Lemme try that one more time. “Snuggling with your pillow girlfriend is probably sort of like sharing your bed with another person if you have not ever shared your bed with another person.”
I’m not entirely certain this is the end of their relationship, as opposed to a turning point. Quite likely it is, but not certain.
Sajuuk-Khar
Sal just got a notification on her phone that’s an animated casino gif going JACKPOT!!! and she doesn’t know why
Needfuldoer
I don’t think anybody predicted the timeline more accurately, but Sal doesn’t get a payout if we play by The Price is Right rules (closest without going over).
depends on how the story goes, asher got more screentime than expected so i assume she’d still be around as jennifer’s roommate unless the next story focus entirely on like ruth/jason’s relationship or another robin story lol
Yeah, a breakup on basically-amicable terms, both of them recognizing their flaws here and owning them, with hope to do better in the future. Probably the best-case scenario for them both on the whole.
as someone who is not good at social situations: are they actually broken up? or is this a “I need some time to cool off and think about things”?
Regalli
I think between “I realized you don’t like me as much as I like you, and that makes me question the feeling I THOUGHT was love,” “you really screwed up with your parents”/“yeah I did and I SHOULD HAVE prioritized you,” and “I deserve better” as a realization, if this ISN’T a breakup I’d be surprised. Between that and the church date itself showing how DISPARATE their values are – Dina pushes back on the guilt and shame built into Becky’s faith, but I’m not sure she finds the idea of believing in a god harmful in and of itself the way Walky’s indicated here* – I don’t think there’s a reassessment where Lucy decides “oh yeah, I do still want to date him” without some serious growth on Walky’s part (including him saying up-front, “yes I actually do like you romantically now that I’ve had time to consider it.”)
* Could be misremembering, granted. But generally speaking Dina finds the idea of god unfounded in the principles of scientific observation and hates CREATIONISM and other such things that run counter to what CAN be observed. But we haven’t seen her show the same discomfort at the IDEA of a god that Walky has here or Joyce had when those first cracks began to show (singing a hymn at church and being triggered because she saw the throughline between it and Ross’s “I would die for you and I know what’s good for you better than you do.”) Specific tenets, yes – and I can see that continuing to cause tension – but belief in something that’s inherently unobservable, not necessarily. At least not to the same extent that the other cast atheists have.
thejeff
I don’t think Walky found the idea of believing in a god harmful, so much as the whole “surrender autonomy” thing. He’s not religious, but he was bothered to find this church felt so culty.
Johan
Accidental Flag because I got fat fingies
He liked her romantically he just didn’t love her yet.
“I deserve better (than you)” is also a hell of a line to leave on. I don’t think Lucy meant it that way, but I won’t be at all surprised if Walky hears it that way.
Daniel M Ball
He OUGHT to hear it that way, because maybe that nail of truth will get through his delusions, and the next time, he might have some actual empathy.
MM
I don’t know that he’s really all that inclined to disagree.
PedanticJerkass
Are we even reading the same webcomic? It doesn’t seem that way.
Firseal
… you think Walky is the one lacking empathy here?
Firseal
By which I note Lucy just spent a week and a half treating Walky as a fanfic version of himself, and for three strips hasn’t evinced any inkling of her own part in this train wreck aside from the first step that she has an entirely over-idealized and not particularly grounded in reality image of Walky. She hasn’t owned up to any of her actions except as ‘jumping through hoops FOR him’ – leaving out that most of the hoops either she made or helped third parties set up. But no, she’s at the blame stage. Everything is Walky’s fault for taking advantage of her.
Lucy’s realizations, in order, are that Walky has never been as invested or active in the relationship as she is. That Walky wasn’t going to be 100% her protector and savior in the face of the parents he increasingly dreads. That she doesn’t think about how she acts.
At the same time, Lucy doesn’t recognise a single fault of her own. Because she doesn’t think she’s made any. She’s handled everything right and is bitter because she didn’t get her shiny toy. With every realization, Lucy’s put it all on Walky. Because if he’s not her idealized lover, then he’s the one pulling that good Christian girl astray.
Lucy has figured out about 33% of why this relationship has failed. She hasn’t even started unpacking the parts that are her fault, and if no one makes her she never will. Because why should she? SHE’S still good, and clean of sin, and the victim. Lucy will hurt over this, but she’s not going to grow in any positive way on her own because God knows she doesn’t have to.
So I guess that is another way Walky is wrong. Lucy’s god does talk back, and just like to so many who hear hIM, its to absolve her of owning up to her mistakes.
Walky is… Walky. He is still being respectful of her feelings as much as someone with the maturity level of a man two thirds his age who has been under the thumb of someone who doesn’t particularly want him mature. But where he lacks a spine, or full understanding of Lucy, he’s still the one letting the other lash out at him, letting himself take the hits, because his entire history of being the perfect son of a manipulative woman tells him that whatever Lucy is angry about he deserves.
Don’t get me wrong. Walky is a total mess, and he has made mistake after mistake after mistake after… well, ad nausem. But there is a person in this scene who is letting the other person hurt them so the second person can feel better, feel exonerated. Lucy sure as Hell (if her religion is right about certain things) isn’t that empathic person.
Daibhid C
Are we reading the same webcomic? You might disagree with Lucy’s analysis that her mistakes were 1) projecting onto Walky 2) jumping through hoops to get his parents to like her (which she doesn’t actually blame him for, just for “going along with it”, which he did) and 3) nothing else, but I don’t think you can really she doesn’t acknowledge making any mistakes. She certainly hasn’t accused him of “taking advantage of her”, and I’m not even sure what that would mean in a relationship where they never had sex, largely due to his complete lack of interest in doing so.
Firseal
We apparently aren’t reading the same webcomic. Yours has a much better Lucy.
Lucy has blamed Walky. Saying ‘fuck you for going along with it’ is blaming someone for going along with it. She, meanwhile, doesn’t acknowledge that she wanted to go jumping through hoops. Lucy just thought she ought to, and now she wonders why. But Walky didn’t stop her, and that makes him culpable in her eyes.
Lucy’s third realization is here on today’s strip, and it is that she ‘should be braver’. Not, ‘she should pay attention’. Not ‘I may want to remember that the other person in the relationship is a person with feelings that may not always mimic mine’. Not, ‘I pushed this’.
Not a single thing about Walky, except to put blame on Walky. Certainly not anything about how Walky may feel except to punch at those feelings. There’s not a shred of empathy in Lucy right now (and there’s rarely been – she tends too much to see people simply, in black and white and blazing neon, rather than in layers. Helped her idolize Billie, make Prince Charming out of Walky, villainize Sarah. Empathy helps people see other people in layers rather than archetypes. Lucy is bad at it.)
Lucy has spent three pages making realizations with zero self reflection, and every problem she identified she put on someone else. Lucy may want bright happy feelings, but she can’t read a room, and her empathy to anything but the most vibrant of surface emotions is poor. Of course she feels Walky took advantage. All that time she sunk into him, and he didn’t actually love her. Not after two weeks of lightweight dating. Not after knowing him for three months. All that time she invested, and he wasn’t what she expected, and so she grows just enough courage to blame him, curse him, and leave making sure she has the last world.
Yes she’s blamed him of not taking advantage. Because to her mind, she wanted him to be something else, and by not being that person, by not being what she wanted, she feels decieved. She feels disillusioned. Lucy feels like she invested in Walky, got him to dress better and go places on time. Lucy felt she just needed to do some superficial changes and out pops her prince, and that didn’t happen. Of course he was taking advantage of her. Lucy wanted a fairy tale, and picked a frog, and he stayed a frog.
How dare Walky. How dare he?
Well, a moment of empathy would let her actually understand how he dare not be what she expected, wanted, desired her to be. But again. Lucy is in the blame stage, because it lets her deflect all blame, internal and external, from herself.
This doesn’t make her a villain or a monster or some sort of terrible person. Lucy is a college kid. Lucy is a young human. She’s not very empathic, she is religious, and she is very nice. Nice is not kind. Nice, intentionally or not, wants reciprocation. Nice wants nice, or kind, or trust, or value, or affection, or appreciation, or SOMETHING back. Nice is when you give someone a birthday present and expect a return gesture. Lucy did all the things she did because she wanted the ‘artist’s impression’ of Walky as hers. She wanted sex. She wanted the fairy tale. Lucy was very nice to Walky, and the last few pages have been her spinning around but never quite landing on the realization that nice may want something back, but nice does not DESERVE something back.
… I do not like Lucy, so this may be bias. Except for all the evidence. (Granted, again, Walky has got ISSUES). So yeah. Neither of these are great people, but if you want to say one has empathy – show one scene of Lucy putting herself in the perspective of another person without it looking like a fanfic because she instead put herself in the highly idealized version of their shoes. I freely admit, sometimes I miss days, and thus strips.
Its possible she’s had empathy once or twice. But certainly not since she left that church.
Mark
May I point out again the element of time. Lucy has begun a radical adjustment of her self-image. Nobody is going to complete that in 30-60 seconds, which is about what the last three strips add up to. It can take months, or years. If she has fairly begun by Monday I’ll applaud her loudly.
Aussir
Firseal answered quite well and lengthily, but to name just a single example of Lucy indeed lacking empathy, she is openly angry at Walky for not being in love with her. She didn’t say “you don’t feel the same way about me”, she expressed it as a failure on his part to “love [her] back”. She has not demonstrated the ability to put herself in his emotional shoes to understand why someone may not be comfortable expressing something taken as seriously as *love* after a few weeks of dating. What she is is angry at him for failing to meet a standard she invented for him.
eskimolos
@aussir – to me it’s realistic dialogue for a teenager dealing with their first breakup. Whether or not we think it’s that big a deal, Lucy did think she was in love with Wally and has a lot further to fall for that than Walky who has been well aware of the difference in their feelings and has been trying to invest but has not genuinely been feeling it. She feels disappointed in him to say the least, but she is the one here grappling with a radical change in how she’d viewed things, people often do not have a fair and empathetic response in moments like this.
I also have to say how bizarre it is because Wally had some investment here, but nowhere as much as Lucy, people have been deriding her for the last year for being too invested in an early relationship, and yet now we should all feel bad for walky? Why would we feel worse for Walky than Lucy here? Because she does actually resent him for having lied to her and asked her out when he wasn’t that into her? Because he may have to fall into the arms of one of his two other, more main character love interests, both of which have shown some sign of still being into him and wanting to be back with him? While after this strip, Lucy may either fade back into the secondary cast.l, or worse become antagonistic to members of the main cast.
This is a bummer experience, the thing that hurts Walky here is certainly Lucy being hurt and upset with him, but more than that I think it challenges his view of himself particularly in relation to his parents. He may have lost a friend as well as a girlfriend today, time will tell.
I don’t think people are understanding “better” in the right context. The “standard” Lucy is right to expect here is “someone who supports her, is happy with her as she is and is honest with her”, Walky for all his best intentions could not and honestly would not have ever done all of those things at once, he is conflict avoidant and too focused on keeping the peace for everybody for as long as it lasts, quite happy to pretend and go along and operate in the grey areas avoiding conflict with everyone until he couldn’t anymore. That was disrespectful to Lucy and the fact that everyone has assumed Lucy had the problem for genuinely being excited and invested in a new relationship with someone she’d had a crush on for 4 months as though that was delusional, rather than allowing wally more responsibility for having misled her in a way that further amplified her misconceptions, to avoid further conflict until finally coming out with it all in the church. Walky isn’t an egregious monster, but neither is Lucy. They’re just awkward teenagers learning how to and not to hurt others. This situation is interesting precisely because they both kinda walked right into this situation with naivete and good intentions.
Does anyone have the sparks notes on this thread? I’m starting to think people should just make YouTube videos on these essays, I’d watch. Can’t really read these gigantic posts on this layout
BorkBorkBork
Mym: It’s mostly reiterations and explanations that demonstrate that Lucy had a fantasy version of Walky in her head, was upset when she realized he wasn’t that version, but didn’t learn anything at all from it other than “I deserve better.” She projected all of the problems of the relationship onto everyone else and doesn’t realize that her own expectations were flawed.
Probably the strongest point stated was that Lucy isn’t showing the empathy to understand people as layered human beings instead of as archetypes.
The flipside is that there’s a lot of slightly subtle language that Firseal has towards Lucy, and seeing her viewpoint as coming from her religion (eg “she’s good and clean of sin”), which I’m not entirely sure is fair because her religion isn’t overtaking her personality in the same way it was for Joyce, or is for Mary. Firseal is open that while they don’t view Lucy as a villain, they really do not like her.
Other people are mostly agreeing with Firseal’s analysis of the problem, except pointing out the fact that they’re being a bit too hard on Lucy or expecting too much too soon, or noting that it takes a while for a real “eureka” moment and personality shift.
Devin
There’s a whole lot of charging of one or the other lacking empathy, and I think maybe everyone should settle down a little. Like…they’re teenagers. I don’t know who we’re “supposed” to feel more bad for, maybe we can feel bad for both of them. Not every situation has a clear-cut villain and victim.
Lucy hasn’t learned to see things outside of the lens she knows. Yes this can be accurately described as a lack of empathy, but she’s still a teenager, she’s still learning.
Walky still doesn’t stand up to his parents very well, but he only just started doing it at all. And that’s hard even when the parent one needs to stand up to isn’t Linda. She scared me with the way she reacted at the dinner with Amber, and I’m not her kid.
+1 for @Devin’s note about them being teenagers and this situation not having a Villain and Victim.
BorkBorkBork
@Devin – Oh, absolutely. I 100% agree that everyone needs to remember that these are just kids, they’re just figuring out life for themselves. It’s a “coming of age” story, and they’re not there yet. Nobody should, at this point, be at the “Ah, they’re totally right, they have all of life figured out” stage.
All the people villifying Walky for not being proactive with his parents, need to freaking understand that up until this point, he only had hypothetical and anecdotal evidence of his parents’ racism. It wasn’t *real* to him in the way that it was *real* to Sal. It seemed like something that could be worked around. And people also need to freaking remember what it was like when you were eighteen and had only been away from home for a few months.
If you had a crap homelife, then yeah, you probably could easily tell your parents to take a hike. If you didn’t, then college probably just felt like sleepaway camp for the first year or so. You don’t really get that you’re an adult and can make your own decisions. Like, people actively worry about parents “taking them home” (like what happened to Dana, or what Joyce and Ruth were worried about) when it’s clear that they *literally can’t* against your will.
In this situation, the only person I feel was in the wrong was Lucy, and not because of what happened here. She’s in the wrong because she was never really Walky’s friend. She was “hanging out” with him for four months, sure, but doing so as an unofficial “girlfriend-in-waiting.” He’s lost a girlfriend, but he hasn’t lost a friend, because she has literally been in “court this boy so he falls for me” mode since they first met. Which is why she believed her own fiction of “He must love me, he sees me as part of the family, etc.” and none of the glaring red flags.
405 thoughts on “Navigate”
Ana Chronistic
self-love is best love tho
if a little less warm in bed
Masumi
At least nobody breathes on me
Furie
Have I got a magazine for you. Free shovel if you send in the barcode from the first three issues…
Azrael
Someone doesn’t have any cats…
Amelie Wikström
I still got my pillow girlfriend, which is probably like sharing my bed with a person if you haven’t done it.
But honestly, props to both Lucy and Walky for saying the difficult things.
Amelie Wikström
Lemme try that one more time. “Snuggling with your pillow girlfriend is probably sort of like sharing your bed with another person if you have not ever shared your bed with another person.”
anon
i’m sure lucy has as many stuffed animals as joyce tho maybe dina should let lucy cuddle her dino plush lol
morleuca
Will it really help Lucy to cuddle something that is full of sex reek?
Felian
THAT IS A TOPIC i’ve been meaning to talk about!!!
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/lobby/
Where are all of them??? Why do we never see them? They must be hard to draw, but THEY SHOULD BE THERE!!!
John Campbell
Dina’s stuffed dinosaur ate them.
Ana Chronistic
Ruth mistook them for femurs
or they’re in the closet
closets are big
Felian
That’s why there’s no space for 6 bins full of Jesus drawings?
Kazuma Taichi
solution: get a nice heating pad and tuck it into a body pillow TuT
Ana Chronistic
I legit want a heated weighted plush that purrs
somebody invent it and sell me one pls
Karla Jean
Atta girl.
Sirksome
Whelp the Walky x Lucy stocks just crashed. I hope folks cashed out in time.
Mym
Thankfully I only bought bit coin, totally safe bets
Sirksome
Sal’s owed some money.
anon
it was inevitable but didn’t they last a bit longer than sal expected?
cbwroses
Nope.
Less.
They didn’t even make the 2 weeks she suggested.
Kaiyalai
I’m not entirely certain this is the end of their relationship, as opposed to a turning point. Quite likely it is, but not certain.
Sajuuk-Khar
Sal just got a notification on her phone that’s an animated casino gif going JACKPOT!!! and she doesn’t know why
Needfuldoer
I don’t think anybody predicted the timeline more accurately, but Sal doesn’t get a payout if we play by The Price is Right rules (closest without going over).
David DeLaney
but they never bit each other
Amós Batista
No, I got late, I’ve a lot of loss .
Needfuldoer
Getting up late is often harder on the commenter than the comic, but people can move past it and heal.
Thag Simmons
I bought big after Walky’s initial save in the church, whoops. Guess I gotta hope one of these two idiots manages to Mary Ellen Carter this ship.
Leorale
RISE AGAIN, RISE AGAAAIN
… who let this melodious Canadian baritone in here
Mark
Really? We’re still getting ambiguous statements from Lucy. But I would go long on a change of scene tomorrow.
zee
I liked the ship but I love Lucy way more so I am THRIVING
milu
i’m ready to branch off DOA and into Mym’s upcoming sexy LucyxDorothy spinoff
Mym
AAAAYYYYEEEE
tim gueguen
Well, that\s probably the last time we’ll see her for the next 3 years of strips.
Rose by Any Other Name
??
It doesn’t take THAT long to get to ‘the next day’ in comic. At worst, it’ll be time for math in a month or two.
Jamie
No guarantee we’ll be there, though.
Masumi
Or seems like a level of awkwardness were likely to witness
Masumi
*it and *we’re, dammit swipy thing!
anon
depends on how the story goes, asher got more screentime than expected so i assume she’d still be around as jennifer’s roommate unless the next story focus entirely on like ruth/jason’s relationship or another robin story lol
MordWa
We can hope.
She belongs with Ken, somewhere far, far in the background of more interesting characters scenes.
True Survivor
Willis is right, math is the best. It will never break your heart.
Francoinblanco
Until you get negative delta in Quadratic function
clif
Better than functioning negatively in the Delta Quadrant.
Lars
Wait till you get to Complex Conjugates
Francoinblanco
Ok im sorry, why flag dont have any safety net with “are you sure to send that person to shadowrealm?” question.
Needfuldoer
Because it takes 5 flags before anything happens to a comment.
zee
Tell that to dyscalculics in highschool
Armadillo
Good moment of realization and growth for both characters. Everyone’s a winner kinda!
Steelbright
Hahaha i like this interpretation. Everybody is a winner and we all feel bad about it!
Regalli
Yeah, a breakup on basically-amicable terms, both of them recognizing their flaws here and owning them, with hope to do better in the future. Probably the best-case scenario for them both on the whole.
Rose Red
as someone who is not good at social situations: are they actually broken up? or is this a “I need some time to cool off and think about things”?
Regalli
I think between “I realized you don’t like me as much as I like you, and that makes me question the feeling I THOUGHT was love,” “you really screwed up with your parents”/“yeah I did and I SHOULD HAVE prioritized you,” and “I deserve better” as a realization, if this ISN’T a breakup I’d be surprised. Between that and the church date itself showing how DISPARATE their values are – Dina pushes back on the guilt and shame built into Becky’s faith, but I’m not sure she finds the idea of believing in a god harmful in and of itself the way Walky’s indicated here* – I don’t think there’s a reassessment where Lucy decides “oh yeah, I do still want to date him” without some serious growth on Walky’s part (including him saying up-front, “yes I actually do like you romantically now that I’ve had time to consider it.”)
* Could be misremembering, granted. But generally speaking Dina finds the idea of god unfounded in the principles of scientific observation and hates CREATIONISM and other such things that run counter to what CAN be observed. But we haven’t seen her show the same discomfort at the IDEA of a god that Walky has here or Joyce had when those first cracks began to show (singing a hymn at church and being triggered because she saw the throughline between it and Ross’s “I would die for you and I know what’s good for you better than you do.”) Specific tenets, yes – and I can see that continuing to cause tension – but belief in something that’s inherently unobservable, not necessarily. At least not to the same extent that the other cast atheists have.
thejeff
I don’t think Walky found the idea of believing in a god harmful, so much as the whole “surrender autonomy” thing. He’s not religious, but he was bothered to find this church felt so culty.
Johan
Accidental Flag because I got fat fingies
He liked her romantically he just didn’t love her yet.
Thag Simmons
Probably the best case scenario for these two
Doctor_Who
Got him to attend church, dumped him, then reminded him that math exists. Cold as ice.
Just kidding, this was probably very necessary.
Savail
Man, when you phrase it like that.
I know it wasn’t on purpose, but ouch.
Xujhan
“I deserve better (than you)” is also a hell of a line to leave on. I don’t think Lucy meant it that way, but I won’t be at all surprised if Walky hears it that way.
Daniel M Ball
He OUGHT to hear it that way, because maybe that nail of truth will get through his delusions, and the next time, he might have some actual empathy.
MM
I don’t know that he’s really all that inclined to disagree.
PedanticJerkass
Are we even reading the same webcomic? It doesn’t seem that way.
Firseal
… you think Walky is the one lacking empathy here?
Firseal
By which I note Lucy just spent a week and a half treating Walky as a fanfic version of himself, and for three strips hasn’t evinced any inkling of her own part in this train wreck aside from the first step that she has an entirely over-idealized and not particularly grounded in reality image of Walky. She hasn’t owned up to any of her actions except as ‘jumping through hoops FOR him’ – leaving out that most of the hoops either she made or helped third parties set up. But no, she’s at the blame stage. Everything is Walky’s fault for taking advantage of her.
Lucy’s realizations, in order, are that Walky has never been as invested or active in the relationship as she is. That Walky wasn’t going to be 100% her protector and savior in the face of the parents he increasingly dreads. That she doesn’t think about how she acts.
At the same time, Lucy doesn’t recognise a single fault of her own. Because she doesn’t think she’s made any. She’s handled everything right and is bitter because she didn’t get her shiny toy. With every realization, Lucy’s put it all on Walky. Because if he’s not her idealized lover, then he’s the one pulling that good Christian girl astray.
Lucy has figured out about 33% of why this relationship has failed. She hasn’t even started unpacking the parts that are her fault, and if no one makes her she never will. Because why should she? SHE’S still good, and clean of sin, and the victim. Lucy will hurt over this, but she’s not going to grow in any positive way on her own because God knows she doesn’t have to.
So I guess that is another way Walky is wrong. Lucy’s god does talk back, and just like to so many who hear hIM, its to absolve her of owning up to her mistakes.
Walky is… Walky. He is still being respectful of her feelings as much as someone with the maturity level of a man two thirds his age who has been under the thumb of someone who doesn’t particularly want him mature. But where he lacks a spine, or full understanding of Lucy, he’s still the one letting the other lash out at him, letting himself take the hits, because his entire history of being the perfect son of a manipulative woman tells him that whatever Lucy is angry about he deserves.
Don’t get me wrong. Walky is a total mess, and he has made mistake after mistake after mistake after… well, ad nausem. But there is a person in this scene who is letting the other person hurt them so the second person can feel better, feel exonerated. Lucy sure as Hell (if her religion is right about certain things) isn’t that empathic person.
Daibhid C
Are we reading the same webcomic? You might disagree with Lucy’s analysis that her mistakes were 1) projecting onto Walky 2) jumping through hoops to get his parents to like her (which she doesn’t actually blame him for, just for “going along with it”, which he did) and 3) nothing else, but I don’t think you can really she doesn’t acknowledge making any mistakes. She certainly hasn’t accused him of “taking advantage of her”, and I’m not even sure what that would mean in a relationship where they never had sex, largely due to his complete lack of interest in doing so.
Firseal
We apparently aren’t reading the same webcomic. Yours has a much better Lucy.
Lucy has blamed Walky. Saying ‘fuck you for going along with it’ is blaming someone for going along with it. She, meanwhile, doesn’t acknowledge that she wanted to go jumping through hoops. Lucy just thought she ought to, and now she wonders why. But Walky didn’t stop her, and that makes him culpable in her eyes.
Lucy’s third realization is here on today’s strip, and it is that she ‘should be braver’. Not, ‘she should pay attention’. Not ‘I may want to remember that the other person in the relationship is a person with feelings that may not always mimic mine’. Not, ‘I pushed this’.
Not a single thing about Walky, except to put blame on Walky. Certainly not anything about how Walky may feel except to punch at those feelings. There’s not a shred of empathy in Lucy right now (and there’s rarely been – she tends too much to see people simply, in black and white and blazing neon, rather than in layers. Helped her idolize Billie, make Prince Charming out of Walky, villainize Sarah. Empathy helps people see other people in layers rather than archetypes. Lucy is bad at it.)
Lucy has spent three pages making realizations with zero self reflection, and every problem she identified she put on someone else. Lucy may want bright happy feelings, but she can’t read a room, and her empathy to anything but the most vibrant of surface emotions is poor. Of course she feels Walky took advantage. All that time she sunk into him, and he didn’t actually love her. Not after two weeks of lightweight dating. Not after knowing him for three months. All that time she invested, and he wasn’t what she expected, and so she grows just enough courage to blame him, curse him, and leave making sure she has the last world.
Yes she’s blamed him of not taking advantage. Because to her mind, she wanted him to be something else, and by not being that person, by not being what she wanted, she feels decieved. She feels disillusioned. Lucy feels like she invested in Walky, got him to dress better and go places on time. Lucy felt she just needed to do some superficial changes and out pops her prince, and that didn’t happen. Of course he was taking advantage of her. Lucy wanted a fairy tale, and picked a frog, and he stayed a frog.
How dare Walky. How dare he?
Well, a moment of empathy would let her actually understand how he dare not be what she expected, wanted, desired her to be. But again. Lucy is in the blame stage, because it lets her deflect all blame, internal and external, from herself.
This doesn’t make her a villain or a monster or some sort of terrible person. Lucy is a college kid. Lucy is a young human. She’s not very empathic, she is religious, and she is very nice. Nice is not kind. Nice, intentionally or not, wants reciprocation. Nice wants nice, or kind, or trust, or value, or affection, or appreciation, or SOMETHING back. Nice is when you give someone a birthday present and expect a return gesture. Lucy did all the things she did because she wanted the ‘artist’s impression’ of Walky as hers. She wanted sex. She wanted the fairy tale. Lucy was very nice to Walky, and the last few pages have been her spinning around but never quite landing on the realization that nice may want something back, but nice does not DESERVE something back.
… I do not like Lucy, so this may be bias. Except for all the evidence. (Granted, again, Walky has got ISSUES). So yeah. Neither of these are great people, but if you want to say one has empathy – show one scene of Lucy putting herself in the perspective of another person without it looking like a fanfic because she instead put herself in the highly idealized version of their shoes. I freely admit, sometimes I miss days, and thus strips.
Its possible she’s had empathy once or twice. But certainly not since she left that church.
Mark
May I point out again the element of time. Lucy has begun a radical adjustment of her self-image. Nobody is going to complete that in 30-60 seconds, which is about what the last three strips add up to. It can take months, or years. If she has fairly begun by Monday I’ll applaud her loudly.
Aussir
Firseal answered quite well and lengthily, but to name just a single example of Lucy indeed lacking empathy, she is openly angry at Walky for not being in love with her. She didn’t say “you don’t feel the same way about me”, she expressed it as a failure on his part to “love [her] back”. She has not demonstrated the ability to put herself in his emotional shoes to understand why someone may not be comfortable expressing something taken as seriously as *love* after a few weeks of dating. What she is is angry at him for failing to meet a standard she invented for him.
eskimolos
@aussir – to me it’s realistic dialogue for a teenager dealing with their first breakup. Whether or not we think it’s that big a deal, Lucy did think she was in love with Wally and has a lot further to fall for that than Walky who has been well aware of the difference in their feelings and has been trying to invest but has not genuinely been feeling it. She feels disappointed in him to say the least, but she is the one here grappling with a radical change in how she’d viewed things, people often do not have a fair and empathetic response in moments like this.
I also have to say how bizarre it is because Wally had some investment here, but nowhere as much as Lucy, people have been deriding her for the last year for being too invested in an early relationship, and yet now we should all feel bad for walky? Why would we feel worse for Walky than Lucy here? Because she does actually resent him for having lied to her and asked her out when he wasn’t that into her? Because he may have to fall into the arms of one of his two other, more main character love interests, both of which have shown some sign of still being into him and wanting to be back with him? While after this strip, Lucy may either fade back into the secondary cast.l, or worse become antagonistic to members of the main cast.
This is a bummer experience, the thing that hurts Walky here is certainly Lucy being hurt and upset with him, but more than that I think it challenges his view of himself particularly in relation to his parents. He may have lost a friend as well as a girlfriend today, time will tell.
I don’t think people are understanding “better” in the right context. The “standard” Lucy is right to expect here is “someone who supports her, is happy with her as she is and is honest with her”, Walky for all his best intentions could not and honestly would not have ever done all of those things at once, he is conflict avoidant and too focused on keeping the peace for everybody for as long as it lasts, quite happy to pretend and go along and operate in the grey areas avoiding conflict with everyone until he couldn’t anymore. That was disrespectful to Lucy and the fact that everyone has assumed Lucy had the problem for genuinely being excited and invested in a new relationship with someone she’d had a crush on for 4 months as though that was delusional, rather than allowing wally more responsibility for having misled her in a way that further amplified her misconceptions, to avoid further conflict until finally coming out with it all in the church. Walky isn’t an egregious monster, but neither is Lucy. They’re just awkward teenagers learning how to and not to hurt others. This situation is interesting precisely because they both kinda walked right into this situation with naivete and good intentions.
Mym
Does anyone have the sparks notes on this thread? I’m starting to think people should just make YouTube videos on these essays, I’d watch. Can’t really read these gigantic posts on this layout
BorkBorkBork
Mym: It’s mostly reiterations and explanations that demonstrate that Lucy had a fantasy version of Walky in her head, was upset when she realized he wasn’t that version, but didn’t learn anything at all from it other than “I deserve better.” She projected all of the problems of the relationship onto everyone else and doesn’t realize that her own expectations were flawed.
Probably the strongest point stated was that Lucy isn’t showing the empathy to understand people as layered human beings instead of as archetypes.
The flipside is that there’s a lot of slightly subtle language that Firseal has towards Lucy, and seeing her viewpoint as coming from her religion (eg “she’s good and clean of sin”), which I’m not entirely sure is fair because her religion isn’t overtaking her personality in the same way it was for Joyce, or is for Mary. Firseal is open that while they don’t view Lucy as a villain, they really do not like her.
Other people are mostly agreeing with Firseal’s analysis of the problem, except pointing out the fact that they’re being a bit too hard on Lucy or expecting too much too soon, or noting that it takes a while for a real “eureka” moment and personality shift.
Devin
There’s a whole lot of charging of one or the other lacking empathy, and I think maybe everyone should settle down a little. Like…they’re teenagers. I don’t know who we’re “supposed” to feel more bad for, maybe we can feel bad for both of them. Not every situation has a clear-cut villain and victim.
Lucy hasn’t learned to see things outside of the lens she knows. Yes this can be accurately described as a lack of empathy, but she’s still a teenager, she’s still learning.
Walky still doesn’t stand up to his parents very well, but he only just started doing it at all. And that’s hard even when the parent one needs to stand up to isn’t Linda. She scared me with the way she reacted at the dinner with Amber, and I’m not her kid.
I think it’s also worth noting that he tried to tell Lucy she didn’t have to meet up with his parents and she couldn’t hear the warning. And I mean they’d been dating for two weeks. Hanging out for three months or not, one does not have to meet the parents that early.
Li
+1 for @Devin’s note about them being teenagers and this situation not having a Villain and Victim.
BorkBorkBork
@Devin – Oh, absolutely. I 100% agree that everyone needs to remember that these are just kids, they’re just figuring out life for themselves. It’s a “coming of age” story, and they’re not there yet. Nobody should, at this point, be at the “Ah, they’re totally right, they have all of life figured out” stage.
All the people villifying Walky for not being proactive with his parents, need to freaking understand that up until this point, he only had hypothetical and anecdotal evidence of his parents’ racism. It wasn’t *real* to him in the way that it was *real* to Sal. It seemed like something that could be worked around. And people also need to freaking remember what it was like when you were eighteen and had only been away from home for a few months.
If you had a crap homelife, then yeah, you probably could easily tell your parents to take a hike. If you didn’t, then college probably just felt like sleepaway camp for the first year or so. You don’t really get that you’re an adult and can make your own decisions. Like, people actively worry about parents “taking them home” (like what happened to Dana, or what Joyce and Ruth were worried about) when it’s clear that they *literally can’t* against your will.
In this situation, the only person I feel was in the wrong was Lucy, and not because of what happened here. She’s in the wrong because she was never really Walky’s friend. She was “hanging out” with him for four months, sure, but doing so as an unofficial “girlfriend-in-waiting.” He’s lost a girlfriend, but he hasn’t lost a friend, because she has literally been in “court this boy so he falls for me” mode since they first met. Which is why she believed her own fiction of “He must love me, he sees me as part of the family, etc.” and none of the glaring red flags.