The Gold Club is a “gentleman’s club” in San Francisco. From my vantage point at Thirsty Bear across to street on a handful of occasions, I have only noticed white guys in suits going in.
You know, I was all teed-up to make a joke that afterwards, he could use the club to play golf as well, but based on all available info, he doesn’t seem to be a particularly rough man (just a man with a tendency to curve his balls), so I feel like that joke would be a fair way from landing and not up to par with the other comments here.
Of course, if you wish to drive me off for my inappropriate pitch, I’ll just go and putter about somewhere else.
This has apparently been retconned a few times. I don’t know where it stands now, but I do remember it being framed as less duplicitous on Harley’s end and more like she was actually in love with her professor and got manipulated.
I’m conflicted. On one hand I never was a huge fan of the “Harley slept her way through school” backstory, though I think that’s to describe that she maaaay not have been as qualified as she seemed to deal with high profile Arkham guys. But I do like the idea that she WAS a good therapist and Joker’s just that good at messing with people’s heads.
I think the updated version in a better mix of both that maybe has other problematic issues. She’s framed more like a talented and naive student mentored by a prof she got feelings for and their relationship turned romantic. But she got disgraced as sleeping her way through school when things got found out since the prof was married. She ends up at Arkham because in a corrupt place like Gotham it’s the only place that would take her, and she tries to use it as an opportunity to repair her reputation before running into Joker. We know what happens after that.
The Harleen comic miniseries from 2019 does a pretty good job with it, I think. She’s genuinely smart and skilled, but she also had an ill-advised affair with a professor while a student. That cast a shadow over all her accomplishments until she got her “big break” working with the hard cases at Arkham, and the Joker was really good at playing on her insecurities and sympathies around that.
I like to head canon that she was like, taken advantage of multiple times like that, including in K 12. Very smart but very alone in life for a long time, and that does things to a person, especially when there’s always always always men who try to take advantage. You can dodge most bullets and still be struck, you know?
Agree strongly on that one, I haven’t seen any non-Timmverse Harleys that lived up to the original. As for her college years, I interpreted it that whether she was smart enough to make it on her own was deliberately left in the air. She was just too innately crooked not to cheat. That said, I think someone with the strong character and well, self-respect to earn a PhD the hard way would not have allowed themselves to get turned into Joker’s perpetual doormat.
Tho I will concede it’s actually less compelling story-wise. There would be more of a dramatic tragedy if Harley was corrupted than if she was just corrupt to begin with.
Schools are super ableist on a systemic level and the disability office (getting accommodations and keeping them and using them is like a fucking part time job that violates your privacy and that you don’t get paid for btw) does *not* help enough, and Harleen is female enough that the type of neurodivergent that she is might have been undiagnosed anyway. Maybe she cheated, maybe she earned her way up, maybe it was both fucking things at the same time, and school admins can fuck off if they don’t want to realize how bad the system is??
I am not up on other continuities, but in DCAU Harley canonically has a doctorate, and I don’t really think you can sleep your way to a doctorate. I think Harley isn’t above shady manipulations in order to juice her grades, but I don’t think it was a thing she could really get by on. I have always taken that to mean that Harley was always ethically dubious, which dovetailed into her getting into sensationalist pop psychology even before she fell in with the Joker.
And to prevent exactly this situation is why thesuses are graded by a committee of at least three people. It would still be possible but it would require either an orgy or multiple seductions in a short space of time.
You know, I’m going to be honest, I would not be surprised if Linda is what could be called a “throat GOAT”, and I hate that it 100 percent would fit for her.
This is a step in getting over it; he’s got to lay out and face that thing he really DIDN’T want to face. He’s looked the beast in the face– now name it, Walkerton!
Your mom being racist, your dad going along with it and realizing you got a pass for 18 years and the background readjusting of your relationships with those parties and anyone else you bring into your life isn’t something you just Hakuna Matata
Yeah, like he knows it sucks, but we also know that he’s well past the days when he used to deny the likelihood of it all, like he’s pretty firmly in Camp Sal on this one.
I feel like a lot of this is outta his control. He can’t force his parents to not be racist. He’s already reaffirmed his relationship with Sal and acknowledged the situation. The guilt at this point feels…I don’t know…redundant? Like we already went through this.
well, he’s not gonna backstep into being racist towards sal/thinking she’s not equally privileged or so but their relationship seems to be doing well despite parents for now at least
Given that it seems to have not come up yet, if there were a male-type manly dude that Walky were to hook up with (Ethan? Asher?), Walky (and we) might find out that his parents (or his mom more specifically) are also in fact queerphobic as well.
Yeah, I was just thinking that a white dude might get a different reaction, but likely wouldn’t “anchor him in respectability”.
Not the way Dorothy would.
We know from past experience Walky is willing to have transactional gay sex in exchange for things like better grades and free pizza. Guess we can add “white privilege” to the list!
He’s joked about it before, like that he’d suck dick for free pizza, but it’s difficult to tell how serious he’s being. It’s not like with Sal where we have a firm “straight” from her.
Walky being bi could be fun, if only to snark his parents like “Ok it may not work out with lucy but my next partner is def gonna be a boy just to try it out”lol
I also noticed that. Previously he had stated he would blow a dude for pizza, I believe. At the GSA thingie. But it could have been ambiguous how much that was a hyperbolic joke. This seems to confirm it was not.
The fact that he thinks a white dude would have grounded him firmly in respectability makes me think that he at least doesn’t think his parents are anti gay.
I would have been labeled bisexual when I was younger simply because I didn’t know how to care about other people, not enough to have a preference for sex. I expect Walky is in about the same position, a sexuality he might define as “If somebody wants to touch my weenus, I’m in.”
Though he has already grown up a bit from the narcissistic baby who told Dorothy about the “life hack” of simply telling her that he loved her because that’s the expected response when she said it to him, he’s probably not going to learn about how it takes continuous effort to care before he really hurts someone.
As I recall Jennifer is biracial East Asian (I want to say Chinese but I might be misremembering) and white. By typical American racist standards East Asian is “whiter” than a black person. Her family also has money and social status adding further “whiteness” making her even “whiter” than Walky. Not sure off hand if Asher is biracial or not but his family also has social status of a sort and I would assume money given how high he seems to rank in the Korean mob. So Linda would probably consider him about as white as she does Jennifer.
Oh man, can you imagine the gay gay mess of a storyline with Walky, Ethan, and Asher? Maybe also Booster in the mix? I’d love some major mlm(+nb) stuff, The First Part of the comic was all about sapphics.
Which was amazing btw, this is the opposite of a complaint.
I mean, it’s why the racist / non-racist binary is really counterproductive? The point of knowing about systematic racism is that it’s just that, a system with layers to it, and where addressing it requires thinking about one’s place in it, like Walky is doing in the last panel.
I don’t know. I get what’s Walky’s saying here. Some racists are evil, others are more like simply flawed. (I suspect Linda would be classist and a shitty parent even if both her kids had come out beige.)
“My parents are villains, but they’re not wacky cartoonish SUPER-villains like Joyce’s mom or Becky’s dad or Amber’s dad or Ruth’s grandfather…I guess Asher’s granddad is *literally* a criminal mastermind but he’s cool with it so I don’t know if that counts. But anyway, they’re just regular villains, like Billie’s parents”
I take it as him saying that he loves his parents, as in he does care about them, and he recognizes admirable qualities they possess, but he also knows that he can’t unsee this side to them after Sal, with an assist by Billie, made him confront it.
Bingo. Grappling with the realization that your parents have some deeply terrible aspects to them is always rough, especially if part of that realization is that you personally have benefited from in any way.
Even before he recognized it as racism, he knew on some level that they were abusive. He recognized, through their treatment of Sal, that his status as “golden child” was always conditional. That if he screwed up it could go away and he’d be in Sal’s place.
that’s also just life, sometimes you can meet a seemingly wonderful person who’s reasonably polite and even charming and then they say something super fucked up/disturbing out of nowhere.
https://youtu.be/-yUafzOXHPE I’m sure a thought process like this would def change a lot of ppl’s opinions about some flirty playboy versus being perceived as a predator if they said something like this speech out loud lol
I can see why you’d say that but 1. I highly doubt Willis writes or plots anything other than fun easter eggs based on the comments section, and 2. this is not a wholly uncommon thing for someone to express about their parents.
People who see whites as better may also see straights as better, both camps tend to be comfortable with the idea hierarchies of valuation in people, so there being overlap wouldn’t be surprising. (Not that it’s 100% as there is some racism in the LGBTQ+ community.)
There’s an episode of GI Joe where Cobra Commander is so vehemently anti-drug that he teams up with the Joes to take down a drug lord and I can easily see an 80’s cartoon doing the same thing with racism.
It would genuinely surprise me if there aren’t several Saturday morning cartoons that (mutatis mutandis) did exactly that. Heck, we all remember the Joker refusing to work with Red Skull when he realizes he’s a Nazi (although Joker being Joker, not sure how much of that was principle and how much was him thinking it’d be funny).
The only thing I can think of is a “Ding Dong Bandit” game where Joyce has to sneak down the dorm halls drawing phalli on whiteboards without getting caught by her neighbors (I imagine Ruth and/or Amber are harder enemies as they actually care to investigate). I guess Joyce could do something where she hides behind plants, or in unlocked dorms, or elevators or something, to avoid detection at some point (maybe you have to be careful because Dina is an ambush predator that may be within lurking within, as seen by eyes in the dark???). Just brainstorming because you asked – not sure if any of these are actually good ideas.
It is a crime they killed flash. Now where shall the masses Kongregate?
Comic-book villains were a warning to us. Villains don’t have to be conflicted. Real life villains sometimes do look like Trump or Hitler or the guys buying Supreme Court justices. They don’t have to have tragic backstories. They can just be power-hungry rich jerks. They can be ridiculous and stupid and still end up killing innocent people.
“Do you remember those bad guys, on the shows you used to watch on Saturday mornings? Well these guys are not like those guys. They won’t exercise restraint because you’re children. They will kill you if they get the chance. Do NOT not give them that chance.”
He kind of was a cartoon villain though. They were basing villains on caricatures of him as far back as the 80s. Back to the Future being the most iconic.
I think my absolute least favorite element of this storyline is…well…Walky is still a mixed race kid. Walky lamenting his “privilege” rubs me the wrong way cuz Mixed people actually get A LOT OF SHIT in both white and black spaces and now we have to talk about what is a “White” feature and what is a “black” feature on this person who is always both and even as a deconstruction of racist behavior it just feels gross to read.
Oh, Walky “Came out Whiter?” Haha Fuck off with that noise. So frustrating to try to quantify anyone’s blackness to justify how they’re treated.
I mean. Ain’t that a core part of it? That privilege isn’t a binary switch and people can enjoy immunity from certain prejudices even if they’re still affected by others?
it’s frustrating to every single mixed race person, myself included. there’s also a cold realization in knowing that the privilege you enjoy is both extremely conditional and arbitary, and it can be taken away by bullshit reasons, as Walky is finding out
It’s a lot, honestly, like there is so much to be said for how “passing privilege” also means often being taken less seriously or othered by people you share a demographic with, or yes, specifically challenges that mixed people face.
Like, I don’t think Walky’s always had a free ride on these things, he’s probably had no shortage of frustrating situations, but I think this is more him just addressing that Sal has had some additional, different challenges compared to him on that front.
Yeah. Walky is also a mixed race kid and nothing is going to fully insulate him from the shit that comes with that. That said, being perceived as ‘whiter’ or ‘having more ‘white’ features’ does often result in being treated better. That does make things hard and alienating for talking about the shit they’re not insulated from, but it’s also something that I think is worth addressing.
I remember there was a study years ago that talked to mixed race white and black twins with more varied features, particularly skin tone. It found that the one who was perceived as ‘whiter/lighter’ tended to identify in terms of being mixed/beige/etc. while the other twin tended to only identify as Black. It reminded me of Walky calling himself ‘generically beige’ but Sal ‘Black’.
Uh oh, here comes The Last Jedi YouTube brigade /s
I think the thing that really rubs people the wrong way how “Walky is whiter than Sal” is presented as being an Objectively True Fact, handed down from the gods and agreed upon by all.
Especially since the actual physical difference between them Sal was referring to (Walky’s hair is naturally straight, Sal straightens hers) isn’t apparent by looking at them, so it reads a lot like Walky just has, like, white vibes, and…well there’s a lot to unpack there that I don’t feel equipped to talk about.
It’s a loaded topic (maybe the most loaded topic of all) with a lot of nuance, so it’s unsurprising it’s leading to discourse.
But is it presented as Objectively True Fact? Has anyone else commented on it? Or agreed with it?
I’ve always seen it as their family dynamic, not as something anyone else in the story recognizes. Other than when talking about Linda’s racism, of course. Nobody’s spontaneously claiming Walky’s whiter, are they?
Jennifer agreed with the assessment of the family dynamic. Of how Linda treated them. Not of him being “whiter” as an Objectively True Fact.
And Walky’s take on himself is obviously part of that.
Yeah but I dunno. It just always strikes an ugly note with me. Like that comic with Sal confronting Walky about it has rubbed me the wrong way for YEARS and I’m only recently compartmentalizing why. I think it’s mostly unfair to treat someone bad for factors beyond their control. And I get that we can’t control how we’re perceived and our privilege. But it’s one thing if we’re talking systemic privilege. But the peer to peer “privilege” of your twin for LOOKING a certain way. I dunno how to feel about that. Is it ok to make someone feel bad for being born different if it benefits him? Like a sister with blonde hair or a cousin with nice eyebrows?
And then you bring with that the stigma of “racism” and I start seeing “Colorism”.
I mean, I don’t think Sal is literally angry at Walky for how he looks in that moment, but for the ways he’s been able to sustain a bubble of ignorance around the shit Sal’s been going through–which is frankly pretty well within Walky’s control. He could’ve cared enough about Sal over the five years she was gone to try to notice what was happening, and he didn’t. Instead he assumed it all started with the gas station robberies and let things lie.
(This is not me trying to make Walky out to be a terrible person, I recognize that he was a dumb teen and he’s trying to do better now. But I think it’s still reasonable for Sal to have been angry about it.)
I think it’s also important to consider maybe Sal wasn’t;’the 100% correct. She’s speaking from her own jaded perspective, but the Walkertons parents fucked up both of them in different ways. Because Walky “came out whiter” he became so afraid of failing in his parents expectations he literally eats his own test paper. Sal did have a valid point but she’s also just a dumb teen too I her own bubble of ignorance. Making this whole thing a confusing, nuanced, mess.
Ah yes it’s definitely the teenage boy’s fault for not picking up on the unfair treatment for the sin of … not being as black as her.
Like even if he clued in on her being treated differently he might not have picked up on why. And I dunno if that’s his fault for being born with straight hair. And making the problem not “You coulda been supportive” and not “You were born “whiter” just…
Yeah I’ll never be cool with that. Sal was wrong for that.
I like the idea that they were both wrong in different ways. It emphasizes that playing favorites with your kids can drive a wedge between them and really puts the fault on Charles and Linda as it should be.
She was. It was wrong of her to take her frustrations out on her brother even if he’s involved in some of them. He has no control over the different ways he and Sal were treated and did not in any way encourage them. But those problems are still there and it is important that Walky knows about them. It is a thing which pushes him to actively be a better person.
Now, I’m not saying that makes Sal lashing out correct or okay. It doesn’t. But I am saying that the conversation needed to happen and the topic needed to be brought to his attention. Could Sal have handled that conversation better? Absolutely. But it’s important to remember that she is a victim here just like Walky is, and in many ways has had it far worse. Expecting her to be perfectly rational about the subject is unreasonable. That’s just not how people work, especially at that age.
We should also remember that she didn’t even bring up “came out whiter” until after Walky responded to being their favorite with Well, I didn’t rob any convenience stores.
Which is far more blaming their parent’s treatment of her on her, than “came out whiter is blaming it on him.
I think it’s sometimes okay to make someone feel bad by telling them the truth about what’s going on around them. Privilege isn’t a moral thing, regardless of how some people act when the idea is brought up, and Walky isn’t even the one being racist here… Like, I could be wrong but I always read Sal’s anger as “it hurts me that you don’t understand and acknowledge why our parent hurt me”. I also don’t really read Walky as feeling hurt by that.
“Passing privilege” is absolutely a deeply fraught topic that a lot of very wise people have given input on outside this comment section. It’s definitely not some absolute thing, some way of saying that Walky (or someone else) doesn’t experience racism or other life problems.
I do feel like Willis is kind of… doing their best here despite limitation of their personal experiences and of needing to stay roughly within established canon that was written down a large amount of education ago. And as an actual Black person with dog in this fight IRL you’re entitled to feel woogy for whatever reason you feel woogy. I hope you’re able to work through whatever feelings you need to.
I honestly think it’s more like sexism? But like, texturism. Having friends of color instead of white/white passing friends. Lots of little things that can determine whether or not someone can pass as white. Not just skin tone.
Well, if it’s any consolation, race is just one factor in the multi-dimensional thing that is privilege? Other identities along axises of gender, sexual orientation, disability, neurodivergence etc., that all come together in subtle but important ways that cannot be overstated.
When it comes to exploring the dimensions of societal privilege in comics and stuff, race in particular is made a main focus these days for several reasons:
1. This is America and the cup runneth over.
2. In the 2016 election, one of the strongest indicators that someone was gonna vote Republican was racial sentiment, even more strongly correlated than being already registered Republican.
3. Racism is a fundamental building block of fascism, and the primary means of sowing discord on the left.
I think everyone has their own lived experience and that’s the important part. It isn’t about Walky’s mixed racial makeup as much as it is that his parents chose to treat him different. He personally knows he hasn’t experienced the same adversity as Sal and he has guilt at that unfairness.
I mean…. Okay maybe it’s bc I live in a majority black country so colorism is an even bigger societal issue than racism but like. Dude. Proximity to whiteness is proximity to privilege. I’m not sure if you’re arguing against that as a concept, or just how it’s treated in the comic, or just venting frustration that it’s a thing? Im kinda confused about what you’re saying here.
Mixed kids do have their own unique set of issues- i myself am pretty light skinned to the point of being ambiguous “generic beige” when my hair is straight, and grew up in a non black centered space, and had kind of an identity crisis when I had to assimilate the information that I am both black but incredibly privileged because of my shade. But yes, there is an inherent privilege to being mixed over being a dark skinned black person. “Quantifying blackness” sucks but its undeniable that someone with pale skin, loose curls and ambiguous or european features gets treated better and given more opportunities in a eurocentric white supremacist society than someone with dark skin, 4c hair or dreads or any number of stigmatized black hair styles and distinct African features.
Having privilege doesn’t make you a bad person, and it pisses me off when people act like acknowledging their privilege is demonizing them somehow. Pointing out the fact that someone gets better treatment for something they have no control over isnt “making them feel bad” about it, it’s pointing out objective fact. Like it is for me, it is simultaneously true that walky has light skinned/ambiguous privilege via proximity to whiteness and that he is a racialized minority with its own set of problems separate from the issues of dark skins.
I like this, this is starting to sell me on these two as a couple. Lucy looks like she’s about to suggest going and crashing their lunch (which I might be misreading, she could also just think Walky’s funny), and Walky getting rightfully upset about this is good. Mayhaps this leads to Walky actually telling her that he loves her in front of his parents (whether he means it or not)? Idk how that would play out, but I’m here for it.
It sells me on them as well, honestly. Lucy *gets* Walky in that he knows he has a particular privilege and is human enough to be aware and admit to all of it. Walky cares about Lucy enough even though he’s not *sure* about where they may go that he knows if they will make this work, he has to be upfront with her in all aspects of the family dynamics.
I do think her expression in the last panel is her being amused by him, yeah, like I am sure she knows he’s being facetious to a degree. I also honestly wouldn’t be surprised if she’s respecting him this much more for even talking about some of this stuff, like I know she knows he’s not just The Fun Guy, we’ve seen her be around for some of his emotionally mature moments like shutting down her brother being a dick for his amusement, but I do think it’s possible she’s appreciating his maturity about this, even if he’s couching it in immaturity to maintain that emotional space cushion, as he is often shown doing.
I read it as ‘slight amusement’ of walky being frustrated like “first world problems” kinda thing (though it is a bit more serious than that but Walky’s lived a fairly cushy life up til now)
See, a cartoon villain would devote their life to tormenting both Sal and Walky, instead of just totally neglecting one of them. Like, maybe by goading Walky into killing him by dropping the tube containing Sal’s marginally-less-shitty-than-Linda adoptive parents onto him, only for it to fall through the floor and also crush Sal’s surrogate father figure to death.
What are you talking about? A cartoon villain would obviously favor one over the other in order to build up resentment and competition between them. Tormenting them both would simply give them a common enemy.
I am so confused… Is it because Walky always hung with white people, and his sister hung out with minorities? They just see her as blacker? They are literally the same color! Is it gender? Black man ok, black woman no?
It’s part of it, sure, though we’ve also seen that hair texture plays a part, too, as does him being seen as “nonthreatening” by people. Colorism can be a complicated topic.
What it is is this: Walky is a well-behaved big ol’ goof. The ways in which he’s kind of a handful “befit his gender”: he’s rambunctious and snarky. But they don’t befit his gender in racialized ways: he’s not angry or aggressive. On top of that, he gets good grades. He’s book smart. His mom sees him as a potential Ph.D. candidate.
Sal, on the other hand, was a tomboy as a kid. She plays rough. She disrespects authority. She gets bad grades. These are traits that are regarded poorly on women and especially Black women, and thus play into Linda’s preexisting biases. Linda’s not just racist but displaying misogynoir, or a specific bigotry against Black women.
On top of that, and god knows how privy Linda is to any of this, but sexually Walky is also nonthreatening. Scared of girls (we know he told Linda sharing a bed with Billie freaked him out), virginal until adulthood. On top of not demonstrated aggressive traits associated with Black men, he sidesteps some very specific associations of that aggression. Compare Sal, who dresses in ways that flatter her, and is by her own admission promiscuous and has dominant traits–it’s easy to imagine Linda reading her as a slut or a whore or whathaveyou, again, doubly so because of her skin color.
Sal’s choice of friends–particularly Marcie, who is also a person of color with a rough-and-tumble personality and who we know is sexually open, and poor to boot–also probably doesn’t help.
(To be 100% unambiguous here: I am doing my best to clarify that I am talking about traits that white people, in this case Linda, associate with Black people. I personally do not believe Black people or Black women en masse “usually” have any sort of personality traits, that being aggressive sexually or physically is necessarily bad, or that intelligence can be measured on paper or has any impact on one’s goodness.)
I know Walky’s had three girlfriends in the past thirteen years of strips but you gotta remember when he first met Dorothy he was literally incapable of talking around her. He’d just go bug-eyed and occasionally spout gibberish. (Basically any strip they’re in together pre-Nov-2011).
He also mentioned when Billie crawled into his bed during a mental-health freakout that when he hit puberty he had to ask Linda not to put them in the same bed during sleepovers anymore because it wigged him out (14-Jul-2014)
He was like that because he LIKED her and never had romantic feelings for girls before.
Not because he was SCARED of her.
Please remember that he interacted with Joyce with no such issues before he even met Dorothy.
He also seemingly had no issues with his female teacher Leslie, the woman at the front desk who I’m currently drawing a blank on, and literally any other female character.
In fact, I’m pretty sure Dorothy is the only woman he’s ever acted like that with, including both Amber (who he was also passionate about) and Ruth (who he openly stated scared him).
So that clearly wasn’t fear regarding Dorothy.
Unless you’re using “scared” as in nervous and not as in fearful, but, again, that was only ever Dorothy.
Sometimes language is imprecise! I thought “scared of girls” succinctly communicated “disinterested and extremely awkward and avoidant around ideas of sexual and romantic intimacy” but I guess not
Consider this: you’re lumping a lot onto the word “scared”, none of which include the primary definition (and not all of which I’m sure even apply to it as I don’t think most people would associate disinterested with scared).
It also further took me into believing you meant fearful because you associated it with him telling Linda not to put him and Jennifer in the same bed anymore because it wigged him out (the strip itself implies it’s the parents’ idea, btw, and we can’t tell if he was actually wigged out at 9 years old or if he was being facetious in the moment because he was wigged out in the moment).
Now I do finally understand what you meant, though, again, that still only applies to Dorothy; the instance with Jennifer was about the situation had her acting extremely abnormal and not because she’s a girl.
We can’t even say it’s sleeping with/waking up next to a girl because he not only did so with Dorothy, but also with Joyce and seemingly had no such issue with Joyce (seemingly because they were not awoken naturally, but rather by water hose, so we can’t say for certain).
In Wack’d’s defence (god that looks weird), the phrase “scared of girls” usually implies “in a romantic/sexual” context. If I heard that a teenage boy was scared of girls I wouldn’t expect them to become a gibbering wreck if a female cashier served them in a shop.
Except scared of girls also usually implies scared of the idea of romance with a girl, not a specific girl, manifesting in the stereotypical nervous behavior around any attractive girl who even remotely pays attention to them.
This would be scared of Dorothy and only Dorothy because he never had pants euphoria until Dorothy.
Oh, yeah, been there. Scared of messing up is what it is. Something unfamiliar is happening in my mind, and a (metaphoric) voice in my head that I’ve never heard before is shouting THIS IS IMPORTANT!!! DON’T FOUL IT UP!!! Scared of saying the wrong thing. Scared because I don’t seem to be able to think. Scared of not knowing what comes next.
A lot of that is after the fact though. We’ve seen flashbacks to Linda’s treatment of them as little kids – meeting Marcie on the playground, the scene with the Hymmel video.
See it rubs me the wrong way when we tie it back to personality and actions. As a black guy who watches cartoons and anime, grew up in the suburbs, has lots of white friends, is corny and never quite fit in with the ideas of black culture, ive always felt a bit of imposter syndrome. And this is coming from someone who’s full on black. I often say stuff like “I don’t sound black” because I feel like I don’t only for people to correct me and say “you do sound black. You’re black and that’s how you sound.” ironically I feel like there’s not really a way to talk about how a racist views “black” features without kinda coopting those stereotypes.. Like being a dorky idiot savant who likes cartoons and has straight hair is no less black than a motorcycle riding smoker with a criminal record and curly hair. But also Walky should check his privilege? So those features aren’t black? Or are we saying what is or is not a black is determined by the racists? And were just gonna validate that by using it against people of color who may not fit the stereotype of what a black man or woman behaves like?
Look obviously I can’t tell you how to feel about any of that stuff, but here’s my take if you’re interested.
I think in-narrative it’s supposed to be super fucked up that Walky’s parents and the world around him have thoroughly deracialized him and he’s bought into it. (See also Sarah having to remind him he’s Black during the kidnapping arc.) Like yeah, Walky is not actually less Black than Sal is, but he still gets read that way and treated better because of it.
Walky doesn’t need to change himself to be “more Black”, in terms of his demeanor, his interests, his appearance. And Sal never, not once, said he had to do any of that. Nobody has. What he did have to do is recognize the social position that puts him in, empathize with the position Sal’s in, and do better to support her. And he’s doing that! He’s putting in the work, all while still being the same old dopey nerd, and it’s healed his relationship with Sal immensely.
So, like, the comic isn’t saying you or Walky is “less Black”. (Walky is saying that, but he’s kind of a moron, and his parents are saying that, but they’re wrong and racist.) Just that some Black people–who are just as Black as anyone else–get treated better by white people for reasons beyond their control. And when that happens they should lend a hand to those who don’t have that going for them. That’s all.
I guess my issue is nobody has said “Walky you’re just as black as anyone else. Neither him nor Sal. Maybe Lucy will. But so far I cant tell if its something the characters believe or something the narrative believes.
I mean right or wrong, perception by White society as the empowered group sets the law on how people are treated. So while the concept of “acting white” is bullshit, that doesn’t change the fact that it still gets you better treatment. that’s why code switching is a thing at all; being able to drop your speech patterns largely associated with your marginalized identity and take on whatever the eurocentric tone of your society is (speaking specifically within western society) is a noted skill because it’ll get people to take you more seriously. Not because it’s better, but because that’s the standard white people set, and while we should deconstruct that, in day to day life there’s not much you can do but go along with it.
It’s the same reason why I deliberately deepen my voice when I want to be taken seriously, but raise it when I want to seem non threatening. Sexism plays into that…
Reread these few strips and I forgot their dad is only half-black, so. Huh. Billy was right, being mixed isn’t a get-out-of-racism free card and it makes a bit more sense now how he can just sit around and condone their mom’s racism towards their kids.
Honestly given how similar in some ways Danny and Lucy are personality wise it also makes the ‘issue’ even less easy to ignore. They are both a bit ‘too romantic’ sometimes. Polite. Generically Christian in a bland sort of way.
Like I even on my head put them in a box of characters I consider ‘perfectly nice if they were real but also boring’. Besides the odd time of verbal diarrhoea from Danny which he hasn’t displayed in front of them nothing is really that offensive about either of them at all and the parents if they show they favour Danny and not Lucy when in the same space is just really obvious what the issue is.
It’d probably won’t happen in this universe but it’d be amusing (yet messed up) if they all had dinner together and like “yeah, your parents have too many issues, we’re going to date each other instead” tho even if sal/danny and walky/lucy don’t last in the ‘long run’ i dn’t expect them to move on too fast either. well maybe lucy with her being gungho about having a bf and such)
I was always kinda on the Walky/Lucy train, like even back when Billie suggested it during the Amber storyline in an unkind way. I think there is something to the dynamic, and it’s honestly developed really nicely.
I am really liking these past few pages with them. It really does display that A. Yes, Lucy has naivete, but she also is definitely not as naive as some might think, and that B. Walky’s got some hidden depths on this, including seeing the nuances of the situation. I also kinda love her playful retort here.
You know, Lucy is a people-pleaser, at points to a fault, and we’ve seen that she really wants to be liked by everyone, including people she can’t possibly think are that pleasant, like Malaya. But, part of me wonders if this is going to go the other direction. Maybe part of her will kind of dig the idea of being the “bad girl” here. Like, I am not suggesting she’s going to deliberately tank the Walkertons’ opinion of her, but, Lucy might feel a wee-bit defiant. This is a dynamic she has really never had an opportunity to feel before, so, maybe she’ll see it as an opportunity of sorts.
This catches the mind-bending vibe of one parent being racist against another, and variably against a kid for how ‘well’ the kid is doing at Being White, pretty damn well. It can even happen if you pass as white when not beside relatives you look enough like who aren’t, but have ‘whiter’ relatives with less so-called ‘tells’ of similar age, from experience…it took a black aunt with a crappy white mom to sit down and explain it to me as a kid lol.
It’s a tough situation, and this arc feels like it’s gonna move some things forward a little– for Sal and Walky internally, if not necessarily for how their parents act.
You might be surprised somehow to discover that the Chinese and Japanese people I’ve met consider themselves different races, and do consider that to be a form of mixed-race marriage.
Colorism is an important factor to the discussion, but the Sal and Walky scenario comes down to features that hinges more in racism; I was comparing a personal experience in which I, too, experienced racism– for further context, in a culturally similar locale to the setting, fairly geographically close to it, where antiblack racism is one of the most important discussions on the matter.
I do love that Walky here is absolutely, and very casually at that voicing he might be a liiiiittle bi. Booster’s very presence might’ve contributed to that kind of realization tbh, queerness is like neurodivergence: We cluster and vibe with each other even before we know.
I also love how he’s not only in Sal’s side, but also, acknowledging how right she always was. And!! The lingo!! He’s picked up “privilege” there :DD
He still has some toxic masculinity traits he hasn’t quite shaken off yet though (see: screaming for a haircut when Booster praised its feminine energy).
Some, though mostly the less toxic ones, if that makes any sense. He doesn’t want to be seen as feminine and has some messed up ideas of what that means. Worrying about being seen as gay usually goes along with that, but it doesn’t for him, which is interesting.
It’s also all internal. All focused on things he should do or look like. No signs of him being toxic to women.
Also implying that his parents could be cool with it if just being white was enough for it to be ‘respectable’, unless they’re just performative allies , if not “I’d rather you be gay than date X race”
It definitely shouldn’t. I’ve always thought the idea was like, the people with the most power or overall influence or whatever, they’re the ones thinking of it as a privilege, and they’re (to their mind) doling out that “privilege” to their “lessers”, as they’d see it.
For a low-stakes example of what I mean, it’s like if you’re a teacher in a classroom and one of the kids is more comfortable standing while they write their answers, but you’re a controlling asshole and punish the kid for standing, because they’re students so they have to sit down, but you’re the teacher so you get to stand up. The only time they get “standing privileges” would be when you give them permission to use the bathroom, which is also you giving them “use of their own body privileges”.
IDK if that’s coherent, I’m still coming down from last night’s edible.
Team Rocket never fails to please. I don’t think there’s a show they’ve been part of without completely stealing it. Personally, I love them the most in Kanto and Alola. Absolute classic trio, and so many generic ‘mon series tried their best to copy ’em.
at least she doesn’t look too upset about it. maybe if they do join for dinner it won’t be too awkward (or walky will do some kinda antics/hijinks in between to ease the tension more)
Walky?? Casually making reference to being bi??? Somehow that’s the more incredible part of this than him acknowledging his privilege and talking to Lucy about his parents
Is that what it means? I thought he meant his PARENTS didn’t care what gender his partner was. I’m all for bisexual Walky though. What male cast member might be a good fit for him? Just hypothetically.
I think it’s a comment about his parents, not himself. He’s trying to head off the notion that because they’re bigoted in one way they’re probably bigoted in all the ways.
that still baffles me considering how people say Sal and Walky look EXACTLY THE SAME. Didn’t Joe say Walky should never grow his hair cuz he’d get them both mixed up?
The way their favoritism shows itself is racist as heck, because Linda is certainly a fairly racist person and their father… well, I don’t know, but I’m guessing he’s not free of that bigotry even though he’s Black himself.
However, honestly, they just picked one child and ran with it. If she’d married a white man, she still would’ve preferred one child to the other.
Okay. Out of all the DOA strips, why did this have to be the one where I finally noticed how good Walky’s hair looks at that length??? (I know it was pointed out earlier, but now I see it.)
I too hate it when people crush my carefree goofball vibe (this is a lie. I am not a carefree goofball but it sounds like a great lifestyle option to this uptight anxietyball)
I think he’s more saying that Linda wouldn’t mind if he were, and in particular that she would prefer him dating a white (or Asian) boy to a Black girl.
I would LOVE if Walky said to his parents “I love my girlfriend who is black, but I also love *insert new character here* who is non binary, Mexican and their skin tone is on the darker end of a makeup foundation pallet.”
Extra points is Booster somehow is involved.
I know it’s not gonna happen but I always wish for these kind of scenarios when bigots are involved. Also, I’m loving this arc because it hits close to home. When my older sister introduced her husband to us (me and my divorced parents) when they were dating for the first time and he let us know he was from Mexico (Chihuahua to be precise) there were three reactions. My mom didn’t care, she was just happy he seemed like a decent guy. My very racist dad was LIVID and was promptly booted from dinner for being a dick, and I just drank in all the drama (I was a teen and didn’t quite see the problem). My dad screamed that they would last 6 months because he’d get deported and left. They’re going for almost 20 years marriage now. I kinda wanna see where Walky will take this and if the drama will be as good as my sister’s.
Hey, Willis, could you try shading with dark gold instead of dark red for these indoor scenes? It would align better for the atmospheric lighting profile for better realism, and I think it’d look better.
Also, Lucy is colored in a way that sort of makes her look like a burn victim with how grey she looks. Slightly darker + higher saturation would be helpful, and her blush tone doesn’t quite match her skin. Sorry if the critiques bother you.
Given that the buffet is ahead all the way to january of next year , i don’t think he’d go back and editi t lol, tho if you have a tumblr or so maybe you can edit it and make your own posts as a fan edit or so
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“I was ALMOST WHITE until you came along!”
“well SORRY for being an oppressed race!”
“I almost checked every box! I just had to develop a taste for mayonnaise and learn what different types of gold clubs are for!”
They make clubs out of gold?
I misspelled Golf (and “misspelled” just now, but I caught it).
Although if there is something out there called the Gold Club, I bet it’s mostly white folks.
I just assumed a gold club was an extra exclusive (white) tier of golf/country club.
The Gold Club is a “gentleman’s club” in San Francisco. From my vantage point at Thirsty Bear across to street on a handful of occasions, I have only noticed white guys in suits going in.
I thought it was people carrying a tier of credit card? Or do they only do that with platinum/black cards?
Gold is too bougie for serious yupscale marketing. I mean, even peasants can have it nowadays.
Wouldn’t a golf club made out of gold weigh a thousand pounds and play like garbage?
Well it’s mostly for show.
I get it!
And Tiger Woods could beat all of us with it.
You know, I was all teed-up to make a joke that afterwards, he could use the club to play golf as well, but based on all available info, he doesn’t seem to be a particularly rough man (just a man with a tendency to curve his balls), so I feel like that joke would be a fair way from landing and not up to par with the other comments here.
Of course, if you wish to drive me off for my inappropriate pitch, I’ll just go and putter about somewhere else.
*golf claps*
But he’d have strong arms from the golfing and be more able to take a swing at people with the super heavy impractical gold widget too…
Heavy, but bendy. Gold be soft, I thought.
If you hit someone with it, you might have the cartoony person-shaped shaft.
that depends on if its 24 karat gold or not. 18 Karat and lower purity gold can be pretty stiff
They now have gold/iron alloys that harden in a magnetic field to maintain the mixture that are reasonably hard and stiff for making shiny tools.
Opus, do you have a source please? That’s way cool!
Hell, it would bend like a pretzel the first time you hit a ball with it.
That’s a fun way to misrepresent what both of them said AND the tone of the conversation.
https://imgur.com/a/mtDBKOi
Don’t click unless you wanna see sexy drawings of Linda.
I knew it! Linda was Harley Quinn all along!
This has apparently been retconned a few times. I don’t know where it stands now, but I do remember it being framed as less duplicitous on Harley’s end and more like she was actually in love with her professor and got manipulated.
This is the original Animated canon, that first told her origin.
In the comics, she’s legitimately a good therapist.
I’m conflicted. On one hand I never was a huge fan of the “Harley slept her way through school” backstory, though I think that’s to describe that she maaaay not have been as qualified as she seemed to deal with high profile Arkham guys. But I do like the idea that she WAS a good therapist and Joker’s just that good at messing with people’s heads.
I think the updated version in a better mix of both that maybe has other problematic issues. She’s framed more like a talented and naive student mentored by a prof she got feelings for and their relationship turned romantic. But she got disgraced as sleeping her way through school when things got found out since the prof was married. She ends up at Arkham because in a corrupt place like Gotham it’s the only place that would take her, and she tries to use it as an opportunity to repair her reputation before running into Joker. We know what happens after that.
The Harleen comic miniseries from 2019 does a pretty good job with it, I think. She’s genuinely smart and skilled, but she also had an ill-advised affair with a professor while a student. That cast a shadow over all her accomplishments until she got her “big break” working with the hard cases at Arkham, and the Joker was really good at playing on her insecurities and sympathies around that.
I like to head canon that she was like, taken advantage of multiple times like that, including in K 12. Very smart but very alone in life for a long time, and that does things to a person, especially when there’s always always always men who try to take advantage. You can dodge most bullets and still be struck, you know?
Oh, that easy: she’s both.
She is a pure straight A+ nerd…. who just pretends to need tutoring.
But how does she know her “subjects” will be receptive?
Easy: she is a genius psychologist who can read her subjects (except that one guy).
Bonus: its manipulative and messed up.
I mean, is there actually anyone qualified to deal with the high profile cases at Arkham in general and the Joker in particular.
That being said BTAS Harley is still my definitive Harley. There’s not a single version of her I like better than that one.
That’s true of the whole Batman Universe for me.
Agree strongly on that one, I haven’t seen any non-Timmverse Harleys that lived up to the original. As for her college years, I interpreted it that whether she was smart enough to make it on her own was deliberately left in the air. She was just too innately crooked not to cheat. That said, I think someone with the strong character and well, self-respect to earn a PhD the hard way would not have allowed themselves to get turned into Joker’s perpetual doormat.
Tho I will concede it’s actually less compelling story-wise. There would be more of a dramatic tragedy if Harley was corrupted than if she was just corrupt to begin with.
I kinda agree.
Schools are super ableist on a systemic level and the disability office (getting accommodations and keeping them and using them is like a fucking part time job that violates your privacy and that you don’t get paid for btw) does *not* help enough, and Harleen is female enough that the type of neurodivergent that she is might have been undiagnosed anyway. Maybe she cheated, maybe she earned her way up, maybe it was both fucking things at the same time, and school admins can fuck off if they don’t want to realize how bad the system is??
I am not up on other continuities, but in DCAU Harley canonically has a doctorate, and I don’t really think you can sleep your way to a doctorate. I think Harley isn’t above shady manipulations in order to juice her grades, but I don’t think it was a thing she could really get by on. I have always taken that to mean that Harley was always ethically dubious, which dovetailed into her getting into sensationalist pop psychology even before she fell in with the Joker.
btw is that a skunk in your profile pic? So CUTE.
And to prevent exactly this situation is why thesuses are graded by a committee of at least three people. It would still be possible but it would require either an orgy or multiple seductions in a short space of time.
Do go on…
I wanted this more than I care to admit.
I have to be nicer to Charles I guess.
You know, I’m going to be honest, I would not be surprised if Linda is what could be called a “throat GOAT”, and I hate that it 100 percent would fit for her.
Nancy Reagan would be proud of her in every way
Joke’s on you, because I’m into that shit!
Walky is a mood
I like Lucy, this is interesting
Walky might just have to get over this one. It ain’t changing.
This is a step in getting over it; he’s got to lay out and face that thing he really DIDN’T want to face. He’s looked the beast in the face– now name it, Walkerton!
Yeah, he may not yet be to Acceptance, but at least he’s done with Denial.
Guess this is Anger? That makes Bargaining next. “Maybe I can date a white girl AND a black girl.”
(Odds, Dorothy and Lucy would agree to share?)
I think Dorothy would agree to share but Lucy is much more insecure.
Amber’d be fucking ecstatic.
And fucking Amber would be ecstatic *rimshot 🎶 *
Oh no, he knows what happened in the comments section when Sal said out out loud. Probably gonna have to acknowledge it in between strips.
Your mom being racist, your dad going along with it and realizing you got a pass for 18 years and the background readjusting of your relationships with those parties and anyone else you bring into your life isn’t something you just Hakuna Matata
Especially because he’s literally talking to his girlfriend right now. Like, that is how you get over stuff.
Yeah, like he knows it sucks, but we also know that he’s well past the days when he used to deny the likelihood of it all, like he’s pretty firmly in Camp Sal on this one.
I feel like a lot of this is outta his control. He can’t force his parents to not be racist. He’s already reaffirmed his relationship with Sal and acknowledged the situation. The guilt at this point feels…I don’t know…redundant? Like we already went through this.
We have. He hasn’t.
He has, in fact, done his very best not to (until now).
well, he’s not gonna backstep into being racist towards sal/thinking she’s not equally privileged or so but their relationship seems to be doing well despite parents for now at least
I like that Walky specifies white lady OR dude here, seems we’ve learned a bit more about Walky today…
It’s not that new, he’s given off bi signals before.
Oh absolutely but this is the first time that Walky’s said it outright.
Kinsey 1 king. Likes dudes but not enough to subject himself to the discourse.
Given that it seems to have not come up yet, if there were a male-type manly dude that Walky were to hook up with (Ethan? Asher?), Walky (and we) might find out that his parents (or his mom more specifically) are also in fact queerphobic as well.
I mean, bigotries can be multiple.
Sigh.
Very few people are ever terrible along only one axis
Yeah, I was just thinking that a white dude might get a different reaction, but likely wouldn’t “anchor him in respectability”.
Not the way Dorothy would.
We know from past experience Walky is willing to have transactional gay sex in exchange for things like better grades and free pizza. Guess we can add “white privilege” to the list!
dangit where did my hyperlinks go
“grades” was supposed to take you to 26-mar-2017
“free pizza” was supposed to take you to 24-july-2015
The filter on this tends to cut out most website links.
Maybe one of the ends got cut off and it read the link as the full website.
also c’mon walky you’ve known there’s more than just two options here for, like, at least a coupla weeks
He’s joked about it before, like that he’d suck dick for free pizza, but it’s difficult to tell how serious he’s being. It’s not like with Sal where we have a firm “straight” from her.
Well Sal may have had some experience (boarding school/juvie) to know she’s not attracted to girls in that way.
Walky being bi could be fun, if only to snark his parents like “Ok it may not work out with lucy but my next partner is def gonna be a boy just to try it out”lol
I also noticed that. Previously he had stated he would blow a dude for pizza, I believe. At the GSA thingie. But it could have been ambiguous how much that was a hyperbolic joke. This seems to confirm it was not.
The fact that he thinks a white dude would have grounded him firmly in respectability makes me think that he at least doesn’t think his parents are anti gay.
I would have been labeled bisexual when I was younger simply because I didn’t know how to care about other people, not enough to have a preference for sex. I expect Walky is in about the same position, a sexuality he might define as “If somebody wants to touch my weenus, I’m in.”
Though he has already grown up a bit from the narcissistic baby who told Dorothy about the “life hack” of simply telling her that he loved her because that’s the expected response when she said it to him, he’s probably not going to learn about how it takes continuous effort to care before he really hurts someone.
*reads panel 4*…. WalkyxAsher when???
I’m waiting for it
So is Asher.
asher is korean tho
Yeah? I’m not talking about his parents’ racist evaluating system.
Unfortunately that ranks higher. We’ve seen how they treat Jennifer. Yes, different race, but that’s not actually the important part.
As I recall Jennifer is biracial East Asian (I want to say Chinese but I might be misremembering) and white. By typical American racist standards East Asian is “whiter” than a black person. Her family also has money and social status adding further “whiteness” making her even “whiter” than Walky. Not sure off hand if Asher is biracial or not but his family also has social status of a sort and I would assume money given how high he seems to rank in the Korean mob. So Linda would probably consider him about as white as she does Jennifer.
You see, Asher is Asian, and therefore automatically clean-cut, at least he would be according to the Walkertons.
Oh man, can you imagine the gay gay mess of a storyline with Walky, Ethan, and Asher? Maybe also Booster in the mix? I’d love some major mlm(+nb) stuff, The First Part of the comic was all about sapphics.
Which was amazing btw, this is the opposite of a complaint.
Love triangle resolved by a polycule, please and thank you.
Already one in-comic, didn’t you see the bonus comic? Or is that a Patreon-only bennie?
I know about *that* polycule– though I’m not sure there was ever a love triangle there. But I want *this* polycule.
i feel like his declaration of his parents being three dimensional human beings was directed at the comment section.
I mean, it’s why the racist / non-racist binary is really counterproductive? The point of knowing about systematic racism is that it’s just that, a system with layers to it, and where addressing it requires thinking about one’s place in it, like Walky is doing in the last panel.
It was directed at the discourse, of which the comment section is a devoted servant.
I don’t know. I get what’s Walky’s saying here. Some racists are evil, others are more like simply flawed. (I suspect Linda would be classist and a shitty parent even if both her kids had come out beige.)
“My parents are villains, but they’re not wacky cartoonish SUPER-villains like Joyce’s mom or Becky’s dad or Amber’s dad or Ruth’s grandfather…I guess Asher’s granddad is *literally* a criminal mastermind but he’s cool with it so I don’t know if that counts. But anyway, they’re just regular villains, like Billie’s parents”
You left out Jason’s dad being a British Ninja in the old continuity, so another Super-villain possibility.
I take it as him saying that he loves his parents, as in he does care about them, and he recognizes admirable qualities they possess, but he also knows that he can’t unsee this side to them after Sal, with an assist by Billie, made him confront it.
Bingo. Grappling with the realization that your parents have some deeply terrible aspects to them is always rough, especially if part of that realization is that you personally have benefited from in any way.
Even before he recognized it as racism, he knew on some level that they were abusive. He recognized, through their treatment of Sal, that his status as “golden child” was always conditional. That if he screwed up it could go away and he’d be in Sal’s place.
that’s also just life, sometimes you can meet a seemingly wonderful person who’s reasonably polite and even charming and then they say something super fucked up/disturbing out of nowhere.
https://youtu.be/-yUafzOXHPE I’m sure a thought process like this would def change a lot of ppl’s opinions about some flirty playboy versus being perceived as a predator if they said something like this speech out loud lol
This was drawn about 6 months ago, and written even earlier than that.
Are we really that predictable? 🙁
Oh yeah. Absolutely, no question.
I can see why you’d say that but 1. I highly doubt Willis writes or plots anything other than fun easter eggs based on the comments section, and 2. this is not a wholly uncommon thing for someone to express about their parents.
Huh. So unless Walky’s got some funny ideas somehow, Linda definitely, definitely won’t mind that Danny’s bi.
Oh oh! I got this one!
Sal has “Cured” his bi-ness with the power of vagina.
Because everyone “experiments” in college.
You’re dating a woman, that means you’re straight.
So on, so forth. A litany of rage-inducing nonsense because “bisexual men don’t actually exist.”
Am I forgetting something? Do we have any reason to expect Linda to be homophobic or biphobic?
General Manichaeism? Seemed like a pretty natural progression.
Because people expressing one form of bigotry are usually more open to adopting other forms as well.
Patterns don’t exist, nobody is likely to do anything, nothing is similar to anything, and if two things happen at the same time no they didn’t.
People who see whites as better may also see straights as better, both camps tend to be comfortable with the idea hierarchies of valuation in people, so there being overlap wouldn’t be surprising. (Not that it’s 100% as there is some racism in the LGBTQ+ community.)
She might not mind at all.
Last balloon sounds like a volume title to me.
Agreed. I kinda want it on a T-shirt, too.
I concur on at least one thing Walky. Cartoon super villains are cool.
I mean my whole shtig is being a marxist alien parasite, I’m inevitably a supervillian to alt-righters. 😏
There’s an episode of GI Joe where Cobra Commander is so vehemently anti-drug that he teams up with the Joes to take down a drug lord and I can easily see an 80’s cartoon doing the same thing with racism.
It would genuinely surprise me if there aren’t several Saturday morning cartoons that (mutatis mutandis) did exactly that. Heck, we all remember the Joker refusing to work with Red Skull when he realizes he’s a Nazi (although Joker being Joker, not sure how much of that was principle and how much was him thinking it’d be funny).
I think I remember Captain Planet having an antifascist special, but teaming up with the villains for it doesn’t ring a bell.
Ah, yeah. The “Fuck, you’re an ACTUAL Nazi? I thought you were just doing a bit to piss flagboy off. Fuck you, I’m jetpacking out of here” story.
definitely the kind of supervillain I can get behind 🙂
Do you have any ideas for fun EVIL DoA flash games? 🙃
(i know shockwave flash is defunct, but hopefully ya catch wat i mean?)
The only thing I can think of is a “Ding Dong Bandit” game where Joyce has to sneak down the dorm halls drawing phalli on whiteboards without getting caught by her neighbors (I imagine Ruth and/or Amber are harder enemies as they actually care to investigate). I guess Joyce could do something where she hides behind plants, or in unlocked dorms, or elevators or something, to avoid detection at some point (maybe you have to be careful because Dina is an ambush predator that may be within lurking within, as seen by eyes in the dark???). Just brainstorming because you asked – not sure if any of these are actually good ideas.
It is a crime they killed flash. Now where shall the masses Kongregate?
You know, this actually sounds like a hella awesome idea! 😀
I would love to brainstorm further with you, do you have a discord or tumblr or other means by which we can DM? 🙃
Cartoon supervillains usually have standards. Or at least a whole lot of style.
Or, thanks to the age of various franchises, have what are now understood as highly legitimate grievances with society at large.
I didn’t particularly enjoy having one as president, TBH.
I’m reluctant to mythologize him like that, he’s not even a cartoon villain, he’s just a giant racist asshole.
Comic-book villains were a warning to us. Villains don’t have to be conflicted. Real life villains sometimes do look like Trump or Hitler or the guys buying Supreme Court justices. They don’t have to have tragic backstories. They can just be power-hungry rich jerks. They can be ridiculous and stupid and still end up killing innocent people.
“Do you remember those bad guys, on the shows you used to watch on Saturday mornings? Well these guys are not like those guys. They won’t exercise restraint because you’re children. They will kill you if they get the chance. Do NOT not give them that chance.”
— Elastigirl, The Incredibles
He kind of was a cartoon villain though. They were basing villains on caricatures of him as far back as the 80s. Back to the Future being the most iconic.
I think my absolute least favorite element of this storyline is…well…Walky is still a mixed race kid. Walky lamenting his “privilege” rubs me the wrong way cuz Mixed people actually get A LOT OF SHIT in both white and black spaces and now we have to talk about what is a “White” feature and what is a “black” feature on this person who is always both and even as a deconstruction of racist behavior it just feels gross to read.
Oh, Walky “Came out Whiter?” Haha Fuck off with that noise. So frustrating to try to quantify anyone’s blackness to justify how they’re treated.
I mean. Ain’t that a core part of it? That privilege isn’t a binary switch and people can enjoy immunity from certain prejudices even if they’re still affected by others?
Sorry this is frustrating for you.
it’s frustrating to every single mixed race person, myself included. there’s also a cold realization in knowing that the privilege you enjoy is both extremely conditional and arbitary, and it can be taken away by bullshit reasons, as Walky is finding out
It’s a lot, honestly, like there is so much to be said for how “passing privilege” also means often being taken less seriously or othered by people you share a demographic with, or yes, specifically challenges that mixed people face.
Like, I don’t think Walky’s always had a free ride on these things, he’s probably had no shortage of frustrating situations, but I think this is more him just addressing that Sal has had some additional, different challenges compared to him on that front.
Yeah. Walky is also a mixed race kid and nothing is going to fully insulate him from the shit that comes with that. That said, being perceived as ‘whiter’ or ‘having more ‘white’ features’ does often result in being treated better. That does make things hard and alienating for talking about the shit they’re not insulated from, but it’s also something that I think is worth addressing.
I remember there was a study years ago that talked to mixed race white and black twins with more varied features, particularly skin tone. It found that the one who was perceived as ‘whiter/lighter’ tended to identify in terms of being mixed/beige/etc. while the other twin tended to only identify as Black. It reminded me of Walky calling himself ‘generically beige’ but Sal ‘Black’.
Uh oh, here comes The Last Jedi YouTube brigade /s
I think the thing that really rubs people the wrong way how “Walky is whiter than Sal” is presented as being an Objectively True Fact, handed down from the gods and agreed upon by all.
Especially since the actual physical difference between them Sal was referring to (Walky’s hair is naturally straight, Sal straightens hers) isn’t apparent by looking at them, so it reads a lot like Walky just has, like, white vibes, and…well there’s a lot to unpack there that I don’t feel equipped to talk about.
It’s a loaded topic (maybe the most loaded topic of all) with a lot of nuance, so it’s unsurprising it’s leading to discourse.
Ah, but what if Walky and Sal had just been random force sensitives instead of the genetic heirs to Palpatine via Charles being his failed clone?
But is it presented as Objectively True Fact? Has anyone else commented on it? Or agreed with it?
I’ve always seen it as their family dynamic, not as something anyone else in the story recognizes. Other than when talking about Linda’s racism, of course. Nobody’s spontaneously claiming Walky’s whiter, are they?
Billie agreed with it at the time, and Walky himself has repeatedly said c that he’s not black, he’s “generically beige”.
Jennifer agreed with the assessment of the family dynamic. Of how Linda treated them. Not of him being “whiter” as an Objectively True Fact.
And Walky’s take on himself is obviously part of that.
Yeah but I dunno. It just always strikes an ugly note with me. Like that comic with Sal confronting Walky about it has rubbed me the wrong way for YEARS and I’m only recently compartmentalizing why. I think it’s mostly unfair to treat someone bad for factors beyond their control. And I get that we can’t control how we’re perceived and our privilege. But it’s one thing if we’re talking systemic privilege. But the peer to peer “privilege” of your twin for LOOKING a certain way. I dunno how to feel about that. Is it ok to make someone feel bad for being born different if it benefits him? Like a sister with blonde hair or a cousin with nice eyebrows?
And then you bring with that the stigma of “racism” and I start seeing “Colorism”.
I mean, I don’t think Sal is literally angry at Walky for how he looks in that moment, but for the ways he’s been able to sustain a bubble of ignorance around the shit Sal’s been going through–which is frankly pretty well within Walky’s control. He could’ve cared enough about Sal over the five years she was gone to try to notice what was happening, and he didn’t. Instead he assumed it all started with the gas station robberies and let things lie.
(This is not me trying to make Walky out to be a terrible person, I recognize that he was a dumb teen and he’s trying to do better now. But I think it’s still reasonable for Sal to have been angry about it.)
I think it’s also important to consider maybe Sal wasn’t;’the 100% correct. She’s speaking from her own jaded perspective, but the Walkertons parents fucked up both of them in different ways. Because Walky “came out whiter” he became so afraid of failing in his parents expectations he literally eats his own test paper. Sal did have a valid point but she’s also just a dumb teen too I her own bubble of ignorance. Making this whole thing a confusing, nuanced, mess.
I agree that Walky’s abject terror of disappointing his parents indicates they fucked him up too, but like
They did not send him away and maintain next to no contact with him for five years?
I think Sal’s right enough, honestly
Ah yes it’s definitely the teenage boy’s fault for not picking up on the unfair treatment for the sin of … not being as black as her.
Like even if he clued in on her being treated differently he might not have picked up on why. And I dunno if that’s his fault for being born with straight hair. And making the problem not “You coulda been supportive” and not “You were born “whiter” just…
Yeah I’ll never be cool with that. Sal was wrong for that.
I like the idea that they were both wrong in different ways. It emphasizes that playing favorites with your kids can drive a wedge between them and really puts the fault on Charles and Linda as it should be.
She was. It was wrong of her to take her frustrations out on her brother even if he’s involved in some of them. He has no control over the different ways he and Sal were treated and did not in any way encourage them. But those problems are still there and it is important that Walky knows about them. It is a thing which pushes him to actively be a better person.
Now, I’m not saying that makes Sal lashing out correct or okay. It doesn’t. But I am saying that the conversation needed to happen and the topic needed to be brought to his attention. Could Sal have handled that conversation better? Absolutely. But it’s important to remember that she is a victim here just like Walky is, and in many ways has had it far worse. Expecting her to be perfectly rational about the subject is unreasonable. That’s just not how people work, especially at that age.
We should also remember that she didn’t even bring up “came out whiter” until after Walky responded to being their favorite with Well, I didn’t rob any convenience stores.
Which is far more blaming their parent’s treatment of her on her, than “came out whiter is blaming it on him.
I think it’s sometimes okay to make someone feel bad by telling them the truth about what’s going on around them. Privilege isn’t a moral thing, regardless of how some people act when the idea is brought up, and Walky isn’t even the one being racist here… Like, I could be wrong but I always read Sal’s anger as “it hurts me that you don’t understand and acknowledge why our parent hurt me”. I also don’t really read Walky as feeling hurt by that.
“Passing privilege” is absolutely a deeply fraught topic that a lot of very wise people have given input on outside this comment section. It’s definitely not some absolute thing, some way of saying that Walky (or someone else) doesn’t experience racism or other life problems.
I do feel like Willis is kind of… doing their best here despite limitation of their personal experiences and of needing to stay roughly within established canon that was written down a large amount of education ago. And as an actual Black person with dog in this fight IRL you’re entitled to feel woogy for whatever reason you feel woogy. I hope you’re able to work through whatever feelings you need to.
I honestly think it’s more like sexism? But like, texturism. Having friends of color instead of white/white passing friends. Lots of little things that can determine whether or not someone can pass as white. Not just skin tone.
Well, if it’s any consolation, race is just one factor in the multi-dimensional thing that is privilege? Other identities along axises of gender, sexual orientation, disability, neurodivergence etc., that all come together in subtle but important ways that cannot be overstated.
When it comes to exploring the dimensions of societal privilege in comics and stuff, race in particular is made a main focus these days for several reasons:
1. This is America and the cup runneth over.
2. In the 2016 election, one of the strongest indicators that someone was gonna vote Republican was racial sentiment, even more strongly correlated than being already registered Republican.
3. Racism is a fundamental building block of fascism, and the primary means of sowing discord on the left.
I think everyone has their own lived experience and that’s the important part. It isn’t about Walky’s mixed racial makeup as much as it is that his parents chose to treat him different. He personally knows he hasn’t experienced the same adversity as Sal and he has guilt at that unfairness.
I mean…. Okay maybe it’s bc I live in a majority black country so colorism is an even bigger societal issue than racism but like. Dude. Proximity to whiteness is proximity to privilege. I’m not sure if you’re arguing against that as a concept, or just how it’s treated in the comic, or just venting frustration that it’s a thing? Im kinda confused about what you’re saying here.
Mixed kids do have their own unique set of issues- i myself am pretty light skinned to the point of being ambiguous “generic beige” when my hair is straight, and grew up in a non black centered space, and had kind of an identity crisis when I had to assimilate the information that I am both black but incredibly privileged because of my shade. But yes, there is an inherent privilege to being mixed over being a dark skinned black person. “Quantifying blackness” sucks but its undeniable that someone with pale skin, loose curls and ambiguous or european features gets treated better and given more opportunities in a eurocentric white supremacist society than someone with dark skin, 4c hair or dreads or any number of stigmatized black hair styles and distinct African features.
Having privilege doesn’t make you a bad person, and it pisses me off when people act like acknowledging their privilege is demonizing them somehow. Pointing out the fact that someone gets better treatment for something they have no control over isnt “making them feel bad” about it, it’s pointing out objective fact. Like it is for me, it is simultaneously true that walky has light skinned/ambiguous privilege via proximity to whiteness and that he is a racialized minority with its own set of problems separate from the issues of dark skins.
Lucy, what’s that face mean lol
I like this, this is starting to sell me on these two as a couple. Lucy looks like she’s about to suggest going and crashing their lunch (which I might be misreading, she could also just think Walky’s funny), and Walky getting rightfully upset about this is good. Mayhaps this leads to Walky actually telling her that he loves her in front of his parents (whether he means it or not)? Idk how that would play out, but I’m here for it.
I’m worried she’s gonna jump his bones and the parents are gonna walk in mid thrust since Walky missed the lunch.
It sells me on them as well, honestly. Lucy *gets* Walky in that he knows he has a particular privilege and is human enough to be aware and admit to all of it. Walky cares about Lucy enough even though he’s not *sure* about where they may go that he knows if they will make this work, he has to be upfront with her in all aspects of the family dynamics.
I do think her expression in the last panel is her being amused by him, yeah, like I am sure she knows he’s being facetious to a degree. I also honestly wouldn’t be surprised if she’s respecting him this much more for even talking about some of this stuff, like I know she knows he’s not just The Fun Guy, we’ve seen her be around for some of his emotionally mature moments like shutting down her brother being a dick for his amusement, but I do think it’s possible she’s appreciating his maturity about this, even if he’s couching it in immaturity to maintain that emotional space cushion, as he is often shown doing.
I read it as ‘slight amusement’ of walky being frustrated like “first world problems” kinda thing (though it is a bit more serious than that but Walky’s lived a fairly cushy life up til now)
*obligatory Kenny Loggins on the hacked muzack*
Foot Loose(y)
Dammit, I was GOING to do that bait and switch with the obvious “Danger Zone” choice, and then I decided it was too silly, and I missed the chance!
See, a cartoon villain would devote their life to tormenting both Sal and Walky, instead of just totally neglecting one of them. Like, maybe by goading Walky into killing him by dropping the tube containing Sal’s marginally-less-shitty-than-Linda adoptive parents onto him, only for it to fall through the floor and also crush Sal’s surrogate father figure to death.
…fuck that storyline was dark
And since Head Alien is indeed cooler than Linda and Charles, it further supports the sentiment in today’s strip.
What are you talking about? A cartoon villain would obviously favor one over the other in order to build up resentment and competition between them. Tormenting them both would simply give them a common enemy.
*plays The Royal Guardsmen’s “Snoopy Versus The Red Baron” on the hacked Muzak*
I am so confused… Is it because Walky always hung with white people, and his sister hung out with minorities? They just see her as blacker? They are literally the same color! Is it gender? Black man ok, black woman no?
It’s part of it, sure, though we’ve also seen that hair texture plays a part, too, as does him being seen as “nonthreatening” by people. Colorism can be a complicated topic.
What it is is this: Walky is a well-behaved big ol’ goof. The ways in which he’s kind of a handful “befit his gender”: he’s rambunctious and snarky. But they don’t befit his gender in racialized ways: he’s not angry or aggressive. On top of that, he gets good grades. He’s book smart. His mom sees him as a potential Ph.D. candidate.
Sal, on the other hand, was a tomboy as a kid. She plays rough. She disrespects authority. She gets bad grades. These are traits that are regarded poorly on women and especially Black women, and thus play into Linda’s preexisting biases. Linda’s not just racist but displaying misogynoir, or a specific bigotry against Black women.
On top of that, and god knows how privy Linda is to any of this, but sexually Walky is also nonthreatening. Scared of girls (we know he told Linda sharing a bed with Billie freaked him out), virginal until adulthood. On top of not demonstrated aggressive traits associated with Black men, he sidesteps some very specific associations of that aggression. Compare Sal, who dresses in ways that flatter her, and is by her own admission promiscuous and has dominant traits–it’s easy to imagine Linda reading her as a slut or a whore or whathaveyou, again, doubly so because of her skin color.
Sal’s choice of friends–particularly Marcie, who is also a person of color with a rough-and-tumble personality and who we know is sexually open, and poor to boot–also probably doesn’t help.
(To be 100% unambiguous here: I am doing my best to clarify that I am talking about traits that white people, in this case Linda, associate with Black people. I personally do not believe Black people or Black women en masse “usually” have any sort of personality traits, that being aggressive sexually or physically is necessarily bad, or that intelligence can be measured on paper or has any impact on one’s goodness.)
THIS. Plus, you gotta also factor in… That he’s a man. And I’m 1000% sure that household full of biases didn’t magically skip sexism.
He’s a momma’s boy and this must’ve contributed to the ouroboros of him perceived as better by his racist mom.
I’m confused about the “scared of girls” part.
Where did that come from?
I know Walky’s had three girlfriends in the past thirteen years of strips but you gotta remember when he first met Dorothy he was literally incapable of talking around her. He’d just go bug-eyed and occasionally spout gibberish. (Basically any strip they’re in together pre-Nov-2011).
He also mentioned when Billie crawled into his bed during a mental-health freakout that when he hit puberty he had to ask Linda not to put them in the same bed during sleepovers anymore because it wigged him out (14-Jul-2014)
I imagine Billie shoving him into lockers in high school didn’t help much, either.
Sure, but this was before that.
He was like that because he LIKED her and never had romantic feelings for girls before.
Not because he was SCARED of her.
Please remember that he interacted with Joyce with no such issues before he even met Dorothy.
He also seemingly had no issues with his female teacher Leslie, the woman at the front desk who I’m currently drawing a blank on, and literally any other female character.
In fact, I’m pretty sure Dorothy is the only woman he’s ever acted like that with, including both Amber (who he was also passionate about) and Ruth (who he openly stated scared him).
So that clearly wasn’t fear regarding Dorothy.
Unless you’re using “scared” as in nervous and not as in fearful, but, again, that was only ever Dorothy.
Sometimes language is imprecise! I thought “scared of girls” succinctly communicated “disinterested and extremely awkward and avoidant around ideas of sexual and romantic intimacy” but I guess not
No it definitely did not.
Consider this: you’re lumping a lot onto the word “scared”, none of which include the primary definition (and not all of which I’m sure even apply to it as I don’t think most people would associate disinterested with scared).
It also further took me into believing you meant fearful because you associated it with him telling Linda not to put him and Jennifer in the same bed anymore because it wigged him out (the strip itself implies it’s the parents’ idea, btw, and we can’t tell if he was actually wigged out at 9 years old or if he was being facetious in the moment because he was wigged out in the moment).
Now I do finally understand what you meant, though, again, that still only applies to Dorothy; the instance with Jennifer was about the situation had her acting extremely abnormal and not because she’s a girl.
We can’t even say it’s sleeping with/waking up next to a girl because he not only did so with Dorothy, but also with Joyce and seemingly had no such issue with Joyce (seemingly because they were not awoken naturally, but rather by water hose, so we can’t say for certain).
In Wack’d’s defence (god that looks weird), the phrase “scared of girls” usually implies “in a romantic/sexual” context. If I heard that a teenage boy was scared of girls I wouldn’t expect them to become a gibbering wreck if a female cashier served them in a shop.
Unless she was cute and smiled at them, but then god, also same.
Except scared of girls also usually implies scared of the idea of romance with a girl, not a specific girl, manifesting in the stereotypical nervous behavior around any attractive girl who even remotely pays attention to them.
This would be scared of Dorothy and only Dorothy because he never had pants euphoria until Dorothy.
Your choice of words definitely communicated what you wanted it to, at least when I read it. I understand what you meant right away.
Yeah, I agree, the phrase was used in the, from my experience, commonly used way.
Oh, yeah, been there. Scared of messing up is what it is. Something unfamiliar is happening in my mind, and a (metaphoric) voice in my head that I’ve never heard before is shouting THIS IS IMPORTANT!!! DON’T FOUL IT UP!!! Scared of saying the wrong thing. Scared because I don’t seem to be able to think. Scared of not knowing what comes next.
Scared of how I’ll feel if she says, “ew, get lost!”
A lot of that is after the fact though. We’ve seen flashbacks to Linda’s treatment of them as little kids – meeting Marcie on the playground, the scene with the Hymmel video.
Intelligence can be measured on paper; it just cannot be measured well due to being a composite of many different things.
See it rubs me the wrong way when we tie it back to personality and actions. As a black guy who watches cartoons and anime, grew up in the suburbs, has lots of white friends, is corny and never quite fit in with the ideas of black culture, ive always felt a bit of imposter syndrome. And this is coming from someone who’s full on black. I often say stuff like “I don’t sound black” because I feel like I don’t only for people to correct me and say “you do sound black. You’re black and that’s how you sound.” ironically I feel like there’s not really a way to talk about how a racist views “black” features without kinda coopting those stereotypes.. Like being a dorky idiot savant who likes cartoons and has straight hair is no less black than a motorcycle riding smoker with a criminal record and curly hair. But also Walky should check his privilege? So those features aren’t black? Or are we saying what is or is not a black is determined by the racists? And were just gonna validate that by using it against people of color who may not fit the stereotype of what a black man or woman behaves like?
Look obviously I can’t tell you how to feel about any of that stuff, but here’s my take if you’re interested.
I think in-narrative it’s supposed to be super fucked up that Walky’s parents and the world around him have thoroughly deracialized him and he’s bought into it. (See also Sarah having to remind him he’s Black during the kidnapping arc.) Like yeah, Walky is not actually less Black than Sal is, but he still gets read that way and treated better because of it.
Walky doesn’t need to change himself to be “more Black”, in terms of his demeanor, his interests, his appearance. And Sal never, not once, said he had to do any of that. Nobody has. What he did have to do is recognize the social position that puts him in, empathize with the position Sal’s in, and do better to support her. And he’s doing that! He’s putting in the work, all while still being the same old dopey nerd, and it’s healed his relationship with Sal immensely.
So, like, the comic isn’t saying you or Walky is “less Black”. (Walky is saying that, but he’s kind of a moron, and his parents are saying that, but they’re wrong and racist.) Just that some Black people–who are just as Black as anyone else–get treated better by white people for reasons beyond their control. And when that happens they should lend a hand to those who don’t have that going for them. That’s all.
I guess my issue is nobody has said “Walky you’re just as black as anyone else. Neither him nor Sal. Maybe Lucy will. But so far I cant tell if its something the characters believe or something the narrative believes.
I mean, Sarah has (5-Apr-2020).
I mean right or wrong, perception by White society as the empowered group sets the law on how people are treated. So while the concept of “acting white” is bullshit, that doesn’t change the fact that it still gets you better treatment. that’s why code switching is a thing at all; being able to drop your speech patterns largely associated with your marginalized identity and take on whatever the eurocentric tone of your society is (speaking specifically within western society) is a noted skill because it’ll get people to take you more seriously. Not because it’s better, but because that’s the standard white people set, and while we should deconstruct that, in day to day life there’s not much you can do but go along with it.
It’s the same reason why I deliberately deepen my voice when I want to be taken seriously, but raise it when I want to seem non threatening. Sexism plays into that…
Walky’s best friend was their favourite ‘white-passing’ “daughter”.
Sal did confront him about it before like “You came out whiter” tho being more metaphorical than literal skin tone
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/princess/
Reread these few strips and I forgot their dad is only half-black, so. Huh. Billy was right, being mixed isn’t a get-out-of-racism free card and it makes a bit more sense now how he can just sit around and condone their mom’s racism towards their kids.
Lucy is doing great here. <3
Honestly given how similar in some ways Danny and Lucy are personality wise it also makes the ‘issue’ even less easy to ignore. They are both a bit ‘too romantic’ sometimes. Polite. Generically Christian in a bland sort of way.
Like I even on my head put them in a box of characters I consider ‘perfectly nice if they were real but also boring’. Besides the odd time of verbal diarrhoea from Danny which he hasn’t displayed in front of them nothing is really that offensive about either of them at all and the parents if they show they favour Danny and not Lucy when in the same space is just really obvious what the issue is.
It’d probably won’t happen in this universe but it’d be amusing (yet messed up) if they all had dinner together and like “yeah, your parents have too many issues, we’re going to date each other instead” tho even if sal/danny and walky/lucy don’t last in the ‘long run’ i dn’t expect them to move on too fast either. well maybe lucy with her being gungho about having a bf and such)
Honestly yeah, a few years ago when Lucy was introduced and Danny was on his Good Egg arc, they were both my wholesome favs for the same reasons
The only real difference I can think of them, personality wise, is Lucy is the kind of person who likes to go to church regularly. Danny doesn’t.
“My parents aren’t cartoon villains! They’re webcomic villains! It’s different!”
Uh-huh! I read the first panel & was like: “Is Willis talking to us??”
I was always kinda on the Walky/Lucy train, like even back when Billie suggested it during the Amber storyline in an unkind way. I think there is something to the dynamic, and it’s honestly developed really nicely.
I am really liking these past few pages with them. It really does display that A. Yes, Lucy has naivete, but she also is definitely not as naive as some might think, and that B. Walky’s got some hidden depths on this, including seeing the nuances of the situation. I also kinda love her playful retort here.
You know, Lucy is a people-pleaser, at points to a fault, and we’ve seen that she really wants to be liked by everyone, including people she can’t possibly think are that pleasant, like Malaya. But, part of me wonders if this is going to go the other direction. Maybe part of her will kind of dig the idea of being the “bad girl” here. Like, I am not suggesting she’s going to deliberately tank the Walkertons’ opinion of her, but, Lucy might feel a wee-bit defiant. This is a dynamic she has really never had an opportunity to feel before, so, maybe she’ll see it as an opportunity of sorts.
Ooh, I think it’d be at minimum fun to watch and maybe even surprisingly healthy for Lucy to cut loose a little– I hope you’re right.
This catches the mind-bending vibe of one parent being racist against another, and variably against a kid for how ‘well’ the kid is doing at Being White, pretty damn well. It can even happen if you pass as white when not beside relatives you look enough like who aren’t, but have ‘whiter’ relatives with less so-called ‘tells’ of similar age, from experience…it took a black aunt with a crappy white mom to sit down and explain it to me as a kid lol.
It’s a tough situation, and this arc feels like it’s gonna move some things forward a little– for Sal and Walky internally, if not necessarily for how their parents act.
it happens even without mixed couples, like colorisms, or asians disliking other asians depending on the countries
You might be surprised somehow to discover that the Chinese and Japanese people I’ve met consider themselves different races, and do consider that to be a form of mixed-race marriage.
Colorism is an important factor to the discussion, but the Sal and Walky scenario comes down to features that hinges more in racism; I was comparing a personal experience in which I, too, experienced racism– for further context, in a culturally similar locale to the setting, fairly geographically close to it, where antiblack racism is one of the most important discussions on the matter.
Hope this helps!
Having multiracial parents that aren’t the exact same kinds of multiracial as each other is an experience ._.
For all intents and purposes, Disney villains don’t count, Lucy
Because their vibes are so strong that they come around to being likable
Or anyone queercoded.
I do love that Walky here is absolutely, and very casually at that voicing he might be a liiiiittle bi. Booster’s very presence might’ve contributed to that kind of realization tbh, queerness is like neurodivergence: We cluster and vibe with each other even before we know.
I also love how he’s not only in Sal’s side, but also, acknowledging how right she always was. And!! The lingo!! He’s picked up “privilege” there :DD
He still has some toxic masculinity traits he hasn’t quite shaken off yet though (see: screaming for a haircut when Booster praised its feminine energy).
Baby steps.
Some, though mostly the less toxic ones, if that makes any sense. He doesn’t want to be seen as feminine and has some messed up ideas of what that means. Worrying about being seen as gay usually goes along with that, but it doesn’t for him, which is interesting.
It’s also all internal. All focused on things he should do or look like. No signs of him being toxic to women.
Also implying that his parents could be cool with it if just being white was enough for it to be ‘respectable’, unless they’re just performative allies , if not “I’d rather you be gay than date X race”
I’ve always had trouble with the use of the word privilege. Being treated decently shouldn’t be considered a privilege.
It definitely shouldn’t. I’ve always thought the idea was like, the people with the most power or overall influence or whatever, they’re the ones thinking of it as a privilege, and they’re (to their mind) doling out that “privilege” to their “lessers”, as they’d see it.
For a low-stakes example of what I mean, it’s like if you’re a teacher in a classroom and one of the kids is more comfortable standing while they write their answers, but you’re a controlling asshole and punish the kid for standing, because they’re students so they have to sit down, but you’re the teacher so you get to stand up. The only time they get “standing privileges” would be when you give them permission to use the bathroom, which is also you giving them “use of their own body privileges”.
IDK if that’s coherent, I’m still coming down from last night’s edible.
I kind of agree, but it’s still by far the best term we’ve got to talk about the problem.
And every single term is going to have privileged people pushing back because the thing that bothers them is really the core concept, not the terms.
They’re not *nearly* well-dressed enough to be supervillains.
Would anyone like to play a game?
Lucy loves cartoon villains.
Who is your favorite cartoon (or animated, or fantasy) villain?
For me, it’s gotta be Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, all the way, baby…
(Sorry. That came out sounding weird. I just meant “all the way,” as in “forever”.)
Head Alien.
Hard to say. Team Rocket are the first to come to mind though.
Yeah. A tie between them and Zim from Invader Zim.
Team Rocket never fails to please. I don’t think there’s a show they’ve been part of without completely stealing it. Personally, I love them the most in Kanto and Alola. Absolute classic trio, and so many generic ‘mon series tried their best to copy ’em.
Azula
David Xanatos
I’m going with Xanatos as well :3
hums Be Prepared
Also, speaking of Xanatos, Demona and Macbeth.
Thirding the Gargoyles villain roster, especially Xanatos.
Lady Eboshi. She’s well written, interesting, and she has sympathetic traits and motivations while still being in the wrong.
Slade from the first Teen Titans cartoon and Amon from Avatar: Legend of Korra.
I’m in the “Magneto Was Right” with passion, but the way he’s deemed? He’s my fave
I’m incapable of picking just one so for the purposes of this thread I’m gonna say Dr. Starline.
From the IDW Sonic comics?
That’s him, yeah. Disaster Eggsimping platypus.
I don’t know much about him, but I saw a fandub of Doctor Robotnik giving him a Doctor Robeatdown, and that was pretty cool.
Ohhhh that’s hard. I’m gonna run with Claude Frollo, one million percent because of the song
Great choices, all!
I will have to go with Mandark, with HIM as a close second.
at least she doesn’t look too upset about it. maybe if they do join for dinner it won’t be too awkward (or walky will do some kinda antics/hijinks in between to ease the tension more)
Miss goody-two-shoes loves cartoon villains? How interesting.
I think she means they’re the fun and goofy kind of evil, as opposed to slightly racist parents.
Lucy’s fucking smirk at Walky realizing he has privilege.
Giving me life.
Aaaaaand she loves cartoon villains!!!! eeeeek! 😍
Walky?? Casually making reference to being bi??? Somehow that’s the more incredible part of this than him acknowledging his privilege and talking to Lucy about his parents
Is that what it means? I thought he meant his PARENTS didn’t care what gender his partner was. I’m all for bisexual Walky though. What male cast member might be a good fit for him? Just hypothetically.
I’m sure they would’ve found Mike charmingly quirky >_>.
I mean, maybe Asher?
Ethan’s too mopey and depressed, Danny hates him, Jacob and Joe are very obviously heterosexual. No one knows who the fuck Carl is.
Zeph, Sayid, and Barry are also possibilities, but neither of them are fleshed out too well. We don’t even know if they’re gay.
We actually do know that Sayid is queer, though that may have only been shown in a Slipshine– he hooked up with a guy in one, though.
I’d actually go for Latine Enby Booster Sánchez. Best of both worlds, and a surefire way to put Walky’s parents to the test (piss them off. )
It must have been the pizza.
How is that incredible? He’s joked and hinted at it before
That was so smooth I didn’t even notice it at the first read XD
I think it’s a comment about his parents, not himself. He’s trying to head off the notion that because they’re bigoted in one way they’re probably bigoted in all the ways.
Oh woe is you, Walky.
that still baffles me considering how people say Sal and Walky look EXACTLY THE SAME. Didn’t Joe say Walky should never grow his hair cuz he’d get them both mixed up?
Also BISEXUAL WALKY.
The way their favoritism shows itself is racist as heck, because Linda is certainly a fairly racist person and their father… well, I don’t know, but I’m guessing he’s not free of that bigotry even though he’s Black himself.
However, honestly, they just picked one child and ran with it. If she’d married a white man, she still would’ve preferred one child to the other.
Okay. Out of all the DOA strips, why did this have to be the one where I finally noticed how good Walky’s hair looks at that length??? (I know it was pointed out earlier, but now I see it.)
I too hate it when people crush my carefree goofball vibe (this is a lie. I am not a carefree goofball but it sounds like a great lifestyle option to this uptight anxietyball)
I think this is the first time that I’m with Lucy. Yay cartoon villains!!
Or dude, huh?
You can be racist and not homophobic. I mean, yeah, the Venn diagram of those two things has a LOOOOOOT of overlap, but it’s not a perfect circle.
I’m sensing an awkward moment incoming, wherein Lucy says (or thinks) “waitaminute, is that why you’ve been putting off Doing It?”
Could be an opportunity for some very personal discussion that could deepen their relationship along a different axis. (Or blow it up. I vote deepen!)
This is *such* good couple talk. On such candid and vulnerable conversations, intimacy is built, and I don’t mean the getting naked one.
Lucy in the final panel is crushing it. She loves his goofy vibe and that they are bonding over his anguish.
Nevermind bi or whatever, I think my life would have been much happier as a carefree goofball.
So I guess there’s at least one thing about being with Lucy that is making Walky turn into a better person, huh?
Some white chick OR DUDE?? Is Walky saying he is bi?
I think he’s more saying he’s attractive to dudes.
Attract[-ed]
I typed what I meant to type.
I think he’s more saying that Linda wouldn’t mind if he were, and in particular that she would prefer him dating a white (or Asian) boy to a Black girl.
I would LOVE if Walky said to his parents “I love my girlfriend who is black, but I also love *insert new character here* who is non binary, Mexican and their skin tone is on the darker end of a makeup foundation pallet.”
Extra points is Booster somehow is involved.
I know it’s not gonna happen but I always wish for these kind of scenarios when bigots are involved. Also, I’m loving this arc because it hits close to home. When my older sister introduced her husband to us (me and my divorced parents) when they were dating for the first time and he let us know he was from Mexico (Chihuahua to be precise) there were three reactions. My mom didn’t care, she was just happy he seemed like a decent guy. My very racist dad was LIVID and was promptly booted from dinner for being a dick, and I just drank in all the drama (I was a teen and didn’t quite see the problem). My dad screamed that they would last 6 months because he’d get deported and left. They’re going for almost 20 years marriage now. I kinda wanna see where Walky will take this and if the drama will be as good as my sister’s.
I love watching Walky grow up and empathize with his sister genuinely, it’s so validating. ♥
Hey, Willis, could you try shading with dark gold instead of dark red for these indoor scenes? It would align better for the atmospheric lighting profile for better realism, and I think it’d look better.
Also, Lucy is colored in a way that sort of makes her look like a burn victim with how grey she looks. Slightly darker + higher saturation would be helpful, and her blush tone doesn’t quite match her skin. Sorry if the critiques bother you.
(Do you have a visual editor at all?)
Given that the buffet is ahead all the way to january of next year , i don’t think he’d go back and editi t lol, tho if you have a tumblr or so maybe you can edit it and make your own posts as a fan edit or so