517

Autonomy
Posted on December 18, 2023 by David M Willis

517 thoughts on “Autonomy”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    *Walky rolls Natural 1*

    1. Grimey

      Or a natural 20 depending on your perspective.

      1. Vanessa

        He might get lucky here. Lucy is really trying to break up I think.

        1. Bryy

          Knowing Lucy, she is 10000% going to reinterpret this new epiphany into her own worldview.

        2. JA

          More like realizing that she’s realizing she’s been idolizing Walky.

      2. fridge_logic

        This conversation is so necessary. Lucy needs to stop worshipping Walky.

        Whether that means she pumps the breaks and starts exploring this relationship in a way that acknowledges who he is. Or if she slams on them and breaks up with him.

        Anything is better for Walky than the status quo of her writing their story without his input.

        1. Taellosse

          Also better for Lucy. No lasting good can come of the current toxic dynamic of this relationship.

    2. Sajuuk-Khar

      GM Willis: BARDIC INSPIRATION THIS, MOTHER FUCKER

      1. UrsulaDavina

        And what add 1d6 to a natural 1? No waste of bardic inspiration. Even if walky was 15th level bard a 1d12 won’t help and its for the best.

        1. Fnord

          Natural 1 isn’t an auto fail except in combat, so it might help.

        2. Joinedtosaythis

          That is actually a houserule

        3. Dr. Sharks

          Fnord is actually right! The only times that rolling a 20 or a 1 matters is for attack rolls and death saves. For ability checks and saving throws, you just add your modifier and compare to the DC as normal.

        4. Aura

          tbh I still think of that as a houserule, just the house is WotC’s place. Established convention for decades is 1 = critical fail, 20= critical success.

        5. Dr. Sharks

          Also not quite true! The last edition I played before 5e was 3.5, and there it only mattered for attacks and saving throws. Otherwise, an untrained commoner always had a 5% chance of succeeding an epic skill check.

        6. Dr. Sharks

          I once joined a campaign already long in progress. I decided the best way to avoid overshadowing the pre-established characters was to make this completely combat-nonviable multiclass monstrosity whose sole purpose was to stack as many buffs as possible on my allies.

          So Inspiration! Emboldening Bond! Guidance! Flash of Genius! Cosmic Omen of Weal! With +2d6+2d4+3 to your ability checks, the world is your oyster.

        7. polerin

          how did it work out? That sounds amazing to fight alongside.

        8. Dr. Sharks

          It worked well enough and was surprisingly fun to play. In combat, my own turns were mostly spent doing either the dodge or the help actions, but I was very active on everyone else’s turns, reminding them of buffs they already had or jumping in with new ones. I also bought a bunch of cheap color-coded dice corresponding to different buffs which I would hand out to other players, and I made a chart that sat at the table saying when they could add each color to their rolls. Role-playing the character was a lot of fun too.

    3. anon

      well circling back to this is prolly for the better, maybe

    4. Bin

      Nah man. That’s on Lucy.

      If Lucy has a problem with what Walky said then the problem is Lucy.

      1. Imogen

        It’s more that they have a mutual problem. Lucy wanting x from the relationship is not “her fault” any more than Walky giving y into the relationship is “his fault”.

        To paraphrase an ex I am now on terrible terms with, “It should never be about You Vs. Me, it’s about Us Vs. The Problem”. In this case, trying to pick out who “ruined this” seems a little reductive in general. The relationship rolled a natural 1.

      2. thejeff

        I don’t see this as her being mad at him for saying it, but as her realizing that she’s doing it. We’ll see where she takes it.

    5. Nicoleandmaggie

      Or 20 depending on your perspective…

      1. Mym

        The dodecahedron fell off the table

  2. Marvelman

    Finally!

  3. shadowcell

    Walky sure is a being we can’t comprehend

    1. True Survivor

      This made me smile. Thank you.

    2. Sirksome

      He…he’s pretty easy to understand. If Lucy had even once just dropped her pants and produced a bag of Doritos and a Playstation this conversation would not be happening.

      1. Nono

        Not really? Like Walky is a man of simple tastes but not in the ‘Wow you have all my favourite things in one picture. Despite me not being attracted to you at all, I will have sex with you now!’ way.

        1. Sirksome

          It’s not about sex, or even having all his favorite things. Maybe I phrased that incorrectly, Walky has blatantly stated he wants someone to chill with. He said that in front of Lucy. The exact scenario I described he did with Amber. He desires companionship without it being anything more complicated than that. If Lucy was providing that they wouldn’t be nearly so mismatched emotionally. But even nothing is something with Lucy.

        2. Leorale

          But, that’s not what Lucy wants. She doesn’t want a chill Taco Bell videogame buddy, she wants mutual love and sexytimes and meeting parents and the possibility of becoming family: the whole enchilada.

          Neither desire is evil or anything, if only they wanted the same thing. The problem is that they’re so mismatched on what they want from this one relationship — and the mismatch will continue to pressure Walky and shred Lucy.

          This is Lucy realizing how mismatched their desires are, and how that’s going to shred her heart.

        3. Mark

          I’m not convinced that Walky doesn’t want all that…eventually. But he’s being rushed, and digging his heels in.

        4. Mark

          Maybe I should have said, “won’t want all that…eventually.”

        5. Stu

          And this is why I actually like the fact that she’s coming to the realization about all this NOW and not after she’s rushed them both into sex and regrets it.

    3. JA

      Walky’s pretty easy to get. Naive kid who had it easy in life and is getting hit by IRL in the real world e.g. math class; doesn’t really know how to interact with women and just wings it, getting lucky for the most part; snacks and games like no one’s business and builds actual, if unseen, connections through it; just drifting through life with no path, plan, care, or realization of his rudderlessness; speaks his mind without thinking, for better or worse; pushes people’s buttons without realizing or understanding why.

      Source: Me. I was basically Walky for my first couple years in college (minus the luck with girls)

  4. yeah

    oh we ARE still doing this now, EXCELLENT

    1. Nicoleandmaggie

      And we’re back…

  5. Rose by Any Other Name

    Oh shit! Lucy with the savage self reflection.

    1. Vanessa

      Bless her heart, as much as she really wants to live in a fantasy world, she is not dumb.

      1. Bo

        ‘Fantasying of Age’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it, though

    2. anon

      at least walky isn’t the type of scumbag to take advantage

      tho makes me wonder which one of the cast would be the most liekly to be successful in being a cult leader lol

      1. Wereg

        If Amber had the energy and will to deal with people, she’d probably be the best at it. I’d buy her faking miracles and pretending that her insane superhero feats are actually messianic powers or something.

      2. Samniel

        Dorothy and Lucy would be at the bottom, since they both have negative charisma modifiers. Joyce is more of a joiner, but she does attract people. As said above, Amber would probably be the best shot if she had the drive, and maybe Carla, she already has the money and ego to buy herself a following, she just needs to be more… personable.

        1. Sav

          Are we leaving off the obvious answer? Because Booster could definitely start a cult.

        2. Dante

          I like your style.

          They haven’t been called a Psychological Soothsayer for nothing.

        3. Miri

          I like you both made these comments with Booster Gravitars. It elevates it somehow…

        4. Mr. FoX

          Joyce is oddly magnetic – she’s got that endearing kind of earnestness. I could see her leading a cult without really realizing that’s what she was doing.

        5. Aura

          Queen of the drunks!
          https://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/queen/

      3. PirateTawnee

        What do you think Faz is doing when Faz is off-panel?

        1. JBento

          Charts.

        2. Firseal

          I suspect he just Faz-es out.

          On the other hand, if he did start a cult, it would be just a Faz.

      4. clif

        Mike returning from the dead would give him an obvious advantage.

        1. JBento

          False claims of having done so have worked for the other dude for 2000 years now.

        2. Decidedly Orthogonal

          He’s not dead. He’s just been busy burning through his collection of nickels with all the moms.

        3. Proxiehunter

          He’s not dead, he’s pining for the fjords.

      5. Firseal

        The cast members who would be good at being cult leaders fell into the Blackout of the Plot Armor.

      6. Hof1991

        Clearly Sierra is already building the core of a cult. By the time people notice all the shoeless people it will be too late.

      7. Proto

        Definitely Mike if he were still around. He’d only do it to make someone mad though. Maybe if Joyce had crossed him more in her more fundie days

    3. JA

      Sometimes you gotta drop the anvil on yourself.

  6. NGPZ

    Reads first panel…

    GET OUT WALKY! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!!!!

    ??????

    *plays “Sikiliza Kwa Wahenga” by Michael Abels on hacked muzak*

    1. thakoru

      I mean maybe he’s into that, you don’t know.

    2. True Survivor

      Yeah, real love isn’t about giving up autonomy. It’s about stealing it.

      Here’s a I found song on the topic which I think you’ll like (sorry I can’t figure out how to make hypertext):

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwujPhp1qQY

      1. NGPZ

        Love ain’t surrendering autonomy.

        And even if there are some things about it that might resemble that, this is a very culty, very worrisome way of seeing it.

        Not even for just Lucy. I don’t even want to THINK about how much Becky agrees with this view.

        Brother, listen.

        Run! Run!

        YOU NEED TO RUN FAR!

        1. Vanessa

          Agreed. This is crazy talk.

        2. NGPZ

          Crazy talk referring to the view of love, right?

        3. clif

          I can teach you to use hypnosis to make any woman fall in love with you and give up her autonomy.

          The way in which this works is mysterious, but the important part is that you send me money.

        4. NGPZ

          I’m sorry clif, as much as I appreciate the effort this is something I don’t really wanna joke about 🙁

        5. Mym

          So like, I agree, but my wife and I are in a total power exchange relationship. It /is/ far more to do with kink than what we view love as, tho.

        6. a/snow/mous/e

          yeah, I would say autonomy-surrendering is more of a dominance kink thing than a love thing. might be weird to be in a bdsm relationship with god though!

        7. a/snow/mous/e

          also if you’re doing that stuff as a kink thing, you can talk beforehand to set the parameters, use safe-words, etc., but i don’t think you can do that with religion, so i hope lucy is practicing safe religion by questioning things and not being blinded by devotion! (but also come to think of it, she’s got a point with walky? i wouldn’t say she really “worships” him, but it can be unhealthy to put your significant other on a pedestal, so… it actually is a good thing for them to communicate about this and try to get on the same page, even if it feels scary at the moment. she DOES need to take a step back, and it’s not because walky did something wrong, it’s just that they’ve been going at two different speeds, and they need to get back in sync before they overturn the vehicle, you know?)

        8. David DeLaney

          *looks at your comment*
          *looks at the holy orders many nuns take*
          *looks back at your comment*

          –Dave, not even going into how many monk orders might fit that also

        9. True Survivor

          I largely agree. I was hoping to make a fun joke and have an excuse to show that song I found, because I thought I remembered you liking Inside Job. Sorry if that wasn’t clear or it was clear and I misinterpreted your reply. Regardless, have a great evening.

        10. NGPZ

          I appreciate the efforts, no worries. Likewise, happy holidays.

          Additionally, I recommend Get Out if you can handle horror. Jordan Peele is a frickin genius at his craft.

        11. APW

          Every meaningful relationship with a person means giving up some autonomy at some point. That’s what compromise is.

        12. NGPZ

          As an autistic person who is not willing to give up any autonomy after having been denied much of it the majority of my life, I deduce this means I will never have a relationship considered meaningful.

          And you know what? I’m alright with that.

          Unless I am missing something?

          (this isn’t a loaded question by the way, if I’m genuinely missing something please tell me)

        13. Hrodvitnir

          I think the use of the word “autonomy” is… intense? Like, if you’re in a monogamous relationship, you can’t sleep with other people. If you live with someone you have to take them into consideration when making decisions.

          I would not call that giving up autonomy though. You never give up control over yourself, your body, and your life – and if you do, something is not right.

        14. monkyvirus

          Yeah it’s more about respect and accommodating the other person. If you need to change the parameters, like trying an open relationship, you need to discuss it. If the parameters don’t suit you, then it could be time to move on.

          This is not the case for anyone who is experiencing control (e.g. how you dress, where you go, who you talk to). In that situation seek support and leave if you can. The major difference is the requests are totally unreasonable, there’s no room for discussion and they do not respect and accommodate you (but they expect you to do that for them).

        15. Masumi

          I feel you on this one. Main reason I haven’t been in a relationship for a loooong time because I refuse to compromise my autonomy. Even someone asking when I’ll be home for dinner makes me irrationally angry because what do I know, I’m busy hyperfocusing, I’ll eat when I’m done.

          That being said, there are absolutely meaningful friendships that don’t have that issue at all. People I choose to be around because here and now, I want to. (pretty exclusively other ND people somehow.)

          (And you just helped me find better words for that feeling, so thanks)

        16. NGPZ

          I’m glad ?

        17. Miri

          Over a decade ago now, my now husband thought it might be a nice thing if he started making me a packed lunch to take to work with me. But he wasn’t asking me what I’d want to eat… So after one or two days of trying to appreciate that he was trying to do something nice, I flipped my lid and got very upset because he was controlling what I was eating, and having to remember something else in the mornings was stressful, and he wasn’t actually thinking about how this would work for me… He still occasionally brings it up. He says he didn’t realise anybody could get that upset about carrots… I think he’s teasing and understood that it was the not checking with me if there was anything I would or wouldn’t like to eat that I was bothered about, rather than the inclusion of carrots in and of themselves…

        18. Firseal

          Perhaps it is a matter of definition. You are reading autonomy as a very strong word – because it very much is. I find it both slightly jarring and entirely in context given the two are leaving a church, and its quite possible some part of the sermon referenced that word heavily. A less strong worth would be control, while an even more mild word would be influence. There’s others that would work.

          What this boils down to is that in a relationship, you and the person you are in a relationship with are a complex ven diagram. There are places where you meet, overlap. There are places where you take autonomy, exert control, have influence over them, and vice versa. There are places where you change, and they change, or neither of you change so much as overlap. There are places where they don’t touch, and places you don’t touch them. This is not necessarily even romantic love. Parents and children, siblings, friends, coworkers, neighbors. When you repeatedly interact with people, they touch the ven diagram that is your existence, and you theirs.

          Romantic relationships are often so intense, and deep, that the interactions are also intense, which is why Lucy is equating time spent with Walky to surrendering and accepting pieces of autonomy. (Including ‘Go to Church / breakfast / etc’) Lucy is, well, -all in- so she is looking for concrete intermingling not just physically but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Walky, having been recently burned and nowhere near as intense about others, just doesn’t mesh like that. Lucy believes in *fixing* the parts of people she likes or sees as broken. Its not a bad thing in therapists (done correctly). Its not a good thing in temporally young relationships.

          So yeah. Autonomy is a very strong word here, and not necessarily a thing others would be getting into. But if anyone is going to equate that to the emotional interaction of a relationship, its Lucy. This also fits with her relative haste in the relationship. Its not how all relationships work, but it is how several fail to work.

        19. Regret

          Not absolute surrender of autonomy, but at least partial. All relationships (not just romantic ones) are about give and take, finding a balance, doing things together you might be better able to do alone but you prefer suboptimal results if those include spending time with your loved one. So yeah, you are going to have to give up something. Even something as simple as meeting a friend for a walk in the park means you are no longer free to use that afternoon for something else: You just gave up part of your autonomy.

        20. NGPZ

          But like, a walk in the park isn’t really surrendering autonomy at all if you made that choice and are no less free to make that choice going forward?

          Surrender of autonomy has undertones of coercion and threat, it means being continuously and increasingly restricted in where you’re allowed to go, who you’re allowed to talk to, what you’re allowed to read and watch, how you are to dress, act, think and even feel, not because it’s what you want but because of threat of shaming, disconnection from friends or family, losing everything and trying to survive on your own, and in some cases even violence.

          And as is a major theme in this comic, that’s exactly the kind of stuff cults do.

        21. Dante

          Yeah, if there’s consent then there’s no actual surrendering of one’s autonomy. Not even in kink, where you ideally create the conditions to let go during the length of a scene safely, and with the understanding a scene ends.

          In every kind of meaningful human relationship you’ll find out there’s compromise – which requires effort, understanding, and good will from both parts. Crucially, though, it can’t be coerced; and shouldn’t be viewed as a Cost of Opportunity thing: You’re giving your time, not giving it up.

          There’s a big difference between “let’s meet in the middle” and “be it onto me according to thy word”.

        22. Species125

          I think it’s more that there is suddenly another person to think about. Your default becomes staying with that person and doing stuff. If you are going to live together, you need to find a way to live together. That usually involves a bit of compromise. To make the household work, you need to find a way to divide up the household chores and if you have a kid, you need to find a way to make that work as well.

          It’s not so much about giving up autonomy but finding a way to make life work with another person deeply involved.

        23. Mark

          Would it help to say “sharing autonomy”? I defer to you — sometimes. You defer to me — sometimes. We both contribute to something that benefits us both. We are individuals who choose to work together for something that we both want.

          It sometimes becomes “OUR autonomy.” “WE are united on this and will not yield.” That can be empowering.

        24. Amelie Wikström

          As the BITE model for identifying cults talks about, you can look at an abusive relationship as a cult with two members. The same rules apply that distinguish healthy relationship from an abusive one as the ones that distinguish a group activity from a cult, namely, there isn’t a specific distinction. It’s just a matter of degrees.

          Like how much you can trust another person? Maybe you shouldn’t trust them to be your sole source of news and education and adjudicator of acceptable thoughts, feelings and behaviors. (That’s a cult leader.) You probably don’t want another person in charge of your money either. But how about a shared bank account? Shared Steam account? Shared reality, so you can trust them if they tell you they are a real person and not a dream you’re having? You probably need to draw a line somewhere in order to live.

          That’s my observation as a fairly paranoid, very lonely autistic person anyway.

        25. milu

          Yeah, red flags are many and there’s no single failproof rule.

          one i’ve heard several times, and try to apply in my own life is: does the person or community encourage or discourage you to seek advice and healthy relationships outside of the relationship/group?

        26. Regret

          By choosing to allot part of your time to the walk in the park, you are surrendering the option of doing something else with that time.

          I don’t know about other people, but I simultaneously live in my remembered past, my present, and my expected future. They are all very real parts of myself. So to make any kind of plans is to restrict my future options (while opening up other options).

          Once you’re in any kind of reciprocal relationship between peers, then you’re both going to have moments where you claim the time of the other because you have a need, and you’ll be glad to give your time to the other when they have a need.

          To me that is a very real loss of freedom. It is a loss you gladly choose, but your options are still being restricted. The line between mutually dependable and co-dependent is the line between relationship and unhealthy relationship. If you’re not mutually dependable, then you don’t actually have a relationship, that’s just an acquaintance.

          but this sounds like we’re having a difference of semantics. So instead of lost autonomy, what word would you use for the options and freedoms you lose when you make plans? And once we both know what we mean, we need to ask Lucy what she means.

        27. clif

          Compromise or doing one thing instead of another is not giving up your autonomy as long as it’s something you choose to do.

        28. Just_IDD

          Making a choice to do something is not losing autonomy. Having someone bind your hands and feet and then taking you for a drag at the park is. Kids don’t get to make choices they lack some autonomy.

        29. thejeff

          But sometimes choices give you responsibilities that limit your autonomy. Kids are the obvious example: taking care of them has to come first – even if no one binds your hands and feet and drags you away, you still have to go when the kid needs to be picked up.

        30. Proxiehunter

          You should go when the kid needs to be picked up because there are consequences both for the kid and yourself if you do not go (or make other arrangements). But nothing other than fear of those consequences means you have to go. Because you do still have autonomy you could theoretically choose not to.

          Unless there’s a very good reason you’d be an asshole to not go, but not going is entirely possible. Neglectful parents do it all the damn time. Your autonomy isn’t limited unless you can’t not go.

        31. thejeff

          I mean if you take that argument far enough, you still have full autonomy even if you’re being held at gunpoint. It’s only fear of consequences that keeps you from ignoring the guy with the gun, right?

          But using that sense of the term, relationships do not limit your autonomy. Using a some what looser definition, they do. I suspect that distinction is driving most of the argument here.

  7. quark

    lucy the fact that you can make that comparison at all is a really really bad sign for how you handle relationships ._.

    1. Jo_Cubstar

      Right? Like yes she was kind of blindly worshipping him in a NRE daze, but in no way is this like a cult-like God like scenario ?… and he was surprisingly being real with her about how he felt and shared that he does care about her a lot.

      1. Derek

        what’s NRE?

        1. Li

          New relationship energy

    2. Li

      I mean this is literally her first boyfriend ever so it’s less how she handles relationshipS…

      1. Archieve

        I think there’s also the issue that she thinks there needs to be mutual love to justify premarital sex so Walky not being able to receipicate right away is causing double the resentment on her end because she still can’t comprehend someone else not being able to meet her at her level right away.

        1. Li

          I mean, look, I agree that it would make sense if Lucy was at least more comfortable having sex for the first time with someone who loves her, and I’ve worried in these comments that she might be rationalizing premarital sex as okay specifically if it’s with a future husband…

          …but this is where we both need to acknowledge that that is technically baseless speculation. At best an educated guess based on what young Christian women who say they’re okay with sex on the third date sometimes mean.

          Lucy herself has not actually said any of that.

        2. Archieve

          Well yeah, educated guesses are what the comment sections for, voicing opinions and speculating on what the authors hasn’t flat out told us.

        3. Li

          Well sure but to start saying “BECAUSE Lucy definitely wants [thing she hasn’t actually said she wants, and also something she’s kinda said she specifically doesn’t want]…” as the foundation for further speculation without at least acknowledging that we don’t really have much reason to think that foundational part is true.

        4. Archieve

          Please reread my initial comment, in begins with ‘i think’ and does not use the word -‘definatly’ its speculation based on the characters past behaviors in comic.

        5. Li

          I feel like it’s speculation based on other characters’ past behavior in the comic; Joyce and Liz specifically. What Lucy has actually said is, after a moment of looking off to one side, that she’s pretty sure Jesus is okay with people having sex on the third date, and that “you have no idea the self-imposed hoops a Christian woman will jump through to justify having sex”, which sounds… well.

          Again, this is a thought I’ve postulated myself in past strips, but I don’t know that I think it was a fair thing for me to postulate. At the very least I definitely wouldn’t say Lucy was feeling resentment here or having difficulty comprehending “someone else not being able to meet her at her level right away”.

          But I have explained my own position now pretty thoroughly and it would be silly for me to keep arguing with you over what you meant, so I will cease doing that.

    3. DashWallkick

      Yep! She fundamentally can’t grasp that what she’s doing isn’t healthy, which means all the attraction turns into obsessing, which then turns into insecurity because she’s not getting validation. It’s actually really hard to maintain a relationship if you’re pouring yourself into someone waiting for imminent returns on your investment!

    4. Mark

      Is it a bad sign, or a good sign that she can step back and look at her own behavior and beliefs? Lucy wants love, intimacy, sex, and mutuality, but she wasn’t living that out. I think she’s on the cusp of seeing that now. If Walky can talk gently about the pressure he’s been feeling, and Lucy will listen gently, I think they can have a more balanced and satisfying relationship, and it may be that with mutuality all the other things will come in time. If he feels safe to warm up a bit, and she feels relaxed enough to cool down a bit, they’ll enjoy each other much more and grow their relationship in partnership.

  8. Sirksome

    These are the most volatile ship stocks ever. I can’t predict the trends, invest at your own discretion folks.

    1. Lanie

      This week has really had some peaks and valleys, that’s for sure!

      1. clif

        The only thing that I can predict is that tomorrow we will cut away. And that prediction will be wrong.

        1. milu

          that’s called hedging your bets. smart.

        2. thejeff

          There are ways to accurately predict that though.
          Just not much more than that.

        3. Mark

          “Prediction is always difficult, especially of the future.”

        4. Bo

          It’s a bull market, and by ‘bull’ I mean bullshit, I can’t make heads or tails on where it’s going…

    2. fridge_logic

      If You’re not hedging your bets on LUCKY with a mix of DOTI Calls and Amber Default Swaps then you should go back to trading poly indexes like GMS or just open a Joeyce Mutual Love account and call it a day.

  9. Jacob Crawford

    Wild comparison from Lucy considering that Walky made a material sacrifice by going to church with her.

    1. Bryy

      She doesn’t view it as that, though, and even flat out made fun of him for voicing his opinions.

      1. Jon

        I feel like her reaction to Wally’s comments about church was maybe the tamest I’ve ever seen from a staunch churchgoer. A little light teasing maybe, but barely any.

        This is very important to her and Walky has done nothing but criticize it, pretty aggressively at that. If I brought my date to see a movie/play/concert that I really liked, and they started talking about how much they hated it the second it was done, I’d be more combative than Lucy is right now. And keep in mind that this is *more* important to her than a performance, given all that immortal soul business, etc etc.

        Caveat: keep in mind I agree with Walky, I’m not criticizing him, I think he’s in the right here. Just pointing out that, for as sensitive as a topic as this is for Lucy, she’s handled it better than almost any real-life Christian I’ve ever seen in “confrontation with vocal nonbeliever” mode.

        1. Hrodvitnir

          I agree. I am atheist from birth, and find churches creepy. I still think Walky has been needlessly negative about the experience, especially considering he volunteered.

          This particularly conversation, OTOH, is reasonable and he is absolutely right, haha.

        2. Miri

          I don’t think he was expecting to find her mainstream church so culty-triggery… After the kidnapping and Mike’s death, and possibly also seeing how much damage those attitudes did to Joyce and Becky it squicking him out hard makes sense, I feel?

        3. lyzyrdwyzyrd

          I’m a Christian.
          I find many churches creepy.

        4. David DeLaney

          i mean, if you can’t feel the hovering Spirit in them following you around, what good ARE they?

          –Dave, They’re a Trinity for a reason, y’know?

        5. fridge_logic

          Am Atheist, there are many churches that make me feel comfortable. My old church had both:

          Go to the traditional service and listen to the preacher tell a story about how someone he knew solve their problems with compassion, patience, and kindness. No need for faith, just a community leader reminding you how to be a good person, now stand up and greet your neighbors.

          Go to the the Contemporary service and sing culty rock songs about how we’re nothing without god….

      2. monkyvirus

        His opinions were quite harsh straight out of the gate and even Walky knows religion is important to people. I don’t particularly like wrestling but when I agree to watch it with my bestie o don’t turn around and go off about it after.

        He can think what he wants but he could have been more tactful (I’m not saying its easy for Walky or others to be tactful). But I can see why Lucy took a jokey tone because he was being rude immediately.

        1. Just_IDD

          Tact is a 4-letter-word. However how you take something is all on you. I’m not saying you have no right to get angry about something, but how you express that anger is 100% a choice you make whether you stop to think about it or not.

  10. Megan Rivera

    ………………oof

  11. DEAD MEME

    Just when we thought we were out, Willis pulls us back in.

    1. David DeLaney

      and then out again. and then in again…

      –Dave, repeat until satisfied, then stop and clean up

  12. morleuca

    More like Lucy finally passed that intuition check. I wonder what the dc was up to

    1. Sajuuk-Khar

      At least 35

  13. Sajuuk-Khar

    THEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE: Failed

    ROENTGENS: Back in the thousands

    SAL’S MONEY: Incoming

    WALKY’S COCK: Blocked

    1. Sajuuk-Khar

      (DISCLAIMER: I take no pleasure in their terrible relationship issues, or at least not more than a normal popcorn-onlooker, I am also mot assigning anyone fault here. These two kids just were doomed from the get, I think.)

    2. Regret

      Walky is a lot less invested in their sex life than Lucy is, so it is more like
      LUCY’S PUSSY: Blocked

      1. NGPZ

        “You have no idea the totally self-placed hoops a Christian girl will go through to justify being laid!”

      2. Mym

        Clam Jammed

        1. Regret

          Much better!

  14. Kyrik Michalowski

    Well, this conversation had to happen at some point. Probably better that it is happening now; it would be a lot more messy otherwise.

    Also, won’t this prove Sarah right?

    That’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out.

    1. cbwroses

      Not really?
      Sarah’s points were:
      1. She wouldn’t deal with a guy with racist parents.
      2. Lucy isn’t really part of the friend group, but instead is around because she wants naked time with Walky.
      3. There are plenty of guys who aren’t Walky, which is already a point in those guys’ favor.
      She said nothing about Lucy’s and Walky’s love or lack thereof for each other.
      That said, if they break up here, and Lucy stops hanging around, then that would support her not being part of the group.

      1. anonymsly

        I mean, I don’t think Sarah’s the arbiter of who everybody is friends with. Lucy and Becky hang out without Sarah’s permission.

        1. cbwroses

          I mean that really depends on how the friend group is defined (in this case, I believe Sarah is defining it around shared trauma and/or support of traumatic experiences) and who is part of it.
          Lucy and Becky being friends doesn’t make Lucy part of the group anymore than it makes Marcie part of the group despite Marcie being Sal’s best friend and Sal being part of the group.
          But Marcie is definitely part of the Sal, Marcie, Malaya, Carla friend group.

        2. Sirksome

          Lucy and Becky hangout? Like yeah, they go to church together, but the last time Becky actively sought out Lucy she was actually looking for Jennifer. Lucy was not invited to Bonnie’s birthday. I don’t think she’s at that level yet.

        3. Bryy

          Becky had no qualms including Lucy in the plan to reconvert Joyce.

        4. Holly

          And so the image of a stealthy distant ship forms in the far fog of future: Lucy x Becky.

        5. eskimolos

          Yes, because they’re both Christian and Lucy has joycelike elements.

        6. Shade

          I feel that was more out of a lack of options. Like who else could she go to for that plan?

      2. Coatl

        Now that you mention that Lucy is not part of the group, there was never any interest on her part in joining.

        I mean, she only cares about Walky and he no longer lives with the others like he did before, plus Raidah’s influence has given Lucy a negative concept towards Sarah.

        1. Li

          Mmm, I don’t know that that’s true re: her not WANTING to be part of the friend group. I think she wanted it a little bit desperately, just like she wanted everyone in Forest Quad to like her.

          Some of what she’s said so far makes me think she didn’t have a lot of friends in high school and none of them came with her to IU. A lot of her actions make more sense viewed through the lens of a former high school “”loser”” (lots of people don’t have real friends in high school, it doesn’t make you a loser, but it does make you feel like one) who’s been trying really hard to turn that around in college.

          (No shade on Lucy here, I find this sympathetic as heck.)

        2. Coatl

          Well, that day when she introduced Walky to her brother, it was clear that she was looking for that need to be taken into account and just hearing Walky tell her “I like you” became a personal victory, while she was happy with his brother and desaforting Walkerton with a face that clearly said “what the fuck did I do”

        3. Regret

          What does desaforting mean?

        4. Coatl

          *unfortunate Walkerton, sorry, mistake on my part

        5. Archieve

          It’s sympathetic but also shows how Lucy doesn’t understand the average person, she flat out stated at lunch with her brother that she thinks university is a majority cast-off nerds like herself and sincerely told her brother to order a random table of people to be her friends. There’s an expectation on things to happen right away and when they don’t like with forest quad friends she seems to write them off as a failed attempt. Hoping she eventually accepts that not being on her speed isn’t an automatic fail.

        6. Rose Red

          It can be hard to make friends in college, too. And often you become good friends with your roommate, just because you spend so much time together, but we know that didn’t happen with Lucy first semester.

      3. Chubsius

        1.1: If Sarah had to deal with such parents, she would face them head-on, rather than engaging in shenanigans or in any way indirectly.

        1. Kyrik Michalowski

          Fair point.

  15. Shorduie

    OH SHE GOT YOU NOW WALKY! YOU CANT DUMBFUCK YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS ONE!

    1. Reltzik

      … I, for one, refuse to underestimate Walky’s powers of dumbfuckery.

      1. Shorduie

        …goddamn it they are going to keep dating, aren’t they? Fucking Walky man, I swear to satan

        1. clif

          You’re giving me whiplash here.

      2. David DeLaney

        i, for one, WELCOME our new dumbfuckery overlord

    2. Shorduie

      Im so happy about this, I was sooooooo pissed that walky managed to avoid the church break up by being cute but hes got nowhere to go now

      1. clif

        Points and laughs, but without Mike’s preamble.

    3. Bin

      But what did Walky say that was wrong? Dude nailed it perfectly.

      Walky saying normal stuff which causes Lucy to self-reflect and realize something about herself is a good thing.

    4. Shade

      Except she’s wrong?

      It isn’t one sided, he literally did something he loathes for her. That’s not something he’d do for a lot of people. She’s expecting him to meet her intensity immediately which isn’t reasonable, but she also doesn’t have to settle for waiting for him either. She needs to decide if she’s okay with that or not, not expect him to rush to where she is.

      1. Miri

        Most of the time if there is somebody more keen to do something and somebody being persuaded to do it, or doing it because they want to make/keep the other one happy, with these two, it is Lucy being the dominant person and Walky surrendering to her will and wants.

        I can’t think of a time when it’s happened in the other direction, with Lucy expressing reservations or discomfort and Walky steamrolling. But even here, “Oh, okay, we’re gonna continue to talk about…”

        Like, the biggest time she has acquiesced when their wishes/needs have been in direct conflict has been “have a loud argument in the vestibule of a church instead of putting her coat on and leave, or put her coat on. And. Continue. To. Leave.” And that is to a very large part because Walky is conflict-avoidant, wants to be a good boyfriend, and if she’s being ballpark reasonable, will probably just go along with her to keep the peace.

        She could be coming to the realisation from the other direction, that he’s not a partner, he’s a Ken doll (supporting her and not voicing his own thoughts/wants). And that’s not her fault – she’s been putting more into being supportive of her cartoonist boyfriend than he’s been putting into cartooning, for instance!- but fundamentally they don’t really communicate well, and that is likely to be an issue for her.

        1. yeah

          yeah somewhat paradoxically I think there’s a certain level of emotional investment required in a relationship to try and convince a partner to do something that matters to you, that they don’t necessarily find appealing at first blush. part of the reason Walky hasn’t done that is of course because Lucy is so eager to please anyway, but I do also think his head is just not in this enough to bother. in theory that’s obliging behavior on his part, in practice it’s a bit more disconnected.

      2. yak

        Wally’s making it pretty clear that he’s only doing the entire relationship because he feels obligated to. Or like he “might as well”.

  16. AeromechanicalAce

    You know, Considering his Parents, Walky has a surprisingly healthy idea of what Relationships should be.

    1. AeromechanicalAce

      The Irony about being assigned Lucy as a Gravatar for this situation is Staggering.

    2. Dante

      I have a feeling that Walky, while unaware of how deeply the rabbit hole of Unhealth went, has intuitively known for a while he doesn’t want anything like his parents’ relationship.

      Like. Maybe there’s been denial at play on his side about their scapegoating of Sal, but the one thing I’ve never ever heard him saying is “mom and dad sure love each other!” like, say, Joyce.

      1. Archieve

        I think your on to something with how Walky viewed his parents growing up, even if all he had for references was cartoon families I think on some level he picked up that what his parents have isn’t mutual love or respect but a non-religious version of ‘you follow me and I’ll make sure everything’s taken care of for our family.’

        1. Dante

          The terror he experiences at the idea of disappointing his mom is super telling. There’s one authority figure in that household, everyone else is a follower and liable to fall out of favor, dad included.

          It’s nice that he doesn’t want someone like his mother but also, doesn’t want to be the one wielding authority either. And it’s an interesting contrast with Amber being terrified of being like his dad back in Arc #1.

  17. newlland(Henryvolt)

    Pretty much so yeah, sorry Lucy.

    1. Shade

      Nope. If it was one sided he literally wouldn’t be here having this discussion right now because he never would have done something he loathed for her.

      It’s pretty clear he does like her, but they are at different intensities.

  18. Reltzik

    No one ever demanded that you surrender your autonomy to Walky, Lucy.

    (If anything, Walky’s surrendered more autonomy to her than she to him.)

    …. though, yeah, the one-sided worship thing checks out.

    1. Sajuuk-Khar

      I mean, I think she’s talking in a more abstract way about autonomy than he was, because she’s talking theology and he’s coping with emotional abuse from his parents from behind fifteen separate proxy doors

      1. Vanessa

        That’s true. Walky is having to fight for autonomy from his overbearing mom He only wishes his dad ever exercised his own autonomy for something more helpful than tasteless jokes, like standing up for his kids.

        1. Sajuuk-Khar

          I’d been kind of inwardly grousing at Walky’s complete inability to do a theology in earlier strips (mostly because some folks were getting on a bit of a congratulatory atheist soapbox about it) but thinking about it I’m like oh, right, both Walkerton kids have to fight for every inch of autonomy they’ve ever been allowed tooth and nail.

        2. Shade

          Just because that’s not how you see it doesn’t make those outside perspectives invalid though. The reality is that is how it looks like from the outside to a lot of people.

          To use another example I’ve had some people in the US explain who they don’t find the pledge of allegiance a big deal but its intensely creepy to me from the outside.

        3. Just_IDD

          If it helps the pledge becomes much more squidgy after you read the parody written by Matt Groening did long before he created the Simpson’s.

        4. Mr D

          Or how the miltary gets worshipped in the US.

        5. Sajuuk-Khar

          Yeah alright, legend, but it doesn’t mean I have to validate those perspectives as anything more than opinions, either, particularly when they’re obnoxious, dehumanizing opinions about anyone who hasn’t gulped down the soapbox-model atheist Kool-Aid.

  19. Steve

    Oop! He just rolled a 1 on his will save. Eject! Eject!

  20. Regalli

    You know, this was inevitable. And honestly, I think it’s BETTER Lucy pull this band-aid off and talk about it, whether it ends in a breakup or not, than let it continue to fester. If there IS any hope for them as a couple, they really need to have this talk about mismatched investment first.

    1. Coatl

      And there is the detail that has everyone worried… what will be the result and how will this pair process it?

    2. Li

      +1

      Pretty much came here to say this exact thing. I dunno that I’ll turn around completely and start shipping these two, but I WILL stop feeling like Willis is constantly foreshadowing their doom if Walky manages to respond to this in a way that convinces me he really does, actually factually, like Lucy as much as she likes him.

      I don’t currently… see that happening? But I would not have predicted Walky’s successful turnaround last time either, so! I am currently 0 for 1.

      1. Shade

        Why does he need to like her at the same level right this minute? She went to 11 pretty much immediately, most people don’t.

        The fact they were even in a church at all shows its not one-sided at least.

        1. Li

          I expressed this better below. I think LUCY needs Walky to like her as much as she likes him, or to at the very least reassure her that he is definitely going to eventually.

          I don’t think Walky is as confident of that as Dorothy said she was, and I think it would be very fair of Lucy to not want to wait for him to get to a place he might never actually reach.

          But again I’m withholding judgment on whether he’s going to do that successfully and whether they’re going to be a long term couple or not.

        2. Li

          Also she was not at 11 immediately, she’s had a crush for four months.

      2. Regalli

        At the very least acknowledging, “I like you, and I think you’re attractive aesthetically, but I only JUST started thinking of you in a romantic context at all and I’m not sure if I DO like you romantically or not yet” puts them in a more honest position. They could have been dating casually – the way Walky kind of seems like he’d be more comfortable with, IIRC – and Lucy wouldn’t have embarrassed herself with Sal or had to deal with the Walkerton parents. (And the Walkerton siblings – all three of them* – would have had more time to figure out when and how to explain the parental racism to Lucy in a less loaded context.) Lucy would be drastically reassessing her timeline for sex. Or Lucy could have decided “no, not really up for casual dating, let me know if you decide you think we COULD be a serious couple.” But, better late than never.

        * The thing with Jennifer is that, for all that she and Sal don’t really have a sibling-like relationship and the uncomfortable “white-passing daughter (Linda) always wanted” aspect… I also can’t BLAME her for latching onto Walky and parents who were willing to include and pay attention to her given what we know of the senior Billingsworths, and unless I’m forgetting something, I don’t think Sal does either. It’s an awkward situation and I think tension is THERE, but Sal doesn’t seem to begrudge Walky having a second sister. And I think if Jennifer got her head out of her ass on her whole cycle of reinventions and crashes (and there weren’t the awkward time bomb of Asher in the background,) they COULD be allies. They aren’t there yet, but I do hope the three of them work something out. And then estrange themselves from Linda and Charles TOGETHER. 🙂

      3. Jay

        He literally doesn’t, though – that’s the problem.

        Or, even if *you* think he *does* like her as much as she likes (her fantasy version of) him, it’s qualitatively not the same, and it doesn’t compare equally in either of *their* minds.

  21. Rose by Any Other Name

    Although, counterpoint to Walky, God does lead a heavenly choir of Angels, so maybe God IS singing back to the humans who sing to them.

    (Note for the casual reader – I am not Christian, but rather a non-Christian who finds Christian mythology fascinating – those Gnostic Angels are fricken awesome)

    1. Coatl

      It has a fascinating bestiary, in my case, the first time I discovered about the fantastic beings in the Bible was in the apocalypse (I clarify, I was a child and the only thing I knew with that name was the Marvel mutant) and mentioning the horsemen, the beasts, etc……Wow, that’s the only thing to say back then. Although the Bible will be the eternal object of debate for many, it cannot be denied that many of its writings are so epic and fantastic (The Exodus, for example, is one of the most overexploited in entertainment).

      1. bemisawa

        Look, without the Bible, what would Transformers lore reference and Japanese anime hilariously misunderstand? CHECKMATE, ATHEISTS.

        1. bemisawa

          (But seriously, the angels are particularly cool, particularly the weirder ones. It’s been a while, but I’m particularly fond of the (fairly faithful?) portrayal of the cherubim in the young adult sci-fi novel A Wind In The Door by Madeleine L’Engle (the sequel to A Wrinkle In Time, incidentally). Glowing humans with wings and robes? Perfectly fine I guess*, and maybe pretty cool if we’re looking at their vastly different psychologies compared to humans. Four-dimensional balls of wings and feathers and smoke and fire? That’s metal.)

          (Although it should also be said, Christianity is by no means the only religion which can be an incredibly cool source of lore. I’m particularly excited to watch Land Of The Lustrous, in large part because it looks like they’re drawing inspiration from the Hindu tradition, kind of like a weird, pretty Steven Universe / Evangelion mashup.)

          * None of this statement should be taken to reflect on Good Omens. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman could and can do whatever the heaven / hell they want.

        2. Coatl

          Exactly, the worldviews that each culture offers is enriching and taking what is essentially the best for us, but always respecting

        3. clif

          Cultural Appropriation for the Win!

        4. bemisawa

          For anyone interested in this aesthetic, I’ll also add a couple other series which capture it well without drawing from the same well:

          1. Puella Magi Magika Madoka, which is Evangelion For Magical Girls But Also Better (Now With More Gumball!). It uses animation to evoke that same feeling of alienness which I personally find so cool.

          2. Yuki Yuna Is A Hero, which is Madoka With The Serial Numbers Filed Off (Now With More Evangelion!). But, I love it anyway. Come to think of it, you *could* also argue that it’s disability-positive; however, it’s very, very possible that the argument would be EXTREMELY stupid. I’m actually super pumped to watch it with my partner (*after* they see Madoka, though, and possibly after Evangelion as well) so that we can discuss it from that angle, because while I enjoyed the drama, on several meta levels there’s some zaniness going on.

          …Annnnnyway. As you were, good citizens.

        5. lyzyrdwyzyrd

          Incidentally, cherubim and seraphim aren’t actually identified as angels in the Bible. ALL of the angels are just dudes, sometimes glowy dudes. Dan McClellan has done videos on it.

          I’m all for making Christianity weird, but the ‘Biblicslly accurate sngles’ is referring to non angelic beings.

        6. David DeLaney

          *Willis intensifies without knowing why*

    2. Mollyscribbles

      I was about to argue that God doesn’t actually do the things people ask of them but on reflection, it can be compared to religion — say that humans show up to church once a week to sing about how they’d do anything for God but do their own thing 99% of the rest of their week; meanwhile, God sings about how they’d do anything for humans once a week and then goes off to poke at an exoplanet side project the rest of the week.

      1. bemisawa

        I really love this take. Just saying, I would read the bongos out of a short story (or novella, or flash fiction, or…) of this idea.

    3. Mark

      An important point, and one that Lucy just skated by: the relationship between deity and worshipper is mutual but asymmetrical. There is an inescapable disparity of power, willingly accepted by the worshipper. (For some, that’s the point.) But gods need worshippers as worshippers need gods; it’s just that the needs are complementary, not similar.

      Lucy pondering if her relationship with Walky (or with their association) is like worship, is a good thing because, if true, that’s bad. Equals should not relate that way.

      1. Mark

        Pratchett’s Small Gods is good for stimulating thought about worship.

  22. Bittersweet

    Yes, Lucy, and that’s why this relationship has been so unhealthy and uncomfortable to watch lol.

    Now y’all can talk about it because I lowkey don’t want you to break up over this line specifically because it kinda rubs me the wrong way and I’m not entirely sure why.

    1. anon

      it does come off as emotionally guilt trippy even if it’s not intentional

      maybe lucy will either be more balanced/reserved in her next relationship assuming she doesn’t give someone a chance who seemingly likes her ‘more’

  23. Muttski

    Oof. Here it comes.

  24. Vanessa

    Walky actually likes her, if she would just live in the moment with him and talk about cartoons. He doesn’t need her to be liked by his parents or to have sex with him. He would be happy to just do homework side by side and go to Taco Bell.

    1. anon

      might be ideal for walky as like a friendship/bros but i imagine lucy wants more since ‘hw and taco bell’ sounds like something a group of teen friends do every now and then rather than couple-y (tho nothign wrong with being casual)

      1. Shade

        The thing is its not like Walky is opposed to working up to those things, the issue is Lucy went to 11 and he started at about a 5 and that’s going to cause an imbalance.

      2. Just_IDD

        A relationship isn’t about the special events though. Its being with the other person all of the time, or rather being present with them when You are together. its the person not the activity justification.

      3. eskimolos

        and frankly, walky has been Proper Into dorothy and amber, and given he may like lucy, there’s no passion in tacos and homework, at least not so far, and the question is if passion can spontaneously materialise when you’re in a relationship where the feelings feel imbalanced. John Green once made the point that those early crush or new relationship feelings seem founded on Not Knowing much about the other person, and as you learn more those feelings kind of dim and fade, and that’s fine – that’s part of the process, you have other feelings that have grown in their place. But my point is, at least to me it feels like Walky is going to need to find something interesting and mysterious about Lucy to have feelings at all matched to her, for Lucy Walky is pretty much entirely a mystery because she largely lived until the last like 15 minutes of their time together in a fantasy version of him that suited her crush-laced interpretation of him. She is now having to reconcile what Real Walky is, now that he’s told her more about himself. It’s not like mystery is needed for a relationship, though it tends to be pretty important for passion as far as my experience goes, so how I’d see this relationship progressing if it stayed together is Lucy sobering and meeting Walky where he is now, rather than Walky eventually “falling in love” and meeting Lucy at 11. I think she is sobering now, that’s a different path to walk but she’s got no choice, she’s already going down it.

        1. Mark

          Their differing POVs on religion would be something to explore together, if they can be calm about it. They find each other’s attitudes on this mysterious, if you will. They could learn a lot about each other that way, and may find more things to like.

  25. anonymsly

    Ooof. Lucy, baby, you’ve been dating a WEEK. Calm down a smidge, let things be what they are and see where it ends up. Maybe it ends up love, maybe not. All that stressing and insisting on LOVE RIGHT NOW will do is ensure the ‘not’. And if you insist on everyone you date being IN LOVE after a week, you’re going to have a supremely disappointing love life.

    1. Archieve

      It’s a common problem with all of Lucy for romantic and platonic relationships, she wants friendship and romantic feelings to happen right away because she’s ready almost instantly and doesn’t seem willing or able to accept that the average person needs more time to emotionally build a foundation for a relationship. Walky already tried to tell her it was simply too soon to which she insisted that hanging out as friends should have produced the same result and then decided on her own four months was more then enough time.

    2. Li

      I mean, come on tho, she wasn’t insisting he be in love with her after a week. She thought he’d said he loved her and that she was just reciprocating, and she assumed he’d asked her out after having a crush on her for some indeterminate amount of the four months they spent being friends and growing closer.

      I agree that a week into a relationship is too soon to expect Lucy’s level of attachment, but it’s not like they met a week ago.

      1. Shade

        True, but they still only started dating a week ago, expecting him to meet her at max setting after a week is quite a big ask.

        1. Li

          She’s not asking for that tho, lol. She THOUGHT he’d said he felt that way. She also thought he’d asked her out because he had similar feelings. This is a long-term miscommunication, not Lucy being wildly unreasonable for no reason.

        2. Archieve

          Thought here is miscommunication it’s hard to overlook the fact that just a few strips back lucys counter to walky pointing out that a week of dating is too fast for him to feel love was to bring up the 4 months of hanging out. She’s indicating that she was expecting Walky should have built up romantic feelings during that time that he didn’t know was expected of him. Lucy does have a habit of jumping all in right away into friendships right away so I don’t see it as vilification or that Lucy is wildy reasonable, its just acknowledging a character flaw that other characters do find frustrating/ awkward at times.

        3. thejeff

          Or she was justifying her own romantic feelings and why she’d thought it was reasonable for Walky to have said “I love you” so early.

        4. Li

          Just gesturing at THIS comment here because yes, this. This is the thing I think she was doing lol.

        5. Mark

          Indeed, part of the problem is that she has not even been asking; she’s been assuming that it’s been given.

        6. Li

          Dunno that we can call it that much of an assumption when at the time she literally thought she had verbal confirmation from him about how he felt…

    3. Bin

      Correction:
      Walky has been dating Lucy for a week.
      Lucy was ‘fake dating’ / had a crush on Walky for way longer. A few months?

      1. Li

        Four months of hanging out, with every indication that she had a crush on him the whole time.

        That’s not what fake dating means tho. Or at least it’s a confusing usage of the term. To fake-date is to mutually pretend to be in a relationship, the way Walky and Amber did for their sitcom antic plot to trick Walky’s mom into liking Lucy better by comparison.

        What Lucy did was more like……. relationship-zone a friend hopefully for a long time, presumably trying to figure out how to make a move. (She as much as said this to Jennifer after she and Walky watched that movie together ages ago, that she didn’t want to ask him out when he’d just broken up with his last girlfriend and that she would put the moves on him once she figured out “what a moves” is.)

        1. lyzyrdwyzyrd

          Boyfriend-zoned by another succubus

  26. Nono

    Past the possibly impending breakup, that is a good point Walky brings up about worship.

    The ‘act of love’ that Christians bring up the most is him sending down his son to die for us, I guess?

    1. anon

      given the modern day i’d expect more ppl to be skeptical and require witnessing ‘miracles’ before joining or so. or even having priests perform some acts on behalf and end up paying for blessings/holy water/etc.

    2. Dante

      “I’d die for you, Joyce. I’d die for you.”

    3. JBento

      I mean, sending someone to die for you isn’t really an act of love is it? It’s not you doing the dieing, and in any case christians claim it didn’t take, so it wasn’t really dieing, he just slept in.

      1. milu

        recommend latest Big Joel video on this. it’s really thoughtful.

      2. thejeff

        Also, the only need for the dying was God’s unwillingness to not punish us otherwise. Which is kind of a weird thing

      3. David DeLaney

        greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for a friend

        –Dave, also see below

        1. thejeff

          “I’d die for you, Joyce.”

      4. Mark

        Thing is: He sent Himself.

        1. JBento

          He should’ve sent Spider-Man, who’s just as real, but isn’t a fascist.

  27. NGPZ

    If God is a being nobody can comprehend, Lucy, then how do you know they don’t yell? Or anything about them, really?

    Just seems paradoxical to me?

    1. Sajuuk-Khar

      I mean, that’s sort of the nature of faith, is Lucy doesn’t know but chooses to believe that a Being of Limitless Light/the great I AM/the universal Logos/the Key and the Gate/etc. wouldn’t yell because They are a creature of love and worthy of worship.

      Walky can’t into this, in large part cause surrendering autonomy is Linda’s abuse tactic du hour, and you know what: that’s fine. Not everyone can. Faith or lack thereof is a personal choice, and no one should be forced into it or shamed for it, in either direction.

    2. anon

      idk about yelling but some stuff like floods and other such natural disaster does seem like it’d be considered a tempter tantrum at the very least

      Tho the ‘god is bowling’ when you hear lightning is interesting, wonder if there’s some christian themed bowling alley out there

      1. LeafletErin

        Ive heard of this bowling god.. I believe I have heard heard him called “Almighty Malachai”

        1. Jon S.

          [insert Captain America .gif here]

    3. Segnosaur

      Or if you can’t comprehend them, how do you know they WANT you to sacrifice your autonomy, or worship them, or anything like that.

      Maybe there is a god and he’s getting angry because he gave all us meat-bags big juicy brains hoping logic and reason would lead us to believe god isn’t really real and we can ignore him, and is constantly frustrated by all the prayers sent his way.

      Maybe only atheists get into heavan.

      1. StClair

        sometimes, when I get a little cranky at certain members of their fandom, I feel like saying:

        “So, this vast and all-knowing, all-powerful being, the creator of everything – you’re saying that you know their plan, what they want, what they do and don’t approve of? You must believe in a very small god.“

        1. khn0

          Got two (duh) Jehovah witnesses at the doors a few days ago and one was feeding me a car metaphor: you need to follow the maker’s manual to mak the car work. And I was like, what, that’s what marketing wants, an engineer would be fine with interoperability.

        2. NGPZ

          Meeting the maker’s manual, eh? :p

          I mean, if God could make Adam and Eve from clay and have them inherit no sin that needs fixing, why does he not make all humans via this method?

          Instead God commands Adam and Eve to “go forth and multiply”, in doing so switches to a production method which he knows will guarantee that every human being is born with flaws that only HE can fix, thereby multiplying the need for sacrifice in his name and for surrender of autonomy to him.

          Producers of Lemon cars and other products that need constant, expensive maintenance work on which they often have monopolies are not those we deem intelligent or loving.

  28. sakamism

    And breaking up is back on the table, lol

    This feels like an interaction in a Telltale game, where each dialogue option wildly changes the direction of the conversation

    1. Vanessa

      And yet we keep coming back to Walky being a disappointment to Lucy.

      1. sakamism

        I still feel the only thing he’s done wrong is not have this conversation earlier (and not stand up to his mom, but that’s not really the main source of their problems). And even though it was dumb to try and sweep it under the rug when Lucy first thought he said he loved her, he did that on advice from Dorothy. In a moment of true self-awareness, he realized that he’s kind of an immature dumbass and went to the person he thought of as the wisest and most mature of his friends…and she gave him bad advice, which he trusted. Not the worst mistake to make.

      2. eskimolos

        I genuinely think that while Lucy may be disappointed, it seems like at this moment it may be more in herself.

        1. Mark

          Exactly. That looked like an “I’ve been doing this wrong” face to me.

  29. thakoru

    And there’s the ol’ “The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways” argument that Christians always fall back to when someone points up how fucked up some of their beliefs are or how little sense it all makes.

    “The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways” bothers me so much because it is fundamentally contradictory to the entire premise of organized religion. If you fundamentally don’t know how God works, then why the heck are you setting yourself up as an authority on that exact subject?

    1. NGPZ

      Exactly! At least to my non-earthling brain, just seems like a paradox, I dunno.

    2. StClair

      I’m willing to stipulate that I don’t understand God, or their plan, if “you” will admit to the same. We can be agnostic together!

      (I don’t think I’d get many takers on that bargain.)

  30. Kenny Williams

    Aaaaaaand we’re back to you’re regularly scheduled break up.

  31. Warcodered

    So Walky didn’t do anything wrong there, he explained his issues with it and he’s perfectly fine to have them, and honestly I can’t really disagree with them.
    Lucy is either actively or subconsciously trying to get back to this argument or coming to a more serious realization about how she views love and relationships in general.

    Honestly if that is how she views love, she might not be ready to have that kind of relationship.

    1. Archieve

      I think she’s really still angry about what Jennifer said about how she can never have the Walkerton parents approval because it’s a moving goal post. She knows on a logical level that she can’t be angry with Walky for his parents actions but she is anyway and that’s taking the form of being overly critical of any everything Walky does. Normally it’s the opposite and she refuses to see any flaws.

      1. Regret

        Good. She needs to think more critically about herself, and if that starts by thinking more critically about her crush, then that’s as good a place to start as any. The only risk is that she starts projecting all her own issues on Walky and blame him instead of resolving her issues.

    2. anon

      def would be hard for someone religious to date a full on atheist versus just someone with a diff faith

      1. drs

        Especially an atheist who can’t shut up about being bothered by her faith.

        1. Shade

          Eh you take an atheist to a church service you’re going to get some griping.

          You’ll notice Walky doesn’t talk about it most of the time. Drag someone to something they hate and they get to do a little complaining its only fair.

        2. Li

          She did not drag. He suggested it. It was entirely his idea.

      2. thejeff

        Why? Why would an atheist be harder for a Christian to date than a Muslim? Or a Buddhist?
        Or frankly, an Evangelical and a Catholic?

        1. eskimolos

          I do think as an atheist the answer there is that you can feel a degree of union on faith, in God or in a core belief system of ethical principle, while the title of atheist confers no such assumption. my experience is that the atheists I know care immensely about ethics and that’s part of why we struggle to manage with religion since it has been and continues to be ripe for ethical abuse under the guise of benevolent authority, but to a religious person without experience with wider atheist circles the assumption could well be that we haven’t got a moral compass, or spirituality (indeed many of us may not), or a core belief system we strive to honor.

          As such, a Muslim and Christian may get along well for the sake that they know they both worship a form of God and follow moral codes clearly outlined in religious doctrine that have many commonalities. The assumption for me as an atheist on the outside may be that different religions cause wars, but the reality is that in the face of a greater unknown threat (atheism), most major religions are just fine to work together and respect one another as children under God. (this doesn’t apply to Buddhism, but I do believe it still confers a level of respect from the religious over atheism)

        2. Li

          Plenty of religious people operate at least partly from a universalist utilitarian perspective, as Jacob himself brings up playfully in one of his discussions with Joyce, aka the belief that all faiths believe in the same thing just under different trappings. God presents themself or themselves in whatever way that particular group of humans needed to best understand. The idea is supported by religions usually agreeing on the Most Important parts.

          But all interfaith relationships can work as long as there’s mutual respect for each other’s beliefs (something Walky definitely does not have for Lucy’s rn, and something I’d argue Lucy doesn’t really have for atheism either — as she put it to Becky, she’s glad the two of them believe in a loving god who will forgive Walky for not believing).

        3. Li

          *who will forgive Walky for being wrong

          *like that specific phrasing was kind of important, self, way to mess it up at the last second lol

        4. drs

          “Why would an atheist be harder for a Christian to date than a Muslim? Or a Buddhist?”

          Depends a lot on the people involved, of course. But in the modern era, a lot of people display what Dennett called “belief in belief”, or what Li called “partly UU perspective”. ‘Some sort of religion is good, we don’t fuss about the details’.

          Vs. “no, it actually matters whether the archangel X gave a revelation to prophet Y, and what they said”.

          Of course many religious people still care about such details, and probably some atheists fall under “belief in belief”. But in the modern US, among a group of people already selected by their behavior for not being religious fundamentalists, I think it’s more likely that the various believers could get along as believers, while the atheist would be thinking “I won’t say anything because I’m polite, but all of your beliefs are _silly_”.

    3. thejeff

      I think it’s more the latter. This is Lucy seeing the difference in where they are in the relationship, not her getting mad at Walky.

      Where that leads her is another question.

    4. David DeLaney

      WALKY DID NOTHIN’ WRONG

      –Dave, fite me

    5. eskimolos

      it makes sense for Lucy to revisit it, Walky is talking about his feelings on god but they are reminding Lucy of the conversation they just had, which was not resolved, she learned a lot of things about their situation and herself that she’s still trying to process.

  32. Yotomoe

    Pull the ship back around guys. I think the Garbage Scow’s still got a chance.

    1. Sirksome

      How are those stocks Yoto? I need market data if I’m gonna make it big.

  33. Taffy

    This is definitely the last we’ll ever hear about this. Conversation over.

    1. Li

      Pff. Once again just letting you know I laughed.

      1. Li

        Wait I can add to this

        Conversation over, relationship over, COMIC OVER. Tomorrow Willis launches a new comic entirely, probably a DoA AU with aliens or something.

        1. Taffy

          Tomorrow a low-poly spaceship crashes.
          Two figures emerge.
          It’s Donald Duck and Goofy.
          Joyce gets the Keyblade now.

        2. eskimolos

          DOA au with aliens, genetically altered kids with super powers, Joyce starts out in love with Danny and ends up with walky, mike dies, he decides not to keep amber or Lucy or Ethan and we get some giant duke nukem looking student that ends up leading to a lot of tragedy. I think we should start out thinking it’s a typical college drama and then once we start getting deep into the supernatural elements, we change the title to show how it’s disconnected from the BAU college jokes structure.

        3. thejeff

          “mike dies” is a universal constant apparently.

        4. David DeLaney

          mike starts OFF already dedded, then comes back (?) to life

          –Dave, perhaps he was never actually alive to begin with this time

        5. eskimolos

          I’m here for it, let’s see what we can do with zombie mike

        6. eskimolos

          he did live in shortpacked anyway, I think? got to have his day havin babies with amber.

        7. Schpoonman

          Good.

  34. Ivy

    This conversation would be so exhausting in real life, tbh. I get that it’s a comic and it’s good character interaction and all that but if hooked up with someone and a week in I had this conversation made of two different land mines, my dislike for church and Christianity as a religion specifically and my relationship with someone I was trying out to see if love would develop eventually and they wanted me to love them Right Then, I don’t know. I would simply expire on the spot.

    1. Ivy

      Wow, this avatar was…a Choice. Thanks, algorithm.

    2. Imogen

      Yeah, this is clearly, like. It’s a very normal kind of hurdle for someone new to romance. But it’s also very normally the kind of hurdle that crashes a relationship.

    3. DashWallkick

      It shows just how immature Lucy is that she’s powering through with increasing obsession over Walky despite the numerous things he’s essentially saying he doesn’t like about her but is willing to “overlook,” including his parents who openly disapprove of her because she’s black. She is way way too in love with the idea of being in love rather than dating being a chance to improve who you are too.

      1. eskimolos

        I mean I read the end of this comic as being her realising that her feelings in this relationship weren’t realistic or sustainable, and we’ll see how she processes that next, but it certainly isn’t with the view of sustaining that fervor either way.

  35. Suet

    Speaking of pedestal…

    This relationship is truly the epitome of the We’re So Back / It’s So Over chart.

    1. DashWallkick

      We’re So Becky/It’s Joever

  36. DiDi

    Whoops! Spoke too soon. We’re back.

    1. David DeLaney

      the cycles are getting shorter

      –Dave, much like the DC Universe’s Crisis occurrences and strength

      ps: _it’s Barry Allen’s fault_

  37. DarkoNeko

    yeah.

  38. Bin

    “Surrendering Autonomy” sounds like a porn tag.

    1. NGPZ

      Or a sign for Walky to get the hell outta this.

      I’d rather there be no slipshine with them than seeing Walky live in the Sunken Place T_T

      1. Imogen

        lowkey dislike this use of that phrase here lmao

        1. NGPZ

          I’m serious bru.

          I once attended a school which unbeknownst to me was controlled by the Unification Church, and after I revealed I was an atheist they continued to act all polite and nonchalant about it only to put me into the Sunken Place for REALS. Unsurprisingly, I had a resultant autistic meltdown and quit going there in the nick of time.

          Cults can do really scary shit, Walky has every right to be sus.

        2. Cattail Catgirl

          That makes sense, and appreciate you sharing! I think it’s just the weird vibes of the (afaik) sole original meaning of “the Sunken Place” being tied to a relationship where a boy is dating a black girl against his parents’ approval. I also just generally don’t think Lucy comes across as remotely cult-like–Joyce, sure, but Lucy? Lucy is very obviously progressive and not isolated.

        3. Imogen

          That makes sense, and appreciate you sharing! I think it’s just the weird vibes of the (afaik) sole original meaning of “the Sunken Place” being tied to a relationship where a boy is dating a black girl against his parents’ approval. I also just generally don’t think Lucy comes across as remotely cult-like–Joyce, sure, but Lucy? Lucy is very obviously progressive and not isolated.

        4. eskimolos

          Isn’t that the opposite? The movie was about a white girl dating a black boy as a bait and switch, the parents approved but it was part of it.

          It is problematic here because the Sunken Place is a metaphor for, to quote Jordan Peele directly, “the besieged consciousness of the African american. The sunken place means we’re marginalized.”

          I get the draw in terms of religion subjugating nonbelievers and neurotypicals forcing adherence to prescriptive behaviours and learning outcomes on neurodivergents, I think there needs to be a lot more consideration in taking a term coined to express a particular identity’s struggle with wider(whiter) societal forces and using it for what can and often are meant to apply to otherwise white people and predominantly white-reinforced systems in other forms of same-race subjugation.

          I don’t personally mind you using it this way, it’s not an egregious sin or anything and get why you said it, but I’m also not the target audience – not being BPOC this isn’t my lane, so I probably shouldn’t speak an opinion on it at all really.

        5. NGPZ

          Well I’m actually part black and several other kinds of marginalized, the Sunken Place is both a real, VERY frightening psychological state I’ve experienced myself as well as a metaphor for being marginalized and silenced by a System designed to benefit those straight, white and all round normal at the expense of minorities, that which is used to keep our oppression in the black.

          Additionally, I need not mention that (slight spoiler?) the antagonistic organization orchestrating the whole thing in the movie is actually a CULT, and cults tend to converge on the same kinds of manipulative and coercive tactics to recruit and control prospective members.

        6. eskimolos

          Apologies for my assumptions! And you’re certainly right there.

        7. NGPZ

          No worries ^^

        8. NGPZ

          Well, I am very much worried for Walky if he doesn’t rip the [Adhesive Medical Strip] off T_T

    2. Slartibeast Button, BIA

      It has me remembering a cartoon in a girlie magazine where there is a movie within the strip where someone is holding someone else at gunpoint “Revisionist Dog! Surrender Your Prerogatives!”

  39. Icalasari

    At least Lucy is finally realizing it

    1. anon

      made me think “oh honey ‘when rading it

    2. Shade

      One sided is a bit much, she jumped to 11 and he started at 5.

      She just needs to decide if she’s okay with a slower build up than hers or not.

      1. eskimolos

        Honestly that’s exactly what it is though, from Lucy’s perspective. She loved and worshipped wally and he didn’t feel the same for him, she wasn’t in a participatory situation building mutual love, she was having feelings at somebody. I completely see how she got here now and think this conversation is so brilliant. Lucy is having to process the very fresh realisation that she did not have a mutual love with someone and that love is more layered and complicated than simply like, attraction, devotion.

        1. eskimolos

          Sorry for autocorrect (walky) and random weird phrasing

      2. David DeLaney

        actually I wouldn’t have put him higher than 3 a the start

        –Dave, a “huh. yeah, okay maybe” rather than even a “… this is something I didn’t know I wanted, yes plz”

  40. Imogen

    OOF.

  41. Imogen

    Update to the Chaos Theory: When Dorothy kisses Joyce in an act of reckless, confused, possibly drunk longing, Joe and Becky will be coming into the room, and *also* Walky is on his way to get with Dorothy after this relationship has fallen apart. Maximum melodrama.

    1. Dante

      INJECT IT INTO MY VEINS.

      1. Imogen

        this plan is perfect because it very economically creates a great deal of confusion and hurt for Dorothy, Joyce, Dina, Becky, Joe, Walky, and possibly even Lucy. Maybe even Jacob and Amber if you play your cards right. How often do you get the chance to drop a mortar shell of drama that big without involving at least one motorcycle chase?

        1. Dante

          Narratively delicious. All of the aforementioned would be torn asunder; but also the ripples would be felt across the entire cast – You’re def onto something.

          Jennifer is an unofficial Walkerton, but also she’s Lucy’s roommate. She’s got relationship drama and is in Raidah’s clique (which would prey on Lucy, already unstable and primed against Sarah too); meanwhile Dorothy would probably end up seeking Ruth’s counsel again (but where did she get the booze from, to begin with??) Sal gave Walky and Lucy’s relationship two weeks and she’s with Danny, who is Joe’s bestie. Booster is Walky’s roomie, and friends with Lucy, Amber, and Ethan (who kissed Asher)…

          Queen Charlie would remain oblivious and unscathed. And she still won’t have noticed Carla.

        2. Imogen

          see we could make it even worse if Joyce kissed Charlie somehow and Dorothy got jealous

    2. Coatl

      Haha, you’re not afraid to take the bull by the horns

      1. Imogen

        if it ever happens you better believe I’ll be giving a great big YEEHAW.

    3. milu

      I love it. I will pray His Willisness

    4. David DeLaney

      and then somehow the Slipshine happens

      –Dave, and is canon but also a noodle incident. so to speak.

  42. Li

    Absolutely withholding judgment until tomorrow and possibly the day after on everything except this one item:

    if Lucy does not want to wait for an indefinite number of weeks / months / years, hanging on to this relationship in the hopes that Walky comes to feel about her the same way she already feels about him… like, that’s valid. Because yeah, it’s entirely possible to develop feelings you weren’t originally feeling as you get to know someone. But it’s also possible those feelings won’t ever manifest, and hanging onto a Relationship that might turn out to have always been Just A Friendship in a couple of years is… well, it’s not something everybody’s built for.

    This will still be true even if tomorrow Walky makes another miraculous turnaround, haha. Because it’s a general point about human beings. And I keep seeing folks decrying the commentariat for being too quick to say nay about Walky’s feelings for Lucy because he could grow to love her in time, but I haven’t seen a lot of acknowledgment of what that would be asking of Lucy.

    A friendship isn’t inferior to a romantic relationship, but they’re not interchangeable either.

    1. Imogen

      For what it’s worth, I’m one of the people who was kind of rooting for a representation of an uneven-feelings-relationship (as someone who may be aro spectrum and who deals with weird confused ace unevenness as well), but I agree that I don’t think that’s something Walky or Lucy can handle at this time.

      1. Imogen

        It requires a lot of maturity on both sides, as well as a lot of emotional strength and personal confidence. Lucy and Walky are a couple of very dumbass kids who are still unpacking their own issues. They’re kids! Of course they are!

        1. Regret

          What makes you think unpacking your own issues ever ends?

        2. Imogen

          I feel weird having this assumed about me.

        3. Li

          I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are using the word “you” in the general sense but I think Imogen meant unpacking the most basic of relationship issues, the kind that make it extra difficult to successfully date someone, rather than there ever being a point in life where we stop growing and learning about ourselves.

        4. Regret

          Bah! The English ‘you’ is annoyingly vague.

          Anyway, the first you was Imogen specifically, because the sentence “a couple of very dumbass kids who are still unpacking their own issues. ” strongly implies that non-kids (or possibly non-dumbasses) aren’t still unpacking their own issues. So it isn’t an assumption, it is a conclusion based on a statement. Also, it is a question that wasn’t meant as sealioning but as an honest question. The answer to which would shape what assumptions I make.

          The “your” was general, maybe it should have been “our”? Anyway, my point was that the only people I know who stopped unpacking their issues are either deluded or stuck.

        5. Imogen

          For the record, this summed up very well what I meant! Thanks, Li. Lucy and Walky are still unpacking the entry-level romance issues. They aren’t necessarily going to know how to handle problems like this yet.

        6. Li

          Heh, I’m SOMETIMES v good at interpretations what someone meant and regurgitating it in a form that clears up misunderstandings >.> not always but sometimes ? happy to help when it works

        7. Li

          +1000 to this. I wasted all that time typing up a longer response lol but you summed it up, tbh.

      2. Li

        That would be neat! (I’m at least demisexual if not also demiromo, but probably demiromo too.)

        But yeah, like, it’s something Lucy has to be on board for, at the very least.

        These things CAN work out, both in the sense that asymmetrical feelings aren’t always a bad thing and in the sense that waiting patiently for someone you like is sometimes rewarded. But Lucy is eighteen, this is her first relationship ever, and she would, I think, very much prefer a more typical romance with someone who matches her for feelings intensity.

        So for this relationship to work out, I think Walky’s going to have to convince her he’s at least definitely going to get there. If only he were half as sure as Dorothy seemed to be when he first brought this up with her, heh.

        1. Imogen

          ^^^^^ EXTREMELY well-put!

        2. Li

          pff well gosh

          not wasted after all 🙂

        3. Imogen

          dgjgfh we really just both went and praised each other’s posts huh

        4. Li

          look sometimes you just finish each other’s sandwiches and it’s fine

          other times it’s the prelude to the worst betrayal imaginable and you almost die but since true love still saves you in the end that’s okay too

        5. Imogen

          I would feel so betrayed if someone I trusted finished my sandwich

        6. Li

          appends a little social media LIKE to this comment

        7. Imogen

          uwu

        8. milu

          U both cuties and also i agree with what u said =3

        9. Li

          <3

        10. David DeLaney

          cheekblush ovals appear on both avatars

    2. Coatl

      The interaction of these two is like a roller coaster, it goes up and down, which is why many of the commentators take for granted what is apparently going to happen, but come on, many of us here read this comic for the drama and chaos it presents.

      1. Imogen

        Honestly I wish we had way less hating on characters (boring, deconstructive, inherently confrontational and baity) and way more rooting for chaos (exciting, destructive, bipartisan and brave).

        1. Li

          yeah, me too

          I figure Willis must be okay with it, or at least willing to put up with it, or else they’d make character-bashing against the rules.

          But I would definitely enjoy these comments a lot more if I didn’t have to keep carefully stepping over the “[Lucy/Dorothy/Sarah/Becky/whoever’s in the crosshairs this week] is frankly a MONSTER who SHOULD HAVE NO FRIENDS, I wish they’d get hit by a bus” comments ffff

        2. Imogen

          I totally get it, but at the same time it’s like… oof, it’s just a take that rarely adds anything. It’s griping that’s guaranteed to start fights. It’s picking fights with fictional characters. I don’t want it to be banned, I want people to be able to express frustration with characters, but it’s genuinely the most draining element of these comments. It makes everything here less fun to interact with.

        3. Li

          Yep. And like I said a few strips back, it also makes me kind of dread developments I otherwise would like to see happen. I’m sure I’m not the only one with a favorite character or ‘ship the comments have deemed Irrevocably Problematic.

          Can’t even wave a lil celebratory sparkler in the air because you don’t wanna get a buncha people piling on you, yelling and shouting.

        4. Imogen

          For real! I hate getting excited about Dorothy/Joyce shipping fuel because I know there’s this severe burnout on it in these comments section nowadays that leads to a lot of pretty stubborn resistance to it all. Any fun Carla/Malaya moments feel undercut knowing I’ll basically have to skip the comments section that day. I don’t resent people their opinions, I just don’t like how many of the interactions here seem to bend between “goof goof goof” and “how DARE you”.

        5. Li

          Saaaame. Hard same.

          Let us agree to know, should we ever get confirmation of that ‘ship, that somewhere the other is like having a nice cup of tea and raising a celebratory sparkler in their heart, because unless comic developments leading up to that point have already driven a certain segment of readers away forever, the comments will be UNREADABLE that day.

          This Is Not a Place of Honor, No Highly Esteemed Deed is Commemorated Here, Nothing Is Valued Here

        6. Imogen

          I will sign this pact.

          (different device i forget how to get the right avatar)

        7. NGPZ

          change email capitalization to get another gravitar

        8. Li

          I mean thank you but Imogen knows that

          The “how to get the right avatar” referred to is more like “don’t remember the exact combination of capitalization I used to get my other gravatar, don’t want to risk getting caught in the spam filter by trying random combinations now”.

        9. Imogen

          I’ve actually been trying to change my username for ages, but the filter refuses to let my posts through when I do that, so I eventually gave up. I’m Imogen forever. Good thing I already transed so it’s not a deadname, I guess. X3

        10. Blume

          I do enjoy having discussions with people or reading their discussions, but it’s a little stressful when it’s really one sided or bad faith readings. I’m not sure if I’m doing a good job myself though, so who knows.

        11. Li

          Yeah. I really hope I’m not as viscerally unpleasant for Walky/Lucy shippers to read, at least??? But that’s a very low bar.

        12. Coatl

          If so, the name Dumbing of Age will sound too soft with these chaotic changes, it would then be…Destroying of Age!!!

      2. Li

        I love the ride, though. This is soooo much more invested in these two than I’ve ever been before. X3

        1. Imogen

          Yeah! This is a really strong payoff to a relationship I was kind of zoned out of.

        2. Li

          100%. Honestly unsure if I’m hoping Walky makes another saving throw tomorrow or not, because I don’t ‘ship it but that would also end the ride??? Conflicted.

          I guess either way I get something I want, though, so really it’s win-win.

        3. Imogen

          I do wanna say that these conversations have been the first time in ages I’ve really enjoyed my time with the DOA Comments, so thanks for that!

        4. Li

          You’re welcome ? not my first time but I’ve been commenting on Willis comments since the Shortpacked days. These HAVE been nice conversations on my end too, tho.

        5. Coatl

          You”re welcome 😉

    3. Doopyboop

      Honestly what you’ve typed here definitely strikes a cord for me. The last relationship I was in was also one of the only ones that really felt like a relationship for me (both relationships prior being more a case of comp-het than anything else) and I did fall pretty hard. I had that good ol’ puppy love! But over time, feelings cooled… And I began to realize that my partner seemed to desire more. We were also long distance which didn’t help matters much. I had a few sleepless nights, worrying that I was wasting my partner’s time. We mutually parted after a couple years, and stayed friends, but thinking on the relationship after made me realize a lot about myself.

      The best way I feel like I can describe it is that I’m like a cat. I prefer alone time, I’ll approach when I want affection and being near the other person is enough to make me feel pretty happy. But sometimes other people need more than that, like my ex did. And I think a similar sort of thing is happening with Walky and Lucy. What Lucy wants and needs is different from what Walky wants and needs. They could work through it together… but I think it’s becoming more and more clear that they might decide to part was friends, like my ex and I did.

      1. Li

        Yeah. I think I would say I am similar to you! Happily I found someone who matched me in that energy. ? It’s important that two people want… not necessarily the same exact thing out of a relationship, but compatible things.

        I just. Gosh. I feel like we’ve had a lot of folks kind of scolding other commenters specifically for expecting too much too soon of Walky; saying back off, give him time to get there. And that IS fair, in a vacuum. But is it fair to Lucy, when it’s totally possible she could give him all the time in the world, and he wouldn’t get there?

        And yeah, all relationships are different. His relationship with Amber wasn’t like his relationship with Dorothy. But critically, Amber would not have wanted a relationship with Walky that was much like his relationship with Dorothy, and…… Lucy would. Lucy does.

        (I think having her echo Dorothy’s complaint about Walky’s pajama jeans was a very deliberate choice, and having Sal compare her to Dorothy was a very deliberate choice, and making Walky’s reactions to Lucy all very different from his reactions to Dorothy was a deliberate choice.

        And in a few more strips, maybe I’ll be sure what those choices were communicating.)

        1. Doopyboop

          Hell yeah, same energy~! And I think some of the vitriol (which definitely swings like a pendulum from blaming Walky to blaming Lucy depending on who said what today) is because people wanna assign a right and a wrong to situations like these. But what’s more realistic is that there’s just… no right OR wrong! Walky’s not wrong to be still warming to Lucy romantically. Lucy’s not wrong to be upset that she may love him more than he loves her.

          It’s also why the solution isn’t as simple as “they break up and never interact again” because there are good sides to the two of them. I think Lucy has been a nice companion for Walky and he’s definitely putting in more work with her compared to the relationship with Dorothy, and that’s not just because Lucy is pretty. He feels something, enough to really try. Enough to meet her brother, enough to go to church for her, enough to be the little spoon.

        2. Li

          Hmm, I don’t know that I think I agree he’s putting more work into this relationship because he cares more about Lucy than he does or did about either Dorothy or Amber. Heck, he said directly to Dorothy that he “can’t fumble that ball twice”, referring pretty clearly to messing up another relationship like he apparently feels he messed up with Dorothy.

          Like. I actually think Walky is trying too hard and overcompensating, tbh.

          But again I’m reserving judgment on the actual status of this relationship for another few strips at least. ?

        3. Doopyboop

          That is true, I guess it looks like he’s putting in more work because he’s putting in the stereotypically expected kind of work? Cause it’s been a long time but he did a lot for Dorothy too. Like Dorothy said, he was a good boyfriend. And he’s trying to be one for Lucy too. Almost a bit too much, honestly, cause like you said it is overcompensating in some ways. It’s gonna be interesting to see Walky untangle his motivations, like if he is trying to hard because of how things went with Dorothy and this is a ‘do-over’.

        4. Li

          Yeah, we will see. I’m definitely not declaring this over, just… a significant thing they need to align on, or else it will end??? Something like that

      2. Imogen

        I just want to say that I *also* often compare myself to a cat in relationships. Sometimes I just come up and lean on them for attention, sometimes I go under the covers and refuse to be drawn into conversation or cuddles for a half-hour. X3

        1. Doopyboop

          I declare this the ‘cool cats’ section of the comments! :3

        2. Imogen

          This only deepens my desire to change my username to something appropriately catgirl adjacent. ?

        3. Cattail Catgirl

          But see? It never makes it past the scanner!

        4. milu

          Look!! It did!! Congratulatory head scratches ?

        5. David DeLaney

          and now I’m just wondering whatall the heck she was trying

        6. milu

          see next to the “reply” button on that last comment? it says “moderated”. that’s because when someone posts for the first time (or under a new username) willis has to approve. well,

        7. Peter Huppertz

          You underestimate the predictability of cats.

          My wife always wonders how I can predict the behaviour of all three of our (completely different) cats pretty accurately.
          Admittedly, I wonder about that too, though.

    4. sanvi

      I hadn’t thought about this in this way, and this is really well put.

      1. Li

        Ty ?

    5. Shade

      I certainly agree, but at the same time it’s been like a week of dating in universe a lot of people don’t hit the level Lucy is at in that time. So I feel like her expectations are a bit unreasonable. But at the same time if she can’t handle less than that she shouldn’t have to either.

      Like I probably would have been scared off pretty early into the relationship if someone started it at Lucy’s level. Like… you barely know me, relax.

      1. Li

        shrugs

        I’ve addressed those arguments a few times now, sometimes in comments you’re replying to and sometimes in replies directly to you.

        I do not know what else I can say ^^;;;; we’re just gonna have to agree to disagree.

        This doesn’t feel like Willis is responding to a long-time comment section criticism just to tell us we are wrong and silly, though, unlike previous metatexual conversations (Danny and Ethan taking a moment to directly say they’d be assholes if they started dating immediately after Danny broke up with Amber, for example, or Sal and Walky calling the “their papers are getting switched” theory out for being really dumb); for one thing, the strip is ending on Lucy nervously giving voice to the concern, whereas the other strips have always ended with a punchline firmly smacking down the idea.

    6. Blume

      Agreed completely. I do feel for both of these characters, I’ve been the Walky a few times before and I’m not sure what that means for me- but I’ve also been a Lucy (to varying degrees). These two characters are just on different wavelengths right now, and I don’t think this relationship is fair to either of them. I do also feel like Walky is overcompensating, which I get, because he might feel like he’s not doing enough emotionally and has to make up for it.

      Lucy did, before this wholeeee situation, seem to think that Walky asked her out because he also felt something for her. I’m not saying he doesn’t, but I am saying that her assumption has warped how much he actually feels for her- and believes there are only a few ways to actually show it? Through “I love yous” and intimacy/affection.

      Anyway, while their chemistry is all off, I do genuinely find these two to be an interesting couple. It’s uncomfortable and mismatched, so thinking about how they both must feel is a bit of a ride. This incoming conversation can honestly go either way, as we’ve seen with the previous convo they had. I’m expecting the unexpected, but also expecting the expected. Let’s goooooo

      1. Li

        Yeah…

        The more I think about it, the more I feel like there was a fundamental misalignment right at the start, where like.

        There ARE two different types of dating. There’s the type where you have a crush on someone for a while before asking them out, where you KNOW you’re interested and you’ve probably already done some mental mapping in your head, you know what you want out of the relationship and the questions you’re looking to answer are mostly in the vein of “will this work” and “will this make us both happy”. Usually in this situation you’ve been friends for quite a while.

        Then there’s the more generally exploratory type, where you ask someone out so that you can get to know them. Here you’re asking much broader questions: do I like this person, will we get along, do we have enough in common. You have to ask those questions before you can get anywhere near the questions the first type of dating asks right off the bat. Folks in this situation might have been fixed up by mutual friends, or they might have met in some other context — coworkers, for example. There’s usually some baseline level of attraction (e.g. thinking the other person seems cool or is pretty), but you don’t know each other very well. (This is also the basic type of dating you get if you meet in a venue like speed dating or via an online dating service.)

        Lucy was firmly in the first camp and she’s been there the whole time. She thought Walky was there, too. She’s now facing the realization that Walky may have been in the second camp, and it isn’t sitting well with her.

    7. Comic.phile

      Most people don’t jump into love as fast as Lucy has. It’s more a red flag to me when someone does vs the opposite. Walky wants to take it slow and that’s okay.. Or is should be. If she can’t handle that relationships are gonna be really hard for her. Or very codependent.

      1. Li

        Yes let’s definitely continue to wildly extrapolate from the one time Lucy misheard him and thought he’d said “I love you” and the four months of crushing she did before he asked her out into Red Flag Codependent Warnings where Lucy will always tell her romantic partners that she loves them on the third date and will always be upset when they get freaked out

  43. Dante

    Oh, Lucy. Poor kid. I dearly hope that this is about her realizing her views on love (and her love for Walky) aren’t healthy, and not that she’s about to blame it on him. They could’ve been great as friends but as a romantic relationship goes, they aren’t in the same place at all.

    Which, y’know. Nothing wrong with not being in the same place but willing to keep going, OR breaking up because it feels too painful. But it’s time to make the choice.

  44. Cass

    To be fair, Lucy, Walky’s been trying a lot harder to meet you in the middle than god ever will.

    1. Mym

      That’s a low bar, tho

  45. C.T. Phipps

    The Book is all about God giving people shit so I think Walky is wrong here.

  46. SvenTS

    Either the beginning of the end or the beginning of an actually healthy (well, for ‘teenagers in college’ levels of ‘healthy’) relationship where they’re both on the same page.

    Either way is gonna hurt but either way it needs to be out in the open and actually discussed.

  47. k

    The Willis GIVETH then TAKETH and then GIVETH AGAIN.

  48. DashWallkick

    Ooooof here we go, it turns out Lucy’s obsession and clinginess are going to make her insecure because this is her first relationship!

  49. Segnosaur

    Wow, talk about whiplash….

    We have gone from “The relationship is doomed because Lucy was told Walky was talking over things with his ex” and “walky doesn’t talk about love”… then Walky saved himself by talking about how he didn’t think “pretty girls” (like Lucy) would like him. And now we seem to be back on the “doomed relationship” track.

    1. Armadillo

      Yes and no. This conversation seems likely to go very poorly, but the fact is this relationship doesn’t stand a chance unless it happens. If the conversation goes well this relationship has a bright future. If it goes the way we all think it might, it’s over right now. If the conversation never happened at all this would have ended with Lucy getting seriously hurt. Probably Walky as well, for that matter.

  50. Amelie Wikström

    That’s a kind and elegant way for Walky to formulate his problem with religion. I really didn’t think he had it in him. Going to be completely overshadowed by Lucy’s adventures in self awareness and truth bombing of course.

  51. drs

    couple days ago:

    > (basically my entire thought process is a way to square the existence of atheism as a historical phenomenon. in historical texts dating before the 18th century, afaict there doesn’t seem to *be* such a thing as an atheist. i don’t believe in “progress”, so there’s got to be a historical explanation.)

    Ada Palmer in _Reading Lucretius_ agreed about ‘atheist’ self-identity not being a big thing until historically recent times. OTOH she also talks about “proto-atheist” ideas that do have long pedigrees of some people believing in them: spontaneous generation from chaos, denial of Providence and design, denial of miracles or the efficacy of prayer, denial of immortal souls.

    As for why those would coalesce into full atheist identity, there are forms of progress that are undeniable: scientific knowledge and medical/technological power. Dawkins and Dennett would note that Darwin’s natural selection killed off the Argument From (biological) Design, or at least gave a strong alternative.

    And while there are many reasons behind religions, big ones have been seeking control or comfort regarding plague, bad weather, famine, childbirth, plus explanations of the world. When we have vaccines, antibiotics, weather prediction, seismology, reliable food surpluses, (fairly) safe birth and infancy, and scientific explanations of natural phenomena, a lot of that goes away.

    We also have more access to knowledge of other religions around the world, which for many of us, makes it harder to take any of them seriously. That’s another objective form of progress; a medieval European would barely know accurate things about Judaism or Islam, let alone Hinduism, Buddhism, shamanism, or Shinto; heck, pre-Reformation Europeans would barely have a concept of other kinds of _Christianity_, except as ‘heresy’. I grew up being able to survey Judaism, Catholicism, Mormonism, Greek and Norse myths, Shinto, Native American myths…

    I _know more_ regarding the natural world and the diversity of religious belief than anyone in the 1700s, and in my case that knowledge is a large part of why I’m atheist.

    1. milu

      Thank you, and thank you @Li too who replied back then with some useful food for thought.

      @Li you essentially disagreed with my claim that there was anything new about atheism. I don’t know enough. These were half-baked hunches i was working through, my premises may well have been faulty.

      @drs interestingly you disagree with a completely different part of my comment. I have several diaagreements with you, but let me pick just one: you assert that a large part of big religions’ appeal is their ability to explain the world, and then point to the availability of scientific explanations as a substitute.

      To me that sounds like you haven’t been talking to a lot of religious folks. In my experience they aren’t mainly preoccupied about why epidemics and earthquakes happen, but about what is a moral way to live one’s life. Scientific progress may go boink but such questions are never settled by it. To put it another way, a lot of religion is about ethics and politics.

      1. thejeff

        A lot of religion in the modern world is about ethics and politics, but that’s not really where it came from. It’s had more and more of a focus on that since we started figuring more science out.

        To the point that when you go back into antiquity religion changes utterly. You didn’t pray to Poseidon about your ethical dilemmas, you sacrificed to him to gain his favor (or avert his wrath) on sea voyages.

        1. milu

          good point. but it seems both me and drs are talking about being or not being religious in the here and now

        2. thejeff

          They seemed to be speaking specifically about how that had changed.

          “I _know more_ regarding the natural world and the diversity of religious belief than anyone in the 1700s, and in my case that knowledge is a large part of why I’m atheist.”

        3. drs

          Yep! Both of your messages in this chain are 100% correct, thejeff.

      2. Li

        Eh. I’m not really persuaded by @drs’ comment for a lot of reasons (see one of them in my direct reply below), but most of all I think it’s still too fixated on Atheism As We Know It Today and is dismissing anything else. There’s always been people who were more or less devout. A religion being state-mandated and severe punishments for heresy do not automatically mean a population of 100% believers, heh, but they sure do mean that no one’s gonna be giving voice to doubt.

        Like as long as there have been philosophers recording their thoughts, we’ve seen both writers who were pretty content to say “morality is completely determined by god/the gods” and there have been writers who needed way more than that to justify morality. The second group might also be religious or even specifically Christian, but their model of specifically Christianity would still be very distinct from American Protestantism in a way that leaves a lot more room for doubt.

        Again it’s not just that our definition of atheism is very modern and might not be compatible with agnosticism and atheism of the past, it’s also that our definition of Christianity has changed. The Deists among the founding fathers were at least nominally Christian, but their Christianity would not be recognizable to modern Christians, so I think claiming their beliefs as Christian and Christian only and claiming atheism is new……. is disingenuous?

      3. drs

        I said “a large part” precisely because I didn’t mean “the only part”.

        Toy model: say that 300 years ago, 1/3 of people were religious in hope of real world control, 1/3 were religious because their parents/society told them to be, and 1/3 because they had personal spiritual experience.

        Better science and tech means the first third becomes eligible for being atheists. It doesn’t touch the last third, and the middle is maybe up for grabs over time. So you get a lot more atheists than you had before.

        You’d asked why atheism seems to be a new phenomenon; my suggestion is that it’s hard for anyone to be fully atheist when the world is super scary (in ways that provoke our neural agency detectors) and full of stuff that looks intentionally designed. Once we have better explanations and control, a lot of people, _not all_, go “huh, don’t need all that, then”.

        The modern people who are still religious will be exactly the ones whose religiosity _wasn’t_ threatened by weather forecasting and vaccines.

        To use comic examples, Becky and Joyce, despite similar upbringings, ended up approaching religion very differently. At her core Becky seems to be “God loves me, no matter what” while Joyce was invested in “all this stuff is _true_, true, right?” Becky’s faith is immune to scientific facts because she’s not looking for God to explain anything scientific. Joyce was, so her faith shattered like a carbon-fiber submersible. (I’m oversimplifying; Joyce first crashed on the rock of her church’s moral hypocrisy, but that led to all the Bible contradictions and “maybe this beliefs are a bit silly” and “have I ever actually felt God?” to erupt.)

    2. eh, whatever

      Well, there have been people like Diagoras the Godless and Theodorus the Godless and the whole Cārvāka phenomenon. But yes, Dawkins & Dennett are right about Darwin.

      1. drs

        Accusing _other_ people of atheism has been a thing for over two thousand years. Note that your pages say Diagoras’s actual beliefs are unknown and even Theodorus’s “atheism” is disputed. I’d forgotten about Carvaka, though, I wonder what Ada would say about them. Maybe “I’m a Renaissance historian, not my field”.

        IIRC that believers have often accused other (different) believers of atheism, so past accusations really aren’t that useful.

        What Ada said was that atheist self-identity is very to find in the past. And I think she said it wasn’t just because of persecution.

    3. eskimolos

      Has this been addressed before? That the reason atheistic identity wasn’t a thing much is because atheism was heretical and before the 19th century likely to lead to people excluded from local communities, tried as satanic or a witch, so literally being an atheist came with the threat of violence for much of the last 500 years at the very least? So yeah, you may not see much since the advent of the middle ages and the crusades regarding an atheist identity, because it wasn’t safe to have one and historians were skewed towards protecting and upholding their favourite flavour of religion, either themselves or the local ruling entity.

      We have recently because it has become more tolerated to have nonbelievers in the last 100-150 years, because science has led directly or indirectly to a lot more people losing faith. In the modern era people may choose religion for political or ethical reasons, but more likely most people choose religion either for being born into it and raised by a certain set of values, or marrying into it, or because their local community are predominantly part of that religion and they want stronger social ties. Here there is still state-mandated religious education, which may contribute to converting or retaining registered believers.

      1. thejeff

        That’s a lot of it. Enforced state religions tend to cut down on open atheism – though likely not completely on people just going through the motions.

        Even once it’s not strictly enforced, there’s a lot of social inertia.

      2. Mark

        Indeed, in Olden Times if you openly disbelieved in the local gods, you were responsible for the recent crop failure and might be killed for it. There were probably more ancient atheists than we will ever know.

        I do have to say that another reason for contemporary acceptance of religion is to respond to questions that science cannot. Such questions exist, because of the very nature of science. It is spectacular at answering “how” but must ignore the question “why” if it is to retain any power to answer “how”.

        1. thejeff

          In a lot of Olden Times, it was a lot more about performing the proper rituals and sacrifices than it was about belief. Not always and not everywhere, but talking about disbelief is a very modern* way of thinking it about it.

          Poseidon didn’t send storms because you didn’t believe in him, he sank your boat because you didn’t sacrifice a sheep like you were supposed to.

          *Well not “modern” really, since that’s always been a big thing in Christianity and that goes back a ways, but …

        2. drs

          Jennifer Michael Hecht’s _Doubt: A History_ is a very interesting book on this.

          Argues that ‘faith’ became more emphasized in some religions in response to Hellenistic period doubt (both Greek and Jewish)

      3. drs

        > because atheism was heretical

        That seems reasonable! But, IIRC (which I may not, it’s been a few years), Palmer said that didn’t fly, at least for her field of study. Like, people were admitting to _worse_ heresies than atheism in their diaries, or even in Inquisition courts. Closer to the present, I think we have enough private material to think that 5 of the first 6 US presidents actually were Deist or Unitarian, not pretending to be to cover up even more outre atheism. (Washington seems to have been “I will go to church as little as possible and keep my mouth and pen shut otherwise”.)

        Personally I would like to believe in lots of hidden historical atheists! But I’m not the historian.

    4. Bruno

      What you want to read on this is Anti-Duhring by Friedrich Engels.

    5. Li

      I am skeptical you have been able to survey “Native American myths”. Bc that is a looooooot of distinct groups of people with a loooooot of distinct religious practices, and afaik they’re also closed religious practices that outsiders are not encouraged to survey.

      Also like. Maybe we should all be a lil more thoughtful about whose sacred practices and beliefs get to be religions and whose sacred practices and beliefs are relegated to “myth”.

      1. drs

        I wouldn’t say it was a comprehensive survey, not by any means. But I had some exposure to some of the beliefs, which contributed to not viewing any of them as true.

        And my perhaps poorly expressed point was that to me, the Bible was on the same level of myth as Greek or Norse ones, etc.

        1. Li

          Okay but the indigenous peoples in question have spoken about how they don’t really like being lumped into one big presumed homogenous group, so let’s not do that, especially while being really dismissive of their sacred practices, esp if we ourselves are the descendants of the colonists that stole their land and did their damnedest to scrub those religious practices off the face of the earth by force.

          Like maybe “Native American myths” just do not belong in the same category as Christianity when we are speaking very broadly about being unconvinced of the legitimacy of someone’s beliefs.

          Indigenous people have never asked you to share their beliefs. They do not care whether or not you find them persuasive. They’re not gonna show up to debate the Richard Dawkinses of the world. Literally all they want is to be allowed to practice those beliefs in peace.

        2. Li

          Like if you tried to convert and you don’t have indigenous ancestry you can trace to that specific tribe, you are SOL, so it’s just very strange to be talking about these practices in the same way.

        3. Bruno

          Man, this is just a case of an internet person trying to start trouble with you, just back away slowly.

        4. Li

          if that’s directed at @drs about me, lol.

          Sure, friend. Whatever you say. I’m outie.

  52. JR

    Ah, there’s that other shoe. Not a moment too soon.

    Host: What do we think, audience?
    Audience: SINK! THAT! SHIP!
    Host: (pulls cord)

    1. Mym

      SLIME!!!

  53. OnyxIdol

    Good realization Lucy.

  54. Autoskip

    The trouble is, that’s a bit of a flawed comparison – no, God’s not going to do everything that we ask him to, but all he’s asking us to do is to be good (if you boil it down – he does also go into a lot of detail as to what is and isn’t good), and the whole punishment side of the equation isn’t actually based on if you follow him – it’s just based on if you try to do good, so I’m almost positive that someone who had had a terrible churchgoing experience and (understandably) decided that they didn’t want to follow a God with those kinds of followers, but instead helped where they could as an atheist would get into heaven, whereas I’m not sure the “followers” that had given them such a rough time would.

    The Christian God doesn’t really ask us to praise him like that, and more asks that we try to do good, it’s just that we’ve decided that we want to praise him like that.

    …which doesn’t change the fact that some churches feel very cult-like.

    1. Bash

      I thought the whole point of the Christian religion is that you had to be a believer, not just a good person.

      1. Mark

        That’s the point of the religion, but I would argue that its God’s point is “accept my leadership and I will lead you well, and you will be happy.” He says this many times.

        Which, come to think of it, asks for more specific belief.

      2. Karla Jean

        No, the whole point is if you fail in being a good person then that failure will be forgiven if you follow Christ (Who instructs you to be kind, forgive others, and give charitably). Saying “Yeah, I’m pretty sure Jesus exists” isn’t a Get Out Of Hell card.

    2. Shade

      That’s not biblically supported. But if said god is truly just it would be how it worked so I can see how you’d reach that conclusion if you believed that part of the claim.

      1. Shade

        There’s also the fact a few of the things you can get into trouble for are literally thought crimes. Which is… not great.

      2. eskimolos

        This exactly, comment OP has a dogmatic view of God that isn’t supported by most versions of scripture, but fits what would seem like the “right” flavour of God to continue in today’s society. This is absolutely not the flavour that God has been described as for most of the last two thousand years to my personal knowledge. This is a nice view but it is not actually what many congregations believe nor what the scripture they preach supports.

        1. thejeff

          Christianity has been reinterpreting scripture to support what people want the religion to be for 2000 years. I’m all in favor of people doing so in positive ways.

        2. eskimolos

          sure, but using a blanket statement to erase the ways it is currently used and has been used in recent memory and suggest that this is definitely god and always has been does not pay proper deference to those harmed by negative interpretations, and instead no true scotsmans responsibility for that away from Christianity and instead lays it on the shadows of a nebulous imposter that is, in fact, still the majority of religious practitioners, last I checked anyway, if Ron DeSantis and basically everything going on with the American GOP’s anything to go by.

    3. JBento

      “The Christian God doesn’t really ask us to praise him like that”

      Praise him like that is literally what the first three commandments are about.

      1. Mark

        I see nothing about praise there. I see a lot about respect.

        See also the fifth chapter of Amos, which basically boils down to “I won’t accept your praise while you continue to misbehave.”

        1. JBento

          Lol, the first commandment is not about “respect”, it’s the “bow down to me, peasant” litany that you hear from every Great Leader in every authoritarian dictatorship. It’s the sort of thing you expect to hear from fascists like the North Korean Kims.

      2. Mym

        Commandments:
        1) “You shall have no other gods but/above me.” What a controlling boyfriend tho. What’s your God body count? Also implies there is more than one god, but this one is sensitive.
        2) “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images.” Wtf are all those crucifixes?? Sounds like a sensitive dude who doesn’t like his photo taken, save for when it’s 8-pack Jesus
        3) “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” People actually misunderstand this one. They assume it means “don’t say oh my God” but it really means “don’t stab someone and say I told you to do it (unless I /did/ tell you to do it)!”

        I don’t have anything positive to say about this dude. Why would he be anymore likely than Zeus or Vishnu?

  55. BBCC

    Well, there’s also the important factor you fell for him first, Lucy. That doesn’t mean he’ll never ever fall for you.

  56. Acher4

    aaaaaand we are back to this.

    Oh no. <.<

    1. Erica

      Oh yes

  57. Arianod

    Oh, c’mon. Walky is not that hard to comprehend.

  58. Blume

    I am reading the comments, and I am wondering, is “surrendering autonomy” a normal, understandable phrase? I’ve never heard it before, but the phrase itself just makes me think it’s unsettling and not something you would want to do. What do others think about it?

    1. Shade

      I mean I guess you technically do that when you’re working?

      But yeah its not a pleasant phrasing.

    2. milu

      It seems fine to me? You have more autonomy when you’re single. Being in a relationship requires trading some of that autonomy away for emotional security and such.

      1. Blume

        You guys are thinking along the lines of “sacrifice for love”, right? For me, calling it “surrendering autonomy” makes me feel like I’m going to lose my independence, or free will. Even if it’s only “some” it makes me think I am going to overrule someone’s choices or self, and they are going to overrule my choices or self in return. I’ve been overruled before, so the phrasing is just… Uncomfortable. I’m not sure if I’m wording this quite right myself, but do you get what I mean?

        I think autonomy is just a very, very loaded word. I understand mutual compromise in relationships, I support that, I’m just confused about the choice of words at the moment.

        1. milu

          right, i get what you’re saying. i personally would never advocate “sacrificing for love” because that sounds loaded to me.

          i guess it’s one of those where in the situation you would need to ask what the other person means, like, precisely. i also wouldn’t default to calling it “surrendering some autonomy”. i prefer to frame this in terms of (mutual) responsibility.

          i also want to say that, to me, that’s just a basic feature of any relationship, whether romantic, friendly, even professional. responsibility is the everyday practice that, over time, translates into trust.

        2. Zaxares

          In a 100% perfect relationship, I would say that that “sacrificing for love” never needs to happen because both of you want exactly the same thing out of life and so there are no clashes whatsoever. Of course, the problem is that finding that 100% perfect partner is more or less a pipe dream; it COULD happen, but you’d be way more likely to win the Powerball before that occurs.

          So most people wind up settling. (It’s that, or you wind up dying alone. Which, I have to say, is not as uncommon as you’d think, and to be honest, if you manage to find fulfillment in other things, it’s not a “wasted life” either.) It’s not that they don’t love their partners or their relationship, but there WILL be strife, and there WILL be compromises in order to make such a relationship work.

        3. Li

          I mean I wouldn’t call it surrendering autonomy either but you DO lose some independence, and frankly the fixation especially in American society on independence isn’t healthy.

          Living alone means you make all the decisions, and most importantly that those decisions only affect yourself. I am still adjusting somewhat to living in a home with people who want to help me — people who want to give me rides to the airport and want to be checked in with before I book a flight, or who would much rather prefer I ask them to pick something up from the store when I’m feeling sick instead of paying a delivery service to do it.

          I am relearning to check in with folks before I finalize plans because those plans now affect other people.

          This is not a bad thing, hah.

        4. Blume

          So it just means keeping other people in mind? I understand the independence bit, now. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but the initial phrasing was just kind of… Not great? Kind of freaky. Like I don’t think “Surrendering autonomy” should be conflated with “Making compromises” or “Being mindful”. But that’s probably because of my personal definition of autonomy and surrendering.

          I think I linked it too much with freedom and individuality. I do think America’s focus on Independence is actively harmful, since people who can’t fully be independent yet aren’t viewed fairly- or kindly. And it’s harder than it should be to become or maintain the kind of independent they want you to be.

        5. Blume

          fully be independent yet, or at all*

        6. Li

          Eh. I don’t know how LUCY meant it, so I don’t know if Walky is right to find it creepy. I’ve always found Christian conceptions of god pretty creepy myself.

          But yeah your phrasing put me in mind of the adjustments I’ve been making and I wanted to acknowledge that relationships do involve being less independent pretty much by definition. I just wouldn’t call that a loss of individuality…? And surrendering autonomy sounds weird, too, but I think it’s accurate to how certain Christians characterize their paternal relationship with their god.

    3. Zero

      Walky phrased it that way because it’s unsettling.

    4. Bruno

      It sounds unsettling to me too, personally, but it’s language used by a lot of religious communities, and when a certain language gets used by a fairly limited group of people its connotations and semantic range naturally shift a little bit. So you can’t necessarily assume that you’re getting out of it what the people in that community get out of it, because in the final analysis it isn’t for you, it’s what arose among that group.

      I used to think this was a kind of like, Muslim translation issue, but it turns out there are actually Protestant groups in America that 100% do use that kind of language.

      1. Blume

        Oh, I am not entirely talking about it within the context of today’s strip. I was also trying to understand today’s comments lol. But yeah, thank you! I didn’t know that was a common phrase there.

    5. Big Z

      It really depends on how you perceive both “surrender” and “autonomy”, IMHO.

      There are going to be some people who see “surrender autonomy” in the context of a relationship and think “I am always going to obey that person” or “I want that person to always obey me”.

      There are also going to be some people who see “surrender autonomy” in that context and think “I am going to add variables outside my control (my love’s desires) to the calculation of whether I do a given thing or not”.

      The first one scares me, the second one just describes a pretty ordinary thing to do in any kind of relationship, love or close friendship or whatever.

      1. Mark

        Does it perhaps depend on whether one thinks of autonomy as binary or continuous? If I can trade a sliver of my autonomy for a sliver of yours, that’s not so bad; if I have to surrender all of it: nope.

  59. sdrainbow

    LUCY NOOOOO

  60. AGV

    I’m glad that they’re having a conversation about this, although maybe I shouldn’t celebrate just in case Walky pulls another “save”

    1. NGPZ

      Given their relationship is probs doomed anyway, let us sing the doom song now!!!

      1. David DeLaney

        i mean, there’s, uh, no -downside- to singing it, right?

        1. Mym

          I mean, the version I know lasts 6 months (about half the length of a usual hymn)

    2. Mark

      I’m glad they’re having this conversation, although perhaps I shouldn’t celebrate just in case Wlaky does not pull another “save”.

      But, then, it’s Lucy’s turn anyway.

      1. Mym

        Lucy, roll for dexterity

  61. CianM1301

    Uh-oh.

  62. FacelessDeviant

    Sacrifice a nuggie to Walky, for its burnt offering pleases the Walky.

  63. Urainkhali

    Sigh. Again, shoving religion up someone’s nose, and when confronted with arguments that is not easily dismissed, switch to personal attacks, ad hominem, etc.

  64. milu

    Look, i don’t want to throw a rant at any one commenter’s face because clearly this is a general feeling but i find this comment section’s overall theological literacy/curiosity to be inversely proportional to its tolerance of religious diversity, and it annoys me.

    (I know, some have intense personal history with religion. But this comic is written by such a person and their approach is nuanced, articulate, welcoming. They depict a whole range of healthy religious attitudes alongside some bigoted, cult-like attitudes, so apparently it’s possible to have clear boundaries without throwing the whole spiritual baby with the oppressive bathwater.)

    1. Bruno

      It’s true. I haven’t really read today’s comment section, but when I give even really basic information about Islam on here, which is a topic on which I am highly knowledgeable, I get dogpiled with incredulity and sarcasm. I think religious tolerance is more complicated than just finding the religion that’s right for your purposes and thinking that you’re necessarily more tolerant of others because you did that.

      Like, as something a man of the cloth myself, as well as as a man of science, I understand and respect having ideas that you won’t move for anybody, and ideas that other people hold that you think are wrong, either intellectually, or philosophically, or scientifically, or morally. I frequently encounter situations where I tell people as much. The absurdity here is the lack of self-awareness when it’s Americans of Christian background doing this…

      1. Bruno

        Like there’s a difference between disagreeing with something from a point of sincere engagement, and dismissing the possibility of engagement wholesale because you think you’re above not only the idea but the people and societies built around it. Where you stand on the issue of God doesn’t really affect whether or not you’ve made this distinction. Talking to an American who hasn’t come to terms with this is basically the same regardless of if they’re a Christian or an atheist much of the time.

      2. Mark

        Thank you for your contributions to mutual understanding.

  65. eskimolos

    Honestly this strip and the build up to it is extremely clever and I actually found my mind blown by the threads coming together this way.

    1. milu

      same! high watermark for Lucy’s entire storyline <3

    2. Blume

      Same here! This has been really engaging.

  66. Lan

    Hearing love framed as “surrendering autonomy” is triggering every feeling of defiance and counter-dependence that kept me single for well over a decade

    1. eskimolos

      For real though, surrendered autonomy is meant to be a subjugative concept. There is an entire school of thought that eschews the notion of your right to free personal choice in favour of greater control from a collective other, and it feels bizarre for that wording specifically to be applied in a relationship context.

      1. Hegelian Cope

        Love is a commitment, it is a binding obligation you take upon yourself, that’s what makes it differ from mere felt attachment. When we enter a relation with another human being we both admit the possibility of being hurt, we give over a part of ourselves to the other – read Judith Butler on Mourning, social relations inherently dispossess us, and this is revealed in the way we lose a part of ourselves in losing the other, we can be dispossessed of our own self in the loss of others specifically because desire, commitment, love, was already a kind of dispossession.

    2. Bittersweet

      It confuses tf outta me, as someone who has been married for several years to a man I’ve been with for a decade.

      I do 100% of everything I want to do, he does 100% of everything he wants to do. The things we don’t want to do are chores. We do chores anyways.

      Like… I choose to spend time with my husband not out of obligation, but because I love him and spending time with him dramatically improved my day. It’s the same for him. If I don’t want to spend time with him for whatever reason, I don’t. I don’t always like visiting his family, but I get excited about being around restaurants I like. He doesn’t like visiting my family, but he loves the beach.

      I’d hardly call it “surrendering my autonomy” nobody is controlling anybody, we aren’t sims. Most I might get is a “try to spend less than $70 today” and me going “okay, that means I get to eat spaghettiO’s and he gets to worry about dinner, sweet”

  67. Amós Batista

    I’m a bit sad (just a bit) because these mildful thoughts Willis have have about religion, christianity, is inside entire DoA history.

    This thing, if God could sing to us, I’m thinking about it since morning, and I’m sure I will think about it for a long time.
    Exactly as the Joyce’s empty stage revelation.

    1. Mym

      As a former Christian, I relate to a lot of these “revelations” (if you will, haha). I can’t fathom a world where there /could/ be a god- a creature who is “all knowing, all good, and all powerful” is impossible.
      If such a creature existed with all 3, children would never be harmed or submit to cancer, climate change caused by humans would have been stopped, the disparity of man would not be happening. The only reason we accept this is the idea of “free will,” which is often countered with the absurd “everything happens for a reason” and “God works in mysterious ways.”

      This all being said, God would never sing to us. If he were real, he is selfish to hoard his “power” and “goodness.” At least from the children.

      1. milu

        former christian too, catholic even, and i find it increasingly hard to accept that people will still identify as catholic when the most progressive pope in decades *still* condemns abortion.

        like, i’m not trying to give christians a pass.

        but a lot of thoughtful believers actually embrace the paradoxes of belief. The free will thing is not a gotcha, because many catholics take it as a challenge and something to be meditated over, and i can see how there’d be philosophical value in that. similarly, you can scoff at the concept of christ being god while also somehow being a singular, historical person or you can watch how people engage this paradox and derive profound lessons from it. not all do. but that’s not necessarily because faith is silly to begin with.

        1. Firseal

          Faith is a silly thing, yet it warps and changes the world. Faith has no form, and is the alchemy of the formless, unable to change one concrete bit of physical reality yet constantly altering the form of anything beyond the physical. A stray neighborhood cat has faith I will not harm it, thus will come to be fed, to be sheltered, to be safe at my door. A fanatic has faith in anger, and kills. A healer has faith in teaching, and saves. A romantic has faith in beauty, and talks of a better world next door that they can with words take steps towards. A politician has faith in the mirror, and so many things fall and fail and flounder.

          Faith is the very silliest of things, because it is belief in something unprovable, ineffiable, unknowable. Which is silly. Silly for the cat, the fanatic, the healer, the romantic, the politician, and everyone else. But it is the silliest thing with the sharpest of edges, and the most possibility for redefining thought and action of any who can percieve it. Faith is dangerous because it is often silly – except to the one keeping it.

          And, as Lucy is experiencing, to those who fear to lose it.

          (Looking back over this… I am getting philosophical in my old age. (technically I qualify as a Christian, by the narrowest of margins at the borders of despair))

        2. David DeLaney

          and Willis is expertly weaving together faith, hope, and love in this line

          –Dave, and the greatest of these is … not faith

        3. milu

          that was very pretty <3

        4. Schpoonman

          Faith as described by red text in the Bible is less terrible. Jesus raised the dead, cured sickness, fed the hungry, etc.

          Then Paul got a hold of it and now we have Kenneth Copelands and Joel Osteens who gleefully deny all Yahweh’s teachings and still say “Oh, I have f a i t h Yahweh will provide.” Ridiculous.

        5. Li

          sure would be great if folks who aren’t Jewish would maybe reconsider specifically invoking what’s supposed to be their name for god, a name we know they hold sacred and try not to say at all, while mocking Christians

          (Like it’s not spelled right, the name is only really-really sacred in Hebrew, but it’s supposed to be the same word and……….. yeah. Seems like this particular fun time jokey joke is maybe not great.)

    2. David DeLaney

      in the Beginning, there was the Word
      since that time, there has been the Music – of the spheres and other things
      and before the Beginning, there were the Numbers

      –Dave, and they were “one, two. one two three FOUR”

    3. Adam Black

      O man. You know there is a whole series of cults er New religious movements, based on listening to this.

      * Some splinter groups are def cults. Im not going to judge the source nor their techniques.

  68. Mym

    OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

    1. milu

      anyway, nice!!!! 😉
      i’m excited =D

  69. Rabisch

    Now it’s the right time for a serious discussion! I hope they will say together, stronger than before. But let’s see. The important thing here is the characters development.

    1. Mym

      I extra hope they break up

  70. Mym

    https://twitter.com/MymdalinB/status/1736733564430086536
    Working on a Dorothy X Lucy comic

    1. milu

      that no one asked for, except me now <3

      1. Mym

        It’s how Lucy has started becoming likeable to me, lol <3

    2. Amós Batista

      Only a small preview, and it’s already wonderful.

      1. Heather

        I concur. Looks really good!

        1. Mym

          Thanks guys! It’s my warmup in the day before my actual comic work, so it’s been fun! I hope you all end up liking it

    3. Li

      oh that is lovely artwork. 🙂

  71. Needfuldoer

    Oh wow, they already caught up with the can they kicked down the road earlier.

    1. eskimolos

      given the size of the can, I think it couldn’t travel too far from them

  72. David DeLaney

    the epiphany she has been keeping at bay STRIKES

    –Daver, also, y’all know that love can be precisely & sufficiently defined in fourteen words in English, right? and worship, yes, isn’t any of them

    1. David DeLaney

      Walky’s sad eyebrow and mouth in panel four OW MY HEART

  73. Caro

    you got what you wanted, walky! it’s not happening IN the church!

  74. Rose Red

    Oh, Lucy.

    I’m so proud of you and so sorry for you and I can’t begin to imagine what sort of emotions you’re going through.

    Can’t wait to see where this goes.

  75. superglucose

    Kinda, Lucy, but there’s something else you have to consider:

    You’re horny as hell and want to fuck Walky. I’m pretty confident you don’t want to fuck God. So consider that you don’t really *love* Walky so much as want to have parts of his body in contact with parts of your body.

    1. Adept

      This is a good point. Lucy believes sex is only ok when coupled with capital L love. She wants to bang Walky, so there has to be love. That’s a good psychological insight, regardless if Willis deliberately wrote it like that.

    2. Zamperla

      Bingo. Like she does like him. But she is HORNY Horny. Literally something my mom taught me when I was young (and im AFAB so its relevant) is you gotta watch out cause girls kinda get taught to think of ‘Aroused’ as ‘TRUE LOVE’ bc its not socially acceptable to just. Be horny.

      1. Adept

        Yeah. It’s really sad and sexist as hell. Society makes girls and women jump though so many bloody hoops.

  76. Adept

    Is this the end? Please let this be the end of this “relationship”. Lucy is looking for love, and she’s infatuated. Walky likes pretty girls and enjoys having a mate to watch cartoons with.

    1. The Jighole Man

      Honestly, i don’t know if the relationship needs to end.
      if Lucy realizes what she’s doing, and starts seeing Walky as a person (and not someone to worship) the relationship may just work out.

      she seems to have (from what i see) an odd idea of love, where the 2 people are supposed to immediately love each other like you would love god. she religiously “loved” Walky, and panicked when Walky didn’t religiously “love” her back.
      is this something that developed over the years, or was this some idea her parents forced down her throat?

  77. Scoops!

    “Wait, let’s go back to the God stuff.”

  78. Bo

    Guh-oh, character development???

  79. Sev

    I like how Walky is so bad at telling certain kinds of lies.

    Comparing this conversation to the Dorothy version of the Love Talk continues to be fascinating.

  80. Yeet

    I feel like he could put this ship back on tracks, violating several shipping laws and probably some train laws too, if he really wants to and manages to articulate it but I’m not sure whether he does beyond the “idiot avoiding feels” instinct.
    Like some people said, it’s an unequal level of investment and those can balance out over time.
    But… Lucy really DOES seem to have been dating him without telling him (we’ve been hanging out for twelve weeks!) to an extent. So, that’s a pretty hecking big difference in investment. He’s barely even invited to the shareholder meetings.

  81. Adam Black

    the “Lucy-Try-to–healthily-come-To-terms-With-Your-Unbalanced-Feelings-without-Making-Walky-as-Inadequate-as-Dorothy-and-Needlessly-Destroying-your-relationship” Challenge

    So close

  82. The Jighole Man

    hopefully this revelation will show her that she needs to calm the flooble down, and take things at a reasonable pace.

  83. Wendy

    I guess this means Walky is BASICALLY God

    1. NGPZ

      The inventors, physicists and engineers who will work in tandem to produce a McNugget creation machine that can fit in his dorm will in fact be doing God’s work, then ?

      1. The Jighole Man

        a mcnugget creation machine sounds so good right now.
        chicken goes here, flour/spices go there, oil goes in the bucket bit.
        hit start, and wait for nuggets.
        all it needs in a conveyor belt, and me at the end, mouth open, on my knees.

        1. NGPZ

          A conveyor belt seems a little clunky and excessive, no?

          Why not have an adjustable vacuum tube-based mechanism that works akin to mail tubes used by old banks and Costco stores?

        2. The Jighole Man

          cuz i intend to sit at the ends with my mouth open, and i don’t need a chicken nugget colliding with the back of my throat at 33 feet per second.

        3. NGPZ

          That’s for the transporation of the nuggets, after a whole bunch of them come they are dropped one by one likewise via mechanical means. ^^

    2. Mym

      Walky has more power than that

  84. Zamperla

    On top of everything else, sweet as her intentions is: honey if someones not comfortable with your church you kinda gotta let it go in the moment. I feel like its very… Lucy. To have just a moment ago been on board with Becky with haha yeah ok its okay he doesn’t like it. And then still. Not being ready to drop the conversation.

    Which like: to be clear, its totally okay to have sharing your religion be something you want in a relationship. In reality, this is a brief conversation happening pretty quick.

    But. Lucy has a way of gently leaning on boundaries, and Walky is kinda terrible at out and out saying ‘this makes me uncomfortable’. Bad mix.

  85. Felian

    Love Walky’s point.
    Lucy’s point is also valid, but part of why she’s making it is derailing from the criticism of her belief system…

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