Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
(CW/TW: Abuse) WCDT strips 3731-3735 (30th April to 4th May 2018)
Morituri:
--- Quote from: swapna on 03 May 2018, 07:21 ---
I didn't want to add anything to this topic, because I figured Morituri and the others who dislike it when people get invested in romantic relationships weren't gonna change their mind, but if there's genuine lack of understanding I'm gonna add a few bits.
--- End quote ---
No worries here... I already said, I realize my ideas of what the forum is for are no more important than anyone else's. Even if I roll my eyes, I'm not going to be angry or strident.
And, with things actually happening now, it's a lot more reasonable for people to be focused on it. It is no longer the utter nonsense of
(unresolved, unacknowledged, possibly sexual tension between guarded, scarred, and emotionally reserved characters that aren't likely to identify/acknowledge attraction nor overcome their relationship fear even if they do, whose gender preference/identity so far isn't even known to be compatible, and who are different species) --> (HAPPILY EVER AFTER! BECAUSE I SAID SO!)
that characterizes most shipping. We have a seismic shift here in the last couple of comics. Faye and Bubbles are now both aware of attraction. So that's one difficulty dealt with. I call that a plot point. It advances toward the possibility of a romantic relationship, which could be good (or horrible) for both of them. But that's not the whole damn story!
They are still guarded, scarred, emotionally reserved characters that haven't yet acknowledged attraction to each other and may decide not to, who may not overcome their relationship fear, who are different species, who now have a business and a mortgage that makes a romantic relationship TERRIFYING because a broken romance could ruin both of them (and Dora) financially. And who may, on BOTH sides, have to build an entirely new gender identity if they want to even try to make it work. The story is only getting started!
Ignoring all that seems like ignoring who the characters actually are. All these circumstances, if they were actual people, would put you on your guard against pushing them together or against making stupid assumptions, for fear that might wind up with both of them hurt, or financially ruined. But, because SHIPPING, people are ignoring all of that and yelling HAPPILY EVER AFTER! BECAUSE I SAID SO!
And that's the kind of petty disrespect that upsets me about the shipping discussions. I don't object to romance in storylines, or even romance as a topic of discussion; I object to the gleeful leaping-to-conclusions that ignores who the characters are. I object to the negation or deliberate defiance of the plot elements and character traits that the author has spent hard work building, so that he can tell the story of the characters struggling with these difficulties. Jumping to HAPPILY EVER AFTER! without paying attention to the story still in progress is ignoring the author's hard work.
Morituri:
It occurs to me that as an AI character, Bubbles has at least a couple of ways to cope with some of the difficulties, that humans normally don't. It would be far easier for her than for any biological to opt for a sex change if Faye has trouble with the gender preference issue.
Which doesn't mean that it would necessarily be a good idea to do so for that reason. If it's otherwise something she'd prefer not to do it could mean resentment later, or give a context for feelings of anger or betrayal if it doesn't work out. Faye could wind up feeling far too much pressure after such a drastic change and that could destroy the relationship. Or Bubbles might just be cisgendered as a female but not as a male, leading to a "working" relationship with a nasty side order of gender dysphoria.
Or it might involve downgrading to a civilian chassis of a more average size/musculature, which could be anything from liberating to its own special brand of Hell for someone accustomed to walking around a little over seven feet tall and able to wad up small cars.
But it's an option most couples don't, practically speaking, have.
Cornelius:
I don't see that happening, though. I've the idea that to Bubbles, her chassis is one of the very few links she still has to the past she's lost. It's taken her forever to even take the armour off. I can't believe that, at this stage, it's something she'd forfeit easily, even for Faye. Even if she did, that will lead to issues later on.
And that's aside from the gender issues it might cause. After all, we've come a long way since Pintsize said it was just a hardware setting - and even then it was more than that.
Skewbrow:
440 Hz?
If it were Faye's vocal chords vibrating at that rate I wouldn't be worried at all. But it's about her brain.
Judging from the pic the oscillations have an amplitude of about two inches. Since I can only do this in metric let's go for a nice round number of 5 centimeters, that is 1/20 th of a meter. So her skull's position, as a function of time, looks something like x(t)=sin (880 Pi*t)/20, t in seconds, x in meters. This gives, by differentiating twice, x''(t)=-38720 pi^2 sin(880 pi t) as the acceleration. In other words, a peak acceleration of 38000 gee. (pi squared meters per second per second is very close to one gee). This feels like an unhealthy level of acceleration. :psyduck:
Addendum: a woodpecker's skull is exposed to 1200 g (at 22Hz). A human will be concussed from 80-100 g.
Rincewind:
--- Quote from: Zebediah on 02 May 2018, 18:21 ---You know, the older I’ve gotten the more I’ve come to believe that these words we use to try to define people aren’t very useful. We invent terms like “heterosexual”, “homosexual”, “bisexual” and try to assign people to distinct categories based on those words. But those categories don’t really match up to the way the world actually works. People are attracted to whoever they are attracted to, they love whoever they love, categories be damned. And I say this as someone who actually fits pretty neatly into that “heterosexual” box, but I see many people around me who don’t fit any of those boxes. The concepts seem pretty well-defined until you start looking at the boundaries between them, and you see that those boundaries are so fuzzy that they don’t really exist. And the solution is not to invent more and more categories for each possible shade of meaning, because that just emphasizes our differences when we should be focusing on our similarities.
--- End quote ---
I'm so glad to read this! It's good to know I'm not the only one who dosen't understand some peoples NEED to staple labels on other folks foreheads. I read a line somewhere that goes "The heart wants what the heart wants"
which pretty much sums my feelings on this. There was (still is?) a webcomic artist who was absolutely positively a lesbian, and then she went to a WebComic convention in Great Britain, met a guy who was an artist, fell in love and eventually got married. She got a lot of grief from some of the more militant members of her group, but didn't let that get to her (too much). I wish I could remember her name, but I'm old and so was the drive I had all my old bookmarks on. I think her name started with a D........
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