He did it for his daughter's sake, to spare her the embarrassment of having a breakdown and years of being emotionally crippled for no good reason.
Lol, well that backfired.
I think you missed IICIH's point (see the emphasized part). IICIH is implying that Faye's father knew Fay was about to have a breakdown and be emotionally crippled for years, and he didn't want that to happen to her for no good reason. So he committed suicide to give her a good reason... 
Lol, that's dark.
Yes, that's what I meant.
Yet another factette to toss in the soup is that she managed a physical relationship (Sven) before she could handle attachment. That could be used as an argument either way.
Or both ways. I'm no expert (though I was a Psych major before my medical problems put my entire life on hold -_-), but I think oftentimes with sexual abuse, when a person finally starts to confront those memories and feelings, they find that sex - which presumably freaked them out the most - is actually easier than a complete relationship. With casual sex, there's a certain emotional distance, you can hold the thing at arms length, and that gives you a modicum of control and power over it. And if things go bad, hey, it was just sex, you can toss it aside easily (though obviously Faye didn't do all that).
Here's an answer: he didn't kill himself. He's actually the director of the DoKYA and what Faye saw was an acephalic clone being controlled by an AI. Steve knows of Director Whitaker of course, but either hasn't made the connection (does he even know about Faye's story?) or has been sworn to secrecy. As for why? Plausible deniability; who better to head up an ultra-secret paramilitary organisation than a dead man?
Aaand now I want a crack-fanfic expanding on this idea.
It was not presented as being a reason, but I think Faye's mom had a point when she said "He was a God-damned Jackass who didn't deserve the wonderful family he had". As good an explanation as any and truer than any excuse he could have come up with.
I think she was disparaging him for committing suicide -- saying he's a jerk for having left his family like that. She wasn't saying that he was a jerk while he was alive.
With regards to Faye's attitude towards sex, bear in mind that from the looks of it, Faye comes from a very religious family, quite possibly in one of the stronger Baptist areas. Growing up in an area like that, well the religious education system practically whacks it into people's head that sex outside of marriage is wrong and that positions other than the missionary position means you're going to hell.
Or at the very least sex was not something openly discussed in Faye's family. Thus Faye has had limited experience talking about sex, which would have been particularly jarring when she moved north and started working with Dora.
But a religious upbringing wouldn't necessarily give you a negative self-body image, and more importantly, Faye
wants to be okay with sex, she knows it's bogus that she's not. If she was just experiencing the aftereffects of a strict religious upbringing, she'd be all "sex is a sin, God this, God that, blee bloo blop."
Summarizable as "he killed himself because he was a stupid jackass".
Or, you know, mentally ill. As someone with a long history of mental illness, as well as knowing many who succumbed to it, I find the way so many people write off suicide as cowardly or selfish to be very insulting. Mental illness is a real thing, it is a medical condition as real as cancer or lupus, not something to be dismissed as a moral failing. In a society that places such a heavy stigma on mental illness, especially for men, it is quite common for a condition to go untreated until it becomes overwhelming.
Faye's mom was just blowing off some steam, just speaking out of hurt, I think, not really rationally condemning the very notion of suicide and mental health problems.
There are varying degrees of depression. It can be relatively easy to appear normal when you are around other people (and it may even lift your spirits a bit), but that doesn't mean that when you are alone, sitting in front of your computer at one o'clock in the morning, because you just cannot bring yourself to stand up and walk a few steps to your bed; that then thoughts don't start creeping up about how worthless you are and how much you suck because you cannot even stand up and because you won't seek help either and the others won't understand anyway and even if they did they would only pretend to care because they don't really like you and you are painfully aware of the fact that most people care about 150 other people at most anyway and why should anyone care about YOU.
Pokemon fans care about 151 other people.
Was there a case where Faye even allowed a little bit of friendly physical contact from Marten while sober?
Tthree times, when Faye was miserable: when he hugged her outside CoD, but lost the chance to do it again! During the Talk (thanks ThomasEll), and shortly before the breakup.
Don't forget my favorite strip, which is even somewhat relevant!
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1564
Off-topic: this is
my favorite strip...
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1399My reaction would be utterly different if he'd had any history of depression. Someone would have noticed.
*Ahem*
BULL!
SHIT!
Also I'll just go "+1 Sitnspin" and add that I'm incredibly sick of people essentially trying to guilt suicidal people into staying alive with how it'd traumatize their family. Just.. very sick of it. You're not entitled to have someone stay alive and it's not them being immoral for "hurting you", even if I'm familiar with having the instinctual response of telling someone "If that happened it'd break me, please don't.." and I hate myself for that. Looking at the stuff associated Mr. Whitaker's suicide is actually pretty unnerving.
"He was a God-damned Jackass who didn't deserve the wonderful family he had"
"I'm willing to bet that most cemetaries have a rule prohibiting negative epitaphs. I'd say if anyone deserves one it's certainly Faye's dad."
I'm reminded of this, which I got linked to on Facebook awhile ago...
hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html
"If I go to therapy will you stop crying?"
I recently told someone at work about my issues with depression as it was affecting my work. I told them about the last time I had a bad rut, which was a couple months long and I was working at the same place. They said, "I never knew." It took so much of me to respond, "You weren't meant to."
Whatever pushed Faye's dad over the edge, it must have been very personal and/or very private. If it was, for example, terrible debt, the family would have found out after his death. If the issue was an outside source.
Yeah, it had to've been something purely inside him. If it was external, it would've come to light after his death.
So I think that really the two most likely contenders for him killing himself are it either being some internal depression that he had been keeping secret, possibly for a long time (the most likely), or that it was actually a cover up so he could become the Director of DoKYA (the version I prefer, although probably not actually very likely 
).
I don't think that him sexually abusing Faye is likely at all, if that was the case then it would have been (or should have been) picked up during Faye's therapy sessions, not to mention the fact that she was about twenty when he did it, so I would think that she would be able to remember that. I also don't agree with the idea that she has any sexual dysfunction, her problem comes from not being able (or rather wanting) to form the emotional attachment necessary for a healthy relationship. This is why she is able to have sex with Sven and at the same time justify to herself that it's not a relationship because she didn't particularly like him (although I think that if he hadn't cheated on her then it could have possibly become a relationship).
My thought was that he sexually abused her when she was a little kid, not when she was twenty. It just so happened to overwhelm him and cause him to take his own life after she left for college. Possibly because her leaving for college made him really think about his relationship with his little girl, and finally put enough distance between them, temporally and spatially, for him to self-analyze and become distraught.
I'm curious how you'd explain her negative body-image and general negative attitude towards sex itself, if there was no sexual abuse.
By the way, everyone always says Sven "cheated on Faye." Is this later on, or are you all referring to the Gina Riversmith thing? He and Faye weren't in a monogamous relationship, I wouldn't call that cheating. They were "just two people having fun," they even talked about it. Clearly, Faye was working up the courage and mental energies to turn it into something more, but at the time Sven banged Gina, he and Faye weren't
dating.
Faye and Sven in an actual relationship? What would that be like?
*shrugs*
I always thought they'd make a good couple. Marten's too self-serving and bitter about the whole Faye thing for them to've ever made it work ("I fix chicks' issues so they can go bang other guys, waaaah"). His "crimes" are in his personality. Sven's crimes are in his actions (sleeping around, lying his ass off to avoid discomfort, etc.). That stuff aside (stuff he pretty much stopped after sleeping with Gina), he's a decent guy.
Not that whether someone's decent or not has anything to do with their success in relationships (if only...), but I think Sven and Faye make a good couple regardless; she kickstarts his conscience, he kickstarts her self-esteem.
This thread title makes me think of horrible responses that are purely mean spirited.
Let's hear 'em!
I'm thinking of the guy mentioned in one of the hardcopy books who wrote Jeph to say that he'd gotten help instead of killing himself when he read The Talk and realized he couldn't do something like that to his daughter.
It is entirely possible that I can't see straight on this subject due to my family background.
It is entirely possible that I can't see straight on this subject due to my family background.
On the other hand we have me picturing people openly saying and wanting to put "[*He] was an idiot who didn't deserve to be loved" over my grave and how I deserved to be spoken of like that for not being able to keep going. Feels great.
*Because let's face it: They would have.
IMO, it's not something you can talk about categorically; it's dependent upon the individual and the circumstances. One shouldn't
automatically jump to "suicide is the coward's way out, think of all the harm you'll cause others, you selfish jerk" but, Valdis, the fact remains that over 90% of people who are forcibly prevented from committing suicide are later happy about it, and go on to recover. Being depressed completely warps and twists your fundamental view of reality, so you also can't say, "suicide is a right, who cares what it does to other people, you just don't understand."
Depends on "rurality". The bigger metro areas are ... well, pretty metropolitan. Atlanta, Memphis, Charlotte, and of course, New Orleans. Being southern doesn't automatically mean religious or repressed!
On Mr. Whittaker's potential mental illness, I'd also like to point out some of the later onset things that can happen. Depression is one, of course, and can strike at any time; so are things like schizophrenia, early onset dementia and / or alzheimers, and several other illnesses.
Now, before someone shouts that the family would have noticed, I'd like to point out that in the early stages of all these (and many other) problems, the first person to notice is the subject / victim / patient. And if her father thought he might be going insane, and perhaps thought he'd "wind up like crazy uncle Joe" or something, he may have thought that the only way to avoid such a fate was suicide.
Or perhaps the illness itself convinced him that it was what he had to do. And that, until it convinced him of this, he had to keep up appearances. Go through the motions. It's surprisingly easy when people expect you to be a certain way to just give them what they expect, rather than go through the questioning and problems that bizarre behaviour leads to...
Though, to nitpick, we'd've most likely heard about it if there was a "crazy" person in the Whitaker family. In the wake of David's death, someone would surely have mentioned it. "Well, look at Uncle Joe; it runs in the family."
And I'll reiterate from personal experience what others keep saying -- you can most definitely hide depression. It doesn't even take that much effort when the people around you don't
want to see it. It's easy to pretend nothings wrong when nobody's reaching out to you. Er, not that it's their responsibility, of course, but still.
Social conservatism topic: Mrs. Whitaker did not react well to Amanda being gay! Her eventual acceptance was grudging.
When Faye visited her mom, though, she didn't seem super-religious. She did mention going to church, but lots of people do that who aren't actually very religious. Mrs. Whitaker didn't mention Jesus or the Bible or anything a single time during Faye's visit -- and Faye's visit was mainly to visit her father's grave, so if Mrs. Whitaker was super-religious, you'd think it would've come up.
So yeah, I don't think the Whitakers were especially religious. Any more than is the norm in religious-ey parts of the nation.
Once we, as a society, learn to see mental illness as a real medical condition rather than weakness of character perhaps we can put aside the blaming and stigma and actually start to help those affected, both the ill and their families.
Wow, I haven't QFT'd since like, 2005.
There is one aspect that I think may have contributed: the Kentucky Bourbon Milkshake.
Perhaps alcoholism ran in the family, and Dad kept it to himself - until he realized that one day that he was turning into his father/uncle/whatever?
I'd be grabbing at straws with that theory, but it's something Jeph could have left himself an out for if he ever wanted Faye to discover a reason.
It was actually the bourbon milkshake that originally pricked my ears up and made me think something sinister might've been going on. Then again, I have an intense hatred of alcohol, so I'm biased, but yeah. Although honestly, given the drinking habits of the entire QC cast and of Jeph himself, I don't think the milkshake was
intended to mean anything.
Not necessarily alcoholism, but it is entirely likely he was using the alcohol to self-medicate whatever illness he did have. That is quite common with undiagnosed and untreated mental illness.
Unfortunately, it's also common with
diagnosed mental illness when the sufferer
rejects treatment...
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Topic: Why did Faye's dad kill himself? (Read 27938 times)