No, he’s using that “fact” (supposition, really–a plan, not a certainty) to excuse being emotionally distant. So, yeah, I concur with Average Loser’s assessment.
Chaucer59
Incidentally, even if she does go off to Yale, it’s on the a East Coast–not another planet. Airlines, railways, busses and of course FaceTime will still be options for maintaining contact if that’s what he wants to do.
Would it have been a dick move if Dorothy didn’t look sad in the last panel? Walky’s obviously struggling with his feelings for her – and she’s asserted from the beginning her intentions of the future. So while yes, he is emotionally distant in this instance, what has caused such a feeling?
TL;DR To call someone a dick based on one statement is pretty assumptive and harsh. Neither party is right or wrong, they just are how they feel. And it’s a tough situation.
Ivan
and to call a non-existant character that is nothing but a cartoon a dick, and then be judged by a real person for calling something that doesn’t exist a name is like really assumptive, harsh and dickish!
Icalasari
Plus, well, Walky is VERY socially awkward. You have to take into account that tact is a bit of a foreign concept for him, and Dorothy would know that
zmm
She seemed pretty clear in the past with the other guy when they first remeet in the dorms, which walky knew of. to not care for distant relationships. I’m pretty sure she told Walky straight up it was a “just while i’m here thing” so walky embraced the “it’s temp for physical dating while we aren’t studying”
She made it more than abundantly clear that she only wanted a short term relaxing kinda thing. Until she makes it clear she’d like anything more long term Walky’s really correct. She basically told him “friends with benefits, but just no others” but didn’t use the term.
and for her, and how she presents it, it’s not just a plan, it is a fact. She’s always used “will move” not “plan to move” or “hope to move” “want to move” etc, she’s used definitives. So as far as walky’s been shown and told, it is only a temp thing, a footnote in their lives.
Now he sure did a passive aggressive jab there; which wasn’t necessary (due to his being upset) but he’s well within his right to hold to a certain distance (for his own protection and because she specifically wanted a “not looking at marriage” kinda dating.
You can recognize that a relationship will be temporary and still take it fairly seriously, and I definitely feel like both of them are more invested than just friends with benefits. It’s not as if entering a serious romantic relationship is like a promise you’re going to marry them and even a marriage doesn’t always last forever.
Laying down a mutually understood end point isn’t super common and could turn off people who are looking for the long term, but it doesn’t mean it has to be casual. And sometimes, recognizing this is an important part of the honesty required to be that close to someone.
Tchoc
I dunno. This sounds like crazy talk to me. “This WILL end” and “this is deep, meaningful and serious” are mutually exclusive as far as I, and i think most people, are concerned. It’s a matter of self-preservation: you don’t invest yourself fully into something that you know can’t go on. If you do and the other person doesn’t, you end up hurt. If you both invest yourself fully, it gets complicated when it “has to end.”
Here Walky is just restating the definition that was more or less forced on him for both their protection, and it may be mean and passive-aggressive but if Dorothy still feels the same way (which she won’t, because otherwise she’s doomed to be removed from the comic and nobody gives up stardom! NOBODY!) then she’d recognize that he’s right and she’s pushing too hard.
Nogre
It may be true for most people, but it’s not true for everyone. There are people who can take a relationship very seriously on multiple levels even while recognizing it’s temporary. It may be incompatible with what you need out of a relationship, but that doesn’t make it wrong or dishonest.
TJ Baltimore
I don’t think Walky really thinks of his relationship at all, or it’s long- or short-term expectations. I think he’s just in it. I’m a lot like Walky in that I’ll say “I’m fine” to mean “I don’t want to talk,” so I am a little irritated with Dorothy not leaving him alone with his feelings, which is what he clearly wants. (There is more to communicatIon than the actual words being said.) So I feel like Walky’s “We’re not serious” is more of a dig, designed to hurt her feelings a bit since she’s not respecting his desire not to talk.
Ivan
that is not the behavior associated with Passive/Agressive Disorder. COME ON GENERATION everything but boomers!! OPEN A BOOK and quit misusing medical & psychological terminology!
John Small Berries
No, see, if they deliberately persist in misusing the term “passive aggressive” long enough, someone will eventually get fed up and define it for them, and save them the trouble of looking it up themselves.
runchydunchygrunchygoo
“No, he’s using that “fact” (supposition, really–a plan, not a certainty) to excuse being emotionally distant.”
No, he’s stating the fact that their relationship is premised on a degree of emotional distance.
He’s not obligated to confide in her because it’s not that kind of relationship.
There are two people here with needs they can’t entirely meet. I don’t think either should be read as the bad guy in this situation.
Walky is “not good at” dealing with Billie’s feelings, which he has been trying to do all day. Part of him wants to just run and run and run away from Billie’s crisis, but he runs TOWARD the awkward because that’s what old friends do. Yet he feels like whatever he does may not be enough, and that makes him vulnerable and severely uncomfortable. He doesn’t like anyone to see that side of him, but especially not the girl who’s done more than anyone to make him feel like a man. The idea that a truly strong man shares his feelings and admits his fears is a little too advanced to expect of somebody whose entire lifeplan recently consisted of “McNuggets and pajama jeans.”
Dorothy may be starting to find her nice, neat, “no strings” relationship is unsustainable: she wants to be closer, wants to be the sort of person Walky would tell his deep troubles to, even if that would make it hurt more if she gets into Yale next semester. It’s neither wrong to try to protect yourself and your partner from hurt nor to want to be a shoulder to cry on.
And she may be a little inconsistent as a result, but I have to say, by the standards of college, she is AMAZINGLY good at stating her desires calmly and plainly.
Bionic_Doctor
I completely agree with this comment: no one is a terrible person here, Walky is having trouble dealing with serious stuff, and Dorothy is confronted to the limits she set herself. I will say however that Walky’s comment is unnecessarily mean-spirited and that even if they were exclusive friends with benefits (which they are not), friends can still talk to each other about their troubles…
Bionic_Doctor
Argh, I hate this Mary gravatar!
Gadgeteer Smashwidget
you’d better go to the gravatar site and upload a super pimpin’ awesome one like mine then
anonymous
Tell me about it
John
It uses a hash of the email you provide to determine which “random” stock gravatar you get. If you change the email – and I think even trivial, otherwise meaningless changes, like fiddling with the capitalization, are enough – it’ll give you someone else. You may have to wait for Willis to approve you again, though.
Zanosuke_Kurosaki
Walky’s comment strikes me as being very offhanded, like his brain is just on another level of working entirely here. He’s very distracted right now, because he’s concerned about his old friend, and when one is distracted, one can sometimes be far more blunt than one means to be.
It is kind of a dick move from him, but she’s said the same thing for a good while, and I guess it finally got to Walky. He’s apparently grown up a lot in the comics past day or two.
…Wait, does this mean Danny is indirectly responsible for the current disagreement. He is Danning up relationships remotely.
Sam
Oh dammit, Danny leveled up his Danning. He now doesn’t even have to be directly involved any more to screw it up. o.o
gwalla
Teledanesis
zmm
Well… when Danny gets giggly (such as with Ethan just now) it echos and steals the giggly from else where.
Danification is ingrained into the physics of the DOA world.
neeks
Man, I hate that whole “indirectly responsible for former significant other’s behavior in future/subsequent relationships” thing. Not because I don’t think it’s a thing, but because my ex was a controlling asshole to the woman he dated immediately after we broke up, so I have to wonder how much of that was him and how much of it he learned from five years of dating a doormat (there is in fact such a thing as too much compromise). (Don’t get me wrong, the temper was ALL him, I take zero responsibility for that.)
John
I don’t know you or your ex, but, if it helps, my experience is that controlling assholes are born or raised that way, and they find or create doormats because they’re controlling assholes; ordinary non-assholes don’t become controlling assholes because they’re dating a doormat.
The canonical term is “Billieing it up” according to a fact-finding commission consisting of Alice, Ruth, Walky, her hometown’s school district, the Arab at orientation, Sal, Danny himself and Amazi-Girl/Amber.
Dorothy has stated it’s just for fun, but she’s still treating it as a genuine relationship and being open with walky. Acknowledging that it’s temporary doesn’t mean that it’s fake. For Dorothy, temporary is a disclaimer and a reminder, to help keep things friendly when the end comes and keep things running smoothly.
Walky, however, is using that temporary status as a shield. He’s hiding behind that instead of being open and honest at all. And he’s throwing it in her face as part of that, using his shield as an offense as much as a defense.
I mean, I have a FWB thing going right now. Unlike Dorothy and Walky who are declared exclusive and 100% boyfriend/girlfriend, my FWB and I are JUST Friends With Benefits. And we’re still both more open an honest with each other than that. (We do have a couple of do-not-mention topics and don’t-wanna-discuss topics, but it was an outright “I’d rather not talk about that”, with no passive aggressive hijinx or defensiveness involved)
Basically Walky is treating his relationship with Dorothy as less than my FWB arrangement and that is bullshit. So yeah, dick move.
Nogre
Yay! Someone else who doesn’t think “temporary” means “lesser.” In fact, if Dorothy hadn’t made her plans for Yale and their implications to the relationship known, shed be investing less in the relationship by not being totally open, not more invested.
Bionic_Doctor
+1 (pleas ignore the Mary gravatar :p)
Gigafreak
Well, there are things you don’t want to reveal to your friends. (Like your browser history, for example.) What seems to be happening here, in my mind anyway, is just that Walky is closer to Billie than he is to Dorothy.
And, well, he is. Dorothy is a friend, but Billie is essentially family. If something seriously wrong happened to a family member, you might not want to talk about it even to your friends. Dorothy’s probing is motivated by “I can tell you are hurting and I want to help.” Walky’s pushback is motivated by “I don’t want to violate Billie’s privacy to someone she barely knows.” The “I won’t tell you that something’s wrong in the first place” thing comes from Walky’s clumsiness around feelings combined with the greater distance between Walky-to-Dorothy than Walky-to-Billie.
For example, how many people have been informed that Joyce was traumatized at a party? The only main cast member who knows about that, outside this room, would be Amber/Amazi-Girl. Dorothy’s friends Danny and Joe don’t know, Joyce’s boyfriend Ethan doesn’t know. Roz was at the party herself and even she wasn’t informed. And if any of the above people asked about why Joyce seemed unusually nervous in the following days, do you think they’d get an answer? And now imagine something like that happened to someone even closer to the people involved.
Walky knows that Billie’s been through something seriously earth-shattering (for her standards anyway), and is attempting to respect her privacy in a similar way. He was present for the post-party debrief and swearing-to-secrecy, after all. He is clumsy as hell about it, he’s going to stumble around and step on some toes trying to find his footing, but that’s Walky for you.
I think he’s catching feelings just as much as she is, and he’s pushing away a little so he can preemptively stop the hurt. It’s a little dick move, sure, but coming from an understandable place.
Dorothy’s the one who kept insisting that they had an expiration date, and that they keep it casual. Billy is Walky’s childhood friend, and to gossip about her mental health with a casual relation would be deeply inconsiderate.
Yeah. But folks keep hating on Walky for being a good friend to Billy. Partly, I think, because we all like Dorothy and when we see her getting upset it’s easy to blame him. But she made her bed.
Also, I did the same thing to an S/O (set an expiration date) and it was super crappy of me, because even though the person in question agreed to it at the time it put a lot of stress and grief in their life. So maybe I’m feeling a little annoyed with Dorothy for making the same mistakes.
Nogre
Dorothy engaged Joyce in the conversation, but kept it fairly well at arm’s length. “I don’t know her very well” and “If its serious, she should consider a therapist” is all she says, and she’s asking Walky to be open with her about him not being okay, not really asking about Billy specifically. Last colic, she even implied she’d be okay with “I’m not okay, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
Steve C.
That may be what she said last comic, but now she’s saying she’s bothered that Walky can’t open up to her. It occurs to me that maybe Dorothy’s feelings have been in flux without her realizing it. I’m in the “Even if it is a dick move, it’s a justified one” camp. I’ll even go further that this is something Dorothy needed to be reminded of if for no other reason that maybe she needs to sit down and decide if she still wants what she thought she wanted, consider the effect having an end date might be having on Walky, and also decide if she wants to do the heavy lifting that would be required to get Walky to do the whole “feelings” thing. (Remember that Walky up to now has had very specific, stereotypical ideas about what is “manly” and what isn’t.)
I think we need to remember just how slow time is passing here. Walky and Dorothy have been together for ages to us, but for them it’s just been a couple of weeks.
Dorothy and Danny were together for years, and they still didn’t have the best communication going.
To be honest, they’ve been dating a month, TOPS. And they only knew each other a week before that. Walky’s not obligated to feel EXTREMELY close to Dorothy in that amount of time regardless of the fact that she’s explicitly made it known that she’s leaving the first chance she gets.
It’s a dick move, but considering all the shit Walky’s been through the last few times we saw him: all the racism trouble about Sal going around in his head, and now Billie, his oldest friend who he can at least rely to be a constant in his life, acting all weird both in the morning and now during lunch…
And Dorothy, like everyone is saying, only knows Walky for like a month whereas Sal and Billie has been around for a year, and she’s being pretty pushy about it despite never really interacting with Billie. I can’t remember the last time that Dorothy and Billie spoke to each other since fighting over the Amazi-girl story, and she’s like “you need to tell me what is wrong about her!” and “she needs to go to the doctor!”
Compare it with Joyce, who likewise doesn’t understand things at all but is taking it in relatively well by not pushing her nose into shit she doesn’t understand beyond that ‘let’s spread Jesus’ which Walky took as more of a joke than anything.
John
Also, while Dorothy is a nice person in all other aspects, she’s always struck me as being a bit of a bongo when it comes to relationships. With Danny, she’s all “I’m breaking up because I’m going to focus on studies” and then proceeds to hook up with Walky a couple days/weeks later, sweet as it is.
And even with Walky she keeps establishing that their relationship is ‘for fun’, be it to Walky, Joyce, her parents, her ex and practically everyone who asks. I mean, I don’t deny that Dorothy seems to be a nice person in all other aspects, but between this and her rather one-note ‘I need to be president’ worldview and working within the lines and everything, she’s pretty screwed as well.
David M Willis
It’s always struck me that same people who make up different reasons for Dorothy breaking up with Danny than what actually happened (and then blame her for these fake reasons) are usually the same folks who are super-pleased to throw gender-charged epithets at her as well.
it’s very curious
tinfoil theory
Curious indeed. Danny was her bongo in their relationship! Why call Dorothy a bongo, when you can call her a dick, a prick, or a total tool?
tinfoil theory
Wait, that doesn’t make it better…
Pinja
Really because I just re-read the strip and more time for studying is EXACTLY the reason she gives.
Maybe the problem is not with the reader but with your writing?
I really don’t know where you’re getting something about studying out of that. The extra time studying was on her mind, but it was not at all the reason she broke up with him. They were simply incompatible.
David M Willis
Link me the strip and quote to me what you’re saying she says. I can’t find it.
Gadgeteer Smashwidget
dude
dude
chill dude, no need to be like that
All the Willis is saying is that “bongo” is a mean word and you shouldn’t use it to describe a person
Gadgeteer Smashwidget
Also, that you are entirely wrong about Dorothy
timemonkey
More time for studying is the reason DANNY later gives for why he was dumped. Because he wasn’t listening to what she was saying. Because he was trying to live out a romantic fantasy with her, as he later attempts with Amazi-Girl.
Scott
The reason they broke up is because when faced with the ultimatum of either being together and stagnating or potentially growing strong apart Danny chose to be together and got upset when Dorothy didn’t agree. Saying that studies was the reason they broke up is like saying you were murdered by a bullet after someone shoots you.
I don’t think that Dorothy is completely exempt from blame in their breakup (for one thing she waited until the least opportune moment to leave Danny, which was a total dick move. And likely, as with all relationships, the incompatibility issue wasn’t 100% one sided) but calling her names because of the Walky/Danny situation is pretty unjustified.
Sam
With Danny – it wasn’t solely for her studies, he just honestly wasn’t the right person for her.
She made it clear multiple times what her goals were, and that she wanted to be with someone who didn’t focus their entire being on being with her – someone that could function as a person apart from her rather than clinging on and following her everywhere.
Danny cared more about her love than her dream, he cared more about marrying her than having his own dreams or goals, he was just going to live for the relationship. He didn’t care about being his own person and he didn’t really care if she achieved her dream or not as long as they were still together. He was pretty much the anti-Dorothy – no life goal and completely focused on love and relationships. :/
neeks
“No life goal and completely focused on love and relationships”
You mean like Joyce?
Well to be fair Danny’s not specifically at IU for the male equivalent of a “M.R.S.” degree, at least not after Dorothy dumped him for both of their own good (-s?).
Nogre
She doesn’t make out with Joyce. ;P
Seriously, though, a significant other having romantic goals incompatible with yours or feeling that your relationship unhealthy is a totally reasonable justification for breaking up with them.
But Joyce is just Dorothy’s friend, and if she expects Joyce to stay out of her sex life, she has to reciprocate and not judge Joyce’s approach to romance. Unless its doing something seriously harmful (such as encouraging a gay man to stay closeted), in which case, yeah, there’d probably be some fallout.
On that not, is anyone else really looking forward to Dorothy learning Ethan is gay? That is going to be a major drama bomb with much potential for growth for everyone involved.
Already happened! They are really the perfect couple (if avoiding sex is a priority).
gwalla
@zolo That’s Joyce, not Dorothy.
But I’m not sure where Nogre is going with this “drama bomb” business. Dorothy just doesn’t seem likely to freak out about Ethan being gay, though she might get on Joyce’s case a little bit.
Mary
I looked it up and don’t really see her mentioning studying at all. She seems to be upset that Danny is both treating her life goal like something that can be revised for him, and trying to ruin his own life goals just to stay with her. Neither of them are wrong, I don’t think, but they have different priorities which make them incompatible.
268 thoughts on “Preposterous”
An Average Loser
Dick Move, Walky
Plasma Mongoose
It seems reasonable enough to me.
Gigafreak
Besides, Walky’s moves involving a dick are a big part of their relationship.
RevenantBacon
Heh-heh, dangly parts.
Gadgeteer Smashwidget
This much is true.
David Herbert
Yeah, he’s just stating a fact.
Chaucer59
No, he’s using that “fact” (supposition, really–a plan, not a certainty) to excuse being emotionally distant. So, yeah, I concur with Average Loser’s assessment.
Chaucer59
Incidentally, even if she does go off to Yale, it’s on the a East Coast–not another planet. Airlines, railways, busses and of course FaceTime will still be options for maintaining contact if that’s what he wants to do.
Observer
Would it have been a dick move if Dorothy didn’t look sad in the last panel? Walky’s obviously struggling with his feelings for her – and she’s asserted from the beginning her intentions of the future. So while yes, he is emotionally distant in this instance, what has caused such a feeling?
TL;DR To call someone a dick based on one statement is pretty assumptive and harsh. Neither party is right or wrong, they just are how they feel. And it’s a tough situation.
Ivan
and to call a non-existant character that is nothing but a cartoon a dick, and then be judged by a real person for calling something that doesn’t exist a name is like really assumptive, harsh and dickish!
Icalasari
Plus, well, Walky is VERY socially awkward. You have to take into account that tact is a bit of a foreign concept for him, and Dorothy would know that
zmm
She seemed pretty clear in the past with the other guy when they first remeet in the dorms, which walky knew of. to not care for distant relationships. I’m pretty sure she told Walky straight up it was a “just while i’m here thing” so walky embraced the “it’s temp for physical dating while we aren’t studying”
She made it more than abundantly clear that she only wanted a short term relaxing kinda thing. Until she makes it clear she’d like anything more long term Walky’s really correct. She basically told him “friends with benefits, but just no others” but didn’t use the term.
and for her, and how she presents it, it’s not just a plan, it is a fact. She’s always used “will move” not “plan to move” or “hope to move” “want to move” etc, she’s used definitives. So as far as walky’s been shown and told, it is only a temp thing, a footnote in their lives.
Now he sure did a passive aggressive jab there; which wasn’t necessary (due to his being upset) but he’s well within his right to hold to a certain distance (for his own protection and because she specifically wanted a “not looking at marriage” kinda dating.
Jaxx Sentinel
^ everything i wanted to say and more
Farmer_10
Nailed it.
Nogre
You can recognize that a relationship will be temporary and still take it fairly seriously, and I definitely feel like both of them are more invested than just friends with benefits. It’s not as if entering a serious romantic relationship is like a promise you’re going to marry them and even a marriage doesn’t always last forever.
Laying down a mutually understood end point isn’t super common and could turn off people who are looking for the long term, but it doesn’t mean it has to be casual. And sometimes, recognizing this is an important part of the honesty required to be that close to someone.
Tchoc
I dunno. This sounds like crazy talk to me. “This WILL end” and “this is deep, meaningful and serious” are mutually exclusive as far as I, and i think most people, are concerned. It’s a matter of self-preservation: you don’t invest yourself fully into something that you know can’t go on. If you do and the other person doesn’t, you end up hurt. If you both invest yourself fully, it gets complicated when it “has to end.”
Here Walky is just restating the definition that was more or less forced on him for both their protection, and it may be mean and passive-aggressive but if Dorothy still feels the same way (which she won’t, because otherwise she’s doomed to be removed from the comic and nobody gives up stardom! NOBODY!) then she’d recognize that he’s right and she’s pushing too hard.
Nogre
It may be true for most people, but it’s not true for everyone. There are people who can take a relationship very seriously on multiple levels even while recognizing it’s temporary. It may be incompatible with what you need out of a relationship, but that doesn’t make it wrong or dishonest.
TJ Baltimore
I don’t think Walky really thinks of his relationship at all, or it’s long- or short-term expectations. I think he’s just in it. I’m a lot like Walky in that I’ll say “I’m fine” to mean “I don’t want to talk,” so I am a little irritated with Dorothy not leaving him alone with his feelings, which is what he clearly wants. (There is more to communicatIon than the actual words being said.) So I feel like Walky’s “We’re not serious” is more of a dig, designed to hurt her feelings a bit since she’s not respecting his desire not to talk.
Ivan
that is not the behavior associated with Passive/Agressive Disorder. COME ON GENERATION everything but boomers!! OPEN A BOOK and quit misusing medical & psychological terminology!
John Small Berries
No, see, if they deliberately persist in misusing the term “passive aggressive” long enough, someone will eventually get fed up and define it for them, and save them the trouble of looking it up themselves.
runchydunchygrunchygoo
“No, he’s using that “fact” (supposition, really–a plan, not a certainty) to excuse being emotionally distant.”
No, he’s stating the fact that their relationship is premised on a degree of emotional distance.
He’s not obligated to confide in her because it’s not that kind of relationship.
T Campbell
There are two people here with needs they can’t entirely meet. I don’t think either should be read as the bad guy in this situation.
Walky is “not good at” dealing with Billie’s feelings, which he has been trying to do all day. Part of him wants to just run and run and run away from Billie’s crisis, but he runs TOWARD the awkward because that’s what old friends do. Yet he feels like whatever he does may not be enough, and that makes him vulnerable and severely uncomfortable. He doesn’t like anyone to see that side of him, but especially not the girl who’s done more than anyone to make him feel like a man. The idea that a truly strong man shares his feelings and admits his fears is a little too advanced to expect of somebody whose entire lifeplan recently consisted of “McNuggets and pajama jeans.”
Dorothy may be starting to find her nice, neat, “no strings” relationship is unsustainable: she wants to be closer, wants to be the sort of person Walky would tell his deep troubles to, even if that would make it hurt more if she gets into Yale next semester. It’s neither wrong to try to protect yourself and your partner from hurt nor to want to be a shoulder to cry on.
And she may be a little inconsistent as a result, but I have to say, by the standards of college, she is AMAZINGLY good at stating her desires calmly and plainly.
Bionic_Doctor
I completely agree with this comment: no one is a terrible person here, Walky is having trouble dealing with serious stuff, and Dorothy is confronted to the limits she set herself. I will say however that Walky’s comment is unnecessarily mean-spirited and that even if they were exclusive friends with benefits (which they are not), friends can still talk to each other about their troubles…
Bionic_Doctor
Argh, I hate this Mary gravatar!
Gadgeteer Smashwidget
you’d better go to the gravatar site and upload a super pimpin’ awesome one like mine then
anonymous
Tell me about it
John
It uses a hash of the email you provide to determine which “random” stock gravatar you get. If you change the email – and I think even trivial, otherwise meaningless changes, like fiddling with the capitalization, are enough – it’ll give you someone else. You may have to wait for Willis to approve you again, though.
Zanosuke_Kurosaki
Walky’s comment strikes me as being very offhanded, like his brain is just on another level of working entirely here. He’s very distracted right now, because he’s concerned about his old friend, and when one is distracted, one can sometimes be far more blunt than one means to be.
Jay Carr
Like so many thing in life, it wasn’t the idea that was the problem, it was timing and the way it was delivered…
Marc in MN
Not really. If I recall correctly, Dorothy was the one who first set the “we’re just having fun” stipulation.
If I’m wrong, I imagine some archive ninja will correct me. 😉
Leorale
You do recall correctly. It looks like this is the first time she’s really seeing the downside of their arrangement.
Freezer
Still a dick move.
RevenantBacon
Funny, coming from Mike.
neeks
Mike is the resident expert on dick moves.
Especially in the context of your mom.
Vael
It is kind of a dick move from him, but she’s said the same thing for a good while, and I guess it finally got to Walky. He’s apparently grown up a lot in the comics past day or two.
Gigafreak
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-2/05-saturdays-all-right-for-slighting/spine/
Dorothy, meanwhile, is still getting the hang of this “even ratio of give and take” in relationships.
…Wait, does this mean Danny is indirectly responsible for the current disagreement. He is Danning up relationships remotely.
Sam
Oh dammit, Danny leveled up his Danning. He now doesn’t even have to be directly involved any more to screw it up. o.o
gwalla
Teledanesis
zmm
Well… when Danny gets giggly (such as with Ethan just now) it echos and steals the giggly from else where.
Danification is ingrained into the physics of the DOA world.
neeks
Man, I hate that whole “indirectly responsible for former significant other’s behavior in future/subsequent relationships” thing. Not because I don’t think it’s a thing, but because my ex was a controlling asshole to the woman he dated immediately after we broke up, so I have to wonder how much of that was him and how much of it he learned from five years of dating a doormat (there is in fact such a thing as too much compromise). (Don’t get me wrong, the temper was ALL him, I take zero responsibility for that.)
John
I don’t know you or your ex, but, if it helps, my experience is that controlling assholes are born or raised that way, and they find or create doormats because they’re controlling assholes; ordinary non-assholes don’t become controlling assholes because they’re dating a doormat.
Rani
The canonical term is “Billieing it up” according to a fact-finding commission consisting of Alice, Ruth, Walky, her hometown’s school district, the Arab at orientation, Sal, Danny himself and Amazi-Girl/Amber.
Kiapdx
Dorothy has stated it’s just for fun, but she’s still treating it as a genuine relationship and being open with walky. Acknowledging that it’s temporary doesn’t mean that it’s fake. For Dorothy, temporary is a disclaimer and a reminder, to help keep things friendly when the end comes and keep things running smoothly.
Walky, however, is using that temporary status as a shield. He’s hiding behind that instead of being open and honest at all. And he’s throwing it in her face as part of that, using his shield as an offense as much as a defense.
I mean, I have a FWB thing going right now. Unlike Dorothy and Walky who are declared exclusive and 100% boyfriend/girlfriend, my FWB and I are JUST Friends With Benefits. And we’re still both more open an honest with each other than that. (We do have a couple of do-not-mention topics and don’t-wanna-discuss topics, but it was an outright “I’d rather not talk about that”, with no passive aggressive hijinx or defensiveness involved)
Basically Walky is treating his relationship with Dorothy as less than my FWB arrangement and that is bullshit. So yeah, dick move.
Nogre
Yay! Someone else who doesn’t think “temporary” means “lesser.” In fact, if Dorothy hadn’t made her plans for Yale and their implications to the relationship known, shed be investing less in the relationship by not being totally open, not more invested.
Bionic_Doctor
+1 (pleas ignore the Mary gravatar :p)
Gigafreak
Well, there are things you don’t want to reveal to your friends. (Like your browser history, for example.) What seems to be happening here, in my mind anyway, is just that Walky is closer to Billie than he is to Dorothy.
And, well, he is. Dorothy is a friend, but Billie is essentially family. If something seriously wrong happened to a family member, you might not want to talk about it even to your friends. Dorothy’s probing is motivated by “I can tell you are hurting and I want to help.” Walky’s pushback is motivated by “I don’t want to violate Billie’s privacy to someone she barely knows.” The “I won’t tell you that something’s wrong in the first place” thing comes from Walky’s clumsiness around feelings combined with the greater distance between Walky-to-Dorothy than Walky-to-Billie.
For example, how many people have been informed that Joyce was traumatized at a party? The only main cast member who knows about that, outside this room, would be Amber/Amazi-Girl. Dorothy’s friends Danny and Joe don’t know, Joyce’s boyfriend Ethan doesn’t know. Roz was at the party herself and even she wasn’t informed. And if any of the above people asked about why Joyce seemed unusually nervous in the following days, do you think they’d get an answer? And now imagine something like that happened to someone even closer to the people involved.
Walky knows that Billie’s been through something seriously earth-shattering (for her standards anyway), and is attempting to respect her privacy in a similar way. He was present for the post-party debrief and swearing-to-secrecy, after all. He is clumsy as hell about it, he’s going to stumble around and step on some toes trying to find his footing, but that’s Walky for you.
Not to say that Dorothy’s unjustified in feeling hurt about it. Danny was talking to Ethan about a very similar situation maybe an hour ago. It’s totally understandable to feel hurt when people keep you at arm’s length when you just want to help them.
Salmo
I think he’s catching feelings just as much as she is, and he’s pushing away a little so he can preemptively stop the hurt. It’s a little dick move, sure, but coming from an understandable place.
Mix
Dorothy’s the one who kept insisting that they had an expiration date, and that they keep it casual. Billy is Walky’s childhood friend, and to gossip about her mental health with a casual relation would be deeply inconsiderate.
Disloyal Subject
Not that I disagree, but you keep repeating that.
Mix
Yeah. But folks keep hating on Walky for being a good friend to Billy. Partly, I think, because we all like Dorothy and when we see her getting upset it’s easy to blame him. But she made her bed.
Also, I did the same thing to an S/O (set an expiration date) and it was super crappy of me, because even though the person in question agreed to it at the time it put a lot of stress and grief in their life. So maybe I’m feeling a little annoyed with Dorothy for making the same mistakes.
Nogre
Dorothy engaged Joyce in the conversation, but kept it fairly well at arm’s length. “I don’t know her very well” and “If its serious, she should consider a therapist” is all she says, and she’s asking Walky to be open with her about him not being okay, not really asking about Billy specifically. Last colic, she even implied she’d be okay with “I’m not okay, but I don’t want to talk about it.”
Steve C.
That may be what she said last comic, but now she’s saying she’s bothered that Walky can’t open up to her. It occurs to me that maybe Dorothy’s feelings have been in flux without her realizing it. I’m in the “Even if it is a dick move, it’s a justified one” camp. I’ll even go further that this is something Dorothy needed to be reminded of if for no other reason that maybe she needs to sit down and decide if she still wants what she thought she wanted, consider the effect having an end date might be having on Walky, and also decide if she wants to do the heavy lifting that would be required to get Walky to do the whole “feelings” thing. (Remember that Walky up to now has had very specific, stereotypical ideas about what is “manly” and what isn’t.)
Clif
Bingo!
Doctor_Who
I think we need to remember just how slow time is passing here. Walky and Dorothy have been together for ages to us, but for them it’s just been a couple of weeks.
Dorothy and Danny were together for years, and they still didn’t have the best communication going.
Leorale
But, that’s what they agreed upon and what he consented to. She wants to change their arrangement, she’s gotta tell the boy in question.
Yotomoe
To be honest, they’ve been dating a month, TOPS. And they only knew each other a week before that. Walky’s not obligated to feel EXTREMELY close to Dorothy in that amount of time regardless of the fact that she’s explicitly made it known that she’s leaving the first chance she gets.
chouji
Dropping truth bombs like a boss. You go Walky
John
It’s a dick move, but considering all the shit Walky’s been through the last few times we saw him: all the racism trouble about Sal going around in his head, and now Billie, his oldest friend who he can at least rely to be a constant in his life, acting all weird both in the morning and now during lunch…
And Dorothy, like everyone is saying, only knows Walky for like a month whereas Sal and Billie has been around for a year, and she’s being pretty pushy about it despite never really interacting with Billie. I can’t remember the last time that Dorothy and Billie spoke to each other since fighting over the Amazi-girl story, and she’s like “you need to tell me what is wrong about her!” and “she needs to go to the doctor!”
Compare it with Joyce, who likewise doesn’t understand things at all but is taking it in relatively well by not pushing her nose into shit she doesn’t understand beyond that ‘let’s spread Jesus’ which Walky took as more of a joke than anything.
John
Also, while Dorothy is a nice person in all other aspects, she’s always struck me as being a bit of a bongo when it comes to relationships. With Danny, she’s all “I’m breaking up because I’m going to focus on studies” and then proceeds to hook up with Walky a couple days/weeks later, sweet as it is.
And even with Walky she keeps establishing that their relationship is ‘for fun’, be it to Walky, Joyce, her parents, her ex and practically everyone who asks. I mean, I don’t deny that Dorothy seems to be a nice person in all other aspects, but between this and her rather one-note ‘I need to be president’ worldview and working within the lines and everything, she’s pretty screwed as well.
David M Willis
It’s always struck me that same people who make up different reasons for Dorothy breaking up with Danny than what actually happened (and then blame her for these fake reasons) are usually the same folks who are super-pleased to throw gender-charged epithets at her as well.
it’s very curious
tinfoil theory
Curious indeed. Danny was her bongo in their relationship! Why call Dorothy a bongo, when you can call her a dick, a prick, or a total tool?
tinfoil theory
Wait, that doesn’t make it better…
Pinja
Really because I just re-read the strip and more time for studying is EXACTLY the reason she gives.
Maybe the problem is not with the reader but with your writing?
Nogre
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/kindness/
I really don’t know where you’re getting something about studying out of that. The extra time studying was on her mind, but it was not at all the reason she broke up with him. They were simply incompatible.
David M Willis
Link me the strip and quote to me what you’re saying she says. I can’t find it.
Gadgeteer Smashwidget
dude
dude
chill dude, no need to be like that
All the Willis is saying is that “bongo” is a mean word and you shouldn’t use it to describe a person
Gadgeteer Smashwidget
Also, that you are entirely wrong about Dorothy
timemonkey
More time for studying is the reason DANNY later gives for why he was dumped. Because he wasn’t listening to what she was saying. Because he was trying to live out a romantic fantasy with her, as he later attempts with Amazi-Girl.
Scott
The reason they broke up is because when faced with the ultimatum of either being together and stagnating or potentially growing strong apart Danny chose to be together and got upset when Dorothy didn’t agree. Saying that studies was the reason they broke up is like saying you were murdered by a bullet after someone shoots you.
I don’t think that Dorothy is completely exempt from blame in their breakup (for one thing she waited until the least opportune moment to leave Danny, which was a total dick move. And likely, as with all relationships, the incompatibility issue wasn’t 100% one sided) but calling her names because of the Walky/Danny situation is pretty unjustified.
Sam
With Danny – it wasn’t solely for her studies, he just honestly wasn’t the right person for her.
She made it clear multiple times what her goals were, and that she wanted to be with someone who didn’t focus their entire being on being with her – someone that could function as a person apart from her rather than clinging on and following her everywhere.
Danny cared more about her love than her dream, he cared more about marrying her than having his own dreams or goals, he was just going to live for the relationship. He didn’t care about being his own person and he didn’t really care if she achieved her dream or not as long as they were still together. He was pretty much the anti-Dorothy – no life goal and completely focused on love and relationships. :/
neeks
“No life goal and completely focused on love and relationships”
You mean like Joyce?
Well to be fair Danny’s not specifically at IU for the male equivalent of a “M.R.S.” degree, at least not after Dorothy dumped him for both of their own good (-s?).
Nogre
She doesn’t make out with Joyce. ;P
Seriously, though, a significant other having romantic goals incompatible with yours or feeling that your relationship unhealthy is a totally reasonable justification for breaking up with them.
But Joyce is just Dorothy’s friend, and if she expects Joyce to stay out of her sex life, she has to reciprocate and not judge Joyce’s approach to romance. Unless its doing something seriously harmful (such as encouraging a gay man to stay closeted), in which case, yeah, there’d probably be some fallout.
On that not, is anyone else really looking forward to Dorothy learning Ethan is gay? That is going to be a major drama bomb with much potential for growth for everyone involved.
Gadgeteer Smashwidget
*LSP voice* Drama Bomb!
zolo
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/02-guess-whos-coming-to-galassos/aprilfools/
Already happened! They are really the perfect couple (if avoiding sex is a priority).
gwalla
@zolo That’s Joyce, not Dorothy.
But I’m not sure where Nogre is going with this “drama bomb” business. Dorothy just doesn’t seem likely to freak out about Ethan being gay, though she might get on Joyce’s case a little bit.
Mary
I looked it up and don’t really see her mentioning studying at all. She seems to be upset that Danny is both treating her life goal like something that can be revised for him, and trying to ruin his own life goals just to stay with her. Neither of them are wrong, I don’t think, but they have different priorities which make them incompatible.