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Help out Penny with the rota for Coffee of Doom as well as help Dora plan expansion/growth

9 (9%)

Field 'phone calls and make appointments at Union Robotics (including appointments for Sam's 'sprays')

10 (10%)

Act as the 'token fleshie' at Punchbot & Associates (Punchbot needing a stand-in right arm)

7 (7%)

Help Hannelore set up and her charity for disadvantaged synthetics

15 (15%)

Organise all the things that she THINKS Hannelore wants in her life (dates, job interviews, etc)

20 (20%)

Get a job at Smif's library (as Claire and Emily have gone back to their respective classes)

1 (1%)

Sulk at her failure and be corrupted to the Dark Side by Spookybot

7 (7%)

Help Winslow and Arthur out at the self-help groups

4 (4%)

Help Marten organise HIS life (keeping up the blog, band practice, publicity and the like)

13 (13%)

Help Jim organise his back office and make sure Brun isn't sneaking too many day-old pastries

1 (1%)

Help Sven keep his chaotic life in more order (Hannelore's plea for a friend)

9 (9%)

Other (Please specify in your comment)

4 (4%)

Total Members Voted: 37

[mercykills]

OK, so I was all ready to jump on the "hate Tilly" bandwagon, but today's comic actually made me change my mind somewhat.

Why? Because of the way she reacts here.

Tilly is jumping over a counter, which to me reads less as a "she's overeager" and more like "she's so desperate to 'help' that it's becoming unnerving". In a vacuum, it would be a cute little moment, but she's jumping the counter in a *complete one-eighty* to what she was doing a second ago. Yes, she was told by Dora to not be behind the counter, but she obliged, and after like a few seconds, she seems to have completely ignored, disregarded or forgotten it.

To me, it doesn't read as overeager behaviour. To me, it reads like an automatic response of a kind that's more than a little disconcerting. I know I'm probably reading too much into it, but such drastic shifts of behaviour for a minor reason suggest to me that she's been brainwashed, or abused (and not in a comedic way), or otherwise forced to "help" Hannelore to the exclusion of everything else. This is one step beyond "comical" to me, especially considering who her employer is. Tilly was never funny to me, but now her downright Pavlovian responses are more chilling than anything. YMMV.

Incidentally, in a world with super-technology, with sapient AI and basically on the verge of the Singularity (or beyond it, depending on what we don't see), people like Beatrice are still in power. Beatrice is not merely a "bad rich person", she is implied to be able to do whatever she wants. Yeah, do NOT sign me up for a future like this.

EDIT: also, I know Hannelore is a popular character, but as much as I dislike Tilly, the reactions to her seem like a "we know this person, so we'll hate that other person", which is a reaction I (in my opinion) have seen in the forum before. I will be very happy if this new character goes away soon, because she's annoying and not interesting, but I still think getting someone's name constantly wrong just because they were forced upon you is a shitty thing to do. I understand Hanners' reaction, but that doesn't mean I like it. And I don't like how it's apparently played up for comedy's sake. It's still not funny, to me personally.

EDIT 2: also also, wasn't it against the forum's rules (and enforced, IIRC) to misspell a real person's *or* a character's name? I didn't know it included a "I don't like this character, so I can do that" clause.

jfc. No.

No. No. No. No. No. To ALL of this, 'No'. Please let us not make the creepy stalker, Taffy, into a sympathetic character. And yes, a stranger who comes into someone's life randomly and then will NOT leave once said person has made clear that they do NOT want this stranger around them is the definition of stalker and is one of the primary reasons restraining orders exist.

Atm, Taffy is using two of the main weapons in a creeper's arsenal; 1.) Gaslighting("no, no, Hannelore. Remember you want me to be here cause I'm useful(according to me). Why are you all of a sudden acting like you don't?") and 2.) Banking on the fact that the person they're stalking hates confrontation, is embarrassed that they're in this situation to begin with and/or won't set aside "decorum" and blow up on them like they deserve.

This is a serious issue that thousands deal with everyday but I guess we'll ignore  our collective skin-crawling and treat it as cute and funny cause Taffy's klutzy and she calls Hannelore ma'am or some shit. >.>

[JimC]

Jeph did do one strip of the characters in middle age...

Wait, when was that?

might have been a guest strip now I think of it...

later...
Indeed it was.

[oddtail]

OK, so I was all ready to jump on the "hate Tilly" bandwagon, but today's comic actually made me change my mind somewhat.

Why? Because of the way she reacts here.

Tilly is jumping over a counter, which to me reads less as a "she's overeager" and more like "she's so desperate to 'help' that it's becoming unnerving". In a vacuum, it would be a cute little moment, but she's jumping the counter in a *complete one-eighty* to what she was doing a second ago. Yes, she was told by Dora to not be behind the counter, but she obliged, and after like a few seconds, she seems to have completely ignored, disregarded or forgotten it.

To me, it doesn't read as overeager behaviour. To me, it reads like an automatic response of a kind that's more than a little disconcerting. I know I'm probably reading too much into it, but such drastic shifts of behaviour for a minor reason suggest to me that she's been brainwashed, or abused (and not in a comedic way), or otherwise forced to "help" Hannelore to the exclusion of everything else. This is one step beyond "comical" to me, especially considering who her employer is. Tilly was never funny to me, but now her downright Pavlovian responses are more chilling than anything. YMMV.

Incidentally, in a world with super-technology, with sapient AI and basically on the verge of the Singularity (or beyond it, depending on what we don't see), people like Beatrice are still in power. Beatrice is not merely a "bad rich person", she is implied to be able to do whatever she wants. Yeah, do NOT sign me up for a future like this.

EDIT: also, I know Hannelore is a popular character, but as much as I dislike Tilly, the reactions to her seem like a "we know this person, so we'll hate that other person", which is a reaction I (in my opinion) have seen in the forum before. I will be very happy if this new character goes away soon, because she's annoying and not interesting, but I still think getting someone's name constantly wrong just because they were forced upon you is a shitty thing to do. I understand Hanners' reaction, but that doesn't mean I like it. And I don't like how it's apparently played up for comedy's sake. It's still not funny, to me personally.

EDIT 2: also also, wasn't it against the forum's rules (and enforced, IIRC) to misspell a real person's *or* a character's name? I didn't know it included a "I don't like this character, so I can do that" clause.

jfc. No.

No. No. No. No. No. To ALL of this, 'No'. Please let us not make the creepy stalker, Taffy, into a sympathetic character. And yes, a stranger who comes into someone's life randomly and then will NOT leave once said person has made clear that they do NOT want this stranger around them is the definition of stalker and is one of the primary reasons restraining orders exist.

Atm, Taffy is using two of the main weapons in a creeper's arsenal; 1.) Gaslighting("no, no, Hannelore. Remember you want me to be here cause I'm useful(according to me). Why are you all of a sudden acting like you don't?") and 2.) Banking on the fact that the person they're stalking hates confrontation, is embarrassed that they're in this situation to begin with and/or won't set aside "decorum" and blow up on them like they deserve.

This is a serious issue that thousands deal with everyday but I guess we'll ignore  our collective skin-crawling and treat it as cute and funny cause Taffy's klutzy and she calls Hannelore ma'am or some shit. >.>

I didn't say she was a sympathetic character. I said I dislike her as a person and as a character, didn't I?

I'm just saying that her eagerness to "help" is too over the top to be funny, in my opinion, and it verges on creepy and disturbing. And I see disturbing reasons that might be true.

It wouldn't change my opinion of the character anyway. I'm not sure where you got from my words that I see her as sympathetic. "I hope she's gone pretty soon" was too subtle? I'm not sure how I could have said it much more directly...

[blt]

Jeph did do one strip of the characters in middle age...

Wait, when was that?

might have been a guest strip now I think of it...

later...
Indeed it was.

This comic really disturbs me and I can't put my finger on why.  All I know is those weird dead faces are going to be burned into my nightmares now.

[Cornelius]

The faces... the stilted language... but then, it is a nightmare.

[Neko_Ali]

I'm beginning to think Beatrice didn't send Tilly here because Hannelore needs a personal assistant, but rather because she just needed some way to get rid of her....

What? The cannon isn't working?

She already tried the cannon. And the sharks. Both with and without lasers. But Tilly keeps coming back....

[BenRG]

"Old Miss-us Cee had trouble of her own,
She had a blonde-haired girl who won't leave her alone!
Steps were needed with deception as its' key!
One wannabe PA! How hard could it be?
(How hard, how hard) How hard could it be? (How hard could it be?)"

"But Tilly came back the very next day!
Tilly came back! We thought she was a gonner
but Tilly came back! She just wouldn't stay away (away, away away)
(Wouldn't stay away!) Wouldn't stay away!"

[Zebediah]

I can see it now: Hannelore vs. Tilly is going to degenerate into this.

[heyjames4]

I could see Hannelore  'ordering' Tilly to get a mental health assessment, put a down payment on a house, and/or engage in other forms of expensive self-care. All charged to the company account, on the grounds that Ms. Elicott-Chatham needs an assistant whose got thier own house in order.

[swapna]

- Marten and Claire - not going to go there

I must know. What happens to Marten and Claire?!

They split up.
Everyone thought it was for the best...

Yes, please. First thing Monday morning wouldn't be fast enough.

(click to show/hide)

OK, so I was all ready to jump on the "hate Tilly" bandwagon, but today's comic actually made me change my mind somewhat.

Why? Because of the way she reacts here.

Tilly is jumping over a counter, which to me reads less as a "she's overeager" and more like "she's so desperate to 'help' that it's becoming unnerving". In a vacuum, it would be a cute little moment, but she's jumping the counter in a *complete one-eighty* to what she was doing a second ago. Yes, she was told by Dora to not be behind the counter, but she obliged, and after like a few seconds, she seems to have completely ignored, disregarded or forgotten it.

To me, it doesn't read as overeager behaviour. To me, it reads like an automatic response of a kind that's more than a little disconcerting. I know I'm probably reading too much into it, but such drastic shifts of behaviour for a minor reason suggest to me that she's been brainwashed, or abused (and not in a comedic way), or otherwise forced to "help" Hannelore to the exclusion of everything else. This is one step beyond "comical" to me, especially considering who her employer is. Tilly was never funny to me, but now her downright Pavlovian responses are more chilling than anything. YMMV.

Incidentally, in a world with super-technology, with sapient AI and basically on the verge of the Singularity (or beyond it, depending on what we don't see), people like Beatrice are still in power. Beatrice is not merely a "bad rich person", she is implied to be able to do whatever she wants. Yeah, do NOT sign me up for a future like this.

EDIT: also, I know Hannelore is a popular character, but as much as I dislike Tilly, the reactions to her seem like a "we know this person, so we'll hate that other person", which is a reaction I (in my opinion) have seen in the forum before. I will be very happy if this new character goes away soon, because she's annoying and not interesting, but I still think getting someone's name constantly wrong just because they were forced upon you is a shitty thing to do. I understand Hanners' reaction, but that doesn't mean I like it. And I don't like how it's apparently played up for comedy's sake. It's still not funny, to me personally.

EDIT 2: also also, wasn't it against the forum's rules (and enforced, IIRC) to misspell a real person's *or* a character's name? I didn't know it included a "I don't like this character, so I can do that" clause.

Yeah, that apparently only goes for characters the mods care about. Or nicknames other characters use are okay also, even if they're malicious? Who knows.

jfc. No.

No. No. No. No. No. To ALL of this, 'No'. Please let us not make the creepy stalker, Taffy, into a sympathetic character. And yes, a stranger who comes into someone's life randomly and then will NOT leave once said person has made clear that they do NOT want this stranger around them is the definition of stalker and is one of the primary reasons restraining orders exist.

Atm, Taffy is using two of the main weapons in a creeper's arsenal; 1.) Gaslighting("no, no, Hannelore. Remember you want me to be here cause I'm useful(according to me). Why are you all of a sudden acting like you don't?") and 2.) Banking on the fact that the person they're stalking hates confrontation, is embarrassed that they're in this situation to begin with and/or won't set aside "decorum" and blow up on them like they deserve.

This is a serious issue that thousands deal with everyday but I guess we'll ignore  our collective skin-crawling and treat it as cute and funny cause Taffy's klutzy and she calls Hannelore ma'am or some shit. >.>

Yes, Tilly's not a sympathetic character, but we know that Hannelore is able and willing to assert herself, if and when necessary. Tilly offered her to go - it's like a telemarketer. You have to end the call. She has to send her away, and if she feels stalked, she can call the police. With Tilly's phone. She has a Winslows eyewitness testimony (should be even better than a human's, it's not as if screwing with AI memory is an easy/legal process).

So, Hannelore thinks Tilly is not as bad - annoying and persistent, instead of a super creepy asshole that makes your skin crawl. Hanners doesn't feel threatened, she's just annoyed, otherwise she'd have used her taser/baton/called the police.  And I agree, the arc isn't great - even May/Claire/Brun were more sympathetic when they were introduced. (Clinton was way way worse; imho, he still is.)

[pwhodges]

EDIT 2: also also, wasn't it against the forum's rules (and enforced, IIRC) to misspell a real person's *or* a character's name? I didn't know it included a "I don't like this character, so I can do that" clause.

Yeah, that apparently only goes for characters the mods care about. Or nicknames other characters use are okay also, even if they're malicious? Who knows.

The relevant paragraph in my expansion of Jeph's rules reads:

6- Write English.  There are many non-native English users here, so we don't expect grammatical perfection and consistency of spelling.  But please, no 1337-speak, ALL CAPS, or excessive use of smileys , marquees, fancy fonts and colours and such; and please try to spell people's (and characters') names right - it's only polite.  Oh, and Internet memes or image macros?  Passé. There is nothing exciting or new about any of them, and they just make people sigh when they see them.

The mods are perfectly capable of applying common sense (in situations like the current one) and sympathy (recognising that mistakes happen, and that some people have a harder time avoiding them than others).  If you disagree with this, please give evidence of our failure so that we can correct it (there's a thread for discussing moderation decisions and policy) - demonising the mods without that is not helpful to anyone.

[shanejayell]

Tilly is getting creepy, I must say...

[Is it cold in here?]

Do you think you can be PA to an Ellicott-Chatham without paying your dues first?

Prove yourself. Spend two years and show me you can bring order to the life of someone living in chaos.

Your assignment is named "Pintsize".

[KnightRider007]

If Tilly had been male, they would have been arrested three strips ago...

[DesiArxxy]

I agree with the opinion I saw on the Subreddit that Tilly isn't actually a very good PA. Why isn't she out buying Hannelore's new 'phone? Why isn't she exploring the town and spending time learning new ways to do her "boss's" bidding by identifying locations and persons of interest? Hanging around Hannelore like a love-struck puppy is not good PA behaviour! I'm wondering if she is actually a hopeless loser who no-one wants hanging around ECI's HQ and Beatrice is using Hannelore as garbage disposal. Alternately, maybe she's the daughter of a senior board member who wants her to have a 'responsible' job but lacks the actual ability to do so; Beatrice used the Dilbert Principle - 'Promote' her to a job where she can do no damage other than to herself.

I reiterate that everything Taffy does is consistent with her actual assignment being, "Gaslight and manipulate Hannelore into being her mother's daughter."

[OldGoat]

Do you think you can be PA to an Ellicott-Chatham without paying your dues first?

Prove yourself. Spend two years and show me you can bring order to the life of someone living in chaos.

Your assignment is named "Pintsize".

He'd be making videos of her doing unspeakable things with integrated circuit modules within two weeks.

[citizenfive]

I'm beginning to think Beatrice didn't send Tilly here because Hannelore needs a personal assistant, but rather because she just needed some way to get rid of her....

What? The cannon isn't working?

She already tried the cannon. And the sharks. Both with and without lasers. But Tilly keeps coming back....

She's like Randy in that she cannot die!

[brasca]

I think that things are going in the direction that I first speculated towards the start of the arc. Tilly is going to be so annoying and intrusive that Hannelore won't be able to tolerate her for a whole morning, let alone 48 hours. She'll be fired and on her way back to Beatrice with a blistering performance review of the sort that can be summed up as "goodbye career".

IMO it is only then, with her career in ruins and the very real possibility that she's about to have a protracted period of unemployment, will we meet the real Tilly and find out what Jeph wants to do with her. I can see three possibilities:

• She's actually quite nasty and, when fired, proceeds to be very verbally abusive to Hannelore: "This is what your mom really thinks of you, you defective failure!"
• Hannelore had been 'last chance saloon' and, facing the total ruin of her dreams, Tilly breaks down and ends up under Winslow's guard to ensure that she doesn't do anything stupid;
• Tilly doesn't have much pride; we have a wholly skin-crawlingly embarrassing moment when she begs for her job and even offers 'personal services' in exchange for mercy. As well as tugging Hannelore's heart-strings, it makes one wonder just how bad things at ECI might be.

Yeah, there's the possibility that she may just shrug and walk away if fired but, somehow, that would be an anticlimax. I can't see Jeph going that way.

Interesting scenarios, but I think if Tilly really wanted revenge she could just call up Hannelore after getting a safe distance and say "Hi Ms. Ellicott-Chatman I just remembered leaving a booger somewhere in your apartment.  Have fun finding it."

P.S.:
I agree with the opinion I saw on the Subreddit that Tilly isn't actually a very good PA. Why isn't she out buying Hannelore's new 'phone? Why isn't she exploring the town and spending time learning new ways to do her "boss's" bidding by identifying locations and persons of interest? Hanging around Hannelore like a love-struck puppy is not good PA behaviour! I'm wondering if she is actually a hopeless loser who no-one wants hanging around ECI's HQ and Beatrice is using Hannelore as garbage disposal. Alternately, maybe she's the daughter of a senior board member who wants her to have a 'responsible' job but lacks the actual ability to do so; Beatrice used the Dilbert Principle - 'Promote' her to a job where she can do no damage other than to herself.

I seriously doubt someone like Beatrice would keep a failure around instead of firing her or worse and I doubt being the daughter of a board member would make any difference.  I think this is all on purpose.  It can't be a coincidence that just when Winslow gets a new body and starts exploring his options that Hannelore gets a new assistant.  Beatrice has likely monitored her and decided this was the time to present her with an assistant, but one that would nudge her in the direction she wants. 

However, since so many people on this board have been jumping to conclusions I think I'll try a few fun ones.  Perhaps Tilly isn't actually the assistant that Beatrice chose.  I can see it now.  Hannelore dismisses Tilly after 48 hours and soon after gets a knock on her door from a Tilly Birch apologizing for being so late.  The Tilly we know gets into a car driven by Spookybot.  As the car drives away Tilly morphs into another Spookybot and says "she's going to be a tougher nut to crack than we thought."

Another possibility is Tilly is unrelated to any of the characters, but a mystical guide similar to The Venture Brothers' Dr. Killinger.   

[JimC]

The mods are perfectly capable of applying common sense (in situations like the current one)

And of course in this case getting the name wrong is 'canon' as I believe the saying goes, so I submit that for the moment, no matter how iffy the spelling, and how large the tally of mis-spellings is, Tilly/Taffy for comic effect is reasonably fair game.

[Case]

... You can't apply population averages to individuals.

If Tilly had been male, they would have been arrested three strips ago...

I thought the first post was rather insightful - don't know whether we'd agree on much in our politics, but its always refreshing to see someone using their headmeats for its intended purpose. Certainly can't be said for all people in discussions around gender/social justice issues.

Second post seems like your forgetting your own (sensible) stance, though. I guess it's pretty rare for someone - regardless of their gender - to be arrested for stalking without someone else pressing charges against them first. The impact of stalking is in the mind of the victim, and most definitions require a pattern of behaviour rather than a single action - without additional information, it's not easy to for a cop passing by to determine at a glance whether someone is being stalked (unlike, e.g. witnessing a burglary, theft or assault).

So no, I don't think a male Tilly would have been arrested by now, all other things being equal.

[Case]

Apologies for double-post & wall of text - Allow me to make an idiot of myself trying to 'mediate' here:

To me, it doesn't read as overeager behaviour. To me, it reads like an automatic response of a kind that's more than a little disconcerting. I know I'm probably reading too much into it, but such drastic shifts of behaviour for a minor reason suggest to me that she's been brainwashed, or abused (and not in a comedic way), or otherwise forced to "help" Hannelore to the exclusion of everything else. This is one step beyond "comical" to me, especially considering who her employer is. Tilly was never funny to me, but now her downright Pavlovian responses are more chilling than anything. YMMV.

My apologies if I'm trying to explain to you stuff that you already know by heart:
There's people who display that kind of behaviour deliberately, and it is part of the abuse they wreak on others. Yes, they may have been abused themselves in the past, but note that some habitual abusers are very well-versed in turning this into a tool to get their victim to postpone insisting on their boundaries being respected

What happened in the past to a stalker/abuser always matters less than their stopping their shit, right now.

(Yes, personal experience, btw - though mine was so brief & comparatively harmless that I hesitate even mentioning it knowing what others here have gone through. It wears you down into a shadow of yourself in a matter of weeks. Even if you're a six-foot, 180 pounds guy - I remember considering changing my ringtone because my old one made my heart race. I remember almost giving up trying to explain to my family why they please neverever tell this person anything about my whereabouts, don't accept any letters, messages or gifts for me and the feelings of shame and confusion and the fear that they'd think I was the one going crazy. I remember my steadfast belief in my sanity becoming frazzled.)

Note that I'm not saying you're wrong for seeing Tilly the way you do - I'm just saying that it looks a bit like you're trying to make sense of abusive/boundary-disrespecting behaviour from within a normal-person view of interpersonal interaction. Not only is that nigh impossible, that view can be insanely frustrating to someone who experiences stalking/abuse, because a lot of abusers are the world's leading experts in making their abuse appear to bystanders superficially like normal interactions. This can be part of the abusers strategy of isolating their victim socially and cutting them off from their emotional support - the freaked-out, emotional person struggling to explain how a superficially harmless and mundane interaction brings them close to tears of rage is always in a worse position explaining themselves than the ostensibly calm, concerned person they're freaking out about. If the victim is rebuked and believes they were over-reacting this can seamlessly lead into heavy-duty gaslighting and other shit that' hard to come back from. I acknowledge not knowing who Tilly is in Jeph's mind - let's just say that if I saw someone behaving like this, I wouldn't consider it a red flag so much as 1982 Red Army parade.


TL; DR - Way I see it, this is less about what you post, or how you view the interaction, but about the past interactions some of us had and that your view reminds us of those bad experiences, of how difficult it was to convince our friends & loved ones that we're not going batshit, and that the harmless person we're freaking out about is not harmless at all. That's not your fault - it's just ... bad memories, k?

P.S.: Your gut-feeling of 'feeling disconcerted' - for a lot of people, the first time they had that feeling marked the point when they should have run like hell. Best advice I ever got from a head-doctor was "Trust your instincts in situations like this".

jfc. No.

No. No. No. No. No. To ALL of this, 'No'.
...

This is a serious issue that thousands deal with everyday but I guess we'll ignore  our collective skin-crawling and treat it as cute and funny cause Taffy's klutzy and she calls Hannelore ma'am or some shit. >.>

Solid copy & and agree on the message in general - but I'm pretty darn close to a 100% sure that oddtail is not trying belittle or downplay a serious problem and/or bad experiences of others. It's frustrating exhausting/horrifying/crazymaking/horrible when 'normal people' with their wonderful normal-people-view of social interaction don't 'get' why you're freaking out about that 'harmless' dude/girl, why your face is flushed, why you're close to tears or even shouting at them and why you can't finish your own goddamn' sentences. I remember having that normal-people-view of social interaction, and I remember how I lost it.

Bearing all that in mind: He is not the 'enemy', IMO.

[Pilchard123]

Maybe Hanners just needs to give Tilly a sock...?

<snip snip>

Yeah, given that my comment was all but ignored but someone "quoting" Dobby's line after it has been liked off the planet - I don't think you were alone!

(Or maybe I'm just not well liked!! Sob!!!!)   

If it helps, I first figured you meant "a punch upside the face" rather than "an article of clothing. I (thought I) was deliberately misinterpreting it with the Dobby allusion.

[KnightRider007]

... You can't apply population averages to individuals.

If Tilly had been male, they would have been arrested three strips ago...

I thought the first post was rather insightful - don't know whether we'd agree on much in our politics, but its always refreshing to see someone using their headmeats for its intended purpose. Certainly can't be said for all people in discussions around gender/social justice issues.

Second post seems like your forgetting your own (sensible) stance, though. I guess it's pretty rare for someone - regardless of their gender - to be arrested for stalking without someone else pressing charges against them first. The impact of stalking is in the mind of the victim, and most definitions require a pattern of behaviour rather than a single action - without additional information, it's not easy to for a cop passing by to determine at a glance whether someone is being stalked (unlike, e.g. witnessing a burglary, theft or assault).

So no, I don't think a male Tilly would have been arrested by now, all other things being equal.

Yes and no. The original post concerned race as a causal or correlative factor regarding privilege, which I stand by. However, gender (of both the person carrying out the act, and the person being acted upon) is, among other things, a causative factor in how acceptable people find certain behaviours. And this applies in both directions. I freely admit that there are behaviours that are generally socially tolerated in men that are not in women.

I contend that Tilly's behaviour is an example of the reverse. You are of course correct that charges would need to be pressed. I believe it would be far more likely to have happened (and police action more likely to have occurred) had Tilly been male and acting in exactly the same manner - stalking, invasion of privacy, interrogating personal AIs, suggesting outfits (often quoted as a form of controlling abuse), refusal to leave when explicitly asked...

As a hypothetical, I would also have been willing to bet small sums that "he" would have received less sympathy and fewer posts on this forum attempting to justify "his" behaviour.

On a separate note and out of sheer curiosity, what was it about my very short post, one sentence long, that prompted you to make the effort to look into my profile for other posts?

[Neko_Ali]

You are new here, and the fact that you are new and it was a short, one line post that read a lot like something Mens Rights trolls have shown up to try and argue about and cause problems over in the past set off alarm bells. The comic features a lot of strong female characters, more then male characters. And it has some pretty strong liberal and feminist leanings. So does the forum membership. This has caused trolls to show up in the past with the intention of cause a scene. While we work to keep the place open and friendly to people of all viewpoints and opinions, we also work to keep it polite and respectful. So when someone makes a comment like "If Tilly had been male, they would have been arrested three strips ago..." that sounds like someone trying to stir controversy over how men are so poorly treated it's sensible to look back and see if this is a pattern in their posting, and should we be paying close attention to see if this is going to become a problem.

[Case]

As a hypothetical, I would also have been willing to bet small sums that "he" would have received less sympathy and fewer posts on this forum attempting to justify "his" behaviour.

Can't say much about that, since IIRC I was amongst the first to use the word 'creepy' for Tilly's behaviour - and it was exactly my above-mentioned past experience with a cute, diminutive, bespectacled 120 pound woman that has sensitized me to boundary-violations, gaslighting and all the other nice stuff that makes you feel all warm & fuzzy inside. That being said: While I cannot completely comprehend women's experiences, I can extrapolate - and part of that is the realization that while my being no small guy didn't help at all with defending myself against (pretty mild) attempts at boundary violations/emotional abuse (wouldn't dream considering myself a survivor, though - I had competent support that helped my to quickly realize what was happening), I have zero trouble imagining how an abuser could use that physical superiority as a tool. Actually, given my ability to read & hear, I don't have to rely on my imagination - it's not like there aren't countless accounts, very often from women, only a mouse-click away.

I don't think that abuse is lesser, or less serious when it happens to a man, or inflicted by a woman - but I do recognize that when one of 'us' decides to hurt, they have some very dangerous additional tools at their disposal that most female abusers do not have to the same degree. Plus there's the fact that when men go from creepy-stalker-y emotional abusive shit to deeply scary physical shit, they tend to inflict vastly more harm, and do that significantly more often than female ones (though recent studies, especially ones using fresh NCVS-data (or was it CDC?), have shown that the ratio is not quite as one-sided as some have proclaimed it to be for a long time).

Weirdly, my experience helped me realize (later on) how threatening we (men) can be to people who are a good deal smaller and lighter than we are. We don't need to do much to intimidate - raising our voices and waving our arms around might be 'just' our being upset, but to someone almost a head shorter and 60 pounds lighter it's very hard not to think about what would happen if we stopped just waving our arms about.

And we haven't even started looking into gendered social expectations, e.g. in child rearing, or aggressive behaviour of men being implicitly condoned or even encouraged etc.etc.

On a separate note and out of sheer curiosity, what was it about my very short post, one sentence long, that prompted you to make the effort to look into my profile for other posts?

Since you asked, you probably already know - one-liners about "This would be totally different if she were a man!" are not a priori always wrong, but they are favourite staple of a certain set of people not rarely found in places that are ... a wee bit less liberal-leaning than this one, which means that 'we' do get the occasional anti-liberal/anti-feminist troll trying to stir up shit.

/begin_{spurious blurb}
Doesn't mean that heads are ripped off because of a first (or fourth) impression (least in my six years experience on the board) - after all, appearances can and do deceive. And IMO the modding-crew is pretty insistent and consistent about balancing the goals of creating room for constructive difference of opinion on the one hand and a safe and welcoming environment - especially for those of us who need it more than others - on the other, and afaics, that is appreciated by the overwhelming majority of forumites. (Mods: Feel free to contradict/shut me up/tell me to go mind my own goddamn' business)
/end_{spurious blurb}

<- Edit: Cf. Neko's post above.

TL;DR - I was curious, and asking doesn't hurt. In fact, now I'm glad that I did. 


P.S.: Are you familiar with Guardian writer Ally Fogg and his blog (https://freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/) ? I always felt that his stance was a good example of a 'third position' on male-specific gender-issues that is distinct from (but informed by) feminism on the one hand and most MRA-sites on the other. He denies being either a feminist or MRA, and is very often furiously attack by people on either side, but by myself, I think of him as a "standard 2.8-wave Feminist, except where it comes to issues specific to men".  Don't always agree with him, but I don't doubt his sincerity - and he does appear quite knowledgeable/well-read. If you're looking for a thoughtful, contemporary, not-quite-feminist view on gender-issues, e.g. abuse of men, that isn't also steeped in MRA-style rabid anti-feminism, his is one of the very few sane voices on the net that I've found.

P.P.S.: People curious about Ally's blog should note that the comments-section is not a safe space, for anybody (Though I'd wager that Ally's articles, while maybe challenging to some parts of the 3rd-wave, should not make people feel demeaned or hurt). IIRC, Ally has just one rule for comment-moderation, the ""HetPat Prime Directive - Thou shalt not generalise about gender activist movements or judge people’s arguments by their association." (My speculation is that this is due to large parts of the Men's Rights movement actually being anti-feminist rather than pro-men & him being tired of people discussing the relative merits of social movements instead of specific issues). The comments-sections can be kind of a social experiment, and you can find yourself next to a brawl between David Futrelle of WeHuntedTheMammoth-fame and AVoiceForMen-founder Paul Elam.

Advantage is that it's not an echo-chamber (at least it wasn't two or so years ago) and discussion is fast-paced, unorthodox and ... not complicated by some of the reservations & stranger-anxiety found in some parts of 3rd-wave feminism regarding some topics; disadvantage is that where there's a lot of friction, there's also a lot of waste heat (and waste-heat producers, I'm afraid) ... and it's definitely not a safe space, so sadly, you won't find that many people who have less than the average "number of spoons to give per day" ...)

[Gyrre]

Geez...

This has been one of those weeks where I skip over about 80% to 90% of the comments since the bulk of them are just folks taking turns beating a dead horse while complaining and missing semi-subtle things.

Only a handful of people have recognized that Tilly was quite sincere when stating her dismay at being unable to assist in hiding her own body were she to be killed. Hanner's question pretty much indicates that there wasn't the slightest hint of sarcasm or jest in Tilly's reaction. That's one broken mind right their.

[oddtail]

My apologies if I'm trying to explain to you stuff that you already know by heart:
There's people who display that kind of behaviour deliberately, and it is part of the abuse they wreak on others. Yes, they may have been abused themselves in the past, but note that some habitual abusers are very well-versed in turning this into a tool to get their victim to postpone insisting on their boundaries being respected

I'm not saying what you're saying is wrong. My general point is that Tilly's behaviour is beyond the scope of what a healthy person might do.

I'm not using this as a justification or defense of her action. I'm using this as a (for now, very speculative) way of maybe understanding the motivation here. Understanding the motivation does not mean acceptance.

Plus, I'm trying to illustrate why Tilly is creepy rather than funny to me. Nothing more and nothing less.

And yes, I realise that behaviour similar to Tilly's may very well be deliberate and is part of a toolset used by abusers. Not every abuse is angry and outwardly hostile, I understand that. "This can be seen as abusive" and "this is not what a healthy person does" are not, in my opinion, mutually exclusive. In fact, healthy and well-adjusted people don't tend to abuse others (because why would they?).

Again, that doesn't make abuse somehow not-wrong. I never said that, nor do I think that.

[Is it cold in here?]

If Tilly had been male, they would have been arrested three strips ago...

Or, male or female, if they'd been in an environment less built around boundary violations than the Questionable Content universe.

Hannelore would have to assert herself to get Tilly arrested, and probably have to take multiple steps like getting a trespass warning letter and/or a restraining order and waiting for Tilly to violate it.

Which leads to a remarkably mean idea.

Tilly, I'm going to get arrested on purpose in a demonstration at the military base. I won't do well in jail without someone there to help. I need you to be my personal assistant on the inside.

Get yourself arrested today, and wait in jail until I arrive.

[TheEvilDog]

To be honest, that sounds more like something I would do...

[blt]

I wasn't on the forums when he was introduced, but on the topic of audience reception for male vs female, what was the contrast to when Clinton was first seen?  The situations are not dissimilar: sudden appearance, quirky personality, being creepy/stalkerish and upsetting Hannelore.

The main difference I see is author opinion on the character.  Where Jeph's notes keyed on Clinton being a creep (and in general are negative towards him even after his character development since then) they're more positive for Tilly, about how she's cute and helpful or whatever (ech).

[Zog]

Maybe Hanners just needs to give Tilly a sock...?

<snip snip>

Yeah, given that my comment was all but ignored but someone "quoting" Dobby's line after it has been liked off the planet - I don't think you were alone!

(Or maybe I'm just not well liked!! Sob!!!!)   

If it helps, I first figured you meant "a punch upside the face" rather than "an article of clothing. I (thought I) was deliberately misinterpreting it with the Dobby allusion.

My first thought was "what does it mean to give someone a sock" and then "Oh a punch". But then my native language is gibberish ,followed by Spanglish.

[DesiArxxy]

If Tilly had been male, they would have been arrested three strips ago...

Or, male or female, if they'd been in an environment less built around boundary violations than the Questionable Content universe.

Hannelore would have to assert herself to get Tilly arrested, and probably have to take multiple steps like getting a trespass warning letter and/or a restraining order and waiting for Tilly to violate it.

Which leads to a remarkably mean idea.

Tilly, I'm going to get arrested on purpose in a demonstration at the military base. I won't do well in jail without someone there to help. I need you to be my personal assistant on the inside.

Get yourself arrested today, and wait in jail until I arrive.

No. You don't have to have a trespass letter, much less a restraining order, to remove a trespasser from private property. Verbal warning from the owner, property manager, or a security officer working on their behalf is fully sufficient to "validate" criminal trespassing, and the police will back that up with an arrest if they have to. In most cases, the police will give the trespasser a verbal warning of their own and will only arrest if the person still refuses to depart the property (or if the person returns to the property after initial removal), but they are not required to do so.

[JimC]

I dunno Hanners, you're getting too bothered about this (quelle suprise). Every shop can use a free gofer. Send Tilly out for a phone, then out to get munchies for everyone, then she can do Dora's food shopping, next go down to the cash and carry (or whatever the US equivalent is) and stock up on what COD needs, and I'm sure there's other stuff. Just have her doing things for *everyone* and I'm sure there'll be enough to keep her out of your way.

[Neko_Ali]

What, and prove that Hanners does need a personal assistant? Remember, she's trying to get rid of Tilly. Being bored and in the way is a far more effective way to show that Hanners does not in fact need her help.

[jwhouk]

So who's up for doing this week's CDT?

[TheEvilDog]

Oh I'll do it. And hope it won't get locked this time 

[mercykills]

Apologies for double-post & wall of text - Allow me to make an idiot of myself trying to 'mediate' here:

To me, it doesn't read as overeager behaviour. To me, it reads like an automatic response of a kind that's more than a little disconcerting. I know I'm probably reading too much into it, but such drastic shifts of behaviour for a minor reason suggest to me that she's been brainwashed, or abused (and not in a comedic way), or otherwise forced to "help" Hannelore to the exclusion of everything else. This is one step beyond "comical" to me, especially considering who her employer is. Tilly was never funny to me, but now her downright Pavlovian responses are more chilling than anything. YMMV.

My apologies if I'm trying to explain to you stuff that you already know by heart:
There's people who display that kind of behaviour deliberately, and it is part of the abuse they wreak on others. Yes, they may have been abused themselves in the past, but note that some habitual abusers are very well-versed in turning this into a tool to get their victim to postpone insisting on their boundaries being respected

What happened in the past to a stalker/abuser always matters less than their stopping their shit, right now.

(Yes, personal experience, btw - though mine was so brief & comparatively harmless that I hesitate even mentioning it knowing what others here have gone through. It wears you down into a shadow of yourself in a matter of weeks. Even if you're a six-foot, 180 pounds guy - I remember considering changing my ringtone because my old one made my heart race. I remember almost giving up trying to explain to my family why they please neverever tell this person anything about my whereabouts, don't accept any letters, messages or gifts for me and the feelings of shame and confusion and the fear that they'd think I was the one going crazy. I remember my steadfast belief in my sanity becoming frazzled.)

Note that I'm not saying you're wrong for seeing Tilly the way you do - I'm just saying that it looks a bit like you're trying to make sense of abusive/boundary-disrespecting behaviour from within a normal-person view of interpersonal interaction. Not only is that nigh impossible, that view can be insanely frustrating to someone who experiences stalking/abuse, because a lot of abusers are the world's leading experts in making their abuse appear to bystanders superficially like normal interactions. This can be part of the abusers strategy of isolating their victim socially and cutting them off from their emotional support - the freaked-out, emotional person struggling to explain how a superficially harmless and mundane interaction brings them close to tears of rage is always in a worse position explaining themselves than the ostensibly calm, concerned person they're freaking out about. If the victim is rebuked and believes they were over-reacting this can seamlessly lead into heavy-duty gaslighting and other shit that' hard to come back from. I acknowledge not knowing who Tilly is in Jeph's mind - let's just say that if I saw someone behaving like this, I wouldn't consider it a red flag so much as 1982 Red Army parade.


TL; DR - Way I see it, this is less about what you post, or how you view the interaction, but about the past interactions some of us had and that your view reminds us of those bad experiences, of how difficult it was to convince our friends & loved ones that we're not going batshit, and that the harmless person we're freaking out about is not harmless at all. That's not your fault - it's just ... bad memories, k?

P.S.: Your gut-feeling of 'feeling disconcerted' - for a lot of people, the first time they had that feeling marked the point when they should have run like hell. Best advice I ever got from a head-doctor was "Trust your instincts in situations like this".

jfc. No.

No. No. No. No. No. To ALL of this, 'No'.
...

This is a serious issue that thousands deal with everyday but I guess we'll ignore  our collective skin-crawling and treat it as cute and funny cause Taffy's klutzy and she calls Hannelore ma'am or some shit. >.>

Solid copy & and agree on the message in general - but I'm pretty darn close to a 100% sure that oddtail is not trying belittle or downplay a serious problem and/or bad experiences of others. It's frustrating exhausting/horrifying/crazymaking/horrible when 'normal people' with their wonderful normal-people-view of social interaction don't 'get' why you're freaking out about that 'harmless' dude/girl, why your face is flushed, why you're close to tears or even shouting at them and why you can't finish your own goddamn' sentences. I remember having that normal-people-view of social interaction, and I remember how I lost it.

Bearing all that in mind: He is not the 'enemy', IMO.

Sorry for dredging a week(s) old post up but I felt I needed to address this. My tendency to be blunt in my speaking...especially about certain...topics seems to have caused some confusion. Trust me, mate. I know oddtail is not the enemy, I've been lurking on this forum long enough to know that all of you have the best intentions and that this is one of the most inclusive, understanding communities on the net. I apologize for coming across all, "grrrrr...me want jugular. blood blood yum yum", on Odd, or anyone else.