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eh, he’s just being a dumb college freshman. I knew a lot of people who thought and acted like him right out of high school; if Danny is anything like them (and anything like his parallel self later in life), he’ll grow out of it.
I more or less expected Danny to be like this in the beginning since he was kind of foolish and wishy-washy as a freshman in the original universe.
And to be honest, though he’s being obnoxious and dumb, I still prefer this foolishness over the self-righteousness the other Danny had over social drinking and things like that.
I was totally in agreement until that last sentence there… self-righteousness??? What self-righteousness over drinking? The part where he didn’t want to do it? Cause if so, it makes me sad that anyone who does not immediately give in to peer pressure over something they’re not comfortable doing is considered self-righteous about it. (And then in the end he gave in to peer pressure anyways.) I certainly don’t remember him going around leading some crusade against drinking, in any case
I didn’t mean to suggest that merely abstaining for drinking is being self-righteous; however, the impression I got from Danny in Roomies! was that he (at least initially) passed judgment on Ruth’s friends merely because they drank (the “Wasting Away” arc – http://www.itswalky.com/d/19981019.html, http://www.itswalky.com/d/19981020.html, http://www.itswalky.com/d/19981021.html). He does of course eventually get over it, but not without getting drunk himself (in a genuinely unhealthy way – out of self-loathing and spite – not to mention the painful plot-related repercussions). There’s a healthy way to drink, and an unhealthy way to drink; Danny learned that the hard way.
It wasn’t really a crusade (it wasn’t really a big enough plot point/something brought up often enough), and he obviously wasn’t so caught up in his feelings to abandon Ruth when he first learned of their drinking, but he obviously had his own feelings to sort through.
And I mean, I can kind of understand where Danny was coming from in that situation, since he was obviously in a situation he was uncomfortable with surrounded by people he didn’t know. That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about how David Willis writes his characters – even when you don’t like what they’re doing, you can usually understand where they’re coming from and sympathize with them.
Oh, drama will be frequent. And of course it’s early, so nobody can go all crying that Dumbing of Age used to not be about drama and can we bring the jokes back?
Yes, it probably would’ve been greater months ago, instead of stringing the guy along and crushing his soul when he just gets into university, damning him to years of regret down the line.
Am I the only one who feels sorry for Danny and that Dorothy is a bit of a bongo? The guy clearly cares for her and she’s being totally self centred. She doesn’t want to break up with him because he’s clueless, but because being with him is inconvenient.
There’s trouble on both sides, and the fact is that he’s a wishy-washy teenager who disregards her aspirations just because they don’t fit into the fantasy he’s built up in his head. I like Danny, but the guy clearly needs some sense knocked into him just like he did the first time around.
That said, while I believe Dorothy is right to dump him, she does seem to be leaning a bit too heavily on the “I’ll be gone when I get accepted into Yale” thing and isn’t bending on her version of what the future should be like either. A lack of compromise tends to spell disaster very quickly in relationships of this nature. Maybe putting some distance between them will help her to grow as well.
Oh, of course she’s not going to manage to get into Yale (or get in but be cockblocked from going/staying there for some other reason) and then probably regret dumping Danny (who will have since moved on) for that dream. You can see that one coming from their first appearance.
Sure, I feel sorry for Danny. I feel sorry for him living in self-delusion for however long it’s been because Dorothy wasn’t prepared to cut him down sooner.
Yes, he cares for her, but that doesn’t mean they should be together. Honestly, he strikes me as just one step away from being this guy. And no-one wants to be that guy.
I wasn’t very sympathetic to Danny before today but I’m suddenly asking myself why Dorothy got together with him in the first place and what she got out of his company before.
I can imagine a gender reversed version of this with a high flyer guy picking up a sweet girl and being in a relationship with her because it makes things easy for him, and then dumping her to move onto better things when she isn’t as valuable to him.
Since that little story sucks I now feel sorry for Danny (though this may change when we learn more about his earlier relationship with Dorothy.
Yea, I feel like readers would be more sympathetic to the situation if the roles were reversed. I just hope it doesn’t turn into a “dump on Danny” storyline.
She’s also breaking up with him because he literally has no aspirations besides “be with Dorothy,” and she knows that’s not a good dynamic for either of them. She wants him to do well, and she knows he won’t grow a pair unless he’s out on his own.
I just can’t follow Danny on all this. I dated the same girl for 6 years, all the way from 7th grade to a year after grad, so I get the having been together for a long time thing… But we had different plans, we wouldn’t have changed anything for each other, and when she said it was over, I was like ‘Oh… Ok.” Went home, cried it out for 15 min, got drunk with my best friend and my sister, and then I was cool. Recovery in less than 24 hours after a 6 year relationship. And I’m no macho guy or anything… I wrote poetry for her, real sensitive guy stuff… But come on… Man the fuck up Danny. Man the fuck up.
Goddamn it, I really hate Dorothy right now. That’s right, get pissed at him for being madly in love with you. It’s totally his fault that you gave him no reason to think you didn’t reciprocate his feelings and instead strung him along into college.
Hating Danny right now would be like hating a puppy for peeing when you decided not to house-train it. I really like Danny generally, and would usually feel bad about this comparison, but let’s face it–Dumbiverse!Danny may not be in the wrong, but if he wasn’t such an idiot this might not have happened.
You’re forgetting that she voiced her concerns with him in the very first strip they appeared together. But since he’s utterly clueless when it comes to relationships, he didn’t listen carefully enough.
I don’t think we’re supposed to see Dorothy as being completely right. One of the things I like about Willis’ writing is his ability to create conflicts where no one side is truly blameless. Dorothy is just as unyielding when it comes to her version of what the future should look like, and neither of them is willing to compromise. That’s bad news for any relationship, especially one formed this young.
It sucks, but this needed to happen. For both of them, it seems.
Having been in a VERY similar situation, I feel for her. She most definitely made a huge mistake stringing him along and letting it get as far as him following her to school. However, not that this makes it better, it’s *really* hard to do something that you know is going to break the heart of somebody you care about. I don’t get the impression that she hates him–the last line indicates that she knows she got them into that situation by not breaking up earlier.
But she has given him reason to think she didn’t reciprocate his feelings. Of course it was just recently, but when you look at how her behavior clearly indicated there might be a problem and he didn’t get it, it’s easy to imagine that she’s done this before and he didn’t get it. Of course, maybe she did string him along, but that means now’s the time to change that pattern. I for one am in favor of breaking up if you’re not feeling the connection anymore. And just about any means or timing of telling someone it’s over is better than leading them on indefinitely, which is something I’ve been on the receiving end of before.
Gaaahhhhh…That last panel just made me realize how similar this whole situation is to when I broke up with my high school ex. And now that I see it, Danny’s so much like my ex it’s scary. Fortunately I ended it before he could follow me across half an ocean.
I’ve been a Dorothy too. I knew I needed to get out when she started writing a horrible bodice-ripping romance novel about idealized versions of us, and I used this program via which I would’ve entered college early as an excuse, citing that I didn’t want to keep things going long-distance… and then I didn’t get accepted into the program. Things got REALLY awkward as I had to backpedal and eventually explain that I just needed to end it, long-distance or no. And she STILL stalked me for a couple years afterward.
Oh wow. No romance novels in mine, although up until I got accepted early decision to my first college choice, there was always that expectation that *maybe* I’d end up staying in-state. And once I did get accepted, he was always going on about basically dropping everything to follow me out there. Never mind that my college town didn’t really have anything to get him further in his own dreams. He was always holding himself back, part of which I attribute to him not wanting to leave me.
Fortunately the fact that I was leaving made it easier, although there was some awkwardness in the few months between the breakup and my leaving. According to our mutual friends, he was doing some crazy stuff trying to make me jealous and want to get back with him.
While it’s sucks for Danny to get broken up with, seriously, this guy needs to grow the hell up.
Its totally obvious that Dorothy is not happy with the relationship, nor has she been for a long time. But Danny’s willing to overlook all that because he doesn’t want things to change. He wants Dorothy to give up her dreams for their relationship, or he’ll throw away his life for it. He’s either not being fair to himself or her.
She obviously cares for him (she was after all so reluctant to break-up with him to begin with), but he’s trying to force her into a life that she doesn’t want. And she doesn’t want Danny to waste his own life on her, when she can’t give him what he wants.
Y’know. I really don’t get the whole “danny wants her to give up her dreams” thing. It just seems to me like he is your average high school grad with little personal ambition who decides to go to the same college as his girl friend be cause he CAN and dosen’t have any better plans. Is he a bit of an idiot, yeah. Does he make stupid statements, yes. But i mostly get that he is trying to make jokes… and failing. That Dorothy isn’t wrong either. Thats just how relationships are.
Look at what he said in the first panel of the previous comic and tell me that’s not what you would think was being said if someone said it to you. Dorothy herself sums it up best in this comic.
But I’m not saying he wants her to solely give up her dreams. I’m saying he either wants her to stay there with him and give up her dreams (i.e. “Maybe you’ll change your mind and stay”) or he’ll give up any chance at a future he has (i.e. the president story he told and saying he’ll drop out of school for her).
He wants to always be with her and is willing to have one of them forgo anything that could be considered as important or more important.
NOOOOOO I will follow you for ever even though you hate me to show you my devotion and love. then I will get all depressed and stalk you more and then suicide by jumping of the bridge somewhere with a mechanical device that will explode my guts all over the air before I reach the ground because smacking in the water is too painful so………do you want to make this work????
Dorothy is ACTUALLY trying to help Danny and trying to tell him to get on with his own life and let her live her own. Sometimes life sucks… you have to live with it
So, wait a second. Dorothy decided to attend Indiana while waiting to hear from Yale? Is she waiting to hear this academic year, or is she expecting admission next year and just planning to transfer credits?
‘Cuz, if it’s the first one, her current situation is a pretty bad move. The reason I’m thinking that’s the case is that she seems pretty intent on it happening very soon, as opposed to 12 months down the road. Why go through all the trouble of moving in, registering for classes, etc., when you expect to be gone in a few months?
She said in the first strip that she expects to hear from them in “a few years.” So it’s not like she plans on leaving right away. She just wants to nip this in the bud the way she should have done before she even left for college.
Also, she might not quite have the grades she needs to get into Yale right now (which is what I assumed from the “I’ll hear from Yale in a few years” thing). She does, however, know exactly what courses she needs to take to apply to Yale from college and get accepted – and, I hope, what grades she needs to get in those courses in order for them to qualify as transferable. (Seriously, nothing’s more frustrating than realizing you’re going to have to do a year’s worth of work, or more, all over again just because you were only one percentage point from qualifying for credit transfer.)
Having experienced my fair share “ouch, this relationship, ouch,” I… um… find this strip pretty funny, actually. Yes, Danny, you CAN drop out of school in this huge stretch of imagination. Sure. Hah hah.
And the last one, too. I mean, Dorothy breaks up with him and then SHE jumps off the building. Total reversal of what I was expecting.
One of the things I’m liking about this strip is that you can see this from BOTH perspectives, and you hurt for them both, and it was done without anyone stating the obvious. I am really liking this strip so far.
been there, done that… shame on me… but yeah, eventually you grow up and find out there’s more to see outside in the world… growing up really hurts, dude
Sheesh, the abuse some people are giving Dorothy for this is absurd. She is absolutely right here; this is a serious aspiration she has, and Danny is treating it like some stupid childish game that she’ll grow out of. If he really cared about her, he would understand how important it is to her. But no, it’s *his* dream of wedded bliss that matters, not her dreams of achievement and success.
And sure Dorothy shouldn’t have strung Danny along like she did, but apparently it slipped by some people here that **she actually admitted that in the final panel**. She’s owning up to her responsibility and doing the best she can with the mess she’s in. Seriously, she’s absolutely in the right here.
Ehhhh, nah, she’s got a good bit of wrong going on here, too. By her own admittance she “didn’t expect him” to follow her there to be with her. And she says “I mean, I love him, -really-, but…” Those words? Do not sound like someone who was really into their partner for who their partner was. So, let’s tally up what she did wrong and is only barely beginning to set right here.
1. She seems to have only really gotten together with him simply to have someone. Unfair to Danny, big time.
2. Even when faced with evidence that he made what was probably one of the same mistakes she did(not really accepting the other for who they are), she kept it going.
3. The way she is ending it is not at all a kindness. It is in fact, one of the deepest ways you can cut a person. Telling him something he could do out of a desire to be with her is “awful”? Very nice, Dorothy, crush that soul beneath your heel a bit more, why don’t you?
4. While we don’t have a mountain of evidence to back it up here, I’m going to do a bit of instinctual guessing, go out on a limb, and say that she never really took him seriously anyway, and pretty much thought he was going to just be a “thing” before she went off to her “grand destiny.” That right there is actually even worse than the way Danny himself didn’t quite pay enough attention to her own dreams, because while it’s not that great an idea to mold yourself around someone else’s life plans(read: Danny in this case), it’s much, much crueler to simply dismiss them or ignore them entirely.
Danny did a typical teenage thing and got hyper-focused on her, yes. But just maybe… Danny knew this was coming, was scared of the emotional pain he knew he would feel, and has only been clinging to her more and more because he really does love her. So here he is, right where he was hoping he wouldn’t be, and his “best friend” is being an insensitive ass about it, to boot. Or will be, anyway.
Sucks to be Danny right now. Probably going to suck to be Dorothy in the long-run, when she either doesn’t get what she wants, or does – and finds maybe it wasn’t what she thought in the first place.
Hmmmmm. Let’s look at your points.
1. We can’t really tell why they got together in the first place.
2. Again, we can’t tell much about how the relationship went before they got to college. His willingness to support her may have mutated over time from “You can do anything” to “We are perfect”. But we can’t tell if he’s always been like this or not.
3. Compared between keeping the relationship going or breaking it off, breaking up is by far the kinder of the two.
4. You’re right, we can’t tell how their relationship’s changed over time.
Yeah, well, I think its good for Danny. He just learned one of life’s most important lessons- never build a future around someone else. I feel for him that he had a fairy tale idea of what life would be like, but he has four years of no attachments to look forward to. Better start working on that “game” Danny!!!!
I’m gonna flip my stance now. Before this started, I was cheering for Danny. He was clearly trying to be a good boyfriend.
But it’s the last part that switched my sympathies to Dorothy. ‘Quit School’ to follow her to Yale? Just out the blue? That’s creepy stalker territory, Danny. Hopefully he dials it back some for his next girlfriend.
He’s either a terrible monster or a emotionally undeveloped child for being willing to follow her to Yale? Sometimes you have to wade through some shit to make a relationship work. Sometimes you don’t get to snap your fingers and be wealthy and successful. Sometime you have to do things like one of you goes to school while the other one tries to hold down a job and make enough money to keep your heads above water, then when the school-goer finishes you switch roles.
Lots of people can do that. And they aren’t stalkers OR emotionally stunted children. They’re just serious about making the relationship work.
Dorothy isn’t serious about making the relationship work. That’s the real reason they need to break up.
This right here. This is some of the point I was shooting for. She’s not serious about being with him, or about anything but her trying for Yale. Yes, it’s good to have a dream – but to shut everyone else out for that dream? That’s where one becomes much, much less sympathetic.
Comic break ups are always slightly easier to deal with than my two best friends splitting up. And then him villifying her when she starts going out with my other best friend who is also ok friends with the first boyfriend…. I mean… Danny is being stupid here and I am totally staying on topic.
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 ⋅ 1d
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.
preternia @preternia.com ⋅ 1h
unknown @collie.bsky.social ⋅ 1d
ETPC @etpc.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
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And now I just want to give that guy a slap. And I’m not a slapping kind’ve guy.
I know,
you could just slap him in the faaaaaaaaaaaaaactually that’s a bit inappropriate today’s strip is serious.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen the “could’ve/could of” error reversed.
I, uhhh, just really like the way the word kind’ve looks. Yup. That’s my excuse. No spelling errors here. Nosiree.
Kind’ve isn’t a word – it would be a contraction of “Kind Have.” What would that possibly mean?
It sounds like “kind of” to me. I like it better than “kinda”. Think I’ll use it.
It’s kinda like “kinda,” but only if you don’t know what an apostrophe is.
That’s a really easy grade school skill.
It’s for when you have kind.
eh, he’s just being a dumb college freshman. I knew a lot of people who thought and acted like him right out of high school; if Danny is anything like them (and anything like his parallel self later in life), he’ll grow out of it.
I more or less expected Danny to be like this in the beginning since he was kind of foolish and wishy-washy as a freshman in the original universe.
And to be honest, though he’s being obnoxious and dumb, I still prefer this foolishness over the self-righteousness the other Danny had over social drinking and things like that.
I was totally in agreement until that last sentence there… self-righteousness??? What self-righteousness over drinking? The part where he didn’t want to do it? Cause if so, it makes me sad that anyone who does not immediately give in to peer pressure over something they’re not comfortable doing is considered self-righteous about it. (And then in the end he gave in to peer pressure anyways.) I certainly don’t remember him going around leading some crusade against drinking, in any case
I didn’t mean to suggest that merely abstaining for drinking is being self-righteous; however, the impression I got from Danny in Roomies! was that he (at least initially) passed judgment on Ruth’s friends merely because they drank (the “Wasting Away” arc – http://www.itswalky.com/d/19981019.html, http://www.itswalky.com/d/19981020.html, http://www.itswalky.com/d/19981021.html). He does of course eventually get over it, but not without getting drunk himself (in a genuinely unhealthy way – out of self-loathing and spite – not to mention the painful plot-related repercussions). There’s a healthy way to drink, and an unhealthy way to drink; Danny learned that the hard way.
It wasn’t really a crusade (it wasn’t really a big enough plot point/something brought up often enough), and he obviously wasn’t so caught up in his feelings to abandon Ruth when he first learned of their drinking, but he obviously had his own feelings to sort through.
And I mean, I can kind of understand where Danny was coming from in that situation, since he was obviously in a situation he was uncomfortable with surrounded by people he didn’t know. That’s one of the things I’ve always liked about how David Willis writes his characters – even when you don’t like what they’re doing, you can usually understand where they’re coming from and sympathize with them.
ugh, “abstaining from,” not “abstaining for.” I am so dumb.
again, sorry for the rambly reply.
Man, that was a long reply. Sorry.
Aww, so sad.
So, the drama’s starting early this time. Will we get back to jokes tomorrow?
Oh, drama will be frequent. And of course it’s early, so nobody can go all crying that Dumbing of Age used to not be about drama and can we bring the jokes back?
Man, I remember back when it was all poop jokes and internet humor. What happened to the jokes, Willis?
Sorry, you had me and you lost me. Now I just have to write a two-thousand word essay about how emo DoA has already gotten. GOOD DAY, SIR.
I just remember when Dumbing of Age was all “Coming Soon” and “This is a secret.”
It was great back then. Now it’s all drama this and poop joke that.
Sell out.
Oh, Willis! You had me at “drama will be frequent.” <3
You say that, and yet…
Soooooooouuuuuuuul cruuuuuuuuush.
Just imagine a Mushroom Cloud bursting from within his chest.
He should really see a doctor for that…
Sad comic is sad
Well, thank GOD for dumping the brainless!
Although I’ll ask, “But what if she doesn’t get into Yale?”
The fact that she refuses to consider that means that it’s a very strong possibility she’ll blow it somewhere down the line.
Foreshadowing?
I’ve heard of that!
Wow ouch… but it had to be done.
Yes, it probably would’ve been greater months ago, instead of stringing the guy along and crushing his soul when he just gets into university, damning him to years of regret down the line.
owie.
How is Dorothy going to get into Yale when she doesn’t know 1 month is not plural so no need for an s at the end
Replace the word ‘one’ with ‘kindness’ and read the sentence again.
The “nighttime shading” effect is very cool.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!!!!!!
I think that best describes the situation.
It would have been better if he just shut-it after Dorothy said “Its Over”
Am I the only one who feels sorry for Danny and that Dorothy is a bit of a bongo? The guy clearly cares for her and she’s being totally self centred. She doesn’t want to break up with him because he’s clueless, but because being with him is inconvenient.
There’s trouble on both sides, and the fact is that he’s a wishy-washy teenager who disregards her aspirations just because they don’t fit into the fantasy he’s built up in his head. I like Danny, but the guy clearly needs some sense knocked into him just like he did the first time around.
That said, while I believe Dorothy is right to dump him, she does seem to be leaning a bit too heavily on the “I’ll be gone when I get accepted into Yale” thing and isn’t bending on her version of what the future should be like either. A lack of compromise tends to spell disaster very quickly in relationships of this nature. Maybe putting some distance between them will help her to grow as well.
Oh, of course she’s not going to manage to get into Yale (or get in but be cockblocked from going/staying there for some other reason) and then probably regret dumping Danny (who will have since moved on) for that dream. You can see that one coming from their first appearance.
Sure, I feel sorry for Danny. I feel sorry for him living in self-delusion for however long it’s been because Dorothy wasn’t prepared to cut him down sooner.
Yes, he cares for her, but that doesn’t mean they should be together. Honestly, he strikes me as just one step away from being this guy. And no-one wants to be that guy.
I wasn’t very sympathetic to Danny before today but I’m suddenly asking myself why Dorothy got together with him in the first place and what she got out of his company before.
I can imagine a gender reversed version of this with a high flyer guy picking up a sweet girl and being in a relationship with her because it makes things easy for him, and then dumping her to move onto better things when she isn’t as valuable to him.
Since that little story sucks I now feel sorry for Danny (though this may change when we learn more about his earlier relationship with Dorothy.
Yea, I feel like readers would be more sympathetic to the situation if the roles were reversed. I just hope it doesn’t turn into a “dump on Danny” storyline.
She’s also breaking up with him because he literally has no aspirations besides “be with Dorothy,” and she knows that’s not a good dynamic for either of them. She wants him to do well, and she knows he won’t grow a pair unless he’s out on his own.
Dumbing of Age used to not be about drama.
Can we bring the jokes back?
I just can’t follow Danny on all this. I dated the same girl for 6 years, all the way from 7th grade to a year after grad, so I get the having been together for a long time thing… But we had different plans, we wouldn’t have changed anything for each other, and when she said it was over, I was like ‘Oh… Ok.” Went home, cried it out for 15 min, got drunk with my best friend and my sister, and then I was cool. Recovery in less than 24 hours after a 6 year relationship. And I’m no macho guy or anything… I wrote poetry for her, real sensitive guy stuff… But come on… Man the fuck up Danny. Man the fuck up.
That last sentence there just fit with the little picture you got.
Goddamn it, I really hate Dorothy right now. That’s right, get pissed at him for being madly in love with you. It’s totally his fault that you gave him no reason to think you didn’t reciprocate his feelings and instead strung him along into college.
Hating Danny right now would be like hating a puppy for peeing when you decided not to house-train it. I really like Danny generally, and would usually feel bad about this comparison, but let’s face it–Dumbiverse!Danny may not be in the wrong, but if he wasn’t such an idiot this might not have happened.
You’re forgetting that she voiced her concerns with him in the very first strip they appeared together. But since he’s utterly clueless when it comes to relationships, he didn’t listen carefully enough.
I don’t think we’re supposed to see Dorothy as being completely right. One of the things I like about Willis’ writing is his ability to create conflicts where no one side is truly blameless. Dorothy is just as unyielding when it comes to her version of what the future should look like, and neither of them is willing to compromise. That’s bad news for any relationship, especially one formed this young.
It sucks, but this needed to happen. For both of them, it seems.
Having been in a VERY similar situation, I feel for her. She most definitely made a huge mistake stringing him along and letting it get as far as him following her to school. However, not that this makes it better, it’s *really* hard to do something that you know is going to break the heart of somebody you care about. I don’t get the impression that she hates him–the last line indicates that she knows she got them into that situation by not breaking up earlier.
Y’know, I have no sympathy for either Danny or Dorothy in this situation.
But she has given him reason to think she didn’t reciprocate his feelings. Of course it was just recently, but when you look at how her behavior clearly indicated there might be a problem and he didn’t get it, it’s easy to imagine that she’s done this before and he didn’t get it. Of course, maybe she did string him along, but that means now’s the time to change that pattern. I for one am in favor of breaking up if you’re not feeling the connection anymore. And just about any means or timing of telling someone it’s over is better than leading them on indefinitely, which is something I’ve been on the receiving end of before.
danny will become an alcoholic and die alone and unloved.
Have you read Roomies? Because that was the worst Dude Not Funny moment from you yet.
Yeah, normally I just ignore you. It’s boring, but there are worse commentators. This, though, was needlessly painful for anyone who’s read Roomies!
Making the veterans cry… How dare you. *sob*
Gaaahhhhh…That last panel just made me realize how similar this whole situation is to when I broke up with my high school ex. And now that I see it, Danny’s so much like my ex it’s scary. Fortunately I ended it before he could follow me across half an ocean.
I’ve been a Dorothy too. I knew I needed to get out when she started writing a horrible bodice-ripping romance novel about idealized versions of us, and I used this program via which I would’ve entered college early as an excuse, citing that I didn’t want to keep things going long-distance… and then I didn’t get accepted into the program. Things got REALLY awkward as I had to backpedal and eventually explain that I just needed to end it, long-distance or no. And she STILL stalked me for a couple years afterward.
Oh wow. No romance novels in mine, although up until I got accepted early decision to my first college choice, there was always that expectation that *maybe* I’d end up staying in-state. And once I did get accepted, he was always going on about basically dropping everything to follow me out there. Never mind that my college town didn’t really have anything to get him further in his own dreams. He was always holding himself back, part of which I attribute to him not wanting to leave me.
Fortunately the fact that I was leaving made it easier, although there was some awkwardness in the few months between the breakup and my leaving. According to our mutual friends, he was doing some crazy stuff trying to make me jealous and want to get back with him.
While it’s sucks for Danny to get broken up with, seriously, this guy needs to grow the hell up.
Its totally obvious that Dorothy is not happy with the relationship, nor has she been for a long time. But Danny’s willing to overlook all that because he doesn’t want things to change. He wants Dorothy to give up her dreams for their relationship, or he’ll throw away his life for it. He’s either not being fair to himself or her.
She obviously cares for him (she was after all so reluctant to break-up with him to begin with), but he’s trying to force her into a life that she doesn’t want. And she doesn’t want Danny to waste his own life on her, when she can’t give him what he wants.
Y’know. I really don’t get the whole “danny wants her to give up her dreams” thing. It just seems to me like he is your average high school grad with little personal ambition who decides to go to the same college as his girl friend be cause he CAN and dosen’t have any better plans. Is he a bit of an idiot, yeah. Does he make stupid statements, yes. But i mostly get that he is trying to make jokes… and failing. That Dorothy isn’t wrong either. Thats just how relationships are.
I think the issue is that he’s followed her with the knowledge that she’s hellbent on transferring. But I see your point
Look at what he said in the first panel of the previous comic and tell me that’s not what you would think was being said if someone said it to you. Dorothy herself sums it up best in this comic.
But I’m not saying he wants her to solely give up her dreams. I’m saying he either wants her to stay there with him and give up her dreams (i.e. “Maybe you’ll change your mind and stay”) or he’ll give up any chance at a future he has (i.e. the president story he told and saying he’ll drop out of school for her).
He wants to always be with her and is willing to have one of them forgo anything that could be considered as important or more important.
Now that DoA is well underway, any chance you could reattach the Drama Tag in Shortpacked? Just a thought.
What part of “once the tag’s pulled, there’s no going back” don’t you understand?
NOOOOOO I will follow you for ever even though you hate me to show you my devotion and love. then I will get all depressed and stalk you more and then suicide by jumping of the bridge somewhere with a mechanical device that will explode my guts all over the air before I reach the ground because smacking in the water is too painful so………do you want to make this work????
I hate all these jokes! Can we please go back to the drama?
Dorothy is ACTUALLY trying to help Danny and trying to tell him to get on with his own life and let her live her own. Sometimes life sucks… you have to live with it
So, wait a second. Dorothy decided to attend Indiana while waiting to hear from Yale? Is she waiting to hear this academic year, or is she expecting admission next year and just planning to transfer credits?
‘Cuz, if it’s the first one, her current situation is a pretty bad move. The reason I’m thinking that’s the case is that she seems pretty intent on it happening very soon, as opposed to 12 months down the road. Why go through all the trouble of moving in, registering for classes, etc., when you expect to be gone in a few months?
She said in the first strip that she expects to hear from them in “a few years.” So it’s not like she plans on leaving right away. She just wants to nip this in the bud the way she should have done before she even left for college.
Also, she might not quite have the grades she needs to get into Yale right now (which is what I assumed from the “I’ll hear from Yale in a few years” thing). She does, however, know exactly what courses she needs to take to apply to Yale from college and get accepted – and, I hope, what grades she needs to get in those courses in order for them to qualify as transferable. (Seriously, nothing’s more frustrating than realizing you’re going to have to do a year’s worth of work, or more, all over again just because you were only one percentage point from qualifying for credit transfer.)
Having experienced my fair share “ouch, this relationship, ouch,” I… um… find this strip pretty funny, actually. Yes, Danny, you CAN drop out of school in this huge stretch of imagination. Sure. Hah hah.
And the last one, too. I mean, Dorothy breaks up with him and then SHE jumps off the building. Total reversal of what I was expecting.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Er… I mean, I’m so sorry for your loss.
One of the things I’m liking about this strip is that you can see this from BOTH perspectives, and you hurt for them both, and it was done without anyone stating the obvious. I am really liking this strip so far.
been there, done that… shame on me… but yeah, eventually you grow up and find out there’s more to see outside in the world… growing up really hurts, dude
Sheesh, the abuse some people are giving Dorothy for this is absurd. She is absolutely right here; this is a serious aspiration she has, and Danny is treating it like some stupid childish game that she’ll grow out of. If he really cared about her, he would understand how important it is to her. But no, it’s *his* dream of wedded bliss that matters, not her dreams of achievement and success.
And sure Dorothy shouldn’t have strung Danny along like she did, but apparently it slipped by some people here that **she actually admitted that in the final panel**. She’s owning up to her responsibility and doing the best she can with the mess she’s in. Seriously, she’s absolutely in the right here.
Ehhhh, nah, she’s got a good bit of wrong going on here, too. By her own admittance she “didn’t expect him” to follow her there to be with her. And she says “I mean, I love him, -really-, but…” Those words? Do not sound like someone who was really into their partner for who their partner was. So, let’s tally up what she did wrong and is only barely beginning to set right here.
1. She seems to have only really gotten together with him simply to have someone. Unfair to Danny, big time.
2. Even when faced with evidence that he made what was probably one of the same mistakes she did(not really accepting the other for who they are), she kept it going.
3. The way she is ending it is not at all a kindness. It is in fact, one of the deepest ways you can cut a person. Telling him something he could do out of a desire to be with her is “awful”? Very nice, Dorothy, crush that soul beneath your heel a bit more, why don’t you?
4. While we don’t have a mountain of evidence to back it up here, I’m going to do a bit of instinctual guessing, go out on a limb, and say that she never really took him seriously anyway, and pretty much thought he was going to just be a “thing” before she went off to her “grand destiny.” That right there is actually even worse than the way Danny himself didn’t quite pay enough attention to her own dreams, because while it’s not that great an idea to mold yourself around someone else’s life plans(read: Danny in this case), it’s much, much crueler to simply dismiss them or ignore them entirely.
Danny did a typical teenage thing and got hyper-focused on her, yes. But just maybe… Danny knew this was coming, was scared of the emotional pain he knew he would feel, and has only been clinging to her more and more because he really does love her. So here he is, right where he was hoping he wouldn’t be, and his “best friend” is being an insensitive ass about it, to boot. Or will be, anyway.
Sucks to be Danny right now. Probably going to suck to be Dorothy in the long-run, when she either doesn’t get what she wants, or does – and finds maybe it wasn’t what she thought in the first place.
Hmmmmm. Let’s look at your points.
1. We can’t really tell why they got together in the first place.
2. Again, we can’t tell much about how the relationship went before they got to college. His willingness to support her may have mutated over time from “You can do anything” to “We are perfect”. But we can’t tell if he’s always been like this or not.
3. Compared between keeping the relationship going or breaking it off, breaking up is by far the kinder of the two.
4. You’re right, we can’t tell how their relationship’s changed over time.
Yeah, well, I think its good for Danny. He just learned one of life’s most important lessons- never build a future around someone else. I feel for him that he had a fairy tale idea of what life would be like, but he has four years of no attachments to look forward to. Better start working on that “game” Danny!!!!
I’m gonna flip my stance now. Before this started, I was cheering for Danny. He was clearly trying to be a good boyfriend.
But it’s the last part that switched my sympathies to Dorothy. ‘Quit School’ to follow her to Yale? Just out the blue? That’s creepy stalker territory, Danny. Hopefully he dials it back some for his next girlfriend.
Wow, all this Danny-hate.
He’s either a terrible monster or a emotionally undeveloped child for being willing to follow her to Yale? Sometimes you have to wade through some shit to make a relationship work. Sometimes you don’t get to snap your fingers and be wealthy and successful. Sometime you have to do things like one of you goes to school while the other one tries to hold down a job and make enough money to keep your heads above water, then when the school-goer finishes you switch roles.
Lots of people can do that. And they aren’t stalkers OR emotionally stunted children. They’re just serious about making the relationship work.
Dorothy isn’t serious about making the relationship work. That’s the real reason they need to break up.
This right here. This is some of the point I was shooting for. She’s not serious about being with him, or about anything but her trying for Yale. Yes, it’s good to have a dream – but to shut everyone else out for that dream? That’s where one becomes much, much less sympathetic.
Comic break ups are always slightly easier to deal with than my two best friends splitting up. And then him villifying her when she starts going out with my other best friend who is also ok friends with the first boyfriend…. I mean… Danny is being stupid here and I am totally staying on topic.