Stepping back to a cultural/historical perspective, orthodox Judaism heavily emphasizes ritual and behavioral strictures — dietary laws, ritual purity rules for festivals, that sort of thing. Since many of these strictures can be quite onerous, we look for ways to bend them. For instance, last night Pessach (passover) started. Orthodox Jews not only cannot eat leavened bread during Pessach, they’re not supposed to have any in the house, and some say you’re not allowed to own any at all during passover. Rather than throwing away all that food, Orthodox Jews will “sell” it to a non-Jewish friend and then “buy it back” at the end of the holiday. Another element of Pessach services is the reading of the Haggaddah, an account of the exodus of Jews from Egypt. The Haggaddah contains several ritualized arguments for the family to recite, including a story of four medieval rabbis staying up all night arguing about the number of plagues that God visited on Egypt (they all come up with reasons for the traditional number 10 to be wrong).
This kind of logic-chopping and rules lawyering, so central to orthodox Jewish religious practice, spread to other aspects of Jewish life. It’s a game to us, and sometimes a profession. Rabbis, lawyers, teachers and professional students are highly regarded in Jewish culture, in part for having found ways to make a living at arguing. We even make jokes about arguing with God — and winning.
Clover.Fuchs
That was a pretty good argument… :I
Gears
It’s true, we do. I once witnessed my grandmother and her sister arguing over which direction was the proper way for toilet paper to come off the roll. It can occasionally backfire though, which is what I expect in this instance.
hehe, for some reason, jew jokes have always flew over my head. Especially Kumar and Harold movie and Family guy and Drawn Together <_< Is it because society is improving?
By “overpowers” does he mean that people can’t see past him being gay for the geek that he is? Or that him being gay overpowers his ability to indulge in the internet and robot-collecting?
You wouldn’t believe how much your sexual preference can cause people to stop looking at you as the person who likes the same stuff as you do, and start looking at you as ‘the guy that could be checking out my ass’
I think, on that note, that Ethan’s in an interesting position to comment not just on real life, but also for gay fictional characters like himself and the way they may be crudely perceived or written.
gangler
Now that you mention it we did get a lot more people asking if he was gay in the Dumbiverse than if he still collects toys.
timemonkey
Sexual orientation affects shipping potential, the sooner you know the potential options the sooner you can explore those options. As the DoA verse Ethan is many years younger than Shortpacked Ethan his childhood, hobbies and such will naturally shift. His age makes the fact that certain thinsg will be different obvious, but sexuality is a question that can only be answered through direct evidence.
SUGauthor
Gangler has a decent point, Ethan’s the gay character in the comic, we think of him as gay first, geek second. Honestly his entire DOA character wouldn’t make sense if he was straight. Meanwhile characters such as Dorothy and Walky aren’t called the straight characters.
Lani
when someone asks “who’s Ethan again?”, “the geeky one” just isn’t specific enough. “the gay guy” is
timemonkey
I’ve always thought of him as the arguementative one on Shortpacked and the whiney one here on DoA.
Blob Marley
He’s the gay character because that’s what’s constantly referenced in the storyline. DoA is largely about feels and t3h s4x. If DoA were more like Shortpacked, where toys are equally as central to the characters, then Ethan would again be That Guy With The Robot Addiction.
Chatokun
Agreed, I only occasionally go to Shortpacked, but I identify Ethan there as a Transformers nerd more than his sexual orientation. I don’t even remember the last time that was brought up here.
Andrew_C
Yup, I know that many of those questions were in jest, but it still annoyed me. At the time I was thinking “Does it really matter?” and “We will learn when it becomes relevant to the story, so stop asking”. Maybe I should have posted instead of just thinking it :/
Department of Redundancy Department
Gunnerkrigg Court ftw.
dethtoll
Since when has a character’s canon sexual orientation /ever/ affected who that character gets shipped with?
timemonkey
It affects which ships we take seriously. Sure, people will ship with whomever they want but we know some ships are just for funsies.
Sexual orientation is also more broadly interesting. I’ve been reading David Willis’ webcomics since I was in middle school, and it sure as hell isn’t because of all the funny discussions about Transformers.
Not that they’re not funny, I’m just not a Transformers guy. It’s a bit like how I read Penny Arcade even in the 2000s, when I didn’t own a game console.
Being transgender is both better and worse. Better because if you’re good enough to blend in there’s no difference in the way people treat you. Worse because if you are good enough to blend in you always wonder if people can still tell – and on the rare times that they do accidentally or deliberately misgender you (… as SOMEONE did to me at ECCC … ) it can send you into a tailspin, whether for a moment or a month.
And if you *aren’t* able to blend in perfectly, you are always sitting there waiting for the next person to freak out.
Static Air
Also, transgender rights, for things like discrimination in the workplace, or being recognized as your chosen gender by Social Security, always takes a backside in the press and general political discussion to everything else. That really f***ing ticks me off.
Hate to sound like a horrible broken commercial, but I hope it gets better. Or Hang In There (complete with cute kitten hanging by its paws).
Sarina
Yea this, so very this. The number of hoops I have had to jump through just to get my new name recognized, and to get my ID change to reflect that. I have had to put up with a bunch of stuff at work. I once had a small child come right up to me and say ‘hi freak’ and his parents didn’t see the need to correct him.
Is he an active sword swallower or just acknowledging that he now knows he wants to? I have no clarity on this point with his character – and don’t want to search a thousand comics, when 2nd semester is *actually* half over, and they are only into week #2 of first semester!!
Traga-sables
As far as we know, he is simply aware of the fact he like dudes.
We have never seen him with anyone else, and judging by his lack of social-life, he doesn’t seem to be…
I mean, if you had anyone else (and you were male-gay), would you go to the church with Joyce?
Being gay totally ruins the internet for him! Before he realized his preference, he was ambivalent about porn. Now he can’t browse without thinking “Screw this intelligent and thought-provoking forum, I could be looking at naked dudes!”
I know, I went through the same thing when I got old enough to realize that boobs are awesome.
Urgh…yaoi. Mind you, I don’t hate yaoi, it’s the fangirls that I really hate. Specifically, the rabid ones. Then again, as my friend said when his favorite series focuses more on the fangirl bait character rather than the main character: “Fangirls ruin EVERYTHING!”(The all caps was for emphasis).
Frick
I know, man! When a series focuses more on the fangirl bait than the main character/story: “Fangirls ruin EVERYTHING!” But when a series focuses on fanboy bait – that’s just normal and ‘real life’ and completely the natural order of things, right?
Aizat
Not really, in my humble opinion, creators of the series shouldn’t really pander to the extreme side of the fandom(that includes fanboys and fangirls).
Li
Sure, but… if you don’t see the fanboy bait in literally every form of media ever, it’s only because you’re so used to it you’ve stopped noticing it.
wouldn’t being gay automatically place you in the yaoi fanclub?
or do you need to fill out an aplication form?
Nightmarewarden
Well some people simply don’t like anime/manga/fanfiction. On the other hand, it has been scientifically proven that those people are crazy. Yeah…Sciency…
Yotomoe
no more than being straight would place you in the yuri fanclub. Or even the hetero anime fanclub.
WhatAGuy
if being gay was putting you in the yaoi club, then why would the yuri club imply straight membership? Shouldn’t the sexual orientation in that sentence be ‘lesbian’?
I would think that yuri club implying/not implying straightness, would be… equivalent to yaoi club implying/not implying the same. The hetero anime club, now that does seem to make sense.
H. Savinien
The actual percentage of yuri that I find actually sexy instead of ragingly offensive and annoying is miniscule. :\ Of course, same for a lot of yaoi. And…okay, let’s be honest, a lot of manga and anime is really bad at gender and sexuality and not being rapey in relationships involving sex. And I like manga.
Li
On the other hand, Japan is way better than us at not being rapey IRL, and western porn does very similar stuff. So. I’d trade.
Li
No, because yaoi is written by and for women. Some gay men like it and some don’t, but they are neither its creators nor its audience.
If you were ever to compare doujinshi for straight men to yaoi, you would notice a fairly large difference in — well, to be blunt, dicks.
The vast majority of yaoi in Japan kind of hides the genitals. The sex going on might be intense or not, but the intensity is MOSTLY conveyed by the dialogue rather than the art. You won’t see erections in any detail or (even during scenes of anal sex) will you see anyone’s anus or balls.
Compare this to a typical doujinshi for men, and OMG the dick worship. There will be multiple pages devoted to showing it being licked and sucked. There will be “transparent” illustrations so that you can see the dick inside the girl’s throat, inside her vagina, mysteriously penetrating her WOMB.
And in these doujinshi, you can always tell how into anal the artist was by how intensely detailed the girl’s anus is when she spreads her legs.
I mean, the “men are more visual thing women” thing is bull. But I think that even straight ladies are less interested in seeing the dick than straight men, so I can’t help assuming gay men would be even more interested in seeing it?
(I mean comparatively there’s almost no vag in straight doujinshi, and boobs exist mostly for titty fucking. The guy in the doujinshi gets all the pleasure, so it being for male gaze is really obvious.) (And all of this is without even going into the interesting phenomenon of “futanari”, where straight dudes add even more dick camera time.)
Did that clear everything up or am I just rendering readers blind?
Oh and I’m not saying that straight doujinshi porn should be more for women or that yaoi should be more for gay men — I just wish I knew where to find the rest of the doujinshi. The gay dude doujinshi for gay dudes would be interesting to read, I’d love to see yuri for ladies, etc. Porn is fantasy and we shouldn’t really be shamed for our fantasies IMHO.
Okay, yesterday’s strip took me from sympathizing with his attempt at self-delusion due to the misery that caused it to being disgusted with Ethan’s manipulation of the situation.
Today’s strip has taken me from being simply disgusted with Ethan to having really mixed feelings including both disgust and sympathy.
Tomorrow’s strip will make you feel apathetic with a hint of stomach discomfort, followed by Thursday’s cloudy with a chance of meatballs, and then you will cap off the week with a strange desire to dress as a squirrel and dance the Batusi.
Keep in mind that if Batusi Squirreling occurs for longer than 3 hours, consult your doctor or physician. You may be suffering from a condition known as Squirrel Dance Fever. Not to be confused with Ants in my pants Fever or Boogie Fever.
Originalslugboy
Does it still count if it’s because my zipper’s jammed and my iPod is stuck on repeat?
235 thoughts on “Always Always”
Doctor_Who
She had a perfectly valid excuse! She was killing spiders!
Aizat
Spiders, a giant legion of spiders.
thecanvashat
Were the spiders larger thelan normal, or the legion larger than normal?
Aizat
It’s a giant legion of giant spiders.
begbert2
Actually it was a regular-sized legion of regular-sized spiders that were part of a sports team.
AlephOzone
It’s the first time I laugh at a comment in Dumbing of Age. Congratulations. You win 1 internet.
NightmareWarden
Sounds like you need to read more comments.
Znayx
Seconded.
ShadowWing Tronix
If you’re going for a Nostalgia Critic reference I salute you.
Tan
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-2/01-pajama-jeans/wronged/
Juliecat
Trigger warning 🙁
Jen Aside
Nooooooo *hugs Ethan*
*tandem HUGZ w/ floater text*
desolation0
I’m just glad the floaty text is only about a week old. Otherwise I’d be going back through the archives for all the floaty text I’d missed.
Yotomoe
Ethan makes a very good argument. Then again he IS Jewish.
DudeMyDadOwnsADealership
Aye. “What about Joyce?” is the only rebuttal. Poor girl and her continuously persecuted self-esteem…
Aizat
And? Am I missing something here?
Yotomoe
Yes. Your aim needs improvement.
Aizat
Well, we don’t sell guns in my country…so, I’m spitballing here.
tyren22
Boring serious answer: “Jews like to argue” is a common stereotype.
Captain67
They make good lawyers for a reason. This is coming from a Jewish guy.
tyren22
I don’t personally know any Jews so it’s not like I can comment on its accuracy or lack thereof. 😉
Makkabee
Going by my family, it’s dead accurate.
Stepping back to a cultural/historical perspective, orthodox Judaism heavily emphasizes ritual and behavioral strictures — dietary laws, ritual purity rules for festivals, that sort of thing. Since many of these strictures can be quite onerous, we look for ways to bend them. For instance, last night Pessach (passover) started. Orthodox Jews not only cannot eat leavened bread during Pessach, they’re not supposed to have any in the house, and some say you’re not allowed to own any at all during passover. Rather than throwing away all that food, Orthodox Jews will “sell” it to a non-Jewish friend and then “buy it back” at the end of the holiday. Another element of Pessach services is the reading of the Haggaddah, an account of the exodus of Jews from Egypt. The Haggaddah contains several ritualized arguments for the family to recite, including a story of four medieval rabbis staying up all night arguing about the number of plagues that God visited on Egypt (they all come up with reasons for the traditional number 10 to be wrong).
This kind of logic-chopping and rules lawyering, so central to orthodox Jewish religious practice, spread to other aspects of Jewish life. It’s a game to us, and sometimes a profession. Rabbis, lawyers, teachers and professional students are highly regarded in Jewish culture, in part for having found ways to make a living at arguing. We even make jokes about arguing with God — and winning.
Clover.Fuchs
That was a pretty good argument… :I
Gears
It’s true, we do. I once witnessed my grandmother and her sister arguing over which direction was the proper way for toilet paper to come off the roll. It can occasionally backfire though, which is what I expect in this instance.
JepMZ
hehe, for some reason, jew jokes have always flew over my head. Especially Kumar and Harold movie and Family guy and Drawn Together <_< Is it because society is improving?
Wonder Wig
By “overpowers” does he mean that people can’t see past him being gay for the geek that he is? Or that him being gay overpowers his ability to indulge in the internet and robot-collecting?
Yotomoe
I’d say the former.
Pyr05
You wouldn’t believe how much your sexual preference can cause people to stop looking at you as the person who likes the same stuff as you do, and start looking at you as ‘the guy that could be checking out my ass’
Wonder Wig
I think, on that note, that Ethan’s in an interesting position to comment not just on real life, but also for gay fictional characters like himself and the way they may be crudely perceived or written.
gangler
Now that you mention it we did get a lot more people asking if he was gay in the Dumbiverse than if he still collects toys.
timemonkey
Sexual orientation affects shipping potential, the sooner you know the potential options the sooner you can explore those options. As the DoA verse Ethan is many years younger than Shortpacked Ethan his childhood, hobbies and such will naturally shift. His age makes the fact that certain thinsg will be different obvious, but sexuality is a question that can only be answered through direct evidence.
SUGauthor
Gangler has a decent point, Ethan’s the gay character in the comic, we think of him as gay first, geek second. Honestly his entire DOA character wouldn’t make sense if he was straight. Meanwhile characters such as Dorothy and Walky aren’t called the straight characters.
Lani
when someone asks “who’s Ethan again?”, “the geeky one” just isn’t specific enough. “the gay guy” is
timemonkey
I’ve always thought of him as the arguementative one on Shortpacked and the whiney one here on DoA.
Blob Marley
He’s the gay character because that’s what’s constantly referenced in the storyline. DoA is largely about feels and t3h s4x. If DoA were more like Shortpacked, where toys are equally as central to the characters, then Ethan would again be That Guy With The Robot Addiction.
Chatokun
Agreed, I only occasionally go to Shortpacked, but I identify Ethan there as a Transformers nerd more than his sexual orientation. I don’t even remember the last time that was brought up here.
Andrew_C
Yup, I know that many of those questions were in jest, but it still annoyed me. At the time I was thinking “Does it really matter?” and “We will learn when it becomes relevant to the story, so stop asking”. Maybe I should have posted instead of just thinking it :/
Department of Redundancy Department
Gunnerkrigg Court ftw.
dethtoll
Since when has a character’s canon sexual orientation /ever/ affected who that character gets shipped with?
timemonkey
It affects which ships we take seriously. Sure, people will ship with whomever they want but we know some ships are just for funsies.
John Harmon
“It affects which ships we take seriously. ”
Yes, because fans pitting two random characters in a relationship together that has literally no real bearing on the story is very serious business.
bunivasal
Sexual orientation is also more broadly interesting. I’ve been reading David Willis’ webcomics since I was in middle school, and it sure as hell isn’t because of all the funny discussions about Transformers.
bunivasal
Not that they’re not funny, I’m just not a Transformers guy. It’s a bit like how I read Penny Arcade even in the 2000s, when I didn’t own a game console.
Just Karen
Being transgender is both better and worse. Better because if you’re good enough to blend in there’s no difference in the way people treat you. Worse because if you are good enough to blend in you always wonder if people can still tell – and on the rare times that they do accidentally or deliberately misgender you (… as SOMEONE did to me at ECCC … ) it can send you into a tailspin, whether for a moment or a month.
And if you *aren’t* able to blend in perfectly, you are always sitting there waiting for the next person to freak out.
Static Air
Also, transgender rights, for things like discrimination in the workplace, or being recognized as your chosen gender by Social Security, always takes a backside in the press and general political discussion to everything else. That really f***ing ticks me off.
Hate to sound like a horrible broken commercial, but I hope it gets better. Or Hang In There (complete with cute kitten hanging by its paws).
Sarina
Yea this, so very this. The number of hoops I have had to jump through just to get my new name recognized, and to get my ID change to reflect that. I have had to put up with a bunch of stuff at work. I once had a small child come right up to me and say ‘hi freak’ and his parents didn’t see the need to correct him.
Ivan
Is he an active sword swallower or just acknowledging that he now knows he wants to? I have no clarity on this point with his character – and don’t want to search a thousand comics, when 2nd semester is *actually* half over, and they are only into week #2 of first semester!!
Traga-sables
As far as we know, he is simply aware of the fact he like dudes.
We have never seen him with anyone else, and judging by his lack of social-life, he doesn’t seem to be…
I mean, if you had anyone else (and you were male-gay), would you go to the church with Joyce?
Doctor_Who
Being gay totally ruins the internet for him! Before he realized his preference, he was ambivalent about porn. Now he can’t browse without thinking “Screw this intelligent and thought-provoking forum, I could be looking at naked dudes!”
I know, I went through the same thing when I got old enough to realize that boobs are awesome.
Yotomoe
But that’s more of a being a human, thing.
Aizat
I got sick of boobs thanks to anime. Now, the only thing I get off on is…well…is kinda misogynistic.
Bekah
Uh… Those things you see in anime aren’t boobs. They’re gravity-independent water balloons in self-contained boobsocks.
Plasma Mongoose
Does this mean that you now prefer the DFCs?
Bekah
…
Dairy Farmers of Canada?
Nightmarewarden
Dragon Fairy Cannons?
Makkabee
Distinguished Flying Crosses?
Plasma Mongoose
I hope Ethan gets his act together and find himeslf as the newest member of a yaoi fanclub, that way his gayness will become moe.
Aizat
Urgh…yaoi. Mind you, I don’t hate yaoi, it’s the fangirls that I really hate. Specifically, the rabid ones. Then again, as my friend said when his favorite series focuses more on the fangirl bait character rather than the main character: “Fangirls ruin EVERYTHING!”(The all caps was for emphasis).
Frick
I know, man! When a series focuses more on the fangirl bait than the main character/story: “Fangirls ruin EVERYTHING!” But when a series focuses on fanboy bait – that’s just normal and ‘real life’ and completely the natural order of things, right?
Aizat
Not really, in my humble opinion, creators of the series shouldn’t really pander to the extreme side of the fandom(that includes fanboys and fangirls).
Li
Sure, but… if you don’t see the fanboy bait in literally every form of media ever, it’s only because you’re so used to it you’ve stopped noticing it.
HLY
wouldn’t being gay automatically place you in the yaoi fanclub?
or do you need to fill out an aplication form?
Nightmarewarden
Well some people simply don’t like anime/manga/fanfiction. On the other hand, it has been scientifically proven that those people are crazy. Yeah…Sciency…
Yotomoe
no more than being straight would place you in the yuri fanclub. Or even the hetero anime fanclub.
WhatAGuy
if being gay was putting you in the yaoi club, then why would the yuri club imply straight membership? Shouldn’t the sexual orientation in that sentence be ‘lesbian’?
I would think that yuri club implying/not implying straightness, would be… equivalent to yaoi club implying/not implying the same. The hetero anime club, now that does seem to make sense.
H. Savinien
The actual percentage of yuri that I find actually sexy instead of ragingly offensive and annoying is miniscule. :\ Of course, same for a lot of yaoi. And…okay, let’s be honest, a lot of manga and anime is really bad at gender and sexuality and not being rapey in relationships involving sex. And I like manga.
Li
On the other hand, Japan is way better than us at not being rapey IRL, and western porn does very similar stuff. So. I’d trade.
Li
No, because yaoi is written by and for women. Some gay men like it and some don’t, but they are neither its creators nor its audience.
If you were ever to compare doujinshi for straight men to yaoi, you would notice a fairly large difference in — well, to be blunt, dicks.
The vast majority of yaoi in Japan kind of hides the genitals. The sex going on might be intense or not, but the intensity is MOSTLY conveyed by the dialogue rather than the art. You won’t see erections in any detail or (even during scenes of anal sex) will you see anyone’s anus or balls.
Compare this to a typical doujinshi for men, and OMG the dick worship. There will be multiple pages devoted to showing it being licked and sucked. There will be “transparent” illustrations so that you can see the dick inside the girl’s throat, inside her vagina, mysteriously penetrating her WOMB.
And in these doujinshi, you can always tell how into anal the artist was by how intensely detailed the girl’s anus is when she spreads her legs.
I mean, the “men are more visual thing women” thing is bull. But I think that even straight ladies are less interested in seeing the dick than straight men, so I can’t help assuming gay men would be even more interested in seeing it?
(I mean comparatively there’s almost no vag in straight doujinshi, and boobs exist mostly for titty fucking. The guy in the doujinshi gets all the pleasure, so it being for male gaze is really obvious.) (And all of this is without even going into the interesting phenomenon of “futanari”, where straight dudes add even more dick camera time.)
Did that clear everything up or am I just rendering readers blind?
Oh and I’m not saying that straight doujinshi porn should be more for women or that yaoi should be more for gay men — I just wish I knew where to find the rest of the doujinshi. The gay dude doujinshi for gay dudes would be interesting to read, I’d love to see yuri for ladies, etc. Porn is fantasy and we shouldn’t really be shamed for our fantasies IMHO.
Totz the Plaid
Okay, yesterday’s strip took me from sympathizing with his attempt at self-delusion due to the misery that caused it to being disgusted with Ethan’s manipulation of the situation.
Today’s strip has taken me from being simply disgusted with Ethan to having really mixed feelings including both disgust and sympathy.
timemonkey
For me today’s strip is exactly what I thought he’d say and doesn’t explain the most problematic parts of the situation: leading Joyce on.
Doctor_Who
Tomorrow’s strip will make you feel apathetic with a hint of stomach discomfort, followed by Thursday’s cloudy with a chance of meatballs, and then you will cap off the week with a strange desire to dress as a squirrel and dance the Batusi.
Yotomoe
Keep in mind that if Batusi Squirreling occurs for longer than 3 hours, consult your doctor or physician. You may be suffering from a condition known as Squirrel Dance Fever. Not to be confused with Ants in my pants Fever or Boogie Fever.
Originalslugboy
Does it still count if it’s because my zipper’s jammed and my iPod is stuck on repeat?