Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT January 9-13, 2012 (2096-2100)
ihaveavoice:
--- Quote from: truestatic on 12 Jan 2012, 01:21 ---
--- Quote from: Akima on 12 Jan 2012, 01:13 ---Nice to see we're back to the woman-blaming-and-man-absolving again. I mean, it's not like Padma and Marten are both adults fully responsible for their feelings and actions in a mutually voluntary relationship. Nope it's all Padma's fault and Marten should be proud of himself. Ugh... :-(
--- End quote ---
I am a filthy liar and an all around bad person, but here I go, posting again. I agree that Padma and Marten BOTH fucked up. The only thing I have to say ins his defense that I can't say in hers is, he made an immediately regretted mistake in the heat of a moment. She consciously chose to ignore him for a week, ten days, whatever. And so far as I can tell, she doesn't seem to feel that bad about it. He notes that "It's been a while," and she's dismissive when she should be sincere.
--- End quote ---
I didn't read dismissiveness in her claim to have been "packing and stuff," but rather awkward guilty dodginess. I am still working on having major issues with essentially doing what Padma does here, though I've never done it in any sort of calling-boy-about-relationship context since the summer after eighth grade: feeling overwhelmed by emotional conflict and letting time just slip away while I agonize over it. If Padma's anything like me, she constantly felt little spurts of panic and shame over the course of that week, with each passing day working to convince her that she wouldn't be well-received if she called and that she'd already blown it, but this is nothing you can explain as a reason for not having called, and it's nothing you should be able to explain away because when it's in a phone-call-about-relationship context, no matter how you felt while you did it, you inflicted pain and uncertainty on the other person, and that's just not cool. Neither is tersely blowing someone off instead of at least hinting at what's wrong, especially when it will deny both of you closure. Badly done, Marten and Padma. Badly done.
Akima does not sound biased toward women. Seriously? She sounds like she's responding to an overall trend of slut-shaming and woman-blaming that's gone on in past arguments about Marten and Padma's fling. And regardless of gender, I think both sides have behaved badly, as I said above. Lashing out isn't okay just because it feels good in the moment. In fact, we'd probably be even more pissed with Padma if their roles were reversed, because we likely wouldn't have seen the instant remorse, though sometimes we do get to see the interiority of the people on the other end of Marten's phone conversations.
truestatic:
--- Quote from: ihaveavoice on 12 Jan 2012, 01:48 ---
--- Quote from: truestatic on 12 Jan 2012, 01:21 ---
--- Quote from: Akima on 12 Jan 2012, 01:13 ---Nice to see we're back to the woman-blaming-and-man-absolving again. I mean, it's not like Padma and Marten are both adults fully responsible for their feelings and actions in a mutually voluntary relationship. Nope it's all Padma's fault and Marten should be proud of himself. Ugh... :-(
--- End quote ---
I am a filthy liar and an all around bad person, but here I go, posting again. I agree that Padma and Marten BOTH fucked up. The only thing I have to say ins his defense that I can't say in hers is, he made an immediately regretted mistake in the heat of a moment. She consciously chose to ignore him for a week, ten days, whatever. And so far as I can tell, she doesn't seem to feel that bad about it. He notes that "It's been a while," and she's dismissive when she should be sincere.
--- End quote ---
I didn't read dismissiveness in her claim to have been "packing and stuff," but rather awkward guilty dodginess. I am still working on having major issues with essentially doing what Padma does here, though I've never done it in any sort of calling-boy-about-relationship context since the summer after eighth grade: feeling overwhelmed by emotional conflict and letting time just slip away while I agonize over it. If Padma's anything like me, she constantly felt little spurts of panic and shame over the course of that week, with each passing day working to convince her that she wouldn't be well-received if she called and that she'd already blown it, but this is nothing you can explain as a reason for not having called, and it's nothing you should be able to explain away because when it's in a phone-call-about-relationship context, no matter how you felt while you did it, you inflicted pain and uncertainty on the other person, and that's just not cool. Neither is tersely blowing someone off instead of at least hinting at what's wrong, especially when it will deny both of you closure. Badly done, Marten and Padma. Badly done.
--- End quote ---
Oh, you don't have to explain it to me. I'm acutely familiar with that feeling. You know you should've called, but you feel terrible about not calling, so you can't call, but then you feel even worse, and you have to call, but it's been so long there's no way you can face up to that. And then you're put in a situation where you have to see them and you can no longer be evasive. And suddenly the world is ending. I understand. I deal with the exact same thing.
It kind of sucks, right?
That said, I still think Padma could have preempted his predictable rejection by explaining this and giving a heartfelt apology. Which she would've had plenty of time to plan and rehearse. I don't know. Blah blah blah hindsight.
Blackjoker:
Marten was passive aggressive here, probably unwise to do it, understandable as hell though. Doras earlier statement about Marten being fucked was pretty much spot on, there's no way this would end cleanly. If Marten did decide to spend a last day with her it probably wouldn't have gone well. There would be a lot of tension and either it would be a kind of frantic 'screw till we can't think' that might be fun but would probably be emotionally draining for both or Marten would get frustrated, tell her how she feels, then she unloads on him, points out how her Grandmothers illness has her stressed, etc. she storms off, he's even more depressed, and neither of them are especially happy. Really, maybe the best thing he could do is see her off, wish her luck and that would be it. The fact is though that this pretty much couldn't end in a way that was happy unless neither of them developed any emotional attachments which seems unlikely.
Tova:
Life is always so much messier than we armchair critics like to admit to.
No-one is going to walk away from this episode feeling proud.
truestatic:
--- Quote from: Tova on 12 Jan 2012, 01:56 ---Life is always so much messier than we armchair critics like to admit to.
No-one is going to walk away from this episode feeling proud.
--- End quote ---
Not even Elliot? Just look at that awesome train wreck he's not a part of! How can he not feel spectacular about that? :laugh:
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