Why is it that every webcomic I follow ends up serving the Liberal Agenda? Like this one.
I have a couple of hypotheses.
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My eyes fire out liberal cooties that swarm up the intertubes to colonize the brains of the artists whose work I look at.
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There is a secret cabal of progressives nested deep in the bowels of the NSA who are monitoring what I watch, and who kidnap the authors and subject them to intense brainwashing techniques.
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I’m self-selecting artists who don’t say stupid conservative shit that annoys me. I’ve somehow been unable to find the appeal of Mallard Fillmore, for instance.
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All the good webcomic artists are naturally open-minded and intelligent.
I’m sort of leaning towards #3, with some appreciation of #4, while wishing #2 were true. I’d start reading webcomics by conservatives if I thought it would provoke a conversion response.
NSA, make my laptop camera light blink 3 times if you’re watching.
Annnd, Jacques hits it out of the park*. I’ve loved Questionable Content for years, and I was a little worried with how this story line would play out. I might just have squeed, quietly of course, in a dignified manner as befits a 48 year old man. ;)
*disclaimer: cis dude here. How I feel about this isn’t deeply informed by trans experience or knowledge.
Conservative “humour” is based on punching down, making the dinenfranchised the butt of the joke. This is inherently not funny.
Here, Doonesbury said it best.
Ok, why did the blockquote work in preview but not when posted?
Oh, right HTML.
@FossilFIshy
There is no dignified way to squee. Accept this, and squee with rapturous glee.
I have been squeeing my little head off over this storyline! Wiggling my toes, too. :3
The Jacques-unit is a beautiful person. And a damn good musician too.
I’ve been really glad to see QC getting so much attention lately. Claire has been one of my favorite characters, and this story arc with Marten has been great. Jeph put a lot of time and research into creating Claire, and I think he’s done a great job.
One of the things I love about QC is that his sexually diverse cast is so perfectly normal. As well they should be. There are characters that are straight, gay, lesbian, bi, trans… there’s even a dominatrix. And their lives, aside from sci-fi robots and obligatory comic hijinks, are perfectly ordinary. Comical, but ordinary. They have ups, they have downs, but mostly they’re just getting by and getting along, the latter being so important. QC is about inclusion, and ought to be on everybody’s daily reading list.
Conservative humor isn’t funny, so you don’t notice it.
Meanwhile, in some other part of the world (perhaps at the American Enterprise Institute, someone is saying that liberal humor is not funny.
I don’t consider this comic to be “humor”, per se. QC in general is only mildly humorous, as Jacque tends to put the story before the jokes, not the other way around. Today’s comic in particular is not funny, but, as they say in Reddit, it hits me in the feels.
*Squeee!!!!*
A post referencing my most favoritist webcomic on the net.
I wish some of those cooties could infest Penny Arcade. So much good there, but so much ungood, too.
Athywren #5
Ahem! I’ll have you know that I have a very dignified squee, thank you very much! Why, you can ask any of the small mammals hereabouts, once they’ve uncovered their ears that is.
And in my last derail, I promise: how the hell did I not know about Deathmole? Any ‘band’ that has a tune in 5/4 called Fifty Goddam Skeleton Warriors will make an instant fan out of me.
I haven’t read this comic before. My loss, it seems.
@rossthompson (#2): Yup, nailed it. When you make fun of people who are less powerful, that’s bullying. When you make fun of the powerful, that’s comedy.
Also, a little bit of #4. Artists are, on average, more liberal and progressive. Comes partly of the environment of art schools and other artists, partly of having to experience a wide range of things to make good art, partly of having to think a little more deeply about things, and partly of realizing that embracing complexity makes better art. And probably some other reasons.
QC is just about the only thing I still read every single day. Well, other than FTB, of course.
Well, I didn’t Squee when I read QC this morning, but I definitely went Aww!
PZs post made me wonder: I don’t thin I ever found an obviously conservative webcomic. Are conservatives truly without humour or talent?
I’m more than a bit doubtfull about Sandra and Woo since the “feminist” storyline, though.
I never watch America’s Funniest Home Videos because, although they can be funny, mostly they are not. It seems every other one is some kind of face plant–like live slapstick. Watching someone get hurt and laughing at them is just mean. IIRC there was a type of entertainment in the Colosseum where they dressed people up in clown clothes so the crowd could laugh harder when the lions ripped them up.
That’s what I think of when I hear conservative humour.
I vote for 3: others tend to put one off.
I’ve not read QC for a while, but it’s always had a liberal flavour. My favourite quote is the last panel here.
Aaaaand I fail at block quotes. Long time lurker, new poster. Not familiar with the posting syntax.
I’d duck if I were you…
@gussnarp #13: Here’s a (not the only, of course) constructivist perspective on why art tends toward the radical. When you’re doing any kind of world-building, as artists tend to do, you’re necessarily consciously constructing a new discourse (or reinterpreting an existing discourse, or adding to or modifying an existing discourse – you’re somehow working to construct new discursive meaning). This process makes it all but impossible to not recognize the constructed nature of our existing cultural discourses, especially in cases where one is reconstructing an existing discourse in a way designed to ‘fool’ the audience (though the buy-in is generally willful) into accepting it as real. Art encourages deconstruction of social truths. If my audience accepts my actor as a king becasue of a fancy robe and a formal manner of speech, I’m also forced to confront (or actively ignore) the reasons that the actual king is accepted as king. Artists, to be good artists, need to be very familiar with the sign systems of the spaces in which they’re working; learning what those signs are and how they function to construct meaning (whether through formal study, lived experience, or intuitive heuristics) challenges essentialist perspectives. Since conservatism usually works by essentializing what it wishes to conserve (at least this is the approach common here in USA in for the first couple of centuries of the country’s existence – you can’t change that which is essential), making art is a radicalizing activity, though of course it’s not necessarily sufficient to actually make someone question or abandon any and all conservative ideas. Hence, as a population, artists skew pretty heavily toward the radical.
There’s also a mutual process of reinforcement with marginal populations. Because art is always going to be at least a little bit contra-normative, art communities are going to tend to be safer spaces for people who don’t conform to mainstream norms and thus attract a disproportionate number of people who are marginalized in various ways. A higher marginalization quotient in the population will tend to reinforce the contra-normative elements of the local discourse, which attracts a greater proportion of marginalized people, and so on.
Jacques posted the following on Twitter in response to speculation about Claire’s physical status.
https://twitter.com/jephjacques/status/517429434958487553
I know it’s just a comment, but it isn’t very convincing. It’s also sort of confusing.
One thing that can’t change (which you might call “essential”) is a person’s psychological disposition toward a certain kind of experience at a certain moment. Whether or not that disposition itself is (at least partly) “socially constructed,” understanding how that happens, as well as how to create such experiences through a work, certainly doesn’t entail that you have to question it or abandon it or revise it or anything like that. It’s what works, so that’s what you learn to do.
I also don’t accept that it’s all part of some “discourse.” Whether it’s meaningful or not is a separate question, but the idea that some experience just plain needs to be communicating something (presumably something expressible in a language, as if all art is like literature*), and not only that but communicating something specifically about our social environment, is simply not tenable. When I write out a chord progression or a rhythm (or really any old abstract object you like), I don’t know what actual “meaning” that may or may not have to one person or another, but it isn’t generally saying something “radical” (or “liberal,” which means something else) that’s challenging any socially “conservative” or “essentialist” ideas. Even if it were, it might slightly undermine the (very strawmannish) idea that nothing is thus constructed, but that wouldn’t lead anyone in any particular direction. It’s simply irrelevant to whether or not any given idea, constructed or not, is true, good, useful, or what-have-you. But it’s not even clear what idea is supposed to be represented by that chord or rhythm or whatever it might be. Why would it need to be about something else? Why can’t you just make the damned thing and appreciate it for what it is?
*Maybe I’m too sensitive about it, because the music world is a different place than literary or visual art circles (and even a lot of other performing arts) so it’s largely ignored, but in any case, I don’t think one artform (or a handful) is enough to represent all of the arts accurately. And these metaphors about a “discourse” just don’t jive all that well with the architectural one about “construction” anyway.
Couple of folks on my Facebook (trans women) got skeeved out by Claire’s mom’s invitation, and by Marten accepting, actually. Thought it crossed some boundaries.
As for humor, it’s a coping mechanism to alleviate discomfort and mediate power relationships – laughing at something disempowers it. Comedy is all about mediating power. Conservatives are uncomfortable with the Other, so they make the Other a subject of ridicule (stereotyped racial impersonation performances, gay caricatures, positioning radical activism as a disingenuous performance to be mocked) as a means to alleviate that discomfort and mitigate the power the Other has to affect them (often to upset or terrify, though also sometimes to arouse, as we see with conservative misogynists complaining about the power women have to arouse them, and also in cases like homophobes who like to have sex with same-gendered people or transphobes who fetishize transgender people) while simultaneously reasserting power over the other by defining them in a particular way. Radicals tend to be uncomfortable with power, especially existing power structures and those who benefit from them, so we use humor to mock them, doing more or less the same thing to the powerful as conservatives do to the marginal – disempowering them through ridicule and simultaneously asserting the power to define them in our terms. As rossthompson noted, it’s very much about punching up versus punching down; whether you personally find something funny is going to depend on whether you agree with attempting to disempower the target of the joke. If you subscribe to a value system that holds that punching down, trying to further marginalize already-marginal groups is worse than disempowering the powerful, than you’re probably not going to find conservative humor funny.
Mums and boundary crossing is a real thing alas.
I hate finding a new comic strip.
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Especially when there are eleven years of strips to catch up on.
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Awwwww… I think I have a new online comic to read. Thanks, PZ!
@Gregory in Seattle
Wait ’till you get to the space station story arch. No, I’m not kidding.
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Lovely. Thanks.
For those just starting the QC archives: Big stuff happens at number 500. But my favorite is 515. It’s better, however, if you’re already familiar with the current characters.
I’ve been watching this story arc with interest since it started.
I’m not the only one? I’m NOT THE ONLY ONE!
I’ve been following QC for a decade. And yes, this storyline is one of my favorites :D
Of course, I might have known I wasn’t the only one by Jeph’s amazingly successful Patreon account.
♥ ♥ ♥
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Trebuchet, I’m not sure throwing Hanners at the newbies is a good idea.
A-fuckin’-men.
I discovered that webcomic last night, thanks to a FB friend. I enjoyed it, but there are problems (cf. ableism, which rears its head a few times in the 75 episodes I read). I’ve come to realize that most forms of entertainment that I enjoy are going to be problematic though. As long as they aren’t *too* problematic, I can criticize the bad parts, and celebrate and enjoy the good parts. The episode linked to in the OP is one of those good parts.
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Athywren @5:
Ah, but you’re wrong. The dignified way to squee is to hold your head high, smile, and let out a soft, barely audible squee (with I had a way to shrink the letters there).
If you want to go with a more jubilant expression of happiness, you can squee a bit louder and do a Snoopy Dance.
And of course you can also go all out and squeem at the top of your lungs.
Squeem? New word?
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kevinalexander @16:
I’m with you. Slapstick really does nothing for me. I also don’t care for humor that makes a joke out of people in pain.
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themadtapper @18/19:
Welcome to the world of the unlurked (sounds like a creature from a horror flick).
Also, you just forgot to close your tag. You need ‘/’ to close it out.
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Gregory in Seattle @27:
When I was introduced to this series, I was told that I should be glad I wasn’t shown a webcomic that is 14 years old and updated every day.
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Since we’re discussing webcomics, this is a great time to mention Strong Female Protagonist, which I fell in love with a few months back. It’s by Molly Ostertang and Brennan Lee Mulligan and is basically superheroes meet social justice. Updated twice a week *and* recently went to producing updates in color *and* a trade paperback of the first four chapters will be released just in time for Xmas.
@Gregory in Seattle (#27)
Even when I caught up (there were only seven years backlog when I discovered QC), the clicking didn’t stop. QC has some storylines (like the aforementioned space station arc) that make me delve into the archives, and much like TVTropes, it can be difficult to escape.
Tony!
Shlock Mercenary is such a comic; neither a broken collarbone nor and exploding server farm is enough to stop Howard Taylor from his daily updates (although the latter incident led to the comic being 3-4 hours late). Despite the author’s mormonism, the comic is quite good and has surprisingly few problematic elements (there’s a notable lack of queer identities, for instance, some problematic stereotyping of women, especially early on, and the common sci-fi issues with ethnic diversity (there’s some, but there really should be a lot fewer white faces in most future histories)), but overall I’ll recommend it. Consistently funny, consistently consistent, overall good characterization, and frankly the sexist bullshit is actually on the lower side for media (IME). Actually one of those rare examples of someone who’s both conservative and funny; I’m sure that he and I disagree vehemently on most political points, but he mostly manages to keep it the hell out of his funny comic. The religion stays out of it too; the only references anyone makes to God are the chaplain, occasionally, and an AI hivemind that says it pretty much qualifies as one.
On topic, I’ve been reading QC since nearly the beginning, and have been persistently squeeing over Marten and Claire since the wedding storyline. I’d also like to point out the example of paying attention to consent from last week
I’m not a huge fan of AFV but I admit I watch it from time to time with the family. It’s one of the few shows we can ALL agree on. In a house with a 45,40,39,13,11,10 yo, that is no small feat.
Anyway, I like to use it as a teaching tool for the kiddos. I ask them to predict what happens next. I also will call out “is this an AFV moment” when I see them doing something like stacking the footstool on top of the couch to reach an escaped balloon.
Regarding the laughing at other peoples pain: normally, that is a big no-no in my book. However, since these videos are voluntarily submitted with the specific intention of being viewed and laughed at by millions absolves me of my guilt, IMO.
South Park I would class as conservative humour. I don’t love it; I think the stupidity of the show annoys me, but if it was stupid about things I did not care about, then I probably would not be so annoyed and could appreciate the humour more.
#40 YOB
Emotional pain sure, but people getting hurt in a funny way is just funny. It looks funny. You only won’t find it funny if your sympathy makes you overlook the inherent hilarity. To say it’s a big no-no is like you’ve decided it’s not acceptable to find it funny and want to preclude yourself from even seeing the merits of it.
My daily comics: XKCD which has a link to Questionable Content which has links to Girls With Slingshots and Scenes from a Multiverse. And also Userfriendly.org for the comic. And the daily local rag to which, as near as I can determine, I subscribe for the comics and daily suduko.
When I burned myself at the forge when I was showing off how tough my paws were (FYI, not quite tough enough). Hilarious. Really. That was funny shit.
When my daughter was running, tripped, fell, scraped her lower lip and teeth on the pavement and proceeded to bleed friggin everywhere, then her cousin starts laughing at her. Not funny.
I’m trying to lead by example to my kids. They should know when it is ok to laugh and when it is not. If the target of pain finds the humor (and wants to share it via media, especially), then you can too. If not, then big ol no-no.
I’m a klutz. Humor that involves someone getting hurt gives me the wiggins, because I know how walking into something, tripping and falling down, or dropping a heavy object on my foot all feel. Most of the people around me think I have no sense of humor in these matters. I prefer to think that my sense of empathy is finely honed by painful experience. YMMV and all that.
Is the “A+” in the last panel a deliberate reference or just idiomatic?
Yeah, it’s a North American idiom. It’s a reference to the best possible grade you can get on a school assignment, so if you tell someone something they’ve done is A+ you’re telling them it was terrific.
@35:
I’m still waiting for the romance between Hanners and Sven.
I started reading QC just after the Marten/Dora breakup, probably because of following a link from XKCD. It was a very short time before that when I had to go back and start from the beginning. I’ve done that two or three more times since.
I also recommend Girls With Slingshots. http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/
Hazel is pretty much a female Marten.
… only because you mentioned the odious Mallard Fillmore… there is a way to truly enjoy it–through the lens of “Ye Fowl Herald”, created (or perhaps translated) by the same genius who does “a good cartoon”
http://fowlherald.tumblr.com/
No Shortpacked?
http://www.shortpacked.com/index.php?id=2141
Heya folks. Long time lurker, first time poster.
I’ve never heard of this comic before, but I feel I should have. Guess I’ll have to start from square one one of these days.
This comic is particularly inspiring for me, for you see I am something of a comic artist myself. After years of false starts and megatons of self-doubt, I’m about 80% of the way to getting something published. And one of my reoccurring characters is a transgirl (I say “girl” because she’s a sophomore in high school). For me, it was just a little more diversity to my cast and hopefully a chance to open a few eyes. But I was seriously afraid of backlash. Yeah, I live in liberal New Jersey but it’s far from perfect. Oddly enough, I haven’t had any… ..yet.
Why do I find this inspiring? Because it shows me that the tide is turning. Again, things aren’t perfect, but there’s actually SUPPORT for what this artist is doing. And this artist isn’t he only one. To me, that’s a sign that things are getting better.
10 years ago I never would have dreamed of putting any of my personal politics in a comic. And here I am now almost ready to go to print for the first time in my life and I’m touching on things like transphobia, atheism, and racism in what’s basically 4 panel punchline-style comic strips.
Sorry for droning on (or talking more about me than the subject at hand). I’ll quietly go away now.
Kid Cthulhu has spoken.
@Kid Cthulhu:
IME, the way to deal with the archive panic of things like this is to simply start reading and do two things:
Maintain a faster pace than it is coming out, (e.g. read at least 14 strips a week for a daily webcomic).
Use local bookmarks to mark your place when you are done reading for the day.
Don’t worry about how long it will take you to catch up, it will happen when it happens, (and if what you’re reading is good you may have the “what, I have to wait? NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!” reaction.
For things that are ‘popcorn’ reading, (such as most webcomics), they also make good things to have open to give you quick distractions while you wait for other things to happen.
Since Mallard Fillmore was mentioned, I think Jon Stewart’s book said it best:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/File:Mallard_Fillmore_parody.jpg
@John Horstman (#21) and consciousness razor (#23):
I really like that explanation. I don’t think it’s universal, by any means, but it definitely puts into clearer words a lot of the way I think about it. Consciousness razor, I think another way of looking at is that artists are in the business of creating something new. That’s always disruptive in some way and it’s the antithesis of conservatism. I think that makes it as applicable to musicians as to any other kind of artist. It also explains why some conservative “art” is just so awful. Modern Christian music, movies like Left Behind and God’s Not Dead, The Sword of Truth books, the problem here is that the people at the helm are trying to simply defend old ideas, not to generate anything new or different. So you get mindless, derivative bullshit.
Glad he seems to have gotten this thing right. I stopped reading QC when he was having one of his fake fights with David Willis and posted a particularly graphic sexual image of him without a NSFW tag. When several, including myself asked if he would tag stuff like that, he said we shouldn’t be reading comics at work anyway.
I decided he was right, at least in his case, and haven’t gone back. And these days, I think that picture alone should have made me stop. I have no more patience for use of sexual imagery as an insult. Even if the target accepts it as friendly joking. Making it public changes things.
Jacques, around the time that Claire was introduced, commented (on his Tumblr, I think) that people who are upset that Claire’s identity and backstory are accepted without problem by the rest of the cast can go [expletive deleted]. His comment was something along the lines of:
(1) He, Jacques, doesn’t like having assholes for protagonists,
(2) Transphobes are assholes,
therefore,
(3) His protagonists won’t be transphobic.
I kindasorta knew that Claire was going to be introduced and was going to end up paired with one of the guys in the cast, as awhile before hand Jacques was quietly making inquires about trans issues (in general) and issues facing trans women who date men in specific. Which indicated to me that either (1) this was research for a character or (2) this was research for personal reasons.