Luann by Greg Evans and Karen Evans for June 21, 2016

You’re a broken record, Luann.

Yes, Bernice, we know you’re a psych major. Stop it.

I find this disappointing and out-of-character for Luann. There are only two other students who have been introduced as characters at Luann’s junior college, they have been seen numerous times, and yet Luann doesn’t know the name of one of them? And if she doesn’t know Mr. Jock’s real name, what are the chances she doesn’t know Mr. Goth’s real name, either? Does she know the names of any students at the junior college she attends?

Lue feels nice someone asked her out, which is more than you, who don’t know how ur interest feels, and can’t notice one who wants u

So Lu doesn’t Know Jocko’s REAL Name. So What?YOU, Bernice, on the other hand, DON’T Know the ‘Real Names of Dez, Viper, Hair, Sun, OR that Guy that has a ’Star’ Carved in the side of His Head, and YOU are an R.A.

So EVERYTHING is ‘Normal’ In the VAST Luanniverse.

NOW, ‘Who’ is Holding up THIS Blasted ‘Line?’

I NEED My Morning COFFEE, like NOW….,

Yeah – I haven’t seen many guys try that hard for Luann lately. I sense an arc coming up where they do go on a date. Evans likes to surprise us – but this is a real stretch on the imagination. Luann is cute, and bright, and funny. Doesn’t look like Mr. Jock has any of those. Like poker, you usually want to see at least a pair of nines to stay for the flop…

Why do I imagine Bernice saying that last line in Hermione Granger’s voice?

I agree with Wiselad and Night-Gaunt49, She is just happy someone asked her out. I never took it for granted when someone asked me out, but that didn’t mean I wanted to go on a date with them.

We do have Brad and Toni for example of mismatched working out.

The big difference is that Luann thought Jock was serious, but he turned and gawked at the next girl. Probably left Emo-boy to go ask her out.

Last time we saw Jock Man I recall he had already had focused on another lady. Quill and Gunther at least have personalities and emotions. Jock Man was not eve that well-drawn, nothing to make me think he could be a semi-regular.

Jock is transgender.

Ack! I’ve just realized…I’m Bernice and have been forever……..ompf

We don’t see every second of there lives. She can get there names off frame. + Why does every ones love life always end in disaster? It’s seems now already expected. almost no point in reading this we already know there is a break up in the future. & Did Brad & Toni ever get married. I didn’t see it yet.

“To Whom It May Concern”“Subliminal And Void”“I’m On A Trip To Your Heart….” (♪)“Who Are You? Who, Who? Who, Who?” (♪)“Cause And Affection”“Where Nomenclature Has Gone, Before”“Me, Myself And Identification”“A Bad Moniker Player”“Stranger….And Stranger, Still”“Jock-ularity”or“In One Irrelevant And Put The Other”

Bernice was/is in the same boat, though at the other end. She at least knows a name of someone who’s a “potential interest”, but not much else, behind it..-And would also ‘keep mentioning’ it….

I thought Luann went to a community college & Bernice went to a state college. That would explain why Bernice and the rest live on a dorm on campus while the community college Luann lives with Mom & Dad.

Bernice never misses an opportunity to mount a snark attack.

WHATEVER HAPPENED WITH PIRO? guess Bernice let him walk.

My take is that this is Greg poking fun at us readers obsessing over Jock and Goth’s (Emo) real names.

Agreed

I think I’ll stop watching Luann from here on…this is a tedious comic that is losing focus and getting BORING!

7To me, Bernice has focused on the correct aspect of this conversation…. Luann IS mentioning Jock’s casual request for a date…. a lot. To me, this is stimulating Bernice’s “psychology radar” and she is (probably correctly) surmising that Luann does want to go on a date with Jock. I think Luann is sort of dismissing going out with Jock…. because he does not fit her stereotypical profile of who she would choose to date. He is someone who is quite a bit different than Quill and quite a bit different than Aaron. Jock is not “dreamy”…. he is more of a regular sort of guy…. a guy who seems nice, seems kind hearted, seems perhaps a tad unfocused, but overall just a regular, nice, sort of guy. The way I hope this arc proceeds is that Luann does go out with him, but instead of romance, they find that they can and want to become great friends. I think this sort of arc could be very enjoyable.As an alternative…. if Greg is wanting Luann to be back in a romance…. would be for Jock and Luann to end up having a very slowly developing romantic interest…. where it is a bit more “real” and not so fantasy oriented like much of Luann’s relationships with Quill and Aaron were. So, even though I think it would be more fun just having them be friends, if Greg needs to have Luann develop a romantic interest with Jock, I hope it goes more “real” and less “fantasy”.

By my count Luann is in her third year of college and STILL LIVES AT HOME. She must be about 20 or 21 years old by now…. When will she star taking on the trappings of a young adult and break away from being a feckless child-woman?

Something tells me that Luann just might give in to going out with the jock guy and Bernice can do nothing to stop her.

It shows that she did not care enough about her classmates to ask. She needs to think about that aspect itself because it shows something she needs to change.Of course, if his family is Scottish then his name really might be Jock, which is the Scottish version of John, Jack, or Jacques (which had been suggested, too). Next scene: caber tossing competition in the park ;-)

Actually, his name is Muncher, because why should such an astonishing name go to waste?

Bern needs to stop psychoanalyzing – it doesn’t suit her, and she has a terrible track record.

Maybe if dude wears a worm suit to class she’d consider saying yes.

Looking very perky today, Lu.

(1) Just how would Bernice know that Luann has been sitting next to Jock in art class all year? (It’s actually been 2 years, but hey.) Has Luann dropped his name before, in conversations with Bernice? That shows that she does in fact have at least some interest in him.(2) Maybe his actual given name is “Jock”, and his surname is in fact “Guy”.(3) Did Luann ever learn Quill’s last name? Or did she introduce him to her friends formally as “Quill Exclamation Point”?

oh crap.. are we back to this? Is Luann going to actually call him…?….can’t we have a story line on Luann that doesn’t involve relationships…. I’m guessing the answer is no..

I Want You to Want MeBy Cheap Trick.“I want you to want meI need you to need meI’d love you to love meI’m begging you to beg meI want you to want meI need you to need meI’d love you to love me”. Not that she cares for him but that she likes that somebody cares for heror at least desires her..Part of being group or pack or herd animals, I suspect

It’s good for her ego. And she didn’t have to chase after him, Bernice…

I personally have no problem w Luann casually dating while she figures herself out and i definitely want to see her social circle increase. After all, that is part of growth. A person does not grow only through study, but also through interactions.I am far from any expert on the formal study of interactions, but have quietly wondered at times if workaholics might (at least for some) suffer from the social interaction fears and loss of control fears of agoraphobia, just without the location fear that physically shuts people in. Work is closely defined, more controllable (if a person has the right job or position) than family or friendships, etc.To me, a wider base of socialization and certainly increased respect toward the people with whom she shared an art class table for her entire freshman year (as well as for others to come) coukd be a help for Luann in pretty much every aspect of life as time goes on through the skills, tolerance of differences, and learning of different viewpoints that woukd be accrued.Does that mean i want her bogged down in a romance regularly? Of course NOT. There are many shades of gray in friendships and in dating. Argy2, that offer to seek services which might be available was a real one. The reason i used the example of caregiver is because i still remember what a huge help the county nurse was when Mom was terminal, not only for Mom, either. Being able to get out and have a couple of hours of walking and relaxing lifted a lot of burden for me, just as Dad’s time caring for her so i coukd do a martial arts class twice a week also helped me refresh and revivify. So, it was just an example i personally know. (Yes, we really mended some hurts, with healing and forgiveness when a person considers earlier years, but that is just part of health and healing.)

I thought “Pitts Community College” was the name we all assumed for it. Maybe it is in fact the “Local Junior College” named for its founder, Abner Local, Jr.

-I went back and read it, thanks for taking the time to explain your thoughts and experiences…

Here’s how it is identified:

Just wait until she finds out that Jock is New England quarterback Tom Brady’s nephew ……….. she’ll be deflated. And, no hanging out with tom’s wife, “Aunt” Gisele Bundchin and her Hollywood buddies. Tiffany would jump at that chance, if she hadn’t already fallen in love with Gunther.

Argy2, they have been sitting next to each other conversing through two semesters. A person would figure that at some point someone would ask, “What is your name?” as equal students, or even peek at a project or paper to see. It really is not so hard to care about others and extend that respect toward them, with gender having nothing to do w it. Of course, they might have become used to the prof’s nicknames, but in that case the two fellow students know she is Luann rather than Miss Degroot, so they have shown more respect on that regard. Gender really does not matter with such a basic form of respect. Unless i have asked someone else’s name recently or that person has asked mine i have NO idea who introduced first because it just does not matter. Women are as capable of that kindness as men are and should not be more lax.So, my disappointment at the lack of that basic thing takes into account the timeframe.Now, if they had just recently met and he wanted to ask her out, of course he would introduce himself, as would she in the reversed situation. But they have chatted for an entire school year and the others know her name, and not just her surname which the prof uses.Asking his name would not make her romantically interested in him; it is just a standard part of human conversation.You wrote:argy.bargy2 said, 13 minutes ago@SukieCrandallI keep asking this and no one answers. Probably because there isn’t a logical answer. Here goes: why is it assumed to be the responsibility of a woman in a casual conversation among classmates (who don’t hang out together afterwards) for all the biographical info? Especially if a guy is thinking of asking a female classmate out, shouldn’t he introduce himself to her?

By the end of the semester, I knew the names of all the students in every one of my classes, and I’m not a very socially outgoing person. It’s just the sort of thing that naturally comes up in the course of being with the same group of people, 3 hours a week, week after week.

Argy2, it sounds like you need a distracting activity or three while healing from that horror. It might pay for a while to stick to ones over which you have more control. As stramge as it might sound tae kwon do helped me hugely during Mom’s illness. Punching and kicking the air was a huge stress release. Dancing to music that makes me smile is also a real way to reduce tension (and i am a terrible dancer but it is an activity which generates happiness). Watching movies that make me smile or laugh helps, too. I am not usually a straight comedy person but a lot of people are helped by that, for me adventure comedy works. Getting away into nature also helps me personally, as does creating something. When a specific individual is being remembered then funny stories from a person’s life provides balance.Those are just things that work for me. You will have your own flavor of them.It is extremely hard to live somewhere where many people are in mourning at the same time. That happened here after 9/11. Even people who did not lose someone they knew often knew someone who had. It is like the entire area is thrown under a dark cloud for a while. In that situation helping each other and using techniques like those i mentioned – but with your own twist to them – truly DO help. If something else is not optimal then spoil yourself and leave it for a later time if that option exists. You have earned spoiling yourself.

Agreed. Crystal is more of a Goth and Luann’s brooding dark art classmate is classic Emo.

According to recent strips, Luann has just completed her first year.

Which means we have yet another “suspension of disbelief” going on … Bernice became a RA midway through her freshman year?.Totally outside the limits of probability.

Oh… this particular message is specifically for Sheriff:You asked me in yesterday’s comment section what I “profess to profess about”. I did not see the comment from you until much later in the evening yesterday, and so I planned on responding to you here this morning right away. Unfortunately, perhaps I needed more coffee, I forgot to respond this morning. So, to answer your question:I am a biology professor. My research revolves around studying the development of the nervous and endocrine systems.

A heads up for Sheriff:It is on the use of colors for specific moods and themes in films: https://vimeo.com/169046276

Okay, for everyone who thinks that Luann knowing people’s names and mentioning them in her dialogue are so important ….I went back over the first six months of the strip from 1985, and found these key dates:.Although Bernice turned up in the fourth strip (March 20), we did not know her last name is Halper until September 29. That was the same day we learned Delta’s last name is James..We had only found out Luann’s last name is DeGroot one month earlier, in the August 25 strip..Gunther had been mentioned by name (but his last name was originally spelled “Burger”) several times, the first being on May 6, but we still had not seen him by the end of September..Knute and Crystal were not introduced during that first six months, although we did see Tiffany in the September 22 strip, still unnamed..Noting that Bernice and Delta were in the strip much more often during that first six months than Jock and Emo have been in the last 500 or so days (first appearance January 26, 2015), it no longer seems odd, does it …

It does appear that Luann is more interested in Jocko than she had let on previously. Of course, Bernice is no real help….

As to the question of whether Luann should know Mr. Jock’s name even if he had never introduced himself … yes, she should. Remember the art show last year? Notice that Luann’s mask has a label beneath it which says (if you view it large) “LUANN by Luann DeGroot.” So the artworks had the makers’ names on labels beneath them.So Mr. Goth and Mr. Jock should have had their names on the labels for their works:You can see that Jock’s toilet artwork is labeled “PLOPS by” but his name is cut off below the panel. Meanwhile, Goth’s empty pedestal is labeled “VOID” but his name is too small to read in the strip.So even if Luann didn’t know Goth and Jock’s names before, she could have learned their names at the art show.

http://www.gocomics.com/luann/2015/08/31

Eric seems to be the first person to note that it did not make sense for Bernice to be an RA. I do not even see notes from me so i must have been thinking along those same lines and reading the replies to others, but my eye is worn out trying to skim a few days, and i can not find what i was trying to recall, Kym.

Hopefully the date will happen! Rife with opportunity for humor, especially if “Emo” goes along. I love the way he translates Luann’s emotions to Jock. (could Jock’s last name be Kitch?)

> Why should you care? It isn’t important.Luann itself isn’t important, since it’s just a comic strip. It’s merely supposed to be amusing, entertaining, and perhaps even thought-provoking and emotionally gripping, but not “important”. That said, it ought at least to be interesting, and obviously a lot of people are interested in what Des’s last name is. For instance, that might help indicate her ethnicity, which is a subject that the strip has skirted while showing us her eclectic tastes in room decor, incense burning, and “Destiny Decks”.

Naming her “Sun” was not the stereotype. Drawing her with closed slits for eyes and a permanent grin filling up 2/3 of her face was the stereotype.

ah, but they both do like dogs!

> So you like it that she is gone?If she were going to continue to look like that, then yes, I’m glad she’s gone. I suspect her character will make some more appearances over time, however, with a more nearly realistic-looking depiction.

“I narrowed it down to Schizotypal Personality Disorder. In both the mild depression and SPD the person seems to see a bit more of reality than ordinarily experienced. Some of what is filtered out isn’t in myself.” .I think some of reality is filtered out too.You often treat one vampire myth as valid and others as invalid, rather than all simply being imaginary..If we were restricted to reality, none of us could enjoy comics strips. I read that George Washington couldn’t understand enjoying novels when there real subjects to read.He must have missed a lot..Just accepting as fact whatever anyone says or writes is unwise, because we all are wrong every now and — well, everybody else anyway. (“That’s a joke, I say that’s a joke son,” to quote Foghorn Leghorn.)

“Here goes: why is it assumed to be the responsibility of a woman in a casual conversation among classmates (who don’t hang out together afterwards) for all the biographical info?”.Possibly because women have heard of this assumption.I never did until tonight, right here..Years back a fellow I had just met started asking questions about me and my background.I decided to speed things up by giving a short bio: name (see above), birth date (October 6, 1954 12 noon on a Wednesday), college major (ME), whatever else came to mind.Then he acted like we were best friends because I had shared so much..In general, though, I assume nobody cares so I tend to neither ask nor tell. (sounds gay, doesn’t it? interesting.)

Didn’t they ever call the role in Zebu’s class? That was the only thing we saw happen in Prof. Raine’s class. Anyway, it seems unusual that you could go through a whole year sitting beside someone and not see his name written down even once on a notebook or a homework assignment or a test paper.-

N-G:

Very interesting that I too have read parts of Taylor’s work and found it very interesting and valuable. The part you cite about depression and seeing more of reality is something that always felt quite true to me. In periods where I had deepest melancholy, it did often feel as if I would perceive too much, and I would want it to stop, even if it were more “real” and accurate… because it would also be harsher and more painful.