243

Stickin’
Posted on July 14, 2024 by David M Willis

243 thoughts on “Stickin’”

  1. Ana Chronistic

    next: Walky shows her his butt

    1. Michael Steamweed

      Well, that’s one way to make progress toward the orgy.

      (what orgy, you may ask? the one that’s gettin’ suggestions from us one-track-mind types)

      1. Reltzik

        Hey now, we’ve got more than one track in our minds.

        That’s why Mike’s coming out of witness protection for the orgy.

        1. Michael Steamweed

          Why, what a suggestion! Please say more on this novel idea! 😀

      2. CianM1301

        I mean, Dina and Becky have made somewhat of a start on that.

    2. ValdVin

      Walky’s butt.

  2. darkoneko

    -grab popcorn-

  3. pope suburban

    Oh lord. Walky no. Not right now, at any rate. Let the poor girl be.

  4. Nono

    Was Walky missing Lucy, or just the idea of her being readily accessible?

    1. Thag Simmons

      Uh, not entirely sure what you mean by ‘missing the idea of her being readily accessible’.

    2. Switchchris

      He did genuinely have some kind of feelings for her, even if not Love, he 100% cared about her. They did however not make a good couple, and its smart of him to realize that and only seek a continued Friendship, not anything more.

      1. Davus

        +1, this is good.

      2. DashWallkick

        Walky is mature enough at this point to go “yeah we probably should’ve just been friends, dating is where all the bad shit started.”

        1. thejeff

          Except that they never really were just friends. The whole thing was built around Lucy’s crush on him all along.

        2. DashWallkick

          She was his friend first with an ulterior motive. Those exist.

      3. Steve C.

        You know, I have to be with Lucy on this. Mistakes were made on both sides, but if Walky was smart enough to know that Lucy wanted to be more than friends, then he should be smart enough to know it’s too late for the “Let’s just be friends” speech.

  5. Bittersweet

    Literally more chemistry here than the entire cumulative sum of when they were together.

    1. Dara

      Absolutely true. “No, I think you owe me some humiliation.” Panel 6 is great.

    2. Steelbright

      Oh my, You’re right. Positive character development in opposite romantic directions

    3. Jeremiah

      Some people really are just better off as friends rather that as a couple.

      1. Coatl

        And in fact, they see each other better as friends.

    4. mneme

      Yes, this.

      Walky and Lucy -never- worked as a couple. She was thirsty, he was…available, I guess, but it always felt kinda gross.

      But being -friends-? Sure, why not; they like a lot of the same things and being friends was basically what Walky -always- wanted from the relationship.

      1. Coatl

        Although it is sudden to say, this experience will at least allow Lucy to leave the extreme mode of idealization

      2. StClair

        Agreed.

    5. GoblinBagsSumo

      Fantastically well put. And also proof that they really shouldn’t have dated in the first place. I hope they can become friends again soon enough. Maybe this drunkeness will see them thru it.

      …Maaaaaybe an orgy. ?

  6. darkoneko

    …how much is “2 fluid ounces” in, like, normal human units like centilitres ?

    1. True Survivor

      5.914 centiliters

      1. darkoneko

        thank you so much

      2. Michael Steamweed

        How much is that in drams?

        1. GingerMadman

          16 drams, since it’s 8 drams to the ounce.

        2. GingerMadman

          As a correction to myself, when talking of alcohol, in the US, a dram is 1.5 ounces, so 2 fluid ounces would be 1.3333333333… drams

        3. Reltzik

          This is the same logic that makes a pound of feathers weigh more than a pound of gold.

        4. GingerMadman

          A pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of gold.
          We just like to use dram for 2 different things.

        5. Reltzik

          Feathers are weighed with avoirdupois pounds (aka, pounds).

          Gold is measured in troy pounds, which weigh less than avoirdupois pounds.

          So, same logic.

        6. someone

          Fun fact: this kind of bull is the etymological origin of the “double standard” expression. As in, there’s a standard ounce for gold, and a different standard ounce for feathers. Different things get different standards.

        7. Agemegos

          Avoirdupois pounds are 7,000 grains, and are divided into 16 ounces, so an avoirdupois ounce is a convenient 437-and-a-half grains. Troy pounds are 5,760 grains and divided into twelve ounces each of 480 grains. A pennyweight is one twentieth of an ounce, which makes a Troy pennyweight 24 grains and an avoirdupois pennyweight 21.875 grains.

        8. Agemegos

          But when English pennies were a pennyweight of silver the pennyweight in question was the Tower pennyweight. The Tower pound (obsolete since the time of Henry VIII) was 5,400 grains. It was divided into twelve ounces each of 450 grains, so a Tower pennyweight was 22.5 grains.

        9. GingerMadman

          You said pound, not troy pound, when comparing the weight of two different things you would you the same type of measurement.

    2. Dara

      59ccs/mls.

    3. Dara

      also, I once again remind everyone that ounces of ALL KINDS are the WORST UNIT. not a worst unit: the worst unit. In modern use. I will reserve space for archaic units being even worse.

      goddamn i hate ounces

      1. mneme

        I mean, the best (worst) part of oz is that they are actually two different units. Walky of course means fluid oz, that is, 1/8 of a cup. But mass oz (that is, 1/16 of a pound) are an entirely different measurement. That said, 1 fluid oz of water weighs 1 oz. This means that it’s likely that his 2 fluid oz weigh slightly less than 1 oz (since alcohol is lighter than water).

        1. cbwroses

          I was today years old…

        2. Agemegos

          Sadly, it is slightly worse than that, 1 US fluid ounce of water weighs very nearly, but not exactly, one Avoidupois ounce. You see, the English pint from which the US pint is derived (and which must not be mistaken for the Imperial pint) was designed to be a pound of wine.

        3. Agemegos

          Also, “ounces” are more than two units. They are at least five.

          There are two different ounces of weight in current use: Avoirdupois ounces and Troy ounces. Troy ounces are 9.7% heavier.

          There are three different fluid ounces in use. The Imperial floz. is an Avoirdupois ounce of water. The US Customary floz. is about 4.1% larger (originally supposed to be an Avoirdupois ounce of wine. And then you have the US Food Labelling floz., which is defined as 30 ml and works out to 1.0442 US Customary floz.

      2. Needfuldoer

        You just have to think in base 8, like dividing inches.

        The worst part was reusing names for different size units. Which ounces and gallons are we talking about? Who knows!

        1. Masumi

          We should solve this by inventing a new unit system that’s base 12. Sounds much more useful, right?

        2. butting

          Base 21 or nothing, you cowards!

          The sovereign was a wild piece of coinage even for the poms.

        3. tim Rowledge

          For base 21 I think you must be referring to the ‘guinea’.
          This monetary lunacy is largely used for things sold to posh gits- race horses, old paintings, expensive sex workers etc. Consider it as a 5% ‘tax’ on said poshies

        4. butting

          Ah! That’s the one. I can but plead that I was very sleepy, and that numbers are almost as demented as UK coinage.

    4. PedanticJerkass

      Even those of us who still use archaic units like ounces and gallons and… like… pints… quarts… um… cups? teaspoons? tablespoons? have trouble keeping them straight, and god forbid any conversions from one to the other ever need to be done.

      1. Plain Marie

        8 ounces to 1 cup, so that must make two ounces to 1/4 cup. That’s all I know.

      2. mneme

        pint cup, quater-point nipperkin, half-a-pint, and the brown bowl.

        Good luck,good luck to the barley moe.

        Fortunately we don’t -actually- use the old pre-reform English system but a slightly reformed one of our own (which is why the US didn’t feel the need to switch to the metric system for commercial reasons; our system was widely enough standardized that it wasn’t a pain point the same way).

        1. StClair

          I still remember some of that song, but not nearly as much as I used to.

        2. J.Gawain

          GOOD LUCK!

      3. ValdVin

        I’m fine with conversions up to hogshead.

      4. TCS

        catch me in the kitchen going “three tisp to the tib, four tibs to the quarter cup”

        1. TCS

          To clarify: “tisp” and “tib” are my silly pronunciations of the abbreviations for teaspoon (tsp) and tablespoon (Tbsp), respectively.

        2. Mark

          Careful! TiB is also “binary terabytes” — you know: what hard disk buyers think they’re buying, because everything else in a computer is sized by powers of 2, rather than the smaller power-of-10 terabytes that the disk manufacturers use to advertise capacity.

    5. Steelbright

      As an American, wtf is a centilitre haha. Our measurement system is objectively bad but I’m like nostalgically attached to it.

      1. PedanticJerkass

        It is one-hundredth of a liter (or “litre” if prefer), as is implied by the name.

        1. PedanticJerkass

          *”if you prefer”

        2. Thing2

          A decilitre is one tenth of a litre, not one hundredth. Deci=10th, Centi=100th.

        3. eh, whatever

          Read again – the question was about the centilitre; decilitres were nowhere mentioned.

        4. eh, whatever

          (But who uses centilitres? Millilitres are a normal unit.)

        5. Agemegos

          International Bartender’s Association standard recipes for cocktails list the ingredients in centilitres. Freaks me out.

        6. foamy

          what in the name of hylia

      2. Kimi

        I mean, 12s are divisible by more numbers than 10, so it is easier to get quarters or thirds from them. In that sense, the numerical system we use is more weird in that it is base 10 instead of base 12 or something. I hope back and forth with which is easier to use IRL, with preferring centimeters over inches, feet over meters and Fahrenheit over Celsius. Centimeters and feet are easier for me to figure out or picture over meters and inches, maybe because they are smaller. Fahrenheit is easier for me because there feels like more of a difference to me between 10C and 20C (50F and 68F) than just 10 degrees. I also find it silly that Celsius commonly uses decimal points, like 24.5C to tell an outdoor temperature. I would be more amiable to Celsius if it was 200C for the boiling point of water, rather than just 100, and it would be a more equivalent gradient to Fahrenheit and how we perceive outdoor temperatures (at least imo). Celsius really works better when dealing with larger temperatures, which you might experience while cooking but not for outdoor temperatures, hopefully. Kilometers and miles are both so large that it is hard for me to picture accurately. As for weight and volume, 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon (so you get 1/2 a tablespoon, 1 teaspoon, 1 tablespoon, 1/2 a teaspoon spoons in the store and gives you most of the fractions related to that). Cups, pints, quarts, and gallons are all also easily divisible by eye items (2 cups to a pint, 2 pints to a quart and 4 quarts to a gallon) vs liters and their equivalents. Has anyone actually tried dividing by 10 without using a specific measuring device? Most people can eye about what half of something is when dividing it, but I don’t think that they could easily do a fifth or tenth. Again, imperial units are mostly about practical application and easily finding 3rds or halves vs metric focusing on matching our numerical system. Metric works best in scientific scenarios where exact amounts are needed and a lot of calculations are used.

        1. Thing2

          In Australia, it is 4 teaspoons to the tablespoon, and USA teaspoons and etc are a different size to ones in other countries.
          In New Zealand shops sell Australian, English and probably USA measuring spoons, without specifying which system they are. Havoc!

        2. Kimi

          Interesting. I didn’t know that Australia had a difference. That is good to know.

        3. Lamppost

          I see this thing about how Fahrenheit supposedly reflect how we percieve outdoor temperatures more accurately a lot, but the only people I see saying this are the ones who are already used to Fahrenheit ? Like, yeah, 100 is very warm and 0 is very cold makes sense and all, but if you grow up learning that +20 is a nice summer day and -20 is wool o’clock and stay inside, that also makes perfect sense? To me, the metric system works perfectly for measuring outdoor temperature, especially since I live in a colder country..
          You can perfectly well divide by halves, quarters and all that using the metric system. We still operate with regular math, it’s just standardised and easier to apply across systems. And since we use it daily, it’s also very intuitive to us. I get incredibly confused with the imperial terms mostly because I’m not used to them.
          We also use teaspoons/tablespoons for cooking measurements, I very rarely see units like cl and ml in recipes because there’s no need to be exactly accurate.
          I find the imperial system incredibly confusing but I also know that I would find it easier if I grew up using it every day.

        4. eh, whatever

          We also use teaspoons/tablespoons for cooking measurements, I very rarely see units like cl and ml in recipes because there’s no need to be exactly accurate.

          The shocker here is that Imperial teaspoons and tablespoons are exactly accurate fractions of “cups” or whatever – of course, as mentioned above, not the same fractions in different countries. They have “measuring spoons” with scales on them and shit.

        5. Lamppost

          That is wild! A teaspoon is like, whatever goes in the teaspoon you have at hand where I’m from.

        6. Mark

          Meanwhile, it seems professional cooks these days eschew all these weird fractions and measure ingredients by weight.

        7. vlademir1

          Most of us who work in professional kitchens don’t measure at all unless we’re engaged in recipe creation. Even then we only do it because it helps at communicating recipes to those outside our sphere.

          The only people who really measure and mainly use weight are Bakers and Pastry Chefs, who have to track liquids vs dry to ensure proper flour/starch hydration and have to track acid vs base ingredient ratios because of chemical leavening.

          Oh, I forgot molecular gastronomy where one has to do exact measures by weight because most of those techniques, like spherification, are heavily influenced by acidic vs basic the same as chemical leavening. That’s not exactly a common use case in restaurants however.

        8. StClair

          thus the semi-common phrase that cooking is an art, baking is science.

        9. vlademir1

          All the crap about Fahrenheit is just us Americans trying to justify not changing by claiming some “superior” argument. Our real underlying argument for not switching to metric at this point is effectively “I don’t get it because I’m not used to it”.
          On the institutional level the argument is really down to not wanting to overhaul huge sections of our societal and educational infrastructure because that costs money our “leadership” doesn’t even want to spend on maintaining education, let alone overhauling it.

        10. eh, whatever

          I also find it silly that Celsius commonly uses decimal points, like 24.5C to tell an outdoor temperature.

          It does not – except in the US by mindless conversion from °F.

        11. Kimi

          I was actually thinking of Canada, as that is where I have seen it displayed on signs. I suppose that could be due to buying things from the US. You also see it on websites giving temperatures, but I suppose that could be for scientific reasons.

        12. HueSatLight

          98.6 F isn’t the average human temperature. It’s a conversion from 37 C, which is an approximation.

        13. Regret

          Don’t confuse the discussion of which base to use with the metric system. The metric system would still be the metric system if it used base 12. The key property is consistency and relatability between the units.

        14. Kimi

          The metric system was developed to coordinate with a base 10 system (why they work in 100s and 1000s). If we started all of our math on a base 12 system instead of a base 10, the metric system would have literally been developed differently.

        15. foamy

          Anybody who thinks F beats C is someone who doesn’t live somewhere where the key and critical question for like half of the year is ‘ice or water’.

        16. Lamppost

          Exactly this!! I had this conversation with an american who was like “why would I need to know the freezing point of water” but that changes A LOT if you live somewhere where it’s around or below zero degrees a lot of the year. It’s not fun to walk on an icy road unprepared – or even worse, an icy road when the temperature is above zero ?

        17. HueSatLight

          At 0 F I have to chop ice, at 0 C I do not have to bundle up to verify that yes, the pond water is still drinkable for the cattle.

        18. HueSatLight

          oh no, I use Fahrenheit, I can’t possibly know that plain water freezes at 32 F.
          0 F is dangerously cold, 100 F is dangerously hot. 50 is jacket weather, 75 is room temperature, 25 is when you start needing to bundle.

        19. Kimi

          The amount of people that seem specifically angry at me in the replies is something to note I guess. I was mainly trying to explain why some people might still find imperial easier on certain situations (especially where precision isn’t needed) and discussing my personal preference. As I was in Canada for a good chunk of my life, and have been in a scientific field, I have dealt with both. I have worked in greenhouses and out in the field doing scientific studies. In greenhouse work, being able to easily divide things into quarters or halves is desirable and just eyeballing measurements is normally good enough. That is the area that tends to use imperial still. For scientific fieldwork, accuracy is the key, and metric tends to be the norm there, though you can see stuff like Kelvin being used. In general, I think people tend to prefer things that they can more easily picture; for example, my pinky finger is a centimeter wide, so I tend to prefer that over inches because that is easy for me to check to compare it to. My only real complaints about Celsius is that they chose 100C for the boiling point of water instead of 200C. I really don’t mind that they used water boiling and freeze points for the basis of the scale, or that they set the freeze point to 0C. In the scale of things, would it have really mattered whether they set the boiling point of water at 200 vs 100? I don’t know. I just know that a couple of degrees difference in Fahrenheit can matter for a lot of things. A human body getting a fever is less than a degree in Celsius while about 2 degrees in Fahrenheit. It might even all be trivial or semantics at some point because the temperature gauge isn’t that accurate or the recording might not be taken properly. I guess my question is, does having a finer gradient between degrees (as in 1F is 1.8C) increase accuracy and reduce errors from misreadings or not? To give a different example, if you have 2 solid color blocks set in a gradients , and 1 has 5 blocks while the other has 10, which would give the more accurate color if the color you were looking for was in between the two blocks? The smaller set might only have green or blue, while the bigger set has a blue-green block. If you can’t decide whether the color matches the blue or the green block the most, you might really appreciate having the blue-green block in thr other set. Hopefully this explains my rationale a bit better for folks. Everyone can have their own personal preference, and I try to have both metric and imperial when I am thinking about it. I actually had been pretty good at converting Celsius to Fahrenheit in my head since I would talk to family in the US while reading Celsius temperatures. Metric cooking amounts I am at a total loss for though. I need to get better at that.

      3. NGPZ

        a centiliter is one 100th of a liter, which in turn is 10 ml, or 10 cubic centimeters (CC)

    6. BarerMender

      Why the insistence the U.S. give up its measuring system for some weird French bullshit? I know how big a foot is. One ten-millionth of one-fourth the circumference of the earth? That’s just silly.

      1. Dragonfire

        And the rest of the seven-and-two-thirds billion of us use a measuring system where we know how big 30 centimetres is, and it’d be nice if we didn’t have to convert back and forth all the time to accommodate the lot of you. 😛

        1. Amelie Wikström

          And most of the world started using the metric system not because it’s more practical to have a universal system everyone uses because it’s useful in itself. The imperial system is not a useful system, it’s hardly a “system” at all. If you want to eyeball amounts for cooking, which I do all the time, you don’t need to measure at all. But if you want to calculate how many horsepower of thrust you need to transport 6½ cubic feet of water held in a 2 stone container 1/3 of a mile in 1 hour or less, you probably want to start with estimating how many hours you’ll have to spend doing calculations because no part of this supposed system is consistent with or is even meant to “relate” to any other part of the system, whereas the metric system has Newtons, kilograms and liters all derived from the length of the meter so you can actually do math.

          Napoleon, the big time conqueror of nations, said of the metric system that it was going to outlast the concept of nations. He realized how important it was, and now everyone has except a faction in the US – a faction distinguishable by not being that one that built the Internet, the Interstate highway system or the space program, as far as I can tell. You’d have to wonder which one of these two groups knows something the other doesn’t.

        2. BarerMender

          Metric is superior for scientific calculations, but only because it’s decimal. It’s still unnatural and offers no improvement for everyday uses.

        3. Peter Huppertz

          Metric is superior, period. It is decimal, and therefore, as Rest Of World knows, much easier to work with than that measurement system that dates back to the Roman Empire.

        4. Agemegos

          The pace is five feet, right. So a mille passus was five thousand feet. But Queen Elizabeth I added 280 feet to make the mile 5,280 feet: a nice, round eight furlongs each of 220 yards. A tenth of a furlong is a chain, which works out to 66 feet. So a link, which is 1/100 of a chain, works out to 7.92 inches (my grandfather had a tape measure marked in links because he was an architect).

          But miles of 5,280 feet are an absolute pain in the arse for the Navy. So it had to add the Nautical mile of 6,080 feet for ease of navigation and the Sea mile of 6,000 feet for use in gunnery. A sea mile is a nice round ten cables (each cable being ten elevenths of a furlong), and a cable is ten fathoms. Quick! How many links in a fathom?

        5. thejeff

          It’s funny because you kind of get at the point here.

          These systems seem awful when you have to convert between them, but the whole point was to use each of them in their own field, not to go back and forth. Why would you need to know how many links in a fathom?

        6. Agemegos

          If I were trying to compare a map of a coastline made by a land surveyor (and scaled in chains, furlongs, and miles) with a navigation chart of the waters off that coastline and within its bays that was scaled in cables and nautical miles.

          Or if I were an architect, working with a land survey that was scaled in furlongs, chains and links, but having to draw up building plans for a builder working in yards, feet, and inches. (Not links per fathom, but a similar problem with inches per link.)

        7. butting

          What did the Romans ever do for us, per Monty Python? Well, they gave us imperial measures and roman numerals and it’s a wonder they lasted anywhere near as long as they did.

          (metric in roman numerals is cursed, get away with that nonsense)

        8. Agemegos

          Imperial measures were devised by the British in 1826. Which is why the USA doesn’t use them.

      2. Peter Huppertz

        I’m thinking maybe to prevent planes full of people falling from the sky, patients overdosing, and losing expensive space missions.
        I am not making this up.

        1. StClair

          per above, the various old systems were devised, ad-hoc, for the practical needs of humans doing tasks at human scale in pre-industrial and early industrial societies, where extreme precision at the high and low ends, let alone interoperability/easy conversion, were secondary to convenience.

        2. thejeff

          And a lot of them were based on already existing at least somewhat standardized things – like cups and tea/tablespoons. Or hogsheads. 🙂

    7. Reltzik

      It’s 1 / 4034 of a hogshead. Or 1 / 2 of a gill, if you prefer.

    8. Thing2

      Dear God!
      2 USA fluid ounces is just over 59mL, which is 0.59 of a decilitre!
      USA ‘imperial’ is often different to imperial ‘imperial’.

    9. Jeremiah

      Wait this entire comment chain is just about the measurement thing? Holy shit.

      1. thejeff

        It’s even more amusing because the “two ounces” wasn’t measured.

        It’s a shot.

        We also haven’t gotten into the special jargon for booze.

    10. Needfuldoer

      The Metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that’s the way I likes it!

      1. Mark

        Does its clock tick in micro-fortnights?

    11. zee

      Fucked me up so bad when i found out people actually use centiliters in some places. Like nah bro thats mL or L, we don’t talk about the shit in between

    12. HueSatLight

      A shot is a [fluid] ounce and a half. Ounces are admittedly terrible for precise measurements because there’s like a dozen different things it can mean, including at least three different fluid ounces (British, US customary, and US food labeling).
      Most of them are close to (or exactly) 30 g or mL.

  7. Disastroid

    Maybe they’ll be okay.

    1. Thag Simmons

      They’re gonna be okay. It’s really just a question of how long it takes for things to be okay, because they could get okay relatively quickly or it could take a few years.

      1. Dara

        Or both, depending upon comic or real time.

  8. IntangibleMatter

    I see a memory of myself in this picture and I don’t like it.

  9. Grimey

    …I can’t help but feel like Lucy will set Walky on the eventual realization that ‘you don’t have to be liked by everybody’.

    1. Bryy

      I just realized that this is a byproduct of Linda’s parenting.

    2. Miri

      I explicitly tell my eldest this. The sticking point for her is “You don’t need to like everyone” so the first time I went to tell her “You don’t need to like everyone, and it’s fine that not everyone is going to like you, so long as they’re civil” we got derailed a bit.

      My 9 year old and 6 month old puppy both basically have the exact same attitude to meeting new people: Friend? Friend! Yay friend! Likes friend! Hug friend!

      However, the puppy is unsure about cats and small children. The human wants to be friends with every living critter in this universe…

      The idea of disliking somebody genuinely seems to cause her dissonance… Even a girl who bullied her for months. “I don’t know why she acted like that, she was my friend…”

      Poor little marshmallow-hearted child!

    3. cbwroses

      I’m pretty sure he knows people don’t like him all the time.
      He was bullied in hs by Jennifer and her cool kid friends, remember?
      And he knows Sarah doesn’t care for him.
      Plus, I’m pretty sure he knows when he’s purposely being annoying (not so sure he knows when he does it accidentally).
      I really don’t get this idea that people have that he feels he needs to be liked by everyone, especially since he’s smart enough to know that he’s not.

      1. Chubseus

        I think that example actually supports the op’s point. Jennifer shoved Walky into lockers, verbally puts him down, and from the first day of college until now he is still trying to be her friend.

        We get the idea that Walky feels he needs to be liked from his own words when Lucy and him broke up, “I like to be liked. But, really, I shoulda been favorin’ you.” This was his excuse for trying to get the approval of his parents at the expense of Lucy’s well-being.

        1. cbwroses

          Jennifer was his childhood friend that he views as a sister.
          The rest of her cool kid friends were not.

          I see a difference between enjoying being liked and needing to be liked.
          If you told me some stranger needed to be liked, I would picture them as someone always trying to change their personality to fit the person they’re trying to impress, and when they did something that didn’t live up to it, they’d try something new and try to never bring that up in front of said person if they could help it.

          Walky certainly isn’t that. He likes what he likes and isn’t ashamed to admit it, despite being called names for it or thought immature. His personality and interests do not appeal to everyone, he knows it, and is fine with it.

          What I imagine someone who needs to be liked would be closer to Lucy, and I don’t mean she needs it, but that her personality and actions are a better example of what the phrase brings to my mind.

          She does want to be cool, she does want to be popular, and she wants to be the one others look to for advice. On the flip side, when Sarah suggests Lucy is an outsider, Lucy is bothered by it. When everyone tells Lucy Walky’s parents won’t like her, she tries to figure out how to change their minds in one weekend. She also wanted to wait for the 3rd date because of pseudo religious norms and not because that’s simply when she was ready (let alone when Walky was).

          She’s not a sycophant and she’s not desperate, nor is she constantly changing her personality to gain approval, but she is closer to “needing to be liked” than I’d ever view Walky as.

    4. Ike

      Isn’t this more a lesson Lucy needs to learn?

    5. thejeff

      Yeah, I don’t see that here.

      He’s not doing this because he needs to be liked by everyone, but because he likes Lucy and wants to get back to being friends with her.
      Even when he said “I like to be liked” during their breakup, he was talking about the thing with his parents, which is a lot more complicated than that.

  10. butting

    Dan it up any harder and you might need to figure out a licensing agreement with Danny, Walky.

    1. butting

      Maybe he could pivot back to his brand by throwing a dinosaur at her? The room’s FULL of them!

      (just not the one that’s bouncing around and giggling in two-part harmony)

  11. Doug D

    “…and Lucy’s balls grew three sizes that day!”

    1. NGPZ

      IM DEAD XD

  12. Amelie Wikström

    Billie probably should be higher on the list, they’ve known each other like 15 years. Or maybe all that locker shoving was not a love language. . .

    1. Jeremiah

      It’s honestly kind of telling of Jennifer I she isn’t higher on that list despite having longevity.

      1. Armadillo

        Especially ironic because Walky is probably the best friend Jennifer has. She has such terrible taste in people that he’s the only real friend she’s got. She should be a much better friend to him than she is but she’d rather self-destruct instead.

      2. Throwatron

        Exactly. I was honestly only scrolling down on this one to eventually leave my “Jennifer got absolutely dunked on” post, and so now it goes right here.

    2. Bash

      He’s know her a long time but it seems like she is often mean to him.

    3. BBCC

      Jennifer doesn’t count, he sees her as family. She’s, for all intents and purposes, another sister.

    4. zee

      She’s an old friend not a best friend. More about investment and familiarity than quality or having anything in common

  13. Steelbright

    I think Walky’s sincerity here is probably good even if he should stop while he’s ahead. And Lucy’s sass is well placed and justified. What I’m wondering is if he’ll actually get to the realization that he should’ve probably had the guts himself to acknowledge he wasn’t that attracted to her, whether sexually or romantically, and been honest with both of them…

    1. Coatl

      It seems like Walky right now wants to just apologize with genuine sincerity and get it out of his system, and yes, I think he himself is aware that there may be a bad choice of words.

      Regarding Lucy, I only hope that this experience is a lesson not to rush and give ideas of “guaranteed futures.”

      Of course, there are still details that she must stop, idolizing “great people.”

  14. Switchchris

    I really think that Both character have grown because of their relationship, so while they were not a good match for each other, it was still a worth while relationship. Lucy has 100% gained more self respect and a more grounded view of the world, she will probably hesitate before seeing anybody as she did Walky. Walky seems to be far further on his self actualization trip that he has been on for a while now, largely because of him speaking against his mother and realizing how his words and actions can and did harm somebody he cares about. He is still a Dumbass sometimes, but he is a more empathetic dumbass who will slowly learn not to be a dumbass. Plus he is now closer to his Sister because of all this.
    I can’t wait to see how he turns out by the end of college.

    1. Jeremiah

      Yeah! That is what this comic is about: growing. And sometimes, growing is painful and it’s done through making very stupid mistakes.

      1. Coatl

        It’s DUMBING OF AGE, there’s a reason it’s in capital letters.

  15. Taffy

    And this is why you don’t date people you know anything about or like. Only strangers who annoy you, to avoid ruining a good thing.

    1. Nymph

      TBH just exclusively date exes you had a big blowout with. Nowhere to go but up.

    2. zee

      Yes. And as everyone knows if you have a crush on a friend or befriend someone you’re attracted to, you were never really their friend and just a pervert lying in wait for your chance all along. Nice guys depositing niceness tokens and expecting to get a girlfriend out of it and teenage girls with crushes on their cute friends that they never really expect to like them back are the exact same thing.

  16. PedanticJerkass

    The worst thing about this is that Walky could end up (also) humiliating her here (unintentionally or not).

    And probably also Dorothy. And Amber. And, well, pretty much everyone else present, too, if only by virtue of them having to witness it happen, kind of like second-hand smoke.

    1. Coatl

      I’ll just say that all this happened at the wrong time.

    2. Jammy

      So you’re saying a bunch of freshman are drinking?

      1. Jammy

        Freshmen. Dang, the ability to not edit is a blessing and curse.

  17. DailyBrad

    Hmm interesting.

  18. Dot

    Time for that famous Walkerton alcohol tolerance!

  19. Bryy

    Lucy, you are owed nothing except an apology.

    1. Jammy

      For getting back with his ex after Lucy broke up with him. Or am I thinking of a different apology?

      1. Shade

        I mean he’s definitely not required to apologise about that. What he does after they break up isn’t her concern.

    2. Jeremiah

      She is owned everything actually. He should give a million dollars, her own car, literally any puppy she wants, and a week at Disneyland. (,I want to clarify that I am NOT being sarcastic here. I mean every word literally).

    3. Jay

      Apology for what? She broke up with him

      1. Bryy

        Yet she thinks she is owed something more than Walky going “sorry I did that thing that very clearly hurt your feelings”.

        Which he is trying to do.

      2. Bash

        I am begging this comment section to think about why she broke up with him and who put her in that position.

        1. Taffy

          She broke up with him because…
          Uh….
          Hmm.
          Y’know, I can’t remember and there’s no way to go back in time to find out. I think it had something to do with him going on a pizza date with Amber, so I guess that means he cheated on her? That makes him look awful, so that must be it.

          (Not serious, unclench)

        2. thejeff

          Mostly because she had a massive crush on him and while he was interested and it might have developed into more in time, she thought she was in love with him and he wasn’t nearly there yet?

        3. Jeremiah

          The racist mom thing. The racist mom thing was an important factor there too.

        4. Miri

          Does she know he shouted at Linda before the parents left? I can’t remember…

        5. thejeff

          No. He didn’t say anything about it.

        6. HueSatLight

          It’s that he didn’t ever communicate that with her. He mislead her.

  20. Kitschensyngk

    Alternate title for this storyline:

    “For Me It Was TWO DAYS”

  21. MisterJinKC

    From what I remember Walky doesn’t owe her a thing. She was an enthusiastic participant in the scheme with his mom. I do t remember for sure, but I think it was her idea to have Amber pretend to be his girlfriend. Even if I’m wrong and it wasn’t, she participated fully from get go without problem. Then she went apeshit on him when it didn’t go as planned and blamed him for everything. He was an idiot, but she was just as much a part of it as him. Plus, he did stand up to his mom about her racism, even if Lucy wasn’t there to see it.

    1. Vanessa

      Oh that’s right, it’s was only fitting that their crazy shenanigans would blow up in their faces. Frankly, just breaking up is expected and probably deserved but did he also completely blow things with his parents so he’ll have to drop out of college and work retail the rest of his life?

      1. lyzyrdwyzyrd

        Firstly, it’s not good to see to the stigma working retail.
        Second, lots of people have high paying and/or fulfilling jobs without a college degree.
        Thirdly, lots of peoplehsve college degrees and work in retail or other low paying jobs.
        College degree value decreases all the time.

    2. BBCC

      Well, Lucy can’t acknowledge the standing up for her if he doesn’t know about. IIRC, Lucy wasn’t upset about the scheme so much as him failing to stand up for her when Linda referred to her in racist terms. Walky acknowledged he should’ve but he didn’t want either of them to be too upset. WE know he then proceeded to stand up for her but this is their first serious talk since then, so she can’t know about that.

      Right now, I think she’s hurt that it seems he moved on after two days (thereby cementing, in her mind anyway, that their relationship didn’t really matter to him) and now I think she just doesn’t really wanna talk but here he is chatting. Which, hey, is how it works sometimes, but I think they’re having a good conversation. They might still need time if they’re gonna be friends again, but so far things could be a lot worse.

  22. Jeremiah

    Okay, I really have to point this out: She is not being serious guys. She doesn’t actually think he “owes” her humiliation, she is literally making a joke, one that Walky play along with as is his not serious nature. Plus it have the additional benefit of relaxing him with booze, which I am told is mostly the point of it, to act as a social lubricant.

    1. Armadillo

      Glad I’m not the only one seeing this, sometimes the comments here get so judgemental it feels like I’m reading a different comic from everyone else. Especially where Lucy is concerned, she seems to have a weird effect on people.

      1. Queezle

        Yes! It is so weird. Lucy is clearly flawed, but not more than any of the main characters. And, like Walky, she is good at heart.

        1. Jeremiah

          Lucy imo, is considerably less flawed that many of the characters in the comic. She is the well ajustes one really.

        2. Throwatron

          Her biggest flaw is that she is mature for her age in enough ways, that she doesn’t always notice her own blind spots, because she forgets to check. She actually realized very shortly after breaking up with Walky, what some of the problems between them had been caused by, and when talking to Jacob that one time she seemed to genuinely understand that she contributed to the problem on some level. She is way more introspective than most of the cast, to her obvious benefit. She’s just gotta figure out her blind spots.

        3. Jeremiah

          Yeah! Honestly of all the characters the comment section gets into endless arguments about, Lucy is easily the least justified one.

    2. Doopyboop

      grrr black girl being mean sassy and rude grrrr she’s a schemer, a snooper, a hooligan, a charlatan grrrrr

      (I’m joking, just poking fun at how quick people are to read the worst possible thing off of Lucy pretty much… all the time)

    3. Chubseus

      Thank you, yes. Fully agree.

    4. Aslan

      There are no jokes in comics. Especially not this one. That’s why they call it Seriousing of Age. Everything every character says should be taken as 100% earnest and at complete face value.

  23. Taffy

    Would you rather fight three 41lb turkeys or 123lbs of hummingbirds?

    1. Jeremiah

      I have no idea how many of each of those that would actually be, so I gonna go with Yes.

      1. Agemegos

        Three 41-pound turkeys would be about three turkeys, each 41 pounds.

        123 pounds of hummingbirds would be about 1,000 hummingbirds, depending on species etc.

      2. Taffy

        Google says the average hummingbird weighs something like 2.5 grams. So, something like 180-ish hummingbirds per pound (You can’t have any partial birds, so we’ll say the decimals get rounded into the slightly fatter birds), 123 pounds total, which gives us around 22,140 hummingbirds.

        If my math is wrong, only correct me if it gives you more hummingbirds to fight.

    2. Reltzik

      Need more details. What’s the goal of the fight? Am I hunting for food or am I trying to survive a remake of The Birds? In the latter case, escape counts as a win, and I can escape the turkeys easier, and in the former case, turkeys are better eating, so the turkeys again. What’s the weather like? Rain partially neutralizes hummingbirds but not turkeys, so if there’s heavy rain, hummingbirds.

      1. Taffy

        It’s a death match in the bird’s natural habitat, neutral weather.

        1. Reltzik

          What species of turkey?

          We’ve got three candidates. But Wild and Ocellated turkeys don’t get as big as 41 pounds. I’d have to be fighting DOMESTICATED turkeys, and their natural environment is an industrial feedlot where they have been confined to cages little larger than they are in an environment specifically designed for humans to control and ultimately slaughter them. Sounds like an easy W to me.

        2. Taffy

          Yeah, the amount of effort required isn’t exactly even for both options, is it.

    3. Nymph

      41lbs of turkey, that’s like ONE turkey. I can take a turkey in a 1v1.

      123lbs of hummingbirds just sounds like a hitchcockian nightmare.

      1. Jeremiah

        In that case I also go with the Turkey. I probably lose but at least have a fighting chance.

      2. Taffy

        Specifically it’s 3 turkeys weighing 41 pounds each.

        1. Nymph

          Oops missed that word – I think I could still take them.

      3. Azhrei Vep

        Ah, but the question was three 41lb Turkeys. 123 lbs of hummingbirds, which would be somewhere between 4920 and 9840 hummingbirds.

        Yeah, I’ll definitely take the turkeys. I’m not sure what the Hummingbirds could do back to me, but I’m fairly certain I would take myself out through sheer exhaustion before I could drop that many hummingbirds. Especially considering how quick and maneuverable the little fuckers are.

        (Best Info I could find has them at 0.2 to 0.1 oz each, so between 5 and 10 per ounce. 16 ounces in a pound makes 40 to 80 a pound. 123 lbs then gets you to 4920 and 9840)

        1. Azhrei Vep

          Oh no, I just realized I screwed up at the number per pound level and fucked up eeeeverything from there. There’s way more hummingbirds than that. More like 9840 to 19680. Helll naw.

        2. Taffy

          Yeah, I may have picked a really lopsided set of birds here. A few turkeys, people generally seem confident they could at least try it, maybe even win. How hard could a few turkeys be to fight?

          Several thousand hummingbirds, though? It starts getting comparable to a swarm of locusts. That’s a little more intimidating.

        3. Mark

          I dunno. 40-pound angry birds. How worried would you be if you were being hit with medicine balls from three sides?

        4. Mark

          Three turkeys can have a go at you all at once. 20,000 hummingbirds will mostly get in each others’ way before they can reach you. And you can slap (or squash) half a dozen hummingbirds with one blow. Treat them like the mob of movie bad guys who come at the hero one at a time.

          What’re they gonna do, sip you to death?

        5. Taffy

          Yes. That’s why it’s scary. No matter how many you hit, you’re gonna be covered again in seconds.

        6. Dana

          Do the hummingbirds have a food source during this fight? They have such extreme calorie needs I’m wondering if I could win the fight just by covering my face and waiting a few hours.

        7. Taffy

          I don’t think you’re gonna last even half an hour, being swarmed by that many.

        8. tim Rowledge

          Do you not understand that hummingbirds are 10% cute bird and 150% hate? That they are equipped with tiny but powerful lasers (that what the high pitch pew-pew noise is) that when aligned and coordinated can slice though pure adamantinium shields?

        9. Mark

          Argh, I forgot the frickin’ laser beams.

    4. Da Boy

      >grabs the axe
      We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here but I will still give thanks for free Turkey!

      1. thejeff

        Don’t know which one would be easier to fight, but if you beat the turkeys at least you’d have good eating.

    5. Yumi

      I feel like I could take them in both cases, though it wouldn’t be my favorite activity. The three turkeys I think would be over sooner, but I would sustain more serious injuries, while with the hummingbirds, I think it would take a while, but I’d mostly just be scarred mentally.

    6. Wereg

      Do we get any sort of weapon or are we unarmed? I’m takin’ the turkeys regardless, but spearing them would make it so much easier.

      1. thejeff

        A net would make short work of the hummingbirds.

    7. Mturtle7

      Man, turkeys can be SCARY when they’re aggressive, man. Almost as bad as geese! Three turkeys attacking at once would almost certainly f*ck me up.

      That being said, hummingbirds are ALSO pretty scary aggro little bastards, for their size anyway, and 123lbs is a LOT of them. So I’d rather take the turkeys, all the way.

    8. yak

      turkeys, easy. Three turkeys absolutely would fuck me up. The hummingbirds would be bad but they would quickly run out of energy without a nearby source of sugar, so I could just run away pretty easily.

      I mean, I could also run away from the turkeys pretty easily, but if they do an encirclement move that’s much harder.

      1. Taffy

        The wording of this is just ambiguous enough that I feel like saying, probably don’t fight three turkeys as a form of self-harm?

        1. yak

          you’re not my mom (probably)

    9. HueSatLight

      I know turkeys can be aggressive, and they’d be pretty daunting when they were, they’re like dinosaurs. But hummingbirds are almost always aggressive. They’re either “where’s my goddam sugar water!” or “get the fuck away from my sugar water”.
      41 pounds is too heavy for a wild turkey, and probably couldn’t fly.

      Is there anything I can climb? What kind of materials are around for me to make tools out of? I’m a tool-making ape, I’m going to play to my strengths. Like is there a shovel blade and shovel handle sitting nearby? I bet I could fashion some sort of tool out of those.

    10. Reaver

      Considering the Aztexs believed that fallen warriors are reborn as Hummingbirds for their ferocity? I’ll take the turkeys

  24. Kim

    There’s some pretty great eyebrow action from Lucy, here ^_^

    1. kaitou

      Yeah. She only has one, but it can move from one side of her face to the other.

  25. Amós Batista

    “I’m actually depressed you might not be, anymore.”
    “It’s been a lonely 2 days without you”
    My brother in Christ, you’re the one who is getting laid, instead her.

    1. Regret

      You’re allowed to miss friends.

    2. Drain

      SAY IT AGAIN LMAO

      1. Drain

        This exchange reads as another layer of unintentional disrespect from Walky after a series of unintentional disrespectfulness. I don’t doubt that this is the way he feels but it is not the time to be bringing it up. Not in a public situation. Not when you just walked in holding hands with your white ex! 18 year olds suck

        1. thejeff

          She dumped him. He walked into this blind, with no reason to expect her to be there. I think he’s doing pretty well.

        2. Taffy

          Why does it specifically matter that Dorothy’s white? Lucy doesn’t hate white people or look down on people of mixed race.

        3. dalniente

          I’m assuming it’s just because the catalyst for the breakup was related to Walky’s parents’ racism. Dorothy just happens to be white, but I can see how that might feel like salt in the wound, even if it’s not actually a factor in why Walky is back with her.

        4. thejeff

          I suspect “Dorothy told me to ask you out” is a bigger factor than her race.

      2. Mturtle7

        PREACH

        God, I hate it when people act like nobody’s allowed to be sad about broken friendships, only romance. Absolutely insufferable.

        1. thejeff

          It is, but you can see it as twisting the knife in this case, since a good part of the problem is that he never fell for her, like she did for him.

    3. Akane

      I guess Dorothy’s not his best friend, which honestly says a lot about how short this rebound relationship will last.

      1. Taffy

        Nope, that’s stupid. Not everyone wants their romantic partner to be their best friend. Those terms mean different things for a huge amount of people. For example, I do not want to have sex with my best friend, grow old with them, buy a house together, or even live together and see them every single day. I want those with my girlfriend though, and the 10 daya I spent in the “behavioral health center” were only tolerable because she visited almost every day. If my best friend showed up while I was on a “grippy socks vacation”, I’d be pissed.

        So like, conflate the two things for yourself if that’s your personal standard and preference for your own life, but it’s inappropriate to project that onto others.

  26. Mark

    Walky is going to talk about his feelings? Now I wonder what I’ve been drinking….

  27. Mark

    Commentary goes on and on about how Walky didn’t instantly fall helplessly in love with Lucy. But this strip has me wondering if Lucy ever was Walky’s friend.

    1. Jeremiah

      Yes?? What reason is there to think otherwise?

      1. Fuzzy

        She started being friends with him after she decided he was hot and wanted to date him. She lumped the time they were friends into her how-soon-should-you-love-me calculation because she’d already been thinking about it back then.

        If, instead of asking her out, Walky had told her he didn’t ever want to date her (and she believed him), would she stay his friend? If she wouldn’t, did she ever really want to be his friend, or was their “friendship” a means to an end in Lucy’s eyes?

        1. Jeremiah

          You know that someone can be romantically attracted to someone else and still be their friend right? Please tell me you understand that.

        2. Mturtle7

          I mean, you can be, but I think the issue Jeremiah is talking about is more about corrupt motivations. It’s a correlation vs. causation kind of thing.

          To use an analogy, one can legitimately be friends with someone who’s much more wealthy than you, but it’s ALSO possible for you to ONLY be friends with them because you want them to buy you cool stuff, which would not be ok.

          Personally, I think Lucy was honestly a good friend to Walky, and would have been even if she hadn’t been attracted to him. But I get why some might not interpret the comic that way.

    2. Yeet

      she was definitely trying to date him without telling him which… isn’t friend behaviour, but I don’t think she was being nice guy weird about it
      she definitely wanted to be friends with him as well

      1. Bash

        I think she understood that they were not dating. Look how excited she got when he wanted to get “romantic dinner”. Before that she was hanging around him and hoping he liked her, but not knowing how to initiate a relationship herself. “Dating him without telling him,” was someone else’s description of the situation.

        If things had gone in the other direction and he said “we’re just friends and we’re not going to date,” I think she would have been hurt but ultimately may have still carried on being his friend.

        1. Yeet

          don’t get me wrong, she understood it for sure
          but it definitely felt like she was there primarily for dating him and doing basically everything except handholding and kissing that she would do with a boyfriend
          this is fine if the people involved are friends who have their boundaries sorted out but less so when they don’t, although the hurt was always gonna fall on her

  28. staszu13

    You owe me some humiliation.

    God, this is just full of new title suggestions

  29. Hof1991

    How much is 2 ounces? It equals 1 Walky. The amount needed to get one Walky slightly drunk.

  30. Aslan

    Ironically, this is healthier communication than just about any conversation they had while they were dating

    1. a/snow/mous/e

      turns out Lucy’s devotion of Walky was not especially healthy

      1. Da Boy

        Desperation is never a good foundation for a relationship

  31. Rabisch

    The friendship between them can be saved, how beautiful! Let’s hope that Lucy can go back to being his best friend and that she’ll be there for him when Dorothy decides to leave him again (or he will be the one that leaves her). By that time, I hope Lucy is with someone, so she can avoid even the thought of getting back together with Walky. If all goes well, Walky and Lucy’s friendship could last their entire lives.

  32. yak

    lmao the healthiness of this conversation, the utter non-maliciousness and self-awareness of everyone involved, as compared to both the name of the comic and the expectations of the comments section for the past uhhh week.

    Very good Willis, superb bait-and-switch.

  33. SailorCakes

    I know this is off topic from what everyone else has been talking about but I just wanted to bring this up. So a few comics back there was a discussion about if Lucy was a drinker from having her past/present roommates and drinking the booze straight. Has anyone else noticed no head bubbles for her yet? It seems like she has been sipping on her drink for a while now and it not taking effect yet. Does that mean she has a higher tolerance pointing to what some people suggested in the comment section that she isn’t new to drinking. Could there really be a darker side to Lucy? Or is she just sipping her drink really slowly…

    1. NGPZ

      Could be both high natural tolerance and sippin real slowly.

      1. SailorCakes

        So you’re on her being an experience drinker side?

        1. NGPZ

          Either she learned the hard way or learned her lesson from seeing others not pace themselves XD

  34. Akane

    I just find it weird but interesting that Walky is sad that his best friend/ex girlfrend is distancing herself from after he got done with rebound sex with another ex who’s losing herself in Walky (as Booster predicted) as a distraction.

  35. Arillius

    When guys do what she did, which is pretend to befriend someone under false pretenses to try and date them, it’s considered bad. I really hope the comic eventually acknowledges how deceitful and dishonest her attitude and treatment of Walky was eventually. I get that the two involved aren’t mature enough to see it, but the story has been pretty good about acknowledging things when they’re ‘actually kind of fucked up’ and this is definitely ‘actually kind of fucked up.’

    1. thejeff

      I don’t think what she did is usually considered bad even when guys do it. It’s the attitude that they’re owed romance (or sometimes just sex) for doing things under the guise of friendship. And that’s not what we saw from her. She seemed to enjoy being Walky’s friend. She was happy when he asked her out, but didn’t demand it.

  36. anon

    plot twist on walky being more of a ‘savant’/eloquent when drunk (tho i think he did also get booze from jen before lol)

    nice that he actually considered her a real friend too, i imagine their age and a bit younger would be like “you’re around/we have to be around each other and i don’t hate you so we’re friends i guess” lol

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