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She fights it by supporting the victims, and by judiciously choosing her battles with the perpetrator (notably, getting involved only when they ask her to, and winning). Not sure what else one can expect an 18-year-old to do about her not-quite-friends’ shitty mom.
I can’t recall if she’s ever had an explicit conversation with Sal about it, but Jennifer has always been supporting Sal in the background. She’s never shied away from backing Sal up to those who don’t want to hear or believe her, which I think is why those two still get along after years of the Walkertons favoring Jennifer over their biological daughter.
Yup, pope’s got it. She also went to bat for the twins vis-a-vis Linda being vindictive against Amber after the kidnapping. They asked for her help with their mom and she stepped up immediately. I get that commenters would love to see Linda put in her place but she’s pretty dang powerful in the DoA world. What’s Jennifer gonna do? Start a fistfight? Escalate every argument until she forfeits her position as an effective advocate? She’s far from a perfect person, but dang, the premise that she doesn’t “bother” to fight Linda because she’s unimpacted is…Jesus, I don’t know. Uncharitably fundamentalist, let’s say.
Right, she drew the line at assaulting a senior citizen who might be a veteran. Didn’t know how best to support Ruth in that moment, but she certainly wanted to.
Also, is this Ms. Billingsworth showing a bit of actual empathy for a forest quad nerd? (I don’t anticipate a tonne of growth here. Just analyzing the armour for cracks.)
She’s right, though. Lucy needs to focus on building a future with Walky without wasting her energy trying to impress Linda N’ Toadie….Billingsworth could do no wrong in her surrogate mother’s eyes and she still sees Linda for what she is.
Frankly, I’m seeing Lucy’s response to this as evidence she very much is the keeper she believes herself to be. I always pictured Jungian Innocents who find Life’s way of putting people into unwinnable situations designed to make them feel like they’re perfectly winnable and you *have* to grin and bare it to be very infuriating as a sign that they see the World as clearly as any cynic. Seriously, she technically got her high for her future with Walky smashed to pieces, and she’s doing a fine job of not taking it out on anyone. Doesn’t like how Sarah does that, so she makes an effort not to do so.
As knee-jerky as it makes Lucy and some folk here, Jennifer is right.
Why does the goalpost move? To folks like Linda, it’s NEVER bigotry. It’s always a billion loaded, inconsistent, bullshit reasons for policies, customs, *traditions*, standards and decisions that JUST HAPPEN to hurt minorities more than they hurt the straight, white, affluent, “normal”, “””respectable””” people who’ve held power in this country for centuries.
Either Linda doesn’t know she’s bigoted and refuses to admit she’s been misguided because of pride or some shit, or she knows she’s a bigot and won’t tell anyone, on the premise that it doesn’t matter to her or even that she thinks that it’s a good thing.
Regardless, it is evident that attempts to change her mind are futile. Walky, Lucy, break the cycle. Change the things that you CAN. Your parents and parents-in-law are not automatically good or joyful to be around because “family”, but of course you don’t realize that if you are in the habit of perceiving what things in your life are *supposed* to be as opposed to what they actually ARE.
Give up kicking the football, Charlie Brown.
Why not do something actually joyful? Like for instance watching Dexter and Monkey Master? Or playing Joyce’s Nightmare? Or Snood?
Or better yet, you still have a few seconds to pull Walky by the collar into your room and bone him immediately.
I mean aren’t you the racist for not seeing it’s really Lucy who has some quality that just screams “budding criminal”? I mean, look into those eyes. She is pure evil.
I dunno about her eyes, but it’s definitely something else in the face region… Maybe something to do with the complexion – something about it just leads people like Walky’s mom to impressions like a “*dark* future” for her son if he dates this girl. Maybe she thinks Lucy’s a superficial girl, and her personality only goes *skin-deep*. Besides, Walky doesn’t need to be dating anyone right now – after all, it’s not a *race*. Besides, with Walky’s track-record, Linda would be doing Lucy a favor by scaring her off this early into the relationship – she wouldn’t want their breakup to be a *black* mark on their school life, right?
… Fifth euphemism about Linda’s (benefit of the doubt) unintentional racial bias that can’t help coming out when she talks.
I don’t suppose Walky can stay away from his family as long as they’re putting him through school, but he can let their bullshit roll off his back. My second wife’s parents didn’t want her marrying a goy. We gave their wants no regard at all.
Not every problem can be solved by ‘pulling someone into your room and boning them immediately’.
On the other hand, it does tend to give you something else to think about for a while…
Jennifer is making her brand “she’s right but she shouldn’t have crossed that line”. Mike at least had the decency to mask the barbed truth with juvenile insults so you could offload some of the anger on hating him.
“Moving Goal Posts” is a currently popular idiom for NPD parents and a method they use to control their prey that makes trying to prove anything to them or make them happy/proud/comfortable/any act beyond common formality a glorified trap. Makes sense that it would apply to Linda.
It’s not even NPD. These are literally so-called “pick-up artist” techniques of Negging and Love-Bombing, in which some dude-bro denigrates you and undermines your confidence so you fixate your attention on them and seek their recognition, only for them to suddenly turn around and treat you “well”.
In which they still HORRIBLY insult the way you talk, look, your interests, tastes, beliefs, etc, but the criticisms are now directed at “””them””” — your friends, your communities, your homies. But not you. The dude-bro tells you you’re better than “”””them”””, like he sees potential in you. After trying to get their respect for what seems like forever, suddenly having it, or what seems like it, seems cool.
But it isn’t REALLY respect. What’s actually going on here is a thinly veiled form of grooming.
I would dare say that this would be the first time where he is not so indifferent towards her, I mean, in the last panel his expression shows some concern.
Maybe I read too much into significance of kisses and what they show in this strip. Her apologizing in the same situation where he 1. made a crude joke and 2. did an “I told you so”, and punctuating it with possibly their first kiss.
Best I can get for what it represents about their relationship is something Mym said yesterday.
“Lucy is doing literally all of the lifting-heavy and light- in this relationship.”
I think Lucy knows Jennifer’s right, too, and also that she genuinely means it when she says she is sorry here. Like, Jennifer isn’t really any more fond of Linda’s shit on this than the twins are, but she’s also in a position where she can’t really rock the boat with the pedestal they’ve got her on.
And if she does start making waves, Jennifer doesn’t get dumked – Sal and Walky get waterboarded for it.
Sometimes you protect others until they figure out how to protect themselves, because any other option only leads to more pain on them (personal experience? This sucks). I do wonder just how much interference Jennifer has run, rightly or wrongly, for Walky’s sake over the years.
Being in an emotional state might make ppl double down but given such an unpleasant experience with Linda i’d def not be in a rush to spend time with them again (tho i’d get emotionally drained even if i had a good time, so i prolly wouldn’t wanna spend time with ppl twice in a row even if they were related to a partner lol)
I think Jennifer isn’t supposed to care about these nerds. That was Billie’s thing. And so it underscores how much she hasn’t really left Billie despite her convincing herself she has.
Awww this would be so sweet if only Walky didn’t look like he sighed mid-sentence about suggesting church.
I’ll be kinder to Walky/Lucy today than I’ve been. I would on the whole consider this a positive sweet interaction between them, especially because it’s sometimes very hard to do a good read of Walky’s facial expressions and tone.
If he is sighing, I think he’s maybe just exhausted with the ordeal they’ve been through. Like, he doesn’t have to offer to go to church with her, so even if it’s not something he wants to do for its own sake, I don’t think it’s what he’s sighing about exactly.
I think he just wants to do something nice for her to meet her in the middle after all the shit Lucy’s been dealing with.
Also Walky is an extremely lapsed catholic at best and probably more agnostic than anything, he’s not much for church. That he’s willing to participate with her, even reluctantly, that’s not nothing
He isn’t really the church-going type, they aren’t a good match. And I don’t get the impression the parents would approve of her churchiness even if she were white enough for them. Both of them deserve better! Lucy could be dating some boy who is into her and whose parents either reserve judgment on a two-week relationship or think she’s a sociable, serious person.
Question: has it been determined that Jacob also has the sex addiction thing from his Shortpacked counterpart? If so, that could be a dealbreaker because Lucy wants to have sex. Badly. She just wants it to fit her checkboxes and in doing so, be meaningful.
Also, remember when Jacob said that his new girlfriend checklist would probably look a lot like Joyce? You know, the girl who’s been referred to as an alternate version of Lucy at least twice? Yeah, I’m here for that, I think that could be a good match.
i’m surprised he’d even think of it, unless his parents are also religious and also invited them, but dealing with the parents would be annoying that early in the day let alone also at church
I want to like this. I know Walky’s offer to go with Lucy to church is his version of reciprocating her apology.
(And inasmuch as either of them have done anything to warrant an apology, they both have; they’ve both been kind of short with each other here, mutually frustrated by how lunch went.)
But man, what an anticlimactic first on-panel kiss. Definitely indicates that they’ve already kissed for the first time, but we didn’t get to see it??
Regarding the kiss, that’s what I think, based on this. That was certainly too calm and not enough reaction out of either of them to be a first time kiss.
(Walky tries but this really isn’t the best relationship)
I took the pause as a “thinking on his feet” pause to come up with an event they could share on Sunday that Lucy would particularly appreciate, but you could be right.
she looks SO GOOD in the bold red. I want to get style tips from her!!!
I also secretly want to cosplay Jennifer. I’m Chinese, have black hair cut in a bob, and I wear glasses… but I would be terrible at expressing her personality hahaha (am much more of a Lucy than a Jennifer)
Jennifer and Tall Rachel are Willis’s exercises in how shitty he can make a character before it overrides their attractiveness. Tall Rachel plummeted into the planet core as soon as she said “Redemption is a story,” and Jennifer is his balancing act on a mono-molecular edge.
Eh, Linda did still marry and settle down with Chuck, so (unless there’s a shoe which hasn’t dropped about that relationship) you probably could theoretically win her over
I take that as Linda doesn’t really consider herself as racist. This is just going by the common, older, middle-class white folks that I’ve run into but many of them have had interracial relationships, married to this day to people of different ethnicities. So they see themselves as well above any ideas of being racist. By their logic, even reasoning, they were the progressive ones of their day. It might be true. They could see beyond race and into content and character. Their relationships meant something–which inevitably puts blinders on them with age and being asleep at the wheel. Lulled into everything they once thought themselves above.
‘I do know better. I’m not racist. I’m not a bigot. I married outside of my race. It means I understand more than others, because I was ahead of the curve.’
Pretty much. Hence the “But your dad is…!” “I KNOW!” Linda believes she’s above racism because she married a black man and had his kids. Ipso facto, she can’t be racist, she just has motherly intuition about the people their kids spend time with.
Not surprisingly, Willis has a creative fascination with bad, controlling, emotionally blind parents.
Racism is about how you treat the people you don’t know. Bigotry is about continuing to treat them that way after you get to know them. Linda might change her mind if she gets to know Lucy, but I don’t think Linda wants to do that.
Yeah, but Linda’s the dominant one in that relationship. And whatever her views on how brilliant Walky has to be, she’s surely aware that he takes after his father in that regard, and that whatever partner he ends up with will but the one pushing him in the right direction. Hence why Dorothy was perfect (since Linda doesn’t know that the reason that relationship worked was because Walky helped Dorothy relax, rather than the other way round). Pushy white woman + dark-skinned male slacker = good. Dark-skinned male slacker + dominant even darker woman? Oh hell no.
I suspect “winning her over” is less “doing anything to impress her” and more “becoming a fait accompli”. If this relationship goes the distance, and they end up married, Linda will be scandalized if ever reminded she was less than 100% supportive of her new daughter-in-law and the relationship with her son.
And of course, she’ll have to keep a close eye on those grandbabies, to make sure they end up being some of the good ones, not delinquents like Sal…
I also suspect Linda would be extremely critical of Lucy’s family and any friends that don’t meet her approval for unknowable reasons.
With the information we have I fully believe it’s possible for someone to become ‘one of the good ones’ in Linda’s eyes. It’s just y’know, that still sucks for them and doesn’t change the core problems with her behaviour.
I know Billie/Jennifer doesn’t always give the best advice, but right now I get the feeling she is 100% on the mark. If Lucy just wants to get laid then she should stick with Walky, but if she wants a relationship that has a future she should find someone else.
I guess the question is if Lucy has to have Linda’s approval to have Walky, if that’s important to either of them. In general, Lucy wants to be liked and thought well of, but between this and Sarah and her dorm mates when Jennifer came, it’s brought her its fair share of grief, too.
I don’t think she has to have Linda’s approval to have Walky at all (although I think if Walky does sleep with her it’ll be because of hormones or out of a sense of obligation). I think she wants Linda’s approval because she has a rigid set of categories that things are supposed to fall into to be “right,” and parental approval of the guy you’re sleeping with is one of those boxes.
Jennifer doesn’t say anything like that at all. She just says she’s not going to be able to be “respectable” enough for the parents.
But she doesn’t need parental approval for the relationship to have a future. Or if she does, that’s her own choice.
…is this the first strip post-timeskip where Jennifer is 100%, unambiguously right?
Because yeah, she’s dead right here. It fucking sucks, and Lucy does need to be aware of it, but the way that Linda and Charles are acting, Lucy will never be good enough.
Also, note Jennifer’s use of “them”. Not “her”. Linda’s the obvious problem, but Charles is just as complicit in it, and Jennifer knows it.
Agree, I think it’s especially important that Lucy realizes that Charles isn’t great either because otherwise she’ll always keep hoping, thinking that she’s halfway to full parental approval.
i’m sure jennifer could also ‘put in a good word’ on lucy’s behalf since they seem to respect/listen to her opinion considering she’s also mixed/not fully white (tho ‘asian’ tends to get a pass with ppl racist against darker skin XP) but i imagine other than the occasional chat jen also doesn’t go outta her way to talk to them as well
I suspect even the respect they show Jennifer is mostly surface level. She probably would put on a friendlier face for Lucy if Jennifer vouched for her but she also said she would do that when Sal was briefly in her good graces, it was more about “rewarding” good behavior with false respect the genuine opinion change.
She’s always been on the mark about the Walkertons tbh. That’s not surprising, since she grew up in their home, but it’s still a stand-out area for her. She was a big park of Walky learning to stand up for Sal and starting to repair his sibling relationship; he had his head in the sand before Jennifer spelled it out for him, and so wasn’t a great ally. It’s also an area Jennifer has always displayed some amount of tact. She’s never seemed to relish what she says, and she’s never been cruel about it- though I imagine it can seem that way because it’s bad enough when said matter-of-factly. Lucy would do well to listen and maybe to have a conversation. I think it could really help her decide if she wants to keep putting in the effort for Walky and for this relationship.
Hasn’t Jennifer’s family and Walky’s family known each other for a long time? Lucy should probably trust her advice on Linda. Nothing Lucy does will make her “Good Enough for Walky/David” in Linda’s eyes. There’s no pleasing bigots.
I think it’s not that Lucy doesn’t trust Jennifer’s advice, it’s that she knows Jennifer is right and she hates it. Lucy is a stubborn and determined young lady and she really REALLY wants to make things work with Walky… and in her idealized head, that includes winning over his parents and getting their approval for a future marriage. Hearing that she will likely never get that, and realizing that it’s likely true, there’s nothing more for her to do then to double down and insist that maybe if she tries REALLY hard, it’ll change this time.
I agree, and in general, Lucy seems to want very much to be liked and accepted.
It doesn’t help that, outside of Becky, Sarah was not entirely wrong when she said Walky’s friends interact with her due to her connection to Walky, though I do also think Sarah was constructing a bad faith argument there given that, while that was the initial reason, it was mostly since that was the impetus for her really meeting them. It doesn’t mean they otherwise got nothing out of it.
Still, that hit hard for Lucy, and this is hitting even harder.
What’s interesting is that this isn’t even the hardest-hitting thing Jennifer could say. The harshest truth would be to follow up this comment with, “And Walky is never going to stand up to them for you.” (Okay, maybe “never” is too much, but he’d need to do a lot of growing up to get to that point.) Because THAT is what matters; she’s dating Walky, not his parents, but when those parents say that their kid is “slumming it” by dating her and he does nothing about it—she’s got a boyfriend problem, not an in-laws problem. Walky simply isn’t mature enough to recognize the long-term consequences of refusing to rock the boat with his mother. Most college freshmen aren’t. But it actively hurts someone else he is meant to care about, and his big solution is to try to keep Lucy away from them after demonstrating a “worse” option didn’t pan out well.
I mean sure, but it’s a college freshman struggling to cope with recognizing how abusive his family life was now that he’s starting to get a little distance from them. He’s already come a long way since the start of last semester – mostly with Sal. He’s also still completely dependent on not rocking the boat with his mother and the long term consequences of that are pretty serious.
And, as I’ve said before, that was all aimed at Walky. Lucy was just a tool to hurt him with. Framing this as if it was all about how she was hurt and he needs to defend/console her is very strange to me.
The proper solution at this point is in fact to keep them separate, while getting in a position to go no-contact if necessary when you don’t rely on them any more. There’s no winning in confronting them, any more than there is in Lucy trying to be more respectable to win them over.
I don’t think it’s entirely out of the realm of possibility she might try. Not going to lay money on it, and definitely don’t see it going well, but not ruling it out.
I think Jennifer has a pretty good idea that trying to talk Linda out of her bigotry is futile. She may have already run up against it when she was dating girls, part of her self-loathing is seeing through all that conditional approval.
well, she did warn them before, but telling her to stop prolly wouldn’t help , even if it’s not worth it (i mean walky isn’t exactly starving for his parents approval anyways, it’s not as if him having a gf they don’t approve of is as ‘bad’ as like him flunking through college)
Didn’t expect Jennifer to have that tinge of concern for Lucy, especially considering she’s not fond of Walky. Must be some first- and/or second-hand childhood experiences of the Walkertons’ colorism towards their twins and herself.
Good point about Jennifer’s socioeconomic standing. If Lucy came from a well-to-do family I wonder if they, especially Linda, would’ve treated her more favorably.
Jennifer’s got… very complex feelings about Walky that include seemingly deliberately lying to downplay aspects of it, like when she said he named her Billie, something that isn’t actually how it happened. (It’s possible she simply misremembers what happened, but my theory is more that she finds it embarrassing because “Billie” and “Walky” originated together and it is a tie between them, and that she’s had off and on feelings for him over the years that she can’t reconcile easily with her persona, same with her love of Kit Fisto.)
In any case, Jennifer does care about Walky, he just also pisses her off a lot.
“Walky, don’t walk to me, you’re a nerd.”
“Walky, I’m going to help you get a girlfriend”
*crawls into Walky’s bed for emotional comfort*
Plus Walky is her “emergency contact” or “next of kin”, as revealed when she and Ruth went to the suicide clinic.
She often finds Walky annoying and embarrassing, but she’s also “the third Walkerton kid”, they’re tangled up together much like siblings, and she does try to help him.
It’s kind of tsundere, though I don’t think there’s any romantic substrate.
Honestly, the best thing they can do after going to church is to keep busy until end of the parent visit. If they are lucky the Walkertons will leave without another meet up. Maybe Linda stay away waiting for the relationship to end.
when’s the next major in universe holiday for them? maybe walky can have thanksgiving at lucy’s parents home if linda wouldn’t take it as a ‘calculated move’ or so on their part lol
Easter, I think, unless there’s some weird American thing before then. Other than Valentine’s Day, which isn’t a holiday but does have the potential for delightful screw-ups from absolutely everyone in the cast, so I hope it won’t be skipped over the way Halloween was.
Two possibilities. There’s President’s Day, but that’s more a three day mattress sale holiday than a go home holiday. But IUB’s spring break for 2024 is before Easter. And I could see a trip home as being something some of the characters might do.
Jennifer might, depending on how close she is with her Chinese ancestry.
But I doubt we’d really see a major celebration of it in the Walkyverse, the only East/Southeast Asian ethnicities in the cast are Jennifer and Faz, who are both half and may not necessarily do anything for it.
Dina is third generation American and the Japanese don’t really do anything for it anyway.
well, she hasn’t said anything that’s been ‘worse’ than how sarah put it, at least she’s trying to be a good friend instead of just ignoring it. Tho it would be better trying to talk to walky, maybe with sal together or so to make him put more of an effort, even if it doesn’t work out with walky/lucy in the long term, he’s still stuck with his parents.
The kiss here is interesting in that I don’t think it’s their first, just, onscreen. Neither of them seems thrown by it. I guess if nothing else, it may suggest the two are more physically intimate than people, myself included, sometimes assumed, even if they haven’t banged yet.
That’s seeming more plausible now. But maybe the “floating” in panel 4 is her reaction to it finally kissing him. Or not, hopefully upcoming strips make it a little more clear.
I get that Lucy doesnt like being on the outside or social marginalized, but if She expects social approval to run her relationship with Walky, there is no relationship.
I get that its a buzzkill , but she needs to trim these expecatations and live her best life.
She didnt even consider making out with walky to cheer up.
She has the Boy and Walky doesnt need outside approval.
Dad likes her.
One thing Jennifer/ Billie have wrong, and know it is this: the goalpost hasn’t changed, she is the goalpost.
She is the chosen daughter(inlaw). She is the tomboy-best-friend, who will marry their son (OK, the daughter will do, just marry one of them). She’s just mixed enough for the “not racist” fiction, yet white enough for the racist reality. She has the social standing of a rich father. She is who they want. She is the goalpost.
Walky asked her for a church date to make her feel better, and she instinctively instrumentalitized it for Social Climbing. Hes trying to make it up to you, not please his mother.
Shes being clueless that this telegraphs not wanting Walky.
I know it’s the constant refrain here, but have we seen anything in the actual comic showing she’s upset about him not standing up for her? Rather than about them not approving and just the whole trauma of it all in general.
not everything needs to be handled with delicacy and Jennifer really didn’t cross any lines here. at worst we’re assuming a catty tone, which I think most adults can survive.
you don’t have to be good enough for his parents; Just for him.
before anyone takes it the wrong way, i mean that you shouldn’t try to impress unreasonable 3rd parties like them. The relationship is between her and walky, at the end of the day ,the bad cop/somewhat bad cop duo aren’t needed.
Be with your man, Be happy, let linda seethe. There’s nothing a person like her hates more than being ignored.
Problem is that you’re putting your partner between a rock and a hard place, basically asking them to either choose you or their parents. Which at first glance might seem like not a big deal, but there’s a lot of emotional baggage in the relationship between parent and child. Even people who have objectively horrible parents tend to have trouble giving up or throttling that bond.
Plus being a student tends to make the situation extra complicated since students often rely on their parents for the ability to educate themselves, either by their parents directly paying for their education or by just pitching in here and there. Getting on the wrong foot with their parents can have negative effects that end up leading to massive consequences further down the line. Wouldn’t be the first kid kicked out of school because their parents stopped paying tuition over some bullshit.
Willis has a wonderful skill: been able to finally give one of their characters something they’re looking for (first kiss) and panels after, riin everything (Jennifer)
People interested in “brutal honesty” are almost always after the brutality and not the honesty. This might be the first Jennifer/Lucy reaction where Jennifer is actually being compassionate and not an asshole like Sarah.
Nice to see Jennifer said that she’s sorry. This could be the most friendly moment between she and Lucy ever. Poor Lucy will walk a very difficult path if she wants to be with Walky. But she’s has friends on her side. I like her love story with Walky and I’m rooting for her.
Aw hell yeah it is.
The super hot cheerleader and the goofy boy definitely had something secret going on in high school.
Wonder what caused Linda to tip THAT apple cart over?
Jennifer really could have passed that message in a way that didn’t sound like “you’ll never be good enough” like she COULD have said “you don’t need their blessing or validation. They will always make up new ways to criticize you.” Or something like that. It’s not Lucy’s fault or her problem that Walky’s mom will never accept any non white partner.
I saw it as a reference to “respectability politics,” and how now matter how much a minority adapts to the norms of the dominant group bigots in that dominant group will never accept the minority as “one of us.”
I have an insane theory. The big timeskip / book 11 was a “soft reset”, but I think that means more than just “things happened in these kids’ lives that we don’t know about”. I think we’re seeing Dumbiverse-2 starting in book 11. It’s like a Berenstain Bears universe, where little details are different. Jennifer’s poster has always been Tom Holland in Dumbiverse-2, and we’re no longer seeing what happens in Dumbiverse-1, where her poster is Andrew Garfield.
Any inconsequential inconsistencies, like doors opening a different direction than years ago? Dumbiverse-2. Jason’s eyebrows? Dumbiverse-2. Ruth and Billie walking in the snow? That happened in Dumbiverse-1.
I feel like this is the first time we’ve seen them be physically affectionate beyond holding hands, yet Lucy is constantly tripping over hooking up. This is…not a healthy attitude towards what having sex is like?
And Walky just seems like, barely interested in Lucy?
AND Walky’s mother is actively racist and his father has internalized it?
That’s been my worry about this pairing too, yeah. Lucy is obviously into Walky, but I haven’t really seen the same kind of reciprocal interest from Walky. He likes her, to be sure; he finds her company pleasant, she’s supportive of his passions, she’s not unattractive… But… I think back to how Walky and Dorothy’s relationship was, or Walky and Amber. And it’s very clear that Walky does not have the same kind of passion for Lucy as he did for those two.
That’s not to say that relationships like this can’t work, of course. But still… I fear this might be one of those relationships where, 20 years down the line, you look at your partner and realize that you love them but you don’t LOVE them, if you know what I mean. And you start wondering if maybe you made a mistake, but you can’t break it off because your partner has been nothing but nice and caring to you and how could you break their heart like that?
There’s a distinct difference in Jennifer doing this and Sarah doing this a little while back. Sarah has no relationship with Lucy and was trying to be hurtful, Jennifer even without really liking Lucy is being honest with her about where this all heads and apologizes for it.
Sarah does have a relationship with Lucy, and it’s developed to the point where Lucy hurts Sarah, and Sarah hurts Lucy back, and Sarah’s better at it.
But also Sarah thinks Lucy deserves better than to put up with this shit from Walky’s parents. Probably just as some baseline solidarity.
Sarah, who would literally have no friends if it weren’t for Joyce constantly dragging her into a situation where she then complains about being there, came up to Lucy unprovoked to tell her to just break up with her boyfriend. That was it, that was her point, she made some perfunctory noises about how racist parents weren’t worth fighting and I think a throwaway line about how harebrained an idea taking Amber to dinner and saying “See, Lucy’s way better.”
she came up to Lucy to say doing shenanigans was a stupid idea, and to either stand up to his parents or not subject herself to it. Sarah does not know how to sugar-coat things.
Lucy responded with the jab she knew got under Sarah’s skin.
dismiss it as “perfunctory noise” and a “throwaway line” if you want, just don’t expect everyone else to. If Sarah just wanted Lucy to suffer, she’d just sit back and watch.
…Aw craperdoodles. They’re gonna break up, aren’t they? …Maybe then, Walky will properly confront of his racist mom and give her the kick to the butt she needs to stop being so horrible?
I don’t know. She likes Walky and he likes her. The question is if she can handle the fact that Walky’s parents will never accept her. There are people who can and people who can’t.
Hey so I’ve been wondering, why did we get an avatar shuffle? Did someone get added or updated? I haven’t seen anyone new in the comments, Jacobs the newest and he got added a while back
I went through confirmation mostly because my mother wanted me to, and then I was pretty much done with church, until I got involved with a girl who invited me to her church.
There are people who are honest and those who claim to be brutally honest but the problem with brutally honest people is they care more about the brutality then the honesty.
Hot take: she’s acting much more like Jennifer than Billie in today’s strip, and that’s a GOOD thing.
Billie tended to constantly flip back and forth between seeing herself as absolute irredeemable garbage, and the hottest shit to ever walk the face of this Earth. Because of this, I can’t really see her ever genuinely saying sorry to someone after giving them some honest-but-brutal advice.
Since becoming Jennifer, she hasn’t exactly been the nicest person, nor is she a shining exemplar of mental health, but one thing she does have is a far more…shall we say, a more ‘stable’ self-image, because she identifies so strongly with being a respectable member of Raidah’s friend group. She hardly ever think her advice is completely beyond reproach anymore, nor does she tend to fall into thinking she’s a completely worthless waste of space. So Jennifer, unlike Billie, is able to do something confidently while still showing some vulnerability and empathy for the people involved.
Genuine question: what has Linda actually done to show she’s racist, other than other characters saying she is? As far as I can remember, every slight she’s made has read much more plainly as sexism, if we’re assuming any discrimination at all. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still totally a pompous ass, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense to me that she’s a huge mound of internalized misogyny. She gave her male child the TV spot over her female child, she decided her female child needed the guidance of a bunch of catholic nuns to become an acceptable adult woman, the closest she comes to accepting Sal is when Sal has a nice boy on her arm or Sal’s hair the way her mother likes, or when she has an even bigger target (Amber) in the room.
It’s probably white privilege on my part but I just don’t get the racism angle when she’s married to a black man and loves her male child who is the exact same color as Sal.
I think reason number 1 for why people believe Linda is racist is the remarks she’s made about Marcie, who is latina. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/influences/ She refers to Marcie as a bad influence and a hoodlum because… Marcie lives in a bad area, and because one time Marcie was bullied by a kid, got hurt really bad in the process, and ‘roped’ Sal into it by… being her friend when she got hurt? Linda be jumping through some hoops, man.
Reason number 2, the instant assumption that Walky was dating the white girl in the group (Joyce) and the swift change from being ecstatic to hug Joyce, to being aloof with Lucy, when there’s… really only one difference between them… And at dinner, she mentioned thinking Lucy wasn’t good for Walky, for vague reasons she couldn’t bring herself to mention cause it’d probably come off as racist.
Reason 3 is also the sudden approval Sal got when she showed them Danny. Based on Linda’s response to Lucy, I imagine if Sal had shown up with Jacob she’d be far more cold to her daughter and not nearly as ‘suddenly’ agreeable.
Other than that, I think the racism from Linda and Charles is less about skin tone and more about behavior. Walky was a ‘good boy’ who listened to his mom and made good grades in high school. Sal was more outspoken, rebellious, and called out things when she saw them. Although that’s not ‘black person behavior’, the combination of Sal’s more textured hair and the way she doesn’t seem to fit into the box Linda wants her to does paint a bad picture.
I’d say Linda’s behavior is a combo of sexism and racism. Good ole misgynoir.
Not sure about 1 (Marcy is very tomboy) or 3 (again, better reaction to nice boy than nice girl), but 2 and 4 are good food for thought. I’d entirely forgot she’d met Joyce. Thank you ^^
Short answer: Sal says it’s racism not sexism, and she has a better perspective on the situation than especially white readers do. Willis would not write a story where the punchline was “surprise! Black woman wrong about white woman being racist to her!”
Long answer: there’s been a lot, and this has been argued to death, so I would not expect much traction for your question at this point. Look back through the archives to find comment discussions on the question.
today in #9chickweedlane i learned we have to be shown children learning and relearning what sex is, for Reasons, even though they already clearly know and have prepared nuanced questions about it!
also that Gran must hate, if she's still alive, how Old Juliette is the same but with gray hair
one of my favorite things is when a commenter explodes WHEN DO THESE CHARACTERS GET THERAPY but directed towards a character who canonically has a regular therapist
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btw if you're one of those rando bluesky weirdos who doesn't know me but sees me in the wild being sarcastic and don't know i'm being sarcastic because you haven't taken like 30 seconds to, like, maybe look at my user profile or something, keep walking, you're not going to score internet points here
Here's an entertaining cite at the bottom of the first page
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
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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 ⋅ 2d
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
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 1d
Josh Gerstein @joshgerstein.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com ⋅ 2d
Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social ⋅ 11d
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“look, I don’t make the rules”
=/
“but it never inconvenienced me personally that much, so i don’t bother fighting against them”
She fights it by supporting the victims, and by judiciously choosing her battles with the perpetrator (notably, getting involved only when they ask her to, and winning). Not sure what else one can expect an 18-year-old to do about her not-quite-friends’ shitty mom.
This is a… Generous reading of Jennifer. Could you point to an instance of her supporting Sal?
She did get Walky up to speed on Sal’s problems with their parents, which resulted in him finally being an ally to his sister: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/whitelady/
Then she followed up on that later: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/villainy/
I can’t recall if she’s ever had an explicit conversation with Sal about it, but Jennifer has always been supporting Sal in the background. She’s never shied away from backing Sal up to those who don’t want to hear or believe her, which I think is why those two still get along after years of the Walkertons favoring Jennifer over their biological daughter.
Yup, pope’s got it. She also went to bat for the twins vis-a-vis Linda being vindictive against Amber after the kidnapping. They asked for her help with their mom and she stepped up immediately. I get that commenters would love to see Linda put in her place but she’s pretty dang powerful in the DoA world. What’s Jennifer gonna do? Start a fistfight? Escalate every argument until she forfeits her position as an effective advocate? She’s far from a perfect person, but dang, the premise that she doesn’t “bother” to fight Linda because she’s unimpacted is…Jesus, I don’t know. Uncharitably fundamentalist, let’s say.
keep in mind she went up against Ruth’s gramps and couldn’t bring herself to hit him more than a slight brushing against his arm
Right, she drew the line at assaulting a senior citizen who might be a veteran. Didn’t know how best to support Ruth in that moment, but she certainly wanted to.
Speaking of which, it’s not church-going that makes you a moral citizen Lucy. The proof of that is in the paedopriests.
Which isn’t to claim you aren’t Lucy. You deserve better than to be shit on by Linda.
Also, is this Ms. Billingsworth showing a bit of actual empathy for a forest quad nerd? (I don’t anticipate a tonne of growth here. Just analyzing the armour for cracks.)
She’s gonna crack and want normalcy right when Asher’s had enough and threeways Ethan and Booster.
She’s right, though. Lucy needs to focus on building a future with Walky without wasting her energy trying to impress Linda N’ Toadie….Billingsworth could do no wrong in her surrogate mother’s eyes and she still sees Linda for what she is.
Frankly, I’m seeing Lucy’s response to this as evidence she very much is the keeper she believes herself to be. I always pictured Jungian Innocents who find Life’s way of putting people into unwinnable situations designed to make them feel like they’re perfectly winnable and you *have* to grin and bare it to be very infuriating as a sign that they see the World as clearly as any cynic. Seriously, she technically got her high for her future with Walky smashed to pieces, and she’s doing a fine job of not taking it out on anyone. Doesn’t like how Sarah does that, so she makes an effort not to do so.
As knee-jerky as it makes Lucy and some folk here, Jennifer is right.
Why does the goalpost move? To folks like Linda, it’s NEVER bigotry. It’s always a billion loaded, inconsistent, bullshit reasons for policies, customs, *traditions*, standards and decisions that JUST HAPPEN to hurt minorities more than they hurt the straight, white, affluent, “normal”, “””respectable””” people who’ve held power in this country for centuries.
Either Linda doesn’t know she’s bigoted and refuses to admit she’s been misguided because of pride or some shit, or she knows she’s a bigot and won’t tell anyone, on the premise that it doesn’t matter to her or even that she thinks that it’s a good thing.
Regardless, it is evident that attempts to change her mind are futile. Walky, Lucy, break the cycle. Change the things that you CAN. Your parents and parents-in-law are not automatically good or joyful to be around because “family”, but of course you don’t realize that if you are in the habit of perceiving what things in your life are *supposed* to be as opposed to what they actually ARE.
Give up kicking the football, Charlie Brown.
Why not do something actually joyful? Like for instance watching Dexter and Monkey Master? Or playing Joyce’s Nightmare? Or Snood?
Or better yet, you still have a few seconds to pull Walky by the collar into your room and bone him immediately.
I mean aren’t you the racist for not seeing it’s really Lucy who has some quality that just screams “budding criminal”? I mean, look into those eyes. She is pure evil.
Yeah. Poor Lucy.
Stay away from this family.
I dunno about her eyes, but it’s definitely something else in the face region… Maybe something to do with the complexion – something about it just leads people like Walky’s mom to impressions like a “*dark* future” for her son if he dates this girl. Maybe she thinks Lucy’s a superficial girl, and her personality only goes *skin-deep*. Besides, Walky doesn’t need to be dating anyone right now – after all, it’s not a *race*. Besides, with Walky’s track-record, Linda would be doing Lucy a favor by scaring her off this early into the relationship – she wouldn’t want their breakup to be a *black* mark on their school life, right?
… Fifth euphemism about Linda’s (benefit of the doubt) unintentional racial bias that can’t help coming out when she talks.
I don’t suppose Walky can stay away from his family as long as they’re putting him through school, but he can let their bullshit roll off his back. My second wife’s parents didn’t want her marrying a goy. We gave their wants no regard at all.
Walky can, sure, but it’s unfair to ask your significant other to do so as well.
People are sick of her, but it would be interesting if there was some bonus mini arc of flashbacks showing how they first met
Not every problem can be solved by ‘pulling someone into your room and boning them immediately’.
On the other hand, it does tend to give you something else to think about for a while…
“give me caffeine to help me change the things that I can, and sex to help me accept the things that I can’t”
“and a couple of assholes to tell me the difference.”
I’m not sure I want to know what you put in your coffee.
Turning that around, I know at least one real human who uses coffee enemas to increase intestinal motility.
It solves some problems. For instance, it might convince Jennifer to leave rather than dropping uncomfortable truths.
I’m guessing Jennifer would put some popcorn in the microwave and settle in to watch.
Jennifer is making her brand “she’s right but she shouldn’t have crossed that line”. Mike at least had the decency to mask the barbed truth with juvenile insults so you could offload some of the anger on hating him.
Always weird when someone defends Mike.
Great, now I’ve got the Snood game noises stuck in my head again. Thanks.
(Can’t believe it’s been 25 years since I picked it up as shareware…)
You can play it free online these days
“Moving Goal Posts” is a currently popular idiom for NPD parents and a method they use to control their prey that makes trying to prove anything to them or make them happy/proud/comfortable/any act beyond common formality a glorified trap. Makes sense that it would apply to Linda.
It’s not even NPD. These are literally so-called “pick-up artist” techniques of Negging and Love-Bombing, in which some dude-bro denigrates you and undermines your confidence so you fixate your attention on them and seek their recognition, only for them to suddenly turn around and treat you “well”.
In which they still HORRIBLY insult the way you talk, look, your interests, tastes, beliefs, etc, but the criticisms are now directed at “””them””” — your friends, your communities, your homies. But not you. The dude-bro tells you you’re better than “”””them”””, like he sees potential in you. After trying to get their respect for what seems like forever, suddenly having it, or what seems like it, seems cool.
But it isn’t REALLY respect. What’s actually going on here is a thinly veiled form of grooming.
In which Jennifer is the comment section
at least she doesn’t seem to be gloating about it compared to sarah
Yeah, to me her subtle expression change in the second-to-last panel says “whoops I hit too hard”.
I like the 4th wall breaking. Feels validating.
This may be the most thoughtful and sympathetic Jennifer has ever been toward Lucy.
I would dare say that this would be the first time where he is not so indifferent towards her, I mean, in the last panel his expression shows some concern.
Her
It’s a key slip mishap no need to point it out.
Congratulations on Jennifer for the transition.
definitely up there
Yeah, I think this is Jennifer actively trying to be helpful. Maybe she was trying all along, and just kind of bad at it.
Hm, can we try that again?
eeeeehh I’m gonna be picky
I do like Malaya. Sure, we’ll go with them for now. Girl-adjacent is close enough.
If there’s been a grav shuffle, why do I still have Lucy?
Lucy is persistent.
Isn’t she though? Like a bedbug infestation
She can be very trying.
first kiss on panel.
context is she’s apologizing to him for … ?
Not sure what to make of it yet.
I think she is apologizing since she’s A. in a mood due to what happened, and B. not banging yet, even if she knows he understands.
or both
Also possibly a touch of plain old “sorry your mom sucks.”
Sympathy via light physical contact?
Maybe I read too much into significance of kisses and what they show in this strip. Her apologizing in the same situation where he 1. made a crude joke and 2. did an “I told you so”, and punctuating it with possibly their first kiss.
Best I can get for what it represents about their relationship is something Mym said yesterday.
“Lucy is doing literally all of the lifting-heavy and light- in this relationship.”
Shit, you’re bringing out my inner Carla. I love attention.
But fr, Lucy is doing everything
+1 alas.
I do think Walky is TRYING, but. How many different ways can I say his heart doesn’t seem to be in it.
Take that, doomsayers!
Still doomsaying
Lucy gonna Lucy, I guess.
Nah Jennifer is giving the right advice here.
Is it something you want to hear hear? No.
Is it the truth? As ugly as it is, yes.
Does she need to hear it? Also yes the sooner she realizes the sooner she can stop seeking approval that’s not worth it.
I think Lucy knows Jennifer’s right, too, and also that she genuinely means it when she says she is sorry here. Like, Jennifer isn’t really any more fond of Linda’s shit on this than the twins are, but she’s also in a position where she can’t really rock the boat with the pedestal they’ve got her on.
And if she does start making waves, Jennifer doesn’t get dumked – Sal and Walky get waterboarded for it.
Sometimes you protect others until they figure out how to protect themselves, because any other option only leads to more pain on them (personal experience? This sucks). I do wonder just how much interference Jennifer has run, rightly or wrongly, for Walky’s sake over the years.
Being in an emotional state might make ppl double down but given such an unpleasant experience with Linda i’d def not be in a rush to spend time with them again (tho i’d get emotionally drained even if i had a good time, so i prolly wouldn’t wanna spend time with ppl twice in a row even if they were related to a partner lol)
Jennifer did not expect Lucy to just brush her off.
I don’t think she’s surprised by Lucy’s reaction. If anything, she doesn’t seem sure what to do about having actual feelings about it.
I think Jennifer isn’t supposed to care about these nerds. That was Billie’s thing. And so it underscores how much she hasn’t really left Billie despite her convincing herself she has.
I’m not sure Jennifer is supposed to not care. After all, she thinks of the Walkertons as her real family.
Awww this would be so sweet if only Walky didn’t look like he sighed mid-sentence about suggesting church.
I’ll be kinder to Walky/Lucy today than I’ve been. I would on the whole consider this a positive sweet interaction between them, especially because it’s sometimes very hard to do a good read of Walky’s facial expressions and tone.
Also, poor Lucy.
If he is sighing, I think he’s maybe just exhausted with the ordeal they’ve been through. Like, he doesn’t have to offer to go to church with her, so even if it’s not something he wants to do for its own sake, I don’t think it’s what he’s sighing about exactly.
I think he just wants to do something nice for her to meet her in the middle after all the shit Lucy’s been dealing with.
Also Walky is an extremely lapsed catholic at best and probably more agnostic than anything, he’s not much for church. That he’s willing to participate with her, even reluctantly, that’s not nothing
I think Willis was clear that Walkerton is an atheist in all universes.
He isn’t really the church-going type, they aren’t a good match. And I don’t get the impression the parents would approve of her churchiness even if she were white enough for them. Both of them deserve better! Lucy could be dating some boy who is into her and whose parents either reserve judgment on a two-week relationship or think she’s a sociable, serious person.
You know who would be a decent match? A church going boy who is also super fucking hot and would probably like Lucy’s convoluted checklist?
Jacob.
jacob did say his interest in religion is more ‘academic’ but i can imagine them also getting along if his story arc isn’t going down a diff direction
Question: has it been determined that Jacob also has the sex addiction thing from his Shortpacked counterpart? If so, that could be a dealbreaker because Lucy wants to have sex. Badly. She just wants it to fit her checkboxes and in doing so, be meaningful.
No, that trait hasn’t come up even once, or so much as been hinted at.
Word of Willis is he does not. https://itswalky.tumblr.com/post/81366789633/dumbing-of-age-the-new-normal-let-me-tell-you-a
Also, remember when Jacob said that his new girlfriend checklist would probably look a lot like Joyce? You know, the girl who’s been referred to as an alternate version of Lucy at least twice? Yeah, I’m here for that, I think that could be a good match.
i’m surprised he’d even think of it, unless his parents are also religious and also invited them, but dealing with the parents would be annoying that early in the day let alone also at church
I want to like this. I know Walky’s offer to go with Lucy to church is his version of reciprocating her apology.
(And inasmuch as either of them have done anything to warrant an apology, they both have; they’ve both been kind of short with each other here, mutually frustrated by how lunch went.)
But man, what an anticlimactic first on-panel kiss. Definitely indicates that they’ve already kissed for the first time, but we didn’t get to see it??
Regarding the kiss, that’s what I think, based on this. That was certainly too calm and not enough reaction out of either of them to be a first time kiss.
(Walky tries but this really isn’t the best relationship)
I took the pause as a “thinking on his feet” pause to come up with an event they could share on Sunday that Lucy would particularly appreciate, but you could be right.
Jennifer is so goddamn fucking hot jesus christ.
The real point of this strip
+1
You are most definitely not wrong.
correctHorse.gif 🫠
I mean…Lucy does glance at her chest for a moment there…
That’s just the sheer gravitational pull.
It’s secondhand gay XD
The bold red shirt also helps, like a clothing equivalent of wearing lipsticks i suppose XD
she looks SO GOOD in the bold red. I want to get style tips from her!!!
I also secretly want to cosplay Jennifer. I’m Chinese, have black hair cut in a bob, and I wear glasses… but I would be terrible at expressing her personality hahaha (am much more of a Lucy than a Jennifer)
Honestly you should try. As a creator myself I know I would be over the moon if someone cosplayed my characters. I’m sure Willis would feel the same!
Si! I second this! ^_^
personally I was rather fond of the yellow outfits she wore a lot pre-timeskip
toe cleavage, but with breasts.
The what
toe cleavage, the third most sensuous part of the body, after “legs with extra knees” and “too many teeth”, in 9 chickweed lane.
9CL is the original AI art.
Yoto has never lied
We should all learn from your example of commenting on only the most important things (genuine).
You are very correct, to be perfectly frank.
I know right? She’s so fucking beautiful, I wish looked that good.
I got that short hair and glasses already so I’m part way there!
Oh, god, yes. So hot.
Jennifer and Tall Rachel are Willis’s exercises in how shitty he can make a character before it overrides their attractiveness. Tall Rachel plummeted into the planet core as soon as she said “Redemption is a story,” and Jennifer is his balancing act on a mono-molecular edge.
Shut up, billiefer
Eh, Linda did still marry and settle down with Chuck, so (unless there’s a shoe which hasn’t dropped about that relationship) you probably could theoretically win her over
It’s just… why would you want to?
I take that as Linda doesn’t really consider herself as racist. This is just going by the common, older, middle-class white folks that I’ve run into but many of them have had interracial relationships, married to this day to people of different ethnicities. So they see themselves as well above any ideas of being racist. By their logic, even reasoning, they were the progressive ones of their day. It might be true. They could see beyond race and into content and character. Their relationships meant something–which inevitably puts blinders on them with age and being asleep at the wheel. Lulled into everything they once thought themselves above.
‘I do know better. I’m not racist. I’m not a bigot. I married outside of my race. It means I understand more than others, because I was ahead of the curve.’
Pretty much. Hence the “But your dad is…!” “I KNOW!” Linda believes she’s above racism because she married a black man and had his kids. Ipso facto, she can’t be racist, she just has motherly intuition about the people their kids spend time with.
Not surprisingly, Willis has a creative fascination with bad, controlling, emotionally blind parents.
Racism is about how you treat the people you don’t know. Bigotry is about continuing to treat them that way after you get to know them. Linda might change her mind if she gets to know Lucy, but I don’t think Linda wants to do that.
Of course, no one could be racist if they marry someone of another race, just like no sexists would marry anyone of another sex. . .
Yeah, but Linda’s the dominant one in that relationship. And whatever her views on how brilliant Walky has to be, she’s surely aware that he takes after his father in that regard, and that whatever partner he ends up with will but the one pushing him in the right direction. Hence why Dorothy was perfect (since Linda doesn’t know that the reason that relationship worked was because Walky helped Dorothy relax, rather than the other way round). Pushy white woman + dark-skinned male slacker = good. Dark-skinned male slacker + dominant even darker woman? Oh hell no.
I suspect “winning her over” is less “doing anything to impress her” and more “becoming a fait accompli”. If this relationship goes the distance, and they end up married, Linda will be scandalized if ever reminded she was less than 100% supportive of her new daughter-in-law and the relationship with her son.
And of course, she’ll have to keep a close eye on those grandbabies, to make sure they end up being some of the good ones, not delinquents like Sal…
So Linda would end up being Mallory Archer to any potential kids her kids have.
Fucking hell.
I also suspect Linda would be extremely critical of Lucy’s family and any friends that don’t meet her approval for unknowable reasons.
With the information we have I fully believe it’s possible for someone to become ‘one of the good ones’ in Linda’s eyes. It’s just y’know, that still sucks for them and doesn’t change the core problems with her behaviour.
I know Billie/Jennifer doesn’t always give the best advice, but right now I get the feeling she is 100% on the mark. If Lucy just wants to get laid then she should stick with Walky, but if she wants a relationship that has a future she should find someone else.
Now, which one is she more likely to choose?
Nope.
Relevant, but nope.
Joe is nice, but he’s no Sal.
No thanks.
No.
Ruth! …but not Sal
Nah.
I ran out of room, so I guess I’m sticking with Becky for the evening.
I mean the next roll for ya is 1/4 chance of getting Sal
hard luck, eh
How many avatars are there? I’ve been mathing, but just using n. ~28, if it’s 1/4 chance for 8 tries?
I think there’s 30 last time i checked.
1 – ((29 / 30) ^ 8 ) = ~1/4
Looks like she is going to keep beating her head against this wall. And Jennifer just got added to her ever-growing shit list.
Apparently so.
Avatar is appropriate – maybe talking to her brother for some outside perspective is one way she could work through all of this?
I guess the question is if Lucy has to have Linda’s approval to have Walky, if that’s important to either of them. In general, Lucy wants to be liked and thought well of, but between this and Sarah and her dorm mates when Jennifer came, it’s brought her its fair share of grief, too.
I don’t think she has to have Linda’s approval to have Walky at all (although I think if Walky does sleep with her it’ll be because of hormones or out of a sense of obligation). I think she wants Linda’s approval because she has a rigid set of categories that things are supposed to fall into to be “right,” and parental approval of the guy you’re sleeping with is one of those boxes.
Jennifer doesn’t say anything like that at all. She just says she’s not going to be able to be “respectable” enough for the parents.
But she doesn’t need parental approval for the relationship to have a future. Or if she does, that’s her own choice.
I mean … a relationship can have a future without parents’ approval. Or involvement.
I don’t think she and Walky are going to work out for other reasons, but that one’s hardly a dealbreaker unless they make it one.
…is this the first strip post-timeskip where Jennifer is 100%, unambiguously right?
Because yeah, she’s dead right here. It fucking sucks, and Lucy does need to be aware of it, but the way that Linda and Charles are acting, Lucy will never be good enough.
Also, note Jennifer’s use of “them”. Not “her”. Linda’s the obvious problem, but Charles is just as complicit in it, and Jennifer knows it.
Agree, I think it’s especially important that Lucy realizes that Charles isn’t great either because otherwise she’ll always keep hoping, thinking that she’s halfway to full parental approval.
i’m sure jennifer could also ‘put in a good word’ on lucy’s behalf since they seem to respect/listen to her opinion considering she’s also mixed/not fully white (tho ‘asian’ tends to get a pass with ppl racist against darker skin XP) but i imagine other than the occasional chat jen also doesn’t go outta her way to talk to them as well
Yeah, Jennifer seems to find Linda’s acceptance rather uncomfortable, even if she doesn’t reject it, either.
I suspect even the respect they show Jennifer is mostly surface level. She probably would put on a friendlier face for Lucy if Jennifer vouched for her but she also said she would do that when Sal was briefly in her good graces, it was more about “rewarding” good behavior with false respect the genuine opinion change.
She’s always been on the mark about the Walkertons tbh. That’s not surprising, since she grew up in their home, but it’s still a stand-out area for her. She was a big park of Walky learning to stand up for Sal and starting to repair his sibling relationship; he had his head in the sand before Jennifer spelled it out for him, and so wasn’t a great ally. It’s also an area Jennifer has always displayed some amount of tact. She’s never seemed to relish what she says, and she’s never been cruel about it- though I imagine it can seem that way because it’s bad enough when said matter-of-factly. Lucy would do well to listen and maybe to have a conversation. I think it could really help her decide if she wants to keep putting in the effort for Walky and for this relationship.
I interpret panel 6 as Lucy glaring at the cleavage of “respectable” Jennifer.
*plays “Respectable” by Mel & Kim* You can only move the goal post so much until it’s torn down
Is there really ever a good moment to kill the messenger? I think not.
Such appropriate music!
Wait, did Jennifer’s Andrew Garfield poster change to Tom Holland over the big timeskip?
ahaha https://www.thomasholland.net/2019/09/03/tom-covers-gq-style-new-photoshoot/
Nice find! I had thought that was James Dean.
yeah the black hair and general style did not make me think tom holland at all but it is a nice pic haha
For whatever reason my dorm wifi security blocker marked that as phishing
I honestly didn’t know it blocked anything but porn
Hasn’t Jennifer’s family and Walky’s family known each other for a long time? Lucy should probably trust her advice on Linda. Nothing Lucy does will make her “Good Enough for Walky/David” in Linda’s eyes. There’s no pleasing bigots.
Ooh! Now I have Amber as an avatar! Neat!
The Walkertons probably did more to raise Jennifer than her own family did, so yeah
I think it’s not that Lucy doesn’t trust Jennifer’s advice, it’s that she knows Jennifer is right and she hates it. Lucy is a stubborn and determined young lady and she really REALLY wants to make things work with Walky… and in her idealized head, that includes winning over his parents and getting their approval for a future marriage. Hearing that she will likely never get that, and realizing that it’s likely true, there’s nothing more for her to do then to double down and insist that maybe if she tries REALLY hard, it’ll change this time.
I agree, and in general, Lucy seems to want very much to be liked and accepted.
It doesn’t help that, outside of Becky, Sarah was not entirely wrong when she said Walky’s friends interact with her due to her connection to Walky, though I do also think Sarah was constructing a bad faith argument there given that, while that was the initial reason, it was mostly since that was the impetus for her really meeting them. It doesn’t mean they otherwise got nothing out of it.
Still, that hit hard for Lucy, and this is hitting even harder.
What’s interesting is that this isn’t even the hardest-hitting thing Jennifer could say. The harshest truth would be to follow up this comment with, “And Walky is never going to stand up to them for you.” (Okay, maybe “never” is too much, but he’d need to do a lot of growing up to get to that point.) Because THAT is what matters; she’s dating Walky, not his parents, but when those parents say that their kid is “slumming it” by dating her and he does nothing about it—she’s got a boyfriend problem, not an in-laws problem. Walky simply isn’t mature enough to recognize the long-term consequences of refusing to rock the boat with his mother. Most college freshmen aren’t. But it actively hurts someone else he is meant to care about, and his big solution is to try to keep Lucy away from them after demonstrating a “worse” option didn’t pan out well.
I mean sure, but it’s a college freshman struggling to cope with recognizing how abusive his family life was now that he’s starting to get a little distance from them. He’s already come a long way since the start of last semester – mostly with Sal. He’s also still completely dependent on not rocking the boat with his mother and the long term consequences of that are pretty serious.
And, as I’ve said before, that was all aimed at Walky. Lucy was just a tool to hurt him with. Framing this as if it was all about how she was hurt and he needs to defend/console her is very strange to me.
The proper solution at this point is in fact to keep them separate, while getting in a position to go no-contact if necessary when you don’t rely on them any more. There’s no winning in confronting them, any more than there is in Lucy trying to be more respectable to win them over.
People are framing as hurting Lucy because Lucy is a person, not an implement.
But Walky’s only role here is to defend or comfort Lucy. None of this could have bothered or affected him at all otherwise.
I think you are right, and thats why walky should end it.
Theyve been ta week and shes getting upset at possible bariers to marriage?
Shes acting like shes writing Joyce Fanfiction instead of dating a boy.
I kiiiinda want to say ‘gee Jennifer, it’s easy to just make commentary, isn’t it?’
But it’s also not her responsibility to tell Linda off for Lucy or Walky.
I don’t think it’s entirely out of the realm of possibility she might try. Not going to lay money on it, and definitely don’t see it going well, but not ruling it out.
I think Jennifer has a pretty good idea that trying to talk Linda out of her bigotry is futile. She may have already run up against it when she was dating girls, part of her self-loathing is seeing through all that conditional approval.
It’s not her responsibility and it’s not like it would change anything anyway.
Sorry not sorry
See, Jennifer… That’d come across as sincere advice if it wasn’t your usual brand of snark.
well, she did warn them before, but telling her to stop prolly wouldn’t help , even if it’s not worth it (i mean walky isn’t exactly starving for his parents approval anyways, it’s not as if him having a gf they don’t approve of is as ‘bad’ as like him flunking through college)
Didn’t expect Jennifer to have that tinge of concern for Lucy, especially considering she’s not fond of Walky. Must be some first- and/or second-hand childhood experiences of the Walkertons’ colorism towards their twins and herself.
Jennifer was prolly ‘high status’ too, so they prolly didn’t say anything too passive aggressive/direct if her family had more ‘power’ but i’d assume they were close enough friends to have sleepovers/share a bed together (https://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/04-the-whiteboard-dong-bandit/wiggin/)
Good point about Jennifer’s socioeconomic standing. If Lucy came from a well-to-do family I wonder if they, especially Linda, would’ve treated her more favorably.
How do they know she doesn’t?
Hell, how do we know she doesn’t?
Yeah, when do we meet her parents?
I think she pretends not to be fond of Walky. Much in the sameway a sibling pretends not to be fond of one another.
Jennifer’s got… very complex feelings about Walky that include seemingly deliberately lying to downplay aspects of it, like when she said he named her Billie, something that isn’t actually how it happened. (It’s possible she simply misremembers what happened, but my theory is more that she finds it embarrassing because “Billie” and “Walky” originated together and it is a tie between them, and that she’s had off and on feelings for him over the years that she can’t reconcile easily with her persona, same with her love of Kit Fisto.)
In any case, Jennifer does care about Walky, he just also pisses her off a lot.
He’s her obnoxious brother.
I don’t think there’s any romantic interest there. They’re too close for that.
Jennifer is not always outwardly nice to be around, but she’s not actually a bad person. She doesn’t want to see people hurt.
“especially considering she’s not fond of Walky”
Billie, in short order after coming to college:
“Walky, don’t walk to me, you’re a nerd.”
“Walky, I’m going to help you get a girlfriend”
*crawls into Walky’s bed for emotional comfort*
Plus Walky is her “emergency contact” or “next of kin”, as revealed when she and Ruth went to the suicide clinic.
She often finds Walky annoying and embarrassing, but she’s also “the third Walkerton kid”, they’re tangled up together much like siblings, and she does try to help him.
It’s kind of tsundere, though I don’t think there’s any romantic substrate.
Honestly, the best thing they can do after going to church is to keep busy until end of the parent visit. If they are lucky the Walkertons will leave without another meet up. Maybe Linda stay away waiting for the relationship to end.
when’s the next major in universe holiday for them? maybe walky can have thanksgiving at lucy’s parents home if linda wouldn’t take it as a ‘calculated move’ or so on their part lol
Easter, I think, unless there’s some weird American thing before then. Other than Valentine’s Day, which isn’t a holiday but does have the potential for delightful screw-ups from absolutely everyone in the cast, so I hope it won’t be skipped over the way Halloween was.
Two possibilities. There’s President’s Day, but that’s more a three day mattress sale holiday than a go home holiday. But IUB’s spring break for 2024 is before Easter. And I could see a trip home as being something some of the characters might do.
East Asian Lunar New Year. The Walkertons probably don’t do anything for it though.
Jennifer might, depending on how close she is with her Chinese ancestry.
But I doubt we’d really see a major celebration of it in the Walkyverse, the only East/Southeast Asian ethnicities in the cast are Jennifer and Faz, who are both half and may not necessarily do anything for it.
Dina is third generation American and the Japanese don’t really do anything for it anyway.
Where does it say Dina is third generation? All I can really recall is confirmation that both her parents and her were born in the US.
That is 3rd Gen. 1st gen are the actual immigrants.
At least in the official US census definition.
There are numbers larger than 3.
But do we have confirmation that Dina’s grandparents were in fact immigrants?
Given the sliding timescale, seems like an unsupported assumption unless I’m missing something.
Fair. I misunderstood.
moot because the question was about the next holiday the Walkertons would expect to spend with Walky, but Asher Park is Asian.
Ah Valentines day: the great ender of college relationships.
And I’m just now remembering Billifer knows the Walkertons, so she’s not just speaking of some generic “they.”
Which adds several layers of “Ouch” to her words.
Jerk move…
But unfortunately, the “nice” move here is crueler.
Sometimes, we need the cruel truth.
well, she hasn’t said anything that’s been ‘worse’ than how sarah put it, at least she’s trying to be a good friend instead of just ignoring it. Tho it would be better trying to talk to walky, maybe with sal together or so to make him put more of an effort, even if it doesn’t work out with walky/lucy in the long term, he’s still stuck with his parents.
Dammit Jennifer, even if you are right…
The kiss here is interesting in that I don’t think it’s their first, just, onscreen. Neither of them seems thrown by it. I guess if nothing else, it may suggest the two are more physically intimate than people, myself included, sometimes assumed, even if they haven’t banged yet.
That’s seeming more plausible now. But maybe the “floating” in panel 4 is her reaction to it finally kissing him. Or not, hopefully upcoming strips make it a little more clear.
Genuine Jennifer empathy. I know it doesn’t feel like it, Lucy, but she’s being honest and trying to help.
oh fuck no time to roulette
( I approve of this kiss, but its too little )
This is such a problem. Lucys a people pleaser.
She doesnt know how to stop.
If Lucy Feels the need for Lindas approval before fucking Walky they should Just break up. Or Walky should pull the plug.
I think Lucy is Imagining marrying Walky. ( Why else would Lindas grumbling matter ) This is a college for fun relationship, theyve dated a week.
Your dating Walky not his Mom. The idea of banging him to Spite Linda hasnt even entered her mind.
I get that Lucy doesnt like being on the outside or social marginalized, but if She expects social approval to run her relationship with Walky, there is no relationship.
I get that its a buzzkill , but she needs to trim these expecatations and live her best life.
She didnt even consider making out with walky to cheer up.
She has the Boy and Walky doesnt need outside approval.
Dad likes her.
She turning a win into a Loss
Billy is right for once.
One thing Jennifer/ Billie have wrong, and know it is this: the goalpost hasn’t changed, she is the goalpost.
She is the chosen daughter(inlaw). She is the tomboy-best-friend, who will marry their son (OK, the daughter will do, just marry one of them). She’s just mixed enough for the “not racist” fiction, yet white enough for the racist reality. She has the social standing of a rich father. She is who they want. She is the goalpost.
Poor Lucy. She really thinks going to church is going to actually have an effect on them.
Its worse than That.
Walky asked her for a church date to make her feel better, and she instinctively instrumentalitized it for Social Climbing. Hes trying to make it up to you, not please his mother.
Shes being clueless that this telegraphs not wanting Walky.
She cannot fathom that his mom won’t approve and he won’t stand up for her and that it’s putting it on her. It’s bad.
I know it’s the constant refrain here, but have we seen anything in the actual comic showing she’s upset about him not standing up for her? Rather than about them not approving and just the whole trauma of it all in general.
I’m definitely making an assumption but the comic updates every day. It’s hard to know if this will come back or not.
This isn’t really relevant to anything, but Jennifer looks really nice in this get-up.
That color suits her.
Time and place, Jennifer. and also tone, you could soften the blow a little bit.
Jennifer said nothing wrong here.
Jennifer may not have said anything wrong, but how she said it?
There’s giving good advice, and there’s using the right words as a rhetorical knife to the gut.
Exactly my point.
not everything needs to be handled with delicacy and Jennifer really didn’t cross any lines here. at worst we’re assuming a catty tone, which I think most adults can survive.
She realized that slightly too late.
this also feels like moving goalposts.
you don’t have to be good enough for his parents; Just for him.
before anyone takes it the wrong way, i mean that you shouldn’t try to impress unreasonable 3rd parties like them. The relationship is between her and walky, at the end of the day ,the bad cop/somewhat bad cop duo aren’t needed.
Be with your man, Be happy, let linda seethe. There’s nothing a person like her hates more than being ignored.
Problem is that you’re putting your partner between a rock and a hard place, basically asking them to either choose you or their parents. Which at first glance might seem like not a big deal, but there’s a lot of emotional baggage in the relationship between parent and child. Even people who have objectively horrible parents tend to have trouble giving up or throttling that bond.
Plus being a student tends to make the situation extra complicated since students often rely on their parents for the ability to educate themselves, either by their parents directly paying for their education or by just pitching in here and there. Getting on the wrong foot with their parents can have negative effects that end up leading to massive consequences further down the line. Wouldn’t be the first kid kicked out of school because their parents stopped paying tuition over some bullshit.
Jennifer’s been so consistently insufferable for a long while now. Nice to see some helpful honesty for a change.
Ugh, right in the flashback trigger.
Jennifer is right on the money.
It just hurts to get hit with that many quarters in a sock, over and over again.
Damn, I feel sorry for Lucy… a little… okay a lot.
Willis has a wonderful skill: been able to finally give one of their characters something they’re looking for (first kiss) and panels after, riin everything (Jennifer)
Willis is a fantastic storyteller and I’ve followed him for over a decade for a reason.
Jennifer’s not being an asshole, though. She’s literally just saying.
Sometimes the worst assholes are “jus’sayin'”.
People interested in “brutal honesty” are almost always after the brutality and not the honesty. This might be the first Jennifer/Lucy reaction where Jennifer is actually being compassionate and not an asshole like Sarah.
Nice to see Jennifer said that she’s sorry. This could be the most friendly moment between she and Lucy ever. Poor Lucy will walk a very difficult path if she wants to be with Walky. But she’s has friends on her side. I like her love story with Walky and I’m rooting for her.
What friends? Lol
IS THAT INTROSPECTION I SEE, JENNIFER?
Aw hell yeah it is.
The super hot cheerleader and the goofy boy definitely had something secret going on in high school.
Wonder what caused Linda to tip THAT apple cart over?
If so, I suspect that it was a secret even to them.
Jennifer really could have passed that message in a way that didn’t sound like “you’ll never be good enough” like she COULD have said “you don’t need their blessing or validation. They will always make up new ways to criticize you.” Or something like that. It’s not Lucy’s fault or her problem that Walky’s mom will never accept any non white partner.
But that’s not the catty, mean girl way! She’s in with Raidah now, so she’s got appearances to keep up.
I saw it as a reference to “respectability politics,” and how now matter how much a minority adapts to the norms of the dominant group bigots in that dominant group will never accept the minority as “one of us.”
It’s easier for them to tie their minds into knots of contradictions and doublethink, than it is for them to admit they were wrong.
What’s the poster in the last panel?
I assume it’s based on 90210 era Luke Perry
Its Tom Holland. HueSatLight posted a link to it further up the page.
You really should read the comments before posting.
I have an insane theory. The big timeskip / book 11 was a “soft reset”, but I think that means more than just “things happened in these kids’ lives that we don’t know about”. I think we’re seeing Dumbiverse-2 starting in book 11. It’s like a Berenstain Bears universe, where little details are different. Jennifer’s poster has always been Tom Holland in Dumbiverse-2, and we’re no longer seeing what happens in Dumbiverse-1, where her poster is Andrew Garfield.
Any inconsequential inconsistencies, like doors opening a different direction than years ago? Dumbiverse-2. Jason’s eyebrows? Dumbiverse-2. Ruth and Billie walking in the snow? That happened in Dumbiverse-1.
Billie knows about the Overton Window?
If she’s committed to the journalism thing, it’s bound to come up.
I feel like this is the first time we’ve seen them be physically affectionate beyond holding hands, yet Lucy is constantly tripping over hooking up. This is…not a healthy attitude towards what having sex is like?
And Walky just seems like, barely interested in Lucy?
AND Walky’s mother is actively racist and his father has internalized it?
I dunno, this relationship makes no sense to me.
That’s been my worry about this pairing too, yeah. Lucy is obviously into Walky, but I haven’t really seen the same kind of reciprocal interest from Walky. He likes her, to be sure; he finds her company pleasant, she’s supportive of his passions, she’s not unattractive… But… I think back to how Walky and Dorothy’s relationship was, or Walky and Amber. And it’s very clear that Walky does not have the same kind of passion for Lucy as he did for those two.
That’s not to say that relationships like this can’t work, of course. But still… I fear this might be one of those relationships where, 20 years down the line, you look at your partner and realize that you love them but you don’t LOVE them, if you know what I mean. And you start wondering if maybe you made a mistake, but you can’t break it off because your partner has been nothing but nice and caring to you and how could you break their heart like that?
As an aromatic person who avoid people I will tell you a secret. Relationship have no sense at all. ALWAYS.
Welp glad to see Lucy’s feeling a bit better…oh wait!!! It’s Billie!!!
Genuine pity from Jennifer was not something I expected, but here we are.
There’s a distinct difference in Jennifer doing this and Sarah doing this a little while back. Sarah has no relationship with Lucy and was trying to be hurtful, Jennifer even without really liking Lucy is being honest with her about where this all heads and apologizes for it.
Sarah does have a relationship with Lucy, and it’s developed to the point where Lucy hurts Sarah, and Sarah hurts Lucy back, and Sarah’s better at it.
But also Sarah thinks Lucy deserves better than to put up with this shit from Walky’s parents. Probably just as some baseline solidarity.
You definitely have the order of that backwards. Sarah started shit with Lucy immediately.
I definitely do not. Lucy’s animosity started after Raidah told her to.
Sarah, who would literally have no friends if it weren’t for Joyce constantly dragging her into a situation where she then complains about being there, came up to Lucy unprovoked to tell her to just break up with her boyfriend. That was it, that was her point, she made some perfunctory noises about how racist parents weren’t worth fighting and I think a throwaway line about how harebrained an idea taking Amber to dinner and saying “See, Lucy’s way better.”
The rest was just Sarah being an asshole.
she came up to Lucy to say doing shenanigans was a stupid idea, and to either stand up to his parents or not subject herself to it. Sarah does not know how to sugar-coat things.
Lucy responded with the jab she knew got under Sarah’s skin.
dismiss it as “perfunctory noise” and a “throwaway line” if you want, just don’t expect everyone else to. If Sarah just wanted Lucy to suffer, she’d just sit back and watch.
God damn you, Jennifer. You’re right, of course, but still… Poor Lucy.
Poor Lucy. She was feeling optimistic for all of a second there.
Fuckery! My Avatar!
Why you do this Willis?!?
Noo, give it back.
Why?!?
Jacob was added as a new avatar a bit ago.
Now there are 30 site avatars in total, and therefore a 50% chance of getting the avatar you want after rolling 21 times.
Just 120 rolls, on average, to farm them all.
Now I kind of wanna do that. And then always reply to people using the same avatars as them.
Then again, this dude kind of tracks.
…Aw craperdoodles. They’re gonna break up, aren’t they? …Maybe then, Walky will properly confront of his racist mom and give her the kick to the butt she needs to stop being so horrible?
I don’t know. She likes Walky and he likes her. The question is if she can handle the fact that Walky’s parents will never accept her. There are people who can and people who can’t.
That’s not a thing that’s going to happen. Not in the short term. There’s no kick in the butt that’s going to change Linda. Nothing Walky can give.
A decade or so of minimal contact and especially lack of contact with possible grandkids might do it.
Hey so I’ve been wondering, why did we get an avatar shuffle? Did someone get added or updated? I haven’t seen anyone new in the comments, Jacobs the newest and he got added a while back
I was hoping the shuffle would mean proper update times, but no dice
I’m curious in Walky re-entering church, now that we know Willis isn’t a christian anymore.
I went through confirmation mostly because my mother wanted me to, and then I was pretty much done with church, until I got involved with a girl who invited me to her church.
Did she keep you inside church or have you took her to get out church? Just curious, no need to answer.
If there’s anyone who understands dealing with racism in your day-to-day life, it’s….um…..Jennifer?
I mean, we haven’t seen it in the story itself but she has SOME experience with it: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-4/01-the-only-dope-for-me-is-you/villainy/ At any rate, she’s unfortunately very familiar with Walky’s parents and how they treat Sal, the “blacker” child.
while I feel bad for lucy… “moral citizen”? yikes??
There are people who are honest and those who claim to be brutally honest but the problem with brutally honest people is they care more about the brutality then the honesty.
Wait, is that a Mako poster in the background??
Oh hey, it’s been a while since we’ve seen Billie. She kinda disappeared when this new Jennifer character showed up
Hot take: she’s acting much more like Jennifer than Billie in today’s strip, and that’s a GOOD thing.
Billie tended to constantly flip back and forth between seeing herself as absolute irredeemable garbage, and the hottest shit to ever walk the face of this Earth. Because of this, I can’t really see her ever genuinely saying sorry to someone after giving them some honest-but-brutal advice.
Since becoming Jennifer, she hasn’t exactly been the nicest person, nor is she a shining exemplar of mental health, but one thing she does have is a far more…shall we say, a more ‘stable’ self-image, because she identifies so strongly with being a respectable member of Raidah’s friend group. She hardly ever think her advice is completely beyond reproach anymore, nor does she tend to fall into thinking she’s a completely worthless waste of space. So Jennifer, unlike Billie, is able to do something confidently while still showing some vulnerability and empathy for the people involved.
Genuine question: what has Linda actually done to show she’s racist, other than other characters saying she is? As far as I can remember, every slight she’s made has read much more plainly as sexism, if we’re assuming any discrimination at all. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still totally a pompous ass, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense to me that she’s a huge mound of internalized misogyny. She gave her male child the TV spot over her female child, she decided her female child needed the guidance of a bunch of catholic nuns to become an acceptable adult woman, the closest she comes to accepting Sal is when Sal has a nice boy on her arm or Sal’s hair the way her mother likes, or when she has an even bigger target (Amber) in the room.
It’s probably white privilege on my part but I just don’t get the racism angle when she’s married to a black man and loves her male child who is the exact same color as Sal.
I think reason number 1 for why people believe Linda is racist is the remarks she’s made about Marcie, who is latina. https://www.dumbingofage.com/2018/comic/book-9-comic/01-flyin-to-the-red/influences/ She refers to Marcie as a bad influence and a hoodlum because… Marcie lives in a bad area, and because one time Marcie was bullied by a kid, got hurt really bad in the process, and ‘roped’ Sal into it by… being her friend when she got hurt? Linda be jumping through some hoops, man.
Reason number 2, the instant assumption that Walky was dating the white girl in the group (Joyce) and the swift change from being ecstatic to hug Joyce, to being aloof with Lucy, when there’s… really only one difference between them… And at dinner, she mentioned thinking Lucy wasn’t good for Walky, for vague reasons she couldn’t bring herself to mention cause it’d probably come off as racist.
Reason 3 is also the sudden approval Sal got when she showed them Danny. Based on Linda’s response to Lucy, I imagine if Sal had shown up with Jacob she’d be far more cold to her daughter and not nearly as ‘suddenly’ agreeable.
Other than that, I think the racism from Linda and Charles is less about skin tone and more about behavior. Walky was a ‘good boy’ who listened to his mom and made good grades in high school. Sal was more outspoken, rebellious, and called out things when she saw them. Although that’s not ‘black person behavior’, the combination of Sal’s more textured hair and the way she doesn’t seem to fit into the box Linda wants her to does paint a bad picture.
I’d say Linda’s behavior is a combo of sexism and racism. Good ole misgynoir.
Not sure about 1 (Marcy is very tomboy) or 3 (again, better reaction to nice boy than nice girl), but 2 and 4 are good food for thought. I’d entirely forgot she’d met Joyce. Thank you ^^
Short answer: Sal says it’s racism not sexism, and she has a better perspective on the situation than especially white readers do. Willis would not write a story where the punchline was “surprise! Black woman wrong about white woman being racist to her!”
Long answer: there’s been a lot, and this has been argued to death, so I would not expect much traction for your question at this point. Look back through the archives to find comment discussions on the question.
Oh hey I guess we AREN’T getting a sustaining relationship outta these two.
God, imagine having that in DoA.
This is actually a warning Lucy needs at a very good moment, she may not listen to it now but it might help her one day in reflection