this comment reads like an eventual book title, and it’s not even a line from the strip
Rose by Any other Name
Oh my gods, a book title that was like
Dumbing of Age
“Schpoonman: That bar is at the geometric center of the Earth and you know it.”
That would be hilarious!
Decidedly Orthogonal
It would be epic, and I’d support it fully. But I could see one comment being favoured for a title leading to chaos in the forum.
Lilith Rose
What if….
…some one else used it as a title for something else?
Jamie
There’s a restaurant at the end of the universe, and a bar at the center of the Earth.
There are parents out there who would rather have a dead son than a live trans daughter.
At least the anti-vaxxers, stupid as they are, think they’re doing the right thing *for the kid*
They’re still wrong and stupid.
Felian
“my baby died of [some disease we have a vaccine for..]. It must have been God’s will and nothing i could have done better.“
antivaxxers and anti science people scare me.
ANeM
The phobes still think they’re doing the right thing for their kid. We’ve got more than a century of documentation from Conversion “Therapists” going “Well, we tried out hardest to ‘cure the patient, but in the end they took their own life. Clearly the ‘disease’ had progressed too far!”
It wasn’t the fact that their family signed off on them being tortured and it’s not the knowledge that if they can’t make themselves conform they -will- be tortured again that drove them to end their lives. It was “The Disease.” The poor doctors and their poor family members only wanted “what was best.”
eruonna
It… depends. There are plenty of phobic parents who are more worried about how their child’s gender or sexuality reflects on the parents than about what is best for the child.
Autogatos
Yeah uhhh…I would argue there are *also* plenty of antivaxxer parents who are more worried about how a child’s autism reflects on the parents than about what is best for the child.
I get how it can SEEM like they’re always doing it because they (incorrectly) think it’s the “right thing” to protect their kid, but any parent who is more willing to risk their child dying than developing a disability isn’t really thinking about what’s best for their child and there’s a good chance that at least subconsciously they have a problem with how they think having a disabled/neurodivergent child will make THEM look.
A LOT of parents of disabled/neurodivergent kids are still incredibly ableist, unfortunately. It’s often less obvious to abled/neurotypical people, because these parents will say a lot of stuff that may SOUND like disability advocacy, but to those who ARE disabled/ND, it’s the sort of stuff that comes off as incredibly condescending/patronizing, self-serving, and performative.
In other words, it tends to be a combo of them using their kid’s disabled/ND identity for their OWN benefit (getting sympathy for their “struggle” as parents and praise for their “advocacy”) and a lot of still-deeply-rooted ableism (either trying to gloss over the kid’s disability by engaging in toxic positivity like treating “disability” like a dirty word and insisting it’s 100% a “superpower”, or going to the opposite extreme and treating their kid as inferior and/or underestimating their abilities).
So, yeah, disability and neurodivergence are certainly no exception to the issue of parents being not just misguided but also phobic/bigoted (even if they don’t see themselves that way). But unfortunately even in progressive circles, there’s still a lot of ignorance and ableism disguised as advocacy/acceptance, and a serious lack of informed advocacy, so I think people often don’t see it for what it is. :/
Yeah, that was the part that always got to me, as someone on the spectrum, even if they were right about vaccines causing autism, they’d rather their child die a slow, painful death to a preventable disease than be like me. They’d rather *I* died a slow, painful death to a preventable disease than exist as I am. Than be WHO I am.
Meanwhile my grandmother had polio at 13, spent a couple years in an iron lung, and then the rest of her life in a wheel chair. As much as she felt bad for my struggles, I can say with certainty we’re both glad I had my struggles and not hers, as at least my struggles came with benefits, IMO.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Two *years* in an iron lung? Good grief. Your grandmother’s a hell of a strong woman!
Throwatron
If I understand correctly, two years in an iron lung is the lucky outcome.
A friend of mine got her kid vaccinated today, and she was feeling really sorry for her kid. I know she’s 100% in favour of vaccines, but to further motivate her I convinced her to look up pictures of the diseases these vaccines would prevent. At pictures of Polio she turned the computer off so I reminded her that she just saved her child from all of that.
I’m not sure if I only hurt her, or if I motivated her to be an even bigger and louder proponent of vaccines. I hope it is the second. I feel somewhat conflicted, I hope I did something good.
If you confront people with reality, and they later choose to reject reality, then take solace in the fact that you have done all you can, and it’s not your job to control people’s choices, no matter how wrong they are. I think it’s more likely she took away a good lesson than a bad one from you, personally.
other than ‘personal choice/parental rights’, even if they don’t get arrested for child endangerment feels like they should at least be fined if their kid dies b/c of that versus only paying for the funeral (tho i wonder if there are fucked up parents out there and just take out life insurance on a kid and purposefully not vaccinate them)
i wonder if life insurance policies cover damage you do to yourself/your children by being bloody stupid. I’d put that in my policy: we don’t cover illness/death that’d be prevented by simple vaccines….
anon
considering ppl don’t even consider it til they’re adults, i’m not sure how much a child payout would be as opposed to like, life insurance going to the kids if parents get in some kinda accident, tho idk how much access they’d have to it if they’re still young enough to just be put in a foster home
But i wouldn’t be surprised if some states would be like “your child only qualifies for health insurance after a full physical” or so
Psychie
My only issue with that is it would mean the kids, who are the innocent victims of their parents’ stubbornness, would be denied treatment the parents couldn’t afford without the aid of insurance. Yes, it is entirely the parents’ fault for not vaccinating their kid that the kid caught an entirely preventable disease, but to make the kid’s suffering even worse by denying treatment is needlessly cruel.
Sure, but she called her husband a fucker, and that’s definitely a step in the right direction
thejeff
Except this is another hint that she’s calling him that because he’s really gay himself.
Decidedly Orthogonal
I see I wasn’t the only one to pick up on that implication.
Throwatron
it’s a stretch, but i’ve been wondering if her extreme fixation on the words “fuck,” “fucking,” and “fucker,” are subtle evidence of some underlying sexual obsession of her own that she’s hiding or denying, lmao. the woman truly makes everything about fucking.
Shadowsnail
Mom will okay the fact you’re gay ’cause she wants you to live.
She still objects; her mind’s on sex; has all the fucks to give.
Dang, I had completely forgotten that piece of dialog. I only had a vague “he’s nto OK with Ethan being gay” feeling. Had to used Naomi’s tag to find it and yuuuuuup, I now know what you mean and completely and absolutely regret my previous comment.
It’s halfway to “you’re an adult,” I guess. But legally and otherwise, the latter is very true.
Daniel M Ball
as long as you’re dependent on somebody for your food, shelter, and education, you kinda have to tolerate their bullshit. Once you get sick enough of it to take charge of those things for yourself (win or lose, you can still lose), then you’re an adult…or at least, then you’re adult enough to expect the respect of being an adult, even if you’re legally underage.
Having read a link somebody else provided further down in the comments, my weighting on the hypothesis of “just insecure” is probably way lower than “her husband is closeted”, which now seems much more likely.
I think it is, she is just also continuing to be homophobic about it.
Throwatron
The very definition of homophobic is that a person is explicitly disgusted by homosexual existence, believes that homosexuals should completely hide their queerness, and that they do not respect homosexuals as equivalently valuable people.
If you feel that way about someone, you cannot genuinely love them. It is a form of hate. There’s no way to describe that kind of person’s love as genuine, if you’re claiming they genuinely love a queer person. They’re a hateful person, and even their attempts at love, are usually just more forms of hate. Someone literally cannot love a person, who they both hate, and don’t respect, and don’t believe should be free. It disturbs me that some people think that could be love.
Jeremiah
Humans are full of awful contractions that don’t really make any sense but exist anyway.
Shadowsnail
Like “ain’t”.
(Sorry, can’t let a good typo pun go to waste.)
Jeremiah
I respect you but I also curse you.
Throwatron
y’all’ain’t’d’ve
cain
Humans are very complicated and love equally so. I agree that the love of my transphobic mother is deeply flawed and painful. I do also believe her feelings of love for me are genuine. She continues to do what she thinks is best for me. She often fails to listen or respect when I tell her she is wrong about what is best for me. It’s still an attempt to love, but love and horror are two sides of the same coin.
Naomi’s having a LOT of trouble meeting Ethan’s eyes right now, though. There’s something she’s not telling him – it could be just how much “allowing” her son’s gayness bothers her, or there’s more to it than that…
It’s been long enough that I forgot some of the shitty things she said before. She just has… Like a phenomenal ability to give possibly the worst comments every single time she opens her mouth. You know the writing is really freaking good when you find yourself genuinely hating a cartoon character.
Mark
Well, Naomi is as blunt as a baseball, whatever else she may be. I am wondering how many thousands of parents quietly think what she says out loud without a qualm.
Throwatron
She’s literally 10 for 10 on strips where she has a line, and all 10 of her lines are her being deeply narcissistic towards every other character she interacts with. The comic itself has shown us 100% complete terribleness from her in every interaction she’s been in, has framed her as terribly as possible, and somehow people are still jumping to her defense, or falling for her nice mom act. I don’t know where they’re getting the idea they can read any humanity into anything she does.
lightsabermario
Eh, I kinda disagree with you there. It’s honestly not that hard to write a hateable character. It’s much harder to write characters with nuance and that have a realistic mindset with good and bad aspects than it is to just write them as easily hateable. Willis has the ability to do that, as evidenced by many of the protagonists, but for the most part for his adults he chooses not to. Sometimes you don’t want a nuanced antagonist. Sometimes you just want a simple hateable adult that you can project all your personal feelings of adults in your life onto. It helps the reader latch onto characters being affected by these adults because they have had similar experiences. It’s effective, but it’s not at all challenging to write because it doesn’t have to be balanced and sensible, and it can be as extreme as you want.
392 thoughts on “Prefer”
Ana Chronistic
oh good, at least she’s better than the parents who think their autistic child is better dead than vaccinated ?
Schpoonman
That bar is at the geometric center of the Earth and you know it.
Dday
Someone summon Hermes Conrad!
Throwatron
this comment reads like an eventual book title, and it’s not even a line from the strip
Rose by Any other Name
Oh my gods, a book title that was like
Dumbing of Age
“Schpoonman: That bar is at the geometric center of the Earth and you know it.”
That would be hilarious!
Decidedly Orthogonal
It would be epic, and I’d support it fully. But I could see one comment being favoured for a title leading to chaos in the forum.
Lilith Rose
What if….
…some one else used it as a title for something else?
Jamie
There’s a restaurant at the end of the universe, and a bar at the center of the Earth.
Proxiehunter
And yet there are so many who fail to step over it.
Xaeon
Sadly it isn’t. If it were, no one could go under it, which they do.
Kerry Ann
There are parents out there who would rather have a dead son than a live trans daughter.
At least the anti-vaxxers, stupid as they are, think they’re doing the right thing *for the kid*
They’re still wrong and stupid.
Felian
“my baby died of [some disease we have a vaccine for..]. It must have been God’s will and nothing i could have done better.“
antivaxxers and anti science people scare me.
ANeM
The phobes still think they’re doing the right thing for their kid. We’ve got more than a century of documentation from Conversion “Therapists” going “Well, we tried out hardest to ‘cure the patient, but in the end they took their own life. Clearly the ‘disease’ had progressed too far!”
It wasn’t the fact that their family signed off on them being tortured and it’s not the knowledge that if they can’t make themselves conform they -will- be tortured again that drove them to end their lives. It was “The Disease.” The poor doctors and their poor family members only wanted “what was best.”
eruonna
It… depends. There are plenty of phobic parents who are more worried about how their child’s gender or sexuality reflects on the parents than about what is best for the child.
Autogatos
Yeah uhhh…I would argue there are *also* plenty of antivaxxer parents who are more worried about how a child’s autism reflects on the parents than about what is best for the child.
I get how it can SEEM like they’re always doing it because they (incorrectly) think it’s the “right thing” to protect their kid, but any parent who is more willing to risk their child dying than developing a disability isn’t really thinking about what’s best for their child and there’s a good chance that at least subconsciously they have a problem with how they think having a disabled/neurodivergent child will make THEM look.
A LOT of parents of disabled/neurodivergent kids are still incredibly ableist, unfortunately. It’s often less obvious to abled/neurotypical people, because these parents will say a lot of stuff that may SOUND like disability advocacy, but to those who ARE disabled/ND, it’s the sort of stuff that comes off as incredibly condescending/patronizing, self-serving, and performative.
In other words, it tends to be a combo of them using their kid’s disabled/ND identity for their OWN benefit (getting sympathy for their “struggle” as parents and praise for their “advocacy”) and a lot of still-deeply-rooted ableism (either trying to gloss over the kid’s disability by engaging in toxic positivity like treating “disability” like a dirty word and insisting it’s 100% a “superpower”, or going to the opposite extreme and treating their kid as inferior and/or underestimating their abilities).
So, yeah, disability and neurodivergence are certainly no exception to the issue of parents being not just misguided but also phobic/bigoted (even if they don’t see themselves that way). But unfortunately even in progressive circles, there’s still a lot of ignorance and ableism disguised as advocacy/acceptance, and a serious lack of informed advocacy, so I think people often don’t see it for what it is. :/
Davus
+1
Thag Simmons
It’s good to know that’s where the bar is at.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Yup, cause I’mma need a drink if she keeps talking.
Opus the Poet
Take my imaginary upvote!
TheCozburger
Or that their child is better dead than autistic…
Psychie
Yeah, that was the part that always got to me, as someone on the spectrum, even if they were right about vaccines causing autism, they’d rather their child die a slow, painful death to a preventable disease than be like me. They’d rather *I* died a slow, painful death to a preventable disease than exist as I am. Than be WHO I am.
Meanwhile my grandmother had polio at 13, spent a couple years in an iron lung, and then the rest of her life in a wheel chair. As much as she felt bad for my struggles, I can say with certainty we’re both glad I had my struggles and not hers, as at least my struggles came with benefits, IMO.
Decidedly Orthogonal
Two *years* in an iron lung? Good grief. Your grandmother’s a hell of a strong woman!
Throwatron
If I understand correctly, two years in an iron lung is the lucky outcome.
Some polio survivors never got to leave them.
Regret
A friend of mine got her kid vaccinated today, and she was feeling really sorry for her kid. I know she’s 100% in favour of vaccines, but to further motivate her I convinced her to look up pictures of the diseases these vaccines would prevent. At pictures of Polio she turned the computer off so I reminded her that she just saved her child from all of that.
I’m not sure if I only hurt her, or if I motivated her to be an even bigger and louder proponent of vaccines. I hope it is the second. I feel somewhat conflicted, I hope I did something good.
Throwatron
If you confront people with reality, and they later choose to reject reality, then take solace in the fact that you have done all you can, and it’s not your job to control people’s choices, no matter how wrong they are. I think it’s more likely she took away a good lesson than a bad one from you, personally.
Felian
You did a great thing opening her eyes like that!
anon
other than ‘personal choice/parental rights’, even if they don’t get arrested for child endangerment feels like they should at least be fined if their kid dies b/c of that versus only paying for the funeral (tho i wonder if there are fucked up parents out there and just take out life insurance on a kid and purposefully not vaccinate them)
Felian
i wonder if life insurance policies cover damage you do to yourself/your children by being bloody stupid. I’d put that in my policy: we don’t cover illness/death that’d be prevented by simple vaccines….
anon
considering ppl don’t even consider it til they’re adults, i’m not sure how much a child payout would be as opposed to like, life insurance going to the kids if parents get in some kinda accident, tho idk how much access they’d have to it if they’re still young enough to just be put in a foster home
But i wouldn’t be surprised if some states would be like “your child only qualifies for health insurance after a full physical” or so
Psychie
My only issue with that is it would mean the kids, who are the innocent victims of their parents’ stubbornness, would be denied treatment the parents couldn’t afford without the aid of insurance. Yes, it is entirely the parents’ fault for not vaccinating their kid that the kid caught an entirely preventable disease, but to make the kid’s suffering even worse by denying treatment is needlessly cruel.
Taffy
Holy shit, Jade called it.
Doopyboop
Called it.
Clif
But who called her reclaiming the F-bomb lead from Malaya?
Cmasta1992
Yup called it. The baby steps were smaller than hoped for
Thag Simmons
I mean, “allowing you to be gay” isn’t much of a step.
Doctor_Who
More like she stayed put until continental drift moved her a centimeter.
Throwatron
can’t wait for him to be openly gay and happy for like 3 months
only for her to be like “your free trial of homosexuality has expired”
Dare
ahahaha thank you for the laugh I needed that badly this morning
Whirlakitty
Throwatron, you win this comic’s comment section. 🙂
Sillygoose
Sure, but she called her husband a fucker, and that’s definitely a step in the right direction
thejeff
Except this is another hint that she’s calling him that because he’s really gay himself.
Decidedly Orthogonal
I see I wasn’t the only one to pick up on that implication.
Throwatron
it’s a stretch, but i’ve been wondering if her extreme fixation on the words “fuck,” “fucking,” and “fucker,” are subtle evidence of some underlying sexual obsession of her own that she’s hiding or denying, lmao. the woman truly makes everything about fucking.
Shadowsnail
Mom will okay the fact you’re gay ’cause she wants you to live.
She still objects; her mind’s on sex; has all the fucks to give.
Daniel M Ball
bravo!!
Comic.phile
https://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/04-just-hangin-out-with-my-family/blunt/
Yeaaaah
SillyGoose
Dang, I had completely forgotten that piece of dialog. I only had a vague “he’s nto OK with Ethan being gay” feeling. Had to used Naomi’s tag to find it and yuuuuuup, I now know what you mean and completely and absolutely regret my previous comment.
Banana Slamma
It’s halfway to “you’re an adult,” I guess. But legally and otherwise, the latter is very true.
Daniel M Ball
as long as you’re dependent on somebody for your food, shelter, and education, you kinda have to tolerate their bullshit. Once you get sick enough of it to take charge of those things for yourself (win or lose, you can still lose), then you’re an adult…or at least, then you’re adult enough to expect the respect of being an adult, even if you’re legally underage.
Opus the Poet
Give him all the ideas…
jeffepp
So, the dad is closeted. She’s not allowing him out. Just her son.
Dday
This possibility adds a new level of horror to Saul’s one line dialogue…☹️
RocketRelm
Might be. She might just be *heavily* insecure.
RocketRelm
Having read a link somebody else provided further down in the comments, my weighting on the hypothesis of “just insecure” is probably way lower than “her husband is closeted”, which now seems much more likely.
AlexanderHammil
I mean, that was obvious from his previous appearance, right? We knew that.
TrueVCU
She’s phrasing it extremely badly but the sentiment feels genuine?
Bruno
The words feel comedically deliberately chosen.
Serendipity
As someone who has been in a near identical situation, the sentiment is 100% not genuine.
Jeremiah
I think it is, she is just also continuing to be homophobic about it.
Throwatron
The very definition of homophobic is that a person is explicitly disgusted by homosexual existence, believes that homosexuals should completely hide their queerness, and that they do not respect homosexuals as equivalently valuable people.
If you feel that way about someone, you cannot genuinely love them. It is a form of hate. There’s no way to describe that kind of person’s love as genuine, if you’re claiming they genuinely love a queer person. They’re a hateful person, and even their attempts at love, are usually just more forms of hate. Someone literally cannot love a person, who they both hate, and don’t respect, and don’t believe should be free. It disturbs me that some people think that could be love.
Jeremiah
Humans are full of awful contractions that don’t really make any sense but exist anyway.
Shadowsnail
Like “ain’t”.
(Sorry, can’t let a good typo pun go to waste.)
Jeremiah
I respect you but I also curse you.
Throwatron
y’all’ain’t’d’ve
cain
Humans are very complicated and love equally so. I agree that the love of my transphobic mother is deeply flawed and painful. I do also believe her feelings of love for me are genuine. She continues to do what she thinks is best for me. She often fails to listen or respect when I tell her she is wrong about what is best for me. It’s still an attempt to love, but love and horror are two sides of the same coin.
Deanatay
Naomi’s having a LOT of trouble meeting Ethan’s eyes right now, though. There’s something she’s not telling him – it could be just how much “allowing” her son’s gayness bothers her, or there’s more to it than that…
Amós Batista
Get any ideas? Is his father…
Thag Simmons
Odds are pretty good
GoblinBagsSumo
It’s been long enough that I forgot some of the shitty things she said before. She just has… Like a phenomenal ability to give possibly the worst comments every single time she opens her mouth. You know the writing is really freaking good when you find yourself genuinely hating a cartoon character.
Mark
Well, Naomi is as blunt as a baseball, whatever else she may be. I am wondering how many thousands of parents quietly think what she says out loud without a qualm.
Throwatron
She’s literally 10 for 10 on strips where she has a line, and all 10 of her lines are her being deeply narcissistic towards every other character she interacts with. The comic itself has shown us 100% complete terribleness from her in every interaction she’s been in, has framed her as terribly as possible, and somehow people are still jumping to her defense, or falling for her nice mom act. I don’t know where they’re getting the idea they can read any humanity into anything she does.
lightsabermario
Eh, I kinda disagree with you there. It’s honestly not that hard to write a hateable character. It’s much harder to write characters with nuance and that have a realistic mindset with good and bad aspects than it is to just write them as easily hateable. Willis has the ability to do that, as evidenced by many of the protagonists, but for the most part for his adults he chooses not to. Sometimes you don’t want a nuanced antagonist. Sometimes you just want a simple hateable adult that you can project all your personal feelings of adults in your life onto. It helps the reader latch onto characters being affected by these adults because they have had similar experiences. It’s effective, but it’s not at all challenging to write because it doesn’t have to be balanced and sensible, and it can be as extreme as you want.