He said that they’d retained and gone through any prior identity struggles, so Ethan is gay and wouldn’t repeat his coming-out, as it were, but didn’t preclude new realizations regarding one’s feelings and identity. Thus, Danny and Billie’s bisexuality. Honestly, I don’t think Joyce is gay for Dotty (it’s just a joke among commenters), but it’s not impossible she actually is.
Okay, I can see why Dorothy’d assume it’s half-assed. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt; heavens know I’ve given terrible explanations for declarations of love and killed the romance of it. Maybe not this badly, but still.
Yeah, it’s not like Walky has a sparkling track record of thinking before he speaks. In fact, Walky’s ‘hat’ seems to be angering or upsetting people by not thinking before he speaks.
There’s half-assed declaration of love, and then there’s actually telling the girl “I said I love you purely so we don’t have to deal with any romantic drama crap, now let’s move on.”
Having seen a bunch of lame romcon anime myself, I can see his point being genuine: those guys are great at modeling how not to act, and I can see Walky thinking “right, if a girl ever tells me ‘I love you’ and I like her, tell her back, don’t be a doofus”. Of course, it’s also indistinguishable at this point from “right, if a girl ever tells me ‘I love you’, tell her back”. Hard to tell if he’s treating it as an empty ritual or not.
Exactly. It’s good that he said it if he actually means it. It doesn’t need to be a huge deal if it’s just that simple to him, but his dumb little reasoning makes it sound like he said it just to pacify her. Right after she said he could wait till he was ready…you were doing so well Walky
But “I love you” IS an empty ritual though, no matter how you look at it. Just like “How are you?”, “I’m sorry”, etc. It doesn’t make the feelings less genuine, but the words are just that, words.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on that MindLink. I don’t believe it is an “empty ritual…no matter how you look at it”. To me, the definition of an empty ritual is that there are no genuine feelings behind it. Your statement that things are empty when they have genuine feelings behind them is confusing to me. By your definition, every single word anyone says or any action they take is empty.
My definition of an empty ritual are words or actions that can be said or done without feelings behind it. Most rituals are, most expressions are. When you bestow power on a word or a sentence, you make it into an empty ritual, because you shift the emphasis onto the ritual or words themself. That’s how it can be an empty ritual, and still leave room for the feelings behind to be true. Love isn’t empty, the word “love” is.
Maybe a better way to put it: It’s like the difference between worshipping a god or worshipping an image of the god. The image/idol itself isn’t holy or powerfull, but the deity/belief is. A person strong in faith would have no problem burning the image of their deity. Or the shadow-on-the-cave-wall-thingy, love is the hand, the words are only the shadow.
I think it was more Dorothy being like “Isn’t this supposed to be a massive deal for you to admit?” and Walky just being like “No, I’m pretty okay with it and being embarrassed about it just makes it harder on everyone invovled.” In a backwards way but still.
No, this is a disaster. We’ve already discovered that Dorothy doesn’t COMPLETELY trust him, and now he says this? He’s sending bad messages. And actually Joyce isn’t helping that.
To be fair, Dotty is sending some seriously mixed messages right now and Walky is kind of the victim of confusion. He probably doesnt even know how to feel right now. He might actually love her but doesnt know whether or not he should considering the fact that she keeps telling him and others how temporary it is.
Uhg, I wish people would stop blaming Dorothy for not planning out this relationship right from the start. Dorothy is not sending mixed messages, she is communicating honnestly, to let Walky know her feelings are evolving. It’s both mature and pretty brave, too, and she is doing it in the most healthy way I can imagine.
What Dorothy said wasn’t all that cool either, really. Their relationship was founded on fleeting fun, and under the terms of that agreement Walky isn’t obligated to take love seriously. Scratch that – he’d be a damn fool to fall in love with miss Yalebound president. And just because she decides to follow her heart/hormones and start craving deeper contact doesn’t mean he’s obligated to reciprocate, and more than a girl is obligated to cave in when a guy starts crying ‘friendzone’ at her.
Seriously, “I guess you weren’t ready to hear that”? Does she think he’s somehow falling behind just because he’s not falling for her the same way she’s falling for him?
(Disclosure: I’ve been hardcore cockblocked for over a decade because I was so dumb as to fall in love with a woman who considers me at best a friend. And guess what? She’s perfectly in the right, and I’d be a fool and a jerk to think otherwise. The same can apply to Dot.)
That was pretty harsh of her to say, yeah. Maybe after some time to ruminate she’ll consider that, trope-aware explanation notwithstanding, he really did mean it.
But she really meant it , too!
I dont think she fully considered how much saying her own feelings out-loud was a potential game-changer, to how she perceived the relationship.
When you feel the words “i love you” and you say them, it has consequences. ( if only to yourself sometimes )
By saying “i love you” right back, it was a tremendous relief to dorothy. It seemed to mean that walky accepted her feelings just as she said them , in the moment; and returned the affection she knows he feels for her. Kudos. No problems.
It would have been a brilliant save for Walky and Dorothy, and relieving Dorothy of the burden of figuring out how deep her feelings were, and how much that might alter their relationship.
But by Walky pointing out he was doing just that, i.e. attempting to rescue them from emotional consequences, He accidentally erased the save.
You can look at it as taking back the “I love you”, or you can look it as taking back ‘the save’ . Both are jarring and might have felt like slap to Dorothys feelings.
She is being charitable here. But she is in a tough spot. Between a rock a hard-space . If she doubles down and owns up to being in love with walky, she risks double -rejection, and unfairly puts him on the spot again — Which she explicitly said she didnt want to do.
If she goes along with it, it puts her in the awkward position of denying her feelings or agreeing to a superficial relationship without room to grow. Even if it was true before — by pointing it out when she just said ” i love you” and meant it — she is likley to reject this as counter to her feelings and integrity.
That self-aware reflection added to her own, could put her in the position of questioning how deep she wants to go in the relationship. Some people here think she is stating a change in the relationship. I think she honestly expressing her pride and affection for being in a relationship with walky and his recent emotional depth about Billy. Which potentially could put her in conflict with what she wants with the relationship.
I think walky genuinely caught her off-guard 2 in a row, and this ,might feel like a gut punch. She is owning up to it, and not guilt-tripping him for saying something very stupid about her feelings. Props to Dorothy.
I think Dorothy could have handled it much more easily if he HADN’T said he loved her. She made it clear she wasn’t demanding that he say it back.
But to have him say it and then to essentially take it back? I remember being 18 and in love and that’s basically one of the cruellest things someone could have done.
It’s worse than not saying it back, because she got her hopes up that he meant it and then he was like “haha not that it means anything.”
And the fact that he doesn’t realise how important it is to her makes it worse. I know Walky didn’t understand how much it would hurt her to say that, but that’s kind of the point.
I think that even if he just said it then walked back on it, it would be a weird walky thing to do. What pissed me off the most is that he basically told Dorothy “What you are saying to me isn’t a big deal” when it is very clearly a big deal to her. He’s telling her that she’s wrong about the way she feels about him.
Walky (and most american men) have been conditioned by movies and TV to think that women can easily and casually say they love men, but that it’s a horrible and much much much more difficult thing for men to say to women. The fact that he rejects the insane difficulty men allegedly have saying the phrase is not much of a comment on how big a deal it is for women to say it – especially since media tells us that it’s a common and easy phrase for women anyway.
Of course, Walky gives no indication that he understands what the phrase even means. (Fair enough: I know a LOT of adults who don’t understand it.) If he thought the phrase had any actual meaning as opposed to “something couples say to each other”, then he might not have said it so cavalierly.
I think it’s just Webcomic Dynamics in general. The same thing is happening over in “Questionable Content.”
This is why I don’t get into the shipping thing. In webcomics, all relationships are destined to fail in time. Shall we discuss how the Billie and Ruth ship will sink? Or over in QC, how the Marten and Claire ship will sink? Because we all know they will…and it will be glorious… 😉
Theirs is a healthy relationship that started out fun, and Dotty is communicating, as her feelings evolve, to let Walky know about them – as healthy adults do. Sure, she WISHES for reciprocal feelings, but in no way is she DEMANDING it. If he does not love her back, it will not be because of the way the relationship started, it will be because of… love! I wish people would stop blaming Dorothy for not planning her relationships from the start: you never know how things will turn out, and it’s OK for relationships to evolve if both are ready. If not, no one is to blame
I’m really impressed that I no longer think I have any idea what Joyce is feeling at this point. DoA Joyce has gotten so complicated!
I think platonic jealousy is likely, but it could also be disorientation at discovering what she thought of as a sexual relationship could become a loving one, since Joyce probably has a lot of trouble connecting lust and love in healthy ways.
He still could have just said “I do love you back, and appreciate the sentiment, but I want to be cautious about how fast we move and how much we commit”
Or, he could have said ‘we’ve been dating for 2(?) weeks, isn’t it a bit early to be saying that?’
Or, being a nerdy nerd, he could, as someone down thread said, have said ‘I know’.
Or he could have changed the subject.
Or he could have gone with an unadorned ‘I love you’, and left it at that, rather than going on his rant about how he’d ‘removed the power’ from the words, and how that was a ‘lifehack’. (That would be a terrible choice, but it would be better than what he did.)
There’s lots of things he could have done besides treat ‘I love you’ as a meaningless call-and-response, because he’s watched a lot of crappy sitcoms.
He was sort of replying to Dorothy’s comment about her expecting to have to drag it out of him. It was not a totally unprompted rant.
But, as we’ve already seen, Walky’s brain-to-mouth filter is not very effective, or possibly completely broken, so he kept talking when he should have realized that was not the thing to say. Or that, maybe, what he was trying to say could have been worded in a way that didn’t trivialize Dorothy’s declaration.
I suspect whatever character development Walky gets, part of it is going to involve him learning when not to necessarily say what he’s thinking. He’s already hurt Joyce’s feelings more than once, escalated an argument with his sister by not thinking before he speaks, and has already broken up with Dorothy (and now made her angry a separate time) by not thinking before he speaks, given how many times that’s come back to bite him, now.
In my experience, you can’t have the first without the second. To be totally honest is to skip the simple white lies we all tell everyday to smooth out our daily life.
Honestly? I don’t feel Walky’s to blame. He doesn’t think this is a serious relationship (because it’s not supposed to be), and Dorothy did put him on the spot, in front of Joyce no less. She probably did it to reassure herself that Walky wasn’t messing around or anything, but Walky doesn’t know any of that. The dude is clueless, and it’s unfair of Dorothy (and us) to expect him to act differently.
Plus the dude just spent all night worrying about Billy, let him have a drama-free moment!
Exactly. Dottie basically built this entire relationship on the implication that they would be breaking up soon. She shouldn’t be mad if he hasn’t formed a DEEP connection with her after what…a month TOPS? Walky just didn’t want any Drama BS. Just cuz she didn’t wanna hear it doesn’t mean that Walky not explaining why he did it would’ve made it any better.
I think she’s more mad that he tried to wordplay his way out of it then being honest about how he felt (since, y’know, she just suggested yesterday in comic time that he should be more open about how he feels with her).
He felt like Love isn’t a word that should have a lot of power. He used it because it’s too stressful. He doesn’t give it the same thought and power Dorothy does. That’s his choice.
And then specifically calls it a ‘life hack’. He may honestly not think it does or should have any power, but he’s admitting he tried to ‘cheat’ his way out of the situation.
I read that more as ‘Even if you felt that way, you wouldn’t say it back unless I encouraged you to’ much in the same way she had to coax him to even touch her boob after insisting that he, in fact, could.
I thought the extorting thing Dorothy said was quite obviously a joke. She said right before that he didn’t need to say it back, which I think she said with sincerity.
I mean, this isn’t really the first time that Dorothy has hinted that she’s getting stronger feelings for him. And I think it would have been better to have just flat out said he didn’t feel the same way then to try and ‘life hack’ his way out of it.
Do we know Walky actually doesn’t feel the same way? Given how unfiltered he’s been in the past (see: “[Joyce] is crazy brainwashed,” etc), I think it’s not at all unlikely that if Walky didn’t reciprocate the feeling, he probably would have just said as much without stopping to think about whether or not he should say it.
Because of not thinking that much about it, he might have been trying to say why he didn’t think it was that big a deal, and in the process, made light of something that was clearly very important to Dorothy.
Honestly, I would’ve been similarly annoyed if I told someone I loved them and their response was effectively “I love you too. That’s the required response, right? I don’t mean it, but that’s what I’m supposed to say to avert drama.”
I don’t think drama could be averted in this case.
When you tell someone you have strong feelings for them, and they indicate that they do not reciprocate (either by not saying ‘I love you’ back, or by pulling Walky’s stunt here), people are hurt!
I’m not saying Walky did something wrong here. But guys, stop trying to avoid drama like it’s the end of the world. Sometimes someone is upset for reasons, and need time away from you to be angry, and this should not shred your self-esteem. Sometimes you don’t do anything wrong, and people’s feelings get hurt anyway, and those feelings are legitimate. It is not just ‘girls amirite’.
It would be one thing if Dorothy was shitting all over Walky for what he said, but expecting her to just be automatically okay with this and act like nothing’s wrong is ridiculous.
Why do people keep implying that bullshit like this is exclusive to either gender? It’s crappy, it happens, and both “sides” do it. We’re all humans, with all the flaws and imperfections that implies right alongside with the good.
No. No! Those three aren’t capable of handling the sadness that was released when Ruth and Billie got together! It’s too strong for them! Even just that tiny bit of excess misery is capable of consuming their entire lives!
When I started sailing this ship, I honestly thought Joyrathy was more of a crack pairing, but damned if Joyce isn’t making me think it’s credible with the past few strips.
Joyce is freakin’ jealous of Walky. She has spent a lot of occasions trying to get Dorothy to spend time with her not Walky. That same day she asked if she could run with Dorothy ‘because that’s the only way she could spend time with Dorothy when Walky wasn’t around’.
So now Dorothy has announced she loves Walky, and Joyce apparently isn’t taking the news well, now is she.
I seriously doubt her and Ethan’s relationship even crossed her mind. She doesn’t want a relationship with Ethan, she wants someplace/someone to hide with. And so does Ethan.
Walky meanwhile is Walky, he’s doing what guys do when a girl says ‘hey this isn’t going anywhere, just fun and games ’cause I’m going to Yale and have no time for serious relationships….he believed her.
Sooo… basically, the characters live up to the name of the comic.
Dorothy puts Walky on the spot with an attempted Relationship Upgrade (TM), in front of Joyce, after saying for weeks that they’re “just for fun” and temporary.
Walky doesn’t quite give the worst possible answer, but it’s not the one Dorothy is hoping for, and his explanation just makes it worse.
Dorothy is annoyed or angry with Walky for having an awkward and poorly-thought-out response for something she sprung on him.
Man, there are a lot of people reading this that always feel the same way about people all the time forever and never have conflicting feelings. Lucky you guys.
When I told my girlfriend I loved her and she said “I’m not ready to say that yet”, I said “That’s fine, I’ll still be here when you are”, and that was the end of it. No drama, no passive aggressive dickery.
Dorothy wants the fun parts of the relationship without any of the strings, and it’s starting to bite her in the ass — and not the way she wants it too, either.
Walky didn’t say that. He said ‘I love you, but don’t really mean it and am just saying it so I don’t have to deal with serious stuff.’ I’m pretty sure Dorothy would’ve been ok with ‘I’m not ready to say that yet’, or even ‘I’m not really looking for something that serious’.
Dorothy is falling/has fallen for Walky, which she hoped wouldn’t happen. She doesn’t just want the fun stuff; she wanted to talk to Walky about the stuff with Billie cause she was worried about him. She maybe didn’t pick the best timing, but I’m pretty sure she’s trying to open up a conversation about her changing feelings about the relationship, and Walky basically replied with ‘I’m just going to tell you what I think you want to here cause that’s easier’.
Again, yes, Dorothy was the one that established that she wanted just a fling. Feelings change.
I don’t. I’ll quit spamming the page with this now, but he never said he didn’t mean it, just that it was dumb that the party that first received the ILU was supposed to have a hard time returning it and that he’d strip the words of that power.
He’s being secure in his masculinity for a change, but his insecurity is coming back with a vengeance to tripp him up on the explanation.
It’s understandable that Dotty’s upset, and yes, he did goof up, but I think I know exactly where David’s coming from.
All she did was state her feelings, that’s not pushing hard, that’s keeping her boyfriend on the same page as her. She has no control how he responds to this.
That would have been okay, if not for the “extort it out of you” followup.
**Clarification on my anecdote — those aren’t direct quotes. Significantly more sassiness was involved. We laughed together instead of crapping a brick.
Obviously not: “Well, Jeez, that was easy. I thought I’d have to extort it out of you.” So it’s obvious that Walky delivered the only permissable answer but not in the right demeanor. “I don’t want to put you on the spot” but she does.
She was kidding. She wasn’t expecting him to say it back immediately. She was pleasantly surprised and cracked a joke, then Walky kept talking and not only ruined the moment but effectively belittled what she said.
Dorothy’s making the mistake of getting serious about someone despite herself that’s obvious. She knew from the get go Walky for multiple reasons was not the kind of guy she wants for a long term relationship but she has fun with him/cares about him/is attracted to him and feelings are going to happen whether she likes it or not. But I’m getting glimpses here of what turned her off from Danny. It has to be exhausting to constantly have to be the more emotionally evolved person in the relationship. To have to go through these little hiccups where you later have to spell out why someone hurt you because they are just not emotionally sensitive/empathetic enough to get it on their own. This relationship isn’t just doomed because of their agreed upon expiration date but also because they’re just NOT that compatible overall and never really have been.
Now I don’t think this is going to be the end of them (yet). I think what this relationship is meant to do is help Walky mature more in preparation for future relationships and give Dorothy more of an idea of what she won’t want to deal with when she enters her next short term or long term relationship. Now yeah these are necessary lessons for both to learn and grow with each other but GOD it will be an emotionally exhausting process and resentment will build up because DAMN IT why is it either of their jobs to do this?
Also, people need to stop blaming Dorothy for this. She might have sprung it on him a bit, but that doesn’t change the fact that Walky completely triviliazed her confession, and then blamed her for the whole thing when she got annoyed with him, yet again. Regardless of how you feel about the idea of love or whether Walky’s description was accurate or not, that was still a jerk move on his part. :/
Urgh, see, this is why I don’t like Walky (or Danny either, because the same thing happens). Not only does he keep acting like a self centered arse, which already makes him an unlikeable character, but when he does it to Dorothy, people inevitably blame *her* entirely for whatever happened. Apparently she’s always, *always* the unreasonable one, even when she has a legitimate complaint. I wonder why that might be, hm… ~_~
Well, she did still kind of spring that on Walky at an unexpected time, while they were still kind of in public, while not exactly being clear with Walky that her feelings on their relationship were changing. Normally, not that big a deal, but she knows Walky well enough to know that she has to spell stuff like that out for him for him to get it.
Then she overreacted a bit. Not that she should have just been okay with what Walky said, but storming off like she did doesn’t help diffuse the situation, either.
Again, it’s not all Dorothy’s fault; Walky played a significant role, too. But neither of them are blameless.
He didn’t react like an ass. He said “I’m gonna say I love you, because I know if I don’t, it’s gonna become a much bigger thing than it means, and honestly I don’t put that much heft into the phrase “I love you” in the first place. He coulda just said “That’s nice” or “I don’t care”. He wasn’t being an ass. He explained his mindset.
He never said he didn’t mean it. He said that he knows that if he didn’t say it it would become much bigger than it needs to be. Maybe don’t back the guy with established commitment issues into a relationship corner like this. Even if he meant it or didn’t mean it, his reasoning would be the same. If I don’t say this, drama will happen. It’s too much stress. WAY too much.
Why can’t they both be acting like idiots? It’s not like this comic is called “Everyone Makes Smart Decisions And Articulates Their Thoughts Effectively”.
Dorothy shouldn’t have put him on the spot like that after so many contradictory messages on what their relationship is; “I love you,” to many, if not most people, implies that the relationship is no longer purely “just for fun,” (see: what Dorothy keeps saying it is).
Then, Walky, because he’s kind of an idiot, after giving the answer he knows she wants to hear, promptly digs himself a hole by flippantly explaining his answer in a way that trivializes Dorothy’s declaration and makes her doubt his sincerity (although, given Walky’s apparently broken brain-to-mouth filter, if he didn’t love her back, he probably would have said as much).
Dorothy’s not wrong to be angry, but Walky’s not wrong to be confused about why she’s angry at him. Seems like a genuine, two-way misunderstanding to me.
Just to clarify, this isn’t the first time she’s tried to make this a more serious relationship. It was out of nowhere to go that far (though she also immediately tried to take the pressure off of him), but this isn’t the first time it’s come up.
While that’s true, she was still trying to be kind of subtle about it. She knows Walky well enough by now that she’ll basically have to draw him a freaking flowchart for him to get that she doesn’t want the relationship to be “just for fun” anymore.
Dorothy’s certainly not carrying the majority of the blame. My point was that it’s a genuine misunderstanding that they both played a roughly equal part in. Dorothy did not broach the subject terribly well, Walky proceeded to be a smartass in a situation where that was more problematic than usual, and Dorothy probably slightly overreacted (I don’t think she should have been okay with it, but storming off doesn’t help the situation, either).
And yet the one thing she’s never said to this boy who you say she’d have to draw a flowchart for is, “Hey, I know I said this was just for fun, but it’s getting a lot more serious than just-for-fun for me. What do you think?”
She vastly prefers to change the rules without his input and expects him to roll with that without a hitch. I suspect that’s because that’s how Danny functioned. As she said before, she’s used to being the spine in the relationship. She still hasn’t adjusted completely to Walky having a spine of his own.
You seem to forget that he believes that the relationship hasn’t changed, that this is a temporary, for fun thing, not a serious, together forever after this thing. Dorothy’s trying to change the rules of their relationship. Walky’s an idiot, yes, but he’s sticking to the plan
It’d be like if you and someone agreed that you would be building a shed. But then halfway through through the other party decides to start making it a larger structure with a patio and separate facilities branching off of it. So they bit by bit start adding things to this shed that are more than they’d agreed on and suddenly one day they say. By the way, I think we should go ahead and make this a barn. The other guy’s like…Yeah…I guess we could make this a barn. That seems like a lot more work and commitment than the shed we were making and I kinda don’t want to, but sure. And then you get all mad cuz clearly this person was not ready to make a barn.
Feelings and construction are two completely different things. lol I get the analogy that you’re trying to make, but in your example, the changes made by the other person are willful, deliberate, they’re thought out and planned. That’s what construction is, following a plan. When it comes to feelings, we have no control over how they develop. They just do what they want, when they want, and we don’t often have any say in the matter. Dorothy had no control over falling in love. The only thing she might have done a little bit wrong here is sprung it on him at an inopportune time, but given the discussion they just had with Billie, and the fact that she’s, you know, human, her actions are forgiveable. Walky on the other hand, was a jerk, plain and simple. He deliberately trivialized the situation in an attempt to make it easier for him to handle, and then, when Dorothy pretty much told him that it was a big deal for her, he dismissed her feelings like they don’t matter, at least compared to his “life hack”.
And honestly, it’s not so much his initial reaction that makes me see Walky as the jerk in this situation, which is why I didn’t comment on the last page. Instead, it was his continued dismissal of Dorothy’s feelings on the matter *after* she’d voiced her concern that makes him the one at fault for her reaction, at least in my eyes. It’s a pattern in Walky’s behaviour that I’m really not fond of. I mean I get that he has trouble with dealing with relationships, but that doesn’t grant him immunity from the consequences of being an arse. :l
Walky likes Dorothy but hasn’t given me any hint that he wants this relationship to be anything more than it presently is. Dorothy even starts the relationship by setting the ground rules that “This thing is temporary. I have no attatchment to you, or IU” and Walky’s like “Cool, girls are gross” So now Dorothy feels like she’s grown more attatched to Walky who is still emotionally distant and very casual about the relationship. He almost broke up with her over a disagreement about PAJAMA JEANS. They’ve been going out for like a month or so and then Dottie drops the “I love you” bomb on him. If I was Walky, I wouldn’t even take this declaration seriously. Like…You LOVE me? You can’t see yourself living without me? Like if we broke up right now it’d break your heart? Well I don’t believe that’s true. Since I don’t believe that’s true I don’t believe you feel as powerful a feeling of love as I define it. But I also don’t want to not reciprocate this Faux love that you’re showing me. I’ll say it back and it’ll mean the same thing that your fake declaration means.
I’d be 100% on Dorothy’s side if she was dating Walky for like 6 months but as far as I know it’s be 1-2 TOPS. I do not acknowledge the feeling you’ve had for someone for 1-2 months love. That shit is infatuation.
The last time Dorothy said she loved someone, she was breaking him with him —- also in public.
That trivializes it to me.
Also, Putting men on the spot, in public, seems to be habit with Dorothy.
You want to credit her for an uncontrolled outbust of passion, but it wasnt.
She just said “You care more about things than you like to admit”
It did need trivializing or contexualizing, but by Dorothy , otherwise its emotionally manipulative.
The second she has been emotionally manipulative about Walkys concern for Billie, and attempted to make it about her.
It would have been more honest to say she admired walky and would love if she could inspire the same level of loyalty. She could suggest to walky he could follow her to yale if their relationship was serious. Even if he wouldnt that would demonstrate that Walky isnt disposable.
yes, he screwed up. He should have given her a big grin and kissed her. Unfortunately, he rehearsed this.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that Dorothy was being intentionally manipulative, right down to the initiation of this situation. A lot of people seem to think that way actually. I didn’t read it that way though. How I read the situation was that she got caught up in the moment because of the conversation with Billie, and blurted out her feelings to Walky. When she said “you don’t need to say it back”, I didn’t read it as her being manipulative either. To me, I read her words as being a statement of genuine consideration for the fact that Walky may not be comfortable with saying it yet, and she’s fine with that, but she wanted to tell him how she felt anyway, just because. Women are capable of saying something and only meaning exactly what they just said, you know. 😛 (And okay, yes, sure, if he hadn’t said it back then this situation may have turned into something else entirely, but it does no good to blame her for a direction that the storyline didn’t go in, so let’s not even discuss her imaginary reaction as if it has any impact at all on what happened instead.)
-sigh- Honestly.. So many people seem to see Dorothy as being this manipulative shrew who only ever says and does things with the intention of trying to get what she wants out of other people all the time, but that’s just not the case. Willis has said as much himself, and he’s the one who *created* her character. Sadly, that hasn’t seemed to change many people’s minds about her though. Oh well.
… I may have been subconsciously responding to two comments at once when I typed this. If parts of it don’t make sense, or seem to not be referring to your post, that’s probably why. lol
I hear what you are saying.
That isnt what I meant by “emotionally manipulative” .
I realize those are potentially loaded terms. I am going to walk it back. A LOT.
Just to be clear. I like Dorothy. She is the character I would like to have as a friend. I think she is disciplined, thoughtful, hard-working, ( mostly ) unpretentious , tolerant of differences, and all-around a good human being. But she is not perfect. ( But she seems close! ) My criticisms here are about one the few flaws that she actually seems to have.
I say this respectfully. You seem to be viewing this ( and my comments ) from the lens of heterosexual-dating politics. ( including Dorothy: right, walky: wrong ) I acknowledge in that context , calling Dorothy emotionally manipulative is loaded. I am not heterosexual , and that is not how I meant it.
She didnt have the full opportunity to explain what she means. Love means different things to different people. Dorothy has a very high emotional intelligence and walky is kind of emotionally inept! I think with this panel we can agree on that.
That situation can naturally lead to the person with the higher emotional intelligence, manipulating the other. In another comment on here I even linked to Journal articles about this phenomena. Humans are social animals with various amounts of empathy and ability to project empathy and other political skills based on that. Its possibly to be emotionally manipulative purely unintentionally. I know, I have been before. This can happen if there is mismatch between what one persons feelings are and their stated intentions about those feelings.
She knows his emotions better than he can express them. That doesnt make Walky or Dorothy bad people. On this one personality trait, they are polar opposites.
I am not accusing her of staging events, or being a shrew. I like Dorothy.
I do, like you, think she loves Walky. I agree with you that she was honestly responding to events.
I disagree with you that she blurted it out. I think she was being honestly reflective and thoughtful about her feelings, toward walkys emotionally depth vis-a-vis Walky and Billie. I could be wrong. I think seeing how deeply walky felt toward Billy , genuinely inspired in her greater affections toward walky.
I think Dorothy’s emotional EQ is high enough that she can know she would inherit the same type of loyalty, considering walkys infatuation with her. I think walky is clueless with ‘The feels’ and doesnt understand this.
That being said, I think Dorothys feelings are genuinely hurt and she did mean she loved walky! I do think its possible for to love walky, and I think Willis is done a great job with providing fuel for that.
( I think its possible to fall in love with someone with just one kiss. )
I think the type of love she feels for walky is like when you see someone that you are attracted to , and simply like them a little more each time you see them. Its partly admiration-based, partly premeditated, and then it just gets out of control and you are in love with them.
However if she wants a greater emotional attachment from walky than she is willing to give, that would be potentially manipulative. That doesnt mean that Dorothy doesnt love him. That doesnt mean her feelings are true, and genuine. Instead its a question, how that effects this being a temporary relationship , with an expiration date, that she told walky not to take seriously.
Does this negate that Yes..No …maybe? Walky needs to hear her say that explicitly. If she wants this relationship to be as thoughtful, earnest and as worthy of the convictions ( that seem to be at the heart if who Dorothy is ) then its manipulative to get Walky fully emotionally invested, with an expiration date.
That doesnt make Dorothy a bad person. It makes her a human being; one with needs and desire that her environment may not allow her to fullfill.
There’s being unprepared for the pressures of a real relationship and there’s “Do you even know what feelings are or do you think it’s just words people say when they’re expected?”
I disagree, Dorothy sprung an emotionally charged revelation on Walky in public which, usually, would require Walky to reciprocate by saying “I love you as well” or risk Dorothy’s embarrassment
Yet Dorothys would it clear shes gone once Yale calls (she may be regretting it now)
Dorothy is a good person but her call probably came (partly) at relief that Walky:
A. “Proved himself worthy” of her proclamation presumably by not having Billie in his bed
B. Showed emotional maturity in his caring about Billies well-being
I’m thinking the person most to blame in all this is Joyce by putting into Dorothys head the notion that Walkys cheating on her
But Joyce doesn’t like this relationship. She thinks Walky is a dumb jerk and is frustrated that Dorothy spends so much time with him. The last thing she wants is for Dorothy to be any more emotionally invested in him.
Ok, she left Danny because she could take him for granted. Now she’s dropping Walky since she can’t take him for granted. After telling him this is just for fun and she’ll leave him for Yale anyway.
And she’s implicating that she considers Walky immature for not being the next Danny.
Danny belittled her professional goals while taking very seriously the emotional aspects of their relationship. Walky is super supportive of her career goals but very immature and unprepared to deal with the feelings aspect of things. He’s getting better but he has a long way to go. Hopefully boyfriend#3 will understand her career goals because he’ll have his own but will also be able to discuss his/her feelings because he’ll be mature enough to realize having the ability to do so doesn’t somehow make him less “manly” or whatever.
And Dorothy will understand having gone through her previous 2 relationships that this kind of balance is what she’s looking for in a partner. She’ll have more of an idea of just what the fuck it is she’s looking for.
Where, exactly, does she dump Walky in this comic? What I see is her being sad & frustrated that he dismissed her attempt to be more emotionally committed to each other, not less.
Okay, I just accidentally posted to yesterday’s comic. So if your reading through on a comment binge you’ll have to put up with most of it again. Though before I start let me add that Joyce probably only heard the first part of their interaction. So you should take that into account in your interpretation.
Here goes:
Walky gives her exactly what she wants and then takes away its value.
Dorothy has a decision to make. It’s either just for funzies or it’s completely serious. Walky isn’t letting her have it both ways. Nor should he. Not if he wants more. If she wants more, she has to take the emotional risk of saying so. And then finding out if he’s willing to go for a serious relationship.
It would be fine to just give her what she wants if he wants to be a doormat and be Dannied when the time comes, or if he’s emotionally dishonest and just wants to keep her happy so the sex’n’stuff keeps coming. But the only one who can change the ground rules is her. Walky’s answer isn’t going to satisfy her but if she’s satisfied then she has no motive to change anything.
There’s nothing to hate Dorothy for in any of this. Nor has either of them ended their relationship.
The past tense of “When somebody Loved Me” is intentionally ominous. When we started out with the Sal and Marcie flashback we assumed it was about Sal. When we hit the development with Billie and Ruth, we assumed it would relate to their story. Now with Dorothy and Walky’s relationship evolving we have a tendency to assume it relates to them. I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say I think the title probably relates to Ethan and his prior relationship with Amber.
In some universe, Walky will follow Joyce back to her room and find her crying and comfort her and much will develope from that. That universe will not be this one.
i agree with you up to a point, but see no evidence Dorothy has changed her mind.
She now has time to think about the situation. I think she will realize If Walky didnt trivialize it she would be back in the same situation with Danny when she dumped him. She will also realize that she is getting too deeply involved, too fast.
This relationship just ended.
Walky discovering Joyce crying and comforting her , is intriguing tho.
Willis isn’t retreading R!IW!J&W! storylines. Walky and Joyce were already a thing in a different continuity. That said, Walky might well go and do something that turns him and Joyce from being “friends” that don’t especially like each other into actual friends.
Walky and Dorothy seem due for a rough patch, even a break-up, although I don’t think that’ll last. I think they complement each other well, despite their problems.
There is plenty of evidence that Dorothy has changed her mind and wants more from their relationship. She wants Walky to trust in her and confide in her. The last two strips have been all about the fact that she wants Walky to feel about her the way she is starting to feel about him. Saying that Dorothy has not changed her mind totally ignores the evidence. Now the strange thing about humans is that however Walkyish his response was, the fact that he is going to take more effort and not just a slam dunk paradoxically makes him more valuable and more of an investment, provided of course he doesn’t become too expensive. That Dorothy will reach the conclusion that she is getting too deeply involved too fast is the thing there is no evidence for.
No I don’t expect Walky to follow Joyce etc. I enjoyed the thought, but as Henry points out Willis is going in different directions. But I’m also sure that if Willis chose to explore that direction he would manage to do it without being hackneyed. And technically there is room in “other directions” for an eventual Walky/Joyce relationship to fail spectacularly to the secret relief of both leaving them ever after friendly exes convinced that there are no circumstances where the two of them would ever work.
But no, I am as convinced that this isn’t the universe where Walky/Joyce just started as I am that this isn’t the universe where Dorothy/Walky just ended.
“She wants Walky to trust in her and confide in her. ”
Yes totally true.
and Walky Put her on the the spot, pointing out she said their relationship was temporary ( and he shouldt get that deeply attached ) She seemed a little rejected, but resigned that he was correct.
She hasnt come back and told him to forget all that. She hasnt said ‘Yale is far away and I want to treat you 100% like a real boyfriend, and this relationship has potential to go places’ . That will get Dorothy what she wants.
I acknowledge that Dorothy has mixed feelings and is honestly feeling her way through them. I do think Dorothy wants more meaning and depth, yet its manipulative to ask someone to emotionally attach, if you wont do the same in return.
Only Willis knows where Dorothy will decide to take this relationship.
I think Dorothys head says one thing, and her heart something else. On the whole I think she leads with her head, which is why I think they might be splitsville.
If I were Joyce, and I overheard folks havin’ a Love Conversation, I would skedaddle out of there. We don’t know exactly what Joyce heard — we don’t know if she heard anything beyond Walky’s original “I love you too.”
I’m guessing Joyce is just like “Billie’s in love…Dorothy’s in love…why can’t *I* be in love?”
Joyce honey — omygod, can I feel your pain.
So I’ll tell you what — your head, my shoulder. Put it there.
We’ll cuddle and cry each other to sleep …. or sumthin’.
Both Walky and Dorothy have said stuff that probably didn’t need to be said here. Dorothy, though she probably didn’t mean to, did put pressure on what Walky assumed to be a fun, temporary relationship, to take it to another level. Even though she said she didn’t have to hear it back, even saying that she did love him still puts on that pressure. It’s not her fault, but because of it I’m not surprised things turned out how they did.
Walky dealt with it in the wrong way though, I mean instead of just shrugging her words aside with some lame jokes, all he should have said was something along the lines of ‘i’m not really ready for that yet” or something along those lines. But ofc he was trying to avoid drama, so he tried to defuse the situation the best way he could with some lame jokes. So while neither of them are really in the right, I wouldn’t say either of them are to blame either.
Mind you, Walky’s brain is in a sleep deprived state, so at the very least he’s grumpy and emotionally unstable, and at worst he’s all that and running on autopilot as his brain tries to go back to sleep.
I think they break Up. For a while…..
Dorothy is nothing if not rational, including about her love.
She now realizes this really was too soon to say, because its too soon.
Shes not willing to reciprocate walkys possible attachment.
She knows its dangerous for her to get too attached when shes going to Yale.
She wanted a relationship just for fun. She’s had it. From her on in its serious.
Its Not Walkys fault that they break up. Dorothy wants opposite things. Walky is doing a good job of straddling those opposites. But Dorothy isnt.
It’s moments like this that reminds me that they are still freshmen and have only begun to scrutinize themselves.
It also made me think of a thing friend of mine said to me earlier tonight: “I wonder what college would be like without regular existential crises.”
Hmm. Judging by how harshly Joyce is treating her sheets, I’d say she’s decide that Walky and Dorothy have broken up. It’s too odd an hour to go for a cold shower without looking suspicious, so to avoid the effects of said thought (namely, Dotty’s single), she has to grab the mattress.
I know canon’s probably going to wreck any shipping I can continue with this tommorrow, but today, I can say that Joyce is devastated that Dotty loves someone who isn’t her.
Bets on her real anguish include sympathy and “oh god Ethan can’t say it to me? Why can’t I say it about Ethan when I think it about dorothy ALL THE TIME?” Okay I may be embellishing it somewhat.
Re: Dotty, what she’s trying to do is way outside the maturity levels of pretty much anyone in the comic except maybe, MAYBE herself and a couple of the actual adults. I honestly don’t, for a second, think when she said the relationship was going to be for fun that they’d bury anything difficult the other person was going through, just that she meant for it to be temporary. It is completely possible to love someone and consider the relationship to be temporary; it will pass, and you will go your seperate ways. Jury’s out on whether she’s actually CAPABLE of it, leaning towards no personally but it’s possible. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell Walky’s capable, or pretty much anyone else in the cast. Frankly, it’s something that’d demand more explanation than she’s ever given, on-screen, and like I said, I don’t believe she’s really ready for what she’s asking for at this stage (which is a shame, since now is when she would like it).
I like your comment. This is a good comment. Thank you for that comment.
And yeah, I don’t expect Joyce is going to realize that huh she kind of is interested in her female friends in potentially not-straight ways tomorrow, or any time soon. But hey, that’s where couple-of-years-down-the-line headcanon is handy. (… Though it would be amazing if at least three out of four of the original Roomies! protagonists turned out to be bisexual or -romantic.)
But she probably will be realizing that whatever she has with Ethan ISN’T on the same level as Dorothy and Walky, or her and Dorothy, and if WALKY can manage these feelings then why doesn’t she have a connection like that with Ethan and please oh please let this be the day where she and Ethan realize this just isn’t going to work. Even if her relationship with Dorothy is totally platonic, it’s still so much deeper than her one with Ethan that that revelation might be coming soon.
I’d find it amazing if Joe turned out to be bi before Joyce.
Despite all the ups and downs of the Walky/Dorothy relationship, it’s actually refreshing for me; it’s arguably the healthiest relationship in DoA right now, with rooted problems that aren’t exactly the easiest thing to solve.
I don’t even understand what Dorothy was expecting here, after the last time. She set a clear boundary about this being a non-serious thing and here she is just straight out ignoring that.
I dunno, I feel like the last few weeks have been a little off.
Temporary and not serious are NOT the same thing (Rutee’s comment above said things really nicely) – plus remember when she set that boundary she was just out of a relationship where her partner wanted to smother her dreams under their precious relationship! That really makes you want to be cautious. Also, relationships start out one way and generally end up another – an telling the other person honnestly as your feelings evolve is a good thing in these cases!
She’s STILL just out a relationship where her partner wanted to smother her dreams. It’s been what, a month in canon time since they’ve started Freshman Year. Less than a month since Dorothy and Walky hooked up.
Dorothy’s declaration is ridiculously early in their relationship for anything like a serious opinion to have formed, and Walky’s right to treat it as just words used for causing drama.
Should she have seen a response like that coming? Probably. Is she wrong for being frustrated or angry with him? Nope. Walky still trivialized something that’s clearly important to her.
As someone mentioned above, Dorothy has recently been suggesting that what she wants from the relationship has changed (wanting Walky to open up more to her and everything).
Of course, she knows Walky well enough to know that he wouldn’t pick up on something like that unless she drew him a flowchart or something.
Could be any number of things, depending on how much she heard. I expect we’ll find out soon.
Could be:
1) Frustration at Dorothy and Walky fighting (again). Alternately, at Walky for being an idiot (since she will assign any blame for this to Walky)(Assuming she heard/saw the whole thing.)
2) As someone earlier predicted, upon realizing that Billie and Dorothy were both in love, Joyce is frustrated by the fact that she knows she and Ethan can’t and won’t be like that. (Assuming she only heard the first part.)
3) Joyce is dealing with some unexpectedly-strong jealousy (see: every single time Joyce has been jealous of the amount of time Walky gets with Dorothy)(Also see: every Dotty/Joyce shipper) and is possibly scared and/or confused by that. (Assuming Joyce only saw the first part.)
Yes, Dorothy now thinks this is love. But she would still dump him in a minute for a better school. Walky knows the limits to her love and is being as realistic about this as she has been. In my view, this is more about pride of ownership on Dorothy’s part. She’s got a good boyfriend who is loyal and good to his friends. Now he should declare his love for her. But its asymetrical, since she feels free to dump him to suit her ambition and walky knows that. Yes, Walky may have just cut off the sex pipeline, but maybe Dorothy is learning that she doesn’t get to totally script other people’s lives, or even her own.
And these are all such freshmen, so I’ll cut them some slack. I was very stupid as a freshman…and a sophomore….and…..
Am I the only one thinking that Walky actually is right and Dorothy is overreacting?
Seriously, she is having a problem with him not having a problem to say it?
I agree with Milky on this. Walky acknowledged his feelings for Dorothy, in a way that makes sense to himself. Acting like using the phrase “I love you” should ONLY come after a long introspective is immature of Dorothy, who should know better. She basically admitted to putting Walky on the spot, and SHE wasn’t ready for him to have a mature reaction to it.
I can understand Joyce fleeing the scene, she has her own crap to deal with…that she caused… but Dorothy isn’t in the right here. She owes him an apology for this.
This was not a mature response to someone telling you they love you. We don’t even know if he meant it when he told her he loved her because he flat out said he only said it back to avoid drama and then robbed the words of any power, which just happened to also belittle Dorothy’s feelings as well as his own.
Basically what Walky said was a longwinded version of ‘Sure, whatever’.
Who said “Well, Jeez, that was easy. I thought I’d had to extort it out of you.”, turning this into a trophy hunt and belittling the meaning of what he said first? She can make fun of him and manipulate him, but woe if he deflects the situation into one where he is not her sock puppet?
I’m not saying that he found the smoothest response here, but I don’t really see that Dorothy’s behavior entitles her to it either.
Umm… that’s not what he did, at all. And if that’s what Dorothy felt he did, then that just shows HER immaturity. Part of maturing is recognizing that words are words and feelings are feelings, and not getting hurt by those kind of things.
You’re not; I agree with Walky. “Love” is a word that represents an abstract idea. Abstract ideas are open to interpretation (e.g. “I want you to know, I only hurt you because I love you”).
That said, if you understand what the other person means with their interpretation, and they know you understand it…And then you tell them “
“I love you…by the way though, I’m only saying that because I know it’s the only acceptable response at this moment”…It’ll probably cause some problems, as the other party feels spurned by your meaning and sincerity not being the same as they believe theirs to have been.
As I see it, the problem isn’t that Walky doesn’t seem to reciprocate what she feels, or that she’s complicating their “casual” relationship (she’s expressing her feelings honestly, thats almost always a good thing). The problem is that Walky’s explanation of why he responded that way, not because he feels that way, but to diffuse a “3rd act climax”.
He’s talking about their relationship, which on Dorothy’s end has gotten more involved and complex as her feelings for him grow, like it’s just a story or plot-arc (whoa META). That implies she’s a “love interest”/”romantic lead” rather than a PERSON. His speech has the veneer of maturity (lets avoid drama), but really reveals the depth of his immaturity (the relationship is just a plot-line to play out by the rules/tropes he knows from TV&movies).
She’s willing to complicate matters by telling him she’s developed strong feelings for him, and yes that it makes it harder because she’s already stated her goals take her away in the long term. Maybe trivializing their relationship/feelings-for-each-other is just him reacting to diffuse THAT dramatic arc as well by diffusing the “I love you” dramatic arc (whoa double-META).
The point is, his response doesn’t express how he feels about her, whether or not he reciprocates her feelings of love and willingness to say so or even how he feels about her declaration (just that he doesn’t want to deal with “drama”). He mocks the very idea of taking feelings seriously, saying its dumb to need time to respond honestly instead of just saying “I love you”.
His sentiment about avoiding drama and how the word only has power if they give it power would be fine, even MATURE, if his “I love you” was sincere and he included THAT fact. As in, “I’m going to avoid drama and just say I love you, because that’s how I feel and its dumb to freak out over saying it”.
It’s not completely sure whether he’s being insincere. It could just as well mean “You should be happy that I love you too, ’cause that defused the drama. Now, could I have smooches for being so mature?” rather than “I should just say this to defuse the drama.” It’s immature, but it’s a lot less dickish.
Yeah, Walky’s like Danny; too dumb to obfuscate the truth. If Walky didn’t love Dorothy back, then most-likely, based on prior evidence, Walky would have said as much and in an equally-thoughtless way.
I know Joyce ain’t no lesbian. If she was why would she think about guys? Easy answer, she wouldn’t. Besides she’s “with” a guy. I’m friends with a lesbian so you can’t tell me differently.
Not with Joyce because due to Christian belief. “If you fall in love with a person of the same gender. You go straight to Hell.” And with Joyce as religious as she is she’d rather die alone and go to Heaven than love another girl and go to Hell.
It might just be my natural hatred of Dorothy, but I don’t see how Walky would be at fault right now. It’s just how he is, he’s immature and slightly retarded. It was Dorothy’s choice to get into a “just for fun” relationship with him. She really can’t expect such deep and complex thoughts and feelings to come out of Walky as of now. He needs a few more extra years or it might not even ever happen, who knows.
Dorothy fucked up, too bad.
All Dorothy has to do is tell Walky how shes feeling rather than being subtle and hoping he “gets it” also Joyce needs to back way off as shes acting in quite a negative way towards the relationship
I mean assaulting Mike just to get access to his room was a little over the top and to me it seemed like she wanted proof of Walkys infedelity more than Dorothy
Joyce had Mike beat up Joe on their date—-that was over the top.
Joyce Punched Joes in the face — that was over the top.
Mike isnt Innocent and had it coming.
Mike just put her through the whole Ding-Dong Scandal. Shes still pissed. Mike is lucky he didnt get a punch in the face, too.
( or unlucky , as he probably wants one )
Mike is a Submissive/masochist , and probably liked it afterwards. He probably jerked off to it. Dont feel bad for him. If Joyce knew this she probably wouldnt hit him, it would creep her out. In a weird way he provoked her, and violated her consent. I fully expect Mike to deliberately provoke Joyce into Hitting him again.
I’m of the school of thought that Dorothy has gotten used to being the one who sets the boundaries in a relationship. Danny was the submissive one in their relationship and she dumped him because he was just not who she wanted. Dorothy, however, is unprepared for dealing with a partner who when Dorothy offers to “upgrade” their relationship isn’t interested, necessarily. Dorothy can’t control Walky and it’s a new feeling for her.
She’s used to a certain level of power in a relationship she doesn’t have.
I look at it in terms of this. Billie is in love with someone, and Dorothy just let out how she felt about Walky. In order to tie in my thought process, I do need to state something in my past. I had a girlfriend, and her friends were getting engaged about 4 months into their relationships. About three months into mine, she asked me how I felt about marriage, and I was taken aback quite a bit.
Not saying this is what Joyce’s mentality is, but after seeing two friends get in love, and admitting it to each other on the same day, it makes you feel like you’re getting left behind. I’m thinking that she’s realizing that her relationship with Ethan isn’t healthy, and that she needs to try and find someone else who will actually love her for who she is.
yes how dare dorothy have feelings even though she said she wasn’t going to have feelings!! and then express those feelings and tell her partner he was under no pressure to have the same feelings. and then apologize to him when he accidentally mocks her feelings. wow history’s worst monster
dorothy is the chillest girlfriend and y’all are a bunch of schmoes
And once again, Dumbiverse Walky proves himself to be…dumb. I love this comic indeed, but at least Roomiverse Walky had the excuse of being coddled by his mom for fear of him going berserk, what the hell is this jag’s excuse for idiocy? It just bugs me because classic Walky is one of my favorite super heroes no lie, while this version IRKS me to so many degrees.
I just don’t get why people are interpreting what Walky said as “I can say this word without actually meaning anything by it” and not simply “I can use this word to express my sincere feelings for you and not treat it as some kind of fearsome mystical invocation of eternal romantic commitment like guys in movies do”. There’s an awful lot of middle ground between meaning nothing and meaning such a big deal that a guy has to have it extorted out of him.
I feel bad for Dorothy here. She’s fine if Walky doesn’t love her back, but she doesn’t want Walky to tell her things just to make her happy. I’ve seen multiple relationships like this.
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NAILED IT
Actually I think you’re wrong. It’s because she can’t be the same way with Ethan.
You mean Danny?
Danny has nothing to do with this.
Joyce isn’t in a relationship with Danny.
She’s in an unhealthy relationship with both Jesus and a in and out closet homosexual. Throwing Danny in the mix wouldn’t change much.
Didn’t The Willis say that all the characters have the same sexuality as in the other universe? I’m not sure if I dreamed that now.
He said that they’d retained and gone through any prior identity struggles, so Ethan is gay and wouldn’t repeat his coming-out, as it were, but didn’t preclude new realizations regarding one’s feelings and identity. Thus, Danny and Billie’s bisexuality. Honestly, I don’t think Joyce is gay for Dotty (it’s just a joke among commenters), but it’s not impossible she actually is.
Billie was bisexual in the old universe, too. That isn’t new for the Dumbiverse.
Yet.
Ah, because she’s worried that her relationship with Ethan isn’t genuine. Makes sense.
THANK YOU!
I sort of see it as about fifty different emotions going through her head.
Half of which have no name.
…
I wanna teke shelter in the pillow’d bed
Where the feels have no name
YES.
Panel 2 = stuck the landing!
5 5 2
DAMMIT!
The Russian judge only gave it an 8…
Slump.
Not a good sign, face down on the pillow gripping the sheets.
Id say that depends more on perspective.
The Mike avatar made that comment so much better.
Also, love your name.
ahem
+1 😀
Sounds kinky.
And no one is even inside her yet.
No one we can see.
God is inside her. God is inside everyone.
DAMN, DIVINE PLAYA!
That’s how its done if you don’t want your parents in the next room to hear you.
So you think Joyce is doing solo sexytimes? I think she’s screaming from frustration…
What, hands-free?
“Don’t look, ma, no hands!”
I assume you are speaking from personal experience.
Joyce need moar green-screen.
You can’t hear it, but she’s humming a marvelous John Williams score into her pillow.
Second best theme song ever.
If anyone needs me I’mma go bang my head on a wall for then next coupla hours. Friggin’ dumbass…
I’ll be face-planting like Joyce.
It’s less painfull (also easier to get asleep and try to make up for past short nights).
I can’t stand to fly. I’m not that naive…
Awesome song.
Wow, Walky is so bad at relationships he just got dumped by a girl he wasn’t even dating.
Somewhere, Danny feels like he’s gone up on some cosmic rating scale, and doesn’t know why.
I don’t believe it’s over between them but there will be drama, boy will there be drama.
There will be drama like a flood has water.
Floods need not be strictly water. There’s also maple syrup ones too.
That sounds like a delicious way to die.
In 1919, a burst molasses tank caused a massive wave of thick, heavy sweetener to rush through the streets of Boston, killing 21 people and injuring many more.
For some reason this feels to me appropriately analogous to DoA drama.
I’d hardly compare molasses to maple syrup in a practical sense.
Nor would I, in my professional capacity as a Vermonter.
For one thing, maple syrup isn’t responsible for any mass deaths that I know of.
I thought it was molasses
Also:
And beer!
to be fair, he dumped her first but forgot
I’m pretty sure the Doctor meant he got “dumped” by Joyce who he wasn’t even dating.
…ohhhhh
Really? What part of that said ‘dumped’ to you?
Walky. if your life had a face. I’d punch it.
You do know he probably wouldn’t hit you back?
…n-no punch…
Walky, if your life had a face I’d kick it in the balls.
You know what else sucks?
EVERYTHING.
One boy’s half-assed declaration of love another girl’s NIGHTMARE!
Okay, I can see why Dorothy’d assume it’s half-assed. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt; heavens know I’ve given terrible explanations for declarations of love and killed the romance of it. Maybe not this badly, but still.
Yeah, it’s not like Walky has a sparkling track record of thinking before he speaks. In fact, Walky’s ‘hat’ seems to be angering or upsetting people by not thinking before he speaks.
There’s half-assed declaration of love, and then there’s actually telling the girl “I said I love you purely so we don’t have to deal with any romantic drama crap, now let’s move on.”
Having seen a bunch of lame romcon anime myself, I can see his point being genuine: those guys are great at modeling how not to act, and I can see Walky thinking “right, if a girl ever tells me ‘I love you’ and I like her, tell her back, don’t be a doofus”. Of course, it’s also indistinguishable at this point from “right, if a girl ever tells me ‘I love you’, tell her back”. Hard to tell if he’s treating it as an empty ritual or not.
Exactly. It’s good that he said it if he actually means it. It doesn’t need to be a huge deal if it’s just that simple to him, but his dumb little reasoning makes it sound like he said it just to pacify her. Right after she said he could wait till he was ready…you were doing so well Walky
But “I love you” IS an empty ritual though, no matter how you look at it. Just like “How are you?”, “I’m sorry”, etc. It doesn’t make the feelings less genuine, but the words are just that, words.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on that MindLink. I don’t believe it is an “empty ritual…no matter how you look at it”. To me, the definition of an empty ritual is that there are no genuine feelings behind it. Your statement that things are empty when they have genuine feelings behind them is confusing to me. By your definition, every single word anyone says or any action they take is empty.
All is dust.
All lies and jest
My definition of an empty ritual are words or actions that can be said or done without feelings behind it. Most rituals are, most expressions are. When you bestow power on a word or a sentence, you make it into an empty ritual, because you shift the emphasis onto the ritual or words themself. That’s how it can be an empty ritual, and still leave room for the feelings behind to be true. Love isn’t empty, the word “love” is.
Maybe a better way to put it: It’s like the difference between worshipping a god or worshipping an image of the god. The image/idol itself isn’t holy or powerfull, but the deity/belief is. A person strong in faith would have no problem burning the image of their deity. Or the shadow-on-the-cave-wall-thingy, love is the hand, the words are only the shadow.
I think it was more Dorothy being like “Isn’t this supposed to be a massive deal for you to admit?” and Walky just being like “No, I’m pretty okay with it and being embarrassed about it just makes it harder on everyone invovled.” In a backwards way but still.
Joyce’s ass is getting bigger. Freshman Fifteen?
There are worse places for that extra weight to go. 😀
Damnit, Willis’ Butts Disease is leaking inta the comic again.
There is no known cure as of this time.
Nah, it’s just the butts disease taking a hold of her.
Or of Willis, one or the other.
Good…
Nearly everyone’s build has changed a bit since Willis started DoA. He’s been trying to diversify the body types.
Yeah, nice try, Walky. This isn’t a disaster YET, but you’ve got a limited window to make it right.
No, this is a disaster. We’ve already discovered that Dorothy doesn’t COMPLETELY trust him, and now he says this? He’s sending bad messages. And actually Joyce isn’t helping that.
To be fair, Dotty is sending some seriously mixed messages right now and Walky is kind of the victim of confusion. He probably doesnt even know how to feel right now. He might actually love her but doesnt know whether or not he should considering the fact that she keeps telling him and others how temporary it is.
Also the part not too long ago where he showed that that and the apparently resulting lack of seriousness was really getting to him.
I don’t remember that happening, Othin. When was that?
Right here.
Ah, I’d forgotten about that. Thanks!
And wasn’t this only the previous day in comic time?
Yep
Has Dorothy really brought up their temporary-ness since Parent’s weekend though?
How many days ago in-comic was Parents Weekend, though?
Less than two weeks.
Uhg, I wish people would stop blaming Dorothy for not planning out this relationship right from the start. Dorothy is not sending mixed messages, she is communicating honnestly, to let Walky know her feelings are evolving. It’s both mature and pretty brave, too, and she is doing it in the most healthy way I can imagine.
Exactly, it’s not mixed messages, the message has changed and she’s keeping him aware of her changed feelings.
Why doesn’t she just TELL him that, then? You simply can’t blame the guy for thinking otherwise.
Protip: What Walky said was not cool. Don’t emulate him IRL, kids
I dunno man. That’s what I’d say. Then again I’m also single.
I’m waiting on my first child, trust me on this one.
What Dorothy said wasn’t all that cool either, really. Their relationship was founded on fleeting fun, and under the terms of that agreement Walky isn’t obligated to take love seriously. Scratch that – he’d be a damn fool to fall in love with miss Yalebound president. And just because she decides to follow her heart/hormones and start craving deeper contact doesn’t mean he’s obligated to reciprocate, and more than a girl is obligated to cave in when a guy starts crying ‘friendzone’ at her.
Seriously, “I guess you weren’t ready to hear that”? Does she think he’s somehow falling behind just because he’s not falling for her the same way she’s falling for him?
(Disclosure: I’ve been hardcore cockblocked for over a decade because I was so dumb as to fall in love with a woman who considers me at best a friend. And guess what? She’s perfectly in the right, and I’d be a fool and a jerk to think otherwise. The same can apply to Dot.)
That was pretty harsh of her to say, yeah. Maybe after some time to ruminate she’ll consider that, trope-aware explanation notwithstanding, he really did mean it.
But she really meant it , too!
I dont think she fully considered how much saying her own feelings out-loud was a potential game-changer, to how she perceived the relationship.
When you feel the words “i love you” and you say them, it has consequences. ( if only to yourself sometimes )
By saying “i love you” right back, it was a tremendous relief to dorothy. It seemed to mean that walky accepted her feelings just as she said them , in the moment; and returned the affection she knows he feels for her. Kudos. No problems.
It would have been a brilliant save for Walky and Dorothy, and relieving Dorothy of the burden of figuring out how deep her feelings were, and how much that might alter their relationship.
But by Walky pointing out he was doing just that, i.e. attempting to rescue them from emotional consequences, He accidentally erased the save.
You can look at it as taking back the “I love you”, or you can look it as taking back ‘the save’ . Both are jarring and might have felt like slap to Dorothys feelings.
She is being charitable here. But she is in a tough spot. Between a rock a hard-space . If she doubles down and owns up to being in love with walky, she risks double -rejection, and unfairly puts him on the spot again — Which she explicitly said she didnt want to do.
If she goes along with it, it puts her in the awkward position of denying her feelings or agreeing to a superficial relationship without room to grow. Even if it was true before — by pointing it out when she just said ” i love you” and meant it — she is likley to reject this as counter to her feelings and integrity.
That self-aware reflection added to her own, could put her in the position of questioning how deep she wants to go in the relationship. Some people here think she is stating a change in the relationship. I think she honestly expressing her pride and affection for being in a relationship with walky and his recent emotional depth about Billy. Which potentially could put her in conflict with what she wants with the relationship.
I think walky genuinely caught her off-guard 2 in a row, and this ,might feel like a gut punch. She is owning up to it, and not guilt-tripping him for saying something very stupid about her feelings. Props to Dorothy.
I think Dorothy could have handled it much more easily if he HADN’T said he loved her. She made it clear she wasn’t demanding that he say it back.
But to have him say it and then to essentially take it back? I remember being 18 and in love and that’s basically one of the cruellest things someone could have done.
It’s worse than not saying it back, because she got her hopes up that he meant it and then he was like “haha not that it means anything.”
And the fact that he doesn’t realise how important it is to her makes it worse. I know Walky didn’t understand how much it would hurt her to say that, but that’s kind of the point.
Wait, I’d forgotten about the “drag it out of you” remark. Okay, yeah, that was totally out of line.
She was kidding.
I think that even if he just said it then walked back on it, it would be a weird walky thing to do. What pissed me off the most is that he basically told Dorothy “What you are saying to me isn’t a big deal” when it is very clearly a big deal to her. He’s telling her that she’s wrong about the way she feels about him.
Walky (and most american men) have been conditioned by movies and TV to think that women can easily and casually say they love men, but that it’s a horrible and much much much more difficult thing for men to say to women. The fact that he rejects the insane difficulty men allegedly have saying the phrase is not much of a comment on how big a deal it is for women to say it – especially since media tells us that it’s a common and easy phrase for women anyway.
Of course, Walky gives no indication that he understands what the phrase even means. (Fair enough: I know a LOT of adults who don’t understand it.) If he thought the phrase had any actual meaning as opposed to “something couples say to each other”, then he might not have said it so cavalierly.
How important is it to her, again? They’re teenagers who’ve known each other for maybe a month.
Bah, this was supposed to be in response to thedatingfeminist’s first comment. Though I’ve probably commented enough on this anyway.
Maybe Dorothy will even up the Dumping Score now.
Is Dorothy becoming the new Danny?
IRONY !!!
.. will result in crisp pleats and wrinkle free bed linens.
Dorothy: I love you
Walky: ya shore me too I guess.
Joyce: ( AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH Its not fare ! Why him ,why him !)
Fair
Well, to be faire, she was short a quarter for the bus, and so had to walk there this morning.
Walky. Calm down. Go watch Robot Jox or something.
One ship stabilizes then another must destabilize
2nd Law of DOA Shipping dynamics
Law of Conservation of Shipping?
The 1st Law is “Happiness is fleeting, Willis is to blame”
It’s not fleeting, it’s being redistributed. There’s a limited amount of happiness that has to be shifted around the whole time.
For every action, there must be an equal but opposite reaction.
*overreaction
I’ve just read this sentence in Weird Al’s voice. Huh.
I think it’s just Webcomic Dynamics in general. The same thing is happening over in “Questionable Content.”
This is why I don’t get into the shipping thing. In webcomics, all relationships are destined to fail in time. Shall we discuss how the Billie and Ruth ship will sink? Or over in QC, how the Marten and Claire ship will sink? Because we all know they will…and it will be glorious… 😉
I’m hoping that the Marten/Claire ship won’t sink this year at least.
Might wanna get some popcorn though, depending on how Emily feels on the matter
I figure that one is still in dry dock with just the being keel laid out. Neither of them has any idea what type of ship they are building either.
Errrr…
Maybe she’s just taking a nap?
Do remember this is the man-child that threw his Monkey Master at your head because he likes you. 😛
Joyce threw a toy at Dorothy’s head, too! Why can’t Dorothy tell her that she loves her? She’d have a way better response than stupid Walky!
Dorothy’s head is a love magnet.
She should wear a helmet.
Grabbing that mattress like a soft ass
making out with her pillow
I would say that she should invest in a body pillow but that would make her too much like Faz.
Dorothy: I love you.
Walky: I know.
2nd panel Walky: Man, this gets more and more Peanuts-y the more I read it.
I can’t stand it.
As far as I am concerned Willis is far better at comics than Schultz ever was
Careful, Kelly. Willis is good, but that’s dangerously close to heresy you’re spouting there. 😛
I’ll give you late Peanuts when it was almost nothing but Uncle Spike talking to a cactus. But no, not “ever”.
If she wanted Walky to take their relationship seriously maybe she shouldn’t have told him it was going to imminently end in a few years.
Theirs is a healthy relationship that started out fun, and Dotty is communicating, as her feelings evolve, to let Walky know about them – as healthy adults do. Sure, she WISHES for reciprocal feelings, but in no way is she DEMANDING it. If he does not love her back, it will not be because of the way the relationship started, it will be because of… love! I wish people would stop blaming Dorothy for not planning her relationships from the start: you never know how things will turn out, and it’s OK for relationships to evolve if both are ready. If not, no one is to blame
I’d say he Danned it, but this was a very distinct Walkying.
I’m really impressed that I no longer think I have any idea what Joyce is feeling at this point. DoA Joyce has gotten so complicated!
I think platonic jealousy is likely, but it could also be disorientation at discovering what she thought of as a sexual relationship could become a loving one, since Joyce probably has a lot of trouble connecting lust and love in healthy ways.
A lot of people mad at Walky for being honest here in the comments. Dorothy is right, he wasn’t ready for that.
Gotta say, I dislike the implication that Walky’s in the wrong and “not ready”, rather than it being possibly the wrong thing to say -to him-.
Then again, I have a bias against Dorothy. It’s hard to specify, but she’s just really, really hard to like.
Maybe it’s that it feels like she’s usually patronizing? I can’t really stand Joe either.
Yeah, for some reason I just get the feeling that I wouldn’t get along with any of these people, except maybe Ethan and Amber.
He still could have just said “I do love you back, and appreciate the sentiment, but I want to be cautious about how fast we move and how much we commit”
Or, he could have said ‘we’ve been dating for 2(?) weeks, isn’t it a bit early to be saying that?’
Or, being a nerdy nerd, he could, as someone down thread said, have said ‘I know’.
Or he could have changed the subject.
Or he could have gone with an unadorned ‘I love you’, and left it at that, rather than going on his rant about how he’d ‘removed the power’ from the words, and how that was a ‘lifehack’. (That would be a terrible choice, but it would be better than what he did.)
There’s lots of things he could have done besides treat ‘I love you’ as a meaningless call-and-response, because he’s watched a lot of crappy sitcoms.
He was sort of replying to Dorothy’s comment about her expecting to have to drag it out of him. It was not a totally unprompted rant.
But, as we’ve already seen, Walky’s brain-to-mouth filter is not very effective, or possibly completely broken, so he kept talking when he should have realized that was not the thing to say. Or that, maybe, what he was trying to say could have been worded in a way that didn’t trivialize Dorothy’s declaration.
I suspect whatever character development Walky gets, part of it is going to involve him learning when not to necessarily say what he’s thinking. He’s already hurt Joyce’s feelings more than once, escalated an argument with his sister by not thinking before he speaks, and has already broken up with Dorothy (and now made her angry a separate time) by not thinking before he speaks, given how many times that’s come back to bite him, now.
I am ok with Walky continuing to hurt Joyce’s feelings
that avatar is scarily appropriate.
And its really early in the morning for him. His brain is probably still half asleep.
He could have, but he is not really mature enough for that. :/
Walky is just demonstrating that it’s possible to be totally honest and kind of a jerk at the same time.
In my experience, you can’t have the first without the second. To be totally honest is to skip the simple white lies we all tell everyday to smooth out our daily life.
Urge to edit last panel… rising…
Though I won’t do it.
Also, dammit Walky.
I wanted her to say she loved ME, Darnit!!!
“I even told my parents I loved her!“
Dammit Walky, you broke the Joyce!
Sarah: Didn’t you say you want them to break up?
Joyce: Yes, but still—aaaaaggggghhhhh.
Honestly? I don’t feel Walky’s to blame. He doesn’t think this is a serious relationship (because it’s not supposed to be), and Dorothy did put him on the spot, in front of Joyce no less. She probably did it to reassure herself that Walky wasn’t messing around or anything, but Walky doesn’t know any of that. The dude is clueless, and it’s unfair of Dorothy (and us) to expect him to act differently.
Plus the dude just spent all night worrying about Billy, let him have a drama-free moment!
Agreed and Joyce needs to stop thinking romance is like a crappy rom com.
Exactly. Dottie basically built this entire relationship on the implication that they would be breaking up soon. She shouldn’t be mad if he hasn’t formed a DEEP connection with her after what…a month TOPS? Walky just didn’t want any Drama BS. Just cuz she didn’t wanna hear it doesn’t mean that Walky not explaining why he did it would’ve made it any better.
I think she’s more mad that he tried to wordplay his way out of it then being honest about how he felt (since, y’know, she just suggested yesterday in comic time that he should be more open about how he feels with her).
He felt like Love isn’t a word that should have a lot of power. He used it because it’s too stressful. He doesn’t give it the same thought and power Dorothy does. That’s his choice.
And then specifically calls it a ‘life hack’. He may honestly not think it does or should have any power, but he’s admitting he tried to ‘cheat’ his way out of the situation.
And Dorothy admitted if he didn’t say “I love you” She’d have “Extorted” it out of him. They’re both dicks.
I read that more as ‘Even if you felt that way, you wouldn’t say it back unless I encouraged you to’ much in the same way she had to coax him to even touch her boob after insisting that he, in fact, could.
I thought the extorting thing Dorothy said was quite obviously a joke. She said right before that he didn’t need to say it back, which I think she said with sincerity.
Yeah, the face she was making made me think it wasn’t a serious ‘threat’.
I am shocked, I say shocked, that college freshmen aren’t emotionally prepared to handle a no-strings-attached relationship.
I mean, this isn’t really the first time that Dorothy has hinted that she’s getting stronger feelings for him. And I think it would have been better to have just flat out said he didn’t feel the same way then to try and ‘life hack’ his way out of it.
Do we know Walky actually doesn’t feel the same way? Given how unfiltered he’s been in the past (see: “[Joyce] is crazy brainwashed,” etc), I think it’s not at all unlikely that if Walky didn’t reciprocate the feeling, he probably would have just said as much without stopping to think about whether or not he should say it.
Because of not thinking that much about it, he might have been trying to say why he didn’t think it was that big a deal, and in the process, made light of something that was clearly very important to Dorothy.
Oh, hey, I almost didn’t recognize Danny for a sec. He sure looks like Walky for this and the last strip.
Walky’s screwing up in a manner diametrically opposed to Danny.
Dear Dorothy,
You’re the bad guy here. Sorry.
Love,
me
So Walky tries to avert drama but Dorothy makes it anyway? I’m seriously confused.
Jess…I’ve got a lot to teach you about College girls…
More like the true nature of girls in general.
Honestly, I would’ve been similarly annoyed if I told someone I loved them and their response was effectively “I love you too. That’s the required response, right? I don’t mean it, but that’s what I’m supposed to say to avert drama.”
That’s not what he said at all. He never stated he didn’t mean it, though some might read that implication into it.
Today’s special: generalizations.
My rule of thumb is taken from the Undersides: “People are fucked up.”
Yeah, no. Don’t do that.
She would have rather him not say it at all, rather than him just say it to “get it out of the way” and possibly not mean it.
Yyyeah, this. Say it if you mean it, don’t if you don’t, don’t try to ‘lifehack’ an ‘I love you’.
Dorothy made the situation awkward by bringing the L-word into the relationship too early. Walky took the absolute worst route to react to it.
Walky: I thought we were on the Same page Dorothy !
I don’t think drama could be averted in this case.
When you tell someone you have strong feelings for them, and they indicate that they do not reciprocate (either by not saying ‘I love you’ back, or by pulling Walky’s stunt here), people are hurt!
I’m not saying Walky did something wrong here. But guys, stop trying to avoid drama like it’s the end of the world. Sometimes someone is upset for reasons, and need time away from you to be angry, and this should not shred your self-esteem. Sometimes you don’t do anything wrong, and people’s feelings get hurt anyway, and those feelings are legitimate. It is not just ‘girls amirite’.
It would be one thing if Dorothy was shitting all over Walky for what he said, but expecting her to just be automatically okay with this and act like nothing’s wrong is ridiculous.
Why do people keep implying that bullshit like this is exclusive to either gender? It’s crappy, it happens, and both “sides” do it. We’re all humans, with all the flaws and imperfections that implies right alongside with the good.
Walky tried to avert drama is basically the worst way possible. Almost anything else would have been better than what he said.
No. No! Those three aren’t capable of handling the sadness that was released when Ruth and Billie got together! It’s too strong for them! Even just that tiny bit of excess misery is capable of consuming their entire lives!
They’re doomed…
Okay, so the initial impression is that Joyce is doing this because she ships this so hard.
But uh… I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t other reasons.
If by “this” you mean “herself/Dorothy”, maybe.
When I started sailing this ship, I honestly thought Joyrathy was more of a crack pairing, but damned if Joyce isn’t making me think it’s credible with the past few strips.
She probably wants to strangle Walky to death in a kind, Christian manner. Simple enough.
Joyce doesn’t ship this. Joyce hates Walky, she wants him away from Dorothy because she thinks Dorothy is fantastic and Walky is a stupid jerk.
Joyce is freakin’ jealous of Walky. She has spent a lot of occasions trying to get Dorothy to spend time with her not Walky. That same day she asked if she could run with Dorothy ‘because that’s the only way she could spend time with Dorothy when Walky wasn’t around’.
So now Dorothy has announced she loves Walky, and Joyce apparently isn’t taking the news well, now is she.
I seriously doubt her and Ethan’s relationship even crossed her mind. She doesn’t want a relationship with Ethan, she wants someplace/someone to hide with. And so does Ethan.
Walky meanwhile is Walky, he’s doing what guys do when a girl says ‘hey this isn’t going anywhere, just fun and games ’cause I’m going to Yale and have no time for serious relationships….he believed her.
No, I’d say Danny looks a lot more like Blonde Amber here.
Sooo… basically, the characters live up to the name of the comic.
Dorothy puts Walky on the spot with an attempted Relationship Upgrade (TM), in front of Joyce, after saying for weeks that they’re “just for fun” and temporary.
Walky doesn’t quite give the worst possible answer, but it’s not the one Dorothy is hoping for, and his explanation just makes it worse.
Dorothy is annoyed or angry with Walky for having an awkward and poorly-thought-out response for something she sprung on him.
Don’t you just love it when everyone’s to blame?
And, forgot to add: Walky explained why he was perfectly willing to say it. Following it up with his usual Walky flippancy.
He didn’t say he didn’t mean it. He only said he saw no reason not to say it. Although maybe I’m pulling at straws. Dunno.
Man, there are a lot of people reading this that always feel the same way about people all the time forever and never have conflicting feelings. Lucky you guys.
Haha lol no.
When I told my girlfriend I loved her and she said “I’m not ready to say that yet”, I said “That’s fine, I’ll still be here when you are”, and that was the end of it. No drama, no passive aggressive dickery.
Dorothy wants the fun parts of the relationship without any of the strings, and it’s starting to bite her in the ass — and not the way she wants it too, either.
‘I’m not ready to say this’ is not nearly the same thing as ‘I’ve said the meaningless words, therefor removed their power!’
Walky is being an ass, and trivializing Dorothy’s feelings. Your girlfriend was just clarifying her feelings.
He did accidentally trivialize her feelings. He didn’t call the words meaningless, only powerless. Major difference, as I see it.
No, he didn’t say the word ‘meaningless’, but he did say the words were meaningless by the entire premise of his comment.
If ‘I love you’ is anything but meaningless (aside from it’s potential as a drama bomb) phrase to Walky, saying it does not take away it’s power.
Walky didn’t say that. He said ‘I love you, but don’t really mean it and am just saying it so I don’t have to deal with serious stuff.’ I’m pretty sure Dorothy would’ve been ok with ‘I’m not ready to say that yet’, or even ‘I’m not really looking for something that serious’.
Dorothy is falling/has fallen for Walky, which she hoped wouldn’t happen. She doesn’t just want the fun stuff; she wanted to talk to Walky about the stuff with Billie cause she was worried about him. She maybe didn’t pick the best timing, but I’m pretty sure she’s trying to open up a conversation about her changing feelings about the relationship, and Walky basically replied with ‘I’m just going to tell you what I think you want to here cause that’s easier’.
Again, yes, Dorothy was the one that established that she wanted just a fling. Feelings change.
I agree with everything you’ve said and especially the first part.
I don’t. I’ll quit spamming the page with this now, but he never said he didn’t mean it, just that it was dumb that the party that first received the ILU was supposed to have a hard time returning it and that he’d strip the words of that power.
He’s being secure in his masculinity for a change, but his insecurity is coming back with a vengeance to tripp him up on the explanation.
It’s understandable that Dotty’s upset, and yes, he did goof up, but I think I know exactly where David’s coming from.
Yeah, Dorothy is just pushing a little too hard on everything she does.
All she did was state her feelings, that’s not pushing hard, that’s keeping her boyfriend on the same page as her. She has no control how he responds to this.
That would have been okay, if not for the “extort it out of you” followup.
**Clarification on my anecdote — those aren’t direct quotes. Significantly more sassiness was involved. We laughed together instead of crapping a brick.
It. Was. A. Joke.
Walky, when someone tells you they love you, the correct answer is “I know.”
Yep.
Obviously not: “Well, Jeez, that was easy. I thought I’d have to extort it out of you.” So it’s obvious that Walky delivered the only permissable answer but not in the right demeanor. “I don’t want to put you on the spot” but she does.
She was kidding. She wasn’t expecting him to say it back immediately. She was pleasantly surprised and cracked a joke, then Walky kept talking and not only ruined the moment but effectively belittled what she said.
Yup.
This.
So Dorothy is allowed to crack jokes about Walky saying “I love you” but he must not return the favor?
Dorothy’s making the mistake of getting serious about someone despite herself that’s obvious. She knew from the get go Walky for multiple reasons was not the kind of guy she wants for a long term relationship but she has fun with him/cares about him/is attracted to him and feelings are going to happen whether she likes it or not. But I’m getting glimpses here of what turned her off from Danny. It has to be exhausting to constantly have to be the more emotionally evolved person in the relationship. To have to go through these little hiccups where you later have to spell out why someone hurt you because they are just not emotionally sensitive/empathetic enough to get it on their own. This relationship isn’t just doomed because of their agreed upon expiration date but also because they’re just NOT that compatible overall and never really have been.
Now I don’t think this is going to be the end of them (yet). I think what this relationship is meant to do is help Walky mature more in preparation for future relationships and give Dorothy more of an idea of what she won’t want to deal with when she enters her next short term or long term relationship. Now yeah these are necessary lessons for both to learn and grow with each other but GOD it will be an emotionally exhausting process and resentment will build up because DAMN IT why is it either of their jobs to do this?
Also, people need to stop blaming Dorothy for this. She might have sprung it on him a bit, but that doesn’t change the fact that Walky completely triviliazed her confession, and then blamed her for the whole thing when she got annoyed with him, yet again. Regardless of how you feel about the idea of love or whether Walky’s description was accurate or not, that was still a jerk move on his part. :/
Urgh, see, this is why I don’t like Walky (or Danny either, because the same thing happens). Not only does he keep acting like a self centered arse, which already makes him an unlikeable character, but when he does it to Dorothy, people inevitably blame *her* entirely for whatever happened. Apparently she’s always, *always* the unreasonable one, even when she has a legitimate complaint. I wonder why that might be, hm… ~_~
I think they’re both in the wrong. I’m not blaming Soley Dorothy. They’re both at fault. I’m just saying she’s not blameless and neither is he.
How is Dorothy at fault? Her feelings changed, she told him, he reacted like an ass. She was acting fairly maturely.
Well, she did still kind of spring that on Walky at an unexpected time, while they were still kind of in public, while not exactly being clear with Walky that her feelings on their relationship were changing. Normally, not that big a deal, but she knows Walky well enough to know that she has to spell stuff like that out for him for him to get it.
Then she overreacted a bit. Not that she should have just been okay with what Walky said, but storming off like she did doesn’t help diffuse the situation, either.
Again, it’s not all Dorothy’s fault; Walky played a significant role, too. But neither of them are blameless.
He didn’t react like an ass. He said “I’m gonna say I love you, because I know if I don’t, it’s gonna become a much bigger thing than it means, and honestly I don’t put that much heft into the phrase “I love you” in the first place. He coulda just said “That’s nice” or “I don’t care”. He wasn’t being an ass. He explained his mindset.
Dude, what he said was being an ass. He said it, admitted he didn’t really mean it and then belittled what it meant for her to say it.
He never said he didn’t mean it. He said that he knows that if he didn’t say it it would become much bigger than it needs to be. Maybe don’t back the guy with established commitment issues into a relationship corner like this. Even if he meant it or didn’t mean it, his reasoning would be the same. If I don’t say this, drama will happen. It’s too much stress. WAY too much.
Why can’t they both be acting like idiots? It’s not like this comic is called “Everyone Makes Smart Decisions And Articulates Their Thoughts Effectively”.
Dorothy shouldn’t have put him on the spot like that after so many contradictory messages on what their relationship is; “I love you,” to many, if not most people, implies that the relationship is no longer purely “just for fun,” (see: what Dorothy keeps saying it is).
Then, Walky, because he’s kind of an idiot, after giving the answer he knows she wants to hear, promptly digs himself a hole by flippantly explaining his answer in a way that trivializes Dorothy’s declaration and makes her doubt his sincerity (although, given Walky’s apparently broken brain-to-mouth filter, if he didn’t love her back, he probably would have said as much).
Dorothy’s not wrong to be angry, but Walky’s not wrong to be confused about why she’s angry at him. Seems like a genuine, two-way misunderstanding to me.
Just to clarify, this isn’t the first time she’s tried to make this a more serious relationship. It was out of nowhere to go that far (though she also immediately tried to take the pressure off of him), but this isn’t the first time it’s come up.
While that’s true, she was still trying to be kind of subtle about it. She knows Walky well enough by now that she’ll basically have to draw him a freaking flowchart for him to get that she doesn’t want the relationship to be “just for fun” anymore.
Dorothy’s certainly not carrying the majority of the blame. My point was that it’s a genuine misunderstanding that they both played a roughly equal part in. Dorothy did not broach the subject terribly well, Walky proceeded to be a smartass in a situation where that was more problematic than usual, and Dorothy probably slightly overreacted (I don’t think she should have been okay with it, but storming off doesn’t help the situation, either).
And yet the one thing she’s never said to this boy who you say she’d have to draw a flowchart for is, “Hey, I know I said this was just for fun, but it’s getting a lot more serious than just-for-fun for me. What do you think?”
She vastly prefers to change the rules without his input and expects him to roll with that without a hitch. I suspect that’s because that’s how Danny functioned. As she said before, she’s used to being the spine in the relationship. She still hasn’t adjusted completely to Walky having a spine of his own.
You seem to forget that he believes that the relationship hasn’t changed, that this is a temporary, for fun thing, not a serious, together forever after this thing. Dorothy’s trying to change the rules of their relationship. Walky’s an idiot, yes, but he’s sticking to the plan
It’d be like if you and someone agreed that you would be building a shed. But then halfway through through the other party decides to start making it a larger structure with a patio and separate facilities branching off of it. So they bit by bit start adding things to this shed that are more than they’d agreed on and suddenly one day they say. By the way, I think we should go ahead and make this a barn. The other guy’s like…Yeah…I guess we could make this a barn. That seems like a lot more work and commitment than the shed we were making and I kinda don’t want to, but sure. And then you get all mad cuz clearly this person was not ready to make a barn.
This exactly! Well put Yotomoe!
Feelings and construction are two completely different things. lol I get the analogy that you’re trying to make, but in your example, the changes made by the other person are willful, deliberate, they’re thought out and planned. That’s what construction is, following a plan. When it comes to feelings, we have no control over how they develop. They just do what they want, when they want, and we don’t often have any say in the matter. Dorothy had no control over falling in love. The only thing she might have done a little bit wrong here is sprung it on him at an inopportune time, but given the discussion they just had with Billie, and the fact that she’s, you know, human, her actions are forgiveable. Walky on the other hand, was a jerk, plain and simple. He deliberately trivialized the situation in an attempt to make it easier for him to handle, and then, when Dorothy pretty much told him that it was a big deal for her, he dismissed her feelings like they don’t matter, at least compared to his “life hack”.
And honestly, it’s not so much his initial reaction that makes me see Walky as the jerk in this situation, which is why I didn’t comment on the last page. Instead, it was his continued dismissal of Dorothy’s feelings on the matter *after* she’d voiced her concern that makes him the one at fault for her reaction, at least in my eyes. It’s a pattern in Walky’s behaviour that I’m really not fond of. I mean I get that he has trouble with dealing with relationships, but that doesn’t grant him immunity from the consequences of being an arse. :l
Walky likes Dorothy but hasn’t given me any hint that he wants this relationship to be anything more than it presently is. Dorothy even starts the relationship by setting the ground rules that “This thing is temporary. I have no attatchment to you, or IU” and Walky’s like “Cool, girls are gross” So now Dorothy feels like she’s grown more attatched to Walky who is still emotionally distant and very casual about the relationship. He almost broke up with her over a disagreement about PAJAMA JEANS. They’ve been going out for like a month or so and then Dottie drops the “I love you” bomb on him. If I was Walky, I wouldn’t even take this declaration seriously. Like…You LOVE me? You can’t see yourself living without me? Like if we broke up right now it’d break your heart? Well I don’t believe that’s true. Since I don’t believe that’s true I don’t believe you feel as powerful a feeling of love as I define it. But I also don’t want to not reciprocate this Faux love that you’re showing me. I’ll say it back and it’ll mean the same thing that your fake declaration means.
I’d be 100% on Dorothy’s side if she was dating Walky for like 6 months but as far as I know it’s be 1-2 TOPS. I do not acknowledge the feeling you’ve had for someone for 1-2 months love. That shit is infatuation.
The last time Dorothy said she loved someone, she was breaking him with him —- also in public.
That trivializes it to me.
Also, Putting men on the spot, in public, seems to be habit with Dorothy.
You want to credit her for an uncontrolled outbust of passion, but it wasnt.
She just said “You care more about things than you like to admit”
It did need trivializing or contexualizing, but by Dorothy , otherwise its emotionally manipulative.
The second she has been emotionally manipulative about Walkys concern for Billie, and attempted to make it about her.
It would have been more honest to say she admired walky and would love if she could inspire the same level of loyalty. She could suggest to walky he could follow her to yale if their relationship was serious. Even if he wouldnt that would demonstrate that Walky isnt disposable.
yes, he screwed up. He should have given her a big grin and kissed her. Unfortunately, he rehearsed this.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that Dorothy was being intentionally manipulative, right down to the initiation of this situation. A lot of people seem to think that way actually. I didn’t read it that way though. How I read the situation was that she got caught up in the moment because of the conversation with Billie, and blurted out her feelings to Walky. When she said “you don’t need to say it back”, I didn’t read it as her being manipulative either. To me, I read her words as being a statement of genuine consideration for the fact that Walky may not be comfortable with saying it yet, and she’s fine with that, but she wanted to tell him how she felt anyway, just because. Women are capable of saying something and only meaning exactly what they just said, you know. 😛 (And okay, yes, sure, if he hadn’t said it back then this situation may have turned into something else entirely, but it does no good to blame her for a direction that the storyline didn’t go in, so let’s not even discuss her imaginary reaction as if it has any impact at all on what happened instead.)
-sigh- Honestly.. So many people seem to see Dorothy as being this manipulative shrew who only ever says and does things with the intention of trying to get what she wants out of other people all the time, but that’s just not the case. Willis has said as much himself, and he’s the one who *created* her character. Sadly, that hasn’t seemed to change many people’s minds about her though. Oh well.
… I may have been subconsciously responding to two comments at once when I typed this. If parts of it don’t make sense, or seem to not be referring to your post, that’s probably why. lol
I hear what you are saying.
That isnt what I meant by “emotionally manipulative” .
I realize those are potentially loaded terms. I am going to walk it back. A LOT.
Just to be clear. I like Dorothy. She is the character I would like to have as a friend. I think she is disciplined, thoughtful, hard-working, ( mostly ) unpretentious , tolerant of differences, and all-around a good human being. But she is not perfect. ( But she seems close! ) My criticisms here are about one the few flaws that she actually seems to have.
I say this respectfully. You seem to be viewing this ( and my comments ) from the lens of heterosexual-dating politics. ( including Dorothy: right, walky: wrong ) I acknowledge in that context , calling Dorothy emotionally manipulative is loaded. I am not heterosexual , and that is not how I meant it.
She didnt have the full opportunity to explain what she means. Love means different things to different people. Dorothy has a very high emotional intelligence and walky is kind of emotionally inept! I think with this panel we can agree on that.
That situation can naturally lead to the person with the higher emotional intelligence, manipulating the other. In another comment on here I even linked to Journal articles about this phenomena. Humans are social animals with various amounts of empathy and ability to project empathy and other political skills based on that. Its possibly to be emotionally manipulative purely unintentionally. I know, I have been before. This can happen if there is mismatch between what one persons feelings are and their stated intentions about those feelings.
She knows his emotions better than he can express them. That doesnt make Walky or Dorothy bad people. On this one personality trait, they are polar opposites.
I am not accusing her of staging events, or being a shrew. I like Dorothy.
I do, like you, think she loves Walky. I agree with you that she was honestly responding to events.
I disagree with you that she blurted it out. I think she was being honestly reflective and thoughtful about her feelings, toward walkys emotionally depth vis-a-vis Walky and Billie. I could be wrong. I think seeing how deeply walky felt toward Billy , genuinely inspired in her greater affections toward walky.
I think Dorothy’s emotional EQ is high enough that she can know she would inherit the same type of loyalty, considering walkys infatuation with her. I think walky is clueless with ‘The feels’ and doesnt understand this.
That being said, I think Dorothys feelings are genuinely hurt and she did mean she loved walky! I do think its possible for to love walky, and I think Willis is done a great job with providing fuel for that.
( I think its possible to fall in love with someone with just one kiss. )
I think the type of love she feels for walky is like when you see someone that you are attracted to , and simply like them a little more each time you see them. Its partly admiration-based, partly premeditated, and then it just gets out of control and you are in love with them.
However if she wants a greater emotional attachment from walky than she is willing to give, that would be potentially manipulative. That doesnt mean that Dorothy doesnt love him. That doesnt mean her feelings are true, and genuine. Instead its a question, how that effects this being a temporary relationship , with an expiration date, that she told walky not to take seriously.
Does this negate that Yes..No …maybe? Walky needs to hear her say that explicitly. If she wants this relationship to be as thoughtful, earnest and as worthy of the convictions ( that seem to be at the heart if who Dorothy is ) then its manipulative to get Walky fully emotionally invested, with an expiration date.
That doesnt make Dorothy a bad person. It makes her a human being; one with needs and desire that her environment may not allow her to fullfill.
“The last time Dorothy said she loved someone, she was breaking him with him”
I know this was just a mistake, but still I can’t help but think of Dorothy telling Danny “I MUST BREAK YOU” a la Ivan Drago.
“You don’t have to say it back.” “I don’t want to put you on the spot.” “I guess you weren’t ready to hear that.”
There’s being unprepared for the pressures of a real relationship and there’s “Do you even know what feelings are or do you think it’s just words people say when they’re expected?”
I disagree, Dorothy sprung an emotionally charged revelation on Walky in public which, usually, would require Walky to reciprocate by saying “I love you as well” or risk Dorothy’s embarrassment
Yet Dorothys would it clear shes gone once Yale calls (she may be regretting it now)
Dorothy is a good person but her call probably came (partly) at relief that Walky:
A. “Proved himself worthy” of her proclamation presumably by not having Billie in his bed
B. Showed emotional maturity in his caring about Billies well-being
I’m thinking the person most to blame in all this is Joyce by putting into Dorothys head the notion that Walkys cheating on her
That was supposed to be in reply to Hannah…
“Stupid Walky not following my script for this relationship.”
“Stupid Dorothy not following my script for this relationship.”
But it’s Joyce saying both statements.
Her fanfic is not canon.
That that is Joyce’s headcanon is now my new headcanon.
But Joyce doesn’t like this relationship. She thinks Walky is a dumb jerk and is frustrated that Dorothy spends so much time with him. The last thing she wants is for Dorothy to be any more emotionally invested in him.
Ok, she left Danny because she could take him for granted. Now she’s dropping Walky since she can’t take him for granted. After telling him this is just for fun and she’ll leave him for Yale anyway.
And she’s implicating that she considers Walky immature for not being the next Danny.
Danny belittled her professional goals while taking very seriously the emotional aspects of their relationship. Walky is super supportive of her career goals but very immature and unprepared to deal with the feelings aspect of things. He’s getting better but he has a long way to go. Hopefully boyfriend#3 will understand her career goals because he’ll have his own but will also be able to discuss his/her feelings because he’ll be mature enough to realize having the ability to do so doesn’t somehow make him less “manly” or whatever.
And Dorothy will understand having gone through her previous 2 relationships that this kind of balance is what she’s looking for in a partner. She’ll have more of an idea of just what the fuck it is she’s looking for.
Are… are we reading the same comic? Because I don’t think we are.
Where, exactly, does she dump Walky in this comic? What I see is her being sad & frustrated that he dismissed her attempt to be more emotionally committed to each other, not less.
….The hell is even happening in that last panel??
Joyce, about to explode in a luminous, purple cloud.
Purple? Does that mean HA is involved?
I read it as she’s face-palming so hard that she needed a whole piece of furniture to be the palm.
(Just kidding. Joyce feels upset. She will probably reveal exactly why later, there are a few possibilities.)
Not sure if Joyce is crying, having a BSoD, or screaming into her pillow.
Given the clenched fists clutching the sheets, I’m going with “screaming into her pillow”.
And that is why I am glad that I’m no longer in my late teens/early twenties!
I’ve found people in their late 30’s/early 40s aren’t much better.
double Sarah avatars. Fitting.
Okay, I just accidentally posted to yesterday’s comic. So if your reading through on a comment binge you’ll have to put up with most of it again. Though before I start let me add that Joyce probably only heard the first part of their interaction. So you should take that into account in your interpretation.
Here goes:
Walky gives her exactly what she wants and then takes away its value.
Dorothy has a decision to make. It’s either just for funzies or it’s completely serious. Walky isn’t letting her have it both ways. Nor should he. Not if he wants more. If she wants more, she has to take the emotional risk of saying so. And then finding out if he’s willing to go for a serious relationship.
It would be fine to just give her what she wants if he wants to be a doormat and be Dannied when the time comes, or if he’s emotionally dishonest and just wants to keep her happy so the sex’n’stuff keeps coming. But the only one who can change the ground rules is her. Walky’s answer isn’t going to satisfy her but if she’s satisfied then she has no motive to change anything.
There’s nothing to hate Dorothy for in any of this. Nor has either of them ended their relationship.
The past tense of “When somebody Loved Me” is intentionally ominous. When we started out with the Sal and Marcie flashback we assumed it was about Sal. When we hit the development with Billie and Ruth, we assumed it would relate to their story. Now with Dorothy and Walky’s relationship evolving we have a tendency to assume it relates to them. I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say I think the title probably relates to Ethan and his prior relationship with Amber.
In some universe, Walky will follow Joyce back to her room and find her crying and comfort her and much will develope from that. That universe will not be this one.
i agree with you up to a point, but see no evidence Dorothy has changed her mind.
She now has time to think about the situation. I think she will realize If Walky didnt trivialize it she would be back in the same situation with Danny when she dumped him. She will also realize that she is getting too deeply involved, too fast.
This relationship just ended.
Walky discovering Joyce crying and comforting her , is intriguing tho.
Oh damn I hope not. That would be such a hackneyed move. Willis’ work is beyond that.
Actually, God’s own work too often is not beyond such hackneyed moves.
Willis isn’t retreading R!IW!J&W! storylines. Walky and Joyce were already a thing in a different continuity. That said, Walky might well go and do something that turns him and Joyce from being “friends” that don’t especially like each other into actual friends.
Walky and Dorothy seem due for a rough patch, even a break-up, although I don’t think that’ll last. I think they complement each other well, despite their problems.
There is plenty of evidence that Dorothy has changed her mind and wants more from their relationship. She wants Walky to trust in her and confide in her. The last two strips have been all about the fact that she wants Walky to feel about her the way she is starting to feel about him. Saying that Dorothy has not changed her mind totally ignores the evidence. Now the strange thing about humans is that however Walkyish his response was, the fact that he is going to take more effort and not just a slam dunk paradoxically makes him more valuable and more of an investment, provided of course he doesn’t become too expensive. That Dorothy will reach the conclusion that she is getting too deeply involved too fast is the thing there is no evidence for.
No I don’t expect Walky to follow Joyce etc. I enjoyed the thought, but as Henry points out Willis is going in different directions. But I’m also sure that if Willis chose to explore that direction he would manage to do it without being hackneyed. And technically there is room in “other directions” for an eventual Walky/Joyce relationship to fail spectacularly to the secret relief of both leaving them ever after friendly exes convinced that there are no circumstances where the two of them would ever work.
But no, I am as convinced that this isn’t the universe where Walky/Joyce just started as I am that this isn’t the universe where Dorothy/Walky just ended.
“She wants Walky to trust in her and confide in her. ”
Yes totally true.
and Walky Put her on the the spot, pointing out she said their relationship was temporary ( and he shouldt get that deeply attached ) She seemed a little rejected, but resigned that he was correct.
She hasnt come back and told him to forget all that. She hasnt said ‘Yale is far away and I want to treat you 100% like a real boyfriend, and this relationship has potential to go places’ . That will get Dorothy what she wants.
I acknowledge that Dorothy has mixed feelings and is honestly feeling her way through them. I do think Dorothy wants more meaning and depth, yet its manipulative to ask someone to emotionally attach, if you wont do the same in return.
Only Willis knows where Dorothy will decide to take this relationship.
I think Dorothys head says one thing, and her heart something else. On the whole I think she leads with her head, which is why I think they might be splitsville.
If I were Joyce, and I overheard folks havin’ a Love Conversation, I would skedaddle out of there. We don’t know exactly what Joyce heard — we don’t know if she heard anything beyond Walky’s original “I love you too.”
I’m guessing Joyce is just like “Billie’s in love…Dorothy’s in love…why can’t *I* be in love?”
Pretty sure she -is-.
More like “Why doesn’t he love ME?!”
You missed an “s” on that pronoun.
Walky needs to find her and go throw another Dexter and Money Master toy at her head
if that dont fix this, nothing will
And all the cool DMM merchandise is possessed by Joyce…
Why do I suddenly want a Monkey Master toy?
Willis should make a Monkey-Master that transforms into a saucer.
And…. train wreck! No amount of snu snu can stand up to the choo choo.
Chugga chugga chugga…. DUN GOOFED!
Joyce honey — omygod, can I feel your pain.
So I’ll tell you what — your head, my shoulder. Put it there.
We’ll cuddle and cry each other to sleep …. or sumthin’.
Both Walky and Dorothy have said stuff that probably didn’t need to be said here. Dorothy, though she probably didn’t mean to, did put pressure on what Walky assumed to be a fun, temporary relationship, to take it to another level. Even though she said she didn’t have to hear it back, even saying that she did love him still puts on that pressure. It’s not her fault, but because of it I’m not surprised things turned out how they did.
Walky dealt with it in the wrong way though, I mean instead of just shrugging her words aside with some lame jokes, all he should have said was something along the lines of ‘i’m not really ready for that yet” or something along those lines. But ofc he was trying to avoid drama, so he tried to defuse the situation the best way he could with some lame jokes. So while neither of them are really in the right, I wouldn’t say either of them are to blame either.
Joyyyyyyce man, I want to give Joyce a cuddle.
Mind you, Walky’s brain is in a sleep deprived state, so at the very least he’s grumpy and emotionally unstable, and at worst he’s all that and running on autopilot as his brain tries to go back to sleep.
I think they break Up. For a while…..
Dorothy is nothing if not rational, including about her love.
She now realizes this really was too soon to say, because its too soon.
Shes not willing to reciprocate walkys possible attachment.
She knows its dangerous for her to get too attached when shes going to Yale.
She wanted a relationship just for fun. She’s had it. From her on in its serious.
Its Not Walkys fault that they break up. Dorothy wants opposite things. Walky is doing a good job of straddling those opposites. But Dorothy isnt.
Poor Walky! He is so dumped.
It’s moments like this that reminds me that they are still freshmen and have only begun to scrutinize themselves.
It also made me think of a thing friend of mine said to me earlier tonight: “I wonder what college would be like without regular existential crises.”
I believe its called Graduate School. Although it can depend on the degree program.
Try graduate school to become a therapist! So much self-scrutiny, so many existential crises. (We’re more connected to resources, though.)
I really don’t think my friends in graduate school would agree with you.
from Matt Groening’s “School Is Hell”, a traditional grade school chant:
“School’s out, school’s out
Teachers let the monkeys out
One went east
One went west
One went up the teacher’s dress”
And a traditional grad school chant:
“School’s out, school’s out
Teacher let the monkeys out
One was jailed
One prevailed
Both asked God, ‘How have I failed?'”
Hmm. Judging by how harshly Joyce is treating her sheets, I’d say she’s decide that Walky and Dorothy have broken up. It’s too odd an hour to go for a cold shower without looking suspicious, so to avoid the effects of said thought (namely, Dotty’s single), she has to grab the mattress.
I know canon’s probably going to wreck any shipping I can continue with this tommorrow, but today, I can say that Joyce is devastated that Dotty loves someone who isn’t her.
Bets on her real anguish include sympathy and “oh god Ethan can’t say it to me? Why can’t I say it about Ethan when I think it about dorothy ALL THE TIME?” Okay I may be embellishing it somewhat.
Re: Dotty, what she’s trying to do is way outside the maturity levels of pretty much anyone in the comic except maybe, MAYBE herself and a couple of the actual adults. I honestly don’t, for a second, think when she said the relationship was going to be for fun that they’d bury anything difficult the other person was going through, just that she meant for it to be temporary. It is completely possible to love someone and consider the relationship to be temporary; it will pass, and you will go your seperate ways. Jury’s out on whether she’s actually CAPABLE of it, leaning towards no personally but it’s possible. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell Walky’s capable, or pretty much anyone else in the cast. Frankly, it’s something that’d demand more explanation than she’s ever given, on-screen, and like I said, I don’t believe she’s really ready for what she’s asking for at this stage (which is a shame, since now is when she would like it).
I like your comment. This is a good comment. Thank you for that comment.
And yeah, I don’t expect Joyce is going to realize that huh she kind of is interested in her female friends in potentially not-straight ways tomorrow, or any time soon. But hey, that’s where couple-of-years-down-the-line headcanon is handy. (… Though it would be amazing if at least three out of four of the original Roomies! protagonists turned out to be bisexual or -romantic.)
But she probably will be realizing that whatever she has with Ethan ISN’T on the same level as Dorothy and Walky, or her and Dorothy, and if WALKY can manage these feelings then why doesn’t she have a connection like that with Ethan and please oh please let this be the day where she and Ethan realize this just isn’t going to work. Even if her relationship with Dorothy is totally platonic, it’s still so much deeper than her one with Ethan that that revelation might be coming soon.
I’d find it amazing if Joe turned out to be bi before Joyce.
Despite all the ups and downs of the Walky/Dorothy relationship, it’s actually refreshing for me; it’s arguably the healthiest relationship in DoA right now, with rooted problems that aren’t exactly the easiest thing to solve.
I don’t even understand what Dorothy was expecting here, after the last time. She set a clear boundary about this being a non-serious thing and here she is just straight out ignoring that.
I dunno, I feel like the last few weeks have been a little off.
Temporary and not serious are NOT the same thing (Rutee’s comment above said things really nicely) – plus remember when she set that boundary she was just out of a relationship where her partner wanted to smother her dreams under their precious relationship! That really makes you want to be cautious. Also, relationships start out one way and generally end up another – an telling the other person honnestly as your feelings evolve is a good thing in these cases!
She’s STILL just out a relationship where her partner wanted to smother her dreams. It’s been what, a month in canon time since they’ve started Freshman Year. Less than a month since Dorothy and Walky hooked up.
Dorothy’s declaration is ridiculously early in their relationship for anything like a serious opinion to have formed, and Walky’s right to treat it as just words used for causing drama.
Should she have seen a response like that coming? Probably. Is she wrong for being frustrated or angry with him? Nope. Walky still trivialized something that’s clearly important to her.
As someone mentioned above, Dorothy has recently been suggesting that what she wants from the relationship has changed (wanting Walky to open up more to her and everything).
Of course, she knows Walky well enough to know that he wouldn’t pick up on something like that unless she drew him a flowchart or something.
Yep. Over.
Don’t know what Joyce’s problem is though.
Could be any number of things, depending on how much she heard. I expect we’ll find out soon.
Could be:
1) Frustration at Dorothy and Walky fighting (again). Alternately, at Walky for being an idiot (since she will assign any blame for this to Walky)(Assuming she heard/saw the whole thing.)
2) As someone earlier predicted, upon realizing that Billie and Dorothy were both in love, Joyce is frustrated by the fact that she knows she and Ethan can’t and won’t be like that. (Assuming she only heard the first part.)
3) Joyce is dealing with some unexpectedly-strong jealousy (see: every single time Joyce has been jealous of the amount of time Walky gets with Dorothy)(Also see: every Dotty/Joyce shipper) and is possibly scared and/or confused by that. (Assuming Joyce only saw the first part.)
4) Something else that we don’t yet know about.
Nah. She’s just pretending she’s Superman.
Pose looks more like Iron Man, based on how she’s got her hands.
Always knew Joyce was a Marvel over DC girl. -nods-
Walky… sometimes, you need to shut up…
Yes, Dorothy now thinks this is love. But she would still dump him in a minute for a better school. Walky knows the limits to her love and is being as realistic about this as she has been. In my view, this is more about pride of ownership on Dorothy’s part. She’s got a good boyfriend who is loyal and good to his friends. Now he should declare his love for her. But its asymetrical, since she feels free to dump him to suit her ambition and walky knows that. Yes, Walky may have just cut off the sex pipeline, but maybe Dorothy is learning that she doesn’t get to totally script other people’s lives, or even her own.
And these are all such freshmen, so I’ll cut them some slack. I was very stupid as a freshman…and a sophomore….and…..
Joyce may be a little over-invested in the relationship drama of Dorothy and Walky.
I’m not ruling out that Willis is sending a message to the fandom with that.
Am I the only one thinking that Walky actually is right and Dorothy is overreacting?
Seriously, she is having a problem with him not having a problem to say it?
I agree with Milky on this. Walky acknowledged his feelings for Dorothy, in a way that makes sense to himself. Acting like using the phrase “I love you” should ONLY come after a long introspective is immature of Dorothy, who should know better. She basically admitted to putting Walky on the spot, and SHE wasn’t ready for him to have a mature reaction to it.
I can understand Joyce fleeing the scene, she has her own crap to deal with…that she caused… but Dorothy isn’t in the right here. She owes him an apology for this.
Or sex. She can solve this with sex.
This was not a mature response to someone telling you they love you. We don’t even know if he meant it when he told her he loved her because he flat out said he only said it back to avoid drama and then robbed the words of any power, which just happened to also belittle Dorothy’s feelings as well as his own.
Basically what Walky said was a longwinded version of ‘Sure, whatever’.
I’d say it’s a lot more mature than 90% of people in relationships act, and a 100% more mature than Dorothys reaction here.
It’s impossible to be less mature than deliberately belittling your girlfriend’s feelings.
Who said “Well, Jeez, that was easy. I thought I’d had to extort it out of you.”, turning this into a trophy hunt and belittling the meaning of what he said first? She can make fun of him and manipulate him, but woe if he deflects the situation into one where he is not her sock puppet?
I’m not saying that he found the smoothest response here, but I don’t really see that Dorothy’s behavior entitles her to it either.
Umm… that’s not what he did, at all. And if that’s what Dorothy felt he did, then that just shows HER immaturity. Part of maturing is recognizing that words are words and feelings are feelings, and not getting hurt by those kind of things.
You’re not; I agree with Walky. “Love” is a word that represents an abstract idea. Abstract ideas are open to interpretation (e.g. “I want you to know, I only hurt you because I love you”).
That said, if you understand what the other person means with their interpretation, and they know you understand it…And then you tell them “
“I love you…by the way though, I’m only saying that because I know it’s the only acceptable response at this moment”…It’ll probably cause some problems, as the other party feels spurned by your meaning and sincerity not being the same as they believe theirs to have been.
Walky wants the words “I love you too to have the power to dispell drama, but he doesn’t want them to have the power to reflect his -actual feelings-.
Communication fail, Walky. Communication fail.
Damn, Joyce is fast
DUN DUN DUN DAAAAAAA DA DA DADUM DA-DAAAAAAAA
http://i.imgur.com/h8nhVjR.gif
It’s a bird!
Here, have an internet!
As I see it, the problem isn’t that Walky doesn’t seem to reciprocate what she feels, or that she’s complicating their “casual” relationship (she’s expressing her feelings honestly, thats almost always a good thing). The problem is that Walky’s explanation of why he responded that way, not because he feels that way, but to diffuse a “3rd act climax”.
He’s talking about their relationship, which on Dorothy’s end has gotten more involved and complex as her feelings for him grow, like it’s just a story or plot-arc (whoa META). That implies she’s a “love interest”/”romantic lead” rather than a PERSON. His speech has the veneer of maturity (lets avoid drama), but really reveals the depth of his immaturity (the relationship is just a plot-line to play out by the rules/tropes he knows from TV&movies).
She’s willing to complicate matters by telling him she’s developed strong feelings for him, and yes that it makes it harder because she’s already stated her goals take her away in the long term. Maybe trivializing their relationship/feelings-for-each-other is just him reacting to diffuse THAT dramatic arc as well by diffusing the “I love you” dramatic arc (whoa double-META).
The point is, his response doesn’t express how he feels about her, whether or not he reciprocates her feelings of love and willingness to say so or even how he feels about her declaration (just that he doesn’t want to deal with “drama”). He mocks the very idea of taking feelings seriously, saying its dumb to need time to respond honestly instead of just saying “I love you”.
His sentiment about avoiding drama and how the word only has power if they give it power would be fine, even MATURE, if his “I love you” was sincere and he included THAT fact. As in, “I’m going to avoid drama and just say I love you, because that’s how I feel and its dumb to freak out over saying it”.
It’s not completely sure whether he’s being insincere. It could just as well mean “You should be happy that I love you too, ’cause that defused the drama. Now, could I have smooches for being so mature?” rather than “I should just say this to defuse the drama.” It’s immature, but it’s a lot less dickish.
*still immature
Yeah, Walky’s like Danny; too dumb to obfuscate the truth. If Walky didn’t love Dorothy back, then most-likely, based on prior evidence, Walky would have said as much and in an equally-thoughtless way.
THEY HAVE ONLY BEEN DATING FOR ALMOST TWO WEEKS.
Actually, 18 days.
Two weeks and change.
A bit longer, there was a time skip when Mike ordered Walky the Pajama Jeans
Baka!
Well, that’s going to be an interesting talk coming up here.
Last panel: Butt!
I actually thought Walky made a point. Is it because I’m a guy?
I thought Dorothy was more pragmatic than this.
As for Joyce…
“What’s Eating Joyce Brown?”
I know Joyce ain’t no lesbian. If she was why would she think about guys? Easy answer, she wouldn’t. Besides she’s “with” a guy. I’m friends with a lesbian so you can’t tell me differently.
*hugs Joyce*
Bisexual folk exist.
Not with Joyce because due to Christian belief. “If you fall in love with a person of the same gender. You go straight to Hell.” And with Joyce as religious as she is she’d rather die alone and go to Heaven than love another girl and go to Hell.
*BATTERY LOW*
Hey, Dorothy
Now you know how Danny felt
Karma finds its way around.
It might just be my natural hatred of Dorothy, but I don’t see how Walky would be at fault right now. It’s just how he is, he’s immature and slightly retarded. It was Dorothy’s choice to get into a “just for fun” relationship with him. She really can’t expect such deep and complex thoughts and feelings to come out of Walky as of now. He needs a few more extra years or it might not even ever happen, who knows.
Dorothy fucked up, too bad.
All Dorothy has to do is tell Walky how shes feeling rather than being subtle and hoping he “gets it” also Joyce needs to back way off as shes acting in quite a negative way towards the relationship
I mean assaulting Mike just to get access to his room was a little over the top and to me it seemed like she wanted proof of Walkys infedelity more than Dorothy
what?!
Joyce had Mike beat up Joe on their date—-that was over the top.
Joyce Punched Joes in the face — that was over the top.
Mike isnt Innocent and had it coming.
Mike just put her through the whole Ding-Dong Scandal. Shes still pissed. Mike is lucky he didnt get a punch in the face, too.
( or unlucky , as he probably wants one )
Mike is a Submissive/masochist , and probably liked it afterwards. He probably jerked off to it. Dont feel bad for him. If Joyce knew this she probably wouldnt hit him, it would creep her out. In a weird way he provoked her, and violated her consent. I fully expect Mike to deliberately provoke Joyce into Hitting him again.
I’m of the school of thought that Dorothy has gotten used to being the one who sets the boundaries in a relationship. Danny was the submissive one in their relationship and she dumped him because he was just not who she wanted. Dorothy, however, is unprepared for dealing with a partner who when Dorothy offers to “upgrade” their relationship isn’t interested, necessarily. Dorothy can’t control Walky and it’s a new feeling for her.
She’s used to a certain level of power in a relationship she doesn’t have.
wow, willis. props to you for making joyce’s reaction really ambiguous
is it jealousy? she was frowning last week.
or is it because of how stupendously horribly dorothy and walky handled the situation? she does see romance in a very cliche’d manner.
I look at it in terms of this. Billie is in love with someone, and Dorothy just let out how she felt about Walky. In order to tie in my thought process, I do need to state something in my past. I had a girlfriend, and her friends were getting engaged about 4 months into their relationships. About three months into mine, she asked me how I felt about marriage, and I was taken aback quite a bit.
Not saying this is what Joyce’s mentality is, but after seeing two friends get in love, and admitting it to each other on the same day, it makes you feel like you’re getting left behind. I’m thinking that she’s realizing that her relationship with Ethan isn’t healthy, and that she needs to try and find someone else who will actually love her for who she is.
yes how dare dorothy have feelings even though she said she wasn’t going to have feelings!! and then express those feelings and tell her partner he was under no pressure to have the same feelings. and then apologize to him when he accidentally mocks her feelings. wow history’s worst monster
dorothy is the chillest girlfriend and y’all are a bunch of schmoes
I love this comic because the characters arn’t one-dimensional and all have flaws but mostly due to the ambiguity of the story lines.
We’ve all read the same story and background yet we’re all reading different reasons and motivations into it
And once again, Dumbiverse Walky proves himself to be…dumb. I love this comic indeed, but at least Roomiverse Walky had the excuse of being coddled by his mom for fear of him going berserk, what the hell is this jag’s excuse for idiocy? It just bugs me because classic Walky is one of my favorite super heroes no lie, while this version IRKS me to so many degrees.
She’ll be fine! She got God’s love! 😀
Is Joyce feeling…a little down in the mouth?
Get it? Because the pillow…oh never mind.
I just don’t get why people are interpreting what Walky said as “I can say this word without actually meaning anything by it” and not simply “I can use this word to express my sincere feelings for you and not treat it as some kind of fearsome mystical invocation of eternal romantic commitment like guys in movies do”. There’s an awful lot of middle ground between meaning nothing and meaning such a big deal that a guy has to have it extorted out of him.
I feel bad for Dorothy here. She’s fine if Walky doesn’t love her back, but she doesn’t want Walky to tell her things just to make her happy. I’ve seen multiple relationships like this.
Take a hint, don’t do what Walky does.