well, there are supportive parents out there but most ppl set more realistic goals, i imagine there are some kids out there that would say ‘ i wanna be president’ but parents would prolly go like ‘sure, honey’
You don’t really need leadership talent to become president, just be corrupt and willing to do whatever your super-wealthy donors want over what’s best for the people.
I mean “not being willing to use a tragedy for your own personal benefit” is a massive impediment to succeeding in politics, she’s right to be re-evaluating her dreams because of that
It’s maybe a little less good that the main reason he’s expressing for not entertaining the idea seems to be the effect it could have on Dorothy’s career prospects, not the effect it would have on his current relationship,
It’s what he is telling Dorothy, based on the way she is acting and what she is saying – that is, he is reacting to her (and trying to support her “dreams”), which he did when they originally broke up. That may or may not have anything to do with what he feels about himself and Lucy.
People keep talking about “cheating”. What, exactly, is Walky and Lucy’s commitment here? IIRC it’s all in Lucy’s head, and Walky’s qualms about acting on feelings for Dorothy, relative to his relationship with Lucy, would center on violating Lucy’s perception of commitment. Which is decent of him.
Given that they’ve literally gone on dates to meet her family and Walky is fully aware of how much this girl is in love to him. He has at the very least committed enough to her to warrant at the very least telling her he wants to break things off before he even considers wanting to fool around with Dorothy.
Sure if Lucy was just crushing on him one sidededly with no encouragement or acknowledgement of a relationship from him then he’d be clear and commitment free. But in this case he’s already started dating the girl full well understanding just how much the act means to get and he’d be incredibly shitty to not at least give her the courtesy of knowing that he doesn’t feel the same way / that they should break what they currently have going on off before he goes to hook up with somone else.
I support communication between any people getting intimate with each other, in any way. And part of that communication is making clear requests and expressing expectations. There’s no such thing as implied monogamy.
Exactly; I’m guessing Bryy missed the hyphen at the end of the first line. Caucus-blocking is the verb here, the subject is just “the mean dean”, not “the mean dean caucus”
Damn this scene is giving me a stress reaction just waiting for the page to load!
As I thought, Walky is still hung up on the idea he’d be holding her back… Yet the only one who really believed in her.
I still ship them.
I’m starting to think that maybe Dorothy ought to go to Yale. Or maybe not Yale – I doubt the environment there is what she needs right now – but somewhere else where she can have a fresh start in a new space with new people.
Maybe, but I genuinely think that a wholly new setting would be beneficial.
Heck, at this point I’d even cosign onto her taking a year off to travel, to work, to do freaking Americorps or something. *Anything* to make a clear break between the past and the future.
Student exchange in Germany, then she changes her name to Dorothea Kiener and becomes in a few years president of Germany, only to realize that german presidents have no power.
Interesting that Walky’s biggest reason for not getting back together with Dorothy is that he doesn’t want Dorothy to fail, and believes that he would cause her to fail. He isn’t saying they can’t get back together because of Lucy, although that might be another reason. It shows just how much he wants Dorothy to be able to follow her dreams, and he truly believes she can do it.
Is Lucy going to find out about this? If she does, what is going to happen?
well, he did still ask her out even if dorothy gave him the idea, if he didn’t think it was leading her along or just asking her out because he think he ‘should’ ask someone out/make the first move, i don’t know if he’d rly just start a relationship that easily (tho i suppose they are at that age where ppl would ‘date’ each other for two weeks and then it’d end)
Yeah, I think Walky’s interest in Lucy extends past convenience. If he was just wanting to hook up, he could have with Amber regardless of the Sal thing since even Sal told him it was fine. Walky doesn’t do things with women he doesn’t feel right about doing.
Of course they’re on speaking terms. It’s been a couple months or so since Halloween. Even though Amber was angry at Walky, she’s not the type to hold a grudge over him being dumb and not processing grief the same way that she does.
Walky was friends with Lucy before they started dating. I think it’s possible he would have been perfectly happy remaining friends. But Lucy wanted more, and Dorothy seemed to think it was a good idea, and why not after all, she’s not bad looking, he’s a boy she’s a girl, it seemed like the thing to do. He doesn’t feel for her the way he felt, and still feels, for Dorothy, but then again he doesn’t think he’ll ever feel that way for anyone else, what, is he supposed to be alone forever? Those are the things I presume are happening in his head. He feels uncomfortable with how fast things are going. He probably realizes Lucy really is in love with him, and he’s not sure it’s right to keep going through the motions hoping his own feelings reciprocate hers in time, not when she is pushing for their relationship to become sexual, something that appears to be a big, important step for her… He can tell she’s under the impression he loves her as she loves him, and that it is under that belief that she wants to have sex with him.
Walky and Lucy need to have an open and honest discussion about their feelings, and that’s just not Walky’s strong suit.
Lucy will find out immediately after it is settled that W&D aren’t getting back together, but of course because of incomplete information and miscommunication she will think W&D are getting back together.
The big question is does she sink into gloom, depression, and excessive ice cream consumption like Dana, or does she go knife-crazy berserk like in that anime?
Dorothy just expressed regret about setting them up, to say “well too late” would just be rubbing it in. She understands that Lucy is an obstacle here.
See this is why the kidnapping plot is impossible to take seriously as something that would actually traumatize people: the characters themselves use the word supervillain completely unironically. It’s cartoonish, so one should expect equally cartoonish consequences
I think that Walky is the only one who would use “supervillain” which may be due to his love of cartoons and comics. Either way, someone can use overblown language and still be seriously affected by something.
This. And like, it was exaggerated because Amazi-Girl’s superheroics exist in their universe, too, but actual IRL abusers’ actions can sound cartoonish when you’re describing them to someone outside that place and time. That doesn’t make them less real, less potentially dangerous, or less traumatizing.
Dude literally dressed up in spandex and a mask, gathered a group of henchmen, made an evil alliance with a guy so thick he had no neck (as well as the ultra conservative Christian right), and fought both a costumed vigilante and a woman unironically acting like a dinosaur.
If that doesn’t scream supervillain, I don’t know what does.
You’re exactly right and that’s WHY I can’t take him seriously or that entire arc: because he IS a supervillain! but the audience is expected to react with real pathos when his reality-stretching actions have real traumatizing consequences
It’s like having a character hold one of those black spherical bombs with a fuse and the word “BOMB” written in bold white letters, but when the bomb explodes the character suffers real burn and shrapnel injuries.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading superhero comics for decades, but that seems weird to me, because it’s not exactly uncommon in the genre for supervillains to cause serious trauma.
You’re not wrong, but I would add that supervillains also have extremely nonsense plans work out for them for no other reason other than the narrative dictated so.
I wish Walky had as much faith in himself as he does for Dorothy. Who knows what he could do if he did? Still it is very sweet of him to believe in her, and shows that he might still be in love with her.
He might also like Lucy, but I don’t know if he is /in/ love with her. Which might be part of the reason he is hesitant to have sex with Lucy.
She’s getting what she wanted from Walky after all. I was “good for him” for 1.5 panels, then he turned into the inverse of the “is there someone you forgot to ask?” meme. He needs to do right by himself and right by who he’s with, instead of “how will what I do best serve my ex”.
She needs someone to be supportive without giving into her weird idea that not becoming president is failure. Doesn’t even need to be a romantic someone, just someone she listens to that won’t reflexively gas her up.
And if that person is Arnold, and they do start dating, then all the better.
Dorothy feels to me like someone who speaks very deliberately most of the time, not really one for the unthinking turn of phrase. So it interests me that her word choice here and last strip is so… self-expressive? She could be setting up a “get back together with me, even if out of pity” but so far it’s been very focused on just saying what she’s feeling and talking about their relationship in the past tense. She comes off very strongly to me here like someone out to unburden themselves with a confession to the one she thinks she made these big mistakes with, which is subtly but meaningfully different from trying to manipulate Walky with this.
She did ask Joyce for “permission” for a selfish act to keep herself sane, so of course I could be wrong and she’s angling to make friends with Walky’s genitalia again. Though she also called it a small one, and again deliberate word choice. Given she always seems to think she has to pick up the problems, the small selfish act might be just putting it on someone else for whom it will be meaningful, even if she’ll feel bad about dumping it all on Walky later.
Yes, she’s actually letting off steam here. She’s normally so careful to choose each word precisely, and to put others before herself. That outburst at Billie was the first time she blew her top, she’s doing it again but in a way that gets at the real core of her pain. She’s been bottling every up, this feels healthy to me — she isn’t really trying to seduce Walky thank goodness.
The way I read it is that a person who is usually very deliberate in speech and action is having trouble holding it together. She’s been erratic for a while. She probably came over not knowing what she really wanted to do, or very sure she wanted to jump him when she really wanted the conversation they’re having.. I think that’s true when she approached Walky and pushed him toward Lucy in the first place. She was ready to pounce and thought better of it.
….Dorothy, most people in the world don’t go to Yale and don’t become President of the United States. If that’s your benchmark for failure as a person, I wonder if you define anyone as successful.
If you decide that you don’t want to do something, you have not failed to do that thing, you have successfully avoided the future misery that is forcing yourself into a career you actually don’t want.
Most people don’t choose Yale and presidency as goals for themselves. Dorothy did. She has decided she’s not going to accomplish those goals, but– crucially– she does not have a new goal ready to focus on.
It’s leaving her adrift and aimless for the first time in her entire life, and that’s what’s fucking her up right now: the goal she just abandoned was the majority of her identity, up to and including the source of her self-worth.
She’s desperate for something familiar, stable, and most importantly comfortable, to anchor herself. She’s desperate for something like Walky. There are a few ways this could go well, but countless ways this could go horribly.
dorothy’s at least likeable, i feel like realistically someone else in that position or ambition/aim in life would prolly look down on others she’d consider ‘beneath’ her
but she’s still young, sometimes you don’t know what you want outta a career til you start working diff jobs. too bad we can’t put a stop on aging or so and get like a decade or two to get diff degrees and work diff careers til deciding on one
Sorry to be the hater but I don’t ship them. I mean I also don’t like Walky generally so not a big surprise.
I understand intellectually what Dorothy’s going through, but emotionally I’m finding it hard to give in to her whole pity party thing. You literally could have gone to Yale, you could still be president hypothetically, and if Walky’s that important to you just wait I’m sure Lucy will wake up one day and realize she deserves better.
idk how hard Indiana University or this series’ equivalent of it is, but given how her own grades started slipping just because she was helping a boyfriend study, i imagine yale would be a lot more competitive and harsh with lessons/essay assignments so she probably would struggle to keep up there and burn out even if she literally did nothing but eat and study and not spend any time on friendships or personal ‘luxuries’ like working out
I think it’s a combination of putting too much on her plate, setting too high a standard (I don’t think she ever said how much her grades slipped) and it’s entirely possible Dorothy’s not a very gifted student. Do you have to put in the time to keep up with college level material? Sure. But not at the cost of cutting yourself off from everyone. Dorothy might be a grinder who needs to hyperfocus and peck away at the material until it sinks in.
Well, her grades seemingly got better as I presume Yale accepted her based off her first semester in college and not her last semester in high school.
Yeah, being kidnapped help, but I doubt that would be enough with a bunch of C’s.
Saying “I shouldn’t have done that” is not really explicitly saying “Let’s do the other thing instead.” Or even implicitly. Maybe she was going to say that next? We’ll never know since Walky keeps preemptively contradicting her.
But it’s not exactly Dorothy’s style to ask multiple other people – Walky and Lucy) – to do work to make up for her own mistakes, I think.
Walky is jumping to the same conclusion as a lot of people here, and I understand why, yet I wish he would just let Dorothy have her say. But he’s successfully switched her from relationship stress to career stress. Maybe she’ll switch back later and be able to get both off her shoulders. I hope so. She needs to talk about both.
Oh, look. People in the comments have decided Dorothy said the thing they’d already decided she was going to say, even though she actually didn’t. How unexpected. Nobody could have seen it coming. /s
Like less than a week ago people were predicting huge dramatic confrontations between Dorothy and Joyce and Joe where Dorothy was going to be the bad guy. It’s not hard to find. She proceeded to not at all do that. So, yeah, people do decide many characters’ actions ahead of time, including currently Dorothy, frequently casting them in a terrible light, and then prove extremely wrong like a day later. And then hop right back to it.
Jesus, Dorothy, it was just one person’s nihilistic opinion of the presidency, you don’t have to let it shatter your world
(I know Dorothy’s breakdown isn’t entirely about Raidah’s comment about the office of POTUS but like… geez. You barely know her, it’d make way more sense if Joyce or Walky or someone closer triggered this)
To be fair, Raidah does make a good point about what being the president entails. It’s not sunshines and roses, you’re going to have to have skeletons in your closets. If Dorothy cant even push herself to go to Yale by taking advantage of the situation that happened, then she’s not going to be able to handle even more fcked up choices in the future that she WILL have to make as president.
It’s honestly an inevitable wake up call in my opinion. She was going to have to acknowledge her own denial sooner or later
It doesnt change the fact that she will have to make harder choices than deciding to go to Yale or not by taking advantage of the situation she’s in. If this sets her back, then she’s not really fit
I think for years Dorothy has been following a plan, THE plan, HER plan. A plan she made when she was way too young and had a very idealistic view of the world and the presidency. Raidah mostly gave her a reality check that the plan may not be in line with actual reality.
What shattered Dorothy, I think, is that for years she has sacrificed for the plan, she’s been denying herself a lot. And now that she’s re-examined the plan she’s either abandoning it or at least re-evaluating it and what she’s ready to sacrifice for it and it seems she no longer is ready to sacrifice her own happyness.
So she’s trying to regain happyness, she was happy when she was with Walky, so that’s the first thing she’s trying to get her happyness back. It’ll not necessarily be the one thing she needs, but I think it’s the easiest for her to home in on.
She set a very silly goal for herself as a child. Now that she’s a newbie adult, she should re-examine her goals, and Raidah’s the first person who got around the thought-stopping cliches Dorothy’s been using to keep herself from thinking about them in that way.
Dorothy’s been fraying, her self-image of “knows whats best for everybody all the time” isn’t holding up. It’s good that her world is shattering. Becoming president should not be the goal of a 19 year old. Being president is a reasonable goal of someone who is qualified to be president, has a plausible chance of becoming president, and understands what the job entails.
I kind of have to do political analysis for the next point, sorry. The Democratic Party has struggled at a lot of levels because of the focus on prestige offices. President, governor, US senator, SCOTUS type offices. Not as much on offices like state rep, school board, circuit court, local DA. Not only does that hurt the pipeline to the prestige offices, the local and state offices effect people’s lives a lot.
Dorothy doesn’t have to rule out being president at 19, but it shouldn’t be her goal. And it’s going to take having her world shattered to realize that being a good state senator isn’t a failure.
What *I* can’t believe is that Dorothy decided to make sure Lucy could never have Walky by contacting Asher to get in touch with a hitman to assassinate Lucy.
I’ll be honest, this reads as out-of-character to me. But I have known bias against Walky, so maybe I’m just giving it the most unfair reading possible.
Walky trying to avoid talking about feelings? ✅
Walky viewing things through media tropes? ✅
Walky believing that Dorothy can succeed at whatever she puts her mind to? ✅
Walky believing that he’ll drag Dorothy down? ✅
Walky claiming someone needs to be punched, but not doing the punching himself? Also ✅
No, pretty much all on brand.
Not sure which part you feel is out of character.
She also knows he doesn’t want to drag her down, though. If the reason he’s rejecting her is that he’s loyal to Lucy, that should be what he leads with regardless.
I can sympathize, Dorothy. In another lifetime, I went to college for music, thinking I’d be the next hot session guy to set the NY studio scene on fire. I had that dream in my head since 9th grade.
About two years in, when I saw I was tripping over guys with much better chops than mine starving in the street, I realized that dream was unrealistic.
I hope Dororhy doesnt run into a ROTC/military recruiter because this is the perfect time and mental state for those vultures- i mean recruiters to tell her to enlist so she can “find herself” while serving your country
If Raidah got into her head about the morality of being a president, I can’t imagine being the one to pull the trigger is going to be any more appealing to her.
Well given the way she took charge during the kidnapping I’d say she has all the qualities to make a good officer plus it has the added bonus of people having to follow her lead and that she’d quickly gain respect for being competent
Joyce got kidnapped again. The actual layout kept them together, to the extent they were kept together. Dina showed up and freed them. Dorothy took credit for organizing, but she didn’t do much. Maybe that’s what “officer material” means.
Well I was in the military and never once killed a child.
Of course, being in the military was very much not my idea and what I did do was my bit towards helping them develop better and more cost effective ways of killing people. I thought, and still think, it beat visiting scenic Vietnam.
Mate, for generations my family served and so did I.
If you served and got something out of it, good for you. I also had some benefits from it and wouldnt change a thing.
HOWEVER my comment was pointing out recruiters tending to literally try to sign as many people up, without a second thought if it might be a good thing or make people worse. My recruiter is a goos man, but I have known many who just try to get a quota and talk bs or unsaid promises to try to get people in. The military isnt for anyone, but the military will try hard to get everyone.
Ultimately, the blame lays with folks in Washington and in boardrooms, but I think you’re lying to yourself about non-combat meaning unrelated to combat.
Do these non-combat trades in any way involve making and/or maintaining the weapons used by combatants? I’m not tainting my search results and making the algorithm think I want more military propaganda.
Somebody’s got to cook the food. Somebody’s got to round up the drunks. Somebody’s got to be the doctor and chaplain and run the local printing press. Of course it’s all in support of the people who maintain and fire the weapons, but so are part of your tax dollars.
Have you served? My unit alone, noncombatants, were filled with soldiers that are depressed and there was not ONE YEAR where we had a soldier not kill themselves.
My friends’ unit has handfuls each year.
You will never run into a soldier who has not have someone in their unit or someone they know commiting suicide.
So far this convo has gone better than I expected. Dorothy has said some iffy things but it feels a little more like her just needing to talk to someone and get validation on how she’s feeling.
But if she WAS hoping to jump his bones, I’m glad that so far Walky seems to be holding firm. And I love how he’s still supportive of her in his own way.
I’m seeing a lot of people saying “let her talk” despite the fact that they are having a back and forth conversation with a couple of interruptions from both.
They ARE talking, people.
This, especially, is how Walky talks, and she knows this.
Even if all she wants is to talk, and not to jump his bones or break him and Lucy up, she still wants to talk to HIM.
I doubt she knows exactly what she wants or what she wants to say, but she’ll get there, and she’ll do so via this conversation.
Trust the process.
No. No process. Only instant emotional gratification, delivered in a way that fits believably into a single normal-sized strip. No character writing, only immediate fix for problem.
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college is all about learning to foist jobs onto others
swear it’s tricky not repeating what Willis says
You used the word “foist,” though, and I appreciate that.
Mmmm… now to hoist some moist petard!
Alliteration!
No Literating
Or, as my Aunt Begonia used to say, “Who’s on foist?”
That’s right.
Walky being Dorothy’s biggest cheerleader has always been one of my favourite things about them.
Great recognizes great.
Yeah, he believes in her even more than Joyce does, honestly. Like, not sure even her parents believe in her as hard as he does.
His reverence seems more… grounded. Joyce worships Dorothy, Walky just recognizes her greatness for what it is.
well, there are supportive parents out there but most ppl set more realistic goals, i imagine there are some kids out there that would say ‘ i wanna be president’ but parents would prolly go like ‘sure, honey’
Walky is exhibiting true leadership talent. Maybe he’ll be president.
He’d have to be from Georgia for that to work though.
That’s more of a General Secretary area
You don’t really need leadership talent to become president, just be corrupt and willing to do whatever your super-wealthy donors want over what’s best for the people.
Hey, you need some natural charisma too. It’s not like a handsome face and no morals are rare qualities in people.
i could totally see him being some kinda “youtuber/streamer” type bro that reacts to political memes and shit
Walky has a fairly good understanding of his strengths and weaknesses.
Aw, geez, the both of you.
I was about to say. I love the spirit but Walky’s got no juice behind that jab!
well, he did get asher a good jab by his standards
Dorothy: I’ve decided not to go to Yale because I don’t want to profit from your kidnapping.
Walky: You mean the one good thing to come out of this? I want you to benefit from it! So does everyone else.
Dorothy: STOP IT.
I mean “not being willing to use a tragedy for your own personal benefit” is a massive impediment to succeeding in politics, she’s right to be re-evaluating her dreams because of that
Also she was willing to profit from Walky’s kidnapping, she just wasn’t willing to benefit from Becky’s.
A brawn signal, Walky? Figures, since you’re the FAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
*plays Never Gonna Let You Go by Sergio Mendes*
“No, Walky, the [Yale] dean isn’t cauc–blocking me, I conceded from the race.”
…Does Ruth’s grandpa count as “somebody else’s dad,” even if he’s technically not her dad and has no living children (that we know of)?
He’s definitely got the whole “the talky kind” schtick down, at least.
He is some evil approximation of a father figure, especially for Howard. I’d say so.
Sure.
The “grand” is silent.
And there’s always Jason’s dad.
In order to be a grandpa, he had to be someone else’s dad. Still totally counts.
Just punch everyone you see. It’s the only way to be safe.
Something like this?
it’s good that Walky doesn’t seem to even be entertaining the idea of cheating on Lucy. It’s also nice that he’s trying to cheer her up.
It’s maybe a little less good that the main reason he’s expressing for not entertaining the idea seems to be the effect it could have on Dorothy’s career prospects, not the effect it would have on his current relationship,
It’s what he is telling Dorothy, based on the way she is acting and what she is saying – that is, he is reacting to her (and trying to support her “dreams”), which he did when they originally broke up. That may or may not have anything to do with what he feels about himself and Lucy.
Walky is sort of like Danny in that respect, very loyal. Fidelity must be one of Dorothy’s attraction points.
People keep talking about “cheating”. What, exactly, is Walky and Lucy’s commitment here? IIRC it’s all in Lucy’s head, and Walky’s qualms about acting on feelings for Dorothy, relative to his relationship with Lucy, would center on violating Lucy’s perception of commitment. Which is decent of him.
Given that they’ve literally gone on dates to meet her family and Walky is fully aware of how much this girl is in love to him. He has at the very least committed enough to her to warrant at the very least telling her he wants to break things off before he even considers wanting to fool around with Dorothy.
Sure if Lucy was just crushing on him one sidededly with no encouragement or acknowledgement of a relationship from him then he’d be clear and commitment free. But in this case he’s already started dating the girl full well understanding just how much the act means to get and he’d be incredibly shitty to not at least give her the courtesy of knowing that he doesn’t feel the same way / that they should break what they currently have going on off before he goes to hook up with somone else.
They’re in a relationship. No matter how young or one sided that relationship is that is still a commitment to not fuck around on eachother
Very mononormative.
I support communication between any people getting intimate with each other, in any way. And part of that communication is making clear requests and expressing expectations. There’s no such thing as implied monogamy.
So, by “Mean Dean Caucus” does he mean Raidah’s group or did he buy that story?
I suspect though cannot prove it is a reference to one Dean, Howard, circa 2004.
No, he means something else.
“Is a mean dean (i.e. McHenry, with whom Walky’s family is connected) performing a
cock-blockcaucus-block upon you?”Exactly; I’m guessing Bryy missed the hyphen at the end of the first line. Caucus-blocking is the verb here, the subject is just “the mean dean”, not “the mean dean caucus”
Damn this scene is giving me a stress reaction just waiting for the page to load!
As I thought, Walky is still hung up on the idea he’d be holding her back… Yet the only one who really believed in her.
I still ship them.
Always. My OTP of the comic for sure.
I’m starting to think that maybe Dorothy ought to go to Yale. Or maybe not Yale – I doubt the environment there is what she needs right now – but somewhere else where she can have a fresh start in a new space with new people.
She needs to find herself a nice leaf blower and settle down.
She doesn’t need to go anywhere, she just needs to expand her circle of friends. I’ve thought so for a while.
She could have that without moving away.
Maybe, but I genuinely think that a wholly new setting would be beneficial.
Heck, at this point I’d even cosign onto her taking a year off to travel, to work, to do freaking Americorps or something. *Anything* to make a clear break between the past and the future.
I mean she needs to not leave her support system in the middle of a mental breakdown.
After this is all settled then maybe
Student exchange in Germany, then she changes her name to Dorothea Kiener and becomes in a few years president of Germany, only to realize that german presidents have no power.
Interesting that Walky’s biggest reason for not getting back together with Dorothy is that he doesn’t want Dorothy to fail, and believes that he would cause her to fail. He isn’t saying they can’t get back together because of Lucy, although that might be another reason. It shows just how much he wants Dorothy to be able to follow her dreams, and he truly believes she can do it.
Is Lucy going to find out about this? If she does, what is going to happen?
well, he did still ask her out even if dorothy gave him the idea, if he didn’t think it was leading her along or just asking her out because he think he ‘should’ ask someone out/make the first move, i don’t know if he’d rly just start a relationship that easily (tho i suppose they are at that age where ppl would ‘date’ each other for two weeks and then it’d end)
Yeah, I think Walky’s interest in Lucy extends past convenience. If he was just wanting to hook up, he could have with Amber regardless of the Sal thing since even Sal told him it was fine. Walky doesn’t do things with women he doesn’t feel right about doing.
He probably can’t. Amber booted him on Halloween because of the comments he made about Mike.
He can’t now, no, but the opportunity was there before. They ended up settling for grinding.
Except he and Amber are not on speakingnterms at the moment; unless they have patched things up since then, but I doubt it.
Of course they’re on speaking terms. It’s been a couple months or so since Halloween. Even though Amber was angry at Walky, she’s not the type to hold a grudge over him being dumb and not processing grief the same way that she does.
Here’s a conversation, after the break. Yeah, they don’t “hang” anymore, but she’s willing to converse.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/location/
She “blows up” the conversation with a wild Dina taunt, but I think that’s because of the then-new Walky hotness overload.
Walky was friends with Lucy before they started dating. I think it’s possible he would have been perfectly happy remaining friends. But Lucy wanted more, and Dorothy seemed to think it was a good idea, and why not after all, she’s not bad looking, he’s a boy she’s a girl, it seemed like the thing to do. He doesn’t feel for her the way he felt, and still feels, for Dorothy, but then again he doesn’t think he’ll ever feel that way for anyone else, what, is he supposed to be alone forever? Those are the things I presume are happening in his head. He feels uncomfortable with how fast things are going. He probably realizes Lucy really is in love with him, and he’s not sure it’s right to keep going through the motions hoping his own feelings reciprocate hers in time, not when she is pushing for their relationship to become sexual, something that appears to be a big, important step for her… He can tell she’s under the impression he loves her as she loves him, and that it is under that belief that she wants to have sex with him.
Walky and Lucy need to have an open and honest discussion about their feelings, and that’s just not Walky’s strong suit.
Lucy will find out immediately after it is settled that W&D aren’t getting back together, but of course because of incomplete information and miscommunication she will think W&D are getting back together.
The big question is does she sink into gloom, depression, and excessive ice cream consumption like Dana, or does she go knife-crazy berserk like in that anime?
“Biggest reason”? or “reason relevant to the current situation”. If he has twenty reasons, does he need to list them all in order of importance?
Dorothy just expressed regret about setting them up, to say “well too late” would just be rubbing it in. She understands that Lucy is an obstacle here.
See this is why the kidnapping plot is impossible to take seriously as something that would actually traumatize people: the characters themselves use the word supervillain completely unironically. It’s cartoonish, so one should expect equally cartoonish consequences
I think that Walky is the only one who would use “supervillain” which may be due to his love of cartoons and comics. Either way, someone can use overblown language and still be seriously affected by something.
We IRL use the phrase “cartoonishly evil” all the time.
This. And like, it was exaggerated because Amazi-Girl’s superheroics exist in their universe, too, but actual IRL abusers’ actions can sound cartoonish when you’re describing them to someone outside that place and time. That doesn’t make them less real, less potentially dangerous, or less traumatizing.
Kidnapping, child abuse and sexual assault don’t sound cartoonish even to people who think you might be exaggerating.
“Cartoonishly evil” is used to refer to the fact that these people are EVIL, not that it doesn’t exist.
Also, like, I guess this depends on personal preference and media era, but… all my favorite media (super)heroes are traumatized.
I get why people might not like the kidnapping arc. It wasn’t my favorite, either. This feels like a weird articulation of why to me, though.
Dude literally dressed up in spandex and a mask, gathered a group of henchmen, made an evil alliance with a guy so thick he had no neck (as well as the ultra conservative Christian right), and fought both a costumed vigilante and a woman unironically acting like a dinosaur.
If that doesn’t scream supervillain, I don’t know what does.
Amber was seemingly stunned her father thought it was awesome.
But, but…where is his fortress under the volcanic island? Can’t take a supervillain seriously without a spooky lair.
You’re exactly right and that’s WHY I can’t take him seriously or that entire arc: because he IS a supervillain! but the audience is expected to react with real pathos when his reality-stretching actions have real traumatizing consequences
It’s like having a character hold one of those black spherical bombs with a fuse and the word “BOMB” written in bold white letters, but when the bomb explodes the character suffers real burn and shrapnel injuries.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading superhero comics for decades, but that seems weird to me, because it’s not exactly uncommon in the genre for supervillains to cause serious trauma.
well, it’s not /impossible/ for something like that to happen, maybe to a smaller group, but only has to happen once to assume more ppl are like that
In practice a supervillain is just one that wears a cool costume. As distinct from a disguise.
You’re not wrong, but I would add that supervillains also have extremely nonsense plans work out for them for no other reason other than the narrative dictated so.
Until inevitably foiled by the superhero.
I wish Walky had as much faith in himself as he does for Dorothy. Who knows what he could do if he did? Still it is very sweet of him to believe in her, and shows that he might still be in love with her.
He might also like Lucy, but I don’t know if he is /in/ love with her. Which might be part of the reason he is hesitant to have sex with Lucy.
understanding your limits is also good, walky knew that he was one part of the cause of dorothy’s grades slipping and he couldn’t keep up as well
But with some Amazi-help he managed to catch up and with some undisclosed Amber meddling he had the time to do it.
lol walky is sweet in his own way
“Caucus-blocking” is *great*.
She’s getting what she wanted from Walky after all. I was “good for him” for 1.5 panels, then he turned into the inverse of the “is there someone you forgot to ask?” meme. He needs to do right by himself and right by who he’s with, instead of “how will what I do best serve my ex”.
She needs someone to be supportive without giving into her weird idea that not becoming president is failure. Doesn’t even need to be a romantic someone, just someone she listens to that won’t reflexively gas her up.
And if that person is Arnold, and they do start dating, then all the better.
oh dorothy 🙁
Walky stop changing the subject and talk about feelings dammit
Maybe these aren’t necessarily the feelings to talk about, right now. It’s a lot to come at somebody with.
Then he should just say so
I like being old and reading this. Kids, none of this is as important as you think. Relax.
Dorothy no… Just no
Dorothy feels to me like someone who speaks very deliberately most of the time, not really one for the unthinking turn of phrase. So it interests me that her word choice here and last strip is so… self-expressive? She could be setting up a “get back together with me, even if out of pity” but so far it’s been very focused on just saying what she’s feeling and talking about their relationship in the past tense. She comes off very strongly to me here like someone out to unburden themselves with a confession to the one she thinks she made these big mistakes with, which is subtly but meaningfully different from trying to manipulate Walky with this.
She did ask Joyce for “permission” for a selfish act to keep herself sane, so of course I could be wrong and she’s angling to make friends with Walky’s genitalia again. Though she also called it a small one, and again deliberate word choice. Given she always seems to think she has to pick up the problems, the small selfish act might be just putting it on someone else for whom it will be meaningful, even if she’ll feel bad about dumping it all on Walky later.
Yes, she’s actually letting off steam here. She’s normally so careful to choose each word precisely, and to put others before herself. That outburst at Billie was the first time she blew her top, she’s doing it again but in a way that gets at the real core of her pain. She’s been bottling every up, this feels healthy to me — she isn’t really trying to seduce Walky thank goodness.
The way I read it is that a person who is usually very deliberate in speech and action is having trouble holding it together. She’s been erratic for a while. She probably came over not knowing what she really wanted to do, or very sure she wanted to jump him when she really wanted the conversation they’re having.. I think that’s true when she approached Walky and pushed him toward Lucy in the first place. She was ready to pounce and thought better of it.
….Dorothy, most people in the world don’t go to Yale and don’t become President of the United States. If that’s your benchmark for failure as a person, I wonder if you define anyone as successful.
If you decide that you don’t want to do something, you have not failed to do that thing, you have successfully avoided the future misery that is forcing yourself into a career you actually don’t want.
Most people don’t choose Yale and presidency as goals for themselves. Dorothy did. She has decided she’s not going to accomplish those goals, but– crucially– she does not have a new goal ready to focus on.
It’s leaving her adrift and aimless for the first time in her entire life, and that’s what’s fucking her up right now: the goal she just abandoned was the majority of her identity, up to and including the source of her self-worth.
She’s desperate for something familiar, stable, and most importantly comfortable, to anchor herself. She’s desperate for something like Walky. There are a few ways this could go well, but countless ways this could go horribly.
Maybe now Dorothy can actually have a tiny bit of sympathy for everything Joyce went through which she was rather dismissive of.
dorothy’s at least likeable, i feel like realistically someone else in that position or ambition/aim in life would prolly look down on others she’d consider ‘beneath’ her
but she’s still young, sometimes you don’t know what you want outta a career til you start working diff jobs. too bad we can’t put a stop on aging or so and get like a decade or two to get diff degrees and work diff careers til deciding on one
Sorry to be the hater but I don’t ship them. I mean I also don’t like Walky generally so not a big surprise.
I understand intellectually what Dorothy’s going through, but emotionally I’m finding it hard to give in to her whole pity party thing. You literally could have gone to Yale, you could still be president hypothetically, and if Walky’s that important to you just wait I’m sure Lucy will wake up one day and realize she deserves better.
idk how hard Indiana University or this series’ equivalent of it is, but given how her own grades started slipping just because she was helping a boyfriend study, i imagine yale would be a lot more competitive and harsh with lessons/essay assignments so she probably would struggle to keep up there and burn out even if she literally did nothing but eat and study and not spend any time on friendships or personal ‘luxuries’ like working out
I think it’s a combination of putting too much on her plate, setting too high a standard (I don’t think she ever said how much her grades slipped) and it’s entirely possible Dorothy’s not a very gifted student. Do you have to put in the time to keep up with college level material? Sure. But not at the cost of cutting yourself off from everyone. Dorothy might be a grinder who needs to hyperfocus and peck away at the material until it sinks in.
We know she got at least one 76, in the middle of her “no distractions, must try harder!” phase.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/bullshit/
Well, her grades seemingly got better as I presume Yale accepted her based off her first semester in college and not her last semester in high school.
Yeah, being kidnapped help, but I doubt that would be enough with a bunch of C’s.
Oh look. Dorothy went and explicitly asked Walky to get back together. How unexpected. Nobody could have seen it coming. /s
Saying “I shouldn’t have done that” is not really explicitly saying “Let’s do the other thing instead.” Or even implicitly. Maybe she was going to say that next? We’ll never know since Walky keeps preemptively contradicting her.
But it’s not exactly Dorothy’s style to ask multiple other people – Walky and Lucy) – to do work to make up for her own mistakes, I think.
Walky is jumping to the same conclusion as a lot of people here, and I understand why, yet I wish he would just let Dorothy have her say. But he’s successfully switched her from relationship stress to career stress. Maybe she’ll switch back later and be able to get both off her shoulders. I hope so. She needs to talk about both.
Oh, look. People in the comments have decided Dorothy said the thing they’d already decided she was going to say, even though she actually didn’t. How unexpected. Nobody could have seen it coming. /s
She’s beating around the bush a little, but even Walky knew where this was going.
Oh look, people in the comments are reading everything Dorothy does in an impossibly good light to make her blameless and pure.
…it sounds just as hilariously wrong when you do the opposite thing.
Like less than a week ago people were predicting huge dramatic confrontations between Dorothy and Joyce and Joe where Dorothy was going to be the bad guy. It’s not hard to find. She proceeded to not at all do that. So, yeah, people do decide many characters’ actions ahead of time, including currently Dorothy, frequently casting them in a terrible light, and then prove extremely wrong like a day later. And then hop right back to it.
Jesus, Dorothy, it was just one person’s nihilistic opinion of the presidency, you don’t have to let it shatter your world
(I know Dorothy’s breakdown isn’t entirely about Raidah’s comment about the office of POTUS but like… geez. You barely know her, it’d make way more sense if Joyce or Walky or someone closer triggered this)
Raidah just gave her that last little nudge over the edge, where she can finally admit she’s not OK and she can’t fix that by trying harder.
To be fair, Raidah does make a good point about what being the president entails. It’s not sunshines and roses, you’re going to have to have skeletons in your closets. If Dorothy cant even push herself to go to Yale by taking advantage of the situation that happened, then she’s not going to be able to handle even more fcked up choices in the future that she WILL have to make as president.
It’s honestly an inevitable wake up call in my opinion. She was going to have to acknowledge her own denial sooner or later
The emphasis was on “war crimes” and I’d like to think you can have a whole house full of skeletons before you start committing those.
It doesnt change the fact that she will have to make harder choices than deciding to go to Yale or not by taking advantage of the situation she’s in. If this sets her back, then she’s not really fit
I think for years Dorothy has been following a plan, THE plan, HER plan. A plan she made when she was way too young and had a very idealistic view of the world and the presidency. Raidah mostly gave her a reality check that the plan may not be in line with actual reality.
What shattered Dorothy, I think, is that for years she has sacrificed for the plan, she’s been denying herself a lot. And now that she’s re-examined the plan she’s either abandoning it or at least re-evaluating it and what she’s ready to sacrifice for it and it seems she no longer is ready to sacrifice her own happyness.
So she’s trying to regain happyness, she was happy when she was with Walky, so that’s the first thing she’s trying to get her happyness back. It’ll not necessarily be the one thing she needs, but I think it’s the easiest for her to home in on.
She set a very silly goal for herself as a child. Now that she’s a newbie adult, she should re-examine her goals, and Raidah’s the first person who got around the thought-stopping cliches Dorothy’s been using to keep herself from thinking about them in that way.
Dorothy’s been fraying, her self-image of “knows whats best for everybody all the time” isn’t holding up. It’s good that her world is shattering. Becoming president should not be the goal of a 19 year old. Being president is a reasonable goal of someone who is qualified to be president, has a plausible chance of becoming president, and understands what the job entails.
I kind of have to do political analysis for the next point, sorry. The Democratic Party has struggled at a lot of levels because of the focus on prestige offices. President, governor, US senator, SCOTUS type offices. Not as much on offices like state rep, school board, circuit court, local DA. Not only does that hurt the pipeline to the prestige offices, the local and state offices effect people’s lives a lot.
Dorothy doesn’t have to rule out being president at 19, but it shouldn’t be her goal. And it’s going to take having her world shattered to realize that being a good state senator isn’t a failure.
Damn , I absolutely looooove Walky in these updates!
I can’t believe Walky demanded Dorothy help him break up with Lucy so that he could get back with her instead.
What *I* can’t believe is that Dorothy decided to make sure Lucy could never have Walky by contacting Asher to get in touch with a hitman to assassinate Lucy.
I can’t believe it’s not butter!
Well I DO believe, that when the Devil is around, toast falls jelly (and butter) side down.
That’s completely true.
It’s also what happens when the Devil isn’t around.
The really unbelievable thing is the reveal that Lucy already sent Joyce to assassinate Walky!
I’ll be honest, this reads as out-of-character to me. But I have known bias against Walky, so maybe I’m just giving it the most unfair reading possible.
Walky trying to avoid talking about feelings? ✅
Walky viewing things through media tropes? ✅
Walky believing that Dorothy can succeed at whatever she puts her mind to? ✅
Walky believing that he’ll drag Dorothy down? ✅
Walky claiming someone needs to be punched, but not doing the punching himself? Also ✅
No, pretty much all on brand.
Not sure which part you feel is out of character.
Fairly concerning that Walky’s objection is “I won’t be why you fail” and not “I am already in a committed relationship”
Well she already knows he’s in a relationship. Repeating already established information usually doesn’t work.
She also knows he doesn’t want to drag her down, though. If the reason he’s rejecting her is that he’s loyal to Lucy, that should be what he leads with regardless.
I can sympathize, Dorothy. In another lifetime, I went to college for music, thinking I’d be the next hot session guy to set the NY studio scene on fire. I had that dream in my head since 9th grade.
About two years in, when I saw I was tripping over guys with much better chops than mine starving in the street, I realized that dream was unrealistic.
Glad you found out sooner than I did.
Walky. Hun? Please shut up and let Dotty talk.
I hope Dororhy doesnt run into a ROTC/military recruiter because this is the perfect time and mental state for those vultures- i mean recruiters to tell her to enlist so she can “find herself” while serving your country
If Raidah got into her head about the morality of being a president, I can’t imagine being the one to pull the trigger is going to be any more appealing to her.
Yeah what a terrible idea, structure, discipline, easily understandable chain of command, leadership training
What a terrible idea that would be
Insert extremely heated and vulgar anti-military tirade here, but somehow, I just don’t think the military’s form of “discipline” is a Dorothy Thing.
Well given the way she took charge during the kidnapping I’d say she has all the qualities to make a good officer plus it has the added bonus of people having to follow her lead and that she’d quickly gain respect for being competent
But no she’s doing so much better here
She didn’t do a good job “taking charge” during the kidnapping.
Yeah she did, she kept everyone together, kept everyone moving, organised under extreme pressure
She did a very good job
Joyce got kidnapped again. The actual layout kept them together, to the extent they were kept together. Dina showed up and freed them. Dorothy took credit for organizing, but she didn’t do much. Maybe that’s what “officer material” means.
We’ll agree to disagree on this
Officers, AKA middle managers with combat training
You, uh, skipped a few things. And the things you listed aren’t even all good things anyway. And they also contradict each other?
Uh yes they are and, uh, where is the contradiction
Dorothy isn’t the child-killing type.
Well that’s a really dumb, ignorant and insulting comment.
Well done.
Well I was in the military and never once killed a child.
Of course, being in the military was very much not my idea and what I did do was my bit towards helping them develop better and more cost effective ways of killing people. I thought, and still think, it beat visiting scenic Vietnam.
Yep, for some reason people always blame the military first and foremost yet the government of the day always seems to be an afterthought
Mate, for generations my family served and so did I.
If you served and got something out of it, good for you. I also had some benefits from it and wouldnt change a thing.
HOWEVER my comment was pointing out recruiters tending to literally try to sign as many people up, without a second thought if it might be a good thing or make people worse. My recruiter is a goos man, but I have known many who just try to get a quota and talk bs or unsaid promises to try to get people in. The military isnt for anyone, but the military will try hard to get everyone.
*good
Imagining the military recruiter’s pitch being like, “I noticed you have PTSD. What do you say, double or nothing?”
Or go into a non-combat trade of which the military has plenty of
Something the majority of posters here don’t seem to realise
Yes, truly you are an intellect among imbeciles.
I certainly wouldn’t say that, more that others simply are unaware.
You don’t know what you don’t know.
Ultimately, the blame lays with folks in Washington and in boardrooms, but I think you’re lying to yourself about non-combat meaning unrelated to combat.
A bit arrogant of you to think if I’m lying or not
Do these non-combat trades in any way involve making and/or maintaining the weapons used by combatants? I’m not tainting my search results and making the algorithm think I want more military propaganda.
Somebody’s got to cook the food. Somebody’s got to round up the drunks. Somebody’s got to be the doctor and chaplain and run the local printing press. Of course it’s all in support of the people who maintain and fire the weapons, but so are part of your tax dollars.
S’pose that’s fair enough. Hope there’s at least decent money to be made feeding soldiers.
Try putting this into Google: us military non combat roles
Have you served? My unit alone, noncombatants, were filled with soldiers that are depressed and there was not ONE YEAR where we had a soldier not kill themselves.
My friends’ unit has handfuls each year.
You will never run into a soldier who has not have someone in their unit or someone they know commiting suicide.
So far this convo has gone better than I expected. Dorothy has said some iffy things but it feels a little more like her just needing to talk to someone and get validation on how she’s feeling.
But if she WAS hoping to jump his bones, I’m glad that so far Walky seems to be holding firm. And I love how he’s still supportive of her in his own way.
I’m seeing a lot of people saying “let her talk” despite the fact that they are having a back and forth conversation with a couple of interruptions from both.
They ARE talking, people.
This, especially, is how Walky talks, and she knows this.
Even if all she wants is to talk, and not to jump his bones or break him and Lucy up, she still wants to talk to HIM.
I doubt she knows exactly what she wants or what she wants to say, but she’ll get there, and she’ll do so via this conversation.
Trust the process.
No. No process. Only instant emotional gratification, delivered in a way that fits believably into a single normal-sized strip. No character writing, only immediate fix for problem.
Walky knows his limits and knows how to compensate for them. That is quite respectable
Alt Text for absolute win, 2 days in a row
Also, “not going to be president” is not the failure you think it.
can we please appreciate “caucus-blocking”
yes
The only solution* is a threesome. That should let everyone figure out their emotions for each other.
Though I think that will just mean Doeothy will end up dating Lucy, since that’ll be the closest thing she’ll get to date Joyce.
*Absolutely not a solution. That would actually be really goddamn terrifyingly wrong.
Better call Sal.
Dumbing of Age, Book 13: David Walkerton and the Talky Kind of Supervillain, or “Walky vs Talky” for short