You hit me!
Yes, I went with a boob joke. I would feel bad about that but it was either or have Peonie walk around with a black eye. Original I had planed to have Peonie have a black eye on this page.
But as I thought about it having Peonie with a black eye would be too distracting to the rest of the story. On top of that once the guards saw Peonie, Tiffany would have ended up in jail. That or it would be a mass slaughter as Tiffany resisted being put in jail.
A couple of you mentioned a spanking as the correct response to the situation. And I got to say when I saw the suggestion I was frustrated that I hadn’t thought of that myself. Because honestly that would have been the correct response to the situation and let’s face it, it probably would have gotten some extra sign up to the members area.
I do want to sum up my opinion on statements like “It’s never ok to hit a woman” because I do understand that the person saying it was not really advocating a complete secession of violence toward females. What they were trying to say was;
“if you are upset you should not vent your anger on those around you ever if you are hurt at the time. You should take a breath and remind yourself that you ultimately care about this person even if they have hurt you. You may have come from a culture or family situation where violence was uses as a punitive measure for disrespectful behavior but it is not an appropriate way to deal hurt feelings.”
However the speaker believed that “abusers” were to dumb to comprehend that message. Or more accurately that there may be some abusers among the entire population of abusers who might miss the message and that it was to dangerous to risk even one abuser missing the message. So the only way to make sure that every one understood the message is to oversimplify it down to a “noble lie”.
And perhaps this is the right thing to do. I am told that the “This is your brain on drugs” campaign was very successful even though it’s message was a complete lie and quite idiotic. Perhaps this is an effective technique. Personally I found the “brain on drugs” campaign very insulting, but then again was not the type of kid to experiment with drugs so I was not the intended audience.
But I don’t believe it is the only technique that will work to get a message across. Lying damages your credibility. You may win on battle but in the long run people are going to stop listening to you. And as we saw when you over simplify a message it is often offensive both because you are calling the listener and idiot and because the message often takes on other meaning you did not intend. “It is never ok to hit a woman” picks up subtexts of entitlement and discrimination against men that was never the intention.
“Well I Always Aim For The Center of Mass.” I like that running gag.
It’s sort of funny how long your comments page is for the last issue, how long this comment thread is probably going to be, and how much you yourself have been writing to explain the last page and the current page. Part, if not most, of that amusement being that apparently you have no qualms with people disliking your work because of the abundant clothes-ripping getting in the way of the story but you have serious issues when it comes to whether people think you are disrespecting women with punch sound effects.
Getting more to the page; Peonie’s right boob? Wouldn’t Tiffany have had to use her left fist then?
If Peonie did want Tiffany to be a man again so they could have romance and currently has feelings for her that she’s not expressing, I personally think she should just romance female Tiffany anyways.
@Lemur – The long posts are not because I am trying to prove much of anything. They are simply because I can under the new CMS. Under the old system I couldn’t post something attached to an individual comic it all had to go into the blog iframe at the bottom. Now I can talk about the comics so I am.
As for abusing female character I actually think it’s a good idea. The reason we thing Tiffany is tough is because she gets beat up in the comic. It you are not willing to put your hero through some misery then they down turn out to be much of a hero. The situation was that giving Peonie the punch she so justly deserved would have interrupted the flow of the comic and I wanted to talk about that creative decision.
@Drowemos — Your post for this comic was very eloquent. Well said.
@Lemur — I didn’t go back and check, but wasn’t Tiffany cracking the knuckles of her left hand in the last page?
It’s the weather’s fault. It wasn’t cold enough for Peonie to be showing, so Tiffany couldn’t go for the nip– er, nah. Won’t go there. *edges away from it*
Tiffany could have swung right handed across her own body pretty easily. I get the feeling she didn’t even hit her that hard, just in a sensitive spot.
@Drow, coolies on posting length then. I wasn’t really considering Tiffany female actually. Whether you intend it or not, I actually read this comic because I see transgender content in it, and there aren’t many comics/webcomics that cater to that in the long run and not just a one-off gag.
Aaaaw, Now I’d like to read the “unselfcensored” original idea, and see Peonie with the shiner. I don’t believe that is a violence against women support. After all, it’s a world where actual fights happend. Ok, in your style, there’s always that autocritic to how fantasy heroins are depicted – I think I’ve never laught so much than when I was reading Tiffany was trying armor models on- but if a mage blast Peonie with a spell is better considered than if Tiffany gives her a bonk?
Anyhow, thanks for the comic. I’m getting more and more fond of it.
There’s one simple solution to this. Tiffany has to kiss it and make it better. =^-^=
Peony complains about her boob, ‘you hit my boob’ again.
Tiffany replies “So do you want me to kiss it and make it all better?” Then realizes what came out of her mouth…
What’s up with feeding the squirrel?
That’s un-barbarian behavior!
Prep and cook…. that’s basic survival skills we in the 21st century respect
but hope we will never need.
(I suspect it’s on Heinleins’ list of things people ought to know how to do.)
It’s a very nice comic you’ve got there, you got me hooked. I must say I’m looking forward to what’s gonna happen next – especially to the dragon-boy whose name I can’t remember right now. I sure do hope you will keep him somewhere in your plotline.
Thanks a lot for the wonderful comic, had a great reading time ^^
The squirrels DID make an appearance in a filler. They were plotting the downfall of Faden after hearing his sarcastic “all squirrel” quip when Tiffany mentioned never actually seeing a baby squirrel. At least, they WERE plotting against him until they got distracted by a chipmunk and a nut.
“But I don’t believe it is the only technique that will work to get a message across. Lying damages your credibility. You may win on battle but in the long run people are going to stop listening to you.”
Empirically, this is simply false. Witness the Torygraph or Daily Hate Mail in the UK. Or Faux News, Kristol or the Mustache of Understanding in the US (although to be fair, Kristol and the Mustache of Understanding are probably too obtuse to realise they’re telling untruths).
Propaganda works.
Now, it’s certainly possible to make good propaganda without mistreating the truth. But it’s harder, it’s more expensive and it takes more time. And lies work just as well, if you just have a big enough megaphone.
– Jake
@Moderator:
Oh, well. My ‘tags’ vanished…
Text was:
Gender is just one attribute of a person – even if it is in most cases a very prominent one and so much overrated.
One attribute of a person is irrelevant for punishment or precautionary ‘first strikes’.
Try to (insert random kind of abuse here) my loved ones and you are in for (insert generic form of mutilation and/or gruesome death) – be you a female, a wheelchair user, a foreign person, mentally challenged, the Holy Father himself, a plain joe or (insert random attribute here).
If you’re referring to the “this is your brain on drugs” ad with the smashed egg, and then she takes the frying pan to the entire kitchen, I’m pretty sure it was metaphor. Drugs scramble your brain? Wreck your life?
I know a lot of those ‘this is your brain on cannabis, cocaine, etc’ scans were done on Long-term heavy drug users who probably suffered pretty severe side effects, so perhaps you were talking about those?
A squirrel! Quick, run, run little chipmunk-thing! Run while you still have your life!
Uh, oh! What are those evil squirrels (or chipmunks) planning? ^_^
@George:
Wouldn’t that be good news for Tiff?