Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT 4116-4120 (14th to 18th Dec, 2020)

<< < (9/48) > >>

Dandi Andi:
I do sometimes wonder what it must be like to read this forum as someone who actually relates at all with these characters. How does it affect someone to feel empathy for these people and then come to the forums and read what people are saying about them?

Imagine being someone who has been in prison and upon release had no job, no permanent shelter, no access to healthcare and no friends. Imagine that after you've served your prison sentence, you're still subject to a system that seems designed to make sure you fail; to actively prevent you from improving your situation. Imagine being almost entirely dependant on a near stranger for the basic needs of life. And then come here to read people shitting on May for her insufficient gratitude or for having an abrasive sense of humor.

Imagine being a socially awkward person who never really dated in college and certainly never in high school. Imagine that the first couple of times you tried you made a dog's breakfast of it and you're feeling a bit shit about it and very deflated because by now everybody else has much more experience than you do. Then you come here to see people condemning Clinton because on his second date ever (and not even actually a date at that) he's expected to navigate a love triangle while examining his own sexuality in the middle of a noisy bar and he didn't stick the dismount. Imagine reading people calling him abusive and manipulative for it; saying that he should never drink any alcohol ever because he apparently is dangerously abusive to the people around him.

Imagine being someone who has been, by their own admission, an ass. Someone who, on top of an generally snarky sense of humor, has been dealing with a lot of trauma and had really unhealthy defense and coping mechanisms. Imagine that you were abusive to people you care about and now you're doing the work to be better. Imagine being lucky enough to have loving friends who have stuck by you while you work on building healthier relationships and learn to do right by the people you've hurt. And then you come here to read people shitting on Faye for a bad joke about operating on the wrong leg of a woman who was awake for the entire procedure and knows exactly which leg was being worked on and is in no risk of falling for it. And the joke was Jeph referencing making that very mistake while working on the strip anyway. Imagine people saying they want her future endeavors to fail horribly because she hasn't suffered enough.

You know what? I actually lied. I don't imagine what it's like to relate to these characters because I DO relate to them. Five internet points to you if you can imagine which of the above people is me. Then you can spend those points telling me what an awful piece of shit you must think I am.

It's good to be critical of characters. It's important to be willing to talk about the more troubling aspects of the stories we engage with. Some of these characters have done genuinely awful things to people. Cartoon logic and Rule of Funny doesn't exempt them from critical analysis. I was certainly critical of Faye and her abusive behavior. But so often these conversations aren't a critical look at how this behavior affects others, they are just moral proclamations about how terrible these characters are for having perfectly normal human failings. And that is not only unhelpful, but it makes me feel like shit every time I come here.

It's kinda weird. DISCUSS is meant for the difficult sensitive conversations, but WCDTs are the threads that are hardest for me to read.

Pilchard123:
You are all three of them and I claim my five internet points.

Thrillho:

--- Quote from: Dandi Andi on 14 Dec 2020, 15:53 ---Imagine being someone who has been in prison and upon release had no job, no permanent shelter, no access to healthcare and no friends. Imagine that after you've served your prison sentence, you're still subject to a system that seems designed to make sure you fail; to actively prevent you from improving your situation. Imagine being almost entirely dependant on a near stranger for the basic needs of life. And then come here to read people shitting on May for her insufficient gratitude or for having an abrasive sense of humor.

--- End quote ---

Thank-you for expressing this all so eloquently, but especially this part. Arguments over this kind of semantics are something I have quite often when discussing, say, dealing with homeless people.

Oh they were a bit rude because you only gave them a dollar? YOU HAVE A BED. IN A HOUSE.

Gnabberwocky:
I sat here for fifteen minutes trying to think of what to say. My first attempts were along the lines of "I agree and understand," but that's bullshit. I agree, but I don't understand. I've gone through none of that, nothing even close to that, and it would be haughty and cruel of me to act like I have.

So all I will say is thank you. Thank you for sharing, thank you for doing so in such an eloquent manner, thank you for being willing to speak up.

And for the record, my internet points would never go toward calling a good person an awful piece of shit.

Tova:
I am genuinely upset at the accusations being levelled at me. I have never said that any character in QC is terrible, and to even critique an action of theirs is rare for me. And this is what I get.

That is all I have to say for now.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page