It's also entirely counter to Faye's demonstrated and stated romantic/sexual orientations, which Amanda as her sister should be aware of; Faye is heterosexual, and has repeatedly rejected robosexuality (sometimes not even when Pintsize was propositioning).
One could argue that Amanda 'shipping' Faye in a gay relationship should be taken as
evidence for Faye's sexual orientation (possibly) including (possibly unacknowledged or even subconscious) homoerotic elements precisely because the former should be in a very good position to assess her sister's sexual orientation due to long familiarity. By the same token, one could even additionally argue that Amanda's ships should be given greater weight than any reader's ships.
For example: We, the audience, might not know how badly Faye crushed on her biology teacher in 8th grade (or vigorously denied any such crush, despite virtually drooling every time Mrs. Applebaum entered the classroom), but Amanda would be in a position to know.
Counter-argument: We don't know how perceptive Amanda is, how much opportunity she had to observe Faye in social settings including potential mates and how open the two were with each other. I would have strangled my sistermonster for "putting her nose where it doesn't belong", or even hinting at a possible intention for doing so - and took it for granted that those feelings were mutual.
He's always been hypocritical about it; the thing that really set him off was Hannelore shippers, but he also drew her lusting after firefighters to the point of leaping into their arms, on good enough drugs when we met her that she could smoke, and a practice date with Sven. However, we aren't allowed to take any of that as an indication she might be able to work past her neuroses she explicitly wants to conquer some day and speculate about why she would cross that Rubicon and who she would do so for. It's a general "hands off fanbase, I'm the only one allowed to play with my toys!" attitude.
Shipping is not the same as speculating about character X lusting for character Y, or as an author making explicit the desires of one of their characters (or that the character has indeed any sexual desires at all).
Shipping, initially derived from the word relationship, is the desire by fans for two or more people, either real-life people or fictional characters (in film, literature, television etc.) to be in a relationship, romantic or otherwise. It is considered a general term for fans' emotional involvement with the ongoing development of a relationship in a work of fiction. Shipping often takes the form of creative works, including fanfiction and fan art, most often published on the internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_(fandom)
By this definition, one could even ask whether an author is even
capable of 'shipping', since they have 'divine knowledge and prescience' about their fictional universe - knowledge excludes the possibility of speculation. You can't make a
guess when you
know. Caveat: Authors are (rumoured to be) people, and people change their minds all the time. I guess one
could say that an author is incapable of speculating about their own intentions for future developments in their creations, because they
know what their intentions are.
Not even portraying characters in the comic shipping (Amanda, Evie) is shipping - remember
Magritte's pipe that wasn't?
As to the given examples (I'll omit adding the 'An author's capability to speculate is significantly limited' each time):
- Jeph portraying Hanners as being attracted to (unspecific, hot, clean) firefighters is not shipping - there's no indication that Hanners desires a relationship with a specific firefighter, or firefighters in general, the only things that can be concluded from the incident are that Hanners experiences heterosexual attraction, that she prefers handsome men ... and that her fantasies, should she have any, might include the one or other (hot, clean) firefighter.
- Jeph portraying Hanners jumping into the arms of a specific (hot, clean) firefighter is not shipping - there's no indication that Hanners desires any relationship of any type with that specific firefighter. The only things that can be concluded are that Hanners experiences heterosexual attraction, that she can be just as impulsive as she's obsessive about planning her live (that' no contradiction in OCD - intrusive thoughts are ego-dystonous, i.e. they are perceived as not in line with the personality of the one experiencing them - that's at least half of what makes it so scary and hard to tolerate. Also: personal experience, again) ... and that her OCD has a remarkably selective memory about the whole "aversion to physical contact"-thingy.
- Not completely sure how realistic that is, my intrusive thoughts never revolved around contamination/purity. A puking caudate nucleus is astoundingly capable when it comes to making sure the rest of the brain knows everything about its being very unhappy indeed - otoh, OCD is ... abstract ... in a way that e.g. triggered traumatic memories are not. And Sex is a primary drive (caveat: Contamination/Purity-themed intrusive thoughts seem to be particularly visceral, judging by accounts I've read, so YMMV. My OCD was always a 'nerd', that doesn't mean that everybodies' is.)
TL;DR - Yes, I'd say it is possible to sort of 'forget' getting brainlocked, if your brain fails to connect the sensual object with fear. I don't remember that happening to me, but there's a pretty good reason why I wouldn't: As soon as you realize that you forgot, your OCD realizes, too - so if that ('forgetting' to get brainlocked) had happened to me, I wouldn't remember, because I didn't notice (and if I had noticed, it's highly likely I'd have gotten Brainlocked - Yes, it really is a nasty shite like that. You can sometimes really feel it creeping up on you: "Ohshit ... No, let's just not think about this, c'mon, only this time ...". There was a time that I could get brainlocked about my fear of getting brainlocked - MetaOCD, so to speak. It's why I'd made a habit out of not thinking about OCD for years: So as not to provoke it. Sometimes you can 'sneak past without waking it' by keeping a realization/thought just below full conscious formation).
The fear comes first in OCD, the object is secondary - I'd go so far as to say that the 'object' of the intrusive thoughts is more of a "rationalization" for the already existing fear, in the sense that the brain is trying to create a narrative/explanation for itself for an experience that is non-sensical: 'Knowing' that the thought's object warrants no reason for alarm, like really 'intuitive knowledge' on the one hand, but 'feeling in your bones' that there is, because some stupid administrative subroutine crashed before giving the 'all clear' - apparently, there's no error management procedure for that. No postmodern lions on the steppes of Africa ...) All contingent on my personal experience (limited, subjective) and understanding of the condition (limited, lacking theoretical basis, non-comprehensive)
- Good enough drugs can absolutely switch your OCD clean off. Personal experience with SNRI's - it literally felt like an engine failing to start for lack of fuel (i.e. intensity of fear). A psychologist specializing in the treatment of OCD with extensive clinical experience regarding relevant medication told me that this is exactly the way it should work & feel like when I recounted that experience to her. Shit, even something as profane as beer can help you 'snap out of it' - just not reliably so & the side-effects really aren't worth it.
- When did Sven and Hannelore have relationship, sexual intercourse or ... anything besides a mutually enjoyable and thoroughly chaste date ending with a chaste hug after which they parted ways on good terms as far as we know? (Jeph can't even ship people using his comic - at best, he can fan other peoples' speculations. The 'worst' thing you can accuse Jeph off is teasing the shippers, only to treat them to a metaphorical cold shower by letting Sven & Hanners laugh at them through the 4th wall ("Herp!" "Derp!")
However, we aren't allowed to take any of that as an indication she might be able to work past her neuroses she explicitly wants to conquer some day and speculate about why she would cross that Rubicon and who she would do so for.
I don't see any indication that Jeph has a even expressed a dislike of anyone seeing something as indication that Hanners might be able to
"work past her OCD" - it would be unrealistic to expect otherwise, since OCD can be treated with very, very good chance of significant improvement (Exihibit A: Haven't had a brainlock in years. Still crazy, though ...). And Jeph appears to know all about how "working past" looks like: My opinion as someone who lived with the condition for ... at least fifteen years (longer, depending on definitions), Jeph has treated us to a magnificently detailed, sensitive and realistic portrayal of how "making progress with your OCD" (can) look(s) like.
I guess what he
is averse to is people speculating about
Hanners wanting to make progress so she can finally bang, or even worse: That she
wants to make progress so she can finally bang specific person XYZ.
"Oh! I have a crush on XYZ! Finally a motivation to get over my OCD! I have ... five weeks to get bang-ready before the risk of someone snatching them away becomes unacceptable" is a naive fantasy - progress doesn't happen on those short timescales (also, it's more than a bit insulting, as it implies that people who suffer for years merely lack sufficient motivation to make an effort with therapy. That's clueless, dumb, insulting - and completely wrong).
And 'crossing the rubicon' hints at a completely wrong picture of the condition: You can't 'push' your way through brainlock, it's not a panic attack, or phobia, it's like the taskmanager of your Win7 installation going tits-up, categorically refusing to end
any processes scheduled for termination & bombarding you with error messages (very, very intense messages) - in fact, pushing yourself way beyond your comfort zone is a pretty good way of achieving regression). If Hanners forced herself to bang her crush, it would do nothing for her OCD - in fact, it might make it worse. OCD is not phobia, and treatment is completely different: With phobia, you can sort of
"put the phobia under siege until it runs out of fear" by helping the afflicted endure an episode until their body runs out of the required transmitters - that doesn't work with OCD (Yes, I've asked my therapist exactly
that question. And got exactly that answer:
"It's not phobia, I can't simply make you stand on a tall building, or pet a spider and keep you in the situation until your body is no longer capable of being afraid. That would do nothing for you". One of the many, many, very, very unhappy questions along the lines of
"Why doesn't this shit go away already?" I've asked them).
Secondly: Trust me, OCD provides it's own motivation for getting over it - the 'finally getting to bang' is merely an added bonus. It's an
intensely unpleasant experience besides limiting your life severely, and I've never heard any indication that this is any different for asexuals. Since Jeph has personal experience with an anxiety disorder (not sure whether it was OCD, though), I'm inclined to believe that his view is similar.
Furthermore, there's no guarantee that the topic of the intrusive thoughts in OCD stays constant in any afflicted - it didn't for me. I wouldn't think it unrealistic for Hanners to return to COD after three years as a sex-addict living in a chaotically messy hotel room ... but a sex-addicted messy accountant agonizing about possible mistakes in her latest report (Dirt, otoh ... yeah, that would be a leap). OCD is like a director who shoots the same movie again and again with different actors, at different sets, with slight different scripts - at age 35, I was completely comfortable discussing topics and exploring thoughts that would have sent me reeling at age 16 - but I was still experiencing symptoms of OCD. It had simply changed scripts.
Examples of different 'thematic complexes' of intrusive thoughts - roughly the most common
"intrusive thought 'genres'"
(They're all directed by Werner Herzog based on a script that David Lynch discarded in first Semester ... and yes, Klaus Kinski is a frequent contributor, and no, the stuff he does still has little to do with acting in any conventional meaning of the term, but Werner likes to hate him, so ...)
It's a general "hands off fanbase, I'm the only one allowed to play with my toys!" attitude.
That's neither particularly unfair, nor hypocritical - Fairness implies that the set of people under consideration are all equal regarding certain properties. There's nothing
a priori unfair about the position that different sets of rules should apply to authors and fans. And Jeph never said that nobody couldn't write Pintsize/Marigold slashfic, merely that he wouldn't be supporting them financially by hosting their writings on his server (Much less did he forbid anyone anything beyond his powers as proprietor of this website here).
Around the time that Tumblr led him to drink himself into stabbing his hand for the crime of making Marigold self conscious and Marten socially awkward, he also came on the forums and basically ranted about how their denizens disgusted him.*
*Timeframe may be unreliable.
I joined in 2011 when 'Era PwHodges' was already a thing, and I know the 'Wrath of Jeph'-episode only from browsing the threads back then (Somewhere around November 2010, if memory serves?). The only Tumblr-specific things I've ever seen from Jeph were more in the vein of 'amused exasperation' - I've never seen anything that would lead me to believe that Tumblr would have "led" Jeph to drinking or stabbing his hand, or being the reason for his tatto, or ... anything, really. Is there maybe evidence for that claim hidden somewhere deep inside the bowels of the forum somewhere?
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Topic: WCDT Strips 3661-3665 (22nd to 26th January 2018) (Read 47349 times)