Great question! There have been a few other people who have come off a little confused by it (and no sore wounds here). 

This might be one of the side-effects of a webcomic and the uploading pace - there have been a lot of small things that people have latched onto and considered MUCH more important than they actually are - or maybe it’s just the fault in my writing in that this was badly placed amongst some important scenes around it and I didn’t focus the writing on the subtleties. Or maybe something else entirely. 

What happens in the scene isn’t specifically the theme of the scene, to be honest. It’s more about showing another aspect of Charlie’s self-loathing - that she’s shamed of buying smokes, and then takes the long way home to avoid anyone seeing her that she might know. 

It’s also about showing a little background for Charlie - that she has a bit of a walking routine going on, and that she used to have a cat that she misses. 

And on another level, it’s about showing the kind of random camaraderie that happens amongst smokers. Might not be something that resonates with non-smokers, and I don’t think I mentioned this in the narration for the scene, but most smokers have had that kind of moment where you share a smoke with a stranger. 

I also made sure to purposefully avoid Raj or Charlie flirting with each other (cut it out of the script, actually), because I was getting conscious of how close Charlie could become a Mary Sue character where everyone just INEXPLICABLY have the hots for her. That’s just not the way reality works, despite how fun it is to write flirting. 

» Asked by Anonymous