Also, If I recall correctly, she basically walked up to him, grabbed his arm, said ,”I like this, this is mine now.” And he just went with it and didn’t object. He liked her, but wasn’t really in love with her.
She clearly wasn’t aware of Walky and Amber “being up in each others DMs”, despite the fact that they weren’t DMs. Dotty even commented about it. Oh, and that was all before the split.
It never cèases to confound me that people have expectations on their former lovers’ behaviour. Two [years|months|weeks|days|…|frickin’ milliseconds], when you say it’s done, the other person is not beholden to your or your feelings at all.
I think there’s a huge difference between having expectations and just finding something hurtful. Most people in Lucy’s situation would be hurt and that’s just how these things go.
Also, there’s different meanings to the word “expectations.” In one sense it means something you more or less believe somebody is obligated to do. In another sense it’s just…what you expect, as in what you predict will happen. It’s understandable that Lucy would think Walky might mourn their relationship longer, or hold off on getting into another one, based specifically on behavior she observed in him before. She feels sad and probably is interpreting it as not mattering as much to him…which, frankly, she doesn’t. That’s not a reflection on her inherent worth, but it probably feels like it is.
All this is a big learning experience for Lucy. She’s growing up.
This seems less about the new hookup, and more about the contrast with how Walky treated his previous relationship. Last time he went out of his way to care about his previous partner’s feelings and not immediately hook up again. But this time he (apparently) had no such reservations.
If Lucy had been Walky’s first relationship, or if Walky had been eager to hook up again immediately after his last breakup, this would’ve been much less painful for her.
And even if that wasn’t the case, the fact remains that if Walky was ready to move on so soon with Dorothy means that Walky’s feelings for Dorothy are WAY stronger than his feelings for Lucy, which means that no matter what Lucy can do or offer, there will always be a part of his heart that belongs to another. That knowledge can REALLY hurt, whether out of a sense that you’re inferior to someone else, or that your partner will never be completely yours.
The more I think about it, the more I feel for Lucy. She broke up with Walky because she realized that she deserved better, but something like this makes a person wonder, “DO I deserve better?” It’s an insidious spiral. Sure, she’s angry with Walky, but I bet she’s at least as angry with herself.
At the same time, as much as I imagine this hurts, her framing of the situation *reinforces* that she deserves better, because logically, it reflects badly on Walky for (allegedly) not valuing her as much as Dorothy.
…It strikes me as actually kind of weird that the emotional impact is so out of sync with the logical implication. Is that a common thing, I wonder?
Agh, sorry, in my effort to reply to this comment I reported it >< anyway, I agree that while I know Walky and Lucy were not gonna work out I still feel bad for her. I know what it’s like to get your hopes up so much over something that turns out to not be what you expected.
Attack requires intent to hurt, she sounds like she’s just processing out loud. Sure, it still hurts, but that’s not the goal. I think the reason she’s doing it out loud is because she wants the group to know and understand her position.
Simply put, if the truth about how people see your behaviour hurts, maybe you could learn something from that.
Maybe revisit the definition of “outright.” At most, she’s implying it. Or, you’re reading things into it that aren’t meant to be there. That’s a normal brain process meant to protect us, but it can also contribute to misunderstanding and unnecessarily escalate conflict.
Kindly, I think you’re reading way too much into her word choice. She’s not saying he’s not a good person, she’s saying that seeing what she saw is what attracted her in the first place, seeing how much he agonized over potentially hurting someone he cared about. She’s hurt and probably taking this as a confirmation he didn’t care about her
My mom lives down in Galveston and drove around the entire island and found maybe one or two actual line workers. Idk if Centerpoint is who handles that for that region, but the state of the island is apparently ridiculous right now.
I, too, would like the experience of having been the rebound. Would’ve been a shot of confidence for me, for some uniquely personal reasons related to my HS experience.
Yup, making the party all about her. No one can stop staring at the train wreck. Thanks, Sarah, great job. Lets all get together and talk about our exes, where is Danny for this?
Well, I don’t hate Sarah for this. She’s trying. Maybe she doesn’t even know or care that Lucy and Walky broke up. But she might look around and regret making the effort because of all the drama.
I do wonder why she thought of Lucy though, maybe because they had that talk, because Lucy had the guts to push back?
Do we know that Dorothy and Walky were not invited?
I know Becky might want to “have Joyce for herself” for the evening (well apart from Sarah/Dina/etc.) and thus might not want to have her “rival” there. But Dorothy and Walky are still part of their social circle so I can’t really see them being excluded.
I don’t know if she understands it. She knows Walky was having feelings about it, I do not think she knows about the part where he got caught by his sister kissing Amber less than a day after getting dumped
I mean, you can always go back and check if she knows all the details.
I don’t think the kissing part matters though.
The point is, IF the number of days matters, then he actually did better this time than he did before.
Hell, he’s doing better regardless in regards to time passing before he rebounded.
Last time, he was already making out with Amber the night before (about 36 hours after getting dumped) and then came to Jennifer to get the green light for his behavior.
This time, he made it about 48.
If it’s messed up now, then it was messed up then, only this time Lucy is on the other side of it and it doesn’t feel too nice (the reasons for the different breakups are also factors of course).
It might also mean that she’d just gotten the wrong impression about Walky the first time. Not just that she’s on the other side, but that last time she heard him worrying about hurting Dorothy after breaking up, but didn’t know the follow up of getting together with Amber right after anyway. This time she only sees the follow up.
Considering she supported Walky getting with Amber ONE day after being dumped by Dorothy, I don’t see how this strip adds justification to any hurt feelings she has.
She acknowledges that she dumped Walky and drug him through an emotional wringer and then continues to make everyone feel sorry for her. I mean she’s not wrong, her feelings are normal, but what a downer for everyone.
This is why you don’t go hang out with your ex’s friends after you break up. Especially not right afterward. What if they do take her side and he loses his friend group too?
I don’t agree with her feeling justified in having any negative feelings, and I do think a lot of what she’s been feeling since the parents arrived is partially on her, but she’s definitely been put through an emotional wringer herself.
That said, these are Walky’s friends in Walky’s dorm building on Walky’s floor (just on the girl side); she was more than likely going to run into him and she’s smart enough to know that.
Also, I’d argue her face in the previous strip broached the subject, but that’s debatable.
TBH, the two days thing feels a lot like ‘I thought I’d have more than two days to snub you and get my revenge/self respect back by watching you be isolated and miserable.’
she’s justified in still being mad at Walky for the same reasons that she was justifiably angry at him in the first place. He strung her along despite not having any actual romantic feelings for her for the entire length of their relationship, then made her jump through a bunch of humiliating hoops to tiptoe around his mom’s racism – only standing up to his mom in Lucy’s defence after the fact to sooth his own guilty conscience. Why should Lucy be over that and playing nice just two days later?
I’m going to disagree that dating someone you like a few weeks is stringing along, particularly when he tried to do something he didn’t like (church), went to a breakfast with people he didnt want (because she was interested) and let her meet his family (despite warnings). He thought she was nice and wanted to see where it went, they just weren’t on the same page and Lucy put a lot on him expecting that same page.
This, exactly. Walky was CLEARLY trying to date her in a normal way for someone you’ve known for a few months and dated a few weeks, whereas LUCY was somewhere off in “auditioning for a spouse/someone to have sex with but that means enough of a commitment to not annoy God” land.
If that’s what she’s feeling, she should say it. Or, ideally, bring it up when she later apologizes to Walky for calling him out in front of his friends. Still, I realize the strip isn’t “Effective and Healthy Communication of Age.”
The ONLY justifiable thing is his mother’s racism and how he handled it. And yes, he handled it badly, but part of that is that he was just beginning to see it himself and didn’t yet know how to confront it.
Lucy chased Walky, and ambushed him into a ‘relationship’ when he wasn’t really feeling it at all. She dragged him to church, which is ALWAYS an attempt at conversion. And when Walky’s lifelong atheism, almost certainly based on a general realization that the whole god business was inherently ridiculous, didn’t lend itself to abandonment and belief in nonsense didn’t get the result she wanted she reacted badly.
Her general cheerfulness conceals a controlling personality. It’s obvious that she wanted him to come groveling back to her, which would have handed her much more control. Instead he gathered up his self respect and hooked up with Dorothy. Walky deserves better than Lucy, and fortunately he’s got it, even if it does end up being short term. Lucy will only get worse, particularly given that she’s taking lessons from Raidah. Malaya was right about her.
May I remind you that Walky is the one who asked Lucy out. Because Dorothy told him so. I guess you could say he was “ambushed” but that one’s not really on Lucy now, is it?
Regarding church: Walky offered to go with Lucy in an attempt to make her happy (honestly cute of him!), and the next morning had absolutely the chance to take that back ( though he would’ve hurt Lucy in the progress)- entirely on him if he didn’t, and saying Lucy “dragged” him is… strange.
(Also, visiting a church because your partner goes isn’t “always an attempt at conversion”??? I’m sorry about the experiences you’ve had to make that statement but it’s like. Kind of wild to me.)
And lastly I also would recommend rereading the breakup scene! Because Lucy treats Walky questioning church stuff as a kind of interesting debate & it’s not that which she “reacts badly” to – it’s realizing that their relationship is rather one-sided or at least to equal in the care/love department. She does act pushy earlier that scene, but it’s again not about the church stuff, & I really don’t know why you’d frame it like that.
I thought you were just interpreting things really weirdly, but now I’m not sure if we’re reading the same comic at all. I guess your last paragraph makes a bit more sense now (I was really wondering where you got that read from, but the answer is probably nowhere?)
What the fuck are you talking about? Lucy didn’t ambush him, he was pawned off on her by Dorothy. She didn’t drag him to church, he volunteered to go and wound up not liking it. She didn’t try to convert him either, you just made that up. If you’re gonna talk about your unhinged fanfic, you could at least provide a link to the damn thing.
You say that like she inserted herself and wasn’t explicitly invited. Dorothy and Wally weren’t. She probably assumed that if they were inviting her, it meant they weren’t inviting him.
Also hot take, he was closer friends with Lucy before they dated than anyone else in the group. Sarah doesn’t like him, Joyce doesn’t like him, ambers finally started liking him again, Dina’s neutral, he got along with Becky at first but we haven’t seen any of that since she came out, Billie was a close friend but she jettisoned herself from the group. Other than amber its not like he hangs out with any of them one on one, and with her it has romantic undertones. He’s more just sorta there because of who he dates, his sister, proximity and shared trauma form semester 1. If anything he was also guilty of hanging out with his ex’s friend group
Even if it was a purely mutual friend group, at this point in the breakup you really need to negotiate with the ex about who’s going to be where and if you’re ready to meet up in a group setting. It’s not really about being right or wrong though, just avoiding awkwardness like this.
Walky on the other hand is in his dorm (or around the corner on the same floor) visiting one of his closest friend’s room.
Sarah did invite him, but it’s not clear Sarah knows the situation and Lucy didn’t ask about Walky or let Sarah know.
No. I say it like someone claimed she couldn’t have expected to see Walky like that wasn’t the most likely thing to happen.
And I doubt she assumed that Walky’s friends decided they were specifically not going to invite Walky.
I agree that he was closer friends with Lucy.
Sarah does not like him.
Joyce doesn’t like him, but does consider him family as she told Becky long ago, which ironically makes him more liked by her than half of her blood family.
Becky has been out almost since he met her, so all of them getting along was after she came out.
Especially since its that she’s “feeling hurt” not “taking out her hurt feelings on others”. It looks like she’s legit trying to process it all, and walking through it, but not casting blame really.
Justified to feel these things (hurt, sadness, even anger), yes; justified to thus accuse others of doing something wrong, no, I don’t think so in this scenario.
A lot of people in the comments section dislike her for being “too cheerful” and yet they’re the first ones to react negatively when Lucy is so upset she stops being the very picture of pep. It’s like there’s a higher standard for her or something.
I dislike her because she always gave off “I just want to be the main character!” energy without much awareness of those around her. Her caring was for her persona, but she didn’t seem to actually care about people/problems because she wanted them to turn to her for help rather than just get help where they wanted. I dislike this not because she’s upset (that’s Def valid in this scenario), but that she’s comparing her ending to those other women unfavorably… when he sought comfort quicker after Dotty (she’s ignoring that) and Amber ended in a spectacular blow up (but still filled in as ‘unhinged white woman’ date for meet the parents).
Naw. It’s a totally different situation and you don’t get to dictate what your ex does or does not do. It might hurt her due to the recent breakup but Walky and Dorothy broke up despite still liking each other because Dotty thought she had to focus on class. She regretted that decision the whole time and Walky suffered for it too. This time, Walky got DUMPED and Lucy told him off while doing it. And wouldn’t ya know it, it was also enough time for Dotty to get over her hangups.
Sorry not sorry: It’s a totally different situation. It stinks for Lucy and I get her being unhappy, but she caused the situation and she has no right to tell an ex what is or is not an appropriate time to date again. She just can’t see past her own feelings on it.
I dont think she’s doing that. She’s vocalizing that she’s hurt and why. She literally said “I can’t be mad, I ended it.” Pointing out why she’s hurt is not dictating anyone’s behavior
Except you would normally do that in your head and not out loud at a party while making pointed gestures to your ex. Vocalizing it to a group kinda seems like one is asking for people to pick sides. The proper thing to do would be for one or both of these people to leave if they can’t deal with seeing each other again. Honestly, I’m not a Lucy fan but Walky would probably be the one who should go since Lucy was brought to help organize the party specifically.
Yes. How dare he behave like a single man while he is a single man and get back together with a woman he loves and would have stayed with if they hadn’t mutually agreed to split up in a healthy and affectionate way that left their friendship intact.
– It could turn into a dogpile or even a roast and while the whole party only means to cheer Lucy up, it could utterly destroy Walky (his whole need to be liked)
– It could be less a roast and more all of them roundly disappointed in him and how he’s handled relationships with all three girls, escalating with situations that aren’t necessarily his fault but that he’s been part of (pretending relationship so Lucy would look good to his parents, for example). Not necessarily his fault even.
– It could just be a lot of silence, awkward looks and glares until Walky (again because of his need to be liked) just flat out leaves. I see Dorothy trying to follow him out and that imploding shortly after.
I think the way to read this is that Lucy’s trying to process this. Not that she’s making an accusation or anything or calling Walky scum or Dorothy a rude word or anything like that.
She’s dealing with shit in a healthier manner than a LOT of characters in this strip would, frankly. Very commendable of her.
True, she’s not shouting or flipping tables or punching someone. She’s just holding the attention of the whole party while being sad and miserable. Let’s see if everyone will tie themselves up in knots out of guilt. Let’s see if Walky will run screaming from the feelings and from everyone man’s worst nightmare — all of his exes talking about him as if he isn’t there.
I’d like to point out for the dimmer folks (not saying you’re one of them, natch), nobody in the comic has sneered at her or reacted to any facial expressions or emotions she’s had, at least not yet. Dorothy has stammered defensively a little bit, but otherwise nobody’s said or done a thing.
I’m already not doing it. Please keep your weird obsession away from me, it’s getting creepy. You’re like, addicted to this game and it’s really unsettling.
She has as much a right to the attention of other people as anyone, and they’re all choosing to listen to her instead of having their own conversations.
Yeah, let’s not pretend some people don’t think it’s a party without some kind of drama going down. At worst, Lucy’s just guilty of not waiting until one of them showed up.
If Walky “run screaming” just from one of his exes talking about her fellings about him in a very reasonable manner, that is how own choice and in no way lucy responsibility.
I’m of two minds about Lucy (as I am with the people in my life that she reminds me of). She seems like a very nice friend who I’m sure could make somebody very happy, but she’s so anxious and insecure in her approach to romance hat it gives me the utter heebie-jeebies. Not making any logical arguments here and I’ll cop to that – her actions just remind me strongly of a lot of girls I knew in college who tried to court, coerce, and cajole me into being their perfect fantasy boyfriend (this was well before I transitioned ofc) and did not seem to realize that a “boy” could feel pressured into a relationship just like a girl. Just… ick. I want the best for her and in this case I think that is a couple harsh lessons in growing up.
Walky sucks too, I should clarify that that’s my position. I don’t think he’s remotely blameless, and he needs to grow a spine in how he relates to both his girlfriends and his parents. Lucy just draws my ire more because the hurt that she is causing is much more familiar to me from personal experience.
Well, if you take the position that all human relationships are essentially variations of contract law, then Lucy simply has no legal standing to invoke hurt feelings because of her voiding of the prior terms. For more great advice on relationships visit Reddit.com!
I don’t hate Lucy. I think she’s got hurt feelings for a valid reason. It’s an awkward place to air them, but she’s not under any obligation to stow her feelings away for a less awkward time.
She’s honestly batting a thousand here. Fingers crossed she grows from this and is better for the experience, however rough it was.
I can’t hate Lucy. Her saying something like this makes re-evaluate my crap choices in college, both being on her side of things as well as Walky’s side.
If it helps I am deeply neutral and don’t understand at all why anyone would hate her so much? She’s not my kind of person and Lucy/Walky was painful, but I don’t really understand why anyone thinks any of the main cast are terrible people. I would actually be in favour of seeing some real Lucy character development and actual friendships.
She’s very, very human in her reactions. I think a lot of people see stuff in her they either don’t like in themselves or that has annoyed them in other people and project.
Nah, the majority definitely don’t “hate” her. That word gets tossed around too freely, I think. The three or four who do seem to hate her at any given moment are just very dramatic human beings who need to touch grass and experience whimsy. And probably drink some damn water.
Maybe I should start up a lucy positivity thread like I used to with booster. I’m a lot more spiteful about her haters though, partly bc I can’t help but wonder if misogynoir is a factor in the sheer intensity of the vitriol. Fuck it, yeah I’ll do it
I don’t hate Lucy. I’ve got plenty of characters I hate in this strip (in different ways) and she’s definitely not one of them. But what she is, for me, is a big ol’ ball of ‘meh’. And so I admit, during Lucy-centric arcs, I tend to get a bit… snarky, I suppose, simply because I find them less interesting and need to keep myself entertained.
Look, if even one person can name three other people who actually, factually hate the character Lucy from Dumbing of Age, using those people’s own words and screen names, I’ll eat my hat. I genuinely don’t believe those haters exist, but I see plenty of vague allegations of hatred.
Phipps, Jay (very vocally, from the beginning), and iirc Adam Black, at least for a while. I think he’s been more hinged about her recently. Vanessa too, I was gonna give them the benefit of the doubt but at this point I’d need them to explain how they *don’t* hate lucy
I said it yesterday, it’s not that we hate Lucy, but because of her way of thinking, anyone would be worried.
In fact, I was almost sure she would hurt Walky and Dorothy, but Lucy herself says it, she knows it’s over and she’s not upset. , but I think an unconscious part of her is making this confession on purpose to make them feel bad.
Okay, Walky has screwed up plenty of times, but I’m just asking, does Dorothy deserve this?
I love Dorohty, but I admit that saying that she missed him at the critical moment she was in was not right.
Walky made things clear to her, but the way he “encouraged” her bothered me so much that I didn’t realize it.
Something tells me that if she was going to reveal it, in the first panel she was ready to break up in front of Lucy, but come on, after Karaoke night she tried to kiss him when he confessed that he broke up with Lucy, but she stopped because she knew it was wrong, no matter what. However, Walky, far from being upset, hugged her and even at lunch was willing to help her return to Lucy.
I love the Dorothy x Walky ship, if they both decide to say that it’s enough, I would understand, but don’t let the trust that exists in both be lost because of this.
But if the opposite is true, let it be the perfect opportunity to rethink things well. Dreaming is free
After Karaoke night she went to kiss him and stopped when he didn’t respond except to say they’d only probably broken up.
Walky gave her a comforting hug because she was bottoming out, not to encourage her.
That took another day. 🙂
For the record, not that anyone asked, I 100% support and condone her actions in that moment, as a narrative event. Any time she expressed her regret with pawning Walky off on Lucy and tried to get a refund, I was really wanting her to succeed and get back with him.
I think she was trying to get him to break up with Lucy and get back with her, not cheat on Lucy with her, to be fair, or at least that’s how I read the situation.
Nah some of y’all definitely, personally hate Lucy. At least one person was projecting their nasty divorce on her or whatever. Maybe not you, but you cannot speak for the anti-lucy group
I like Lucy, both as a character and as a person. But that does not mean she isn’t wrong/annoying/immature sometimes, and her relationship with Walky hasn’t been Lucy at her best for the most part. Her immature side was really at the forefront there (not that she’s the only one).
I think the way she did the breakup was good – she should build on that and grow.
I don’t hate Lucy — I was all in favor of LucyxWalky. I just think she’s completely avoiding the point that she was ALWAYS a couple of relationship stages more invested in this than Walky was, in a very not-cool way, and as such she shot the relationship and herself in the foot over it.
For one, someone has to raise the clone. The likelihood that the clone receives the exact upbringing is slim, so Clone!Willis might find cartooning a chore… especially if you tell him he was Made For This(tm).
Walky waited one day more than he did when Dorothy dumped him, so if her focus is on the number of days, it really doesn’t confirm how he feels about her.
But I’m pretty sure that they firmly established that she cares for him more than he did for her after church.
… so, Lucy? Remember when Walky, despite being worried about Dorothy’s feelings if he hooked up with Amber so soon after the breakup, NEVERTHELESS hooked up with Amber so soon after the breakup?
Or, and this is what I think, what attracted her was seeing the concern he had. There’s a difference between deliberating and agonizing over something before going through with it and just going straight into it.
Wow, Lucy went through that situation in a mature and reasonable manner while still not taking her own fellings for granted! Who would that though? Not a lot of people apparently. (Also surprise! She does in fact knows that she broke off with her own boyfriend).
I kind of dislike this approach, since it inherently lowers all the romantic stakes in the story. There’s some truth in it, but at the same time, it’s not like breakups in college weren’t devastating too
Get over enough to not be heartbroken over the break up, I can see. Get over enough to literally hop in bed with somebody else, especially an ex? Maybe it’s just because I’m ace, but that’s pretty oof.
After two weeks, there isn’t exactly much to get over romantically (for Walky, Lucy was into him for so much longer). I bet Walky mourns the friendship, though, and he can still do that while being with someone else.
I agree with others that the romantic relationship with Dorothy had much more weight than that with Lucy, and if course that’s painful for Lucy to see.
As others have said, I don’t think Walky and Dorothy are doing anything wrong, but that doesn’t mean Lucy cannot still feel hurt and sad about it.
Walky isn’t over her “her” as in Lucy. It may have only been a less than two week relationship, and he didn’t realize until after the split but he has deeper interest in Lucy. There have been multiple hints and I frankly it’s been more obvious than hints.
Maybe you’re right. If all that comes out, my hope is that it leads to Walky having multiple girlfriends and having to figure out how to navigate that in very short order. Really fast-track that emotional intelligence or “personal growth” or whatever were calling it this month.
Amber already got brought into it when they had her play unhinged white woman to make Lucy look like a better person to the racist parents he warned her about.
It’s in the US Bill of Rights, Freedom of Speech, so long as the behavior you’re commenting on is someone you are currently in a romantic relationship with.
To answer this sincerely*, I actually think that if your ex murders a person, you shouldn’t chime in with an opinion. If you’re audacious and self-centered enough to have an opinion on it at all, you should keep it to yourself. At least until the trial is over, and even then you should probably play it safe and stay quiet about the whole thing.
That is an excellent way to keep people from processing bad experiences in their relationship, practically guaranteeing that all their future relationships will be messed up as well.
You misunderstood. The point is that once your ex is your ex, you lose the right to comment on their conduct from that point on. You are free to comment upon the behavior that led to them being your ex. If someone asks Lucy why she broke it off in the first place, she’s well within her rights to list Walky’s misconduct beforehand. But what he does now? Is his business. At most, you get to look at an ex’s behavior and say, “Welp, glad I’m out of that”.
By saying she doesn’t get to share her feelings with her friends in this context, you’re limiting the kinds of processing she is allowed to employ. People are allowed to express an opinion or observation about the behaviour of people in their environment, even if they are an ex. Just like you can say “Ew, muesli in fanta” to a friend without being shunned. They might say “bite me, that’s my business”, but that’s putting down personal boundaries, which is a part of normal social interaction too), you can also say “when she dumped you, you stayed considerate of her emotions, but when I dumped you, you apparently don’t care. That hurts my feelings.” To which he can still say “bite me, that’s my business”, but him expressing a boundary is not the same thing as nobody ever being allowed to touch that boundary before knowing about it. Social interaction is in essence sharing your thoughts & feelings and expressing your boundaries. Both are important parts. If you say people can’t express their thoughts and feelings if they might touch a boundary, then you’re blocking both parts of social interaction and at that point you might as well have a conversation with a pillow for all the connection and growth you(plural) can get from that interaction.
Hang on, I think I’ve thought of a way to put this. “Boundaries should be touched, not avoided.” You can of course believe that boundaries shouldn’t be crossed, but it sounds to me like you’re saying here that boundaries shouldn’t even be touched, which to me would mean nobody ever gets to practice stating their boundaries in a safe environment, so when they get in a dangerous environment they won’t have practiced.
Thank you for articulating this. Telling people to stuff their feelings is usually not healthy. Thinking of relationships and feelings in terms of legalistic “rights” is also probably not healthy. Unless we are talking about marriage, co-ownership of property, or co-parenting, it’s not a legal matter.
Exactly, everyone has the right to feelings and the right to process them. Feelings don’t have to make sense or follow rules. It’s what you do with those feelings and your actions that matter, in that sense.
I’m sorry but I say differently. If you are trying to control and judge a romantic partner after they have been broken up with, you’re a shitty person. Plenty of dudebros act entitled to their ex-girlfriends and judgy and it’s just plain awful.
Lucy is here being nasty to Walky and his date just because she dumped HIM. She’s saying he wasn’t “mourning” her enough. Which is terrible and ruining the party.
Two days is pretty short I think I’d give anyone a pass in this circumstance. Also Lucy is surprised by this info so i can’t fault her reaction here.
Also it’s just hurtful to be confronted by the fact your ex clearly didn’t give a fig about you. Doesn’t mean your ex is evil but she’s just surprised and hurt. It’s been 2 days! Of course she’s still going to have a lot of feelings about stuff.
But that’s got nothing to do with “after they have broken up”. Trying to control and judge a romantic partner is shitty while you’re still with them. Probably shittier. Dudebro entitlement is awful, before, during and after a relationship.
People can judge and comment on other’s behavior regardless of relationship status and others can judge and comment on that
I’m going to be honest but this all seems apologia for toxic evil male behaviors. A break up means that you have no hold on someone. A relationship means that you have an investment in what your partner thinks of your opinion and vice versa.
The fact that you think its right to judge a partner’s behavior after a breakup is very concerning. It means that you think you own them or they owe you.
No, it means I don’t think anyone’s owned, whether in a relationship or not.
People get judged all the time. You thinking this is “very concerning” is itself judging.
This entire thread is getting ridiculous. Multiple people explicitly saying they disagree with a controlling behavior, and somehow that’s “apologia” and “means you think [person] owns [other person]”. Like, is it opposite day? Are we just looking for keywords now and deciding the rest of the sentence based on that? And then conveniently making that sentence mean something we can belittle another human for? Like, isn’t this coming from a goddamn published author? You’d think basic fucking reading comprehension would be involved in that somehow.
@Taffy – to be fair, *everyone’s* reading comprehension goes down when we are triggered/have our amygdala activated. My read on this is that CT has had a negative experience with an ex trying to be controlling (or more than one), and their brain is in fight/flight mode (or was when they were commenting on this), and selectively only taking in information that feels like a threat/can be interpreted as a threat i.e. reminding them of that bad experience.
Like, on the one hand, I totally agree with you that they completely misinterpreted what people are saying, but maybe give people a little grace/kindness when they are potentially recalling some bad experiences and not thinking clearly.
I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask people to allow their viewpoints to be wildly misrepresented just because someone might be upset behind the keyboard. If that person is upset, they’re welcome to remove themselves from the conversation, no one here is getting paid to babysit.
Even if it is appropriate to ask for – I have no interest in doing so. I don’t believe in giving grace to the point of smothering my own thoughts about things. C.T.Phipps is either trolling intentionally or needs a reality check, but isn’t offering any “grace” to others soooo…
I know you were talking to Taffy, but since it was my comment being called “apologia” at the time I feel like I can chime in just fine.
I’m gonna be frank, the only Amygdala I care about having activated is the one in Bloodborne. 40 Insight and you can see the fuckers crawling on the walls practically everywhere.
What sticks out to me in what you said here is the phrase “allowing your viewpoints to be misrepresented.”
Why do viewpoints get misrepresented? Well, it can either be intentional or unintentional. As a latecomer to the discussion looking over the interaction, I don’t think it was intentional. I think CT *misunderstood* what you were saying and you were talking past each other.
That begs the question, why did this person misunderstand? I put forth a guess about why that might be, which seems to be partially right based on a more recent comment.
It’s a matter of “you can be right or you can be happy,” or “you can get agro and defensive and perpetuate the misunderstanding, or you can try to understand why a misunderstanding is happening and work to correct it.”
We all jump to conclusions and make wrong inferences, especially on the internet in text-based communication. Hammering away at an argument in the same way over and over again is unlikely to course correct a conversation and achieve the understanding you want.
Chiming in with others to say that, woah, you’re conflating “having and expressing feelings” with “trying to control people.” Those are not the same thing. Unfortunately people do conflate them a lot, but understanding the difference is part of maturing as a human.
This is actually part of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), which I generally am not a fan of, but it has a few good insights. One being that we mistakenly assume a lot of things are mutually exclusive, that are in fact not mutually exclusive. You can both understand an ex has the right to live their life however they wish, AND have negative feelings about their choices. Having a feeling does not indicate or necessitate a specific action.
Eh, my apologies if I came off as overly aggressive and probably was. It’s been an unfortunate set of days for the neuroatypical worried about their country falling to fascism thanks to the collapse of the Biden campaign and that is making me feel extra foul in my mood.
But yes, I am surprised its a controversial opinion. I think that people should be free to date or do whatever they want after a breakup without being judged by exes. And yes, I’m thinking of female friends who got called all manner of nasty names by their exes for not entering a funk after they got dumped by their boyfriends.
Sorry you’re having a hard time. It sounds like your friends were hurt by this name calling you mention.
The thing is, I think there’s a huge misunderstanding /talking past each other between you and other commenters. Well, at least partly. I don’t think anyone here is disagreeing with the first part of your sentence that reads, “I think that people should be free to date or do whatever they want after a breakup.”
But as far as judgment from exes, well, we all have the right to judge each other. It’s not always healthy, but it’s a fundamental part of being a thinking being.
My take on what you’re describing is that while amicable break ups are a nice ideal, they are not the reality in most situations. Your friends probably broke up with those guys because they were nasty even while they were together, so why would they be surprised that it would continue after breaking up?
And if it’s not those men’s “right” to judge the girlfriends who left them, why is it healthy for the women in question to continue to be concerned about their exes’ judgments? It would seem the whole point of the breakup is to distance themselves from those judgments, not continue to be caught up in worrying what their ex-boyfriends think of them.
But again – feelings don’t follow a formula. While the point of a breakup is to gain distance, that takes time on an emotional level. I think it’s completely understandable that your friends would still care about the names their exes called them shortly after a break up, although I hope they eventually care a lot less about that. Just as it is understandable the men in the situation also had feelings about what their ex-girlfriends did after the relationship ended – which they hopefully will also not continue to obsess over indefinitely.
There’s also a difference between expressing a feeling as such (“I’m hurt you moved on so quickly”) versus calling someone a nasty name.
Within 5 seconds, that’s the usual rule I’ve seen. Sometimes it gets extended to 10, but that’s often treated as something of a stretch scenario. That might be mainly a Midwestern USA thing, but I’m not sure.
Nah, gotta disagree. I’d say that, if they get with someone else right after, you don’t have the right to comment on the person they get with, but you absolutely can comment on their behavior. Especially if it’s something manipulative or harmful. I don’t know if this falls under those categories because Dorothy and Walky had a previous relationship and didn’t really have a bad falling out after splitting, but if this had been something where Walky was just sleeping with random people afterwards or if Walky did something like Jennifer did after breaking up with Ruth, then I think Lucy would have every right to criticize him.
I think part of the problem with Walky and Lucy might be that Walky isn’t attracted to her. Like, she was a nice person to spend time with, but Walky was thinking of and treating like a friend, for the most part.
Lucy being hurt is valid and it must be painful because what she was feeling insecure about was true: Walky really want to be her boyfriend very much and so when they broke up, he only felt bad about his behavior, not the end of the relationship.
And so far, it seems like Lucy is doing a great job dealing with this in a very mature fashion.
I don’t think it’s as simply as that, honestly? Like, we definitely HAVE seen him on-screen turned on by her in several strips, it’s moreso that he gets really wigged out by being put in a position where he’s expected to match someone else’s speed and he’s not there yet.
Like, don’t forget, the first time Dorothy said she loved him, he was emphatically not ready to say it back yet. Dorothy was much more experienced than Lucy, though, and frankly more educated in matters of the heart, so she recognized it and it didn’t lead to a series of misunderstandings and lies by omission.
He wasn’t as lustful as he was with Amber, or as smitten as he was with Dorothy, but I don’t think it was as much a non-starter as that Walky really could not handle being the experienced party. He didn’t have someone else to set the pace, and did not rise to the occasion to set it himself.
I think a mitigating circumstance here is that Walky and Dorothy already had the history. With Amber, he didn’t, and his relationship with Dorothy had been more serious.
That’s really the issue, though, that she feels like small potatoes here. And I am sure there are plenty who’d agree with her, but, ehhh. I think that’d be overly reductive, that Walky probably grew more with her than he did with Amber (who he didn’t even date, officially, so Lucy has that over her, at least), but a lot of that came at the end.
I dunno, like I see why this hurts, but I wonder if it’d hurt less if she’d seen how much the breakup did actually kind of fuck him up, like when he was talking to Amber about it after, how it got him to stand up to his mom and go just about scorched earth about her veiled racism, etc. I don’t think that stuff happens if she’s a nobody in his life, just… she moved too fast, he was too passive, and he ultimately just has a stronger dynamic with Dorothy.
Exactly, that is what was always noticeable in their relationship.
Lucy went at full speed and Walky did it calmly, an obvious fateful result and precisely because Lucy rushed, Walky even felt forced to constantly say “I like Lucy”, he didn’t want to hurt her, but she didn’t even stop for a moment. moment until Linda’s comment came.
With Amber, at least they had the decency to be honest, even Amber felt that things didn’t add up but she never reproached Walky for that.
I know it’s not the right thing to say, but let’s hope that the trust that there is in Walky and Dorothy is not lost because of all this.
His relationship with Dotty wasn’t really “serious” for the most part was it?
She tagged him as a fuck buddy then caught feelings, they dated a bit and she made him her current Project Person, then she realized trying to fix him was hurting her grades, so she broke things off with him a few times until it stuck, and then he boffed Amber two days after.
Am I missing anything? because that’s a bit of a jump into “Serious” for me.
Walky was completely smitten with Dorothy, throwing his dolls at her and all. She was his first love/infatuation/whatever, his first sex partner, the first (only?) girl that (I think) he eventually did say “I love you” too. ‘Serious’ or not, it was a Big Deal in his life.
In *his* life maybe. He was basically just Hotter, Less-Smothering, and Dumber Danny for Dotty though. Then she tried to train him up and got an A- and threw him away.
Not even really at first. She struggled with it, because she had a plan and didn’t want to self-sabotage with a distraction, but her interest in Walky rolled right over that. She tried to fool herself with that “just-for-fun” approach, but that was never really true.
And she’s had it bad for him ever since.
I’ve never really been a big Dotty fan. She reads as self centered and that she feels like she’s above the rest of the cast. Malaya should be focusing on her instead of Sal.
Her friendships AND relationships are all “I can fix them” side projects where she takes on a mentor role and treats them like children. “I can make you better” is the overrunning theme of every relationship she’s been a part of.
She’s the insufferable mom friend who read a book about how life should be, but never actually experienced anything that absolves her egotistical treatment of people. Then folds like a paper fan as soon as someone pokes a hole in her world view balloon.
See, I like Dorothy for exactly the reasons you’re saying you dislike her. I used to be really sick of her, but lately I think she’s actually a lot more interesting for being the way she is.
Walky and Amber never had sex, no. The furthest they got was dry humping in her bed. Like, officially, that’s what happened. Had to be kind of an awkward walk back to his dorm if he didn’t toss his boxers in his backpack or something.
I’m way too ace for this shit so instead of arguing who should be fucking who, and when, and how, and who deserves to feel what, I’m just gonna eat my pizza and be glad I’ve never been in this situation.
Party with no food and unspecifically strong booze for inexperienced people is not a good idea.
Maybe they’ve all just eaten a good dinner before then?
I hope Dorothy gets a chance here to say that she basically threw herself at Walky and all but jumped him, or that she had tried to do so even before Lucy and Walky had broken up, and that he turned her down flat the first time and even the second time took some convincing. It wasn’t like Walky himself immediately went sprinting back to Dorothy the instant Lucy broke up with him. That probably wouldn’t mitigate anything Lucy is feeling (justifiably so), nor does it entirely excuse Walky himself, but still.
(Assuming any of that is something Dorothy would actually want to admit out loud to a room full of people, which is probably highly unlikely.)
I hope she does too, because her trying to justify his jumping bed syndrome is gonna be hilarious considering her own newfound realization in her inability to commit, and only dating/lusting after people who are train wrecks.
This strip and the last one, I’ve been saying he got with Amber one day after the breakup with Dorothy and that Lucy supported it.
But that’s a slight oversimplification which I realized as I replied to someone earlier.
Dorothy and Walky broke up completely and then Walky and Jason got drunk.
The next day, he spent the whole day feeling messed up over the breakup except when talking to Amber, who he made out with that night.
So it was the next day, but it’s technically closer to 36 hours.
The day AFTER that is when he went to Jennifer and got her (and Lucy’s) endorsement.
Comparatively, since Lucy broke up with him after church, which most likely ended while it was still morning, Walky went about 48 hours, give or take, before getting with Dorothy.
There’s not much difference time wise, though there’s a lot of difference emotionally between the two situations, even if we disregard the different women’s personalities and positions.
But the difference in time doesn’t really matter to anyone who isn’t overly focused on it like I am.
If your take is “Two days is enough time to get over someone” you’re either never been heartbroken or you lack the emotional capacity to be in a relationship with someone.
Two days in nowhere near enough time by itself let alone with the in your face data that they turned around and hooked up with their ex.
Oh hey, that’s my take. Almost word for word. Well, not that you’re entitled to this information, but I’ve been heartbroken a few times, and I’ve been in a committed, mutually supportive relationship for 11 years, three weeks, and a day. I still think exactly what I said, that two days is plenty of time to get over someone. Some of us process emotions more quickly than others, and there’s no need to extrapolate all that silly stuff about “you’ve never” or make some ridiculous moral statement about people for being different.
” Some of us process emotions more quickly than others”
True, but this applies to everyone, not to some more than others:
“two days is plenty of time to get over someone”
So you’re basically saying that anyone who doesn’t process emotions as fast as you doesn’t count, or did you mean “two days is plenty of time for me to get over someone”
Something in between the two wrong things you said. “Applies to everyone” is too broad, “anyone […] doesn’t count” is nonsense, and “for me” is both partially implied and too narrow. I don’t speak for everyone on Earth, let’s not be silly here, but I also don’t have any obligation to say the entire thing every single time.
A Little Tip: If you have to rephrase someone’s point as “so you’re basically saying” you are likely making a point that isn’t actually in evidence in their original comment.
Taffy didn’t make a judgment about who “counted” in one way or another, you made that up yourself and then tried to correct it.
In addition to my agreement with you, I’d like to point out that “two days” is PLENTY of time to get over someone you’ve been on 3-4 dates with–if you were being normal about it and not building the whole thing up into some monument to love and/or losing-your-virginity like Lucy was (and I reiterate, I LIKE Lucy, but she was CLEARLY attaching significance to this relationship that was not justified by time spent or anything Walky said).
There’s also the simple problem that hooking up with someone else doesn’t actually mean you’ve gotten over someone. It could be part of the process – isn’t that kind of what a “rebound” is? It could just be a mistake.
I’ve had entire multi-year relationships while still getting over the last one. Didn’t always realize it at the time.:)
Super true – how is this not a bigger part of this conversation? After a breakup, people are lonely and want comfort. That’s the whole concept of a rebound.
I find it kind of amusing that there seem to be two basic negative responses to someone hooking up again quickly after a relationship disappointment: The current “that relationship wasn’t important, see how fast they hooked up” and the other “The new relationship isn’t important, it’s just a rebound.”
The takeaway here is, no relationship is ever important enough to anyone to be valid, and definitely nobody is projecting their own unpleasable standards onto other people’s relationships.
“If your take is “Two days is enough time to get over someone” you’re either never been heartbroken or you lack the emotional capacity to be in a relationship with someone.”
Who died and appointed you a Feelings Cop?
I’ve been heartbroken plenty of times, I’m polyamorous, so sometimes I lose more than one person in a short span and amplify that. I’m also married to someone I love deeply.
Two days is plenty of time to get over someone. Especially someone you’ve been on a few dates with over two weeks. You can take longer, and I’m not going to judge you, but I’m also not judging someone for hopping into another person’s bed literally five milliseconds after being dumped.
Or doing the dumping.
If a relationship doesn’t work, then it doesn’t. Grief works differently (and at different speeds) for every one. Not everyone feels or experiences things the way you do and your frankly WEIRD need to police how other people feel or dehumanize them when they don’t agree with you (see robot comment above) is something you should grow up and get over.
I think a distinction is failing to be made here. People are saying “Two days is enough time to get over someone” meaning that Walky is valid to have gotten over Lucy (or not gotten over but nonetheless seek comfort in the arms of an ex) because emotions work different for everyone. You appear to be hearing that as meaning that Lucy is supposed to be over Walky because it’s been two days, which is a thing exactly no one has said.
Well i kind of think this emotional honesty is good for them all, at least. Oh but so cringe in a way i feel deeply. good on Lucy for being upfront about it. It’s ok for her to be hurt, and she’s right, she’s got no right to stop them but that doesn’t mean she can’t be upset.
(I still want Walky and Dorothy to get together again, so i kind of hope this forces them to have a conversation about what they’re doing and why)
I also love the ship, but it is true that they have to rethink and clarify things well, I love the dynamism that both have and I hope it is not lost because of this
One of the interesting things about W&D getting back together that we’ve already seen hints of is the problem of falling back into old patterns as if nothing has changed, when they both have actually changed.
Having gone through something similar, I empathize with Lucy. She’s a good kid. I hope she finds someone who values and appreciates her as much as she deserves.
I think we need to reclaim the word rebound. It’s a basketball term and we should treat it with that respect. It that regard we don’t know what kind of numbers any of these ladies are putting up in the paint! How many assists? How many triple doubles, or uncontested threes? Whose reclaiming the most point attempts? We should be caring less about how fast Walky be fucking and more about his average points total in the second half. He seems like a guy that gasses out early. The James Harden of DoA.
I would actually love to see the cast doing more extracurricular activities. Sports especially seems pretty neglected, extra especially considering how athletic most of the cast are. Carla, Sal, Amber, Sarah, Joe, Jacob, Ethan. They could be demons of the sports world and we’ve only ever seen a football stadium like one time and getting baited with occasional glimpses of roller derby. IU’s gotta have a sports track! Who’s the jock of the group? Someone step up! I’ll settle for just a pickup game!
And yeah I think Walky would definitely be blown out by halftime! But what’s his shot like? Who got game on the cast. I’m,open to speculation.
Like you mentioned we’ve got roller derby with 3 main characters (+Marcie) involved, though we haven’t seen it too much.
That’s not actually bad numbers for basically one floor of characters.
Lucy’s got a point about Walky’s conduct re: Dorothy, but I’m not sure how applicable it is to Lucy and Walky’s relationship considering how messed up it was from the start – although I get why she’d feel hurt given that it was her first relationship.
The real problem with them was the difference in investment and intensity and I feel like that’s like 70/30 on Lucy for relationship-zoning him (for the longest time it felt like you were dating him without telling him, right?), evening out to about 60/40, maybe about 55/45, on Lucy after Walky didn’t manage enough emotional honesty re: the I love that you get that incident and just continuing to dodge the issue.
“The romantic fantasy I’ve written for these strangers in my head” is a bit too real I guess.
And Walky getting back with someone who tried to get him to cheat on Lucy isn’t great either.
Dorothy may have been having a bad time but that wasn’t exactly cool of her.
Kind of curious off topic question: How often do you refresh or re enter this page to see new comments or if someone responded to you? I do it every couple of minutes if I am not distracted with something else.
I’ll refresh a decent amount of times throughout a day, if I’m not especially busy. It helps fill time during loading screens or DPS queues, innit. Sometimes I’ll wind up responding to somebody just a few minutes after they leave a comment, and I used to worry they’d think I was obsessively refreshing 24/7 just to argue with them, but lately (since I started on anxiety meds) I’ve come to realise it doesn’t actually matter if somebody thinks that and I don’t have to correct every wrong thought you people have (I’d be here all day long, lmao). But yeah, mostly during loading screens.
6 times or more for the hour then I leave and come back later the same night. If I’m really invested in the conversation for that strip I come back the next day.
I used to be like 15 minutes, waiting for.
But now I just comment and read it again after 4, 5 hours because, usually, almost nobody answer me. (Because I usually post after everyone)
I was wondering this myself! Especially as someone who often comes late the next day to comment, or even days later. I kind of wish there was a way to be notified if someone responded to me, but that would make it more dramatic, I’m sure. At least with this format, arguments just kind of die out on specific pages as the story progresses.
Once or twice a few hours after if i remember to. Sometimes more if i was particularly heated or involved. If i don’t respond to your reply to me, know it’s entirely bc I have semi-not-really treated ADHD and typically forget this place exists until I come back the next morning. Really wish there were notifications like another disqus comment section I’m active in
“Don’t deserve” as in “you’re not in the right while they are in the wrong”.
People feel how they feel regardless, as feelings are uncontrollable.
Her actions in response to those feelings are controllable, and that’s when the idea of whether or not she deserves to feel a certain way comes in.
The idea of deserving to feel a certain way may come in at that point, but it’s muddy thinking. Much better to talk about actions rather than tell people they aren’t allowed to feel a certain way. You said yourself they are separate things.
She is not saying anything is his fault though. She still fell hurt about it, since fellings aren’t rational. And she is aware of this so she is trying to not lash out about it, just saying how she fells about the whole thing as calmly as she can.
It’s true that she’s not trying to retaliate, however, the expressions in the last few panels suggest that she’s actually holding back as best she can.
I mean, I Get that. With how important Walky was to her. It’s not like Walky treated Lucy badly or anything, but seeing how little she amounted to him In Comparison to his ex? Gut punch to the ego. That ought to hurt.
While she’s certainly reading it that way, it’s not really clear that perception is true.
He was actually making out with Amber as quickly, even if he did come to talk to Jennifer about it.
That’s commendable. She’s doing her best to not let her emotions get the better of her despite how strong they are. “Can’t control how you feel but you can control what you do about it” is the Actual Therapy meaning of “your feelings are valid.”
God yeah I’ve been scrolling and scrolling and there’s so much vitriol against this kid it’s upsetting. And yes, she’s being quite emotionally mature actually? (Not holding anyone hostage?? Just clearing the air given this unplannedly happened here & now in front of a crowd who Knows?)
I’ve seen her getting called manipulative and a social climber so much in earlier strips it’s like Yet Another Sequel to it
Aw come on. People haven’t gone outright and said “I hate Lucy” today but I saw several “hate”/”dislike”/a whole lotta projection yesterday. This is the same with other words. [Shrug] I’m not inventing things, and anyway, I read and watch fiction to have feelings about it.
It’s possible to discuss a character’s flaws without it being vitriol.
She does occasionally manipulate people and she has definitely shown social climber behavior. Like, these are characters crafted by an author to tell a story, they are going to have things wrong with them.
A lonely girl who has repeatedly been rejected by her dorm because they’re obsessed with popularity, in favor of her roomie who’s also obsessed with popularity, and whom Lucy would love to spend more time with so they can be actual friends… Shouldn’t be deemed a “social climber” for wanting to hang out with the so called “cool kids” imho
Yeah I think she’s brave for expressing herself. I would have been way too scared to do so at that age because I didn’t believe I mattered, and people would reject me for doing anything other than going along with the group.
I mean, I think—viewing her as a real person and not a character—this behavior is wild af to me. Because she’s 200% trying to start a fight. There is zero reason to vocalizing this here and now if it isn’t meant to cause a scene. Like, irl most people would just leave or storm out. Even at 18 I knew to suck it up and not make a scene in public if I was the one that brought it about. And it suuuucked to do. Keep quiet, either focus on something else and have fun or accept you can’t and bail to find something better to do. Confrontation is not on my bingo card of responses for exes ever.
As a character this is probably the best way for the story, I’m just shocked by how many people are like “Yeah, full confrontation and talking aggressively about my feelings and hurt in public is exactly how this situation should be handled, that’s very mature.” I can’t tell if that’s actually how people are supposed to handle this and I’m just emotionally suppressed or if it’s the sentiment of literally agreeing with what Lucy is saying, but I am baffled at best.
I do feel bad for her too. Strictly speaking, Walky should bail (and looked like he was going to), but just airing your laundry in front of all your friends and acquaintances is a literal nightmare scenario for me.
And just to stem off anything, just… anything like this reads as way aggressive to me because I was raised that the proper response was nothing at all or a single, quiet and veiled comment to a friend. So I’m still willing to say I’m emotionally stunted or suppressed or whatever, just that listing off grievances or pain in a relationship and calling someone a name lead to the same outcome in my anxiety riddled brain.
I think it depends where you are coming from, eg what’s your emotional starting place. For someone who makes a habit of causing scenes and being confrontational, their growth edge is learning when to remove themselves and handle their emotions in a more regulated way. (Like maybe Billie…? to choose someone from the cast of characters.)
Lucy, on the other hand, has been a people pleaser. For her to express her discomfort with something openly like this, I see as her growth edge/ a form of being brave.
Ultimately I think balance is good. There’s a time to walk away, not make waves, and there’s a time to bravely address things directly. Maturity is learning when to do which (and that we won’t always get it right).
I kind of agree, but I don’t think she’s doing it intentionally aggressively. She’s not trying to start a fight, she’s just processing it openly, because she’s not actually good socially. If you’re emotionally suppressed, she’s not able to suppress enough in this moment?
OTOH, it’s her first breakup and I suspect few of us handled that well. She’s being more mature than actually getting openly mad at him (or Dorothy) for it.
I can’t help but find it weird that there are folks who think Lucy is doing something wrong here. She’s not lashing out, she’s not arguing, she’s only commenting at all because people are walking on eggshells around her *assuming* that she must be mad at them.
She’s hurt, she has a valid reason to feel hurt even if it was only a short relationship because emotions aren’t logical, she communicated that reason.
Yeah if she *was* lashing out or sulking or fuming in a corner then maybe there’s reason to judge it but this is about the best case scenario one can possibly ask for.
Yeah but you see, I already made up my mind about Lucy being in the wrong here so what actually happens on the story isn’t really important now is it?/s
Nobody’s even walking on eggshells, either. Dorothy’s offering whatever explanation she can stammer out (not very successfully, lol) and Lucy’s telling her to save it. Not an eggshell to be found, just regular human communication.
The only thing I think Lucy is doing wrong here is that she’s here at all. Hanging out with your ex’s friend group days after a break up, when your ex is likely to show up, is always a bad idea. Even more so without talking to the ex about it first.
I don’t really blame Lucy for this though. This is her first rodeo and she’s long been shown to be desperate to make friends (and also being bad at doing so). I’ve made similar mistakes. That’s how we learn.
And yes, she was invited, but I don’t think Sarah knew they’d broken up.
It takes re-reading the same strip twice in one night to actually see the undertones. Lucy is more seems more upset with herself than with Walky.
Did Walky give Dorothy more consideration than he did Lucy because he loves her more or is it because Lucy and some of the others put it in his head to normalize moving on quickly after a break up? These are the questions to ask.
I am blessedly relieved to see that Lucy is emotionally mature enough to recognize the greater insult beyond “we were on a break” drama. It’s way more devastating to point out that Walky accidentally blundered right into the same preferential treatment his parents have, and Dorothy didn’t even think for a second about it.
With all the self-doubt Walky is undergoing, there’s no way he doesn’t break it off with Dorothy again while he tries to figure things out, right? Like there has to be.
I saw a lot of jokes about “on a break” (to the point it felt like “Say the line, Bart), but I’m curious if anyone actually, genuinely expected that to be a real thing that was going to happen in this story (or still expects it). Like, are any of y’all serious about that? Sound off, I wanna know why you think so little of the author’s ability to write a story. If you exist, which I’m not taking as an assumed fact.
Given the fact that Walky has more than once referenced Friends, including literally “we were on a break,” I hope you recognized I was being more glib than literal. Willis is an excellent writer but I assumed Lucy’s immaturity would naturally slip her into feeling betrayed by Walky and Dorothy would be the outlet for that.
Instead I’m delighted to see her recognize she *did* end it, and instead of being dramatic, Lucy simply makes the point that she’s angry because Dorothy and Walky aren’t the people she thought they were.
Her “I basically ended it” line here (along with a few earlier hints) makes me wonder if she hadn’t completely realized that until now. In which case, even more impressed by her processing and accepting that so quickly.
Panel 2: “I’m not mad. I can’t be.” I’m taking it she means “I shouldn’t be.” Unfortunately for homo sapiens, “shouldn’t be” is not the same as “can’t be.”
My memory is fuzzy and I can’t be arsed to be go back and find it, but I’m pretty sure Dorothy didn’t break up with Walky with “fuck your parents and fuck you too”, so I’m not sure Lucy’s high horse act here is really fair. I mean, really, a pass-agg version of “I can’t believe you got back with your former long-term partner so soon after I told you to go fuck yourself”? Incredibly self-centred.
That has been Lucy’s MO however when it comes to Walky though. Their relationship was in many ways, Lucy trying to brute force the relationship to warp speed. In about two weeks she was was feeling a lot. One could argue that was a bit fast.
She literally said “fuck your parents” and “fuck you” to Walky before telling him she could do better and then barely engaging with him the next time she saw him. And I’m not saying she was wrong for that reaction to his parents, but it was a blunt force trauma break up. Getting haughty because he’s hurt and rebounding after it is shitty on her part.
They broke up because of her trouble keeping up with her grades, not because of his trouble keeping up with his.
The whole reason Jason was there at the breakup was because Walky was trying to bring him along as a life coach to make him more worthy of Dorothy since they just had sex after being on pause (Jason had just quit his job after being accused of sleeping with a student, ie Sal).
And also because of her realization – based on not sticking to the pause for more than a day – that she was being unfair to him by setting boundaries and then not keeping them.
I see a lot of comments about how well Lucy is handling the situation.
Regardless of if we like Lucy or don’t like her,
think she’s in the wrong or the right,
have sympathy for her or feel like this is the result of her own actions,
or somewhere in between,
I really think we should wait til the end of the ride before we decide how well she’s handling this.
The current strip is an excellent setup for her to go in multiple directions.
This could just be us reaching the top of the rollercoaster before the drop happens.
Or it could be us landing the plane after encountering an unexpected storm.
We’ll have a better idea tomorrow.
Or, and hear me out here, we speculate endlessly on every release and make judgement calls before we’ve seen how things play out. And, most importantly of all, if we do make a judgement about someone about a predicted future event that then turns out to be completely incorrect, we maintain that inaccurate judgement as an irrefutable truth about their character and hold it against them forever onward.
Every strip released is the only strip that has or will ever be released. Prior strips only exist as nebulous information people have invented on the spot. It’s unreasonable, irresponsible, and immoral to act as if someone’s immediate knee-jerk reaction to the only existing strip is anything but a frank and accurate representation of raw reality.
Yup Lucy, you pretty much nailed it. Walky does not care about you as much as he cared about Dorothy. Personally I think that is pretty justified considering why and how you decided to break up.
Lucy appears to base her relationship decisions entirely around arbitrary measurements of time. How many dates before it’s acceptable to have sex despite her wanting premarital hanky panky right away. How long to wait after breaking up with someone before starting to date someone else. (How long was the turnaround after Dorothy dumped Danny before she started dating Walky, come to think of it?)
I dunno, I’m still torn on this, because on the one hand Lucy isn’t wrong about the difference between now and when Dorothy and Walky broke up, but on the other hand I still can’t get over how Lucy and Walky’s relationship was based around sex from the very start, with the question “Walky hey Walky when are you going to put your Power Booster Rod in me so I can show you the best I can do” dominating every storyline with the two of them up until they split. Which, again, nothing wrong with that, but seeing as Lucy abandoned ship before meeting her own stated goal, it makes her umbrage here ring a little hollow?
I know it’s nothing new, but it’s still jarring sometimes to realize that two days in comic time has been 8 months IRL. I don’t know that it would change my opinion either way since I got together with my wife when she was two days out of her previous relationship, but the time dilation certainly shifts viewpoints to some degree.
It’s kind of crazy how these characters have developed in what 8 months of comic time maybe? Walky and Joe have done almost complete roll reversals or at least subversions of their initial presentation. Walky’s the fuckboy and Joe is in the stable relationship with a virgin? I would not believe you at the start if you told me Joe was the soft wholesome one while Walky was the chromic bed hopper and heartbreaker. Crazy how they turned out.
Walky isn’t really a fuckboy though. He’s had multiple relationships, but he has been committed to all of them.
The relationship with Dorothy ended because Dorothy felt stretched too thin and didn’t feel like she was being fair to Walky.
The relationship with Amber ended due to conflicting trauma over Mike’s death.
The relationship with Lucy ended because Lucy chose to end it. Supposedly because “she deserves better”, but frankly in context it seems like she was more upset that Walky didn’t like her church.
I’ve got no idea why people think Walky’s reaction to her church had anything to do with it.
That kind of sparked the conversation, but it quite quickly got derailed by the “I love you” thing and that fed back into his parents (and even to Dorothy).
I’m using “fuckboy” in a more general term. It does have a somewhat negative connotation for a guy who routinely jumps between casual sexual encounters for fun, but it fits Walky because he’s kind of been the most romantically active character and he is the dude with three women he has at least dated in the room. All within a very quick timeframe. Sure he has been loyal when dating them but I think at this point a pattern has been established of him moving to the next girl very quickly as Lucy has noted. You can be an ethical fuckboy.
It’s a little weird when he’s only actually fucked one of them.
And when there were some months in between Amber and Lucy.
None of them were particularly “casual sexual encounters for fun”. Dorothy was a serious relationship and we don’t know yet how the sequel will turn out. Amber started out right after, but had some false starts before running aground. And with Lucy one of the big signs of trouble was that he didn’t seem to want it to become sexual.
So many comments jumping on Lucy for daring to have feelings as she realizes her relationship never meant as much to Walky as it did to her, not enough comments calling out Dorothy for being, at minimum, extremely tacky.
Reading these comments again confirms that I like Lucy about 100x more than the average reader, crazy. Poor girl. Goes above and beyond being accepting and mature at a freshman level and people still criticize her for having feelings. Hope she finds a happy ending.
I see that the morality police are out in force, judging characters and fellow commenters alike in bad faith. Maybe we could… not?
Lucy’s handling this relatively well IMO. It strikes me as normal to feel emotional pain after a relationship with someone ends. Seeing them move on quickly can feel like a twist of the knife. Lucy is learning that Walky moved on FAST and processing it aloud in real time, so yeah… It’s raw and messy.
Yeah no one in this room has done anything wrong here, people just refuse to be normal about things when there’s a comment section or any sort of reply forum. And yes, some people are taking this so insanely far that I am worried for them personally, as human beings, on the other side of this screen. Some people need to work through their issues in therapy instead of projecting them on fictional teenagers
Okay fuck it LUCY POSITIVITY THREAD 👏👏👏 it’s late bc I prefer to read the comic first thing after I wake up and my sleep schedule could be better, but fuck it. Anyone still around to see this who wants to sprinkle in a bit of niceness and joy like Lucy does for this comic, hop in. Sorry if any of what I say comes off as bitter, it’s because I am.
THE RULES
In this thread we are nice to lucy. You don’t like her? Cool, express your right to free speech in any other comment, don’t be fucking rude.
Lucy’s top is fucking LOVELY today and someone should say it. And she is being incredibly mature here, especially considering she’s a broken hearted teenager.
Lucy developing a spine that lets her act outside the confines of her “this is how relationships go” script is the best thing that’s ever happened to her. I’m genuinely excited to see where her character goes from here.
I wanna say, I agree 100% about the maturity. Also the top.
But I’ve been one of those outspoken “I don’t really think she realized that she broke up with Walky” folks, ESPECIALLY after yesterday, and… damn. She really got a brand new perspective on life and is far more self-aware than I realized.
I guess I should have realized that, from the previous comment about “I was an outsider, desperately wanting to be in.” Or from the fact that she put her floormates in their place and finally got their respect. Lucy was – is – my favorite Shortpacked! character, and I was a little sad that it seemed like she was being shortlisted as “the girlfriend” and “Replacement Joyce” especially as she was introduced in Shortpacked! as the replacement Amber, after Amber and Mike got married and pooped a baby.
I honestly likes her positive and outgoing attitude and I hope that she is able to keep it even as she grow and become more savvy. The world doesn’t need more cynicism, some optimism is very welcome.
She’s been so lonely! And yet she’s tried hard to stay optimistic and do actual things to reach out and meet people. Her environment at the other dorm had truly sucked and hasn’t done her any favors.
I do dislike her relationship with Walky, and so! I’m excited to see where her character will go now she’s learning to self-respect and getting out of her self-assigned Girlfriend box. I hope she gets actual friends out of this!!
She’s so genuinely sweet and caring in a way few other characters in this comic are. It’s only her bad luck at dorm placement that’s kept her from being fully in with this friend group and the fact that she’s looking for connection at all instead of giving in to sad feelings is so heartening.
I also really appreciate, from a writing perspective, that her flaws aren’t cool flaws. She’s enthusiastic and gets overly invested in relationships that are more one sided than she realizes. It’s an uncool flaw to have and you look deeply uncool falling into it. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of her hate comes from people seeing their own mistakes reflecting back at them.
How so? I mean, afaik Prom isn’t necessarily for one specific grade in High School?
Not that I’d know, when other kids where preparing for Prom, I was in the wheel-chair learning video game programming and stoning out with medical marijuana.
In retrospect, it unironically seemed like a better use of my time.
I think since he hasn’t really shown up in a lot of flashbacks aside from ones directly related to or immediately preceding the convenience store, I was under the impression that the connection was outside of school. Like I said, may have just been a bad assumption on my part.
I always thought I was just too in my own feels with how much Lucy and Wally reminded me of my college boyfriend. I loved him so much, I got back together with him in a fuck buddy status because I just wanted to have even a little of his attention, and when he broke up with me the second and last time, it’s because he found someone he wanted to date, and it took all of a week for him to move on.
Bless your heart, Walky, but I hope this teaches you a lesson in dating someone who cares about you more than you care about them. At the very least, be honest with them at the start before following their lead to play house with them. It’s just so sad because it’ll be hard to even salvage a friendship from this, now that Lucy feels Walky didn’t care about her.
And then another panel after that, revealing Sarah filled Lucy’s cup with dry Cheerios. Not even Honey Nut or anything, just the regular ones. No milk, either.
Lucy would have quite a point… if not for all the context surrounding all of this. And unfortunately, chances are nobody’s going to tell her about any of that context, so she’s going to start sounding like Mary, even though Lucy’s nothing like that waste of carbon.
Everyone’s gonna start hating on Lucy or Walky or Dorothy, but none of them are in the wrong on this. There is no wrong or right here. (At least until Lucy or Dina get drunk and do something horrible. Then everyone else is wrong for letting it happen.)
Hold on hold on you’re telling me, that in this comic, bad things can sometimes happen, even things that really hurt someone, without any malice or even a mistake on anyone’s part?
I don’t normally read the comments on this comic but is it always an endless vortex of people screaming at each other about the decision making of fictional 18 year olds and trying to expand that out to judge the morality of other commenter?
Stay away from Reddit. I wandered into a Reddit forum once and was astounded by the hate I found. Like these people had no other reason to read the comic.
I enjoy watching a bad movie for fun as much as the next girl but committing to reading a comic you don’t like *every day* just so you can be mad about it? Bizzare behaviour.
Right now Lucy is feeling like she was a place holder for Dorothy. Walky couldn’t have Dorothy so he went out with her,(because Dorothy told him too). But once she was out of the picture and Dorothy was available Walky went back to Dorothy.
And she’s not wrong, Walky was never invested in the relationship like Lucy was. He only took an interest when Dorothy told him too.
She loved Walky or at least she believes she loved Walky but Walky didn’t love her so it hurts. Breaking up hurt her, but it only made Walky feel guilty.
Lucy presents the facts with extreme clarity. She’s hurt, but I think there’s also a bit of relief, leaving Walky she dodged a bullet and I’m happy for her. It seems like he prefers girls who organize his life, not ones he can decide together what to do. Now he just has to follow her without doubts. I know he’s young and can still change, but now it seems that his future is to become like his father. Let’s hope that his future partner will not be like his mother. About Dorothy, I don’t know how long her desire to be with Walky will last this time, but she too needs to changes, or to finds a partner who likes to have someone organising their life, with the subtle impression that she thinks they’re incapable of doing it on their own.
wild how much the comment section loves to loathe two teenage girls (lucy & becky) who have basically done nothing wrong except be subjectively ‘annoying’ to some
A different person might tell you it definitely has something to do with skin color and/or socioeconomic status. I think it’s partly because they’re both Christian and aren’t trying to stop being Christian.
I wouldn’t really say that’s the reason. People tend to be pretty arbitrary with the characters they hate. (Like Roz. Everyone hates Roz for reasons that still aren’t clear to me. Literally the bongo rule was put into place cause of Roz. What has she even done?)
Oh, people dislike Roz because she’s a lefty who’s differently lefty than them. Nobody hates a progressive as much as another progressive whose opinion is slightly different.
And she’s a teenager, so she’s almost inherently annoying because she’s still developing.
(Almost??) every leftist has gone through Roz’s specific flavor of self-righteous phase when they were baby leftists. I think it’s endearing tbh! But a lot of people might cringe wayyy too hard either because it reminds them of themselves, or the teenage annoyingness you mention :’33
It sucks. It hurts. But at the end of the day when you’re the one who ends that relationship, the other person is no longer beholden to you. They do not owe you any time at all. Lucy is correct that Walky showed more concern for Dorothy’s feelings than hers in a similar situation, and she’s not wrong to feel hurt by that. But I think what’s hurting her the most right now is that she’s finally, truly realizing what the comment section knew all along – Walky, though he tried his best, was never as serious about Lucy as she was about him. He liked Lucy, yes, that’s true. But he loved Dorothy.
“two days…” yes, he got over you in 2 days.
he’s back with the woman he wants to be with, and is happier for it.
the fact that you are hurt by how long it took him to get over you shows just how much you overestimated your importance.
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yep
She’s not wrong.
Though I do seem to remember it being about Sal’s feelings, but my memory isn’t always accurate.
Hi Clif. I am sorry. I reported your comment by accident while trying to click an unrelated thing.
She’s not wrong on the timeline but she’s absolutely wrong thinking that both situations are the same.
Also, If I recall correctly, she basically walked up to him, grabbed his arm, said ,”I like this, this is mine now.” And he just went with it and didn’t object. He liked her, but wasn’t really in love with her.
He went to her and asked her to go out. On the prodding of Dorothy. Dorothy was the one who went “I like this, I can’t have it, you can have it.”
She clearly wasn’t aware of Walky and Amber “being up in each others DMs”, despite the fact that they weren’t DMs. Dotty even commented about it. Oh, and that was all before the split.
Quick, get Jacob in here!
Re: your gravatar: I understood that reference! You still drinkin’ that warm carrot juice stuff?
Only if the Hindmost is buying!
😀
Yup.
It never cèases to confound me that people have expectations on their former lovers’ behaviour. Two [years|months|weeks|days|…|frickin’ milliseconds], when you say it’s done, the other person is not beholden to your or your feelings at all.
I think there’s a huge difference between having expectations and just finding something hurtful. Most people in Lucy’s situation would be hurt and that’s just how these things go.
I would have commented this if you hadn’t.
Also, there’s different meanings to the word “expectations.” In one sense it means something you more or less believe somebody is obligated to do. In another sense it’s just…what you expect, as in what you predict will happen. It’s understandable that Lucy would think Walky might mourn their relationship longer, or hold off on getting into another one, based specifically on behavior she observed in him before. She feels sad and probably is interpreting it as not mattering as much to him…which, frankly, she doesn’t. That’s not a reflection on her inherent worth, but it probably feels like it is.
All this is a big learning experience for Lucy. She’s growing up.
This seems less about the new hookup, and more about the contrast with how Walky treated his previous relationship. Last time he went out of his way to care about his previous partner’s feelings and not immediately hook up again. But this time he (apparently) had no such reservations.
If Lucy had been Walky’s first relationship, or if Walky had been eager to hook up again immediately after his last breakup, this would’ve been much less painful for her.
Exactly. It’s leading her to feel like she’s somehow less worthy of consideration than Dorothy.
And even if that wasn’t the case, the fact remains that if Walky was ready to move on so soon with Dorothy means that Walky’s feelings for Dorothy are WAY stronger than his feelings for Lucy, which means that no matter what Lucy can do or offer, there will always be a part of his heart that belongs to another. That knowledge can REALLY hurt, whether out of a sense that you’re inferior to someone else, or that your partner will never be completely yours.
Lucy, you figured it out. Walky cares deeply about Dorothy. He liked you, but that’s not om the same level. Most of the affair was in your own head.
Soooooo much this!!!!! Save it Lucy. We’re all out of tiny violins right now.
Sorry, I just found a few cases in the back room. Seems we’ve got a few hundred left.
Thank goodness! I thought I’d ordered extra last time.
Forgot extra rosin, though. Ooops.
Sure, but the confirmation still hurts.
It’s not even confirmation for her. I think for her this is a new realization/reframing of the situation.
I think you’re right. This reads like processing in real time, and out loud.
Poor thing 🙁
The more I think about it, the more I feel for Lucy. She broke up with Walky because she realized that she deserved better, but something like this makes a person wonder, “DO I deserve better?” It’s an insidious spiral. Sure, she’s angry with Walky, but I bet she’s at least as angry with herself.
At the same time, as much as I imagine this hurts, her framing of the situation *reinforces* that she deserves better, because logically, it reflects badly on Walky for (allegedly) not valuing her as much as Dorothy.
…It strikes me as actually kind of weird that the emotional impact is so out of sync with the logical implication. Is that a common thing, I wonder?
Agh, sorry, in my effort to reply to this comment I reported it >< anyway, I agree that while I know Walky and Lucy were not gonna work out I still feel bad for her. I know what it’s like to get your hopes up so much over something that turns out to not be what you expected.
Daaaang
oh right
Hoo boy…
“good person” ? 😮
Yeah, basically.
Like i mean, i know they’re (probably) incompatible as far as romance goes, but did she really have to attack Walky’s character like that?
It was basically required.
Attack requires intent to hurt, she sounds like she’s just processing out loud. Sure, it still hurts, but that’s not the goal. I think the reason she’s doing it out loud is because she wants the group to know and understand her position.
Simply put, if the truth about how people see your behaviour hurts, maybe you could learn something from that.
Nah, she’s outright saying Walky isn’t a good person here.
“Decided” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Whether Raidah caused or simply reinforced this way of thinking in Lucy, it seems the result is the same :/
Maybe revisit the definition of “outright.” At most, she’s implying it. Or, you’re reading things into it that aren’t meant to be there. That’s a normal brain process meant to protect us, but it can also contribute to misunderstanding and unnecessarily escalate conflict.
Absolutely. She’s processing out loud, reflecting on her experiences.
That’s a bit like attacking Atlantis
Didn’t they burn Atlantis in the Civil War?
So you’re saying they were sunk before they started?
Kindly, I think you’re reading way too much into her word choice. She’s not saying he’s not a good person, she’s saying that seeing what she saw is what attracted her in the first place, seeing how much he agonized over potentially hurting someone he cared about. She’s hurt and probably taking this as a confirmation he didn’t care about her
But also the fact she’s drinking that so casually despite it being double x distilled is impressive.
At least it’s not Everclear.
Darn it Ali.
I am so exhausted mentally rn that I initially read this as “at least it’s not Centerpoint.”
If you know, you know.
😀
I lived in Houston years ago. Still got like 30 friends or so down there. They’re telling me Whataburger is more reliable than Centerpoint. 🙁
My mom lives down in Galveston and drove around the entire island and found maybe one or two actual line workers. Idk if Centerpoint is who handles that for that region, but the state of the island is apparently ridiculous right now.
And, lo, still is. Centerpointless has informed half my friends down there that they’ll get power back (which really means A/C) by Friday or Saturday.
At least it ain’t rubbing alcohol
Panel 6: “What the hell am I drinking?” Which is what we’ve been wondering about, too.
Still waiting for someone to read the label.
yeah that’s wild
party legend in the making
Truly, babygirl is in such a state nothing can sting worse, and whatever is there in the glass will probs help anyway.
I still get flashbacks of the stuff I drank at her age without flinching. It said “vodka” but it was closer to oil. Youth is an amazing thing
I, too, would like the experience of having been the rebound. Would’ve been a shot of confidence for me, for some uniquely personal reasons related to my HS experience.
Well, now that you’ve gone that far, a wall of text explaining is pretty much mandatory.
As the Dread Pirate Roberts would say: “Learn to live with disappointment.”
I bow to your wisdom
It’s not actually any better than being rebounded from, for whatever that’s worth.
Oh no, she’s emotional monologuing, party fun times shut down everyone go home
Yup, making the party all about her. No one can stop staring at the train wreck. Thanks, Sarah, great job. Lets all get together and talk about our exes, where is Danny for this?
Why is this Sarah’s fault???
You understand that Dorothy and Walky weren’t invited, they just happened in, yeah? And that Sarah didn’t start this party, she just tried to help it?
Wild reach there.
Well, I don’t hate Sarah for this. She’s trying. Maybe she doesn’t even know or care that Lucy and Walky broke up. But she might look around and regret making the effort because of all the drama.
I do wonder why she thought of Lucy though, maybe because they had that talk, because Lucy had the guts to push back?
Do we know that Dorothy and Walky were not invited?
I know Becky might want to “have Joyce for herself” for the evening (well apart from Sarah/Dina/etc.) and thus might not want to have her “rival” there. But Dorothy and Walky are still part of their social circle so I can’t really see them being excluded.
Do we know that Sarah was aware Dorky was a thing again?
That annoying kid
… Isn’t this Dorothy’s room? Somebody said? So even if they were not invited, it’d be reasonable to expect them to show up at some point.
No, this is Amber and Dina’s room. Even if we haven’t had a shot of the dinosaur for a few days.
And even then they share a half-bath with Becky/Dina.
“hey is there a party happening in her?” Is not something you say when you were actually invited, unless it was super last minute or something.
It was pretty last-minute. Booze was acquired spontaneously, then party began to materialize. Hard to say exactly, but the time was measured in hours.
Why is this Sarah’s fault???
I think think that the point is that Sarah invited Lucy.
Danny’s off in an actual healthy relationship, he doesn’t need to be dragged back into Dotty’s terrible decisions again.
Meanwhile the “Fuck Walkerton” Party Bus is off in the ditch, and on fire… Again.
That’s got to be some kind of record.
48 hours is a long time.
Wally and Amber were also a pretty quick rebound, if I remember right, although Lucy might not know that
Lucy does know it. She was there when Walky talked to Jennifer about it and supported him in doing so.
I don’t know if she understands it. She knows Walky was having feelings about it, I do not think she knows about the part where he got caught by his sister kissing Amber less than a day after getting dumped
I mean, you can always go back and check if she knows all the details.
I don’t think the kissing part matters though.
The point is, IF the number of days matters, then he actually did better this time than he did before.
Hell, he’s doing better regardless in regards to time passing before he rebounded.
Last time, he was already making out with Amber the night before (about 36 hours after getting dumped) and then came to Jennifer to get the green light for his behavior.
This time, he made it about 48.
If it’s messed up now, then it was messed up then, only this time Lucy is on the other side of it and it doesn’t feel too nice (the reasons for the different breakups are also factors of course).
It might also mean that she’d just gotten the wrong impression about Walky the first time. Not just that she’s on the other side, but that last time she heard him worrying about hurting Dorothy after breaking up, but didn’t know the follow up of getting together with Amber right after anyway. This time she only sees the follow up.
Remember what Booster said. Walky and Dorothy lose themeselves in each other in an unhealthy way. Lucy loses herself in Walky. Amber doesn’t.
Can feel like months sometimes
I already basically thought Lucy feeling hurt by this was justified, but when you spell it out like that she’s completely justified to feel this way
Considering she supported Walky getting with Amber ONE day after being dumped by Dorothy, I don’t see how this strip adds justification to any hurt feelings she has.
She acknowledges that she dumped Walky and drug him through an emotional wringer and then continues to make everyone feel sorry for her. I mean she’s not wrong, her feelings are normal, but what a downer for everyone.
This is why you don’t go hang out with your ex’s friends after you break up. Especially not right afterward. What if they do take her side and he loses his friend group too?
She dragged him through an emotional wringer? And she wasn’t expecting to see him there anyway, AND she didn’t broach the subject.
I don’t agree with her feeling justified in having any negative feelings, and I do think a lot of what she’s been feeling since the parents arrived is partially on her, but she’s definitely been put through an emotional wringer herself.
That said, these are Walky’s friends in Walky’s dorm building on Walky’s floor (just on the girl side); she was more than likely going to run into him and she’s smart enough to know that.
Also, I’d argue her face in the previous strip broached the subject, but that’s debatable.
TBH, the two days thing feels a lot like ‘I thought I’d have more than two days to snub you and get my revenge/self respect back by watching you be isolated and miserable.’
she’s justified in still being mad at Walky for the same reasons that she was justifiably angry at him in the first place. He strung her along despite not having any actual romantic feelings for her for the entire length of their relationship, then made her jump through a bunch of humiliating hoops to tiptoe around his mom’s racism – only standing up to his mom in Lucy’s defence after the fact to sooth his own guilty conscience. Why should Lucy be over that and playing nice just two days later?
I’m going to disagree that dating someone you like a few weeks is stringing along, particularly when he tried to do something he didn’t like (church), went to a breakfast with people he didnt want (because she was interested) and let her meet his family (despite warnings). He thought she was nice and wanted to see where it went, they just weren’t on the same page and Lucy put a lot on him expecting that same page.
This, exactly. Walky was CLEARLY trying to date her in a normal way for someone you’ve known for a few months and dated a few weeks, whereas LUCY was somewhere off in “auditioning for a spouse/someone to have sex with but that means enough of a commitment to not annoy God” land.
If that’s what she’s feeling, she should say it. Or, ideally, bring it up when she later apologizes to Walky for calling him out in front of his friends. Still, I realize the strip isn’t “Effective and Healthy Communication of Age.”
Comment directed towards sception
The ONLY justifiable thing is his mother’s racism and how he handled it. And yes, he handled it badly, but part of that is that he was just beginning to see it himself and didn’t yet know how to confront it.
Lucy chased Walky, and ambushed him into a ‘relationship’ when he wasn’t really feeling it at all. She dragged him to church, which is ALWAYS an attempt at conversion. And when Walky’s lifelong atheism, almost certainly based on a general realization that the whole god business was inherently ridiculous, didn’t lend itself to abandonment and belief in nonsense didn’t get the result she wanted she reacted badly.
Her general cheerfulness conceals a controlling personality. It’s obvious that she wanted him to come groveling back to her, which would have handed her much more control. Instead he gathered up his self respect and hooked up with Dorothy. Walky deserves better than Lucy, and fortunately he’s got it, even if it does end up being short term. Lucy will only get worse, particularly given that she’s taking lessons from Raidah. Malaya was right about her.
May I remind you that Walky is the one who asked Lucy out. Because Dorothy told him so. I guess you could say he was “ambushed” but that one’s not really on Lucy now, is it?
Regarding church: Walky offered to go with Lucy in an attempt to make her happy (honestly cute of him!), and the next morning had absolutely the chance to take that back ( though he would’ve hurt Lucy in the progress)- entirely on him if he didn’t, and saying Lucy “dragged” him is… strange.
(Also, visiting a church because your partner goes isn’t “always an attempt at conversion”??? I’m sorry about the experiences you’ve had to make that statement but it’s like. Kind of wild to me.)
And lastly I also would recommend rereading the breakup scene! Because Lucy treats Walky questioning church stuff as a kind of interesting debate & it’s not that which she “reacts badly” to – it’s realizing that their relationship is rather one-sided or at least to equal in the care/love department. She does act pushy earlier that scene, but it’s again not about the church stuff, & I really don’t know why you’d frame it like that.
I thought you were just interpreting things really weirdly, but now I’m not sure if we’re reading the same comic at all. I guess your last paragraph makes a bit more sense now (I was really wondering where you got that read from, but the answer is probably nowhere?)
What the fuck are you talking about? Lucy didn’t ambush him, he was pawned off on her by Dorothy. She didn’t drag him to church, he volunteered to go and wound up not liking it. She didn’t try to convert him either, you just made that up. If you’re gonna talk about your unhinged fanfic, you could at least provide a link to the damn thing.
So did you actually read the comic or just sorta hallucinate all this based on a couple of weirdos in the comments and your own probable misogynoir
@Taffy – I love this line and I’ll be using it:
“If you’re gonna talk about your unhinged fanfic, you could at least provide a link to the damn thing.”
You say that like she inserted herself and wasn’t explicitly invited. Dorothy and Wally weren’t. She probably assumed that if they were inviting her, it meant they weren’t inviting him.
Also hot take, he was closer friends with Lucy before they dated than anyone else in the group. Sarah doesn’t like him, Joyce doesn’t like him, ambers finally started liking him again, Dina’s neutral, he got along with Becky at first but we haven’t seen any of that since she came out, Billie was a close friend but she jettisoned herself from the group. Other than amber its not like he hangs out with any of them one on one, and with her it has romantic undertones. He’s more just sorta there because of who he dates, his sister, proximity and shared trauma form semester 1. If anything he was also guilty of hanging out with his ex’s friend group
Even if it was a purely mutual friend group, at this point in the breakup you really need to negotiate with the ex about who’s going to be where and if you’re ready to meet up in a group setting. It’s not really about being right or wrong though, just avoiding awkwardness like this.
Walky on the other hand is in his dorm (or around the corner on the same floor) visiting one of his closest friend’s room.
Sarah did invite him, but it’s not clear Sarah knows the situation and Lucy didn’t ask about Walky or let Sarah know.
No. I say it like someone claimed she couldn’t have expected to see Walky like that wasn’t the most likely thing to happen.
And I doubt she assumed that Walky’s friends decided they were specifically not going to invite Walky.
I agree that he was closer friends with Lucy.
Sarah does not like him.
Joyce doesn’t like him, but does consider him family as she told Becky long ago, which ironically makes him more liked by her than half of her blood family.
Becky has been out almost since he met her, so all of them getting along was after she came out.
Wait, why would Joyce consider Walky family in this universe?
He’s _Billie’s_ family.
You’d have to ask her. She said it.
Yup, this is where I’m at.
Especially since its that she’s “feeling hurt” not “taking out her hurt feelings on others”. It looks like she’s legit trying to process it all, and walking through it, but not casting blame really.
Justified to feel these things (hurt, sadness, even anger), yes; justified to thus accuse others of doing something wrong, no, I don’t think so in this scenario.
You never need to justify your feelings, that is a harmful way of thinking that makes people not express their emotions until they crash and burn.
A lot of people in the comments section dislike her for being “too cheerful” and yet they’re the first ones to react negatively when Lucy is so upset she stops being the very picture of pep. It’s like there’s a higher standard for her or something.
I dislike her because she always gave off “I just want to be the main character!” energy without much awareness of those around her. Her caring was for her persona, but she didn’t seem to actually care about people/problems because she wanted them to turn to her for help rather than just get help where they wanted. I dislike this not because she’s upset (that’s Def valid in this scenario), but that she’s comparing her ending to those other women unfavorably… when he sought comfort quicker after Dotty (she’s ignoring that) and Amber ended in a spectacular blow up (but still filled in as ‘unhinged white woman’ date for meet the parents).
And not just not express them, but often feel bad for having them in the first place. Which yeah, is just the absolute wrong way to process feelings.
Naw. It’s a totally different situation and you don’t get to dictate what your ex does or does not do. It might hurt her due to the recent breakup but Walky and Dorothy broke up despite still liking each other because Dotty thought she had to focus on class. She regretted that decision the whole time and Walky suffered for it too. This time, Walky got DUMPED and Lucy told him off while doing it. And wouldn’t ya know it, it was also enough time for Dotty to get over her hangups.
Sorry not sorry: It’s a totally different situation. It stinks for Lucy and I get her being unhappy, but she caused the situation and she has no right to tell an ex what is or is not an appropriate time to date again. She just can’t see past her own feelings on it.
I dont think she’s doing that. She’s vocalizing that she’s hurt and why. She literally said “I can’t be mad, I ended it.” Pointing out why she’s hurt is not dictating anyone’s behavior
But she also directly followed that up with a review of her consideration of Walky as a good person.
Isn’t that her decision though, how she thinks of Walky?
It absolutely is, but it’s also a different act to privately review it vs vocally doing so in a group that also includes the person in question.
I mean, yeah, this is true.
Except you would normally do that in your head and not out loud at a party while making pointed gestures to your ex. Vocalizing it to a group kinda seems like one is asking for people to pick sides. The proper thing to do would be for one or both of these people to leave if they can’t deal with seeing each other again. Honestly, I’m not a Lucy fan but Walky would probably be the one who should go since Lucy was brought to help organize the party specifically.
Oh maybe Walky’s girlfriends do have something in common after all.
They all decide they can’t be emotional because of reasons so they compartmentalise their feelings to be Good/Better People instead.
When has Amber ever compartmentalised?
Oh, right.
Maybe they will all turn on Walky now.
Yes. How dare he behave like a single man while he is a single man and get back together with a woman he loves and would have stayed with if they hadn’t mutually agreed to split up in a healthy and affectionate way that left their friendship intact.
What a jerk.
All that to say: Turn on him for what?
Any number of routes.
– It could turn into a dogpile or even a roast and while the whole party only means to cheer Lucy up, it could utterly destroy Walky (his whole need to be liked)
– It could be less a roast and more all of them roundly disappointed in him and how he’s handled relationships with all three girls, escalating with situations that aren’t necessarily his fault but that he’s been part of (pretending relationship so Lucy would look good to his parents, for example). Not necessarily his fault even.
– It could just be a lot of silence, awkward looks and glares until Walky (again because of his need to be liked) just flat out leaves. I see Dorothy trying to follow him out and that imploding shortly after.
If he didn’t want people to turn on him, he should have done a better job dodging the Shaman Bone Blade that Becky hit him with.
“Yep, he held out one more day than he did when you dumped him. He must have loved me more than I realized.”
Damn.
inb4 “So I shouldn’t point out that Dorothy and I had a bunch of sex earlier?”
I think Walky’s about to inadvertently ruin his second party.
I think the way to read this is that Lucy’s trying to process this. Not that she’s making an accusation or anything or calling Walky scum or Dorothy a rude word or anything like that.
She’s dealing with shit in a healthier manner than a LOT of characters in this strip would, frankly. Very commendable of her.
Gah, this was supposed to be a new comment, sorry for the confusion!
True, she’s not shouting or flipping tables or punching someone. She’s just holding the attention of the whole party while being sad and miserable. Let’s see if everyone will tie themselves up in knots out of guilt. Let’s see if Walky will run screaming from the feelings and from everyone man’s worst nightmare — all of his exes talking about him as if he isn’t there.
She can be given a damn minute to deal with this shit before people start sneering at her.
I’d like to point out for the dimmer folks (not saying you’re one of them, natch), nobody in the comic has sneered at her or reacted to any facial expressions or emotions she’s had, at least not yet. Dorothy has stammered defensively a little bit, but otherwise nobody’s said or done a thing.
No one in the *comic* has done that.
I wasn’t referring to people in the comic.
Yes, I’m aware of that. I’m not playing this dumbfuck “I didn’t say you said” game with you people, knock it the fuck off.
Well, if you find that so damn annoying you could also stop doing it.
I’m already not doing it. Please keep your weird obsession away from me, it’s getting creepy. You’re like, addicted to this game and it’s really unsettling.
She has as much a right to the attention of other people as anyone, and they’re all choosing to listen to her instead of having their own conversations.
Yeah, let’s not pretend some people don’t think it’s a party without some kind of drama going down. At worst, Lucy’s just guilty of not waiting until one of them showed up.
If Walky “run screaming” just from one of his exes talking about her fellings about him in a very reasonable manner, that is how own choice and in no way lucy responsibility.
Well, currently the “whole damn party” is 6 people, one of whom is Lucy and two of whom are kinda directly connected to this…
” inadvertently ruin his second party.”
And he hasn’t even said anything yet!
Time for another episode of I Hate Lucy with our special guest star the comments!
I mean I think this is hard to argue against, although I’m sure someone will find a way
I’m of two minds about Lucy (as I am with the people in my life that she reminds me of). She seems like a very nice friend who I’m sure could make somebody very happy, but she’s so anxious and insecure in her approach to romance hat it gives me the utter heebie-jeebies. Not making any logical arguments here and I’ll cop to that – her actions just remind me strongly of a lot of girls I knew in college who tried to court, coerce, and cajole me into being their perfect fantasy boyfriend (this was well before I transitioned ofc) and did not seem to realize that a “boy” could feel pressured into a relationship just like a girl. Just… ick. I want the best for her and in this case I think that is a couple harsh lessons in growing up.
Walky sucks too, I should clarify that that’s my position. I don’t think he’s remotely blameless, and he needs to grow a spine in how he relates to both his girlfriends and his parents. Lucy just draws my ire more because the hurt that she is causing is much more familiar to me from personal experience.
Well, if you take the position that all human relationships are essentially variations of contract law, then Lucy simply has no legal standing to invoke hurt feelings because of her voiding of the prior terms. For more great advice on relationships visit Reddit.com!
I don’t hate Lucy. I think she’s got hurt feelings for a valid reason. It’s an awkward place to air them, but she’s not under any obligation to stow her feelings away for a less awkward time.
She’s honestly batting a thousand here. Fingers crossed she grows from this and is better for the experience, however rough it was.
I can’t hate Lucy. Her saying something like this makes re-evaluate my crap choices in college, both being on her side of things as well as Walky’s side.
I would comment more on Lucy strips because I love her but I’m scared to because the majority of commenters seem to hate her
I can relate.
I’m with you.
If it helps I am deeply neutral and don’t understand at all why anyone would hate her so much? She’s not my kind of person and Lucy/Walky was painful, but I don’t really understand why anyone thinks any of the main cast are terrible people. I would actually be in favour of seeing some real Lucy character development and actual friendships.
She’s very, very human in her reactions. I think a lot of people see stuff in her they either don’t like in themselves or that has annoyed them in other people and project.
Nah, the majority definitely don’t “hate” her. That word gets tossed around too freely, I think. The three or four who do seem to hate her at any given moment are just very dramatic human beings who need to touch grass and experience whimsy. And probably drink some damn water.
Maybe I should start up a lucy positivity thread like I used to with booster. I’m a lot more spiteful about her haters though, partly bc I can’t help but wonder if misogynoir is a factor in the sheer intensity of the vitriol. Fuck it, yeah I’ll do it
Who hates Lucy? Name even three commenters, I’m 95% sure you can’t.
🍿Don’t mind me, I’m just waiting to see if it happens🥤
I don’t hate Lucy. I’ve got plenty of characters I hate in this strip (in different ways) and she’s definitely not one of them. But what she is, for me, is a big ol’ ball of ‘meh’. And so I admit, during Lucy-centric arcs, I tend to get a bit… snarky, I suppose, simply because I find them less interesting and need to keep myself entertained.
Dawg when I say I am so tempted but it probably violates some rules of conduct or whatever
Look, if even one person can name three other people who actually, factually hate the character Lucy from Dumbing of Age, using those people’s own words and screen names, I’ll eat my hat. I genuinely don’t believe those haters exist, but I see plenty of vague allegations of hatred.
Show us the hat.
No, I’m wearing it. You don’t get to see my face.
Phipps, Jay (very vocally, from the beginning), and iirc Adam Black, at least for a while. I think he’s been more hinged about her recently. Vanessa too, I was gonna give them the benefit of the doubt but at this point I’d need them to explain how they *don’t* hate lucy
….unless this was more of your dry sarcasm and my autistic ass just missed it this time. In which case. Whoopsie doodles
I’m not playing your drama games!
I’m also not raking through 457(!) comments on yesterdays strip.
Pff. “Drama games”, there’s a rich one. You’re funny.
I said it yesterday, it’s not that we hate Lucy, but because of her way of thinking, anyone would be worried.
In fact, I was almost sure she would hurt Walky and Dorothy, but Lucy herself says it, she knows it’s over and she’s not upset. , but I think an unconscious part of her is making this confession on purpose to make them feel bad.
Okay, Walky has screwed up plenty of times, but I’m just asking, does Dorothy deserve this?
Dorothy tried to break up a committed couple, so yeah, if we’re discussing who “deserves”…whatever is about to happen, she does deserve some of it.
I love Dorohty, but I admit that saying that she missed him at the critical moment she was in was not right.
Walky made things clear to her, but the way he “encouraged” her bothered me so much that I didn’t realize it.
Something tells me that if she was going to reveal it, in the first panel she was ready to break up in front of Lucy, but come on, after Karaoke night she tried to kiss him when he confessed that he broke up with Lucy, but she stopped because she knew it was wrong, no matter what. However, Walky, far from being upset, hugged her and even at lunch was willing to help her return to Lucy.
I love the Dorothy x Walky ship, if they both decide to say that it’s enough, I would understand, but don’t let the trust that exists in both be lost because of this.
But if the opposite is true, let it be the perfect opportunity to rethink things well. Dreaming is free
After Karaoke night she went to kiss him and stopped when he didn’t respond except to say they’d only probably broken up.
Walky gave her a comforting hug because she was bottoming out, not to encourage her.
That took another day. 🙂
Dorothy tried to get Walky to cheat on Lucy with her, so yes but not that Lucy knows of.
THERE IS THAT SHOE AS WELL.
Shoes all over the ceiling.
Waiting to drop like Koalas.
For the record, not that anyone asked, I 100% support and condone her actions in that moment, as a narrative event. Any time she expressed her regret with pawning Walky off on Lucy and tried to get a refund, I was really wanting her to succeed and get back with him.
Honestly same.
I think she was trying to get him to break up with Lucy and get back with her, not cheat on Lucy with her, to be fair, or at least that’s how I read the situation.
Nah some of y’all definitely, personally hate Lucy. At least one person was projecting their nasty divorce on her or whatever. Maybe not you, but you cannot speak for the anti-lucy group
I like Lucy, both as a character and as a person. But that does not mean she isn’t wrong/annoying/immature sometimes, and her relationship with Walky hasn’t been Lucy at her best for the most part. Her immature side was really at the forefront there (not that she’s the only one).
I think the way she did the breakup was good – she should build on that and grow.
don’t count with me, please
I don’t hate Lucy — I was all in favor of LucyxWalky. I just think she’s completely avoiding the point that she was ALWAYS a couple of relationship stages more invested in this than Walky was, in a very not-cool way, and as such she shot the relationship and herself in the foot over it.
Ouch
I do love Dorothy actually engaging with the situation and trying to defuse things, and meanwhile Walky’s seeing his life flash before his eyes…
Oh, no, the feelings! Must make a joke! Must run!
He’s just not that into you, Lucy.
Or he sucks at staying single.
He does seem to get aggressively pursued every time he becomes single for one second.
Oh, yeah. That did happen…
Uh. Walky, you screwed. Dorothy too. Not in the fun way. Y’all gonna get this emotional unpacking.
How many here would accept Willis as their rebound?
Willis like… the author of the comic? That’s a really weird question to ask. I’m really hoping you meant Walky and just mistyped.
I think they’re referring to the alt text.
I stand by it being a weird question regardless, worse now that I know it’s not a mistype.
That would be incredibly parasocial, so definitely not.
look i’m married
I guess that would explain the lack of rebounds.
Didn’t you have a clone of yourself made?
How else are you going to continue this strip in perpetuity?
when has cloning yourself ever had a good outcome
It worked for Walky in an alternate universe.
Right?!
For one, someone has to raise the clone. The likelihood that the clone receives the exact upbringing is slim, so Clone!Willis might find cartooning a chore… especially if you tell him he was Made For This(tm).
The alt-text is clearly from Lucy’a PoV, or rather a snarky author’s comment on what Lucy is sort of thinking.
That doesn’t make sense. How can she be the rebound from Amber and lament her lack of being the rebound?
Dudes been drawing comics for longer than I’ve been alive so that feels weird to think about
I have a calendar notification that tomorrow’s comic is supposed to be soul-crushing for someone, according to a comment from this comic: https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/02-its-the-love-i-havent-got/prettygirls
Ok that URL was weird, maybe https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-14/02-its-the-love-i-havent-got/prettygirls works and won’t have the sketchy google redirect?
I thought it was supposed to be soul-crushing for Schpoonman.
Ah, well that’s good and ominous
Schpoonman about to have a birthday win.
The next preview panel I see on tumblr is the 15th, not quite tomorrow. But soon!
Walky like “What was your name again?”
I think he feels guilty.
Considering how wonky the timeline feels at points, it’s good she pointed this out.
Ooh… ow. OK, that stings.
It just confirms that Walky never really cared for Lucy that way. Or at least, not as much as she cared for him.
Walky waited one day more than he did when Dorothy dumped him, so if her focus is on the number of days, it really doesn’t confirm how he feels about her.
But I’m pretty sure that they firmly established that she cares for him more than he did for her after church.
… so, Lucy? Remember when Walky, despite being worried about Dorothy’s feelings if he hooked up with Amber so soon after the breakup, NEVERTHELESS hooked up with Amber so soon after the breakup?
Yeah, okay, it hurts, but don’t act surprised.
(At least she recognizes that she DID end it.)
I don’t think she does though. She wasn’t as close to the group then and might well not have known how quickly he hooked up with Amber.
Or, and this is what I think, what attracted her was seeing the concern he had. There’s a difference between deliberating and agonizing over something before going through with it and just going straight into it.
But that time she saw the deliberating and agonizing and this time she only saw the outcome.
Do you know how many comics happen in 2 days
Thats like a month real time
Webcomic time is funny like that
she has a point, i mean, two days is pretty quick, it should be at least
one week
One week? You mean half the entire time they dated?
They dated for weeks.
Yes. Two of them.
Sal deserves a prize for calling it.
Literally the exact amount of weeks to make it plural. What a massively important distinction.
No seriously it feels like we’re viewing these events happening from the perspective of someone who has the life span of an ant.
Wow, Lucy went through that situation in a mature and reasonable manner while still not taking her own fellings for granted! Who would that though? Not a lot of people apparently. (Also surprise! She does in fact knows that she broke off with her own boyfriend).
I’m not really sure where the assumption that she wouldn’t came from
That one kind of felt out of left field to me
Right?!
Well, I’m glad she admits it’s over. Now all the desperate “she didn’t say the magic words” crap can stop.
Two days is plenty of time to get over someone you just met.
For. Real.
The “basically” part is her acknowledging that she wasn’t as clear as she could be, which is what most of the back in forth in the comments was about.
All of them have known each other for months. Lucy included.
Two days is plenty of time to get over someone you have known for months but dated for two weeks.
True, no one here was engaged or lived together. It hasn’t even been two semesters in the whole comic yet.
I kind of dislike this approach, since it inherently lowers all the romantic stakes in the story. There’s some truth in it, but at the same time, it’s not like breakups in college weren’t devastating too
Yeah, we all had less life and romantic experience then, too, so within the context of what we knew, shorter relationships were more meaningful.
Get over enough to not be heartbroken over the break up, I can see. Get over enough to literally hop in bed with somebody else, especially an ex? Maybe it’s just because I’m ace, but that’s pretty oof.
It’s often easier to reconnect with an ex because you have shared history, previous understandings, and old habits to slip into.
After two weeks, there isn’t exactly much to get over romantically (for Walky, Lucy was into him for so much longer). I bet Walky mourns the friendship, though, and he can still do that while being with someone else.
I agree with others that the romantic relationship with Dorothy had much more weight than that with Lucy, and if course that’s painful for Lucy to see.
As others have said, I don’t think Walky and Dorothy are doing anything wrong, but that doesn’t mean Lucy cannot still feel hurt and sad about it.
(For reference, I’m ace too, though not aro.)
Yes, Lucy is within her rights to be angry.
It may be too far-fetched, but it seems like he’s still trying to hurt Walky and Dorothy, indirectly.
“he’s still trying to hurt Walky and Dorothy”
Who is ‘he’?
Probably Lucy, and they just forgot the S in “she”. It’s a simple typo.
Lucy is absolutely within her rights to have all manner of feelings about this. It super sucks from her perspective.
A vocal re-evaluation of her consideration of Walky as a good person to his face does seem kind of direct to me.
It’s called rebounding.
If you can get over someone in two days, you didn’t actually feel anything for them.
If you’re a robot just say it amigo
Could you elaborate on the “robot” part? I know I type a little strangely sometimes, but I didn’t think I was mistakable for a bot.
“People who feel differently than I do aren’t human”
Great take A+ not literally dehumanizing at all. Clearly your feelings are the best and only feelings.
Walky isn’t over her “her” as in Lucy. It may have only been a less than two week relationship, and he didn’t realize until after the split but he has deeper interest in Lucy. There have been multiple hints and I frankly it’s been more obvious than hints.
I’d bet on that being revealed at this party.
Maybe you’re right. If all that comes out, my hope is that it leads to Walky having multiple girlfriends and having to figure out how to navigate that in very short order. Really fast-track that emotional intelligence or “personal growth” or whatever were calling it this month.
I don’t know if polyamory would be the best option for them, but it might be the most entertaining for us!
Two days might be fast, from her pov, sure, but D+W are exes. They already had established pathways to reconnecting.
Lucy is beginning to see a pattern?
Probably not that “Walky is the protagonist and so can’t stay single for long.”
Yeah. This looks bad. Poor Lucy, and Amber.
Amber got to know him better on Garbage roof. She had no illusions.
I think Amber is mentally saying, “Hey, don’t bring me into this.”
Amber already got brought into it when they had her play unhinged white woman to make Lucy look like a better person to the racist parents he warned her about.
Lucy, unfortunately you lose any right to comment on your ex’s behavior once they are your ex.
Ser Criston Cole should have learned this about Rhaenyra.
Tell that to Dorothy.
“unfortunately you lose any right to comment on your ex’s behavior once they are your ex.”
So, I’m not a lawyer, but nu-uh.
It’s in the US Bill of Rights, Freedom of Speech, so long as the behavior you’re commenting on is someone you are currently in a romantic relationship with.
Nah rebounding with your most recent ex after two days is shitty.
Amber is the most recent ex.
Amber was the most recent ex. Dorothy is the first ex.
What if your ex murders someone? You’re not allowed to say “that’s not cool?”
An extreme obviously, but my point is that your ex can do a fucked up thing and you can still call that out.
To answer this sincerely*, I actually think that if your ex murders a person, you shouldn’t chime in with an opinion. If you’re audacious and self-centered enough to have an opinion on it at all, you should keep it to yourself. At least until the trial is over, and even then you should probably play it safe and stay quiet about the whole thing.
* not sincerely at all
That is an excellent way to keep people from processing bad experiences in their relationship, practically guaranteeing that all their future relationships will be messed up as well.
You misunderstood. The point is that once your ex is your ex, you lose the right to comment on their conduct from that point on. You are free to comment upon the behavior that led to them being your ex. If someone asks Lucy why she broke it off in the first place, she’s well within her rights to list Walky’s misconduct beforehand. But what he does now? Is his business. At most, you get to look at an ex’s behavior and say, “Welp, glad I’m out of that”.
I disagree. I’ll comment on anyone’s conduct if I feel like it. Or refrain, if I think it will cost more than it pays.
By saying she doesn’t get to share her feelings with her friends in this context, you’re limiting the kinds of processing she is allowed to employ. People are allowed to express an opinion or observation about the behaviour of people in their environment, even if they are an ex. Just like you can say “Ew, muesli in fanta” to a friend without being shunned. They might say “bite me, that’s my business”, but that’s putting down personal boundaries, which is a part of normal social interaction too), you can also say “when she dumped you, you stayed considerate of her emotions, but when I dumped you, you apparently don’t care. That hurts my feelings.” To which he can still say “bite me, that’s my business”, but him expressing a boundary is not the same thing as nobody ever being allowed to touch that boundary before knowing about it. Social interaction is in essence sharing your thoughts & feelings and expressing your boundaries. Both are important parts. If you say people can’t express their thoughts and feelings if they might touch a boundary, then you’re blocking both parts of social interaction and at that point you might as well have a conversation with a pillow for all the connection and growth you(plural) can get from that interaction.
Hang on, I think I’ve thought of a way to put this. “Boundaries should be touched, not avoided.” You can of course believe that boundaries shouldn’t be crossed, but it sounds to me like you’re saying here that boundaries shouldn’t even be touched, which to me would mean nobody ever gets to practice stating their boundaries in a safe environment, so when they get in a dangerous environment they won’t have practiced.
I wouldn’t frame everything in the exact same way as you did here, but I really appreciate you articulating this nonetheless.
Nah that’s still bullshit
Thank you for articulating this. Telling people to stuff their feelings is usually not healthy. Thinking of relationships and feelings in terms of legalistic “rights” is also probably not healthy. Unless we are talking about marriage, co-ownership of property, or co-parenting, it’s not a legal matter.
All these remarks about “the right to [x]” are stupid. Fuck rights, they have nothing to do with anything.
Exactly, everyone has the right to feelings and the right to process them. Feelings don’t have to make sense or follow rules. It’s what you do with those feelings and your actions that matter, in that sense.
I’m sorry but I say differently. If you are trying to control and judge a romantic partner after they have been broken up with, you’re a shitty person. Plenty of dudebros act entitled to their ex-girlfriends and judgy and it’s just plain awful.
Lucy is here being nasty to Walky and his date just because she dumped HIM. She’s saying he wasn’t “mourning” her enough. Which is terrible and ruining the party.
Controlling and judging are actions, not emotions or feelings. You’re not in disagreement.
Two days is pretty short I think I’d give anyone a pass in this circumstance. Also Lucy is surprised by this info so i can’t fault her reaction here.
Also it’s just hurtful to be confronted by the fact your ex clearly didn’t give a fig about you. Doesn’t mean your ex is evil but she’s just surprised and hurt. It’s been 2 days! Of course she’s still going to have a lot of feelings about stuff.
But that’s got nothing to do with “after they have broken up”. Trying to control and judge a romantic partner is shitty while you’re still with them. Probably shittier. Dudebro entitlement is awful, before, during and after a relationship.
People can judge and comment on other’s behavior regardless of relationship status and others can judge and comment on that
Yeaaahhh, their comment does heavily imply that they think controlling and judging are fine within the confines of a relationship.
Yikes territory there.
I’m going to be honest but this all seems apologia for toxic evil male behaviors. A break up means that you have no hold on someone. A relationship means that you have an investment in what your partner thinks of your opinion and vice versa.
The fact that you think its right to judge a partner’s behavior after a breakup is very concerning. It means that you think you own them or they owe you.
Will you learn how to read, for fuck’s sake?
No, it means I don’t think anyone’s owned, whether in a relationship or not.
People get judged all the time. You thinking this is “very concerning” is itself judging.
This entire thread is getting ridiculous. Multiple people explicitly saying they disagree with a controlling behavior, and somehow that’s “apologia” and “means you think [person] owns [other person]”. Like, is it opposite day? Are we just looking for keywords now and deciding the rest of the sentence based on that? And then conveniently making that sentence mean something we can belittle another human for? Like, isn’t this coming from a goddamn published author? You’d think basic fucking reading comprehension would be involved in that somehow.
@Taffy i think if Phipps learned to read they’d run out of comments. Like their whole role here is basically being convincing rage bait
You replied to the wrong comment, I think. I didn’t say anything even close to that.
Keep swinging though? I’m sure you’ll hit on a point eventually.
@Taffy – to be fair, *everyone’s* reading comprehension goes down when we are triggered/have our amygdala activated. My read on this is that CT has had a negative experience with an ex trying to be controlling (or more than one), and their brain is in fight/flight mode (or was when they were commenting on this), and selectively only taking in information that feels like a threat/can be interpreted as a threat i.e. reminding them of that bad experience.
Like, on the one hand, I totally agree with you that they completely misinterpreted what people are saying, but maybe give people a little grace/kindness when they are potentially recalling some bad experiences and not thinking clearly.
@Meagan
I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask people to allow their viewpoints to be wildly misrepresented just because someone might be upset behind the keyboard. If that person is upset, they’re welcome to remove themselves from the conversation, no one here is getting paid to babysit.
Even if it is appropriate to ask for – I have no interest in doing so. I don’t believe in giving grace to the point of smothering my own thoughts about things. C.T.Phipps is either trolling intentionally or needs a reality check, but isn’t offering any “grace” to others soooo…
I know you were talking to Taffy, but since it was my comment being called “apologia” at the time I feel like I can chime in just fine.
I’m gonna be frank, the only Amygdala I care about having activated is the one in Bloodborne. 40 Insight and you can see the fuckers crawling on the walls practically everywhere.
@Nymph –
What sticks out to me in what you said here is the phrase “allowing your viewpoints to be misrepresented.”
Why do viewpoints get misrepresented? Well, it can either be intentional or unintentional. As a latecomer to the discussion looking over the interaction, I don’t think it was intentional. I think CT *misunderstood* what you were saying and you were talking past each other.
That begs the question, why did this person misunderstand? I put forth a guess about why that might be, which seems to be partially right based on a more recent comment.
It’s a matter of “you can be right or you can be happy,” or “you can get agro and defensive and perpetuate the misunderstanding, or you can try to understand why a misunderstanding is happening and work to correct it.”
We all jump to conclusions and make wrong inferences, especially on the internet in text-based communication. Hammering away at an argument in the same way over and over again is unlikely to course correct a conversation and achieve the understanding you want.
Chiming in with others to say that, woah, you’re conflating “having and expressing feelings” with “trying to control people.” Those are not the same thing. Unfortunately people do conflate them a lot, but understanding the difference is part of maturing as a human.
This is actually part of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), which I generally am not a fan of, but it has a few good insights. One being that we mistakenly assume a lot of things are mutually exclusive, that are in fact not mutually exclusive. You can both understand an ex has the right to live their life however they wish, AND have negative feelings about their choices. Having a feeling does not indicate or necessitate a specific action.
Eh, my apologies if I came off as overly aggressive and probably was. It’s been an unfortunate set of days for the neuroatypical worried about their country falling to fascism thanks to the collapse of the Biden campaign and that is making me feel extra foul in my mood.
But yes, I am surprised its a controversial opinion. I think that people should be free to date or do whatever they want after a breakup without being judged by exes. And yes, I’m thinking of female friends who got called all manner of nasty names by their exes for not entering a funk after they got dumped by their boyfriends.
Sorry you’re having a hard time. It sounds like your friends were hurt by this name calling you mention.
The thing is, I think there’s a huge misunderstanding /talking past each other between you and other commenters. Well, at least partly. I don’t think anyone here is disagreeing with the first part of your sentence that reads, “I think that people should be free to date or do whatever they want after a breakup.”
But as far as judgment from exes, well, we all have the right to judge each other. It’s not always healthy, but it’s a fundamental part of being a thinking being.
My take on what you’re describing is that while amicable break ups are a nice ideal, they are not the reality in most situations. Your friends probably broke up with those guys because they were nasty even while they were together, so why would they be surprised that it would continue after breaking up?
And if it’s not those men’s “right” to judge the girlfriends who left them, why is it healthy for the women in question to continue to be concerned about their exes’ judgments? It would seem the whole point of the breakup is to distance themselves from those judgments, not continue to be caught up in worrying what their ex-boyfriends think of them.
But again – feelings don’t follow a formula. While the point of a breakup is to gain distance, that takes time on an emotional level. I think it’s completely understandable that your friends would still care about the names their exes called them shortly after a break up, although I hope they eventually care a lot less about that. Just as it is understandable the men in the situation also had feelings about what their ex-girlfriends did after the relationship ended – which they hopefully will also not continue to obsess over indefinitely.
There’s also a difference between expressing a feeling as such (“I’m hurt you moved on so quickly”) versus calling someone a nasty name.
What about the right to be stupid?
If you drop your ex on the floor, is it okay to pick them up again within a certain number of seconds?
Within 5 seconds, that’s the usual rule I’ve seen. Sometimes it gets extended to 10, but that’s often treated as something of a stretch scenario. That might be mainly a Midwestern USA thing, but I’m not sure.
This is true. One time I dropped my ex on the floor and laughed too long about it, passed the 5 second rule, and had to leave them there.
It can go longer, depending on how clean the floor is, and be contracted all the way to nothing depending on how sticky the ex is.
Our standard rule was “before the dogs get to it”. Which was a race.
Very refreshing light humor after the last comments section.
Nah, gotta disagree. I’d say that, if they get with someone else right after, you don’t have the right to comment on the person they get with, but you absolutely can comment on their behavior. Especially if it’s something manipulative or harmful. I don’t know if this falls under those categories because Dorothy and Walky had a previous relationship and didn’t really have a bad falling out after splitting, but if this had been something where Walky was just sleeping with random people afterwards or if Walky did something like Jennifer did after breaking up with Ruth, then I think Lucy would have every right to criticize him.
I think part of the problem with Walky and Lucy might be that Walky isn’t attracted to her. Like, she was a nice person to spend time with, but Walky was thinking of and treating like a friend, for the most part.
Lucy being hurt is valid and it must be painful because what she was feeling insecure about was true: Walky really want to be her boyfriend very much and so when they broke up, he only felt bad about his behavior, not the end of the relationship.
And so far, it seems like Lucy is doing a great job dealing with this in a very mature fashion.
I don’t think it’s as simply as that, honestly? Like, we definitely HAVE seen him on-screen turned on by her in several strips, it’s moreso that he gets really wigged out by being put in a position where he’s expected to match someone else’s speed and he’s not there yet.
Like, don’t forget, the first time Dorothy said she loved him, he was emphatically not ready to say it back yet. Dorothy was much more experienced than Lucy, though, and frankly more educated in matters of the heart, so she recognized it and it didn’t lead to a series of misunderstandings and lies by omission.
He wasn’t as lustful as he was with Amber, or as smitten as he was with Dorothy, but I don’t think it was as much a non-starter as that Walky really could not handle being the experienced party. He didn’t have someone else to set the pace, and did not rise to the occasion to set it himself.
I think a mitigating circumstance here is that Walky and Dorothy already had the history. With Amber, he didn’t, and his relationship with Dorothy had been more serious.
That’s really the issue, though, that she feels like small potatoes here. And I am sure there are plenty who’d agree with her, but, ehhh. I think that’d be overly reductive, that Walky probably grew more with her than he did with Amber (who he didn’t even date, officially, so Lucy has that over her, at least), but a lot of that came at the end.
I dunno, like I see why this hurts, but I wonder if it’d hurt less if she’d seen how much the breakup did actually kind of fuck him up, like when he was talking to Amber about it after, how it got him to stand up to his mom and go just about scorched earth about her veiled racism, etc. I don’t think that stuff happens if she’s a nobody in his life, just… she moved too fast, he was too passive, and he ultimately just has a stronger dynamic with Dorothy.
I feel like this is a good take.
Agreed! Dorothy and Walky having history does change things – although it doesn’t have to change how Lucy feels about it.
Exactly, that is what was always noticeable in their relationship.
Lucy went at full speed and Walky did it calmly, an obvious fateful result and precisely because Lucy rushed, Walky even felt forced to constantly say “I like Lucy”, he didn’t want to hurt her, but she didn’t even stop for a moment. moment until Linda’s comment came.
With Amber, at least they had the decency to be honest, even Amber felt that things didn’t add up but she never reproached Walky for that.
I know it’s not the right thing to say, but let’s hope that the trust that there is in Walky and Dorothy is not lost because of all this.
His relationship with Dotty wasn’t really “serious” for the most part was it?
She tagged him as a fuck buddy then caught feelings, they dated a bit and she made him her current Project Person, then she realized trying to fix him was hurting her grades, so she broke things off with him a few times until it stuck, and then he boffed Amber two days after.
Am I missing anything? because that’s a bit of a jump into “Serious” for me.
Walky was completely smitten with Dorothy, throwing his dolls at her and all. She was his first love/infatuation/whatever, his first sex partner, the first (only?) girl that (I think) he eventually did say “I love you” too. ‘Serious’ or not, it was a Big Deal in his life.
In *his* life maybe. He was basically just Hotter, Less-Smothering, and Dumber Danny for Dotty though. Then she tried to train him up and got an A- and threw him away.
“Dumber Danny for Dotty”
At first. Then she said “I love you” and meant it.
This.
Not even really at first. She struggled with it, because she had a plan and didn’t want to self-sabotage with a distraction, but her interest in Walky rolled right over that. She tried to fool herself with that “just-for-fun” approach, but that was never really true.
And she’s had it bad for him ever since.
I think you and I read different comics. That’s such a wildly off-base take we literally cannot be talking about the same characters.
I’ve never really been a big Dotty fan. She reads as self centered and that she feels like she’s above the rest of the cast. Malaya should be focusing on her instead of Sal.
Her friendships AND relationships are all “I can fix them” side projects where she takes on a mentor role and treats them like children. “I can make you better” is the overrunning theme of every relationship she’s been a part of.
She’s the insufferable mom friend who read a book about how life should be, but never actually experienced anything that absolves her egotistical treatment of people. Then folds like a paper fan as soon as someone pokes a hole in her world view balloon.
See, I like Dorothy for exactly the reasons you’re saying you dislike her. I used to be really sick of her, but lately I think she’s actually a lot more interesting for being the way she is.
Oh, she’s a fantastic character, don’t get me wrong.
She’s just the Rick Sanchez of DoA.
Walky, I turned myself into a pickle.
I thought Walky and Amber never actually had sex or went very far physically? Did I miss something?
Walky and Amber never had sex, no. The furthest they got was dry humping in her bed. Like, officially, that’s what happened. Had to be kind of an awkward walk back to his dorm if he didn’t toss his boxers in his backpack or something.
Damn, DailyBrad. Putting it into words so succinctly.
This is a good comment :33
Let her cook
I feel like a father at his child’s eighteenth birthday who drinks alcohol for the “first” time. Second person no flinches after 40 volts.
40 volts? What kind of party does your family have when people turn 18?
Those parties are lit…electrifyingly lit.
I’m way too ace for this shit so instead of arguing who should be fucking who, and when, and how, and who deserves to feel what, I’m just gonna eat my pizza and be glad I’ve never been in this situation.
What kind of pizza?
Pepperoni pizza, because I’m pretty basic.
Well, pepperoni is a classic for a reason.
I prefer meat lovers or something similar, but if I have to go single topping, I choose sausage.
I am not ace but I completely fell you, except I rather have a burger. Maybe with some fries.
You know, that’s exactly what this party needs is some good food!
A party with no food is not a party I want anything to do with.
Party with no food and unspecifically strong booze for inexperienced people is not a good idea.
Maybe they’ve all just eaten a good dinner before then?
there’s an entire freezer of pizza rolls and three microwaves going at once.
I hope Dorothy gets a chance here to say that she basically threw herself at Walky and all but jumped him, or that she had tried to do so even before Lucy and Walky had broken up, and that he turned her down flat the first time and even the second time took some convincing. It wasn’t like Walky himself immediately went sprinting back to Dorothy the instant Lucy broke up with him. That probably wouldn’t mitigate anything Lucy is feeling (justifiably so), nor does it entirely excuse Walky himself, but still.
(Assuming any of that is something Dorothy would actually want to admit out loud to a room full of people, which is probably highly unlikely.)
I hope she does too, because her trying to justify his jumping bed syndrome is gonna be hilarious considering her own newfound realization in her inability to commit, and only dating/lusting after people who are train wrecks.
Man, from the outside looking in it feels like we’re living through inverted dog years.
All along I’ve been wondering who was going to be the Bison and who was the Chun Li, and this is suspiciously monologue-y.
YUP.
YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP.
This strip and the last one, I’ve been saying he got with Amber one day after the breakup with Dorothy and that Lucy supported it.
But that’s a slight oversimplification which I realized as I replied to someone earlier.
Dorothy and Walky broke up completely and then Walky and Jason got drunk.
The next day, he spent the whole day feeling messed up over the breakup except when talking to Amber, who he made out with that night.
So it was the next day, but it’s technically closer to 36 hours.
The day AFTER that is when he went to Jennifer and got her (and Lucy’s) endorsement.
Comparatively, since Lucy broke up with him after church, which most likely ended while it was still morning, Walky went about 48 hours, give or take, before getting with Dorothy.
There’s not much difference time wise, though there’s a lot of difference emotionally between the two situations, even if we disregard the different women’s personalities and positions.
But the difference in time doesn’t really matter to anyone who isn’t overly focused on it like I am.
If your take is “Two days is enough time to get over someone” you’re either never been heartbroken or you lack the emotional capacity to be in a relationship with someone.
Two days in nowhere near enough time by itself let alone with the in your face data that they turned around and hooked up with their ex.
Oh hey, that’s my take. Almost word for word. Well, not that you’re entitled to this information, but I’ve been heartbroken a few times, and I’ve been in a committed, mutually supportive relationship for 11 years, three weeks, and a day. I still think exactly what I said, that two days is plenty of time to get over someone. Some of us process emotions more quickly than others, and there’s no need to extrapolate all that silly stuff about “you’ve never” or make some ridiculous moral statement about people for being different.
” Some of us process emotions more quickly than others”
True, but this applies to everyone, not to some more than others:
“two days is plenty of time to get over someone”
So you’re basically saying that anyone who doesn’t process emotions as fast as you doesn’t count, or did you mean “two days is plenty of time for me to get over someone”
Something in between the two wrong things you said. “Applies to everyone” is too broad, “anyone […] doesn’t count” is nonsense, and “for me” is both partially implied and too narrow. I don’t speak for everyone on Earth, let’s not be silly here, but I also don’t have any obligation to say the entire thing every single time.
A Little Tip: If you have to rephrase someone’s point as “so you’re basically saying” you are likely making a point that isn’t actually in evidence in their original comment.
Taffy didn’t make a judgment about who “counted” in one way or another, you made that up yourself and then tried to correct it.
In addition to my agreement with you, I’d like to point out that “two days” is PLENTY of time to get over someone you’ve been on 3-4 dates with–if you were being normal about it and not building the whole thing up into some monument to love and/or losing-your-virginity like Lucy was (and I reiterate, I LIKE Lucy, but she was CLEARLY attaching significance to this relationship that was not justified by time spent or anything Walky said).
There’s also the simple problem that hooking up with someone else doesn’t actually mean you’ve gotten over someone. It could be part of the process – isn’t that kind of what a “rebound” is? It could just be a mistake.
I’ve had entire multi-year relationships while still getting over the last one. Didn’t always realize it at the time.:)
Super true – how is this not a bigger part of this conversation? After a breakup, people are lonely and want comfort. That’s the whole concept of a rebound.
I find it kind of amusing that there seem to be two basic negative responses to someone hooking up again quickly after a relationship disappointment: The current “that relationship wasn’t important, see how fast they hooked up” and the other “The new relationship isn’t important, it’s just a rebound.”
The takeaway here is, no relationship is ever important enough to anyone to be valid, and definitely nobody is projecting their own unpleasable standards onto other people’s relationships.
I love the nihilistic takeaway 🙂
“If your take is “Two days is enough time to get over someone” you’re either never been heartbroken or you lack the emotional capacity to be in a relationship with someone.”
Who died and appointed you a Feelings Cop?
I’ve been heartbroken plenty of times, I’m polyamorous, so sometimes I lose more than one person in a short span and amplify that. I’m also married to someone I love deeply.
Two days is plenty of time to get over someone. Especially someone you’ve been on a few dates with over two weeks. You can take longer, and I’m not going to judge you, but I’m also not judging someone for hopping into another person’s bed literally five milliseconds after being dumped.
Or doing the dumping.
If a relationship doesn’t work, then it doesn’t. Grief works differently (and at different speeds) for every one. Not everyone feels or experiences things the way you do and your frankly WEIRD need to police how other people feel or dehumanize them when they don’t agree with you (see robot comment above) is something you should grow up and get over.
Preferably in about two days.
I mean it is if you never were really all that into or in love with the person in the first place.
You said, citing your own opinion and not a universal objective fact that’s applicable to all situations.
I think a distinction is failing to be made here. People are saying “Two days is enough time to get over someone” meaning that Walky is valid to have gotten over Lucy (or not gotten over but nonetheless seek comfort in the arms of an ex) because emotions work different for everyone. You appear to be hearing that as meaning that Lucy is supposed to be over Walky because it’s been two days, which is a thing exactly no one has said.
yeah, this sounds more like proper freshman dorm drama. Can’t say I ever missed it XD
Well i kind of think this emotional honesty is good for them all, at least. Oh but so cringe in a way i feel deeply. good on Lucy for being upfront about it. It’s ok for her to be hurt, and she’s right, she’s got no right to stop them but that doesn’t mean she can’t be upset.
(I still want Walky and Dorothy to get together again, so i kind of hope this forces them to have a conversation about what they’re doing and why)
I also love the ship, but it is true that they have to rethink and clarify things well, I love the dynamism that both have and I hope it is not lost because of this
One of the interesting things about W&D getting back together that we’ve already seen hints of is the problem of falling back into old patterns as if nothing has changed, when they both have actually changed.
Oh no, I can tell from this convo that Walky and Dorothy are on borrowed time, this ship is going down too lol
Ouch.
Having gone through something similar, I empathize with Lucy. She’s a good kid. I hope she finds someone who values and appreciates her as much as she deserves.
I think we need to reclaim the word rebound. It’s a basketball term and we should treat it with that respect. It that regard we don’t know what kind of numbers any of these ladies are putting up in the paint! How many assists? How many triple doubles, or uncontested threes? Whose reclaiming the most point attempts? We should be caring less about how fast Walky be fucking and more about his average points total in the second half. He seems like a guy that gasses out early. The James Harden of DoA.
Of course Amber reclaiming the most point attempts (is that a good thing? I don’t do sports well and basketball not at all).
But even without understanding the game, I know Walky has no stamina; he’d be lucky to make it to the second half.
I would actually love to see the cast doing more extracurricular activities. Sports especially seems pretty neglected, extra especially considering how athletic most of the cast are. Carla, Sal, Amber, Sarah, Joe, Jacob, Ethan. They could be demons of the sports world and we’ve only ever seen a football stadium like one time and getting baited with occasional glimpses of roller derby. IU’s gotta have a sports track! Who’s the jock of the group? Someone step up! I’ll settle for just a pickup game!
And yeah I think Walky would definitely be blown out by halftime! But what’s his shot like? Who got game on the cast. I’m,open to speculation.
Like you mentioned we’ve got roller derby with 3 main characters (+Marcie) involved, though we haven’t seen it too much.
That’s not actually bad numbers for basically one floor of characters.
It’s an accidental homophone and was coined independently, probably by someone who didn’t even know the basketball term.
It’s not a homophone if they’re the same word, with the same meaning. Of course, this supports your conjecture that both usages could arise independently. It is no coincidence that a word meaning “bounce back [off of something]” would be used in these two contexts.
Lucy’s got a point about Walky’s conduct re: Dorothy, but I’m not sure how applicable it is to Lucy and Walky’s relationship considering how messed up it was from the start – although I get why she’d feel hurt given that it was her first relationship.
The real problem with them was the difference in investment and intensity and I feel like that’s like 70/30 on Lucy for relationship-zoning him (for the longest time it felt like you were dating him without telling him, right?), evening out to about 60/40, maybe about 55/45, on Lucy after Walky didn’t manage enough emotional honesty re: the I love that you get that incident and just continuing to dodge the issue.
“The romantic fantasy I’ve written for these strangers in my head” is a bit too real I guess.
Actually the I love that you get that incident is entirely on Walky and the relationship-zoning on Lucy.
I don’t know why I turned it into math.
And Walky getting back with someone who tried to get him to cheat on Lucy isn’t great either.
Dorothy may have been having a bad time but that wasn’t exactly cool of her.
Kind of curious off topic question: How often do you refresh or re enter this page to see new comments or if someone responded to you? I do it every couple of minutes if I am not distracted with something else.
I’ll refresh a decent amount of times throughout a day, if I’m not especially busy. It helps fill time during loading screens or DPS queues, innit. Sometimes I’ll wind up responding to somebody just a few minutes after they leave a comment, and I used to worry they’d think I was obsessively refreshing 24/7 just to argue with them, but lately (since I started on anxiety meds) I’ve come to realise it doesn’t actually matter if somebody thinks that and I don’t have to correct every wrong thought you people have (I’d be here all day long, lmao). But yeah, mostly during loading screens.
If I have a take I really wanna discuss often times ill come back every few minutes for a few hours
6 times or more for the hour then I leave and come back later the same night. If I’m really invested in the conversation for that strip I come back the next day.
First hour
I used to be like 15 minutes, waiting for.
But now I just comment and read it again after 4, 5 hours because, usually, almost nobody answer me. (Because I usually post after everyone)
I answer you! (This one time, probably not any other time. Sorry.)
Couple of times throughout the day – and then one last check the next morning. But I go to bed to early to get in on the initial rush.
I’d probably check more often if there was an easy way to find new comments or even see if there were replies to you specifically.
I was wondering this myself! Especially as someone who often comes late the next day to comment, or even days later. I kind of wish there was a way to be notified if someone responded to me, but that would make it more dramatic, I’m sure. At least with this format, arguments just kind of die out on specific pages as the story progresses.
I have the rule that when a new page come out and don’t comment in the previous one anymore, even if I wanted to continue an argument or something.
Once or twice a few hours after if i remember to. Sometimes more if i was particularly heated or involved. If i don’t respond to your reply to me, know it’s entirely bc I have semi-not-really treated ADHD and typically forget this place exists until I come back the next morning. Really wish there were notifications like another disqus comment section I’m active in
Called it!
My “I’m not mad” t-shirt had people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt
After all those comments yesterday!
A lively comments section seems like a good thing, yeah? Means people give a dang about the comic.
Yup! And we’ve got over 200 in only ~5 hours. Means we’ve got opinions on it. 🙂
“You don’t deserve to feel hurt” is the weirdest take. People feel their emotions, with or without permission. Bottling it up doesn’t help.
“Don’t deserve” as in “you’re not in the right while they are in the wrong”.
People feel how they feel regardless, as feelings are uncontrollable.
Her actions in response to those feelings are controllable, and that’s when the idea of whether or not she deserves to feel a certain way comes in.
The idea of deserving to feel a certain way may come in at that point, but it’s muddy thinking. Much better to talk about actions rather than tell people they aren’t allowed to feel a certain way. You said yourself they are separate things.
Dumping your negative emotions out in a party of people who aren’t very close friends may not help either.
Sometimes other people are around when drama is going down.
Y’all dated for two weeks Lucy. It’s not his fault you’re lovesick and fell face first on herself
She is not saying anything is his fault though. She still fell hurt about it, since fellings aren’t rational. And she is aware of this so she is trying to not lash out about it, just saying how she fells about the whole thing as calmly as she can.
It’s true that she’s not trying to retaliate, however, the expressions in the last few panels suggest that she’s actually holding back as best she can.
I mean, I Get that. With how important Walky was to her. It’s not like Walky treated Lucy badly or anything, but seeing how little she amounted to him In Comparison to his ex? Gut punch to the ego. That ought to hurt.
And for all we know, her being an awkward nerd, Walky was probably her first boyfriend. That’s gotta be painful.
She did say he was her first boyfriend.
While she’s certainly reading it that way, it’s not really clear that perception is true.
He was actually making out with Amber as quickly, even if he did come to talk to Jennifer about it.
That’s commendable. She’s doing her best to not let her emotions get the better of her despite how strong they are. “Can’t control how you feel but you can control what you do about it” is the Actual Therapy meaning of “your feelings are valid.”
Ah! That was for @Coatl, sorry. The page was working awfully for me last night. Slow as hell, did it happen to anyone else?
There are far too many people in the comments the past few days trying to be all “this teen girl isn’t being rational about a breakup”
Which is odd because I feel like she’s reacting accordingly. She still has her emotions but she’ know where they stand.
God yeah I’ve been scrolling and scrolling and there’s so much vitriol against this kid it’s upsetting. And yes, she’s being quite emotionally mature actually? (Not holding anyone hostage?? Just clearing the air given this unplannedly happened here & now in front of a crowd who Knows?)
I’ve seen her getting called manipulative and a social climber so much in earlier strips it’s like Yet Another Sequel to it
There’s no vitriol, don’t make things up to upset yourself. It’s unhealthy.
Aw come on. People haven’t gone outright and said “I hate Lucy” today but I saw several “hate”/”dislike”/a whole lotta projection yesterday. This is the same with other words. [Shrug] I’m not inventing things, and anyway, I read and watch fiction to have feelings about it.
The fact that you’re responding to multiple comments with “no one hates Lucy. You’re delusional” sure makes it seem like you hate Lucy
It’s possible to discuss a character’s flaws without it being vitriol.
She does occasionally manipulate people and she has definitely shown social climber behavior. Like, these are characters crafted by an author to tell a story, they are going to have things wrong with them.
Except for Carla and Charlie who are perfect.
Charlie and Carla are in the running for the coolest and hottest characters in this comic, slightly behind Ruth and Dina.
A lonely girl who has repeatedly been rejected by her dorm because they’re obsessed with popularity, in favor of her roomie who’s also obsessed with popularity, and whom Lucy would love to spend more time with so they can be actual friends… Shouldn’t be deemed a “social climber” for wanting to hang out with the so called “cool kids” imho
Listen, that’s your opinion and you can have it but I disagree. I deem her a social climber and I support her upward mobility.
Hey, if that’s the direction she’ll take after this whole thing? That would be interesting as hell. I’d support it too.
Yeah I think she’s brave for expressing herself. I would have been way too scared to do so at that age because I didn’t believe I mattered, and people would reject me for doing anything other than going along with the group.
I mean, I think—viewing her as a real person and not a character—this behavior is wild af to me. Because she’s 200% trying to start a fight. There is zero reason to vocalizing this here and now if it isn’t meant to cause a scene. Like, irl most people would just leave or storm out. Even at 18 I knew to suck it up and not make a scene in public if I was the one that brought it about. And it suuuucked to do. Keep quiet, either focus on something else and have fun or accept you can’t and bail to find something better to do. Confrontation is not on my bingo card of responses for exes ever.
As a character this is probably the best way for the story, I’m just shocked by how many people are like “Yeah, full confrontation and talking aggressively about my feelings and hurt in public is exactly how this situation should be handled, that’s very mature.” I can’t tell if that’s actually how people are supposed to handle this and I’m just emotionally suppressed or if it’s the sentiment of literally agreeing with what Lucy is saying, but I am baffled at best.
I do feel bad for her too. Strictly speaking, Walky should bail (and looked like he was going to), but just airing your laundry in front of all your friends and acquaintances is a literal nightmare scenario for me.
And just to stem off anything, just… anything like this reads as way aggressive to me because I was raised that the proper response was nothing at all or a single, quiet and veiled comment to a friend. So I’m still willing to say I’m emotionally stunted or suppressed or whatever, just that listing off grievances or pain in a relationship and calling someone a name lead to the same outcome in my anxiety riddled brain.
I think it depends where you are coming from, eg what’s your emotional starting place. For someone who makes a habit of causing scenes and being confrontational, their growth edge is learning when to remove themselves and handle their emotions in a more regulated way. (Like maybe Billie…? to choose someone from the cast of characters.)
Lucy, on the other hand, has been a people pleaser. For her to express her discomfort with something openly like this, I see as her growth edge/ a form of being brave.
Ultimately I think balance is good. There’s a time to walk away, not make waves, and there’s a time to bravely address things directly. Maturity is learning when to do which (and that we won’t always get it right).
I kind of agree, but I don’t think she’s doing it intentionally aggressively. She’s not trying to start a fight, she’s just processing it openly, because she’s not actually good socially. If you’re emotionally suppressed, she’s not able to suppress enough in this moment?
OTOH, it’s her first breakup and I suspect few of us handled that well. She’s being more mature than actually getting openly mad at him (or Dorothy) for it.
I can’t help but find it weird that there are folks who think Lucy is doing something wrong here. She’s not lashing out, she’s not arguing, she’s only commenting at all because people are walking on eggshells around her *assuming* that she must be mad at them.
She’s hurt, she has a valid reason to feel hurt even if it was only a short relationship because emotions aren’t logical, she communicated that reason.
Yeah if she *was* lashing out or sulking or fuming in a corner then maybe there’s reason to judge it but this is about the best case scenario one can possibly ask for.
Yeah but you see, I already made up my mind about Lucy being in the wrong here so what actually happens on the story isn’t really important now is it?/s
Nobody’s even walking on eggshells, either. Dorothy’s offering whatever explanation she can stammer out (not very successfully, lol) and Lucy’s telling her to save it. Not an eggshell to be found, just regular human communication.
The only thing I think Lucy is doing wrong here is that she’s here at all. Hanging out with your ex’s friend group days after a break up, when your ex is likely to show up, is always a bad idea. Even more so without talking to the ex about it first.
I don’t really blame Lucy for this though. This is her first rodeo and she’s long been shown to be desperate to make friends (and also being bad at doing so). I’ve made similar mistakes. That’s how we learn.
And yes, she was invited, but I don’t think Sarah knew they’d broken up.
Two days… that’s eternity compared to how long it took Marten to hook up with Dora after he had been shut down by Faye.
2 days in comic time… Months in our own… eeeeeh <.<
Also:
7 Days!!!
(any VHS around?)
Heh all going very well
It takes re-reading the same strip twice in one night to actually see the undertones. Lucy is more seems more upset with herself than with Walky.
Did Walky give Dorothy more consideration than he did Lucy because he loves her more or is it because Lucy and some of the others put it in his head to normalize moving on quickly after a break up? These are the questions to ask.
Did Walky actually give Dorothy more consideration? is another question to ask.
I think part of it was the type of breakup.
Dorothy essentially said “This isn’t fair to you” and broke up.
Lucy said “You aren’t good enough for me” and walked off.
It makes sense that Walky would be concerned about not hurting Dorothy because he still expected to be friends with Dorothy.
After how Lucy treated Walky he wouldn’t be expecting to be friends with Lucy.
I would suggest Lucy said “this is one-sided worship and it isn’t healthy”
This isn’t the route I expected her to take but like
Holy shit, I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut by her delivery.
+1 that hurrrrt
I am blessedly relieved to see that Lucy is emotionally mature enough to recognize the greater insult beyond “we were on a break” drama. It’s way more devastating to point out that Walky accidentally blundered right into the same preferential treatment his parents have, and Dorothy didn’t even think for a second about it.
With all the self-doubt Walky is undergoing, there’s no way he doesn’t break it off with Dorothy again while he tries to figure things out, right? Like there has to be.
I saw a lot of jokes about “on a break” (to the point it felt like “Say the line, Bart), but I’m curious if anyone actually, genuinely expected that to be a real thing that was going to happen in this story (or still expects it). Like, are any of y’all serious about that? Sound off, I wanna know why you think so little of the author’s ability to write a story. If you exist, which I’m not taking as an assumed fact.
Given the fact that Walky has more than once referenced Friends, including literally “we were on a break,” I hope you recognized I was being more glib than literal. Willis is an excellent writer but I assumed Lucy’s immaturity would naturally slip her into feeling betrayed by Walky and Dorothy would be the outlet for that.
Instead I’m delighted to see her recognize she *did* end it, and instead of being dramatic, Lucy simply makes the point that she’s angry because Dorothy and Walky aren’t the people she thought they were.
Her “I basically ended it” line here (along with a few earlier hints) makes me wonder if she hadn’t completely realized that until now. In which case, even more impressed by her processing and accepting that so quickly.
Panel 2: “I’m not mad. I can’t be.” I’m taking it she means “I shouldn’t be.” Unfortunately for homo sapiens, “shouldn’t be” is not the same as “can’t be.”
My memory is fuzzy and I can’t be arsed to be go back and find it, but I’m pretty sure Dorothy didn’t break up with Walky with “fuck your parents and fuck you too”, so I’m not sure Lucy’s high horse act here is really fair. I mean, really, a pass-agg version of “I can’t believe you got back with your former long-term partner so soon after I told you to go fuck yourself”? Incredibly self-centred.
That has been Lucy’s MO however when it comes to Walky though. Their relationship was in many ways, Lucy trying to brute force the relationship to warp speed. In about two weeks she was was feeling a lot. One could argue that was a bit fast.
I also absolutely loathe the “I’m not mad. I can’t be.” followed by what reads as a retraction of her idea of Walky as a good person.
Lucy has every right to be upset, but this is dishonest and weak af.
And Lucy didn’t either. She said “this isn’t healthy and I need to know when I can do better”
She literally said “fuck your parents” and “fuck you” to Walky before telling him she could do better and then barely engaging with him the next time she saw him. And I’m not saying she was wrong for that reaction to his parents, but it was a blunt force trauma break up. Getting haughty because he’s hurt and rebounding after it is shitty on her part.
I was never a fan of Lucy’s but DANG, someone give this girl a hug.
Dorothy dumped Walky? I thought they broke up hastened by his trouble in math.
I’m gonna need an annotated smoochy chart.
They broke up because of her trouble keeping up with her grades, not because of his trouble keeping up with his.
The whole reason Jason was there at the breakup was because Walky was trying to bring him along as a life coach to make him more worthy of Dorothy since they just had sex after being on pause (Jason had just quit his job after being accused of sleeping with a student, ie Sal).
Ahh, thanks. Yeah, it was more mutual.
And also because of her realization – based on not sticking to the pause for more than a day – that she was being unfair to him by setting boundaries and then not keeping them.
Dorothy, you should have noped out of there when you had the chance. Nothing you can say will help. Second best time to leave is now.
I see a lot of comments about how well Lucy is handling the situation.
Regardless of if we like Lucy or don’t like her,
think she’s in the wrong or the right,
have sympathy for her or feel like this is the result of her own actions,
or somewhere in between,
I really think we should wait til the end of the ride before we decide how well she’s handling this.
The current strip is an excellent setup for her to go in multiple directions.
This could just be us reaching the top of the rollercoaster before the drop happens.
Or it could be us landing the plane after encountering an unexpected storm.
We’ll have a better idea tomorrow.
Or, and hear me out here, we speculate endlessly on every release and make judgement calls before we’ve seen how things play out. And, most importantly of all, if we do make a judgement about someone about a predicted future event that then turns out to be completely incorrect, we maintain that inaccurate judgement as an irrefutable truth about their character and hold it against them forever onward.
Sound good?
It’s worked for over a decade, why mess with the formula?
I co-sign all of this. /s 🙂
Every strip released is the only strip that has or will ever be released. Prior strips only exist as nebulous information people have invented on the spot. It’s unreasonable, irresponsible, and immoral to act as if someone’s immediate knee-jerk reaction to the only existing strip is anything but a frank and accurate representation of raw reality.
Party party party
Amber: Uh, why are you bringing me into this?
Lucy is hurting.
Lucy needs to quit slut-shaming Walky.
This, but unironically.
This but hyperironically
This but satirically
This, but counterclockwise
Yup Lucy, you pretty much nailed it. Walky does not care about you as much as he cared about Dorothy. Personally I think that is pretty justified considering why and how you decided to break up.
She broke up with him because he didn’t care about her as much as she cared about him. So technically yes, but that isn’t a gotcha.
Lucy appears to base her relationship decisions entirely around arbitrary measurements of time. How many dates before it’s acceptable to have sex despite her wanting premarital hanky panky right away. How long to wait after breaking up with someone before starting to date someone else. (How long was the turnaround after Dorothy dumped Danny before she started dating Walky, come to think of it?)
I dunno, I’m still torn on this, because on the one hand Lucy isn’t wrong about the difference between now and when Dorothy and Walky broke up, but on the other hand I still can’t get over how Lucy and Walky’s relationship was based around sex from the very start, with the question “Walky hey Walky when are you going to put your Power Booster Rod in me so I can show you the best I can do” dominating every storyline with the two of them up until they split. Which, again, nothing wrong with that, but seeing as Lucy abandoned ship before meeting her own stated goal, it makes her umbrage here ring a little hollow?
Lucy: “the broken heart of his one true love, to whom he may one day return”
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/propriety/
bwahaha
Willis you madman
Oh damn, thank you both for linking these.
So basically Lucy wanted sex, but she felt that she couldn’t/shouldn’t *just* want sex, or maybe she also needed an emotional connection…
so she contrived to cultivate that connection with the person Billie suggested she bone.
This whole arc is artfully plotted! Dang! It’s hard to keep up with it when it goes by so slowly, in our time.
I know it’s nothing new, but it’s still jarring sometimes to realize that two days in comic time has been 8 months IRL. I don’t know that it would change my opinion either way since I got together with my wife when she was two days out of her previous relationship, but the time dilation certainly shifts viewpoints to some degree.
It’s kind of crazy how these characters have developed in what 8 months of comic time maybe? Walky and Joe have done almost complete roll reversals or at least subversions of their initial presentation. Walky’s the fuckboy and Joe is in the stable relationship with a virgin? I would not believe you at the start if you told me Joe was the soft wholesome one while Walky was the chromic bed hopper and heartbreaker. Crazy how they turned out.
Walky isn’t really a fuckboy though. He’s had multiple relationships, but he has been committed to all of them.
The relationship with Dorothy ended because Dorothy felt stretched too thin and didn’t feel like she was being fair to Walky.
The relationship with Amber ended due to conflicting trauma over Mike’s death.
The relationship with Lucy ended because Lucy chose to end it. Supposedly because “she deserves better”, but frankly in context it seems like she was more upset that Walky didn’t like her church.
I’ve got no idea why people think Walky’s reaction to her church had anything to do with it.
That kind of sparked the conversation, but it quite quickly got derailed by the “I love you” thing and that fed back into his parents (and even to Dorothy).
I’m using “fuckboy” in a more general term. It does have a somewhat negative connotation for a guy who routinely jumps between casual sexual encounters for fun, but it fits Walky because he’s kind of been the most romantically active character and he is the dude with three women he has at least dated in the room. All within a very quick timeframe. Sure he has been loyal when dating them but I think at this point a pattern has been established of him moving to the next girl very quickly as Lucy has noted. You can be an ethical fuckboy.
I think the medical term for what you’re describing is “slut”.
It’s a little weird when he’s only actually fucked one of them.
And when there were some months in between Amber and Lucy.
None of them were particularly “casual sexual encounters for fun”. Dorothy was a serious relationship and we don’t know yet how the sequel will turn out. Amber started out right after, but had some false starts before running aground. And with Lucy one of the big signs of trouble was that he didn’t seem to want it to become sexual.
GETTIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So many comments jumping on Lucy for daring to have feelings as she realizes her relationship never meant as much to Walky as it did to her, not enough comments calling out Dorothy for being, at minimum, extremely tacky.
Like, girl, how were you gonna end that sentence?
Reading these comments again confirms that I like Lucy about 100x more than the average reader, crazy. Poor girl. Goes above and beyond being accepting and mature at a freshman level and people still criticize her for having feelings. Hope she finds a happy ending.
Poor Lucy. She just wanted to be a fan of Starfire, and then everybody else started fucking everybody else.
I see that the morality police are out in force, judging characters and fellow commenters alike in bad faith. Maybe we could… not?
Lucy’s handling this relatively well IMO. It strikes me as normal to feel emotional pain after a relationship with someone ends. Seeing them move on quickly can feel like a twist of the knife. Lucy is learning that Walky moved on FAST and processing it aloud in real time, so yeah… It’s raw and messy.
Yeah, it’s always weird to see people say shit like “If you have different relationship standards than me, you’re not human” about a goddamn webcomic.
Yeah no one in this room has done anything wrong here, people just refuse to be normal about things when there’s a comment section or any sort of reply forum. And yes, some people are taking this so insanely far that I am worried for them personally, as human beings, on the other side of this screen. Some people need to work through their issues in therapy instead of projecting them on fictional teenagers
Sorry Luce, but rebounding to your ex after a fucky break up falls under a whole different set of rules.
Walky’s just returning to his one true love, as Lucy herself predicted. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/propriety/
Oh ouch, I forgot about that.
I’m impressed, Lucy is holding it together REALLY well
Okay fuck it LUCY POSITIVITY THREAD 👏👏👏 it’s late bc I prefer to read the comic first thing after I wake up and my sleep schedule could be better, but fuck it. Anyone still around to see this who wants to sprinkle in a bit of niceness and joy like Lucy does for this comic, hop in. Sorry if any of what I say comes off as bitter, it’s because I am.
THE RULES
In this thread we are nice to lucy. You don’t like her? Cool, express your right to free speech in any other comment, don’t be fucking rude.
Lucy’s top is fucking LOVELY today and someone should say it. And she is being incredibly mature here, especially considering she’s a broken hearted teenager.
I like her glasses.
I like your icon sdklgjs it’s beautiful
Thanks. It’s my OC Yff-At the Alien, rendered as a Final Fantasy 4 sprite. Took me the better part of a day to get the proportions just right.
Lucy developing a spine that lets her act outside the confines of her “this is how relationships go” script is the best thing that’s ever happened to her. I’m genuinely excited to see where her character goes from here.
I want to see takes-no-shit Lucy so much 💕
As we’ve seen no evidence of any mixers, Lucy seems to be taking that straight liquor like a champion. I can’t do that and I’m at least twice her age.
I wanna say, I agree 100% about the maturity. Also the top.
But I’ve been one of those outspoken “I don’t really think she realized that she broke up with Walky” folks, ESPECIALLY after yesterday, and… damn. She really got a brand new perspective on life and is far more self-aware than I realized.
I guess I should have realized that, from the previous comment about “I was an outsider, desperately wanting to be in.” Or from the fact that she put her floormates in their place and finally got their respect. Lucy was – is – my favorite Shortpacked! character, and I was a little sad that it seemed like she was being shortlisted as “the girlfriend” and “Replacement Joyce” especially as she was introduced in Shortpacked! as the replacement Amber, after Amber and Mike got married and pooped a baby.
This is the most interested I have ever been in Lucy. She’s expressing herself uncommonly well for this comic.
I honestly likes her positive and outgoing attitude and I hope that she is able to keep it even as she grow and become more savvy. The world doesn’t need more cynicism, some optimism is very welcome.
She’s been so lonely! And yet she’s tried hard to stay optimistic and do actual things to reach out and meet people. Her environment at the other dorm had truly sucked and hasn’t done her any favors.
I do dislike her relationship with Walky, and so! I’m excited to see where her character will go now she’s learning to self-respect and getting out of her self-assigned Girlfriend box. I hope she gets actual friends out of this!!
Lucy is in my favorite archetype of DOA characters which is a Joyce so she is automatically one of my more favorite characters.
She’s holding it together VERY well, I’m impressed!
She’s so genuinely sweet and caring in a way few other characters in this comic are. It’s only her bad luck at dorm placement that’s kept her from being fully in with this friend group and the fact that she’s looking for connection at all instead of giving in to sad feelings is so heartening.
I also really appreciate, from a writing perspective, that her flaws aren’t cool flaws. She’s enthusiastic and gets overly invested in relationships that are more one sided than she realizes. It’s an uncool flaw to have and you look deeply uncool falling into it. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of her hate comes from people seeing their own mistakes reflecting back at them.
Lucy may not be the shallow character we thought she was.
( then again she hasnt shown us her best side )
On a completely separate note, I am fascinated by the preview stuff Willis has been posting on their tumblr for February.
February isn’t a real month, don’t be ridiculous.
If I can’t be ridiculous on the internet, then what is the internet good for??
Ah yeah, Jennifer’s Prom Night, AKA the day she also summoned a Lorax.
I was wondering if that was what it was going to be, but Asher’s presence made me doubt it.
How so? I mean, afaik Prom isn’t necessarily for one specific grade in High School?
Not that I’d know, when other kids where preparing for Prom, I was in the wheel-chair learning video game programming and stoning out with medical marijuana.
In retrospect, it unironically seemed like a better use of my time.
At least at my school it was just seniors, short of coming as someone’s date.
But really I thought Asher had been out of their lives for longer, which may have just been an assumption on my part.
Why? Is Asher supposed to be older?
He’d been out of Sal’s life, since she was at boarding school and he wasn’t close to Jennifer or Walky.
I think since he hasn’t really shown up in a lot of flashbacks aside from ones directly related to or immediately preceding the convenience store, I was under the impression that the connection was outside of school. Like I said, may have just been a bad assumption on my part.
Asher is canonically 26.
speak of the devil, over 420 comments again!
BLAZE IT!!!!! 🌿
I always thought I was just too in my own feels with how much Lucy and Wally reminded me of my college boyfriend. I loved him so much, I got back together with him in a fuck buddy status because I just wanted to have even a little of his attention, and when he broke up with me the second and last time, it’s because he found someone he wanted to date, and it took all of a week for him to move on.
Bless your heart, Walky, but I hope this teaches you a lesson in dating someone who cares about you more than you care about them. At the very least, be honest with them at the start before following their lead to play house with them. It’s just so sad because it’ll be hard to even salvage a friendship from this, now that Lucy feels Walky didn’t care about her.
There needs to be one more panel, with Lucy saying: “What the hell am I drinking?”
And then another panel after that, revealing Sarah filled Lucy’s cup with dry Cheerios. Not even Honey Nut or anything, just the regular ones. No milk, either.
That would genuinely be more impressive to me than straight moonshine because she isn’t chewing. Just right-down-the-hatch with tiny, unsugared o’s
Lucy would have quite a point… if not for all the context surrounding all of this. And unfortunately, chances are nobody’s going to tell her about any of that context, so she’s going to start sounding like Mary, even though Lucy’s nothing like that waste of carbon.
Everyone’s gonna start hating on Lucy or Walky or Dorothy, but none of them are in the wrong on this. There is no wrong or right here. (At least until Lucy or Dina get drunk and do something horrible. Then everyone else is wrong for letting it happen.)
Hold on hold on you’re telling me, that in this comic, bad things can sometimes happen, even things that really hurt someone, without any malice or even a mistake on anyone’s part?
This comic is incredibly unrealistic.
I don’t normally read the comments on this comic but is it always an endless vortex of people screaming at each other about the decision making of fictional 18 year olds and trying to expand that out to judge the morality of other commenter?
Only when a character does something.
Gotta start having more comics that are just the smallest DeSanto quietly eating cereal
Although I’m sure there’d be multiple threads 40 responses deep about how she’s a bad person for eating the wrong kind of cereal
Stay away from Reddit. I wandered into a Reddit forum once and was astounded by the hate I found. Like these people had no other reason to read the comic.
I enjoy watching a bad movie for fun as much as the next girl but committing to reading a comic you don’t like *every day* just so you can be mad about it? Bizzare behaviour.
Yes. Sometimes funni jokes too
Right now Lucy is feeling like she was a place holder for Dorothy. Walky couldn’t have Dorothy so he went out with her,(because Dorothy told him too). But once she was out of the picture and Dorothy was available Walky went back to Dorothy.
And she’s not wrong, Walky was never invested in the relationship like Lucy was. He only took an interest when Dorothy told him too.
She loved Walky or at least she believes she loved Walky but Walky didn’t love her so it hurts. Breaking up hurt her, but it only made Walky feel guilty.
Lucy presents the facts with extreme clarity. She’s hurt, but I think there’s also a bit of relief, leaving Walky she dodged a bullet and I’m happy for her. It seems like he prefers girls who organize his life, not ones he can decide together what to do. Now he just has to follow her without doubts. I know he’s young and can still change, but now it seems that his future is to become like his father. Let’s hope that his future partner will not be like his mother. About Dorothy, I don’t know how long her desire to be with Walky will last this time, but she too needs to changes, or to finds a partner who likes to have someone organising their life, with the subtle impression that she thinks they’re incapable of doing it on their own.
wild how much the comment section loves to loathe two teenage girls (lucy & becky) who have basically done nothing wrong except be subjectively ‘annoying’ to some
A different person might tell you it definitely has something to do with skin color and/or socioeconomic status. I think it’s partly because they’re both Christian and aren’t trying to stop being Christian.
I wouldn’t really say that’s the reason. People tend to be pretty arbitrary with the characters they hate. (Like Roz. Everyone hates Roz for reasons that still aren’t clear to me. Literally the bongo rule was put into place cause of Roz. What has she even done?)
Oh, people dislike Roz because she’s a lefty who’s differently lefty than them. Nobody hates a progressive as much as another progressive whose opinion is slightly different.
And she’s a teenager, so she’s almost inherently annoying because she’s still developing.
(Almost??) every leftist has gone through Roz’s specific flavor of self-righteous phase when they were baby leftists. I think it’s endearing tbh! But a lot of people might cringe wayyy too hard either because it reminds them of themselves, or the teenage annoyingness you mention :’33
New leftists and new aethiests: both embarrassing the hell out of their older selves
The trick is being a two-fer as early as possible to minimize the damage
Lmfao no people absolutely treat Lucy differently than other characters because she’s a Black woman
Yeah. When I said in another comment “it’s like they judge her under another standard or something” it was sarcasm and I very much meant this.
Hi, I love your username
And not even two of the longer days! Some days last for months and months. These were pretty quick days, all things considered.
I think mostly this particular strip solidifies how much I really don’t miss being 18/19.
Now I’m Lucy. The try-harder. The one that was exchanged by a hot blondie. The annoying cheerful ray of sun that blinded Malaya.
nice avatar ^^
also WOAH i was not expecting 500+ comments on this one
A Black girl was expressing emotions, of course there was gonna be a hubbub.
makes sense, unfortunately 9-9
those who focus too much on how they’re not learning math are going to probably also not learn from history
and those who don’t learn from history…
Aren’t going to learn from math either?
seems like a missed opportunity for
“It’s been… TWO DAYS since you looked at me”
(to be fair, I literally just thought of it)
It sucks. It hurts. But at the end of the day when you’re the one who ends that relationship, the other person is no longer beholden to you. They do not owe you any time at all. Lucy is correct that Walky showed more concern for Dorothy’s feelings than hers in a similar situation, and she’s not wrong to feel hurt by that. But I think what’s hurting her the most right now is that she’s finally, truly realizing what the comment section knew all along – Walky, though he tried his best, was never as serious about Lucy as she was about him. He liked Lucy, yes, that’s true. But he loved Dorothy.
“two days…” yes, he got over you in 2 days.
he’s back with the woman he wants to be with, and is happier for it.
the fact that you are hurt by how long it took him to get over you shows just how much you overestimated your importance.
Two days is frankly 40 hours more than she deserved.
oof.. i feel for you lucy. it hurts T-T