No no no no no.
on August 17, 2021 at 12:01 amChapter: Speak Now
Location: Duct tape table, some country road
A good story moment for Walky here, but, hrm, realtalk: first loves are overrated. I mean, I’m pretty sure my kindergarten “girlfriend” is, statistically, a meth dealer now, and I didn’t meet Maggie until I was 25. But it works well in the narrative so why not.
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yeah my first love was Dark Heart from Care Bears II idk
you could do worse
“time for a game of disappearing bears”
oh I didn’t get the impression that walky had like a crush on joyce when they were on HA’s spaceship.
Honestly Dorothy seems more like Walky’s first love than Joyce due to the backstory we were told.
She probably was in truth, but I don’t think that’s what actually matters here
but has she considered… It’s just walky
truly… it was walky
*points at the screen* that’s walky
It’s Walky over there!
I don’t remember if it was you or Danielle Corsetto that caused me to always notice tangents in comics, now, but…that’s one heck of a long line tangent Walky’s mouth and neck have going in the last panel.
“You have to marry me, because I was your first love!”
“No, I don’t!”
“You mean because first love is a stupid concept?”
“No, because PLOT-CONVENIENT ERASED MEMORIES!”
“…screw you, David.”
I know Walky is immune to the mind wiper because of how many times it’s been used on him, but does that mean all his past memories that were erased came back to him or is he still missing some?
“Didn’t you read For Better or For Worse YOU ALWAYS MARRY THE FIRST PERSON YOU FELL FOR, BE IT IN KINDERGARTEN AND THEN YOU DON’T SEE THEM FOR TWENTY YEARS!!!
(Especially if they’re parent-approved!!!)”
And then they’re already married but to a
standard romcom fianceecold, hateful CAREER WOMAN who doesn’t want kids but he convinces her to have just the one, he’ll do all the caretaking, and despite this perhaps being a sign the two of them probably weren’t compatible on a pretty key point, they have the kid and he resents that she isn’t any more interested in parenting than she was before (you, of course, bond with said child instantly). So they divorce, and you break up with your current boyfriend because you’re more into Married First Grade Guy, and somewhere in here is a truly tasteless storyline in which he saves you from a sexual assault that is pretty much immediately forgotten about except the ~romance~ of him stopping the assaulting guy.Am I missing anything big?
Honestly, much as I hate the Anthony thing, in a weird way the bit I hate most is Michael saying “That does it. I’m definitely marrying someone else” about Deanna in grade 1, and then her mysteriously reappearing out of nowhere, he falling in love with her after having an existential crisis over profiting from her car accident, and then marrying her after all.
I was too young to actually read FBOFW so I had no knowledge of that romance plot until now. Wow, that is infuriatingly ridiculous!
And then all the online versions of the comics get edited into gifs so the characters can all blink awkwardly.
Honestly it feels like this is just another yanking of the rug out from under Dorothy. Life been going downhill since college? Bookstore failing, parents dying under mysterious circumstances, tracking down a biological parent just for HIM to die under mysterious circumstances? Everything’s been going wrong for her (because, in large part, she’s being used as a pawn for an evil little alien.) But her first crush is here, and she can save him from an awful fate! She’s the special one who won’t end with his horrible death!
And then Walky says no, he doesn’t believe her. And further, the thing she’s trying to use as leverage? She doesn’t have THAT going for her, either. She’s not special to him.
I see no way for this to backfire when it’s only Dorothy’s force of will and desire not to do a murder keeping back Walky’s archnemesis possessing her body!
Wait, first loves are overrated?
*glances nervously at wife, in bed next to him*
The saying goes “You never forget your first love” but to be honest all that to me just sounds like being in love with nostalgia more than being in love with a person.
Even If Dorothy was in fact Walky’s first then so what? These versions of the two have been through hell and back together and have a bond with each other Dorothy will never have with Walky, just being the first one to catch his eye wouldn never outweigh that.
Plus if I was to rank what girls in walkys past love life meant the most to him I’d say Dorothy ranks 3rd behind Dina.
I’ve always interpreted “You never forget your first love” as referring to the feeling, not necessarily a person. The first love that you remember becomes your first love by default because all of your previous loves have been forgotten.
The Victorians considered nostalgia a disease.
Daaaw!
Yes, I know, but Daw! Anyway.
Holy shit that grimace
I can’t remember the last time he seemed that pissed… Or ANY time really, now that i think about it
That one time Joyce floated the idea Dina would be burning in hell?
“Dorothy, kindergarten doesn’t count.”
I don’t consider my “first love” to be the girl who I danced with at some afterschool event in third grade, even though she called me up asking for a date the day after and told me she loved me. I didn’t feel the same, and I don’t even remember her name…
But she seems like the closest analog I’d have to “the girl from the spaceship.” I doubt Walky would remember Joyce much as a person if he’d never met her after that incident; his memories there were mostly about not being brave enough to save someone, not who the someone was.
But Dorothy’s own claim to “first love” status is not that much better, alt-universes aside. She and Walky were sorta vibing for about seven minutes before she let him down easy, and both of them felt there was some potential for follow-up but they never communicated again? That’s a first CRUSH, maybe.
The word “love” has many shades of meaning, but in this context, it doesn’t really apply to two people who never spent any time as mutual significant others. That’s the real reason to say “No, you weren’t” to Dorothy here, not this appeal to continuity.
…wait, was Dorothy’s comment about the boy she kissed in kindergarten growing up to run a meth lab based on real life all along? Dang, it’s always the little details.
I can definitely agree with first loves. I blew eighteen years on an abusive prick who treated consent as a nice bonus, not a requirement. Wheeeeee….
I feel like this scene would be stronger if I ever bought that present-day Walky was attracted to Dorothy on more than the shallowest level. Like, okay, so he looked at her boobs once or twice and got flustered when she felt his heartbeat. But she’s so damn pathetic that she’s really got nothing to offer except ingenue charm and a fading cache of nostalgia, and so conflicted that she doesn’t even use that very well.
Even with the Head Alien’s coaching, she mostly appeals to Walky’s pity and laziness, none of which builds her up as an desirable alternative to Joyce. Then things get kinda weird with force-kissing and visions and prophecy and possession, but nowhere in any of that is she made a seductive figure.
“Y’always saw me as a doctor? Weird, I always saw you as a senator, or just somethin’ other than a jobless burnout! Life’s funny, huh?”
(I could almost see a version of this where Dorothy’s plight moves Walky to spend more and more time helping her out, pulling him away from Joyce. He’d think that if he can just get her back on his feet, she’d become the shining vision of success that he was ready to fall for, once. But that would require Walky to take on a lot of responsibility voluntarily, so that’s out.)
Walky’s angry with Dorothy here because she just came close to killing him, not because he was ever at any serious risk of leaving Joyce for her. Were we meant to believe he was at such risk? That belief could him unsympathetic, sure, but without it, the emotional stakes of this story are not high and its outcome is not at all surprising. Pathetic loser who’s lost at everything loses yet again, film at eleven.
If it weren’t for Dorothy’s later, much more successful version in Dumbing of Age, I’d say she felt kind of vindictive. She’s like going back to your high school reunion out of schadenfreude, just to see if the jocks and populars and pretty girls and straight-A students ended up crashing and burning. And hey, we all read stories out of schadenfreude sometimes (“Take THAT, Luthor! You may be richer and smarter and have more sex than me, but you’ll never kill Superman and you’re evil, unhappy, and bald!”). But in this case, the schadenfreude makes her such an ineffective threat to Joyce and Walky that HA has to coach her, enhance her, and finally just take her over altogether.
David’s my favorite webcartoonist: this is my least favorite of his major arcs. I guess that combination does get me worked up, but maybe knowing that the best of us can stumble is my schadenfreude-reading experience. Still, probably time I stepped away from this for a while. Might see you guys again at the finale.
I think Walky’s also angry with Dorothy because of her saying Joyce will kill him.
also my least favorite of David’s major arcs is the recent DOA arc with super-villain Blaine. That seemed to lean way too close to Winkerbean territory for my liking (Plantman anyone?).
The first girl I had a crush on that I remember was a girl in my class in fourth or fifth grade, and I’m pretty sure her family moved away a year or so later, so I’ve never seen her since then.
My first (and probably last) love was the only person I ever dated, but those are only tangentially related.
I may not be able to honestly claim they’re unrelated, but the dating itself was only one indirectly causative factor.
“There’s a voice in my head that wants me to kill you, or at least make you suffer, but let’s set that aside while I explain why I very strongly think you shouldn’t marry Joyce. The voice agrees, so it’s gotta be right!”
I had a crush in kindergarten who I once kissed on the cheek (my feelings for him exited my body after this). I don’t know what he’s doing now but we went to the same high school and he was one of the top fundraisers for this overnight cancer walk we did – so like, apparently I made a good choice.
I’m sure you could do better than a meth dealer. What about a meth kingpin? Reach for the stars, etc.