Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

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David Johnston
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by David Johnston »

TBeholder wrote:] She didn't know what she was doing to Melissa, or she didn't know she was using some incantation when Tiffany resisted her? Please, clarify.)
SHe didn't know that she was so universally attractive because she (or rather the school on her behalf) was subconsciously hacking everyone's brain. When she sucked Melissa into her dreamworld she didn't understand that she wasn't really giving Melissa what she truly wanted but was too proud to admit to in the real world.

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Absinthe Green
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by Absinthe Green »

Augh, Fluffy - Ai-yi-yi. Ok, let me take a running jump at this one.

I posted and initial observation about a deeply unsettling phenomenon that was short and concise and coherent. The Whiny Little Hothouse Flower Dickwolves Who Engage In Disingenuous Ad Hominems get their delicate, fragile, tender psyches bruised from trying to keep up with the subjet, so without any provocation against them from me they engage in disingenuous ad hominems *caughstormforgemystiquecough*. They focus on word choice and grammar and whine because what I've writtem's to harrrrrrrrrrrd to follow. So I push back by addressing them with the same petulant, juvenile tone I've been addressed in. I'll be the first to admit I try to have some fun slapping around Whiny Little Hothouse Flower Dickwolves Who Engage In Disingenuous Ad Hominems for being Whiny Little Hothouse Flower Dickwolves Who Engage In Disingenuous Ad Hominems. If you don't get to slap Whiny Little Hothouse Flower Dickwolves Who Engage In Disingenuous Ad Hominems around once in a while for being Whiny Little Hothouse Flower Dickwolves Who Engage In Disingenuous Ad Hominems, what's the point of them? Hell, if you don't slap Whiny Little Hothouse Flower Dickwolves Who Engage In Disingenuous Ad Hominems nice and hard as a matter of habit, they'll get the false impression that being Whiny Little Hothouse Flower Dickwolves Who Engage In Disingenuous Ad Hominems is something to be proud of instead of something to be embarrassed about. Instead of doing the smart thing and backing off after making themselves look stupid by having behaved like Whiny Little Hothouse Flower Dickwolves Who Engage In Disingenuous Ad Hominems, they clutch their pearls and fan themselves like antebellum southern belles with a case of the vapours and make themselves out to be even bigger Whiny Little Hothouse Flower Dickwolves Who Engage In Disingenuous Ad Hominems by doubling down on the little ad hominems in the whiniest, most dickwolf-y,most hothouse-flowerish and disingenuous manner possible.

Look, if they addressed the nuts and bolts of the claims I've presented; if they said something along the lines of "your a+b=c has some z=y+x flaws in it, and here're the links that'll provide the evidence", then I'd be thrilled to read through their post and click on the follow-up links. That kind of Good Faith engagement is what I'm here for and love to read in other people's posts, especially when I read something that I hadn't though of but is so good that I wish I had and makes me look at the comics in a new way. But Team WLHFDWEIDAH isn't here for that, and they know who they are. They're here to misrepresent, move goalposts, fire off ad hominems and slippery slopes and appeal to authority and so on and so on and so on. They send up a big red flag that they're here to engage in complete bad faith and giving them the benefit of the doubt is a complete waste of time. I reserve the right to call them out and push back and if that causes a few rhetorical elbows to land in a few rhetorical throats - pfft. Nobody forced them to start something they didn't know how to finish.

They attacked for things like word choice and syntax and not the subject of the argument - in this case, the rape-culture levels of slut-shaming hostility directed toward some of the sex-positive characters. I made the initial observation on this thread re: a trend I found deeply disturbing. Some of the people who post here have a consistent reaction of going after the sex-positve characters - Faith and Jackie for example, or how the homophobes came crawling out of the woodwork when Dio and Ash started frenching each other - and of justifying their slut-shaming with tissue thin arguments that simply cannot justify the tenacity with which they attack both the characters and those that point out that their behaviour is slut-shaming, regardless how hard they try to make it sound respectable or reasonable. I take issue with slut-shaming because even though we're talking about fictional characters on these threads, slut-shaming itself is a very real phenomenon that has very real, very ugly consequences, and the pigs that do it need to be called out, and called out consistently whenever they do it. Not doing so gives consent - that one is okay with the ugliness that's going on and that those involved in the ugliness are themselves okay despite the ugliness they're perpetuating. The ugliness that is slut-shaming particularly sticks out in the forums of webcomics whose major theme is girls / young women dealing with the balance that has to be struck between their innate power and the responsibilities that come with it. Part of what's drawn me into EC / MC / DC is precisely how well Giz & Co. have taken that theme and woven it into a complex and compelling narrative, complete with eye candy art and spot-on dialogue. I not the only one.
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mikbuster
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by mikbuster »

Umm... that can't really be done because you just stated that some people seem to do x without stating who those people were or giving any details of what your observations consist of.
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Storm-forge mystique
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by Storm-forge mystique »

No one is responding to your arguments because you aren't making any. You just pop in whenever someone points out Faith's megalomania, or Zii's lack of empathy, or that what Jacqui's doing with Delatorre is really not okay, yell "slut-shaming" amidst the aforementioned string of childish ad homs, and make irrelevant speeches about the danger of slut-shaming, with no effort to establish that that's actually what it is to call out these people's destructive acts and attitudes. Now I see you've discovered the emperor's-new-clothes gambit - good for you. But I think most of us can see your sesquipedalian turd polish for what it is.

(And The Nick, with respect... what the hell are you talking about?)

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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by TBeholder »

dex drako wrote:My I ask if you don’t believe Morals come from rational thought then where do they come from?
Thin air. It's okay to just say "thin air".
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jaimehlers
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by jaimehlers »

dex drako wrote:everything I’ve posted are expectable definitions of these words they just don’t agree with your view on them which is different. All words have more than one meaning regardless if you don’t like the other means.
This makes no sense unless you mean 'acceptable', so I'm assuming that's what you mean. By all means, if you meant some other word, please say so. With that said, when you have to use a medical dictionary to get the definition you want, it makes your reasoning suspect. And what you said here goes for you too - you can't simply ignore the definitions of a word that you don't like, such as "a neurotic restraint upon a normal or beneficial impulse or activity caused by psychological inner conflicts or by sociocultural forces of the environment". When you have two such disparate meanings for a word, it is usually better to not refer to both with the same word, because that confuses the issue.
dex drako wrote:Take the words restrictions and guidelines that you’re using to differentiate meaning when in fact these two words are all synonyms and so can replace each other and the sentence will retain its context. Now morals and inhibitions are expectable synonyms but inhibition has a farther reach of means then morals do. Like a person not liking the idea of eating bugs, that isn’t a moral issue but it’s still an inhibition. So all morals are inhibitions but not all inhibitions are morals.
Incorrect. First off, guidelines and restrictions are not synonyms. If you had actually checked a thesaurus before you made this statement, you would have known that. You might be able to replace one word with the other in a sentence, but it changes the meaning of the sentence, and thus its context. Second, by the same token, inhibition is not a synonym of moral. And to be blunt, that pretty well undercuts the whole basis for your argument, since the two words are not interchangeable. What that means is that morals are not necessarily inhibitions, just as inhibitions are not necessarily morals. There might be some overlap between the two, but by and large they have distinct meanings and thus refer to different things. Third, whether or not someone eats bugs is totally irrelevant to a discussion about whether morals are inhibitions or not. The reason most people don't eat bugs is because they have a psychological block - an inhibition, as you say - that dissuades them from doing so, but it has nothing at all to do with their morals.
dex drako wrote:but when I say “inhibitions” I have years scientific research and study into the human mind and how it works to back it up.
Playing the authority card now? Sorry, but I don't really buy it, at least not without some hard evidence to back it up.
dex drako wrote:Now something you may not know Morality and empathy comes from rational thought, they are our brain trying to understand the inner emotional state of others. The reasons Psychopathy can’t understand morality and empathy is because the part of the mind responsible for this understanding of others inner emotional states doesn’t work right. (This has been shown through MRI studies of Psychopathic subject compared to average people.) This leaves a Psychopath unable to understand what their actions will do to other but they still have inhibitions(like not eating bugs) because the rest of the mind functions more or less the right way.
So, are you trying to say that psychopaths are incapable of being rational? Or are you acknowledging that they can be rational without having morality and empathy because of the differences between the way their brains work and the way an average human brain works?
dex drako wrote:you show look up a book called the warrior gene it’s goes into detail on things like this.
Unless you can demonstrate its relevance to "are morals the same as inhibitions", I don't really see the point.
dex drako wrote:My I ask if you don’t believe Morals come from rational thought then where do they come from?
First off, I never said that they weren't the product of rational thought. Certainly, the complex moral codes that we've developed require rational thought. But there have been studies showing at least primitive morality in animals. Here's a few links for your edification:

http://www.livescience.com/24802-animal ... -book.html

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article ... ty_animals

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcJxRqTs5nk

Naturally, this is not conclusive. But it's enough to throw the question wide open.
dex drako wrote:my whole point has been since the start is without inhibitions humans would be like other animals with less higher thought proses who react solely on instinct . inhibition are any prosses then puts limits on base instincts which I’ve made very clear.
I do not agree with your idea that morality or inhibitions are what set us apart. It isn't morality or inhibitions that do that, it's rational thought itself, and that came from our ability to communicate abstract concepts through language. It is perfectly possible to be rational without being inhibited, unless (as you are attempting to do) you stretch the definition of an inhibition far past the point of usefulness.

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vampire hunter D
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by vampire hunter D »

Why are we still doing this? Aren't there more important things we can worry about?

Syria? Debt crisis? Miley Cyrus twerking?
Pointless arguing is one of the three pillars upon which the Internet is built. The other two are of course cat pictures and porn.

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Geeno
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by Geeno »

Oh good God, twerking must be stopped - at least Miley's version.

The Debt "Crisis" is the very definition of an artificial crisis, so anyone who wants to play with that fire deserves to get burned, and Syria seems (for the present) to have been resolved peaceably and to everyone's satisfaction. So, of the three you mentioned, twerking is the real issue.
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The Nick
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by The Nick »

Storm-forge mystique wrote:No one is responding to your arguments because you aren't making any. You just pop in whenever someone points out Faith's megalomania, or Zii's lack of empathy, or that what Jacqui's doing with Delatorre is really not okay, yell "slut-shaming" amidst the aforementioned string of childish ad homs, and make irrelevant speeches about the danger of slut-shaming, with no effort to establish that that's actually what it is to call out these people's destructive acts and attitudes. Now I see you've discovered the emperor's-new-clothes gambit - good for you. But I think most of us can see your sesquipedalian turd polish for what it is.

(And The Nick, with respect... what the hell are you talking about?)
I might have switched two people's quotes around, although you did say some very unnice things back there.

Either way, I think Absynthe is being VERY clear here: the rape-culture levels of slut-shaming hostility directed toward some of the sex-positive characters is 'deeply disturbing' and leads to real-life tragedies and deaths, answering people who are having a discussion with hatred instead of a calmly reasoned reaction to facts is a bad thing, and being a homophobe is bad.

You're free to disagree with these points. Not everybody thinks that a girl who has sex and enjoys it should be allowed to live or doesn't deserve to get beaten, not everybody believes that gay people shouldn't get hit with rocks. True, if you believe those things, I think you're terrible, but... eh, it's the free world and you have a right to believe whatever you want.

But at least make an argument instead of just slut-shaming or insulting people or whatever. Politely, if possible. Entertainingly, if not (within reason).
mikbuster wrote:Nick, Melissa wasn't standing, per Faith saying she hadn't even hit the ground yet. Also per the visual immediately afterward where Faith is slumped against a tree or something and Mel is getting up. In a sparring match especially, not everything goes. If we were sparring, without protective gear, and I kicked you hard in the crotch I'm pretty sure you'd complain that it was unfair even if it wasn't a permanent injury like it could be. Were there lines crossed with Faith stroking a naked Mel in that dreamscape? I guess that depends on how Mel feels about it. She seems to not want that kind of attention from Faith, and I would think unwanted sexual touching in my head is worse than physical unwanted sexual touching.
They both were standing. They started standing. Faith says their bodies hadn't hit the ground yet because they were still upright.

True, eventually, they did go down, but that eventually happens.

Either way, when you're doing something unpleasant like 'training to fight to the death', sometimes unpleasant things happens. Do soldiers in the army somethings "not feel comfortable" when they're out in the 35 degree Fahrenheit cold or staying awake for 20 hours at a time? That doesn't mean that they're being pushed too hard.

Regardless, I'm saying it's not unwanted sexual touching in this situation. Just calling it that doesn't make it that and it's a tactic you could use in an argument either way - "Is Faith's attempt to murder Melissa and then eat her parents inappropriate?" Yeah, yeah it would be, if that's what she did. But look at what she says: she asks a pretty straightforward question that Melissa takes a while to think about and then never gives an answer one way or another. Even if we presume that this is an invasion despite the fact that there is an event preceding it which justifies it, we have to look at the concept of having a choice being factored in.

i.e. if Faith were to approach a girl and forcibly drag her off to a place to do unspeakable sexual things to her, then YEAH, of course she'd be terrible. If Faith were to ASK the girl to come behind the shed to play the Gardener Dress-up Game and the girl says no and they go home unhappy OR she says yes, that's fine. Coincidentally, that's also how conversations work.

Not accepting that sometimes the possibility for a person to communicate an answer in the negative is basically accusing every person who ever approached another person of rape just because they "might have ignored the person saying no."

Double post merged. The DAMNed
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Varanus
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by Varanus »

The Nick wrote:But look at what she says: she asks a pretty straightforward question that Melissa takes a while to think about and then never gives an answer one way or another. Even if we presume that this is an invasion despite the fact that there is an event preceding it which justifies it, we have to look at the concept of having a choice being factored in.

i.e. if Faith were to approach a girl and forcibly drag her off to a place to do unspeakable sexual things to her, then YEAH, of course she'd be terrible. If Faith were to ASK the girl to come behind the shed to play the Gardener Dress-up Game and the girl says no and they go home unhappy OR she says yes, that's fine. Coincidentally, that's also how conversations work.
Let's change the line of questioning then, as certainly if she was only asking questions it'd be hard to argue anything was wrong. Namely how did Mel and Faith get into the water naked? Do you really think Mel undressed herself in the dream? We don't know one way or the other, but isn't it highly uncharacteristic of Mel to do such a thing? Does it make what Faith did worse if she mentally undressed Melissa and got her in the water?

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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by mikbuster »

Which part of the phrase is incorrect, the unwanted, the sexual, or the touching?
You don't need a reason to help people. ~Zidane Tribal
Geez. Why are adults so pigheaded? ~Palom
How do you prove that we exist? Maybe we don't exist... ~Vivi Orunitia
The only dependable thing about the future is uncertainty. ~Amarant Coral
ADD is a double edged sword. Also the handle is a blade.

That one's easy: it's because it sounds disgusting. Society's got nothing to do with that. ~Gotoh

jaimehlers
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by jaimehlers »

How did Faith get Mel into the water? Probably by suggesting that they could take a dip together.

I mean, really. Comics and such have to leave out details that aren't particularly relevant or important (unless they're doing fillers, which this wasn't, and even then the details have to be important to the filler plot), meaning that if a scene (like two girls getting undressed) is left out, then it didn't have any real relevance to the plot, unless it's retroactively given importance later on within the comic. Which this hasn't been.

So posing questions like, "isn't it highly uncharacteristic of Mel to undress herself in the dream" and "would it make what Faith did worse if she mentally undressed Melissa and got her in the water", are only speculative. The fact of the matter is that if the 'undressing' scene had been important, it would have been part of the comic. Since it wasn't part of the comic, it's not reasonable to give it any real importance.

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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by Geeno »

Oh for F's sake lock this so it starts moving down the thread list. Christ people - get a f'n room.
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The Nick
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by The Nick »

Varanus wrote:
The Nick wrote:But look at what she says: she asks a pretty straightforward question that Melissa takes a while to think about and then never gives an answer one way or another. Even if we presume that this is an invasion despite the fact that there is an event preceding it which justifies it, we have to look at the concept of having a choice being factored in.

i.e. if Faith were to approach a girl and forcibly drag her off to a place to do unspeakable sexual things to her, then YEAH, of course she'd be terrible. If Faith were to ASK the girl to come behind the shed to play the Gardener Dress-up Game and the girl says no and they go home unhappy OR she says yes, that's fine. Coincidentally, that's also how conversations work.
Let's change the line of questioning then, as certainly if she was only asking questions it'd be hard to argue anything was wrong. Namely how did Mel and Faith get into the water naked? Do you really think Mel undressed herself in the dream? We don't know one way or the other, but isn't it highly uncharacteristic of Mel to do such a thing? Does it make what Faith did worse if she mentally undressed Melissa and got her in the water?
Check out the third and fourth panel. And the strip in the water. Those are NOT the positions of somebody who is not cognizant of their position. Check out that finger-nibbling. That is NOT the action of a girl who despises somebody and wants to actively commit an act of murder against Faith. Look at them from one panel to the next - they're far from the pool and then they go to the pool.

In general, while I might be willing to bathe with some people who I wouldn't be willing to smooch, all of these actions taken together suggest something about Melissa. Now, being willing to bathe with Faith and being willing to marry her are two entirely different ballparks; being willing to kill Faith for even breaching the air within 20 feet of her and being willing to hang out with Faith in vaguely-naughty-but-never-consummated ways are equally distant ballparks.


It's entirely legitimate that Melissa doesn't want to make a decision but doesn't want to punch Faith in the face with a knife. Everybody seems to be insisting that either Melissa wants to do the sexorz with Faith or Melissa is about to be raped. What I'm suggesting is something much more rationale and reasonable and in the middle (as most things in life are) - maybe she's willing to do SOME things with Faith and probably doesn't want to actually commit an act of murder against her, but neither of the girls are willing to do any of the extreme bold-faced actions to each other.
mikbuster wrote:Which part of the phrase is incorrect, the unwanted, the sexual, or the touching?
Possibly all three.

-It wasn't unwanted, for reasons I've mentioned above. If it WAS unwanted (and I REALLY don't want to have to explain this), you generally don't play along and act the part and play a convincing angle but then cry 'rape' afterwards. Either way, Melissa is definitely willing to do something. Again, refer to the above quotes.

-It wasn't necessarily sexual in the way some people are using it, i.e. full penetration or whatever hard-core imaginings people want to imagine. I mean, there's an element of 'sexual' to it, but you can say the same thing about a 12 year-old giving a Valentine's Day heart to a girl; there's an 'element' of sexual but we're hardly expecting the children of to be fornicating between recess and fifth period snack time.

-It wasn't necessarily 'touching' for metaphysical mind-spaced reasons. But this is a silly argument and irrelevant. More specifically, it was probably touching (for our purposes of the term), but that's not really so bad.
"Sometimes [Layla] is a bit discourteous."-David Johnston
"The usual incentive for peace is to not be at war."-Thor
"that's actually one of thor's lines you've got in your signature there, not one of mine." -J (usually more invisible)
"Somebody just stake me now" -TJgalon
"I can masturbate without guilt now." -Panchocheesecake
"More Nick-sarcasm is always appreciated. Hail Beret Cat!" -Don Alexander
"...get that girl's panties off of her as soon as possible, and then see what effect that has on her personality." -kitsune9tails (out of context)
"special flowers" -Thor
"Doggy style." -Milnoc
"Wanted: ...berets on cats..." -The Nick

Varanus
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Re: Magick Chicks 20-09-13 Even her enemies

Post by Varanus »

The Nick wrote:Check out the third and fourth panel. And the strip in the water. Those are NOT the positions of somebody who is not cognizant of their position. Check out that finger-nibbling. That is NOT the action of a girl who despises somebody and wants to actively commit an act of murder against Faith. Look at them from one panel to the next - they're far from the pool and then they go to the pool.

In general, while I might be willing to bathe with some people who I wouldn't be willing to smooch, all of these actions taken together suggest something about Melissa. Now, being willing to bathe with Faith and being willing to marry her are two entirely different ballparks; being willing to kill Faith for even breaching the air within 20 feet of her and being willing to hang out with Faith in vaguely-naughty-but-never-consummated ways are equally distant ballparks.

It's entirely legitimate that Melissa doesn't want to make a decision but doesn't want to punch Faith in the face with a knife. Everybody seems to be insisting that either Melissa wants to do the sexorz with Faith or Melissa is about to be raped. What I'm suggesting is something much more rationale and reasonable and in the middle (as most things in life are) - maybe she's willing to do SOME things with Faith and probably doesn't want to actually commit an act of murder against her, but neither of the girls are willing to do any of the extreme bold-faced actions to each other
Just to be clear, as your frustration implies to me you may think this, I am not one of the people calling Faith an evil rapist slut or any equivalent. I simply am arguing that especially with the lack of information on just what really happened and what was going through Melissa's mind it is pretty easy for me to read a darker interpretation of the above scene. Obviously other people had very different reactions to the scene, and understanding both reactions is something I am interested in doing, though naturally I have tried hard to explain all the reasons for my interpretation.

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