To the point that, from what I’ve heard, it’s not uncommon for gay people to compare their “Coming Out” stories to see who had it worse, and skits like this one get made (Title: “When Coming Out Goes Better Than You Thought”) – https://youtu.be/UgHwF4CNiJA?si=egeOrVbag1CXxoEw
In Finland, our “moderate and civilized” right wing party just voted against bannin “gay-to-hetero conversion therapy”, despite the party officially having that opinion.
Yeah. The governor of Kentucky just signed an executive order to ban conversion therapy this past week and it was Kind of a Big Deal locally. There are already groups calling it unconstitutional and saying that banning conversion therapy is going to set back mental health care for young people in the state.
If you think parents in YOUR country can’t be insufferable, you just haven’t chosen the right lifestyle to shock or offend them. Parents, are Parents, (except when they’re worse).
As of the posting, that’s the Human Bill character from Fortnite. Grey alien with a few skin color options and some outfits you can mix and match. Comes with a little UFO you can wear on his back, too. I hounded the in-game shop obsessively for months, waiting for him to show up when I had the 1800 V-Bucks he cost. Fuck revolving storefronts, they kept me from having basically my ‘sona as a skin for way too long.
Actually it is – Judaism is a matriarchal religion (which, historically, was overridden by Middle Eastern and then European patriarchal societal norms, but course-corrected in the West as time went on).
Judaism is decidedly not matriarchal, and hasn’t been at any point where it was definable as Judaism. Matrilineal, yes, but not matriarchal.
Whether it had Matriarchal elements prior to becoming monotheistic is more than I am able to state, but I will state that despite a lot of neo-pagan claims, there’s very little evidence for matriarchal religions anywhere in Europe or Asia at any point.
Maybe not so much with the traditional religious affairs, but as a culture we’ve definitely got highly formidable matriarchs that wield a lot of influence and directorial power in the family. Certainly in my family, the ladies are not to be messed with, let me tell ya.
I would lean towards saying it is improvement. By taking this secret trip to meet her son, she is risking her relationship with her husband and thus, is willing to take a large risk for the sake of “supporting” her son.
Is the support steeped in ignorance and baked in toxic levels of control? Definitely.
Would she benefit from Prof. Leslie’s class? If she paid attention, yes.
Is this an improvement over actively trying to change who Ethan is; largely by trying to get him into Joyce’s pants (who was at the time trying to save herself till marriage)? I believe so, as new Naomi makes me ever so slightly less uncomfortable.
Is the improvement sufficient? That is up to Ethan.
personally, i prefer to choose to assume bad intentions from people who constantly act badly and never attempt to change. it’s actually a completely reasonable conclusion to reach. people deserve the benefit of the doubt when you meet them; after 20 years of living with them, not so fucking much.
“Attempt to change” is what we seem to be witnessing here. You don’t have to be right about everything to attempt to move in a better direction, I can’t think of any ulterior motives she would have, but it’s possible there’s something I didn’t think of.
I genuinely don’t agree that this is an attempt to change.
She feels entitled to show up unannounced and be received by her child, with no respect for his agency.
She feels entitled to control whether or not he shares aspects of life with his father.
She’s manipulative in the way she removes his agency, by obviously dangling a very important and tense topic she wants to talk about over his head, so he can get scared and anxious about what it might be, and then she extracts his absolute compliance that he will do what she wants him to do (not tell daddy about it) before she actually brings up what she wants to tell him.
She’s a grown woman who fully believes it is her right to tell her grown child, another 20 year old man, another adult person, who he is allowed to be and who he is allowed to associate with.
For you to say that her “allowing” him to be a homosexual, is an attempt to improve herself, you are falling into the manipulative trap of her framing, and you are directly supporting that she is correct about having the right to control her child this way. And I don’t think you actually believe she is right about that, but IMO with what you’re arguing, you support her framing of the situation, and are denigrating Ethan’s agency and humanity.
A terrible manipulative person being oh-so-kind to permit the person she feels like she’s entitled to control, one meager scrap of agency, is not them getting better or improving. It’s purely them recognizing that they have been pulled away from, and trying to correct it, by manipulating their victim back into their life and good graces through the appearance of some acquiescence. But, the thing she is “giving” to Ethan, is the implication that she should continue to have absolute control over his life.
This is not a sweet little Mom coming around to love and appreciate her queer son. She is still fully disgusted and ashamed of who he is. It’s just that, there is nothing that a controlling person abhors more, than losing control of their victim when their victim establishes distance and boundaries away from them. This is just the continuing cycle of her assuming control over Ethan’s life and self, and restricting who he is allowed to portray himself as. Which is probably the first thing Asher will tell him, when he’s allowed to come back out of the closet…that Ethan willfully shoved him back into…because Ethan is terrified of displeasing or disappointing his Mom.
It’s not sincerely nice behavior, even slightly, at all. It’s just a manipulation tactic from an abuser, and it’s shocking to me that people don’t recognize that.
@Throwatron
Ummm ok that’s a lot of writing. I gather… ok you’re saying her ulterior motive is control? Sure that’s possible, at least partly. She talks like someone that assumes control was a given, like she’s yielding something here.
I’m willing to see this through, if she’s yielding to the idea that Ethan’s sexuality isn’t a choice to begin with, I still see it as progress, personally. If she admits to that, she’d effectively, if begrudgingly, be admitting she was wrong in the first place for trying to control it.
she’s not just a narcissistic parent, but one who’s so invasive to the point to which she entitles herself to dominate what kind of sex her adult son can and can’t have.
These invasions are there to remind Ethan that even in the most private aspects of his relationships and his fucking BODY, he remains under royal rulership.
Frankly if this were happening just outside a state like Indiana, this the kinda shit that would warrant intervention from a social worker at the very LEAST. 👀
Weird takes here.
This is far better than I was expecting out of her. Don’t get me wrong, it still sucks, but I was expecting her to be trying for the Linda/Carol tier and this isn’t that.
However you try to diagnose pathology and motivation into a couple of sentences.
Throwatron,
You’re right. She’s not doing it perfectly, so let’s give her no credit at all…. OR
some people have no instructions or understanding how to proceed, so they stumble through it doing the best they can with the only understanding they have.
It is simultaneously true both that this is garbage behavior and also that this is improvement over the last time we saw her. She has taken a step in the correct direction, but she still has 900 or so miles (~1450km) to go to reach baseline decent human being.
you make many assumptions, not real practiced in negotiating with other people are you? Especially people who disagree with your choices. Or you haven’t yet had the dubious pleasure of helping someone kick a habit or had to actually work with someone to change their mind rather than condemning them and dropping them. the mere ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of fact is sometimes the first hurdle you’ve got to get over, especially if the person’s used to having to be in control, or having to be stubborn in a conflict-rich environment. She’s shown up to ACKNOWLEDGE a fact Ethan’s been fighting to get her to admit to for years, likely, and she’s finally admitting what’s been in front of her the whole time.
THAT, y’alls, is PROGRESS. The other issues like the controlling/obsessive helicopter/overbearing relationship dynamic that’s been suggested since Ethan’s first appearance on this comic? is also something that has to be worked on, but at least he’s got her to admit to herself that grandchildren are likely to be adopted, not spawned, if they’re linked with her son…and that’s a major thing in some families.
I am holding out to see what it actually entails. We don’t know what is going on behind the scenes here yet. While her wording is horrible, it could be that there is another discussion going on between the mom and dad that would be even worse. This could be her pressuring her son behind the scenes because the dad thought that he needed a break with everything that was going on (and so pressured the mom to stop), or that the dad was threatening to pull the son out of school (aka cut funding) and send him to a camp or something. I do hope that this heads towards one of the better possible options than one of the worst, but will have to wait and see.
I didn’t get the impression Ethan’s dad was the one with a problem with homosexuality the last time they visited. If anything, she probably doesn’t want him to know for fear he’ll take it as permission to explore his own urges.
I bet it’s this. It probably isn’t even that she’s scared Ethan will fail, or do something drastic…she’s scared her co-parent will [checks notes] unconditionally love and support her child in a way that will make Ethan act in a way that she finds disgusting and embarrassing.
She hasn’t changed her mind at all, that him being queer is a bad thing. She simply aims to maintain the level of control over Ethan’s life and self, and deference to her authority, that she has worked so hard to establish for the past 20 years.
I mean, she has appeared very few times, but her every expression is drawn as menacing as possible, and every scant interaction she has with any other character has her attempting to manipulate, belittle or domineer them in one way or another, and the overall intensity of that behavior is cartoonish, even for this strip.
So, I agree that it’s accurate that we have little total exposure to her behavior. But, this is also a work of fiction, and she has been deliberately portrayed by Willis as completely fucking reprehensible, every time she’s been on screen. I choose to assume it’s a reasonable reading of the text, that the absolute consistency of her controlling nature in every strip she’s portrayed in, is meant to imply that she acts this way literally all the time. I really don’t see any evidence to the contrary.
I went back and checked. She’s appeared in nine strips total where she actually has a line, or performs an action. She consistently does something reprehensible in every strip she is in.
Strip 1: Meets her son’s best friend on campus. Demands that Amber call her by her first name, even though Amber is clearly uncomfortable with that. Sarcastically attacks Amber with accusations of her turning her son gay, when Amber doesn’t back down from her boundary and comply.
Strip 2: Suggests to her son’s best friend that what he needs to be happy and healthy, is for her to leave him alone, because her support of his gayness is confusing him. She wants to sever her son’s most important social bond, because she believes her failure to be a perfect wife for a gay man is the reason Ethan is having issues with his sexuality.
Strip 3: Is deeply cold to Ethan even after he tries to gain any mote of approval for the fact that he is willfully denying his sexuality to please her. It does not sway her at all. She refuses to give him any validation whatsoever, and does not have a line besides angrily glaring at him. This is also the first time her husband talks all day, despite the fact that he has been there with her for 100% of her panel time. He says nearly nothing, all the time. Big red flag.
Strip 4: Naomi directly accuses Ethan of trying to placate her, and is unmoved until he admits that he thinks he’s found a straight girl who is okay dating a gay man, at which point she admits that his gayness made him a complete disappointment to her, and begins demanding that he begin fucking her, immediately, with aplomb. Which, common sense says, she believes will cure his gayness, because she is an insane person.
Strip 5: The only strip where Ethan’s dad says more than a single word. He says the line that has lead most of us to assume that he is a deeply closeted gay man who keeps arrangements of appearing straight with Naomi to maintain their relationship. Which, if true, also makes her demand that Ethan and his father have no discussion of her permitting him to have a sex life, even more disgusting than it already is. She won’t even let her two owned gays talk to each other, lest they support one another, and lessen her control over them. Divide and conquer behavior. Naomi’s only line in this strip is “FUCK HER BRAINS OUT.”
Strip 6: Naomi meets her sons girlfriend for the first time. Joyce greets her boyfriend’s mother. She doesn’t bother to answer or acknowledge Joyce, at all. She mutters under her breath that Joyce will be an easy lay for her son.
Strip 7: Flashback, Naomi is so uncomfortable seeing her son briefly look at another boy, that she completely withdraws him from his social group and takes him home.
Strip 8: She shows up unannounced to her son’s front door like she owns the place, and demands to be let in. The first thing she says to him is a direct criticism of his appearance.
Strip 9: She demands that her son does not discuss what she is about to say with his own family members, deliberately triggering his anxiety to manipulate him into promising that he will comply before actually announcing what she is going to say. She literally would not have said anything, until he agreed under duress to keep quiet, because like in every other single line she has in the entire comic, she completely tramples the agency of every other character she interacts with. She finally grants her son “permission” to be a homosexual. Also, keep in mind, she is here entirely in secret from her husband, because she also controls what information he has access to, as her personal accessory.
Oh, strip 10 just popped. My prediction that she’s rather have a gay embarrassment of a son, then a dead embarrassment of a son, was correct. Of course, she also implies that her current state of permission, is at least temporary; so, that’s even shittier than what everybody singing her praises, was hoping for. Either way, she fully and plainly confirms that she wishes to maintain control of her husbands and her sons’ sexualities, whenever she deems convenient.
Tl;dr every time she is on screen, the singular unifying theme of everything she has ever said and done, fully implies she is an undercutting, manipulative, controlling person, who feels deeply entitled to the agency, autonomy, and personhood of the people around her. When she’s batting 100 on ten tries, maybe she is in fact like this all the time, and is genuinely not a good person.
I’d say yes, improvement. I’m reading this as “I have a lot of prejudices but I’m choosing you over them”. Which, I think, is less bad than “I have a lot of prejudices and they are more important than you”. Still bad, less bad.
Yah, she’s not being Toedad, and Ethan’s won at least enough ground that she’s acknowledging the facts in front of her instead of railing against them with the pastor at her back.
It’s more like how she was in the Shortpacked universe during her only appearance over there.
Essentially, she’d rather he be with a man than alone. Which… take that as you will.
I mean, I guess if she went from not clearing a bar 1 inch off the floor to clearing a bar 6 inches off the floor, that counts as an improvement, but it’s still a real low bar she’s still not setting any records.
We haven’t heard what her conditions are. Someone who thinks they have the power to allow or not allow someone to have the sexuality they’re going to have anyway will not be above setting terms.
Not everyone has what it takes to be a varsity athlete. Sometimes, you have to take some goddamned time to get them to change decades of upbringing THEY experienced plus decades experienced with YOU.
I have a theory. Naomi’s relationship with her husband is on the rocks (probably because he’s closeted or repressed, and it’s finally starting to leak out). She wants Ethan’s emotional support, so she’s offering tolerance to get him on her side against his father. It’s transactional, and repugnant, and it’s more likely Ethan would sympathize with his father, so she’s trying to win his support before he realizes the truth.
If ethan wasn’t currently going through a depression , it’d be a great opportunity to troll her and like “I only care about 2d /fictional charas” and just hugging a body pillow and accidentally leaking it to like the neighborhood or so
hopefully the ‘permission’ doesn’t mean “i know someone powerful/super rich who also has a gay son”, go be a sugar daddy hunter for the family XD
I have a feeling that seeing her son truly depressed has made Naomi realize how much she actually does want her son to be happy, even if being happy means being with a man.
Ethan still doesn’t need her permission or approval for it, so her approach here is still urgh, but at least she might have the spirit…?
Aww, are Jewish people somewhat better at that? Because my very Christian mother once outright told me that she’d rather see me unhappy and miserable every minute of my life, as long as she knew I’d be keeping my “eternal salvation”.
Not knowing what branch of Judaism the Siegals come from: if they’re Reform, her homophobia is not supported by current Rabbinical thinking.
Orthodox Judaism is still mostly against it; but given they were presumably able to drive to IU on the Sabbath for Family Weekend, they either aren’t Orthodox, or don’t keep it very well.
Conservative Judaism is somewhat split on homosexuality in general, essentially ending on “Read the views of these different eminent rabbis, then decide what your synagogue believes.” The current Conservative thinking still holds Leviticus’s view that anal sex between men is an abomination, but other homosexual activity is fine. Most Conservative synagogues at least say that they’re fine with gay members.
But regardless of any of that, there’s no sense of an “eternal salvation” being at risk, because that’s not part of Judaism; if Ethan suddenly decides that he wants to follow the Conservative view on anal sex, then he can repent at Yom Kippur and be fine.
Second, I’m not Jewish myself so take it with a grain of salt, but I’ve heard people often say that Judaism doesn’t have a concept of Hell, certainly not the kind of Hell Christians believe in. I understand your feelings and experiences, as I was told by my peers growing up that I’d go to Hell for not going to church enough. So, at the very least, Naomi would presumably not think Ethan would go to Hell for being gay, because she probably doesn’t believe in Hell.
Hello friends, Jew here! Judaism does have a concept of “Hell” in that there is a place where you suffer/repent after you die. However, it’s quite different from the Christian concept of Hell in many ways. It’s not exactly a punishment, and it’s certainly not eternal. It’s called Gehenna, or sometimes Gehinnom, and the chabad provides the definition of “purgatory, the spiritual realm in which the souls are cleansed from the blemishes brought about by their conduct while on Earth.” (source: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1594422/jewish/Do-Jews-Believe-in-Hell.htm) I suggest looking it up if you’re interested- here’s a great article to start with: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2970/jewish/Do-Jews-Believe-in-an-Afterlife.htm
TL;DR Gehenna/Gehinnom could be thought of like a Jewish Hell, but it is a place where the soul is cleansed before moving on, not a place of eternal punishment. Hope that helps 🙂
Thank you! Makes me wonder, though, what is her problem, then? LikeI can understand my mother’s concern: she honestly believes that me going against Christianism’s tenets will end with me experiencing an eternity of horrible pain. She’d rather I never be unhappy, but if the choice is between a few decades of it versus trillions and trillionf of years unending… well the choice is rather simple. I imagine that’s how she also copes with her own unhappiness.
But if Naomi doesn’t have that little coercive threat heavily hanging over her heart… what is it to her, then, whatever Ethan does?
How much of “Depressed Ethan” has she really seen tho? I imagine there might’ve been the news and such, and a holiday/break or so but him staying holed up in his room like amber probably is nothing new
Well her first comment was on how much weight he’d lost, which is something readers commented on after the timeskip as well. Losing weight, change of appearance, change in behavior… I’d say a good parent would recognize that as signs that something’s wrong. Naomi isn’t a good parent (as far as we’ve seen at least) but she has eyes.
I’d also say “the college might have reached out about Ethan’s lack of attendance” but 1) college doesn’t tend to reach out to parents like that and 2) I… don’t remember entirely but I wanna say it was implied that Amber might be hacking his grades a bit to keep them stable/keep Ethan in school? Not sure and I don’t feel like looking lol
@doopy, given the fatshaming culture in some areas i’ve seen stories where it’s like “Ppl kept telling me i looked so good losing weight when i was literally a recovering addict” so i guess it might depend (not that ethan was particularly considered ‘chubby’ before hand but not necessarily muscular i suppose)
People don’t go from bad to good instantly. Best thing for Ethan to do right now is accept the progress and explore what triggered it. Getting upset at her over the phrasing, regardless of her intent, is more likely to trigger a regression rather than further progress.
Feels like that would still come with a caveat of like “Approved gays” or so
probably would be difficult if he was trans too, it’s not a competition of course but i imagine there’d be some parents that are like “You can be trans but i’m not paying for anything” (which might sound fair but other than some ppl who are already working part time and saving, and living in a state/country with good healthcare it’d probably be hard to deal with HRT as opposed to someone genderfluid/neutral that wouldn’t necessarily have dysphoria to need ‘treatment’)
Like with college, i understand why some parents would tell the kid to pay for it all yourself, but even with a lower chance of debt unless the parents have been poor/struggling their whole childhood, you’d think they’d help pitch in a /little/ in that aspect
considering she used “allow” id oubt it’s in good faith lol
versus “i realized your father’s a piece of shit” (well idk if we really saw /know much of ethan’s father but given the context she’s bringing him up here he probably doesn’t ‘approve’ of ethan’s sexuality either), “and divorced him/met a wonderful woman and am going to be a late in life lesbian”
I’m not sure I like her saying it that way, but I’m glad Ethan has at least one parent onboard. This also means that Asher can get out of Ethan’s closet, and not have to hide from Ethan’s mom.
I feel like she said a kind of nice thing, in the worst way possible. He is gay weather you “allow” it or not, but it is kind of nice that she is fine with it? If that is what she is saying? I think it is, but she said it in a way that is so shitty that I am not 100% sure?
and that, right there, is the basic meaning of tolerance, and it opens the doors to negotiations that were closed hard before she said it. “Tolerance’ does not mean support or approval, it means not attacking someone for things you disapprove of. we have words like “Support” and “Approval”, after all.
this isn’t sweet, this is a woman believing she has absolute agency over the behavior and life choices of her fully adult son. this is grade A narcissist behavior.
This is parent-of-a-teenager behavior. When you’ve had that level of responsibility for someone literally his entire life, it takes a lot of work to hand it over. Some of us are really bad at it.
I’m terrified that you actually have kids, and think this behavior is acceptable. I’m sure you’re a better parent than this in real life, but as a grown adult person, you should also recognize controlling, manipulative behavior for what it is.
what, you’d rather they didn’t release that control, or would you rather they were so distant that they didn’t bother in the first place? Not everyone can successfully be a doormat for their offspring, just like not everyone can rein in those tyrannical urges-sometimes part of achieving adulthood, is having to work to free yourself mentally, and sometimes it’s having to work to convince your parents you’re really and truly big enough to take care of yourself without their help. (and some kids NEVER MASTER THAT.)
What I said was, very clearly, I do not think that they were in any way like that to their own kids, but that it was concerning for a grown adult to not recognize clearly awful behavior for what it is; if you manage to make it to age 40 or 50, and you think how Naomi acts is just a little growing pains/empty nest syndrome from a good mother, I just don’t know how someone can avoid the wisdom of recognizing a person like Naomi, for that many years, doing something as hard as raising kids.
Failing to adequately give your grown kids space is one thing; lots of parents forget to stop telling their 20 year old to keep a curfew, or something like that. That is not the same thing as displaying aggrieved entitlement over your child’s body, adult relationships, and sexuality. Mark suggested the second thing was like the first thing, which is what I thought was really unusual from somebody who’s definitely mature enough to recognize that difference.
Congratulations Naomi, your actions are….slightly better than the alternative, but fail to realize that you are acting outside of your jurdiction.
What you can do, is not criticize/actually support Ethan, regardless of him being gay.
How rules based was your household growing up? How many trips to the ER did you end up taking? I knew people in the service who had to enlist to escape their parents, (in at least one instance, to the utter shock and horror of their parents, who were still intent on being hippies long after it wasn’t cool anymore).
Overbearing parental units exist, Naomi clearly has such a relationship with Ethan, but with added…issues.
I’d rather he process the death of his abuser, than process the abuse of his abuser. The first thing has a much shorter lifespan. If she lives, she’s going to be treating him like this, until he has the self-respect to go no-contact with her.
And her behavior is fully intended to impair his self-respect and agency, so that he doesn’t pull away from her control. So, Ethan escaping her treating him this way, would likely take a while, if it ever happened. Which is the point of her behavior.
Last strip, I was thinking that her expression in the last panel didn’t make me condemn her at once, and that while I didn’t expect her to burst out “I just discovered your father is gay! And it’s fine and I still love him and I’m so sorry for all the things I’ve said to you!!!”, I wouldn’t be shocked if she did. Of course, then I remembered this was a parent in a Willis strip, and laughed wildly at myself for the very thought, but I feel that by those standards, this is actually not that far off.
I would wonder more if it would be something like “I have known for years that your father was gay, and we only stayed together because of you.” type of thing. Sort of a whole, I was expressing my frustrations out on you instead of your father, who I still had to have a somewhat working relationship with.
Very kind of Naomi to allow her son to be a homosexual. My mom never allowed me to be a homosexual, she never even brought that up because she doesn’t care. Naomi cares. More moms should be like Naomi./s
Unfortunately, she recently found out about trans men and wants Ethan to find one who’s okay having kids. She figures if he’s gonna date a guy, that guy should at least have a working uterus he wants to keep.
Look, don’t argue with me about how that does or doesn’t work, Naomi is the one who canonically said it.
And then Ethan’s Dad (legal name) is like “Yeah, I can see that. How many steaks ya want, boy?” and then Asher reveals he’s a vegan and now Ethan’s really in for a lecture.
Have you ever encountered someone who’s technically an adult, but can’t handle the simplest setback, failure, resistance, or condemnation?
Yah, those are adutls who were kids, whose parents never let them get traumatized.
Hold up, we don’t know if she’s leaving this at that. “Allow” implies that she can still take this away and may set unreasonable (read: any) conditions.
It’s very easy to mock this but I actually am weirded out by saying it’s progress.
She clearly never believed Ethan actually wasn’t gay despite Ethan’s own attempts.
It’s still horrible but…less horrible?
I mean, maybe my expectations are rock bottom after Carol. Ethan has no reason he HAS to accept her “acceptance” but she’s showing more growth than almost any other parent here.
It’s progress, but not in the “she’s getting there” or “she’s definitely going to get there”, but in the “this is different in a way that in the short term is probably at least less hostile.” journey of a thousand miles, single step, etc etc.
But ya, Ethan’s not obligated to walk her the rest of the thousand miles.
she’s begun acknowledging reality. The next step in her journey, is to recognize her son is no longer five, and can make adult decisions on his own without her input or approval.
SOme people not only never get there, but start extending that to those they are NOT related to. we call them ‘Activists’.
Yeah, this is very much not a good approach, but a lot of the speculation the last couple days was that she was going to make a serious play for “worst mom” and this isn’t that. This is far better than I expected.
The hiding it from his dad is what’s intriguing me now. Have we been completely misreading this pair all along? Was he the worse one? Or is there something else going on with them?
It’s never good when parents start asking their kids to keep things secret from the other parent.
Also, she doesn’t want her husband to know but is it because she’s of the mind he’s less accepting than he seems or is he actually violently homophobic and she’s actually afraid of his reaction?
Oh sure, she’s come to the “whelp, this is just how it is” conclusion which is a reasonable result. It’s just a thought about her having to put it this bizarre way for her own… ego? psychology? whatever reason.
My takeaway is that it’s as simple as, “Ethan being a respectable, clandestine homosexual” is less potentially embarrassing than him failing out of college due to depression, or doing something even worse. Her core concern relative to him, is how bad she will look if people witness how badly he is doing, and judge her parenting skills for it, when she knows deep down that she has been an utterly perfect parent, whose child just doesn’t appreciate how lucky he is to have a patient and supportive mother such as her.
So, she’s choosing the least embarrassing option she thinks is possible, and is “graciously” steering him towards it. She’s calculated in her own fucked-up worldview, that she’ll look like a less terrible parent for raising a respectable, tasteful homosexual, as opposed to a college dropout, or a beautiful young corpse. Even her fear of something potentially bad happening to him, is rooted in how bad it would make her look, and not in any real grief she’d feel to actually lose her son.
Incredibly shocking that 75% of people in the comments are like “awwweeee!!! Naomi is being such a good Mom here! Ethan is so lucky she loves him enough to change!!!” I really thought people around here had a better read on this stuff.
Though, I guess I should feel blessed, that so many people are so oblivious to being able to spot an obvious narcissist when they’re deliberately shown one behaving that way. It means they’ve probably escaped dealing closely with this behavior in real life, and that’s better than the alternative reality, where they recognize this behavior for what it is, as a matter of course. It means nobody has hurt them in this way, and I’m happy for their shocking ignorance, and I hope they never have to learn the things that I know.
I’ve got one WORSE. She might’ve looked up stats on disposable income and relationship stability and realized that as an openly gay man, he’s statistically likely to have more disposable income than a corresponding straight man in his age group and education level.
That translates into a potentially nicer nursing home when she gets too old and decrepit to work.
I’m a little interested in that income thing. Is it down to gay guys not being (as) pressured into buying like, diamonds and restaurant meals and flowers and fancy cars and all that stuff?
The really weird thing is that we haven’t seen a lot of Saul, Ethan’s dad, but like the one time he said anything significant he was much less blunt about condemning Ethan’s homosexuality, and more or less framed straight sex as maybe an acquired taste.
Honestly, it came across like he’d had his own same sex attraction at a younger age and either shoved himself in the closet hard or is actually bisexual. (The previous sentence is about Saul, to be clear. Ethan has shown no signs of being interested in a woman and while some conversation has been made about fluid sexuality, I do not expect him to.)
Not “maybe”. He called it “gross and scary at first” and said that, after a long while of doing it anyway, “perhaps eventually you will learn to enjoy it.” The only explanation for this is that he does not enjoy sex with his wife. He’s either asexual or 6 on the Kinsey scale, and given the evidence for a certain heritability of such things it’s probably the latter.
I don’t know… I’m 0 on the Kinsey scale, and most definitely NOT asexual.
But I would not enjoy sex with mrs. Siegal. She doesn’t seem like a person I’d trust and respect enough to drop my pants for.
…I suppose, coming from her, that this is technically an improvement.
No, what’s really interesting here is her keeping this a secret from Saul. Back in Freshman Family Weekend, Naomi was the one who was really with Ethan about it while Saul just kinda meekly said that sex with girls was gross and icky but he would eventually get used to it. Is she keeping this secret because Saul told her to relent and she doesn’t want to admit she’s come to agree with him? Is Saul actually more firm about this because he’s closeted himself, and “allowing” Ethan to be gay would be admitting that he hasn’t really turned himself straight? I have no idea! Looking forward to seeing where this dumpster fire rolls.
Could she actually be the one closeting herself? I mean, what Saul said could have been something he told himself but it could have also been something that he told Naomi. Could just be that she was jealous of Ethan being able to be true to himself when she wasn’t allowed to. I am just being a devil’s advocate here though. I do wonder how much of her fixation was due to wanting grandkids. Her terminology of considering him “a disappointment” just sort of makes me feel like she wanted biological grandkids, but I could be very wrong on that.
A teeny tiny mini improvement, but an improvement but an improvement nonetheless. Still would not blame Ethan if it was too little too late for him. But if this is a relationship he wants in his life, this could be a start.
you could almost read it as an attempt to do right by someone who is just completely unequipped. but man, between “allowed” and nouning the adjective it sure sounds like the real aim is self-righteousness
Narcissists view their children as extensions of themselves, and the stakes on their child’s success or failure, are purely centered around what other people may judge of them from their child’s behavior. The child’s wants or needs do not factor in. They see their child’s function to be representing them well, and making them look good, in honor of them.
In her mind, she is being “helpful” by being permissive, because the dual implication is that 1) even as adults, children of narcissists are expected to submit to the complete control of their parents in any aspect or area of their entire natural lives, as a matter of course, and 2) Ethan is being completely unreasonable, by having any expectation of living his own live based around his own wants, needs, and values, and from her perspective, he is being willfully unreasonable to her by exhibiting any behaviors, or having any feelings, or exerting any agency, in any way she does not innately approve of and support.
So, she’s saying “you can be a dirty homo as long as you keep it quiet, because it’s less embarrassing than whatever the fuck is wrong with you right now; and, honestly, you’re being so unreasonable, by feeling and living in ways that don’t make me feel like you are a good representation of how perfectly excellent a parent I am, and have always been for you.”
From her perspective, she is being unfailingly nice and patient and reasonable and supportive of Ethan, and it’s just that he doesn’t appreciate how good she is to him. She feels this way, because she is a disgusting, self-centered person, and has spent 20 years deeply abusing and traumatizing her child.
have you seen the shitstorm that is literally all of everything? “responsible parent” is practically a contradiction in terms. or so my conscience tells me at 3:45 AM most days
She’s worried about her son’s mental health, but not because of any kind of maternal love, but because she is ashamed he is doing unwell after massive personal trauma and tragedies. So, in her mind, she’s trying to give him a win, by graciously allowing him the privilege to be embarrassing by being gay; because, at least it’s possible to be gay discreetly, but if he bombs out of college because he’s severely depressed, everybody she knows will find out, and it reflects badly on her as a parent if he has personal problems.
She’s just done the calculus for herself personally, and has decided that it’s less embarrassing for her child to be a relatively clandestine homosexual, than it is for him to be a complete burnout failure. In her disgusting, twisted mind, this is her being supportive.
Of course, it has to be secret enough that Ethan’s own dad never finds out, because if he finds out that she permitted this, he will be disgusted at her, for allowing her child to willfully misbehave, and possibly embarrass them both.
In short, the correct people rarely die in this comic. And I didn’t even particularly care for Mike.
I suspect we’re about to formally learn that Saul + Naomi is an exact match to Ethan + Joyce, in that Naomi is explicitly Saul’s effort to be straight and knowingly always has been. He walked into the closet, told her to shut and bar the door behind him, and she has faithfully complied.
I would guess that the reason Saul can’t know about this is because he’d see it as a betrayal. That she’ll back away and unbar the closet door for Ethan, but not him. He, like the comments section regarding Ethan + Joyce, may well have entirely forgotten or disregarded that this was his idea in the first place, but also Naomi is not as willing to unbar the door and let her husband of 20+ years be free as Joyce was for her chaste boyfriend of a few weeks tops.
Let me be clear: still gross and calculating, just a different flavor than ‘narcissist thinking openly depressed and grieving is worse than get, so stop being the former if I give you the latter’. It’s ‘woman desperately trying to hold together a house that has always been rotting from the inside.’
Upon checking her name out in the tag: I realize it is explicitly stated they’re like that; she just hasn’t been in the comic for 9 of our years, 6 if you add in the flashback version.
The only reason I remember is because of the flashback where Mike and Ethan were sitting on the couch together at Amber’s birthday party and she *immediately* whisked him away. She hasn’t been in the comic in *ages*.
because it takes a while for overbearing parents to accept their offspring’s decisions when those decisions do not line up with the perfect plan they had for those loin-fruit at birth? Or, that the longer someone has been fighting reality, the harder it is for them to accept it?
In Shortpacked, she tells Ethan at one point that by the time he realized he was gay (and then came out to her) she was just happy that he was dating anyone at all rather than ending up as a shut-in loner. Pretty sure she also immediately started pushing him to adopt some grandbabies.
This younger version of her is… let’s say far less educated and flexible in this regard. Mostly just because she hasn’t gotten over her default expectation that Ethan would be straight, especially considering the long-running relationship dynamic between him and that childhood female friend of his who he took care of for ages.
true, though I knew one guy in the Army who enlisted to spite his parents, whom were college educated, vegetarian/vegan eating, ‘guns are evil and the military is the cause of wars’ on the hard-core side. so, sex for spite? doesn’t seem like that big a difference to me. I presently know enough evangelical atheists (they don’t believe in god and neither should anybody else) whose parental units were (and sometimes still are) fundies…
You can still dislike her a bit if she’s being genuine. Chances are she’s doing this from a place of killed as she watches her only son waste away from depression and not because she wants him to be happy.
Hold on – I thought Naomi was the only homophobic parent of Ethans, is his dad also a homophobe (it has been a while since we heard about Ethans coming out)? Or is Naomi afraid of the reaction her husband will have if she changes her mind (in her own way) to match his?
I think it might be even worse. I think he is closeted, they both know it perfectly well, and their entire relationship has always been what Joyce’s and Ethan’s was – both of them trying to force him to be straight.
He can’t know she’s here saying this to Ethan because it’s a betrayal of their deal. Why not him? It’s not fair that Ethan ‘gets’ to be who he is, when Saul can’t, etc. Plus, Naomi loves her husband and doesn’t want to lose him, which she’ll have to if this gets back to him and he decides ‘me too.’
As long as Ethan is still ‘going against their wishes’ and fighting them both, everything’s fine, Naomi thinks. It’s not that Saul and Naomi are fundamentally incompatible and lonely and have been living a vicious lie (vicious to both of them!), it’s just that their son is a rebellious teenager who doesn’t follow their loving advice. So Naomi wants to give permission, so she doesn’t lose her son, but also still toe the line of her deal with Saul while Saul is present.
This looks to me like Naomi will be saying she’s going to maintain the public face she showed on back on family day, but trying to get Ethan onside with either pretending ‘for Saul’s sake’ or at least understanding that she ‘doesn’t mean it’. It’s complicated, when you have two closets, to let one be as open as it wants while insisting the other one has to stay locked up tight.
Depending on what she says in the next strip this isn’t the worst baby step. Obviously full acceptance would be better but idk take the small victories where you can
(She is absolutely going to torpedo this comment with her first line tomorrow guaranteed isn’t she)
I know most comments so far are thinking that Ethan’s not doing well is the cause of this, but I can’t help but wonder if Naomi herself is gay, or at the very least bi. The closeted gay homophobe trope working in overtime over wanting her child to not be like her. I know that the characters’ sexualities carry over between universes – any hints of this over in Shortpacked! ?
I got an immediate flashback to the Penny and Aggie spinoff comic. And now I want to re-read both the original and the spin-off.
I know this is probably some sort of trap for the audience, and she’s definitely been pretty extremely awful in the past, but I do think it would be very interesting if it turned out that Naomi was actually the more caring of the two parents, and the dad just benefited from being able to act more passive in public because he knew she would be the ogre. If she’s actually growing a little bit and trying to make amends, that would be. kind of cool!
and like, it would kind of make sense? as toxic as she can be, she must realize that Ethan is not doing very good right now, and she may have her own human journey to undertake here. It sucks that Ethan has to be the doctor for that, but it would be nice to see another parent grow and change and act like a complete person.
Everyone does that now, and any company that says they don’t is telling lies. If they make a phone that always works, they can’t sell you a new one with minor (if any) upgrades in six months.
Where regular version is competitors conspire to raise prices for products/services whose quality stay the same, motherfuckers conspire to all simultaneously lower quality of their products/services to make more money off the same prices.
As a trans girl whose own mother took a while to really accept it, I can say that it often involves baby steps, and you kinda have to learn to accept them in return. I mean, you don’t HAVE to, but some parents are trash and should be cut off entirely, but otherwise I mean you gotta show them some grace if they don’t get it right immediately.
It is hard to both keep oneself emotionally safe from abuse, and help the abuser change. You don’t owe her Ethan, but if your depression is a shield that protects you from harm, snark all the self awareness at her you can.
Have we even seen his dad? or was he more of a hands off parent /being like “i’m not getting involved” while she was freaking out about Ethan’s obvious crush on mike in the flashback, although i feel like finding out your spouse is gay/closeted might make her double down on her homophobia but it’s not like ethan’s a minor so other than himself doing some kinda ‘restraining order’ it’s not like there’d be some messy divorce where he’d fight her for ‘sole custody’ if he wanted her to get away from their son
My bet? She doesn’t want Ethan’s Dad to know because that man has already accepted Ethan and would crow about it and never let her forget it for the rest of her life.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/blunt/ given this strip, i wouldn’t think he’d ‘come around’ first, unless it’s implied he was also maybe closeted/ace leaning or so to think of sex as a ‘gross’ thing (there’s more to marriage than sex tho i wouldn’t be surprised if they only ever had ethan and didn’t have an active sex lief after that)
ironically asher probably is more attracted to ethan’s ’emo’ look than his previous nerdy look but you never know i suppose , since he did click with Walky tho i suppose not like that had flirty undertones (although if walky was diff/bi and asher dated him after jen it would’ve been worth it/amusing just to see the look on jen’s face)
She doesn’t want her spouse to know she’s going behind his back to support their kid in a behavior he thinks is harmful.
To take a politics and the “maybe divorce is a better option” element out of it, imagine if your mother was a teetotaler but your father has a drink and bums a cigarette to smoke with you when he’s visiting. Something that isn’t worth giving your kid shit about, but also not worth putting stress on the marriage about, is how they’re viewing this.
Obviously for this comic the audience has been narrowly cultivated not to agree with that framing, but that’s likely the perspective of the parent here. With some extra brownie points for the fact that she’s clearly known for a while and just been not bringing it up because she knowns how her husband gets about it. Doesn’t really get you parenting full marks, exactly, but a nice change from the “all post-college adults are pure evil, all the time, even when it makes no sense” that we sometimes get here.
I kinda like the attempt to write a parent intentionally as being legitimately trying to reconcile their own shit and their children’s shit and just failing without being malicious about it, this is new and interesting.
I’m pretty sure he could’ve picked the “straightest’ seeming “normal” person who you’d never expect to be gay and she still might not approve. or she’d want someone that’d be like some “average everyman” over some ‘flamboyant’
Lmao that punchline(?). Feels like it’s transactional. if not to spite the dad that might be a bigger homophobe or so and them having problems or so
Tho other than cutting off right away after, wonder how many gay kids are like “Well, i guess i’ll just be single the rest of my life anyways”. If not “I have a son/daughter from a sperm bank/IVF, here’s your grandchild” and just dropping them off in their lap and taking off lol XD
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“HUZZAH! …Asher! Come out of the closet!”
Roadblock: “…now Ethan be spurting like a leaky faucet”
Or Asher saying something laconic as he emerges out of the closet having heard this.
I hope people’s parents aren’t really this insufferable in the US.
They can very easily be worse!
To the point that, from what I’ve heard, it’s not uncommon for gay people to compare their “Coming Out” stories to see who had it worse, and skits like this one get made (Title: “When Coming Out Goes Better Than You Thought”) – https://youtu.be/UgHwF4CNiJA?si=egeOrVbag1CXxoEw
Aren’t there still places in the US where parents send their kids to be tortured by electrocution until they (pretend to) turn hetero?
In Finland, our “moderate and civilized” right wing party just voted against bannin “gay-to-hetero conversion therapy”, despite the party officially having that opinion.
So as a GROUP they’re against conversion therapy, but just not as individuals?
electrocution is almost the least of what goes on at those camps
Still a lot of states where it’s legal to, yeah:
https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/conversion_therapy
Or commit suicide. Yes. Gay conversion camps. Banned in some states.
Yeah. The governor of Kentucky just signed an executive order to ban conversion therapy this past week and it was Kind of a Big Deal locally. There are already groups calling it unconstitutional and saying that banning conversion therapy is going to set back mental health care for young people in the state.
If you think parents in YOUR country can’t be insufferable, you just haven’t chosen the right lifestyle to shock or offend them. Parents, are Parents, (except when they’re worse).
Yeah, this isn’t just a US thing.
Nor is it an everyone in the US thing, but people can suck. Even parents.
Especially parents. They’re generally the group least worthy of trust.
O you sweet summer child! in most of the US (geographically. not population density) that would be considered progressive!
Is saying something that should be a good thing in completely the wrong way going to be a theme with her?
I just noticed your deer-elf avatar has a wooden arm. That is very cool.
Yeah, she’s got a fun design. She’s from Potionomics, she’s your carpenter buddy.
Although I am suddenly feeling very tempted to change my avatar, I’ve been using Saffron for a while now.
So that’s what Saffron looks like. Nice hat.
Ethan: WELL THAT’S ALRIGHT THEN!
(Doctor Who “WELL THAT’S ALRIGHT THEN!” Toymaker meme)
“…I mean, it’s a step, but you clearly don’t get how this works.”
“You are my property, Ethan, even though you are an adult. At least until you marry into a new family that will own you.”
“…what?”
“It’s how it works in the Torah!”
“NO IT ISN’T.”
brotha ain’t owned by her nor any shiksa
thiz oppression sure as hell ain’t no mitzvah
This is some @maimonodes_nutz level stuff. Nice!
Naomi aint right but now Ethan wont shvitz
about whether or not he likes tits
“… Declaration of Independence?”
Ooo. Nice avatar. What’s it from?
As of the posting, that’s the Human Bill character from Fortnite. Grey alien with a few skin color options and some outfits you can mix and match. Comes with a little UFO you can wear on his back, too. I hounded the in-game shop obsessively for months, waiting for him to show up when I had the 1800 V-Bucks he cost. Fuck revolving storefronts, they kept me from having basically my ‘sona as a skin for way too long.
Actually it is – Judaism is a matriarchal religion (which, historically, was overridden by Middle Eastern and then European patriarchal societal norms, but course-corrected in the West as time went on).
Matrilineal doesn’t equal matriarchal – and in this case it doesn’t seem to be terribly old either.
Judaism is decidedly not matriarchal, and hasn’t been at any point where it was definable as Judaism. Matrilineal, yes, but not matriarchal.
Whether it had Matriarchal elements prior to becoming monotheistic is more than I am able to state, but I will state that despite a lot of neo-pagan claims, there’s very little evidence for matriarchal religions anywhere in Europe or Asia at any point.
Maybe not so much with the traditional religious affairs, but as a culture we’ve definitely got highly formidable matriarchs that wield a lot of influence and directorial power in the family. Certainly in my family, the ladies are not to be messed with, let me tell ya.
Improvement???
NOPE
I would lean towards saying it is improvement. By taking this secret trip to meet her son, she is risking her relationship with her husband and thus, is willing to take a large risk for the sake of “supporting” her son.
Is the support steeped in ignorance and baked in toxic levels of control? Definitely.
Would she benefit from Prof. Leslie’s class? If she paid attention, yes.
Is this an improvement over actively trying to change who Ethan is; largely by trying to get him into Joyce’s pants (who was at the time trying to save herself till marriage)? I believe so, as new Naomi makes me ever so slightly less uncomfortable.
Is the improvement sufficient? That is up to Ethan.
yeah her “allowing it” is still her being a homophobic shit
she hasn’t solved her bigoted aggression – just gotten better at hiding it
Idunno pikachu change is hard, you don’t gotta assume bad intentions automatically
personally, i prefer to choose to assume bad intentions from people who constantly act badly and never attempt to change. it’s actually a completely reasonable conclusion to reach. people deserve the benefit of the doubt when you meet them; after 20 years of living with them, not so fucking much.
“Attempt to change” is what we seem to be witnessing here. You don’t have to be right about everything to attempt to move in a better direction, I can’t think of any ulterior motives she would have, but it’s possible there’s something I didn’t think of.
I genuinely don’t agree that this is an attempt to change.
She feels entitled to show up unannounced and be received by her child, with no respect for his agency.
She feels entitled to control whether or not he shares aspects of life with his father.
She’s manipulative in the way she removes his agency, by obviously dangling a very important and tense topic she wants to talk about over his head, so he can get scared and anxious about what it might be, and then she extracts his absolute compliance that he will do what she wants him to do (not tell daddy about it) before she actually brings up what she wants to tell him.
She’s a grown woman who fully believes it is her right to tell her grown child, another 20 year old man, another adult person, who he is allowed to be and who he is allowed to associate with.
For you to say that her “allowing” him to be a homosexual, is an attempt to improve herself, you are falling into the manipulative trap of her framing, and you are directly supporting that she is correct about having the right to control her child this way. And I don’t think you actually believe she is right about that, but IMO with what you’re arguing, you support her framing of the situation, and are denigrating Ethan’s agency and humanity.
A terrible manipulative person being oh-so-kind to permit the person she feels like she’s entitled to control, one meager scrap of agency, is not them getting better or improving. It’s purely them recognizing that they have been pulled away from, and trying to correct it, by manipulating their victim back into their life and good graces through the appearance of some acquiescence. But, the thing she is “giving” to Ethan, is the implication that she should continue to have absolute control over his life.
This is not a sweet little Mom coming around to love and appreciate her queer son. She is still fully disgusted and ashamed of who he is. It’s just that, there is nothing that a controlling person abhors more, than losing control of their victim when their victim establishes distance and boundaries away from them. This is just the continuing cycle of her assuming control over Ethan’s life and self, and restricting who he is allowed to portray himself as. Which is probably the first thing Asher will tell him, when he’s allowed to come back out of the closet…that Ethan willfully shoved him back into…because Ethan is terrified of displeasing or disappointing his Mom.
It’s not sincerely nice behavior, even slightly, at all. It’s just a manipulation tactic from an abuser, and it’s shocking to me that people don’t recognize that.
@Throwatron
Ummm ok that’s a lot of writing. I gather… ok you’re saying her ulterior motive is control? Sure that’s possible, at least partly. She talks like someone that assumes control was a given, like she’s yielding something here.
I’m willing to see this through, if she’s yielding to the idea that Ethan’s sexuality isn’t a choice to begin with, I still see it as progress, personally. If she admits to that, she’d effectively, if begrudgingly, be admitting she was wrong in the first place for trying to control it.
she’s not just a narcissistic parent, but one who’s so invasive to the point to which she entitles herself to dominate what kind of sex her adult son can and can’t have.
These invasions are there to remind Ethan that even in the most private aspects of his relationships and his fucking BODY, he remains under royal rulership.
Frankly if this were happening just outside a state like Indiana, this the kinda shit that would warrant intervention from a social worker at the very LEAST. 👀
Weird takes here.
This is far better than I was expecting out of her. Don’t get me wrong, it still sucks, but I was expecting her to be trying for the Linda/Carol tier and this isn’t that.
However you try to diagnose pathology and motivation into a couple of sentences.
Throwatron,
You’re right. She’s not doing it perfectly, so let’s give her no credit at all…. OR
some people have no instructions or understanding how to proceed, so they stumble through it doing the best they can with the only understanding they have.
High school thespians act badly. Everyone else acts bad.
And the baddest is the worst.
Yup.
She’s getting there, but just like Dorothy, she’s interpreting her growth through the lens of her prior belief system.
It is simultaneously true both that this is garbage behavior and also that this is improvement over the last time we saw her. She has taken a step in the correct direction, but she still has 900 or so miles (~1450km) to go to reach baseline decent human being.
And improvement should be encouraged. That’s how you get people to take more steps.
you make many assumptions, not real practiced in negotiating with other people are you? Especially people who disagree with your choices. Or you haven’t yet had the dubious pleasure of helping someone kick a habit or had to actually work with someone to change their mind rather than condemning them and dropping them. the mere ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of fact is sometimes the first hurdle you’ve got to get over, especially if the person’s used to having to be in control, or having to be stubborn in a conflict-rich environment. She’s shown up to ACKNOWLEDGE a fact Ethan’s been fighting to get her to admit to for years, likely, and she’s finally admitting what’s been in front of her the whole time.
THAT, y’alls, is PROGRESS. The other issues like the controlling/obsessive helicopter/overbearing relationship dynamic that’s been suggested since Ethan’s first appearance on this comic? is also something that has to be worked on, but at least he’s got her to admit to herself that grandchildren are likely to be adopted, not spawned, if they’re linked with her son…and that’s a major thing in some families.
She used to yell at him to fuck ladies
completely normal mom behavior. totally above board.
I am holding out to see what it actually entails. We don’t know what is going on behind the scenes here yet. While her wording is horrible, it could be that there is another discussion going on between the mom and dad that would be even worse. This could be her pressuring her son behind the scenes because the dad thought that he needed a break with everything that was going on (and so pressured the mom to stop), or that the dad was threatening to pull the son out of school (aka cut funding) and send him to a camp or something. I do hope that this heads towards one of the better possible options than one of the worst, but will have to wait and see.
I didn’t get the impression Ethan’s dad was the one with a problem with homosexuality the last time they visited. If anything, she probably doesn’t want him to know for fear he’ll take it as permission to explore his own urges.
I bet it’s this. It probably isn’t even that she’s scared Ethan will fail, or do something drastic…she’s scared her co-parent will [checks notes] unconditionally love and support her child in a way that will make Ethan act in a way that she finds disgusting and embarrassing.
She hasn’t changed her mind at all, that him being queer is a bad thing. She simply aims to maintain the level of control over Ethan’s life and self, and deference to her authority, that she has worked so hard to establish for the past 20 years.
Where does this come from?
We’ve seen her like 3 times before. The homophobia shone through, but the rest of this seems to be reading a lot into very little evidence.
I mean, she has appeared very few times, but her every expression is drawn as menacing as possible, and every scant interaction she has with any other character has her attempting to manipulate, belittle or domineer them in one way or another, and the overall intensity of that behavior is cartoonish, even for this strip.
So, I agree that it’s accurate that we have little total exposure to her behavior. But, this is also a work of fiction, and she has been deliberately portrayed by Willis as completely fucking reprehensible, every time she’s been on screen. I choose to assume it’s a reasonable reading of the text, that the absolute consistency of her controlling nature in every strip she’s portrayed in, is meant to imply that she acts this way literally all the time. I really don’t see any evidence to the contrary.
I went back and checked. She’s appeared in nine strips total where she actually has a line, or performs an action. She consistently does something reprehensible in every strip she is in.
Strip 1: Meets her son’s best friend on campus. Demands that Amber call her by her first name, even though Amber is clearly uncomfortable with that. Sarcastically attacks Amber with accusations of her turning her son gay, when Amber doesn’t back down from her boundary and comply.
Strip 2: Suggests to her son’s best friend that what he needs to be happy and healthy, is for her to leave him alone, because her support of his gayness is confusing him. She wants to sever her son’s most important social bond, because she believes her failure to be a perfect wife for a gay man is the reason Ethan is having issues with his sexuality.
Strip 3: Is deeply cold to Ethan even after he tries to gain any mote of approval for the fact that he is willfully denying his sexuality to please her. It does not sway her at all. She refuses to give him any validation whatsoever, and does not have a line besides angrily glaring at him. This is also the first time her husband talks all day, despite the fact that he has been there with her for 100% of her panel time. He says nearly nothing, all the time. Big red flag.
Strip 4: Naomi directly accuses Ethan of trying to placate her, and is unmoved until he admits that he thinks he’s found a straight girl who is okay dating a gay man, at which point she admits that his gayness made him a complete disappointment to her, and begins demanding that he begin fucking her, immediately, with aplomb. Which, common sense says, she believes will cure his gayness, because she is an insane person.
Strip 5: The only strip where Ethan’s dad says more than a single word. He says the line that has lead most of us to assume that he is a deeply closeted gay man who keeps arrangements of appearing straight with Naomi to maintain their relationship. Which, if true, also makes her demand that Ethan and his father have no discussion of her permitting him to have a sex life, even more disgusting than it already is. She won’t even let her two owned gays talk to each other, lest they support one another, and lessen her control over them. Divide and conquer behavior. Naomi’s only line in this strip is “FUCK HER BRAINS OUT.”
Strip 6: Naomi meets her sons girlfriend for the first time. Joyce greets her boyfriend’s mother. She doesn’t bother to answer or acknowledge Joyce, at all. She mutters under her breath that Joyce will be an easy lay for her son.
Strip 7: Flashback, Naomi is so uncomfortable seeing her son briefly look at another boy, that she completely withdraws him from his social group and takes him home.
Strip 8: She shows up unannounced to her son’s front door like she owns the place, and demands to be let in. The first thing she says to him is a direct criticism of his appearance.
Strip 9: She demands that her son does not discuss what she is about to say with his own family members, deliberately triggering his anxiety to manipulate him into promising that he will comply before actually announcing what she is going to say. She literally would not have said anything, until he agreed under duress to keep quiet, because like in every other single line she has in the entire comic, she completely tramples the agency of every other character she interacts with. She finally grants her son “permission” to be a homosexual. Also, keep in mind, she is here entirely in secret from her husband, because she also controls what information he has access to, as her personal accessory.
Oh, strip 10 just popped. My prediction that she’s rather have a gay embarrassment of a son, then a dead embarrassment of a son, was correct. Of course, she also implies that her current state of permission, is at least temporary; so, that’s even shittier than what everybody singing her praises, was hoping for. Either way, she fully and plainly confirms that she wishes to maintain control of her husbands and her sons’ sexualities, whenever she deems convenient.
Tl;dr every time she is on screen, the singular unifying theme of everything she has ever said and done, fully implies she is an undercutting, manipulative, controlling person, who feels deeply entitled to the agency, autonomy, and personhood of the people around her. When she’s batting 100 on ten tries, maybe she is in fact like this all the time, and is genuinely not a good person.
I’d say yes, improvement. I’m reading this as “I have a lot of prejudices but I’m choosing you over them”. Which, I think, is less bad than “I have a lot of prejudices and they are more important than you”. Still bad, less bad.
Yah, she’s not being Toedad, and Ethan’s won at least enough ground that she’s acknowledging the facts in front of her instead of railing against them with the pastor at her back.
It’s more like how she was in the Shortpacked universe during her only appearance over there.
Essentially, she’d rather he be with a man than alone. Which… take that as you will.
I mean, I guess if she went from not clearing a bar 1 inch off the floor to clearing a bar 6 inches off the floor, that counts as an improvement, but it’s still a real low bar she’s still not setting any records.
We haven’t heard what her conditions are. Someone who thinks they have the power to allow or not allow someone to have the sexuality they’re going to have anyway will not be above setting terms.
Not everyone has what it takes to be a varsity athlete. Sometimes, you have to take some goddamned time to get them to change decades of upbringing THEY experienced plus decades experienced with YOU.
Baby steps.
it would be hilarious if it was some shitty attempt at ‘reverse’ psychology. Like how “don’t date this person” “i’m gonna date her harder”
Am curious about what her reasoning is even tho her phrasing is something that’d come outta a politician
I have a theory. Naomi’s relationship with her husband is on the rocks (probably because he’s closeted or repressed, and it’s finally starting to leak out). She wants Ethan’s emotional support, so she’s offering tolerance to get him on her side against his father. It’s transactional, and repugnant, and it’s more likely Ethan would sympathize with his father, so she’s trying to win his support before he realizes the truth.
Aw. Isn’t it so sweet that she’s giving him permission to be what he is…
Well, it’s certainly different.
If ethan wasn’t currently going through a depression , it’d be a great opportunity to troll her and like “I only care about 2d /fictional charas” and just hugging a body pillow and accidentally leaking it to like the neighborhood or so
hopefully the ‘permission’ doesn’t mean “i know someone powerful/super rich who also has a gay son”, go be a sugar daddy hunter for the family XD
I have a feeling that seeing her son truly depressed has made Naomi realize how much she actually does want her son to be happy, even if being happy means being with a man.
Ethan still doesn’t need her permission or approval for it, so her approach here is still urgh, but at least she might have the spirit…?
One could interpret “permission” as “I’ve chosen to stop hurting you in a fight I can’t win.” A type of love….
Aww, are Jewish people somewhat better at that? Because my very Christian mother once outright told me that she’d rather see me unhappy and miserable every minute of my life, as long as she knew I’d be keeping my “eternal salvation”.
Not knowing what branch of Judaism the Siegals come from: if they’re Reform, her homophobia is not supported by current Rabbinical thinking.
Orthodox Judaism is still mostly against it; but given they were presumably able to drive to IU on the Sabbath for Family Weekend, they either aren’t Orthodox, or don’t keep it very well.
Conservative Judaism is somewhat split on homosexuality in general, essentially ending on “Read the views of these different eminent rabbis, then decide what your synagogue believes.” The current Conservative thinking still holds Leviticus’s view that anal sex between men is an abomination, but other homosexual activity is fine. Most Conservative synagogues at least say that they’re fine with gay members.
But regardless of any of that, there’s no sense of an “eternal salvation” being at risk, because that’s not part of Judaism; if Ethan suddenly decides that he wants to follow the Conservative view on anal sex, then he can repent at Yom Kippur and be fine.
Great answer, thanks!
First, sympathy hug about your Christian mom.
Second, I’m not Jewish myself so take it with a grain of salt, but I’ve heard people often say that Judaism doesn’t have a concept of Hell, certainly not the kind of Hell Christians believe in. I understand your feelings and experiences, as I was told by my peers growing up that I’d go to Hell for not going to church enough. So, at the very least, Naomi would presumably not think Ethan would go to Hell for being gay, because she probably doesn’t believe in Hell.
Hello friends, Jew here! Judaism does have a concept of “Hell” in that there is a place where you suffer/repent after you die. However, it’s quite different from the Christian concept of Hell in many ways. It’s not exactly a punishment, and it’s certainly not eternal. It’s called Gehenna, or sometimes Gehinnom, and the chabad provides the definition of “purgatory, the spiritual realm in which the souls are cleansed from the blemishes brought about by their conduct while on Earth.” (source: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1594422/jewish/Do-Jews-Believe-in-Hell.htm) I suggest looking it up if you’re interested- here’s a great article to start with: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2970/jewish/Do-Jews-Believe-in-an-Afterlife.htm
TL;DR Gehenna/Gehinnom could be thought of like a Jewish Hell, but it is a place where the soul is cleansed before moving on, not a place of eternal punishment. Hope that helps 🙂
Thank you! Makes me wonder, though, what is her problem, then? LikeI can understand my mother’s concern: she honestly believes that me going against Christianism’s tenets will end with me experiencing an eternity of horrible pain. She’d rather I never be unhappy, but if the choice is between a few decades of it versus trillions and trillionf of years unending… well the choice is rather simple. I imagine that’s how she also copes with her own unhappiness.
But if Naomi doesn’t have that little coercive threat heavily hanging over her heart… what is it to her, then, whatever Ethan does?
How much of “Depressed Ethan” has she really seen tho? I imagine there might’ve been the news and such, and a holiday/break or so but him staying holed up in his room like amber probably is nothing new
Well her first comment was on how much weight he’d lost, which is something readers commented on after the timeskip as well. Losing weight, change of appearance, change in behavior… I’d say a good parent would recognize that as signs that something’s wrong. Naomi isn’t a good parent (as far as we’ve seen at least) but she has eyes.
I’d also say “the college might have reached out about Ethan’s lack of attendance” but 1) college doesn’t tend to reach out to parents like that and 2) I… don’t remember entirely but I wanna say it was implied that Amber might be hacking his grades a bit to keep them stable/keep Ethan in school? Not sure and I don’t feel like looking lol
@doopy, given the fatshaming culture in some areas i’ve seen stories where it’s like “Ppl kept telling me i looked so good losing weight when i was literally a recovering addict” so i guess it might depend (not that ethan was particularly considered ‘chubby’ before hand but not necessarily muscular i suppose)
“….allowing”?
Fuck that shit🖕
“YES, Ethan, *allowing*. Now, I want you get a man in here right now and have sex with him in front of me!”
It’s only gay if your mom is watching.
Wait,
And Asher is right there in the closet! Talk about fortuitous!
“Asher, is it? Well, pleased to meet you. So, when are you and Ethan going to adopt a grandchild for me?”
Pretty much.
People don’t go from bad to good instantly. Best thing for Ethan to do right now is accept the progress and explore what triggered it. Getting upset at her over the phrasing, regardless of her intent, is more likely to trigger a regression rather than further progress.
(oof i misclicked the report button m ybad)
Feels like that would still come with a caveat of like “Approved gays” or so
probably would be difficult if he was trans too, it’s not a competition of course but i imagine there’d be some parents that are like “You can be trans but i’m not paying for anything” (which might sound fair but other than some ppl who are already working part time and saving, and living in a state/country with good healthcare it’d probably be hard to deal with HRT as opposed to someone genderfluid/neutral that wouldn’t necessarily have dysphoria to need ‘treatment’)
Like with college, i understand why some parents would tell the kid to pay for it all yourself, but even with a lower chance of debt unless the parents have been poor/struggling their whole childhood, you’d think they’d help pitch in a /little/ in that aspect
Uhhh well I guess it’s technically progress even if by inches.
Nanometers.
Naomimeters
Naomiters
considering she used “allow” id oubt it’s in good faith lol
versus “i realized your father’s a piece of shit” (well idk if we really saw /know much of ethan’s father but given the context she’s bringing him up here he probably doesn’t ‘approve’ of ethan’s sexuality either), “and divorced him/met a wonderful woman and am going to be a late in life lesbian”
I’m not sure I like her saying it that way, but I’m glad Ethan has at least one parent onboard. This also means that Asher can get out of Ethan’s closet, and not have to hide from Ethan’s mom.
Oh, there’s no way she would think Asher is good enough for her precious baby boy. I’m pretty sure Asher isn’t even Jewish!
I feel like she said a kind of nice thing, in the worst way possible. He is gay weather you “allow” it or not, but it is kind of nice that she is fine with it? If that is what she is saying? I think it is, but she said it in a way that is so shitty that I am not 100% sure?
She’s not “fine” with it, she’s allowing it. (I suspect she still greatly disapproves, but is willing to make that “concession.”)
and that, right there, is the basic meaning of tolerance, and it opens the doors to negotiations that were closed hard before she said it. “Tolerance’ does not mean support or approval, it means not attacking someone for things you disapprove of. we have words like “Support” and “Approval”, after all.
“Does this ruling apply retroactively? ‘Cause I’ve banged a lot of dudes over the last few months.”
’twas never legitimate
should tell his mom to fuck that shit
I’m a strong believer in telling your parents to fuck their shit after they’re done paying for your college
The phrasing is cringey but the sentiment is sweet. Let’s (hopefully) see what brought this about.
this isn’t sweet, this is a woman believing she has absolute agency over the behavior and life choices of her fully adult son. this is grade A narcissist behavior.
This is parent-of-a-teenager behavior. When you’ve had that level of responsibility for someone literally his entire life, it takes a lot of work to hand it over. Some of us are really bad at it.
I’m terrified that you actually have kids, and think this behavior is acceptable. I’m sure you’re a better parent than this in real life, but as a grown adult person, you should also recognize controlling, manipulative behavior for what it is.
what, you’d rather they didn’t release that control, or would you rather they were so distant that they didn’t bother in the first place? Not everyone can successfully be a doormat for their offspring, just like not everyone can rein in those tyrannical urges-sometimes part of achieving adulthood, is having to work to free yourself mentally, and sometimes it’s having to work to convince your parents you’re really and truly big enough to take care of yourself without their help. (and some kids NEVER MASTER THAT.)
What I said was, very clearly, I do not think that they were in any way like that to their own kids, but that it was concerning for a grown adult to not recognize clearly awful behavior for what it is; if you manage to make it to age 40 or 50, and you think how Naomi acts is just a little growing pains/empty nest syndrome from a good mother, I just don’t know how someone can avoid the wisdom of recognizing a person like Naomi, for that many years, doing something as hard as raising kids.
Failing to adequately give your grown kids space is one thing; lots of parents forget to stop telling their 20 year old to keep a curfew, or something like that. That is not the same thing as displaying aggrieved entitlement over your child’s body, adult relationships, and sexuality. Mark suggested the second thing was like the first thing, which is what I thought was really unusual from somebody who’s definitely mature enough to recognize that difference.
I’m concerned that she’s going to lay down conditions. “Allow” implies she believes she still has the power to force him to not be gay.
I’m glad that somebody in this thread grasps the problematic thing, here.
Congratulations Naomi, your actions are….slightly better than the alternative, but fail to realize that you are acting outside of your jurdiction.
What you can do, is not criticize/actually support Ethan, regardless of him being gay.
The next panel should be Ethan saying: “Good.” *Turns* “Asher, you can come out now!”
homophobia is solved, you can come out of the closet now
Next, Naomi will ascend to the summit of Everest in one step.
Well, that’s honestly better than I expected.
With the phrasing, I was thinking the same but… It’s because of the phrasing that I think something worse is about to happend.
Oh, I think we’re about to get one hell of a Mike breakdown.
oh how fucking nice of her to allow it! ~<3
It’s ok to be gay!*
*With Ethan’s mom’s permission.
“Mom, now that I’m allowed to be gay, can I do the crimes, too?”
“No, Ethan, I’m not allowing that yet.”
I would like to believe that she is trying hard to understand her son…..but the last panel……”Allowing”
How rules based was your household growing up? How many trips to the ER did you end up taking? I knew people in the service who had to enlist to escape their parents, (in at least one instance, to the utter shock and horror of their parents, who were still intent on being hippies long after it wasn’t cool anymore).
Overbearing parental units exist, Naomi clearly has such a relationship with Ethan, but with added…issues.
Please, fictional character, die in a car crash on your way back home.
Fictionally.
can’t wait for ethan’s mom to unalive (in fortnite)
Finally, an opportunity for Taffy to shine. I have so many good dances to do over her corpse.
it will be so much fun for us
when she be hit by the Battle Bus!
I mean, I get where this sentiment’s coming from, but Ethan’s already had enough problem processing ONE death of someone close to him…
I’d rather he process the death of his abuser, than process the abuse of his abuser. The first thing has a much shorter lifespan. If she lives, she’s going to be treating him like this, until he has the self-respect to go no-contact with her.
And her behavior is fully intended to impair his self-respect and agency, so that he doesn’t pull away from her control. So, Ethan escaping her treating him this way, would likely take a while, if it ever happened. Which is the point of her behavior.
How about head trauma resulting in a total personality change?
“I’m still not allowing him to be, though.”
Last strip, I was thinking that her expression in the last panel didn’t make me condemn her at once, and that while I didn’t expect her to burst out “I just discovered your father is gay! And it’s fine and I still love him and I’m so sorry for all the things I’ve said to you!!!”, I wouldn’t be shocked if she did. Of course, then I remembered this was a parent in a Willis strip, and laughed wildly at myself for the very thought, but I feel that by those standards, this is actually not that far off.
I would wonder more if it would be something like “I have known for years that your father was gay, and we only stayed together because of you.” type of thing. Sort of a whole, I was expressing my frustrations out on you instead of your father, who I still had to have a somewhat working relationship with.
OTOH, that doesn’t fit well with the whole “promise me you won’t tell your father I came here” thing.
Very kind of Naomi to allow her son to be a homosexual. My mom never allowed me to be a homosexual, she never even brought that up because she doesn’t care. Naomi cares. More moms should be like Naomi./s
So good mom. Such wholesome. Much generous.
Thats, one way to phrase it
Appropriate facial expression, lucky you!
nah I made this avatar
The avatar you made had an appropriate facial expression. Lucky you!
She has released him from the demand for grandchildren.
Don’t get a head of yourself
Yeah, there’s a good chance her friend Sheila’s son just came out, and he’s going to be a doctor, so…
Unfortunately, she recently found out about trans men and wants Ethan to find one who’s okay having kids. She figures if he’s gonna date a guy, that guy should at least have a working uterus he wants to keep.
Look, don’t argue with me about how that does or doesn’t work, Naomi is the one who canonically said it.
Interesting theory but then what’s with all the cloak an dagger
She’s gonna surprise Ethan’s Dad with the good news.
“It’s a boy!”
And then Ethan’s Dad (legal name) is like “Yeah, I can see that. How many steaks ya want, boy?” and then Asher reveals he’s a vegan and now Ethan’s really in for a lecture.
Well, that . . . honestly nudges her up to the top 50% of DoA parents.
Not if we count parents we don’t meet because they don’t leave their kids too traumatized.
But we also need to figure in the parents we haven’t met because they left their kids too traumatized.
Have you ever encountered someone who’s technically an adult, but can’t handle the simplest setback, failure, resistance, or condemnation?
Yah, those are adutls who were kids, whose parents never let them get traumatized.
Or they’re kids who had too much trauma and that’s their trauma response.
Kids should face setbacks, failure and resistance, but being traumatized is bad for you.
Right? That’s a fucking hilarious suggestion, that NOT being traumatized is bad for you and why one might struggle.
I categorize those as “unranked due to insufficient data”.
Hold up, we don’t know if she’s leaving this at that. “Allow” implies that she can still take this away and may set unreasonable (read: any) conditions.
Hey, I’m only saying that for this specific strip. She still has the chance to drop below the threshold.
It’s very easy to mock this but I actually am weirded out by saying it’s progress.
She clearly never believed Ethan actually wasn’t gay despite Ethan’s own attempts.
It’s still horrible but…less horrible?
I mean, maybe my expectations are rock bottom after Carol. Ethan has no reason he HAS to accept her “acceptance” but she’s showing more growth than almost any other parent here.
It’s progress, but not in the “she’s getting there” or “she’s definitely going to get there”, but in the “this is different in a way that in the short term is probably at least less hostile.” journey of a thousand miles, single step, etc etc.
But ya, Ethan’s not obligated to walk her the rest of the thousand miles.
See, I’d call it progress, but it’s not a good or stable sort of progress.
she’s begun acknowledging reality. The next step in her journey, is to recognize her son is no longer five, and can make adult decisions on his own without her input or approval.
SOme people not only never get there, but start extending that to those they are NOT related to. we call them ‘Activists’.
Yeah, this is very much not a good approach, but a lot of the speculation the last couple days was that she was going to make a serious play for “worst mom” and this isn’t that. This is far better than I expected.
The hiding it from his dad is what’s intriguing me now. Have we been completely misreading this pair all along? Was he the worse one? Or is there something else going on with them?
It’s never good when parents start asking their kids to keep things secret from the other parent.
I want to parallel this to Blaine’s lying when his pride is injured. Something like, “My mom orders her own defeat after she loses a battle.”
Some sort of “My mom orders the result to be true, but after it happens,” anyway.
Salvaging her idea of control instead of a sense of pride maybe. Not sure.
I mean, I imagine she’s absolutely sincere.
But in a self-congratulatory way.
Also, she doesn’t want her husband to know but is it because she’s of the mind he’s less accepting than he seems or is he actually violently homophobic and she’s actually afraid of his reaction?
Oh sure, she’s come to the “whelp, this is just how it is” conclusion which is a reasonable result. It’s just a thought about her having to put it this bizarre way for her own… ego? psychology? whatever reason.
My takeaway is that it’s as simple as, “Ethan being a respectable, clandestine homosexual” is less potentially embarrassing than him failing out of college due to depression, or doing something even worse. Her core concern relative to him, is how bad she will look if people witness how badly he is doing, and judge her parenting skills for it, when she knows deep down that she has been an utterly perfect parent, whose child just doesn’t appreciate how lucky he is to have a patient and supportive mother such as her.
So, she’s choosing the least embarrassing option she thinks is possible, and is “graciously” steering him towards it. She’s calculated in her own fucked-up worldview, that she’ll look like a less terrible parent for raising a respectable, tasteful homosexual, as opposed to a college dropout, or a beautiful young corpse. Even her fear of something potentially bad happening to him, is rooted in how bad it would make her look, and not in any real grief she’d feel to actually lose her son.
This sounds… depressingly in line with Naomi’s character arc so far.
Makes perfect sense for a narcissist.
Incredibly shocking that 75% of people in the comments are like “awwweeee!!! Naomi is being such a good Mom here! Ethan is so lucky she loves him enough to change!!!” I really thought people around here had a better read on this stuff.
Though, I guess I should feel blessed, that so many people are so oblivious to being able to spot an obvious narcissist when they’re deliberately shown one behaving that way. It means they’ve probably escaped dealing closely with this behavior in real life, and that’s better than the alternative reality, where they recognize this behavior for what it is, as a matter of course. It means nobody has hurt them in this way, and I’m happy for their shocking ignorance, and I hope they never have to learn the things that I know.
No one is saying “such a good Mom”. Certainly not a majority.
People are saying that this is a little bit of progress, with serious issues left, when they expected far worse.
I’ve got one WORSE. She might’ve looked up stats on disposable income and relationship stability and realized that as an openly gay man, he’s statistically likely to have more disposable income than a corresponding straight man in his age group and education level.
That translates into a potentially nicer nursing home when she gets too old and decrepit to work.
I’m a little interested in that income thing. Is it down to gay guys not being (as) pressured into buying like, diamonds and restaurant meals and flowers and fancy cars and all that stuff?
The really weird thing is that we haven’t seen a lot of Saul, Ethan’s dad, but like the one time he said anything significant he was much less blunt about condemning Ethan’s homosexuality, and more or less framed straight sex as maybe an acquired taste.
Honestly, it came across like he’d had his own same sex attraction at a younger age and either shoved himself in the closet hard or is actually bisexual. (The previous sentence is about Saul, to be clear. Ethan has shown no signs of being interested in a woman and while some conversation has been made about fluid sexuality, I do not expect him to.)
Not “maybe”. He called it “gross and scary at first” and said that, after a long while of doing it anyway, “perhaps eventually you will learn to enjoy it.” The only explanation for this is that he does not enjoy sex with his wife. He’s either asexual or 6 on the Kinsey scale, and given the evidence for a certain heritability of such things it’s probably the latter.
I don’t know… I’m 0 on the Kinsey scale, and most definitely NOT asexual.
But I would not enjoy sex with mrs. Siegal. She doesn’t seem like a person I’d trust and respect enough to drop my pants for.
That’s not the only explanation. He could have just been being patronizing.
Or because she doesn’t want to appear to her husband as weak, just because.
…I suppose, coming from her, that this is technically an improvement.
No, what’s really interesting here is her keeping this a secret from Saul. Back in Freshman Family Weekend, Naomi was the one who was really with Ethan about it while Saul just kinda meekly said that sex with girls was gross and icky but he would eventually get used to it. Is she keeping this secret because Saul told her to relent and she doesn’t want to admit she’s come to agree with him? Is Saul actually more firm about this because he’s closeted himself, and “allowing” Ethan to be gay would be admitting that he hasn’t really turned himself straight? I have no idea! Looking forward to seeing where this dumpster fire rolls.
Could she actually be the one closeting herself? I mean, what Saul said could have been something he told himself but it could have also been something that he told Naomi. Could just be that she was jealous of Ethan being able to be true to himself when she wasn’t allowed to. I am just being a devil’s advocate here though. I do wonder how much of her fixation was due to wanting grandkids. Her terminology of considering him “a disappointment” just sort of makes me feel like she wanted biological grandkids, but I could be very wrong on that.
A teeny tiny mini improvement, but an improvement but an improvement nonetheless. Still would not blame Ethan if it was too little too late for him. But if this is a relationship he wants in his life, this could be a start.
Oh, I’m sorry. Is one ALLOWED to be a homosexual?
“Yes, I just said so.”
-Hypothetical Naomi response
It’s not up to her to allow, the bigot [bongo] all uptight
Being gay ain’t a privilege — it’s a RIGHT!
Called it! I guess
Upgrades, People, Upgrades
He doesn’t need your permission Naomi
But, unlike Joyce, does he still want it?
Well, her wording and attitude here suck, but I’m hoping it’ll have good results for Ethan.
…huh. Alright then.
Ah yes… that feeling when something is so outrageously offensive, all you can do is laugh.
you could almost read it as an attempt to do right by someone who is just completely unequipped. but man, between “allowed” and nouning the adjective it sure sounds like the real aim is self-righteousness
Narcissists view their children as extensions of themselves, and the stakes on their child’s success or failure, are purely centered around what other people may judge of them from their child’s behavior. The child’s wants or needs do not factor in. They see their child’s function to be representing them well, and making them look good, in honor of them.
In her mind, she is being “helpful” by being permissive, because the dual implication is that 1) even as adults, children of narcissists are expected to submit to the complete control of their parents in any aspect or area of their entire natural lives, as a matter of course, and 2) Ethan is being completely unreasonable, by having any expectation of living his own live based around his own wants, needs, and values, and from her perspective, he is being willfully unreasonable to her by exhibiting any behaviors, or having any feelings, or exerting any agency, in any way she does not innately approve of and support.
So, she’s saying “you can be a dirty homo as long as you keep it quiet, because it’s less embarrassing than whatever the fuck is wrong with you right now; and, honestly, you’re being so unreasonable, by feeling and living in ways that don’t make me feel like you are a good representation of how perfectly excellent a parent I am, and have always been for you.”
From her perspective, she is being unfailingly nice and patient and reasonable and supportive of Ethan, and it’s just that he doesn’t appreciate how good she is to him. She feels this way, because she is a disgusting, self-centered person, and has spent 20 years deeply abusing and traumatizing her child.
Wow she started even before conception impressive
For a responsible parent, it’s never too early.
have you seen the shitstorm that is literally all of everything? “responsible parent” is practically a contradiction in terms. or so my conscience tells me at 3:45 AM most days
Just because nobody’s ever met one, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
“I’m going to need a notarized certificate saying that.”
I want to know her angle, like why his father is not to be let in on this, and why she’s suggesting this.
She’s worried about her son’s mental health, but not because of any kind of maternal love, but because she is ashamed he is doing unwell after massive personal trauma and tragedies. So, in her mind, she’s trying to give him a win, by graciously allowing him the privilege to be embarrassing by being gay; because, at least it’s possible to be gay discreetly, but if he bombs out of college because he’s severely depressed, everybody she knows will find out, and it reflects badly on her as a parent if he has personal problems.
She’s just done the calculus for herself personally, and has decided that it’s less embarrassing for her child to be a relatively clandestine homosexual, than it is for him to be a complete burnout failure. In her disgusting, twisted mind, this is her being supportive.
Of course, it has to be secret enough that Ethan’s own dad never finds out, because if he finds out that she permitted this, he will be disgusted at her, for allowing her child to willfully misbehave, and possibly embarrass them both.
In short, the correct people rarely die in this comic. And I didn’t even particularly care for Mike.
When I made this particular post I had briefly forgotten that Ethan’s dad was definitely fuckin’ gay as hell, lmfao
I suspect we’re about to formally learn that Saul + Naomi is an exact match to Ethan + Joyce, in that Naomi is explicitly Saul’s effort to be straight and knowingly always has been. He walked into the closet, told her to shut and bar the door behind him, and she has faithfully complied.
I would guess that the reason Saul can’t know about this is because he’d see it as a betrayal. That she’ll back away and unbar the closet door for Ethan, but not him. He, like the comments section regarding Ethan + Joyce, may well have entirely forgotten or disregarded that this was his idea in the first place, but also Naomi is not as willing to unbar the door and let her husband of 20+ years be free as Joyce was for her chaste boyfriend of a few weeks tops.
Let me be clear: still gross and calculating, just a different flavor than ‘narcissist thinking openly depressed and grieving is worse than get, so stop being the former if I give you the latter’. It’s ‘woman desperately trying to hold together a house that has always been rotting from the inside.’
Damn straight, this one gets it
This take makes sense.
I don’t know who’s right about this, but I feel like this is a much more interesting take than the other ones I’ve seen in this comment section.
… Y’know, I’m sure it was said somewhere before but I had no idea Ethan’s Parents were “like that.” That makes some things make much more sense.
Upon checking her name out in the tag: I realize it is explicitly stated they’re like that; she just hasn’t been in the comic for 9 of our years, 6 if you add in the flashback version.
The only reason I remember is because of the flashback where Mike and Ethan were sitting on the couch together at Amber’s birthday party and she *immediately* whisked him away. She hasn’t been in the comic in *ages*.
That’s… progress… compared to the bar we’ve set for parents of our cast so far
What was Obama’s line?
“Better is good.”
Nevermind everyone, coast is clear! Come on out now, Asher!
In failing to say “fuck” for two strips in a row, Naomi has officially ceded her title as Sweariest Named Character to Malaya.
Is that based on swears per appearance?
Yeah. In terms of absolute output, it’s still Billie/Jennifer, but she’s been in like 80 times as many strips.
And it’s actually only “fuck”, not all swears, but if someone wants to contest the award, they can count the other ones.
Huh. I actually like Malaya.
Huh, well it’s a start. I wonder if Blaine’s kidnapping scheme contributed to this change of mind and heart.
Interesting point… though I think it’s been while at this point.
Why?
because it takes a while for overbearing parents to accept their offspring’s decisions when those decisions do not line up with the perfect plan they had for those loin-fruit at birth? Or, that the longer someone has been fighting reality, the harder it is for them to accept it?
I think it served as a pretty stark lesson that the need to change your child’s sexuality can lead to bad outcomes.
In Shortpacked, she tells Ethan at one point that by the time he realized he was gay (and then came out to her) she was just happy that he was dating anyone at all rather than ending up as a shut-in loner. Pretty sure she also immediately started pushing him to adopt some grandbabies.
This younger version of her is… let’s say far less educated and flexible in this regard. Mostly just because she hasn’t gotten over her default expectation that Ethan would be straight, especially considering the long-running relationship dynamic between him and that childhood female friend of his who he took care of for ages.
…I was led to believe that would take all the fun out of it. am I mistaken?
It would be an even more bizarre world than the one we live in if sex existed purely to spite our parents.
true, though I knew one guy in the Army who enlisted to spite his parents, whom were college educated, vegetarian/vegan eating, ‘guns are evil and the military is the cause of wars’ on the hard-core side. so, sex for spite? doesn’t seem like that big a difference to me. I presently know enough evangelical atheists (they don’t believe in god and neither should anybody else) whose parental units were (and sometimes still are) fundies…
All progress beings with a single step.
Grindr: Ask your parents’ permission before logging on.
This is all gonna wind up with Ethan marrying Ruth, isn’t it.
For citizenship! The most romantic motivation of all.
… actually, where does Ruth’s posh boy-toy fall on the Kinsey scale?
He fell off sideways. Nobody’s sure where he went.
There’s a flag for that.
…….Yay?
how generous!
She’s a pillar of the community. The salt of the earth. A pillar of salt.
𝅘𝅥𝅮 Turn around… 𝅘𝅥𝅮
I’m still suspicious and very much prepared to continue disliking Naomi, however… I will admit I am surprised.
You can still dislike her a bit if she’s being genuine. Chances are she’s doing this from a place of killed as she watches her only son waste away from depression and not because she wants him to be happy.
*guilt
This is not what I was expecting in any way.
How nice…
*Asher blasting out of the closet*
“oh that’s great news!”
Well I hope she doesn’t backtrack if Asher’s asked to show himself.
“Love Dares You To Change”, but imagine if Ethan got the Joyce Brown treatment in panel 2
Hold on – I thought Naomi was the only homophobic parent of Ethans, is his dad also a homophobe (it has been a while since we heard about Ethans coming out)? Or is Naomi afraid of the reaction her husband will have if she changes her mind (in her own way) to match his?
The theory is that the reason she so homophobic is because Ethan dad might also be closeted and that’s made her paranoid their whole marriage.
I think it might be even worse. I think he is closeted, they both know it perfectly well, and their entire relationship has always been what Joyce’s and Ethan’s was – both of them trying to force him to be straight.
He can’t know she’s here saying this to Ethan because it’s a betrayal of their deal. Why not him? It’s not fair that Ethan ‘gets’ to be who he is, when Saul can’t, etc. Plus, Naomi loves her husband and doesn’t want to lose him, which she’ll have to if this gets back to him and he decides ‘me too.’
As long as Ethan is still ‘going against their wishes’ and fighting them both, everything’s fine, Naomi thinks. It’s not that Saul and Naomi are fundamentally incompatible and lonely and have been living a vicious lie (vicious to both of them!), it’s just that their son is a rebellious teenager who doesn’t follow their loving advice. So Naomi wants to give permission, so she doesn’t lose her son, but also still toe the line of her deal with Saul while Saul is present.
This looks to me like Naomi will be saying she’s going to maintain the public face she showed on back on family day, but trying to get Ethan onside with either pretending ‘for Saul’s sake’ or at least understanding that she ‘doesn’t mean it’. It’s complicated, when you have two closets, to let one be as open as it wants while insisting the other one has to stay locked up tight.
Gee, thanks mom.
Depending on what she says in the next strip this isn’t the worst baby step. Obviously full acceptance would be better but idk take the small victories where you can
(She is absolutely going to torpedo this comment with her first line tomorrow guaranteed isn’t she)
Next she will give him permission to be a mammal!
Oh cool, I think my prediction yesterday was right on the money.
Now we get to the fight in… 1.5 strips?
I wonder what happened for make her take this decision.
The fear of losing her child most likely, I listened to soooo many reddit stories like this.
“Good show, mom. You’re facing in the direction of being a decent human being.”
“Allowing”.
How very generous of you, Naomi.
/s
Oh geeze that’s a mess of familial abusive dynamics there
Well that’s so FRUCKING kind of you, karen.
I mean, as shitty as she makes it sound it Could be a step in the right direction?
I know most comments so far are thinking that Ethan’s not doing well is the cause of this, but I can’t help but wonder if Naomi herself is gay, or at the very least bi. The closeted gay homophobe trope working in overtime over wanting her child to not be like her. I know that the characters’ sexualities carry over between universes – any hints of this over in Shortpacked! ?
I got an immediate flashback to the Penny and Aggie spinoff comic. And now I want to re-read both the original and the spin-off.
Great, Mom. I also allow you to be straight.
I know this is probably some sort of trap for the audience, and she’s definitely been pretty extremely awful in the past, but I do think it would be very interesting if it turned out that Naomi was actually the more caring of the two parents, and the dad just benefited from being able to act more passive in public because he knew she would be the ogre. If she’s actually growing a little bit and trying to make amends, that would be. kind of cool!
and like, it would kind of make sense? as toxic as she can be, she must realize that Ethan is not doing very good right now, and she may have her own human journey to undertake here. It sucks that Ethan has to be the doctor for that, but it would be nice to see another parent grow and change and act like a complete person.
*vector
If she’s a narcissist, she can’t “grow and change”.
Anyone can grow and change, if they want to. The problem is, it’s rare for a narcissist to want anything that isn’t centered about themself.
“If”.
Diagnosing her as a narcissist based on a few comments we’ve seen from her is a stretch. It’s a possibility, but hardly set in stone.
Chat, is it too early to be pleasantly surprised?
Allowing him? Girl, he’s been homosexualing all over campus before you made that decision.
“Allow”?
Allowing him to be gay is like flat earthers allowing the earth to be round.
In the words of Elon… “G.F.Y.”
Elon? Phony Stark? The one who’s not allowing his daughter to be his daughter?
Give him some credit, Musk worked really hard to supersede Steve Jobs as the worst person to market cool stuff.
I think you misspelled overpriced crap for hipsters.
Apple products are at least genuinely better in terms of build quality, hardware, and software than most of their competitors.
Both are garbage compared to Linux, but hey, credit where credit is due.
Don’t they sabotage them with updates that kill the performance so you have to replace them?
Everyone does that now, and any company that says they don’t is telling lies. If they make a phone that always works, they can’t sell you a new one with minor (if any) upgrades in six months.
Yeah but Apple seems to be the spearhead of anti-consumer activities which everyone else emulates later on.
It’s like the reverse of Price Fixing:
Where regular version is competitors conspire to raise prices for products/services whose quality stay the same, motherfuckers conspire to all simultaneously lower quality of their products/services to make more money off the same prices.
You missed the entire point of the acronym, but that’s ok.
As a trans girl whose own mother took a while to really accept it, I can say that it often involves baby steps, and you kinda have to learn to accept them in return. I mean, you don’t HAVE to, but some parents are trash and should be cut off entirely, but otherwise I mean you gotta show them some grace if they don’t get it right immediately.
I have to say. It’s nice to see the parents, actually making steps into becoming better people.
I guess the title of the chapter was not only for the protagonists. 😀
Nice!
Now that Ethan finally has parental consent, it’s okay. Right?
You heard the woman, Asher! Get out of that Closet and Kiss Up a Storm with Ethan!
This is consent?
Ooh, can we spin it so Ethan is somehow manufacturing the consent of his own mother, manipulating her into letting him be gay?
shes allowing him to be gay how mighty wide of her ……..
It is hard to both keep oneself emotionally safe from abuse, and help the abuser change. You don’t owe her Ethan, but if your depression is a shield that protects you from harm, snark all the self awareness at her you can.
Such generosity! Such giving! Ethan, show some gratitude!
There, you see: all the hate was for nothing.
So did Ethan’s dad finally come out of the closet or is she just this concerned about his depression?
Have we even seen his dad? or was he more of a hands off parent /being like “i’m not getting involved” while she was freaking out about Ethan’s obvious crush on mike in the flashback, although i feel like finding out your spouse is gay/closeted might make her double down on her homophobia but it’s not like ethan’s a minor so other than himself doing some kinda ‘restraining order’ it’s not like there’d be some messy divorce where he’d fight her for ‘sole custody’ if he wanted her to get away from their son
We saw him and he gave off the vibe of being so far in the closet he was in Narnia.
Ethan: “Mom, look, I swear YHWH nobody spoiled this episode for me, but…”
My bet? She doesn’t want Ethan’s Dad to know because that man has already accepted Ethan and would crow about it and never let her forget it for the rest of her life.
well, hopefully the dad has grown too
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/blunt/ given this strip, i wouldn’t think he’d ‘come around’ first, unless it’s implied he was also maybe closeted/ace leaning or so to think of sex as a ‘gross’ thing (there’s more to marriage than sex tho i wouldn’t be surprised if they only ever had ethan and didn’t have an active sex lief after that)
Wow, I still hate her. “Allow?” Really?
So either Ethan’s mom is a coward or his dad is abusive.
Got it.
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/blunt/ based on this panel i would think the mom is the more ‘aggressive’ one and him also not ‘approving’ but at the same time probably not wanting to push back or interfere more than necessary
Two things can be true at once.
you don’t “allow” it, you accept it, but I supposed baby steps are to be praised
well that’s not sus as fuck at all
“…but you’re never going to get a man dressed like that. Let’s see what’s in your closet!”
ironically asher probably is more attracted to ethan’s ’emo’ look than his previous nerdy look but you never know i suppose , since he did click with Walky tho i suppose not like that had flirty undertones (although if walky was diff/bi and asher dated him after jen it would’ve been worth it/amusing just to see the look on jen’s face)
Aw gee, thanks mom!
(Fuck you, mom)
…can Asher come out of the closet now?
inb4 they go out to lunch to talk about it and he forgets about asher /him not coming out til jacob comes in lol
I’m not sure if “allowing” is the correct turn of phrase here.
Gee thanks Mrs. Ethansmom, for “allowing” your son to be something he is. You’re so a fantastic parent. 🙄
well your dive form was piss poor but at least your finally hitting the actual water now?
Ethans really having a hell of a year huh.
She’s trying to be supportive. She’s just really bad at it.
Understandable — she’s never done it before, it’s to be expected she’ll botch the first attempts.
Unless she feels unsafe about it, the fact that she’s hiding it from her husband doesn’t seem ideal/actually being supportive
It suggests he’s not okay with it.
Are we getting a parent experiencing actual growth or will the next page have the other shoe drop? Let’s find out.
Also what doesn’t she want her husband to know? … did she discover she’s not as straight as she initially believed?
well joyce’s dad grew enough to divorce her mom lol
She doesn’t want her spouse to know she’s going behind his back to support their kid in a behavior he thinks is harmful.
To take a politics and the “maybe divorce is a better option” element out of it, imagine if your mother was a teetotaler but your father has a drink and bums a cigarette to smoke with you when he’s visiting. Something that isn’t worth giving your kid shit about, but also not worth putting stress on the marriage about, is how they’re viewing this.
Obviously for this comic the audience has been narrowly cultivated not to agree with that framing, but that’s likely the perspective of the parent here. With some extra brownie points for the fact that she’s clearly known for a while and just been not bringing it up because she knowns how her husband gets about it. Doesn’t really get you parenting full marks, exactly, but a nice change from the “all post-college adults are pure evil, all the time, even when it makes no sense” that we sometimes get here.
I kinda like the attempt to write a parent intentionally as being legitimately trying to reconcile their own shit and their children’s shit and just failing without being malicious about it, this is new and interesting.
I guess that’s better than not being allowed?
Not that it matters, it’s not allowing it’s respecting choice
I’m pretty sure he could’ve picked the “straightest’ seeming “normal” person who you’d never expect to be gay and she still might not approve. or she’d want someone that’d be like some “average everyman” over some ‘flamboyant’
Lmao that punchline(?). Feels like it’s transactional. if not to spite the dad that might be a bigger homophobe or so and them having problems or so
Tho other than cutting off right away after, wonder how many gay kids are like “Well, i guess i’ll just be single the rest of my life anyways”. If not “I have a son/daughter from a sperm bank/IVF, here’s your grandchild” and just dropping them off in their lap and taking off lol XD
“If your father finds out I’m allowing you to be gay,
he might think it’s ok if he starts that up again.”
“What?”
“What?”
Welll, well. Look who was onto something.
Vindication!
It’s official now
Naomi’s clearly got some issues of her own to work out, but… baby steps?
Well, baby steps, right?
Wellll let’s see where this goes before i decide how i’m gonna feel about Naomi.
For now, what i gotta say is, people who use homosexual as a noun tend to be uncomfortable about queer people.
How thoughtful.
Probably not the words he expected to hear, nor words he should need to hear, but he heard ’em and I’m sure it’s progress?
Wait and see where Naomi is going with this, very different from her stance in the few strips she has been in. Interesting.
Not sure if narcissist is a good descriptor, there’s a lot of flavors of controlling people.