There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
The Weave
Rennie Kingsley
A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
Monster's Garden
Ash G.
Champion pit fighter Kilo Monster was content to spend the rest of his days tending to his quiet garden alone... until he met a curious robot girl and her human family.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Freakshow
Scotty
A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Novae
KaiJu
A historical romance with a touch magic and a dash of astronomy. It chronicles the romantic adventures of Sulvain, a sweet tempered necromancer and Raziol, a passionate 17th century astronomer.
Barbarous
Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota
A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
Peritale
Mari Costa
A fairy godmother with no magic tries her best to successfully fulfill a Fairytale and win the respect of her peers.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Three Panel Soul
Matt Boyd, Ian McConville
It's a pretty rigid format but we keep the content loose, you know?
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Heroes of Thantopolis
Izzy Strontium Hall
A living boy fights to save the City of the Dead.
Guilded Age
T Campbell, John Waltrip, Florence Machina
Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
The Messenger
indui
In a ruin-abound town cursed with bad luck, Kai and Kalla--a young boy and a fledgling dragonbird spirit--take on a quest in hopes the reward will solve all of their problems.
Augustine
Winter Jay Kiakas, Windy
August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
Little Tiny Things
Clover
What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
Angel's Orchard
Harry Bogosian
After the events in Demon's Mirror, Gerda has accepted her role as a Demon Hunter, and Cezar has traveled back to the Demon City. Demons have existed alongside humans for millennia, so things begin to return to normal. But an impossibly powerful Relic has been taken by one of the Demon Masters, and a silent war enters its final stages.
Ozzie the Vampire
Eric Lide
Ozzie and her best friend Kimmy are your average everyday normal art students – except one is an immortal vampire with superpowers and the other possesses a magic talking grimoire. Also they have to save their town from a demonic invasion.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
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I suppose panel 4 Dotty could be considered hot… although one would have to be into some fairly specific fetishes. To me, that face screams “I’m gonna step on your face.” And being stepped on just isn’t my thing.
Personally, today’s panel 2 does it for me. Oh, and that (I assume) flannel shirt….ooooooohhhhhhh baby. (Need I suggest I met my wife 41 years ago in high school, she had glasses and a flannel shirt just like that, with the top two buttt……. ok, Ima gonna be busy for a minute….)
The skin is copper, but the original support ribs and superstructure were all iron. Galvanic corrosion was setting in and the ribs were rusting and expanding. The vast majority of them had to be replaced, but they had to somehow take off the decades of tar, pitch, and other weird stuff that was used before synthetic sealants were invented without hurting the green patina. I think they finally settled on sandblasting using baking soda or dry ice as the media, with attentive rinsing on the outside.
So, true story… Years ago I was giving my friend a massage because she had back issues. She was barely not naked and started kissing me. In no way at any point during that did I think she was actually interested in me. Yes, seriously. Yes once I was told otherwise, literally a year or so later, everyone has since mocked me mercilessly. Walky in this strip has more of a clue than I did.
Just to add, in a very pitiful defense of myself, there were mitigating circumstances that had me not consider her being interested as just a given. The details of which make complete sense to me, but kind of fall flat given the almost naked and kissing aspect mentioned above.
well hey, that was brave of her!!
but yeah, context matters though. i think i’m on quasi-naked massage terms with quite a few of my friends of either gender. i’m not sure because i don’t really do massages, i’m a selfish dick like that.
A number of people kept saying that Walky couldn’t be that dense, that he knew Lucy was interested and was pretending not to notice because he didn’t feel the same way, but I was pretty sure he really was that dense. And I’m glad to see this strip confirms my view.
I believe it, mostly because this is similar to how I function. I can get a solid read on how two different people feel about each other fairly easily, but I’m blind as a bat when it comes to trying to figure out how people feel about me
I am another real, actual person who is like this. I spent years waiting for it to click for me like it seems to for everyone else before realizing that it just wasn’t going to happen. Some of us just aren’t built to fit in with traditional notions of romance.
Daniel here. Sorry Sirksome, but there are plenty of us who have no way of realizing that other people are interested in them. Walky’s reason is he was never interested himself, so he NEVER learned any of the signs. For me, I was dealing with bullies & because of that basically kept to myself my entire School life…
Only ever lost 1 fight (4 older kids all kicking me while on the ground) and 1 draw (stopped before I actually decided to ignore the baby-taps and fight back), but never realized a friend’s Little Sister had a massive crush on me (was told, I think by the friend), it literally took me 11 YEARS to realize that girl asking me if I was going to the prom wanted to go with me, I only figured out a coworker was interested when she changed her behavior after seeing “my wife and kid” (Sister-in-law and Nephew) and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more…
Basically, neither Walky nor I ever had the right life training to pick up on the sometimes quite subtle signs that others were interested in us. It’s like expecting us to ride a horse when you’ve never even seen one before…
I have to agree. Some of us just can’t see it. I didn’t know a girl was interested in me even when she said something about “I could go out to dinner sometime.” But when her friend who was with her audibly gasped at that statement, the penny finally dropped.
In my first year of undergrad I had a class where the guy next to me asked me if I wanted to get dinner with him. I had another class immediately following the first one; said no because I had to go to class. He said “maybe another time” and I, baffled, clarified that I *always* had the second class after the first one. Did not realize until about 3-4 years later that I had kinda shot him down.
And that’s one that I realized eventually. I was a female engineering student and I only identified ONE (1) person as interested me during the interaction. It helped that he said “Do you want to go out sometime? Like on a date?”
I once woke up realizing that a woman with whom I had one conversation years before was rather not-very-subtly checking me out at the time. I proceeded to kick myself for the rest of the day.
A decade or so after high school, I identified at least three girls there who had crushes on me at various times, and two others who were very strong likelihoods of the same. Some of them I’d been interested in myself.
I spent a while kicking myself after each of these realizations, while also acknowledging that in almost all cases, it would never have worked.
When I was maybe a year younger than Walky, a girl I was friends with drew a full page comic about us kissing and I didn’t realize she liked me until a friend explained it to me. Teenage boys really can be that dense.
Thanks to this thread, I realized I’m very much not alone in the cluelesness. I often realize someone was interested in me years later. I’m glad others like me exist!
I’m-a be completely honest, if someone liked me I’d like them on that principle alone. Like…oh my god I’m smiling just imagining the idea of a girl who likes me. Damn…I would certainly like if someone had a crush on me.
i mean… it is flattering, no matter what. probably extremely hot/charismatic people eventually get bored with people crushing on them, can we have an extremely hot/charismatic person weigh in on this?
I’d at least have to consider whether I might like her back if I learned that a woman I hadn’t thought about romantically before liked me. And it would definitely be a nice feeling to know for sure that a woman liked me that way.
That’s totally valid, and I’ve developed crushes on as little prompting, but there’s something to be said for existing physical attraction before any social machinations.
It’s arguable whether Walky’s “buffoon” reaction to Dorothy would even have happened if Walky hadn’t overheard her stated affection for a certain alien-and-robot-monkey comic.
Nope, nope, we’re still in the Shock and Disbelief stage. The Deciding if I Will Reciprocate stage isn’t for another comic or three (or twenty if Willis switches to other characters). The Examining My Feelings to See If I SHOULD Reciprocate stage isn’t until…. well, until he learns to examine his feelings. So probably never.
https://imgur.com/a/TVZqW1k (NSFW)
ok one more. I really wanted to draw the Frankensteiner and I knew it had to be Billie (it’s pre-timeskip so I can say that). Also I wanted to do the cheerleader outfit cuz it needs more love. Then I got hooked by traveling through the Jennifer tag and like…god she has pretty hot outfits in this comic.
The various edges of the spectrum of cluelessness vs. presumptuousness as exemplified by the typical (stereotypical?) fictional attractive young person.
This one being male and the needle swings to the clueless.
Maybe Dorothy needs pencil and paper to literally spell it out for him?
In Walky’s defense, I’ve seen more than a few times people ignoring clear signs of romantic interest, to the point I though I had been dragged into a romcom.
Has anyone else ever experienced this, or should I look into getting paid for my support role as the snarky friend?
I remember a girl told me in high school she had a crush on me in elementary and I’m just…I wish people TOLD me these things!!! What am I supposed to pick up on signals? I’m not a Wi-fi router.
I typed my example on an earlier comment. I very much am the embodiment of this as I have somehow “friendzoned” at least four girls. I only know of that because I was told later by people to whom it was laughably obvious. I pretty much live a comedic (to others, not so much to me) soap opera life though, so par for the course.
It’s easy to misjudge these things and see things that aren’t really there. It is reasonable to disregard what you might be seeing, with regards to another’s apparent attraction to you, as likely the results of you projecting.
After all, if you’re wrong you now have to face both the embarrassment of being wrong and rejection.
It is a wonder that people can ever tell that another is interested in them with enough certainty to act on it.
A good point. I don’t think it applies to Walky, but there is a second kind of cluelessness where you notice the signs, but decide they aren’t real because of all the previous times you saw interest that turned out not to exist.
One person’s “clear romantic interest” is another person’s “interacting with a friend they enjoy the company of”. Lucy’s behaviour, once deprived of her contextualising inner monologue, is well within the boundaries of platonic interactions from multiple people I’ve known.
My closest friend and I cuddle, hold hands, etc pretty regularly. We are completely platonic.
lots of people are saying they’re incorrigibly oblivious, and while for some there may like neuroatypical factors i think for the rest of us, if you notice it happening to you regularly you might need to take stock and figure out what you’re doing wrong. my guess is, it’s often a combo of lack of confidence and self-centeredness, two traits that are way more often associated than we think. i think there might just be a gendered slant to it, judging by the small and probably biased sample on this page? idk, i’m a dude and i definitely check all those boxes, and i’ve definitely been guilty of letting the women in my life do the emotional heavy lifting, so maybe it’s just me but from what i see around me… i doubt it.
wrong-doing??? oh no!! i just like to scratch at surfaces and feel around for explanations when i see something happening like literally dozens of comments on this page and previous Lucy/Walky strips that echo the exact same sentiment and experiences, of which a great number seem to come from straight dudes. to me this just screams out for a deeper examination =)
anyway, re: possible gendered aspects, i’ve let my thoughts run with me on that lower down this comment section, feel free to respond there if you want.
re: my use of the word “self-centered”, well maybe that was a bad choice of word. i think insecurities, if they get too overwhelming, can be a form of suffering, and when you’re in pain it’s hard to focus on and empathize with anyone else. so maybe that’s where what i’ve called “self-centredness” comes into play. i don’t know, it was very helpful to me to see it like that.
hey i reread my earlier comment and i can better see what you meant now.
there were several commenters who seemed to bemoan their own obliviousness as though it’s obviously a baseline personality trait that you can’t do anything about. and, that might be true sometimes, which is why i hedged about neurodivergence, but i did want to push back on the general tone of “whoopsie well that’s just who i am too bad” that some people seemed to express.
so maybe not “wrongdoing”, and not about the obliviousness itself, but more like “skepticism”? about the fatalism of it? does that make more sense, idk
I’ve definitely had at least a few times where a woman was interested in me and I completely failed to notice until years later. Often what one person thinks is “clear signs of romantic interest” isn’t at all clear to another person.
I’ve been assuming he’s been oblivious this entire time. Walky’s not really the sort to actually lead anyone on. He would’ve run away and begged for help from Sal or something out of desperation around not having any idea how to handle it, by now.
I’m surprised that people are surprised at Walky not realizing. 1. Have absolutely known people just as oblivious as him and 2. To Walky’s credit, You gotta remember we see a LOT of Lucy’s internal thoughts and expressions she makes when Walkys not looking, conversations she has about him when he isn’t around, etc. I bet if you only took “stuff Lucy has said directly in front of Walky” it’d be a little less obvious than it is to us readers.
One good point I saw on the “everyone else can see it” thing is that if Bob likes Alice, everyone else can compare how Bob acts around Alice to how Bob acts when Alice is not there, but Alice only ever sees the first behavior.
Adding myself to the list of oblivious people, although in this case she was also oblivious, despite how much we hung out at college, to the point (I later learned) that some people actually thought we were an item even though we never even approached the subject.
…I’m kinda with Walky on this one.
Please just talk straight with us ladies! We did not grow up watching all the same rom-com’s and dramas you did; we can’t recognize what to you are familiar patterns in deliberately-overcomplicated-for-maxium-drama-entertainment “relationships”.
For “hints” to work between us, we’d need the same frame of reference… and we don’t have it.
Good communication skills are defined by their clarity, not their subtlety.
The only Lucy could have been more clear that she has the major hots for Walky is if she tattooed it on her forehead. Maybe sometimes you guys should pay more attention and not need torch flares and a makeout in public to pick up on attraction lol.
Sometimes the answer is “be more direct”, not “pay more attention”. Lucy’s been dropping breadcrumbs, but Walky needs landing lights and a ground marshal with semaphore flags.
Well, asking is always a possibility. Seems simpler than the torch flares.
And really, how clear has she been? It’s clear to us, but we’ve seen more than Walky has. She’s actually said it out loud, for us to pick up on. Otherwise aren’t we hitting the “she’s being nice to me and spending time with me, she must want to fuck” take, which is the other side of the problem.
Actually she hasn’t been that obvious to him directly. She’s been obvious to us, who can read her thoughts, and to everyone else because she lets herself freak out when he’s not looking. But with Walky directly she’s more or less acted like a friend. Most obvious thing she’s done is the thing Walky said about her pulling her hat over her face and i can see how, in a vacuum, that just looks like something weird that happened for some reason and not necessarily meaning a crush
yeah…. and deep, sustained eye contact?? which some have argued is a form of body language most of us are inherently really good at reading (i don’t know about neurodivergent people, i’m sure there are shades of gray there). Whether our conscious brain is willing to do the reading is another matter, i guess.
I don’t know if Walky’s obliviousness is consistent with his character. But I can buy him being that dense.
In my experience it took me four years to realize a guy I met once was hitting on me. He even bought me ice cream and I thought he was being friendly. Oh to be a naive college kid again…
Also, like… you don’t need to know for 100000% sure that somebody LIKE likes you before you ask them out. Unless you’re a total creep, or they’ve made it very clear that they’re Not Interested, you can ask them and then take their “yes” or “no” as your answer as to whether or not they “like you that way”.
Note: this is not a sarcastic dig at you in particular, as I have had the same anxieties you have had before about coming on too strong and/or too creepy. But the truth is that it’s actually way simpler than people make it out to be. To wit, check out this handy script/flow chart I’ve prepared:
YOU: Hey, you seem really nice./I think you are really cool./[Some other generic positive thing.] Would you like to go out sometime?
THEM: You mean like a date? [IF THEY DON’T ASK THIS, MOVE ON TO NEXT “THEM” STATEMENT, AS CLARIFICATION MAY NOT BE NECESSARY]
YOU: Yes./That was sort of what I was getting at, yeah.
THEM: Yes./No.
YOU: Great! [PROCEEDS TO MAKE PLANS WITH DATE]/Okay, well can’t blame a person for trying, I guess. Have a great day!
And that’s it. It was hard to wrap my mind around for a while, but it really is that simple.
Yeah, it’s not nearly that simple. On the one hand, you’re making yourself vulnerable and cruel people can take advantage of that. On the other, if you come across more aggressive than you think or if you’re doing it in some inappropriate circumstance it’s quite easy to appear creepy or threatening.
The confidence to handle even a gentle rejection without it hurting you isn’t available to everyone.
And if you’re friends with the person and would like to keep that even if they say no, that’s another complication.
You can’t assume they will give a clear yes or no answer. There are lots of evasive responses implying yes but with a circumstance that means no, at least right now, motivated by kindness, apprehension, or fear.
It takes a while to catch on that anything not a clear and definite yes is a no.
It’s not stupid really. It’s a blind spot. Doesn’t necessarily translate into being stupid about everything. Or even all relationship stuff. It’s pretty common to not be able to read interest in yourself even while being able to see it between other people.
To be fair, we have strips in reruns over in J&W where he recently noted that he acts dumber than he actually is.
On the other hand, that Walky’s been through a lot that this one hasn’t. This Walky’s had to grow up a lot less (and often seems to be trying as hard as he can not to).
There’s a difference between being dumb and being oblivious. Walky rarely pays attention, so he misses a lot of things regardless of how smart he actually is.
And this isn’t even necessarily that. Many people have specific blind spots about others being attracted to them, even when they’re paying attention and without being dumb in other areas.
I was worried that this would turn into Walky only going out with Lucy because Dorothy said it was a good idea, and he wouldn’t actually be all that into it.
That may still happen, but it’s a little hopeful that he was kind of clueless about it.
Bagge, I’d argue that walky being this dense to lucy’s affections is proof that he isn’t as in to her. But we’ll see if that starts to change now that he realizes her feelings.
When I was young and dumb, I was in the Navy with a ridiculous mustache. An attractive girl I knew told me she wanted to “ride my mustache”. I laughed it off, like lol right. Months later, she was like “What’s your problem with me?” And I’m like “What do you mean?” “I was coming on to you, and you never made a move.” And I’m like “I thought you were joking”.
I think the trouble is that, for a lot of people, they have a certain “type” or they think someone is out of their league or for whatever reason they don’t immediately file someone as “yeah, this is somebody I’d like to date”, and thus viewed through that lens, they interpret all of that person’s flirtations or interest as merely “they’re just a nice person” or “they’re being supportive of me, hence the compliments” or “they just like hanging out with me, that’s why we’re together all the time” and never think it might mean something deeper.
From there, of course, it could either turn out good if the interest can be reciprocated, or bad if there just isn’t any attraction, and somebody’s heart is gonna get broken.
Yup. That, coupled with massive anxiety, was why I didn’t date in high school. A girl could have walked down the hallway with my name on a sandwich board, yelling “I like this guy, who sits behind me in biology class” while the school band marched behind her playing a love song, and I’d have been like “Huh, didn’t know there someone in bio class has the same name as me.” I sympathize Walky, I really do….
Reminded of a quote in JMS autobiography. ‘If you want to flirt with JMS, you have to start taking off his clothes. He won’t get any hints you give him below that.’
I think a girl may have flirted with me once at Uni, about 20 years ago. I’m still not entirely certain.
I do know I got the definite sense the conversation didn’t go the way she expected, but most conversations with me don’t go the way people expect, whether they’re flirting or not.
hey, a lot of us straight dudes today testifying to how terrible many of us are at picking up signs of interest from women.
i said as much in a comment a bit higher, but i’m starting to think there’s too much of a pattern here to be purely a coincidence.
this society is still a patriarchy lads, so maybe it also behooves us to make allowances for chicks being wary of being seen as too forward… it’s sad and all, but under a heterosexist regime straight men and women simply do not occupy the same positions, and that very much applies when it comes to flirting and dating.
any thoughts?
(i live in france but i think this broadly applies to at least all of european & north-american societies)
(also of course this is not a exclusively cis-het-male trait, nor is it purely reducible to gendered factors in every individual case. maybe re-read this sentence before replying? just in case it turns out that covers it?)
It’s worth noting that, at least in America, social media is rife with stories of women being annoyed that they can’t ‘just be friendly’ with guys, that ‘just because I hang with you, doesn’t mean I am into you’, etc. After seeing enough of those responses, it becomes the safe bet to assume a lack of attraction, even if or when engaging in behavior that others perceive as flirtation. Add into that a person who naturally engages in light banter (or, flirting), and you get someone who won’t recognize any signs to begin with, and who won’t act on any signs they do recognize, because they are sufficiently conditioned to disregard said signs.
but surely in mixed friendships, women crush on men just as often as the reverse? i feel like i’m missing something for why this seems to be a gender-polarized issue according to you. and anyway i don’t feel like this really bears on my main point, being that flirting with men is possibly more fraught for women than the reverse?
also, look up emotional labour if that’s a concept you’re not familiar with (here’s a piece by Jess Zimmerman i haven’t read in a while but i remember finding it illuminating). i think in many cases of mixed friendships, whoever has a crush on the other, the female friend will be the one bearing the brunt of the effort to talk things through, so that’s one reason why women might complain about this more.
It is gender polarized because everything about dating is gender polarized.
Women certainly do crush on men and women do bear the brunt of the emotional labor of managing any misunderstandings — which goes both ways, since depending on the circumstance they’re either trying to indicate interest (which the guy could be missing or not interested in) or trying to keep the guy’s romantic interest at bay without revealing that’s what they’re doing.
Partly because many still have the old programming that it should be the guy taking the active role in asking, but also knowing that many guys take rejection badly.
Flirting is definitely more fraught for women than men, but so is rejecting flirting, so a guy who’s aware of that will be looking for signs that she’s interested before being too blatant, to avoid putting her on the spot.
A lot of this does go both ways, with both sides engaging in the little dance of trying to signal what they want and read the other’s signals, with varying degrees of success.
I’m much more terrified of straight dudes misreading basic friendship as a crush than i am of having to be more direct to get a guys attention. So uh, yeah, keep being oblivious lads, the alternative is much worse
This is a good point, and thank you for bringing it up.
(For the record, I’m neither straight nor a man, but most people see me as both.)
There’s a whole stew of intersecting reasons here. One, as you brought up, is society’s (weakening, but still definitely there) insistence that men pursue and women gatekeep. Women are definitely socially penalized for being open and frank about their attractions (especially if said attractions aren’t reciprocated). Ironically, attempting to defy those roles gives rise to another issue here: men who don’t want to be pushy or entitled to a woman’s affection. A lot of guys are trying their best to not be the story everyone’s looking at in horror on r/relationships.
Then there’s the fact that a lot of straight guys (particularly among the “oblivious” group) honestly don’t see themselves as attractive. Partially because, well, straight, partially because they don’t fit in society’s narrow bounds for “hot guy,” partially because of a lack of confidence. If you think you’re a weird schlubby nerd, you’re more likely to also think that that stunningly beautiful woman couldn’t possibly be interested in you romantically.
Sprinkle in non-neurotypical people (turns out those supposedly universal signs of attraction aren’t universal at all!) and you end up with well-meaning guys who don’t want to overstep their bounds with that woman who isn’t showing clear signs of interest and who’s way out of their league anyway.
Anyway, I’m not sure there is an answer here beyond dismantling sexist patriarchal assumptions and allowing for open communication of desires, but maybe a temporary fix would be for people to allow for more generous assumptions: Women, maybe he’s not dense or intentionally ignoring you, maybe he’s trying to be respectful. Men, she’s probably not lying in wait waiting to splash the story of the jerk who actually thought she was interested in him all over social media.
sure, i agree generally but in terms of there being some sort of an imbalance in terms of who’s oblivious to who, like of course some guys have insecurities and/or are have different abilities to comprehend subtle cues, and we could also talk of cultural differences etc; but all of these factors apply just as much to women.
I think there well could be the imbalance you wonder about, but also there’s a lot to consider in the demographics providing the stories here (those who comment on this particular webcomic) and what it’s in response to– a particular arc in said webcomic about a guy being oblivious to a girl’s interest. That’s going to attract comment from people who can relate.
As for my experience, I’m queer & nonbinary, and my general sense is that I can read signals from men okay, but I might be being overly cautious. Meanwhile, I’m shit at reading signals from people of other genders. Only a few people of other genders have explicitly expressed interest in me in my life, but I’ve been blindsided each time.
oh you’re absolutely right, this is speculation based on a small, biased sample to begin with. it did seem a worthwhile exercisej though because some gendered generalities have been floated around by some of the commenters (“girls, you need to do this or that to get our attention” etc) so i thought, eh, can’t hurt to suggest a different perspective and see what reactions that elicits maybe.
i do intuitively feel that there’s some truth this slant, and to the patchy explanations i’ve attempted for it— probably because it aligns with my experience. but none of this is particularly grounded. oh well!
Women out there concocting all sorts of tricks when a simple “i want you to be my king” would suffice. It’s not (only) that we’re oblivious, and we are. Girls are b a d at putting this stuff clearly and bluntly on thr table
FWIW, I’ve read statements from males and females alike complaining that the other side apparently thinks that they are telepathic and can interpret unspoken expressions of interest with perfect clarity. If you want my opinion, I suspect it is more a case of extreme nervousness and a fear of being perceived as being ‘too forward’.
i imagine you were responding to my comment above Ben?
i think you’re right, there are many reasons why a person of any gender might be reluctant or shy about making an explicit pass at someone.
however, i suspect that among the factors that might cause some to be nervous, a variety of gendered expectations (emotional labour) and fears (slut-shaming, bullying, assault) probably play some sort of role. i would be pretty astonished, though happy, to hear that that’s not the case.
we’re talking about a widespread phenomenon obviously, certainly among the readers of this strip, and i thought i would at least put this attempt at a feminist take out there and see if anyone feels like that’s an angle worth taking.
in that vein, i think Hinoron above makes a good point when he says that girls are far more likely than boys to have consumed a lot of romance in their lives; but i don’t think it follows that women are therefore more responsible for making their intentions clear. the way i think about it, is that boys are disincentivized to care about emotional work under the assumption that it will generally be shouldered by the girls/women around them. symmetrically, girls are trained from a young age to take on that role in their families, friendships, workplaces. no wonder we don’t have the same frame of reference, and missing out on dating opportunities is only one of the bad consequences of such an unbalance.
I doubt it has much to do with consuming more romance, but the expectations and fears. Women frankly have more to fear from making bad relationship choices in our society than men do. Even a rejection can be dangerous or doing something that signals interest.
I’d say that it should be on the interested party to take responsibility for making their intentions clear, but that leaves us with the flip side of Lucy’s hesitation in the face of Walky’s obliviousness: Someone like Joe who keeps making his intentions clear even with no indication of interest from the other party – thus pushing the emotional labor of rejecting him (and worrying about the consequences) onto women.
There are no simple solutions, I’m afraid.
you’re right, the part where girls are fed more romance is not itself the issue.
what i meant is that cultivating an interest in the intricacies of romantic scenarios in young girls, while that is discouraged in boys, is part of how they are differentially gendered in childhood.
The interested party should make their intentions clear, and the other party should make their response clear. Preferably using clear, spoken language.
This… really isn’t as hard as people are making it out to be.
Lucy: “Walky I’m interested in you, would you like to go on a date?”
Walky: “Yes that would be nice/no I’m not interested sorry but I still enjoy your company”
> I doubt it has much to do with consuming more romance, but the expectations and fears. Women frankly have more to fear from making bad relationship choices in our society than men do. Even a rejection can be dangerous or doing something that signals interest.
The version I’ve heard went something like:
“Men worry that women won’t like them. Women worry that men will try to rape and/or kill them.”
if it makes anyone feel better, a girl told me she had loved me for years and all I could think of was “she’s just messing with me, right?”
admittedly this was middle school and people loved to do the ‘ask egg out on april fools day’ to me, so i was rightfully skeptical, but i can’t believe i never followed up on that
See I just figured the problem with being forward about your interest is that doing so requires having enough self confidence to go through with it and not inherently feel like you can come off as a weirdo, except believing I could come off as a weirdo is indicative that I don’t have the self confidence to pull it off.
So, if I’m reading the signs correctly, here’s what happens next:
Walky returns to the room to propose to Lucy.
He is met with a flying crotch to the face.
Jennifer points and laughs.
First of all – what? What emotional stake does Booster have in this?
Second thing, I don’t know if “prick” is a great word to use on someone who isn’t a 55-year-old white guy named Chuck. Your username looks sorta Danish, so I’m maybe making a leap here, but in English, “prick” is generally a masculine-assigned term, being slang for a penis and often used as an insult for older men. I don’t think it’s especially appropriate for a they/them character.
amen. that was unnecessarily brutal.
there are canonically vile characters you can pile all your hate on, but please, try to remain at least somewhat civil about characters that matter some of us.
I would say a missed factor no one is discussing here is that Walky was also bullied. As someone who was also bullied, I literally can’t tell you if anyone legitimately had a crush on me in high school or if they were just trying to mess with me but I hated the ones that acted like they did regardless. If anyone has PRETENDED to be interested in him, that definitely could have made him less able to see any signs that do exist outwardly as real interest.
As I recall, it has been mentioned by Jennifer that he was a dweeb and that she used to like push him into lockers. In searching through strips, I have found that the strips Alice were in which remind me that they heavily imply that Walky was used to being shunted to another table as soon as Jennifer found someone cooler to talk to. So it sounds like in high school he wasn’t particularly popular, Jennifer bullied him, and given that she was the popular head cheerleader at the time, it isn’t unlikely that other people followed her lead in doing so as well.
right i remember the scene with Alice. Yeah, i felt bad for Walky then.
i didn’t read it as a clear sign that he was bullied necessarily but it would square if he was.
Oh! Almost forgot that in one of the flashbacks involving Leland, he was shown intimidating Walky as well. There are probably things I’m still forgetting, but yeah, I’m fairly sure he was bullied. And like, he did put up with a looooot of Jennifer’s behaviour early in the comic of basically saying he wasn’t worth talking to as if that was perfectly normal acceptable behaviour.
Look Walky, if you want people not to think you’re girly in any way, you have to be less of a lesbian when it comes to love. “No no we’re just very good friends” no you’re on your fourth date
Did panel four make anyone else immediately think of Cuba Gooding Jr. looking over his glasses at Tom Cruise after accusing him of shoplifting the pootie in Jerry Maguire?
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 18h
JUST IN: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan moves to dismiss federal criminal case against her for allegedly helping immigrant hide from ICE. Her lawyers say she's protected by official acts & judicial immunity and 10th Amendment. Doc: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Where did Hollywood go so wrong? I thought movies were supposed to be an escape from reality, a chance to put your worries aside and not have to think about any underlying ideas or concepts. Well, not anymore.
theonion.com/you-can...
It's not a new argument, of course, but Chesterton dismissed it effectively in 1908.
"You will hear everlastingly... this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man."
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Hawley dismisses Trump lining his pockets with his memecoin: "Listen, I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought. I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?"
wilbur, savvy enough to know he's in a comic strip but still not a great actor, awkwardly lifts a muffin up into frame so that we, the audience, understand that he has a muffin right now, which is very important narratively, but he's not really selling it well as an organic, human action
confirming that the reason there's been no Galaxy Version female characters in Blokees until now is that they felt they needed to make Round Lady Thighs For Ladies
It's #webcomicday? We have a special day???
Well, my name is Pat McHoarney and I draw 69 Mouse-Ear Blvd, a multigenerational story about women who all have sexy legs and probably other features. There was a grandmother, but she wasn't hot and so she died off-panel.
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. Her partner, Billy Evans, is now trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics.” nyti.ms/3FbtZm9
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 18h
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 1d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 10d
The New York Times @nytimes.com ⋅ 5d
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 3d
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“She likes her men like a model of the Statue of Liberty”
“Not the actual statue? Not green and rusty?”
“no, that’s TALL and dense”
Hot Dotty panel 4 tho
That looks a lot like Scorn tho.
I think that’s her “Come on. Really?” face.
**reads Clif’s comment**
….
**immature giggling**
Nope. That’s panel 2.
Panel 4 is her “Come on!! Really??” face
I suppose panel 4 Dotty could be considered hot… although one would have to be into some fairly specific fetishes. To me, that face screams “I’m gonna step on your face.” And being stepped on just isn’t my thing.
Now panel 6 Dotty? That’s more my jam.
Not as good as yesterday’s panel 5. But, yeah.
Personally, today’s panel 2 does it for me. Oh, and that (I assume) flannel shirt….ooooooohhhhhhh baby. (Need I suggest I met my wife 41 years ago in high school, she had glasses and a flannel shirt just like that, with the top two buttt……. ok, Ima gonna be busy for a minute….)
I might be a bit basic, but panel 1 & 2 Dorothy on my end.
But she’ll step on it gently.
Make her a 9 foot vampire
Glasses? Plaid button-down? That knowing glare?
oh no my weaknesses
Glad to know Daisy will hit it off with Ruth 110%
Statue of Liberty’s actually hollow inside, so not particularly dense
It is also, in point of fact, not rusty.
Yup, it’s painted. Copper rust is a little less even in color, and also a darker shade as far as I know.
It’s not rusty but the Statue of Liberty wasn’t painted. It’s unpainted copper, and it’s colour is from the patina you get when Copper oxidizes.
Which, fun fact! Actually protects and strengthens the copper metal, unlike oxidized iron (rust), which weakens the iron metal.
another DOA, another TIL <3
When it was being restored, they were afraid they might not find copper of the proper age. I think they got it from a church finally.
Me and my being the only one copping to quotes
The skin is copper, but the original support ribs and superstructure were all iron. Galvanic corrosion was setting in and the ribs were rusting and expanding. The vast majority of them had to be replaced, but they had to somehow take off the decades of tar, pitch, and other weird stuff that was used before synthetic sealants were invented without hurting the green patina. I think they finally settled on sandblasting using baking soda or dry ice as the media, with attentive rinsing on the outside.
The year it was being restored, the infamous Halloween on 6th St in Austin, had a guy dressed as the Statue of Liberty, complete with scaffolding.
While I didn’t expect yesterday’s turn of events, this was well within my predictions
Also, I may have been hit by the Hot Walky effect. I’m just a sucker for the panel 5 large eyes
panel 5 is horny Walky. he’s like “omg?! i can haz girl?!”
“So he really is that dense.” Thousands of readers say, sighing.
I did actually sigh when I read the last panel. We all just have to live with it now.
goodbye pro-Walky Sirksome?
i’m like… on the one hand, thank god, but on the other hand, jesus christ Walky
So, true story… Years ago I was giving my friend a massage because she had back issues. She was barely not naked and started kissing me. In no way at any point during that did I think she was actually interested in me. Yes, seriously. Yes once I was told otherwise, literally a year or so later, everyone has since mocked me mercilessly. Walky in this strip has more of a clue than I did.
Just to add, in a very pitiful defense of myself, there were mitigating circumstances that had me not consider her being interested as just a given. The details of which make complete sense to me, but kind of fall flat given the almost naked and kissing aspect mentioned above.
well hey, that was brave of her!!
but yeah, context matters though. i think i’m on quasi-naked massage terms with quite a few of my friends of either gender. i’m not sure because i don’t really do massages, i’m a selfish dick like that.
Danny and Walky: 2
Audience: 0
A number of people kept saying that Walky couldn’t be that dense, that he knew Lucy was interested and was pretending not to notice because he didn’t feel the same way, but I was pretty sure he really was that dense. And I’m glad to see this strip confirms my view.
No, you’re not!
I guess the joke is that Walky is that dense……I don’t buy it.
I believe it, mostly because this is similar to how I function. I can get a solid read on how two different people feel about each other fairly easily, but I’m blind as a bat when it comes to trying to figure out how people feel about me
I am another real, actual person who is like this. I spent years waiting for it to click for me like it seems to for everyone else before realizing that it just wasn’t going to happen. Some of us just aren’t built to fit in with traditional notions of romance.
Avatar is apropos.
Daniel here. Sorry Sirksome, but there are plenty of us who have no way of realizing that other people are interested in them. Walky’s reason is he was never interested himself, so he NEVER learned any of the signs. For me, I was dealing with bullies & because of that basically kept to myself my entire School life…
Only ever lost 1 fight (4 older kids all kicking me while on the ground) and 1 draw (stopped before I actually decided to ignore the baby-taps and fight back), but never realized a friend’s Little Sister had a massive crush on me (was told, I think by the friend), it literally took me 11 YEARS to realize that girl asking me if I was going to the prom wanted to go with me, I only figured out a coworker was interested when she changed her behavior after seeing “my wife and kid” (Sister-in-law and Nephew) and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more…
Basically, neither Walky nor I ever had the right life training to pick up on the sometimes quite subtle signs that others were interested in us. It’s like expecting us to ride a horse when you’ve never even seen one before…
I have to agree. Some of us just can’t see it. I didn’t know a girl was interested in me even when she said something about “I could go out to dinner sometime.” But when her friend who was with her audibly gasped at that statement, the penny finally dropped.
In my first year of undergrad I had a class where the guy next to me asked me if I wanted to get dinner with him. I had another class immediately following the first one; said no because I had to go to class. He said “maybe another time” and I, baffled, clarified that I *always* had the second class after the first one. Did not realize until about 3-4 years later that I had kinda shot him down.
And that’s one that I realized eventually. I was a female engineering student and I only identified ONE (1) person as interested me during the interaction. It helped that he said “Do you want to go out sometime? Like on a date?”
I do. Some people (like me) are that dense. At Walky’s age, I certainly would not have had a clue if someone like Lucy wanted to go out with me.
For that matter, I probably still wouldn’t. (which is probably one reason why I am still single in my mid-50’s)
I once woke up realizing that a woman with whom I had one conversation years before was rather not-very-subtly checking me out at the time. I proceeded to kick myself for the rest of the day.
A decade or so after high school, I identified at least three girls there who had crushes on me at various times, and two others who were very strong likelihoods of the same. Some of them I’d been interested in myself.
I spent a while kicking myself after each of these realizations, while also acknowledging that in almost all cases, it would never have worked.
I have had at least a few times where I realized a woman might have been into me literally years too late.
Hard same. /Very/ hard same.
…and it’s not like that happens often enough I can afford to miss it, either.
Walky’s pretty astute about relationships.
OTHER PEOPLE’S relationships.
When I was maybe a year younger than Walky, a girl I was friends with drew a full page comic about us kissing and I didn’t realize she liked me until a friend explained it to me. Teenage boys really can be that dense.
Hell, I had a moment nearly identical to this at 21. I think we can expand that statement to just “men can really be that dense”
tsh, yeah… there’s a story about emotional labour in there, for sure.
It doesn’t seem implausible to me
I’m pretty good at telling when a person is attracted to someone else, but when it’s me they’re interested in I really am that oblivious.
I have gotten better at noticing these things now, but back when I was in my late teens? OBLIVIOUS.
I’m so glad I was not the only oblivious one!
My boyfriend (before we started dating) had a girl literally grind on him at a party and didn’t realize she was into him
Thanks to this thread, I realized I’m very much not alone in the cluelesness. I often realize someone was interested in me years later. I’m glad others like me exist!
As long as Lucy doesn’t follow Jenny’s orders, sure.
Being hotter also making you denser defies physics, yanno.
OR, check this out, maybe physics needs an update to include such rare states of matter as superwalkductivity
Someone do an edit where her expression just keeps getting more severe, and his eye keep getting bigger, for four more panels.
Gimme 9 hours
Does Walky even like Lucy or is it a because she likes him?
I’m-a be completely honest, if someone liked me I’d like them on that principle alone. Like…oh my god I’m smiling just imagining the idea of a girl who likes me. Damn…I would certainly like if someone had a crush on me.
i mean… it is flattering, no matter what. probably extremely hot/charismatic people eventually get bored with people crushing on them, can we have an extremely hot/charismatic person weigh in on this?
I’d at least have to consider whether I might like her back if I learned that a woman I hadn’t thought about romantically before liked me. And it would definitely be a nice feeling to know for sure that a woman liked me that way.
Does Lucy even like Walky, or is it just because Jennifer brought it up out of the blue that one time? https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/nut/
Does anyone like anyone, or are we all just a product of circumstances? What even are romance and attraction?
“What even are romance and attraction?”
What does it mean to be attracted to somebody? Do opposites really attract? How does magnets even work?
Not sure. It’s complicated. It depends on what you mean by opposites. I have some equations for you.
fucking magnets
There’s this little white dog and this little black dog. They are each glued to a magnetic base…
That’s totally valid, and I’ve developed crushes on as little prompting, but there’s something to be said for existing physical attraction before any social machinations.
What’s… Feelings?
I don’t think Walky has asked himself the question of if he likes Lucy that way. Whereas his initial reaction to Dorothy was visceral.
It’s arguable whether Walky’s “buffoon” reaction to Dorothy would even have happened if Walky hadn’t overheard her stated affection for a certain alien-and-robot-monkey comic.
Nope, nope, we’re still in the Shock and Disbelief stage. The Deciding if I Will Reciprocate stage isn’t for another comic or three (or twenty if Willis switches to other characters). The Examining My Feelings to See If I SHOULD Reciprocate stage isn’t until…. well, until he learns to examine his feelings. So probably never.
Everything about the expressions in panels 2-5 is perfect.
I love Dotty so much!
https://imgur.com/a/TVZqW1k (NSFW)
ok one more. I really wanted to draw the Frankensteiner and I knew it had to be Billie (it’s pre-timeskip so I can say that). Also I wanted to do the cheerleader outfit cuz it needs more love. Then I got hooked by traveling through the Jennifer tag and like…god she has pretty hot outfits in this comic.
Does this make her Big Mama Pump?
The details in this are awesome! Jennifer’s drunken bubbles in “panel” 2, and Ruth’s anime dope lips in the smash panel.
Kinda feel like a dopey grin on Ruth’s face at the end would be fitting, too.
You don’t really think Billingsworth would give advice without testing it out first to be sure it worked?
Hey wait a minute.
Jennifer is hot or something, I think. Not quite on Ruth’s level, but y’know.
Sorry, I’m doubling down on her being the hottest gal.
Billie can pull it off!
aplha cheer-leader head solution or however it went
damn, Yoto *0*
you are a legend
a legend who doesn’t like drawing hands i think =P
but still!!!
These are actually three separate events depicting Jennifer’s attempts at getting back with Ruth.
loooool you just made it even more perfect
“Damn I thought the cheerleader outfit would have worked, maybe the Leafs jersey will do it.”
– welp, if even the leafs jersey doesn’t do it, guess there’s only one way left to get my girl back…
– flowers…?
– are you out of your goddamn mind?!
The various edges of the spectrum of cluelessness vs. presumptuousness as exemplified by the typical (stereotypical?) fictional attractive young person.
This one being male and the needle swings to the clueless.
Maybe Dorothy needs pencil and paper to literally spell it out for him?
welp, there’s your answer.
Part of it anyway.
Now that he knows, what does he want to do with the information?
Dorothy’s faces in panel’s 2 and 4, I am living for that.
Panel 4 especially is a mood.
I know right, they’re just perfect. Superbly drawn!
In Walky’s defense, I’ve seen more than a few times people ignoring clear signs of romantic interest, to the point I though I had been dragged into a romcom.
Has anyone else ever experienced this, or should I look into getting paid for my support role as the snarky friend?
I remember a girl told me in high school she had a crush on me in elementary and I’m just…I wish people TOLD me these things!!! What am I supposed to pick up on signals? I’m not a Wi-fi router.
I know I’ve experienced it once or twice. And suspect I’ve experienced it a dozen times and been too dumb to realize I was experiencing it.
I typed my example on an earlier comment. I very much am the embodiment of this as I have somehow “friendzoned” at least four girls. I only know of that because I was told later by people to whom it was laughably obvious. I pretty much live a comedic (to others, not so much to me) soap opera life though, so par for the course.
It’s easy to misjudge these things and see things that aren’t really there. It is reasonable to disregard what you might be seeing, with regards to another’s apparent attraction to you, as likely the results of you projecting.
After all, if you’re wrong you now have to face both the embarrassment of being wrong and rejection.
It is a wonder that people can ever tell that another is interested in them with enough certainty to act on it.
A good point. I don’t think it applies to Walky, but there is a second kind of cluelessness where you notice the signs, but decide they aren’t real because of all the previous times you saw interest that turned out not to exist.
One person’s “clear romantic interest” is another person’s “interacting with a friend they enjoy the company of”. Lucy’s behaviour, once deprived of her contextualising inner monologue, is well within the boundaries of platonic interactions from multiple people I’ve known.
My closest friend and I cuddle, hold hands, etc pretty regularly. We are completely platonic.
lots of people are saying they’re incorrigibly oblivious, and while for some there may like neuroatypical factors i think for the rest of us, if you notice it happening to you regularly you might need to take stock and figure out what you’re doing wrong. my guess is, it’s often a combo of lack of confidence and self-centeredness, two traits that are way more often associated than we think. i think there might just be a gendered slant to it, judging by the small and probably biased sample on this page? idk, i’m a dude and i definitely check all those boxes, and i’ve definitely been guilty of letting the women in my life do the emotional heavy lifting, so maybe it’s just me but from what i see around me… i doubt it.
just sayin, fellas
I’m not sure I get it. Are you applying some kind of wrongdoing to the obliviousness?
wrong-doing??? oh no!! i just like to scratch at surfaces and feel around for explanations when i see something happening like literally dozens of comments on this page and previous Lucy/Walky strips that echo the exact same sentiment and experiences, of which a great number seem to come from straight dudes. to me this just screams out for a deeper examination =)
anyway, re: possible gendered aspects, i’ve let my thoughts run with me on that lower down this comment section, feel free to respond there if you want.
re: my use of the word “self-centered”, well maybe that was a bad choice of word. i think insecurities, if they get too overwhelming, can be a form of suffering, and when you’re in pain it’s hard to focus on and empathize with anyone else. so maybe that’s where what i’ve called “self-centredness” comes into play. i don’t know, it was very helpful to me to see it like that.
hey i reread my earlier comment and i can better see what you meant now.
there were several commenters who seemed to bemoan their own obliviousness as though it’s obviously a baseline personality trait that you can’t do anything about. and, that might be true sometimes, which is why i hedged about neurodivergence, but i did want to push back on the general tone of “whoopsie well that’s just who i am too bad” that some people seemed to express.
so maybe not “wrongdoing”, and not about the obliviousness itself, but more like “skepticism”? about the fatalism of it? does that make more sense, idk
I’ve definitely had at least a few times where a woman was interested in me and I completely failed to notice until years later. Often what one person thinks is “clear signs of romantic interest” isn’t at all clear to another person.
Now he’s gotta go back to his room and toss a toy at his head.
Has Wally always been taller than Dorothy or did he hit a later growth spurt?
My husband was short all through high school then got tall and hot in college, wondering if Walky is going through the same.
He also has a hard time telling when someone is interested in him…. oh no… did I marry a Walky?
He’s a little taller than usual here, but not by that much. Her eye level is usually at his nose, not his chin.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2020/comic/book-10/03-when-it-crumbles/scheduled/
oh my god wait i thought he was pretending not to notice, is he really that oblivious???
I’ve been assuming he’s been oblivious this entire time. Walky’s not really the sort to actually lead anyone on. He would’ve run away and begged for help from Sal or something out of desperation around not having any idea how to handle it, by now.
That or he would have tossed a toy at Lucy.
“How do they expect me to find a single tree in this friggin forest?”
Look, it works for zebra wrt confusing lions, why wouldn’t it work for trees?
Don’t do it, though, Walky. 100% of all divorces start with marriage.
Alt text is right, I got to kissing someone and then had a bat taken to my heart’s ankles. Wasn’t a good time.
the ol’ Not Uninterested, Just Oblivious.
Been there before
Yep, sounds right. Some people need a metaphorical brick to the head.
For some, less metaphorical.
Walky has been upgraded to somewhat dense harem protagonist.
Oh god this subplot really was playing out like a romcom anime.
I’m surprised that people are surprised at Walky not realizing. 1. Have absolutely known people just as oblivious as him and 2. To Walky’s credit, You gotta remember we see a LOT of Lucy’s internal thoughts and expressions she makes when Walkys not looking, conversations she has about him when he isn’t around, etc. I bet if you only took “stuff Lucy has said directly in front of Walky” it’d be a little less obvious than it is to us readers.
Yes, this exactly!
She is explicitly not communicating with him.
He’s kinda oblivious, but that happens. She’s doing it on purpose.
Shyness is not exactly “on purpose”, tho
One good point I saw on the “everyone else can see it” thing is that if Bob likes Alice, everyone else can compare how Bob acts around Alice to how Bob acts when Alice is not there, but Alice only ever sees the first behavior.
As the saying goes, “Dawn breaks over Marblehead…”
Blank out the text bubbles and you have the workings of a fucking EXCELLENT meme with viral potential
hell yeah
HELL YEAH
Adding myself to the list of oblivious people, although in this case she was also oblivious, despite how much we hung out at college, to the point (I later learned) that some people actually thought we were an item even though we never even approached the subject.
…I’m kinda with Walky on this one.
Please just talk straight with us ladies! We did not grow up watching all the same rom-com’s and dramas you did; we can’t recognize what to you are familiar patterns in deliberately-overcomplicated-for-maxium-drama-entertainment “relationships”.
For “hints” to work between us, we’d need the same frame of reference… and we don’t have it.
Good communication skills are defined by their clarity, not their subtlety.
The only Lucy could have been more clear that she has the major hots for Walky is if she tattooed it on her forehead. Maybe sometimes you guys should pay more attention and not need torch flares and a makeout in public to pick up on attraction lol.
Sometimes the answer is “be more direct”, not “pay more attention”. Lucy’s been dropping breadcrumbs, but Walky needs landing lights and a ground marshal with semaphore flags.
Well, asking is always a possibility. Seems simpler than the torch flares.
And really, how clear has she been? It’s clear to us, but we’ve seen more than Walky has. She’s actually said it out loud, for us to pick up on. Otherwise aren’t we hitting the “she’s being nice to me and spending time with me, she must want to fuck” take, which is the other side of the problem.
Actually she hasn’t been that obvious to him directly. She’s been obvious to us, who can read her thoughts, and to everyone else because she lets herself freak out when he’s not looking. But with Walky directly she’s more or less acted like a friend. Most obvious thing she’s done is the thing Walky said about her pulling her hat over her face and i can see how, in a vacuum, that just looks like something weird that happened for some reason and not necessarily meaning a crush
yeah…. and deep, sustained eye contact?? which some have argued is a form of body language most of us are inherently really good at reading (i don’t know about neurodivergent people, i’m sure there are shades of gray there). Whether our conscious brain is willing to do the reading is another matter, i guess.
Because guys assuming attraction that isn’t there is never a problem.
[/sarcasm]
I don’t know if Walky’s obliviousness is consistent with his character. But I can buy him being that dense.
In my experience it took me four years to realize a guy I met once was hitting on me. He even bought me ice cream and I thought he was being friendly. Oh to be a naive college kid again…
Bless the boy, he’s got a brain like a neutron star
In which Dorothy is reminded why breaking up with Walky was probably the better option, no matter what her libido occasionally tells her.
Also, like… you don’t need to know for 100000% sure that somebody LIKE likes you before you ask them out. Unless you’re a total creep, or they’ve made it very clear that they’re Not Interested, you can ask them and then take their “yes” or “no” as your answer as to whether or not they “like you that way”.
Not sure if this is directed at Walky or Lucy.
What if you never really learned where the line is and how to broach the subject, and are afraid of coming across as a Joe?
Note: this is not a sarcastic dig at you in particular, as I have had the same anxieties you have had before about coming on too strong and/or too creepy. But the truth is that it’s actually way simpler than people make it out to be. To wit, check out this handy script/flow chart I’ve prepared:
YOU: Hey, you seem really nice./I think you are really cool./[Some other generic positive thing.] Would you like to go out sometime?
THEM: You mean like a date? [IF THEY DON’T ASK THIS, MOVE ON TO NEXT “THEM” STATEMENT, AS CLARIFICATION MAY NOT BE NECESSARY]
YOU: Yes./That was sort of what I was getting at, yeah.
THEM: Yes./No.
YOU: Great! [PROCEEDS TO MAKE PLANS WITH DATE]/Okay, well can’t blame a person for trying, I guess. Have a great day!
And that’s it. It was hard to wrap my mind around for a while, but it really is that simple.
> Okay, well can’t blame a person for trying, I guess.
Can and do, actually.
Rejection is one (painful) possibility, if the signals/interest is misread and unwelcome, and they get worse from there.
Yeah, it’s not nearly that simple. On the one hand, you’re making yourself vulnerable and cruel people can take advantage of that. On the other, if you come across more aggressive than you think or if you’re doing it in some inappropriate circumstance it’s quite easy to appear creepy or threatening.
The confidence to handle even a gentle rejection without it hurting you isn’t available to everyone.
And if you’re friends with the person and would like to keep that even if they say no, that’s another complication.
You can’t assume they will give a clear yes or no answer. There are lots of evasive responses implying yes but with a circumstance that means no, at least right now, motivated by kindness, apprehension, or fear.
It takes a while to catch on that anything not a clear and definite yes is a no.
comments section for the past few weeks: “he can’t possibly, no one could possibly…”
me: *smirks, licks finger and turns to next page*
I was so sure he wasn’t this stupid.
You were right and I was wrong.
It’s not stupid really. It’s a blind spot. Doesn’t necessarily translate into being stupid about everything. Or even all relationship stuff. It’s pretty common to not be able to read interest in yourself even while being able to see it between other people.
Fair enough.
I was still blindsided by it.
I’m just glad to see my view that Walky really is that dense confirmed.
Don’t. Wake. Up. The. Beast
Walky is in favor of the Jennifer solution, I see.
I don’t know, that might be too subtle.
I have argued long and hard that Walky understands perfectly well what Lucy feels but just isn’t that into her.
Turns out I was wrong. I can’t believe I bet against Walky being an idiot.
To be fair, we have strips in reruns over in J&W where he recently noted that he acts dumber than he actually is.
On the other hand, that Walky’s been through a lot that this one hasn’t. This Walky’s had to grow up a lot less (and often seems to be trying as hard as he can not to).
Walky very often acts dumber than he is… however, social interactions also very often don’t depend on a person’s smarts.
There’s a difference between being dumb and being oblivious. Walky rarely pays attention, so he misses a lot of things regardless of how smart he actually is.
And this isn’t even necessarily that. Many people have specific blind spots about others being attracted to them, even when they’re paying attention and without being dumb in other areas.
Same boat. I’m shaking my fist at the monitor.
Gosh darn you fail Walky and your fail ship!
I was worried that this would turn into Walky only going out with Lucy because Dorothy said it was a good idea, and he wouldn’t actually be all that into it.
That may still happen, but it’s a little hopeful that he was kind of clueless about it.
Bagge, I’d argue that walky being this dense to lucy’s affections is proof that he isn’t as in to her. But we’ll see if that starts to change now that he realizes her feelings.
Sure, I mean, a lot can happen from this point.
But my main prediction, that him not responding to her advances was a conscious choice, is firmly refuted. There is no salvaging my pride from here.
i think seppuku is the only honourable thing to do here.
I’ll go with a eating a milkshake.
If you had a really nasty milk allergy that would be A method of performing seppuku…
Otherwise, let the sweet, sugary calories comfort you. Bonus points if the milkshake is blended chocolate bar/candy/cake snack bar + ice cream + milk.
ooh, good thinking. getting a shake is in fact extremely honourable.
In the game Eve Online, I have a ship named Dishonor On Your Cow.
Not that that is relevant to anything else.
that is a truly excellent ship name. thank you for this.
He’s probably not completely over Dorothy yet either. That would put some blinders on.
I can say from personal experience that not being aware someone was into you is not at all evidence you weren’t into them.
likewise
Her face in panel 2 and 4 is priceless. Good work, Willis.
Walky is making progress. It took him only a few moments to understand Dorothy’s “Seriously?” look. But will he accept Lucy’s love?
When I was young and dumb, I was in the Navy with a ridiculous mustache. An attractive girl I knew told me she wanted to “ride my mustache”. I laughed it off, like lol right. Months later, she was like “What’s your problem with me?” And I’m like “What do you mean?” “I was coming on to you, and you never made a move.” And I’m like “I thought you were joking”.
Some of us really are that oblivious to another person’s romantic interest.
I think the trouble is that, for a lot of people, they have a certain “type” or they think someone is out of their league or for whatever reason they don’t immediately file someone as “yeah, this is somebody I’d like to date”, and thus viewed through that lens, they interpret all of that person’s flirtations or interest as merely “they’re just a nice person” or “they’re being supportive of me, hence the compliments” or “they just like hanging out with me, that’s why we’re together all the time” and never think it might mean something deeper.
From there, of course, it could either turn out good if the interest can be reciprocated, or bad if there just isn’t any attraction, and somebody’s heart is gonna get broken.
Walky-oblivious on the receiving end and Lucy-direct on the giving end is a deadly combo.
Yup. That, coupled with massive anxiety, was why I didn’t date in high school. A girl could have walked down the hallway with my name on a sandwich board, yelling “I like this guy, who sits behind me in biology class” while the school band marched behind her playing a love song, and I’d have been like “Huh, didn’t know there someone in bio class has the same name as me.” I sympathize Walky, I really do….
Reminded of a quote in JMS autobiography. ‘If you want to flirt with JMS, you have to start taking off his clothes. He won’t get any hints you give him below that.’
I’m in this strip but I’m too oblivious to notice it.
I see what you did there.
I think a girl may have flirted with me once at Uni, about 20 years ago. I’m still not entirely certain.
I do know I got the definite sense the conversation didn’t go the way she expected, but most conversations with me don’t go the way people expect, whether they’re flirting or not.
Lumus totally called it yesterday
Walky showed no disbelief. He went from surprised to accepting.
ok, they almost totally called it!
hey, a lot of us straight dudes today testifying to how terrible many of us are at picking up signs of interest from women.
i said as much in a comment a bit higher, but i’m starting to think there’s too much of a pattern here to be purely a coincidence.
this society is still a patriarchy lads, so maybe it also behooves us to make allowances for chicks being wary of being seen as too forward… it’s sad and all, but under a heterosexist regime straight men and women simply do not occupy the same positions, and that very much applies when it comes to flirting and dating.
any thoughts?
(i live in france but i think this broadly applies to at least all of european & north-american societies)
(also of course this is not a exclusively cis-het-male trait, nor is it purely reducible to gendered factors in every individual case. maybe re-read this sentence before replying? just in case it turns out that covers it?)
It’s worth noting that, at least in America, social media is rife with stories of women being annoyed that they can’t ‘just be friendly’ with guys, that ‘just because I hang with you, doesn’t mean I am into you’, etc. After seeing enough of those responses, it becomes the safe bet to assume a lack of attraction, even if or when engaging in behavior that others perceive as flirtation. Add into that a person who naturally engages in light banter (or, flirting), and you get someone who won’t recognize any signs to begin with, and who won’t act on any signs they do recognize, because they are sufficiently conditioned to disregard said signs.
but surely in mixed friendships, women crush on men just as often as the reverse? i feel like i’m missing something for why this seems to be a gender-polarized issue according to you. and anyway i don’t feel like this really bears on my main point, being that flirting with men is possibly more fraught for women than the reverse?
also, look up emotional labour if that’s a concept you’re not familiar with (here’s a piece by Jess Zimmerman i haven’t read in a while but i remember finding it illuminating). i think in many cases of mixed friendships, whoever has a crush on the other, the female friend will be the one bearing the brunt of the effort to talk things through, so that’s one reason why women might complain about this more.
It is gender polarized because everything about dating is gender polarized.
Women certainly do crush on men and women do bear the brunt of the emotional labor of managing any misunderstandings — which goes both ways, since depending on the circumstance they’re either trying to indicate interest (which the guy could be missing or not interested in) or trying to keep the guy’s romantic interest at bay without revealing that’s what they’re doing.
Partly because many still have the old programming that it should be the guy taking the active role in asking, but also knowing that many guys take rejection badly.
Flirting is definitely more fraught for women than men, but so is rejecting flirting, so a guy who’s aware of that will be looking for signs that she’s interested before being too blatant, to avoid putting her on the spot.
A lot of this does go both ways, with both sides engaging in the little dance of trying to signal what they want and read the other’s signals, with varying degrees of success.
hear hear
I’m much more terrified of straight dudes misreading basic friendship as a crush than i am of having to be more direct to get a guys attention. So uh, yeah, keep being oblivious lads, the alternative is much worse
well hey, if it works out for you, that’s cool =)
i guess i do still wish guys were more emotionally literate, though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is a good point, and thank you for bringing it up.
(For the record, I’m neither straight nor a man, but most people see me as both.)
There’s a whole stew of intersecting reasons here. One, as you brought up, is society’s (weakening, but still definitely there) insistence that men pursue and women gatekeep. Women are definitely socially penalized for being open and frank about their attractions (especially if said attractions aren’t reciprocated). Ironically, attempting to defy those roles gives rise to another issue here: men who don’t want to be pushy or entitled to a woman’s affection. A lot of guys are trying their best to not be the story everyone’s looking at in horror on r/relationships.
Then there’s the fact that a lot of straight guys (particularly among the “oblivious” group) honestly don’t see themselves as attractive. Partially because, well, straight, partially because they don’t fit in society’s narrow bounds for “hot guy,” partially because of a lack of confidence. If you think you’re a weird schlubby nerd, you’re more likely to also think that that stunningly beautiful woman couldn’t possibly be interested in you romantically.
Sprinkle in non-neurotypical people (turns out those supposedly universal signs of attraction aren’t universal at all!) and you end up with well-meaning guys who don’t want to overstep their bounds with that woman who isn’t showing clear signs of interest and who’s way out of their league anyway.
Anyway, I’m not sure there is an answer here beyond dismantling sexist patriarchal assumptions and allowing for open communication of desires, but maybe a temporary fix would be for people to allow for more generous assumptions: Women, maybe he’s not dense or intentionally ignoring you, maybe he’s trying to be respectful. Men, she’s probably not lying in wait waiting to splash the story of the jerk who actually thought she was interested in him all over social media.
sure, i agree generally but in terms of there being some sort of an imbalance in terms of who’s oblivious to who, like of course some guys have insecurities and/or are have different abilities to comprehend subtle cues, and we could also talk of cultural differences etc; but all of these factors apply just as much to women.
I think there well could be the imbalance you wonder about, but also there’s a lot to consider in the demographics providing the stories here (those who comment on this particular webcomic) and what it’s in response to– a particular arc in said webcomic about a guy being oblivious to a girl’s interest. That’s going to attract comment from people who can relate.
As for my experience, I’m queer & nonbinary, and my general sense is that I can read signals from men okay, but I might be being overly cautious. Meanwhile, I’m shit at reading signals from people of other genders. Only a few people of other genders have explicitly expressed interest in me in my life, but I’ve been blindsided each time.
oh you’re absolutely right, this is speculation based on a small, biased sample to begin with. it did seem a worthwhile exercisej though because some gendered generalities have been floated around by some of the commenters (“girls, you need to do this or that to get our attention” etc) so i thought, eh, can’t hurt to suggest a different perspective and see what reactions that elicits maybe.
i do intuitively feel that there’s some truth this slant, and to the patchy explanations i’ve attempted for it— probably because it aligns with my experience. but none of this is particularly grounded. oh well!
This is completely believable to me.
A while ago, I wound up back in contact via social media with a woman that I had gone to college with, leading to this conversation:
Her: I had a huge crush on you back in school.
Me: What? I would totally have gone out with you. Why didn’t you say something?
Her: I flirted with you constantly.
Me: Okay, you have to understand that I am very oblivious. You basically would have had to climb onto my lap.
Her: I did that twice!
Women out there concocting all sorts of tricks when a simple “i want you to be my king” would suffice. It’s not (only) that we’re oblivious, and we are. Girls are b a d at putting this stuff clearly and bluntly on thr table
FWIW, I’ve read statements from males and females alike complaining that the other side apparently thinks that they are telepathic and can interpret unspoken expressions of interest with perfect clarity. If you want my opinion, I suspect it is more a case of extreme nervousness and a fear of being perceived as being ‘too forward’.
i imagine you were responding to my comment above Ben?
i think you’re right, there are many reasons why a person of any gender might be reluctant or shy about making an explicit pass at someone.
however, i suspect that among the factors that might cause some to be nervous, a variety of gendered expectations (emotional labour) and fears (slut-shaming, bullying, assault) probably play some sort of role. i would be pretty astonished, though happy, to hear that that’s not the case.
we’re talking about a widespread phenomenon obviously, certainly among the readers of this strip, and i thought i would at least put this attempt at a feminist take out there and see if anyone feels like that’s an angle worth taking.
in that vein, i think Hinoron above makes a good point when he says that girls are far more likely than boys to have consumed a lot of romance in their lives; but i don’t think it follows that women are therefore more responsible for making their intentions clear. the way i think about it, is that boys are disincentivized to care about emotional work under the assumption that it will generally be shouldered by the girls/women around them. symmetrically, girls are trained from a young age to take on that role in their families, friendships, workplaces. no wonder we don’t have the same frame of reference, and missing out on dating opportunities is only one of the bad consequences of such an unbalance.
I doubt it has much to do with consuming more romance, but the expectations and fears. Women frankly have more to fear from making bad relationship choices in our society than men do. Even a rejection can be dangerous or doing something that signals interest.
I’d say that it should be on the interested party to take responsibility for making their intentions clear, but that leaves us with the flip side of Lucy’s hesitation in the face of Walky’s obliviousness: Someone like Joe who keeps making his intentions clear even with no indication of interest from the other party – thus pushing the emotional labor of rejecting him (and worrying about the consequences) onto women.
There are no simple solutions, I’m afraid.
you’re right, the part where girls are fed more romance is not itself the issue.
what i meant is that cultivating an interest in the intricacies of romantic scenarios in young girls, while that is discouraged in boys, is part of how they are differentially gendered in childhood.
The interested party should make their intentions clear, and the other party should make their response clear. Preferably using clear, spoken language.
This… really isn’t as hard as people are making it out to be.
Lucy: “Walky I’m interested in you, would you like to go on a date?”
Walky: “Yes that would be nice/no I’m not interested sorry but I still enjoy your company”
That would do it fine.
That’s the most unromantic exchange I can imagine.
> I doubt it has much to do with consuming more romance, but the expectations and fears. Women frankly have more to fear from making bad relationship choices in our society than men do. Even a rejection can be dangerous or doing something that signals interest.
The version I’ve heard went something like:
“Men worry that women won’t like them. Women worry that men will try to rape and/or kill them.”
if it makes anyone feel better, a girl told me she had loved me for years and all I could think of was “she’s just messing with me, right?”
admittedly this was middle school and people loved to do the ‘ask egg out on april fools day’ to me, so i was rightfully skeptical, but i can’t believe i never followed up on that
See I just figured the problem with being forward about your interest is that doing so requires having enough self confidence to go through with it and not inherently feel like you can come off as a weirdo, except believing I could come off as a weirdo is indicative that I don’t have the self confidence to pull it off.
Dorothy’s look is my look. And yet, Walky’s response is also my response. I contain multitudes. Incredibly dysfunctional multitudes.
Dorothy shows discipline in resisting the urge to get back with Walky, and is rewarded with an immediate reminder of why it never would have worked
So, if I’m reading the signs correctly, here’s what happens next:
Walky returns to the room to propose to Lucy.
He is met with a flying crotch to the face.
Jennifer points and laughs.
It’s like LAWsome but with sex.
LAWsome Slipshine
He’ll just assume Lucy is really into pro wrestling.
Go for it, Walky – it gets you a wife plus pisses off that snotball prick Booster. Win-win.
First of all – what? What emotional stake does Booster have in this?
Second thing, I don’t know if “prick” is a great word to use on someone who isn’t a 55-year-old white guy named Chuck. Your username looks sorta Danish, so I’m maybe making a leap here, but in English, “prick” is generally a masculine-assigned term, being slang for a penis and often used as an insult for older men. I don’t think it’s especially appropriate for a they/them character.
amen. that was unnecessarily brutal.
there are canonically vile characters you can pile all your hate on, but please, try to remain at least somewhat civil about characters that matter some of us.
In other news, despite a deep understanding of the human condition, Booster is still unpaired.
I would say a missed factor no one is discussing here is that Walky was also bullied. As someone who was also bullied, I literally can’t tell you if anyone legitimately had a crush on me in high school or if they were just trying to mess with me but I hated the ones that acted like they did regardless. If anyone has PRETENDED to be interested in him, that definitely could have made him less able to see any signs that do exist outwardly as real interest.
Walky was bullied? i didn’t remember that. but yeah, that would do it.
Even Jennifer was one of Walky’s bullies back in school, as I recall.
As I recall, it has been mentioned by Jennifer that he was a dweeb and that she used to like push him into lockers. In searching through strips, I have found that the strips Alice were in which remind me that they heavily imply that Walky was used to being shunted to another table as soon as Jennifer found someone cooler to talk to. So it sounds like in high school he wasn’t particularly popular, Jennifer bullied him, and given that she was the popular head cheerleader at the time, it isn’t unlikely that other people followed her lead in doing so as well.
right i remember the scene with Alice. Yeah, i felt bad for Walky then.
i didn’t read it as a clear sign that he was bullied necessarily but it would square if he was.
Oh! Almost forgot that in one of the flashbacks involving Leland, he was shown intimidating Walky as well. There are probably things I’m still forgetting, but yeah, I’m fairly sure he was bullied. And like, he did put up with a looooot of Jennifer’s behaviour early in the comic of basically saying he wasn’t worth talking to as if that was perfectly normal acceptable behaviour.
Look Walky, if you want people not to think you’re girly in any way, you have to be less of a lesbian when it comes to love. “No no we’re just very good friends” no you’re on your fourth date
“I wondered why there was a U-Haul double-parked outside.”
Yell that even louder why don’t you
what you said exactly, but without being sarcastic =D
Dorothy’s faces here are a thrill in their own right.
God for once I’m agreeing with Walky here.
Becky wrote the alt text
What do the girls even see in Walky? He’s pretty stupid and has issues.
I’m with Walky if a woman doesn’t say “I like you” then I’m not going to know.
Did panel four make anyone else immediately think of Cuba Gooding Jr. looking over his glasses at Tom Cruise after accusing him of shoplifting the pootie in Jerry Maguire?