Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT strips 3701-3705 (19th to 23rd March 2018)

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Gyrre:

--- Quote from: ckridge on 19 Mar 2018, 08:32 ---
--- Quote from: efindumb on 19 Mar 2018, 07:10 ---
He reminds me of a "gentle giant" who likely is a good person inside but was likely psychologically abused in his past making him hide his true strength and struggle to socially interact with people who have an interest in him or he has an interest in.

--- End quote ---

Maybe, but he's not mean. By and large, "those to whom evil is done, do evil in return," though seldom to the people who originally did evil to them.  Faye is a perfect of example of someone who has taken damage and who is a mass of teeth, claws, and spiky armor, not to mention some practiced social blindness, as a result. You would expect that if Elliot had been badly harmed, he would be doing more harm.

Maybe he takes it out all out on the iron and on pugnacious drunks. That can work.

--- End quote ---
Different people deal with it differently.

Who's to say Elliot's father wasn't just as big as he is but with a nasty temper? That'd lead to one of two results; Elliott being just like his father or Elliott being timid and bashful.

BenRG:
I think that we're getting too into speculation here. There is no particular reason why a physically large man should have to have an aggressive personality. Indeed, in many ways, the thought of a person that big being shy, retiring and needing originally Marten's and now Clinton's encouragement to actively pursue a romantic interest is a nice character twist, in my view at least.

ckridge:
What invites speculation is not Elliot's lack of aggressiveness, but his complete lack of self-confidence. It is not at all uncommon for large men to have gentle ways, because they get tired of scaring people, because people seldom give them any problems, and because, if someone does, it's not a problem. That, however, is not at all the same thing as lack of self-confidence. It is, in fact, self-confidence. What we are seeing here is Elliot blushing, hanging his head, and saying "Oh. Sorry. I'm stupid." That is not gentleness. That is self-deprecation.

Morituri:
When you're Elliot's size or bigger, what you get used to is that when you come around a corner too close to people, some of them yelp and jump away.  If you move too quickly, you see startled people's heads jerk around in alarm, and in a bad situation you may notice a police officer's hand reflexively dropping to his or her holster.   You get used to coming down the street on foot and, if it's uncrowded, seeing people a block ahead crossing to avoid being on the same sidewalk as you.

The whole social-interaction thing is very much a series of mixed messages for very large men.  A bunch of it is that the way most people interact with you is about your size, rather than being about anything else about you.  Some people feel like they have something to prove by messing with you.  Some people want to be your friend because your size makes them feel safe.  A lot of people resent you because of your perceived 'privilege.'   A few people are attracted to you on account of your size.  More than a few tend to fall into a sort of de-sexualized child/adult interaction - possibly because your size may remind them of being children, possibly just because it places you in category 'unrelatable other,' as though you were a different species, and any kind of personal relationship is clearly impossible. 

And finally there are a significant number of people who are just plain terrified of you, no matter what, because you remind them of someone who happened to them in the past - possibly when they were small children.  That's not your fault and it's not theirs, and they may be ashamed of the fear and they may be trying to get over it and they may be trying to keep it secret and they may not, but there isn't jack you can do about it except you just try to move past them without causing any more pain.

Don't look at Elliot and think that his physique ought to fill him with confidence.  That isn't how it's going to work.  Most of the time it probably fills him with "well, I wonder how this next person's going to handle it...."

Which, in the end, isn't that different on a personal level from "wondering whether I can get along with this next person" so to some extent it's a universal experience.  It's different, but being bigger doesn't make it particularly better. 

ckridge:
What is the basis of your experience here? I am not challenging your authority by asking this, but rather trying to figure out why your perspective is different from mine. I have been a light-heavy most of my life, though I am no longer of much consequence physically, being old. I mostly know large men from dojos, where they might be expected to have more of a feeling of being up to whatever might arise, since being large is a substantial advantage in dojo.

That said, in my experience large men generally know that smaller people have problems with them, but do not think of this as their problem.

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