I don’t know Animedingo’s sexuality, but it’s very common for queer people to say “aww gay!” When they see something cute and romantic/lovey-dovey, even of it’s about a hetero-couple… it’s just our way of expressing “oh my gosh! I love this love/crush/adorableness” and has nothing at all to do with the literal homosexuality behind the relationship lololol
It can also be a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reclamation thing. Thanks to comphet and toxic masculinity it used to be a lot more common for people, especially men, to call anything they didn’t like ‘gay’, especially if it involved something scandalous like (shock) feelings or (horror) romance. So it can be kind of a way to parody that behaviour by mimicking it in a way that makes it obvious we mean it as a seal of approval.
This is similar to how I occasionally use it, except I only do it when it absolutely doesn’t apply, i.e. the epitome of heterosexualness, especially when it is unambiguously good gets called “gay” by me. i.e. any sweet and romantic act between straight partners.
Amber is still very much into Walky.
His hair was enough to get her distracted from her phone for a few seconds.
She’s also still currently writing erotic fiction about them that Booster recently read.
Couple that with it being 3 months since Halloween and her recent letting go of or at least lessening of the guilt she feels towards Mike, them actually bringing up their feelings as they sit here, and Walky defending her to his mom, and I can easily see Amber at least willing to have a moment with him.
Hell, she came when he texted and basically acknowledged them messing around as a slim possibility when she asked Lucy if she was bothered and I’m not sure she’d have done the first day back.
Lastly, let’s not forget that Amber is “garbage” and a rule breaker, more than willing to do something unconventional if she likes someone, including wanting to make out with Walky after he made it clear he wanted to do right by Sal.
Long story long, I think the biggest factor against them messing around for a moment is Walky not wanting to cheat, not Amber still being mad about Halloween.
And for the sake of drama, I could easily see them messing around as it would affect multiple plot threads concerning the abrupt end to their relationship, the still seeming lack of passion between him and Lucy as well as the misunderstanding of him saying he loved her, and him turning down Dorothy because he was a good boyfriend.
Such a thing could potentially hurt all four of them, so I wouldn’t necessarily want to see that, but it’s certainly has a decent chance of occurring with the plot hooks we have currently.
We’ll denying the death of a close friend who essentially sacrificed himself for you can be a bit of a turn off. For how long though is the real question. If Walky apologizes right now this night might go somewhere.
Walku: Yes. He is dead as sh!t. Worms everywhere. Super dead. Dave Mustaine will write songs about him. Now let’s make out. What…. do you want him dead or not?
Amber is not very good at lying and dissembling, is she. She’s talking just to Walky now again forgetting to put on some sort of show for the parents. I love it. She’s fully present, engaging and defending herself. She was willing to come to dinner, but Lucy and Walky were cruel fools to think she would just sit there absorbing more abuse.
They at no point suggested she would be abused, let alone that she should take any abuse given to her.
If you predicted Linda would abuse her, well good call.
If you think they should have predicted it, maybe you’re right.
But if you look back at the discussions they had with each other and with Amber, nothing like that ever came up.
The closest thing that even suggests that is they expected his parents to “hate” Amber and thus be willing to like Lucy more, but even literally hating someone doesn’t automatically equal verbally abusing someone in a public restaurant.
This is not normal grammer when talking about emotions that were true in the past but might not be in the present. If she wanted to be ambiguous she would have said something like “I started liking him”. By saying it in past tense I think she is letting the mask slip and finally showing that she hasn’t felt anything in a long time, she’s depressed.
It just as normal to use past tense for like there as it is to use past tense for “didn’t want you to leave” in the previous sentence.
She’s talking about past motivations. When she changed his grades without telling him.
Well, toss that on the pile of “I don’t understand relationship stuff because as far as I can tell it is indirect hints and euphemisms all the way down.”
Sal defusing the situation is what anyone would hope their friends and loved ones would do for them. The parents listened and the supposedly useless dad actually defended Walky?! This is not turning out how I predicted, so interesting. Perhaps there is character growth possible for these racist parents.
Because she thought Amber was a useless, depressed lump who would passively absorb a bunch of abuse and distain. I eagerly await Lucy reaching the “finding out” portion of this tale.
No, the situation was messed up when they decided to give Walky a pretend girlfriend to take Linda’s verbal abuse/be someone she’d hate more than Lucy. Amber stood up for herself and now Linda definitely won’t like Lucy more. How’s he gonna pull “breaking up” with Amber and getting back with Lucy to his parents now, when his parents think that Amber, who also happens to have the bonus in their racist eyes of being white, went to such extreme lengths to help keep him in school just because she liked him? Yeah no, project get the Walkerton’s to accept Lucy by disliking a white girl more is a fail. I don’t think Walky will cheat, but the whole thing is a fiasco even if he doesn’t.
Sarah’s going to be proven right. I predict that Walky will have to fake dating Amber so as not to upset his mom, and it will cause Lucy all sorts of problems.
I think Walky doesn’t actually have the balls to upset his mom. I saw his face on the previous page, he had never experienced anything like that and can’t bear it.
Exactly. The goal was for his mom to be upset at his girlfriend, not him. It feels like he’s trying to backpedal a bit here by making sure his mom knows he’s currently doing well.
I’m still wondering how compromised Walky really was. Ambers making it sound like he would drop out or something for failing one class. I gotta wonder if Walky’s really that sensitive to failure? I think he’s tougher than that.
I think Walky had a panic moment when he realized he might flunk a class, and that is when the idea to hack the grades was born. Also by the way he reacted to his mom finding out confirms that at least to some degree that yes he is sensitive to failure.
sometimes the first encounter with failure hits you hard, and he probably grew up seeing how strict sal was treated (even if she was away for 5 years at the boarding school) [or maybe she had all her attention focused on him/smothered in the meantime to where she would be saying passive agressive guilt trippy stuff to where he’d subconsciously know that failing would be something his mother would be very against]
Exactly. He never had to put effort in at school before, and good grades just came his way. When that suddenly stops, leaving you with a plummeting GPA and no skills to effectively reverse that trend, it’s terrifying. Add an unhealthy dose of self-doubt and impostor syndrome on top of that.
He wasn’t dealing with failure particularly well. He ate his paper so no one would see a bad score, he lied to Dorothy about it, he skipped class because he couldn’t face the issue.
I don’t hate Linda enough. In fact this recent story has humanized her a bit more though I never was truly on the hate train. She’s unlikeable and deeply flawed but I think most of her horrible behavior is motivated by sincere love and I know her kids love her back. Her dying would really screw them both up bad. As much as we like hating her she’s no Blaine or Ross.
I’m not saying she needs to die (especially in this scene, where both her kids would both see it and feel guilt), but I very disagree. None of her behaviour reads to me as loving her kids (particularly not Sal), but as her using them as status symbols. Sal had to be sent away because she did something embarrassing to her mom (even more embarrassing because she already had a problem with Sal), and Catholic school too far away to visit is way more appealing looking to friends, colleagues, etc than a stint in juvie and a delinquent daughter the neighbours actually see. She hasn’t said shit indicating she cares if Walky is okay, only screamed at him for flunking, because flunking makes her look bad.
I’m also not convinced Sal loves her. Maybe in like, a familial way that she would mourn her death, but I think she’d more be mourning the fact that she went half her childhood without her mother, and longer without a mom who actually liked her. I’d assume her feelings about her mom are more like ‘As soon as I get out of college, I only have to talk to her on holidays at most, so I’m going to get through this.’
I acknowledge that this is only my opinion, but the phrase ‘sincere love’ really threw me.
Sincere love can be toxic. I think Linda’s problem is that she wants what she believes is best for her kids and not what they actually want. I also believe we commenters tend to make a lot of assumptions on her motivations from the kernels of information given cause we only really see her as reflected by her kids. A mom who doesn’t care about her daughter would not be as hysterically pissed at or insulting to Amber. To me she reads less like a mom who only cares about the value her kids bring to her and more like a mom who forces her expectations on her kids because it’s for their own good.
Like sending Sal away can read as either getting rid of the problem kid to impress the neighbors or sending her away from the troublesome friends she’s made so she doesn’t end up in jail not realizing you were actually more the cause for the conflict. These are just my takes though too. I could be wrong.
Stealing Sal’s money to stop Marcie from getting surgery to save her voice so that it would be harder for them to stay friends is not a love language, no matter how bad Marcie’s reputation is. Indeed, if memory serves she dismissed Sal’s complaints about this specifically because she thought Sal would forgive her out of love, just like any domestic abuser. She’s counting on the kids not having any choice but to love her and depend on her to get away with doing “what’s best for them,” and it doesn’t occur to her that Sal in fact has hated and distrusted her for most of Sal’s life and Walky still might; just like any narcissist. Maybe if every single thing she thinks is for their own good just so happens to be things with a strong potential to improve her own wealth and status. . .
She’s in the running for worst parent left, but bailing out the person who kidnapped your daughter’s best friend and threatened your daughter with a gun gives Carol a really strong edge.
I wonder at what point we should stop considering Carol as a parent. Showing up without warning to dump Joyce’s possessions on her and then dismissing her stated foundational beliefs out of hand seems like disowning to me. Which, I mean, it fits with how her adult siblings have either quietly or loudly disappeared from the parents’, particularly Carol’s, life.
Whereas Linda is still there twisting the knife deeper, hoping the kids will some day fit into the roles she has planned for them in her life.
+1. I’m convinced that the vast majority of awful people were made, not born, and I’m hoping that with emotions running this high she might break down a bit and tell us something of what made her this way.
When Charles’ asks where Sal was out late at night, she says ‘Making us look like bad parents’. Right here, she’s saying Walky ‘was her good student’. She didn’t give a flying FUCK about her being stabbed until she could use it for ammunition for the kid she pretends to care about – Walky, because he was kidnapped by Amber’s dad. If she had she wouldn’t have dumped Sal in another state and ignored her except to yell at her for five years.
Linda might claim to love her kids, but her actions do not bear that out.
Even Ross is no Blaine. The genuinely horrifying thing about people like Ross and Carol is that they really do think their actions are motivated by good. This is no excuse, of course, but it’s a very different kind of awful than someone like Blaine who’s consciously and shamelessly only out for themselves.
Charles seems more like the type to try to appease everyone and calm his wife however he can. Distract her, focus on the upside, anything other than tell her she’s behaving inappropriately. I don’t think their marriage would have survived this long if he was in the habit of directly standing up to her.
I feel like this plan is going to get even more complications.
As long as no one brings up Mike, it won’t become a massive drama nuke.
So I expect it in the next 2 strips.
wow this is the second time we’ve had a pretend girlfriend with possibly real feelings for a character in ths comic. surely this will work out better than that time in fall semester.
makes me wonder if dannys caught on since he’s been through it before , tho i’d hope they’d at least get a text before or explanation after if they part ways after lunch
You can like someone without wanting to bang them. I am so sick of everything around romance being a euphemism for a euphemism. It’s euphemisms all the way down. And that makes it impossible to talk about feelings for people without everyone assuming you want more. Walky is likeable, having him around is nice. Doesn’t mean everyone who likes him wants to date him.
But we already know it was a romantic kind of “like”. If they were always just friends that would be one thing, but I don’t think it’s a stretch here to interpret this romantically.
Walky’s already had Dorothy throw herself at him this (in-story) week, I think people are severely overestimating how much he’s willing to ditch Lucy because an ex is making eyes at him.
Even if they don’t break up, there’s been a lot of emotional intimacy with Amber and I think Walky would feel the need to disclose that to Lucy. It may even lead to a breakup like Jacob and Raidah. So I think there’s going to be drama either way. I don’t think Walky and Lucy are just going to resume their relationship exactly as before.
How perceptive are Linda and Charles? “Liked”? This is so delicious; go Amber, more train-wreck! She has nothing to gain or lose here, no ulterior motives, no filter. I hope she walks away with her dignity and self-worth.
She’s referring to a past event, yes, but that’s not her motivation, that’s her emotion, and she is saying she doesn’t like him anymore. Probably not because her feelings for him have changed but because she is depressed and hasn’t felt anything in a long time.
I’d imagine she’d probably find other ways to control him, dun think he could be forced to be pulled out of school like dana, though that was more of a legal situation, since idk if weed’s legal in indiana but i imagine staff wouldn’t tolerate a student getting high/drunk on campus
At the time that was written, weed def was illegal, never mind campus sobriety rules.
We assume Dana’s dad pulled her out and ordered her home to avoid it becoming a legal issue (and take her away from her sources) and maybe, hopefully, get her help for the real issues though the jury is out on that one (or even if he might be the real issue).
We only have Raidah’s account of her being unhappy with being home and she’s not the most reliable narrator at the best of times.
(Dana, who’d been spiraling while telling her friends all is well isn’t, too.)
I’m almost certain US universities don’t send report cards to a student’s parents. Mine certainly didn’t. I think it’s illegal to discuss a student’s grades without that student’s consent.
I’m pretty sure you’re right in general; at the college where I teach we ABSOLUTELY don’t. A whole bunch of years ago I heard from a student’s uncle who was checking in on his nephew’s performance because his nephew was on probation. I was not allowed to tell him anything and had to refer him to the main college information desk. I’m not even allowed to email students their final grades in case someone else (like a parent, relative, or SO) is using their email account. We don’t send out paper report cards any more; all grades are reported through the online college system, which is username/password protected.
As far as I know the law is somewhat ambiguous but schools pretty much exclusively interpret it in a way that covers their ass by giving the student as much privacy as possible
I worked in IT Support at a university and still teach there; students’ grades are in a highly protected data classification. There’s annual training backed by rules with sharp pointy teeth. Even tenured professors stay off that rail.
If I’m shaky-hungry, I crave as many meats as you can fit, with a simple redsauce. If I’m just normal hungry, I go for chicken, maybe bacon, then tomato, spinach, bell peppers, and maybe onions, with an Alfredo sauce. If I’m feeling self-destructive, olives and pepperoni and beef with barbecue sauce.
I’ve never heard of “St. Louis style” cheese, and the city is less than two hours away. Google suggests it’s Provel cheese instead of the usual mozzarella.
Provel is like velveta, but one of the primary source cheeses is provolone. It has the consistency of paste and tastes bad for pizza. The only people I met who thought it was good were born here.
Fennel seed is what gives Italian sausage its distinctive flavor, and very recognizable. Fennel leaf or bulb has similar flavor, tastes kind of anise-like, but I’ve only seen it fresh not dried so it’s as different as any dried herb is to fresh.
Am I seeing Linda’s pose right in the first panel? Is she like, halfway standing up? Was she gonna lunge over the table, unhook her jaw, and swallow him for having bad grades briefly,in the past, which got fixed well before it would ever have mattered?
Holy fuck Sal is SO COOL. This is actually a super cool move to be able, at 18, to tell your mother “shut the fuck up if you want to keep your precious social status as a reasonable woman” while physically restraining them. Oh my god I wish that was be but also I feel like that’s……. a family role.
“The kid that keeps me grounded.” “I know I can be a lot sometimes, but my wonderful daughter is here to tell me to stop, thank you sweetie.”
Linda… doesn’t have to change a lot of things in her life to stay who she is even if she now has an adult daughter that tells her she’s going too far.
That’s another case of the inversion between the golden child and the indesirable child: Walky internalized that he had to be a child, so he stayed a child. Sal internalized she would never be a good enough child, so she became an independant person. But now that they’re both eighteen, suddendly… the paradigm shifts: I think Linda understands that she shouldn’t want quiet kids anymore, she should want independant adults. And she’s been served that by Sal. “Oh cool, she daughter we neglected and abused turned into a strong and independant woman, we actually did it right!” “What do you mean my son is an idiot who cannot handle adulthood, he was my GOOD KID???”
This storyline is so… important to me… thank you Willis…
Also, while this is sweet, this doesn’t mean that Amber is remotely available for a romantic relationship, let alone is even seeking one with Walky. This could well be just Amber being happy about helping out her friend. Lets pump the brakes on the squeeing a bit.
Actually, let’s dial up the squeeing. This site has been way too hostile during this scene, and discouraging joy feels like a step in the wrong direction.
The thing is, Amber and Walky were always about giving in to your base desires even if it was trashy. So I think it would feel more comfortable to act badly in this case. Whereas with Dorothy, Walky always felt like he didn’t deserve her and he had to become a better person. So restarting the relationship with bad behavior would taint the whole thing with feelings of shame.
I’m not even personally invested in Walky-Amber, but I do feel that Amber’s little speech here is going to make a big impression on Walky.
I AM personally invested in AxW and this is exactly my take for why at least a moment is possible despite him rejecting Dorothy the day before (two days max).
On one hand, I don’t think Amber not being available for a romantic relationship would necessarily stop her.
But also, I, too, am cold water, as well. This might be another crack in the wall, but he has obligations now. Even if he did decide to break up with Lucy, it’s not going to be immediate, he doesn’t want to hurt her so he’ll put it off and hope the problem goes away on its own.
I guess AG would not approve, more than usual, if Amber decided to go after Walky while he was still with Lucy. Too much like Blaine.
My golden boy is failing math? I’m going to fix this problem six months in the past by screaming at the entire restaurant with escalating volume until something happens! I don’t know how people think sometimes. If they think.
People do NOT think when they are angry. They just react. In particular parents who use yelling as a form of discipline get in the habit of just shouting when they’re angry without thinking about it.
… Uh oh. I’m now imagining a scenario where Walky and Amber get back FOR REAL and then they go back and see Lucy who’s all “So how did it go?” and they’re “Yeeeeaaah, so it turns out that we’re actually dating for real now.” XD
I can imagine the scenario but Walky just rejected Amber. This is more like a nice moment (in the middle of a shitstorm) than gravitational attraction. Probably.
Or maybe, after the party breaks up, Walky wants to express his appreciation for walking into the lions’ den and for doing so well. They hug. Lucy sees it and jumps to a conclusion. Fresh drama!
I’m kinda amazed (see what I did there) that Walky’s Mom believes that Amber could change those grades. (Of course we know she can.) That skullduggery requires professional-grade hacking ability, to get into a university’s student records system. Why believe it?
I’m not sure where you get the idea that hacking a school is necessarily super fancy. Hacking just about any category of thing that isn’t a federal agency or specifically a security company is dependent on whether the individual IT department is well-managed, and universities have a habit both of drawing in really talented students like Amber, and making CS/IT students that aren’t necessarily unusually talented do all the work.
Even the “really talented” students at this point in their lives generally don’t have the skills of developing large, complex, secure and easily maintainable systems.
And they’ll be gone in a couple years, leaving their cool project to be maintained and updated by new students with no idea what the last ones were thinking.
honestly you’d really think lucy would be smarter than to send two exes to a fake-dating meet-the-parents situation
does she not read fanfiction? she certainly seems like a fandom-y person
Amber brought it up when this was planned iirc
If Lucy didn’t know I think she’d flip the fuck out at Walky or at least be very hurt because like. holy fuck dude.
man y’know it’s amazing how all walky needed was a confidence boost and some help with actually putting in the work and his mom’s first response to finding out he was failing was… horrible shrieking.
linda, do you even know your kids? do you even want to? do you know that humans aren’t achievement machines that do things to make you look good? do you know your kids are humans?
this arc is hitting close to home for me
Is it just me, or are Sal & Walky’s skin tones becoming more indistinguishable? Perhaps a physical manifestation of the black sheep of the family role shifting… or maybe it’s just the lighting being inconsistent from strip to strip, or Walky is REALLY moving around a lot.
They’ve been the same. Taking this strip from halfway through their shared appearances, http://www.dumbingofage.com/deadman (subject relevance coincidental), they have the same RGB values in the same lighting. So maybe you’re used to Walky in brighter lighting.
Walky, you’re in for it now. Linda is going to be up. your. ass. about every single aspect of your grades. She’s going to call and remind you that you have a quiz in math scheduled for tomorrow, and shouldn’t you be studying right now?
Because she’s seen the stench of failure on you, and she’ll be determined to do whatever it takes to wash it off.
Okay, so given the vibe in this strip, I’m inclined to believe him, but I also feel like “She stopped, I swear” is exactly the thing Willis would say if she had not, in fact, stopped.
I’ve just realized this is the second time Amber has been her actual crushes’ fake gf for having a meal with his parents. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Then again what with the Joyce and Jacob’s brother scenario maybe it’s just a type of scene Willis likes doing.
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“Aww! Why did we ever break up?”
“Because YOU insisted that our DEAD FRIEND isn’t DEAD”
“…and?”
“Also, we couldn’t fuck because the knife thing made it too weird.”
“Ah, right.”
“So knifeplay isn’t one of your kinks?”
This is totally a conversational track that should happen. Walky’s Mom’s mind blown.
Men and women can never be friends, because the knife thing always gets in the way.
At which point, Danny is tapped into this fight
The guy who insisted Mike isn’t dead vs the guy who insisted it’d be better if he’s dead. Go.
Surprise polycule!
“Also, we didn’t break up. We’re totally still an item as far as the parents are concerned. Remember?”
Aww gay <3
… But this is straight?
saying “aww gay” means “aww that’s so cute and romantic” the sexualities involved in the relationship are meaningless to the statement
They’re literally not being gay here? This is friendship/straight romance
I can only guess that this is meant in the “gay = happy,” but if it isn’t then I will be confused.
I don’t know Animedingo’s sexuality, but it’s very common for queer people to say “aww gay!” When they see something cute and romantic/lovey-dovey, even of it’s about a hetero-couple… it’s just our way of expressing “oh my gosh! I love this love/crush/adorableness” and has nothing at all to do with the literal homosexuality behind the relationship lololol
Ah, I see. I will try to keep that in mind in the future. Thank you for telling me.
It can also be a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reclamation thing. Thanks to comphet and toxic masculinity it used to be a lot more common for people, especially men, to call anything they didn’t like ‘gay’, especially if it involved something scandalous like (shock) feelings or (horror) romance. So it can be kind of a way to parody that behaviour by mimicking it in a way that makes it obvious we mean it as a seal of approval.
This is similar to how I occasionally use it, except I only do it when it absolutely doesn’t apply, i.e. the epitome of heterosexualness, especially when it is unambiguously good gets called “gay” by me. i.e. any sweet and romantic act between straight partners.
Also there’s something beautiful about calling Het romantic stuff gay. Reminds me of the old. “Fellas, is it gay to like women?” memes
Haha I almost referenced those! Very much the same energy imo and the reason I enjoy them so much ^^ And yeah that’s also my favourite usage too
Yep, my sister does this to me and my spouse, especially if we’re wearing similar clothing.
Yeah <3
New slang unlocked! lol
Yup! 🥰😋 hee hee hee
The confusion in the replies to you is sustenance.
*slurping noises*
That is the perfect avatar for that comment.
Confusion says the one who claims to be not someone else when they are clearly someone else.
I mean, if you’re not someone else, I have bigger problems than Amber.
Don’t worry, Animedingo. You’re a visionary misunderstood in your time.
fwiw I know what you meant here, AD, you’re not the only person here who uses “gay” that way. X3
https://youtu.be/h_9ATQFgu9o Gaaay!
Oh this is about to get new and different kinds of weird
Walky dumps Lucy for Amber, and Dorothy starts crashing even harder?
Better. Walky starts ALSO dating Amber. And then Dorothy. And finally, Joe. And that’s when Danny’s head explodes.
Better that than dating his sister which is where that pattern would lead next.
I’m going crackship here, not full blown methship.
Lucy already rejected the polycule when it was fake
If Walky was gonna dump Lucy, it would have been for Dorothy a bunch of panels back, but he wants to be a good boyfriend for Lucy.
Its not gonna happen now. If it goes too far, Walky will just burn the whole thing to the ground and admit to the ruse.
If Amber was a company that would be her slogan.
Lets make that windmill high 5 happen
i imagine amber wouldn’t do that too lucy, or like evne if they impulsively make out amber wouldn’t actively chase after it or so
She’s not going to forget what he said on Halloween.
Amber is still very much into Walky.
His hair was enough to get her distracted from her phone for a few seconds.
She’s also still currently writing erotic fiction about them that Booster recently read.
Couple that with it being 3 months since Halloween and her recent letting go of or at least lessening of the guilt she feels towards Mike, them actually bringing up their feelings as they sit here, and Walky defending her to his mom, and I can easily see Amber at least willing to have a moment with him.
Hell, she came when he texted and basically acknowledged them messing around as a slim possibility when she asked Lucy if she was bothered and I’m not sure she’d have done the first day back.
Lastly, let’s not forget that Amber is “garbage” and a rule breaker, more than willing to do something unconventional if she likes someone, including wanting to make out with Walky after he made it clear he wanted to do right by Sal.
Long story long, I think the biggest factor against them messing around for a moment is Walky not wanting to cheat, not Amber still being mad about Halloween.
And for the sake of drama, I could easily see them messing around as it would affect multiple plot threads concerning the abrupt end to their relationship, the still seeming lack of passion between him and Lucy as well as the misunderstanding of him saying he loved her, and him turning down Dorothy because he was a good boyfriend.
Such a thing could potentially hurt all four of them, so I wouldn’t necessarily want to see that, but it’s certainly has a decent chance of occurring with the plot hooks we have currently.
Amber x Walky stocks are going up. This was such a bad idea for the Walky x Lucy shareholders.
Nyahhaahhahaha I’m cornering the market, BABY.
playing both sides so you always come out on top
Collateral damage to Sal X Danny possible
Still an opportunity for Danny and Sal to sneak away while no one is looking at them. Maybe even do the sexytimes now.
My bet would remain on a complete market crash for all involved stocks.
Walky x Billie. It’s clearer now, she reminds him of his mom.
Daawww!
Liked?
We’ll denying the death of a close friend who essentially sacrificed himself for you can be a bit of a turn off. For how long though is the real question. If Walky apologizes right now this night might go somewhere.
Also, SCULPTED FROM CARAMEL
Walku: Yes. He is dead as sh!t. Worms everywhere. Super dead. Dave Mustaine will write songs about him. Now let’s make out. What…. do you want him dead or not?
I assume “liked” given this is faking a former relationship.
Amber is not very good at lying and dissembling, is she. She’s talking just to Walky now again forgetting to put on some sort of show for the parents. I love it. She’s fully present, engaging and defending herself. She was willing to come to dinner, but Lucy and Walky were cruel fools to think she would just sit there absorbing more abuse.
They at no point suggested she would be abused, let alone that she should take any abuse given to her.
If you predicted Linda would abuse her, well good call.
If you think they should have predicted it, maybe you’re right.
But if you look back at the discussions they had with each other and with Amber, nothing like that ever came up.
The closest thing that even suggests that is they expected his parents to “hate” Amber and thus be willing to like Lucy more, but even literally hating someone doesn’t automatically equal verbally abusing someone in a public restaurant.
I think Walky underestimated just how cruel Linda can really be, since he was never in her crosshairs before.
Everyone is taking that past tense a little too seriously, I think. It’s normal grammar given the context of the sentence.
This is not normal grammer when talking about emotions that were true in the past but might not be in the present. If she wanted to be ambiguous she would have said something like “I started liking him”. By saying it in past tense I think she is letting the mask slip and finally showing that she hasn’t felt anything in a long time, she’s depressed.
It just as normal to use past tense for like there as it is to use past tense for “didn’t want you to leave” in the previous sentence.
She’s talking about past motivations. When she changed his grades without telling him.
Well, toss that on the pile of “I don’t understand relationship stuff because as far as I can tell it is indirect hints and euphemisms all the way down.”
She changed his grades, in the past, because she liked him, at that time. It doesn’t imply she doesn’t still like him.
She used to
do drugslike Walky. She still likes him, but she used to, tooIt’s the simple past tense. X was true then. Nothing is said about whether X is or is not true now. If X is no longer true, use the past perfect.
“I hated you, now and long ago as much as I loved you, now and long ago.”
-Kumagawa Misogi
Yeah! Stick it to her Sal!!! 🤘😁
Sal defusing the situation is what anyone would hope their friends and loved ones would do for them. The parents listened and the supposedly useless dad actually defended Walky?! This is not turning out how I predicted, so interesting. Perhaps there is character growth possible for these racist parents.
Eh, less like character growth IMO, more Linda showing more of her true colors in public and Sal (and ideally Walky) finally giving up on her.
I am glad he’s genuinely doing better, but yeah. Glad Sal and Henry are trying to calm the situation down.
Who is Henry? (Lol I know who you mean tho. Their dad’s name is Charles 🙂
I always forget his name.
Sal and (maybe) Charles are the adults in this
Wendy’sGlasso’sconversation.Wally is a good boyfriend, so I don’t think he’d cheat on Lucy… But umm this plan seems to be headed back to being a bad one.
Walky* my phone did the thing…
True! Amber looks like a much better match for his parents. I don’t think Lucy ever be this honest and straightforward.
Essentially you don’t think he’d be a wally about it?
It stopped being a bad plan at some point? When? How??
Well, Linda, you wanted a partner who would do anything to push Walky to reach his potential…
Awwwww
this is definitely not going to end well for lucy, is it
hahahahaha not at all oh no
Lolll I wish these comments had “like” buttons.
Why did Lucy think this was a good idea…
My gravatar is SO appropriate for this lol
Because she trusted Walky. Oops.
Because she thought Amber was a useless, depressed lump who would passively absorb a bunch of abuse and distain. I eagerly await Lucy reaching the “finding out” portion of this tale.
Asking Amber was Walky’s idea, and on this path he gets rewarded for it. Yaaaaaaaaaay
Of course she did! He said he loved her, after all. 🙃
These poor doves.
No, the situation was messed up when they decided to give Walky a pretend girlfriend to take Linda’s verbal abuse/be someone she’d hate more than Lucy. Amber stood up for herself and now Linda definitely won’t like Lucy more. How’s he gonna pull “breaking up” with Amber and getting back with Lucy to his parents now, when his parents think that Amber, who also happens to have the bonus in their racist eyes of being white, went to such extreme lengths to help keep him in school just because she liked him? Yeah no, project get the Walkerton’s to accept Lucy by disliking a white girl more is a fail. I don’t think Walky will cheat, but the whole thing is a fiasco even if he doesn’t.
The plan was doomed from the start, we’re just seeing the very colorful ways in which it’s falling apart
Okay, there’s living vicariously though your kids, and then there’s *this*. >_>
Wow, this might all have the effect of Walky and Lucy being on shaky ground.
Which I am here for. I still ship the garbage skow and I miss it.
However I also ship Dorothy/Walky, so my heart is confused.
Polycule?
That would certainly work for me, but it would also mean I need to beg Yotomoe for the threesome that I dream of.
The polycule I am talking about is Amber, Dorothy, Walky. Didn’t want there to be any confusion going forward.
Dorothy and Lucy both strike me as serial monogamists
The way I interpreted the threesome, was Dorothy, Amber, Walky. Lucy doesn’t even get a blip on my sexy meter, don’t know why.
Because you and Walky have similar tastes?
That would make sense, though I’m not 100% sure we have the same tastes. More research to be done.
I’m pretty sure Lucy’s too vanilla for that.
I mean, you can be polyamorous and still very vanilla
Yeah, but that’s French vanilla. Lucy’s like Great Value vanilla.
It’s only vanilla if it comes from the French region of vanilla. Otherwise, it’s just commonplace.
And it’s only French kissing if you do it in the French region of Kissing.
A lot of people in these comments seem to be forgetting that Dorothy already tried and he shot her down because he wants to be a good boyfriend.
That same thing would happen here.
Lucy’s fucked, isn’t she?
Not at all. That’s her main problem at the moment
Lmaooo
Relationship wise? Yeah
The way she wants to be? No.
Someone get Daisy & Lucy together, STAT! 😀
No, she didn’t get the opportunity.
Oh… she had the chance. But she didn’t go for it.
Nope, she was too poisoned by the “nice Christian girl” trope.
Technically, she had the chance, but didn’t want the alpha bongo audience of one.
I still say Walky used that as an excuse to get out of having sex with Lucy.
Probably.
It’s okay, just remind her of the insensitive remarks he made about Mike’s death.
Actually both of Amber’s exes have been rude about Mike, huh.
I mean, let’s face it, Mike wasn’t a very likeable person.
Mothers often liked him. One nickel at a time.
When was Ethan rude about Mike?
I was thinking about Danny. Guess Ethan slipped my mind considering he was pre-comic.
Holy cow, before this moment it never occurred this night result in Walky realizing he looeks amber more than Lucy
I am here for a Walky/Amber reunion
Sal pulling on that leash she should
Sarah’s going to be proven right. I predict that Walky will have to fake dating Amber so as not to upset his mom, and it will cause Lucy all sorts of problems.
Upsetting his mum was the goal though
I think Walky doesn’t actually have the balls to upset his mom. I saw his face on the previous page, he had never experienced anything like that and can’t bear it.
Maybe it’s never been turned on him before, but I’m pretty sure he recognizes it. That could be even worse.
He may have a newfound appreciation for the abuse that Sal has had to endure now that he’s experienced it for himself?
Exactly. The goal was for his mom to be upset at his girlfriend, not him. It feels like he’s trying to backpedal a bit here by making sure his mom knows he’s currently doing well.
I don’t care if they never get together again. I will ship them with the red hot intensity of a supernova from now on.
KAMEHAME AMBER x WALKY XD
Speed of the gods to both you, and the ship. May it sail forever.
Who’s both of you? Pika pika? 😮
Apparently speech to text added the word both to my comment and I didn’t notice.
Wait, no both is correct. I’m referencing Yotomoe, and the ship as “you both” while saying that.
Wait, RED HOT intensity?
I know what you mean, but red-hot actually refers to the temperature at which things glow red. As opposed to yellow-hot or white-hot.
Supernovae are gamma-hot.
It’s chilly in space, give the supernova a break.
I’m still wondering how compromised Walky really was. Ambers making it sound like he would drop out or something for failing one class. I gotta wonder if Walky’s really that sensitive to failure? I think he’s tougher than that.
He was freaking the fuck out and also skipping class hoping the problem would go away on its own.
I think Walky had a panic moment when he realized he might flunk a class, and that is when the idea to hack the grades was born. Also by the way he reacted to his mom finding out confirms that at least to some degree that yes he is sensitive to failure.
Linda certainly is, haha.
sometimes the first encounter with failure hits you hard, and he probably grew up seeing how strict sal was treated (even if she was away for 5 years at the boarding school) [or maybe she had all her attention focused on him/smothered in the meantime to where she would be saying passive agressive guilt trippy stuff to where he’d subconsciously know that failing would be something his mother would be very against]
Exactly. He never had to put effort in at school before, and good grades just came his way. When that suddenly stops, leaving you with a plummeting GPA and no skills to effectively reverse that trend, it’s terrifying. Add an unhealthy dose of self-doubt and impostor syndrome on top of that.
He wasn’t dealing with failure particularly well. He ate his paper so no one would see a bad score, he lied to Dorothy about it, he skipped class because he couldn’t face the issue.
If I recall correctly, the worry was that Linda would pull him out of school for flunking math, not that he would kicked out of school.
Given the verbal abuse he’s demonstrably at risk of enduring, I don’t think “toughness” will do him much good in this scenario
Who hopes Linda dies of a heart attack here?
That would leave Walky scarred for life, and might even perturb Sal a bit too.
I don’t hate Linda enough. In fact this recent story has humanized her a bit more though I never was truly on the hate train. She’s unlikeable and deeply flawed but I think most of her horrible behavior is motivated by sincere love and I know her kids love her back. Her dying would really screw them both up bad. As much as we like hating her she’s no Blaine or Ross.
I’m not saying she needs to die (especially in this scene, where both her kids would both see it and feel guilt), but I very disagree. None of her behaviour reads to me as loving her kids (particularly not Sal), but as her using them as status symbols. Sal had to be sent away because she did something embarrassing to her mom (even more embarrassing because she already had a problem with Sal), and Catholic school too far away to visit is way more appealing looking to friends, colleagues, etc than a stint in juvie and a delinquent daughter the neighbours actually see. She hasn’t said shit indicating she cares if Walky is okay, only screamed at him for flunking, because flunking makes her look bad.
I’m also not convinced Sal loves her. Maybe in like, a familial way that she would mourn her death, but I think she’d more be mourning the fact that she went half her childhood without her mother, and longer without a mom who actually liked her. I’d assume her feelings about her mom are more like ‘As soon as I get out of college, I only have to talk to her on holidays at most, so I’m going to get through this.’
I acknowledge that this is only my opinion, but the phrase ‘sincere love’ really threw me.
Sincere love can be toxic. I think Linda’s problem is that she wants what she believes is best for her kids and not what they actually want. I also believe we commenters tend to make a lot of assumptions on her motivations from the kernels of information given cause we only really see her as reflected by her kids. A mom who doesn’t care about her daughter would not be as hysterically pissed at or insulting to Amber. To me she reads less like a mom who only cares about the value her kids bring to her and more like a mom who forces her expectations on her kids because it’s for their own good.
Like sending Sal away can read as either getting rid of the problem kid to impress the neighbors or sending her away from the troublesome friends she’s made so she doesn’t end up in jail not realizing you were actually more the cause for the conflict. These are just my takes though too. I could be wrong.
Stealing Sal’s money to stop Marcie from getting surgery to save her voice so that it would be harder for them to stay friends is not a love language, no matter how bad Marcie’s reputation is. Indeed, if memory serves she dismissed Sal’s complaints about this specifically because she thought Sal would forgive her out of love, just like any domestic abuser. She’s counting on the kids not having any choice but to love her and depend on her to get away with doing “what’s best for them,” and it doesn’t occur to her that Sal in fact has hated and distrusted her for most of Sal’s life and Walky still might; just like any narcissist. Maybe if every single thing she thinks is for their own good just so happens to be things with a strong potential to improve her own wealth and status. . .
this too
Linda is the worst parent in this comic.
Linda isn’t even the third worst parent in this comic.
She’s in the running for worst parent left, but bailing out the person who kidnapped your daughter’s best friend and threatened your daughter with a gun gives Carol a really strong edge.
I wonder at what point we should stop considering Carol as a parent. Showing up without warning to dump Joyce’s possessions on her and then dismissing her stated foundational beliefs out of hand seems like disowning to me. Which, I mean, it fits with how her adult siblings have either quietly or loudly disappeared from the parents’, particularly Carol’s, life.
Whereas Linda is still there twisting the knife deeper, hoping the kids will some day fit into the roles she has planned for them in her life.
Oh, I’m sure she’s not done yet.
+1. I’m convinced that the vast majority of awful people were made, not born, and I’m hoping that with emotions running this high she might break down a bit and tell us something of what made her this way.
When Charles’ asks where Sal was out late at night, she says ‘Making us look like bad parents’. Right here, she’s saying Walky ‘was her good student’. She didn’t give a flying FUCK about her being stabbed until she could use it for ammunition for the kid she pretends to care about – Walky, because he was kidnapped by Amber’s dad. If she had she wouldn’t have dumped Sal in another state and ignored her except to yell at her for five years.
Linda might claim to love her kids, but her actions do not bear that out.
I forgot this was an actual line
Even Ross is no Blaine. The genuinely horrifying thing about people like Ross and Carol is that they really do think their actions are motivated by good. This is no excuse, of course, but it’s a very different kind of awful than someone like Blaine who’s consciously and shamelessly only out for themselves.
What they don’t know is that Carla changed Walky’s marks after Amber stopped. Why? Who knows, this is Carla we’re talking about
The real question is why wouldn’t Carla TELL Walky she’d done it? Carla’s not exactly the shy and secretive type when it comes to her accomplishments.
Carla would wait til the best possible moment to drop that bombshell
would she use any technical skill/knowledge to do something like that versus another pie prank?
Walky’s dad isn’t exactly standing up for him. Would it be fine to continue screaming at him if he’s still failing classes?
“Wait you’re still failing? Sorry honey, here’s your megaphone. Really let ‘im have it”
I think it was less that he is condoning the yelling about failing, and more towards, “he is trying to fix it.”
After all, Linda can’t be too proud considering she said she would sleep with someone for better grades.
I’m surprised he even made that effort. We have never seen him stand up for Sal this much.
We haven’t seen much of him at all. That’s a “who knows what happened off-panel” sort of thing.
Charles seems more like the type to try to appease everyone and calm his wife however he can. Distract her, focus on the upside, anything other than tell her she’s behaving inappropriately. I don’t think their marriage would have survived this long if he was in the habit of directly standing up to her.
Well, I suspect Amber would be willing to try a threesome, but Lucy’s Christianity might not be quite flexible enough.
The Bible does have a multitude of polygamists.
i think it would be more of a ‘i don’t wanna share my boyfriend’ kinda thing
Dollars to donuts she’s devoured more than a few Robin/Starfire/Raven fics…
reading that doesn’t necessarily mean she’d be into it irl
that said, maybe it’d help if amber was in costume/cosplayed someone else lol
I feel like this plan is going to get even more complications.
As long as no one brings up Mike, it won’t become a massive drama nuke.
So I expect it in the next 2 strips.
wow this is the second time we’ve had a pretend girlfriend with possibly real feelings for a character in ths comic. surely this will work out better than that time in fall semester.
Third time! Second time with Amber.
And it’s always at Galasso’s…
makes me wonder if dannys caught on since he’s been through it before , tho i’d hope they’d at least get a text before or explanation after if they part ways after lunch
You can like someone without wanting to bang them. I am so sick of everything around romance being a euphemism for a euphemism. It’s euphemisms all the way down. And that makes it impossible to talk about feelings for people without everyone assuming you want more. Walky is likeable, having him around is nice. Doesn’t mean everyone who likes him wants to date him.
I get what you’re saying, and I don’t disagree in the big picture, but Amber is a provably known enjoyer of banging Walky.
But we already know it was a romantic kind of “like”. If they were always just friends that would be one thing, but I don’t think it’s a stretch here to interpret this romantically.
+1
Alt text: that goes for both tweaking his grades and liking him
Sal: “Holy crap I blocked mom from killing somebody and she didn’t go for me”
Yes! Wonderful to see.
So can we talk about an uncomfortable future? What is going to happen between Lucy and Walky after this… “incident” and their defense of each other?
I have a feeling this will end in tears, I just don’t know whose.
Maybe Lucy would have to proof she’s some kinda math genius to where it can be like “Don’t worry i’ll tutor him throughout everything” or so
i know lucy wants more but i’d just not deal with parents and just date him or just do casual flings or so
Walky’s already had Dorothy throw herself at him this (in-story) week, I think people are severely overestimating how much he’s willing to ditch Lucy because an ex is making eyes at him.
Even if they don’t break up, there’s been a lot of emotional intimacy with Amber and I think Walky would feel the need to disclose that to Lucy. It may even lead to a breakup like Jacob and Raidah. So I think there’s going to be drama either way. I don’t think Walky and Lucy are just going to resume their relationship exactly as before.
Walky and Lucy will work it out and continue their low-key relationship, and many commenters will be drowning in their own tears.
That would be incredibly boring, and Willis rarely takes the boring option.
How perceptive are Linda and Charles? “Liked”? This is so delicious; go Amber, more train-wreck! She has nothing to gain or lose here, no ulterior motives, no filter. I hope she walks away with her dignity and self-worth.
In context of what she’s saying “liked” is correct. She’s referring to a past event and her motivation at the time.
She’s referring to a past event, yes, but that’s not her motivation, that’s her emotion, and she is saying she doesn’t like him anymore. Probably not because her feelings for him have changed but because she is depressed and hasn’t felt anything in a long time.
That smile in the last panel seems like genuine warmth to me. If it was really “liked” in the past tense I would expect a more bittersweet expression.
Sal getting between her screaming mom and scared brother. :’)
I doubt Linda would get physical but I’m glad Sal holds her back.
And the good news is if this gets out it’ll ruin Walky’s (and by extension, Linda’s) reputation as well as risk Walky being kicked out of school.
I wouldn’t call that “good” news, if anyone else on campus happens to be here, right now, though. Galasso’s is pretty close, after all.
Sydney is their waiter and they’re a sophomore.
I’d imagine she’d probably find other ways to control him, dun think he could be forced to be pulled out of school like dana, though that was more of a legal situation, since idk if weed’s legal in indiana but i imagine staff wouldn’t tolerate a student getting high/drunk on campus
At the time that was written, weed def was illegal, never mind campus sobriety rules.
We assume Dana’s dad pulled her out and ordered her home to avoid it becoming a legal issue (and take her away from her sources) and maybe, hopefully, get her help for the real issues though the jury is out on that one (or even if he might be the real issue).
We only have Raidah’s account of her being unhappy with being home and she’s not the most reliable narrator at the best of times.
(Dana, who’d been spiraling while telling her friends all is well isn’t, too.)
Yea, I assume they got their kids report cards when the semester / quarter ended. I assume that much time has passed so far.
I’m almost certain US universities don’t send report cards to a student’s parents. Mine certainly didn’t. I think it’s illegal to discuss a student’s grades without that student’s consent.
I’m pretty sure you’re right in general; at the college where I teach we ABSOLUTELY don’t. A whole bunch of years ago I heard from a student’s uncle who was checking in on his nephew’s performance because his nephew was on probation. I was not allowed to tell him anything and had to refer him to the main college information desk. I’m not even allowed to email students their final grades in case someone else (like a parent, relative, or SO) is using their email account. We don’t send out paper report cards any more; all grades are reported through the online college system, which is username/password protected.
But even with all that, Linda would want to see and what excuse would Walky have not to log into the system and show her?
As far as I know the law is somewhat ambiguous but schools pretty much exclusively interpret it in a way that covers their ass by giving the student as much privacy as possible
I don’t mean to imply that I don’t think that’s the right call, only that schools aren’t necessarily making it for noble reasons.
Not being sued is a noble reason.
Yes, it’s in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html
I worked in IT Support at a university and still teach there; students’ grades are in a highly protected data classification. There’s annual training backed by rules with sharp pointy teeth. Even tenured professors stay off that rail.
I wonder what Galasso’s pizza is like. I hope there’s a lot of garlic and fennel.
Which one is fennel, again?
It’s an herb with the same texture as carrot leaves. Bitter and kinda like licorice when raw, sweet and savory when cooked.
I’ve never knowingly touched a carrot leaf, so that texture is unknown to me. I do like sweet and savory, though.
Yeah it’s good.
New activity : What are your favorite pizza toppings and sauce?! 😋
If I’m shaky-hungry, I crave as many meats as you can fit, with a simple redsauce. If I’m just normal hungry, I go for chicken, maybe bacon, then tomato, spinach, bell peppers, and maybe onions, with an Alfredo sauce. If I’m feeling self-destructive, olives and pepperoni and beef with barbecue sauce.
Mmmmm your shaky-hungry is my kinda pizza, I’m a meat lover who like Dina craves a sausage pizza 😋
I also support the shaky-hungry, but at all instances of hungry.
green pepper and mushroom. Marinara with fennel and lots of garlic. And the cheese canNOT be St Louis style.
I’ve never heard of “St. Louis style” cheese, and the city is less than two hours away. Google suggests it’s Provel cheese instead of the usual mozzarella.
Provel is like velveta, but one of the primary source cheeses is provolone. It has the consistency of paste and tastes bad for pizza. The only people I met who thought it was good were born here.
Marinara and I like lots of meats on pizza, but mostly pepperoni.
No cheese, am allergic.
Fennel seed is what gives Italian sausage its distinctive flavor, and very recognizable. Fennel leaf or bulb has similar flavor, tastes kind of anise-like, but I’ve only seen it fresh not dried so it’s as different as any dried herb is to fresh.
you may know it as the seed that’s in italian sausage.
It’s the reason I hate Italian sausage lol
If the plan works because the Walkertons hate Amber but Walky actually realizes he still likes her…. well, might be just desserts, heh
I don’t think my Canadian University sent a report card… pretty sure grades were only posted online and that was it lol
Oh no!
But for different reasons!
Am I seeing Linda’s pose right in the first panel? Is she like, halfway standing up? Was she gonna lunge over the table, unhook her jaw, and swallow him for having bad grades briefly,in the past, which got fixed well before it would ever have mattered?
I wouldn’t be surprised if she was about to either slap him or get closer for screaming more effectively tbh
i actually feel like this is one of the public restaurant establishments where yelling is okay…
So basically the Krusty Krab? Yeah that tracks…
Holy fuck Sal is SO COOL. This is actually a super cool move to be able, at 18, to tell your mother “shut the fuck up if you want to keep your precious social status as a reasonable woman” while physically restraining them. Oh my god I wish that was be but also I feel like that’s……. a family role.
“The kid that keeps me grounded.” “I know I can be a lot sometimes, but my wonderful daughter is here to tell me to stop, thank you sweetie.”
Linda… doesn’t have to change a lot of things in her life to stay who she is even if she now has an adult daughter that tells her she’s going too far.
That’s another case of the inversion between the golden child and the indesirable child: Walky internalized that he had to be a child, so he stayed a child. Sal internalized she would never be a good enough child, so she became an independant person. But now that they’re both eighteen, suddendly… the paradigm shifts: I think Linda understands that she shouldn’t want quiet kids anymore, she should want independant adults. And she’s been served that by Sal. “Oh cool, she daughter we neglected and abused turned into a strong and independant woman, we actually did it right!” “What do you mean my son is an idiot who cannot handle adulthood, he was my GOOD KID???”
This storyline is so… important to me… thank you Willis…
Sorry for the multiple grammar issues in this post.
Face it, Danny. You hit the jackpot.
Was that a Maryjane quote?
I was high when I typed it, so yes.
Yes it was.
To the “ZOMG WALKY AND AMBER ARE GONNA GET BACK TOGETHER” crowd…
Look, I’m not saying that Walky explicitly likes Dorothy more than Amber, but we’re not even a week in-story removed from Dorothy throwing herself at Walky and him going “Uh, yeah, no, I’m with Lucy”: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2023/comic/book-13/03-joementum/failed-2/
Also, while this is sweet, this doesn’t mean that Amber is remotely available for a romantic relationship, let alone is even seeking one with Walky. This could well be just Amber being happy about helping out her friend. Lets pump the brakes on the squeeing a bit.
Actually, let’s dial up the squeeing. This site has been way too hostile during this scene, and discouraging joy feels like a step in the wrong direction.
The thing is, Amber and Walky were always about giving in to your base desires even if it was trashy. So I think it would feel more comfortable to act badly in this case. Whereas with Dorothy, Walky always felt like he didn’t deserve her and he had to become a better person. So restarting the relationship with bad behavior would taint the whole thing with feelings of shame.
I’m not even personally invested in Walky-Amber, but I do feel that Amber’s little speech here is going to make a big impression on Walky.
I AM personally invested in AxW and this is exactly my take for why at least a moment is possible despite him rejecting Dorothy the day before (two days max).
I think Amber is enjoying the memory of a time that has passed.
On one hand, I don’t think Amber not being available for a romantic relationship would necessarily stop her.
But also, I, too, am cold water, as well. This might be another crack in the wall, but he has obligations now. Even if he did decide to break up with Lucy, it’s not going to be immediate, he doesn’t want to hurt her so he’ll put it off and hope the problem goes away on its own.
I guess AG would not approve, more than usual, if Amber decided to go after Walky while he was still with Lucy. Too much like Blaine.
Damn, Sal is THE best here!
FUCK YEAH BRUH 😍
aww
My golden boy is failing math? I’m going to fix this problem six months in the past by screaming at the entire restaurant with escalating volume until something happens! I don’t know how people think sometimes. If they think.
It’s expected rage from an abusive mom with Nice White Lady Syndrome. Drama and spite are like fuckin oxygen to her.
People do NOT think when they are angry. They just react. In particular parents who use yelling as a form of discipline get in the habit of just shouting when they’re angry without thinking about it.
… Uh oh. I’m now imagining a scenario where Walky and Amber get back FOR REAL and then they go back and see Lucy who’s all “So how did it go?” and they’re “Yeeeeaaah, so it turns out that we’re actually dating for real now.” XD
I can imagine the scenario but Walky just rejected Amber. This is more like a nice moment (in the middle of a shitstorm) than gravitational attraction. Probably.
He did reject Amber. But that’s not today.
Fiddlesticks! I meant Dorothy. I am such a scatterbrain
Or maybe, after the party breaks up, Walky wants to express his appreciation for walking into the lions’ den and for doing so well. They hug. Lucy sees it and jumps to a conclusion. Fresh drama!
The conclusion she jumps to is that Amber is pretending to break up with Walky on friendly terms.
Sals character development has been really pleasing to see, she’s really grown me.
Good writing
I’m kinda amazed (see what I did there) that Walky’s Mom believes that Amber could change those grades. (Of course we know she can.) That skullduggery requires professional-grade hacking ability, to get into a university’s student records system. Why believe it?
I’m not sure where you get the idea that hacking a school is necessarily super fancy. Hacking just about any category of thing that isn’t a federal agency or specifically a security company is dependent on whether the individual IT department is well-managed, and universities have a habit both of drawing in really talented students like Amber, and making CS/IT students that aren’t necessarily unusually talented do all the work.
Even the “really talented” students at this point in their lives generally don’t have the skills of developing large, complex, secure and easily maintainable systems.
And they’ll be gone in a couple years, leaving their cool project to be maintained and updated by new students with no idea what the last ones were thinking.
I think IU uses professional software for this sort of thing. Which can have its own problems, but they’re not rolling their own.
OTOH a university that is working to build a reputation in cybersecurity probably takes really good care of student records.
Didn’t it mainly involve breaking and entering?
What is this? Understanding? Calmness? Kindness? Where is the apocalypse I was promised?
Oh, don’t worry, this could EASILY still turn into some kind of love triangle apocalypse later.
Yeah the way things are going Lucy is still in the blast zone.
honestly you’d really think lucy would be smarter than to send two exes to a fake-dating meet-the-parents situation
does she not read fanfiction? she certainly seems like a fandom-y person
Yup she should have considered this kind of development.
Did Lucy know they were exes?
Amber brought it up when this was planned iirc
If Lucy didn’t know I think she’d flip the fuck out at Walky or at least be very hurt because like. holy fuck dude.
man y’know it’s amazing how all walky needed was a confidence boost and some help with actually putting in the work and his mom’s first response to finding out he was failing was… horrible shrieking.
linda, do you even know your kids? do you even want to? do you know that humans aren’t achievement machines that do things to make you look good? do you know your kids are humans?
this arc is hitting close to home for me
So many people have left Amber. She needs Walky around even if it isn’t sexual.
Is it just me, or are Sal & Walky’s skin tones becoming more indistinguishable? Perhaps a physical manifestation of the black sheep of the family role shifting… or maybe it’s just the lighting being inconsistent from strip to strip, or Walky is REALLY moving around a lot.
They’ve been the same. Taking this strip from halfway through their shared appearances, http://www.dumbingofage.com/deadman (subject relevance coincidental), they have the same RGB values in the same lighting. So maybe you’re used to Walky in brighter lighting.
Walky, you’re in for it now. Linda is going to be up. your. ass. about every single aspect of your grades. She’s going to call and remind you that you have a quiz in math scheduled for tomorrow, and shouldn’t you be studying right now?
Because she’s seen the stench of failure on you, and she’ll be determined to do whatever it takes to wash it off.
Up from the depths, thirty stories high
Breathing fire, her head in the sky
Momzilla! Momzilla! Momzilla!
And Walky
Ah I messed up, this was supposed to be a reply to Rogue 7 above.
Oh No!
There goes Walky-O!
Go Go Momzilla!
Okay, so given the vibe in this strip, I’m inclined to believe him, but I also feel like “She stopped, I swear” is exactly the thing Willis would say if she had not, in fact, stopped.
Lucy’s plan may have severely backfired.
This is the moment everthing goes wrong. Or right, if you don’t ship Lucy and Walky.
Yeah Walky/Lucy isn’t making it out of this storyline alive, sorry
I mean personally I like Walky/amber more than Walky/Lucy.
Maybe it’s cause I don’t like lucy cheery attitude.
I’ve just realized this is the second time Amber has been her actual crushes’ fake gf for having a meal with his parents. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Then again what with the Joyce and Jacob’s brother scenario maybe it’s just a type of scene Willis likes doing.