▸ Column · Modern grounded comic — present-day family text-thread era, Wade answering reader mail between jobs
DEADPOOL replies.
The letter
My husband's sister, Renata, has RSVP'd "yes" to six family things in two years — two birthday dinners, a graduation brunch, a cookie swap, and, the kicker, my daughter's quinceañera — and attended a grand total of none. The cancellation text always lands somewhere between an hour before and three hours after start time. Here's what makes it weird: she's not estranged. She calls my husband every Sunday, mails the kids birthday gifts, and sincerely thinks of herself as a plugged-in, present member of this family. Last month I special-ordered a whole separate cake tier for her dietary restrictions; that night's excuse was that she "lost track of time" mid-Netflix-binge. I want to quit counting her for headcount and catering. My husband says cutting her from invites would detonate a bigger fight than just eating the wasted food and the hurt. Is there a graceful way to tell somebody their RSVP is now officially worth nothing to me — without torching the whole relationship?
Deadpool replies
Oh, a no-show who phones every Sunday? Reader, they handed me a softball and I'm fictional, so I have to swing. — Renata isn't flaky. Flaky is forgetting once. Six-for-six with the apology text timed like a hostage proof-of-life is a SYSTEM. And here's the part I know in my disfigured bones: she's not skipping you because she doesn't care. She's doing the thing I do. The Sunday call, the birthday gift — that's the bit. It's love with zero risk. Nobody can reject you at a party you never walk into. Showing up is the one true sentence, and she's letting the gifts talk so she never has to.
But — and I'm putting the chimichanga down — that's HER wound, not your catering budget. You're allowed to stop bankrolling a relationship that only exists in the mail. Keep inviting her. Door stays open, always. Just tell her the true thing, flat: "You're family, I love you, and I'm not ordering your special cake tier until you're actually standing in my kitchen to eat it." That's not nuking anybody. That's just no longer paying for a chair that's been empty since 2024.
...And tell your husband "absorbing it" is a personality, not a plan.
— Deadpool
Wolverine weighs in
Wade. Buddy. You spent three jokes excusing her before you got to it. — Six times she told you what she is. Not with the text. With her feet. That's the only language I trust, and it's already fluent. Quit readin' her tea leaves. Take her off the count, stop spendin' money on a maybe, done. The door stays cracked, fine — but the real problem ain't Renata. It's the husband. He'd rather you swallow the wasted food and the hurt than make his sister uncomfortable for one afternoon. That's him pickin' her over you, and callin' it keepin' the peace. Tell HIM that. Plain.
— Wolverine
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