A story about messy relationships. From friendly foes to crazy families. Nothing is black and white, just full of color. But, all colors can get a little hazy...
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Velinxi
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Anacrine Complex
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Knights Errant
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How to be a Werewolf
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The Otherknown
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The Witch Door
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You implied that “yaoi fangirls” *wouldn’t* want their boyfriends to be gay, which doesn’t really make sense in that context. I’m assuming that the joke was that they *would* want them to be gay so that they could watch.
Aizat was responding to the implied sarcasm. With that said The Kelliest Kelly statment really means it would be bad to have a gay BF as a girl (you probably knew that, I just needed to say it.)
So with that said, AIzat was saying it could be a good thing for Yaoi fangirls to have a gay BF
That wasn’t a particularly controversial joke. Inaccurate and silly, because
a.) as has been pointed out, bisexual boyfriends are the way to go if you’re hoping for a show
b.) a majority (or at least a very vocal minority) of yaoi fangirls have too much internalized misogyny to want any gay boy to have a girlfriend, girls being in the picture at all ruins things
c.) many yaoi fangirls are underaged, not actually heterosexual, or just otherwise very much not interested in having a boyfriend at all, gay or otherwise
but… not controversial.
You’re poking fun at a subsection of fandom generally reviled as weird, gross, and creepy. You’ve also said more offensive stuff in the past, and have rarely been called out on it. So I don’t know why you’re bracing for impact now.
I knew a yaoi fangirl who wanted to marry a gay man and have, and I quote, “gay babies.” She called me a racist when I told her it doesn’t work that way. She absolutely hated women, especially lesbians, and was completely off her rocker. And I knew this person IRL.
Okay, but, you know that the one you knew doesn’t detract at all from my thesis, right? The internalized misogyny feature especially doesn’t. And I’m all too well-aware of the subsection that thinks lesbianism is super super gross. (Which is, to be fair, noooot much different or worse than the subsection of the male population that thinks lesbianism is awesome and hot but that gay dudes are disgusting and horrible.) (Except that homophobic yaoi fangirls tend to actually espouse things like gay rights [for men] while also thinking lesbians should stop existing anywhere near them ew.)
I once hated these people a lot. I really did. I was in the slash fandom myself, and I still am, and it was disquieting and discouraging to have peers who, you know, felt comfortable saying that people like me were gross. I’ve never really gotten over that, since it was coupled with real life friends also indicating more than once that my being “too” into girls made them super uncomfortable. I’m still incredibly uncomfortable expressing my sexuality, even just in words.
But I also recognize that the internalized misogyny is not directly their fault. Hating women is pretty much the patriarchy’s fault. Lots of young girls lash out as a result of being told for more than a decade of their lives that pink moms and princesses are all they’re allowed to be, and from spending all their lives with media where the only female characters allowed to exist are The Exceptional Woman. (Note that I don’t think calling out BtVS for this is especially fair, but it still defines the term pretty well.)
I know, right? It’s meaningless ball chasing and has little to no visible variation. If I’m gonna do something meaningless, I want a little more imagination in it. Give me fiction or give me death by extreme boredom!
I still have my “I Harbor Perverse Sexual Lust” t-shirt. I loved wearing it:
1) on auto trips through the Bible belt, where I got all sorts of interesting looks and comments and I would walk around chuckling all day, and
2) a few years later in Japan, where almost nobody understood it and I got to walk around chuckling all day for entirely different reasons.
No, she thinks Ethan broke it off with Joyce after she caught him at the pizza place. She assumed that Joyce being told Ethan was gay would eb the end of things.
Personally, I’m waiting for Joyce’s mom to remember a Christian cartoon that is a direct ripoff of Dexter and Monkey Master and there to be a cutaway to…I dunno, Billy and Ape Apostle.
oh. OH.
I’m slow, it took me a minute to realize that Joyce is talking about a character doing exactly what she’s doing.
okay.
I think it’s naptime for me.
Oh, apparently the ouch is me belatedly realizing that, meta joke aside, Joyce and her family’s reactions are terribly similar to me and my family’s reactions to similar conversations.
It’s actually that all these people who hate him? Were him. And it embarrasses them to be reminded of that pathetic period in their late teens/early twenties and thus overreact in their rejection of him.
It’s a fandom tradition, much like everyone in the Gunnerkrigg Court fandom hates Botbox. Maybe it’s a kind of irony, because he’s actually one of the least hateable characters in the verse; he’s just… kind of bland.
Naomi hates her son for being gay. Which means she could have been a great mom before he came out and may possibly resume such role in the future if she ever gets over it. Danny’s parents genuinely seem to not like Danny for who he is, and that never goes away.
I love that you covered that even if it is a decision, there’s nothing wrong with that. “Born this way” might be true, and might not, but either way it’s fine. =) *thumbs up*
I was really happy about that too. I feel that far too often people focus strictly on the genetic predisposition side of the argument, and they tend to tacitly accept the implication that CHOICES regarding sexuality are invalid. This isn’t really a defensible position in consideration of the non-binary nature of orientations and sexuality.
Agreed. I also have a lot of trouble with relying purely on innateness as justification from the perspective that a real scientific finding that sexual orientation is innate lends creedence to the argument that “deviant” sexual orientations are pathological and can/should be “cured”.
Isn’t it funny how no matter if someone blames God’s plan, genetics or a person’t choice for their homosexuality, their actual complaint with homosexuality always boils down to “I don’t think they’re as good as real people because they’re different”. Every time. You can always tell if someone’s heart is in the right place, no matter how confused they are about how homosexuality works, by looking at if they treat it like a problem or not.
I never thought that. I just thought “well if that’s the premise for your prejudice and even that’s factually wrong, you can either change your mind and admit you were wrong or admit that the only reason you’re making this an issue is because you think gay people are icky”. It forces the issue and saying “that doesn’t matter” whether that’s true or not feels like I’m leaving the point unaddressed which I hate to do.
You know what’s funny? Lots of homophobes, especially religious ones, reject the innateness argument too: in their view, it’s a way of excusing gays on the grounds that “they’re born that way and they can’t help it”. Basically, both gays and homophobes tend to dislike the idea of genetic predisposition, for diametrically opposed reasons.
The key issue is whether we have free will, either at all, or with respect to orientation per se. I tend to side with the idea that we don’t have classical free will. No one I know seems to have been the conscious author of their sexuality. They may have come to a conscious awareness and acceptance of it, but that’s not really the same thing. As long as that’s true it doesn’t matter whether orientation is inate, genetic, epigenetic, environmental, et al. If it’s just the way one finds oneself and one can thrive and flourish without magnifying the relative suffering of others by living it out, then it should be fine to do so.
Most of the non-straight people I know who dislike the focus on genetic causes are not really upset because their free will is being taken away, but because the implication is this:
“Well, if little Johnny could control being gay, we would want him not to be, of course! But since he can’t, we have to accept him.”
In other words, they feel that by “resorting” to this argument, you’re accepting that being gay or bi or trans or asexual is a bad thing to be discouraged. So, they respond with, “Who cares if it’s a choice or not? Screw you, it shouldn’t matter because it’s not a bad choice.”
And I can see where they’re coming from on this, but I can’t get behind it, because as long as homophobic people continue to have non-straight children it is desperately important that we drill it into their heads that they can’t change their kids.
Get everyone to accept that the “bad thing” is unfixable so that more stuff like Exodus International shutting the hell down happens, to save these kids, and then we can focus on reminding everyone that it’s also not a bad thing to be.
As someone who makes the argument and sincerely believes that, in our present climate, no one would choose to be anything other than straight and cisgendered — I can also add that for me this is not because I think it’s wrong to be gay/bi/a/trans but because I think it’s harder to be gay/bi/a/trans. As soon as we eliminate the forces that make that true, I think we’ll start seeing a lot more sexual diversity.
(I also think that once we stop defining gender so rigidly, we’ll start to see both more and fewer trans people, because if the only difference between being a man and being a woman could ever truly be the genitalia that comes along with it — then I’m willing to bet that fewer people would feel so uncomfortable in their boxes to begin with. So we’d see more blurred lines, but maybe fewer people who felt like they’d been born wrong. Which would be a really good thing, because feeling like you’ve been born wrong is awful to go through… right now.)
(We’d also probably see more non-binary-sexed people, because the pressure to perform surgery on newborn babies would evaporate, and so on. It would be a very different and much more welcoming world for everyone. Sigh. I want to go to there…)
Okay, that’s… kind of weird. (That you think you’re a far better person because of it.) You mean because you overcame adversity?
But either I misspoke or you misinterpreted. Let me clarify: I don’t think people would choose to be gay at the outset. That’s slightly different from saying I think every gay / bi / trans / asexual person out there would change if they could. I definitely don’t believe the latter. And your comment indicates that you went through a transformative experience, which is something people usually try to avoid but don’t usually regret.
Change is hard and change is painful. But we appreciate the fruits of our labors all the more afterwards. As you are currently demonstrating.
Reiterating: I didn’t mean to say that all current gay/bi/trans/a people would choose to be heterosexual cisgender people now. I meant that it isn’t a road [let’s back it up and say “most”] people would opt to go down initially, because it is undeniably harder and more painful.
There is a world of difference between “I would change now if I could, and give up all that I am and the people I’ve loved” and “I think kids with budding sexualities aren’t choosing to be gay because they think it’s nifty”. I meant the latter, not the former.
Well, if I could go back in time and turn myself from bi to straight as a child, my wife would still kill me, following me through time and intercepting me before I got to my younger self. Because I’d leave her directions.
But seriously speaking, the pain and hardships etc have always been worth it to me. Even as a child, being in love with my only friend and knowing that telling her about it could only drive her away from me, I’d never have chosen to make those feelings go away just to make it easier on myself. I thought, then, that to feel so strongly was worth something in itself, even if there was bad stuff along with the good; and that my friend deserved to be felt so strongly for.
(I didn’t think it in so many fancy words, though.)
Yeah, maybe most people might think differently, as you say, although I can only speak for myself, and I’m loath to think that “most people” would do worse in a given situation than I would. Some people, certainly.
If we only lean heavily on the “unchangeable”/innate/genetically predetermined stance then we don’t change the opposition that bi/homosexuality is bad, we merely reinforce that it’s only tolerable because it’s unchangeable.
Until it isn’t. If it does end up to be changeable/preventable then we won’t have actually undermined the argument that bi/homosexuality is bad. We’re just temporarily postponing the argument under the guise of tolerance until such time as it is changeable/preventable.
Additionally, while it’s arguable whether or not sexual orientation can change, many people discover their orientation is not necessarily what they thought it was once or more over their lifetimes. This fluidity needs to be accommodated and doesn’t neatly fit into the innateness concept. It doesn’t mean we are actively deciding, or that sexual orientation can be consciously changed, but change does happen and we need to work to make that acceptable.
I’m not saying “born this way” is a bad argument, I’m saying it can’t be the only argument.
I also think if you do some polling, you’ll find plenty of people who would choose to be non-straight and even non-cis all over again because of how it shaped their lives, identities, and social circles.
I know it’s not true of everyone but if I had opportunity to re-roll my stats in life, I’m happy to say there are other aspects of myself I’m far less comfortable with than my sexuality I would be more inclined to tweak (a few more points in charisma and dexterity would be nice).
If we only lean heavily on the “unchangeable”/innate/genetically predetermined stance then we don’t change the opposition that bi/homosexuality is bad, we merely reinforce that it’s only tolerable because it’s unchangeable.
Yeah, I addressed this point. I said that if you get them to accept that first, then you’ve got more of a leg to stand on with getting them to accept that it’s not just tolerable but acceptable, period, at which point it wouldn’t matter what science said.
But so far all the science and social studies say it’s unchangeable. Big ex-gay rally had a grand total of ten people show up who claimed to have been changed, and even those ten are probably lying to themselves. So I don’t think this is actually a real concern.
So, you’re saying “born this way” can’t be the only argument — but so was I. I just think it’s a better starter argument.
I think a lot of the debate around this issue stems from a confusing choice of words. I’ve always been of the opinion that genetics determine, at most, 50% of what/who you are; the rest is shaped by your upbringing, early life experiences and other non-genetic factors. But sexuality is never a “choice”: you don’t just get up one day and decide that you’re going to like boys or girls; it’s something that just happens. You can’t “choose” to be gay or bi. You can choose between accepting your sexuality or rejecting it, living in denial or being true to yourself; that is the choice that LGBT people refer to (correct me if I’m wrong), and that’s what I understand whenever someone says “I chose to be gay”. But I’ve seen a lot of people get confused about the matter.
So far Ethan’s dad seems like the native American guy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He stands around listening to his wife talk crazy the whole time until he can’t take it anymore, smothers her with a pillow, then throws a sink through the window and runs away into the sunset.
I’m interested to see where this goes with Ethan’s mom. I’m not entirely it’s so much that Ethan’s mom is a homophobe as that she really doesn’t understand, the same way that Joyce didn’t think Ethan was evil for being homosexual, but didn’t understand it was about more than “resisting sexual urges.” But with Ethan’s mom, she has the added worry for Ethan’s wellbeing as his mom, and she may be lashing out against Amber out of fear for Ethan’s well being. It still isn’t easy in our society to be homosexual, even though it’s definitely getting better, and I can understand a parent being afraid for the discrimination their child will face while loving them just as much as before.
Or, maybe she is as bad as she looks here. (shrug)
I was raised Mormon and I actually have a lot of friends who are in “Mixed Orientaiton Marriage” where one person is gay and the other is straight. I’ve seen it work to varying degrees, but some of them are actually very happy. I don’t think it would work for Ethan but it’s definitely a situation I could see Ethan and Joyce finding themselves in.
Well the meaning of mixed orientation here is that their orientations are different – one person is homosexual and one person is heterosexual. I have a few friends who it’s working for, at least right now, but almost everybody I’ve ever met it ends in heartbreak. They think they’ll beat the odds, but then five, ten, fifteen years later the marriage ends and it’s awful for everybody, especially because there’s often children involved.
I just realized that the kind of cutaway Joyce is describing is exactly the kind of cutaway that occurs between the penultimate and ultimate panels. Wheels within wheels, Willis.
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lol I see what you did there
Jinx!
I think you mean ‘Jinkies’
I see what you did there…
I ‘see’ what YOU did there.
I can’t see a thing without my glasses!
Darnit, wrong email address..
Sadly, I JUST got it.
Man I really wanna punch Naomi in the face.
Just Blue scadoo into the comic, then.
We could do that? Why I wasn’t informed?
You’ve never blue scadoo’d into a webcomic before? You should go back and try it out in the archives. A lot of interesting possibilities out there.
Especially any of them involving Billie.
I can only Leeroy into webcomics.
Blue scadoo, we can too!
SOUND EFFECT AND SPINNYNESS
Triple side flip into webcomic!
I just tried.
I shouldn’t be left home alone
I see what you did there
Right, because what girl WOULDN’T want her boyfriend to be gay?
Is that sarcasm or are you extolling the virtues of gay men?
The avatar makes think sarcasm even if it is just a default avatar.
No, it’s totally serious. Think about the fashion! The sharing! The discussions of feelings!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to vomit from thinking of a relationship that sincerely involves those things.
Yaoi fangirls? And here comes the storm.
You just said the opposite of what you were trying to say.
[/storm]
Come again?
You implied that “yaoi fangirls” *wouldn’t* want their boyfriends to be gay, which doesn’t really make sense in that context. I’m assuming that the joke was that they *would* want them to be gay so that they could watch.
Actually, wouldn’t that really imply they want their boyfriends to be bisexual?
I’d agree with you there, but what Aizat said still doesn’t make sense, even with that interpretation.
Aizat was responding to the implied sarcasm. With that said The Kelliest Kelly statment really means it would be bad to have a gay BF as a girl (you probably knew that, I just needed to say it.)
So with that said, AIzat was saying it could be a good thing for Yaoi fangirls to have a gay BF
You’re expecting Yaoi fangirls to be entirely too reasonable.
That wasn’t a particularly controversial joke. Inaccurate and silly, because
a.) as has been pointed out, bisexual boyfriends are the way to go if you’re hoping for a show
b.) a majority (or at least a very vocal minority) of yaoi fangirls have too much internalized misogyny to want any gay boy to have a girlfriend, girls being in the picture at all ruins things
c.) many yaoi fangirls are underaged, not actually heterosexual, or just otherwise very much not interested in having a boyfriend at all, gay or otherwise
but… not controversial.
You’re poking fun at a subsection of fandom generally reviled as weird, gross, and creepy. You’ve also said more offensive stuff in the past, and have rarely been called out on it. So I don’t know why you’re bracing for impact now.
I knew a yaoi fangirl who wanted to marry a gay man and have, and I quote, “gay babies.” She called me a racist when I told her it doesn’t work that way. She absolutely hated women, especially lesbians, and was completely off her rocker. And I knew this person IRL.
Okay, but, you know that the one you knew doesn’t detract at all from my thesis, right? The internalized misogyny feature especially doesn’t. And I’m all too well-aware of the subsection that thinks lesbianism is super super gross. (Which is, to be fair, noooot much different or worse than the subsection of the male population that thinks lesbianism is awesome and hot but that gay dudes are disgusting and horrible.) (Except that homophobic yaoi fangirls tend to actually espouse things like gay rights [for men] while also thinking lesbians should stop existing anywhere near them ew.)
I once hated these people a lot. I really did. I was in the slash fandom myself, and I still am, and it was disquieting and discouraging to have peers who, you know, felt comfortable saying that people like me were gross. I’ve never really gotten over that, since it was coupled with real life friends also indicating more than once that my being “too” into girls made them super uncomfortable. I’m still incredibly uncomfortable expressing my sexuality, even just in words.
But I also recognize that the internalized misogyny is not directly their fault. Hating women is pretty much the patriarchy’s fault. Lots of young girls lash out as a result of being told for more than a decade of their lives that pink moms and princesses are all they’re allowed to be, and from spending all their lives with media where the only female characters allowed to exist are The Exceptional Woman. (Note that I don’t think calling out BtVS for this is especially fair, but it still defines the term pretty well.)
ugh formatting fail
Hei, I’m a yaoi fangirl though I’m a mostly straight guy. Mostly because I’ve never heard of a term for the (mostly) straight men that like yaoi.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-YCdcnf_P8 they will marry your girlfriends
XD
Took me a bit to get it.
Ba Dum Tss!
And now the mother has the awkward polite smile.
Carol actually might just have an open moth for speech, but it is kinda hard to tell with David’s white-open-mouth style of coloring.
She’s still speaking awkwardly with a smile though.
But what about the open butterflies?
At least Amber wont be there when the two families meet.
Don’t tempt Fate, squall.
Oh yes. The forum walls have ears.
Where is the forum?
Dunno. I was going there, but something funny happened on the way.
It’s the big building towards the center of town. You passed it on the way to the fire-juggling clowns.
Actually, a forum is a clearing in the center of town, not an actual building. A fine detail, but an important one.
Good one!
Where would she be when the shitstorm begins?
Probably walking in on her mother and dr Rosenthal.
And the shitstorm just doubled in intensity.
A veritable shitnado
The sequel to sharknado.
From what I’ve heard, it’s the same thing again, except less teeth.
But with more shit.
What’s worst is the scene where it hits the fan. Cuz they built a giant fan to blow it away, but it didn’t work.
Was that before or after it filled the creek and blew away their paddle?
It’s after it flew downwards.
That’s right. It had just finished blowing right out of Lucy Cluck’s farm.
Actually, most of it came from Washington DC. There was already a lot of bull flying through the air.
Nah Sharknado 2 is in New York. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jul/17/sharknado-sequel-greenlit
If anything, shitnado is the prequel
Something tells me this will be a silly as the grumpy cat movie.
Yeah, it’ll be like one and a half hours of people running from crappy CGI effect that is the shitnado.
CGI? I don’t think they could afford CGI in Shitnado.
Wait, that was real shit?
They’ll need gallons of chocolate sauce. Or maybe shit. Depends on their budget.
For more graphic browns, they used food coloring. Apparently real isn’t real enough anymore
Did you know horses don’t actually make an audible clip cloop?
On cobblestones I can hear them. But I have sensitive ears. Also it’s cobblestone.
A sharkalanche?
Personally, I think Sci-Fi should just take all the crappy shark movies they’ve done and bring them together for The Sharkvengers.
….boy, Naomi’s going to take back EVERYTHING she said when THAT happens!
I make glaciers seem quick sometimes.
They’re both equally mind-linked to the baseball game, as guys do.
whoops wrong reply, damn.
It may be wrong but it feels sooo right.
…I’m unconvinced that Joyce’s father and brother aren’t currently sharing a mind-link.
They’re both equally mind-linked to the baseball game, as guys do. o3o
Not me, I pretty much the only guy in the world who is not mind-linked to any sporting events.
Not the only one. Sports are so hideously boring I can’t even understand the concept of enjoying them.
I think it’s football that they’re thinking about, given that this is late summer/early fall.
And by football, I mean the football that literally no one but America calls football.
You mean American Football?
Or as I like to call it Rugby in Denial.
Do you ever actually kick the “ball” with your foot in “American Football”?
Yes. On the kickoff. And during a field goal attempt. And when trying for the extra point.
Good. I’m glad that the name has at least some connection to the actual game XD
I know, right? It’s meaningless ball chasing and has little to no visible variation. If I’m gonna do something meaningless, I want a little more imagination in it. Give me fiction or give me death by extreme boredom!
Which ones baseball again? The one with the hoops?
I actually don’t understand why guys find it so entertaining. It bores me to tears.
From what I can glean, the purpose of baseball is to drink beer.
That’s beer pong. Similar, yes, but smaller bats.
Based upon every game I’ve been to, I have to admit, it’s not a bad theory.
Ah dunno man, Ah was like dat, bu’den I seent Bo Jackson.
Ah didn’ know sport ’till Ah got tah know Bo.
Bo knows baseball. Khrene knows Bo. Therefore, Khrene knows baseball.
You’re half right – the purpose of baseball is two-fold : drink beer AND eat hot dogs.
I actually like baseball… by which I mean I like it marginally better than other sports, which I am apathetic to.
No silly, it’s the one where the players tackle people carrying a brown thingie that they call a ball.
It’s the one with the flying disk and the bat and the hoop.
http://youtu.be/02_sgXSJch8
Baseball’s the Welsh one. Croquet has the hoops.
And now, Joyce’s mom has that same face Joyce made.
Joyce was pretty much her mom’s clone at the beginning, I think. But now she’s learning new culture.
I love that Monkey Master shirt, but it would probably look hideous on my fat body. :/
Monkey Master compliments all body types!
As we can see here, Monkey Master’s eyebrows are boobs.
Doth thou wanteth to killeth boobs for me?
‘Twould be tits, my lord.
I want Willis to make it an actual shirt. ; – ;
That’s what I’m saying.
I still have my “I Harbor Perverse Sexual Lust” t-shirt. I loved wearing it:
1) on auto trips through the Bible belt, where I got all sorts of interesting looks and comments and I would walk around chuckling all day, and
2) a few years later in Japan, where almost nobody understood it and I got to walk around chuckling all day for entirely different reasons.
Curses. Ethan’s dad moved. Oh well, that’s hardly a shift from his previous position. I’m holding out hope.
I think what Naomi needs is for Ethan to make out with a dude in front of her.
I also need that.
We all do.
Preferably, Jacob.
Yes. And there will be pictures. Both of Ethan making out, and Naomi’s face.
Her FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE?
See, Amber this is what happens when you need some space and don’t monitor Ethan’s stupidity. Friends don’t let friends date Joyce.
And Walky will always be grateful to Dorothy for that.
…but Amber knows.
No, she thinks Ethan broke it off with Joyce after she caught him at the pizza place. She assumed that Joyce being told Ethan was gay would eb the end of things.
Gotta love your ex’s parents…unless they accuse you of making their kid gay….
I smell a motherly freak out over how much she’s talking about Dexter and Monkey Master, stating she used to talk about Jesus like this all the time.
Personally, I’m waiting for Joyce’s mom to remember a Christian cartoon that is a direct ripoff of Dexter and Monkey Master and there to be a cutaway to…I dunno, Billy and Ape Apostle.
“Jesus Chimp and the Tree Apostles.”
This is the most awkward situation I’ve ever seen.
I hate her already.
already? yesterday wasn’t insta-hate?
Her hate transcends through time. Just like the hatred to Justin Bieber.
No, that was just the pre-rinse cycle.
*bangs head against dishwasher*
Don’t bang your head on the dishwasher. Go bang your head against the wall.
Or a desk.
I love how the boy-Browns are looking out through the fourth wall as Joyce gets all meta.
oh. OH.
I’m slow, it took me a minute to realize that Joyce is talking about a character doing exactly what she’s doing.
okay.
I think it’s naptime for me.
Aaand here comes the ouch.
Oh, apparently the ouch is me belatedly realizing that, meta joke aside, Joyce and her family’s reactions are terribly similar to me and my family’s reactions to similar conversations.
Damn.
Joyce’s mother sure is freaked out.
And now the shoe is on the other foot.
I don’t know which one is worse… Ethan’s mom or Danny’s parents.
Well Ethan’s mom is a huge bongo who blames Amber for Ethan “thinking” he’s gay.
Meanwhile Danny’s parents made Danny.
It’s a toss up.
Why does everyone hate Danny so much? I don’t understand.
I do it mostly as a joke now but he can be really obnoxious.
I can’t think of a single character who hasn’t been obnoxious at one point or another.
Danny is obnoxious constantly. Plus as Yotomoe said, it’s just fun.
Except he’s really not that obnoxious. He’s just kind of a putz.
It’s actually that all these people who hate him? Were him. And it embarrasses them to be reminded of that pathetic period in their late teens/early twenties and thus overreact in their rejection of him.
It’s a fandom tradition, much like everyone in the Gunnerkrigg Court fandom hates Botbox. Maybe it’s a kind of irony, because he’s actually one of the least hateable characters in the verse; he’s just… kind of bland.
Naomi by far. I don’t get why people are arguing Danny has it worse.
Someone care to explain?
Naomi hates her son for being gay. Which means she could have been a great mom before he came out and may possibly resume such role in the future if she ever gets over it. Danny’s parents genuinely seem to not like Danny for who he is, and that never goes away.
Worst parents award doesn’t go to Joyce, Danny, OR Ethan! Goes to Billie’s parents for sure.
I feel sad that Ethan and Joyce are in a one sided relationship. They are both great. And they deserve someone who can love them completely.
Haha look there I go, getting all emotional over fictional characters. *reaches for another tissue*
Hey, some of us, if not all of us, got emotional over fictional characters.
I still shed a single manly tear when my favorite characters die.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again: If fictional characters aren’t making you feel something, something has gone wrong somewhere.
Or you’re not emotionally invested.
That’s crazy talk.
No, this is crazy talk: I think the Atari Jaguar is the best console ever made.
You didn’t specify for who. It might still be a valid statement.
… he’s got you there. Clearly, the 3DO was.
That is certainly insane. The best game system is mud-covered stick!
Well, it did have a pretty sweet Alien vs Predator game.
I love that you covered that even if it is a decision, there’s nothing wrong with that. “Born this way” might be true, and might not, but either way it’s fine. =) *thumbs up*
I was really happy about that too. I feel that far too often people focus strictly on the genetic predisposition side of the argument, and they tend to tacitly accept the implication that CHOICES regarding sexuality are invalid. This isn’t really a defensible position in consideration of the non-binary nature of orientations and sexuality.
Agreed. I also have a lot of trouble with relying purely on innateness as justification from the perspective that a real scientific finding that sexual orientation is innate lends creedence to the argument that “deviant” sexual orientations are pathological and can/should be “cured”.
Isn’t it funny how no matter if someone blames God’s plan, genetics or a person’t choice for their homosexuality, their actual complaint with homosexuality always boils down to “I don’t think they’re as good as real people because they’re different”. Every time. You can always tell if someone’s heart is in the right place, no matter how confused they are about how homosexuality works, by looking at if they treat it like a problem or not.
I never thought that. I just thought “well if that’s the premise for your prejudice and even that’s factually wrong, you can either change your mind and admit you were wrong or admit that the only reason you’re making this an issue is because you think gay people are icky”. It forces the issue and saying “that doesn’t matter” whether that’s true or not feels like I’m leaving the point unaddressed which I hate to do.
You know what’s funny? Lots of homophobes, especially religious ones, reject the innateness argument too: in their view, it’s a way of excusing gays on the grounds that “they’re born that way and they can’t help it”. Basically, both gays and homophobes tend to dislike the idea of genetic predisposition, for diametrically opposed reasons.
The key issue is whether we have free will, either at all, or with respect to orientation per se. I tend to side with the idea that we don’t have classical free will. No one I know seems to have been the conscious author of their sexuality. They may have come to a conscious awareness and acceptance of it, but that’s not really the same thing. As long as that’s true it doesn’t matter whether orientation is inate, genetic, epigenetic, environmental, et al. If it’s just the way one finds oneself and one can thrive and flourish without magnifying the relative suffering of others by living it out, then it should be fine to do so.
Most of the non-straight people I know who dislike the focus on genetic causes are not really upset because their free will is being taken away, but because the implication is this:
“Well, if little Johnny could control being gay, we would want him not to be, of course! But since he can’t, we have to accept him.”
In other words, they feel that by “resorting” to this argument, you’re accepting that being gay or bi or trans or asexual is a bad thing to be discouraged. So, they respond with, “Who cares if it’s a choice or not? Screw you, it shouldn’t matter because it’s not a bad choice.”
And I can see where they’re coming from on this, but I can’t get behind it, because as long as homophobic people continue to have non-straight children it is desperately important that we drill it into their heads that they can’t change their kids.
Get everyone to accept that the “bad thing” is unfixable so that more stuff like Exodus International shutting the hell down happens, to save these kids, and then we can focus on reminding everyone that it’s also not a bad thing to be.
As someone who makes the argument and sincerely believes that, in our present climate, no one would choose to be anything other than straight and cisgendered — I can also add that for me this is not because I think it’s wrong to be gay/bi/a/trans but because I think it’s harder to be gay/bi/a/trans. As soon as we eliminate the forces that make that true, I think we’ll start seeing a lot more sexual diversity.
(I also think that once we stop defining gender so rigidly, we’ll start to see both more and fewer trans people, because if the only difference between being a man and being a woman could ever truly be the genitalia that comes along with it — then I’m willing to bet that fewer people would feel so uncomfortable in their boxes to begin with. So we’d see more blurred lines, but maybe fewer people who felt like they’d been born wrong. Which would be a really good thing, because feeling like you’ve been born wrong is awful to go through… right now.)
(We’d also probably see more non-binary-sexed people, because the pressure to perform surgery on newborn babies would evaporate, and so on. It would be a very different and much more welcoming world for everyone.
Sigh. I want to go to there…)
No, if given the option I’d still choose my gayness. It’s played a huge part in my character development and I’m a far better person for it.
Okay, that’s… kind of weird. (That you think you’re a far better person because of it.) You mean because you overcame adversity?
But either I misspoke or you misinterpreted. Let me clarify: I don’t think people would choose to be gay at the outset. That’s slightly different from saying I think every gay / bi / trans / asexual person out there would change if they could. I definitely don’t believe the latter. And your comment indicates that you went through a transformative experience, which is something people usually try to avoid but don’t usually regret.
Change is hard and change is painful. But we appreciate the fruits of our labors all the more afterwards. As you are currently demonstrating.
Heck no. My wife would kill me.
Reiterating: I didn’t mean to say that all current gay/bi/trans/a people would choose to be heterosexual cisgender people now. I meant that it isn’t a road [let’s back it up and say “most”] people would opt to go down initially, because it is undeniably harder and more painful.
There is a world of difference between “I would change now if I could, and give up all that I am and the people I’ve loved” and “I think kids with budding sexualities aren’t choosing to be gay because they think it’s nifty”. I meant the latter, not the former.
Well, if I could go back in time and turn myself from bi to straight as a child, my wife would still kill me, following me through time and intercepting me before I got to my younger self. Because I’d leave her directions.
But seriously speaking, the pain and hardships etc have always been worth it to me. Even as a child, being in love with my only friend and knowing that telling her about it could only drive her away from me, I’d never have chosen to make those feelings go away just to make it easier on myself. I thought, then, that to feel so strongly was worth something in itself, even if there was bad stuff along with the good; and that my friend deserved to be felt so strongly for.
(I didn’t think it in so many fancy words, though.)
Yeah, maybe most people might think differently, as you say, although I can only speak for myself, and I’m loath to think that “most people” would do worse in a given situation than I would. Some people, certainly.
If we only lean heavily on the “unchangeable”/innate/genetically predetermined stance then we don’t change the opposition that bi/homosexuality is bad, we merely reinforce that it’s only tolerable because it’s unchangeable.
Until it isn’t. If it does end up to be changeable/preventable then we won’t have actually undermined the argument that bi/homosexuality is bad. We’re just temporarily postponing the argument under the guise of tolerance until such time as it is changeable/preventable.
Additionally, while it’s arguable whether or not sexual orientation can change, many people discover their orientation is not necessarily what they thought it was once or more over their lifetimes. This fluidity needs to be accommodated and doesn’t neatly fit into the innateness concept. It doesn’t mean we are actively deciding, or that sexual orientation can be consciously changed, but change does happen and we need to work to make that acceptable.
I’m not saying “born this way” is a bad argument, I’m saying it can’t be the only argument.
I also think if you do some polling, you’ll find plenty of people who would choose to be non-straight and even non-cis all over again because of how it shaped their lives, identities, and social circles.
I know it’s not true of everyone but if I had opportunity to re-roll my stats in life, I’m happy to say there are other aspects of myself I’m far less comfortable with than my sexuality I would be more inclined to tweak (a few more points in charisma and dexterity would be nice).
If we only lean heavily on the “unchangeable”/innate/genetically predetermined stance then we don’t change the opposition that bi/homosexuality is bad, we merely reinforce that it’s only tolerable because it’s unchangeable.
Yeah, I addressed this point. I said that if you get them to accept that first, then you’ve got more of a leg to stand on with getting them to accept that it’s not just tolerable but acceptable, period, at which point it wouldn’t matter what science said.
But so far all the science and social studies say it’s unchangeable. Big ex-gay rally had a grand total of ten people show up who claimed to have been changed, and even those ten are probably lying to themselves. So I don’t think this is actually a real concern.
So, you’re saying “born this way” can’t be the only argument — but so was I.
I just think it’s a better starter argument.
I think a lot of the debate around this issue stems from a confusing choice of words. I’ve always been of the opinion that genetics determine, at most, 50% of what/who you are; the rest is shaped by your upbringing, early life experiences and other non-genetic factors. But sexuality is never a “choice”: you don’t just get up one day and decide that you’re going to like boys or girls; it’s something that just happens. You can’t “choose” to be gay or bi. You can choose between accepting your sexuality or rejecting it, living in denial or being true to yourself; that is the choice that LGBT people refer to (correct me if I’m wrong), and that’s what I understand whenever someone says “I chose to be gay”. But I’ve seen a lot of people get confused about the matter.
First complete comic on the cintiq, eh? No wonder this one seems more… cintiq-lating than usual.
Unngh! (gasp). Punned! Woozy..blacking out…tell…tell…my wife I love her (slump).
“So, I heard you recently became single, Mrs. Finch…”
::sigh, grumble:: Were I still single and in my prime “Joe” days… oh, well. Now what am I gonna do with this corpse?!
You would think she could have just shared the prom night story. Or would have done that a long time ago…
You know. It’s weird. But the dynamic they’d have… It’d remind me a lot of the dangerous duo.
Is it me or does Naomi have Sal hair?
Oh… Oh Lord, I forgot that parents day means Ethan’s folks too. This may be less wacky misunderstanding and more major drama tag pullage.
This universe never had a drama tag. When it tried to form it just disintegrated from the drama already there.
I thought they weren’t going to come, I was under the impression they disowned him.
If they disowned him he wouldn’t be at college due to lack of money.
Unless he was there on scholarship
There are scholarships for kids who’ve been disowned by their parents for being gay
And would these scholarships force the parents to show up on parents day?
Oh dammit, if I had known you were in the market for a Cintiq, I would have conned you into buying mine.
I love how Ethans dad just looks indifferent on everything.
Sholy hit I’m caught up, damn it, now I have to go to the bookstore and read while I wait for this to update . . .
Can Amber win, like ever?
She got the boy. Sort of.
She’ll win when she sheds the cloud of disinformation and dogma she was raised in
…I think you’re confusing Amber for somebody else. Like Joyce.
This is officially the BEST DOA strip in a long time XDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXD
Amber, Amber, Amber that makes Ethan the perfect man for Joyce.
So far Ethan’s dad seems like the native American guy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He stands around listening to his wife talk crazy the whole time until he can’t take it anymore, smothers her with a pillow, then throws a sink through the window and runs away into the sunset.
OH SNAP. You reckoned without Joyce’s massive issues, Amber!
I’m interested to see where this goes with Ethan’s mom. I’m not entirely it’s so much that Ethan’s mom is a homophobe as that she really doesn’t understand, the same way that Joyce didn’t think Ethan was evil for being homosexual, but didn’t understand it was about more than “resisting sexual urges.” But with Ethan’s mom, she has the added worry for Ethan’s wellbeing as his mom, and she may be lashing out against Amber out of fear for Ethan’s well being. It still isn’t easy in our society to be homosexual, even though it’s definitely getting better, and I can understand a parent being afraid for the discrimination their child will face while loving them just as much as before.
Or, maybe she is as bad as she looks here. (shrug)
Also, Joyce marveling at the cutaway shots in “Dexter and Monkey Master” says a lot about how few cartoons she’s seen, lol
I was raised Mormon and I actually have a lot of friends who are in “Mixed Orientaiton Marriage” where one person is gay and the other is straight. I’ve seen it work to varying degrees, but some of them are actually very happy. I don’t think it would work for Ethan but it’s definitely a situation I could see Ethan and Joyce finding themselves in.
Wouldn’t only ‘traditional’ marriages be mixed? In all other pairings each person is oriented towards the same gender.
I’ve heard of this concept but it was called “lavender marriage”. Where one partner is, for example, a gay man and the other is a straight woman.
Well the meaning of mixed orientation here is that their orientations are different – one person is homosexual and one person is heterosexual. I have a few friends who it’s working for, at least right now, but almost everybody I’ve ever met it ends in heartbreak. They think they’ll beat the odds, but then five, ten, fifteen years later the marriage ends and it’s awful for everybody, especially because there’s often children involved.
I dunno, Naomi reminds me of Carla from Cheers. Must be hair….
I just realized that the kind of cutaway Joyce is describing is exactly the kind of cutaway that occurs between the penultimate and ultimate panels. Wheels within wheels, Willis.
No, don’t them about it…they won’t understand!
No, don’t them about it…they won’t understand!
PS: Argh I didn’t use my real account…just delete that other one.
Oh yeah? we’ll seee…
And Jocelyne is staring right at the camera. Well played.
She got that dead wrong
Joshua is breaking the fourth wall and it scares me.