Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3661-3665 (22nd to 26th January 2018)
OldGoat:
--- Quote from: Zebediah on 25 Jan 2018, 04:11 ---
Seriously? You honestly believe that Evie would be professionally blacklisted because she once talked to her girlfriend’s sister about feelings?
She hasn’t tried to use this in her research and I don’t see her doing so in the future, so how would her professional peers even know in the first place?
--- End quote ---
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of jealous academics?
I notice that person-who-from-the-back-resembles-Brun is still very much there, and it is a college town. And Evie is steepling her fingers, a sure sign she's wielding her mojo. "Look over there. That woman is making shrink-eyes across the table and steepling. Start taking video, this is going to be interesting."
That may attract attention. Or not.
Seriously, Evie is another Spookybot, written in to move one part of the story along. She's much more gracefully executed, but she's serving the same narrative function.
themacnut:
I think many of us are jumping the gun. We still don't know yet whether Amanda and Evie are seeing something that isn't there, or if Faye is the one not recognizing her real feelings. It is entirely possible for someone to have a close and deep friendship with someone else without romantic or sexual feelings being involved, and also have a selfish desire to want their friend to all to themselves.
Although if Faye does end up going "robosexual", she will be the second main female character (after Dora) to find no satisfaction in hetero relationships and end up turning to alternative sexuality for fulfillment. I find this...interesting.
SpanielBear:
I have to say, I'm not getting that bad a vibe from Evie in this instance. It's very different from her lecturing at Bubbles about how bad AI discrimination is. There she was talking over someone who was clearly upset, and treating a personal subject as an academic thought experiment.
Here, to me at least, that isn't the case. She's asking questions not telling Faye how she should feel, and Faye seems comfortable asking them.
I get that the nature of the questions is quite analytic, but I think that may be more a case that Evie just talks that way- she has an academic background, she's used to talking in that environment, so it's become her normal tone. It definitely doesn't strike me as an impromptu public therapy session, just sort of Socratic questioning- not to trap someone, but to get them to consider their assumptions.
They *are* personal questions, that is very true, and if Faye were to tell her that she has no business to ask them, she would be well within her rights to do so. But she hasn't. And as others have said, if you make Faye uncomfortable she *will* let you know.
Again, I'm not defending Evie's treatment of Bubbles, I just don't think that interaction should lead to assumptions about how this one is being taken.
Also, if you would personally find Evie's line of questioning offensive if you were in Faye's position- that's fine and legit. No one has the right to demand you answer their questions about your personal life. I think that should be your choice, as much as it is Faye's.
Ghanima Atreides:
--- Quote from: themacnut on 25 Jan 2018, 10:08 ---Although if Faye does end up going "robosexual", she will be the second main female character (after Dora) to find no satisfaction in hetero relationships and end up turning to alternative sexuality for fulfillment. I find this...interesting.
--- End quote ---
Dora is (and has always been presented as) bisexual; there's nothing unusual about it. She's always been open to dating both men and women, she just happened to date a man, it didn't work out, and now she's dating a woman. There's no "turning" there, things like this just happen. Some relationships work out, others don't.
As for Faye discovering she is bisexual/biromantic/robosexual...I am getting the feeling that it may be heading in that direction, whereas before it felt very much ambiguous. Whether this involves just romantic feelings or sexual ones too, remains to be seen, but she reminds me a lot of myself and how I felt about a friend I didn't realise (or didn't want to acknowledge) I had feelings for. The wanting to keep them to yourself, feeling jealous of potential romantic partners. I'd be surprised if this lead to Faye giving Evie a bemused "what? No, she's just a friend and nothing more" reply once she realises where this is going. There is something there; we just don't yet know exactly what.
Neko_Ali:
The 'Oblivious character falling in love with their best friend and everyone sees it but them' is a well worn trope and clearly what Jeph is going for here. Any doubt should have been put to rest after Faye's talk about how she feels about Bubbles and dating in today's comic. Pretty much everyone around them sees this happening. Some have been keeping it to themselves because they know of Faye's history or out of fear maybe. Some have come right out and said/asked about it. At this point I think that Faye is the only one who hasn't figure it out, which will probably change tomorrow.
And it makes sense that they don't want to vocalize it or think too much on it. Both have been seriously hurt in the past by the loss of people close to them. Both feel a lot of self loathing and believe themselves to be unworthy or are afraid to hope. Both tend to hold most people at arm's length to keep from getting hurt and both are afraid to get too close to someone lest they lose them again. So it make sense to not want to think or talk about it. And again, most of the people around them know better than to push the issue.
And then we meet Evie, who is custom tailored to be the kick in the butt Faye needs to think about this. She has a link to Faye through Amanda, yet has no direct stake in dancing around the subject. She's got psychology knowledge to not only see what's not being said but to push Faye into realizing it. Amanda or one of her friends just telling Faye she's got the hots for Bubbles wouldn't do anything. Faye would just brush it off, and I think Evie realizes that. Which is why she's using leading questions to get Faye to actually think and talk about her feelings towards Bubbles.
I don't get why people are hating on Evie for doing this though. Unless they think Faye should just continue to wallow in denial? At some point that trope has to have a pay off and the storyline has to resolve, or it's just bad writing. Evie isn't psychoanalyzing or pushing Faye into doing anything. Just asking some leading questions to get Faye to think. If a mechanic hear's a friend's car and starts asking questions or pointing out that the timing seems off, should they be yelled at for butting in? Why specifically does Evie's psychology training preclude her from talking about the very subject she's studying except in a professional environment?
--- Quote from: themacnut on 25 Jan 2018, 10:08 ---Although if Faye does end up going "robosexual", she will be the second main female character (after Dora) to find no satisfaction in hetero relationships and end up turning to alternative sexuality for fulfillment. I find this...interesting.
--- End quote ---
I think you are reading way to much into that. Dora was established almost from the beginning as being bisexual. Her issues with Marten had nothing to do with him being male or even really to do with Marten at all. They had to do with her trust issues. Something that breaking up with Marten made her finally realize she needed to address. The fact that she's been in a stable relationship with Tai for so long is more an indication that Dora has realized that learned to trust more and that Tai was willing to put in the emotional labor that Marten wasn't. None of this have anything to do with their respective genders or sexualities.
Most of the relationships shown in the comic have been heterosexual, with at least as many stable, working hetero relationships as homosexual ones, possibly more. Faye and Angus has a long term successful relationship until Angus got his dream job and got on the bus. It wasn't his gender that was an issue, but distance and Faye's fear of abandonment.
We have seen people with close and deep friendships that don't lead to romance. Brun and Renee for one. Notice how they don't blush and swoon while complementing each other or talk about each other the way Faye and Bubbles do. I don't know where Jeph will take the story, but I can plainly see he's been dropping hints all along. Had one of them been male I don't think people would be questioning so hard that there was some attraction at work there.
Also, the phrase 'alternate sexuality' is loaded with bad subtext. By describing homosexual attraction as 'alternate' it establishes that heterosexual attractions as being 'normal' or at least baseline. That to have homosexual attractions is different from what is expected/normal/baseline.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version