it’s much nicer if parents are authentic about the rules they set.
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The best thing I’ve heard (recently, anyway) was
“…Eventually I agreed to meet him for lunch. He asked me to wear a red hat to our date because he couldn’t remember what I looked like. I was a tall, slender blonde with waist-long hair in 501 button-fly jeans and cowboy boots (not beautiful, but hard to miss). But he didn’t remember that. He only remembered how I made him feel (funny, important, interesting). …
You don’t want the sexy guy, or the guy with money. You want a happy, hard-working adult who respects you. You want the guy (like my guy) who will fly 7,000 miles in economy class for a lunch date with a woman he’s not sure he’ll recognize because she makes him happy.”
So yeah, million fish in the sea, but not all of them will bring you lasagna to work. Or hack your grades for profit.
That Clerks line pops into my head every time in situations like this.
I think that last line just bluescreened my head
Spinning beach ball of death for me.
I’m so confused by this man. I just can’t read him at all.
He’s probably had a really complicated life, and is aware of Linda’s flaws. Think about being a mixed-race couple in the 70s-80s or potentially earlier. There’s probably a lot of emotional stuff mixed-in with the obvious racial bigotry stuff. If anyone is going to understand “this person is willing to go to bat vs. the family, for you” it’s him.
Given that this comic runs in the eternal present, they weren’t a young couple in the 70s or 80s. They were *born* then.
Or maybe, just maybe, he is a huge Transformers fan.
Walky: Would you die for me?
Amber: …I’d kill for you – does that count?
Walky: Um….
Wait, what is our read on Charles now? I remember the days he was just as big an asshole as Linda for the Sal’s hair comment. Who is this man??
Chuck is a land of contrasts
Yeah, it’s almost like people are complex rather than just archetypes!
As long as he doesn’t have the spine to say stuff like this in front of Linda he’s still shitty to me, just ever so slightly less so
I can’t speak on marriages but I feel like saying inflammatory stuff in front of your already emotionally agitated wife is a quick trip to divorce town. Not saying it’s right or wrong to contradict her behind her back instead of to her face, in front of their kids, just that it’s probably smarter if he still cares about her.
Sometimes you gotta pick your battles i guess, marriages should be about compromising, but i would think he’d still care enough about his kids to eventually take their side publicly
Haven’t seen Charles ever compromise with Linda, is always going along with her.
Probably presents a united front in company, then in private proceeds to try and talk her down. He certainly appears to be the more reasonable and diplomatic of the two.
As nice as that would be we have never seen evidence of this.
I think it’s more stuff like going along with making up a excuse to ditch Walky and Lucy for lunch that makes Charles complacency toxic. He’s polite to people’s faces but it never translates to action. Kind of wish Walky called Charles out on that, his assurance rings hollow here.
And as SOON as Walky brought up Lucy, he defaulted back to Linda’s Accomplice.
As far as we’ve seen, he hasn’t even had the inclination to pull *Sal* aside and speak to her like an adult, despite the fact that Linda has repeatedly treated Sal much, much worse than this, so still shitty to me. Possibly makes me think he’s *more* shitty, considering—IIRC—the only time he’s ever spoken to Sal one-on-one he was lamenting the state of her natural hair. He clearly picks favorites as readily as Linda does, he’s just less overt about it.
Sadly, this. I have sympathy for Charles. I think he’s brow-beaten and feels he can’t speak up, but still wants to give encouragement in his own way so as to not let their kids go entirely without love or understanding. But he’s also stood by – or argued and failed – in any case, allowed, Sal to grow up barely knowing her parents and being treated as third to Walky’s best friend in child ranking terms, Walky to be totally unsupported with his obvious focus issues, and both of them to basically discard half their heritage. He also seems to have been swayed by Linda’s views on their kids and what they have to do to be acceptable, in many ways, if not just internalising those views totally. He’s an enabler until proven otherwise in my eyes.
She robbed a grocery store at knife point….. that kind of moves them into extreme parenting territory that makes it difficult for any parent to know the best way to proceed. Willis points out that they felt that they had to take extreme measures to course correct at that point. Im kind of curious why so many people are so quick to condemn them given that Sal herself doesnt seem to hold it against them.
It’s less that they sent her to boarding school -that was reasonable given the circumstances- more that they basically cut her off from the family during that time. At the beginning of the comic Walky either implied or outright said he hadn’t seen her in five years. Extreme measures were necessary but she was 13, and healing from a traumatic injury. She needed her family at that time and it sounds like Chuck and Linda made no effort to support her. If that isn’t internalizable for a child as “we don’t love you anymore” then I don’t know what is. Yes they kept her out of jail, but they also kept her out of her own family
Also it was a gas station convenience store, not a grocery store.
And had they not treated her like shit for thirteen years that wouldn’t have happened.
Had one particular person not stolen all her money she saved up for a friends operation that wouldn’t have happened.
Here is the comic strip regarding the ‘hair’ comment (in particular how Sal’s hair was curly after being straight for a long time)…
I may be in the minority here, but I felt his comments about Sal’s hair could be interpreted in different ways:
– Saying she looked “prettier” with straight hair could be a sort of racial thing (i.e. she looks better with her air in a “white” hair style)
– He thought she had a certain pride in her hair before, and was disappointed that she was giving that up
It could also mean that he just thought her hair looked better straight. I mean, he’s black so I don’t think it was a racial thing with him.
Well there is still racism and colorism within the black community as well. I think she looked fine with either but unfortunately there’s also been times where ppl have gotten backlash for ‘natural’ black hair not looking ‘professional’ enough in an office setting (tho i doubt sal would settle down into some office job unless it’s some indie artsy hippie thing where you can do/wear whatevery ou want more or elss)
Even if that’s the case (and I don’t think it is—in the words of Jennifer, “it’s not like being mixed is a get-out-of-racism-free card”), it’s still an incredibly shitty thing to say to your kid. “Oh, you’re doing that with your hair/clothes/style? Shame, you looked prettier the way it was before.”
Right, nobody is allowed to have an opinion of the way anybody else presents himself. Shocking!
Nope.
Not when it’s your kid, they don’t ask and it’s the first thing you say the first time you see them after they go to college (Or maybe longer).
At the very least, don’t be surprised when they then take the excuse of a hair appointment to blow you off.
And that’s without all the fraught racial politics around black women’s hair.
Most of us learned in kindergarten that just because you have an opinion, that doesn’t mean you need to share it. Perhaps you were out sick that day.
I lose years of my life every time I see someone say this. Colorism is as prevalent as racism, for Christ’s sake
It’s almost like we’re all swimming in the same toxic muck, and we’re *all* exposed.
I mean, he’s black so I don’t think it was a racial thing with him.
That is 100% not how it works even a little bit at all.
If the second was the case then that’s still shitty since for all he knew she was trying something else out, and Charles has to know she’s had it done since she was a kid.
@ MisterJinKC – That comment can’t be divorced from the context of how black people’s natural hair is treated, intent or not.
I feel like there’s a lot going on there and while it cannot be divorced from the racial elements, I think there’s something to be said for how Charles probably associates Sal’s straightened hair with when she was younger, and before his little cowgirl, from his perspective, went down a dark path.
Now, does he regard Sal’s natural hair as a reminder of that time? She was apparently letting it revert, as a reminder. Or does his internalized racism actually see it as a warning sign like the smoking and staying out late? Honestly, probably a little of both, IMHO.
It’s not fair, he shouldn’t have said it, and he’s really not acknowledging the role Linda had in forcing her in that direction, but I can at least get it.
We know her hair wasn’t straightened when Marcie was first being picked on by Leland, but it was when Leland disabled her when they were 12. The robbery was a year later and her hair was curly again. That’s a very brief period of time for him to remember her with straight hair and to associate her curly hair with her misbehaving.
I wrote basically an essay about this a week or two back and I’m not gonna retype all that so, tl;dr “your hair is prettier straight” is an extremely loaded statement in the black community with years of history, oppression, and internalized racism imposed by colonial society (or pre civil rights movement for the US). Its on the same level of You Just Dont Say That as “aw, you looked prettier before you gained weight”
Hair is always political – though black woman’s hair is more obviously so.
Think of the discourse here about Becky getting her “lesbian haircut” and Ross’s “your hair is your womanhood” bit.
Personally while I appreciate the sentiment of “don’t date someone just because they’re who Linda would like” I can’t divorce that from the context of the hair comment (and with it, the fact that Charles has some internalized bias himself) and the fact that Lucy is black and Amber is white.
Like. There’s layers to this and I have to admit I’m conflicted.
Oooooh I forgot about the whole hair comment, thanks for the reminder 😮
Yeah in any case I feel real bad for Charles, Linda be keeping him in the Sunken Place 😔
^ That. I doubt he means it that way but unconscious bias is a helluva drug.
Get out Walky!!! Get out!!! GET OUT!!! GET OUT!!!! 😭
Same. Even if that is exactly how it’s meant to be seen, I just can’t see this with totally good intentions. In the end he’s still kinda getting exactly what he wanted for Walky.
Those were my thoughts exactly.
In many ways, that’s actually the thrust of this whole arc–Walky and Sal’s parents, as bad as they are in some ways, are more complicated than the caricatures of Blaine and Toedad. They’re human beings and, for all their faults, it can legitimately be said that they are actually trying to be good parents (even when it’s obvious that they have no clue how to do that).
100% this
+1
An enabler.
Charles and Linda are both people, good and bad, even if Linda’s certainly the easier person to hate. Both do care about their kids, but Charles is definitely the one more like Walky and warmer with the kids.
Of course, that last line is telling, too. I wonder if he’s told himself the same about Linda, that Linda’s stuck her neck out for him and that’s why he doesn’t shrink away from her shittier aspects.
Awwww, nail on the head there. And I don’t like it.
My read is that Lucy absolutely nailed it in assuming that Charles would windmill high-five Walky if they’d gone with the plan of presenting as a polycule with Lucy and Amber.
Oh, I think the fuckpile comment demonstrated that
Sometimes when you don’t see someone important to you for a while, you work up the courage to say something you feel like you have to say to them beforehand, and then put that statement into context after you actually hit the ground. Sometimes that means realizing that your son is under a lot of pressure to live up to other peoples’ expectations—especially yours and his moms—and so you get ready to tell him something about how he should do what makes him happy. Then he shows up with his weird girlfriend who makes a bad impression and seems to feel like he has to defend in front of you.
Well, it’s pretty obvious in that situation how to carry out operation supportive nonjudgmental father…
Is it possible that Charles didn’t actually mean anything with his hair comment other than “I know that’s what you usually do with your hair and I want to be supportive of what you like”? I mean, she was wearing her catholic school outfit at the time, he didn’t know the hair was coincidental, he might have been trying to hint at her he’s fine with whatever (just like he’s doing now)?
I dunno. Seems like she started straightening her hair so her parents would like her better. At least, from her POV
I’m aware that’s the general consensus around here, and it’s a logical conclusion, but do we have proof of that?
Case in point: The entire rest of Sal’s appearance at university isn’t exactly “parent approval optimized”. And on parent weekend, she scheduled her hair appointment for AFTER she met her parents, when she probably could’ve done things the other way around with fairly little trouble.
And, if that is indeed the reason Sal straightens her hair – would Charles be aware? Maybe she did it to appease her mum and her dad is just blissfully unaware.
My interpretation of Sal’s hair appointment scheduling was that she scheduled it for a time when she would otherwise have been expected to hang out with her parents. Like, she was trying to bail on them and used her hair as an excuse because she thought it would be important to them that she “fix” it (when she brought it up, she similarly leaned on the fact that they like it when she’s punctual or keeps her appointments or something like that). I think it’s pretty clear that she only straightened her hair out of parental/societal pressure to look whiter—whether that pressure was intentionally inflicted or something she perceived—and that episode was a turning point for her where she decided she would rather look like herself than what she thought her parents wanted her to be (she stopped wearing the Catholic schoolgirl clothes around them at that point too).
Speaking of proof, though, I think it’s worth noting that we’ve seen nothing to suggest Sal’s hair straightening was about her mother. Linda didn’t seem to give one solitary crap about Sal’s hair (or Sal, in that moment, but that’s a whole other mess), and we’ve never seen her comment on it. We’ve only seen Charles comment on Sal’s hair. Also worth noting that when Sal talked to Walky about the racism in their family, she pinned it on *both* their parents without singling out Linda, despite the fact that we’ve seen more conflict between Sal and Linda in flashbacks. Idk why people are so eager to give Charles a pass.
I agree that she absolutely scheduled the hair appointment to have an excuse to bail. I also think that if they hadn’t reacted the way she was expecting them to, she would have blown off the hair appointment instead.
That was actually the only time we’ve seen the Catholic schoolgirl outfit – though they probably saw it if they visited her in boarding school.
Yeah, good points…
Dunno, for me it’s just that Charles’ potential situation kinda reminds me of my dad, who is a really decent human being as long as he’s not around my mother – then he just tries to not get on her bad side. She’s always been abusive to him, too – but the difference between us was that I could count the years till I’m finally 18 and able to move out, and he has given up on finding a life for himself a long time ago.
So, yeah, Charles might be indeed an ass in his own right, but for the time being I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I also totally get why other people don’t.
I don’t think it is possible. He had limited contact with her while she was in Tennessee and so he can’t know that’s how she did her hair. We’ve only seen her with straight hair during the time Marcie was attacked when she was 12 and it was curly again by the time she was 13. Every time before that we see her with curly hair. If anything, his ‘usual’ for Sal would be curly hair.
And well….intent doesn’t divorce his comment from the context of how black people’s natural hair is treated by society. It’s a racist comment whether he means it as one or not.
Given Sal talks about both their parents being racist and told Amber she envies her ability to reject her dad’s claim over her, I’m not inclined to be so charitable to Charles.
For all the jokes about asshole parents in DoA, people only actually have one (1) asshole parent at most in this comic.
No. If you have two parents who are married to each other, and they have *stayed married*, then if one is an asshole parent, they both are.
I’d go even further and say that, even if they stayed married for alleged home stability or other reasons, it should still be obvious if the other parent is *actively trying to undo the damage* the first one causes. They might be deluded that the AH’s behaviour isn’t a constant, irrational or unchangeable thing, for example, but still indefatigably defend the kids from criticism despite that and constantly shut such things down. And they’d still basically be allowing harm to happen in that case. But they may not end up a full enabler, or eventual departure or at least pressure caused by that threat on the AH parent to change may still be in the works. Possible shades of grey.
This is *not* what we have seen from Charles. He has acted til the above strip as a full enabler – whether bullied into it himself or not. He seems to buy into what Linda insists on about their children and to see her and him as a team despite their disagreements. At best, that is. At best he shores their kids up in private after Linda tears them and/or him down, and he still allowed one to be sent away. He might believe he’s doing his best for them, but I agree, they would have been better off if he’d been willing to stand up for their health and happiness and moved out a long time ago.
Sure, I can get behind that, and I’ll retract my own statement enough to allow that people who are the victim of abuse may not be able to leave (or may not feel able to leave safely, which is much the same thing).
I don’t think that applies to Charles either. He’s just an enabler.
I concur. My mom was and remains a monster. My dad had and still has the means to leave. He did not, and broadly failed to protect me at all when I was a child. He wasn’t the one hitting me or telling me he’d get a second job (unnecessary) just to get rid of me by shipping me off to school, but he was the adult with the knowledge and power to spare us both. His failure moves him squarely into asshole territory. Though I guess he’s going to serious therapy now, at least some of which is probably dealing with the residual catholic guilt that factored into him staying, so change may be possible. It certainly is possible as a broad concept; people can always learn and do better if they put in the work. But I don’t think we’ve seen that with the twins’ dad yet, so…two asshole parents.
Hes the dad of the former author avatar.Moms the Villainess, Dad is better but goes along.
Same as Joyce but less evil.
Or Ethans.
Unsure if Danny fits the author avatar pattern.
I mean, Danny was of author avatar, but maybe intentionally we haven’t had a whole lot of detail on his parents except that both Dorothy and Danny’s parents may be kinda creampuff people, so that’s pretty good anyway, but may also be because dumbiverse Dorothy and Danny backgrounds are not as developed for the dumbiverse, but also because it kinda makes sense to be done that way, not everyone has to have a lot going on with their parents.
Danny’s parents spent most of their appearance over FFW putting him down. They’re not as overtly evil as Linda or Carol, but Danny’s self-esteem issues likely started with them.
Check his shoelaces.
Now if only he had a spine to say stuff like that in front of his wife
My opinion of him has improved but only marginally
Same.
True, but saying it out of earshot of Linda lets him make his point without being bogged down with arguing.
Sure, but it also allows her to tear down the kids without arguing.
i’m not sure if he’s rly shown to have had a disappointing relationship with linda but who knows, maybe he secretly regretted never marrying an ‘offbeat weirdo’ who was int ohim
I think Linda was the offbeat weirdo. This whole chapter has been making subtle and not so subtle comparisons between her and Sal, from similar body language to similar thought processes and problem solving. Linda was likely a troublemaker type his parent’s didn’t like. Maybe. There are at least hints at it. I can even see Linda growing up poor which would explain why she’s so obsessed with status.
I’d honestly see this the other way around and see him warning Walky about not going for the woman his parents wanted for him in Linda – but then that would be a very charitable position, and both are definitely still possibilities.
I can even see Linda growing up poor which would explain why she’s so obsessed with status.
Huh. I actually feel like this would explain a lot. Would it justify her? HELL NO, but it’s an actual Real Life phenomenon of some people that, once they “overcome” their former social class, they become allergic to anything that remembers them having been poor.
That is the way people usually improve: marginally. If they continue to improve marginally then I’ll cheer them on.
So does that go into the pro or con column?
Amber doesn’t hack grades professionally and she never got convicted for the crime, so I think it’s neither?
Charles absolutely considers having a girlfriend who would do felonies for you a pro.
Charles has been repeatedly shown to be emotionally romantic to the detriment of his own kids’ lived realities and this is an extension.
Definitely a pro.
It’s deifnitely a con, because the point isn’t that Amber committed a crime for Walky, it’s that she did it after he SPECIFICALLY TOLD HER NOT TO.
The point I perceived was that Amber likes Walky enough to take serious risks on his behalf.
…. maybe I need to start being less subtle with my puns.
AhhahA! That flew right by me the first time.
Stealth Pun, well done.
Given how universities treat plagiarism and anything along those lines like first degree murder, con. Definitely con. I’m glad it worked out because the plot can’t have walky getting kicked out and banned, but she coulve ruined his whole academic career right there
Uh-oh. And HERE’S the backfire. The little niggling seed planted in his brain that will germinate into something later.
Walky you idiot goofus, you did this to yourself.
The biggest weakness to his relationship with Lucy is he’s never seemed to have had strong feelings for her at all, he just seems to feel obligated to think he should.
Yup, as if Lucy meets his checklist the way Raidah’s guy did for her. Bloodless and clinical. Or perhaps just because she was there, available. Personally I feel like Lucy is half-baked, still figuring out who she is and what she wants other than to be “popular.” She’ll do anything, become anyone. She feels like a landmine about to go off when you least expect it, a simmering pot of resentment, ambition, and repressed feelings. Her weird “nice Christian girls don’t have sex on the first date” is so performative. And Walky is performing loyalty in a way that could see him being a tool for any purpose just like his dad.
That last line hit me hard. Lucky and Walky is like Linda and Charles, and Charles is trying to caution Walky away from doing something just because he feels like he should.
I dislike Lucy as a whole but I think we are forgetting that they do have shared interests, so it isn’t just a flavorless proposition for Walky. She accepts him where he is, but she doesn’t see it as garbage roof-worthy (Amber). She helped him with the comic and believed in that. She’s not pushing the academics (Dotty). She’s supporting him in the areas that are important to him and she’s at his level of maturity around relationships. She has a lot of pros for him.
I sympathise with Lucy because I’ve basically been there in her place. Coming to university half-formed and with a whole bunch of moral hang-ups, much like she seems to have, not at all helped by being undiagnosed ND. But equally benevolent and with the hope of making friends – plus an open acceptance of changing and an unwillingness to judge quite so openly as she did Sarah working in my favour. There was also a small dose of Amber in the unhandled neurotype and related struggles plus some childhood cPTSD. I found my own Walky, in some ways, though he was older and a lot more accomplished in many as well. He liked me the way this comic’s Walky likes Dorothy and Amber rolled into one. We’re going strong still a decade-and-bit later, but not without a lot of work. The main concern I have about Lucy is whether she can find herself separate from who she’s dating and/or friends with, and prioritise things properly rather than in a romantic storyline mainly in her head, in time for both of these things to not fall apart.
I’m sure not going to judge any girl in our society for being “performative” for making protestations about not wanting sex on the first date.
Later on, a cutscene to Charles looking up Transformer porn.
And that’s my next Patreon bonus strip vote sorted.
I mean, Fred Perry does good work.
wow, there’s some flashbacks.
This strip seems to me like a heart-to-heart straight out of One Piece, and I love every panel of it! 😃
Walky’s dad is so good, I feel bad for him, what for having to put up with Linda all the time. 🥺
On another relevant note, maybe Walky should start a polyamory and subsequent fuck pile… 😏
To judge by her fics, Amber would be on board with it.
I have no idea where Dorothy’s at on that or any other question, and I don’t think Dorothy has any idea either.
But Lucy’s still way too vanilla.
Pika pika? What do you mean by vanilla exactly, earthling? 😮
Conservative and/or basic in regards to physical relations.
Or a nicer way to say it, polyamory (and probably some other fun things) would seem to be outside her comfort zone.
Vanilla is a term used by kinky people to refer to not-kinky people
What cbwroses said. Lucy’s views and preferences towards romance are too conventional for her to go along with a poly relationship.
I mean, he doesn’t have to put up with her. They invented a thing called divorce. He can call Joyce’s father for tips on it.
I mean, there’s divorce, and then there’s the rest of the mine-field of what goes into actually ending what may very well be an abusive relationship.
while it can still happen and 50% of marriages ending in divorce (ddi that statistic ever get updated? lol), it would still be a mess/i imagine they probably wouldn’t rush into it without more without a lot more problems between them unless he’s had a plan to be divorcing all along and his bags packed and a new living place setup for himself and such
I think you meant start a polucule. Polyamoury is the type of love/relationship style, where someone loves multiple people. A polycule is a polyamourous group in a relationship with each other.
Dude still married Linda, and they weren’t college sweethearts or anything she had a previous marriage under her belt. I can’t imagine he didn’t know what he was getting into.
I’m betting Linda did a crime or otherwise pulled an unethical string for him. So now he feels obligated to put up with her worst aspects. IE she might have convinced him she was ride or die for him and he feels compelled to reciprocate that sort of commitment.
Eh… Charles is a lot more laid-back than Linda but I think they agree about a lot of things. I’ve gotten a social climber vibe from both of them, and I think that what’s motivated a lot of bad parenting choices
Wouldn’t you know, Dad fell for Amber.
That was not the way I expected Walky and Lucy’s plan to backfire!
well, they’re still friends so i imagine they’d hang around even if amber doenst tag along to their future kid-parent mealtimes but it would be funny if dad started texting with amber
Charles is on Yotomoe’s team!
“If you don’t date her, I will. I always wanna hear the new kinds of 80s franchise pornography”
That is a very specific 30 Rock reference in the alt text. Also does that make Amber Floyd in this situation? So Dorothy was Dennis and Lucy is Dr. Drew?
Oh, that explains why it just looked like word salad to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jO5U7-_zks&pp=ygUYMzAgcm9jayBzYW5kd2ljaCBhaXJwb3J0 She can have it both/all!
In other news after a huge crash the Amber x Walky ship is showing the kernels of a small upturn. Smart investors should buy in now while the stock is priced so low.
I’m sorta disturbed that relationships make more sense as an analogy to a futures market than as an analogy to boats.
Shipping was derived from the word ‘relationship’ rather than any nautical metaphor.
And marriages have oft across history been a literal transaction.
They can be both!
The Garbagebucks are at a low, but with the economy we may see them start to trend upwards. Don’t sell out before the new rise.
HODLgang
I no crap threw up in my mouth a little
fortune favours the infamous
I see that that ship dead, full of living dead pirates and preg transformers nice to see but still dead
That last panel is interesting. It also says a lot that Walky says he LIKES Lucy, but doesn’t say he LOVES her. Walky does need to sit down and really think about his relationships, because just because Amber was willing to commit a crime for him, nice as the gesture is, doesn’t have to mean he NEEDS to date her or that somehow her feelings for him are somehow… more?
Honestly I think Walky needs to THINK, regardless of whatever Amber and Lucy feel for him, and think about what WALKY feels about these women. As we know, though, Walky isn’t one to really understand his own feelings all of the time.
Maybe Walky just needs to be single for a bit.
Agreed, honestly.
He was apparently single for most of the timeskip (broke up with Amber at Halloween -> only actually started seeing Lucy in a romantic light post-skip,) but yeah, I think a bit longer would be good for him.
I mean, we already knew he didn’t love Lucy.
He just had a conversation with Dorothy about it like 3 days ago in story.
Also, while feelings of love can develop quickly, it usually takes longer than the 8-10 days they’ve been dating.
He hasn’t had enough time to love Lucy. A lot of people here, me included, think that Lucy would find that she really hasn’t had enough time either, after pondering the difference between “loving” and “being in love.”
They may get there. They have a lot going for them, and a lot still to discover.
Part of the difference it that while they’ve only been dating a week or so, they’ve been hanging out a lot for months and Lucy’s been thinking of it romantically all along. She has had time to develop those feelings.
That is the big issue with their relationship, her feelings are way more intense than his and balance is important.
I mean, of course he isn’t going to say that he loves Lucy. While we have observed them for a long enough period of time to get engaged and married, in their world he has been friendly with her for a while and only very recently started dating her. By only a loose interpretation of what “dating” is, they’ve had 3 total dates. Sure, that might be enough to get to bone town but not enough to get to actual “love”, at least not yet.
In his defence, they’ve dated less than a month. I think not feeling love yet is fair game.
He may never be that into Lucy but Lucy is already sending out wedding and baptism invitations.
Well of course, he told her he loved her. That makes it serious.
Why do you think he should he *love* her already? It may feel to us that they’ve been together for a long time, but in-universe I think he’s known her a few weeks. Even by Lucky’s somewhat generous calculations, they’ve been on 3 dates. I think a problem with Willis’s very slow passage of time in this comic is that it sometimes feels like relationships have gone one much longer than they actually have, so perhaps should be deeper than they really have time to be. (That’s even ignoring that these are teenagers.)
At no point did I say he should ‘love her already’, thank you.
I see several people mentioning the love thing, and I’m gonna go ahead and just reply to myself instead of trying to address every person who brings it up. It makes total sense why Walky isn’t in love with Lucy yet. The reason it is more significant HERE for me, is that if you’re in a situation where you introduce your partner to your parents, and they reject that partner, usually that has a way of intensifying your feelings for the person. Like, the conflict makes you double down, or makes you realize just how much you appreciate your partner. You think or say ‘fuck you parents, this is my partner and I love them. If you can’t accept that, fuck you.’
We don’t get that from Walky. Walky and Lucy came up with this hairbrained idea and when confronted with his feelings for Lucy… the best he can conjure up is still LIKE. He LIKES her. He doesn’t LOVE her. It’s one thing when you’re early into dating, and you’re still navigating stuff. It’s another if the parents cause a stink and in defense of your partner the best you can come up with is ‘I like them’… Eh, to me, it just makes it clearer just how short-lived their relationship is gonna be.
Some people are also just honest with where they are and think that their opinion should be good enough without basing it on the person themself. I’d go to bat to have my relationships be as it is and still say “like.” They make me happy and I enjoy spending time with them should be enough without anything else.
“Like” and “love” are orthogonal. I’d guess that Hank still loves Carol, and only split with her because he can no longer like her and that hurts so much.
well they’ve only been dating for a week and a half or two weeks at most? So ‘love’ might be soon even for that age (i mean lucy thinks he said it but he didn’t retract it) but lucy is stable in comparison for now even if he does move on
Maybe he can’t say outright “I love Lucy” because it’s still trademarked… nope I just checked it’s free to use
Charles is… cool?
I mean, last panel is conflicting advice with ‘don’t get a girlfriend just to make a parent happy’, but 4/5 good parent isn’t bad.
I think the final panel isn’t conflicting advice; it is more of a “this woman was willing to commit a crime for you. So if you are conflicted on who you love more, keep that in mind.” Which is actually good advice. I’m not saying he should dump Lucy just because she hasn’t committed a crime for him, or whether she would be willing to. I’m saying don’t date someone just because you think you should. Dating someone because they fit “your type” is fine, but there should be more.
Of course, when considering “was willing to commit a crime for you”, you also have to factor in how willing they are to commit crimes in general, If criming is an everyday thing for them, it’s not really a point in their favor.
Yeah, Amber committing a crime for Walky is not some big thing…. she commits crimes in like every storyline
It’s not conflicting advice.
What he’s saying is don’t CHOOSE a girlfriend to fit your parent’s image of you.
It’s all about the reason for getting with a particular girlfriend and nothing about when to get a girlfriend.
I don’t completely absolve Charles for his complicity in seemingly following Linda’s lead, nor his own biases.
BUT…
He has consistently appeared in this storyline to be a decent person (so far).
And he’s team Garbage Skowl!
Hard not to like him.
We had the saga of the irredeemable dads. Now we are in the potentially redeemable dads era
(*garbage shipping intensifies*)
i imagine he’s been a backseat kinda parent and let linda be in charge for most of it so sal/walky probably don’t have resentment towards him but not necessarily confide in him
Oh man, I can’t believe I forgot this one yesterday
“Things were bad, but now they’re good, forever!”
CHarles being lowkey pro amber is!! A goddamn left turn!!
He was the one saying everyone should get in a pile and f***, so I’m sure the transformer thing, though over the top, spoke to some part of his soul.
At the same time, don’t confuse stability with boredom.
Don’t confuse drama with excitement.
Words to live by.
Wait.
Was Dean McHenry the one Linda dated to please her parents?
…and then Charles the one she actually liked?
Is… is this nuance?
Possibly, but I’m not sure how many parents would be ok with their teenage/early 20’s daughter dating a marrying a man who seems like he’s a decade older (and potentially had authority over her).
I’m sure some would, but I’d like to imagine they’re in the minority.
Thanks to the floating timeline, Linda’s birth year can’t be nailed down. She is, for now, older than I am, and I think a lot of women older than I am had parents who would not have objected to the relationship on the grounds that Anthony was a Respectable Professional Man
Hard to say if the Dean was that much older than Linda. She and Charles are both probably in their fifties at least, and I don’t think it’s hard to imagine the Dean as late fifties/early sixties
He’s older to the point that Walky doesn’t want to think about their age difference, and I think that probably means his parents are in their 40s and the dean is in his 50s (also, being in their 50s would mean they didn’t have kids til their 30s, which is entirely possible, but I never got that feeling).
I feel like if they were all in their 50s, he wouldn’t feel weird about it, but that’s just me.
When did Walky say that? I don’t recall offhand.
At the breakfast Raidah I believe.
At the very least it was to Raidah in relation to her asking about his connection to the dean.
……. He’s the TA she boned for grades, isn’t it.
Omar: oh, indeed.
Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude
Amazi-girl/Nightguy team up coming soon.
Funny thing, I could not care less who Wally ends up with. Wally is an overgrown infant, and he likely will be for the rest of his life. Sal and Danny are the interesting characters. They learn, grow, and develop. I WANT to know where their relationship goes. Same for Joe and Joyce. Yes, Joyce is still childish, but she learns and grows—she fucks up, falls down, gets up, and moves forward.
Yeah the most Walky has grown in the story so far has been “Hey I should probably actually study.”
Walky has also grown in being concerned about his parents’ relationship with Sal.
Oh, come on. Walky has shown character development. It might not be adequate for your tastes, but he has absolutely changed and grown since this comic started.
He is still basically a sit-com character, that’s the way he sees himself apparently.
I had thought he had undergone some character growth before this recent idiotic scheme but apparently being Hot addled his brain, I can’t wait until he and Sal have Some Words about his shenanigans.
I think the problem with Walky is that he’s too afraid to change and so resists it so much he seems to “revert” back into “lovable goof”, much like how Joe thought that “if I always act like a garbage perv then no one will expect anything different from me and I won’t have to think of myself as anything other than a lovable lech.”
Lucy, unlike Amber and Dotty, seems more unwilling to challenge him to NOT be a cartoon version of himself. Even encourages it, somewhat.
Afraid, or “I like who I am, and I’ve about had it with the whole world demanding that I be someone else”?
This. He’s also very strongly typified as neurodivergent and one literal translation of a term for ASD is “in your own time”. We tend to reject mass societal presumptions about how to present, function, work, relax, and enjoy life, when those haven’t worked for us or been seemingly examined in any way other than simply being traditional. Due to this we often go for entertainments and pastimes others consider “childish” simply because we actively enjoy them most and aren’t as easily put off. We also grow and mature in our own time. I don’t like watching people dumping on Walky for being childish in his tastes, interests, or mannerisms, or even just growing at his own pace. What bothers *me* about him is his all-too-slowly cracking ingrained sense of entitlement (almost certainly in part Linda’s doing) alongside a repeated difficulty in observing how his actions harm others. If there’s any area he ought mature in before seriously dating, that’d be the one.
Walky found out he liked girls for the first time.
He found out that he can’t breeze through life like he did for the past decade.
He realized his parents have treated him and his sister significantly different and it had little to do with the choices she made at 13 years old.
He has started to stand up for, get along with, and get to know his sister while also realizing the part he played in their estrangement.
He has confronted significant failure for the first time, as well as heartbreak, and when given the easy way out, has rejected it both times.
Walky has shown a lot of character development through the years in real time and 6 months in story, with even more that I haven’t mentioned.
It’s fine not to like him and to not be interested in him, we all have characters we prefer and others not so much, but it’s a bit unfair to act like he has made no changes/has had no growth.
100% agreed, couldn’t have said better.
I’d also add he’s stood up for Sal even when it would’ve been risky to do so. He sought out Asher with the specific intent of punching him for having ruined Sal’s life, while knowing the dude had been at the very least a tween criminal.
This, and that he’s been unlearning the trappings of toxic masculinity to the point he’s comfortable casually mentioning liking guys may be a possibility that can’t be discarded outright; and of racism (as much as he joked about learning he had “privilege”, he meant what he said.)
(PS: The kid is like a posterkid for untreated ADHD, so honestly, the fact that he tries to make sense of the world through media, tropes, and humor is 100% neurodivergence.)
I think Walky is comfortable with possible bisexuality, but he’s still unnerved by the idea of not being masculine (see: his aversion to having ‘feminine’ hair).
Which is neat to see because fiction often treats “toxic masculinity” as one big homogenous thing. Walky’s got a few of the traits, but mostly the least toxic of them. He’s got some weird ideas about performative masculinity (the hair thing, having only one pair shoes, a few others).
But as you say he’s comfortable with at least hints of bisexuality and none of the toxic parts seem to be directed at women. He’s supportive. He’s perfectly comfortable with strong women.
Just in general, I’d love more “yeah, I’d be okay if I were bi, but I’m not” characters. Feels like the options are either “gay/bi” or “never considers attraction to the same sex”.
Some folks are just comfortable and secure in their heterosexuality, ya know?
She gets knocked down, but she gets up again. Life is never gonna keep her down.
I can see how people might not like Walky, but to me he has shown enormous character growth. He was an absolute goof at the start of the comic, and while he maintains some of that playful attitude he has made enormous strides in maturity and responsibility. It’s not just that he learned to study, he learned to face his problems instead of running away. He’s trying to do the right thing by Lucy instead of taking the easy way out. He was scared when Linda was yelling at him, but he stood up to her and said he wasn’t a kid anymore. I can’t imagine early Walky doing any of those things.
I mean this whole scheme was a complete fuster cluck but not in the way that expected.
time for lucy to join nightguy then and do some hero/crime stuff
Walky: “… so here’s your costume.”
Lucy: “This is just pajamas!”
Walky: “Because NightGirl rules the night!”
Lucy: “And why is there this cutout over the chest? It’s cold out!”
Walky: “Because NightGirl… Just because, OK?”
i’d hope walky would’ve been in leslie’s class enough to not have a boob window lol, but i’m sure thre are pre existing costumes like that lol. maybe they’ll ge ttraining from amber too
I wonder if Charles has ever told himself Linda’s the one for similar reasons to the last panel, that she did/does something that makes her the one.
What Crimes did Linda commit for Charles? The question now inevitably rises.
It’s unlikely that her racism evolved in a vacuum, so she likely burned bridges with her parents by dating and marrying Charles. I think he still remembers that even as he sees her become more like her parents as she gets older.
I could believe that, that Linda walked away from certain things for Charles, but it’s hard to say for sure. I’d definitely be curious to know.
I mean, Amber also pushed you into a table, Walky. Hard. So, y’know.
Maybe don’t take dating advice from the guy who married Linda.
But that’s because he made a crass joke about Mike’s death (because of his own issues with that) iirc, so while Amber’s violence isn’t justified, it wasn’t entirely uncalled for either
Yeah but Linda didn’t fully approve of either of them so what does that mean?
It means that Linda shouldn’t be a factor and he should make the choice himself.
“I did crimes for you” by Deerhoof starts playing on the hacked musack
Are you saying that Walky may not be the Apple O’ his mother’s eye any more?
“Willingness to commit crimes for” is super not a great bar to measure compatibility by. It’s like those people who think Joker x Harley is the gold standard for relationships when it’s just unhealthy codependency and narcissism.
Wouldn’t go that far, it’s more along the lines of “If I needed someone to help me hide a body.”
tfw no gf who’ll help you hide a body.
tfw no bodies for a gf to help hide
tfw gf and bodies but no hiding place
There’s a difference between someone who loves you so much they’d help you hide a body and someone who’s like “no big deal. I do this all the time.”
Far as the Walky and Lucy dynamic went it always felt like Lucy resigned herself to being Walkys cling on, which she should be more than that because she shouldn’t be anyone’s accessory.
It’s why everyone says “she deserves better” it’s not because of Walky it’s because of the role she’s trying to give herself.
True, they both deserve better. Maybe Lucy would be less neurotic with a boyfriend who was into her.
We’ve seen plenty of times by now that he is into her, though, not the least of which example being when her turned down Dorothy without any hesitation.
Lucy seems a bit like Danny pre-Dorothy-breakup. A little clingy, a little too romantic, a little presumptuous, a little dense.
Meanwhile
Linda: Now that your father ain’t here…
*Do date someone ‘cause you think your parents will like them.
*Keep trying to meet the image of who you think we want you to be. *And nothing matters more than what your mother says.
*If you find some offbeat weirdo, then dump em fast.
*Okay. And don’t date anyone who wouldn’t commit a crime for you. Lamo alert.
I’m glad Charles is trying to support Walky regardless of who he chooses. That being said, I wish he had to backbone to say it in front of Linda. I do agree with him to some degree about Amber though. I’m not saying Walky should immediately dump Lucy and get back together with Amber, but I do think he needs to figure out whether he likes Lucy or loves her.
What do y’all think about whether he loves Lucy or not?
I think he likes her, and she is a “safe bet(meaning she is unlikely to dump him,)” but I don’t think he loves her.
I think Lucy loves Walky and Walky just likes Lucy. And honestly if they have sex I think it’ll only complicate things and make shit hard down the road.
Especially given that if they do have sex, Walky will be her first. There is no way that can end well.
I think Lucy actually doesn’t love Walky, or rather, not the way she THINKS she does. She’s just super horny for him and thinks that means she must be in love with him, because in her Teen Series view of college, she MUST meet and date her one true love on the first try.
I actually used to have that back in Uni, thinking that any person I fancied was actually love even though we’d had exactly one conversation which wasn’t even romantic. Takes a bit to grow out of it.
We know he doesn’t love her.
He had a conversation with Dorothy about it several days ago.
And in comparison to his other two relationships, he fell for Dorothy pretty much at first sight, giving the impression that he never had romantic feelings for a woman until then.
As for Amber, they related to each other over the course of a couple days, and she made him feel a lot better when he was down about Dorothy, and they both felt turned on enough with each other to immediately start making out the next time they were in each other’s presence.
Dorothy made him feel new things.
Amber ignited physical passion in him that, while there with Dorothy, we didn’t see them fall into so quickly and easily (either because it wasn’t as powerful or because they were trying to keep some decorum).
With Lucy we see neither.
It may be because time has passed and he has changed, neither falling instantly nor feeling the desire to wallow in physicality.
It may be because Lucy doesn’t get his motor running like they did.
Or it could simply be the dynamic they have with each other.
I think it’s the second option, but I don’t feel we have enough info to decide.
I also think the reason Lucy hasn’t really generated those sorts of feelings in Walky is because I think he is depressed. Which, if he is written to be depressed, I gotta applaud Willis for writing depression in a very not stereotypical way. It’s kinda hard to really describe or pull specific examples for why I think Walky is dealing with depression during this semester, but I do think that’s how he’s feeling.
Charles, My man. Supporting the Garbage Scow.
I would commit a crime if it meant getting the Garbage Scow back.
“Committed a crime for you” is not a green flag. It’s a very big red flag at any stage of a relationship, but especially in the first six months of knowing a person. Shame on you, Charles.
Depends on the crime. Jaywalking on an empty street to meet up with you faster I think is forgivable.
To be fair, I don’t think “committed a crime for you” would be a very strong argument here if that crime was something like jaywalking. “She briefly parked in a no-parking zone because she saw you and wanted to stop and say hi! So devoted, she must be the one!”
Unless you asked them to commit the crime, in which case it should be a red flag for them. Or maybe you just both like crimes. I mean, I guess supervillains need love too.
Thank you for bringing up this point because I also thought of that. Like, it certainly sounds nice on paper, ‘oh man so and so loves me so much they committed a felony for me’ but in practice that can get pretty yikes real fast.
That’s what I think is interesting about it. Charles isn’t telling Walky that Amber is the better choice. Committing a crime is NOT a selling point, even to a relaxed parent. He’s pointing out that Amber liked him enough to do something stupid and reckless. He’s not telling Walky who to date, he’s pointing out that he still has options. Amber is the “offbeat weirdo who makes him happy”, not Lucy.
Exactly. It can be read as positive or negative, or both at the same time. The comment can be taken as a roundabout way of asking, “what do you want? have you thought about that?”
I mean, sal committed that original gas station crime because of malaya, does that mean he indirectly/retroactively approves of what she did for her sake?
How was the crime Malaya’s fault? I hate Malaya too, but we should hate her with the truth. 😛
Pretty sure Angel meant Marcie, who hasn’t been seen in a storyline without Malaya in a long time, and on whose behalf Sal committed the crime.
Marcie.
Yep.
It really depends on the crime.
If I had to bet on one of the Walkertons becoming better, it’d be Charles. This is solid advice, as involved or uninvolved his own biases may or may not be.
(It’s not a crime if nobody else realizes/knows about what happened)*
“Offbeat Weirdo” As opposed to?
Also these folks are hella young. Having a relationship now doesn’t mean it’ll be forever.
some ppl marry right outta high school sometimes it can last but it can be hard, other than a shot gun pregnancy idk why ppl would rush, other than being young/dumb and hormonal but the person you are at 18 isn’t the same at 35 unless you never grow/change at all but life/everything else around you would probably def affect you
i can see dina and becky lasting in the long run, it’d be a shame if they didn’t given everything they’ve been to
Damn. I was hoping he’d give us a glimpse into the origin of his relationship with Linda.
I’m thinking he did: she’s either the one who committed crimes for him, or the respectable one he thought his parents would like (and for whom he dumped the interesting weirdo.)
Third option: Linda is his weirdo, cuz her social climbing quasi-racist control freak angle just happens to do it for him.
Or he is her weirdo because she grew up in a very racist area and that’s why some of that is still internalized in her.
Wow, they could both be each others’ weirdoes!
That’s some Dumbing of Age right there
I think Walky needs to not date anyone for a while. Amber he her own issues she needs to work through. He was pushed into a relationship with Lucy by Dorothy so she wouldn’t be tempted to get back together with him. And Lucy is pressuring him into sex.
Walky needs a friend right now he can talk to more then he needs a girlfriend.
At least he finally knows Dorothy isn’t some kind of superhuman goddess he can unburden himself to. Poor girl.
well he does have a psych major as a current roommate so hopefully he could open up to them (tho being skilled in that might not necessarily help as opposed to being experienced yourself or even experience as a teen/young adult as opposed to analyzing, since i imagine even if psych is a requirement, a couples/marriage counselor therapist is prolly diff to an overall therapist youd see versus like, a criminal psychologist)
Maybe he needs a girlfriend he can talk to? Someone who will listen without trying to fix him until he asks for help? Even if it’s about misgivings regarding their relationship?
Talk to Dorothy and you get an action plan that would suit her, not you.
Talk to Lucy: no, you can’t talk to Lucy, she’ll be shattered if it’s about her, or ahem distracted if it’s about anything else.
“She wolfed her teamster sub for you.”
I don’t know what that means, but I’m pretty sure it involves Jimmy Hoffa’s body.
it’s a ref to the 30 rock sitcom
It would be messed up if Walky, having refused Dorothy, now breaks up with Lucy, tries to get back with Amber to be refused in turn, and then have Amber start dating Booster, who outright stated they were interested in her and have recently started communicating with her.
I don’t want to see things get messy, but it’s hard not to expect some messiness to come from this.
i don’t know if she’d consider going with booster even as a hookup but i imagine amber would get fulfillment helpign booster hook ethan up with asher or someone else
Polycule! Polycule! Polycule!
Panama! Panama!
(Plays softly in the background)
I wonder if that’s actually a real possibility since they did make a joke about it. I don’t see Lucy as the polycule type of girl though. But I could be wrong on this.
she did refuse but maybe she’d consider it as an ultimatum or so if walky rly wanted it but other thans omething casual it seems like it’d be a pain to balance lol
Ummm… giving a sexual ultimatum to someone who already refused would be a very mean and inconsiderate thing to do. Especially as poly stuff requires mutual trust and can affect the non-poly partner’s health directly, for example, with risk of infectious illness. I would question the consent of someone who merely “accepted” a sexual arrangement and only after being given an “ultimatum”.
Sorry, you used the word “consider,” not “accept”. But still.
Can we at least be adults and use its proper name?
Its a fuckpile, damn it! 😀
Oh snap Charles is investing with Yoto, BUY BUY BUY!
Heh, that was trying to sell the fuck pile?
Welp, with my autism, it’s easier to know how many licks to get to the center of a Tootsy Roll XD
Charles: When it comes to dating, you don’t just need to do what your parents want.
Walky: Okay, I want to date Lucy
Charles: Okay but hear me out. What about Amber instead?
RIGHT? This right here.
Yes.
He doesn’t really know Lucy at all at this point, and he just witnessed some pretty heavy romantic tension between Amber and Walky. So I think he’s trying to give Walky his blessing if he decides to date Amber, even though at this point Linda now prefers Lucy. The “okay” in the last panel implies that he respects Walky’s decision and his approval isn’t contingent on Walky doing what he wants.
……. So between this comment and everyone saying the last days that “one of the things Linda hated of Sal” (apart from being an immensely racist hag) is “she reminded of herself”…
Yeah yeah, we’ve all seen the Charles and Walky parallels. But I wonder if we should also pay attention to Charles and Danny’s.
Somewhat related, but I also kind of felt while Olin a meta way this comment makes a lot of sense, in practical in-universe reaction to this series of events it seems strange to me that this advice was given to Walky rather than Sal. If my daughter who’d always had a difficult relationship with her mom suddenly showed up with a boyfriend completely different from her usual interests that my wife loved, I would definitely worry she was dating someone just for her mom’s approval. I don’t think that’s the case with Danny and Sal here, I do think Sal is legitimately charmed by Danny but struggles to articulate why.
Okay, but imagine tomorrow’s strip is exactly the same but with Sal & Charles instead lol
given what ppl have said about the dad, i’d say danny has more of a backbone
Oh, ABSOLUTELY. I actually love Danny!! (He’s such a good egg, he’s grown so much ;;) And I love Sal!! Linda on the other hand is unredeemable imho. But her thing with Charles is starting to feel like a distorted mirror of them? In specific if she was the “delinquent” to his “easygoing nerd”, as some hints point at.
Personally, I’m still waiting for Walky to form that polycule he keeps joking about.
Took me until the end of the comments to remember the crime was falsifying Walky’s grades – stupid vacation brain.
Daaaaaammmmnn. Point to team Amber.
That confirms where Walky got his “more attentive and insightful than he lets on” from.
I think I said it then and I’ll say it again now, but in terms or Walky shipping I feel like it’s still either Joyce or Dorothy for me, maybe the Amber thing felt out of left field and just shoving them together but they still don’t feel like they really Get Along the way Dorothy and Walky did, and their meaningful moments haven’t been super meaningful the way they felt for Joyce and Walky in It’s Walky (part of that being that it was against the backdrop or a lot of sci-fi world ending level drama which intensified things for sure). If it’s a choice between Amber and Lucy, I still think I prefer Amber for Walky because they do have some depth while Lucy and Walky this strip does hit home that almost everything they’ve done together has been performative. I think if we’re talking about who for Amber, either we haven’t met someone really suitable for that yet or it feels like she just needs supportive friends, at least for right now.
Really? I always felt like they got along the best out of any Walky pairing. He and Dorothy had that shared interest in cartoons, but otherwise they were very different people and it caused a lot of tension. Walky and Lucy do seem to get along, but mostly because Lucy is a people pleaser. She likes Walky a lot, and any attention from him is a good thing for her. Amber and Walky flirted on twitter, they had meaningful conversations on garbage roof, and they helped each other out. Walky distracted Amber when she was having a panic attack about Sal, and she helped him realize he needed to take responsibility for his math grades and not just look for an easy fix.
I personally do think that Amber is actually the best match for Walky. Dorothy and Walky do have genuine attraction to each other, but their personal real life goals are too mismatched. Dorothy has grand ambitions, but all Walky wants to do is coast through life and enjoy a geeky, loving relationship with somebody who shares his passions. The two of them will ultimately grow apart because their visions of what they want out of life are too different. (In particular, we already saw how stressed Dorothy was on having to take time out from her schedule to help tutor Walky. Now imagine what happens when she finally becomes Prez or a similar high-ranking, high-responsibility role. She simply will not have time for Walky anymore, and the two will inevitably grow apart.)
Meanwhile, I think Lucy is caring and considerate, does also find Walky attractive and wants what’s best for him, but here’s the rub… What does SHE want out of Walky? As you mentioned, she’s a people pleaser and while a relationship can survive like this for a considerable amount of time, I think eventually Lucy will reach a point where she feels drained being the giver all the time, the one making sure that Walky keeps up on his appointments, his responsibilities etc.
That leaves Amber, and again, the two of them have mutual attraction, adore similar hobbies, but perhaps more importantly, what they want out of life is pretty similar. They just want someone with whom they can be themselves together. They don’t have big dreams or big goals. What’s more, Amber’s neuroticism and desire for control means she probably won’t mind being the responsible one in the relationship because it’s something she would have done anyway.
i know he and dorothy had a connection but joyce would be a bit odd in comparison even more so than billie/jen, even if tehy were together in itswalky/walky and joyce or whatever the chemistry is diff i think even tho lucy once described herself as a white bisexual version of herself lol
I actually don’t love either of them that much as characters, but I do like Walky and Amber as a pairing. I think they’re both more honest with each other than they tend to be with their other peers. That said, I don’t think either of them are quite ready for it yet, with the big trauma they both share (maybe Amber could be ready but not that sure about Walky). And I do think there’s still a lot of interesting stuff to explore with the Walky/Lucy dynamic.
And she would’ve committed that same crime for Danny or Joyce or Dorothy or Ethan is she thought she had to.
Just saying.
“if”
that might make it more appealing incharles’ eyes lol
That just makes her a good friend
Charles is biased in favor of Amber, I personally wouldn’t ship them right now but I do believe Walky should cultivate that friendship for the same reason Charles is biased. Amber has proved so far she is a good friend for Walky and would help him out in any way she can.
People might not believe in the future of Walky and Lucy and relationship, but both are young, both are growing and there are some points they get along and help each other. Even if they mature on lasting love or fall out I think it will be worth it.
This strip does nothing to influence my opinion on any character involved, or the state of their various relationships. I just like it as it is.
Mr. Walkerton is the best. A shame about his wife.
Oh no, tactical understanding right in the unresolved parental issues. I’m so moved that Charles would understand and emphasize with Walky enough to say something like this. I know some people have a problem with the last panel but to me this is 10% good dad mode.
Terrible advice, Chuck. 10/10. No notes.
Yeah if he really do be trying to upsell Walky on that fuck-pile, it’d pay to be a bit more direct.
Makes you wonder how much of that came from his own experience. Maybe Linda has a far more interesting backstory than we thought.
I was with him until the last line
That’s… one way to see it
The more I see of the walkertons the more notes I have on how not to treat my kids.
A lot of tolerance and acceptance for their golden boy, despite the initial outburst, and praise for their daughter only because she behaves like they want her to currently.
Nothing has changed on the parents front except for the optics.
Oof
And Lucy has agreed to follow an absurd plan to convince two racist parents that she wasn’t a bad girlfriend to their son, showing how strong her trust in Walky is. But Charles don’t knows this.
The fact that a black guy counts into “two racist parents” against a black girl brings me very confused amusement.
Isn’t “Some offbeat weirdo who makes (me) happy” the way girls sell Walky to their mothers?
Eh, I believe Lucy and Walky will be still together (or at least friends), until December.
Y’know Charles, I think that before you gauge just how touching of a gesture that is, you should first gauge just how much the person committing it likes doing crimes in general.
And in Amber’s case the answer is: A Lot.
You were doing so well until the last panel there, Chuck…
I’m with Chuck. Amber is a gem.
I was actually pretty impressed with what he was saying until I absolutely was not.
“also she’s white” 😉
Counterpoint: Committing a crime for someone is often a negative more than a positive.
There are exceptions obviously e.g. stealing to provide food for someone who would starve to death when there are no viable options otherwise.
But a lot of crimes can land people in jail for years. It could show passion… but it can also show a lack of morals, lack of respect for others, disregard for law and authority and a lot of other negatives. So you know, not much of a selling point.
Some people here take crime too seriously.
So what crime was it that Charles committed for Linda?
He shoplifted diapers.
More likely what Linda did for him…
In between Linda being nice as long as the kids fall in line with her expectations and Charles trying to sort of counter her behind her back, together they make up like 1.25 non-abusive parents?
Not entirely related to the topic of the strip, but I’m pretty sure Charles was stated to be only half-black. I only bring this up because everyone keeps saying he’s full black.
There’s kind of a weird cultural thing in America where any amount of black is black.
legacy of slavery and segregation.
Combined with almost no one in America other than recent immigrants being “full black” whatever that would actually mean.
What, she committed a crime for walky ? What, when ?
She hacked the university to change his grades, this is an offense, possibly even a felony as the university in question is a government institution or w/e, I don’t remember the exact wording.
It’s a federal crime to hack protected computers in order to cause harm. Changing the grades would count as fraud. It’s the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Oh damn. My mind isn’t the sharpest these days ^^’
I think this comic nails down the problem with Walky x Lucy. Walky can say he really likes Lucy all he wants, but the fact is, even with this being a dumb scheme they concocted together, if Walky really liked Lucy in a way that mattered he would’ve brought her to this dinner regardless of what his parent’s thought. Even if they’re racist he could’ve defended her and walked out or any number of things, but he didn’t even bring her cause what mattered more was their perception of her than Lucy herself. To both of them. I think this relationship needs some real conversations soon or it might sink.
Eh, it was a mutual plan that they hatched together. This kind of ignores that this is as much *her* hijink as it is Walky’s. Honestly them coming up with a scheme together to make Walky’s mom regret rejecting her is kind of the most earnestly couple-y thing they’ve done.
The fact it was a mutual plan makes it worse to me. That’s why I said it mattered more to both of them what Walky’s parent’s thought then what they think of the actual relationship. The irony is in the fact they both really connected as a couple over this scheme. If they actually care about each other the parent’s opinion wouldn’t matter. The whole plan to use Amber to make Lucy look better kind of backfired to me. At least they would’ve known who Lucy is. Right now they only know who Amber is and that she still likes him despite alienating Linda.
Right now this all feels very shallow. I mean their relationship is barely a week old so maybe it should be, but it’s more about how good they look together, or how hot Walky is, or how nice and smart Lucy is. That’s nice, but I feel like Lucy should have been at this get together if she was gonna last. We don’t know if they’ll get another chance.
Well, they’re here all weekend. He has a lot of time.
….okay but amber’s committed several crimes for several people i don’t know if thats really the bar we want to be measuring for her lmao
amber’s committed crimes for or against potentially a majority of the campus and definitely most of the main cast, yeah
charles has a point though, she was actually trying while lucy was… kind of friendzoning herself
“committed crimes for or against potentially a majority of” upward of 35,000 people? She’s been busy!
That “Don’t care about what others think of your beau” of his is speaking from experience, isn’t it?
When it doesn’t go against his wife, he can be quite the father.
I wonder what Linda did for Charles.
Whatever it was, it involved/justified putting him in the Sunken Place apparently T_T
Woah I feel like that’s a little much. The Sunken Place is a metaphor for some heavy trauma. What did you mean by it?
It can involve trauma, yes. The Sunken Place I feel is a metaphor for being put into a state of vulnerability, of being mentally/spiritually displaced and subsequently controlled by the power of someone or something, be it an abuser or systematic bigotry, an experience of oppression that is kept in the black by very design (hence, systematic unseeing).
I actually had this very internal experience during a meltdown when I attended a middle school which unbeknownst to me was controlled by the Unification Church. Not fun.
Yeah but amber did crimes for a lot of people, i don’t think it counts in this case
it also seems like a sh*^^y reason to be in a relationship with someone, an an even sh*&&ier reason to break up with someone
“I really DO like Lucy”
“yeah, but Amber did you a favor”
What is he suggesting? Walky owes Amber, and should therefore dump Lucy?
I feel like he is suggesting ‘Amber has shown commitment and passion and loyalty by putting herself in a precarious situation for you’.
But Walky would have every right to not be interested.
Uh, so Charles really doesn’t like Lucy at all.
“There’s just something…dark…about her.”
“Dad!”
“I can’t tell it but there’s a shade off about her….”
“You’re black!”
“I AM?”
Okay, that was terrible.
I feel like given the dates they brought, this is a conversation that would have made more sense for him to have with Sal (the one who showed up with someone incredibly unlike their image of her or anyone else she ever dated), but I guess he’s just too relieved she’s with a ‘nice white boy’ :/
I’d give him the benefit of the doubt that he was going to say something when he gets Sal alone a moment, but his reaction to Sal showing up with Danny doesn’t give me much hope
Wait a minute
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/03-see-you-in-the-funny-page/indomitable/
“out of earsight” “out of ear reach”
What a detail for this world, I love it lol
“You shouldn’t date someone to make us, your parents, happy, but I want you to know that I think Amber is the cool one.”
OK buddy.
Very glad I binged the diner scene in one go today. My anxiety would not have had a fun time.
“Amber commits a lot of crimes, dad.”
Here we go again with the parents who suddenly turn out *not* to be an unseperable parental unit. It’s nice to see some nuance in parenting.
Me & my coparent are also trying to find ways in which we can teach our kids “yeah, i do this differently from your other dad. and that’s okay. he has different needs, so he makes different rules.“
It doesn’t have to be a war between the parents whose rule gets done, it’s much nicer if parents are authentic about the rules they set.