11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

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JoybuzzerX
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by JoybuzzerX »

Maechris wrote:
JoybuzzerX wrote:
Miora wrote:Genitals and gender are only relevant for sex and reproduction.
DNA tests and which prison to be sent to, as well, which with Ruby filming on her phone, could be relevant to Angel first attacking and Dillion assaulting a female (regardless of him being assaulted first).
PUBERTY GROWTH HORMONES ACTIVITY OF GLANDS HIP BONE STRUCTURE SECONDARY CHARACTERSTICS MUSCLE DEVELOPMENT ARGGHHHHHHH

Yeah, when you're in the biology/chemistry or medical departments, accepting the above statement to its logical extreme proves almost impossible :P

But, yeah, when it comes to general personality, treatment we should extend towards a person we're romantically uninvolved and uninterested in, and when we're talking about virtues and flaws of fictional characters, this statement should at least be strived towards.



Angel's an impulsive, unforgiving and obsessed individual, but there are some positive sides to their character that mostly only people they're neutral or friendly towards get to see.
I don't expect to see Angel or Dillion go off to jail :p It's a comic. The first part, was people just generally seem to forget the DNA aspect of things. It's one thing they haven't been able to change yet. When they do, maybe the world will change with it.
Zayzie wrote:(I tend to lurk the forum threads for the comics rather than participate in them, so apologies for appearing out of nowhere)

Myself (cis-woman) and many other women I know have actually used "dickhead" or "dick" as an insult to each other before, and I get called it a lot. I never actually thought about it much until I took an economics class where I was informed that the terms are used to insult people based on gender norms/roles.

Insults referencing cis-male anatomy tend to be geared towards insulting a person's rashness, foolishness, manipulative tendencies, overbearing tendencies, shamelessness--very extreme traits associated with men's roles in a relationship or a society. Insults referencing cis-female tend to be associated with weakness, submissiveness, fragility, being delicate, vain, promiscuous, etc. Some insults are often interchangeable while others might be specific to one gender like "whore". In regards to the comic, Dillon's lack of skill in articulating his true feelings into a thoughtful insult, resorted in him referring to Angel as a "dickhead" when he probably meant something like "you are a manipulative, overbearing and obsessed jerk" (which is still hypocritical regardless of whether Angel or Dillon said it).

That being said, I didn't much anything about this Angel/Dillon/Zii fight funny, save for Zii's part in all this. And today's strip just makes me cringe a lot, and I really didn't think the punchline was funny.

Both Dillon and Angel are being so incredibly sexist and (unwittingly) self-degrading, especially in this strip, and the conversation, obectively makes very little sense. They're fighting over Jerzy and how their definition of "gay" applies to him, and bashing qualities, perceived as girl-specific, in the process. I don't even understand why Angel even continues to hate Dillon, he's not even trying to get Jerzy back, and Jerzy hasn't been unfaithful at all (unless you count that calendar spread with Dillon, though I don't think anything really happened). Angel could very easily be the better person here by being satisfied with having Jerzy, but, by even getting into this fight, and going as far to go after Zii, it's obvious Angel is just as insecure about their relationship with Jerzy as Dillon was.

Like, at this point, I just want Jerzy to move to Australia and get into a monogamous relationship with any other person living on the planet while I finish off strangling these two butt wipes with my bare hands. I've got enough of their Jerzy-specific angst to use up an average person's liftetime supply of facepalms and incoherent rage.

However, kudos to Giz for making characters with enough personality to provoke such an intense emotional response though. I don't usually get hung up on characters like that, especially ones I don't like.
Well, to be fair, this is a comic that updates twice a week and a year's worth of comics is a month or less time. Look at the first year or two of M3. All of it happened within a month of the M3 universe time. When comics don't update daily, time moves slow, while the reader will think time should be going by faster (because it is for them).

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Spidrift
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by Spidrift »

JoybuzzerX wrote:I think the times are changing. Asshole seemed to be male centered and now seems to be going over to gender neutral. At least, that's how it's seemed to me.
If that sort of thing is true, as Zayzie says, it's probably due to women gradually getting into more traditionally masculine social positions, especially with power over others. You sling male-gendered insults at people who behave in traditionally-male-style bad ways.
Maechris wrote:Angel's an impulsive, unforgiving and obsessed individual, but there are some positive sides to their character that mostly only people they're neutral or friendly towards get to see.
Characters in these comics are not only mostly impulsive, immature, and erratically vengeful - which is because they're comedy characters, of course - but also quite often romantically obsessive. In other words, Giz has a habit of doing comedy stalker gags. But only their targets and rivals tend to see that; the rest of the time, they're amiable dingbats like almost everyone else. So Gary liked Yuki from the first, Peggy likes Sonya, and Ruby probably likes Angel, despite the fact that if they were paying attention, they ought to notice that these people are trouble.

As for fighting over Jerzy - well, we note the Jerzy has apparently never tried to do much to escape Angel's clingy obsessions, and he said that he loved how Dillon "wears his heart on his sleeve". In other words, it looks like Jerzy sets out to be a drama queen magnet. It's not excusing those two for their asinine behaviour to say that Jerzy ultimately encourages them, and is a twit himself.
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LegendaryKroc
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by LegendaryKroc »

Wow, Dillon. You walked right into that crack about fighting like a girl.

And given that you just did that thing some guys do where they act like losing to a girl is in some way more demeaning than losing to a guy, my sympathy guage for you may have just gone into minus numbers. That shouldn't even be possible!

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TwoWayStar
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by TwoWayStar »

Zayzie wrote:I don't even understand why Angel even continues to hate Dillon, he's not even trying to get Jerzy back, and Jerzy hasn't been unfaithful at all (unless you count that calendar spread with Dillon, though I don't think anything really happened). Angel could very easily be the better person here by being satisfied with having Jerzy, but, by even getting into this fight, and going as far to go after Zii, it's obvious Angel is just as insecure about their relationship with Jerzy as Dillon was.
Omg...you're so right. If only Dillon were smart enough to turn the tables! But then again I'm sick of their Jerzy-related squabbling as well as sick of Jerzy himself.

Spidrift wrote:"Dickhead" is an insult usually addressed to men, especially as it includes a reference to male anatomy. Dillon has just spent the last three panels categorising Angel as female because of her anatomy, and then he blows it by insulting Angel as a male, with a reference to male anatomy. Angel is laughing at Dillon's inability to keep those categories str... clear.

Yeah, weak punchline, frankly.
Ahh i see, thanks.

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Zayzie
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by Zayzie »

JoybuzzerX wrote: Well, to be fair, this is a comic that updates twice a week and a year's worth of comics is a month or less time. Look at the first year or two of M3. All of it happened within a month of the M3 universe time. When comics don't update daily, time moves slow, while the reader will think time should be going by faster (because it is for them).
Double post merged. The DAMNed
I don't mind how slowly the time moves, how slowly the characters develop, I was just more irked about how those two lashed out, it was incredibly self-entitled and overall just icky.

Also, I just realized one thing I really do like about this strip is that it shows off how awful people can be when they hate another person to such an extent, and how far they'd go to hurt them emotionally rather than address the fact that they're being hypocrites (specifically Angel and Dillon).

Hypothetically, if Ruby was genderfluid I highly doubt Dillon would have said any of the things he did, and obvs Angel would never speak that way to Ramona. Dillon also stopped strangling Zii when he got snapped out of his rage via logic and reason. Heck, Dillon is barely paying any attention to anything or he'd of picked up that Angel had boobs when they both lost their shirts. Angel seems to be suffering from a much more severe, but focused form of blind rage.

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Spidrift
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by Spidrift »

They are, well, drama queens. They both get off on big emotional scenes. (The difference between them and Sonya is that she wants dramatic events, while these two want dramatic emotions.) Which is all terribly cute and delightfully camp, darling - until they run into each other and start competing for something. Then the screaming rises in pitch until local dogs start to curl up and die. It's a feedback effect. And yeah, it all maybe gets a bit tiresome.

(Contrast Zii, who is no saint and certainly not a pacifist, but who doesn't get off on cheap melodrama, and who therefore punctuated her contribution to all this violence by offering Angel some good advice, and who has now dropped out of the action.)
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Velf
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by Velf »

Spidrift wrote:Yeah, weak punchline, frankly.
Though not a native speaker, I would suppose that a "b-word" would have been more appropriate to describe Angel's personality and actions in this case... But it is Dillon, for God's sake....

JoybuzzerX
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by JoybuzzerX »

No. Dickhead works just as well. As stated in earlier posts, name calling has started to go beyond them sticking to one gender :p

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cellabella
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by cellabella »

Zayzie wrote:(I tend to lurk the forum threads for the comics rather than participate in them, so apologies for appearing out of nowhere)

Myself (cis-woman) and many other women I know have actually used "dickhead" or "dick" as an insult to each other before, and I get called it a lot. I never actually thought about it much until I took an economics class where I was informed that the terms are used to insult people based on gender norms/roles.
Likewise. My sister and I call each other smegheads or dickcheeses all the time. Neither of us have any appendage that could produce those substances. I didn't get the end either until I read some forum responses. I thought the "joke" was that Dillon had mispronounced "dickhead" because of his injuries until I saw that it was spelled correctly. Then I came here to see what I'd missed.
Insults referencing cis-male anatomy tend to be geared towards insulting a person's rashness, foolishness, manipulative tendencies, overbearing tendencies, shamelessness--very extreme traits associated with men's roles in a relationship or a society. Insults referencing cis-female tend to be associated with weakness, submissiveness, fragility, being delicate, vain, promiscuous, etc. Some insults are often interchangeable while others might be specific to one gender like "whore". In regards to the comic, Dillon's lack of skill in articulating his true feelings into a thoughtful insult, resorted in him referring to Angel as a "dickhead" when he probably meant something like "you are a manipulative, overbearing and obsessed jerk" (which is still hypocritical regardless of whether Angel or Dillon said it).
I agree with this in spirit, but since the authors had Dillon repeat the insult in what we're to take as a shamefaced, self-realizing "Oops, did I really say that" sort of tone, I'm assuming we're also meant to believe that Dillon realizes his "mistake." It was, as others have pointed out, a weak punchline.
That being said, I didn't much anything about this Angel/Dillon/Zii fight funny, save for Zii's part in all this. And today's strip just makes me cringe a lot, and I really didn't think the punchline was funny.
Also agreed. I'm actually a little shocked that the authors went there with having them physically rough each other up to the point where there are injuries possibly bad enough to get Dillon bounced from his movie. I understand the violence is supposed to be "slapstick" and the "rule of funny" and so forth, but I had to take a hiatus from the MA3 boards because Yuki's behavior during her psychotic breaks made me ill. I find nothing funny about people railing on each other. To each their own, but ... yeah.
Both Dillon and Angel are being so incredibly sexist and (unwittingly) self-degrading, especially in this strip, and the conversation, obectively makes very little sense. They're fighting over Jerzy and how their definition of "gay" applies to him, and bashing qualities, perceived as girl-specific, in the process.
I see your point, but Dillon has been fairly biphobic, at least when it comes to males, from the time Matt cheated on him with Sandra. He's also being fairly transphobic here and quite misogynistic, as you point out. Femininity is not judged by how good you do or don't look in a dress. Angel's motives are a little more clear to me. Xe knows that Xe isn't exactly what Jerzy wants, because for whatever reason, Jerzy is biphobic as hell, as well. That's been the sticking point for me ever since the Jerzy/Angel/Dillion stuff played out.
I don't even understand why Angel even continues to hate Dillon, he's not even trying to get Jerzy back, and Jerzy hasn't been unfaithful at all (unless you count that calendar spread with Dillon, though I don't think anything really happened). Angel could very easily be the better person here by being satisfied with having Jerzy, but, by even getting into this fight, and going as far to go after Zii, it's obvious Angel is just as insecure about their relationship with Jerzy as Dillon was.
You have it on your last line. Angel is, frankly, very unstable, insecure and quite dangerous. The very fact that Angel chose to crater her relationship with Zii, who genuinely had no idea that Jerzy was in a "relationship" with xer rather than get mad as hell as Jerzy should say it all. I didn't like Dillon attacking Sandra, but at least he rightfully was furious at Matt for cheating. There was none of that with Angel. Xe continues to kiss Jerzy's ass. There's not even any suggestion that Jerzy apologized to Angel for the indiscretion. Xe loathes Dillon because Dillon had the "nerve" to "take" what Angel believed to be theirs. Xe hates Zii for the same reason. The fact that Angel still can't let any of this go despite, as you point out, Dillon having no desire for Jerzy any longer and Zii having long moved on says a lot - and none of it good.
Like, at this point, I just want Jerzy to move to Australia and get into a monogamous relationship with any other person living on the planet while I finish off strangling these two butt wipes with my bare hands. I've got enough of their Jerzy-specific angst to use up an average person's liftetime supply of facepalms and incoherent rage.
Like with Zii, I have a soft spot for Dillon. They both have done stupid stuff, but I think it was not out of malice. I think Dillon got a raw deal. The more we see of Matt, the more it becomes clear what a selfish, lying douche he was. It is more likely that he purposely withheld being bi from Dillon knowing he'd react badly. When he dropped the bombshell in MA3, neither the Matt nor Dillon characters were especially fleshed out. But now it's impossible to believe that Matt would spend any time at all with Dillon and not realize that Dillon had zero interest in females, so his "You're not bi?" query was extremely disingenuous.

Angel, I don't like so much. I've dealt with people like xer, and I also really don't like how she laid the burden of Jerzy's cheating on Zii's doorstep.

But for me, it's Jerzy that's the one I want to send on a one-way trip to Mars. I think across the MA-verse, the only character I hate more at this point is Takeru (Yuki's dad) and possibly the model whose name I forget who is about to ruin Lavali's life in SOTR. Jerzy is a spineless ass whose inability to acknowledge that he is bisexual directly led to Dillon being hurt and Angel, as well. Xe is binding, no doubt, because xe wants to be as male as possible for Jerzy.

I was prepared to go neutral on Jerzy if he managed to stop from occurring what actually occurred, but he was ineffectual, as usual, so eff him.

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Spidrift
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by Spidrift »

JoybuzzerX wrote:No. Dickhead works just as well. As stated in earlier posts, name calling has started to go beyond them sticking to one gender
However, the joke doesn't work if insults are non-gendered. And the whole reason that Dillon wasn't going to call Angel a "bitch" was that Dillon has been thinking of Angel as a guy, and can't instantly shed that habit.
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by Cortez »

Velf wrote:
Spidrift wrote:Yeah, weak punchline, frankly.
Though not a native speaker, I would suppose that a "b-word" would have been more appropriate to describe Angel's personality and actions in this case... But it is Dillon, for God's sake....
Not really.

Anyway, Angel still isn't wrong in saying Dillon screwed things up with Jerzy himself.
UnsightlyWalrus wrote:I'm with the school of thought that gender is biological and it's something you are and not something that you can choose (yet). Even if you chop off your ****, devour hundreds of hormone pills and have your gender changed in official papers, your scars and your very own chromosomes point out your biological gender.

And that's just my opinion.
And you'd be wrong, since gender identity isn't a matter of choice.

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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by LegendaryKroc »

Indeed. Isn't that directly stated by Angel, who should know that better than anyone?

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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by Don Alexander »

Weeeellll, Angel/Angie is a fictional character who knows only what their creator(s) put in their mouth. ;)
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by Maechris »

Conservative people are inherently at a disadvantage when trying to discuss issues of mental vs biological gender, because they find it extremely easy to put it in a way that makes them come off as simply bigoted and transphobic. I mean, heck, I have my own opinion on certain matters related to LGBT that has been called disgustingly unnatural by conservative catholics, but bigoted and fascist by certain (admittedly somewhat extreme-appearing) people involved with the mentioned "matters", so I know what a landmine field this is without even being a 'conservative person'.

If we're going to go there, I'd advise caution, in case some people involved didn't know that already.
Last edited by Maechris on Sat Dec 12, 2015 11:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 11-12-15 Knockout in a dress

Post by LegendaryKroc »

Don Alexander wrote:Weeeellll, Angel/Angie is a fictional character who knows only what their creator(s) put in their mouth. ;)
Can't argue with that, but so far xer writers have displayed plentiful insight into issues of gender & sexuality, so I'm fairly inclined to not get too meta about it.

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