2482 Settle.
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Reggie probably doesn’t have much experience dealing with girls being disappointed in not getting him. He probably does have a lot of experience not being bothered by someone crying in front of him if he feels like it’s his fault. For people who don’t have the kind of brain that is averse to blame to an unhealthy degree it probably seems odd that he can just blow past it without much of a reaction. His reaction, however, is from an intense desire to not admit fault, or express guilt. You have probably encountered this exact kind of reaction in your daily life. Possibly regularly if you use social media at all. At the same time he’s not attempting to be mean, or double down. He’s trying to empathize in so far as he is capable. I think he genuinely likes Maddison in spite of her being a bit annoying and simple. On some level he’s also preparing himself for when she tells him they aren’t friends anymore, which will genuinely hurt him. Even if he never shows it he will feel the loss deeply and show it in ways that are maladaptive. The fact that Reggie describes her as already being a friend is likely an attempt to passively let her know that she has some value to him even though he hasn’t really processed that in a conscious way.
Then again maybe I don’t know anything about people and this is just a lot of nonsense. Either way, if you enjoy my possible nonsense you can support it via Patreon or Subscribestar via the links above. I would like that very much and am not ashamed to admit it.
Anyway, I hope you all have safe and pleasant weekends. I will see you on Monday hopefully.
21 Comments
While I would say Reggie is acting like a narcissist on purpose to try and get Maddi to like him less, I’m not crazy. Reggie wouldn’t be Reggie if he didn’t genuinely believe his self praise.
What friend zoning a woman can look like. In his case with a dash of ‘I am saying all this so if no then I said my peace already.’
I’m simultaneously flabbergasted Reggie can say that straight faced at someone else and yet applaud him for for his confidence.
“oh, behave” -Reggie
I’ve been liking Reggie a moderate amount lately, so I appreciate the occasional reminders that a significant component of his personality is still of the “deluded narcissist” category…
Man, this boy is SMOOTH.
As a porcupine’s ass!
I admire Reggie’s ability to think on his feet.
I wouldn’t have done so well. For someone in his position this scene is like pogo-sticking through a minefield and he’s adept at it…so far.
The thing that always stuns me with Reggie is that he isn’t even trying to be an arrogant ass, he just is. That said, I’m loving every minute of it.
Man, this is awesome! Reggie both toots his own horn, makes it clear that he has friendly feelings for Maddie, breaks through here self-pity and gets her to accept that he is not romantically interested in her, but values her as a friend non the less. And he is sincere in all of it. Yes he is full of himself, but somewhere or somehow he learned a form of tact that totally works on Maddie
Being perfectly honest? This feels HUMAN. I’ve always been blamed for everything in my family (because nine times out of ten it’s going to be the autistic kid /s) so like Reggie I’ve grown a knack for not being bothered when someone accuses me of something. If it’s true, I’ll do what I can to fix it. If it’s not, then there’s no point in me spending brain cycles on it. I’m just glad I didn’t get the real or projected inflated sense of self-worth, haha.
“His reaction, however, is from an intense desire to not admit fault, or express guilt. You have probably encountered this exact kind of reaction in your daily life. Possibly regularly if you use social media at all.”
These kinds of people need psychological help. No way around it. Some of them are so far up their own tailpipe that they will never listen to reason, no matter what anyone does. All anyone can do is try to out-think them until they shut down because their egos have been beaten.
Reggie is becoming more likable the more this webcomic goes on. In the beginning he was insufferable, to the point where he needed to go through something so reality-shattering that would break his ego down to nothing. But he is changing, slowly but surely. And hopefully, before long, he’ll go back to something of what he was during that one flashback scene where he wasn’t an arrogant @$$.
Well Reggie handled that beautifully. He was honest but also polite.
did she just shrink by, like, 30kg between strips?
Her posture changed
That whole second panel..oof. let’s just take that dialogue, put it in a little box, and bury it in the yard.
With someone as.. simple, as Maddi, they tend to take every statement quite literally in my experience. So saying no guy’s gonna measure up feels like setting her up for hurdles in the future.
They are setting her up for potential hurdles. But on the positive side (without defending Reggie’s ego), they’re hurdles that Maddi’s friends are probably more prepared to deal with than the hurdle that she can’t emotionally claim a human being without their reciprocation, and that’s a hurdle that his words seem to be handling effectively. They’re still not correct, but probably less harmful than they could be, especially since she does have a decent support network. Someone without another source of truth to moderate it would be at more risk of damage from it though, since it does play into self-doubt systems that are also often present.
I don’t think anything here is Reggie’s fault.
Weird, I was more under the impression Reggie was giving her a reason to be less attached to him with his crazy boasting, not that he believes it himself.
I wouldn’t be able to hang around a guy like that.
Yeah, but he’s also giving himself an out; if she decides she can’t stay friends, it’s because she “can’t control her lust” and not because he’s revealing himself to be quite a blowhard, or because her legitimate feelings of interest are too much to handle around him (and not just “lust”). In other words, if she chooses to stay away from him, it’s because something is WRONG with her, because Reggie can’t imagine someone right-minded would not want to be around him every second. That said, he certainly could be worse; he doesn’t string her along, and he definitely doesn’t try to have a side-dish.
It’s sort of odd that he’s narcissistic when his childhood was apparently one of never measuring up and being desperate for approval. I guess that led him to never care what other people think, but it also implies there’s a strong ego gene in him.
You just described how a narcissist is made.