She’s probably aware that Walky’s friend group is also now her only friend group (I’m spite of Sarah) because the girls in her hall openly and clearly prefer Jennifer, she’s probably just trying not to cause drama in the group.
she just comes off as polite to me. it’d be more trolling if she happened to join someone right afterwards and like “hey babe we still on for lunch later?” or so but even as a friend idk how many ppl could do that quickly/last minute haha
Politely setting expectations and asserting boundaries. She’s not trying to get a rise out of anybody like a troll, she’s doing them both a favor and reducing the likelihood of stupid teen drama, of which frankly she has previously been too great a source.
(Also, ugh, sorry I accidentally reported your comment while trying to hit “reply”. This UI is not my favorite.)
That would be more true if she hadn’t herself stated she was uncertain where this relationship was right now. She seems certain right now and is not just ‘setting boundaries’, she’s doing so vaguely. A more mature person would say ‘hey, we’re done, see you Wednesday.’ This is still very much potentially in the realms of ‘Walky fucked up and he is the only one who made mistakes’ behavior.
I didn’t mean medically diagnosable mania, I meant the behavior where someone is upset so they’re a bit high-energy and all over the place. Like when Joyce was having problems with Ethan so she was obsessing over getting Jacob with Sarah. Sarah says “you seem a bit manic” and I think most people understand what she means.
It came across to me as “proud of herself for stating clearly what she currently expects from Walky” even though she didn’t really make it clear for Walky in the most important sense.
Either that or it’s a secret crafty smile at turning the tables on Walky. Maybe she’s playing “hard to get”. Perhaps she’s enjoying having HIM pursuing HER for a change.
Except that he isn’t, yet. They’re still playing “after you my dear Alphonse.” He wants her to say it’s okay; she wants him to say whether he really wants her in his life. Because if you ask, the answer could be the one you don’t want to hear.
You guys don’t have to apologize every time. It takes like five people for it to even do anything. It’s not automated, willis can tell the difference between a genuine report and fat thumbing
The typical Willis “wild eyes” indicator is a line under the eyes on a character who’s smiling. That’s not an absolute rule, but it HAS been remarkably consistent art choice.
I don’t want that either! Though I have appreciated how the last storyline really made it clear that Walky doesn’t really see Dorothy clearly, reinforcing to me how it wasn’t headed towards being a long term match. (I don’t think in their current states they can have “drama” without causing actual drama.)
True, but by that same merit I don’t know if their friendship was strong enough that she’d find it worth saving either. Kinda goes both ways in that regard.
I think you make a good point actually. I just realized a major factor in their “friendship” was Lucy pining for Walky. That’s what motivated her to even spend time with him. Without that are they actually even friends to begin with? And that actually is a tinge messed up.
Yeah it’s kinda uncharitable to call that behavior toxic. If you like someone you get to know them. Hang out with them. Become friends and then maybe once you feel you’re close you ask them out. Like sure it’d be NICE if you only had crushes on people you were already friends with but it doesn’t always happen in that order.
Yoto I can’t reply to your comment correctly, so I hope it gets to the correct place.
It would be problematic if she decided that Walky (or all men) were the problem because he did not pick up on her vague signals. Or if she decided the friendship was wasted effort if he did not want to date her.
If being flirty friends with a crush was bad, I struggle to see how anyone could get into relationships. Lucy wasn’t exactly subtle about her intentions. She spent time with him and flirted with him in the hopes he would ask her out. She didn’t disarm him “we’re just friends” and then get mad when he interpretted that literally.
From the beginning, Lucy only had one intent. To date Walky. To approach him saying ‘hey, lets me friends’ when that is not when she wants is in fact toxic. We know that this is how she thinks because a week later she got mad at Walky for being honest about how he’s not in love with her after a WEEK. That means that she has been viewing every day of their friendship as time he should have been falling for her.
That is a false narrative she created and than got angry at him for.
It is okay to want to be friends with someone you also want to date, but it is not okay to do so with only the intention of dating them and making you love them during that time. That is toxic and that is what Lucy did.
Ok but real talk. What do you do if you meet someone you want to date? Sure you can just ask them out and hope that your base level attractiveness is enough to pull them in. But like…isn’t it normal to try to hang out and get closer to someone you wanna date before you ask them out? Like even if you’re initiating contact BECAUSE you want to date them, you’re still taking it slow and putting in the effort so you’re not just going “you’re hot, wanna date?” You’re not OWED affection but I’ve also heard the “How can you like me, we barely know each other.” How do you approach someone you wanna date but aren’t super close with?
It’ll probably just be awkward for a little while. If Walky and Amber are back on good terms after how THEIR thing ended, I don’t see how he and Lucy can’t get along.
Amber could mentor Dorothy in the way of Garbage. I mean she tried that one time when Dorothy hanged out and video gamed. But Dorothy could improve at garbage.
Them breaking up is the best thing to happen for them but it still kinda highlights that Walky doesn’t really have any close friendships to fall back on.
Being friendly in the same group, sure. Regularly going out to eat just the two of them together or hanging out watching cartoons as a pair, like they’d been doing before they started dating. I don’t think that would work.
either way they’d def need some time apart, even the ppl who are like “let’s be friends/stay with our group of friends” and mean it probably don’t literally hang out hte next week after their breakup
Lucy blaming him entirely despite her enthusiastic participation in the parent debacle is some bullshit. Its not 100% either of their faults, but her treatment of him has been patently unfair
Agreed. Like, feels bad to be Walky here, and if I were his friend I’d want to take him out for consolation McNuggets, but Lucy isn’t being mean. She’s just not dating him anymore because she didn’t enjoy the experience.
So y’all don’t see this as being cold?
Cuz she sure seems cold to me.
She was more polite to Sarah, and she thinks Sarah is a person who ditches her friends when they’re inconvenient and has had two separate back and forth’s with.
She and Walky were supposed to have been friends (since she always wanted to get with him, I’m not sure how genuine the friendship was), but she’s treated him like a stranger or a coworker that you would not hang out with after work or eat with at lunch.
Collegial politeness is pretty dang good for a 19-year-old who, less than 24 hours ago, broke up with a guy she had previously had a massive crush on. It’s her first breakup ever, so far as we are aware. Returning to friendship takes time and isn’t always possible.
My only criticism of Lucy would be that Walky doesn’t know he’s a fictional character so he might not fully understand that that was definitely a breakup.
didn’t seem cold to me, and I don’t even like her that much, but it probably is just an act. just seemed like maybe she had taken what Sarah said to heart and is a kid who doesn’t know how to have relationship discussions honestly, but I would bet that the next scene of her is her in her dorm room crying for several hours (even if we don’t get to see it on panel).
I think it’s cold, but understandably so. She’s still messed up about him and interacting with him is going to be difficult. For both of them. Hold it together, be polite and minimize contact.
While still trying to stay in with what is closer to his group of friends than hers, which is the hard part.
I do think they’re going to need to have at least one more talk to clarify where they stand with each other, but neither of them are good at doing that, so it’ll likely fester a while.
I think she’s trying to be polite. She massively overinvested in this relationship too soon, and now she’s trying to disengage without being awful about it. It’s hard.
(And for that matter, maybe she’s *not* breaking up with him. Maybe she’s taking a few days to think about how she feels before she makes a decision. Sure, she’d do better to tell Walky what the deal is – but is she supposed to tell him in public in front of a group of his friends and classmates? Seriously?)
No, but if that’s what’s going on, she should make an opportunity to talk to him, rather than both hanging out with the group of his friends and just saying “see you wednesday”.
It’s understandable if she doesn’t. She’s dealing with what’s probably her first real breakup (or relationship crisis, if she’s not thinking of it as a breakup), and she’s surely messed up about it, but that’s different than thinking she’s actually executing this well.
This is cold behavior. Whether or not she fully intends it, she is very much an immature character who is not acknowledging the relationship she basically did nothing but push for, then helped break.
People don’t just go ‘hey’ a day after a break up. Particularly not 18+ yo teens. If she’s not power tripping a little, I’d be surprised, but even if she isn’t an actual mature act would be to acknowledge Walky, tell him she doesn’t want to spend time with him outside of class, and then walk away. This subtle ‘hey, good bye’ is child stuff.
Intersting. It would literally never occur to me in my entire life to tell anyone whatsoever “Okay, I don’t want to spend time with you, so I’m leaving now.” Not even someone I actively hated. It certainly wouldn’t occur to me that not doing that makes me an asshole.
1. That is not what I’m saying she needs to say. Good job mischaracterizing my point.
2. Drawing clear boundaries after a break up, or during a relationships problem area, is absolutely the mature thing to do. If you don’t get that, you might have problems.
Especially since she didn’t know that was the situation, he did, and he didn’t tell her. Linda’s racism, and Walky not standing up to her was like a gust of wind that blew over their Jenga tower, precarious because Walky does not like having earnest conversations.
I’d like to think that after the whole parents revelation, Walky is going to have the presence of mind to realize that jumping right back into a relationship with somebody right now is a Very Bad Idea for him. He really, really, wants to some time to himself so he can figure out who is he and what he wants when he’s not just drifting along and accepting his mom’s plans for him. And he knows damn well that Dorothy wants to get back together with him. So yeah, I predict that he’s actually gonna be low-key avoiding Dorothy for a while.
It’s also just like really solid affirmation of his and Joyce’s relationship where, she actually *does* feel comfortable giving him physical affection, it’s just got to be when she feels secure.
These two are cute and I hope they are as unusually drama-free as Becky and Dina are for couples in this strip.
She is leaving with complete serenity, at least I think she prefers to keep her distance, but I just hope that Walky doesn’t try to be insistent, besides Dorothy is there and it is more than obvious that it is not a wise decision to approach her either and she wants a seek advice.
I think Walky is too :/ I suspect even Lucy’s not sure and might be taking time to think things over/trying to leave her options open, but she’s (intentionally) not really communicating that.
I get it, Walky.
You’re sad.
You broke up with another girlfriend and it’s unlike anything you’ve been through before.
With Dorothy, you did nothing wrong and she knew that and wanted to make things as easy for you as possible.
With Amber, you initially ended things in support of Sal which gave you a hint of nobility (for lack of a better word that hopefully someone will supply me in a later comment), and then at Halloween you dealt poorly to Mike’s passing and Amber reacted violently to that, leaving you both in the wrong.
Now you have Lucy acting politely yet coldly to you, almost like a stranger, and for something that isn’t solely your fault, but that you and her both treat as solely your fault. It’s barely been 24 hours and it’s new emotional pain for you, something you don’t deal well with in the best of times.
If he could be honest with Amber, maybe he can be on good terms with Lucy (and I hope Dorothy too) too, well, as long as he does things more accurately this time.
He doesn’t know he’s on bad terms with Dorothy.
And honestly, while Dorothy is going through some things, the girl was in the wrong coming to him like that and he was right to shut her down (strictly in relation to her wanting him to break up with Lucy).
But as far as talking to Lucy, the chick is partially to blame and won’t give him the time of day, so I think we’ll need them both to be honest and to be willing to talk.
I know that Walky didn’t want to look like a jerk and that’s why he prioritized Lucy, but he also hurt Dorothy (not intentional) with those “words of encouragement” and also there are things that we didn’t see at karaoke and it’s also obvious that searching advice on Dorothy now is also not a good idea
Like I said, he doesn’t know he’s on bad terms with Dorothy.
Has Dorothy even said she’s on bad terms with Walky to anyone?
She said she took Ruth’s advice and humiliated herself, but I don’t think she’s said she’s mad at Walky for any reason.
As for him going to her for advice, I know that’s something you’ve considered, but I’m not even thinking about that right now.
My brain doesn’t even want to go there to have an opinion.
Precisely, the fact that Walky does not know about it and that Dorothy possibly keeps to herself that those words hurt her, is the opportunity to see things more clearly, that is, to take her down from the pedestal and see her as a normal girl and that’s not bad.
One can hope that, if and when Walky and Dorothy get back together, she’ll be all the more secure in the relationship for knowing that he demonstrated that kind of loyalty to someone else.
if i had a nickel for every time a girl dumped Walky and then acted totally unphased by it afterwards, i’d have two nickels. which isn’t a lot but it’s sad it’s happened twice
She seemed to have become much more misanthropic (is that the word?) since Halloween.
Of course, there was Mike’s death and Ethan’s withdrawal from her and into his Emo Peter phase that also contributed to that.
Unless you mean Dorothy, but since Dorothy was still trying to have sex with him to make him feel better the next day, I’m not sure that counts, either.
Like I said, Dorothy wanted to run to Walky and have sex with him specifically to make him feel better the very next day.
And she said this out loud in front of their friends.
I do agree that she herself wasn’t saddened by the breakup, but I wouldn’t call that unphased.
oh my god, i mean in the time before Walky was suddenly hot and she wanted him again. she was never over Walky but she definitely acted that way towards him because she was still stuck thinking she had to be the nature one about everything
We are talking about the same time period.
I am literally talking about the next day after they first broke up.
The day he spent tweeting with Amber.
The day Joyce was feening for Jacob.
Back in the first semester before the time skip.
If you don’t agree with me, fine, but it’s coming off like you don’t even know what I’m talking about.
If you don’t remember, I’ll find the strip for you in a moment.
it’s coming off the same way for me lol. i’m aware she wanted to fuck him out of pity, but after Dorothy stopped waffling about it and said they were over for good she acted to his face like it didn’t affect her negatively
This is the day after she said it was over for good, egon.
Not before when she said they were taking a break.
It being over for good is why he’s upset.
And I already agreed that she wasn’t saddened.
My point was that if she still cared about him, about his feelings, to want to do specifically this, then I personally would not call her unphased as she is phased by his sadness despite not having her own.
You realize that the strip you found is after Walky quit Amber, right?
That’s several days story time and more than half a year real time after the strip I shared.
But if you want to make the distinction between her being unfazed (apparently we were both spelling it wrong) and her acting unfazed, I still stand by what I said: her wanting to make Walky feel better is her being fazed by the breakup, but she is not saddened by the breakup.
still can’t reply to you. of course i’m aware, how could i not be?? also i don’t know what you’re trying to get across anymore. like you’re saying words but they mean nothing
Yeah, even if you completely ignore the fact that she immediately wanted to have a quickie with him to make herhim feel better, just the fact that she was stammering and weirdly calling him “David” instead of “Walky” shows that she was (and, also, was acting) at least a little bit fazed by it all.
It’s bad enough that I, like others, feel that Lucy is just as much to blame for what happened as Walky, but am I the only one who feels that there’s some added pettiness involved from her having deeper feelings than he did?
It might be just me, but my belief that it is the case takes away any sympathy I have for Lucy’s view of things and on,y makes me want to have Walky move on as soon as possible.
She was angry he didn’t love her back, remember? That’s more than just pettiness. She’s genuinely immature and a bit mean spirited. Which, you know, is being a teenager. But I definitely feel it too.
I have sympathy for Lucy because I remember being young and stupid and having wildly unrealistic expectations about love and romance. Which doesn’t negate the fiasco she caused, of course, but it’s an understandable fiasco that lots of people go through.
A lot of comments here read way too harsh and judgemental of Lucy to me. Not only are these teenagers, but hardly any time has passed. Even adults require time to process their feelings, or might not recognise their own mistakes for wekks, months, or years down the line (e.g. until they do it repeatedly and recognise a pattern, or until someone else sees enough of the situation to call them out on it).
My other concern is that they are in public, in front of a lot of people, and they have to both continue attending the same classes for a long time. Now is not the time to talk about things, or make a scene; it’s not beneficial to poke the wound for the long-term situation. A lot of people seem to be interpreting this as malice on Lucy’s part, but she might simply think that Walky does not care deeply for her (she acknowledged her foolishness in liking him more than he her, after all), and that there is nothing more to talk about, and no need for closeness between them or any further discussion.
Okay is this the autism stopping me from seeing the subject here bc I cannot fathom where you people are getting all this from “nice seeing you too. See ya Wednesday.”
Then again people in the comments have always acted severely mentally ill in regards to this woman so idk
I personally am basing this on a couple of things:
1. She was friendlier to Sarah, who she actively thinks is the kind of person of is mean to her friends and ditches friends when it’s inconvenient, than she was in this strip and when she first saw Walky in the morning.
2. Lucy has always been one to talk about and/or show her feelings (that Walky was oblivious to her crushing on him doesn’t change the fact she shared and showed those feelings to just about everyone else).
But now she is deliberately treating him like an acquaintance, not like her bf, not like her ex with some complicated feelings, and not like the friend she had been for the past several months.
Anecdotally, it is not how I acted at that age during breakups (at least not the next day), is not how I would act now, and not how I would expect her to act given what we normally see from her.
So she sees Walky is feeling something (as evidenced by him stopping mid sentence, dropping his smile, and standing in the doorway upon seeing her face, and then not keeping up with the group this morning), her giving him a polite yet distant response despite their connection to each other and time spent together, and her being less distant to Sarah who she actively dislikes leads me to believe she is being petty, as, even if she is confused herself, she can say as much (with or without making a scene and in private or in public or even via text).
And if she’s not confused, she can also say that.
Oh, y’know. Crazy, insane, demented, nuts, psychotic, sick in the head, wrong-brained. Saying it in half-assed clinical terms doesn’t do anything to make it better, does it? It’s still a really rude thing to say about real human beings who actually exist, and I’m really not sure what the point was.
We can only make assumptions on what we are shown. Lucy, visually, seems perfectly fine and dandy. It would seem she is over their relationship and the troubles it came with. Until we have a scene of her bothered by the situation, I don’t see any reason to assume she is.
I think the detail is that Lucy naturally overcame the failed relationship, but I think Walky will do something stupid unintentionally (and I hope not, because at least the development he has shown has been good)
I think the issue is that we have seen Lucy comment that she wasn’t certain herself if the relationship was over to Sarah this morning. Now? She’s acting like it is as if she had made a declarative statement the other day to that affect, despite not doing so.
It’s teen BS in general more than a specifically ‘Lucy flaw’ but it definitely plays with her flaws very heavily. Assumptions, biases, the act of ‘acting good’ is more important than actually being mature and respectful, etc.
The right thing to do here IS to acknowledge that it’s over, or that it isn’t but you want time, or to say that you want space. To just go ‘hey, bye’ is a level of distance and separation that, if not intentional, is still immature.
And maybe that image of serenity is a kind of weapon towards Walky and she feels bad, that would be a very perverse act of Lucy, I wouldn’t be surprised if Raidah wants her in her malevolent league.
I don’t think acting calm and composed, if she’s feeling turmoil, is an act of maliciousness.
Raidah has other motivations than just revenge on Joyce and Sarah, she’s not forming a rogue’s gallery. Her circle is people she feels have influence and wealth. Lucy was just Walky’s plus one to brunch. She’d rather have Walky David.
Exactly. Faced with the crisis, Walky hasn’t done anything to break or salvage the relationship. She is now resolved to no longer be the one doing all the work, and wants to know whether he thinks it’s worth some effort on his part.
But that itself would be a shitty move. She made the break, whether she really means it as a breakup or not. Expecting him to pursue her now, rather than respecting her decision, is unfair.
It’s along the same lines as telling someone “no” when what you really want is for them to keep trying to prove their really serious.
If she actually did intend it as a breakup and Walky kept trying to win her back anyway, that would be shitty of him.
It’s definitely possible, because it’s kind of a rom-com thing to do and Lucy doesn’t seem to have a real mature understanding of relationships, even for a college freshman.
That is extremely toxic and immature behavior. She’s made a soft request for space twice now. If Walky pursues her? That’s just harassment at this point. She doesn’t get to make even soft declarative statements like that and then expect Walky to know that ‘Oh, but when I said this, actually meant you should try and speak to me more or fix things.’
What you say when you want someone to fix things is ‘Here is problem X, here is solution Y that I need from you to continue dating you. If you have other ideas with this, we can either discuss it or it may just be a line I’m not willing to cross and we need to break up.’
Not to ask for clarity, no.
But the theory here is that she wants him back, but she wants him to pursue her to show that he’s actually willing to put in effort.
Which, if she actually had broken up with him and didn’t want to continue, would bad behavior on his part.
Usually string along implies giving someone just enough attention to keep them interested, or giving them a false impression of how interested you are.
I think a better name for this behavior is sending mixed signals.
I’d forgotten about that comment to Sarah. That casts all of this in a slightly different light.
Regardless, she and Walky need to talk before this goes to much farther, but where’s the drama in that.
Unfortunately talking won’t fix this relationship. Walky is under the mistaken belief, as proposed to him by Lucy, that this is all Walky’s fault. Walky needs time away from her, some advice with someone with a neutral perspective to say ‘eh, some of it is, some of it isn’t, keep improving and keep trying’, and that’s really it.
Lucy, meanwhile, needs to understand that every single choice she has made has excitedly steered her to this conclusion, but she won’t learn that for a while yet. That’s almost as big an arc as Sarah herself getting over her shitty attitude.
It probably wouldn’t fix this relationship, but it’s still necessary to set the new boundaries. Like, have they actually broken up. Are they going to try to remain friends.
That kind of thing.
I think Becky might be in all of them too actually. Like, Joyce is the focus of the flashbacks but that seems pretty fitting considering Becky’s longstanding crush.
I think flashbacks are for us. A character might be remembering those incidents, but their memories are foggy. For example, Jennifer and Walky remembering that they gave each other their nicknames, when both of them named themself in the flashback.
I took that as Jennifer dreaming, which is why it immediately segued into her being woken up by Asher.
It being a dream is why she didn’t remember it accurately after waking.
That’s also why we were given scenes with no context, like her name being called while sitting on the couch.
I hope this isn’t (and doesn’t become) a case of Walky being all “Man, when we were together and she was totally into me, I wasn’t really all that into her, but with her being not into me anymore, I’m totally into her now.”
and thats are normal feelings,
when someone is your main friend for months and social support.
They only dated a week, he schemed to make her parent like her. He introduced her tot his parents,
and he turned down his ex, he still has feelings for.
Lol, never mind. I see how I ended up with Leslie (no thank u) and Booster (fine but not it) in lower comments, and have made the necessary corrections.
Walky, Please do the healthy thing and go have sex with Amber and Dorothy.
and maybe Amazigirl.
No matter what walky does, Lucy will come back.
and lucy will retroactively claim the opposite relationship status based on what makes him feel worse.
WE are broken up // It was just a fight you cheated.
There is no “High road” here —other than the passive aggressive one of Lucy chose of showing up, being polite and stringing him along.
I think compulsive asshole is a bit strong, but I do think it’s clear that Lucy is sending we’re-over signals to punish Walky and I also think it highly likely that Lucy would be hurt by Walky immediately getting together with Dorothy, Amber or someone else, in which case it’s not completely unlikely she would try to make him feel bad about it. That’s not so very different from what Adam is saying, except for the attitude.
Without the ability to edit, let me clarify that the first sentence should read “I think calling Lucy a compulsive asshole is a bit strong …” Until I reread it, I didn’t realize there were alternate ways to construe it.
“do the healthy thing and go fuck either one of your emotionally unstable exes. Maybe the one actively in the middle of a breakdown who’s super hung up on you. Infinitely better than a girl who was overeager and now is being cordial after a breakup”
I’m 94% sure that we are not reading the same webcomic. Quick, when did Nelson Mandela die in your universe? And how do you spell the name of the kid’s book bear family?
Rachel did fully intend to break up with him in that moment, but after cooler heads prevailed she regretted it. When you break up in the middle of a fight, it’s not always permanent. If you sleep with someone else, it will harm your chances of reconciliation. If Rachel had slept with someone else I do not think it would have been fine on Ross’s end.
This is different because there is no attempt at reconciliation or working through the problem. Lucy is behaving like an ex who wants to remain friends. If she is still his girlfriend then either she should be mad at him or saying she forgives him. “I will see you when we next have class” is not normal girlfriend behavior.
I mean, that does carry the implications of “We will only see each other when we are contextually obligated to do so” at least that is what I got from it.
Exactly. There is an expectation that people in relationships will want to spend time together. If they instead need space or don’t want to be around you, normally they will communicate that somehow. They don’t smile and say see you next week.
In the traditional fashion of the lovable meathead working on himself, he follows the example of his more emotionally intuitive BFF.
It’s not perfect, but it’ll do, Joe. It’ll do. ♡
(Also, the fact that you and Joyce want to work on yourselves for each other makes me ship you two all the harder, I have to admit. I fucking love to see that, it’s so good.)
So Mike once suggested to Amber that Walky has a strong case of attention deficit.
Speaking as someone with attention deficit, I have often missed social queues and unintentionally ignored people who were not stating their intentions directly to me.
Which leads me to say Lucy really needs to just be direct and say what she wants from Walky right now. Cause I don’t know if they are broken up, on a break, or anything. And Walky clearly doesn’t know what to make of that situation either. I’m worried she’s deliberately leaving him stuck in limbo, and that isn’t fair to him.
As an ADHD person also, I agree that Walky would hugely benefit from Lucy being straight-up with him, yes.
BUT he’s a very intuitive boy and in his talk with Linda he did indicate he was pretty aware this wasn’t a salvageable mishap, for one thing, so it’s not like he’s necessarily just twisting in the wind as per arc words.
ALSO, I think it’s uhhhh kind of off to assume Lucy is doing things to punish???? him? Lucy isn’t thinking of him at all, probably intentionally; she’s laser-focused on being a valid member of the group who is totally fine, and Sarah can shut her dumb face.
I’ve been trying to form some thoughts on this Walky and Lucy situation. Maybe too many thoughts because I doubt it’s that serious.
1. I don’t think Lucy is in the wrong here. Emphasizing a distance between them is fair if that’s even what she’s doing. I kinda doubt she’s putting much thought into hurting Walky or into him at all.
2. I think this is Walky’s problem as in now that Lucy is gone he wants or misses her. There’s some irony there of him being more aware of her as his ex than he was when they were dating.
3. It’s only been a day so we don’t know how this will shake out, but I don’t like the implication that their friendship dynamic has cooled so abruptly. They were friends longer than they dated and I think that’s worth more than any lingering awkwardness at a week long romance.
4. I don’t like Lucy. I’ve been on the fence with her for a while, but I feel that her cheery personality is a partial facade for someone more manipulative and calculating. I really don’t like that she inserted herself into Walky’s life and friend group to get one thing (him) and when that didn’t work out the way she planned, Walky’s the one left holding the emotional damage check while she gets to still chill in his friend group. Maybe that’s not fair to her but something about how this shook out feels a bit unfair to Walky.
Lucy seems to want to follow society’s default script. I don’t know how much of that is just uncritical acceptance and how much is actually agreeing with it. I do worry that she might assume all men are in control of their emotions, and view support as weakness. If she weren’t following society’s script so often, I wouldn’t suspect this stereotyping behavior from her since she hasn’t actually shown it though. But just as likely, she’s used to not getting support, why give it?
I’m with you up til point 4; I think Lucy isn’t intentionally calculating or manipulative, she just kind of knows how to be in order to navigate social situations, especially social situations where she’s the underdog. If anything, she seems like she’s been bullied a lot of her life and the calculating social engineer moments are her way of people-pleasing and fitting in.
It’s why she and Sarah immediately went off like a pair of cats, too (Sarah refuses to please people or have a filter of any kind) and also why she’s currently being Miss Congeniality around Sarah and the group—Sarah challenged her space and the only true revenge is to prove her wrong with a big smile.
I used to give her the benefit of the doubt too but seeing her during and post relationship has changed my mind. She pursued Walky, changed her schedule to be closer to him by having the same class. She spent time with him as friends under the pretense he was falling for her before they started dating. She was trying to speedrun dates to rush sex while staying within her proper Christian values. The whole fake girlfriend plan. Trying to cozy up to Raidah’s popular group. These actions don’t add up to a purely genuine or naive person to me. I don’t have a problem with Lucy being calculating or taking steps to manipulate scenarios in her favor. I just wish she were honest about it. It comes off a little cowardly.
Walky + Lucy is tedious. Walky + Dorothy only slightly better, Dorothy’s going to be a drag until she gets to “shave her head” levels of identity crisis.
Joe and Joyce are cute, and also Dina has her arm around Becky. <3
I loved old-school Dorothy x Walky, but like…yeah, I don’t think either of them are gonna rekindle the old flame necessarily, and…
Dorothy you gotta make a move, of some kind. Any kind. Even a bad move. You’re just drifting, girl! You are floating rudderless into a very weird space where you’re kind of the, uh, proverbial “Nice G(irl)”, and it is not a good look!
…Ok, it took me a hot minute to figure out what the heck you were talking about, but then I managed to squint hard enough I could see Dina’s arm around on Becky’s back in the first panel.
L E W D
Happy for how far Lucy has come! If they ever did decide to try again I feel like they’d be on even footing this time and would actually have a chance. For now I’m glad Lucy can stand on her own and value herself. Instantly makes her a lot more enjoyable to read and I hope she’s still going to show up regularly.
You know, if Lucy is trying to banish him from normal friendly lunch, with this bunch, that is his friend group, then that is kinda dickish. Not a merciless Machiavellian ploy, but a bit presumptuous there.
If Lucy had spoken at any point with Walky about where she stood, this would have been a good place for her to assert that she considers the relationship over and wants to be at a friendly place. She hasn’t. So all Lucy is doing is again setting where she wants to be, and expecting Walky who never really kenned where she wants to be to figure it out on his own.
Again, I do not like Lucy so I am not entirely objective. But this is not positive motion. This is just once again her deciding her worldview is right and expecting the world to reflect it, even if it causes confusion and hurt feelings because actually talking about what she expects of her relationships directly to the others in those relationships (romantic, platonic, or social) might lead to challenges of that worldview.
Or, more succinctly, Lucy really needs to actually TALK to people before she gets any gold stars for progress. This is just a holding pattern without her needing to put in any effort.
Pretty soon, I expect her to actually get out a football and call Walky over to kick it.
I don’t like Lucy either. Walky has done approximately zero speaking to Lucy about where he and she stood when it mattered. This is just her learning the wrong lesson about communication from him.
Hey now, her reasons are and were twofold and very valid! Look:
1.) ”Walky is here and Walky is my hot boyfriend yaaaayyyy”
2.) “Um, EXCUSE YOU, Sarah, I am actually a really valued member of the friend group?? How dare you??? I’ll show YOU who doesn’t belong here!”
As you can see, one of these reasons is still totally intact!
Y’all, Lucy was “friendlier” to Sarah because she’s proving a point to Sarah about how she’s the better person (which is tiresome, perhaps, but also super normal and not a manifestation of demonic qualities or Machiavellian villainy, it’s not even Raidah villainy, it’s just A Thing)
She’s brushing Walky off because breakup feels are really bad and hey let’s not confront them everything is TOTALLY FINE byyyyeeeeee
See neither Walky nor Lucy are saints here, but Walky’s been kind of obsessed the entire relationship over whether he’s treating Lucy well. On this he really has very little to go off of, because Lucy doesn’t actually talk to him about her feelings unless she’s angry at him for not knowing what they are. So Walky ends up getting hurt in ways that would really affect Walky if he was hurting Lucy like that while Lucy doesn’t give a crap at all.
Oof. I hope Walky catches onto this and stands up for himself. Dude really has been doing his best and that isn’t being appreciated at all.
I’m not 100% sure Lucy understands that others have feelings, or that her actions and words can affect them in ways she doesn’t directly intend. Like, she’s not the devil, or even particularly a Bad Person™ (only a complete dumbfuck would think I was saying so 🙂), but she comes off as fairly insensitive a lot of the time, at least to me.
The hug made me smile in part because it’s cute and also because I am a short blonde girl with a significant other who is a foot taller than me and this is precisely how we hug.
“Can I have a hug?” Joe you precious darling you can have WHATEVER you want I love you <3333
also Lucy baby i love you but you may want to be upfront about whether you guys are like, y'know, broken up. SURE he could pick up on context, but life is short and shit is easier when you just straight up say what you mean.
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Math: where they learn to put 2 and 2 together
…
idk, I can’t brain bc work wants us working four hours of overtime every day and I busted a gut laughing at them
1+1=2
But Walky – Lucy = Sadness
That’s as many as four hours.
And that’s terrible.
TWO-forty minutes!
–Dave, Lex Luthor _aspires_ to be so evil
Always Act your Wage and demand payment for any work you do for them.
Overtime: because business can’t afford to pay better and hire more people, so they’ll pay 50-100% more to get us at our absolute least effective.
Surprisingly mature
Given it’s Lucy
They’re both still performing above expectations, honestly.
She’s probably aware that Walky’s friend group is also now her only friend group (I’m spite of Sarah) because the girls in her hall openly and clearly prefer Jennifer, she’s probably just trying not to cause drama in the group.
Lucy must be trolling him now. I approve.
Also, Willis is trolling us.
Forever and always.
she just comes off as polite to me. it’d be more trolling if she happened to join someone right afterwards and like “hey babe we still on for lunch later?” or so but even as a friend idk how many ppl could do that quickly/last minute haha
Politely setting expectations and asserting boundaries. She’s not trying to get a rise out of anybody like a troll, she’s doing them both a favor and reducing the likelihood of stupid teen drama, of which frankly she has previously been too great a source.
(Also, ugh, sorry I accidentally reported your comment while trying to hit “reply”. This UI is not my favorite.)
That would be more true if she hadn’t herself stated she was uncertain where this relationship was right now. She seems certain right now and is not just ‘setting boundaries’, she’s doing so vaguely. A more mature person would say ‘hey, we’re done, see you Wednesday.’ This is still very much potentially in the realms of ‘Walky fucked up and he is the only one who made mistakes’ behavior.
She looks a bit manic in the last panel. I think she’s unsure of where the relationship is and unsure of how to act right now.
I don’t see any mania in her expression? That just look like a normal Lucy face to me.
It might be by imagination but her eyes seem a bit… wild somehow? I admit I could be misreading this.
As a person with bipolar — no. Lucy is not manic. That’s not what manic eyes look like.
Manic eyes look like someone on hard drugs.
She’s proud of herself for setting a firm boundary with Wwlky, when she has a personal history, it seems, of being a doormat.
I didn’t mean medically diagnosable mania, I meant the behavior where someone is upset so they’re a bit high-energy and all over the place. Like when Joyce was having problems with Ethan so she was obsessing over getting Jacob with Sarah. Sarah says “you seem a bit manic” and I think most people understand what she means.
It’s your imagination. That’s a neutral smile, Lucy just has big eyes
What, you don’t see the horns and angry eyebrows and little French moustache?
I wouldn’t say “manic”, but I agree there’s something off about it. Likely just a bit of strain. This isn’t as easy as she wants it to seem.
It came across to me as “proud of herself for stating clearly what she currently expects from Walky” even though she didn’t really make it clear for Walky in the most important sense.
Either that or it’s a secret crafty smile at turning the tables on Walky. Maybe she’s playing “hard to get”. Perhaps she’s enjoying having HIM pursuing HER for a change.
Except that he isn’t, yet. They’re still playing “after you my dear Alphonse.” He wants her to say it’s okay; she wants him to say whether he really wants her in his life. Because if you ask, the answer could be the one you don’t want to hear.
Sorry, I clicked Report accidentally :(((
Reporting you on purpose because it’s always funny to me.
Reported for reporting, because you can take the nerd out of WoW, but you apparently can’t take the WoW out of the nerd.
Joke’s on you, punk. I reported myself 20 minutes before you could get to me.
You guys don’t have to apologize every time. It takes like five people for it to even do anything. It’s not automated, willis can tell the difference between a genuine report and fat thumbing
Let ’em, it’s funny.
The typical Willis “wild eyes” indicator is a line under the eyes on a character who’s smiling. That’s not an absolute rule, but it HAS been remarkably consistent art choice.
Or maybe she’s taking a break while she thinks about things and thinks Walky is on the same page as her.
I read it as “I’m okay now, but it’s your move.”
I read it less as a troll and more as a very determined act of friendzoning. Which is fair!
See you Wednesday.
C yOu [Next] GAwain’s day.
C O N GA
She’s calling him a conga.
I missed Becky’s “Joyce!” at first, so it just seemed like Joyce was singling Becky out for unknown reasons.
Me too!
I can’t imagine that somehow not being passive aggressive. Either against everyone who isn’t Becky or just against Becky.
Alas, the cold shoulder.
it’s pretty friendly for a cold shoulder unless it’s her version of it
She was friendlier with Sarah, so yeah, I’d call that her a cold shoulder.
The shoulder seems lukewarm at worst.
I mean, it IS January in Indiana, and they’re standing outside. I’m pretty everyone’s shoulder is cold at this point.
I look forward to not having Lucy + Walky drama for 5-6 months.
Hm, zero sarcasm detected. That can only mean you broke my sarcasm detector by overloading it. I’ve got to build in some sort of failsafe for that.
I’m getting my hopes up. Way way up.
I too am wanting more Walky/Dorothy drama.
Believe me, it’s what I most want to see, and it’s obvious that they also have a lot to clarify.
I would love more Walky/Dorothy drama….is….is “drama” a euphemism? I feel like it’s a euphemism.
I don’t want that either! Though I have appreciated how the last storyline really made it clear that Walky doesn’t really see Dorothy clearly, reinforcing to me how it wasn’t headed towards being a long term match. (I don’t think in their current states they can have “drama” without causing actual drama.)
Let’s stay friends but actually you don’t really stay friends. I know that feel.
How fucked would that be if they stopped being friends because of a week long relationship?
Kinda fucked, but in an entirely normal and precedented way.
Not very. People stop being friends for all kind of reasons. A breakup is honestly one of the better ones.
True, but I don’t think their romance ever got to the point of irreconcilable grievances. Ultimately they were just on two different wavelengths.
As long as Walky doesn’t try to do something intense, I guess things could be fixed.
And as long as he doesn’t do anything it won’t be.
True, but by that same merit I don’t know if their friendship was strong enough that she’d find it worth saving either. Kinda goes both ways in that regard.
I think you make a good point actually. I just realized a major factor in their “friendship” was Lucy pining for Walky. That’s what motivated her to even spend time with him. Without that are they actually even friends to begin with? And that actually is a tinge messed up.
Yeah, Lucy did the toxic thing that is typically expected of dudes. She befriended someone with the full intention of dating them.
She had a crush on him but didn’t know how to ask him out. So she just spent time with him and dropped hints.
Yeah it’s kinda uncharitable to call that behavior toxic. If you like someone you get to know them. Hang out with them. Become friends and then maybe once you feel you’re close you ask them out. Like sure it’d be NICE if you only had crushes on people you were already friends with but it doesn’t always happen in that order.
Yoto I can’t reply to your comment correctly, so I hope it gets to the correct place.
It would be problematic if she decided that Walky (or all men) were the problem because he did not pick up on her vague signals. Or if she decided the friendship was wasted effort if he did not want to date her.
If being flirty friends with a crush was bad, I struggle to see how anyone could get into relationships. Lucy wasn’t exactly subtle about her intentions. She spent time with him and flirted with him in the hopes he would ask her out. She didn’t disarm him “we’re just friends” and then get mad when he interpretted that literally.
Still not getting why this is toxic. I think friendship is the foundation of all positive personal relationships.
Perhaps you refer to pretending friendship?
Yeah, that is not the actual toxic thing. There is a toxic thing that looks like that, but making friends with someone you’re attracted to is not it.
From the beginning, Lucy only had one intent. To date Walky. To approach him saying ‘hey, lets me friends’ when that is not when she wants is in fact toxic. We know that this is how she thinks because a week later she got mad at Walky for being honest about how he’s not in love with her after a WEEK. That means that she has been viewing every day of their friendship as time he should have been falling for her.
That is a false narrative she created and than got angry at him for.
It is okay to want to be friends with someone you also want to date, but it is not okay to do so with only the intention of dating them and making you love them during that time. That is toxic and that is what Lucy did.
Ok but real talk. What do you do if you meet someone you want to date? Sure you can just ask them out and hope that your base level attractiveness is enough to pull them in. But like…isn’t it normal to try to hang out and get closer to someone you wanna date before you ask them out? Like even if you’re initiating contact BECAUSE you want to date them, you’re still taking it slow and putting in the effort so you’re not just going “you’re hot, wanna date?” You’re not OWED affection but I’ve also heard the “How can you like me, we barely know each other.” How do you approach someone you wanna date but aren’t super close with?
It’ll probably just be awkward for a little while. If Walky and Amber are back on good terms after how THEIR thing ended, I don’t see how he and Lucy can’t get along.
(I still want Walky n Amber to get back together tbf)
Walky×Amber is great; I would prefer Walky×Dorothy, but I like both of them.
“I like both of them”
That’d be an… interesting polycule.
Amber could mentor Dorothy in the way of Garbage. I mean she tried that one time when Dorothy hanged out and video gamed. But Dorothy could improve at garbage.
More than a mentor, she could be the older sister Dorothy needs.
Agreed. I was never that invested in WalkyxLucy, but now they’re not friends and Walky sad and that makes me feel bad
Them breaking up is the best thing to happen for them but it still kinda highlights that Walky doesn’t really have any close friendships to fall back on.
Yeah, but that took months and a time skip. If that had all played out on screen it would have been a decade or more of real time.
Their friendship was kind of mostly built on Lucy’s crush. So kind of a bummer I guess.
Yeah, that’s my take as well. I don’t know that Lucy and Walky ever HAD a friendship in the first place.
They did not. Lucy had (possibly unconscious) ulterior motives and Walky had a friendship based on the idea of a person who didn’t really exist.
They really didn’t, did they?
At the very least, they’ll have to renegotiate their friendship. It wouldn’t work to just keep doing what they’re doing on the regulars already, just with infinitely less hand-holding.
Being friendly in the same group, sure. Regularly going out to eat just the two of them together or hanging out watching cartoons as a pair, like they’d been doing before they started dating. I don’t think that would work.
either way they’d def need some time apart, even the ppl who are like “let’s be friends/stay with our group of friends” and mean it probably don’t literally hang out hte next week after their breakup
Joe standing with his hands behind his back next to three characters he’s a foot taller than is an amusing visual
Lucy blaming him entirely despite her enthusiastic participation in the parent debacle is some bullshit. Its not 100% either of their faults, but her treatment of him has been patently unfair
I can respect the clean break but only if she means it and I don’t think she means it.
(love to be wrong tho)
Yeah, it’s definitely good for her to get some distance even if that means being maybe a little harsher than is deserved.
Does she blame him? Or has she simply decided that he’s got too much going on with his parents for her to waste her time on him?
Agreed. Like, feels bad to be Walky here, and if I were his friend I’d want to take him out for consolation McNuggets, but Lucy isn’t being mean. She’s just not dating him anymore because she didn’t enjoy the experience.
So y’all don’t see this as being cold?
Cuz she sure seems cold to me.
She was more polite to Sarah, and she thinks Sarah is a person who ditches her friends when they’re inconvenient and has had two separate back and forth’s with.
She and Walky were supposed to have been friends (since she always wanted to get with him, I’m not sure how genuine the friendship was), but she’s treated him like a stranger or a coworker that you would not hang out with after work or eat with at lunch.
Collegial politeness is pretty dang good for a 19-year-old who, less than 24 hours ago, broke up with a guy she had previously had a massive crush on. It’s her first breakup ever, so far as we are aware. Returning to friendship takes time and isn’t always possible.
My only criticism of Lucy would be that Walky doesn’t know he’s a fictional character so he might not fully understand that that was definitely a breakup.
Hopefully he’ll ask at some point and she will give a straight answer or he’ll call it quits if she doesn’t. Chances of either of those happening…
didn’t seem cold to me, and I don’t even like her that much, but it probably is just an act. just seemed like maybe she had taken what Sarah said to heart and is a kid who doesn’t know how to have relationship discussions honestly, but I would bet that the next scene of her is her in her dorm room crying for several hours (even if we don’t get to see it on panel).
I think it’s cold, but understandably so. She’s still messed up about him and interacting with him is going to be difficult. For both of them. Hold it together, be polite and minimize contact.
While still trying to stay in with what is closer to his group of friends than hers, which is the hard part.
I do think they’re going to need to have at least one more talk to clarify where they stand with each other, but neither of them are good at doing that, so it’ll likely fester a while.
I think she’s trying to be polite. She massively overinvested in this relationship too soon, and now she’s trying to disengage without being awful about it. It’s hard.
(And for that matter, maybe she’s *not* breaking up with him. Maybe she’s taking a few days to think about how she feels before she makes a decision. Sure, she’d do better to tell Walky what the deal is – but is she supposed to tell him in public in front of a group of his friends and classmates? Seriously?)
No, but if that’s what’s going on, she should make an opportunity to talk to him, rather than both hanging out with the group of his friends and just saying “see you wednesday”.
It’s understandable if she doesn’t. She’s dealing with what’s probably her first real breakup (or relationship crisis, if she’s not thinking of it as a breakup), and she’s surely messed up about it, but that’s different than thinking she’s actually executing this well.
This is cold behavior. Whether or not she fully intends it, she is very much an immature character who is not acknowledging the relationship she basically did nothing but push for, then helped break.
People don’t just go ‘hey’ a day after a break up. Particularly not 18+ yo teens. If she’s not power tripping a little, I’d be surprised, but even if she isn’t an actual mature act would be to acknowledge Walky, tell him she doesn’t want to spend time with him outside of class, and then walk away. This subtle ‘hey, good bye’ is child stuff.
Intersting. It would literally never occur to me in my entire life to tell anyone whatsoever “Okay, I don’t want to spend time with you, so I’m leaving now.” Not even someone I actively hated. It certainly wouldn’t occur to me that not doing that makes me an asshole.
+1
1. That is not what I’m saying she needs to say. Good job mischaracterizing my point.
2. Drawing clear boundaries after a break up, or during a relationships problem area, is absolutely the mature thing to do. If you don’t get that, you might have problems.
It’s never occurred to you to leave a situation you didn’t want to be in?
She’s still mad at him for not standing up for her with his parents.
It wasn’t just the parents though. She (rightly) realized that it wasn’t healthy for her to like him so much more than he liked her back.
Especially since she didn’t know that was the situation, he did, and he didn’t tell her. Linda’s racism, and Walky not standing up to her was like a gust of wind that blew over their Jenga tower, precarious because Walky does not like having earnest conversations.
Lucy talks to Walky calmly, and Dorothy is there.
I know it’s too soon to speak but I don’t think Walky dares to seek advice after everything that has happened recently.
I just hope Dorothy doesn’t immediately try to get back together with him, after picking up on the subtext.
I’d like to think that after the whole parents revelation, Walky is going to have the presence of mind to realize that jumping right back into a relationship with somebody right now is a Very Bad Idea for him. He really, really, wants to some time to himself so he can figure out who is he and what he wants when he’s not just drifting along and accepting his mom’s plans for him. And he knows damn well that Dorothy wants to get back together with him. So yeah, I predict that he’s actually gonna be low-key avoiding Dorothy for a while.
Joe accepting that Danny was right about him being touch-starved! And just straight asking for what he wants, and Joyce obliging. You love to see it!
highlight of the strip
Lotta growth on display today!
It’s also just like really solid affirmation of his and Joyce’s relationship where, she actually *does* feel comfortable giving him physical affection, it’s just got to be when she feels secure.
These two are cute and I hope they are as unusually drama-free as Becky and Dina are for couples in this strip.
It seems Joe’s also been doing some reading!
I’m so glad someone else noticed this.
Also, good on him for not assuming he’s due one.
Perilously close to being respectful!
Joe is trying that’s so great
I wish he is able to show and receive non-romantic affection, as his friends. Yes, I’m talking about Danny.
*I wish he’s able too, because he’s doing great, today.
God, I squeeed at that second panel. CHARACTER GROWTH! Yayyyyyyyyyy
Ooh thanks for pointing that out, I’d somehow forgotten all about that interaction already!
… still feeling a lot of “are they broken up or aren’t they?” vibes from this interaction.
She is leaving with complete serenity, at least I think she prefers to keep her distance, but I just hope that Walky doesn’t try to be insistent, besides Dorothy is there and it is more than obvious that it is not a wise decision to approach her either and she wants a seek advice.
Yeah, I’m just hoping that Dorothy realizes that now is a good time to try again.
I cross all fingers.
It’s probably like everything else in their relationship, they aren’t on the same page.
I think Walky is too :/ I suspect even Lucy’s not sure and might be taking time to think things over/trying to leave her options open, but she’s (intentionally) not really communicating that.
Well that cleared things up!
it’d be weirder if they weren’t broken up unless she’s like “ok i’ll give you one more chance” or so and they just go slower or so
I get it, Walky.
You’re sad.
You broke up with another girlfriend and it’s unlike anything you’ve been through before.
With Dorothy, you did nothing wrong and she knew that and wanted to make things as easy for you as possible.
With Amber, you initially ended things in support of Sal which gave you a hint of nobility (for lack of a better word that hopefully someone will supply me in a later comment), and then at Halloween you dealt poorly to Mike’s passing and Amber reacted violently to that, leaving you both in the wrong.
Now you have Lucy acting politely yet coldly to you, almost like a stranger, and for something that isn’t solely your fault, but that you and her both treat as solely your fault. It’s barely been 24 hours and it’s new emotional pain for you, something you don’t deal well with in the best of times.
If he could be honest with Amber, maybe he can be on good terms with Lucy (and I hope Dorothy too) too, well, as long as he does things more accurately this time.
He doesn’t know he’s on bad terms with Dorothy.
And honestly, while Dorothy is going through some things, the girl was in the wrong coming to him like that and he was right to shut her down (strictly in relation to her wanting him to break up with Lucy).
But as far as talking to Lucy, the chick is partially to blame and won’t give him the time of day, so I think we’ll need them both to be honest and to be willing to talk.
I know that Walky didn’t want to look like a jerk and that’s why he prioritized Lucy, but he also hurt Dorothy (not intentional) with those “words of encouragement” and also there are things that we didn’t see at karaoke and it’s also obvious that searching advice on Dorothy now is also not a good idea
Like I said, he doesn’t know he’s on bad terms with Dorothy.
Has Dorothy even said she’s on bad terms with Walky to anyone?
She said she took Ruth’s advice and humiliated herself, but I don’t think she’s said she’s mad at Walky for any reason.
As for him going to her for advice, I know that’s something you’ve considered, but I’m not even thinking about that right now.
My brain doesn’t even want to go there to have an opinion.
Precisely, the fact that Walky does not know about it and that Dorothy possibly keeps to herself that those words hurt her, is the opportunity to see things more clearly, that is, to take her down from the pedestal and see her as a normal girl and that’s not bad.
One can hope that, if and when Walky and Dorothy get back together, she’ll be all the more secure in the relationship for knowing that he demonstrated that kind of loyalty to someone else.
Anything can happen and yes, I love the ship
if i had a nickel for every time a girl dumped Walky and then acted totally unphased by it afterwards, i’d have two nickels. which isn’t a lot but it’s sad it’s happened twice
I don’t think Amber was unphased.
She seemed to have become much more misanthropic (is that the word?) since Halloween.
Of course, there was Mike’s death and Ethan’s withdrawal from her and into his Emo Peter phase that also contributed to that.
Unless you mean Dorothy, but since Dorothy was still trying to have sex with him to make him feel better the next day, I’m not sure that counts, either.
i did mean Dorothy, and when they first broke up, pre time-skip she acted very unphased by the whole thing at least when around other people
Like I said, Dorothy wanted to run to Walky and have sex with him specifically to make him feel better the very next day.
And she said this out loud in front of their friends.
I do agree that she herself wasn’t saddened by the breakup, but I wouldn’t call that unphased.
oh my god, i mean in the time before Walky was suddenly hot and she wanted him again. she was never over Walky but she definitely acted that way towards him because she was still stuck thinking she had to be the nature one about everything
We are talking about the same time period.
I am literally talking about the next day after they first broke up.
The day he spent tweeting with Amber.
The day Joyce was feening for Jacob.
Back in the first semester before the time skip.
If you don’t agree with me, fine, but it’s coming off like you don’t even know what I’m talking about.
If you don’t remember, I’ll find the strip for you in a moment.
it’s coming off the same way for me lol. i’m aware she wanted to fuck him out of pity, but after Dorothy stopped waffling about it and said they were over for good she acted to his face like it didn’t affect her negatively
This is the day after she said it was over for good, egon.
Not before when she said they were taking a break.
It being over for good is why he’s upset.
And I already agreed that she wasn’t saddened.
My point was that if she still cared about him, about his feelings, to want to do specifically this, then I personally would not call her unphased as she is phased by his sadness despite not having her own.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-8/04-of-mike-and-men/david-2/
Here you go.
First semester, pre time skip, wants to give Walky a quickie to make him feel better about the breakup.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2019/comic/book-9-comic/02-but-the-sun-still-shines/blows-2/
can’t reply to your last response,
this is the one i’m talking about. also i said she acted unphased, not that she was unphased
You realize that the strip you found is after Walky quit Amber, right?
That’s several days story time and more than half a year real time after the strip I shared.
But if you want to make the distinction between her being unfazed (apparently we were both spelling it wrong) and her acting unfazed, I still stand by what I said: her wanting to make Walky feel better is her being fazed by the breakup, but she is not saddened by the breakup.
still can’t reply to you. of course i’m aware, how could i not be?? also i don’t know what you’re trying to get across anymore. like you’re saying words but they mean nothing
Yeah, even if you completely ignore the fact that she immediately wanted to have a quickie with him to make
herhim feel better, just the fact that she was stammering and weirdly calling him “David” instead of “Walky” shows that she was (and, also, was acting) at least a little bit fazed by it all.imagine making a lil referential joke then having not one, but two someones go “well actually in accordance with the timeline” ☝🏼🤓
(it’s almost like the joke wasn’t very good)
It’s bad enough that I, like others, feel that Lucy is just as much to blame for what happened as Walky, but am I the only one who feels that there’s some added pettiness involved from her having deeper feelings than he did?
It might be just me, but my belief that it is the case takes away any sympathy I have for Lucy’s view of things and on,y makes me want to have Walky move on as soon as possible.
I think do too. Of course it increases the hurt she feels, but is still not fair.
Shes so Hurt, ….shes showing up where Walky will have to face her.
Socializing with Sarah , as a Powermove on them BOTH.
and stringing walky along, not resolving things.
She was angry he didn’t love her back, remember? That’s more than just pettiness. She’s genuinely immature and a bit mean spirited. Which, you know, is being a teenager. But I definitely feel it too.
Its petty when they only dated a week.
she needs to backdate her friendship to count as dating to justify this.
Shes immature and counting things before they happen ( including being in love) . thats not walkys fault.
If he didnt tell her this could be misconstrued as using her for sex ( and even tho she was the initiator ) .
Yes, that is what I said?
agreed.
I have sympathy for Lucy because I remember being young and stupid and having wildly unrealistic expectations about love and romance. Which doesn’t negate the fiasco she caused, of course, but it’s an understandable fiasco that lots of people go through.
A lot of comments here read way too harsh and judgemental of Lucy to me. Not only are these teenagers, but hardly any time has passed. Even adults require time to process their feelings, or might not recognise their own mistakes for wekks, months, or years down the line (e.g. until they do it repeatedly and recognise a pattern, or until someone else sees enough of the situation to call them out on it).
My other concern is that they are in public, in front of a lot of people, and they have to both continue attending the same classes for a long time. Now is not the time to talk about things, or make a scene; it’s not beneficial to poke the wound for the long-term situation. A lot of people seem to be interpreting this as malice on Lucy’s part, but she might simply think that Walky does not care deeply for her (she acknowledged her foolishness in liking him more than he her, after all), and that there is nothing more to talk about, and no need for closeness between them or any further discussion.
Okay is this the autism stopping me from seeing the subject here bc I cannot fathom where you people are getting all this from “nice seeing you too. See ya Wednesday.”
Then again people in the comments have always acted severely mentally ill in regards to this woman so idk
I personally am basing this on a couple of things:
1. She was friendlier to Sarah, who she actively thinks is the kind of person of is mean to her friends and ditches friends when it’s inconvenient, than she was in this strip and when she first saw Walky in the morning.
2. Lucy has always been one to talk about and/or show her feelings (that Walky was oblivious to her crushing on him doesn’t change the fact she shared and showed those feelings to just about everyone else).
But now she is deliberately treating him like an acquaintance, not like her bf, not like her ex with some complicated feelings, and not like the friend she had been for the past several months.
Anecdotally, it is not how I acted at that age during breakups (at least not the next day), is not how I would act now, and not how I would expect her to act given what we normally see from her.
So she sees Walky is feeling something (as evidenced by him stopping mid sentence, dropping his smile, and standing in the doorway upon seeing her face, and then not keeping up with the group this morning), her giving him a polite yet distant response despite their connection to each other and time spent together, and her being less distant to Sarah who she actively dislikes leads me to believe she is being petty, as, even if she is confused herself, she can say as much (with or without making a scene and in private or in public or even via text).
And if she’s not confused, she can also say that.
Um, what do you mean by “severely mentally ill”?
Oh, y’know. Crazy, insane, demented, nuts, psychotic, sick in the head, wrong-brained. Saying it in half-assed clinical terms doesn’t do anything to make it better, does it? It’s still a really rude thing to say about real human beings who actually exist, and I’m really not sure what the point was.
The gang’s all here!
*Lucy leaves*
The gang’s here!
Nothing more than a hug, ey!!
I’m very much enjoying the friendship nucleus that Joe has found for himself
Joe, Danny, Joyce, Dina and Sal make up a really good group, if they want the group that is
We can only make assumptions on what we are shown. Lucy, visually, seems perfectly fine and dandy. It would seem she is over their relationship and the troubles it came with. Until we have a scene of her bothered by the situation, I don’t see any reason to assume she is.
I think the detail is that Lucy naturally overcame the failed relationship, but I think Walky will do something stupid unintentionally (and I hope not, because at least the development he has shown has been good)
I think the issue is that we have seen Lucy comment that she wasn’t certain herself if the relationship was over to Sarah this morning. Now? She’s acting like it is as if she had made a declarative statement the other day to that affect, despite not doing so.
It’s teen BS in general more than a specifically ‘Lucy flaw’ but it definitely plays with her flaws very heavily. Assumptions, biases, the act of ‘acting good’ is more important than actually being mature and respectful, etc.
The right thing to do here IS to acknowledge that it’s over, or that it isn’t but you want time, or to say that you want space. To just go ‘hey, bye’ is a level of distance and separation that, if not intentional, is still immature.
And maybe that image of serenity is a kind of weapon towards Walky and she feels bad, that would be a very perverse act of Lucy, I wouldn’t be surprised if Raidah wants her in her malevolent league.
*he feels bad.
I don’t think acting calm and composed, if she’s feeling turmoil, is an act of maliciousness.
Raidah has other motivations than just revenge on Joyce and Sarah, she’s not forming a rogue’s gallery. Her circle is people she feels have influence and wealth. Lucy was just Walky’s plus one to brunch. She’d rather have
WalkyDavid.I think she might be waiting to see if Walky wants to rekindle the relationship, thus making it not so one-sided.
Exactly. Faced with the crisis, Walky hasn’t done anything to break or salvage the relationship. She is now resolved to no longer be the one doing all the work, and wants to know whether he thinks it’s worth some effort on his part.
But that itself would be a shitty move. She made the break, whether she really means it as a breakup or not. Expecting him to pursue her now, rather than respecting her decision, is unfair.
It’s along the same lines as telling someone “no” when what you really want is for them to keep trying to prove their really serious.
If she actually did intend it as a breakup and Walky kept trying to win her back anyway, that would be shitty of him.
It’s definitely possible, because it’s kind of a rom-com thing to do and Lucy doesn’t seem to have a real mature understanding of relationships, even for a college freshman.
That is extremely toxic and immature behavior. She’s made a soft request for space twice now. If Walky pursues her? That’s just harassment at this point. She doesn’t get to make even soft declarative statements like that and then expect Walky to know that ‘Oh, but when I said this, actually meant you should try and speak to me more or fix things.’
What you say when you want someone to fix things is ‘Here is problem X, here is solution Y that I need from you to continue dating you. If you have other ideas with this, we can either discuss it or it may just be a line I’m not willing to cross and we need to break up.’
It is not harassment to ask for clarity what the fuck are you talking about
Not to ask for clarity, no.
But the theory here is that she wants him back, but she wants him to pursue her to show that he’s actually willing to put in effort.
Which, if she actually had broken up with him and didn’t want to continue, would bad behavior on his part.
Sounds like a secret test, which is actually a form of abuse, so I certainly hope she’s not doing that. That would be very unpleasant to read.
Shes stringing him along.
Unfortunately someone reported a future comic where they are togther.
Usually string along implies giving someone just enough attention to keep them interested, or giving them a false impression of how interested you are.
I think a better name for this behavior is sending mixed signals.
I’d forgotten about that comment to Sarah. That casts all of this in a slightly different light.
Regardless, she and Walky need to talk before this goes to much farther, but where’s the drama in that.
Unfortunately talking won’t fix this relationship. Walky is under the mistaken belief, as proposed to him by Lucy, that this is all Walky’s fault. Walky needs time away from her, some advice with someone with a neutral perspective to say ‘eh, some of it is, some of it isn’t, keep improving and keep trying’, and that’s really it.
Lucy, meanwhile, needs to understand that every single choice she has made has excitedly steered her to this conclusion, but she won’t learn that for a while yet. That’s almost as big an arc as Sarah herself getting over her shitty attitude.
It probably wouldn’t fix this relationship, but it’s still necessary to set the new boundaries. Like, have they actually broken up. Are they going to try to remain friends.
That kind of thing.
So, is it just me or has Willis turned that speed up to 1.5 x normal speed?
Also, any thoughts on who is having these flashbacks and when?
It should be Joyce since she’s the only one in every memory.
But is she actively having these memories?
If so, is she having them at the times we’re seeing them?
Or are these flashbacks solely for us readers as context and we are not to assume she is actively thinking about them?
I think Becky might be in all of them too actually. Like, Joyce is the focus of the flashbacks but that seems pretty fitting considering Becky’s longstanding crush.
I don’t believe Becky was in the one where Joyce was hiding behind a trash can.
She was.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/popjuice/
I stand corrected.
i think more context.
50-50 on joyce thinking about it ( as her mother brought this up both drawings and Tristan. )
I think flashbacks are for us. A character might be remembering those incidents, but their memories are foggy. For example, Jennifer and Walky remembering that they gave each other their nicknames, when both of them named themself in the flashback.
I took that as Jennifer dreaming, which is why it immediately segued into her being woken up by Asher.
It being a dream is why she didn’t remember it accurately after waking.
That’s also why we were given scenes with no context, like her name being called while sitting on the couch.
So, we’ll see Lucy again in… three months? Six?
She said “Wednesday.” This strip is Monday. So, yes?
I hope this isn’t (and doesn’t become) a case of Walky being all “Man, when we were together and she was totally into me, I wasn’t really all that into her, but with her being not into me anymore, I’m totally into her now.”
I think thats exactly what She is doing;
and thats are normal feelings,
when someone is your main friend for months and social support.
They only dated a week, he schemed to make her parent like her. He introduced her tot his parents,
and he turned down his ex, he still has feelings for.
I think Walky was into her, just not moving as quickly as she was.
That’s the same as cheating on her.
Walky, it’s okay, you’re just collateral damage in her quest to prove to Sarah that she totally is part of the group thanks
also I don’t think it could be more over for you two if Strong Bad yelled “it’s over!!!” a la Teen Girl Squad
I’m sorry, Daisy gravatar. I think I may have permanently lost you, and I’m not sure how.
Lol, never mind. I see how I ended up with Leslie (no thank u) and Booster (fine but not it) in lower comments, and have made the necessary corrections.
Is it February 14th again, already?
Walky, PLEASE do not go back to Lucy.
Walky, Please do the healthy thing and go have sex with Amber and Dorothy.
and maybe Amazigirl.
No matter what walky does, Lucy will come back.
and lucy will retroactively claim the opposite relationship status based on what makes him feel worse.
WE are broken up // It was just a fight you cheated.
There is no “High road” here —other than the passive aggressive one of Lucy chose of showing up, being polite and stringing him along.
What’s it like in the moon?
I wasn’t aware any incels read this strip. Live and learn, I guess.
It is why I when I see their name I completely skip over anything they say, learned the hard way there is nothing of value there.
Idk, it helps me feel more normal sometimes.
Is there a reason you start from the assumption that people are compulsive assholes?
I think compulsive asshole is a bit strong, but I do think it’s clear that Lucy is sending we’re-over signals to punish Walky and I also think it highly likely that Lucy would be hurt by Walky immediately getting together with Dorothy, Amber or someone else, in which case it’s not completely unlikely she would try to make him feel bad about it. That’s not so very different from what Adam is saying, except for the attitude.
Without the ability to edit, let me clarify that the first sentence should read “I think calling Lucy a compulsive asshole is a bit strong …” Until I reread it, I didn’t realize there were alternate ways to construe it.
Dude.
“do the healthy thing and go fuck either one of your emotionally unstable exes. Maybe the one actively in the middle of a breakdown who’s super hung up on you. Infinitely better than a girl who was overeager and now is being cordial after a breakup”
I’m 94% sure that we are not reading the same webcomic. Quick, when did Nelson Mandela die in your universe? And how do you spell the name of the kid’s book bear family?
That’s a trick question. It’s always been spelled “Bearinstone”.
It’s pronounced “Bor-un-shteen”.
I wonder if this is leading to a Ross-Rachel thing where Walky thinks they’re broken up but Lucy doesn’t.
Rachel did fully intend to break up with him in that moment, but after cooler heads prevailed she regretted it. When you break up in the middle of a fight, it’s not always permanent. If you sleep with someone else, it will harm your chances of reconciliation. If Rachel had slept with someone else I do not think it would have been fine on Ross’s end.
This is different because there is no attempt at reconciliation or working through the problem. Lucy is behaving like an ex who wants to remain friends. If she is still his girlfriend then either she should be mad at him or saying she forgives him. “I will see you when we next have class” is not normal girlfriend behavior.
I mean, that does carry the implications of “We will only see each other when we are contextually obligated to do so” at least that is what I got from it.
Exactly. There is an expectation that people in relationships will want to spend time together. If they instead need space or don’t want to be around you, normally they will communicate that somehow. They don’t smile and say see you next week.
Even George, Prince of Wales, knew they were broken up.
Aww Joe is taking what Danny said about touching to heart.
In the traditional fashion of the lovable meathead working on himself, he follows the example of his more emotionally intuitive BFF.
It’s not perfect, but it’ll do, Joe. It’ll do. ♡
(Also, the fact that you and Joyce want to work on yourselves for each other makes me ship you two all the harder, I have to admit. I fucking love to see that, it’s so good.)
Wh…Leslie? No. No, I think not. Try again, grav roulette.
…”that’s when next math is”…
Which means we won’t be seeing it ’til . . . Late October?
So Mike once suggested to Amber that Walky has a strong case of attention deficit.
Speaking as someone with attention deficit, I have often missed social queues and unintentionally ignored people who were not stating their intentions directly to me.
Which leads me to say Lucy really needs to just be direct and say what she wants from Walky right now. Cause I don’t know if they are broken up, on a break, or anything. And Walky clearly doesn’t know what to make of that situation either. I’m worried she’s deliberately leaving him stuck in limbo, and that isn’t fair to him.
Yeah, that would be helpful. Also he could ask, since he knows he doesn’t know. Maybe by Wednesday they will have thought of that. : )
As an ADHD person also, I agree that Walky would hugely benefit from Lucy being straight-up with him, yes.
BUT he’s a very intuitive boy and in his talk with Linda he did indicate he was pretty aware this wasn’t a salvageable mishap, for one thing, so it’s not like he’s necessarily just twisting in the wind as per arc words.
ALSO, I think it’s uhhhh kind of off to assume Lucy is doing things to punish???? him? Lucy isn’t thinking of him at all, probably intentionally; she’s laser-focused on being a valid member of the group who is totally fine, and Sarah can shut her dumb face.
I’ve been trying to form some thoughts on this Walky and Lucy situation. Maybe too many thoughts because I doubt it’s that serious.
1. I don’t think Lucy is in the wrong here. Emphasizing a distance between them is fair if that’s even what she’s doing. I kinda doubt she’s putting much thought into hurting Walky or into him at all.
2. I think this is Walky’s problem as in now that Lucy is gone he wants or misses her. There’s some irony there of him being more aware of her as his ex than he was when they were dating.
3. It’s only been a day so we don’t know how this will shake out, but I don’t like the implication that their friendship dynamic has cooled so abruptly. They were friends longer than they dated and I think that’s worth more than any lingering awkwardness at a week long romance.
4. I don’t like Lucy. I’ve been on the fence with her for a while, but I feel that her cheery personality is a partial facade for someone more manipulative and calculating. I really don’t like that she inserted herself into Walky’s life and friend group to get one thing (him) and when that didn’t work out the way she planned, Walky’s the one left holding the emotional damage check while she gets to still chill in his friend group. Maybe that’s not fair to her but something about how this shook out feels a bit unfair to Walky.
Lucy seems to want to follow society’s default script. I don’t know how much of that is just uncritical acceptance and how much is actually agreeing with it. I do worry that she might assume all men are in control of their emotions, and view support as weakness. If she weren’t following society’s script so often, I wouldn’t suspect this stereotyping behavior from her since she hasn’t actually shown it though. But just as likely, she’s used to not getting support, why give it?
I’m with you up til point 4; I think Lucy isn’t intentionally calculating or manipulative, she just kind of knows how to be in order to navigate social situations, especially social situations where she’s the underdog. If anything, she seems like she’s been bullied a lot of her life and the calculating social engineer moments are her way of people-pleasing and fitting in.
It’s why she and Sarah immediately went off like a pair of cats, too (Sarah refuses to please people or have a filter of any kind) and also why she’s currently being Miss Congeniality around Sarah and the group—Sarah challenged her space and the only true revenge is to prove her wrong with a big smile.
I used to give her the benefit of the doubt too but seeing her during and post relationship has changed my mind. She pursued Walky, changed her schedule to be closer to him by having the same class. She spent time with him as friends under the pretense he was falling for her before they started dating. She was trying to speedrun dates to rush sex while staying within her proper Christian values. The whole fake girlfriend plan. Trying to cozy up to Raidah’s popular group. These actions don’t add up to a purely genuine or naive person to me. I don’t have a problem with Lucy being calculating or taking steps to manipulate scenarios in her favor. I just wish she were honest about it. It comes off a little cowardly.
I really like Lucy in this one. She’s being polite and honest and setting a clear expectation
. Well done, Lucy!
She’s really went to top. I was expecting she was suffering because Walky’s parents, but she got a load of auto-respect. I’m amazed.
Lucy’s self-respect is inconstant. But she’s getting better.
on the other hand, some times it’s too high
Walky + Lucy is tedious. Walky + Dorothy only slightly better, Dorothy’s going to be a drag until she gets to “shave her head” levels of identity crisis.
Joe and Joyce are cute, and also Dina has her arm around Becky. <3
I loved old-school Dorothy x Walky, but like…yeah, I don’t think either of them are gonna rekindle the old flame necessarily, and…
Dorothy you gotta make a move, of some kind. Any kind. Even a bad move. You’re just drifting, girl! You are floating rudderless into a very weird space where you’re kind of the, uh, proverbial “Nice G(irl)”, and it is not a good look!
I love how Dina is the most openly horny person in this strip :p <3
…Ok, it took me a hot minute to figure out what the heck you were talking about, but then I managed to squint hard enough I could see Dina’s arm around on Becky’s back in the first panel.
L E W D
Happy for how far Lucy has come! If they ever did decide to try again I feel like they’d be on even footing this time and would actually have a chance. For now I’m glad Lucy can stand on her own and value herself. Instantly makes her a lot more enjoyable to read and I hope she’s still going to show up regularly.
A hug?! How lewd, and in front of their friends.
You know, if Lucy is trying to banish him from normal friendly lunch, with this bunch, that is his friend group, then that is kinda dickish. Not a merciless Machiavellian ploy, but a bit presumptuous there.
she’s leaving.
The devious fiend.
If Lucy had spoken at any point with Walky about where she stood, this would have been a good place for her to assert that she considers the relationship over and wants to be at a friendly place. She hasn’t. So all Lucy is doing is again setting where she wants to be, and expecting Walky who never really kenned where she wants to be to figure it out on his own.
Again, I do not like Lucy so I am not entirely objective. But this is not positive motion. This is just once again her deciding her worldview is right and expecting the world to reflect it, even if it causes confusion and hurt feelings because actually talking about what she expects of her relationships directly to the others in those relationships (romantic, platonic, or social) might lead to challenges of that worldview.
Or, more succinctly, Lucy really needs to actually TALK to people before she gets any gold stars for progress. This is just a holding pattern without her needing to put in any effort.
Pretty soon, I expect her to actually get out a football and call Walky over to kick it.
I don’t like Lucy either. Walky has done approximately zero speaking to Lucy about where he and she stood when it mattered. This is just her learning the wrong lesson about communication from him.
At what point does this mean Lucy’s going to fangirl all over Jennifer again? Was she in this friend circle for more reasons than Walky-adoration?
Hey now, her reasons are and were twofold and very valid! Look:
1.)
”Walky is here and Walky is my hot boyfriend yaaaayyyy”2.) “Um, EXCUSE YOU, Sarah, I am actually a really valued member of the friend group?? How dare you??? I’ll show YOU who doesn’t belong here!”
As you can see, one of these reasons is still totally intact!
I honestly think this joyce/joe story arc is so boring
I Love Lucy
Sometimes I wonder if a few of y’all were just never teenagers, or if you’ve ever met a woman in your entire lives.
Literally Most of Them Are Like 18 Precisely.
Hey, I’m sorry. It’s hard being ugly and weird; dating game on the hardest.
Kappa
I know it’s a small thing but seeing Joe ask for a hug like that made me so happy.
Guess I was wrong about him skipping calc.
Y’all, Lucy was “friendlier” to Sarah because she’s proving a point to Sarah about how she’s the better person (which is tiresome, perhaps, but also super normal and not a manifestation of demonic qualities or Machiavellian villainy, it’s not even Raidah villainy, it’s just A Thing)
She’s brushing Walky off because breakup feels are really bad and hey let’s not confront them everything is TOTALLY FINE byyyyeeeeee
See neither Walky nor Lucy are saints here, but Walky’s been kind of obsessed the entire relationship over whether he’s treating Lucy well. On this he really has very little to go off of, because Lucy doesn’t actually talk to him about her feelings unless she’s angry at him for not knowing what they are. So Walky ends up getting hurt in ways that would really affect Walky if he was hurting Lucy like that while Lucy doesn’t give a crap at all.
Oof. I hope Walky catches onto this and stands up for himself. Dude really has been doing his best and that isn’t being appreciated at all.
Kinda like Dorothy actually.
I’m not 100% sure Lucy understands that others have feelings, or that her actions and words can affect them in ways she doesn’t directly intend. Like, she’s not the devil, or even particularly a Bad Person™ (only a complete dumbfuck would think I was saying so 🙂), but she comes off as fairly insensitive a lot of the time, at least to me.
The hug made me smile in part because it’s cute and also because I am a short blonde girl with a significant other who is a foot taller than me and this is precisely how we hug.
“Can I have a hug?” Joe you precious darling you can have WHATEVER you want I love you <3333
also Lucy baby i love you but you may want to be upfront about whether you guys are like, y'know, broken up. SURE he could pick up on context, but life is short and shit is easier when you just straight up say what you mean.