2013-12-03 Pretty Badass of you

[IamBernard]

I have to admit, I'm kind of okay with slaps. I've been slapped in the face by friends and I've slapped them and we're cool with it, as far as I know. If she had punched him that would have been one thing. The "severe swelling" is probably just a very common comic effect since this is after all a webcomic. If it's not, then yes, that was way out of line.

[Spidrift]

you know, i was just thinking that what gary needed was to be smacked upside his fool head.

Sadly, Senna was not wielding th Clue-by-Four carved from the last remaining fragment of the Tree of Knowledge. (Thank you, Aaron Williams.) Which I think is about all that would get his brain working.

Gary needs to learn. But, he has learned in the past by people calmly explaining things to him and that's the proper way to do it.

Has Gary ever learned anything? Really?

Well, he's learned not to faint in the presence of attractive women - by experience rather than teaching. And he's learned how to do basic sex - again from experience, and not very well. But anything else? I really can't think of any examples off hand.

As to the physical violence issue... Oh heck, this is is a comedy universe, and some of the time it's slapstick, which means that it features realistically-unwise levels of comedy violence. This is far from the first time that someone has been slapped in one of these comics, even aside from Yuki's ball-kicking. Eisu's art style may simply be making the results of a face-slap look worse than Giz tends to imply, but remember that Zii left Jung with a black eye after their first meeting (for a far lesser offence). And Yuki literally put Gary in Casualty with concussion, without the excuse of a psychotic breakdown that time.

It's a tiny bit dated, frankly, and there is a definite problem with the double standard - we don't see men hitting women as comedy, ever. But it's probably too late to worry about it in these particular comics.

Anyway... I feared when I saw the title of the strip that this would be another case of SotR duplicating the latest Ma3 exactly, but it is at least nice to see them each taking significantly different angles on similar events. (Ma3 does sex, SotR does violence.) Hopefully now they'll find ways to diverge a little (more Alex and Marie in SotR?), and we'll then get a scene involving Sandra being summoned in black lingerie, allowing Ma3 to break away completely for a stretch. The crossover is fun, but only for as long as the two comics can still be doing slightly different things while it happens.

[Bambikles]

So now we're certain that when Gary says he doesn't have one clue about how relationships work, that's not hyperbole.

[Fluffy]

Once again: Ok, cool. Next time someone hurts my pride, an ex GF perhaps, I'll slap her in the face. Hard enough to cause severe swelling. I'll let you guys know how that goes, you know, from jail.

You never did answer my question. What would you have done if you had been treated the way Senna had been (essentially used for sex, seemingly ignored throughout your date, and then dumped for your rival?).

As for the rest of what you said - it would depend on the situation. If a guy slaps a girl while she's in a fit of hysterics, it's forgivable. If he's slapping her around because he's angry, it's assault (as a rule, men are stronger than women and aren't supposed to be assaulting the weaker sex). A woman slapping a man once across the face for saying something that offends her is not assault - it's a message that says 'you disgust me; back off'. It's self defense.

Again, Senna could have done a whole lot worse to Gary (kick him in the balls, punch him, slam her high heel into his foot, claw his face, etc - which would have been assault on her part, as the actions would have been extreme and unnecessary) - but she didn't, and settled for something that got his attention, but didn't cause him any real harm.

So why make an issue out of it by trying to turn it into a double standard scenario?

[panzertank83]

A woman slapping a man once across the face for saying something that offends her is not assault

Why YES, yes it is. It is EXACTLY the same thing as a man hitting a woman, and to say otherwise undermines the gender equality that we have all fought so hard for (not to even go into the fact that Senna is chromosomally male).

As for what I would do in such a situation: Well setting aside the fact that the whole "used for sex" part of it would require malice and intent to be true, neither of which were present, at least not for Gary. Besides that, he was only ever a sex toy /accessory for Senna anyway and she's just mad that he had the audacity to disobey her (she really did treat him more like some kind of sex-pet than a person).
Woah, got off track.....OH! right, what I would do: Well, I'd pull out a "So let me get this straight..." speech. Those tend to be both enlightening and devastating for the person on the receiving end. Very emotionally satisfying.

[Spidrift]

A woman slapping a man once across the face for saying something that offends her is not assault ...

You're right, it isn't. It's battery. Though I imagine that Senna also did enough in the scene we didn't see to qualify as assault as well, so I'd guess that the charge sheet would read A&B. In an Anglophone country, at least; I'm not sure what the French equivalent would be.

Of course, whether the case ever came to court would be a whole other question - one can imagine a lot of policemen trying to talk the victim out of pressing charges in a situation like this. On the other hand, those highly visible bruises on Gary's face are going to make things a whole lot easier for the prosecution if things do go that far. I can also imagine Senna throwing a whole lot of diva-esque shapes at the police and making the whole situation progressively worse for herself.

But anyway, I'd like to think that most people here don't actually think that physical violence is a good solution to social or romantic problems - though I could be wrong. What I'm guessing a lot of people mean is, "Gary is being a clueless jerkass, and deserves whatever penalties are mandated for that. In a slapstick comedy universe, that means a comedy slap round the face, complete with comedy bruising."

(Note for the slow of thinking: You are not slapstick comedy characters. Don't try this at home.)

[Fluffy]

Okay, so - Senna slapping Gary is wrong. If a guy slapped a girl in the strip, it would be wrong, as well.

So how come no one pitched a real fit when Kiley slapped Yuki? Or when Yuki flipped Didi, bound her and then spanked her with a spatula? And I don't recall much of a fuss being raised when Yuki chucked a cowbell at Sonya's head.

What I'm getting at is pitching a fit over Senna slapping Gary being a jerk is ridiculous when there have been cases where women reacted more violently to each other for lesser things.

[FlashD81]

You have 4 panels to get your point across, and in a COMIDY strip this was one of the funniest way to get to the point.

I'm not for the abuse of Gary but he can be so dense sometimes, or just plain ignorant. He sometimes needs a wakeup call on the shit he pulls out of that ignorance. I think he let is curiosity get the better of him in this situation. He has been so spineless in the past that he can't imagine being in the position, much less the frame of mind, to dump someone.

Sorry for going off topic, but the point is I feel he needs to learn that he is capable of hurting people unintentionally, and it is unwise to seek the advise of the person he just hurt.

Senna could have yelled at him, but that would have probably carried into the next strip. While she is fun to have around, at times, I'm hoping to find out more about the other characters.

[philippos42]

Senna is chromosomally male, but appears to be hormonally female. Not that a woman can't hurt a man with her hands.

But let's not pretend that Senna isn't an awful awful person in general.

[Spidrift]

So how come no one pitched a real fit when Kiley slapped Yuki? Or when Yuki flipped Didi, bound her and then spanked her with a spatula? And I don't recall much of a fuss being raised when Yuki chucked a cowbell at Sonya's head.

Actually I remember quite a bit of ... discussion ... over most incidents of this kind (except probably for Kiley's snap-out-of-it slap on Yuki, which would have been perceived as medical treatment rather than assault - though I believe it'd be bad practice in real life). It certainly came up in the fourteen pages of rather heated discussion of the cowbell incident, and in the nineteen pages of downright confused debate when Yuki started spanking DiDi.

You really, really can't say that "no one" objected. And some fits were pitched along the way.

[Fluffy]

Eh, knew I was phrasing it wrong - meant to say that there weren't as many people making a huge fuss, not that no one had done so.

I guess this case with Gary should be seen as all the other incidents of 'unprovoked' violence in this series - as long as the person on the receiving end doesn't complain/press charges, the 'attacks' are harmless.

[Don Alexander]

This is like the Director's Cut of the Ma3 strip!

So how come no one pitched a real fit [...] when Yuki flipped Didi, bound her and then spanked her with a spatula?

What, you don't remember that guy, mortaug, who completely flipped, screamed that the comic had jumped the shark, no way ever could Yuki - so slight - toss Amazonian DiDi, then went forth to describe in graphic detail how he'd dismember Yuki, and was finally banned after puking epithets at the entire forum?

[Fluffy]

Again, as I said in my last post, I phrased my last response wrong (I meant to say that there weren't many who created a fuss, not that no one had).

[themacnut]

Sometimes, what you don't know can hurt you, sometimes literally. Far as real-life social situations go, you say the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time and place, it can get you hit or worse - and it won't matter whether you knew it was the wrong thing to say.

Also, the person cracking open the Can O' Pain on you may not care about legal consequences for doing so; in fact calling the law on certain people is liable to make things even worse, since that person or his/her friends may retaliate against you, possibly with even greater violence. The difference between most of us on this forum and those people is that since we would strongly prefer NOT to go to jail, we are unlikely to respond violently to someone saying something that pisses us off.

As for the comic, I still maintain that Gary deserved that slap. Maybe next time he'll remember the pain and have a bit more clue. Maybe. Since it's a comic strip and not at ALL representative of real life (a geek like Gary getting to bang someone like Senna? REALLY? Not in our universe!), let's just accept it as fictional slapstick and move on, 'k?

[FlashD81]

As for the comic, I still maintain that Gary deserved that slap. Maybe next time he'll remember the pain and have a bit more clue. Maybe. Since it's a comic strip and not at ALL representative of real life (a geek like Gary getting to bang someone like Senna? REALLY? Not in our universe!), let's just accept it as fictional slapstick and move on, 'k?

Agreed