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Yes

5 (22.7%)

Why?

8 (36.4%)

Its a draw

4 (18.2%)

Mommymilker

3 (13.6%)

Burger Oni

2 (9.1%)

Total Members Voted: 22

Voting closed: 21 Nov 2021, 16:39

[shanejayell]

So Claire gets to co-star as a vtuber. Wonder what her avatar will be?

[Farideh]

'Bovinnia Delavache'

Not gonna lie, that made my day. Sibling rivalry brings out Claire's creativity!

[shanejayell]

Poor, poor Clinton. And Elliot is just "Wha...?"

[badbum61]

*pulls up couch*
I'm in. Who wants popcorn?

[derris_kharlan]

Claire is the worst. Ugh. Poor Clinton.

[Ghanima Atreides]

This seems...unnecessarily mean-spirited of Claire. There's being competitive, then there's embarrassing your brother in front of a large online audience just for kicks (I know they're avatars and nobody knows who they really are -for now- but she's doing it purely to annoy him.)

[oddtail]

Yeah, I sometimes feel like Claire, both in-universe and as far as the comic's narration works, never really gets called out on being just plain mean and unpleasant to Clinton. I don't know if it's the cuteness factor meaning she gets cut more slack or what, and I understand sibling rivalry and that some nasty jabs might be acceptable to an extent, but today's comic makes me real uncomfortable.

Especially given how their mom reacts. I mean, she can't really outright scold Claire on-air, but if she doesn't say anything at all when they go offline, this is gonna be a big "yikes" moment for me. This feels like enabling bad behaviour that almost borders on bullying, and I think dealing with that is part of the job of being a mom.

I dunno.

[Gyrre]

This seems...unnecessarily mean-spirited of Claire. There's being competitive, then there's embarrassing your brother in front of a large online audience just for kicks (I know they're avatars and nobody knows who they really are -for now- but she's doing it purely to annoy him.)

Aurelia did immediately shut it down, though.

[oddtail]

This seems...unnecessarily mean-spirited of Claire. There's being competitive, then there's embarrassing your brother in front of a large online audience just for kicks (I know they're avatars and nobody knows who they really are -for now- but she's doing it purely to annoy him.)

Aurelia did immediately shut it down, though.

"now, now, dear" is shutting it down? That's pretty much as flimsy a non-response as I can imagine.

I mean, if Claire stopped, I guess it's all that was needed, but the punctuation ("Now now, dear-") implied to me that this was not the end of the conversation. And implies to me that Aurelia left the sentence hanging and/or was interrupted by Claire proceeding, although admittedly I'm reading deep into this. Maybe too deep.

EDIT: although, given that Clinton says "YOU BETTER NOT" and then says "she's probably gonna (...)", he doesn't seem to think Claire is going to stop now, either. And if he has a reason to think Aurelia's response is not enough to end this part of the conversation, maybe it isn't.

[St.Clair]

I agree. 

[John Allenson]

I don't get why Clinton is lying to Elliot.

[Mr_Rose]

I don't get why Clinton is lying to Elliot.

Because he doesn’t want to admit he got baked and did a guest spot as an anthro bull on his mom’s definitely-not-a-fetish vtube show and also because he wants to protect Aurelia‘a secret.

But mostly because of the congenital lack of chill.

[notStanley]

But mostly because of the congenital lack of chill.

That can be difficult to defeat :} 

[sitnspin]

I don't get why Clinton is lying to Elliot.

Because his mom's vtube career is a secret and he's respecting her privacy

[DaiJB]

This seems...unnecessarily mean-spirited of Claire. There's being competitive, then there's embarrassing your brother in front of a large online audience just for kicks (I know they're avatars and nobody knows who they really are -for now- but she's doing it purely to annoy him.)

You know that kind of person, that you don't actively hate....but their behaviour makes it really, really hard to actually like them?
To me, that's Claire.

[BarGamer]

How does she know what furries are, and not about the horrors of Rule 34, 4chan, reddit, etc, etc?

I'm starting to wonder about these kids. Where did that competitiveness come from? What are the origins of the Claireface?

[Penquin47]

I fully support Clinton going off on Claire for this one.  Aurelia, too, for not shutting down the stream when Claire started revealing embarrassing personal details like that.

...on the other hand, I can just HEAR the Mommymilkers section of AO3 breaking with the fanfic of just why Lil' Beef has a cowboy phobia, and the hot-but-sweet cowboy who cures it with the power of his love.

[Farideh]

Though I wonder: does Clinton really have a cowboy phobia, or did Claire just invent that on the spot (to 'flesh out his character')?

[John Allenson]

Though I wonder: does Clinton really have a cowboy phobia, or did Claire just invent that on the spot (to 'flesh out his character')?

I'm guessing it's something that Claire invented on the spot to go with the cow theme.
It might be analogous to a fear of (for example) doctors.

And earlier about Clinton lying to Elliot.  Aurelia told Claire and her significant other.  But this implies that Clinton is not allowed to tell his significant other.  We haven't been shown a reason why Aurelia would forbid Elliot from knowing.  Even if Aurelia had said "Don't mention the V-Log", Clinton could still say that he's angry that his sister is using something private to mock him.

[Penquin47]

There's a world of difference between Marten and Elliot right now.  Claire and Marten have been dating for something like a year, I think, and Claire is living with Marten.  There is every reason to include the established, long-term, live-in partner.  They're not married and AFAIK haven't started talking about that yet, but Marten has met the family and been accepted as one of them.

Elliot and Clinton have been dating for a couple weeks.  They're still in that new couple stage where of course they're welcome to participate in some family events, but they're still outsiders and should not assume that they're welcome to know everything right away.  It takes time to build up that level of integration into the family.

Aurelia is, in general, keeping this secret.  She hadn't told her kids until recently.  It's way too soon for Clinton to just assume it's okay to tell Elliot - although if he asked first, Aurelia might be perfectly fine with him telling Elliot.  Also, Claire asked if it was okay to bring Marten for the unvealing of the secret! 

[ihaveavoice]

Though I wonder: does Clinton really have a cowboy phobia, or did Claire just invent that on the spot (to 'flesh out his character')?

It's so cow-themed, I feel like it has to have been an invention for lore purposes. (I'm also not sure I believe Jeph could've resisted bringing it up sooner if Clinton actually had a phobia that amusing to draw.)

Claire's immediate jump to "Let's embarrass Clinton!" in any public scenario sometimes feels to me like her writer applying the typical sitcom bratty-children-attacking-each-other model of siblings without adjusting for the age or other behavior of the characters, which is weird because it's not like Jeph hasn't shown us other sibling relationships that don't work that way. I also felt this way about their immediate hostility to each other in Coffee of Doom when they weren't even fighting at the time and we've seen them hang out and have casual conversations, but figured it was there for the gag.

It's funny, without Claire and Clinton's history in the comic, I can easily see this just being a story of Claire getting caught up in the idea of creating ~Lore~ for the Mommymilkers cinematic universe without stopping to consider that her brother may see her making up weird phobias and shit for his character as her making them up about him with the character as a veil. Then they would fight, have some of those classic QC discussions about the situation with other characters, and reconcile in a comic with like twenty dairy-themed puns. That's not the story we have, though.

[BenRG]

@ihaveavoice,

We have a rule on this forum about not saying things about fictional characters that we wouldn't say about real people. I wonder if anyone will take Claire aside and tell her that she's hurting Clinton for laughs and that 'it's only for the made-up lore' doesn't in any way justify or excuse her need to make him look bad and feel bad. The fact is that Claire is written increasingly as something of a petty bully and is given a free pass for certain reasons.

[Gyrre]

Well, Aurelia warned her.

[Gyrre]

Though I wonder: does Clinton really have a cowboy phobia, or did Claire just invent that on the spot (to 'flesh out his character')?

It's so cow-themed, I feel like it has to have been an invention for lore purposes. (I'm also not sure I believe Jeph could've resisted bringing it up sooner if Clinton actually had a phobia that amusing to draw.)

Claire's immediate jump to "Let's embarrass Clinton!" in any public scenario sometimes feels to me like her writer applying the typical sitcom bratty-children-attacking-each-other model of siblings without adjusting for the age or other behavior of the characters, which is weird because it's not like Jeph hasn't shown us other sibling relationships that don't work that way. I also felt this way about their immediate hostility to each other in Coffee of Doom when they weren't even fighting at the time and we've seen them hang out and have casual conversations, but figured it was there for the gag.

It's funny, without Claire and Clinton's history in the comic, I can easily see this just being a story of Claire getting caught up in the idea of creating ~Lore~ for the Mommymilkers cinematic universe without stopping to consider that her brother may see her making up weird phobias and shit for his character as her making them up about him with the character as a veil. Then they would fight, have some of those classic QC discussions about the situation with other characters, and reconcile in a comic with like twenty dairy-themed puns. That's not the story we have, though.

Sadly, some people never grow out of it.

@ihaveavoice,

We have a rule on this forum about not saying things about fictional characters that we wouldn't say about real people. I wonder if anyone will take Claire aside and tell her that she's hurting Clinton for laughs and that 'it's only for the made-up lore' doesn't in any way justify or excuse her need to make him look bad and feel bad. The fact is that Claire is written increasingly as something of a petty bully and is given a free pass for certain reasons.

Siblings --especially those with less than two years between them-- tend to have at least one of them like that. Especially if one or both have issues with anxiety, ego or srlf confidence. Though, one would think they'd be past it by their 30s. When they do, they'll may still fall into bickering at the drop of a hat (family stuff with some boomers with a crap childhood).

[shanejayell]

Having seen (and written) fanfic, be careful what you wish for....

[Torlek]

Having seen (and written) fanfic, be careful what you wish for....

Ya rly. The Rule 34 fanfic and fanart for Bovinnia is going to be..........vigorous. And is probably going to take great liberties with her anatomy.

[Potato Farmer]

Yes, be very smug about going on the stream just to outdo your brother and in the process make up stuff about him for personal entertainment. I mean, in the grand scheme of things it's probably not a real problem but I'm a bit sensitive about people making fun of each other, especially if it's in public and they don't have any way to retort. If both Claire and Clinton were on the stream so they could openly quibble with each other it'd be another matter entirely.

At least Clinton, lack of chill notwithstanding, seemed to be enjoying his time on the stream on its own without getting the rivalry involved.

As it stands I'm kind of hoping that Claire discovers what her mother was trying to warn her about while Clinton is present.

[dutchrvl]

Echo'ing multiple posters in this thread, that Claire's (recurring) behavior, especially towards her brother, is making it increasingly difficult to like her. I don't actively dislike her (yet), so I hope in due time she will have some kind of aha-moment about her behavior (I also remember some distinct not-cool moments towards Marten, e.g. when she was told in the bar about Padma). This could come in the form of Aurelia telling her, or somebody else Claire holds in high regard (possibly Bubbles or even Elliott).

[Ghanima Atreides]

I wonder if this is now going to devolve in a competition of who can make up the most outrageous stuff about the other on Mommymilkers' stream (spawning ever-increasing amounts of progressively weirder/pervier fanart/fic) and Aurelia going from being happy her kids embraced her hobby to wishing she'd never told them...

[Farideh]

New comic.

The Augustus family stick their feet in their mouths so much, I'm surprised they can still walk.

Is that Claire in the background picture, holding a fish?

[St.Clair]

DESTROYED

[shanejayell]

Ouch....

[Tova]

The weird thing is that, for a moment, I thought she meant a library job as well ... 

[Oenone]

Oof. I don’t see Claire as being a bully here — she made up some stories while pretending to be a calf whose mom has four udders. She was being ridiculous.

[Mr Intrepid]

New comic.

The Augustus family stick their feet in their mouths so much, I'm surprised they can still walk.

Is that Claire in the background picture, holding a fish?

Current thought is that it might be a photo of Aurelia, on a campus or day trip some time back.  Remember that Claire didn't start transitioning until after high school.

[ihaveavoice]

Siblings --especially those with less than two years between them-- tend to have at least one of them like that. Especially if one or both have issues with anxiety, ego or srlf confidence. Though, one would think they'd be past it by their 30s. When they do, they'll may still fall into bickering at the drop of a hat (family stuff with some boomers with a crap childhood).

Claire and Clinton are in their early 20s. The internet says 24 and 21, which is further apart than I thought they were! That's the age difference between me and my brother. And I would expect that all siblings have at least one or two triggers to pretty much age in reverse, lol. That's normally a behavior aimed directly at each other while in the same place, though. At least in my experience, with a sibling I bitterly fought with at times but would never have thought to publicly humiliate. Not sure if that's on a different scale of rivalry or just a different variety.

[BenRG]

So, it looks like strong anxiety reactions run in the women of the family. All I can add at this point is that Aurelia at no point should act surprised, mention Claire's student loans or act as if she's trying to be supportive of an eccentric idea that disappoints her.

That's the advantages of having a less-complex brain, Marten. Animals do what they do and see no point being embarrassed about it. Humans have something called self-expectations that seem to exist only to torment us!

[Farideh]

Current thought is that it might be a photo of Aurelia, on a campus or day trip some time back.  Remember that Claire didn't start transitioning until after high school.

Also possible.


For some reason, Aurelia doesn't strike me as the person to have pictures of herself up in such a prominent position, but I'm probably just projecting. I'd put up family pictures, kids' pics, ones of me and my husband... But not one by myself.

[neurocase]

Oof. I don’t see Claire as being a bully here — she made up some stories while pretending to be a calf whose mom has four udders. She was being ridiculous.

This was my thinking, too. They're completely anonymous internet personas. I think she was just having fun with it by making up stuff about her brother the MommyMilkers cinematic universe version, not the actual person. Cowboy phobia seems too 'on-brand' for the whole thing to have any actual basis in reality, and it's not as though making up that sort of thing affects their real lives. I saw it as a bit of harmless pretend fun. Clinton was clearly worried that Claire was going to spill real tea of some description, but a degree of paranoia is always his baseline.

I think it's a bit quick to judge before we even know Clinton's reaction, rather than his kneejerk "DON'T DO THAT" in relation to thinking Claire was going to give away real personal stuff.

[bhtooefr]

There's a world of difference between Marten and Elliot right now.  Claire and Marten have been dating for something like a year, I think, and Claire is living with Marten.  There is every reason to include the established, long-term, live-in partner.  They're not married and AFAIK haven't started talking about that yet, but Marten has met the family and been accepted as one of them.

I mean, Marten did just bring up engagement...

[dutchrvl]

Oof. I don’t see Claire as being a bully here — she made up some stories while pretending to be a calf whose mom has four udders. She was being ridiculous.

This was my thinking, too. They're completely anonymous internet personas. I think she was just having fun with it by making up stuff about her brother the MommyMilkers cinematic universe version, not the actual person. Cowboy phobia seems too 'on-brand' for the whole thing to have any actual basis in reality, and it's not as though making up that sort of thing affects their real lives. I saw it as a bit of harmless pretend fun. Clinton was clearly worried that Claire was going to spill real tea of some description, but a degree of paranoia is always his baseline.

I think it's a bit quick to judge before we even know Clinton's reaction, rather than his kneejerk "DON'T DO THAT" in relation to thinking Claire was going to give away real personal stuff.

I don't think Clare is a bully either, but I do think her general behavior especially towards Clinton regularly veers into the unpleasant side.

W.r.t. the above (underlining mine): I respectfully disagree. it may seem harmless to make something up as pretend fun for an online persona, but it really isn't.
It's one thing if 2 people agree to have fun with it and make up fun/shocking things for each others' online personas, it's entirely another to do this unilaterally without the other's permission.
Is it his anonymous internet persona? Sure. Does it therefore not matter what Claire makes up about that persona? Yet it absolutely does, because it is his persona, and whatever Claire says about that persona will directly affect how others in the online community will continue to interact with Clinton's persona, and therefore his very real experience when being online as that persona. So yes, it does actually affect a person's real life.
And this is not even getting into the fact that many people develop pretty significant (emotional) connections with their online personas, indeed their personas are extensions of themselves and their online lives are extensions of their real life. As such, just making shit up/spreading rumors/saying whatever about a persona, whether true or not, has a very real effect even if it was meant as 'harmless pretend fun'.
 

[oddtail]

Yeah, when someone is present incognito as a fictional persona, that *is* an extension of that person, and while it may not be AS bad to make up stuff about the persona as about the real person, it's still pretty bad.

As a person who's met plenty of people only as anthropomorphic rabbits or foxes and whatever, in communities where those foxes and rabits were understood to be as real to the person inhabiting them as they wanted them to be*, I feel pretty strongly about this.

Clinton is not a furry of course (yet), and his streaming avatar is not important to his everyday interactions, so any damage is minor, but the same principle stands.

*Granted, my formative years as a furry were when the Internet was different. But I don't think this aspect of the furry fandom changed that much. People can be a different person on the Internet, and furries (that I've met) seem to treat this constructed identity as serously as the person constructing it.

[dutchrvl]

Also, not to belabor the point, but it's not up to Claire to decide how Clinton's online character is 'fleshed out'.

Anyway, I'm sure this will be revisited soon enough, likely by Clinton having to remind Claire why this is not really OK.
In the meantime, poor Claire for getting this reaction from her mom. Aurelia's reaction is understandable of course, but not helpful given Claire's anxiety/uncertainty about finding a library job  

[Roborat]

Interesting, same author's comment on the same day for QC and SP. And I see where Claire's facial expressions come from.

[Farideh]

New comic.

Marten will cheer Claire up, but who will do that for Aurelia? Petting Cosmo is always good, but still. Maybe Clinton will come over to complain about his sister and Aurelia can offload on him.

[Gyrre]

....... Do any of you have siblings?
Moreover, siblings within 2 years of your own age?

A lot of this scans like the answer is 'no'. Maybe it's because I'm from a highly dysfunctional family.
EDIT: I'm not saying that this degree of sibling rivalry is natural or 'normal'. Nor am I defending it. I'm just saying that I understand it and have seen plenty of IRL examples (both related and not). A common thread is very much some form of family dysfunction.

And from what we know of their father, he was a PoS.

[Penquin47]

My brother is 18 months older than me.  If he treated me the way Claire treats Clinton, I don't care how chaotic our childhood was that led to us becoming best friends because then we wouldn't have to either leave our best friend or have them leave us in two years, we'd be seeing each other at holidays and that's it.

[BenRG]

Something tells me that Marten has a long evening ahead of him trying to manage Claire's reaction to this. Most importantly trying to help her reject her fear that she is a failure and a disappointment to her mother. (Of course the real one disappointed in Claire is Claire herself.)

"No, Claire, quitting your job after one day won't help anything!"

[Prestwick]

Siblings --especially those with less than two years between them-- tend to have at least one of them like that. Especially if one or both have issues with anxiety, ego or srlf confidence. Though, one would think they'd be past it by their 30s. When they do, they'll may still fall into bickering at the drop of a hat (family stuff with some boomers with a crap childhood).

Claire and Clinton are in their early 20s. The internet says 24 and 21, which is further apart than I thought they were! That's the age difference between me and my brother. And I would expect that all siblings have at least one or two triggers to pretty much age in reverse, lol. That's normally a behavior aimed directly at each other while in the same place, though. At least in my experience, with a sibling I bitterly fought with at times but would never have thought to publicly humiliate. Not sure if that's on a different scale of rivalry or just a different variety.

There is certainly some level of vindictiveness in how Claire handled herself on the stream but I feel it is subconscious rather than deliberately malicious and it reflects the fact that both Claire nor Clinton have a lot of repressed issues between themselves which haven't yet been resolved and this in turn will lead to very irrational behaviour, passive aggressive behaviour as well as repeated attempts by one to get the attention of the other regardless of whether that attention is either positive or negative. One or both will crave that even if it makes either one or both of them miserable in the process and because they haven't really been shown the concept of seeking positive attention (e.g. enjoying coffee, lunch or dinner together or with friends, talking about stuff without the need to put down or demean the other, etc) then that cycle will continue.

It is possible for brothers and sisters - even those closely tied by age - to co-exist without constantly needing to compete, bicker or even engage in full on negative behaviour. As a foster parent, I've seen siblings transition from a very fraught and negative relationship to an overwhelmingly positive one but that only happens when that behaviour is identified and worked out of the system and unfortunately when you have a parent figure who herself has significant behavioural challenges then that is going to be difficult to do. I feel that rather than helping, Aurelia ends up enabling Claire and Clinton's mostly negative relationship with each other.

A clear example of Claire's rather negative behaviour towards Clinton by the way: Her need to call give herself the nickname "Devanche" which, as one viewer pointed out, is French for "of the cow" which to me is a clear dig at her brother and a passive aggressive way of saying "I'm closer to Mom more than you are, SUCK IT, BROTHER!" Theres a clear insecurity and need for one to make themselves look the more authentic child than the other there and that would probably mean we'd be sitting down with her for a few hours to work out why she felt the need to do that, her feelings towards her brother and so forth. Theraputic parenting helps

[BenRG]

Theraputic parenting helps

Unfortunately, Aurelia's strategy seems to have been 'get high and hope the problem goes away'. It isn't working, as she just realised in today's strip.