Welcome to the saga of the working-class adventurer! Enjoy the complete story with new annotations daily!
Nerf Now!!
Josué Pereira
A cute webcomic about fanservice, video games, and... love. Mostly video games, though.
Alice and the Nightmare
Misha Krivanek
Alice finally attends University to learn to collect the dreams of humans, meet new friends, and deal with a pesky reflection along the way.
How to be a Werewolf
Shawn Lenore
Malaya Walters was bitten by a werewolf as a child. After being raised by her human family, she faces the chance to learn what being a werewolf is really like as an adult.
The End
August Brown, Cory Brown
Two aliens crash a sci-fi convention and accidentally take seven nerds on an adventure that spans the galaxy!
Widdershins
Kate Ashwin
A series of light-hearted Victorian-era adventure stories featuring grumpy bounty hunters, accidental thiefkings, and more, in England's magical capital city Widdershins!
Love Not Found
Gina Biggs
Abeille is on a quest to find someone who wants to do it the old-fashioned way in a time when touching has become outdated.
Star Impact
Jack McGee
A young, energetic woman fights her way up in the world of super-powered boxing after discovering the mighty gloves of her missing idol!
Alexander, The Servant & The Water of Life
Reimena Yee
The 21st century retelling of the life and legends of Alexander the Great.
Sakana
Mad Rupert
Our heroes must navigate a hazardous dating scene, overcome personal anxieties, and wrangle unruly seafood in order to find love, peace of mind, and a paycheck.
Ride or Die
Mars Heyward
Ride or Die is an LGBTQ webcomic about two street racers who team up with a demon-possessed muscle car in the search for a missing woman, while being hunted by a deadly religious cult.
Dumbing of Age
David M Willis
Joyce has been homeschooled her entire life until now, when she's suddenly a freshman in college! Things don't go well.
Little Tiny Things
Clover
What are the little things that move us? The simple joys that warm our bodies and hearts? The micro life of insects that influence our world more than we think? The tiny steps we make everyday to have a happier tomorrow?
The Forgotten Order
Christy
A young witch for whom every spell is a misfire finds solace and friendship in her new companion - a cursed doll.
The Weave
Rennie Kingsley
A young woman pursued by bad luck is witness to the murder of the Fairy Queen of Summer. Can she get to the bottom of this mystery?
Stand Still, Stay Silent
Minna Sundberg
A few generations after the end of the world, a small, poorly financed research crew is sent out to rediscover whatever is left of the forbidden old world in the south.
Cyanide & Happiness
Explosm
Satire, dark humor and surreal humor.
Not Drunk Enough
Tess Stone
Logan Ibarra is possibly the unluckiest repairman in the world. A late night job should not have landed him in the middle of a mad scientist's squabble, but he soon finds himself surrounded by monsters and further madness with little tools to get out.
Darkling Bright
Chris Hazelton
Kieran Bright is a college student home for the summer and roped into an online reunion with his old neighborhood friends in the most recent update of their favorite childhood MMORPG.
At least, he was, and that was the idea...
Join Kieran and his friends as they are pulled into another reality that may or may not be real and are forced to confront their own identities, the nature of simulated universes and reality itself.
Beeserker
TJ Cordes
This comic is about a robot powered by bees, but it's also about the kind of people who think filling a robot with bees is a good idea, and why they're wrong.
Barbarous
Ananth Hirsh, Yuko Ota
A crummy wizard and an anxious monster have to get over themselves and bring order to an apartment building full of misfits.
Lies Within
Lacey
Lysander's aimless and carefree life is turned upside down when he accidentally discovers that the cute boy next door, Simon, is a literal monster
Within
Verena Loisel
A young hitman meanders between a reality that seems to happen without him, and his dreams where he is lost in an endless house. When he makes an accidental friend, his world is shaken up and he realizes there are things he can't remember about himself.
Aquapunk
Lo
In an underwater world of unknown coordinates, inhabited by aliens, ghosts, and robots, a young member of a warrior underclass is framed for a crime and goes on the run. Little does he know he is part of a grand design that only gods and ancestors could choreograph.
Scape
Lauren
Sula has always preferred to forge her own path, but before she knows it, she is pulled into the middle of a civil war between man and monster!
Freakshow
Scotty
A festival of broken people, blood flows in the center ring. Come one and come all, to the greatest show in all of Paris.
Empowered
Adam Warren
A sexy superhero comedy (except when it isn't) about the never-ending struggles of a plucky but very unlucky young superheroine.
Astral Aves
Moon Cabal
A fantasy coming-of-age following the adventures of Astra The Black and friends, as they navigate the mysterious world around them. It's politics, adventure, and the supernatural; oh, and crazy hair.
ARISE, YE SKELETON KING
Brian Clevinger, Escher Cattle, Lee Black
A troupe of wandering "adventurers" down to their last silver "acquire" a map only to find the real treasure was the fiend they dug up along the way.
Augustine
Winter Jay Kiakas, Windy
August and her ragtag group are just like everyone else, simply surviving in the treacherous Crater... When they stumble into what may be an artifact of the ancient past, their lives are thrown into a much bigger loop as they trifle with bounty hunters, monsters and gods.
Sister Claire
Yamino
In the troubled aftermath of a great war between Witches and her fellow Nuns, novice Sister Claire just wants a purpose.
Quick$ilver
Crypto
The flirtatious, directionless, and ever disastrous Luci searches for excitement in a life of crime, and finds himself caught in a web of messy romance and bad blood.
The Golden Boar
Magnolia Porter Siddell
A young woman joins a group of summoners who call forth Guardian Beasts to protect their isolated magical island. Unfortunately, her Guardian Beast is nothing like she'd imagined, and he's about to change her life, and everything she thought she knew about herself...
Namesake
Isa, Meg
There's ghosts at your heels and fairy tale worlds ahead. What do you do? Jump down the rabbit hole!
Missing Monday
Elle Skinner
Two girls fall in love through a magic door connecting their worlds. When Monday suddenly goes missing, it's up to Foyle to find her. How she's going to navigate an entirely unfamiliar world is another matter.
Nigh Heaven & Hell
Scotty
Heather Vodihn is on a simple mission: find her father. However she becomes entangled with two strangers with mysterious powers being stalked by a group with bizarre demands. Heather must learn to trust her new traveling companions, even if she is untrustworthy herself.
The Last Diplomat
Cat Farris
Samma and Tark didn't ask to be stuck together, but now they're partners on the adventure of a lifetime.
Saint for Rent
Ru Xu
Saint Halliday runs an inn for Time Travelers. Unfortunately, he seems to attract other supernatural "guests," too.
Blindsprings
Kadi Fedoruk
Tamaura, wrested into a world 300 years in the future, must find a way to save the magic fading from her country.
Sleepless Domain
Mary Cagle (Cube Watermelon)
In a world where magical girls and their battles are commonplace, loss has become all too common as well.
Kochab
Sarah Webb
A YA F/F fantasy comic about Sonya, a lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village; and Kyra - a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she let fall apart around her.
Monsterkind
Taylor C
Wallace Foster, a young, bright-eyed human social worker, has his entire world view rocked when he's suddenly relocated into a city primarily inhabited by monsters.
Goodbye to Halos
Valerie Halla
Cuddles, gay flirting, weird feelings, and magic-fueled knife fights - it's an adventure across the queer multiverse!
Edison Rex
Chris Roberson
The adventures of the world’s greatest villain who, after defeating his superheroic nemesis, decides that he’s the only one left to defend the world.
Headless Bliss
Clover
A story about story-telling, and other metaphysical themes such as Nightmares! (Failed) Teamwork! Comedy! And more!
Cassiopeia Quinn
Gunwild, Psudonym
A cute, pantsless thief is pursued across the stars by a buttoned-up military officer in the spacey, laser-filled future.
The Substitutes
Myisha Haynes
What happens when three roommates accidentally acquire otherworldly and powerful magic weapons destined for someone else?
Trying Human
IntroducingEmy
Two women separated by over half a century are brought together by an alien-filled conspiracy involving murder, mystery and romance!
Gzhel Guardian
Atla Hrafney, nushanchel
The Railway World is a complex, mysterious network of trains, towns and mechanical monsters. Leo is a Guardian of one of these towns, and although their burn-out and depression has taken hold of them, they have one last job to finish.
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It’s a continuation of the last panel of yesterday’s strip. Amber is rapidly putting together the obvious, that 1) Walky is here because Amber is his safe space for coping with reality by escaping it, and that 2) the thing Walky is trying to escape, is that he blew it with another girl. Which, while Walky doesn’t mean anything by it, does put Amber in a very weird situation, because she knows that what Walky wants, is the thing both of them substitute for emotional support; so, in a way, it’s like Walky is using this form of intimacy with his one ex, to cope with losing the intimacy he was getting from his other ex. Which especially sucks for Amber, ’cause she seems to not be 100% over Walky.
Is Walky really one of those wants what he can’t have type ninjas? I swear he did not think on Lucy this hard before they split up. Or even before they got together.
I feel like she made herself such a constant presence in his life that he was taking her for granted. Now between her giving him hell the other day and basically ghosting him now the sudden change is giving him a lot to think about. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.
Yeah. She moved so fast, because she’s emotionally immature around relationships in her “I’m a smart capable woman who is still mentally trapped in a high school girl’s mindset” way, and that made her move uber fast, as she was just excited about the premise of being in a relationship.
Her moving uber-fast, and getting straight to direct emotional closeness and commitment, was the worst possible thing for triggering the problems Walky has with his own avoidant emotional immaturity. Walky got uncomfortable, and immediately had to erect a boundary to protect himself, because he felt pushed too fast, so he never actually reached a space where he was comfortable internally contemplating how he felt about Lucy.
Remember, the core beliefs Walky has about his last two relationships, is that him and Dorothy could never be a serious thing because her dreams were too big to accommodate his presence, and that him and Amber was never serious, because the purpose of them being together was as an outlet for each others’ avoidant and self-destructive coping mechanisms. In both cases, I think those relationships fully departed him, before he really had the impetus to have a conversation with himself about either, as to whether those relationships were part of his future. If he was honest with himself, he’d probably realize that he felt way more strongly than he thought about both of those relationships.
So, I don’t think it’s an “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing. Lucy built the relationship up in her own head to the point that she blew through Walky’s comfort zone, and she did so so brazenly and freely, he didn’t even feel comfortable applying boundaries around that, because he didn’t have an interpersonal strategy for someone getting through his outer walls so fast. But, Lucy was also easily able to discard him, because her love for him was less about him, and more about her being excited to be in a relationship, in general.
However, none of Walky’s prior relationships prepared him for dealing with a partner like Lucy. Both Dorothy and Amber are very similar to Walky, in that they bury their real emotions in humor and sarcasm, and in their own ways, deflect or temper strong emotions through a veneer of irony. Lucy, therefore, ended up being the first one to force Walky to evaluate his relationship with her, as if a serious future together was a possibility. She’s the first one to treat him as an individual she is sincerely trying to build a future with. She’s the first person who literally ignores his attempts to avoid sincerity and emotional discomfort, and while she did so more out of excitement and interpersonal recklessness than any malice, it arises in him for the first time, the need to sincerely reckon with the way he feels
It literally all probably would have worked itself out, if it weren’t for David’s parents, or if Lucy took several peoples’ gentle advice, that she wouldn’t have a good experience. With time, Walky would have eventually known what he needed to know about his feelings for Lucy, that he could have met her where she was at, if her interest in him persisted. But, Walky literally just could not move fast enough, at his current level of emotional maturity, to process how much romantic heat Lucy was bringing, in time for it to actually matter. Now, he’s just stuck realizing, that he actually did fuck up a relationship he had nearly realized was important to him, and now there’s nothing he can really do about it, anymore.
It’s not that he “wants what he can’t have.” It’s that, because of his emotional and interpersonal trauma, he wasn’t able to keep up with the pace of acceleration of sincere intimacy that she was rushing him through; and, now that it’s gone, he realizes for the first time, that maybe that sort of intimacy, was something desirable and good for him, that has been perpetually missing from his life.
He sure as shit didn’t get that from either of his parents. So, when he was confronted with it, he had no frame of reference to process it with emotional intelligence. And, while it isn’t the reason that he and Lucy broke up, his inability to get on board with her personal brand and level of intimacy, has left him knowing for the first time, what it always was that he needed to fill that one hole inside him, which he was most scared to approach.
I’m not quite sure that it’s his emotional immaturity or interpersonal trauma that kept him from keeping up with her. Or any problem with him. Or that he should have kept up with her.
The problem may have been more that she was moving unreasonably fast, at least partly because she’d been dwelling on it for months before the relationship started. Which speaks to her emotional immaturity, in a different way.
Otherwise though, I largely agree with this.
I think the point is that, if he was able to confront his discomfort, he could have communicated to Lucy that she was moving too quickly for him. Instead, he avoided addressing the issue (in part because Dorothy told him to), and it led to an inevitable breakdown when the veil fell from Lucy’s eyes. It’s not that he should have been able to keep up, but that he didn’t have the emotional tools to handle a relationship where one side is moving recklessly, because all his other relationships have been treated as easily discardable.
That’s fair, but that’s a really hard thing to do, especially once that initial “love” misunderstanding happened. There was already a good chance of the “I don’t really love you” conversation going seriously badly.
I had a thoughtful reply that got deleted because this damn site is held together with spit and wishful thinking, but I also think Walky’s reckoning with how his avoidant behaviors are actively harming the people he cares about, as well as depriving him of any opportunities for finding people who care about him. Dorothy and Amber both reacted negatively to this impulse (Dorothy with passive aggression when Walky responded to her confession of love with a joke, and Amber with ACTIVE aggression when Walky played off Mike’s death as a joke) but neither of them actually confronted him on his behavior or, to your point, made their relationships out to be important, so threats to those relationships didn’t have much weight to them. Now, his behavior has had significant repercussions and he’s actually been called out on it, which has forced him to acknowledge emotions that he’s actively been avoiding.
A Relationship needs some internal space to see the other person, appreciate them. Develop feelings.
If one person likes the other a lot more, and collapses the space between, it deprives the other person of the room to catch up. Pursue.
It’s not walkys fault. She was a bit ubiquitous and smothering. A lesson she seems to have learned. Walky never really learned how to have a desire and use his ambition to pursue it. And Lucy helped deprive him of that.esp True In a relationship that starts outs as besties or FWB. Without that internal space the feelings for romance may never develop.
( I’m not blaming Lucy for walkys brain. Keeping a little space goes a long way , both for preserving your own identity to develop and the other person having the separateness to value that. ).
I think it would be weirder if he didn’t miss her after together as friends so often.
It could also be that the drama or activity of the relationship helped keep his mind off of the loss of Mike. I also doubt that Lucy would have brought up thoughts of Mike as much as Amber would have, since she wasn’t a part of that group during that whole fiasco (if I remember right). Booster is his new roommate and might dig into his mind too closely, so hanging out distracting himself online in his room would be hard. I am not sure how much he is really a friend with the guys of their social circle, and with Danny dating his twin while Joe is focused on Joyce, it doesn’t really leave him many options. Out of the girls, I think that most of them are either already in a relationship or are someone that he has already dated (leaving out Ruth and Sarah). He just seems like the type of person to be socially active to try and forget what is on his mind, and that failed by adding more problems of his parents’ racism and his relationship with Lucy. While Lucy did move fast, I also think that he didn’t want to think about the relationship too deeply because then he would have to think deeply about other things too, almost like a cascade effect. How serious he gets about Lucy runs into his concerns about his parents (which he normally ignores for his sanity while financially relying on them) which crashes into his passivity on how they treated his twin and then into how he might be careless of the feelings of those around him, bringing up Mike. It is a lot for any adult to self reflect and analyze their family’s actions that deeply, not even mentioning that he isn’t financially stable or in a secure spot in his life (aka job, house, etc).
Honestly, I wonder more whether he just needed a friend to hang out and do things with, but the best way to do that was through a relationship. From personal experience, people obviously prioritize their free time for their dating partner over a regular friend, and most people are dating. It can really depend on someone’s course load and whether they work, but there can be very limited free time (I had more labs and class time than other majors though). The best ways to have someone to hang out with every day or every other day is to date or be their roommate.
This could all be me projecting though. I can’t even say how often I sometimes wonder if I should just date so I have someone to spend time with, even though I run asexual/grey. I may be more introverted but even I like having fun with friends more than every 4-6 months. Not a good reason to date, which is why I haven’t done it, but it does frustrate me sometimes.
I don’t think so. He’s spent a lot of time thinking and worrying about Lucy since they started dating. He wasn’t speedrunning the relationship like she was, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care or wasn’t invested.
If you think about how Walky’s brain works, even some of the things that look like he wasn’t were just trying to distract himself from his concerns – like coming to play video games with Amber before.
Huh, is Walky realizing he has more feelings for Lucy than previously displayed? Is true, does absence make the heart grow fonder? Or is this like me when I make comments without considering how awkward they are?
I need answers and the only questions. Story of my life.
lol i keep my hair fairlys hort but when i do trim it myself more comes out than expected but not worth it to pay a salon to do it versus a mess at home depending lol (tho if i was less shallow or it grew back super fast i’d just shave it off completely)
My hair is so static prone that it would drive me crazy if I kept it short. The sticking to my face or getting caught in my glasses would just drive me bonkers. I don’t think that a buzz cut would look that great on me either. I normally keep it long enough to braid or put in a loose bun. I also have a cowlick dead front and center with straight hair, so I looked like I had devil’s horns as a young kid with bangs. Having longer hair also means that it is less of a fight dealing with that.
Same here, my hair is just too light and fluffy to cut short, I would look like a dandelion going off. So much easier when it’s long enough to get heavier and to easily contain.
I cut all my hair off ages ago bc it’s an overly thick nightmare that has I’ve gotten injuries from maintaining, but I’m not consistent about keeping short. It got to the length (5-6 inches?) where it actually started taking time to style after a wash, and I needed to keep curl cream and mousse supplied or else it’d look a mess, which was getting expensive. Like two weeks ago I woke up and realized it really needed a wash and I absolutely hated the idea of standing around for 45 minutes finger curling, so i grabbed my dad’s clippers and buzzed it all off to a 2. Gave my floor mates the shock of their life and I think they love me for it
My hair is also like that, but my platonic wife’s is somehow even worse. Like our landlord is legit convinced that we have a secret cat, when it’s really just her hair getting everywhere all the time.
Sometimes people get married for legal protections (i.e. power of attorney or having a say over medical care when one party is incapacitated), access to insurance, for financial reasons (married couples get benefits that non-married couples sometimes cannot access), or might just have fallen out of love but not in an explosive or negative way so they choose to stay married for a host of reasons.
I might have missed a reason or two, but you get the gist. Being married =/= being in love, it’s a legal contract/definition.
In our case, a combo of both, actually! She realized she was hella gay after we got married, but for the moment, we’re cool with staying married for legal protections, and I also just really like her as a person and want her to be in my life forever (just not in a romantic sense)
It’s taken me a long time to admit to myself that a platonic spouse is something I want out of life at all, precisely because seemingly everybody in our society is so dismissive of the concept at all. People like you, sharing their stories on the Internet (and outside the Internet) helped me realize this was an actual, legitimate thing people can both want and have. So, thanks!
On a not-entirely unrelated note, I lost my beloved black cat this month … and it’s only now it occurred to me, how long before I’ve swept up the last of her fur?
My condolences for your loss. When my grey tabby passed, grey tabby hairs were found for a lengthy time afterwards, I want to say two years, actually. Girl was a champion shedder, and there’s nothing like an old farmhouse to trap hairs.
Deepest sympathies. Maybe your kitty might meet mine on the Other Side. I found a whisker in my carpet just this evening, while doing push-ups. It’s been over 2 years. And yes, I do vacuum every two weeks.
So sorry to hear that. Losing a pet is always rough. We are still finding fur from our old cat that we lost in thhe beginning of 2022, though normally only in clothes like sweaters. Can tell since he was a brown tabby, and none of our current cats are that fur color (the ticking is very distinctive in color contrast). I have taken some of the fur of our current cats to put in a baggy with their name to remember them by after they are gone. Still a bit different from stumbling across the fur when you weren’t expecting it though. It just hits different.
We had a buff tabby for most of my youth, and his thick coat shed like a fiend. He hated being brushed too (we don’t know why, we got him as a kitten), so the house had fur tumbleweeds.
He passed seven years ago and I’ve moved twice since then, but I still find his cat hair on occasion.
Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that. And it’s certainly not easy to realize it’s gone. I felt some sort of way when my boyfriend could first come over without needing his allergy. I said ‘I miss my kitty’ and he told me he’d take his allergy meds every day for the rest of his life if he could still be here.
Yes, Walky suggesting her to try another hairstyle so she can look a little like the other girl he likes is pretty sordid. But I don’t think he said it consciously.
I didn’t understand it. It actually makes more sense and might just prove that he’s always thinking about Lucy. Of course, if tomorrow Walky goes to Amber bringing her a bonnet identical to Lucy’s as a gift, that’s a problem.
When I see someone in these comments talk about “people” being horrible to a character, my first thought is other people in the comments, but I’m not seeing much of that today either.
Seems that Amber understood everything. Looks like one of those classic situations in which someone understand how much they care about a person only when that’s gone. I hope it’s not too late for him to make peace with Lucy. But it would be great if Walky starts telling everyone things like that, continously talking about Lucy, making all awkward until Booster has enough and points out to him how much he misses her.
prolly associated with looking ‘homely’ and grandma-like then again some ppl are into the ‘cottage core’ aesthetic and all tho i’m sure there’s some Lolita style bonnets to obut more so fashion wise than for it to keep ur hair in place, if that’s fitting (tho even lucy (and sarah?) only wore those hair bonnets/protectors while they slept as opposed to just during the day, i’d assume otherwise ppl just tie their hair up/back or in a towel after showering)
tho i do hear some super curly haired ppl do use something similar as well
… this white lady does wear bonnets a third of the time. One third of the time they are getting washed and the other third I forget because my bedtime routine is a mess in general.
Does he not realize his sister also has a hair bonnet? And my guessumption is mentioned it’s uses to Amber before due to roller derby time and how much probably got shed in the helmets?
Cops are overgrown children cosplaying War, with all the rest of us forced into their stupid, childish game without our consent, consuming vast funds from the public treasury and ruining lives by the hundreds of thousands.
unknown@collie.bsky.social ⋅ 18h
I cannot get over these cops wearing night vision to arrest a dude on a Southwest Airlines flight in broad daylight.
a woman posted a pic in a group chat of a baby turkey she bought thinking it was a chicken. She captioned the pic "IS THIS A TURKEY?!?"
Anyway, I haven't been here because I've been yelling IS THIS A TURKEY at everything. You should try it
y'ever figure, hey, i should put joyce in bisexual flag colors for this storyline, but you also figure, hrm, that might telegraph things 8 months in advance, so you... add orange stripes and... it works, somehow it works, nobody points out the pink/purple/blue
Jonathan Joss being shot outside his home while protecting his husband after being sent a threatening and distressing package is WHY we need Pride
It's 2025 and people are still being shot and killed for being queer
This is why we march and why we fight
the thing about white liberal Americans is that they'll argue to accept bigots into their tent before accepting the bigots' targets.
the targets that have been on the same side as white liberals from the jump.
John Redcorn was pretty much the only contemporary Native representation I had in comedy growing up. Probably the funniest Native character in cartoon history and a lot of that was on Jonathan Joss' pitch perfect rezzy uncle performance. RIP to one of the best to ever do it.
today in #9chickweedlane i learned that, yes, lolly is so edda 2.0 that she's even wearing her mother's wedding dress as she gets married to Her Dad (But Taller)
unknown @collie.bsky.social ⋅ 18h
ETPC @etpc.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
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(Digi Desktop Vtuber)
⚧️
video games !
Bag of chips?
I can DoorDash somethin’.
imagine awkwardness so palpable you would rather do SCHOOL WORK
That is an almost painful to imagine, and yet here these goofuses are.
…I mean, I’m not gonna say I’ve never been in a situation like that.
The horror.
So… high school
o.o
Indeed.
Walky’s become a much more sentimental person than I bet he’d have ever expected. It’s not a bad thing, though.
It’s just me, but it seems like the suggestion is a subtle way of saying, are you looking for advice with Amber?
Block the fells with the power of videogames!
Ok, I don’t know why, but that expressionless face in panel 3….it’s disturbing, maybe she’s going to cut her hair again?
It’s a continuation of the last panel of yesterday’s strip. Amber is rapidly putting together the obvious, that 1) Walky is here because Amber is his safe space for coping with reality by escaping it, and that 2) the thing Walky is trying to escape, is that he blew it with another girl. Which, while Walky doesn’t mean anything by it, does put Amber in a very weird situation, because she knows that what Walky wants, is the thing both of them substitute for emotional support; so, in a way, it’s like Walky is using this form of intimacy with his one ex, to cope with losing the intimacy he was getting from his other ex. Which especially sucks for Amber, ’cause she seems to not be 100% over Walky.
Is Walky really one of those wants what he can’t have type ninjas? I swear he did not think on Lucy this hard before they split up. Or even before they got together.
Seriously, he’s thinking about her more in the past ten minutes than he appeared to for the previous four months or whatever.
And now he’s realizing it.
I feel like she made herself such a constant presence in his life that he was taking her for granted. Now between her giving him hell the other day and basically ghosting him now the sudden change is giving him a lot to think about. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.
Yeah. She moved so fast, because she’s emotionally immature around relationships in her “I’m a smart capable woman who is still mentally trapped in a high school girl’s mindset” way, and that made her move uber fast, as she was just excited about the premise of being in a relationship.
Her moving uber-fast, and getting straight to direct emotional closeness and commitment, was the worst possible thing for triggering the problems Walky has with his own avoidant emotional immaturity. Walky got uncomfortable, and immediately had to erect a boundary to protect himself, because he felt pushed too fast, so he never actually reached a space where he was comfortable internally contemplating how he felt about Lucy.
Remember, the core beliefs Walky has about his last two relationships, is that him and Dorothy could never be a serious thing because her dreams were too big to accommodate his presence, and that him and Amber was never serious, because the purpose of them being together was as an outlet for each others’ avoidant and self-destructive coping mechanisms. In both cases, I think those relationships fully departed him, before he really had the impetus to have a conversation with himself about either, as to whether those relationships were part of his future. If he was honest with himself, he’d probably realize that he felt way more strongly than he thought about both of those relationships.
So, I don’t think it’s an “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing. Lucy built the relationship up in her own head to the point that she blew through Walky’s comfort zone, and she did so so brazenly and freely, he didn’t even feel comfortable applying boundaries around that, because he didn’t have an interpersonal strategy for someone getting through his outer walls so fast. But, Lucy was also easily able to discard him, because her love for him was less about him, and more about her being excited to be in a relationship, in general.
However, none of Walky’s prior relationships prepared him for dealing with a partner like Lucy. Both Dorothy and Amber are very similar to Walky, in that they bury their real emotions in humor and sarcasm, and in their own ways, deflect or temper strong emotions through a veneer of irony. Lucy, therefore, ended up being the first one to force Walky to evaluate his relationship with her, as if a serious future together was a possibility. She’s the first one to treat him as an individual she is sincerely trying to build a future with. She’s the first person who literally ignores his attempts to avoid sincerity and emotional discomfort, and while she did so more out of excitement and interpersonal recklessness than any malice, it arises in him for the first time, the need to sincerely reckon with the way he feels
It literally all probably would have worked itself out, if it weren’t for David’s parents, or if Lucy took several peoples’ gentle advice, that she wouldn’t have a good experience. With time, Walky would have eventually known what he needed to know about his feelings for Lucy, that he could have met her where she was at, if her interest in him persisted. But, Walky literally just could not move fast enough, at his current level of emotional maturity, to process how much romantic heat Lucy was bringing, in time for it to actually matter. Now, he’s just stuck realizing, that he actually did fuck up a relationship he had nearly realized was important to him, and now there’s nothing he can really do about it, anymore.
It’s not that he “wants what he can’t have.” It’s that, because of his emotional and interpersonal trauma, he wasn’t able to keep up with the pace of acceleration of sincere intimacy that she was rushing him through; and, now that it’s gone, he realizes for the first time, that maybe that sort of intimacy, was something desirable and good for him, that has been perpetually missing from his life.
He sure as shit didn’t get that from either of his parents. So, when he was confronted with it, he had no frame of reference to process it with emotional intelligence. And, while it isn’t the reason that he and Lucy broke up, his inability to get on board with her personal brand and level of intimacy, has left him knowing for the first time, what it always was that he needed to fill that one hole inside him, which he was most scared to approach.
Now this is why I read the comment section.
Well, that and the lulz.
Wow, you might understand it even better than the author.
I’m not quite sure that it’s his emotional immaturity or interpersonal trauma that kept him from keeping up with her. Or any problem with him. Or that he should have kept up with her.
The problem may have been more that she was moving unreasonably fast, at least partly because she’d been dwelling on it for months before the relationship started. Which speaks to her emotional immaturity, in a different way.
Otherwise though, I largely agree with this.
I think the point is that, if he was able to confront his discomfort, he could have communicated to Lucy that she was moving too quickly for him. Instead, he avoided addressing the issue (in part because Dorothy told him to), and it led to an inevitable breakdown when the veil fell from Lucy’s eyes. It’s not that he should have been able to keep up, but that he didn’t have the emotional tools to handle a relationship where one side is moving recklessly, because all his other relationships have been treated as easily discardable.
That’s fair, but that’s a really hard thing to do, especially once that initial “love” misunderstanding happened. There was already a good chance of the “I don’t really love you” conversation going seriously badly.
I had a thoughtful reply that got deleted because this damn site is held together with spit and wishful thinking, but I also think Walky’s reckoning with how his avoidant behaviors are actively harming the people he cares about, as well as depriving him of any opportunities for finding people who care about him. Dorothy and Amber both reacted negatively to this impulse (Dorothy with passive aggression when Walky responded to her confession of love with a joke, and Amber with ACTIVE aggression when Walky played off Mike’s death as a joke) but neither of them actually confronted him on his behavior or, to your point, made their relationships out to be important, so threats to those relationships didn’t have much weight to them. Now, his behavior has had significant repercussions and he’s actually been called out on it, which has forced him to acknowledge emotions that he’s actively been avoiding.
*applause*
Seriously, this is really great analysis and I wish I had been the one to write it. Well done!
They were together for like a week or two in DoA time.
A Relationship needs some internal space to see the other person, appreciate them. Develop feelings.
If one person likes the other a lot more, and collapses the space between, it deprives the other person of the room to catch up. Pursue.
It’s not walkys fault. She was a bit ubiquitous and smothering. A lesson she seems to have learned. Walky never really learned how to have a desire and use his ambition to pursue it. And Lucy helped deprive him of that.esp True In a relationship that starts outs as besties or FWB. Without that internal space the feelings for romance may never develop.
( I’m not blaming Lucy for walkys brain. Keeping a little space goes a long way , both for preserving your own identity to develop and the other person having the separateness to value that. ).
I think it would be weirder if he didn’t miss her after together as friends so often.
Holy shit, a reasonable comment regarding Lucy??? From Adam Black?????
It could also be that the drama or activity of the relationship helped keep his mind off of the loss of Mike. I also doubt that Lucy would have brought up thoughts of Mike as much as Amber would have, since she wasn’t a part of that group during that whole fiasco (if I remember right). Booster is his new roommate and might dig into his mind too closely, so hanging out distracting himself online in his room would be hard. I am not sure how much he is really a friend with the guys of their social circle, and with Danny dating his twin while Joe is focused on Joyce, it doesn’t really leave him many options. Out of the girls, I think that most of them are either already in a relationship or are someone that he has already dated (leaving out Ruth and Sarah). He just seems like the type of person to be socially active to try and forget what is on his mind, and that failed by adding more problems of his parents’ racism and his relationship with Lucy. While Lucy did move fast, I also think that he didn’t want to think about the relationship too deeply because then he would have to think deeply about other things too, almost like a cascade effect. How serious he gets about Lucy runs into his concerns about his parents (which he normally ignores for his sanity while financially relying on them) which crashes into his passivity on how they treated his twin and then into how he might be careless of the feelings of those around him, bringing up Mike. It is a lot for any adult to self reflect and analyze their family’s actions that deeply, not even mentioning that he isn’t financially stable or in a secure spot in his life (aka job, house, etc).
Honestly, I wonder more whether he just needed a friend to hang out and do things with, but the best way to do that was through a relationship. From personal experience, people obviously prioritize their free time for their dating partner over a regular friend, and most people are dating. It can really depend on someone’s course load and whether they work, but there can be very limited free time (I had more labs and class time than other majors though). The best ways to have someone to hang out with every day or every other day is to date or be their roommate.
This could all be me projecting though. I can’t even say how often I sometimes wonder if I should just date so I have someone to spend time with, even though I run asexual/grey. I may be more introverted but even I like having fun with friends more than every 4-6 months. Not a good reason to date, which is why I haven’t done it, but it does frustrate me sometimes.
I don’t think so. He’s spent a lot of time thinking and worrying about Lucy since they started dating. He wasn’t speedrunning the relationship like she was, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care or wasn’t invested.
If you think about how Walky’s brain works, even some of the things that look like he wasn’t were just trying to distract himself from his concerns – like coming to play video games with Amber before.
Huh, is Walky realizing he has more feelings for Lucy than previously displayed? Is true, does absence make the heart grow fonder? Or is this like me when I make comments without considering how awkward they are?
I need answers and the only questions. Story of my life.
Stupid auto correct
Not necessarily. He could just be realizing, that he really will notice her absence.
That’s the thing about change. It changes things.
Could be. Could also just be noticing things stronger only when they became absent.
Re: the alt text – I don’t like hair. It’s coarse and rough and irritating — and it gets everywhere.
It won’t help with it getting everywhere, but using shampoo can help a lot with the other parts.
Sand is rough and irritating and gets into everything. They should shampoo the beach.
No no no shampoo would only make it worse, it dries your shit out. They should do a 10 minute deep conditioner on the beach
dang it, walky
Sparing a thought for his dead girlfriend, I see. Nice of him.
She’s in witness protection, you know.
I heard she was doing missionary work in Bulmeria.
My hair is like that.
Sometimes I wonder why I don’t cut it.
And then I get distracted again.
lol i keep my hair fairlys hort but when i do trim it myself more comes out than expected but not worth it to pay a salon to do it versus a mess at home depending lol (tho if i was less shallow or it grew back super fast i’d just shave it off completely)
My hair is so static prone that it would drive me crazy if I kept it short. The sticking to my face or getting caught in my glasses would just drive me bonkers. I don’t think that a buzz cut would look that great on me either. I normally keep it long enough to braid or put in a loose bun. I also have a cowlick dead front and center with straight hair, so I looked like I had devil’s horns as a young kid with bangs. Having longer hair also means that it is less of a fight dealing with that.
Same here, my hair is just too light and fluffy to cut short, I would look like a dandelion going off. So much easier when it’s long enough to get heavier and to easily contain.
I seem to have changed with age to a point where my hair grows very slowly and stops at a fairly short length.
Unless we’re talkin’ ear, nose or eyebrows; those are going BOOOOOOSH like they’re on steroids.
Hairoids? No no, that makes me think of other ‘roids and OMG STOP TYPING MIA JUST FUCKING STOP
I cut all my hair off ages ago bc it’s an overly thick nightmare that has I’ve gotten injuries from maintaining, but I’m not consistent about keeping short. It got to the length (5-6 inches?) where it actually started taking time to style after a wash, and I needed to keep curl cream and mousse supplied or else it’d look a mess, which was getting expensive. Like two weeks ago I woke up and realized it really needed a wash and I absolutely hated the idea of standing around for 45 minutes finger curling, so i grabbed my dad’s clippers and buzzed it all off to a 2. Gave my floor mates the shock of their life and I think they love me for it
My hair is also like that, but my platonic wife’s is somehow even worse. Like our landlord is legit convinced that we have a secret cat, when it’s really just her hair getting everywhere all the time.
You have a platonic wife?
Sometimes people get married for legal protections (i.e. power of attorney or having a say over medical care when one party is incapacitated), access to insurance, for financial reasons (married couples get benefits that non-married couples sometimes cannot access), or might just have fallen out of love but not in an explosive or negative way so they choose to stay married for a host of reasons.
I might have missed a reason or two, but you get the gist. Being married =/= being in love, it’s a legal contract/definition.
In our case, a combo of both, actually! She realized she was hella gay after we got married, but for the moment, we’re cool with staying married for legal protections, and I also just really like her as a person and want her to be in my life forever (just not in a romantic sense)
It’s taken me a long time to admit to myself that a platonic spouse is something I want out of life at all, precisely because seemingly everybody in our society is so dismissive of the concept at all. People like you, sharing their stories on the Internet (and outside the Internet) helped me realize this was an actual, legitimate thing people can both want and have. So, thanks!
I’m really glad to hear that! ^-^
Give in, Walky… surrender yourself to the floof…
On a not-entirely unrelated note, I lost my beloved black cat this month
… and it’s only now it occurred to me, how long before I’ve swept up the last of her fur? 
My condolences for your loss. When my grey tabby passed, grey tabby hairs were found for a lengthy time afterwards, I want to say two years, actually. Girl was a champion shedder, and there’s nothing like an old farmhouse to trap hairs.
Deepest sympathies. Maybe your kitty might meet mine on the Other Side. I found a whisker in my carpet just this evening, while doing push-ups. It’s been over 2 years. And yes, I do vacuum every two weeks.
So sorry to hear that. Losing a pet is always rough. We are still finding fur from our old cat that we lost in thhe beginning of 2022, though normally only in clothes like sweaters. Can tell since he was a brown tabby, and none of our current cats are that fur color (the ticking is very distinctive in color contrast). I have taken some of the fur of our current cats to put in a baggy with their name to remember them by after they are gone. Still a bit different from stumbling across the fur when you weren’t expecting it though. It just hits different.
Cat hair is like glitter, it’s never really gone.
I am so sorry to hear about your cat, though. Losing a pet can be so hard, and I hope you have support and comfort surrounding you.
Our dog passed close to six years ago now and we still find clumps of his hair behind cupboards and the like.
It’s like a half life, there’s progressively less and less, but it’s never gone completely.
We had a buff tabby for most of my youth, and his thick coat shed like a fiend. He hated being brushed too (we don’t know why, we got him as a kitten), so the house had fur tumbleweeds.
He passed seven years ago and I’ve moved twice since then, but I still find his cat hair on occasion.
Oh no, I’m so sorry to hear that. And it’s certainly not easy to realize it’s gone. I felt some sort of way when my boyfriend could first come over without needing his allergy. I said ‘I miss my kitty’ and he told me he’d take his allergy meds every day for the rest of his life if he could still be here.
1. Yes, long hair gets everywhere. I’m still raking it out of the carpet two years after cutting mine off.
2. Walky…don’t do a Danny.
In what way is he like Danny?
Other than his taste in women?
I have thick hair that sheds a lot, and it’s blue! Picture that everywhere
Why are people so horrible towards Amber
I’m confused who you see being horrible toward Amber.
Yes, Walky suggesting her to try another hairstyle so she can look a little like the other girl he likes is pretty sordid. But I don’t think he said it consciously.
I think he means using one of those thing Lucy and Sarah uses on their hair while sleeping. Lucy has one in the shape of a PokeBall.
I didn’t understand it. It actually makes more sense and might just prove that he’s always thinking about Lucy. Of course, if tomorrow Walky goes to Amber bringing her a bonnet identical to Lucy’s as a gift, that’s a problem.
When I see someone in these comments talk about “people” being horrible to a character, my first thought is other people in the comments, but I’m not seeing much of that today either.
I think she means that people are showing up only to get things from her. It’s not to see her, it’s access to her shit.
Yes, Taffy. Amber is very attractive.
Indeed.
Seems that Amber understood everything. Looks like one of those classic situations in which someone understand how much they care about a person only when that’s gone. I hope it’s not too late for him to make peace with Lucy. But it would be great if Walky starts telling everyone things like that, continously talking about Lucy, making all awkward until Booster has enough and points out to him how much he misses her.
Amber is wondering if she should undertake the emotional labor that he’s dumping on her.
To quote paraphrase the great David Rose
“I have never heard someone say so many wrong things, one after the other, consecutively, in a row”
“And then they fucked!”
(comment #69, i am bored and need to jumpstart my brain somehow)
Thank you, Yelling Bird.
Yeeeeeee make white girls wear satin bonnets again! Like the olden days!
They’re so good for everyone I really don’t know why they slipped out of fashion.
Wear bonnets again, protect your hair.
prolly associated with looking ‘homely’ and grandma-like then again some ppl are into the ‘cottage core’ aesthetic and all tho i’m sure there’s some Lolita style bonnets to obut more so fashion wise than for it to keep ur hair in place, if that’s fitting (tho even lucy (and sarah?) only wore those hair bonnets/protectors while they slept as opposed to just during the day, i’d assume otherwise ppl just tie their hair up/back or in a towel after showering)
tho i do hear some super curly haired ppl do use something similar as well
I was definitely just talking about the satin bonnets for protecting your hair at night.
… this white lady does wear bonnets a third of the time. One third of the time they are getting washed and the other third I forget because my bedtime routine is a mess in general.
I wonder how hard it is to clean that dino plushie…
perhaps one of them can contact their chemistry Professor for ideas ^^
I think that sounds like a good idea.
And by good I mean an entertaining large number of ways it could go wrong.
they’re pretty much failing at avoiding feelings
Poor Walky. He misses Lucy.
Does he not realize his sister also has a hair bonnet? And my guessumption is mentioned it’s uses to Amber before due to roller derby time and how much probably got shed in the helmets?
Walky….. that was a pretty insensitive comment…. essentially “be more like this other woman i’m now dating instead of dating you“ oof.