Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT 2887-2891 (2-6 February 2015)
AprilArcus:
If Smif is Smith, she couldn't have been an undergrad there (let alone a resident), since she started her transition during her first year of college and wouldn't have had her paperwork in order as a high school senior to matriculate at a women's college. Her brother is a student at UMass; she probably was too.
Aziraphale:
--- Quote from: ReindeerFlotilla on 08 Feb 2015, 02:23 ---
--- Quote from: bucky_2300 on 08 Feb 2015, 00:20 ---Could Marten get any more empty as a character? I mean, the guy's been presented as a straight man (as in the archetype) and a straight man (as in the sexuality) for the entirety of the comic, and now he's suddenly down with dating a transgendered person, which happens to come right around the time that trans* issues are gaining real traction in the social justice community? Come on. I've dated a trans*person in the past, and the first time we got naked, it was treated with much more dignity and care than it was given here. "You're beautiful"? I'll take Things That a 16 Year Old Says When Losing His Virginity for $200, Alex. This is just empty pandering.
--- End quote ---
Also, this is wrong. As in counter factual. As in this description of Marten is not accurate.
"Straight" is a construct. What defines straight really depends on who you ask. I'm sure there's a bi person somewhere who finds the application of that fact terribly hypocritical. So, what straight means to Marten is up to... Marten. (Well, Jeph. But I repeat myself.)
<snip>
Whatever's going down can be straight by whatever definition Marten uses. (As an aside, I found this comment no less clangy than those implying Marten might be fluid because of his mom's job. I didn't just make up this stuff about the artifice of straight for this comment, so the idea that Marten's personal view on the matter needs a justification is kind of a drop... on the head.)
<further snip>
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Bucky:
GET A GRIP, MAN!
(You may, if you'd like, read the preceding in the voice of Powdered Toast Man)
RF: Okay, maybe not fluidity, since you find that "clangy". How about openness, at the very least? Various... possibilities have been hinted around on the forums, to varying degrees of tact, for quite some time now. It seems to me to be a bit silly that those same things wouldn't already have occurred to Marten, and that he wouldn't have thought them through. Having thought them through, he may also have decided that he doesn't quite give a shit, and will take things as they come... an attitude, as we've seen a million or so times before in QC, that's far from being out of character. Does it need clarification? Not particularly. What he and Claire do or don't get up to is their business, not ours. But it seems a bit off somehow to think that the straightness you've already acknowledged as a construct is somehow more valid than the possibility that he's either decided that construct has outlived its usefulness, or that he'll just go and construct his own construct.
Penquin47:
--- Quote from: AprilArcus on 08 Feb 2015, 09:39 ---
--- Quote from: BenRG on 08 Feb 2015, 09:29 ---I think that this is a key point: Claire seems to have been generally under-socialised at the point she started out as an Intern. She has no friends out side of the Library/CoD circles that we know about. Lacking previous close friendships means that she, at best, can sometimes only guess about appropriate behaviour based on others' actions. I suspect that she probably doesn't have anyone fully reliable to turn to in romance issues (not with the possible exception of her mother). Because of this, her behaviours will sometimes be eccentric to the objective eye.
--- End quote ---
How much of that do we chalk up to her having a difficult, socially isolating transition during her freshman/sophomore years, and how much to other factors? It's hard to imagine making it through four years of college (and a couple years of grad school?) without making at least a few close friends. Clinton definitely seems a little bit ASD; I wonder if Claire has some of those traits too.
--- End quote ---
I made it through 4 years of high school and 5 and a half years of college without making any close friends. I am not trans*, but I do have serious body image issues and moderate to severe anxiety and depression. I don't think Claire has depression, but we know she has anxiety. Between the transition and the anxiety, I can see her not keeping in touch with high school friends and not making college friends pretty easily.
Skewbrow:
--- Quote from: BenRG on 08 Feb 2015, 09:29 ---In any case, I still think that her key motivator was her body image issues. She isn't confident in her appearance and she had to get this out of the way and on her own terms.
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I agree with this - as do apparently very many of us. I'm unable do any kind of deep analysis on it so I won't even try.
I would like to compare the approaches the two characters with severe body/self image issues took to their first times getting intimate with someone else. Marigold more or less opted to dive in. Head first. Pancakes and syrup for dessert. Here we have Claire with her special interlude.
Clearly both of them wanted to proceed on their own terms. I also think both of them planned events ahead of time. May be not a detailed script but a general plan was there. Marigold's forwardness may have taken some by surprise, but my guess is that she was planning on it, which is why she war so nervous that the hives broke out (sorry about acting Capt'n obvious here - I am slow). Also both had have very little social experience. Romantic in particular.
Differences between them? Relatively little I think? May be the characters in Jeph's head told him that this is how they will act?
Afterwards Marigold turned to Momo to reflect on her second thoughts. Who will Claire turn to?
AprilArcus:
--- Quote from: Skewbrow on 08 Feb 2015, 10:32 ---Afterwards Marigold turned to Momo to reflect on her second thoughts. Who will Claire turn to?
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Emily, of course. I see real potential for Claire/Hanners and Claire/Tai (oh god) to be interesting character dynamics, but for whatever reason Jeph hasn't developed them yet.
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