Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3081 to 3085 (2-6 November 2015)
MrNumbers:
See, I don't read it as playful because every bit of that last panel looks genuinely aggressive.
If I thought the fourth panel looked playful, I wouldn't have any problem. Faye's eyebrows are a dark 'v' shape, she's pulled into a boxer's pose, her mouth is definitely upturned, Marten is cringing pretty hard and there's no hint of a smile to his expression either.
I'd be fine if this was being played as a joke, but it really doesn't look like it. It just makes me uncomfortable.
Kugai:
I just think Faye's nervous about how things are gonna go with Bubbles after what happened and she just reacted as she usually does to Marten and her friends when she gets in that state.
gopher:
I just think Faye is a bullying thug who has been enabled by her spineless friends. If any of my friends hit me they would be gone. The fact that it is Marten's housemate that hits him adds an unpleasant domestic abuse overtone.
chaospersonified:
You have different friendships with different people and a different look on those relationships than others might. You're also one hell of a harsh judge, using words like 'spineless.'
It's a subjective point, but I wouldn't classify their relationship as abusive. The punches are brought on by people making rude comments, there's never any lasting after-effects, physically or otherwise*, and it's ultimately all in good fun. I can't think of any significant example where Marten actually held back from something because Faye would hit him.
As to the appearance in the panels, again, I'm speaking from personal experience. One of my best friends in high school, that was her response to me making cruel(ish)jokes about her, and the face she made would be angry for a few seconds. Then she'd relax, because she'd shown how she felt about me being mean. There's no lasting effect from the punch, and trust me, there's no way Faye hits harder than this girl; our senior year of high school, she gave a sophomore a black eye for using a pick-up line on her.
*italicized because I'm aware that not all abusive relationships leave visible signs.
Morituri:
Wow, that's pretty absolute. I'm guessing violence must mean a whole lot more (or a whole lot different) to you than it does to me.
I guess I've worked with violence in a lot of different contexts and where it has a lot of different meanings. To someone who grew up in Savannah Georgia it's entirely reasonable that swapping a few light punches among friends is mainly just a way to communicate points (or, yes, make jokes) while avoiding wasted time, hurt feelings and escalation that would result from long drawn out sessions of passive-aggressive bitching or screaming about those points.
But violence is very different for different people. Soldiers, bar bouncers, bar brawlers, professional wrestlers, abused partners, excessively punished children, people who've acted in defense of themselves or their own -- every last one of them has a different thing that violence can mean to them. Thinking it always means the same thing no matter what, or even that the people involved in a particular violence interpret it in exactly the same way, is, IMO, not paying attention to who they are and where they're coming from.
And, just FWIW, someone who smacks me on the arm to make a joke, or to make a point if I'm saying or doing something they think is stupid or evil, is something I take a whole lot more casually and lightly than someone who YELLS about things, or wants to have long-drawn-out discussions where nothing gets resolved except that other people besides themselves are morally and irredeemably wrong. Those last behaviors -- yelling about things and blame-gaming -- are fast ways to end relationships with me because I won't stand for them as a general rule.
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