I can relate to Ethan here. My name may be Doctor Who, but that’s not all I’m capable of thinking about. For example, there’s that Transformer named Skids who homages Doctor Who.
Okay, that was a bad example. Ooh, how about the new DuckTales, I like that! It features David Tennant as an adventurer who is much older than he looks, has been everywhere and done everything, fought tons of monsters and villains, time traveled, became gloomy and reclusive until having new young companions in his life rekindled his will to have adventures, and has a history with Catherine Tate!
I’m talking about Ducktales. I’m the kind of guy who likes to watch a series from the beginning and I have no desire to attempt that with a show that’s been running consistently (from what I understand) longer than I’ve been alive (I’m pushing 40).
I’m surprised my Dvr hasn’t been recording DT.
Welp, I know what I’m binge watching this weekend.
Consistent isn’t the word I would use to describe Doctor Who’s run. It was ran consistently from 1963-1989. The current run’s only been going since 2005.
Even then, the modern series is only barely connected with the original. There’s the occasional reference for the hardcore fans, but for the most part it’s entirely new characters, planets, aliens, stories, etc. It’s very easy to view the 2005 series as a separate show from the 1963 version as a lot of old school fans do.
The old series didn’t have too much connection between episodes either; but it was also in a different format in which each storyline was made up of a few epsiodes (So, essentially, each story was between 2-4 hours long). Between the storylines, though, the threads were about as thin as they are between the current generation and reboot.
I started watching during Tom Bakers last few episodes; one of the best things I remember from the current crop was, during the mummy on the train episode, I mentioned how Capaldi was basically channeling Tom Baker for a lot of his quirks and attitudes, and all he needs to do is pull out a bag of Jelly Babies and offer it to some random stranger.
…Sure enough, in the _very next scene…_
Although they’ve changed along the way as well. Now the Dalecks can fly, the Cybermen have evolved separately multiple times and there has been a Sontaran sidekick for comic relief. Also the Time Lord home world got lost, the Doctor got married for a while until his wife was saved , which is actually just as well since the Doctor is now a woman. So, yeah, I think the show has been fairly consistent in its way.
And even that’s assuming you allow “consistently” to include the 18-month hiatus in 85-86, and the new series skipping years because Ten’s doing Hamlet/Moff’s busy overseeing the Sherlock finale lest it accidentally make sense or something.
What about Star Trek having one of the most interesting adventures when they crossed over with The Doctor making one hell of a great cyborg adventure as the Cybermen and Borg met
During my freshman year I occasionally interacted with the other people in my dorm, but every year after that I almost never talked or hung out with anyone in whatever dorm I was in that year.
Nothing like any uni residence I ever lived in. The only communication I had with fellow residents was when they sounded vuvuzelas to wake everyone up to try to make us go and watch intramural Rugby matches.
Of course, the “you” that they want to engage with is the “you” that they assume you are because you MUST have something in common. Maybe Ethan doesn’t talk to them because he has heard what they are interested in and it bores him to tears.
Or maybe I am projecting.
Today’s strip was sponsored by Tic-Tac and their current product line celebrating The Simpsons. If you use up most of a pack and then give the pack to somebody else, is it bad manners to invite them to “Eat My Shorts”?
I wouldn’t be surprised. I tried with Bey.
I watched the first one.
I actually enjoyed the second one.
I got annoyed with the third one.
I gave up with the fourth one.
And I didn’t even try with the fifth one.
He is canonically familiar enough with Sailor Moon to know when Martian Manhunter uses ‘Rei Hino’ as an alias. Between that and his multitude of children, I’m certain he’s at least seen a Transformer.
Apparently, the reference was a fluke: the writer asked a friend for a female Japanese name that would translate to ‘Poet of Mars’. His friend gave him the name of a SAILOR of Mars as a joke. It got to print obviously.
Aw come on, Ethan. Don’t you have a working knowledge of things like spongebob and pokemon? Weren’t those the DVDs that subverted the authority of the Lord God Joyce was worried about.
In Shortpacked!, Drew was, IIRC, Ethan’s “opposite” who worked at McAwesome’s, just across the street from Shortpacked! – similarly to how Rose was Amber’s “opposite”, or Agatha being Robin’s – and with McAwesome’s whole thing being that it was basically the complete opposite of Shortpacked! in how it treated its employees, its customers, etc., whenever something bad happened to Shortpacked! employees (which was quite often), something good happened to their McAwesome’s counterparts…so when things finally started going right for Ethan for a while, his McAwesome’s counterpart was hit by a car, if I remember right.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: (Related to this being the Mike Chapter)
What’s the deal with the “Girls like Bad Boys” trope? Like, Where does it come from? How prevalent is it? Does it have any purchase in reality?
Okay, fine, the ammount of Fangirls that Sephiroth or Draco Malfoy have tells me that yes, it does have SOME purchase in reallity.
So, What’s the deal?
I know it isn’t nearly as prevalent among guys, when guys go after the “bad Girl” they don’t go for the one that’s the biggest bitch, the stereotype is that they go for the “loose” one, such as it is.
In reality, there’s not a lot to it. Though in my experience, men who classify themselves as “bad boys” typically aren’t that attractive. They’re just creeps. I know plenty of women who’ve fallen into relationships with creeps, less with “bad boys”, whatever that actually means in real life. When it does pop up, however, it’s typically a case of the girl feeling special because he’s “different” around her. Also, leather jackets and rebelling against society is kind of sexy. When you’re a teenage girl, sometimes the best way to rebel against your parents is to date the guy they think is no good. And sometimes the person other people classify as “bad” is actually a really good guy once you actually have a conversation with him.
In FICTION, it’s usually just that the antagonists are the most interesting characters! Everyone loves them, not just their fangirls. Of course every fanfic has the reader’s self-insert ending up with the most interesting character. Whether that’s a “mary sue” or another character the author is projecting onto. And again, there’s something romantic about a villain changing their ways in the name of love.
Oh, I also had other thoughts- if you want to talk about characters like Mike and why girls in universe find him attractive (which we haven’t actually seen much evidence of, aside from Amber who has a whole host of issues surrounding that) and characters in movies and tv shows, you’ll have to ask the writers.
In terms of real girls falling for fictional bad boys- often the character isn’t really “bad”. Not the way they’re written in the fanfiction or interpreted by their fangirls anyway. To follow the Draco Malfoy example you mentioned, he’s not really a “villain”. There aren’t a ton of Voldemort fangirls (there are some, but they’re not the norm) but there are so many Malfoy and Snape ones. And the fanfiction usually has Draco starting out as a dumb teen who learns the error of his ways through true love. And dumb idiot teen is how he’s presented in most of the books. Snape is an asshole, but he’s presented as one that’s secretly been “good” the whole time both in text and out. Sephiroth is also kind of a tragic figure, if you’re trying to look at him that way (which the fangirls you’re referencing usually are). Same with Vegeta, another fictional “bad boy” (bad man).
My point is, usually those fantasies are about REDEEMING the “bad boy”, who already has sympathetic traits. Then you just get the charming snark and cool aesthetic wrapped around a heart of gold.
Anyway, that’s all based around fictional bad boys where the girls are in complete control of the fantasy. In real life, girls end up with jerks because they have their own issues they’re still trying to work through and occasionally they get trapped due to various societal pressures and occasionally the actual abusive partner. Sometimes they’re assholes too and think their asshole boyfriend is actually a genius. It’s not particularly connected to the “bad boy” fantasy, at least in my experience.
It’s easier if you imagine him with a full “80s Phil Collins” receding hairline, and think he just says “eff it” and finishes the job with a razor like BBCC said.
I’m pretty sure david willis exists in this universe(I think he was the creator of Dexter and Monkey master), but not sure about whether he made the recordicons comic in this universe.
Oh man, I feel this. I’m pretty bad at small talk (not that I HATE small talk- I love talking, it’s just sometimes I can’t come up with topics to talk about and that’s just how it is). I’m pretty content standing there in silence with someone if there’s really nothing to talk about, but I guess some people feel awkward when no one’s talking and feel the need to force a conversation because they think the other people are bored. This one time on the train, a college classmate kept asking me questions like “Read any book lately? Watched any movie lately? Any TV show? Played any videogame?” and after I had to keep awkwardly answering “…not really”, he actually had the nerve of saying how “difficult” it was talking to me. Like, wow, thanks asshole!
(Funniest part is, when I asked HIM back if he had watched, read, played anything he also said “no”. So you start the conversation but it’s all MY responsability to keep it going?! D: )
I have a lot to talk about: Homestuck, Voltron, Wakfu, Dungeons and Dragons, Steven Universe, RWBY, Adventure Time, Pokemon, The Legend of Zelda, DC, Marvel, Doctor Who, etc.
Sadly, not many people know about those things, so I can only nod with a boring expression when they talk to be about something boring.
…I’m having flash backs to college (except replace Transformers with Marvel Comics, and this was back in ’98-’02… so no MCU, no one knew who Tony Stark was let alone how weird is was when his armor became sentient and caught him in an abusive relationship)
YOU GUYS ARE IN COLLEGE ASK “What is your major?” AND IF THAT GETS A CURT RESPONSE ASK “And what drew you to that?” GEEZE IT IS NOT THAT HARD TO BUILD A FRIENDLY CHATBOT FOR STUDENTS.
I just don’t get people like Ethan, whether it be “nerds”, “geeks, “jocks” (or whatever other labels you can think of) that’re just interested in very few things
Its not that hard to understand the basics of most sportss even if you’re not interested in it and its not that hard to differentiate between different comics, toys, movies or whatever
Ethans a good person but geez he’d probably be the most boring, dull and uninteresting main character to hang out with
Sports generally bore me to tears but it’s typically easy enough to understand since gym class is a thing and it’s easy to ask ‘how do you score?’ and ‘how do you win’ as relevant.
No one can be bothered to learn even a moderate amount of my interests, why should I be bothered to learn a moderate amount of theirs? We connect with people based on similar interests, and I’m just not gonna connect with people who don’t share them. Why fake it? *That* is boring. Ethan might be boring to people who aren’t the fans of the same things he’s fans of, but he wouldn’t be boring to people with similar interests.
But his things are sufficiently narrowly focused that’s not going to be a lot of people and he’s so into them that even people casually interested aren’t going to be able to keep up.
More generally, I’m not going to fake being into sports or the latest TV shows or whatever, but there are plenty of things I can connect with. Even more so back in school, where you could at least rant about classes or something.
OTOH, Ethan was able to talk to Joyce and to Danny – who don’t really share his focuses.
You don’t have to care but when you’re talking to someone, tuning them out because it’s not a thing you like is kind of rude. Just listening for a minute until you change the subject won’t hurt you. Besides, you might find something you found boring is actually neat. Maybe you won’t but again, that’s what changing the subject is for.
It’s easy enough to understand the basics of sports, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend a lot of time talking about them. And the usual talking about them is more keeping up on how local favorite teams are doing and how the last big game went than the basics.
I mean, I know the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars, but to people who don’t like science fiction at all what do the differences matter? They don’t care and they’re not going to like either of them.
and Transformer Batfans
I can relate to Ethan here. My name may be Doctor Who, but that’s not all I’m capable of thinking about. For example, there’s that Transformer named Skids who homages Doctor Who.
Okay, that was a bad example. Ooh, how about the new DuckTales, I like that! It features David Tennant as an adventurer who is much older than he looks, has been everywhere and done everything, fought tons of monsters and villains, time traveled, became gloomy and reclusive until having new young companions in his life rekindled his will to have adventures, and has a history with Catherine Tate!
See? I contain multitudes.
I wish the new episodes would come out already.
September, from the sound of it.
Unless you’re talking about Ducktales, in which case the hiatus is blessedly over and we’ve been getting new episodes the last several Saturdays.
I’m talking about Ducktales. I’m the kind of guy who likes to watch a series from the beginning and I have no desire to attempt that with a show that’s been running consistently (from what I understand) longer than I’ve been alive (I’m pushing 40).
I’m surprised my Dvr hasn’t been recording DT.
Welp, I know what I’m binge watching this weekend.
“Consistently?” *Laughs maniacally.*
Consistent isn’t the word I would use to describe Doctor Who’s run. It was ran consistently from 1963-1989. The current run’s only been going since 2005.
Would you look at that? Even thought it’s not as consistent as I thought, as a series, it’s still older than me.
Even then, the modern series is only barely connected with the original. There’s the occasional reference for the hardcore fans, but for the most part it’s entirely new characters, planets, aliens, stories, etc. It’s very easy to view the 2005 series as a separate show from the 1963 version as a lot of old school fans do.
The old series didn’t have too much connection between episodes either; but it was also in a different format in which each storyline was made up of a few epsiodes (So, essentially, each story was between 2-4 hours long). Between the storylines, though, the threads were about as thin as they are between the current generation and reboot.
I started watching during Tom Bakers last few episodes; one of the best things I remember from the current crop was, during the mummy on the train episode, I mentioned how Capaldi was basically channeling Tom Baker for a lot of his quirks and attitudes, and all he needs to do is pull out a bag of Jelly Babies and offer it to some random stranger.
…Sure enough, in the _very next scene…_
I haven’t watched much of the new series (John Pertwee veteran, Tom Baker fanboy). Don’t they at least have Daleks, cybermen, and Sontarans?
Yes.
Although they’ve changed along the way as well. Now the Dalecks can fly, the Cybermen have evolved separately multiple times and there has been a Sontaran sidekick for comic relief. Also the Time Lord home world got lost, the Doctor got married for a while until his wife was saved , which is actually just as well since the Doctor is now a woman. So, yeah, I think the show has been fairly consistent in its way.
Pity any modern Doctor Who fan that thinks they can just go back and binge-watch the entire original series…
Well, you can binge watch most it, though it’ll take awhile.
Good chunks of the early seasons are lost, but it’s still a worthwhile endeavor.
And even that’s assuming you allow “consistently” to include the 18-month hiatus in 85-86, and the new series skipping years because Ten’s doing Hamlet/Moff’s busy overseeing the Sherlock finale lest it accidentally make sense or something.
…DVR?
I just https://disneynow.go.com/shows/ducktales-disney-channel
Does the TARDIS have a money bin?
Of course, Cybermen have (or had at least, they eventually mostly got rid of it) a known allergy to gold, so it’s good to keep a lot of it around.
plus he’s gotta buy food or fuel sometimes…
Not a joke, I believe that was once addressed on the show(money, jewels, gold etc.)
It does, but no one knows exactly where it’s hiding after the latest remodel. Could be next to the swimming pool.
But The Doctor can just waggle his (or her) Sonic Screwdriver at any ATM whenever money is needed.
I originally read the question as Does the TARDIS have a looney bin?
To which the answer is yes, it’s called the main control room. After all he IS a madman with a box.
What about Star Trek having one of the most interesting adventures when they crossed over with The Doctor making one hell of a great cyborg adventure as the Cybermen and Borg met
I LOVE that they took advantage of the longevity of both shows by having two different era crews encounter two different era doctors.
Ah, Assimilation². Great story. Artwork could have been better.
Wait, that’s a real thing? Holy crap!
*Googles*
I hope that DS9-based sequel gets made someday, if only to see how the Cardassians react to Dalek sass.
When life gives you gators, make Gatorade.
(Yes, I know I should have come up with this one yesterday, but now is when I thought of it, so screw it)
STILL FUNNY, DANGIT
You could go back in time and make the comment in context. Or if you don’t have a time machine handy, you could just use the Previous button.
Or, I could post it here, and WHATCHA GONNA DO ABOUT IT?
. . .College Dorm neighbors who are actually interested in you and WILLINGLY engage you in conversation? What madness is this?
True, I barely talked to anyone in my dorm.
I interacted with people in my dorm. It’s next door neighbors after I left school that I never talked to.
Same! Though, I lived in the building for all the single rooms, so maybe I was in good company.
During my freshman year I occasionally interacted with the other people in my dorm, but every year after that I almost never talked or hung out with anyone in whatever dorm I was in that year.
Nothing like any uni residence I ever lived in. The only communication I had with fellow residents was when they sounded vuvuzelas to wake everyone up to try to make us go and watch intramural Rugby matches.
Of course, the “you” that they want to engage with is the “you” that they assume you are because you MUST have something in common. Maybe Ethan doesn’t talk to them because he has heard what they are interested in and it bores him to tears.
Or maybe I am projecting.
I am projecting too!
common kitchen and no cafeteria on evenings make wonders for communication.
*plays the Age of Chance remake of TAFKA Prince’s “Kiss” on the hacked Muzak*
Today’s strip was sponsored by Tic-Tac and their current product line celebrating The Simpsons. If you use up most of a pack and then give the pack to somebody else, is it bad manners to invite them to “Eat My Shorts”?
Why don’t we have a Transformer homaging Robin yet? He’s toyetic!
You think Batman is a transformers fan?
It occurs to me that due to Comic Book Time, I am now only a couple years younger than Batman. So we probably grew up watching some of the same shows.
Batman is two thousand years old?
Unless he’s lying.
Why would Batman lie about something like that?
Doubtful. He’s not happy enough. Or at all.
Must only have seen the Bay movies then.
I wouldn’t be surprised. I tried with Bey.
I watched the first one.
I actually enjoyed the second one.
I got annoyed with the third one.
I gave up with the fourth one.
And I didn’t even try with the fifth one.
Fan? No. Someone who reads the TF Wiki on the off-chance that solving a supervillain’s plot will rely on knowing Transformers trivia? Absolutely.
What would make this even better would be if Pat Lee was the villain
Hard to say.
He is canonically familiar enough with Sailor Moon to know when Martian Manhunter uses ‘Rei Hino’ as an alias. Between that and his multitude of children, I’m certain he’s at least seen a Transformer.
Huh? He knows about Sailor Moon? Picturing Batman sitting in the Batcave watching anime makes me giggle.
He does and he assumes other people are familiar enough that ‘Rei Hino’ would be too on the nose as an alias.
Also – this means Martian Manhunter watches it too and liked it enough to use Rei’s name as an alias.
I picture Batman seeing his ship not working out, glaring and saying “Hrm.”
Then a Joker voice in his head goes: “Ooo, harsh… Maybe we should go visit those writer’s, give ’em a piece of your mind. I know I enjoy mine…”
I bet he’d be into Detective Conan or The Big O.
For reference: JLA #27, 1999. (http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/antpogo/media/bWVkaWFJZDozMTIwNDA1OQ)
Apparently, the reference was a fluke: the writer asked a friend for a female Japanese name that would translate to ‘Poet of Mars’. His friend gave him the name of a SAILOR of Mars as a joke. It got to print obviously.
why does he look like Steven Seagal?
He’s a scientist so it’s possible.
I don’t think football words can save you now, Ethan!
who *doesn’t* think about batman
Oh hey let me tell you about my friend Amber and her Batman slash fics
Aw come on, Ethan. Don’t you have a working knowledge of things like spongebob and pokemon? Weren’t those the DVDs that subverted the authority of the Lord God Joyce was worried about.
On the one hand, I’m not certain how many thought processes one should devote to Spongebob. On the other hand, he never truly leaves your mind.
So can Thad’s last name be Guy in THIS universe?
it’s “guys”
it’s why he and only he responds in the first panel
Rad
So do u think thad is a dileberate homage to thew adams
thad-the-character is eleven years old: http://www.shortpacked.com/comic/goaaaal
and his name is a pun on “that guy”
so no
thanks for telling me still though crazy coincidence that there names and appearances r so similar
Hey, where’d Manny get himself off to
…did Drew get hit by a car in this universe too
Wait, he got hit by a car?
In Shortpacked!, Drew was, IIRC, Ethan’s “opposite” who worked at McAwesome’s, just across the street from Shortpacked! – similarly to how Rose was Amber’s “opposite”, or Agatha being Robin’s – and with McAwesome’s whole thing being that it was basically the complete opposite of Shortpacked! in how it treated its employees, its customers, etc., whenever something bad happened to Shortpacked! employees (which was quite often), something good happened to their McAwesome’s counterparts…so when things finally started going right for Ethan for a while, his McAwesome’s counterpart was hit by a car, if I remember right.
(that was Evan)
Drew was Ethan’s boyfriend
I don’t think I’ve ever empathized with Ethan more than I have right now
Is Ethan’s shirt torn or something? I can’t tell what’s going on.
Whoops, no he’s just holding a dinosaur transformer.
I wonder if Ethan is so monogeeky that he doesn’t like Star Wars.
Huh I guess Ethan’s social circle was consistently small, even in his less than two months at college.
And he could stand to socialize with other gay guys on his floor too, to minimize his self-loathing.
Is this Thad’s very first DOA appearance?!
Yes! I’m happy to see Thad!!
I think. They mean OTHER things.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: (Related to this being the Mike Chapter)
What’s the deal with the “Girls like Bad Boys” trope? Like, Where does it come from? How prevalent is it? Does it have any purchase in reality?
Okay, fine, the ammount of Fangirls that Sephiroth or Draco Malfoy have tells me that yes, it does have SOME purchase in reallity.
So, What’s the deal?
I know it isn’t nearly as prevalent among guys, when guys go after the “bad Girl” they don’t go for the one that’s the biggest bitch, the stereotype is that they go for the “loose” one, such as it is.
In reality, there’s not a lot to it. Though in my experience, men who classify themselves as “bad boys” typically aren’t that attractive. They’re just creeps. I know plenty of women who’ve fallen into relationships with creeps, less with “bad boys”, whatever that actually means in real life. When it does pop up, however, it’s typically a case of the girl feeling special because he’s “different” around her. Also, leather jackets and rebelling against society is kind of sexy. When you’re a teenage girl, sometimes the best way to rebel against your parents is to date the guy they think is no good. And sometimes the person other people classify as “bad” is actually a really good guy once you actually have a conversation with him.
In FICTION, it’s usually just that the antagonists are the most interesting characters! Everyone loves them, not just their fangirls. Of course every fanfic has the reader’s self-insert ending up with the most interesting character. Whether that’s a “mary sue” or another character the author is projecting onto. And again, there’s something romantic about a villain changing their ways in the name of love.
Oh, I also had other thoughts- if you want to talk about characters like Mike and why girls in universe find him attractive (which we haven’t actually seen much evidence of, aside from Amber who has a whole host of issues surrounding that) and characters in movies and tv shows, you’ll have to ask the writers.
In terms of real girls falling for fictional bad boys- often the character isn’t really “bad”. Not the way they’re written in the fanfiction or interpreted by their fangirls anyway. To follow the Draco Malfoy example you mentioned, he’s not really a “villain”. There aren’t a ton of Voldemort fangirls (there are some, but they’re not the norm) but there are so many Malfoy and Snape ones. And the fanfiction usually has Draco starting out as a dumb teen who learns the error of his ways through true love. And dumb idiot teen is how he’s presented in most of the books. Snape is an asshole, but he’s presented as one that’s secretly been “good” the whole time both in text and out. Sephiroth is also kind of a tragic figure, if you’re trying to look at him that way (which the fangirls you’re referencing usually are). Same with Vegeta, another fictional “bad boy” (bad man).
My point is, usually those fantasies are about REDEEMING the “bad boy”, who already has sympathetic traits. Then you just get the charming snark and cool aesthetic wrapped around a heart of gold.
Anyway, that’s all based around fictional bad boys where the girls are in complete control of the fantasy. In real life, girls end up with jerks because they have their own issues they’re still trying to work through and occasionally they get trapped due to various societal pressures and occasionally the actual abusive partner. Sometimes they’re assholes too and think their asshole boyfriend is actually a genius. It’s not particularly connected to the “bad boy” fantasy, at least in my experience.
Oh I am.actually talking about media consumption in this case. Real life “bad boy romance” usually ends up in sad sad things.
That’s… a pretty aggressive way to start a conversation.
It is isn’t it, whats wrong with hey hows it going or see around (or similar vaguely similar), this just sounds a bit accusingly
Sounds like they’ve tried that in the past and haven’t gotten anywhere.
I guess it’s kind of aggressively friendly. Nothing compared to Joyce levels of aggressive friendliness though.
Poor Thad, only in college and he’s already bald.
…I am trying to imagine Thad with hair and failing.
(HI THAD!)
It’s easier if you imagine him with a full “80s Phil Collins” receding hairline, and think he just says “eff it” and finishes the job with a razor like BBCC said.
Oh man early 80s Phil Collins (and Genesis and Peter Gabriel and Mike + The Mechanics)) are a particular favourite of mine
Maybe he shaves it?
I knew a guy who started going bald when he was about 17.
ETHAN (thinks): “Oh dear, I’ve just realised that my life is empty. Better find Danny, Amber or Mike”
This comic makes me miss the Batman comics from Shortpacked. Willis really has a talent for comedy focused Batman.
and Batman-focused comedy 😀
Does Batbot (A David Willis creation) exist in this universe? If so, Ethan would be a fan of his own creator’s creation… which is a bit meta
I’m pretty sure david willis exists in this universe(I think he was the creator of Dexter and Monkey master), but not sure about whether he made the recordicons comic in this universe.
Oh man, I feel this. I’m pretty bad at small talk (not that I HATE small talk- I love talking, it’s just sometimes I can’t come up with topics to talk about and that’s just how it is). I’m pretty content standing there in silence with someone if there’s really nothing to talk about, but I guess some people feel awkward when no one’s talking and feel the need to force a conversation because they think the other people are bored. This one time on the train, a college classmate kept asking me questions like “Read any book lately? Watched any movie lately? Any TV show? Played any videogame?” and after I had to keep awkwardly answering “…not really”, he actually had the nerve of saying how “difficult” it was talking to me. Like, wow, thanks asshole!
(Funniest part is, when I asked HIM back if he had watched, read, played anything he also said “no”. So you start the conversation but it’s all MY responsability to keep it going?! D: )
“also, sometimes, i think about gay batman smut…“
Be careful what you ask for 😀
Why is this literally me but replace Transformers with Power Rangers?
I like Thad and Bryan already.
I have a lot to talk about: Homestuck, Voltron, Wakfu, Dungeons and Dragons, Steven Universe, RWBY, Adventure Time, Pokemon, The Legend of Zelda, DC, Marvel, Doctor Who, etc.
Sadly, not many people know about those things, so I can only nod with a boring expression when they talk to be about something boring.
…I’m having flash backs to college (except replace Transformers with Marvel Comics, and this was back in ’98-’02… so no MCU, no one knew who Tony Stark was let alone how weird is was when his armor became sentient and caught him in an abusive relationship)
YOU GUYS ARE IN COLLEGE ASK “What is your major?” AND IF THAT GETS A CURT RESPONSE ASK “And what drew you to that?” GEEZE IT IS NOT THAT HARD TO BUILD A FRIENDLY CHATBOT FOR STUDENTS.
But Ethan doesn’t have a major yet!
I just don’t get people like Ethan, whether it be “nerds”, “geeks, “jocks” (or whatever other labels you can think of) that’re just interested in very few things
Its not that hard to understand the basics of most sportss even if you’re not interested in it and its not that hard to differentiate between different comics, toys, movies or whatever
Ethans a good person but geez he’d probably be the most boring, dull and uninteresting main character to hang out with
Sports generally bore me to tears but it’s typically easy enough to understand since gym class is a thing and it’s easy to ask ‘how do you score?’ and ‘how do you win’ as relevant.
Exactly, you don’t have to know the ins ands outs of sports to get the basic gist of it.
To me its like people who don’t bother to see the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek
No one can be bothered to learn even a moderate amount of my interests, why should I be bothered to learn a moderate amount of theirs? We connect with people based on similar interests, and I’m just not gonna connect with people who don’t share them. Why fake it? *That* is boring. Ethan might be boring to people who aren’t the fans of the same things he’s fans of, but he wouldn’t be boring to people with similar interests.
But his things are sufficiently narrowly focused that’s not going to be a lot of people and he’s so into them that even people casually interested aren’t going to be able to keep up.
More generally, I’m not going to fake being into sports or the latest TV shows or whatever, but there are plenty of things I can connect with. Even more so back in school, where you could at least rant about classes or something.
OTOH, Ethan was able to talk to Joyce and to Danny – who don’t really share his focuses.
You don’t have to care but when you’re talking to someone, tuning them out because it’s not a thing you like is kind of rude. Just listening for a minute until you change the subject won’t hurt you. Besides, you might find something you found boring is actually neat. Maybe you won’t but again, that’s what changing the subject is for.
It’s easy enough to understand the basics of sports, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend a lot of time talking about them. And the usual talking about them is more keeping up on how local favorite teams are doing and how the last big game went than the basics.
I mean, I know the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars, but to people who don’t like science fiction at all what do the differences matter? They don’t care and they’re not going to like either of them.