Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT strips 3951-3955 (4th to 8th March 2019)

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hedgie:

--- Quote from: Milayna on 04 Mar 2019, 19:57 ---Oh and uh...What was her name, Butterbot? is INCREDIBLY anime in the first panel.

--- End quote ---
Beepatrice.

Valakhan:

--- Quote from: Milayna on 04 Mar 2019, 19:57 ---is there anyone here who knows proper pronuncation of "Khoury"?

--- End quote ---

The "kh" is supposed to make a sound similar to the "ch" in the German "Nacht". It's similar to a h sound, but harsher and coming from the back of the mouth rather than from the throat. There is no real equivalent in English though, so it's hard to describe.

For the little story, Khoury means priest in levantine dialect. In modern standard Arabic, priest is qas or kahin, but khoury is the way they say priest in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, etc.

It's a name very common in the Christian community in Lebanon, and by extension in other Christian minorities in all the middle east. The most famous person with that name was Besharra Al-Khoury, one of the leaders of the Lebanese independance, the first president of independent Lebanon and one of the craftsmen of the National Pact, which is the separation of powers between the different religious communities in Lebanon, where for example the presidency is held by Christians, the prime minister by Sunnis and the head of Parliament by Shias.

Given that, we can safely assume that Brun's father is a Christian Lebanese. Given Brun's apparent age, it is likely that her father was a refugee from the Civil War and met her mother in the US. Of course it's possible that he wasn't a refugee as even before the war there was a big Lebanese diaspora around the world, but it would be interesting if he was one.

Refugees and their integration is a topic very dear to me, so having him be a former refugee could help shed light on the challenges those people have to face when in a new country, a topic that is sadly still relevant nowadays.

By the way hi! Long time reader, just found out the forum

Gyrre:

--- Quote from: Tova on 03 Mar 2019, 23:45 ---As true as Jeph's line about bully-enablers rings, and as satisfying as the idea of uttering that one line that silences your bullies may feel, in my experience, that line would have either been laughed off or would have motivated a doubling of whatever bullying prompted it.

--- End quote ---
Nearly got me expelled.
"People like you are why Columbine happened."

BTW, 1) not trying to one-up anyone, 2) this was back in 2001 or 2002, and 3) I now know that wasn't the whole of the cause for that tragedy.

Milayna:
Thanks Valakhan! Wow, I kind of pride myself an being relatively aware of the world, geographically, but that is a lot of stuff that I've never even heard of! As an American, I know very broadly of Israel's history and relation to the Arab world (1967 war, etc) and I know of Christian Arabs, but I hear almost nothing of the history of other nations. In just one paragraph you've mentioned several historical events I knew nothing of. I know it's presumptuous of me to ask, but if you have any more lessons to share, I'm all ears!

Tova:

--- Quote from: Datalore on 04 Mar 2019, 18:47 ---I've said things like panel 4 just because "those are the things people say."

I rely on what I call scripts, also known as imperfect copying. As far as I can tell you guys all have some sort of telepathy or something that signals what 'script' is the appropriate one to engage when and how. Things like clunky dialogue or "People don't actually talk like that," are harder for me to determine because I've seen clunky dialogue as a thing that exists in the world (even if only creatively) and it seems to function just as well as other dialogue that for some reason is what people say.
<snip>
Basically what I'm getting at is it might be unrealistic dialogue, but that's ironically exactly what makes it realistic in this case.

--- End quote ---

Hi, new person!

I can certainly relate to what you're saying here.

I'm not sure whom you are referring to because I didn't think anyone was saying that Brun's dialogue was "clunky" or that "people don't actually talk like that." I personally did not think her dialogue was unrealistic, because I did do exactly that when I was at school. I was hopeless at dealing with bullies, so I often re-used lines. Stuff Mum had said, stuff Dad had said, stuff that I'd read.

In the worst case, it would backfire spectacularly when what I said sounded stupid was or incredibly uncool, earning myself merciless mocking that I could have avoided by simply shutting up.

Best case was that the line would hit home. That happened rarely, thankfully, because that generally ended badly for me as well.

So, what am I saying? Brun's line was certainly believable as far as I was concerned. It's only the bullies' stunned reaction to it that I didn't buy. It only affects us because we have the benefit of hindsight and can see the truth of what Brun is saying. These bullies I daresay would neither have comprehended what Brun was saying nor would they have given two shits about it even if they had.

Nice fantasy, though.

NEW COMIC
*reads*
njdnasjdaodhae

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