Sorry friendo, Lucy did not come to this conclusion independently, she is absolutely echoing Raidah, and Raidah deliberately set this criticism up to make Walky and his connections more accessible to Raidah.
Sarah is abrasive, AND Lucy is uncritically aping a vacuous position opined by a self-interested sophisticate.
Ironically, jettisoning people when they’re inconvenient is totally a thing that Raidah does. Ask what happened to her former cronies. Wait what’ll happen to the utterly bland Carl. I wish any of the main characters would notice this.
And then months later they weren’t seen hanging around with Raidah any more.
My assumption is they’re still Raidah’s cronies, they’re just being kept at arm’s length for the Jennifer scheme. Probably weren’t capable of faking it well enough.
Re: R-slur and jettisoning Sarah, Raidah still seems to be stuck on the grade-school definition of bigotry where it “doesn’t really count” as bigotry unless it involves slurs or deliberate cruelty. Apathy and ignorance? Just avoid slurs and that’s good enough. 😑
Thing is, Lucy’s right. I mean not about this idea, this idea is a disaster, but ditching a guy cause his parents you haven’t even met yet are an apparent problem would be pretty crappy. Radiah might not have been on the nose on purpose, but here, now, her words are actually accurate.
Sarah mentioned confronting them as her first suggestion, but then went on the that the even *better* idea is to ditch Walky, and she kept on going on about that as her main focus.
So what does it matter that ditching him wasn’t her first suggestion, when it was the suggestion she herself argues is the best suggestion?
you’re clearly missing Sarah’s fucking point here, you’re either as naive as Lucy, or you’re misinterpreting what a character you dislike is saying despite her being 1000% correct, just like many others in this comment section.
fighting to remain with a partner who will not confront their bigoted parents about their views when push comes to shove is a dumb and bad idea because they clearly don’t care or love you enough to put their relationship with their parents at risk for you, and this doesn’t even have to apply with parents, this also applies with friends too.
you also clearly missed the part where Sarah said that if he matters that much to her, she needs to be the one that confronts them for him if he’s too chickenshit to do it himself.
Your interpretation of Sarah’s words isn’t in the text, it’s just your interpretation.
There’s nothing in Sarah’s words about Walky not confronting his bigoted parents about their views when push comes to shove, there’s a lot about it’d being better to ditch him because the current situation is “so much trouble” and requires “all this work”.
She doesn’t tell Lucy to find a guy who will stand up more to his parents, she tells her to find a guy who doesn’t have shitty racist parents in the first place.
Also, it’s been two weeks at this point. They’ve known each other, not terribly well, for most of a semester. Dealing with racist parents is a big ask at any time, and for a fledgling relationship, it might not be worth the pain or effort. It’s not like they’ve been committed for a year, or they’re living together, or share a child, or anything like that. I take Sarah’s point because if the parents are a dealbreaker- understandable- then there’s really no need to go through a whole huge messy painful thing after a couple of dates and some limerence.
I agree that the point is “confront them yourself” and “If your boyfriend isn’t willing to defend you, then he’s too much trouble for what he’s worth”.
Walky, at this point, is a very shallow creature. He even acknowledges it himself.
> but ditching a guy cause his parents you haven’t even met yet are an apparent problem would be pretty crappy.
Would it, though? He’s someone you’ve been dating for a few weeks, at most, and you have only even known for a few months. And now you’ve learned that his parents will never fully accept you, and if you and your boyfriend were to eventually have children, you would have to navigate the issue that one set of their grandparents would resent them for being blacker than their “generically beige” father. Even if Walky were to cut his parents out of his life completely, that’s still a level of fuss that you aren’t obligated to take on.
OTOH, it’s a college relationship only a couple weeks in. Should you really be basing your plan for the next weeks on how his parents might treat potential children years in the future?
Sarah has suffered the terrible curse of the worst person she knows making a great point. It seems like in the specific case Raidah is mad about Sarah was in the right; but it also seems like Raidah caught on to a pattern in Sarah…
She is. Because Sarah is working very hard to confirm what Raidah said.
Raida says ‘Sarah Jettisons people’
Sarah says ‘Walky is a loser, too much effort, best thing to do is just get someone else’ (Sarah does not actually jettison people who are too much effort, or she’d have jettisoned Joyce. Lucy has no way of knowing this)
Lucy is reminded of the warning Raida gave her, apparently confirmed here, and yes, uses that language.
And Sarah deciding that this is all Raida’s fault without going ‘am I being a jerk’? is not in her favor either.
I like Sarah mind you, she’s a good person at heart. But she has her flaws, and those are in full display here. Lucy is absolutely right to rebuke her.
Lucy and Walky’s plan is still a terrible plan for various reasons though.
Close, but not quite. Sarah is recommending Lucy do the thing those words describe. She, herself, has only ever ‘jettisoned’ one person (Dina), and that was actually not the intention of her actions (she just wanted Dina to get some goddamned therapy, and Dina’s other ‘friends’, such as Raidah, were utterly fucking worthless on that front).
If Sarah were ~actually~ as willing to jettison difficult or troublesome people as everyone accuses her of being, she and Joyce wouldn’t even be on speaking terms.
Not quite related, but is it just me who wishes I’d gotten unsolicited life advice more often? Like, I’d make a dumb mistake (because too damn autistic to notice someone isn’t trustworthy, or too unaware of my own behaviour), and months after it all crashed and burned and I’m finally somewhat recovered, my so-called friends finally start mentioning how it was obvious to them that it was a bad idea… Why didn’t you tell me?! Like, I might or might not have listened, but I’d gotten the chance to at least consider things! ><
friends and family haven’t the same standpoint. Family think they know your needs when all they know is how you liked pony when you were 12 y.o. hence should find someone owning a riding school and an equestrian facility. Friends thinks they know your needs when all they know is what you told them. Some people need advice (note I don’t say guidance), some people will brush them off, really really few of them would be broken by a heartfelt point of view on a situation. Especially when it’s about a “SO” that’s been there for less than a trimester.
Not just you. There were a few times that I might have benefitted enormously from timely advice, or information that I lacked. Much better than figuring out what I should’ve done, years too late.
I mean, if that advice was delivered in a relevant and non-hostile way, it might be helpful, I don’t know
the vast majority of the unsolicited life advice I’ve received is stuff like “you should try [something that won’t help/is too expensive/relates to an entirely thing]” or “lose weight!”
(the second one isn’t really “advice” per se but people insist it is)
point is, if you’re in a position where people want to give you a lot of unsolicited advice it’s probably going to be crap
sarah’s falling into a common problem with advice here; she doesn’t back it up with good reasoning and includes an insult
“this is a bad idea” is fair
“here’s what I would do” is less helpful! it doesn’t inherently demonstrate why you should do a different thing and sarah doesn’t add that
and finally “your bf sucks” is just an insult in this context (walky’s not abusive or a cheater or anything he’s just not very cool or mature), even if sincerely meant, tbh
so, like, B for effort, D for content on sarah’s part but then most unsolicited advice fails to do better
just say “this plan will make everything worse and probably piss off walky’s sister immensely” sarah, jeez
In this case though where was Sarah to interject common sense before Walky and Amber walked off? It’s more like a prequel to I told you so than actually stopping the idiocy.
might be a cultural norm or stigma, i imagine growing up in an asian community/neighborhood all teh aunties/uncles will comment on every little thing, but for some white ppl i’ve noticed, some get snippy with each other for ‘unsolicited’ advice or so, or ppl just doubling down out of spite even if said advice is good (or like, some cases where “can i ask for advice?” even if they may have wanted a 2nd opinion they usually go along with their first thought/already decided and unchanged by it or so)
And it depends on what kinda stuff it is, ppl are extra sensitive about relationships as well like “oh you shouldn’t date him/tehy seem like a bad influence” and then it’s like Michael Scott Voice: “You know what?I ‘m going to date her even harder” or so
/Some/ ppl might be grateful in retrospect but a lot get kinda …uppity? if someone steps in with some life choices and such liek “you had no right to do that” (tho advice is diff than just steering/making decisions for you)
Wouldn’t be surprised if there were a handful of books/vids like “how to be a person” and social skills and stuff but there’s prolly an equal amount of underhanded/manipulative ppl that try to take advantage of ppl who they think is an easy target
So, C.T. Phipps. You’re saying Sarah shouldn’t speak when someone’s making a stupid mistake? She has to shut up and walk away? She’s surrounded by freshman. She’d never be permitted to speak again.
Why should Sarah carah in the first place? The closest thing she’s got to a dog in this fight is that Lucy talked to Raidah, who Sarah doesn’t get along with, and that’s such a loose connection a stiff breeze could sever it.
There’s a scene in Mass Effect where Shepard overhears a couple talk about whether they should give their child genetic therapy. Shepard, out of the blue, walks up and gives them advice. It’s incredibly weird and creepy. So is Sarah listening in and giving unsolicited relationship advice to someone she doesn’t like and doesn’t like her back.
There’s “You should dump your boyfriend because I’m not attracted to him” and then there’s “Hey, I’m a respected public figure and I happen to have relevant information about this thing that’s actually pretty fucking important to your kid’s future in this futuristic sci-fi setting”.
“someone she doesn’t like and doesn’t like her back” they were friends up until like, earlier this morning. this isnt “sarah walking up to a random person and giving them unsolicited life advice” it’s “sarah walking up to someone she considers her friend and telling her her bad plan is a bad plan”. i also think lucy doesnt “make it clear she is not welcome” but instead is just like. making passive aggressive comments, which again, she only started doing a few hours ago. after she had breakfast with raidah where raidah made essentially those exact same passive aggressive comments.
Walky isn’t a sunk cost. At no point has Walky shown any sign that he feels that his relationship with his parents is more important than his relationship with Lucy. The wacky hijinks plan is dumb for a variety of reasons, but it was one formed in conjunction with Lucy, not one he’s forcing upon her, and with the goal of getting his parents to better accept him dating Lucy.
Chasing a sunk cost would be like spending $20,000 on repairs for a 20 year old car that’s been in four accidents. This would be like getting a brand new car because your current, newish one has a broken taillight.
Ah, there is an alternate universe where Joyce embraces the chad lady killer we all know is lurking inside her. Probably the same universe where Walky and Billie fuck on the reg. Yup, it all checks out.
Joyce loves it, Dorothy and Becky bond over being able to quote episodes at each other. Dina gets hung up on how the monkeys that Monkey Master uses as ammunition can possibly still be alive.
Sarah says “I hate that you all got me into this” all the way to the convention. (The group cosplay is lovely, and the other four are sworn to secrecy about whose idea it was.)
This is really fantastic, honestly. Do you have a dA or tumblr or anything? Just since I do love your art and sometimes wish there was like, a place to go to look at it in case I miss it in the comments.
Is there anywhere good to find your DOA art, or just go through all the old comics comments sections hoping to find them? Iirc you did a whole Walky x Billie/Jennifer comic a while ago but I don’t know if there’s anywhere where it’s all in one spot, for example.
You know, I already shipped Dorothy and Joyce, and then loved the idea of them joining Becky and Dina for a cute poly romance…but the addition of Sarah is a perfection I didn’t know I needed until now.
You won Yotomoe, now my improbable endgame is Joyce/Dorothy/Becky/Dina/Sarah.
I actually don’t like this from Lucy. She’s turning out to be kind of fickle in her opinion of people. One comment from Raidah really turned her against Sarah quick. Not that Sarah’s particularly likable, but stil….
I think Lucy’s too harsh on Sarah by a little, but this strip? This is not a case of it, Sarah’s waaaaaay over the line with the “you should just dump him because his parents are racist assholes” line.
…Lucy should still confront them herself instead of going into the wacky hijinks territory, but more than one person can be wrong at a time.
Just a PSA for the young folks: It’s ok to dump someone. You don’t even have to have a big, fancy reason. Just wanting to, or a feeling is enough. There are so, so many fish in the sea.
I fall in the camp of Sarah has a good point, but is as blunt as the baseball bat she wields. It’s not a sin to suggest that the guy Lucy has been on three dates with, who Sarah knows rather well, is not the guy for her and comes with too much unresolved baggage.
Yeah, its fine to dump someone, dating is an At Will status, no need for there to be a reason.
But pushing that option to someone else is a much more difficult line, especially when the amount of baggage that Walky has is that he doesn’t want to get up on his racist parents at the first gate.
It’d be one thing for Sarah to just say “you could always dump him”. But going beyond that to really advocating for that move is just too far.
I mean, sure, in the sense that nobody is owed your time and affection this is true. In the sense that you have no obligation to continue a relationship. However dumping someone can harm them and possibly yourself (heartbreak is real and it sucks), and it’s not really reversible, so I think it is a big decision that deserves a lot of thought and being careless about it is a dick move. In general I think a careless attitude towards dating is pretty bad for everyone involved.
Sarah may not be “friends” with Lucy (mostly because she does not really have friends at all). But she has familiarity with walky (remember there was a night that Joyce walky and Dorothy spent the night in Joyce’s bed). Also, Lucy has inserted herself into the residence life of Sarah’s building and has had many one on one and group interactions with Sarah. Probably more than enough to consider them more than “casual strangers”.
She used to kiss Sarah ass and suddenly she’s a popular-girl viper mindlessly repeating someone else’s exact words. Sarah’s not the one playing a trick on parents and being viciously cruel to a girl with obvious problems.
I feel like she’s been having a morning walk/hangout with not just Sarah but the whole morning walk group for at least a few weeks. She met Raidah and had exactly one fancy brunch with her and suddenly she’s quoting her to Sarah, referencing a situation she knows fuck all about. I like Lucy as a character, so I’m willing to give her some benefit of the doubt, but this one moment ain’t a great look.
In that same day she’s seen Sarah mortify Joyce by commenting on her masturbation habits in public for the lolz, and now he sees Sarah insult her boyfriend and recommend she ditch him.
Perhaps Sarah should stop being an asshole to people.
Well, exactly: she hasn’t known Sarah for long and hasn’t done more than chat a bit in her presence. She hasn’t had time or opportunity to see that Sarah’s default abrasive-misanthrope behavior is not all there is.
Sarah know Walky rather well, long than Lucy has. She know him well enough to know this is a stupid plan. She knows that while Walky has grown, he still falls back on ignoring/avoiding his own problems, and may not be up to the task of standing up to his parents for her. She doesn’t like that Lucy is avoiding confronting the problem directly, and tells her so.
Raidah twisted the knife, but Sarah’s honestly not really made that difficult with how often her advice to people is patronizing them or cynically telling them to abandon all hope and go live in the woods or something.
Walky didn’t seem sold, but I get why he had more reason to see Raidah as dubious than Lucy does, given Raidah’s treatment of Dorothy, someone whom he has immensely more respect for.
I don’t think that’s true. I think she belees she’s in the right because she doesn’t realize she’s missing context for what Raidah told her about Sarah.
To be fair, it wasn’t one comment from Raidah.
It was a conversation with Raidah and that guy who suddenly appeared at breakfast AND Jennifer who said Sarah “basically” confirmed what Raidah said, and Lucy definitely trusts Jennifer to know what she’s talking about (for some reason I don’t fully understand).
So it’s 2.5 to 4 people confirming it, depending on how you count Jennifer’s statement that Sarah confirmed it.
And Sarah hasn’t set her straight, yet while being mean twice today.
Lucy is still wrong, but she doesn’t have the context we have, and the context she does have, from multiple sources, does support her understanding.
Really, I think it’s probably better for Sarah to not clarify what happened every time Raidah’s plastic ass tells somebody a lie. Everyone’s always on about who “owes” or doesn’t owe somebody some interpersonal information anyhow.
I don’t disagree.
But, if Sarah ever complains about Lucy misunderstanding or misjudging her, at that time, she’ll only have herself to blame for not clarifying.
If she doesn’t care that she’s being misunderstood or misjudged, then it’s not on her.
I figure even if Sarah does care about that, she doesn’t have any need to give her side to every single person who comes sniffing up her ass about things that aren’t their business. Lucy’s got literally no reason to hold the Dana thing against Sarah. She wasn’t there, she wasn’t affected, and it has no bearing on her life. Throwing it in her face is about the most childish, pointless shit possible.
Some people are bothered by the principle of things.
In fact most people have principles they deem important.
It’s usually only of what they are and to what degree.
So people don’t have to necessarily be personally affected to be bothered by stuff.
Being bothered is fine, within certain boundaries. Taking things so personally when you were never a factor at all isn’t just crossing that boundary, it’s inappropriate too. We’re not entitled to the drama of other people’s pasts.
the fact of the matter is Lucy doesn’t know the situation, so her “principles” on it are pretty flawed, and probably shouldn’t be the basis of her judgement.
If her principle is “you don’t abandon your friends because they’re inconvenient” then her principle isn’t flawed, only her knowledge of the event causing her to apply said principle to Sarah is.
If, for example since it’s part of this arc though not part of this situation, you’re anti racist, and you go off on someone for being racist, and it turns out that you were mistaken and the person wasn’t racist, being anti racist isn’t the flaw, your misinformation is the flaw.
I personally think that, given what she said, Sarah deserved that verbal slap. I’d have said worse even if Sarah was my friend, ESPECIALLY if Sarah was a friend.
So if one of your friends pisses you off with unwanted advice, you’re deliberately going to use emotional traumas against them to hurt them and twitch every knife you can find? Eesh.
Y’know, there’s a lot of words for folks that deliberately gather every bit of personal ammo they can find so they can unleash it whenever you invoke their ire. Friend isn’t actually one of them.
It’s amazing how people think that walking up to someone, insulting them and their boyfriend is somehow “giving unwanted advice”. Being a bongo isn’t “being painfully honest”. It’s just being a bongo.
Sarah’s not exactly giving her much to go off of. She’s basically proving Raidah right, she’s never been friendly to Lucy and the more she’s included into the circle the more Sarah has been nothing but mean and now she’s straight up telling her to drop Walky for his parents being inconvenient to her. Of course it was easy for Lucy to turn on her, Sarah has never been a nice person with lots of friends and Raidah(Who takes painstaking measures to hide her horribleness)shows up and basically gives her the backstory on why Sarah is a friendless misanthrope.
I’m not sure how that makes Lucy look bad, she’s basically having everything said to her affirmed. Lucy doesn’t know what we know about Sarah, all she knows is she’s a person who derives great pleasure from being mean to the few friends she has and that’s her being NICE. Lucy is wrong, but she is not being given a lot to make her second guess what she’s been told and lbr, if Sarah was real it’d probably happen like this too. She’s not exactly the person you’d want to be around to dig into her personality deeper.
Raidah: “Sara’s the kinda purpose who ditches you because your inconvenient”
Sarah: Your boyfriends parents are inconvenient. Ditch him. What’s wrong with you? And this guy you like? He’s crap anyway.
From Lucy’s perspective, why WOULDN’T she be thinking back to Raidah, who’s being proved right at this very moment?
Nah this is completely justifiable. Lucy is very friendly and very perceptive. She’s been ha ging out with them a while building a connection. Sarah has been prickly rude and snappish and openly critical and raidah pointed out her flaws that Lucy already noticed. Lucy tried being aggressively kind and deferential to Sarah hoping to befriend her because of how happy Joyce was with her but she’s seen none of the good in Sarah honestly Joyce walky Dorothy and such wouldn’t be friends with Sarah if she hadn’t saved Joyce from daterape and been kidnapped they’re trauma bonded not actual friends it feels like
I mean it’s a stupid idea to get back at your parents with Three’s Company hijinks but Lucy is absolutely right to point out that Sarah’s just being her usual bitter self and pushing people away because it’s easy. Lucy isn’t like that and she has every right to point out that’s a real bongo move.
Anything Sarah says that’s not a detailed explanation of the Dana scenario would “prove Raidah right”, though. That’s the point of Raidah spinning it the way she does, to either alienate Sarah if she doesn’t explain herself to everyone who ever being it up, or to exhaust her from repetition if she does. There’s no win condition, and I figure Sarah isn’t attached enough to the emotions and opinions of unrelated people to give much of a damn if she never sees them again.
It’s false information. Sarah is out of line, but quoting a lie specifically crafted to hurt her isn’t justified. I’m really confused why this is just okay. I was even on Lucy’s side reading this until she said that, but this isn’t a righteous clap back. It’s kind of just Lucy being a puppet of Raidah. How are people not upset at how this diminishes Lucy? Maybe I’m reading to much into it.
I’m confused that you’re confused. Sarah is suggesting the thing Raidah told Lucy she’d do. And reacting badly to Lucy invoking her in her clapback. Not sure why Lucy knowing Raidah’s also a bongo (frankly, I’m pretty sure Lucy already picked up on that) would change her reaction here, but I’m listening if you’ve got an explanation.
I don’t think Lucy’s picked up on Raidah at all. I think Walky has, but he’s always been decent at reading people. Lucy kind of feels naive. She’s been hanging with Sarah and the larger group for weeks. She even changed up her schedule, just to follow them. I feel like she knows most of Sarah’s deal now. Sarah was abrasive the first moment they met and that hasn’t changed. What’s changed is that now Lucy’s got an in with the “popular” group and somehow their opinion means more than maybe checking her info with people who hang with Sarah or Sarah herself. I agree Sarah deserves to be checked, she has dipped into being more malicious in her teasing and comments post winter break, but Lucy isn’t doing that. She’s parroting nonsense other people told her too. She could easily have said “don’t comment on my relationship.” Lucy doesn’t even have to be nice about it. Instead she’s weaponized rumor bullshit, and Sarah won’t be the last. Raidah also has beef with Joyce. I wonder what will be planted at their next group date.
Yeah, Walky doing all that… stuff he did? Like, no really, what has Walky done thus far that’d make Lucy’s interest in him a bad idea? They’ve been having a pretty wonderful time together.
Because Walky’s goofiness is not appealing to Sarah’s character, so she finds him annoying (as a lot of the characters do).
Nor is his height appealing.
Probably also his hygiene.
But those aren’t negatives to Lucy (except probably the hygiene).
I feel like Lucy’s not really dedicated to bagging on Sarah or girlcrushing on Raidah. I’m pretty sure her response to that would be “So basically, they are both mean people? We’re just caught in a mean crossfire I guess.”
I agree. Lucy has responded to Sarah in her face, but hasn’t laid on anything either outside Sarah’s presence or to anyone other than Sarah herself. Similarly there’s a distinct lack of ‘Raidah says’ repetitions or any real mentions of Raidah outside of HER presence.
Lucy got a head’s up about a person, who is 2 for 2 in proving said head’s up reasonable and correct.
Nothing. Walky’s cool but he is kind of a dweeb and a slob. Sarah kind of digs on tall jocks. The opposite of Walky and his personality definitely clashes with hers. Makes sense she doesn’t like him.
He’s a lazy idiot who needs his hand held to make sure he showers every day. His only redeeming factor is that he’s supposedly hot as tits. His effort to payoff ratio is abysmal and in spite all of her own baggage Lucy could do better.
I mean, it’s my opinion, sure.
Showering daily IS wasteful of water. And there are many people (including those in my close family) who have a lot of trouble showering or bathing, due to disabilities.
I agree with what Taffy said, 100%.
But there’s actually only just under 8 billion humans on the planet. (Probably well over 12 billion “people,” though, depending on your definition of “person”.)
The 12 billion thing was a random large number I threw out, but to justify it, I’ll go ahead and count my girlfriend as the other 4 billion, because I’d happily sacrifice about half the planet’s population if it meant she’d be safe.
My apologies.
I should have been more specific.
I didn’t mean that people who need to shower every day are wasteful.
I just meant that placing an *expectation* on people to shower every day, even if the showering people DON’T actually need to shower daily, tends to waste water.
What feels wasteful is when a person doesn’t actually need a daily shower but only does it because others expect them to.
That was what I meant.
I’m sorry: I didn’t mean to come across as condemning of anyone who does shower daily.
2) Willing to fight-a-bongo if he believes there’s just cause, such as “You’re the person who sent my sister to jail!” even if he believes there’s absolutely no way in hell that he’ll win the fight.
3) Sticks up to friends & family for things that he considers ‘right’.
4) Has a sense of humor, even if rather immature.
*HONESTLY* What does Walky have to do for people to stop acting like a rotten banana peel yanked off their shoe is better than him? From a perspective of looking at personal character (and character growth), of the male members of the cast? He’s quite probably #2 behind JOE! Possibly #3 behind Danny as well…. but? Danny and Joe have both been undergoing tremendous growth as well.
Some people in the commentariat really loathe this poor dude, and it’s so saddening. He’s willing to learn and change, no matter how difficult or personally uncomfortable, because he wants to do right by the people he lo– oh.
I dunno, Mike might have been a terrible one-dimensional human being, but I sure enjoyed reading him when he was on screen. Walky is too realistic. Reminds me of the man children who wanted me (and other women) to mommy them in college. I probably would keep away from both of them if they were real people. OMG… I just realized I dated Walky and then he dated two of my other friends after me. He was pasty white and an only child, but… same person. Oh no.
(I would probably find Joe hot and exchange witty banter but never actually get to know him in any sense of the word. But I’ve never met anyone like Joe or Mike or Ethan or even Danny, just Walky. Joe features prominently in regency romances though, so he seems familiar.)
You know, I do hate that Raidah’s done the spin, but I also don’t think Lucy’s retort here, in and of itself, is off-base. It’s just bullshit in the context of Sarah’s handling of her ex-roommate, who was spiraling and completely indifferent to taking Sarah down with her.
it does look bad when raidah tells it and Jennifer did more or less back it up so Lucy has no reason/hasn’t seen much of sarah’s ‘good side’ to give her teh benefit of the doubt
But other than a casual fling, even with someone with less baggage than walky, more or less you also kinda sign up to deal with the ‘bad’ aspects of a relationship or offer comfort/support even if you don’t directly help someone through it d,depending on what it is
Tho understandable if bad parents/them just disliking you is where you’d draw the line because you’d have to deal with that the rest of the marriage if they do get together in that way
Still can’t get how people are so put off by Sarah saying “ditch someone whose shit you can’t managed” deadpan half joking, as her cynical character who pretends not to care -fake as we know, while it’s 1/ perfectly reasonable to take it as a joke 2/ perfectly reasonable as a general advice not to be willing to go through much shit for someone you’re “dating” (this word) for so short a time 3/in the context of manipulating three other people, one of which has multiple traumas to work on, some about the two (shitty) others even
tl;dr: vaguely cynical general words vs setting unhealthy manipulation in motion debate
I mean, I like Sarah. And obviously, the plan is romcom shenanigans dumb. But she is definitely messing up here.
1: Getting involved in the first place. Neither Walky nor Lucy are friends of her. Why was she listening, why is she getting involved?
2: Implicitly talking down to Lucy as being a coward with the ‘I would confront them myself’
3: Suggesting that if a romantic interest has ‘trouble’ you should just pick someone else, rather than try to deal with it. (Which is not a great thing to say someone still in a full on crush AND is actively suggesting that what Raidah told Lucy is right) It’s not even ‘you can’t manage’ It is ‘find someone who’s less trouble’ It suggests to not even try.
4: Toss an insult at the guy who Lucy is crushing on for flavor.
I can’t say I detect is as a joke. And even if someone would say this as a joke, it would very much be ‘Not funny, and kind of assholish’.
I like Sarah. She’s a good person at heart. She can also, regularly, be an absolute asshole.
They could have been talking about Sara’s shit-talking Walky at the end as completely deserved. That at least gets one of … four? People brought up individually as identifiable by a pronoun.
Fun fact: Numbah 5 in Kids next door is voiced my Cree Summer is probably the most prolific black voice actress ever. Widely known as “the black girl” in most every western cartoon from the 90’s and 00’s, still working to this day. She was Kida in Atlantis, Susie in Rugrats, Numbah 5 of course, and a niche favorite of mine exo female race in Bungie’s Destiny IP. If DoA ever got an animation deal she would likely be one of the black girls.
Yeah, I get Sarah’s own pessimism about things, but I think so many of her problems tend to be caused by her projecting it onto others, especially in a carelessly curt fashion. Like, there’s advice, and there’s being a wet blanket that reeks of piss.
I’m not saying Lucy should dump Walky because his parents are bad, but I am saying his parents are racist, have already indicated that want minimal contact with Lucy, and if Lucy wants to be really serious with Walky, then there’s going to be more conflict. And either she and Walky will need to be on the same page about this, up to and including the fact that he might need to go no-contact with his parents who are currently paying his tuition, or she will forever be the despised girlfriend of Walky’s who will be scapegoated for everything wrong with Walky.
I don’t think Sarah’s point is said here from a point of meanness, I think as a black woman she is trying to advise Lucy that she either needs to position herself as Walky’s equal and confront this sort of thing WITH him, or should dump him for her own emotional and mental well-being. Walky isn’t a bad person, but his parents are, and if Lucy were to dump him over their treatment of her, that wouldn’t be wrong?
Also, shenanigans like this are hardly the best way to handle this situation, which is also Sarah’s point.
And if she’d said any of that instead of ‘hey stupid, dump your boyfriend yesterday, he’s SO much work and I personally think he’s worthless’ she might actually have made an impression other than ‘oh here’s Sarah being a bongo as per usual’.
(whoops, accidental flag)
I mean. Yes. That is kind of the obvious way to take this.
1: Your idea is stupd (Fair! It absolutely is)
2:You should confront the parents yourself (Is one of the possible solutions, but kinda jerkish to force someone into an emotioanlly fraught confrontation they might not be ready for)
3: Suggests that a better option is not to try but to pick someone who’s ‘less trouble’, in a way that suggests you really shouldn’t be expected too put too much effort in. If she said ‘Look, I know you like him, but I’m thinking you’re setting yourself up for a world of heartache. You sure you like him this much?’ that would come across as a lot different than ‘better find a new man who’s not so much trouble’
4: “As a bonus, he’s not Walky”, is unambiguously Sarah denigrating Walky.
So… I mean, yeah. It kinda is what Sarah said here. Now Sarah often TALKS a lot more heartless than she acts or feels. I like Sarah. But Lucy doesn’t know any of this. She can only Judge based on information people tell her, but also, on behaviour of Sarah she’s seen. Few of which is painting her in a flattering light.
Lucy’s been black about as long as Sarah has. Being the same colour doesn’t turn unsolicited heckling into solicited advice, and if the speaker thinks it does, it just makes them pretentious in addition to annoying.
I’m saying that Sarah’s not saying “ugh Walky’s too much work” she’s saying “dealing with RACIST PARENTS is too much work”, which it IS. Which is where the perspective of Lucy and Sarah both being black comes into play. Discovering that your partner’s parents shouldn’t mean an automatic break up, but it does indicate there will be strife, and that you will have to worker harder WITH your partner, to attain happiness.
See though, she immediately follows that with “dump walky cause he is walky.” Which frankly muddies any other point she’s making. And maybe Lucy thinks it’s not too much work. And maybe Sarah’s race doesn’t give her any real exception to being a rude abrasive person who just offered Lucy unsolicited advice while insulting her and her boyfriend. Maybe Sarah should shut up.
This is the second time I’m actually NOT siding with Sarah, which is weird since I usually do side with her. You don’t flippantly suggest someone dump their boyfriend and then imply he’s a loser. And Walky doesn’t deserve to be badmouthed on that level. Sure, he can be mildly annoying, but he usually tries to do right by people. And this is also what makes this even worse, Walky stuck up for Sarah when she was being badmouthed by Raidah and her clique.
Lucy isn’t wrong, but it was a more morally complicated situation than the little scraps she got from Raidah and Jennifer.
Lucy *is* wrong, because Raidah’s version is a misrepresentation. Sarah’s roommate was depressed and addicted. Sarah was the only one to notice this as a problem, admittedly because it interfered with her own studies, and the only who took action that resulted in the roommate getting help, while also being withdrawn from college, which she was of course utterly failing due to not attending classes and other non-productive behavior. Not only was Dana more of a burden to Sarah due to close proximity – and let’s not forget Sarah *does* actually care for people – also Raidah did *nothing* to help alleviate that burden.
Yeah, that sure does make Lucy wrong. How could she judge Sarah so harshly despite knowing all that stuff about Sarah’s situation. Oh wait. She doesn’t know, so pointing all of that out is utter nonsense. All she knows is Raidah’s story, and Sarah’s consistently shitty attitude. Yeah, I wouldn’t give Sarah the benefit of the doubt either.
She’s not though. Raidah is painting a very biasted picture with a bs brush. But Sarah just suggested Lucy jettison Walky for being inconvenient. She’s dead on the nose.
I mean, all Lucy said was “I don’t jettison people” when Sarah advised her to jettison her boyfriend. Sure, Sarah is saying it out of concern, but she is being a little bit snarky about it. It’s a little bit harsh on Lucy’s end, but completely factual in relation to the situation she is in now. She doesn’t know what happened to Dana, other than that Dana’s mom died and Sarah called her Dad and got her pulled out of school. It would be nice if Dana did show up later, so we could understand if what Sarah did was actually helpful or harmful.
But on this current situation, Sarah literally badmouthed Lucy’s boyfriend to her face and said she should dump him. I would be pissed off, too. Lucy has absolutely every right to be pissed off here, and nothing she is saying is really incorrect or unreasonable. Sure, Lucy could handle the parent situation a little more maturely and her and/or Walky directly confront them. But I mean, Sal has tried that approach *several times* with her mom, and Walky has even told them when Sal stormed off, “You’ve never given her (Sal) a good reason to stay”, and she immediately got defensive.
And Walky didn’t clarify the story, because he knows about as much as Lucy does. Sarah and him don’t have interactions beyond the occasional walking to class together with friends, but Sarah only told Joyce, Dina, and Jennifer the story about Dana. Raidah and her friends (as far as we know) are the only others who actually know what happened. And Walky did try to defend Sarah as best he could without the full story, but there was not much he could say to deny it because, in his point of view, it very well could have happened the way Raidah is telling it.
I did look over it again, and nearly all of Lucy’s interactions with Sarah are…
Sarah insulting her and/or Walky. First interaction was her calling Lucy creepy.
Sarah making fun of Joyce for being uncomfortable with anything sexual (which is something Lucy can empathize with).
Sarah being grumpy and leaving situations because she doesn’t want to deal with them.
When you look at it like that, it’s no wonder Lucy doesn’t really like Sarah or respect her at all. She hasn’t said one nice word to her, and Sarah hasn’t shown any respectful behavior to Lucy. And Lucy is someone who doesn’t really enjoy unkind words toward others and tries her best to be kind to others, like Joyce.
However, Lucy is different in that she has slightly more of a backbone than Joyce in these situations. Most of the time, Joyce naturally avoids conflict, probably relating somewhat to her masked autism and “better safe than sorry” mentality. Lucy isn’t afraid of conflict as much.
Correction: Sarah first and foremost advised Lucy to confront the problem directly rather than through hijinks. Which I agree with. All this is just avoiding a difficult conversation with Walky’s parents. I feel like this is Walky falling back on his bad habit of avoiding his problems. Walky may have more spine now, but he might still be the guy who eats his test scores, or who lives in denial of Mike’s death.
Also, dumping someone because they come with too much parental baggage is totally fine. It’s not a sin to dump someone. It’s only been three dates, it’s way too early for Anyone to deal with future in-law evilness, and it would be perfectly reasonable for Lucy to be spooked off. The only reason someone needs to dump someone in order to be “valid,” is that they want to do it.
Note that the way Sarah frames it is that the PREFERRED option is getting rid of someone who’s ‘too much trouble’. And while it’s absolutely fine to end a relation because of the family thing, I feel that it’s pretty damn early in the process to do it with a relation you value highly. But the language that Sarah is using suggests that she is not valuing relationships highly. ‘too much trouble’ ‘find a new man’ ‘doesn’t require work’ All of that is Sarah basically saying ‘All that shit Raidah is saying about me? Right on the money baby!’
Now, I know, and you know, that when it comes to misanthropy and disregard for relationships, Sarah talks a good game but absolutely will put herself on the line for people she cares about. But Lucy has no way to know that. She can only judge the words and actions of Sarah she sees.
You’re not wrong, but I think I still tend to side with Sarah. The preferred option IS to break up with someone after three dates, instead of trying to fix him and his entire family. Maybe if Walky had stepped up and backed Lucy, been the the adult in the room like he was with Raidah & gang, but instead he’s going to show how bad Amber is instead of how good Lucy is.
Also, I bet Sarah doesn’t know Lucy dropped the L-word so early. She may not have realized how alike Lucy and Joyce are.
I mean, I don’t think Lucy feels Walky needs fixing. Like, early DoA Walky was less aware of this. But Walky here pretty much makes it clear that he’s very much on Lucy’s side. They’re just not sure how to go about dealing with the problem of their family. It should be noted that the current (so very, very stupid) plan that they made is not an attempt of Walky to get out of confronting his parents, but is actually Lucy’s idea.
And I mean, yeah, it’s easier for Walky to confront some rando who he isn’t all that inclined to like who’s part of the new ‘Jennifer’, then it is to confront his own parents who he’s financially dependent on about one of the most painful conversations to have.
Honestly, if they’re together ‘Let’s just endure them, roll our eyes till college is finished and we’re financially independent, at that point we can set ultimatums’ is a perfectly valid tactic. So I definitely feel that Sarah’s ‘nah, no point in trying, ditch and move on’ suggests callousness and disloyalty to those who are closer to her. (Again, Sarah talks a bigger game than she acts about these things in most cases)
Honestly the worst defense at this point. We know Raidah acts in far less good faith then Sarah, but right now, since Sarah is proving her right, adding in that name drop just leads one to believe that Sarah was probably really mean to Raidah too. Come to think of it, wasn’t there some kind of assault?
Sarah punched Raidah and tried to get Joyce and Jacob together while he was dating Raidah to mess with her, without even thinking how it could potentially mess with Joyce, much less Jacob. We don’t know what Raidah has done besides ditch Sarah and badmouth her to other people.
We’ve got pretty good reason to believe there was a campaign of constant harassment, basically from the Dana incident through to the start of the comic. It’s off-screen, since it’s before the comic began, but we see Raidah continuing it in her first couple appearances. Even the scene at the mall that leads up to the punching can be seen as Raidah attempting to peel these new people away from Sarah.
Billie is for sure, and Lucy still tries to make nice with her. She was also pretty chummy with Malaya despite constantly being told to fuck off and derided for basic friendliness. Jury’s out on how much Lucy and Raidah interact, but any 18-20 year old with Raidah’s “look at me I’m all growed up” attitude is definitely toxic.
Jennifer and Malaya, though, are/were Lucy’s roommates though. Can’t fault the lonely nerd for trying to make nice with people who share quarters this close
That’s a good point, too. I understand the instinct/desire to wanna get along with everyone , but when they very firmly and abrasively set a boundary against that, on repeated occasions, it’s probably best to leave them be.
You’re not wrong that this is a train wreck, Sarah, though what you would do in this situation (find a boyfriend with less shitty family because you’re not that invested) is not helpful to someone who is invested.
She hasn’t exactly been trying. Pretty sure she’s been actively avoiding that kind of thing while she works on her education, barring a one-night-stand here and there and regular dates with lil’ Jacob.
Despite Sarah is right here in the context that is a very stupid plan, she should have phrased the explanation of a sunk cost fallacy in a more palatable way, or just not gotten involved. Neither of which is Sarah’s style.mind you Radiah was in the wrong about Sarah but I doubt Lucy will beleive her.
Sarah’s giving Lucy zero cause to doubt the portrait of Sarah as provided to her. Sarah is consciously and willfully cruel to people she purports to like/love, and just now suggested ‘dump your boyfriend, he’s being inconvenient, that’s what I’d do.
If Sarah wants people not to believe Raidah’s BS, she really ought to stop proving Raidah’s points.
And it’s on her if she’s gonna be that suggestible. She can say “mean” like a 7-year old instead of “obnoxious,” “a buzzkill,” or “toxic,” but she is both over 18 and smart enough to live with the consequences of having no middle ground when it comes to liking and trusting others…
Just met Raidah, but Jennifer seems to like her and she also hates Sarah…”I’ll help her bury a body! No questions asked!!”
She made a good call with Walky, but what Sarah and Raidah can do to others on purpose, she can potentially be capable of though personally convenient naivety…
Lets review though:
Raidah: Sarah Jettisons people cause their inconvenient.
Lucy: Wow that’s a harsh claim, Billie?
Billie: Yeah Sarah actually told me she did that.
Walky: Yeah we know Sarah’s like that.
And then today:
Sarah: Hey, no time for greets, just telling you your plan is stupid. I think this is so inconvenient you should jettison Walky. Actually just jettison walky cause he’s Walky.
So Lucy had this confirmed by two of her friends and then Sarah comes to her talking exactly how the version of her Raidah paints would talk. Honestly I’d expect I’d react the same sans metadata.
Thing called “manipulating language” that Lucy needs to learn.
Raidah left out that Dana forced Sarah to “jettison” (who says that?) her in order to not get kicked out with her due to her out of control in-dorm pot smoking rooted in grief, while Raidah simply claimed “she was getting better” and washed her hands clean of what happened first by doing nothing else, then by putting the whole thing on Sarah…Then not letting it go until she both provoked Sarah to punch her then got called a bully in front of her friends….Flat-out lying is kindergarten-level deceit. Let Lucy jump to conclusions on her own, and now she’s taken a side in a situation she wouldn’t want anything to do with, otherwise. Sarah’s enough to deal with without associating Lucy with Raidah’s drama.
Much like a thing called “Butting out” that Sarah needs to learn.
Jennifer’s no saint and has tons more reason to have a problem with Walky, and even she knows when to say “I’m not touching that one.” This both isn’t Joyce nor is it a close friend of hers. For how much Sarah goes on about not wanting other people’s drama, she does wave a LOT of chances to avoid provoking it her way…
It’s a combination EMF meter, cell phone, cryptid locator, and Power Morpher, created for a team of cryptozoology-themed Power Rangers in a tabletop campaign I’m running for my girlfriend and my sister. Comes in about a dozen potential colors, but my favorite is green so that’s the grav.
I didn’t think it was rude. It’s not beyond the realm of reason for me to have a weird artsy energy drink as my gravatar, anyway. I’ve made some strange ones over the years.
Of course none of the other characters have agency either – but the readers (or at least commenters here) act like they do. In a sense, both the characters and the readers are Willis’s puppets – though it’s not clear that the readers always react the way Willis intends.
I try to mentally insert all the boring little “yes it’s fiction, this character represents this archetype, and within the parameters blah blah blah” caveats before most comments. Just assume we’re all aware this is fiction from the outset and are working from that perspective, and all that.
Sometimes though, I’ll say something obvious because I typed a very involved comment and accidentally refreshed before I could post and lost the entire paragraph.
Err…Lucy…Sweetheart? Raidah is Sarah, but without even your boyfriend’s racist mother’s few redeeming qualities. I’d avoid repeating any claims she made, because if Sarah is too much of a turd to deal with…Well at least you’ve been warned without any gaslighting or being conscripted into other people’s drama on top of her own…
Oh, it’s going to be a Sara haters vs “Lucy is a social climber” peeps sort of night. Appropriately, the characters are also both in the wrong here.
Sara isn’t Lucy’s friend. She’s been eavesdropping. It doesn’t matter if those are Raidah’s words when she’s been nothing but abrasive to Lucy in every interaction and kind of proving the point. However… God yeah, it’s a dumb plan and both Lucy and Walky should learn to do proper confrontation. The fact the only character we’ve watched Lucy to tell off is Sarah is worrying, not because “social climber!!1!” but because it shows how easily influenced she is.
I didn’t expect the trainwreck pulling even more characters into its blazing, deathly ride; but by god, this is fun to watch
Sarah did just tell her to Jettison her boyfriend cause he’s inconvenient though. It was an absolute shit plan but she jumped from that to encouraging her to dump Walky. Then adds that Walky being Walky (which Lucy likes about him) is reason to dump Walky.
Everything Raidah said about Sarah was dead on from what Lucy has seen.
Yeah, no. Absolutely. Lucy has been given zero reasons to doubt these claims and she doesn’t know Sarah like us readers do. I think Badgermole stuck it too – this is her trying to be helpful, and that’s why Lucy’s reply gave us a single panel of her being vulnerable.
The thing is, Sarah’s way to be helpful sucks. A lot. Joyce might’ve understood, but she’s her roommate and therefore has seen more of her. Lucy might’ve given her the benefit of doubt before that breakfast, too. Right now though? She was given a warning on somebody she already knew was mean, got first-hand confirmation – and stopped fawning.
Meanwhile Raidah is somewhere else going ALL ACCORDING TO KEIKAKU (keikaku meaning plan), like the Actually Horrible Person she is.
Lucy falling for Raidah’s plan, however, continues to prove that Raidah’s plan is just the worst. It’s ill-thought out and predicated on misinformation about the main players in Joyce and Sarah’s lives.
But how do we know Raidah is being deliberately manipulative here? I mean, she networks like hell because she wants to be a lawyer, but… I read it as her sharing her perspective on the situation. It seems Raidah mostly made snide comments and left her alone afterwards. Sarah tried to get Joyce to steal her boyfriend as a vendetta move.
Sarah didn’t deal with the situation in the best way. It was mostly due to how difficult the position she was put in was, but the tipping point was that she wouldn’t be able to go to school anymore. Understandable, but still somewhat selfishly motivated. And literally, when she did tell the group about Dana, she said “she’s not getting better and I have to study so I don’t lose my scholarship”.
You have to read between the lines a bit and extrapolate what last year must have been like, but it really should be clear Raidah’s being deliberately manipulative. It’s her thing.
I mean, she openly talked to Carl about “laughing at that stunted man-child’s jokes” and how she’ll “never learn who Kit Fisto is”, so she’s clearly manipulating both Jennifer and Walky. For month’s now, in Jen’s case.
I know she’s a social climber and definitely a fake friend, but is she doing anything antagonistic to specifically Sarah other than be a bongo and avoid her? I mean, I don’t think she’s some mastermind pulling puppet strings and cackling. Just knows that networking is important, and both Billie and Walky are valuable networks, so pretend to like them. That’s basically what being a social climber is. Sure, you don’t have to like it, but it’s not exactly making her Satan. She’s not s good person, but in the course of the comic, Sarah has technically done worse to her.
Sarah hit Raidah in an argument and tried to get Joyce to screw Jacob just to mess with her. I’d honestly say that’s way more conniving and manipulative than Raidah just telling people Sarah isn’t a good friend.
Hitting people is sometimes fine. Like when they’re personally responsible for ostracizing you and suddenly reappear in your life. Like, Sarah was very obviously Not Okay in that moment, for reasons we’ve been given.
We don’t absolutely know yet, because the aim of her plot hasn’t yet been revealed.
That said, it’s absolutely clear that it’s aimed at Sarah and Joyce. She didn’t just show up and befriend Jennifer out of nowhere or just for the social climbing.
At the very least, those scenes clearly show she’s manipulative
The reason this is hurtful is that Sarah, in her own way, tried to help Lucy. She’s telling her to have some self respect. This is Sarah telling Lucy she deserves more than her boyfriend’s parents being manipulated into grudgingly accepting her.
Lucy took that and threw it back in her face, ascribing Sarah’s comment to malice. She really thought Sarah is coming around to shit talk Walky for funsies. Which is understandable I guess if you’re predisposed to seeing someone as a villain, but is also stupid. Lucy doesn’t understand people and really isn’t as smart as she thinks she is.
Of course Sarah, being a cynical tsundere, will take from this a single lesson: never try to help people, let them sink into the quicksand of their own messes.
I agree that if you’re going to speak your mind and to hell with how people take it, you have no business being hurt when they don’t take it well. Sarah’s fault is that she’s perpetually fronting as a dgaf tough girl when she’s actually really quite sensitive.
And it’s a really sad self-fulfilling prophecy kind of way. “I knew I shouldn’t have cared!” ➡️ thicker walls, harsher words ➡️ reaching out in the worst possible way 🔄
She’s not helpful, true. But she’s not malicious either if we understand malice to mean taking pleasure in hurting others. Calling Walky more trouble than he’s worth isn’t malicious, it’s simply true (at least re. his shitty parents).
I feel like how much Walky is worth is up to Lucy, and like…
people seem to be forgetting that *Lucy* first voiced the plan they’re going with now. She initiated this whole scheme. This is not Walky being a goofball first and foremost, this is *her* being a goofball, and in that the two fit each other perfectly.
Raidah told Lucy Sarah “jettisons people when they are inconvenient.”
Lucy asked Billie about it. Billie said Sarah told her she did this (this being the Dana situation). Walky confirmed that Sarah is “not a people person.”
Lucy sees malice because that’s what Lucy has seen from Sarah. Who just interrupted her to tell her that she should jettison Walky if he’s this inconvenient.
I think it comes down to whether you think Sarah’s advice is wrong. Sure it’s rude and unconvincing. She isn’t good at expressing her good intentions, nor does she make any effort to do so. But is Sarah wrong in saying that Walky’s racist parents make Walky more trouble than he’s worth and that Lucy can do better?
I don’t think Sarah is wrong about this. Lucy can do better than trying to coax scraps of approval out of racists. The problem of course is Lucy, for a number of uncomfortable reasons, does not want to do better.
Walky’s parents are not the problem. They rarely show up personally and, aside from the whole “paying for college” thing, are not explicitly a permanent part of his life.
The problem is how much Walky wants his parents in his life. He’s hoping that they can be bopped on the head and gotten to realize that they’re being dicks, and that’s not an impossible thing (not saying its easy of course, just that with deeply personal connections, people can be dragged out of their racist bullshit). And we don’t know if he’d be willing to largely cut them out of his life if they can’t get past it.
Walky, from what we know right now, is not explicitly more trouble than he’s worth. He’s a guy with shitty parents but doesn’t share their prejudice. And, frankly, Sarah should fucking know this.
Lucy’s plan is dumb, but in a childish, wacky hijinks way. Sarah’s suggestion of ditching him because he has shit parents is just callous.
True. It’s not unfairly judging Walky for having shit parents, which he can’t help. It’s judging him for going through with this ridiculous plan in the first place because he’s too cowardly to confront his parents. I’m surprised people in the comments don’t see this other layer of intention in Operation Garbage White GF. There is the stated intent — Amber will screw up his parents’ expectations — but imo there’s also the unconscious wish that Linda will actually approve and give her darling boy all the congratulations he deserves for his choice of girlfriends. Walky said as much that this approval is what he wants, right before they came up with the plan.
And if she stuck with that, it’d be another thing. But she kept going into how Walky is inherently a bad pick anyway. I mean, who the fuck is this bongo? Lucy and Sarah are not close enough for that to be something you can say and have any expectation of being well received. Sarah started strong but it turned into just not liking Lucy’s boyfriend. I’d be dismissive of her at this point too.
Sarah *is* predisposed to shit-talk Walky. She’s predisposed to shit-talk everyone, but especially folks like Walky. And she’s not here, injecting herself unwanted into a situation that has nothing to do with her, because she wants to help. She’s here because she wants to tell someone they’re wrong. Which, cool, they probably are. What business is it of hers?
If Sarah doesn’t want people to think that she’s aasshole, she should start minding her own business a whole hell of a lot more.
I don’t agree with her motivations here. I think she legitimately does want to help, but both her abrasive approach and her viewpoint on relationships in general make her come off badly.
IIRC, her standard advice on relationships is “don’t”.
You really think Sarah is telling Lucy she can do better because she likes telling people they’re wrong? Like… the fact that they’re both Black women has nothing to do with this?
If Lucy waited until Sarah suggested dumping Walky over this to get snippy she would be entirely in the right.
And to be fair nobody likes hearing there stupid plan is stupid and Sarah can be a little mean sometimes.
That being said Lucy should really get Sarah’s side of the story first before judging her not Billy’s spoiled interpretation.
Lucy is also right: Sarah is being mean. For the second time, which makes Sarah two for two for mean in the sum total of all interactions Lucy has had with her. AND she just proved correct another bit of the Raidah bit correct, the bit about jettisoning people at a moment’s notice: Sarah pretty much just said ‘his parents suck, you should’ve just dumped him for it, that’s what I would do.’
Not that Lucy and Walky’s plan isn’t stupid! Just that, you know, if Sarah actually wants people to see through Raidah’s shit, she should stop proving her basically right.
Sarah’s comment wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t pushing the dump Walky option so hard. Sarah really hates Walky for some reason and it really hurt her overall message, which should have been focused on Lucy standing up to Walky’s parents.
“Hate” is a strong word and I wouldn’t equate breaking things off with people as the same as cutting them off from your life. Especially since Walky is still on speaking terms with some of his other exes.
I wonder if there wasn’t raidah that lucy is said to be parroting how many people would support Sarah. Seriously, your friend’s friend comes up to you and pours out his opinion about your boyfriend. How you react?
Sarah, who supposedly doesn’t care, is more drama hungry than she admits
I mean Sarah clearly is out of line with unwanted advice, but responding with personal attacks just makes me feel like Lucy never actually was a nice person, she just pretends to be.
“This is an incredibly stupid idea” is already an attack though. Then the “advice” is just “dump Walky because he sucks anyway.” I think she’s entitled to retaliate.
Just a heads-up, the blurry Patreon preview is clear enough to read dialogue again. Look if you want, but understand it’s going to be more spoiler-y than normal.
I don’t like that Lucy said what she said, but I get why she did it. She never has seen the nicer/caring side of Sarah. And Sarah was way out of line too, but she has a point about this being a terrible plan.
So to sum this up: even through I kind of like both characters and both of them do kind of have a point neither of them comes off particularly well here in my opinion.
Hey Sarah, hate to break it to you, but you don’t get to tell people off for believing fake rumors about you while actively working to prove those rumors right.
Seriously, Sarah is a garbage person. As a defense mechanism, sure, but frankly I don’t care about the justification for it. It’s all a bunch of self-centered bullshit so she can play the victim whenever people believe the worst about her. And it ignores the very simple fact that the rumors may be bullshit but her attitude is still genuinely awful. She refuses to show any semblance of redeeming qualities unless lives are literally in danger, which is only good enough because her friend group seems to be a magnet for attempted murder.
Honestly, I don’t even dislike her in spite of all this. I guess I’m more just mad because of all the comments that are being willfully ignorant about how shitty she acts all the fucking time.
She’s generally done a shit job of explaining her perspective to everyone except Joyce. An uninterested outside observer can easily take Raidah’s spin at face value. “Sarah thought Dana was getting in her way so she got her dad to pull her from school” is a lie by omission, not an outright fabrication. If your rebuttal starts with “technically yes, but…” nobody’s going to listen to anything after the “but” because you reinforced the other person’s account.
That’s what makes Raidah’s manipulation so insidious.
I wouldn’t call this dumping Walky when he’s not convenient bc Sarah is basically saying “get some self respect” which like. Yeah. I can really see why Sarah would think that dating a guy with racist parents, one of whom is white, constitutes a lack of it—then tack on this whole fucking plan—is debasing. This is closer to home for both of them than it was for Jennifer, even if they aren’t friends so it’s not really Sarah’s place.
Then she recoils because Lucy came out with a deep cut (understandable when we think about her perception of Raidah still being pretty clean). But overall I think if Raidah wasn’t a complicating factor, Lucy might listen.
These two are in my top 3 favorite characters and I’m glad they’re having this clash of perspective talk past each other thing. I hope they can sort it out sooner rather than later and be friends :’) it would be good for both of them
For the record, Walky is great and just as full of depth, but my point is that that’s Sarah’s flippant “comedic” addition to meaningful (unsolicited, but meaningful) advice, which we know is a recurring flaw of hers and part of the tone of the comic in general, but bc it’s not the last panel it has consequences in-universe! We’ll see in the next comic what is coloring Lucy’s opinion of this advice: rudeness to her boyfriend, pointing out how the relationship is doomed to crash and burn if neither are or only one of them is able to work on their fear of confrontation, or Raidah’s machinations.
In case no one could tell I’m so fucking excited for the rest of this interaction
Sarah is right but she didn’t need to add “and also aren’t Walky”
that sole line is why she get hit with the dumping people when convenient
but honestly this whole thing is dumb and debasing. Does Lucy even know Walky and Amber used to be a thing? I remember that Lucy met Walky when he went to Jennifer for advice on hooking up with Amber, but I don’t know if she heard who was the person Walky was interested in. And Lucy and Amber barely interacted before this
There’s also some just-barely-revealed drama concerning a former boyfriend and her sister. I can’t decide whether Sarah has never actually been in love and doesn’t understand how that rebalances the equation, or she had been and grew a lot of mental scar tissue to shield her from hurting that way ever again.
So lemme get this straight: Lucy is too much of a chickenshit to exist on purpose around her boyfriend’s parents (not that anyone is obligated to tolerate bigotry when they’ve been told that’s what to expect), so she comes up with the stupid-ass idea to have Walky pretend to date Amber. And somehow, through some arcane mechanism unknown to mortal minds, I’m not supposed to believe she set this up on purpose because as much trouble and as many mental backflips as it requires, it’s still less exhausting than sitting through an entire meal with a racist and being expected to just grin and bear it?
Nah, Lucy planned this from the start. She’s smarter and more devious than she lets on, and that’s hot.
I mean isn’t this a ploy to make Lucy look better to Walky’s parents? They shove the most disastrous white girl in from of them so that when Walky brings in Lucy she’ll seem like a massive improvement?
ffft that’s ridiculous, Lucy isn’t planning any of this.
she’s clearly just naturally inclined towards maximum chaos. she’s the darkest character in the story so far because she’s been cultivating a sweet, naive girl persona purely so that when she decides to let her whackadoodle energy rip no one sees it coming. And she has zero motivation except pure lust for destruction. proper satanic shit 🔥
From the start of what? She found out about the racist parents 10 seconds before this plan was hatched. Even if she figured it out earlier, it’s been max four hours since Walky’s parents showed up.
Love it when Lucy has some sass. She doesn’t always have to play the nice girl.
Also also I just realized that Walky and Amber are not just on their way to have lunch with the parents, but also with Sal and DANNY. When’s the las time we’ve seen Amber and Dan interacting? Banking on the two having a huge blown-out fight (maybe about Ethan) and making it awkward for everyone else. Can’t wait
They were on good terms during the Halloween fight, and Amber was pretty supportive of Danny and Sal so I don’t think they’ll have a fight… but I do think it’s going to be turbo awkward for them in that scenario. Plus Danny always puts his foot in his mouth so I imagine he’s gonna be like “wow Walky did Lucy and you break up, I thought you two were trying to fuck last night what happened?” and make shit even more awkward
I have zero interest in diving into the no holds barred pvp zone the strip is sure to create, but because I haven’t seen anyone else point out this angle:
This isn’t just another “Sarah jumps in and offers unsolicited advice to a casual acquaintance,” it’s specifically “Sarah, a young Black woman, approaches the only other Black woman in their friend group* on the topic of dating a guy with racist parents.” That’s an important layer that inclines me to be more charitable towards her.
*Sal is Black, obviously, but she doesn’t have the same distance from the situation since it’s, ya know, HER parents.
Good point. A little intersectionality could be a good thing. Lucy, listen up to your older wiser, more cynical sister in the ways of shitty people. Some good perspectives there, and potential for good conversation. But Lucy puts it back into personal, so she wiffs the pitch.
I guess I was thinking “ young, black, straight, woman.” As in, a particular combination of identities (and possibly experiences) that others might not share. And Willis has added in a few more visual factors that contribute to the plot, r.e. colorism within communities, i.e. not all characters have the same color palette.
I mean I did say it, in my reply to some Rogue person who thinks Sarah is jumping in here because she loves to tell people they’re wrong.
I thought it was understood that one Black woman telling another that she can do better than a man with racist parents is more layered than mere rudeness… but reading these comments, apparently not.
If your response to unwanted advice is personal attacks, you’re not actually a good person in my opinion. I don’t think I’d be able to overcome my immediate distrust to Lucy after saying stuff like this.
Being a good person is impossible by anyone’s standards but our own, anyway. There’s always someone who’ll declare you the lowest of the low, so listening to literally anybody about your own morality is equivalent to buying the Shroud of Turin at a yard sale in Kentucky.
I mean, i get that and I do agree to an extent but do keep in mind Lucy has seen nothing to actually contradict what Raidah has said about Sarah either
It’s specifically the smug “you’re doing it all wrong” kind of advice though. I think some snark is warranted. The last comment was probably too harsh, but she doesn’t know the full story.
If your so-called “advice” to me is basically an entirely unsolicited “your boyfriend sucks, his parents suck, and you should dump him and find someone else because he’s too much trouble,” then you’re not actually a good person in my opinion. I don’t think I’d be able to overcome my immediate distrust to Sarah after saying stuff like this.
I mean, it did partly come from Sarah telling her to cut Walky out of her life because he’s inconvenient. Radiah’s full of shit but Sarah didn’t have to come out and give support to Radiah’s false claims like that.
Eh to be honest Sarah ain’t wrong, if your going to deal with this shit seriously grow a spine, cut the shenanigans, and deal with this directly or don’t put yourself in a position to deal with this stuff at all.
I’m honestly not sure “deal with this directly” is the best plan either, since it involves potentially blowing up your partner’s relationship with his parents. Which is a huge ask a couple weeks into your relationship, when he’s still largely dependent on them.
The shenanigans are a bad idea, if a glorious one, but forcing a confrontation isn’t great either.
I think the best plan for Lucy, at least at this point, would be to just lay low and wait for the shit parents to piss off. While its something that would have to be dealt with *eventually*, that doesn’t need to be today, after a handful of dates and one PG-13 sleepover.
If things continue well and it becomes really serious, then yeah, confronting the parents would be the better option. Some bigots can be reached, particularly when its through close, personal connections, and the Walkerton parents aren’t actively bigoted, just imagine if someone else called Sal or Walky the N-word in earshot of Linda.
The wacky hijinks are a far, far worse play, no question. But it’s also wacky hijinks, so grab some popcorn and wait for the fireworks.
Oh good, a chance for Sarah to clear things up. See I think Sarah’s problem is that she’s too kind. Raidah used to harass her directly in the past, and now she’s committed to this ongoing character assassination campaign that works really well because she’s getting people to read such cruel and selfish intentions into everything Sarah does and in that light her often drastic and severe actions easily look terrible, and Sarah doesn’t do anything about it “because it would be unkind to talk about Raidah behind her back.”
Now she’s probably going to dismiss Lucy from her life like she has in the past with everyone Raidah has talked to, but I have a hope she’ll try to talk for some reason.
See you can understand why Lucy thinks this, since she has seen little to actually contradict Raidah’s image of her, and while Raidah is a cruel and selfish person and just loves to spread around how terrible Sarah is, it isn’t completely untrue.
Now, the context of those matters is what Raidah leaves out or alters to suit her narrative, Sarah does jettison people who are as Lucy puts it “inconvenient” but not just “I find them mildly annoying.” otherwise she wouldn’t even bother with even interacting with Walky, even if he hangs around Joyce and the rest of them.
What’s more Raidah has the very real, “She tried to break me and my boyfriend up by getting him to want Joyce” which IS true, like, there is not even a way you can spin that in Sarah’s favor besides “Raidah is awful so why should she care” (though Jacobs angency in all this was ignored which is where the issue with that one lies)
Raidah is an awful person, but she is a very good manipulator, keeping true facts and spinning them in a way that makes someone seem irredeemable to another by ommitting some details and having just enough actual ammo to keep it all very believeable.
As they say the best lies have some measure of truth in them.
I do not doubt Sarah will likely try to “jettison” Lucy if she can, probably avoid talking to her since she’s just mirroring Raidah’s words, and Lucy herself is has no reason to assume any of what Raidah said is out of context or exageratted to make her look worse.
I don’t know about “too kind”. She’s been okay doing some petty things to get back at Raidah. I think she’s unwilling to be vulnerable and tell the true story to just anyone, because they might condemn her anyway and that would hurt. It’s easier to say “oh Raidah poisoned you against me with her lies” and act like nothing can be done about it.
I was liking Lucy again, so of course she dans it up. I hope someday that that particular event and the why’s of how it’s been spun out to people gets cleared up to her.
i really don’t remember much about raidah but, was raidah a bad person?
i really don’t know much about that character, other than the fact that the girl that doesn’t like anyone or anything doesn’t like her.
being hated by sarah feels like being hated by squidward.
The voice of truth always has an annoying sound. What kind of advice is it to leave the boy you love because his parents are a mess, even when the boy is the first to be disgusted by them? Sarah seems to be trying really hard to show Lucy that Raidah is totally right!
I mean in the bigger picture here, walky and Lucy are gleefully being truly terrible people on a moral level with the idea of it being the “lesser of two evils”, they definitely deserve each other and this comic included are not at all shown to have complex or multifaceted understanding of the people’s characters or motivations whom they are judging.
As for Sarah, I feel like she should be left alone, but also she’s the one eavesdropping and interjecting with salty opinions where they aren’t wanted.
The swipe at Walky is unnecessary when he’s been pretty consistently standing up for Sarah, but racist parents are not an “inconvenience,” they’re a completely reasonable dealbreaker.
Racist parents could be a dealbreaker for some and I wouldn’t fault them, but I also think it’s admirable to be loyal to your partner despite shitty parents.
Yeah, same with other bigotry. It can be admirable to stay with a partner, but you do NOT have to choose to make yourself a target of bigotry, jokes or cruelty of people that person is in contact with – it is a reasonable dealbreaker that the company someone chooses to keep may suck so badly you nope out.
Walky is obviously not at a stage where he CAN cut contact, and even if this idea is dumb, he came up with it, WITH LUCY, so they are on the same page that it sucks at least, but there’s always a good few posts on reddit about people who are unhappy/miserable, because the company their partner chooses to keep includes possessive friends, bullying relatives or bigots that they brush off as ‘just like that’ and are not on the same page that it sucks.
racist/sexist/homohating parents could be a dealbreaker if their son/daughter keeps ignoring the racism/sexism/homohatred, and expects you to do the same, as if you needed to take every hit and not complain about it.
but i wouldn’t break up with my boyfriend because he has an asshole family member.
Especially since Walky isn’t okay with his parents’ bigotry and is actively giving Lucy outs so that she doesn’t have to deal with it. He’s placing Lucy’s comfort first and foremost, and this (incredibly stupid) scheme that they’re doing is something that Lucy helped come up with.
As is her tradition, Sarah delivers the correct course of action with enough sass, sarcasm, and surliness to ensure that absolutely no one listens to her. Personality trauma aside, she really is a great narrative device.
Agreed. I really wish Sarah would set Lucy straight about the whole Riadah/ roommate situation. But for the sake of the narrative, it probably won’t happen.
Because no one friggin’ asked her. Lucy didn’t turn to Sarah and ask “what do you think of our awesome plan?” Sarah injected herself into a situation for no other reason than she wanted to tell someone that they were wrong.
Like, her opinions on Walky and his parents aren’t out of line, per se- I don’t think they’re *right* but I see where she comes from- but why does she feel the need to share them? Sarah needs to learn to mind her own friggin’ business.
What did Lucy ever do to Sarah? From my perspective, Sarah just showed up because she smelled an opportunity to say that someone is wrong. If Sarah doesn’t want people to validate Raidah’s opinion of her, maybe she should stop acting in a way that makes Raidah look correct.
Lucy blindly accepts Raidahs word because she’s more interested in the idea of a person rather than see them for who they are. Raidah is cool and popular so she MUST be right. Walky is cute and quirky so he MUST be the perfect boyfriend she can love and live happily ever after with. Never mind that there might be some issues she can’t just make go away with a zany scheme.
You all act like Sarah interjecting herself is something horrible, out of line, etc. but Sarah is one of the realist characters in the comic. If she didn’t have some care or concern she would have just walked off. But she sees how messed up all this is and bluntly tells Lucy so she can make a better decision.
And Lucy responds by throwing something extremely personal and hurtful to Sarah right in her face, without a single second thought. Because the “cool kids said so.”
She doesn’t need to blindly accept Raida’s word. Sarah is here to basically provide evidence to suggest Raida is correct.
Note that initially, she just says that Sarah is mean. (which, I mean, she saw Sarah doing some things that really weren’t okay with Joyce) She only brings up the thing Raida says when Sarah suggests she gets rid of Walky because it’s too much work and he sucks anyway.
Lucy doesn’t say it because ‘the cool kids say so’ Lucy says that because Sarah, unprompted, and with Lucy actively making clear that she does NOT consider Sarah a friend, gets in her personal business and suggests she dumps someone Lucy is head over heels with ‘because it’s too much work’
Sarah could have gone to her and said ‘Hey, heard you talked with Raida. You should know everything she said about me is 100 % true, and you should avoid me.’ and it wouldn’t have done as much to give Lucy confirmation about what Raida said as what she did just now.
Is Raida right? No. She is not. But Lucy doesn’t read the comic. She can’t know that. But from her perspective, Sarah is an unpleasant person who doesn’t respect boundaries (including the whole ‘was clearly eavesdropping a convo that wasn’t about her), is cruel to people, badmouths someone she cares deeply about and actively suggests dumping him.
Why on earth would Lucy give Sarah the time of day? Raida or not?
Lucy has been nothing but a cinnamon roll throughout her entire presence in the comic. She’s basing her opinion of Sarah here not just on Raidah’s word, but on her own interactions with Sarah. The last time they interacted, Sarah was making fun of her roommate and closest friend. Sarah will freely admit that her entire personality is built around judging other people.
I don’t hate Sarah, deep down she is a good person who cares for people, but Lucy isn’t wrong at all for being dismissive when Sarah effectively said that Lucy is wrong for liking Walky, not because of his parents, but because of who he is.
Don’t patronize me. I’m making a sweeping generalization and using alternating caps to condescendingly mock people, all without naming one name or replying directly to even one of the people who are allegedly doing the thing I’m mocking.
I mean, you can easily see the comment right above my original one as an example, but I guess because I didn’t technically hit the reply button to single out one person when I know there’s a bunch of weirdos here sharing the same thing makes me weasely, ok.
Sarah, I know you don’t like Walky and he can kind be of a lamewad ranging to occasional dick, but he’s not an abuser or anything. Telling someone you’re not that close with to dump him is inappropriate and rude.
Also, I wonder what Sarah’s going to say if Lucy turns around and tells her Walky stood up for her against Raidah & co with no real prompting or hesitation.
Gosh Sarah, if you overheard the plan, you should have maybe told the people who are going to enact it? It’s a wierd plan, it’s wierd for you to listen in, it’s wierd for you to approach Lucy like this, and it’s a wierd choice of attack: you could have mentioned Amber is his ex if you wanted to be catty or you could have led with empathy if you wanted to be effective but you have gone for maximum wierd ineptitude. It’s like you being asocial is a well established character trait of yours or something.
Upon reading the comments I’m starting to lean towards Sarah is being a jerk in this interaction and Lucy has the right to call her on it.
But…
Lucy isn’t in the process of discarding jerks from her life and/or calling them on there B.S. its only Sarah, because the popular girl told her to.
She’s going to find out the hard way that Raidah is everything she accuses Sarah of being but worse.
I mean…. Sarah’s not wrong. If your partner’s parents are a big part of their life, racism isn’t exactly something that resolves overnight… I’ve had a dear friend go thru that heartbreak 🙁
“Dump your boyfriend” isn’t an argument you wanna throw out there without some weight behind it or knowing your audience. Like, Sarah wants to be a lawyer, she really needs to be smarter about the battles she picks and the tacts she takes.
Sarah, *explain yourself*. She’s echoing Raidah’s perspective because it’s the only one she’s heard. If you don’t explain why you did what you did, she won’t know, and she’ll just keep assuming Raidah was right.
Explaining herself is also a losing move, as long as Raidah is able to spread more lies and half-truths to people. The only long-term solution would be to completely remove their feud as a factor, and neither of them is mature enough to let that happen. It’s unfairah to Sarah to have to be the adult, considering she’s been the victim in this from the start, and Raidah’s such a stuck-up snake that she can’t be trusted to keep any peace under any circumstances.
Or maybe Sarah can just, you know, not act like a jerk most of the time?
Its not that Lucy’s echoing Raidah’s words. It’s that Sarah’s echoing them with her actions, and then blaming Raidah when Lucy says that she’s being a jerk.
I hate Raidah but the fact is that Sarah is someone who has gone to insane and creepy lengths to destroy her life–including using Joyce to break up her long term relationship.
Sarah is great but her actions against Radiah made her the bad guy a long time before she started trying to interject herself into Lucy’s life.
I’m not counting or anything, but there might be more comments claiming other people are saying those things, than there are comments actually saying those things. It usually feels that way.
Can you people read one strip without going directly for each other’s throats like rabid animals? There are real fucking people behind these screen names, for fuck’s sake, and disagreements about the subtleties of webcomic characters aren’t worth this level of hateful bullshit.
It seems kinda weird that at no point has Lucy bothered to just ask Sarah what happened to the old roommate. Like, her interactions with everyone else make me believe she’d want to know the other side of this story before just deciding that Raidah’s story must be the 100% truth and Sarah really did ruin someone’s life over an inconvenience.
Wow. Sarah is visibly holding back tears right now.
Honestly Lucy has been just as blunt as Sarah usually is in this scene. :/ Only, like, she’s new at being blunt and doesn’t know how to navigate people’s boundaries while also being blunt at the same time. (I’ve been there.)
I actually really like Lucy and I only think I just realized that, I was under the impression that I felt neutrally until I actually talked about her. Pls don’t hurt Sarah’s feelings though aaaaaaaa
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“So, Sarah, you’re saying you’re LAZY.”
“I’m saying I know what Sunk Cost Fallacy is.”
Take note Sarah interjects herself into this conversation even though that Lucy, who is friends with everyone, makes it clear she’s not welcome.
Sarah is actually the one giving unsolicited unwanted life criticism to a stranger.
Lucy used to be friendly to her, obsequious and fawning even. Lucy is friends with Sarah’s friends. This new Raidah clone is brand-new to Sarah.
Other than they had breakfast, there’s no Radah-ness.
She just says that Sarah is quick to give up on people, which is literally what Sarah advised for something not Walky’s fault.
Sorry friendo, Lucy did not come to this conclusion independently, she is absolutely echoing Raidah, and Raidah deliberately set this criticism up to make Walky and his connections more accessible to Raidah.
Sarah is abrasive, AND Lucy is uncritically aping a vacuous position opined by a self-interested sophisticate.
Ironically, jettisoning people when they’re inconvenient is totally a thing that Raidah does. Ask what happened to her former cronies. Wait what’ll happen to the utterly bland Carl. I wish any of the main characters would notice this.
The disappearance of Char and Chan does need to be addressed at some point…
Well, Char literally called Dina the R-slur, that may have something to do with it.
And then months later they weren’t seen hanging around with Raidah any more.
My assumption is they’re still Raidah’s cronies, they’re just being kept at arm’s length for the Jennifer scheme. Probably weren’t capable of faking it well enough.
Re: R-slur and jettisoning Sarah, Raidah still seems to be stuck on the grade-school definition of bigotry where it “doesn’t really count” as bigotry unless it involves slurs or deliberate cruelty. Apathy and ignorance? Just avoid slurs and that’s good enough. 😑
Thing is, Lucy’s right. I mean not about this idea, this idea is a disaster, but ditching a guy cause his parents you haven’t even met yet are an apparent problem would be pretty crappy. Radiah might not have been on the nose on purpose, but here, now, her words are actually accurate.
Except that “dicthing a guy” was the last of Sarah’s suggestions, the first being “confront them yourself, if he really matters that much to you.”
So Lucy is completely wrong here.
Sarah mentioned confronting them as her first suggestion, but then went on the that the even *better* idea is to ditch Walky, and she kept on going on about that as her main focus.
So what does it matter that ditching him wasn’t her first suggestion, when it was the suggestion she herself argues is the best suggestion?
you’re clearly missing Sarah’s fucking point here, you’re either as naive as Lucy, or you’re misinterpreting what a character you dislike is saying despite her being 1000% correct, just like many others in this comment section.
fighting to remain with a partner who will not confront their bigoted parents about their views when push comes to shove is a dumb and bad idea because they clearly don’t care or love you enough to put their relationship with their parents at risk for you, and this doesn’t even have to apply with parents, this also applies with friends too.
you also clearly missed the part where Sarah said that if he matters that much to her, she needs to be the one that confronts them for him if he’s too chickenshit to do it himself.
I mean Walky is. That’s why they have a zany plan.
Your interpretation of Sarah’s words isn’t in the text, it’s just your interpretation.
There’s nothing in Sarah’s words about Walky not confronting his bigoted parents about their views when push comes to shove, there’s a lot about it’d being better to ditch him because the current situation is “so much trouble” and requires “all this work”.
She doesn’t tell Lucy to find a guy who will stand up more to his parents, she tells her to find a guy who doesn’t have shitty racist parents in the first place.
Some would argue that this terrible, terrible plan is confronting them with their own biases.
Also, it’s been two weeks at this point. They’ve known each other, not terribly well, for most of a semester. Dealing with racist parents is a big ask at any time, and for a fledgling relationship, it might not be worth the pain or effort. It’s not like they’ve been committed for a year, or they’re living together, or share a child, or anything like that. I take Sarah’s point because if the parents are a dealbreaker- understandable- then there’s really no need to go through a whole huge messy painful thing after a couple of dates and some limerence.
I agree that the point is “confront them yourself” and “If your boyfriend isn’t willing to defend you, then he’s too much trouble for what he’s worth”.
Walky, at this point, is a very shallow creature. He even acknowledges it himself.
> but ditching a guy cause his parents you haven’t even met yet are an apparent problem would be pretty crappy.
Would it, though? He’s someone you’ve been dating for a few weeks, at most, and you have only even known for a few months. And now you’ve learned that his parents will never fully accept you, and if you and your boyfriend were to eventually have children, you would have to navigate the issue that one set of their grandparents would resent them for being blacker than their “generically beige” father. Even if Walky were to cut his parents out of his life completely, that’s still a level of fuss that you aren’t obligated to take on.
No. But it is in fact jettisoning somebody because their inconvenient. So again what is Lucy saying that’s wrong?
OTOH, it’s a college relationship only a couple weeks in. Should you really be basing your plan for the next weeks on how his parents might treat potential children years in the future?
And Sarah is doing nothng but reinforce that narrative by invoking Raidah every time someone calls her on her bullshit.
Sarah has suffered the terrible curse of the worst person she knows making a great point. It seems like in the specific case Raidah is mad about Sarah was in the right; but it also seems like Raidah caught on to a pattern in Sarah…
She’s repeating Raidah’s exact words when talking about Sarah.
Not getting defensive and parroting “Raidah got to you too” every time someone sounds like Raidah would probably help Sarah’s case.
This isn’t “sounding like”, this is verbatim quoting.
She is. Because Sarah is working very hard to confirm what Raidah said.
Raida says ‘Sarah Jettisons people’
Sarah says ‘Walky is a loser, too much effort, best thing to do is just get someone else’ (Sarah does not actually jettison people who are too much effort, or she’d have jettisoned Joyce. Lucy has no way of knowing this)
Lucy is reminded of the warning Raida gave her, apparently confirmed here, and yes, uses that language.
And Sarah deciding that this is all Raida’s fault without going ‘am I being a jerk’? is not in her favor either.
I like Sarah mind you, she’s a good person at heart. But she has her flaws, and those are in full display here. Lucy is absolutely right to rebuke her.
Lucy and Walky’s plan is still a terrible plan for various reasons though.
Because Sarah is literally doing the thing those words describe.
Raidah was lying, but Sarah is suggesting it right now.
Close, but not quite. Sarah is recommending Lucy do the thing those words describe. She, herself, has only ever ‘jettisoned’ one person (Dina), and that was actually not the intention of her actions (she just wanted Dina to get some goddamned therapy, and Dina’s other ‘friends’, such as Raidah, were utterly fucking worthless on that front).
If Sarah were ~actually~ as willing to jettison difficult or troublesome people as everyone accuses her of being, she and Joyce wouldn’t even be on speaking terms.
Not quite related, but is it just me who wishes I’d gotten unsolicited life advice more often? Like, I’d make a dumb mistake (because too damn autistic to notice someone isn’t trustworthy, or too unaware of my own behaviour), and months after it all crashed and burned and I’m finally somewhat recovered, my so-called friends finally start mentioning how it was obvious to them that it was a bad idea… Why didn’t you tell me?! Like, I might or might not have listened, but I’d gotten the chance to at least consider things! ><
my family did this a lot and it drove me crazy 🙁
friends and family haven’t the same standpoint. Family think they know your needs when all they know is how you liked pony when you were 12 y.o. hence should find someone owning a riding school and an equestrian facility. Friends thinks they know your needs when all they know is what you told them. Some people need advice (note I don’t say guidance), some people will brush them off, really really few of them would be broken by a heartfelt point of view on a situation. Especially when it’s about a “SO” that’s been there for less than a trimester.
Not just you. There were a few times that I might have benefitted enormously from timely advice, or information that I lacked. Much better than figuring out what I should’ve done, years too late.
I mean, if that advice was delivered in a relevant and non-hostile way, it might be helpful, I don’t know
the vast majority of the unsolicited life advice I’ve received is stuff like “you should try [something that won’t help/is too expensive/relates to an entirely thing]” or “lose weight!”
(the second one isn’t really “advice” per se but people insist it is)
point is, if you’re in a position where people want to give you a lot of unsolicited advice it’s probably going to be crap
sarah’s falling into a common problem with advice here; she doesn’t back it up with good reasoning and includes an insult
“this is a bad idea” is fair
“here’s what I would do” is less helpful! it doesn’t inherently demonstrate why you should do a different thing and sarah doesn’t add that
and finally “your bf sucks” is just an insult in this context (walky’s not abusive or a cheater or anything he’s just not very cool or mature), even if sincerely meant, tbh
so, like, B for effort, D for content on sarah’s part but then most unsolicited advice fails to do better
just say “this plan will make everything worse and probably piss off walky’s sister immensely” sarah, jeez
In this case though where was Sarah to interject common sense before Walky and Amber walked off? It’s more like a prequel to I told you so than actually stopping the idiocy.
From friends? Sure. From some person I just recently meant I’ve seen be nothing but mean who also insults my boyfriend? Fuck right off
might be a cultural norm or stigma, i imagine growing up in an asian community/neighborhood all teh aunties/uncles will comment on every little thing, but for some white ppl i’ve noticed, some get snippy with each other for ‘unsolicited’ advice or so, or ppl just doubling down out of spite even if said advice is good (or like, some cases where “can i ask for advice?” even if they may have wanted a 2nd opinion they usually go along with their first thought/already decided and unchanged by it or so)
And it depends on what kinda stuff it is, ppl are extra sensitive about relationships as well like “oh you shouldn’t date him/tehy seem like a bad influence” and then it’s like Michael Scott Voice: “You know what?I ‘m going to date her even harder” or so
/Some/ ppl might be grateful in retrospect but a lot get kinda …uppity? if someone steps in with some life choices and such liek “you had no right to do that” (tho advice is diff than just steering/making decisions for you)
Wouldn’t be surprised if there were a handful of books/vids like “how to be a person” and social skills and stuff but there’s prolly an equal amount of underhanded/manipulative ppl that try to take advantage of ppl who they think is an easy target
So, C.T. Phipps. You’re saying Sarah shouldn’t speak when someone’s making a stupid mistake? She has to shut up and walk away? She’s surrounded by freshman. She’d never be permitted to speak again.
Why should Sarah carah in the first place? The closest thing she’s got to a dog in this fight is that Lucy talked to Raidah, who Sarah doesn’t get along with, and that’s such a loose connection a stiff breeze could sever it.
There’s a scene in Mass Effect where Shepard overhears a couple talk about whether they should give their child genetic therapy. Shepard, out of the blue, walks up and gives them advice. It’s incredibly weird and creepy. So is Sarah listening in and giving unsolicited relationship advice to someone she doesn’t like and doesn’t like her back.
There’s “You should dump your boyfriend because I’m not attracted to him” and then there’s “Hey, I’m a respected public figure and I happen to have relevant information about this thing that’s actually pretty fucking important to your kid’s future in this futuristic sci-fi setting”.
“someone she doesn’t like and doesn’t like her back” they were friends up until like, earlier this morning. this isnt “sarah walking up to a random person and giving them unsolicited life advice” it’s “sarah walking up to someone she considers her friend and telling her her bad plan is a bad plan”. i also think lucy doesnt “make it clear she is not welcome” but instead is just like. making passive aggressive comments, which again, she only started doing a few hours ago. after she had breakfast with raidah where raidah made essentially those exact same passive aggressive comments.
Walky isn’t a sunk cost. At no point has Walky shown any sign that he feels that his relationship with his parents is more important than his relationship with Lucy. The wacky hijinks plan is dumb for a variety of reasons, but it was one formed in conjunction with Lucy, not one he’s forcing upon her, and with the goal of getting his parents to better accept him dating Lucy.
Chasing a sunk cost would be like spending $20,000 on repairs for a 20 year old car that’s been in four accidents. This would be like getting a brand new car because your current, newish one has a broken taillight.
Hell, not even the broken tail light thing. It’s like abandoning your car in a parking lot because your CD is done playing and now the car is quiet.
I’m imagining from Sarah’s point of view, Walky seems to be an energy sink
She DID pointlessly(?) endure THREE “dates” with him to even GET to the “bone zone”
So me imagining Lucy as sounding like Dr. Mrs. The Monarch from Ventures Bros. is inaccurate, huh?
Probably, unless Raidah has a voice so low it’s beyond the range of human hearing.
Or Raidah sounds like Dr Mrs The Monarch confirmed?
A lot of families irrationally hate their in-laws.
I had to cut my mother out of my life for almost ten years because she never quite believed I’d choose my wife over her.
These two are getting along just fine!
Sarah notably starts up the conversation after making it clear she was eavesdropping.
All the better to (with any good luck) shorten the conversation. Sarah being allergic to people.
https://imgur.com/a/A0aRsBj
Joyce’s polyamory.
Drew this a while back and now making it public.
Ah, there is an alternate universe where Joyce embraces the chad lady killer we all know is lurking inside her. Probably the same universe where Walky and Billie fuck on the reg. Yup, it all checks out.
Love it!
Fantastic, we can only imagine what hi-jinks occurred before they all fell asleep.
All-night Dexter & Monkey Master marathon?
Joyce loves it, Dorothy and Becky bond over being able to quote episodes at each other. Dina gets hung up on how the monkeys that Monkey Master uses as ammunition can possibly still be alive.
Sarah says “I hate that you all got me into this” all the way to the convention. (The group cosplay is lovely, and the other four are sworn to secrecy about whose idea it was.)
This is really fantastic, honestly. Do you have a dA or tumblr or anything? Just since I do love your art and sometimes wish there was like, a place to go to look at it in case I miss it in the comments.
seconding this
yotomoe1 on twitter. Though I rarely post there. And I never post my DOA art there.
Is there anywhere good to find your DOA art, or just go through all the old comics comments sections hoping to find them? Iirc you did a whole Walky x Billie/Jennifer comic a while ago but I don’t know if there’s anywhere where it’s all in one spot, for example.
You know, I already shipped Dorothy and Joyce, and then loved the idea of them joining Becky and Dina for a cute poly romance…but the addition of Sarah is a perfection I didn’t know I needed until now.
You won Yotomoe, now my improbable endgame is Joyce/Dorothy/Becky/Dina/Sarah.
nice lol i don’t think i could sleep comfortably like that but even a platonic group sleepover with friends would be fun
😍😍😍 Thank you this looks awesome Porn Lord Yoto!
Aww, heckin adorable!
You are my hero.
This is super cute, I always like seeing your art from this alt universe where the gang are more sexually fluid and active
Lord, I’m making a request: please, make this cannon. Amen.
I actually don’t like this from Lucy. She’s turning out to be kind of fickle in her opinion of people. One comment from Raidah really turned her against Sarah quick. Not that Sarah’s particularly likable, but stil….
It’s almost like everybody in the world is hypocritical at times.
Sarah basically walks up to her and says she should dump her boyfriend because of his parents.
She’s on her worst behavior with Lucy without the excuse of them being friends or roommates.
Thiiiiiiis.
I think Lucy’s too harsh on Sarah by a little, but this strip? This is not a case of it, Sarah’s waaaaaay over the line with the “you should just dump him because his parents are racist assholes” line.
…Lucy should still confront them herself instead of going into the wacky hijinks territory, but more than one person can be wrong at a time.
Just a PSA for the young folks: It’s ok to dump someone. You don’t even have to have a big, fancy reason. Just wanting to, or a feeling is enough. There are so, so many fish in the sea.
I fall in the camp of Sarah has a good point, but is as blunt as the baseball bat she wields. It’s not a sin to suggest that the guy Lucy has been on three dates with, who Sarah knows rather well, is not the guy for her and comes with too much unresolved baggage.
Yeah, its fine to dump someone, dating is an At Will status, no need for there to be a reason.
But pushing that option to someone else is a much more difficult line, especially when the amount of baggage that Walky has is that he doesn’t want to get up on his racist parents at the first gate.
It’d be one thing for Sarah to just say “you could always dump him”. But going beyond that to really advocating for that move is just too far.
I mean, sure, in the sense that nobody is owed your time and affection this is true. In the sense that you have no obligation to continue a relationship. However dumping someone can harm them and possibly yourself (heartbreak is real and it sucks), and it’s not really reversible, so I think it is a big decision that deserves a lot of thought and being careless about it is a dick move. In general I think a careless attitude towards dating is pretty bad for everyone involved.
Sarah may not be “friends” with Lucy (mostly because she does not really have friends at all). But she has familiarity with walky (remember there was a night that Joyce walky and Dorothy spent the night in Joyce’s bed). Also, Lucy has inserted herself into the residence life of Sarah’s building and has had many one on one and group interactions with Sarah. Probably more than enough to consider them more than “casual strangers”.
How much did she and Sarah actually interact prior to this, and how much of that was just Sarah being a bongo to her.
She used to kiss Sarah ass and suddenly she’s a popular-girl viper mindlessly repeating someone else’s exact words. Sarah’s not the one playing a trick on parents and being viciously cruel to a girl with obvious problems.
Lucy is aggressively friendly in general, even to people who openly despise her.
Yeah she’s taking Raidah at her word. Sarah is also advising her to do basically exactly what Raidah accused her of doing.
Can you remind me of when Lucy “used to kiss Sarah’s ass”? Because I don’t remember anything like that at all.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-11/02-look-straight-ahead/overfriendly/ from their first? meeting sarah was snarky about her joining tho lucy didn’t really seem esp bothered
I feel like she’s been having a morning walk/hangout with not just Sarah but the whole morning walk group for at least a few weeks. She met Raidah and had exactly one fancy brunch with her and suddenly she’s quoting her to Sarah, referencing a situation she knows fuck all about. I like Lucy as a character, so I’m willing to give her some benefit of the doubt, but this one moment ain’t a great look.
And knowing Sarah, how much of that time was spent seeing Sarah actually be nice to anybody?
In that same day she’s seen Sarah mortify Joyce by commenting on her masturbation habits in public for the lolz, and now he sees Sarah insult her boyfriend and recommend she ditch him.
Perhaps Sarah should stop being an asshole to people.
Well, exactly: she hasn’t known Sarah for long and hasn’t done more than chat a bit in her presence. She hasn’t had time or opportunity to see that Sarah’s default abrasive-misanthrope behavior is not all there is.
Sarah know Walky rather well, long than Lucy has. She know him well enough to know this is a stupid plan. She knows that while Walky has grown, he still falls back on ignoring/avoiding his own problems, and may not be up to the task of standing up to his parents for her. She doesn’t like that Lucy is avoiding confronting the problem directly, and tells her so.
Not helping Sarah’s cause that she has just been proving Raidah right, from what Lucy can see.
Generally, shit talking the SO of someone who loves said SO will get a much harsher response
Raidah twisted the knife, but Sarah’s honestly not really made that difficult with how often her advice to people is patronizing them or cynically telling them to abandon all hope and go live in the woods or something.
Walky didn’t seem sold, but I get why he had more reason to see Raidah as dubious than Lucy does, given Raidah’s treatment of Dorothy, someone whom he has immensely more respect for.
Lucy’s always wanted to be a Mean Girl.
I don’t think that’s true. I think she belees she’s in the right because she doesn’t realize she’s missing context for what Raidah told her about Sarah.
Lucy was worshipping Alpha bongo Jennifer’s every move for how long? Lucy absolutely has some Popular Girl Can Do No Wrong bullshit in her.
This. Lucy is a follower.
To be fair, it wasn’t one comment from Raidah.
It was a conversation with Raidah and that guy who suddenly appeared at breakfast AND Jennifer who said Sarah “basically” confirmed what Raidah said, and Lucy definitely trusts Jennifer to know what she’s talking about (for some reason I don’t fully understand).
So it’s 2.5 to 4 people confirming it, depending on how you count Jennifer’s statement that Sarah confirmed it.
And Sarah hasn’t set her straight, yet while being mean twice today.
Lucy is still wrong, but she doesn’t have the context we have, and the context she does have, from multiple sources, does support her understanding.
Really, I think it’s probably better for Sarah to not clarify what happened every time Raidah’s plastic ass tells somebody a lie. Everyone’s always on about who “owes” or doesn’t owe somebody some interpersonal information anyhow.
I think Raidah knows and counts on living in Sarah’s head rent free. It only strengthens her case.
I don’t disagree.
But, if Sarah ever complains about Lucy misunderstanding or misjudging her, at that time, she’ll only have herself to blame for not clarifying.
If she doesn’t care that she’s being misunderstood or misjudged, then it’s not on her.
I figure even if Sarah does care about that, she doesn’t have any need to give her side to every single person who comes sniffing up her ass about things that aren’t their business. Lucy’s got literally no reason to hold the Dana thing against Sarah. She wasn’t there, she wasn’t affected, and it has no bearing on her life. Throwing it in her face is about the most childish, pointless shit possible.
Some people are bothered by the principle of things.
In fact most people have principles they deem important.
It’s usually only of what they are and to what degree.
So people don’t have to necessarily be personally affected to be bothered by stuff.
Being bothered is fine, within certain boundaries. Taking things so personally when you were never a factor at all isn’t just crossing that boundary, it’s inappropriate too. We’re not entitled to the drama of other people’s pasts.
the fact of the matter is Lucy doesn’t know the situation, so her “principles” on it are pretty flawed, and probably shouldn’t be the basis of her judgement.
If her principle is “you don’t abandon your friends because they’re inconvenient” then her principle isn’t flawed, only her knowledge of the event causing her to apply said principle to Sarah is.
If, for example since it’s part of this arc though not part of this situation, you’re anti racist, and you go off on someone for being racist, and it turns out that you were mistaken and the person wasn’t racist, being anti racist isn’t the flaw, your misinformation is the flaw.
I personally think that, given what she said, Sarah deserved that verbal slap. I’d have said worse even if Sarah was my friend, ESPECIALLY if Sarah was a friend.
So if one of your friends pisses you off with unwanted advice, you’re deliberately going to use emotional traumas against them to hurt them and twitch every knife you can find? Eesh.
Y’know, there’s a lot of words for folks that deliberately gather every bit of personal ammo they can find so they can unleash it whenever you invoke their ire. Friend isn’t actually one of them.
It’s amazing how people think that walking up to someone, insulting them and their boyfriend is somehow “giving unwanted advice”. Being a bongo isn’t “being painfully honest”. It’s just being a bongo.
Sarah’s not exactly giving her much to go off of. She’s basically proving Raidah right, she’s never been friendly to Lucy and the more she’s included into the circle the more Sarah has been nothing but mean and now she’s straight up telling her to drop Walky for his parents being inconvenient to her. Of course it was easy for Lucy to turn on her, Sarah has never been a nice person with lots of friends and Raidah(Who takes painstaking measures to hide her horribleness)shows up and basically gives her the backstory on why Sarah is a friendless misanthrope.
I’m not sure how that makes Lucy look bad, she’s basically having everything said to her affirmed. Lucy doesn’t know what we know about Sarah, all she knows is she’s a person who derives great pleasure from being mean to the few friends she has and that’s her being NICE. Lucy is wrong, but she is not being given a lot to make her second guess what she’s been told and lbr, if Sarah was real it’d probably happen like this too. She’s not exactly the person you’d want to be around to dig into her personality deeper.
Raidah: “Sara’s the kinda purpose who ditches you because your inconvenient”
Sarah: Your boyfriends parents are inconvenient. Ditch him. What’s wrong with you? And this guy you like? He’s crap anyway.
From Lucy’s perspective, why WOULDN’T she be thinking back to Raidah, who’s being proved right at this very moment?
Nah this is completely justifiable. Lucy is very friendly and very perceptive. She’s been ha ging out with them a while building a connection. Sarah has been prickly rude and snappish and openly critical and raidah pointed out her flaws that Lucy already noticed. Lucy tried being aggressively kind and deferential to Sarah hoping to befriend her because of how happy Joyce was with her but she’s seen none of the good in Sarah honestly Joyce walky Dorothy and such wouldn’t be friends with Sarah if she hadn’t saved Joyce from daterape and been kidnapped they’re trauma bonded not actual friends it feels like
I mean it’s a stupid idea to get back at your parents with Three’s Company hijinks but Lucy is absolutely right to point out that Sarah’s just being her usual bitter self and pushing people away because it’s easy. Lucy isn’t like that and she has every right to point out that’s a real bongo move.
No Raidah has an agenda
Lucy calls you out on your shit Sarah
Lucy has absolutely no idea what the context is, and is simply parroting Raidah. Also, Raidah would 10000% talk shit about Lucy to Walky’s parents.
Lucy has absolutely no idea why she’s saying what she is saying, minus the face value stuff.
Which doesn’t change the fact that Sarah’s proving Raidah right at this moment
Anything Sarah says that’s not a detailed explanation of the Dana scenario would “prove Raidah right”, though. That’s the point of Raidah spinning it the way she does, to either alienate Sarah if she doesn’t explain herself to everyone who ever being it up, or to exhaust her from repetition if she does. There’s no win condition, and I figure Sarah isn’t attached enough to the emotions and opinions of unrelated people to give much of a damn if she never sees them again.
Ever *brings. Brings. That’s a word, phone.
Raidah is doing the very real-life tactic of “talk shit, don’t confront”.
Lucy’s gonna feel like shit if she ever learns the full story behind that remark.
i hope not. Lucy hasn’t said anything Sarah hasn’t specifically invited with her words or actions in Lucy’s presence.
Why would she? Learning the backstory of her and Raidah wouldn’t change the fact that Sarah’s being a bongo right then and there.
It’s false information. Sarah is out of line, but quoting a lie specifically crafted to hurt her isn’t justified. I’m really confused why this is just okay. I was even on Lucy’s side reading this until she said that, but this isn’t a righteous clap back. It’s kind of just Lucy being a puppet of Raidah. How are people not upset at how this diminishes Lucy? Maybe I’m reading to much into it.
I’m confused that you’re confused. Sarah is suggesting the thing Raidah told Lucy she’d do. And reacting badly to Lucy invoking her in her clapback. Not sure why Lucy knowing Raidah’s also a bongo (frankly, I’m pretty sure Lucy already picked up on that) would change her reaction here, but I’m listening if you’ve got an explanation.
I don’t think Lucy’s picked up on Raidah at all. I think Walky has, but he’s always been decent at reading people. Lucy kind of feels naive. She’s been hanging with Sarah and the larger group for weeks. She even changed up her schedule, just to follow them. I feel like she knows most of Sarah’s deal now. Sarah was abrasive the first moment they met and that hasn’t changed. What’s changed is that now Lucy’s got an in with the “popular” group and somehow their opinion means more than maybe checking her info with people who hang with Sarah or Sarah herself. I agree Sarah deserves to be checked, she has dipped into being more malicious in her teasing and comments post winter break, but Lucy isn’t doing that. She’s parroting nonsense other people told her too. She could easily have said “don’t comment on my relationship.” Lucy doesn’t even have to be nice about it. Instead she’s weaponized rumor bullshit, and Sarah won’t be the last. Raidah also has beef with Joyce. I wonder what will be planted at their next group date.
…. yes it absolutely would.
Raidah has an agenda
Raidah agends (the verb form of agenda)
Raidah is an agender.
Diversity win.
Raidah has an agenda. Part of that agenda is exactly this – turn people against Sarah.
Sarah there’s like…a dozen reasons offhand that this is dumb as hell and I don’t know why you didn’t address those first.
Because she doesn’t like Walky and is basically dismissing him as not worth it.
Rightfully so.
Yeah, Walky doing all that… stuff he did? Like, no really, what has Walky done thus far that’d make Lucy’s interest in him a bad idea? They’ve been having a pretty wonderful time together.
Because Walky’s goofiness is not appealing to Sarah’s character, so she finds him annoying (as a lot of the characters do).
Nor is his height appealing.
Probably also his hygiene.
But those aren’t negatives to Lucy (except probably the hygiene).
I’m wondering if the reason they break up is because Lucy brags about how she told Sarah off and Walky is all “uh, Raidah and those people are fake”.
I feel like Lucy’s not really dedicated to bagging on Sarah or girlcrushing on Raidah. I’m pretty sure her response to that would be “So basically, they are both mean people? We’re just caught in a mean crossfire I guess.”
I agree. Lucy has responded to Sarah in her face, but hasn’t laid on anything either outside Sarah’s presence or to anyone other than Sarah herself. Similarly there’s a distinct lack of ‘Raidah says’ repetitions or any real mentions of Raidah outside of HER presence.
Lucy got a head’s up about a person, who is 2 for 2 in proving said head’s up reasonable and correct.
Nothing. Walky’s cool but he is kind of a dweeb and a slob. Sarah kind of digs on tall jocks. The opposite of Walky and his personality definitely clashes with hers. Makes sense she doesn’t like him.
He’s a lazy idiot who needs his hand held to make sure he showers every day. His only redeeming factor is that he’s supposedly hot as tits. His effort to payoff ratio is abysmal and in spite all of her own baggage Lucy could do better.
Expecting people to shower every day is both ableist and wasteful.
I can’t tell if that’s a real opinion or not.
With 12 billion people on this planet, it’s probably somebody’s.
Personally, I don’t shower every day because it’s not something I need to do. Maybe other people need to, idk.
Taffy I positively must know where the other four billion people are.
I mean, it’s my opinion, sure.
Showering daily IS wasteful of water. And there are many people (including those in my close family) who have a lot of trouble showering or bathing, due to disabilities.
I agree with what Taffy said, 100%.
But there’s actually only just under 8 billion humans on the planet. (Probably well over 12 billion “people,” though, depending on your definition of “person”.)
As an autistachu I can barely function without a daily shower 🥺
The 12 billion thing was a random large number I threw out, but to justify it, I’ll go ahead and count my girlfriend as the other 4 billion, because I’d happily sacrifice about half the planet’s population if it meant she’d be safe.
Are the 4 billion on the do-nothing track or the flip-the-lever track?
They’re on the track that glasses a large portion of the planet.
My apologies.
I should have been more specific.
I didn’t mean that people who need to shower every day are wasteful.
I just meant that placing an *expectation* on people to shower every day, even if the showering people DON’T actually need to shower daily, tends to waste water.
What feels wasteful is when a person doesn’t actually need a daily shower but only does it because others expect them to.
That was what I meant.
I’m sorry: I didn’t mean to come across as condemning of anyone who does shower daily.
Sometimes my words come out wrong and lack context or nuance.
No worries, on a multicultural frontier, misunderstandings are better off treated as the rule, not the exception. 🙂
Redeeming factors that we have seen multiple times on-screen…
1) Highly intelligent (and occasionally perceptive).
2) Willing to fight-a-bongo if he believes there’s just cause, such as “You’re the person who sent my sister to jail!” even if he believes there’s absolutely no way in hell that he’ll win the fight.
3) Sticks up to friends & family for things that he considers ‘right’.
4) Has a sense of humor, even if rather immature.
*HONESTLY* What does Walky have to do for people to stop acting like a rotten banana peel yanked off their shoe is better than him? From a perspective of looking at personal character (and character growth), of the male members of the cast? He’s quite probably #2 behind JOE! Possibly #3 behind Danny as well…. but? Danny and Joe have both been undergoing tremendous growth as well.
Some people in the commentariat really loathe this poor dude, and it’s so saddening. He’s willing to learn and change, no matter how difficult or personally uncomfortable, because he wants to do right by the people he lo– oh.
Kinda like what happens with Danny, isn’t it?
It is funny how the commentariat so often stands up for the worst male characters, while just shitting on the flawed, but basically decent ones.
Thinking especially of Mike and of early Joe here.
I dunno, Mike might have been a terrible one-dimensional human being, but I sure enjoyed reading him when he was on screen. Walky is too realistic. Reminds me of the man children who wanted me (and other women) to mommy them in college. I probably would keep away from both of them if they were real people. OMG… I just realized I dated Walky and then he dated two of my other friends after me. He was pasty white and an only child, but… same person. Oh no.
(I would probably find Joe hot and exchange witty banter but never actually get to know him in any sense of the word. But I’ve never met anyone like Joe or Mike or Ethan or even Danny, just Walky. Joe features prominently in regency romances though, so he seems familiar.)
ngl i’d tag along just to watch but i suppose it’s good that someone’s telling them it’s a bad idea, even if they won’t change their minds
So wait is Lucy talking like Kate Bush in “Wuthering Heights”, or like a excessively cutesy anime character?
She’s a baritone. It’s just that Raidah is a bass.
Gilbert. Gottfried.
I thought anime character at first. But now I can’t get Gadget from the rescue rangers out of my head :/
Uh-oh. Lucy pushed the Dana button.
She shouldn’t have done that.
popcorn.gif
You know, I do hate that Raidah’s done the spin, but I also don’t think Lucy’s retort here, in and of itself, is off-base. It’s just bullshit in the context of Sarah’s handling of her ex-roommate, who was spiraling and completely indifferent to taking Sarah down with her.
Odds on Sarah diffusing this by mentioning that Raidah would throw Lucy under the bus if it suited her?
Hardly none.
it does look bad when raidah tells it and Jennifer did more or less back it up so Lucy has no reason/hasn’t seen much of sarah’s ‘good side’ to give her teh benefit of the doubt
But other than a casual fling, even with someone with less baggage than walky, more or less you also kinda sign up to deal with the ‘bad’ aspects of a relationship or offer comfort/support even if you don’t directly help someone through it d,depending on what it is
Tho understandable if bad parents/them just disliking you is where you’d draw the line because you’d have to deal with that the rest of the marriage if they do get together in that way
Completely deserved.
Which part is completely deserved and who deserves it completely? Can we at least get a pronoun?
Sarah deserved it.
Still can’t get how people are so put off by Sarah saying “ditch someone whose shit you can’t managed” deadpan half joking, as her cynical character who pretends not to care -fake as we know, while it’s 1/ perfectly reasonable to take it as a joke 2/ perfectly reasonable as a general advice not to be willing to go through much shit for someone you’re “dating” (this word) for so short a time 3/in the context of manipulating three other people, one of which has multiple traumas to work on, some about the two (shitty) others even
tl;dr: vaguely cynical general words vs setting unhealthy manipulation in motion debate
I mean, I like Sarah. And obviously, the plan is romcom shenanigans dumb. But she is definitely messing up here.
1: Getting involved in the first place. Neither Walky nor Lucy are friends of her. Why was she listening, why is she getting involved?
2: Implicitly talking down to Lucy as being a coward with the ‘I would confront them myself’
3: Suggesting that if a romantic interest has ‘trouble’ you should just pick someone else, rather than try to deal with it. (Which is not a great thing to say someone still in a full on crush AND is actively suggesting that what Raidah told Lucy is right) It’s not even ‘you can’t manage’ It is ‘find someone who’s less trouble’ It suggests to not even try.
4: Toss an insult at the guy who Lucy is crushing on for flavor.
I can’t say I detect is as a joke. And even if someone would say this as a joke, it would very much be ‘Not funny, and kind of assholish’.
I like Sarah. She’s a good person at heart. She can also, regularly, be an absolute asshole.
They both go by she. How would that help?
It wouldn’t.
They could have been talking about Sara’s shit-talking Walky at the end as completely deserved. That at least gets one of … four? People brought up individually as identifiable by a pronoun.
Weird sense of vindication that I was right about Lucy’s voice.
*plays “All We Want Is Your Soul” by Classroom 3000 on hacked muzak*
Blotto has just the song for what Sarah is telling Lucy to do:
“It’s Not You”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWcFZSSeQX8
Is it weird that Lucy sounds like Pinky Pie in my mind?
Tara Strong voices Twilight Sparkle, Timmy Turner, Powerpuff Bubbles and now Lucy
i would think she’d sound like a younger starfire but with out hte ‘accent’/broken english lol
So, de-aged Princess Bubblegum?
Lucy sounds like Numbuh 5 to me
The Australian guy? I mean, fair enough.
Nah, Wally’s Numbah 4
Fun fact: Numbah 5 in Kids next door is voiced my Cree Summer is probably the most prolific black voice actress ever. Widely known as “the black girl” in most every western cartoon from the 90’s and 00’s, still working to this day. She was Kida in Atlantis, Susie in Rugrats, Numbah 5 of course, and a niche favorite of mine exo female race in Bungie’s Destiny IP. If DoA ever got an animation deal she would likely be one of the black girls.
Makes sense to me! =)
For all those taking Sarah’s side, I point out Sarah literally advised Lucy to dump Walky for the fact that his parents are bad.
Walky should dump Lucy because she’s just as much of a ruthless social climber as his mom.
I dont think Lucy as a social climber but a people pleaser nor is she ruthless.
Yeah, I get Sarah’s own pessimism about things, but I think so many of her problems tend to be caused by her projecting it onto others, especially in a carelessly curt fashion. Like, there’s advice, and there’s being a wet blanket that reeks of piss.
She did also mention confronting them, she just preferred her more anti-social method.
Both are in the wrong here.
I’m not saying Lucy should dump Walky because his parents are bad, but I am saying his parents are racist, have already indicated that want minimal contact with Lucy, and if Lucy wants to be really serious with Walky, then there’s going to be more conflict. And either she and Walky will need to be on the same page about this, up to and including the fact that he might need to go no-contact with his parents who are currently paying his tuition, or she will forever be the despised girlfriend of Walky’s who will be scapegoated for everything wrong with Walky.
I don’t think Sarah’s point is said here from a point of meanness, I think as a black woman she is trying to advise Lucy that she either needs to position herself as Walky’s equal and confront this sort of thing WITH him, or should dump him for her own emotional and mental well-being. Walky isn’t a bad person, but his parents are, and if Lucy were to dump him over their treatment of her, that wouldn’t be wrong?
Also, shenanigans like this are hardly the best way to handle this situation, which is also Sarah’s point.
And if she’d said any of that instead of ‘hey stupid, dump your boyfriend yesterday, he’s SO much work and I personally think he’s worthless’ she might actually have made an impression other than ‘oh here’s Sarah being a bongo as per usual’.
Yep because that’s exactly what Sarah said here.
(whoops, accidental flag)
I mean. Yes. That is kind of the obvious way to take this.
1: Your idea is stupd (Fair! It absolutely is)
2:You should confront the parents yourself (Is one of the possible solutions, but kinda jerkish to force someone into an emotioanlly fraught confrontation they might not be ready for)
3: Suggests that a better option is not to try but to pick someone who’s ‘less trouble’, in a way that suggests you really shouldn’t be expected too put too much effort in. If she said ‘Look, I know you like him, but I’m thinking you’re setting yourself up for a world of heartache. You sure you like him this much?’ that would come across as a lot different than ‘better find a new man who’s not so much trouble’
4: “As a bonus, he’s not Walky”, is unambiguously Sarah denigrating Walky.
So… I mean, yeah. It kinda is what Sarah said here. Now Sarah often TALKS a lot more heartless than she acts or feels. I like Sarah. But Lucy doesn’t know any of this. She can only Judge based on information people tell her, but also, on behaviour of Sarah she’s seen. Few of which is painting her in a flattering light.
Lucy’s been black about as long as Sarah has. Being the same colour doesn’t turn unsolicited heckling into solicited advice, and if the speaker thinks it does, it just makes them pretentious in addition to annoying.
I’m saying that Sarah’s not saying “ugh Walky’s too much work” she’s saying “dealing with RACIST PARENTS is too much work”, which it IS. Which is where the perspective of Lucy and Sarah both being black comes into play. Discovering that your partner’s parents shouldn’t mean an automatic break up, but it does indicate there will be strife, and that you will have to worker harder WITH your partner, to attain happiness.
See though, she immediately follows that with “dump walky cause he is walky.” Which frankly muddies any other point she’s making. And maybe Lucy thinks it’s not too much work. And maybe Sarah’s race doesn’t give her any real exception to being a rude abrasive person who just offered Lucy unsolicited advice while insulting her and her boyfriend. Maybe Sarah should shut up.
She also said they could confront it head on instead of something that will obviously be a train wreck.
This is the second time I’m actually NOT siding with Sarah, which is weird since I usually do side with her. You don’t flippantly suggest someone dump their boyfriend and then imply he’s a loser. And Walky doesn’t deserve to be badmouthed on that level. Sure, he can be mildly annoying, but he usually tries to do right by people. And this is also what makes this even worse, Walky stuck up for Sarah when she was being badmouthed by Raidah and her clique.
Lucy isn’t wrong, but it was a more morally complicated situation than the little scraps she got from Raidah and Jennifer.
Lucy *is* wrong, because Raidah’s version is a misrepresentation. Sarah’s roommate was depressed and addicted. Sarah was the only one to notice this as a problem, admittedly because it interfered with her own studies, and the only who took action that resulted in the roommate getting help, while also being withdrawn from college, which she was of course utterly failing due to not attending classes and other non-productive behavior. Not only was Dana more of a burden to Sarah due to close proximity – and let’s not forget Sarah *does* actually care for people – also Raidah did *nothing* to help alleviate that burden.
Yeah, that sure does make Lucy wrong. How could she judge Sarah so harshly despite knowing all that stuff about Sarah’s situation. Oh wait. She doesn’t know, so pointing all of that out is utter nonsense. All she knows is Raidah’s story, and Sarah’s consistently shitty attitude. Yeah, I wouldn’t give Sarah the benefit of the doubt either.
She’s not though. Raidah is painting a very biasted picture with a bs brush. But Sarah just suggested Lucy jettison Walky for being inconvenient. She’s dead on the nose.
I mean, all Lucy said was “I don’t jettison people” when Sarah advised her to jettison her boyfriend. Sure, Sarah is saying it out of concern, but she is being a little bit snarky about it. It’s a little bit harsh on Lucy’s end, but completely factual in relation to the situation she is in now. She doesn’t know what happened to Dana, other than that Dana’s mom died and Sarah called her Dad and got her pulled out of school. It would be nice if Dana did show up later, so we could understand if what Sarah did was actually helpful or harmful.
But on this current situation, Sarah literally badmouthed Lucy’s boyfriend to her face and said she should dump him. I would be pissed off, too. Lucy has absolutely every right to be pissed off here, and nothing she is saying is really incorrect or unreasonable. Sure, Lucy could handle the parent situation a little more maturely and her and/or Walky directly confront them. But I mean, Sal has tried that approach *several times* with her mom, and Walky has even told them when Sal stormed off, “You’ve never given her (Sal) a good reason to stay”, and she immediately got defensive.
And Walky didn’t clarify the story, because he knows about as much as Lucy does. Sarah and him don’t have interactions beyond the occasional walking to class together with friends, but Sarah only told Joyce, Dina, and Jennifer the story about Dana. Raidah and her friends (as far as we know) are the only others who actually know what happened. And Walky did try to defend Sarah as best he could without the full story, but there was not much he could say to deny it because, in his point of view, it very well could have happened the way Raidah is telling it.
I did look over it again, and nearly all of Lucy’s interactions with Sarah are…
Sarah insulting her and/or Walky. First interaction was her calling Lucy creepy.
Sarah making fun of Joyce for being uncomfortable with anything sexual (which is something Lucy can empathize with).
Sarah being grumpy and leaving situations because she doesn’t want to deal with them.
When you look at it like that, it’s no wonder Lucy doesn’t really like Sarah or respect her at all. She hasn’t said one nice word to her, and Sarah hasn’t shown any respectful behavior to Lucy. And Lucy is someone who doesn’t really enjoy unkind words toward others and tries her best to be kind to others, like Joyce.
However, Lucy is different in that she has slightly more of a backbone than Joyce in these situations. Most of the time, Joyce naturally avoids conflict, probably relating somewhat to her masked autism and “better safe than sorry” mentality. Lucy isn’t afraid of conflict as much.
Correction: Sarah first and foremost advised Lucy to confront the problem directly rather than through hijinks. Which I agree with. All this is just avoiding a difficult conversation with Walky’s parents. I feel like this is Walky falling back on his bad habit of avoiding his problems. Walky may have more spine now, but he might still be the guy who eats his test scores, or who lives in denial of Mike’s death.
Also, dumping someone because they come with too much parental baggage is totally fine. It’s not a sin to dump someone. It’s only been three dates, it’s way too early for Anyone to deal with future in-law evilness, and it would be perfectly reasonable for Lucy to be spooked off. The only reason someone needs to dump someone in order to be “valid,” is that they want to do it.
Note that the way Sarah frames it is that the PREFERRED option is getting rid of someone who’s ‘too much trouble’. And while it’s absolutely fine to end a relation because of the family thing, I feel that it’s pretty damn early in the process to do it with a relation you value highly. But the language that Sarah is using suggests that she is not valuing relationships highly. ‘too much trouble’ ‘find a new man’ ‘doesn’t require work’ All of that is Sarah basically saying ‘All that shit Raidah is saying about me? Right on the money baby!’
Now, I know, and you know, that when it comes to misanthropy and disregard for relationships, Sarah talks a good game but absolutely will put herself on the line for people she cares about. But Lucy has no way to know that. She can only judge the words and actions of Sarah she sees.
You’re not wrong, but I think I still tend to side with Sarah. The preferred option IS to break up with someone after three dates, instead of trying to fix him and his entire family. Maybe if Walky had stepped up and backed Lucy, been the the adult in the room like he was with Raidah & gang, but instead he’s going to show how bad Amber is instead of how good Lucy is.
Also, I bet Sarah doesn’t know Lucy dropped the L-word so early. She may not have realized how alike Lucy and Joyce are.
I mean, I don’t think Lucy feels Walky needs fixing. Like, early DoA Walky was less aware of this. But Walky here pretty much makes it clear that he’s very much on Lucy’s side. They’re just not sure how to go about dealing with the problem of their family. It should be noted that the current (so very, very stupid) plan that they made is not an attempt of Walky to get out of confronting his parents, but is actually Lucy’s idea.
And I mean, yeah, it’s easier for Walky to confront some rando who he isn’t all that inclined to like who’s part of the new ‘Jennifer’, then it is to confront his own parents who he’s financially dependent on about one of the most painful conversations to have.
Honestly, if they’re together ‘Let’s just endure them, roll our eyes till college is finished and we’re financially independent, at that point we can set ultimatums’ is a perfectly valid tactic. So I definitely feel that Sarah’s ‘nah, no point in trying, ditch and move on’ suggests callousness and disloyalty to those who are closer to her. (Again, Sarah talks a bigger game than she acts about these things in most cases)
She’s got you there, Sarah.
And no amount of “Oh look, Raidah is in your words” can change that.
Honestly the worst defense at this point. We know Raidah acts in far less good faith then Sarah, but right now, since Sarah is proving her right, adding in that name drop just leads one to believe that Sarah was probably really mean to Raidah too. Come to think of it, wasn’t there some kind of assault?
I took Sarah’s last remark as talking-to-herself, not name-dropping.
Sarah punched Raidah and tried to get Joyce and Jacob together while he was dating Raidah to mess with her, without even thinking how it could potentially mess with Joyce, much less Jacob. We don’t know what Raidah has done besides ditch Sarah and badmouth her to other people.
Because trying to destroy both her and Joyce’s lives is a proportional response, right?
We’ve got pretty good reason to believe there was a campaign of constant harassment, basically from the Dana incident through to the start of the comic. It’s off-screen, since it’s before the comic began, but we see Raidah continuing it in her first couple appearances. Even the scene at the mall that leads up to the punching can be seen as Raidah attempting to peel these new people away from Sarah.
im just wondering how his parents are gonna gloss over that Amber isn’t Lucy. or do they think they’ll be so happy shes white that they dont care
i mean. that may happen but
Translation: I don’t remove toxic people from my life.
Walky is toxic?
Billie is for sure, and Lucy still tries to make nice with her. She was also pretty chummy with Malaya despite constantly being told to fuck off and derided for basic friendliness. Jury’s out on how much Lucy and Raidah interact, but any 18-20 year old with Raidah’s “look at me I’m all growed up” attitude is definitely toxic.
Jennifer and Malaya, though, are/were Lucy’s roommates though. Can’t fault the lonely nerd for trying to make nice with people who share quarters this close
You can after they repeatedly told her to leave them alone.
That’s a good point, too. I understand the instinct/desire to wanna get along with everyone , but when they very firmly and abrasively set a boundary against that, on repeated occasions, it’s probably best to leave them be.
You’re not wrong that this is a train wreck, Sarah, though what you would do in this situation (find a boyfriend with less shitty family because you’re not that invested) is not helpful to someone who is invested.
Now hush, I wanna watch the train wreck play out.
To be fair; Sarah, you’ve not exactly been killing it in the “finding a man” department.
Really makes you wonder what kind of man isn’t too much work for her.
Also, I just realized that Sarah’s dehumanizing `Gain Dump Him` is starting to wander toward the Manosphere concepts related to “High Value Partners.”
I mean, Sarah’s fairly open that she just wants a human vibrator.
That aside, for a self-proclaimed antisocial misanthrope, Sarah sure enjoys getting up in everyone’s business.
She hasn’t exactly been trying. Pretty sure she’s been actively avoiding that kind of thing while she works on her education, barring a one-night-stand here and there and regular dates with lil’ Jacob.
Sarah was doing pretty good till she made it about dumping Walky for no good reason
Hey now, she explained her reasons. They were just, you know, mean. And dumb.
Despite Sarah is right here in the context that is a very stupid plan, she should have phrased the explanation of a sunk cost fallacy in a more palatable way, or just not gotten involved. Neither of which is Sarah’s style.mind you Radiah was in the wrong about Sarah but I doubt Lucy will beleive her.
Sarah’s giving Lucy zero cause to doubt the portrait of Sarah as provided to her. Sarah is consciously and willfully cruel to people she purports to like/love, and just now suggested ‘dump your boyfriend, he’s being inconvenient, that’s what I’d do.
If Sarah wants people not to believe Raidah’s BS, she really ought to stop proving Raidah’s points.
Oh yeah, Lucy was also given the “here’s why you should hate Sarah” speech by Raidah.
And it’s on her if she’s gonna be that suggestible. She can say “mean” like a 7-year old instead of “obnoxious,” “a buzzkill,” or “toxic,” but she is both over 18 and smart enough to live with the consequences of having no middle ground when it comes to liking and trusting others…
Just met Raidah, but Jennifer seems to like her and she also hates Sarah…”I’ll help her bury a body! No questions asked!!”
She made a good call with Walky, but what Sarah and Raidah can do to others on purpose, she can potentially be capable of though personally convenient naivety…
Lets review though:
Raidah: Sarah Jettisons people cause their inconvenient.
Lucy: Wow that’s a harsh claim, Billie?
Billie: Yeah Sarah actually told me she did that.
Walky: Yeah we know Sarah’s like that.
And then today:
Sarah: Hey, no time for greets, just telling you your plan is stupid. I think this is so inconvenient you should jettison Walky. Actually just jettison walky cause he’s Walky.
So Lucy had this confirmed by two of her friends and then Sarah comes to her talking exactly how the version of her Raidah paints would talk. Honestly I’d expect I’d react the same sans metadata.
Thing called “manipulating language” that Lucy needs to learn.
Raidah left out that Dana forced Sarah to “jettison” (who says that?) her in order to not get kicked out with her due to her out of control in-dorm pot smoking rooted in grief, while Raidah simply claimed “she was getting better” and washed her hands clean of what happened first by doing nothing else, then by putting the whole thing on Sarah…Then not letting it go until she both provoked Sarah to punch her then got called a bully in front of her friends….Flat-out lying is kindergarten-level deceit. Let Lucy jump to conclusions on her own, and now she’s taken a side in a situation she wouldn’t want anything to do with, otherwise. Sarah’s enough to deal with without associating Lucy with Raidah’s drama.
Much like a thing called “Butting out” that Sarah needs to learn.
Jennifer’s no saint and has tons more reason to have a problem with Walky, and even she knows when to say “I’m not touching that one.” This both isn’t Joyce nor is it a close friend of hers. For how much Sarah goes on about not wanting other people’s drama, she does wave a LOT of chances to avoid provoking it her way…
What lesson are we teaching the parents, again? “Walky is a dope and has interesting taste in women”?
huh i always read the comments on my tiny ass phone and just realized your icon isn’t like an art deco monster energy drink
Currently, no. It’s a device I made for a tabletop campaign.
Really? What is it?
It’s a combination EMF meter, cell phone, cryptid locator, and Power Morpher, created for a team of cryptozoology-themed Power Rangers in a tabletop campaign I’m running for my girlfriend and my sister. Comes in about a dozen potential colors, but my favorite is green so that’s the grav.
HOLY SMOKES! Wow!
If I’m gonna write officially-encouraged fanfic, you better believe it’s gonna come with visuals and props.
yeah that’s super cool!! :0 love the classic big foot silhouette
sorry if the comment came off as weird/rude it was in jest
I didn’t think it was rude. It’s not beyond the realm of reason for me to have a weird artsy energy drink as my gravatar, anyway. I’ve made some strange ones over the years.
Confirmation that Lucy’s the asshole I always thought her to be.
Me when I think Lucy’s an asshole and then someone else does too
Jesus christ your new avatar.
holy fuck.
If we’re gonna paint Lucy as a dangerous person*, I wanna hit the ground runnin.
*Nobody has yet that I know of, but it’s not even 6pm here yet.
A+. 10/10. No notes.
“She’s out of line but she’s right”
“Do you mean Lucy or Sarah?”
“Yes.”
Yup…
They’re both in the wrong on this, for different reasons… But they both have that little glint of being in the right, as well…
CHALLENGE: Commenters remember that Lucy hasn’t seen everything that we have seen and has only experienced Sarah being rude to her
DIFFICULTY: Impossible
Oh yeah, does she know about Dana at all? 😮
Raidah made a very brief, one-sided note of the Dana situation. There might have been some other guy there too.
Lucy doesn’t have agency, so it doesn’t matter if she’s seen what we have.
Of course none of the other characters have agency either – but the readers (or at least commenters here) act like they do. In a sense, both the characters and the readers are Willis’s puppets – though it’s not clear that the readers always react the way Willis intends.
I try to mentally insert all the boring little “yes it’s fiction, this character represents this archetype, and within the parameters blah blah blah” caveats before most comments. Just assume we’re all aware this is fiction from the outset and are working from that perspective, and all that.
Sometimes though, I’ll say something obvious because I typed a very involved comment and accidentally refreshed before I could post and lost the entire paragraph.
it happens every time
Err…Lucy…Sweetheart? Raidah is Sarah, but without even your boyfriend’s racist mother’s few redeeming qualities. I’d avoid repeating any claims she made, because if Sarah is too much of a turd to deal with…Well at least you’ve been warned without any gaslighting or being conscripted into other people’s drama on top of her own…
Raidah = 2-Faced Bespectacled Sarah. Sarah’s bad? Raidah’s worse.
I kind of respect that Sarah just kind of takes a hands off approach when Lucy parrots Raidah. Like she really is just living her own life.
Oh, it’s going to be a Sara haters vs “Lucy is a social climber” peeps sort of night. Appropriately, the characters are also both in the wrong here.
Sara isn’t Lucy’s friend. She’s been eavesdropping. It doesn’t matter if those are Raidah’s words when she’s been nothing but abrasive to Lucy in every interaction and kind of proving the point. However… God yeah, it’s a dumb plan and both Lucy and Walky should learn to do proper confrontation. The fact the only character we’ve watched Lucy to tell off is Sarah is worrying, not because “social climber!!1!” but because it shows how easily influenced she is.
I didn’t expect the trainwreck pulling even more characters into its blazing, deathly ride; but by god, this is fun to watch
Sarah did just tell her to Jettison her boyfriend cause he’s inconvenient though. It was an absolute shit plan but she jumped from that to encouraging her to dump Walky. Then adds that Walky being Walky (which Lucy likes about him) is reason to dump Walky.
Everything Raidah said about Sarah was dead on from what Lucy has seen.
Yeah, no. Absolutely. Lucy has been given zero reasons to doubt these claims and she doesn’t know Sarah like us readers do. I think Badgermole stuck it too – this is her trying to be helpful, and that’s why Lucy’s reply gave us a single panel of her being vulnerable.
The thing is, Sarah’s way to be helpful sucks. A lot. Joyce might’ve understood, but she’s her roommate and therefore has seen more of her. Lucy might’ve given her the benefit of doubt before that breakfast, too. Right now though? She was given a warning on somebody she already knew was mean, got first-hand confirmation – and stopped fawning.
Meanwhile Raidah is somewhere else going ALL ACCORDING TO KEIKAKU (keikaku meaning plan), like the Actually Horrible Person she is.
Lucy falling for Raidah’s plan, however, continues to prove that Raidah’s plan is just the worst. It’s ill-thought out and predicated on misinformation about the main players in Joyce and Sarah’s lives.
But how do we know Raidah is being deliberately manipulative here? I mean, she networks like hell because she wants to be a lawyer, but… I read it as her sharing her perspective on the situation. It seems Raidah mostly made snide comments and left her alone afterwards. Sarah tried to get Joyce to steal her boyfriend as a vendetta move.
Sarah didn’t deal with the situation in the best way. It was mostly due to how difficult the position she was put in was, but the tipping point was that she wouldn’t be able to go to school anymore. Understandable, but still somewhat selfishly motivated. And literally, when she did tell the group about Dana, she said “she’s not getting better and I have to study so I don’t lose my scholarship”.
You have to read between the lines a bit and extrapolate what last year must have been like, but it really should be clear Raidah’s being deliberately manipulative. It’s her thing.
I mean, she openly talked to Carl about “laughing at that stunted man-child’s jokes” and how she’ll “never learn who Kit Fisto is”, so she’s clearly manipulating both Jennifer and Walky. For month’s now, in Jen’s case.
I know she’s a social climber and definitely a fake friend, but is she doing anything antagonistic to specifically Sarah other than be a bongo and avoid her? I mean, I don’t think she’s some mastermind pulling puppet strings and cackling. Just knows that networking is important, and both Billie and Walky are valuable networks, so pretend to like them. That’s basically what being a social climber is. Sure, you don’t have to like it, but it’s not exactly making her Satan. She’s not s good person, but in the course of the comic, Sarah has technically done worse to her.
Sarah hit Raidah in an argument and tried to get Joyce to screw Jacob just to mess with her. I’d honestly say that’s way more conniving and manipulative than Raidah just telling people Sarah isn’t a good friend.
Hitting people is sometimes fine. Like when they’re personally responsible for ostracizing you and suddenly reappear in your life. Like, Sarah was very obviously Not Okay in that moment, for reasons we’ve been given.
We don’t absolutely know yet, because the aim of her plot hasn’t yet been revealed.
That said, it’s absolutely clear that it’s aimed at Sarah and Joyce. She didn’t just show up and befriend Jennifer out of nowhere or just for the social climbing.
At the very least, those scenes clearly show she’s manipulative
“But how do we know Raidah is being deliberately manipulative here?”
1) She has literally said so.
2) You think the breakfast wasn’t her trying to manipulate Walky?
The reason this is hurtful is that Sarah, in her own way, tried to help Lucy. She’s telling her to have some self respect. This is Sarah telling Lucy she deserves more than her boyfriend’s parents being manipulated into grudgingly accepting her.
Lucy took that and threw it back in her face, ascribing Sarah’s comment to malice. She really thought Sarah is coming around to shit talk Walky for funsies. Which is understandable I guess if you’re predisposed to seeing someone as a villain, but is also stupid. Lucy doesn’t understand people and really isn’t as smart as she thinks she is.
Of course Sarah, being a cynical tsundere, will take from this a single lesson: never try to help people, let them sink into the quicksand of their own messes.
Maybe if Sarah cared about being seen as malicious, she could say things less abrasively.
I agree that if you’re going to speak your mind and to hell with how people take it, you have no business being hurt when they don’t take it well. Sarah’s fault is that she’s perpetually fronting as a dgaf tough girl when she’s actually really quite sensitive.
And it’s a really sad self-fulfilling prophecy kind of way. “I knew I shouldn’t have cared!” ➡️ thicker walls, harsher words ➡️ reaching out in the worst possible way 🔄
Sarah’s comment certainly is malicious to Walky. Several times over.
She’s not helpful at all.
She’s not helpful, true. But she’s not malicious either if we understand malice to mean taking pleasure in hurting others. Calling Walky more trouble than he’s worth isn’t malicious, it’s simply true (at least re. his shitty parents).
I feel like how much Walky is worth is up to Lucy, and like…
people seem to be forgetting that *Lucy* first voiced the plan they’re going with now. She initiated this whole scheme. This is not Walky being a goofball first and foremost, this is *her* being a goofball, and in that the two fit each other perfectly.
Raidah told Lucy Sarah “jettisons people when they are inconvenient.”
Lucy asked Billie about it. Billie said Sarah told her she did this (this being the Dana situation). Walky confirmed that Sarah is “not a people person.”
Lucy sees malice because that’s what Lucy has seen from Sarah. Who just interrupted her to tell her that she should jettison Walky if he’s this inconvenient.
I think it comes down to whether you think Sarah’s advice is wrong. Sure it’s rude and unconvincing. She isn’t good at expressing her good intentions, nor does she make any effort to do so. But is Sarah wrong in saying that Walky’s racist parents make Walky more trouble than he’s worth and that Lucy can do better?
I don’t think Sarah is wrong about this. Lucy can do better than trying to coax scraps of approval out of racists. The problem of course is Lucy, for a number of uncomfortable reasons, does not want to do better.
Walky’s parents are not the problem. They rarely show up personally and, aside from the whole “paying for college” thing, are not explicitly a permanent part of his life.
The problem is how much Walky wants his parents in his life. He’s hoping that they can be bopped on the head and gotten to realize that they’re being dicks, and that’s not an impossible thing (not saying its easy of course, just that with deeply personal connections, people can be dragged out of their racist bullshit). And we don’t know if he’d be willing to largely cut them out of his life if they can’t get past it.
Walky, from what we know right now, is not explicitly more trouble than he’s worth. He’s a guy with shitty parents but doesn’t share their prejudice. And, frankly, Sarah should fucking know this.
Lucy’s plan is dumb, but in a childish, wacky hijinks way. Sarah’s suggestion of ditching him because he has shit parents is just callous.
True. It’s not unfairly judging Walky for having shit parents, which he can’t help. It’s judging him for going through with this ridiculous plan in the first place because he’s too cowardly to confront his parents. I’m surprised people in the comments don’t see this other layer of intention in Operation Garbage White GF. There is the stated intent — Amber will screw up his parents’ expectations — but imo there’s also the unconscious wish that Linda will actually approve and give her darling boy all the congratulations he deserves for his choice of girlfriends. Walky said as much that this approval is what he wants, right before they came up with the plan.
And if she stuck with that, it’d be another thing. But she kept going into how Walky is inherently a bad pick anyway. I mean, who the fuck is this bongo? Lucy and Sarah are not close enough for that to be something you can say and have any expectation of being well received. Sarah started strong but it turned into just not liking Lucy’s boyfriend. I’d be dismissive of her at this point too.
Lucy implying that Walky is inconvenient because of his parents is a huge red flag.
Sarah *is* predisposed to shit-talk Walky. She’s predisposed to shit-talk everyone, but especially folks like Walky. And she’s not here, injecting herself unwanted into a situation that has nothing to do with her, because she wants to help. She’s here because she wants to tell someone they’re wrong. Which, cool, they probably are. What business is it of hers?
If Sarah doesn’t want people to think that she’s aasshole, she should start minding her own business a whole hell of a lot more.
I don’t agree with her motivations here. I think she legitimately does want to help, but both her abrasive approach and her viewpoint on relationships in general make her come off badly.
IIRC, her standard advice on relationships is “don’t”.
You really think Sarah is telling Lucy she can do better because she likes telling people they’re wrong? Like… the fact that they’re both Black women has nothing to do with this?
Sarah was also there for the initial snubbing of Lucy for Joyce.
She’s outta line but she has a point
Which one?
Yes.
I was thinking Sarah in panel 3, but also yes.
If Lucy waited until Sarah suggested dumping Walky over this to get snippy she would be entirely in the right.
And to be fair nobody likes hearing there stupid plan is stupid and Sarah can be a little mean sometimes.
That being said Lucy should really get Sarah’s side of the story first before judging her not Billy’s spoiled interpretation.
Yeah Jennifer didn’t seem to give a proper enough of a fuck to give decent context.
*sigh* Yeah, and Sarah should take her own advice and confront Lucy over whatever it is (Sarah’s POV) that caused Lucy to dislike her.
But then, if characters just talked to each other sincerely, the stories would collapse. Kinda like real life, I guess.
She did. She said this after Sarah suggested dumping walky Then she added the dump walky simply because he was walky.
Sarah’s right.
More importantly, Sarah’s hot.
Lucy is also right: Sarah is being mean. For the second time, which makes Sarah two for two for mean in the sum total of all interactions Lucy has had with her. AND she just proved correct another bit of the Raidah bit correct, the bit about jettisoning people at a moment’s notice: Sarah pretty much just said ‘his parents suck, you should’ve just dumped him for it, that’s what I would do.’
Not that Lucy and Walky’s plan isn’t stupid! Just that, you know, if Sarah actually wants people to see through Raidah’s shit, she should stop proving her basically right.
Sarah’s comment wouldn’t be so bad if she wasn’t pushing the dump Walky option so hard. Sarah really hates Walky for some reason and it really hurt her overall message, which should have been focused on Lucy standing up to Walky’s parents.
“Hate” is a strong word and I wouldn’t equate breaking things off with people as the same as cutting them off from your life. Especially since Walky is still on speaking terms with some of his other exes.
Also Lucy would have gotten the same suggestion from atleast 3 others in this circle.
But they would have phrased it more gently, and that makes a big difference.
Booster’s phrasing is ‘You can do better’, repeatedly.
I wonder if there wasn’t raidah that lucy is said to be parroting how many people would support Sarah. Seriously, your friend’s friend comes up to you and pours out his opinion about your boyfriend. How you react?
Sarah, who supposedly doesn’t care, is more drama hungry than she admits
It’s a moot point, because Lucy would say something else to combat Sarah. It would probably make sense, too.
If I’m in Lucy’s shoes, Raidah just got proven right about everything. Sarah is just a mean bongo.
I mean Sarah clearly is out of line with unwanted advice, but responding with personal attacks just makes me feel like Lucy never actually was a nice person, she just pretends to be.
“This is an incredibly stupid idea” is already an attack though. Then the “advice” is just “dump Walky because he sucks anyway.” I think she’s entitled to retaliate.
Is it an attack if it’s true, though? I thought honesty was a virtue.
So…. I’m an unabashed Sarah fan, so I can’t wait for Lucy’s misery sandwich to arrive.
The blurry patreon preview suggests you should stay tuned, then.
Just a heads-up, the blurry Patreon preview is clear enough to read dialogue again. Look if you want, but understand it’s going to be more spoiler-y than normal.
I was very surprised to see Josh name-dropping Jericho Cross.
Josh? I don’t think DoA has a character by that name. You sure ya checked the right patreon fam?
You don’t remember Josh?
Oh yeah. Now i remember. I had to boop him from all your earthling memories, and myself for some reason
Again with the Josh erasure.
It’s still blurry for me. Don’t know if it’s intermittent or only on some platforms.
I don’t like that Lucy said what she said, but I get why she did it. She never has seen the nicer/caring side of Sarah. And Sarah was way out of line too, but she has a point about this being a terrible plan.
So to sum this up: even through I kind of like both characters and both of them do kind of have a point neither of them comes off particularly well here in my opinion.
Hey Sarah, hate to break it to you, but you don’t get to tell people off for believing fake rumors about you while actively working to prove those rumors right.
Seriously, Sarah is a garbage person. As a defense mechanism, sure, but frankly I don’t care about the justification for it. It’s all a bunch of self-centered bullshit so she can play the victim whenever people believe the worst about her. And it ignores the very simple fact that the rumors may be bullshit but her attitude is still genuinely awful. She refuses to show any semblance of redeeming qualities unless lives are literally in danger, which is only good enough because her friend group seems to be a magnet for attempted murder.
Honestly, I don’t even dislike her in spite of all this. I guess I’m more just mad because of all the comments that are being willfully ignorant about how shitty she acts all the fucking time.
She’s generally done a shit job of explaining her perspective to everyone except Joyce. An uninterested outside observer can easily take Raidah’s spin at face value. “Sarah thought Dana was getting in her way so she got her dad to pull her from school” is a lie by omission, not an outright fabrication. If your rebuttal starts with “technically yes, but…” nobody’s going to listen to anything after the “but” because you reinforced the other person’s account.
That’s what makes Raidah’s manipulation so insidious.
Yep, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.
If you don’t share your side, the other side controls the narrative.
I wouldn’t call this dumping Walky when he’s not convenient bc Sarah is basically saying “get some self respect” which like. Yeah. I can really see why Sarah would think that dating a guy with racist parents, one of whom is white, constitutes a lack of it—then tack on this whole fucking plan—is debasing. This is closer to home for both of them than it was for Jennifer, even if they aren’t friends so it’s not really Sarah’s place.
Then she recoils because Lucy came out with a deep cut (understandable when we think about her perception of Raidah still being pretty clean). But overall I think if Raidah wasn’t a complicating factor, Lucy might listen.
These two are in my top 3 favorite characters and I’m glad they’re having this clash of perspective talk past each other thing. I hope they can sort it out sooner rather than later and be friends :’) it would be good for both of them
that is, if they both put the best of their traits forward, but that’s not what’s gonna happen. Anyways I’m glad it’s happening. Go girls go
For the record, Walky is great and just as full of depth, but my point is that that’s Sarah’s flippant “comedic” addition to meaningful (unsolicited, but meaningful) advice, which we know is a recurring flaw of hers and part of the tone of the comic in general, but bc it’s not the last panel it has consequences in-universe! We’ll see in the next comic what is coloring Lucy’s opinion of this advice: rudeness to her boyfriend, pointing out how the relationship is doomed to crash and burn if neither are or only one of them is able to work on their fear of confrontation, or Raidah’s machinations.
In case no one could tell I’m so fucking excited for the rest of this interaction
+1 to everything here!1!1!
There’s going to be a looonng real-time development to this situation, I know it in my heart, but I do hope they become friends at some point :33
Sarah is right but she didn’t need to add “and also aren’t Walky”
that sole line is why she get hit with the dumping people when convenient
but honestly this whole thing is dumb and debasing. Does Lucy even know Walky and Amber used to be a thing? I remember that Lucy met Walky when he went to Jennifer for advice on hooking up with Amber, but I don’t know if she heard who was the person Walky was interested in. And Lucy and Amber barely interacted before this
Not sure if I’d take relationship advice from someone whose entire experience in that matter is “Lusting for Jacob, maybe partially to spite Raidah.”
dunno, don’t think this is v complex relationship math here, even someone like Sarah can figure it out
it’s not like Lucy has a lot more experience
There’s also some just-barely-revealed drama concerning a former boyfriend and her sister. I can’t decide whether Sarah has never actually been in love and doesn’t understand how that rebalances the equation, or she had been and grew a lot of mental scar tissue to shield her from hurting that way ever again.
Knowing Sarah probably the latter. Didn’t she have an argument with her sis over boyfriend stealing?
So lemme get this straight: Lucy is too much of a chickenshit to exist on purpose around her boyfriend’s parents (not that anyone is obligated to tolerate bigotry when they’ve been told that’s what to expect), so she comes up with the stupid-ass idea to have Walky pretend to date Amber. And somehow, through some arcane mechanism unknown to mortal minds, I’m not supposed to believe she set this up on purpose because as much trouble and as many mental backflips as it requires, it’s still less exhausting than sitting through an entire meal with a racist and being expected to just grin and bear it?
Nah, Lucy planned this from the start. She’s smarter and more devious than she lets on, and that’s hot.
That is certainly a take.
Hey, I’m here for the hijinx disaster fireworks and to root for team garbage, and all I’m getting is Lucy/Sarah drama. Damn that Willis.
I mean isn’t this a ploy to make Lucy look better to Walky’s parents? They shove the most disastrous white girl in from of them so that when Walky brings in Lucy she’ll seem like a massive improvement?
ffft that’s ridiculous, Lucy isn’t planning any of this.
she’s clearly just naturally inclined towards maximum chaos. she’s the darkest character in the story so far because she’s been cultivating a sweet, naive girl persona purely so that when she decides to let her whackadoodle energy rip no one sees it coming. And she has zero motivation except pure lust for destruction. proper satanic shit 🔥
Lucy 100000% came up with this plan.
From the start of what? She found out about the racist parents 10 seconds before this plan was hatched. Even if she figured it out earlier, it’s been max four hours since Walky’s parents showed up.
So she thinks quickly, is that suddenly a crime?
“Unreasonable sagaciousness” is actually a misdemeanor in Indiana although it was last invoked legally in 1899 and that was actually against an elk.
Love it when Lucy has some sass. She doesn’t always have to play the nice girl.
Also also I just realized that Walky and Amber are not just on their way to have lunch with the parents, but also with Sal and DANNY. When’s the las time we’ve seen Amber and Dan interacting? Banking on the two having a huge blown-out fight (maybe about Ethan) and making it awkward for everyone else. Can’t wait
They were on good terms during the Halloween fight, and Amber was pretty supportive of Danny and Sal so I don’t think they’ll have a fight… but I do think it’s going to be turbo awkward for them in that scenario. Plus Danny always puts his foot in his mouth so I imagine he’s gonna be like “wow Walky did Lucy and you break up, I thought you two were trying to fuck last night what happened?” and make shit even more awkward
Actually thats what I’m baffled about, they MET Lucy? He said she was his girlfriend surely everyone will be like “Uh, David what are you doing?”
Now that’s just friggin rude to Lucy. What are you going to do next? Call her Mary?
Well, they do both go to church.
Lucy has also been seen to approve of Becky’s (ex?)plan to reconvert Joyce.
Best Roommate Agreement Clause
Joyce 🫱🏻🫲🏿 Sarah
[Walky’s not
good enough
for anyone]
I have zero interest in diving into the no holds barred pvp zone the strip is sure to create, but because I haven’t seen anyone else point out this angle:
This isn’t just another “Sarah jumps in and offers unsolicited advice to a casual acquaintance,” it’s specifically “Sarah, a young Black woman, approaches the only other Black woman in their friend group* on the topic of dating a guy with racist parents.” That’s an important layer that inclines me to be more charitable towards her.
*Sal is Black, obviously, but she doesn’t have the same distance from the situation since it’s, ya know, HER parents.
Good point. A little intersectionality could be a good thing. Lucy, listen up to your older wiser, more cynical sister in the ways of shitty people. Some good perspectives there, and potential for good conversation. But Lucy puts it back into personal, so she wiffs the pitch.
Intersectionality? With what other identity besides racial? I am not sure how you are using the term?
I guess I was thinking “ young, black, straight, woman.” As in, a particular combination of identities (and possibly experiences) that others might not share. And Willis has added in a few more visual factors that contribute to the plot, r.e. colorism within communities, i.e. not all characters have the same color palette.
I was looking for this comment earlier lol x2
I mean I did say it, in my reply to some Rogue person who thinks Sarah is jumping in here because she loves to tell people they’re wrong.
I thought it was understood that one Black woman telling another that she can do better than a man with racist parents is more layered than mere rudeness… but reading these comments, apparently not.
If your response to unwanted advice is personal attacks, you’re not actually a good person in my opinion. I don’t think I’d be able to overcome my immediate distrust to Lucy after saying stuff like this.
Being a good person is impossible by anyone’s standards but our own, anyway. There’s always someone who’ll declare you the lowest of the low, so listening to literally anybody about your own morality is equivalent to buying the Shroud of Turin at a yard sale in Kentucky.
I mean, i get that and I do agree to an extent but do keep in mind Lucy has seen nothing to actually contradict what Raidah has said about Sarah either
It’s specifically the smug “you’re doing it all wrong” kind of advice though. I think some snark is warranted. The last comment was probably too harsh, but she doesn’t know the full story.
And I wouldn’t trust Sarah who’s done nothing but prove Radiah right who’s also giving my boyfriend shit.
Unwanted insults on her boyfriend as well.
If your so-called “advice” to me is basically an entirely unsolicited “your boyfriend sucks, his parents suck, and you should dump him and find someone else because he’s too much trouble,” then you’re not actually a good person in my opinion. I don’t think I’d be able to overcome my immediate distrust to Sarah after saying stuff like this.
All Lucy said was that she didn’t cut people out of her life when they became inconvenient.
Sarah took it as an insult.
Yeah, and Lucy got that idea all on her own.
I mean, it did partly come from Sarah telling her to cut Walky out of her life because he’s inconvenient. Radiah’s full of shit but Sarah didn’t have to come out and give support to Radiah’s false claims like that.
oof
Eh to be honest Sarah ain’t wrong, if your going to deal with this shit seriously grow a spine, cut the shenanigans, and deal with this directly or don’t put yourself in a position to deal with this stuff at all.
I’m honestly not sure “deal with this directly” is the best plan either, since it involves potentially blowing up your partner’s relationship with his parents. Which is a huge ask a couple weeks into your relationship, when he’s still largely dependent on them.
The shenanigans are a bad idea, if a glorious one, but forcing a confrontation isn’t great either.
I think the best plan for Lucy, at least at this point, would be to just lay low and wait for the shit parents to piss off. While its something that would have to be dealt with *eventually*, that doesn’t need to be today, after a handful of dates and one PG-13 sleepover.
If things continue well and it becomes really serious, then yeah, confronting the parents would be the better option. Some bigots can be reached, particularly when its through close, personal connections, and the Walkerton parents aren’t actively bigoted, just imagine if someone else called Sal or Walky the N-word in earshot of Linda.
The wacky hijinks are a far, far worse play, no question. But it’s also wacky hijinks, so grab some popcorn and wait for the fireworks.
Oh good, a chance for Sarah to clear things up. See I think Sarah’s problem is that she’s too kind. Raidah used to harass her directly in the past, and now she’s committed to this ongoing character assassination campaign that works really well because she’s getting people to read such cruel and selfish intentions into everything Sarah does and in that light her often drastic and severe actions easily look terrible, and Sarah doesn’t do anything about it “because it would be unkind to talk about Raidah behind her back.”
Now she’s probably going to dismiss Lucy from her life like she has in the past with everyone Raidah has talked to, but I have a hope she’ll try to talk for some reason.
See you can understand why Lucy thinks this, since she has seen little to actually contradict Raidah’s image of her, and while Raidah is a cruel and selfish person and just loves to spread around how terrible Sarah is, it isn’t completely untrue.
Now, the context of those matters is what Raidah leaves out or alters to suit her narrative, Sarah does jettison people who are as Lucy puts it “inconvenient” but not just “I find them mildly annoying.” otherwise she wouldn’t even bother with even interacting with Walky, even if he hangs around Joyce and the rest of them.
What’s more Raidah has the very real, “She tried to break me and my boyfriend up by getting him to want Joyce” which IS true, like, there is not even a way you can spin that in Sarah’s favor besides “Raidah is awful so why should she care” (though Jacobs angency in all this was ignored which is where the issue with that one lies)
Raidah is an awful person, but she is a very good manipulator, keeping true facts and spinning them in a way that makes someone seem irredeemable to another by ommitting some details and having just enough actual ammo to keep it all very believeable.
As they say the best lies have some measure of truth in them.
I do not doubt Sarah will likely try to “jettison” Lucy if she can, probably avoid talking to her since she’s just mirroring Raidah’s words, and Lucy herself is has no reason to assume any of what Raidah said is out of context or exageratted to make her look worse.
Radiah is going to be a better lawyer then Sarah ever will.
Another point towards that being why Lucy/Walky break up.
Walky very clearly knows Raidah is bullshit.
I don’t know about “too kind”. She’s been okay doing some petty things to get back at Raidah. I think she’s unwilling to be vulnerable and tell the true story to just anyone, because they might condemn her anyway and that would hurt. It’s easier to say “oh Raidah poisoned you against me with her lies” and act like nothing can be done about it.
I am Sarah-sided as a cynical erson but god-damn if this comic doesn’t point in a lucy-centric favor.
The squeaky voice thing really endears me to Lucy for some reason 😅 Such a sweet anime girl in a harsh, american, world
So many men in the world and NONE of them asked for your input, Sarah!
I was liking Lucy again, so of course she dans it up. I hope someday that that particular event and the why’s of how it’s been spun out to people gets cleared up to her.
Sarah: The world is full of men
Lucy: …
Sarah: Oh! The world is full of Raidahs, too.
i really don’t remember much about raidah but, was raidah a bad person?
i really don’t know much about that character, other than the fact that the girl that doesn’t like anyone or anything doesn’t like her.
being hated by sarah feels like being hated by squidward.
Even you, Ms. Lovett
Even I.
as a Fair and Balanced, I believe that both sides have valid concerns here 😌
I am confident that a Frank Exchange of Opinions will benefit them bothkdfldkdlsjfjs
The voice of truth always has an annoying sound. What kind of advice is it to leave the boy you love because his parents are a mess, even when the boy is the first to be disgusted by them? Sarah seems to be trying really hard to show Lucy that Raidah is totally right!
I mean in the bigger picture here, walky and Lucy are gleefully being truly terrible people on a moral level with the idea of it being the “lesser of two evils”, they definitely deserve each other and this comic included are not at all shown to have complex or multifaceted understanding of the people’s characters or motivations whom they are judging.
As for Sarah, I feel like she should be left alone, but also she’s the one eavesdropping and interjecting with salty opinions where they aren’t wanted.
The swipe at Walky is unnecessary when he’s been pretty consistently standing up for Sarah, but racist parents are not an “inconvenience,” they’re a completely reasonable dealbreaker.
Racist parents could be a dealbreaker for some and I wouldn’t fault them, but I also think it’s admirable to be loyal to your partner despite shitty parents.
Yeah, same with other bigotry. It can be admirable to stay with a partner, but you do NOT have to choose to make yourself a target of bigotry, jokes or cruelty of people that person is in contact with – it is a reasonable dealbreaker that the company someone chooses to keep may suck so badly you nope out.
Walky is obviously not at a stage where he CAN cut contact, and even if this idea is dumb, he came up with it, WITH LUCY, so they are on the same page that it sucks at least, but there’s always a good few posts on reddit about people who are unhappy/miserable, because the company their partner chooses to keep includes possessive friends, bullying relatives or bigots that they brush off as ‘just like that’ and are not on the same page that it sucks.
racist/sexist/homohating parents could be a dealbreaker if their son/daughter keeps ignoring the racism/sexism/homohatred, and expects you to do the same, as if you needed to take every hit and not complain about it.
but i wouldn’t break up with my boyfriend because he has an asshole family member.
Especially since Walky isn’t okay with his parents’ bigotry and is actively giving Lucy outs so that she doesn’t have to deal with it. He’s placing Lucy’s comfort first and foremost, and this (incredibly stupid) scheme that they’re doing is something that Lucy helped come up with.
As is her tradition, Sarah delivers the correct course of action with enough sass, sarcasm, and surliness to ensure that absolutely no one listens to her. Personality trauma aside, she really is a great narrative device.
Agreed. I really wish Sarah would set Lucy straight about the whole Riadah/ roommate situation. But for the sake of the narrative, it probably won’t happen.
She’s not wrong, she’s just an asshole.
I was going to say “which one” but it sort of applies to them both here.
This comment thread describes this conversation accurately.
Oh my god Sarah is just Reddit
I mean going to a party with a baseball bat doesn’t smack of convenience, either, so…
Do you know why Sarah deserves Lucy’s comment?
Because no one friggin’ asked her. Lucy didn’t turn to Sarah and ask “what do you think of our awesome plan?” Sarah injected herself into a situation for no other reason than she wanted to tell someone that they were wrong.
Like, her opinions on Walky and his parents aren’t out of line, per se- I don’t think they’re *right* but I see where she comes from- but why does she feel the need to share them? Sarah needs to learn to mind her own friggin’ business.
1. Lucy sucks.
2. Of fucking course most of you are taking her side because “sArAh iS mEaN”
What did Lucy ever do to Sarah? From my perspective, Sarah just showed up because she smelled an opportunity to say that someone is wrong. If Sarah doesn’t want people to validate Raidah’s opinion of her, maybe she should stop acting in a way that makes Raidah look correct.
Lucy blindly accepts Raidahs word because she’s more interested in the idea of a person rather than see them for who they are. Raidah is cool and popular so she MUST be right. Walky is cute and quirky so he MUST be the perfect boyfriend she can love and live happily ever after with. Never mind that there might be some issues she can’t just make go away with a zany scheme.
You all act like Sarah interjecting herself is something horrible, out of line, etc. but Sarah is one of the realist characters in the comic. If she didn’t have some care or concern she would have just walked off. But she sees how messed up all this is and bluntly tells Lucy so she can make a better decision.
And Lucy responds by throwing something extremely personal and hurtful to Sarah right in her face, without a single second thought. Because the “cool kids said so.”
So no. Fuck Lucy.
She doesn’t need to blindly accept Raida’s word. Sarah is here to basically provide evidence to suggest Raida is correct.
Note that initially, she just says that Sarah is mean. (which, I mean, she saw Sarah doing some things that really weren’t okay with Joyce) She only brings up the thing Raida says when Sarah suggests she gets rid of Walky because it’s too much work and he sucks anyway.
Lucy doesn’t say it because ‘the cool kids say so’ Lucy says that because Sarah, unprompted, and with Lucy actively making clear that she does NOT consider Sarah a friend, gets in her personal business and suggests she dumps someone Lucy is head over heels with ‘because it’s too much work’
Sarah could have gone to her and said ‘Hey, heard you talked with Raida. You should know everything she said about me is 100 % true, and you should avoid me.’ and it wouldn’t have done as much to give Lucy confirmation about what Raida said as what she did just now.
Is Raida right? No. She is not. But Lucy doesn’t read the comic. She can’t know that. But from her perspective, Sarah is an unpleasant person who doesn’t respect boundaries (including the whole ‘was clearly eavesdropping a convo that wasn’t about her), is cruel to people, badmouths someone she cares deeply about and actively suggests dumping him.
Why on earth would Lucy give Sarah the time of day? Raida or not?
Lucy has been nothing but a cinnamon roll throughout her entire presence in the comic. She’s basing her opinion of Sarah here not just on Raidah’s word, but on her own interactions with Sarah. The last time they interacted, Sarah was making fun of her roommate and closest friend. Sarah will freely admit that her entire personality is built around judging other people.
I don’t hate Sarah, deep down she is a good person who cares for people, but Lucy isn’t wrong at all for being dismissive when Sarah effectively said that Lucy is wrong for liking Walky, not because of his parents, but because of who he is.
To be fair, walky is garbage and sarah is correct.
Who’s “most of you”? Who’s “you all”?
Dont patronize me. It’s not a literal term.
Don’t patronize me. I’m making a sweeping generalization and using alternating caps to condescendingly mock people, all without naming one name or replying directly to even one of the people who are allegedly doing the thing I’m mocking.
Literal or not, it’s weasely as fuck.
I mean, you can easily see the comment right above my original one as an example, but I guess because I didn’t technically hit the reply button to single out one person when I know there’s a bunch of weirdos here sharing the same thing makes me weasely, ok.
Are the weirdos in the room with us right now?
“I didn’t technically hit the reply button to single out one person when I know there’s a bunch of weirdos here sharing the same thing”
Personally, I would not have responded to “you’re attacking the comments section” with “well they should stop being weirdos”, but that’s just me.
ehhh, Lucy sucks in the last few strips but I’d be pissed too, given the information Lucy has and the things Sarah is saying.
both people suck.
I have wanted to chuck lucy in the garbage since the day we met her. Don’t speak for me.
Lucy and Sarah both suck, at least in this particular interaction.
Ooo maybe we’ll get Sarah’s backstory in more detail now
Sarah, I know you don’t like Walky and he can kind be of a lamewad ranging to occasional dick, but he’s not an abuser or anything. Telling someone you’re not that close with to dump him is inappropriate and rude.
Also, I wonder what Sarah’s going to say if Lucy turns around and tells her Walky stood up for her against Raidah & co with no real prompting or hesitation.
He stood up for this morning, too, when he called her the mom friend before triggering the parents to appear.
yeah but it needs to happen twice, because she’ll think once could’ve been a fluke
three times is clearly part of a vast conspiracy though.
Gosh Sarah, if you overheard the plan, you should have maybe told the people who are going to enact it? It’s a wierd plan, it’s wierd for you to listen in, it’s wierd for you to approach Lucy like this, and it’s a wierd choice of attack: you could have mentioned Amber is his ex if you wanted to be catty or you could have led with empathy if you wanted to be effective but you have gone for maximum wierd ineptitude. It’s like you being asocial is a well established character trait of yours or something.
They can both be wrong. Wrong in different ways. Happens a lot.
Upon reading the comments I’m starting to lean towards Sarah is being a jerk in this interaction and Lucy has the right to call her on it.
But…
Lucy isn’t in the process of discarding jerks from her life and/or calling them on there B.S. its only Sarah, because the popular girl told her to.
She’s going to find out the hard way that Raidah is everything she accuses Sarah of being but worse.
Sarah is 100% correct and I love her for continually calling out that Lucy is falling for mean girl bullshit.
I mean, there’s a reason she keeps pushing the Raidah angle with Lucy.
Are we finally throwing lucy in the garbage yet or are people still willing to give her a chance?
Wow that random gravatar was ON POINT given the strip and my comment XD
This might be the first deliberately rude thing she’s ever said.
I mean…. Sarah’s not wrong. If your partner’s parents are a big part of their life, racism isn’t exactly something that resolves overnight… I’ve had a dear friend go thru that heartbreak 🙁
I just have a bad feeling both Lucy and Walky are setting themselves up for grave disappointment
Finally? Pretty sure I dropped here there months ago.
And this was supposed to be a reply to someone else’s comment…
oof this got mad vitriolic?!
Take care y’all <3
I feel I’ve had some small hand in the vitriol, and I apologise for my part.
I shouldn’t have implicitly threatened the lives of 50% of humanity.
i have nothing smart to say i just think the expressions theyre both making are cute
Criticism?? THAT CAN ONLY MEAN YOU ARE MY ENEMY
Only I am allowed to criticize!!!!!111 😛
It’s funny because this conversation started with Lucy not liking Sarah’s criticism.
“Dump your boyfriend” isn’t an argument you wanna throw out there without some weight behind it or knowing your audience. Like, Sarah wants to be a lawyer, she really needs to be smarter about the battles she picks and the tacts she takes.
I love Sarah so much.
Sarah, *explain yourself*. She’s echoing Raidah’s perspective because it’s the only one she’s heard. If you don’t explain why you did what you did, she won’t know, and she’ll just keep assuming Raidah was right.
Explaining herself is also a losing move, as long as Raidah is able to spread more lies and half-truths to people. The only long-term solution would be to completely remove their feud as a factor, and neither of them is mature enough to let that happen. It’s unfairah to Sarah to have to be the adult, considering she’s been the victim in this from the start, and Raidah’s such a stuck-up snake that she can’t be trusted to keep any peace under any circumstances.
Also, closure for this arc will probably be another three years.
Or maybe Sarah can just, you know, not act like a jerk most of the time?
Its not that Lucy’s echoing Raidah’s words. It’s that Sarah’s echoing them with her actions, and then blaming Raidah when Lucy says that she’s being a jerk.
Well she also heard Jennifer’s perspective. Which wasn’t much better.
Sarah providing some inconveniently good advice.
I hate Raidah but the fact is that Sarah is someone who has gone to insane and creepy lengths to destroy her life–including using Joyce to break up her long term relationship.
Sarah is great but her actions against Radiah made her the bad guy a long time before she started trying to interject herself into Lucy’s life.
How did this get to be over 400 comments and are they all just repeating some combination of Sarah/Lucy is the worst but Sarah/Lucy has a point?
If you wanna build two boxes, label them, and shovel whatever comments you want into those boxes, then yes, that’s what happened.
I’m not counting or anything, but there might be more comments claiming other people are saying those things, than there are comments actually saying those things. It usually feels that way.
indeed that is the general flavor of this comments section.
But if I don’t say that you said that someone said that someone else said one of the characters was [insert overdramatic moral term], how will I cum?
Uuuuugh. I hope this conflict resolves at some point. Of course Sarah wouldn’t explain her side.
Yeah, you can’t blame people for working off the only intel they have.
You can blame them for being too incurious to ask for more intel, though. Expecting people to explain themselves unprompted is silly.
Can you people read one strip without going directly for each other’s throats like rabid animals? There are real fucking people behind these screen names, for fuck’s sake, and disagreements about the subtleties of webcomic characters aren’t worth this level of hateful bullshit.
This.
Author’s too good. Fans get intense.
There’s intense and then there’s actually threatening to murder me.
…. wait what
No, like, as an example. I don’t think anyone’s done that.
basic decency on my internet? it’s less likely than you think
I realized I might have gone a bit too far when I noticed I couldn’t reply to my own thread anymore
Not to appear to be a Raidah supporter, but Lucy is definitely on the money with “Oh look, it’s Sarah, and surprise, she’s being mean.”
Mike’s death really did create an asshole power vacuum, didn’t it?
Well, there’s some imagery you just conjured.
🤣🤣🤣 Thx Taffy i needed that
It seems kinda weird that at no point has Lucy bothered to just ask Sarah what happened to the old roommate. Like, her interactions with everyone else make me believe she’d want to know the other side of this story before just deciding that Raidah’s story must be the 100% truth and Sarah really did ruin someone’s life over an inconvenience.
well, jennifer was tehre when sarah told her side of the story and she pretty much didn’t go against anything raidah said
Lucy definitely isn’t covering herself in glory here.
Wow. Sarah is visibly holding back tears right now.
Honestly Lucy has been just as blunt as Sarah usually is in this scene. :/ Only, like, she’s new at being blunt and doesn’t know how to navigate people’s boundaries while also being blunt at the same time. (I’ve been there.)
I actually really like Lucy and I only think I just realized that, I was under the impression that I felt neutrally until I actually talked about her. Pls don’t hurt Sarah’s feelings though aaaaaaaa
The ads are getting weird again. Now it’s jewelry and body armor.