trinityvixen | I...WHAT!?

Uh, first and last one of THOSE I'm ever reading. Holy SHIT.

No, seriously, going to delete all the icons I made from that strip unless he updates with an apology. Right the F now.

I agree, but just to cause trouble...

I guess you'd find it less tasteless if she just showed up with a chainsaw and hacked them to bits?

Yes, if only because a chainsaw hasn't been linked to the same kind of preventable atrocity as the hangar. The hangar is a symbol of the kinds of back-street abortions that women were forced to have before Roe v Wade. The consequences of those abortions--the infections, the deaths--were entirely preventable. Murder by chainsaw, on the other hand, is almost unheard of, so the rarity of this means it doesn't have the visceral horror of being commonplace the way abortion does.

There's also the fucked-up-ed-ness of depicting a forced abortion as "funny." Or playing it for laughs. Yes, personal choice being removed by violent, traumatic force is high-larious.

"Yes, personal choice being removed by violent, traumatic force is high-larious."

My point exactly. But I've never been able to appreciate slasher films, either. I dunno, maybe I'm unusual in finding "visceral horror" in chainsaw murder. I mean, your reply to E-man makes clear that you find murder hysterical.

Dane Cook should totally do a show with the DC Sniper.

It's a question of fates worse than death. Having someone assault you with a hanger up the crack is pretty high up there. Because it's not just death. I mean, it's very likely death (that's why the hangar became the symbol of the bad old days before Roe v Wade), but it's extreme pain, infection, loads of suffering, then death.

Chainsaw death is horrific but a) rare, and b) pretty immediate. Neither pleasant, sure, but chainsaw murder is something I'm less likely to fear being brought back by cultural insensitivity and boarishness.

Sounds like comedy GOLD!

Wow. Guess it's a good thing I never liked VG Cats much to begin with.

I've never thought much of the give-and-take violence of the strip. Mostly, it was in keeping with the Looney Tunes/ACME standard.

This? This is repulsive.

Oh, no, the violence or whatever didn't bother me. I just never found most of the strips that funny, or completely didn't get them, one of the two.

OMG!

But... can we just keep the panels with the vest and the DeLorean?

See, I'm all for time-travel un-birthing certain people. Just prevent their parents from meeting. Ha ha, it's funny. Kill them, fine. But this is worse than that. And it's not funny.

Would it have been so much to ask that she just kill the parents? Really?

*reads* okay, I make fun of the 360 *reads* huh not so bad *reads* oh my god....that took a left turn and just kept going. Thats horrible, vulgar, offensive, and just wow. Seriously. Never read it, never will. There is such a thing as crossing a line, and then there is that. I am just in awe. How horrible! Thats just offensive to be offensive, there is no justification or defense for that.

There's no need for this to have gone the way it did. WTF?

yeah it just seemed to take a turn that had nothing to do with anything and was totally not called for. Me thinks the artist forgot to take his antipsychotics that morning?

Eh, nothing's sacred. I think S*P's first strip ever was a coat-hanger abortion joke. It was only later that it developed its more tasteful horrible offensiveness.

Nothing is sacred, you're right, but there are things that should be approached with tact if you want to riff off them with humor. This is not the way to do that.

Now that I'm away from work...The first Something Positive.

The difference is that the SP comic makes a point that it's a mean-spirited sort of thing to do. By making Leo the bad guy and Aeris the put-upon one, the VG Cats cartoon is trying to justify/excuse the forced abortion "joke." It's not justified. It never, ever is.

Trey Parker commented in an interview that "If we ever acknowledge that one thing we did crosses the line or is too tasteless to be funny, then everything we've ever done suddenly becomes something that crosses the line or is too tasteless." I'm not saying the strip was all that funny or that the guy is some kind of comedy First Amendment maverick or something, but any problems you have with the strip are what you bring to it, and in my opinion not the responsibility of the artist, nor does he have any responsibility to keep his comic within anyone's boundaries of good taste other than his own.

I mean, you're certainly entitled to be offended by it, to post about it, to discourage others from reading the comic, etc. I realized right now as I was writing that you only implied that you wanted an apology and you also only did it in the comments, but what I'd been going to say is that's when it becomes like some sort of privilege to be entertained. Nobody has the "right" not to be offended on the internet. You can expect it and hope for it, but you're bound to be disappointed.

Me personally, I don't take it so seriously. It's an internet webcomic about anthropomorphic cats that are time traveling to prevent each other's birth due to anger over "your mom" and XBOX jokes. One of the characters is randomly British. It could have been more tactful, yeah, but it's not like it's a "message" comic and it has any impact on society. Based on the message board response it looks like his comic is read by about 20 people, two of whom were disappointed.

The boundaries of good taste are exceeded whether they or mine or his. I doubt anyone finds this in good taste. There's also the tricky question of the fact that it's patently not funny, which, if you're going to be in bad taste, you have to shoot for in order to justify your work.

I also find it very telling that only guys on the f'list see no problem with this comic. It's specifically riffing on violence against women as a panacea for one person's suffering. That shit skates, as Kevin Smith said in This Film Is Not Yet Rated. It's only a woman, after all. Just forget what the coat hangar symbolizes and the suffering inherent in it. The debate is not that this is a comic that is incredibly awful and demeaning towards women written by a man but a call to defend his right to be offensive. God forbid we say he was in bad taste, no matter how many insignificant females feel utterly revolted by this.

For the record: this is not an infrequently read or unpopular comic.

Your first point is not true. Clearly the author thinks it will be okay. He didn't offend himself in writing it. He also didn't seem to offend any of the message board posters. And I don't want to get in some sort of argument over this because it's unwinnable, but the truth is, I feel inarguably, that humor is subjective. There is nothing in the world that SOMEONE doesn't find funny. Again, the readers on his message board and the author himself think the comic is funny.

Well, I am a guy, I can't argue that, but I think it's more that I don't read that kind of meaning into objects. It may be symbolic of various struggles throughout history for you. To me, it's a coat hanger. Same with the noose example you used below. It's not like I get offended whenever characters in a comedy get marched up to the noose (although this example is flawed IMO in that it can't be quite substituted in a potential joke the way the hanger is used, nor would finding a way to get it in necessarily have the same ties to racism the way the hanger is a reference to abortion).

I'm not arguing against the way you reacted to it at all, though, I'm just saying it isn't my way. I look at it as something that is, hopefully, currently not happening, and if we all don't vote with our heads up our asses, will not return to happening and if someone makes a joke about it, that may make them ignorant and stupid but for me it's not the end of the world. I'm pretty sure the author of the comic and his readers will go on being ignorant and stupid regardless of what they learn.

And while what Kevin Smith says is true, you can't really reverse it without creating a bit of the opposite double-standard. The point, as someone else was trying to make, is that it's just violence period, whether it's a coat hanger or a chainsaw murder.

To put it another way, the coat hangar is to women's rights what the noose is to racial politics. It is a symbol of the imbalance of power and the suffering the un-empowered have endured because the empowered decreed they weren't full people worthy of consideration and protection.

A noose is not a joke, so why should a coat hangar abortion be?

Of course, Muslims are funny, gay rape is funny, as is alien rape, prostitution is funny, transsexuals are funny, infanticide is funny, and racism is funny.

You can be as offended as you want to be, but realize that you didn't mind when other people's sacred cows were being slaughtered.

Of course, I don't mind when it seems the behavior is not being validated. In the latest strip, it's like we're supposed to agree that that is not only funny but a good move on Aeris' part. No one thinks Yoshi sticking a sock in Mario's mouth is okay; Yoshi is just a bitter little dinosaur.

Plus, there's a lack of visual on that one at least that doesn't put it in the same league as the latest.

Because "Hope you get crib death!" isn't horrible and triggering?

(Also, I totally forgot the latest Super Effective, which shows a character effectively encouraging a child's eating disorder.)

My point is more that VGCats is offensive, and always has been offensive, and has several times crossed the line into things that I'm sure made someone have the reaction that you had here.

The latest comic was weak--I can see where he was going, with the "I'll go back and time and make sure you never existed" thing; but lacking a particularly coherant punchline, he took refuge in audacity. It's weak, but it's not worth breaking out the picket signs. I'd be more concerned if it didn't immediately follow a comic about writer's block--he's obviously low on ideas and not producing his best work.

Which, again, doesn't mean you don't have the right to be offended. You can be offended by anything you want. But you should be aware of why this is something that matters but everything else is apparently okay.

Because I am the resident internet bitch, I have to say that "triggering" is the worst excuse ever for someone to say that X thing is offensive. Everyone has "triggers", but so, so many people pull it out as a trump card and it always makes me want to offend them more when they do it.

I'm not saying I don't have any, I'm just saying that I recognize that they're entirely my problem and no one ought to actually cater to them.

The typical use of "triggering" online sets my teeth on edge, but I was using it here to make a point about the general versus specific offensiveness of VGCats.

Would I have been better spelling out the sociopolitical issues with implying that crib death is an active choice on the part of a caretaker?

No, I'm just saying "triggering" is a stupid word and shouldn't be brought into serious arguments if you don't want to be dismissed out of hand.

I...WHAT!?

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