Purely platonic cuddles, but that’s platonic with a lower-case ‘p’, because the actual Plato was a pre-Christian heathen and we can’t do things his way.
Wasn’t his ideal love he pushed forwards “the love between an older man and a younger man, cause girls just produce babies not philosophical thought or ideas.” anyways?
I mean, not really very actually platonic even so, but also kind of possibly casual man-on-boy statutory rape.
As a cashier, I see that about three times a day. Two of those three times, there’s nothing under the tiny sweater/thick shirt, unless it’s snowing outside. It seems to be for girls who like wearing thick fabric but don’t want to overheat the second they get hit with sunlight? Not sure though.
They can look good over dresses, or if the colours/textures look especially great together so you totally want to see them both at once.
I wouldn’t have expected one over a plain white shirt, but then, Sarah doesn’t strike me as a person who spends all morning meticulously matching up her outfits.
Sarah DOES like some layering though, and it’s one of her favourite colours (she wears lots of purple and green, so I’m assuming those are her favourites). She seems like she goes towards ‘fully dressed, not in anything that could possibly be seen as unprofessional by the school, done’.
Was about to say: This is not their primary function but they are GREAT for people who need pressure stim without overheating! I have a connective tissue disorder and often my extremities feel “cold” and itchy when the rest of me is not actually cold, and wearing a light, short sweater like this really helps.
As far as what it’s intended to do…fashion-wise stuff like this can make your torso appear longer so it just looks “nice.” Kinda the same way high-waisted pants can make your legs look longer. A+ fashion for short people.
Nope, a game. Persona 5. It comes out this coming Tuesday. Its kind of a series about Jungian psychology and a lot of other themes, but mainly about highschoolers dealing with their personal life issues by traveling to a weird alternate realm where they fight both their own and other peoples literal inner demons by using the manifestations of historical figures who align with their inner selves….
All in order to sort out the horrible things going on around them and to become better people. Well, okay, 5 is more about a bunch of kids who were wronged somehow by adults in their lives rebelling and busting up the sources of corruption as phantom thieves of Justice (I mean, one of the characters literally has Zorro as their special Persona), but still, working out their issues.
The character’s name is Futaba Sakura. Which is weird cause usually Futaba is more of a last name and Sakura is more of a first name, but she’s like this cool hacker chick, who yeah is super cute and kind of looks like how I identify at least. Even to the point of spending a huge amount of money to import the headphones she wears that they’ve made real versions of.
Yours is Maggie from R.O.D. TV right? She was always my favorite of the three, though I’m kind of prone to being a recluse who likes to read and isn’t great at showing the expressions that fit what I’m feeling in my head, so thats probably part of why.
Maggie is my favorite also. It’s true, she’s very introverted and quiet. On the other hand, consider Sumiregawa-sensei. She seems very out there, very ready to speak her mind in most situations. But she is very reluctant to show certain feelings, e.g., the end of Episode 10, or how long it takes her to admit she likes the sisters. I’ve been exploring their personalities in some depth in a fanfiction I’m writing. They’re both really quite interesting characters.
Her scarf? I mean, for me, if I’m wearing a scarf like that in public, its because my hair’s a mess or on its way to becoming a mess. But Sarah’s hair looks fine without one so idk why either. Its definitely a thing, though. Hell, I see girls wearing full on bonnets to class sometimes. I guess its just to show that she doesn’t really care about her appearance maybe?
I have wavy/lightly curly hair, so someone please correct me if I’m totally wrong here, but I think it’s a more common thing for people with very curly/textured hair? Since textured hair doesn’t necessarily “fall flat” the way straight/untextured hair does, I believe some women use scarves like these to sort of “contain” their hair if they prefer to wear it closer to their scalp and don’t want to use relaxers/flat irons.
On my campus, it’s very common to see chicks wearing full-on long-sleeved hoodies… and bootie shorts. Like, what, do you only get cold on the top half of your body? Only hot on the bottom half? What? I don’t get it.
You can also take the hoodie off easily when you’re somewhere less cold. I’ve done that with shorts and a jacket on occasion. Easier to just throw on a jacket than to change into long pants.
It’s 90F here on the regular. They’re walking around outside like this. I would be on fire if I wore a hoodie outside. The humidity here makes the heat even worse.
I’ve talking with marketing types, and got into the topic of women’s clothing. Fashion companies realized that when it comes to clothing, female culture pushes women to go for what’s fashionable and trendy over what’s practical. So with guy culture, who couldn’t care less about fashion overall, they stick with practical for the most part. But with female culture, since they *control* the fashion magazines, they simply started a trend of “the layered look”, called it trendy, so they could basically mandate having to buy multiple layers of clothes (and generally of lower and flimsier quality than the male counterpart clothes).
As such, clothing marketing basically went predatory on an entire 50% of our society.
Since female culture ostracizes women who “don’t keep up with the trends”, women were forced to spend 2-3 times much on clothing that would last half as long. And this is -after- fashion industry had already successfully introduced the very financially rude concept of “never be seen wearing the same outfit more than once.” And stores, to keep up with what would sell according to the fashion magazines, mainly sell what fits the current trends.
So, basically, guy culture equivalent would be if all walk-in hardware stores started selling ONLY gold plated house products, and house-plan improvement inspectors would not look kindly on any home improvement projects that didn’t use them.
Well, I mean “guy culture not caring about fashion” is just as socially-constructed as “female culture pushing women to go for whats trendy”.
Its also the reason that guys can often get singled out as being “homosexual” just for wanting to actually dress nice for once, or having any sort of taste in clothing beyond the basic “practical work attire” they need for their job. Because someone at some point decided that “men aren’t allowed to actually care how they look”.
I mean really the worst part of it is that “fashion” itself often isn’t even remotely fashionable anymore because yeah, as you said its basically just about the industry telling people what “looks good” and expecting them to abide by that, while fashion designers just spend their time making artistic statements instead of attractive clothing.
While I’m sure all of this is true and kinda lame on the part of the fashion industry, I do appreciate how stuff like this accidentally provides good fashion choices for people with different body types. All the high-waisted, layered, long-shirt stuff has been really nice for us short people who are trying to make our legs/torsos look longer.
It’s ok though because I stick it to them by owning very few different outfits and wearing the same dress to every fancy event because I don’t want to buy more. :)))
Well, yeah, sometimes there’s something actually useful or nice looking as a result, but only if you’re willing to actually think for yourself about what works for your body type and piecing things together yourself.
Like me personally, I’m pretty tall, but super lanky and my metabolism keeps me from being at a healthy weight or even looking the “unhealthy but considered attractive weight” due to the combination of the traits, so stuff that makes me look a bit bulkier or adding layers to stay warm as well really works well for me.
Well, that or stuff that adds layers for a lot of the helpful circulatory and looking bulkier and staying warm end of things while also showing off my sexy waistline is even better. So vests with nice coats and pants that aren’t super skinny cause I don’t have any meat on my legs below my thighs and skeleton legs aren’t hot.
Hehe yeah, the fashion industry tends to ignore short people as a whole (or assumes short or thin = no curves so “petite” clothing never has space for hips/boobage) as it does pretty much anyone outside the “average” (and I use that term sarcastically, as to them “average” seems to be “model”) body type. So I’ve had to do a loooot of figuring out what existing styles/trends coincidentally work for my not-average body type. And thank god for petite girl fashion blogs too!.
It’s funny how stuff like this can work for 2 totally different body types for totally different reasons too! And how we always tend to envy what other people have (I have short, stocky legs even when my weight is on the lower end, and I would probably kill for long skinny legs like yours XD).
Cropped sweaters are often paired with high-waisted skirts and trousers, too. It brings that visual horizontal line of the waist up, which can make the legs look longer and play around with your proportions. It’s neat and fun for a certain type of person. *cough*
Joyce seems to assume that no relationship is set in stone until marriage. I seem to remember her pushing for Walky and Billie coupling up after “Dorothy inevitably dumps Walky cause transfers”.
If it makes you feel any better, I read what you meant instead of what you wrote.
Joyce knows, Joe reminded her at Galasso’s that Jacob is seeing someone and I think she can interpret that sidehug.
Yep, and Sarah is trying to take Jacob from Raidah, near as I can tell. And, since it fits with Joyce’s ship and doesn’t necessarily involving cheating, she’s fine with it.
Sarah bailed on that idea after Jacob and Joyce’s previous conversation where she realised she was objectifying Jacob as she was only interested in a few sex times, not a serious relationship, which wasn’t what he was looking for.
“you keep giving up” is rather interesting phrasing. Has Sarah given up but then decided to pursue him again? Or does Joyce just assume that Sarah’s conclusion won’t stick, because they’re her favourite ship? Or what’s up with that?
Sarah did give up before she discovered he was dating Raidah. Since then, she’s seemed to go back and forth on whether she wants to break them up and then date Jacob. Or just break them up.
Gave up again after that conversation between Jacob, Joyce, Joe and herself made her realise she was objectifying Jacob.
Kind of still interested but not trying to pursue him now because she really just wanted him for a few romps, not for a long-term relationship, and that clashes with what he wants.
I think it’s related to the final panel. Yeah, Sarah keeps waffling on whether it is right to pursue him and the reasons for that are good. They are romantically incompatible, have conflicting desires for a relationship, and Jacob is happy in his relationship.
All of these are strong reasons to back off and let the crush go, but in Joyce’s worldview, if it’s “true love” then you need to ignore all that and pursue them and never let go even when it is hurting your partner.
It’s not out of hand until she’s read Homestuck, every Rick Riordan book, and watched Ouran High School Host club, RWBY, and Star vs. the Forces of Evil. Then you will have created a monster.
Funny thing is, Joyce would not know the cultural subtext and actually come prepared to watch movies and or television shows on Netflix. Wait a minute…how does the fundie community view the works of Tolkien? Because if she hasn’t yet then Joyce needs to watch Lord of the Rings. Maybe the Hobbit if she ends up being a hardcore fan who can just completely blot out the Tauriel/Kili subplot and contain her disappointment about not enough Beorn. Think about it, she’d totally love it. Ultimate triumph of good over evil, chaste hero who is in a monogamous relationship that he won’t consummate until marriage (Aragorn), plenty of shipping material *cough* Frodo and Sam *cough* are even closer *cough* to being a couple *cough* in the books *cough* also, Legolas *cough*, evil that destroys itself through its own actions (Gollum), even a little bit of divine intervention at the end (the only reason the eagles show up is because Manwe sent them Eru dammit).
…
Just realized I answered my own question about how Tolkien’s work is viewed by fundies. His Catholicism probably really pisses them off. Plus, he’s like the father of modern fantasy and DnD is the devil’s work yadda yadda yadda.
Wait wait wait. They let C.S. Lewis of the hook? C. S. Lewis. The man who has the God (Aslan) of his fantasy universe say that, even if you worshipped an evil false god or idol, so long as you did good things you were really his servant all along without knowing it, and if you did evil in his name you were actually being a servant of that universe’s devil equivalent. They let him off the hook they hold the rest of fantasy on? I mean, that’s some pretty non-American-fundie type talk if I’ve ever heard it. Do they also know about his science fiction writing (actually better than his Narnia writing in my opinion, but hey I’m in the minority on that)? Or that his personal idea of being a good Christian was “genial orthodoxy” aka “Just because you’re a religious person that’s no reason to be a dick to people”? I’m being completely sincere here because I honestly don’t know how “fundie think” as I’m going to personally call it works at this point.
Whether *they* let Lewis off the hook depends on who *they* is. If you equate Catholicism with the hore of Babylon then Lewis is just more of the same pretend Christianity. If you are Catholic or view it as legitimate, your view is a bit different.
@ Silly Name eh, Anglican is just an off-brand Catholicism in the big picture. I mean, the only initial difference was that good ole’ Henry “I’m going to keep beheading wives” VIII Tudor decided, “The Pope won’t let me divorce my Spanish Queen so we’re just going to ignore him and put me and my descendants in charge of a state religion got it?”
Hey, at least the Chronicles of Narnia were well written and most of them were actually enjoyable (Except the one that was basically just an allegory to the Christian end times), if perhaps filled to capacity with “British Children” and their British Children Issues.
I’m fairly certain he wrote a book that ridicules atheists through a lot of allegory. That he dedicated to his devoutly Catholic friend Tolkien who had helped him through a crisis of faith. Who if I remember correctly responded by commenting on how much he detests allegory in all its shapes and forms.
Not always! There are a great many fundementalist theologians who have written that Lewis is a heretic for exactly the reason you mentioned, as well as a few other beliefs (he didn’t believe in scriptural inerrancy, and thought grace was extended even to those already in hell, among other things). Never doubt the ability of Christians to eat their own.
From experience, Tolkien is actually like by most fundies, as the Lord of the Rings was said by Tolkien to be an allegory for a Christian’s life, and the creation of Middle Earth in the Silmarillion significantly parallels the Christian creation story. That said, I’m not sure how much they realized he borrowed from his icelandic nordic-pagan nanny.
You mean like magic rings that let you rule the world? And gold resulting in Dwarves becoming too greedy and and dragons being the end result? (Not that it actually turns Dwarves into Dragons in the process, but still)
And likeable characters. No joke, when those things came out one member of my social clique had us all read it just so we could rag on it. I mean the main characters are a hundred year old vampire with a school girl fetish, a Native American werewolf who gets thrown away in favor of the old white guy, and guy magnet Mary Sue who is a complete bongo to her friends and apparently needs to define herself by who she ends up with. Plus they’re all wrapped up in a crappy metaphor for converting to Mormonism. What did Mormonism do in the last fifty years to deserve that?
I liked the Ender’s Game series, regardless of Card’s personal beliefs. I know they always say that calling them “Buggers” was homophobic, but don’t Brits use that word all the time, mostly not using it as a slur? And also they’re bugs? idk, I didn’t see any of Card’s bigotry incorporated into his writings. I could be naive, though.
I don’t recall it in Ender’s Game, but it shows up in some of his other works. Not nearly so blatantly as in his political essays and the like. Though I haven’t read any of his more recent fiction.
Ender’s Game was okay. There were strains of homophobia and sexism in it, but it could be read as a cultural element of the setting rather than author advocacy. Speaker for the Dead and maaaaybe Xenocide, the same.
After that, he starts sprinkling blatant “fuck you if you’re not socially conservative” turds into the entire Shadows series, and it’s pretty clearly religious party line with author backing rather than just in-verse setting and characters.
That’s just the Enderverse. In one way, it’s been way too long since I’ve read his Mormonism allegories (Children of Earth and Alvin Maker) for me to flag anything specific. In another, it hasn’t been long enough.
Well, I mean the series was written by a “good Christian woman” apparently.
Despite the creepy age gaps, mystical predator badboys (who want to wait for marriage?), papist vampires, magical doggie strippers, unsafe use of teeth during an impromptu c-section, and implied pedophilia…apparently?
I dunno, had a manager once who was all about it being good Christian literature just because apparently Stephanie Meyer is a churchgoing Christian….who just happened to write a book that inspired 50 Shades of Grey.
Meyer’s a Mormon, so some folks wouldn’t consider her a Christian.
I’m pretty sure Meyer has denied ever seeing Buffy: The Vampire Slayer before she started Twilight, but it’s hard not to suspect was heavily influenced by the Buffy/Angel relationship.
Not implied pedophilia, but explicit child grooming- it’s just never given that name. On that topic it also includes magical mind control that literally strips a person’s identity (no hyperbole, it’s actually said and shown just as the child grooming is) and violence if the object of your affections rebuffs you. And these things, by the way, are depicted as romantic and good.
Twilight isn’t romance. It’s horror, with an extra meta level of terror when you realise how many people ACTUALLY seem to feel and believe these are good examples of healthy relationships.
Oh yeah, see it was even too creepy feeling for me when I kept having to watch the trailers of the first few.
Like, Edward is how many hundreds of years old falling for and dating some highschool girl? And from what I’ve heard, its basically couched in an “its okay and not predatory at all because he really really loves her and doesn’t want to be a bad vampire so its basically her being the one seducing him or something,” despite it literally being a novel about a ‘super old mystical sexual predator’ type of vampire who falls in ‘true love’ with a normal minor.
At least the Dresden Files had the decency of making their “sexy vampires” go after adults and admitted that they’re supposed to be scary monsters and that how they function in society is basically evil and wrong, instead of making them into Glitter Sunscreen “Sexual Predators….you know for kids.”.
Pretty sure most people who read the books didn’t squick out till the grooming of an insanely quickly maturing baby/little girl to tie up the loose end of the love triangle of horrible relationships.
As I mentioned above, my social group read them when they came out to rag on how bad it was…and then we got really, really squicked out fast. The real horror is just how popular it became…I could never watch Goblet of Fire again after that. How can you take Sigwert’s death seriously when you know he plays a sparkly skinned immortal pedophile.
Yeah, the explicit child molestation and grooming themes were among the most disturbing part of those books. From the centuries old vampire creeping on a high school girl and demanding she get married immediately at 18 before she has even left school before she’s even allowed to explore the mostly sexual attraction she has to the abusive groomer to… ugh Jacob and that ending plotline where he “imprints” on a literal newborn in much the same way as another member of his group and basically grooms the kid from birth to be his younger bride when she’s “off age”.
It’s genuinely terrifying how explicit the normalizing of child molestation, grooming, and child brides are in that work and the fact that is sandwiched in an awful sandwich of also normalizing rape as the only “acceptable” form of sex (because the woman shouldn’t do something as sinful as enjoy it until she’s properly a mother) and normalizing violent abusive stalking and an ownership model of relationships just makes it all so so much worse.
Ugh, works like that make me wish that it was cultural acceptable to show kinky desires as normal in kid lit, because right now folks curious about that stuff are reading twisted religious works that pair it with all these unhealthy ideas of what a relationship “should” look like instead of treating it as something two people who respect each other can do in ways that don’t involve open abuse.
From what I’ve heard, the Twilight Fanfiction that was rewritten into Corporate Kink Fetish Erotica by the name of Fifty Shades of Grey wasn’t actually any better about properly representing that culture anyways.
I mean, personally it ‘feels’ too close to that abuse borderline for me to not get squicked out by kinky stuff anyways, so I’d rather just not there have been a Mormon-written Teen Novel that normalizes Kink Erotica as “Romance” to begin with, but yeah, it’d still be a lot better if it wasn’t basically “rape dressed up as being a consentual surrender of free will to an emotionally unavailable abuser” every time.
For the record, I used to work at a bookstore and habitually read the back cover of every book I stocked. Everything was basically Scotsmen, Crime Thriller Romances, a tiny bit of Regency, or by and large some sort of Hardcore Kinky Sub Woman Dom Male book that was split between Supernatural and Mundane couplings. Cause apparently our culture is so paranoid that men are losing control that we have to sell women on the idea that the only way they can have good sex is by letting themselves be shoved down and forced into being a man’s property.
Well, I mean, apparently it literally started out as Adult Erotic Fanfiction of Twilight, before a publishing company decided they wanted to try and sell it and got the author to change the story to not involve actual vampires and change the names of the main characters. Its like literally “Edward” as a Corporate 1% “Vampire” with “Bella” the College Age Journalist. Except instead of being a super strong supernatural sexual predator made of diamonds, he’s just an emotionally unavailable super rich sexual predator who can afford all the diamonds.
Ah, so just name changes then to make it publishable? Man, wasn’t it great when rape fantasies weren’t mainstream romance and teen novels? Those were the days.
I believe that the book changed about 11% that was strictly necessary to avoid copyright infringement charges and that was it. In practice, I believe this mostly went into names, location names, and a couple minor tweaks here and there that didn’t affect the main plot. I believe she was also required to take down the fanfic – titled Master of the Universe – but this is the internet. Nothing goes away.
The wiki also has a list of the changes made between the fic and the book. Seriously, if you have a copy of the book from the library you can read along and see how LITTLE is different.
Honestly the only one I’m remotely think would be interesting to read would be Grey, and that just because it might be a study of how an emotionally unavailable maladjusted control freak functions and justifies their rationalizations.
Which you know, I’m not even sure it properly does, cause otherwise it’d probably ruin people’s ‘sexy’ image of Mr. Grey.
Wait, when was it that “rape fantasies weren’t mainstream romance and teen novels”?
“Rape fantasy” as romance novel goes back to the early twentieth century. The Sheik by Edith Maude Hull, was an early example. It’s been a mainstay of genre romance ever since. If anything, and despite such mainstream examples, it’s become less common over the years. Pretty much as women wanting sex, even outside of marriage, has become more acceptable.
Yeah, sadly, rape’s been a mainstay in romance for a long ass time. Editors have a tricky time convincing writers that they don’t want to portray creepiness and rape as acceptable.
Apparently, Grey has been squicking out fans. Particularly ones who wanted it to be a misunderstanding or a coincidence – stuff like him stalking her to work was, until then, possibly seen as a coincidental Meet Cute. They were not happy to be wrong, understandably, as that meant Grey was fucking terrifying and not Damaged But Ultimately A Good Person like they wanted him to be. I kinda feel bad for them because it sucks being wrong about favourite characters like that, even if the writing was on the wall for a long time beforehand.
@thejeff: Well, at the very least there were a lot less of the blatent ones that my bookstore stocked in the “Romance” section instead of the “Erotica” section before Fifty Shades of Grey hit the market. After that the overall majority of books in the “Romance” section were “hardcore sex novels” in the same style as Fifty Shades of Grey.
@BBCC: So, in other words actually a proper exploration of his character traits and him being a Damaged But Ultimately Actually A Horrible Person Anyways. At least thats something.
Well, I meant as far as the “scene” it was trying to go for…with apparently ridiculously bad euphemisms for everything cause the author didn’t know how to actually write anything that didn’t sound like bad fanfiction anyways.
50 Shades is still what really “Kicked off the Kink Craze” when it came to mainstream releases that all the soccer mom types came in to pick up every month.
Doubt anyone’s going to read this at this point, but yeah, I was specifically referring to the werewolves with my comment. All the rest of it is also messed up as all hell, for sure, but that was the bit I was addressing in particular.
And echoing what has already been said- 50SoG is a horrible abusive relationship that’s “supposed” to depict BDSM but doesn’t. Not at all. It’s abuse. It’s abuse using kink as an excuse. I think it’s safe to say it’s a series that gets the hackles up of anyone who is actively into BDSM.
Also, as someone with a history of abuse in my life, I found it to be actively triggering. I couldn’t read it and had to rely on an in depth breakdown. That alone is NOT a good sign.
Looking into it, I’m pretty sure the way she gets away with justifying it…
Is that its the “Older male character” that basically gets turned into the ‘perfect guy’ for the main female lead’s underage daughter. Its his life on the line if she somehow decides she doesn’t actually like the doting werewolf guardian that way once she’s old enough for them to start getting it on. Its once again all made okay because its not the ‘sweet innocent girl’ getting groomed for the romance but the “adult male who shouldn’t be imprinting on babies in the first place”.
I mean apparently he was made as a plot device to get Bella up to speed on vampires in time to hook up with a mysterious dude with bad hair anyways. He just got upgraded to love rival tier when people decided he was hot.
And then back down to bargaining chip tier when the story demanded he imprint on a baby in order to keep her safe from werewolf retribution. Its still disturbing for like a million different reasons.
I can envision half a dozen scenarios where it could occur, and that’s in less than ten seconds of thinking. It’s probably happened somewhere, somewhen, somehow.
Ah, but see, after she becomes a supervillain, and kills dozens of people, and is steeped in evil — after all that, she will be cleansed, and made pure, and become one of the good guys, and all the evil she did will no longer count. Just like Electra.
I think because Sarah is into him and because Raidah is his girlfriend. I would guess already-in-a-relationship makes him out of Joyce’s moral bounds, and that he’s black would just make him even less likely to be considered as a relationship partner for her, I’d guess – I don’t think she’s racist at all, but I think she doesn’t excel at thinking outside the box, either. We already know how much Joyce struggles with the gray areas! So I can’t see her feeling right about pursuing a taken guy. But her ship game is epic, so she can project all that creepy goodness onto Sarah!
I think she is into him but not really processing it because she’s already committed to shipping him with Sarah. Like, her friend already called dibs sort of thing?
aaaalla dese comments =p
(tho I’d add, being less likely to consider a romantic partner on the basis of race is definitely racism- But Joyce is a pawn of systemic racism, rather than actively hateful, which I take to be the intended meaning)
Ehh I don’t know? I’m attracted to both and women but less likely to consider a woman as a romantic partner. I wouldn’t call that sexism though. It’s just more like they don’t spring to my mind immediately as options. Usually I get butterfly-stomach-feelings around them first and then am like OHHHH where with guys I realize it sooner I guess because of social conditioning. So I guess you could call that systemic sexism but that doesn’t really seem right to me either. It’s less bigotry and more pre-loaded opinion. And those exist with EVERYTHING, not just race and gender.
There’s that…there’s also panel 2. she’s pushing on his back and pulling on his arm- not, like, HARD or anything, but there tis. Raidah doesn’t like Jacob being friendly with sarah.
In any case, me personally, I’d still rather someone crazy shorter than me not. do. that.
She also may be doing that because she herself wants to get away from Sarah because she doesn’t want to be around Sarah, which would be understandable since they bring out the worst in each other.
I’m always surprised at how the “Christian Side Hug” is everywhere in things talking about or mocking christian dating. I went to a fairly isolated christian high school and it was like at meme status there. Then I graduate and come to find out its meme status literally everywhere with “Christian” teenagers
Well, this explains her issues with personal space.
And YIKES girl, noooo.
(Also – fixed the bug. Turns out my computer needed an update and was blocking things like gifs, ads, etc., not letting me copy paste between the internet and word processor, or run any of my apps, because it wanted its update. My lil computer was throwing a fit because it wanted its check up. Seems to be all back in order now, which means I get to see ads again without needing to download them. Yay?)
I’ve seen odd behavior when a computer has downloaded and installed an update but hasn’t been rebooted yet. Not sure if that happened here, but maybe something similar.
Pretty sure, yeah. My computer likes to throw a fit when it needs an update, like not letting certain apps work. I figured it out when I realized that clicking links on Patreon made downloads instead of following the links. Plus running the files through multiple virus scanners returned them all as ‘probably safe’ and showed names similar to ads I see all the time (such as for colleges).
The most baffling part of that video for me: why, for a rap song about Christian love and affection, would you choose to sample the motherfucking Imperial March, one of the most iconically evil movie themes of all time!?!?
Yo, Jacob. Dating Sarah would probably lead to more screentime. Also Raidah’s really uninteresting. Her only thing is that she doesn’t like Sarah. That’s it. No secret identity, no horrible parent, no psychological trauma or debilitating social querk. Trade up!
She is actually mostly okay, which honestly makes her one of the better adults in the entire comic to get advice from so far. Well, except for all bad decisions in regards to thinking lady politicians with horrible policies are hot.
Sarah’s expression in Panel 7 is… odd. Suddenly, it seems Joyce is the centre of her thoughts. I wonder if she’s starting to ponder if Joyce’s encouragement to her might be some sort of transference thing about her own feelings. It is a bizarre thought, as Sarah’s expression shows!
Pretty sure Sarah’s already cottoned onto the idea of Joyce developing affection for Jacob, from the way they interacted after having pizza together. No, I think Sarah’s quietly aghast at Joyce’s horrifying world view in the last panel.
The advice was fine, it was Elsa who took it to an extreme. The parents advice may have been wrong but the message was simple: conceal your powers, don’t be afraid. Elsa on her own twisted it into ‘I must feel nothing at all or I’ll completely lose it’ and ended herself in a non-stop anxiety attack.
I dunno, they seemed pretty hardcore into “don’t use your powers ever again, get your emotions under control so you’re a respectable princess instead of a danger to yourself and your sister” to me as well.
Which hey, I guess if you had to take one of your daughters to a ‘special hospital’ because of an accident ’caused’ by something your other daughter was goofing around with, its reasonable to expect them to over correct.
It still kind of feels like they were the true villains all along even if by accident though.
>I mean Elsa was supposed to go bad and be the villain anyways, which is why she gets so little screentime, but then she got a touching themesong that plays down the villain angle and Elsa ends up being super identifiable to a lot of people and we don’t want her to be the villain so they had to find a new one.
Its still a pretty shitty way to advice someone to behave. Trying not to feel because you’re “too sensitive” or whatever is really a horrible sort of life.
They’re not as hardcore as they seem, a lot of the things that look extreme like the sisters being separated and Elsa staying in her room almost all the time were actually Elsa’s choices.
The king and queen just wanted Elsa to control her powers so she, and everyone around her, would be safe. They did the best with the information they had but unfortunately their advice was warped by Elsa’s fear. Try not to let fear control you turned into don’t feel anything. Be careful around others turned into isolate herself. The gloves will help turned into her needing the gloves to touch anything or else she’s automatically freeze it. Sadly, Elsa wasn’t thinking or feeling clearly, she was panicking almost the entire time so no matter what advice she was given would eb warped and become bad.
Well, all of that also sets some heavy queer parallels. A kid showing signs of non-heteronormativity as a kid, parents over-correct and create a strong idea of shame that leads to the kid self-closeting in response to it, having the kid be terrified of “accidentally showing” their non-heteronormativity ever again to the point of secluding themselves and becoming heavily anxious in public.
Like, just because someone sets up their own closet doesn’t mean they didn’t learn to do so by the strong negative reactions of their parents.
The isolation was her parents’ idea: “We’ll lock the gates. We’ll reduce the staff. We will limit her contact with people, and keep her powers hidden from everyone. Including Anna.” They may not have actually said “you can’t spend any time with your sister” but it’s not terribly surprising she got that from “you shouldn’t be around people until you can control your powers” + “nobody can ever know about your powers, including your sister” + the unspoken “last time you used your powers you nearly killed her.”
^^^ this. Even if the parents didn’t actually MEAN that Elsa can’t spend time with Anna, they sure did nothing to fix it once Elsa misinterpreted the situation. SHE WAS LIKE EIGHT. IT WAS NOT HER RESPONSIBILITY TO RAISE HERSELF.
Yeah, I mean its pretty clear the parents were pretty scared of her powers as well, what with them basically acting like it was a curse to be gotten rid of when they brought it up to the troll elder before admitting that it was an inborn ability.
I mean, yeah, it wasn’t like they had any idea how to train her, but their approach to try and solve the problem was basically “Hey, just don’t use your weird powers ever again and everything will be great, okay honey?” instead of “lets look into ways to try and get you to be able to harness and control your power so it can be used in a safe way and keep it from going crazy and activating on its own when you get upset.”
Seriously, they didn’t even want to try to figure it out, just make the “problem go away”.
The kicker? Elsa COULD control her powers until that incident. She lost control because she was terrified of them after that. A better solution would have been her parents saying, “Okay, this definitely wasn’t GOOD, but it was an accident, it’s okay, Elsa, you don’t have to be scared. Just be careful next time, okay, sweetie? Try finishing your building before you let Anna climb it, instead of making a game of climbing. Or maybe only do that when mommy and daddy are there, okay?”
“Were actually Elsa’s choices” ah yes those of an impressionable child scared so far out of her mind she can’t control powers she used to control with ease.
Remember, she never actually lost control of her powers. The original incident was her missing with a shot she deliberately made, and she SAW IT COMING and was already shouting at Anna to stop.
The parents never even asked what happened. They ASSUMED that Elsa lost control of her powers (which she KIND OF did, freezing the entire hall while gripping Anna, but AFTER the accident and BECAUSE of it), because I guess that was already something they were afraid for. Then the troll scared Elsa even more (YOUR GREATEST ENEMY IS FEAR jfc dude that’s ‘don’t think of a white elephant’ levels of twisted), then the parents enacted their ‘plan’ isolating Elsa… Of course she was onboard with it, she was, what, eight? and scared out of her fucking mind by nearly losing her sister.
No, just… no. Elsa’s parents handled the situation TERRIBLY, and everything bad that happened (including ANNA growing up in isolation and nearly marrying the first stranger she met because she was that starved for companionship) is UNILATERALLY THEIR FAULT.
Also, on that note – if the trolls meant ‘other people’s fear of your powers’ would be her enemy and not just any fear ever, they REALLY SHOULD HAVE FUCKING CLARIFIED when they realized her parents misinterpreted.
FWIW, I’m really surprised tha tthere are not more Frozen/X-Men crossover fan-fictions out there. Elsa’s problematic relationship with her powers and with her family seems to be right out of The Big Book of X-Men Character Tropes.
Raidah’s pose certainly is very possesiv. Even though he immediately starts to go with her, she pulls his arm and propels him in the back. So he can’t turn around? Strange, uncomfortable looking pose.
Joyce: Listen to yourself and process what you are hearing!
Re:Tolkien films – I actually gave up on the films because they were so focused on the fighting. But I always wondered what happened to Kili and his Elf love. Can someone point me to a spoiler-site?
Its probably past the statute of limitations on the spoiler, but Killi meets the same end he does in the book form of The Hobbit, which kind of sets that ship dead in the water as Tauriel then vanishes back into the mists of “Made up just for the movies” Land, never to be mentioned ever ever again.
Pretty tragic all in all, and really helps to sell the tragedy of the Battle of Five Armies, cause Kili was really one of the more likable Dwarves in the movie anyways.
No, it was worse: after the scene where Toriel mourns Kili and we get some profound musings from Tranduil, THERE IS NO RESOLUTION FOR HER AT ALL. She was exiled from the kingdom, did she ever get un-exiled? Where did she go? Did she end up coping in any way? She didn’t even feature in Legolas’s last discussion with his dad about where Legolas is going to go that foreshadows the events of LotR (in a way that makes no sense with the book timeline by the way).
She’s literally just… dropped. She doesn’t get any scenes that don’t feature Kili or Legolas, and she doesnt’ even get any finish for her arc. Even the mourning scene was more about Tranduil than about her. WHY
Cause she was literally completely made up to give the movie more GIRL POWER for marketing reasons?
I mean, mind you other than completely dumping the character when her emotional relevance to the plot was done, she was one of the better additions or alterations to the original story, but she basically was created so Hollywood could leverage things to make more money.
Glad I’m not the only one who noticed that forearm-grab thrown in there just in case the hand on the back wasn’t quite enough to draw him away. I kinda hope we follow them for a minute just in the hopes that Jacob will call her on that and see how she responds. To what degree she’s aware of it and whether she tries to excuse it as ‘for his own good’ or recognizes it as something she needs to work on
I know how people ship Joyce and Jacob and in a way I can kinda see it… but I don’t think Joyce has the slightest idea of what she wants from Jacob, she’s just inadvertently wowed by all that Jacob in front of her. Even more, if Jacob would ever do anything remotely similar to engaging her in any sort of romantic or intimate fashion I’m fairly certain Joyce would flip.
More than a ship that looks like a girl who has no idea how relationships work to me.
That said, Joyce here is living proof you don’t change overnight. And I was fairly certain Sarah decided ruining whatever Jacob has right now is not worth pursuing him. Which is, you know, the adult thing to do.
See, I think its not just “all that Jacob in front of her” that she’s wowed by. Him actually saying he thinks its awesome that she’s sticking to her values…and being like the only person she’s met so far who actually both enjoys her bible talks and is someone she likes being around probably impress her a lot too.
That said, yeah, its pretty clear that she doesn’t realize the crush she may be developing on him. I mean a crush doesn’t even have to ever be anything more than someone you’re super into being around who also gets you a bit flustered just by being near them.
She’s still focused on throwing Sarah at him for now anyways, so stalking by her probably isn’t on the menu yet.
Cause obsession is truuuuuuuuuuuuuuueeee looooooooove?
A thought that basically seems like it should only seem logical to stalkers.
Pretty sure it ties into toxic masculinity having been taught as the ‘rule’ and also as what was ‘cool’ for a long time, combined with women not having much socially acceptable power and having to rely on doing things a lot more covertly to get anything they wanted or find a better spot in the pecking order?
Theres something about “dating the badboy” being “safe” because you know from the start that he’s not the marrying type or something, which sounded weird when someone tried explaining it to me, but is apparently a thing. Getting together with someone you know you can’t be serious about so you can have a relationship, but not risk falling in love and getting stuck with them.
Plus there’s a huge cultural idea of “fixing the bad boy”, where women are expected to do free emotional labor to redeem men and make them better while absorbing a lot of abuse while doing so. This of course makes it hard for a lot of women to escape abusive relationships or recognize them, because our whole culture sells unhealthy toxic and obsessive relationships as “romantic”.
Because the media itself doesn’t call itself out as being creepy or abusive, it pretends it is romantic, throws in some words about how the person’s special and blah blah blah.
Plus, due to lack of teaching about relationship stuff, a lot of people (it is not just girls into Twilight, I assure you) do not know off hand abuse tactics and unhealthy behaviours until way later than they should. So playing it as romance means people like Joyce twistedly believe such behaviours are normal for romance or are romantic in nature, rather than creepy as hell.
I still feel like one of the worst parts is that guys tend to be portrayed one of maybe three ways in most romance stuff.
A. Hotblooded extremely passionate horndogs who are always trying to sneak a peek or cop a feel and is probably the type to cheat on them.
B. Emotionally unavailable control freaks and machavelian manipulators.
C. Charming Douchebags who somehow cover up their douchiness by “just being that charming and also being super hot”.
Like none of that is either healthy or respectful. Or actually very romantic either.
Like seriously, there needs to be more romance stuff with people who actually like each other and treat each other well because they care about each others emotional, mental, and physical well being.
Tbh, everything about it is usually the worst part.
The girl is usually attracted to the guy at their absolute worst, blinded by her attraction completely, and generally the guy doesn’t soften for her, he just gets backstory so she becomes more tolerant of it.
There really does need to be more like that where people treat each other well and don’t have exaggerated fights every five seconds. Like, relationships where people treat each other well melt my heart soooo fast. I will turn into an absolute puddle of joy because goddamn is it good for the soul when people are understanding, caring, respectful and try to help each other out while casually and lovingly correcting harmful behaviours (without it blowing up into a big thing they fight over for stupid reasons). I live for healthy respectful relationships.
One of my favorite romances is an anime series called Ai Yori Aoshi for that last sort of reason in particular.
I mean, it gets pretty fanservicey because it tries to sell itself as a harem comedy, but its more of a threes company sort of setup where the guy just can’t admit that he and the main girl are in love because of drama in regards to their families.
Still, the great thing is that even with the temptations being there, or even things getting in the way of things going as planned, the guy always makes the right choice and doesn’t chase after the girls who aren’t the one he’s secretly dating, and is just a super thoughtful guy who isn’t going to do the wrong thing just for some immediate pleasure. The female lead is really great too, but its more amazing when the guy isn’t just plain horrible in romantic shows.
Seriously its annoyingly hard to find stuff with healthy respectful relationships in it, and yeah, I basically live for those too.
Aside from teenagers of either sex rarely having a realistic idea about what a healthy relationship is supposed to look like and mostly get their expectations from the mediocre writing of their favorite fanfics or shipteasing Netflix series,…actually, no. That’s pretty much it. Overexposure to media written by people who don’t know how to actually depict romance and create unrealistic expectations that lead to very unhealthy situations for viewers too young to separate fact from fiction. I’ve lost count of the amount of supposedly consensual romance scenes in various series that really were intended to be consensual, but look like the exact opposite because the writers and directors have no fucking clue what a consensual romance scene actually looks like.
Wow this is giving me flashbacks to Christian camp, we had a youth councilor make a memorable speech about “Side hugs are for friends, front hugs are for making babies.”
Naturally we all took every opportunity to gratuitously front hug. When we got back to church a week later we announced that everyone was super-pregnant, especially the guys.
I like the reverse color speech balloons, in that we know Sarah and Raidah are frosty polite to each other, even in the long shot. Nice elements.
Even though Joyce is “clearly overrunning with hormones” we never got a limit on what she would stop at for pre-marital dating contact until now, have we?
What’s the bet that Jacob thinks that it’s ‘nice’ that Raidah and Sarah are at least on speaking terms and is completely oblivious to the subtext? ‘Oblivious’ and ‘Jacob’ do seem to go together, after all!
I don’t think his low-keyness means “oblivious”. Raidah told Jacob “Sarah is toxic to me”, he’s with Raidah, and I think he’s not going to stir the pot just for hahas.
PS I liked how Raidah said “She’s toxic to me” rather than Sarah’s just “toxic” (to everyone).
Well, I mean…its only actually being a yandere when the person reaches ‘mental illness’ tier obsession. Got to be sick in the head enough to think your toxic messed up and usually illegal levels of obsession are actually just “devotion” and “love”.
Still, you know she’s got the path to the Yandere life all set out for herself. Seriously, stalking is bad stuff that can lead to worse stuff.
I’m really hoping that this mini-arc is leading down to a sit-down/deprogramming session in which Sarah explains to Joyce why this proposed course of action is socially unacceptable. Possibly with the coda of Sarah saying: “If I think it’s socially unacceptable, that should tell you a lot about just how bad it is!”
I grew up about as churched as one can be, and I never got the idea that an actual hug is *more* intimate than smooching. Oh dear God, have I been violating people all along without realizing it?!?
Also, no, Joyce. You think you’re the angel of her conscience, but you’re on the other shoulder at the moment.
I’m honestly questioning whether it IS a good idea for Sarah to keep pursuing Jacob though. Obviously, she finds him sexually attractive, and they do have a mutual friend in Joyce. But does she actually like Jacob for himself beyond that? Do they have any shared interests? Mutual life goals? So far the answer seems to be “no”, and it seems that part of Sarah’s motivation in pursuing Jacob seems to be “Raidah must not win”. That’s a TERRIBLE motivation to have in a relationship, one that could ultimately prove poisonous and leave the couple with bitter feelings.
I like you, Sarah, but honestly, I think you might be better off stepping back on this.
Honestly, it’s really a terrible idea for her to pursue him. He’s in a relationship and extremely monogamous, has shown clear signs of being happy in his current relationship, her and Jacob have incompatible views towards what they’d want from a relationship, and they have somewhat conflicting personalities.
And yeah, the desire to hurt Raidah for hurting her. Which is an awful reason to pursue a person.
So yeah, I think she’s well figured out that her and Jacob isn’t going to work and it’s time to let that beautiful dream go.
Panel 1: It’s not great, but it’s a slight improvement from where they were before. Like Raidah and Sarah are never going to be friends and frankly have enough bad blood that civility is also a tough ask. So a terse greeting and a quick departure is about as good as they can do now and is certainly healthier than the bullying Raidah was doing to Sarah before.
Like, it’s baby steps, but it’s baby steps moving in a slightly better direction than before.
Panels 2-5: Raidah’s doing the quickly departing thing, which is for the best. And Sarah’s eyes seem to be showing that she’s making peace with his relationship to her.
Like it’s never easy seeing someone you like with someone you hate, especially when that person you hate has done awful things to you in the past. But it’s important to respect a person’s autonomy and what they believe makes them happy.
And in this case, Raidah really does make Jacob happy. We’ve seen it in their interactions, in the happy way he speaks of her, in their sexual and romantic compatibility. And I think that Panel 5 might be her finally accepting that on some level and beginning the painful process of letting the beautiful dream go.
Panel 6: Oh Joyce, so unaware of your growing crush…
Panel 7: Which eesh, is probably for the best with attitudes like that with regards to how you’re supposed to act when you have a crush.
There’s a lot here to unpack, but it’s worth noting the deliberate parallelism being made, where Joyce here is channeling or invoking Joyce’s stalker character from Roomies! Which was always a hot mess, so I’m very glad that even though Joyce has many of the same unhealthy ideas about romance, her actions reflect that less and we’ve never really seen her retreading those same grounds in action.
That all said, oof, everything Joyce believes about what love “should look like” is deeply unhealthy to the point of genuinely being a bit scary.
But it’s also an idea that’s heavily incorporated into our culture. The idea that stalking and obsession are the two most “pure” forms of love is an idea weaved into most every teen romance and TV series and it’s a deeply toxic idea, because it gets folks to believe bad boundary actions is somehow romantic (see the cultural swooning for John Cousak playing a boombox outside his crush’s house or for Twilight).
Happily, it does seem like there’s been a fair few works for teens that are starting to unpack this deeply unhealthy bullshit like Steven Universe’s response to Jamie’s obsessive attraction to Garnet or Legend of Korra’s Eska plotline, but it’s definitely something that is deep in our cultural narrative and tends to micturate with unhealthy ideas like “fixing the bad boy who abuses you with your love, showing how special and true your connection is*” or the hero “winning” his love interest by physically besting the bad guy, because women are seen as rewards for feats of masculinity.
*Which quickly leads to a way to not only justify way too much effort thrown in emotional labor to abusers, but also a ready-made way for kids in abusive relationships to blame themselves. CW: Abuse logic: After all, if their love was “stronger”, they’d be able to cure the abuse out of their partner, so really it’s their own fault that their partner is still hurting them.
And that’s mixed in Joyce’s case with the Christian shame doctrine and the idea that anything outside chaste interactions before marriage or with someone who is not your lawfully wedded partner is bad and wrong. Which is an idea that is getting a lot more public attention these days given Mike Pence’s “I can’t meet women alone” thing becoming a national talking point.
And all in all shows the sort of deeply unhealthy mess you can end up with when you are raised with these sorts of ideas of what love looks like and are barred from seeing any healthy examples of love and partnership because of twisted ideas that feminism or equal relationships are literally demonic*.
*Like, the whole “roles” thing and exaggerated gendered behavior in a certain type of Christian doctrine in order to try and sell an idea that heteronormative relationships are somehow ordered by God and the natural order of things does a lot of damage. Not only because it heavily discourages equality and figuring out who you are, but also because it necessitates fetishizing really unhealthy ideas of love. Like, Twilight got written and became as popular as it was largely on the back that it heavily fits that “roles” idea of relationships. And that means playing up Bella’s docile femininity to the point of her being largely non-active in the resolution of any major conflict and Edward’s toxic masculinity to the point where the narrative openly celebrates his creepy possessive behavior.
And that gets hammered down on the women in these cultures. What they are repeatedly told to look for in a man is essentially someone who doesn’t respect them or view them as fully human and who feels perfectly comfortable ordering them around and they are repeatedly told that being an equal partner rather than a possession that keeps a clean house and raises godly kids is the worst desire a woman could possibly have.
So yeah, this is a worldview not only born out of a toxic cultural idea of what is “romantic” but also in someone who has been barred from any actual healthy depictions of love and relationships. And just like with her interactions with Dorothy in the mock relationship, this shows how far she has to go to really accept the idea that equal partnerships where there aren’t set “roles” are something she can and should prioritize in her life.
Kind of weird that women are supposed to be stalking the guys who they want to be completely subservient to.
Seems a weird contradiction to the supposedly “women need to be the submissive one in a relationship” spiel. I mean, the submissive/dominant idealized ‘romance’ seems really icky to me anyways and it almost seems like thats the last bastion that the concept of Gender has to stand on in modern society.
I’m not sure how people are ever supposed to be Equal Partners in a relationship so long as humanity remains obsessed with the concept of looking at other people as just whether they’re someone who will ‘submit to you’ or someone who will ‘dominate you’…and I don’t have any desire to be in that sort of relationship at all even though it seems like even non-heteronormative relationships are told that they have to have a specific top/bottom, “man”/”woman”, or dom/sub setup to be ‘real’.
Why does Joyce seem to think that if Jacob can be stolen away from Raidah, what makes him immune from being stolen away from Sarah?
And if he’s willing to cheat on Raidah (and I don’t think he is), why wouldn’t he be willing to cheat on Sarah?
Just some things I don’t think Joyce is thinking through. Yeah, her innocence might be endearing (in some way), but she has to realize that when OTHER people say “No”, it’s just as valid as when she says it.
I don’t think Joyce thinks they should cheat, but that they should break up and then Sarah & Jacob should date.
And obviously once her OTP pair are together no one will steal him away because they’re the One True Pair. True Love will win out.
The thing is, Joyce hasn’t been taught that when SHE says no it means no. She thinks wives are supposed to submit to husbands, and the reason non-marital rape is wrong is because all pre-marital hanky-panky is wrong. All her boundaries are institutional boundaries – not ‘I am uncomfortable with this’, but ‘this is a wrong thing to do’.
There is a long, long way to go here, but it’s decidedly NOT about hypocrisy and empathy failure. It’s a cultural thing.
Last panel Joyce is shitty Joyce. Bad Joyce, BAD! We just broke Sarah out of crappy relationship behaviour, you either stop trying to get her back on it or you get water-sprayed. At least Sarah’s expression seems to indicate she acknowledges it as being crappy relationship behaviour.
Also, happy birthday to Willis (and Ultra-Car). Slightly disappointed today’s strip isn’t Carla celebrating with an Ultra-Car marathon.
Much of the enthusiasm is her own crush on Jacob. And I suspect Sarah’s expression reflects both her acknowledgement as you say and her recognition of Joyce’s crush.
Sarah (or Dorothy, or whoever) should tell her that talking like that is creepy and inappropriate, and that you should respect people’s feelings about relationships. They should not suggest that it makes her comparable to a guy who tried to rape her, because it’s really not true. (If Joyce were actually stalking people, it might be different, but to the best of my recollection she never has.) A better argument-from-personal-experience would be “You wouldn’t want Becky to treat you like that, would you?”
How the fuck does your head not explode from cognitive dissonance of trying to police someone’s behavior based on a horrible thing that happened to them???
So back from a couple of days of hunting and I’m glad we’ve moved on from Howards extremely inappropriate behavior and back onto the shenanigans of Joyce and her “interesting” ideas of love and romance
Being that no one can verify if I did or not based on my what I say I have to say that I got…absolutely nothing at all, not even a shot was fired
Everything about the area screamed deer ie back of a farm leading onto a national park (the Rimutakas) so plenty of cover but areas for grazing plus plenty of streams and leading into the roar as well meant it should have been a good area but its also close to a town so the deer were very skittish and didn’t want to come out, I’m guessing a lot of people also go into the area
But it was a good couple of days, the weather was ok and the company was entertaining so while a deer would have been good, overall it was a good time
Well I got to test out some new gear and got some much needed exercise and we were only there because the other place fell through so all in all it was a good time
Plus if it was easy then it wouldn’t be as much fun 🙂
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“Why let a little thing like monogamy and personal boundaries stand in your way of CUDDLES?”
“yeah I can totes tell you subscribe to that policy”
“it’s not anarchy if we can control it.”
“We both want Jacob and I hate her, do you not see any problems with that?”
“CUDDLES.”
Purely platonic cuddles, but that’s platonic with a lower-case ‘p’, because the actual Plato was a pre-Christian heathen and we can’t do things his way.
If it’s before Christ was even born, can you really call them ‘heathens’?
Apparently so.
“People are without excuse” because Creation, so yes.
Plus, Plato actually included the sexins in his ideal love. You were just supposed to move beyond it.
Wasn’t his ideal love he pushed forwards “the love between an older man and a younger man, cause girls just produce babies not philosophical thought or ideas.” anyways?
I mean, not really very actually platonic even so, but also kind of possibly casual man-on-boy statutory rape.
No Joyce, let Sarah do the mature thing on her own
Joyce, you . . . just might be talking about yourself, there.
what? no, that’s… noooooo.
that’s silly. you’re silly!
Then, why are your hands forming the shape of his butt?
That’s her “Leave room for Jesus” gesture.
‘Leave room for Jesus – between your cheeks!’
“I’m not projecting! YOU’RE projecting!”
What, no. Well not this universe her anyway.
Joyce no. No creepy. *Bops nose with rolled up newspaper* No.
You need to bop Joyce with a rolled up Chick Tract, or she won’t get it.
Oh god, you know the song. I had managed to forget it and you brought it back with that alt text.
David has said that Joyce is more or less based on his own life, I believe.
I’m out of the loop, so I need to ask; do young people ever dress like Sarah is here?
Midriff-revealing sweater…does such a thing exist? What weather is it intended for? And wearing it over a long shirt, thus defeating the purpose?
Maybe it was a regular sweater and she washed it incorrectly and it shrunk.
Pretty sure it’s a sweater designed to be worn over a shirt or dress.
No one ever said style had to make sense.
Watch enough anime and everything makes sense.
Mainly because you don’t want to figure it out.
Nope. They are a very real phenomenon. My girlfriend owns one, and I don’t understand the appeal for the life of me, but it’s beyond my questioning.
Yep. It’s called a crop-top sweater. Normally you’d wear it to show off your midriff, but hey, sometimes just your arms get cold, I guess.
As a cashier, I see that about three times a day. Two of those three times, there’s nothing under the tiny sweater/thick shirt, unless it’s snowing outside. It seems to be for girls who like wearing thick fabric but don’t want to overheat the second they get hit with sunlight? Not sure though.
They can look good over dresses, or if the colours/textures look especially great together so you totally want to see them both at once.
I wouldn’t have expected one over a plain white shirt, but then, Sarah doesn’t strike me as a person who spends all morning meticulously matching up her outfits.
Sarah DOES like some layering though, and it’s one of her favourite colours (she wears lots of purple and green, so I’m assuming those are her favourites). She seems like she goes towards ‘fully dressed, not in anything that could possibly be seen as unprofessional by the school, done’.
As someone who owns one of those, it’s mostly because it looks cute, and the fabric tends to not be as thick as a normal sweater.
I’d imagine it’s great for autistic people who need to pressure stim in warm weather.
Was about to say: This is not their primary function but they are GREAT for people who need pressure stim without overheating! I have a connective tissue disorder and often my extremities feel “cold” and itchy when the rest of me is not actually cold, and wearing a light, short sweater like this really helps.
As far as what it’s intended to do…fashion-wise stuff like this can make your torso appear longer so it just looks “nice.” Kinda the same way high-waisted pants can make your legs look longer. A+ fashion for short people.
I kind of like how it works with the layering the way Sarah has it…not sure I’d be so big on it without a shirt under it though.
OMG, your grav is so cute — is she from an anime?
Nope, a game. Persona 5. It comes out this coming Tuesday. Its kind of a series about Jungian psychology and a lot of other themes, but mainly about highschoolers dealing with their personal life issues by traveling to a weird alternate realm where they fight both their own and other peoples literal inner demons by using the manifestations of historical figures who align with their inner selves….
All in order to sort out the horrible things going on around them and to become better people. Well, okay, 5 is more about a bunch of kids who were wronged somehow by adults in their lives rebelling and busting up the sources of corruption as phantom thieves of Justice (I mean, one of the characters literally has Zorro as their special Persona), but still, working out their issues.
The character’s name is Futaba Sakura. Which is weird cause usually Futaba is more of a last name and Sakura is more of a first name, but she’s like this cool hacker chick, who yeah is super cute and kind of looks like how I identify at least. Even to the point of spending a huge amount of money to import the headphones she wears that they’ve made real versions of.
Doumo. I agree; her name is odd. There is Futaba Yoshioka in Ao Haru Ride, though, so having Futaba as a given name isn’t completely unknown.
Yours is Maggie from R.O.D. TV right? She was always my favorite of the three, though I’m kind of prone to being a recluse who likes to read and isn’t great at showing the expressions that fit what I’m feeling in my head, so thats probably part of why.
Maggie is my favorite also. It’s true, she’s very introverted and quiet. On the other hand, consider Sumiregawa-sensei. She seems very out there, very ready to speak her mind in most situations. But she is very reluctant to show certain feelings, e.g., the end of Episode 10, or how long it takes her to admit she likes the sisters. I’ve been exploring their personalities in some depth in a fanfiction I’m writing. They’re both really quite interesting characters.
What I don’t get is the thing she wears on her head a the time. Like… why?
Her scarf? I mean, for me, if I’m wearing a scarf like that in public, its because my hair’s a mess or on its way to becoming a mess. But Sarah’s hair looks fine without one so idk why either. Its definitely a thing, though. Hell, I see girls wearing full on bonnets to class sometimes. I guess its just to show that she doesn’t really care about her appearance maybe?
I have wavy/lightly curly hair, so someone please correct me if I’m totally wrong here, but I think it’s a more common thing for people with very curly/textured hair? Since textured hair doesn’t necessarily “fall flat” the way straight/untextured hair does, I believe some women use scarves like these to sort of “contain” their hair if they prefer to wear it closer to their scalp and don’t want to use relaxers/flat irons.
On my campus, it’s very common to see chicks wearing full-on long-sleeved hoodies… and bootie shorts. Like, what, do you only get cold on the top half of your body? Only hot on the bottom half? What? I don’t get it.
Maybe they just think hoodies are comfortable or cute, and aren’t wearing them strictly for weather?
You can also take the hoodie off easily when you’re somewhere less cold. I’ve done that with shorts and a jacket on occasion. Easier to just throw on a jacket than to change into long pants.
It’s 90F here on the regular. They’re walking around outside like this. I would be on fire if I wore a hoodie outside. The humidity here makes the heat even worse.
It’s made to sell undershirts.
Not joking.
I’ve talking with marketing types, and got into the topic of women’s clothing. Fashion companies realized that when it comes to clothing, female culture pushes women to go for what’s fashionable and trendy over what’s practical. So with guy culture, who couldn’t care less about fashion overall, they stick with practical for the most part. But with female culture, since they *control* the fashion magazines, they simply started a trend of “the layered look”, called it trendy, so they could basically mandate having to buy multiple layers of clothes (and generally of lower and flimsier quality than the male counterpart clothes).
As such, clothing marketing basically went predatory on an entire 50% of our society.
Since female culture ostracizes women who “don’t keep up with the trends”, women were forced to spend 2-3 times much on clothing that would last half as long. And this is -after- fashion industry had already successfully introduced the very financially rude concept of “never be seen wearing the same outfit more than once.” And stores, to keep up with what would sell according to the fashion magazines, mainly sell what fits the current trends.
So, basically, guy culture equivalent would be if all walk-in hardware stores started selling ONLY gold plated house products, and house-plan improvement inspectors would not look kindly on any home improvement projects that didn’t use them.
So that’s why.
Socio-political scalping.
Well, I mean “guy culture not caring about fashion” is just as socially-constructed as “female culture pushing women to go for whats trendy”.
Its also the reason that guys can often get singled out as being “homosexual” just for wanting to actually dress nice for once, or having any sort of taste in clothing beyond the basic “practical work attire” they need for their job. Because someone at some point decided that “men aren’t allowed to actually care how they look”.
I mean really the worst part of it is that “fashion” itself often isn’t even remotely fashionable anymore because yeah, as you said its basically just about the industry telling people what “looks good” and expecting them to abide by that, while fashion designers just spend their time making artistic statements instead of attractive clothing.
While I’m sure all of this is true and kinda lame on the part of the fashion industry, I do appreciate how stuff like this accidentally provides good fashion choices for people with different body types. All the high-waisted, layered, long-shirt stuff has been really nice for us short people who are trying to make our legs/torsos look longer.
It’s ok though because I stick it to them by owning very few different outfits and wearing the same dress to every fancy event because I don’t want to buy more. :)))
Well, yeah, sometimes there’s something actually useful or nice looking as a result, but only if you’re willing to actually think for yourself about what works for your body type and piecing things together yourself.
Like me personally, I’m pretty tall, but super lanky and my metabolism keeps me from being at a healthy weight or even looking the “unhealthy but considered attractive weight” due to the combination of the traits, so stuff that makes me look a bit bulkier or adding layers to stay warm as well really works well for me.
Well, that or stuff that adds layers for a lot of the helpful circulatory and looking bulkier and staying warm end of things while also showing off my sexy waistline is even better. So vests with nice coats and pants that aren’t super skinny cause I don’t have any meat on my legs below my thighs and skeleton legs aren’t hot.
Hehe yeah, the fashion industry tends to ignore short people as a whole (or assumes short or thin = no curves so “petite” clothing never has space for hips/boobage) as it does pretty much anyone outside the “average” (and I use that term sarcastically, as to them “average” seems to be “model”) body type. So I’ve had to do a loooot of figuring out what existing styles/trends coincidentally work for my not-average body type. And thank god for petite girl fashion blogs too!.
It’s funny how stuff like this can work for 2 totally different body types for totally different reasons too! And how we always tend to envy what other people have (I have short, stocky legs even when my weight is on the lower end, and I would probably kill for long skinny legs like yours XD).
Cropped sweaters are often paired with high-waisted skirts and trousers, too. It brings that visual horizontal line of the waist up, which can make the legs look longer and play around with your proportions. It’s neat and fun for a certain type of person. *cough*
Imo, a lot of the clothes in DoA look like the type of stuff that was relatively in style back in 2006-08. ESPECIALLY all the layering.
Roomies is bleeding through.
Hey, she isn’t talking about marriage and at least six children. Still an improvement.
She isn’t talking about it YET.
No. She knows Sarah’s not interested in marriage yet. She has a Google alert set for “ruinous mistakes in a motel dumpster” though.
wait does sarah know jacob’s dating raidah? i wouldn’t think she’d be encouraging cheating for the sake of her ship/projected crush
She and Raidah do not get along.
shit I wrote Sarah instead of Joyce
point still stands! please ignore me being a moron I am so tired
Joyce seems to assume that no relationship is set in stone until marriage. I seem to remember her pushing for Walky and Billie coupling up after “Dorothy inevitably dumps Walky cause transfers”.
If it makes you feel any better, I read what you meant instead of what you wrote.
Joyce knows, Joe reminded her at Galasso’s that Jacob is seeing someone and I think she can interpret that sidehug.
Sarah actually tried to double down on seeing about getting Jacob for herself when she realized he was going out with Raidah.
You know, because they hate each others guts enough to invert their textbubble colors at each other.
well, briefly. then she bailed and walked out on it
Yup. Her conscience wouldn’t let her go through with it.
Stupid conscience.
Yep, and Sarah is trying to take Jacob from Raidah, near as I can tell. And, since it fits with Joyce’s ship and doesn’t necessarily involving cheating, she’s fine with it.
Nah, she decided not to risk mucking up his happiness iirc.
Sarah bailed on that idea after Jacob and Joyce’s previous conversation where she realised she was objectifying Jacob as she was only interested in a few sex times, not a serious relationship, which wasn’t what he was looking for.
“you keep giving up” is rather interesting phrasing. Has Sarah given up but then decided to pursue him again? Or does Joyce just assume that Sarah’s conclusion won’t stick, because they’re her favourite ship? Or what’s up with that?
Sarah did give up before she discovered he was dating Raidah. Since then, she’s seemed to go back and forth on whether she wants to break them up and then date Jacob. Or just break them up.
Gave up before knowing he was dating Raidah.
Reinvigorated to try again when she learned that.
Gave up again after that conversation between Jacob, Joyce, Joe and herself made her realise she was objectifying Jacob.
Kind of still interested but not trying to pursue him now because she really just wanted him for a few romps, not for a long-term relationship, and that clashes with what he wants.
I think it’s related to the final panel. Yeah, Sarah keeps waffling on whether it is right to pursue him and the reasons for that are good. They are romantically incompatible, have conflicting desires for a relationship, and Jacob is happy in his relationship.
All of these are strong reasons to back off and let the crush go, but in Joyce’s worldview, if it’s “true love” then you need to ignore all that and pursue them and never let go even when it is hurting your partner.
well, so much for my hopes of theology
Joyce your shipping is getting a bit out of hand.
It’s not out of hand until she’s read Homestuck, every Rick Riordan book, and watched Ouran High School Host club, RWBY, and Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
Then you will have created a monster.
Pretty sure we need to toss My Little Pony: Friendship(ping) is Magic in there as well to balance the gender ratios out a bit.
See, I didn’t want to go that far, because then Joyce would become a singularity of shipping so dense it would destroy us all.
Nah, the next step seems to be blending in Touhou, Jojo, and Steven Universe…
And then you hit singularity on all the stuff people like to ship and crossover into every other fandom.
Joyce no, find your chill.
Enhance your calm, Joyce Brown.
It’s with Dotty, and Netflix.
See, I can ship too.
Funny thing is, Joyce would not know the cultural subtext and actually come prepared to watch movies and or television shows on Netflix. Wait a minute…how does the fundie community view the works of Tolkien? Because if she hasn’t yet then Joyce needs to watch Lord of the Rings. Maybe the Hobbit if she ends up being a hardcore fan who can just completely blot out the Tauriel/Kili subplot and contain her disappointment about not enough Beorn. Think about it, she’d totally love it. Ultimate triumph of good over evil, chaste hero who is in a monogamous relationship that he won’t consummate until marriage (Aragorn), plenty of shipping material *cough* Frodo and Sam *cough* are even closer *cough* to being a couple *cough* in the books *cough* also, Legolas *cough*, evil that destroys itself through its own actions (Gollum), even a little bit of divine intervention at the end (the only reason the eagles show up is because Manwe sent them Eru dammit).
…
Just realized I answered my own question about how Tolkien’s work is viewed by fundies. His Catholicism probably really pisses them off. Plus, he’s like the father of modern fantasy and DnD is the devil’s work yadda yadda yadda.
Fantasy = evil, unless it’s Narnia, so I guess not well?
Wait wait wait. They let C.S. Lewis of the hook? C. S. Lewis. The man who has the God (Aslan) of his fantasy universe say that, even if you worshipped an evil false god or idol, so long as you did good things you were really his servant all along without knowing it, and if you did evil in his name you were actually being a servant of that universe’s devil equivalent. They let him off the hook they hold the rest of fantasy on? I mean, that’s some pretty non-American-fundie type talk if I’ve ever heard it. Do they also know about his science fiction writing (actually better than his Narnia writing in my opinion, but hey I’m in the minority on that)? Or that his personal idea of being a good Christian was “genial orthodoxy” aka “Just because you’re a religious person that’s no reason to be a dick to people”? I’m being completely sincere here because I honestly don’t know how “fundie think” as I’m going to personally call it works at this point.
Something something important Jesus allegory and Christian themes.
Look, the reasons things are ‘evil’ are often arbitrary and don’t make much sense, I’ve given up on deciphering it.
Whether *they* let Lewis off the hook depends on who *they* is. If you equate Catholicism with the hore of Babylon then Lewis is just more of the same pretend Christianity. If you are Catholic or view it as legitimate, your view is a bit different.
Actually, Lewis was Anglican, not Catholic.
Yes, it always depends, but Joyce’s sect is based off Willis’ sect, which found Narnia acceptable, and they are the ‘they’ I refer to.
Despite equating Catholicism with the whore of babylon.
@ Silly Name eh, Anglican is just an off-brand Catholicism in the big picture. I mean, the only initial difference was that good ole’ Henry “I’m going to keep beheading wives” VIII Tudor decided, “The Pope won’t let me divorce my Spanish Queen so we’re just going to ignore him and put me and my descendants in charge of a state religion got it?”
Its cause Aslan is totally Lion Jesus.
Well, maybe also cause C.S. Lewis also wrote a good amount of books where he talks about Christianity and how Christian he is?
Same reason Twilight is okay (if ‘edgy’) even though Mormons are a cult in Joyce’s sect. Because Christian themes.
Hey, at least the Chronicles of Narnia were well written and most of them were actually enjoyable (Except the one that was basically just an allegory to the Christian end times), if perhaps filled to capacity with “British Children” and their British Children Issues.
I’m fairly certain he wrote a book that ridicules atheists through a lot of allegory. That he dedicated to his devoutly Catholic friend Tolkien who had helped him through a crisis of faith. Who if I remember correctly responded by commenting on how much he detests allegory in all its shapes and forms.
Every member of the Inklings had a complicated friendship with each other.
yes. and keep quiet. it’s a valuable escape hatch out of fundamentalism.
Can’t go wrong with a fluffy lion Jesus. It might be bad if he was I dunno, a golden cow or something, but Lion Jesus is great.
Yes, the ram gods of Fillory suck deluxe. Much darker vision.
Oh. Ok. Didn’t know that. Shutting mouth now.
Not always! There are a great many fundementalist theologians who have written that Lewis is a heretic for exactly the reason you mentioned, as well as a few other beliefs (he didn’t believe in scriptural inerrancy, and thought grace was extended even to those already in hell, among other things). Never doubt the ability of Christians to eat their own.
Relevant Shortpacked! is relevant!
Tolkien was a fervent Catholic. So fundies would hate him.
But… above, you said he’s not Catholic? Was that supposed to be a correction to this comment?
He said Lewis wasn’t Catholic. Tolkien was.
Oh, yeah, derp
From experience, Tolkien is actually like by most fundies, as the Lord of the Rings was said by Tolkien to be an allegory for a Christian’s life, and the creation of Middle Earth in the Silmarillion significantly parallels the Christian creation story. That said, I’m not sure how much they realized he borrowed from his icelandic nordic-pagan nanny.
You mean like magic rings that let you rule the world? And gold resulting in Dwarves becoming too greedy and and dragons being the end result? (Not that it actually turns Dwarves into Dragons in the process, but still)
Raidah is marking her territory. She’s going to be peeing on him next.
Didn’t think Sarah was into that sort of thing, but hey, whatever sparks her engine…
If it floats her duckie
If it lifts her luggage
“Butt hugs are still not okay.”
Nor is the Joyce Special Booty Call.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/bootycall/
Romantic comedies are not a good way to learn how relationships work, Joyce.
I think in Joyce’s case it might be Twilight.
Are you saying that wasn’t a romantic comedy?
It would require romance.
and intentional comedy
Happy little accidents always count. So sayeth Bob Ross, so sayeth we wall.
And likeable characters. No joke, when those things came out one member of my social clique had us all read it just so we could rag on it. I mean the main characters are a hundred year old vampire with a school girl fetish, a Native American werewolf who gets thrown away in favor of the old white guy, and guy magnet Mary Sue who is a complete bongo to her friends and apparently needs to define herself by who she ends up with. Plus they’re all wrapped up in a crappy metaphor for converting to Mormonism. What did Mormonism do in the last fifty years to deserve that?
Orson Scott Card.
Also Prop 8.
Also, making an atrociously high rate of LGBT teen homelessness.
And IIRC, it’s been less than 50 years since they had their “revelation” that they needed to stop segregation in their own church.
…. oh, and Glenn Beck. Let’s not forget Glenn Beck.
Shit. Forgot about that.
@Reltzik well, damn. What the hell?
I liked the Ender’s Game series, regardless of Card’s personal beliefs. I know they always say that calling them “Buggers” was homophobic, but don’t Brits use that word all the time, mostly not using it as a slur? And also they’re bugs? idk, I didn’t see any of Card’s bigotry incorporated into his writings. I could be naive, though.
I don’t recall it in Ender’s Game, but it shows up in some of his other works. Not nearly so blatantly as in his political essays and the like. Though I haven’t read any of his more recent fiction.
Well, there was his rewrite of Hamlet.
@snow mouse
Ender’s Game was okay. There were strains of homophobia and sexism in it, but it could be read as a cultural element of the setting rather than author advocacy. Speaker for the Dead and maaaaybe Xenocide, the same.
After that, he starts sprinkling blatant “fuck you if you’re not socially conservative” turds into the entire Shadows series, and it’s pretty clearly religious party line with author backing rather than just in-verse setting and characters.
That’s just the Enderverse. In one way, it’s been way too long since I’ve read his Mormonism allegories (Children of Earth and Alvin Maker) for me to flag anything specific. In another, it hasn’t been long enough.
I don’t know why. Regular romantic comedies don’t.
(Also, I have to admit that everything I know about Twilight, I learned from watching Bad Lip Reading.)
Breaking into a teenager’s bedroom through the window to watch them sleep is the truest kind of love.
Well, I mean the series was written by a “good Christian woman” apparently.
Despite the creepy age gaps, mystical predator badboys (who want to wait for marriage?), papist vampires, magical doggie strippers, unsafe use of teeth during an impromptu c-section, and implied pedophilia…apparently?
I dunno, had a manager once who was all about it being good Christian literature just because apparently Stephanie Meyer is a churchgoing Christian….who just happened to write a book that inspired 50 Shades of Grey.
Meyer’s a Mormon, so some folks wouldn’t consider her a Christian.
I’m pretty sure Meyer has denied ever seeing Buffy: The Vampire Slayer before she started Twilight, but it’s hard not to suspect was heavily influenced by the Buffy/Angel relationship.
Point. I suppose its just horny Mormons who try and cover up how weird and vaguely erotica Stephanie Meyer’s poorly edited “teen” book series is.
At least in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy was appropriately freaked the hell out when stalked.
Joyce doesn’t even consider Mormons ‘proper Christians’ though. Twilight is pretty much the closest she can get to being risque in her culture though.
Not implied pedophilia, but explicit child grooming- it’s just never given that name. On that topic it also includes magical mind control that literally strips a person’s identity (no hyperbole, it’s actually said and shown just as the child grooming is) and violence if the object of your affections rebuffs you. And these things, by the way, are depicted as romantic and good.
Twilight isn’t romance. It’s horror, with an extra meta level of terror when you realise how many people ACTUALLY seem to feel and believe these are good examples of healthy relationships.
Oh yeah, see it was even too creepy feeling for me when I kept having to watch the trailers of the first few.
Like, Edward is how many hundreds of years old falling for and dating some highschool girl? And from what I’ve heard, its basically couched in an “its okay and not predatory at all because he really really loves her and doesn’t want to be a bad vampire so its basically her being the one seducing him or something,” despite it literally being a novel about a ‘super old mystical sexual predator’ type of vampire who falls in ‘true love’ with a normal minor.
At least the Dresden Files had the decency of making their “sexy vampires” go after adults and admitted that they’re supposed to be scary monsters and that how they function in society is basically evil and wrong, instead of making them into Glitter Sunscreen “Sexual Predators….you know for kids.”.
Pretty sure most people who read the books didn’t squick out till the grooming of an insanely quickly maturing baby/little girl to tie up the loose end of the love triangle of horrible relationships.
As I mentioned above, my social group read them when they came out to rag on how bad it was…and then we got really, really squicked out fast. The real horror is just how popular it became…I could never watch Goblet of Fire again after that. How can you take Sigwert’s death seriously when you know he plays a sparkly skinned immortal pedophile.
Yeah, the explicit child molestation and grooming themes were among the most disturbing part of those books. From the centuries old vampire creeping on a high school girl and demanding she get married immediately at 18 before she has even left school before she’s even allowed to explore the mostly sexual attraction she has to the abusive groomer to… ugh Jacob and that ending plotline where he “imprints” on a literal newborn in much the same way as another member of his group and basically grooms the kid from birth to be his younger bride when she’s “off age”.
It’s genuinely terrifying how explicit the normalizing of child molestation, grooming, and child brides are in that work and the fact that is sandwiched in an awful sandwich of also normalizing rape as the only “acceptable” form of sex (because the woman shouldn’t do something as sinful as enjoy it until she’s properly a mother) and normalizing violent abusive stalking and an ownership model of relationships just makes it all so so much worse.
Ugh, works like that make me wish that it was cultural acceptable to show kinky desires as normal in kid lit, because right now folks curious about that stuff are reading twisted religious works that pair it with all these unhealthy ideas of what a relationship “should” look like instead of treating it as something two people who respect each other can do in ways that don’t involve open abuse.
From what I’ve heard, the Twilight Fanfiction that was rewritten into Corporate Kink Fetish Erotica by the name of Fifty Shades of Grey wasn’t actually any better about properly representing that culture anyways.
I mean, personally it ‘feels’ too close to that abuse borderline for me to not get squicked out by kinky stuff anyways, so I’d rather just not there have been a Mormon-written Teen Novel that normalizes Kink Erotica as “Romance” to begin with, but yeah, it’d still be a lot better if it wasn’t basically “rape dressed up as being a consentual surrender of free will to an emotionally unavailable abuser” every time.
For the record, I used to work at a bookstore and habitually read the back cover of every book I stocked. Everything was basically Scotsmen, Crime Thriller Romances, a tiny bit of Regency, or by and large some sort of Hardcore Kinky Sub Woman Dom Male book that was split between Supernatural and Mundane couplings. Cause apparently our culture is so paranoid that men are losing control that we have to sell women on the idea that the only way they can have good sex is by letting themselves be shoved down and forced into being a man’s property.
50 Shades was utter bullshit. It’s basically rape and abuse dressed up as BDSM.
Well, I mean, apparently it literally started out as Adult Erotic Fanfiction of Twilight, before a publishing company decided they wanted to try and sell it and got the author to change the story to not involve actual vampires and change the names of the main characters. Its like literally “Edward” as a Corporate 1% “Vampire” with “Bella” the College Age Journalist. Except instead of being a super strong supernatural sexual predator made of diamonds, he’s just an emotionally unavailable super rich sexual predator who can afford all the diamonds.
They didn’t even have to take out the vampires – the original fic was a All Human AU.
Ah, so just name changes then to make it publishable? Man, wasn’t it great when rape fantasies weren’t mainstream romance and teen novels? Those were the days.
I believe that the book changed about 11% that was strictly necessary to avoid copyright infringement charges and that was it. In practice, I believe this mostly went into names, location names, and a couple minor tweaks here and there that didn’t affect the main plot. I believe she was also required to take down the fanfic – titled Master of the Universe – but this is the internet. Nothing goes away.
Read at your own risk:https://ohfifty.com/downloads/MOTU_w_Outtakes_Snowqueens_Icedragon_COMPLETE.pdf
The wiki also has a list of the changes made between the fic and the book. Seriously, if you have a copy of the book from the library you can read along and see how LITTLE is different.
Honestly the only one I’m remotely think would be interesting to read would be Grey, and that just because it might be a study of how an emotionally unavailable maladjusted control freak functions and justifies their rationalizations.
Which you know, I’m not even sure it properly does, cause otherwise it’d probably ruin people’s ‘sexy’ image of Mr. Grey.
Wait, when was it that “rape fantasies weren’t mainstream romance and teen novels”?
“Rape fantasy” as romance novel goes back to the early twentieth century. The Sheik by Edith Maude Hull, was an early example. It’s been a mainstay of genre romance ever since. If anything, and despite such mainstream examples, it’s become less common over the years. Pretty much as women wanting sex, even outside of marriage, has become more acceptable.
Yeah, sadly, rape’s been a mainstay in romance for a long ass time. Editors have a tricky time convincing writers that they don’t want to portray creepiness and rape as acceptable.
Apparently, Grey has been squicking out fans. Particularly ones who wanted it to be a misunderstanding or a coincidence – stuff like him stalking her to work was, until then, possibly seen as a coincidental Meet Cute. They were not happy to be wrong, understandably, as that meant Grey was fucking terrifying and not Damaged But Ultimately A Good Person like they wanted him to be. I kinda feel bad for them because it sucks being wrong about favourite characters like that, even if the writing was on the wall for a long time beforehand.
@thejeff: Well, at the very least there were a lot less of the blatent ones that my bookstore stocked in the “Romance” section instead of the “Erotica” section before Fifty Shades of Grey hit the market. After that the overall majority of books in the “Romance” section were “hardcore sex novels” in the same style as Fifty Shades of Grey.
@BBCC: So, in other words actually a proper exploration of his character traits and him being a Damaged But Ultimately Actually A Horrible Person Anyways. At least thats something.
*splutters* HARDCORE? 50 Shades is pretty milquetoast on the hardcore/softcore scale, as far as porn goes.
Well, I meant as far as the “scene” it was trying to go for…with apparently ridiculously bad euphemisms for everything cause the author didn’t know how to actually write anything that didn’t sound like bad fanfiction anyways.
50 Shades is still what really “Kicked off the Kink Craze” when it came to mainstream releases that all the soccer mom types came in to pick up every month.
Doubt anyone’s going to read this at this point, but yeah, I was specifically referring to the werewolves with my comment. All the rest of it is also messed up as all hell, for sure, but that was the bit I was addressing in particular.
And echoing what has already been said- 50SoG is a horrible abusive relationship that’s “supposed” to depict BDSM but doesn’t. Not at all. It’s abuse. It’s abuse using kink as an excuse. I think it’s safe to say it’s a series that gets the hackles up of anyone who is actively into BDSM.
Also, as someone with a history of abuse in my life, I found it to be actively triggering. I couldn’t read it and had to rely on an in depth breakdown. That alone is NOT a good sign.
I like the following mocking of Twilight.
http://shinga.deviantart.com/art/Head-Trip-Twilight-Sucks-85504254
http://shinga.deviantart.com/art/Head-Trip-Breaking-Dawn-98016573
I thought about linking these too. Thanks for doing so.
Sorry for the extra work, Mr. W.
Looking into it, I’m pretty sure the way she gets away with justifying it…
Is that its the “Older male character” that basically gets turned into the ‘perfect guy’ for the main female lead’s underage daughter. Its his life on the line if she somehow decides she doesn’t actually like the doting werewolf guardian that way once she’s old enough for them to start getting it on. Its once again all made okay because its not the ‘sweet innocent girl’ getting groomed for the romance but the “adult male who shouldn’t be imprinting on babies in the first place”.
I mean apparently he was made as a plot device to get Bella up to speed on vampires in time to hook up with a mysterious dude with bad hair anyways. He just got upgraded to love rival tier when people decided he was hot.
And then back down to bargaining chip tier when the story demanded he imprint on a baby in order to keep her safe from werewolf retribution. Its still disturbing for like a million different reasons.
That’s even worse
Sounding pretty Roomies there, Joyce.
*follows up “I Fought the Law” with “STOP! In the Name of Love”…*
I’m thinking more Every Breath You Take goes better with the last panel here.
That song showed up in the NEXT strip.
Joyce. You’re being at least two opposing kinds of creepy. You need to stop at least one of them.
Or at least find a way to make them cancel out.
It’s too late. She has passed the creepy event horizon, and now, all will spiral down into the black hole of her shipping. None shall be spared.
…. normally, this is where I and everyone else says “No, Joyce.”
…..
…. Here, Joyce. Have a shovel. Keep digging. I want to see the spectacle you produce.
I mean, like, there are train wrecks, and then there are high-speed train wrecks that hit five school buses filled with nuns.
….. okay, I’m reasonably sure that the latter hasn’t yet happened in the plural, but still….
I can envision half a dozen scenarios where it could occur, and that’s in less than ten seconds of thinking. It’s probably happened somewhere, somewhen, somehow.
But has it happened twice?
Exactly 5 school buses, COMPLETELY filled with nuns, both times?
I looked it up and found a dirty joke. *shrugs*
https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1j4awb/a_bus_full_of_nuns/
…. why am I not surprised that the internet has already Rule 34’d a bus full of dead nuns?
Damn it Joyce, that way leads down the path to becoming a supervillain.
Ah, but see, after she becomes a supervillain, and kills dozens of people, and is steeped in evil — after all that, she will be cleansed, and made pure, and become one of the good guys, and all the evil she did will no longer count. Just like Electra.
I’m thinking he seems like Joyce’s type, too, like, a lot. So is she not into him cos Sarah is, cos he’s Black, or just cos she’s not?
Did you see the lip biting last strip? She is ABSOLUTELY into him
I think because Sarah is into him and because Raidah is his girlfriend. I would guess already-in-a-relationship makes him out of Joyce’s moral bounds, and that he’s black would just make him even less likely to be considered as a relationship partner for her, I’d guess – I don’t think she’s racist at all, but I think she doesn’t excel at thinking outside the box, either. We already know how much Joyce struggles with the gray areas! So I can’t see her feeling right about pursuing a taken guy. But her ship game is epic, so she can project all that creepy goodness onto Sarah!
I think she is into him but not really processing it because she’s already committed to shipping him with Sarah. Like, her friend already called dibs sort of thing?
We can tell Joyce doesn’t realize she’s got this crush, because she hasn’t spent the day beating herself up about it.
aaaalla dese comments =p
(tho I’d add, being less likely to consider a romantic partner on the basis of race is definitely racism- But Joyce is a pawn of systemic racism, rather than actively hateful, which I take to be the intended meaning)
Ehh I don’t know? I’m attracted to both and women but less likely to consider a woman as a romantic partner. I wouldn’t call that sexism though. It’s just more like they don’t spring to my mind immediately as options. Usually I get butterfly-stomach-feelings around them first and then am like OHHHH where with guys I realize it sooner I guess because of social conditioning. So I guess you could call that systemic sexism but that doesn’t really seem right to me either. It’s less bigotry and more pre-loaded opinion. And those exist with EVERYTHING, not just race and gender.
*both men
Not helping, Joyce, not helping.
Also: Happy Birthday to our liege, Lord Willis! Long may he reign!
DamnHappy birthday to you, Willis!I didn’t even have to look at the hover text. I knew.
I need to look up that song x3
Also, I hate that hand position. like, you’re literally pushing me, can we not do that pls.
That, and the control thing guys do where they grab the back of a woman’s neck. WTF is that? Knock it off!
Some folks happen to like it. One of the reasons communication is so great.
I think it’s the equivalent of putting her arm around his far shoulder, given that she can’t reach it comfortably.
There’s that…there’s also panel 2. she’s pushing on his back and pulling on his arm- not, like, HARD or anything, but there tis. Raidah doesn’t like Jacob being friendly with sarah.
In any case, me personally, I’d still rather someone crazy shorter than me not. do. that.
She also may be doing that because she herself wants to get away from Sarah because she doesn’t want to be around Sarah, which would be understandable since they bring out the worst in each other.
I’m always surprised at how the “Christian Side Hug” is everywhere in things talking about or mocking christian dating. I went to a fairly isolated christian high school and it was like at meme status there. Then I graduate and come to find out its meme status literally everywhere with “Christian” teenagers
I don’t think I believe Sarah when she says she’s only interested in Jacob for his body anymore :/
Well, this explains her issues with personal space.
And YIKES girl, noooo.
(Also – fixed the bug. Turns out my computer needed an update and was blocking things like gifs, ads, etc., not letting me copy paste between the internet and word processor, or run any of my apps, because it wanted its update. My lil computer was throwing a fit because it wanted its check up. Seems to be all back in order now, which means I get to see ads again without needing to download them. Yay?)
Never heard of that before. Your’re sur you hadn’t caught a Virus and updating removed it?
I’ve seen odd behavior when a computer has downloaded and installed an update but hasn’t been rebooted yet. Not sure if that happened here, but maybe something similar.
Pretty sure, yeah. My computer likes to throw a fit when it needs an update, like not letting certain apps work. I figured it out when I realized that clicking links on Patreon made downloads instead of following the links. Plus running the files through multiple virus scanners returned them all as ‘probably safe’ and showed names similar to ads I see all the time (such as for colleges).
Joyce… My child… No. Calm down.
Yeah Joyce, that sounds super healthy…
Sarah’s thoughts in the final panel: Holy shit that’s creepy. And I think grounds for a restraining order.
Obligatory post:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJAMu9cUtIc
The most baffling part of that video for me: why, for a rap song about Christian love and affection, would you choose to sample the motherfucking Imperial March, one of the most iconically evil movie themes of all time!?!?
Creative irony? Either that or their just really, really big Star Wars fans.
And just for Joyce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ZF_R_j0OY
Oh, hey, it even answers how it gets around sodomy taboos.
I mean, in a really dumb nonsensical way, sure, but logic is for scientists and scientists believe evolution exists?
I love how Walky and Becky just silently steps to the sideline to watch the drama unfold.
Becky: Man, we should have brought popcorn.
Walky: It’s like going to the movies but free.
Happy birthday, Willis! Thanks for a great comic.
Yo, Jacob. Dating Sarah would probably lead to more screentime. Also Raidah’s really uninteresting. Her only thing is that she doesn’t like Sarah. That’s it. No secret identity, no horrible parent, no psychological trauma or debilitating social querk. Trade up!
Happy birthday Willis!
Now we know what happened to that personality of Joyce from Roomies!
Willis has always said that the DoA characters are just the Walkyverse characters without the super-powers, memory wipes and alien invasion.
Jacob’s butt gained sentience and also said goodbye
We know that Joyce will address butts directly, so it shouldn’t be a surprise.
“Hello Ethan’s tushie I would like to touch you very much thanks you please.”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/03-up-all-night-to-get-vengeance/bootycall/
Joyce should be a songwriter. Heck can anyone else imagine her as a beat poet?
Silly Joyce, stalking leads to “stalking” if you know what I mean.
So, where did Dorothy have to be this afternoon?
Shoe waiting to drop.
Damn you, Birthday Willis!
Someone please tell Joyce to stop getting relationship advice from Twilight ohmygods. XD
Also hey happy birthday Willis!!
Wow… both sides of unhealthy expectations of romance in one sentence. Joyce, uh, maybe you want to talk to your women’s studies prof about that?
She is actually mostly okay, which honestly makes her one of the better adults in the entire comic to get advice from so far. Well, except for all bad decisions in regards to thinking lady politicians with horrible policies are hot.
I say CHRISTIAN you say SIDE HUG!
CHRISTIAN!
SIDE HUG!
Joyce… Joyce, no, please don’t. Nothing but pain comes out of the ‘stalk’ attitude, even if it’s gender-flipped >_<
Sarah’s expression in Panel 7 is… odd. Suddenly, it seems Joyce is the centre of her thoughts. I wonder if she’s starting to ponder if Joyce’s encouragement to her might be some sort of transference thing about her own feelings. It is a bizarre thought, as Sarah’s expression shows!
Pretty sure Sarah’s already cottoned onto the idea of Joyce developing affection for Jacob, from the way they interacted after having pizza together. No, I think Sarah’s quietly aghast at Joyce’s horrifying world view in the last panel.
Conceal, don’t feel.
This is horrible advice and they were pretty bad parents for giving it.
The advice was fine, it was Elsa who took it to an extreme. The parents advice may have been wrong but the message was simple: conceal your powers, don’t be afraid. Elsa on her own twisted it into ‘I must feel nothing at all or I’ll completely lose it’ and ended herself in a non-stop anxiety attack.
I dunno, they seemed pretty hardcore into “don’t use your powers ever again, get your emotions under control so you’re a respectable princess instead of a danger to yourself and your sister” to me as well.
Which hey, I guess if you had to take one of your daughters to a ‘special hospital’ because of an accident ’caused’ by something your other daughter was goofing around with, its reasonable to expect them to over correct.
It still kind of feels like they were the true villains all along even if by accident though.
>I mean Elsa was supposed to go bad and be the villain anyways, which is why she gets so little screentime, but then she got a touching themesong that plays down the villain angle and Elsa ends up being super identifiable to a lot of people and we don’t want her to be the villain so they had to find a new one.
Its still a pretty shitty way to advice someone to behave. Trying not to feel because you’re “too sensitive” or whatever is really a horrible sort of life.
They’re not as hardcore as they seem, a lot of the things that look extreme like the sisters being separated and Elsa staying in her room almost all the time were actually Elsa’s choices.
The king and queen just wanted Elsa to control her powers so she, and everyone around her, would be safe. They did the best with the information they had but unfortunately their advice was warped by Elsa’s fear. Try not to let fear control you turned into don’t feel anything. Be careful around others turned into isolate herself. The gloves will help turned into her needing the gloves to touch anything or else she’s automatically freeze it. Sadly, Elsa wasn’t thinking or feeling clearly, she was panicking almost the entire time so no matter what advice she was given would eb warped and become bad.
Well, all of that also sets some heavy queer parallels. A kid showing signs of non-heteronormativity as a kid, parents over-correct and create a strong idea of shame that leads to the kid self-closeting in response to it, having the kid be terrified of “accidentally showing” their non-heteronormativity ever again to the point of secluding themselves and becoming heavily anxious in public.
Like, just because someone sets up their own closet doesn’t mean they didn’t learn to do so by the strong negative reactions of their parents.
The isolation was her parents’ idea: “We’ll lock the gates. We’ll reduce the staff. We will limit her contact with people, and keep her powers hidden from everyone. Including Anna.” They may not have actually said “you can’t spend any time with your sister” but it’s not terribly surprising she got that from “you shouldn’t be around people until you can control your powers” + “nobody can ever know about your powers, including your sister” + the unspoken “last time you used your powers you nearly killed her.”
^^^ this. Even if the parents didn’t actually MEAN that Elsa can’t spend time with Anna, they sure did nothing to fix it once Elsa misinterpreted the situation. SHE WAS LIKE EIGHT. IT WAS NOT HER RESPONSIBILITY TO RAISE HERSELF.
Yeah, I mean its pretty clear the parents were pretty scared of her powers as well, what with them basically acting like it was a curse to be gotten rid of when they brought it up to the troll elder before admitting that it was an inborn ability.
I mean, yeah, it wasn’t like they had any idea how to train her, but their approach to try and solve the problem was basically “Hey, just don’t use your weird powers ever again and everything will be great, okay honey?” instead of “lets look into ways to try and get you to be able to harness and control your power so it can be used in a safe way and keep it from going crazy and activating on its own when you get upset.”
Seriously, they didn’t even want to try to figure it out, just make the “problem go away”.
The kicker? Elsa COULD control her powers until that incident. She lost control because she was terrified of them after that. A better solution would have been her parents saying, “Okay, this definitely wasn’t GOOD, but it was an accident, it’s okay, Elsa, you don’t have to be scared. Just be careful next time, okay, sweetie? Try finishing your building before you let Anna climb it, instead of making a game of climbing. Or maybe only do that when mommy and daddy are there, okay?”
“Were actually Elsa’s choices” ah yes those of an impressionable child scared so far out of her mind she can’t control powers she used to control with ease.
Remember, she never actually lost control of her powers. The original incident was her missing with a shot she deliberately made, and she SAW IT COMING and was already shouting at Anna to stop.
The parents never even asked what happened. They ASSUMED that Elsa lost control of her powers (which she KIND OF did, freezing the entire hall while gripping Anna, but AFTER the accident and BECAUSE of it), because I guess that was already something they were afraid for. Then the troll scared Elsa even more (YOUR GREATEST ENEMY IS FEAR jfc dude that’s ‘don’t think of a white elephant’ levels of twisted), then the parents enacted their ‘plan’ isolating Elsa… Of course she was onboard with it, she was, what, eight? and scared out of her fucking mind by nearly losing her sister.
No, just… no. Elsa’s parents handled the situation TERRIBLY, and everything bad that happened (including ANNA growing up in isolation and nearly marrying the first stranger she met because she was that starved for companionship) is UNILATERALLY THEIR FAULT.
Also, on that note – if the trolls meant ‘other people’s fear of your powers’ would be her enemy and not just any fear ever, they REALLY SHOULD HAVE FUCKING CLARIFIED when they realized her parents misinterpreted.
FWIW, I’m really surprised tha tthere are not more Frozen/X-Men crossover fan-fictions out there. Elsa’s problematic relationship with her powers and with her family seems to be right out of The Big Book of X-Men Character Tropes.
Yeah, but I think its mainly seen as a joke….that or noone wanting to cross that Disney/Fox borderline even in fanfiction.
Even if the “How it should have ended!” video with them forcing even Wolverine to join in singing the song was great.
Raidah’s pose certainly is very possesiv. Even though he immediately starts to go with her, she pulls his arm and propels him in the back. So he can’t turn around? Strange, uncomfortable looking pose.
Joyce: Listen to yourself and process what you are hearing!
Re:Tolkien films – I actually gave up on the films because they were so focused on the fighting. But I always wondered what happened to Kili and his Elf love. Can someone point me to a spoiler-site?
Its probably past the statute of limitations on the spoiler, but Killi meets the same end he does in the book form of The Hobbit, which kind of sets that ship dead in the water as Tauriel then vanishes back into the mists of “Made up just for the movies” Land, never to be mentioned ever ever again.
Pretty tragic all in all, and really helps to sell the tragedy of the Battle of Five Armies, cause Kili was really one of the more likable Dwarves in the movie anyways.
Right. I forgot the nicer dwarves didn’t make it through the final battle.
No, it was worse: after the scene where Toriel mourns Kili and we get some profound musings from Tranduil, THERE IS NO RESOLUTION FOR HER AT ALL. She was exiled from the kingdom, did she ever get un-exiled? Where did she go? Did she end up coping in any way? She didn’t even feature in Legolas’s last discussion with his dad about where Legolas is going to go that foreshadows the events of LotR (in a way that makes no sense with the book timeline by the way).
She’s literally just… dropped. She doesn’t get any scenes that don’t feature Kili or Legolas, and she doesnt’ even get any finish for her arc. Even the mourning scene was more about Tranduil than about her. WHY
Cause she was literally completely made up to give the movie more GIRL POWER for marketing reasons?
I mean, mind you other than completely dumping the character when her emotional relevance to the plot was done, she was one of the better additions or alterations to the original story, but she basically was created so Hollywood could leverage things to make more money.
Glad I’m not the only one who noticed that forearm-grab thrown in there just in case the hand on the back wasn’t quite enough to draw him away. I kinda hope we follow them for a minute just in the hopes that Jacob will call her on that and see how she responds. To what degree she’s aware of it and whether she tries to excuse it as ‘for his own good’ or recognizes it as something she needs to work on
I know how people ship Joyce and Jacob and in a way I can kinda see it… but I don’t think Joyce has the slightest idea of what she wants from Jacob, she’s just inadvertently wowed by all that Jacob in front of her. Even more, if Jacob would ever do anything remotely similar to engaging her in any sort of romantic or intimate fashion I’m fairly certain Joyce would flip.
More than a ship that looks like a girl who has no idea how relationships work to me.
That said, Joyce here is living proof you don’t change overnight. And I was fairly certain Sarah decided ruining whatever Jacob has right now is not worth pursuing him. Which is, you know, the adult thing to do.
See, I think its not just “all that Jacob in front of her” that she’s wowed by. Him actually saying he thinks its awesome that she’s sticking to her values…and being like the only person she’s met so far who actually both enjoys her bible talks and is someone she likes being around probably impress her a lot too.
That said, yeah, its pretty clear that she doesn’t realize the crush she may be developing on him. I mean a crush doesn’t even have to ever be anything more than someone you’re super into being around who also gets you a bit flustered just by being near them.
She’s still focused on throwing Sarah at him for now anyways, so stalking by her probably isn’t on the menu yet.
Currently, I think she’s stalking him by throwing Sarah at him. Unintentionally, but it gives her an excuse to see him and talk to him.
And to go further, there’s the other Jacob.
Happy birthday Ultra-Car! (And Willis too)
I’m starting to understand why stuff like “Twilight” is popular… Why are girls so into unhealthy, abusive bullshit O_o
Because stalking is sooooo romantic!
Cause obsession is truuuuuuuuuuuuuuueeee looooooooove?
A thought that basically seems like it should only seem logical to stalkers.
Pretty sure it ties into toxic masculinity having been taught as the ‘rule’ and also as what was ‘cool’ for a long time, combined with women not having much socially acceptable power and having to rely on doing things a lot more covertly to get anything they wanted or find a better spot in the pecking order?
Theres something about “dating the badboy” being “safe” because you know from the start that he’s not the marrying type or something, which sounded weird when someone tried explaining it to me, but is apparently a thing. Getting together with someone you know you can’t be serious about so you can have a relationship, but not risk falling in love and getting stuck with them.
Plus there’s a huge cultural idea of “fixing the bad boy”, where women are expected to do free emotional labor to redeem men and make them better while absorbing a lot of abuse while doing so. This of course makes it hard for a lot of women to escape abusive relationships or recognize them, because our whole culture sells unhealthy toxic and obsessive relationships as “romantic”.
Because the media itself doesn’t call itself out as being creepy or abusive, it pretends it is romantic, throws in some words about how the person’s special and blah blah blah.
Plus, due to lack of teaching about relationship stuff, a lot of people (it is not just girls into Twilight, I assure you) do not know off hand abuse tactics and unhealthy behaviours until way later than they should. So playing it as romance means people like Joyce twistedly believe such behaviours are normal for romance or are romantic in nature, rather than creepy as hell.
I still feel like one of the worst parts is that guys tend to be portrayed one of maybe three ways in most romance stuff.
A. Hotblooded extremely passionate horndogs who are always trying to sneak a peek or cop a feel and is probably the type to cheat on them.
B. Emotionally unavailable control freaks and machavelian manipulators.
C. Charming Douchebags who somehow cover up their douchiness by “just being that charming and also being super hot”.
Like none of that is either healthy or respectful. Or actually very romantic either.
Like seriously, there needs to be more romance stuff with people who actually like each other and treat each other well because they care about each others emotional, mental, and physical well being.
Tbh, everything about it is usually the worst part.
The girl is usually attracted to the guy at their absolute worst, blinded by her attraction completely, and generally the guy doesn’t soften for her, he just gets backstory so she becomes more tolerant of it.
There really does need to be more like that where people treat each other well and don’t have exaggerated fights every five seconds. Like, relationships where people treat each other well melt my heart soooo fast. I will turn into an absolute puddle of joy because goddamn is it good for the soul when people are understanding, caring, respectful and try to help each other out while casually and lovingly correcting harmful behaviours (without it blowing up into a big thing they fight over for stupid reasons). I live for healthy respectful relationships.
One of my favorite romances is an anime series called Ai Yori Aoshi for that last sort of reason in particular.
I mean, it gets pretty fanservicey because it tries to sell itself as a harem comedy, but its more of a threes company sort of setup where the guy just can’t admit that he and the main girl are in love because of drama in regards to their families.
Still, the great thing is that even with the temptations being there, or even things getting in the way of things going as planned, the guy always makes the right choice and doesn’t chase after the girls who aren’t the one he’s secretly dating, and is just a super thoughtful guy who isn’t going to do the wrong thing just for some immediate pleasure. The female lead is really great too, but its more amazing when the guy isn’t just plain horrible in romantic shows.
Seriously its annoyingly hard to find stuff with healthy respectful relationships in it, and yeah, I basically live for those too.
Aside from teenagers of either sex rarely having a realistic idea about what a healthy relationship is supposed to look like and mostly get their expectations from the mediocre writing of their favorite fanfics or shipteasing Netflix series,…actually, no. That’s pretty much it. Overexposure to media written by people who don’t know how to actually depict romance and create unrealistic expectations that lead to very unhealthy situations for viewers too young to separate fact from fiction. I’ve lost count of the amount of supposedly consensual romance scenes in various series that really were intended to be consensual, but look like the exact opposite because the writers and directors have no fucking clue what a consensual romance scene actually looks like.
Because unhealthy societal conditioning bullshit from a young age! \o/
WTF Joyce. No.
Wow this is giving me flashbacks to Christian camp, we had a youth councilor make a memorable speech about “Side hugs are for friends, front hugs are for making babies.”
Naturally we all took every opportunity to gratuitously front hug. When we got back to church a week later we announced that everyone was super-pregnant, especially the guys.
Well: you really should have done those front hugs naked. Didn’t the councilor explain that?
Given that everyone in that camp seemed determined to do the exact opposite of what he said, such advice might have led to… consequences.
I like the reverse color speech balloons, in that we know Sarah and Raidah are frosty polite to each other, even in the long shot. Nice elements.
Even though Joyce is “clearly overrunning with hormones” we never got a limit on what she would stop at for pre-marital dating contact until now, have we?
Happy birthday bityhday, Willis.
Thank you, predictive grammar.
What’s the bet that Jacob thinks that it’s ‘nice’ that Raidah and Sarah are at least on speaking terms and is completely oblivious to the subtext? ‘Oblivious’ and ‘Jacob’ do seem to go together, after all!
I don’t think his low-keyness means “oblivious”. Raidah told Jacob “Sarah is toxic to me”, he’s with Raidah, and I think he’s not going to stir the pot just for hahas.
PS I liked how Raidah said “She’s toxic to me” rather than Sarah’s just “toxic” (to everyone).
Yeah, I liked that too. It was a nice character growth moment for Raidah.
Joyce, professional Yandere XD
Well, I mean…its only actually being a yandere when the person reaches ‘mental illness’ tier obsession. Got to be sick in the head enough to think your toxic messed up and usually illegal levels of obsession are actually just “devotion” and “love”.
Still, you know she’s got the path to the Yandere life all set out for herself. Seriously, stalking is bad stuff that can lead to worse stuff.
I’m really hoping that this mini-arc is leading down to a sit-down/deprogramming session in which Sarah explains to Joyce why this proposed course of action is socially unacceptable. Possibly with the coda of Sarah saying: “If I think it’s socially unacceptable, that should tell you a lot about just how bad it is!”
I grew up about as churched as one can be, and I never got the idea that an actual hug is *more* intimate than smooching. Oh dear God, have I been violating people all along without realizing it?!?
Also, no, Joyce. You think you’re the angel of her conscience, but you’re on the other shoulder at the moment.
Was it consensual hugging? If they hugged you back its okay.
Right! This was mostly dramatic sarcasm. I wasn’t the best at reading discomfort in my teens, but I am definitely not agressive with body contact.
I’m honestly questioning whether it IS a good idea for Sarah to keep pursuing Jacob though. Obviously, she finds him sexually attractive, and they do have a mutual friend in Joyce. But does she actually like Jacob for himself beyond that? Do they have any shared interests? Mutual life goals? So far the answer seems to be “no”, and it seems that part of Sarah’s motivation in pursuing Jacob seems to be “Raidah must not win”. That’s a TERRIBLE motivation to have in a relationship, one that could ultimately prove poisonous and leave the couple with bitter feelings.
I like you, Sarah, but honestly, I think you might be better off stepping back on this.
Honestly, it’s really a terrible idea for her to pursue him. He’s in a relationship and extremely monogamous, has shown clear signs of being happy in his current relationship, her and Jacob have incompatible views towards what they’d want from a relationship, and they have somewhat conflicting personalities.
And yeah, the desire to hurt Raidah for hurting her. Which is an awful reason to pursue a person.
So yeah, I think she’s well figured out that her and Jacob isn’t going to work and it’s time to let that beautiful dream go.
Sure, sure, it’s a terrible idea, but let’s’ keep the eye on the ball here.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-6/01-to-those-whod-ground-me/determination/
I mean, spite IS a good idea to hurt a lot of people, including yourself, right?
I feel that last line but not sarcastic explains Trump voters in a nutshell.
Comic Reactions:
Panel 1: It’s not great, but it’s a slight improvement from where they were before. Like Raidah and Sarah are never going to be friends and frankly have enough bad blood that civility is also a tough ask. So a terse greeting and a quick departure is about as good as they can do now and is certainly healthier than the bullying Raidah was doing to Sarah before.
Like, it’s baby steps, but it’s baby steps moving in a slightly better direction than before.
Panels 2-5: Raidah’s doing the quickly departing thing, which is for the best. And Sarah’s eyes seem to be showing that she’s making peace with his relationship to her.
Like it’s never easy seeing someone you like with someone you hate, especially when that person you hate has done awful things to you in the past. But it’s important to respect a person’s autonomy and what they believe makes them happy.
And in this case, Raidah really does make Jacob happy. We’ve seen it in their interactions, in the happy way he speaks of her, in their sexual and romantic compatibility. And I think that Panel 5 might be her finally accepting that on some level and beginning the painful process of letting the beautiful dream go.
Panel 6: Oh Joyce, so unaware of your growing crush…
Panel 7: Which eesh, is probably for the best with attitudes like that with regards to how you’re supposed to act when you have a crush.
There’s a lot here to unpack, but it’s worth noting the deliberate parallelism being made, where Joyce here is channeling or invoking Joyce’s stalker character from Roomies! Which was always a hot mess, so I’m very glad that even though Joyce has many of the same unhealthy ideas about romance, her actions reflect that less and we’ve never really seen her retreading those same grounds in action.
That all said, oof, everything Joyce believes about what love “should look like” is deeply unhealthy to the point of genuinely being a bit scary.
But it’s also an idea that’s heavily incorporated into our culture. The idea that stalking and obsession are the two most “pure” forms of love is an idea weaved into most every teen romance and TV series and it’s a deeply toxic idea, because it gets folks to believe bad boundary actions is somehow romantic (see the cultural swooning for John Cousak playing a boombox outside his crush’s house or for Twilight).
Happily, it does seem like there’s been a fair few works for teens that are starting to unpack this deeply unhealthy bullshit like Steven Universe’s response to Jamie’s obsessive attraction to Garnet or Legend of Korra’s Eska plotline, but it’s definitely something that is deep in our cultural narrative and tends to micturate with unhealthy ideas like “fixing the bad boy who abuses you with your love, showing how special and true your connection is*” or the hero “winning” his love interest by physically besting the bad guy, because women are seen as rewards for feats of masculinity.
*Which quickly leads to a way to not only justify way too much effort thrown in emotional labor to abusers, but also a ready-made way for kids in abusive relationships to blame themselves. CW: Abuse logic: After all, if their love was “stronger”, they’d be able to cure the abuse out of their partner, so really it’s their own fault that their partner is still hurting them.
And that’s mixed in Joyce’s case with the Christian shame doctrine and the idea that anything outside chaste interactions before marriage or with someone who is not your lawfully wedded partner is bad and wrong. Which is an idea that is getting a lot more public attention these days given Mike Pence’s “I can’t meet women alone” thing becoming a national talking point.
And all in all shows the sort of deeply unhealthy mess you can end up with when you are raised with these sorts of ideas of what love looks like and are barred from seeing any healthy examples of love and partnership because of twisted ideas that feminism or equal relationships are literally demonic*.
*Like, the whole “roles” thing and exaggerated gendered behavior in a certain type of Christian doctrine in order to try and sell an idea that heteronormative relationships are somehow ordered by God and the natural order of things does a lot of damage. Not only because it heavily discourages equality and figuring out who you are, but also because it necessitates fetishizing really unhealthy ideas of love. Like, Twilight got written and became as popular as it was largely on the back that it heavily fits that “roles” idea of relationships. And that means playing up Bella’s docile femininity to the point of her being largely non-active in the resolution of any major conflict and Edward’s toxic masculinity to the point where the narrative openly celebrates his creepy possessive behavior.
And that gets hammered down on the women in these cultures. What they are repeatedly told to look for in a man is essentially someone who doesn’t respect them or view them as fully human and who feels perfectly comfortable ordering them around and they are repeatedly told that being an equal partner rather than a possession that keeps a clean house and raises godly kids is the worst desire a woman could possibly have.
So yeah, this is a worldview not only born out of a toxic cultural idea of what is “romantic” but also in someone who has been barred from any actual healthy depictions of love and relationships. And just like with her interactions with Dorothy in the mock relationship, this shows how far she has to go to really accept the idea that equal partnerships where there aren’t set “roles” are something she can and should prioritize in her life.
Kind of weird that women are supposed to be stalking the guys who they want to be completely subservient to.
Seems a weird contradiction to the supposedly “women need to be the submissive one in a relationship” spiel. I mean, the submissive/dominant idealized ‘romance’ seems really icky to me anyways and it almost seems like thats the last bastion that the concept of Gender has to stand on in modern society.
I’m not sure how people are ever supposed to be Equal Partners in a relationship so long as humanity remains obsessed with the concept of looking at other people as just whether they’re someone who will ‘submit to you’ or someone who will ‘dominate you’…and I don’t have any desire to be in that sort of relationship at all even though it seems like even non-heteronormative relationships are told that they have to have a specific top/bottom, “man”/”woman”, or dom/sub setup to be ‘real’.
Considering how big of a Twilight fan Joyce is, I’m not too surprised that this is what she envisions a romance to be.
Also, happy birthday Mr. Willis! Keep on being awesome!
Hopefully Sarah will set Joyce straight tomorrow.
oh wow. You guys weren’t kidding about privacy issues and self-righteousness (thinking she knows who Jacob should be with more than he does)
clarifying that I still think she is awesome
Why does Joyce seem to think that if Jacob can be stolen away from Raidah, what makes him immune from being stolen away from Sarah?
And if he’s willing to cheat on Raidah (and I don’t think he is), why wouldn’t he be willing to cheat on Sarah?
Just some things I don’t think Joyce is thinking through. Yeah, her innocence might be endearing (in some way), but she has to realize that when OTHER people say “No”, it’s just as valid as when she says it.
I don’t think Joyce thinks they should cheat, but that they should break up and then Sarah & Jacob should date.
And obviously once her OTP pair are together no one will steal him away because they’re the One True Pair. True Love will win out.
I didn’t say she being rational.
The thing is, Joyce hasn’t been taught that when SHE says no it means no. She thinks wives are supposed to submit to husbands, and the reason non-marital rape is wrong is because all pre-marital hanky-panky is wrong. All her boundaries are institutional boundaries – not ‘I am uncomfortable with this’, but ‘this is a wrong thing to do’.
There is a long, long way to go here, but it’s decidedly NOT about hypocrisy and empathy failure. It’s a cultural thing.
Good point.
Last panel Joyce is shitty Joyce. Bad Joyce, BAD! We just broke Sarah out of crappy relationship behaviour, you either stop trying to get her back on it or you get water-sprayed. At least Sarah’s expression seems to indicate she acknowledges it as being crappy relationship behaviour.
Also, happy birthday to Willis (and Ultra-Car). Slightly disappointed today’s strip isn’t Carla celebrating with an Ultra-Car marathon.
Well, today in universe isn’t April 3rd. Give it a few decades and we’ll see if she celebrates then.
Much of the enthusiasm is her own crush on Jacob. And I suspect Sarah’s expression reflects both her acknowledgement as you say and her recognition of Joyce’s crush.
Fun theorising that we’ll probably never see in-comic: if Sarah and Jacob DID start to date, how would Joyce handle the crush-feelings?
Hi there Roomies Joyce. You haven’t been missed.
Keep her away from Danny.
Happy happy birthday, filled with all the good things! 😀
You had to remind me of that song
Wow, this is not the kind of talk I want to see from someone who was nearly raped at a party. Maybe Sarah should point that out to Joyce.
Sarah (or Dorothy, or whoever) should tell her that talking like that is creepy and inappropriate, and that you should respect people’s feelings about relationships. They should not suggest that it makes her comparable to a guy who tried to rape her, because it’s really not true. (If Joyce were actually stalking people, it might be different, but to the best of my recollection she never has.) A better argument-from-personal-experience would be “You wouldn’t want Becky to treat you like that, would you?”
How the fuck does your head not explode from cognitive dissonance of trying to police someone’s behavior based on a horrible thing that happened to them???
So back from a couple of days of hunting and I’m glad we’ve moved on from Howards extremely inappropriate behavior and back onto the shenanigans of Joyce and her “interesting” ideas of love and romance
Oooh, didja catch anything?
Being that no one can verify if I did or not based on my what I say I have to say that I got…absolutely nothing at all, not even a shot was fired
Everything about the area screamed deer ie back of a farm leading onto a national park (the Rimutakas) so plenty of cover but areas for grazing plus plenty of streams and leading into the roar as well meant it should have been a good area but its also close to a town so the deer were very skittish and didn’t want to come out, I’m guessing a lot of people also go into the area
But it was a good couple of days, the weather was ok and the company was entertaining so while a deer would have been good, overall it was a good time
I won’t be going back to that area again though 🙂
Ahhh, dear are tricky to catch. Don’t beat yourself up too bad. It could be worse – turkey are apparently a bongo and a half to catch.
Well I got to test out some new gear and got some much needed exercise and we were only there because the other place fell through so all in all it was a good time
Plus if it was easy then it wouldn’t be as much fun 🙂
Happy birthday, Willis!
It’s also my brother’s birthday, and he has the same first name as you, so I assume there are time-travel shenanigans involved.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WILLIS!!!
Side hugs to you, good sir!
NO PREMARITAL FRONTAL HUGGING
Happy Birthday Good Sir! May it be pleasant, and one of many more.
Sarah: RAIDAAAAAAH !
Raidah: SARAAAAAAH!
Me: TESTUOOOOOO !
Tetsuo: KANEDAAA !
Kaneda: Donkey !
Happy birthday Willis
Thus endith another trip around the sun.
What on Earth is a “side hug”?
So… my old nemesis. We meet ag… okay, bye then.