simpson’s bus driver tapping sign meme, about how there are a lot of different types of lawyers, and even for defense attorneys most cases do not go to trial.
deliverything
To quote LegalEagle: “…the litigators and trial lawyers, the… let’s call them real lawyers. No I don’t want you to think that transactional attorneys aren’t real lawyers, I mean, they’re not real lawyers, but I definitely don’t want you to think that.” (followed by “I am gonna get some very well-worded angry emails from a bunch of transactional attorneys.”) https://youtu.be/UfZgNamKbwc?feature=shared&t=486
Hof1991
My brother and sister are both retirement age lawyers and I’m not sure either of them were ever involved in a criminal case. My son has spent his career putting people in jail and keeping them out of jail. The other seven lawyers in the family were on the spectrum. I escaped, but have been directly involved in more criminal cases than my siblings (witness and juror).
She’ll also never win a jury case even if she manages to select a jury, because rejects little things like ‘tact’ and ‘persuasiveness’. She’d be like Rosa Diaz, “Look, I’m gonna make this REAL simple so even you dumdums can understand…”
I hope so because at the moment he seems less like a real person and more like an idealised caricature
Psychie
I don’t think he’s displaying patience at all, he’s annoyed by her being so blatant about *not* interacting with him, her behavior is making him uncomfortable so he’s trying to confront her about it. Patience would be passively dealing with the annoyance of her behavior and doing nothing about it, he’s actively trying to change the situation to be more tolerable for him.
JR
Funny, that’s how I feel about Sarah in these interactions. She’s being given such clear invitations by a guy she’s on record as attracted to, and even after all she’s been through, she still can’t take the win. She’s so assertive in every other area, increasingly comfortable with expressing love (see: Joyce, Liz), and has none of the sexual hangups of her loved ones (see: Other Jacob). That she falls to pieces and acts like such an asshole on purpose to this one guy who has every reason to dislike her and still lets her in…well, as one of the best fictional characters of the last 5 years put it, “Get out of your own way, man, because this woe-is-me thing you’ve got going on is just fucking ponderous.”
keithcurtis
Mentioning “Other Jacob” suddenly makes me realize. She (like most of the cast) really took off on Joe for his objectifying list. How is naming a literal sex object after a specific person any different? Now she is stalking the person she named a sex toy after. Sorry, Imagine the positions reversed. Sarah is just being extremely creepy.
thejeff
She’s not “stalking” him. As she says they share a schedule and she’s freaked out about interacting with him, which makes it weird, but that’s not stalking.
The sex toy is creepy, but it started as a joke.
And it’s still not nearly the problem that early Joe was.
HueSatLight
going to flip this for you. imagine being socially awkward, and you keep telling someone you find intimidating that you don’t feel charismatic to strike up a conversation with them, and they keep insisting you try and then scold you for being a bad conversationalist.
that’s a more accurate description than “she’s stalking him”.
Taffy
I just noticed, but is your current Gravatar a picture of Dorothy with Krillin’s haircut and scars?
Reaver
Imagine this really awkward person who never strikes up a conversation with, oogling you like a big ol hunk of meat all the time, and then volunteers to spot for you, only to continue to stare at you like a tasty hunk of meat.
It is. Those are supposed to be short dreads which will leave parts of the scalp exposed from the braid, especially if the hair around them is cut usually a fade.
people have suggested that before. you can tell how accurate it is by how Joe has been too self-concious to even talk to any women and how it’s never been on Sarah’s mind since Jacob brought up being objectified.
He brought it up directly to her at the gym. She looked introspective for one panel, and then instantly forgot.
HueSatLight
you can tell how she forgot by how she’s now too self-conscious to talk to him. When you find someone attractive and intimidating, it means you don’t acknowledge their personhood.
Sirksome
I think Sarah gets criticized too much for her relationship with Jacob. She felt extremely guilty for objectifying him to the point she completely gave up on pursuing him romantically for a while because she felt she didn’t deserve him. Even now she probably feels that way. Her antisocial traits are only even a problem because Jacob actually likes her and wants a real relationship with her which I think is ignored a bit here in the comments. It wouldn’t be difficult to avoid here if he was truly as creeped out as he says. He’s trying to break her walls to form a real connection. That’s why this keeps coming up.
Anon A Mouse
In my personal opinion, she doesn’t deserve him. She has been manipulative to him directly and indirectly and has even been (rightly) called out for objectifying him. By all accounts, she is the one who keeps setting herself up in these antisocial situations and he is doing his best to ease that and she reacts in extremely negative ways. Does she even deserve this much patience from him? Any relationship they form seems like it would be emotionally abusive.
Bash
Wasn’t she objectifying him in the gym scene a few days ago? I don’t think that was just anxiety.
Sirksome
She does objectify him and that is a problem but I don’t see it as the real problem. Jacob doesn’t have to give her the time of day, he chooses to. Because he likes her. Sarah just doesn’t like herself enough to be unguarded around a great guy like Jacob so she defaults to staring at him and keeping distance. I think Sarah doesn’t get any empathy because her personality is awful, but she’s really just a shy girl with a crush here and that’s pretty relatable to me.
I also don’t like taking away Jacob’s agency. He is trying to pursue some kind of deeper relationship with Sarah. He doesn’t have to walk near her just cause they’re going to the same class. I doubt she was intentionally stalking him. He’s just not letting Sarah get away with being shy because he wants to be her friend. It’s just not working well.
Morleuca
and to add this, I also think he is kinda, on some level, enjoying this whole….thing
Li
The readership really seems to be struggling with the idea that their personal dislike of Sarah might not be shared by Jacob.
Schpoonman
Almost every instance of him trying to open up to Sarah since the timeskip has been met with “Shut up, busy looking at my eye candy.” She absolutely reduces his personhood. His very first appearance after the timeskip, the first time we’d seen him in years, was to hear Sarah say “Hey, remember how I pointed a Joyce-shaped cruise missile at you and Raidah? Mind being that cruise missile for my own emotional gratifucation again?”
Jacob is free to like or dislike Sarah, they’re fictional characters. But fucking miss me with “She’s just nervous,” when she’s clearly not too nervous to stand over him and stare at him while he’s working out, explicitly shooting down every attempt at conversation.
Li
To elaborate on / clarify my point: I have genuine sympathy for all the folks who are waiting impatiently for an emotional catharsis (in this case, Jacob telling Sarah to go fuck herself and leave him alone forever) that just isn’t going to happen.
That must be very frustrating.
Mark
As someone who was once (well, thrice) a shy guy with a crush, I offer another possible factor: I didn’t know how to approach someone I was attracted to, and just froze up. It was awful. It took a long time to figure it out.
Li
@Mark: sympathy via light physical contact.
I have mixed feelings about the aggressive pathologization of “creepiness”. On the one hand, absolutely the worst guys on the internet and real life started claiming it was a slur and the worst thing you could accuse a guy of being, which is… revealing, heh.
But on the other, absolutely there ARE a lot of perfectly benign shy people with social anxiety who were already constantly second guessing themselves and worrying about how they came across and worrying about the impact just passively crushing on someone might have on the other person — and those folks did not need more ammo for their self-doubt. ?
that’s def something she needs to reflect on, jacob did mention it when she and joyce had lunch with him but at this point, he can’t be the only attractive person on campus sarah can tolerate it’d be easiest for her to move on and find osmeon to have a fling with
personality aside, i think she prefers someone taller/buffer b/c she wants them to be an ‘obstacle course’ (which also is kinda objectifying but i imagine there would be some guys into it/wouldn’t mind), tho dang even if she somehow admitted that walky was hot i imagine walky would stay far away from her lol
Schpoonman
She was in the group when he hair hit the right “intentionally long and messy” length and she was not immune.
Schpoonman
*his hair
Li
I think she’s said as much, though I might be confusing her with someone else (there is So Much DoA). Something about wanting to climb her boys like trees and not being so much a fan of boys climbing her like one.
Then again, she’s only like this around Jacob, therefore we can assume it is caused by something about Jacob *as a person*. He’s not the only hot dude on campus, after all.
“The way she accuses Joe”? Is that different from the way we saw early Joe treat women?
And no, she really doesn’t. She does objectify him and that is clearly treated as a character flaw, but she’s not aggressive about it as Joe was. She doesn’t show up out of nowhere to tell a stranger how much she wants to fuck him – as Rachel phrased it.
Yeah, that was some seriously fucked-up behavior Joe was engaging in months ago. Behavior for which he has apologized and he is actively attempting to better, but Sarah think she can declare that a mistake is forever.
Schpoonman
Tall Rachel, Sarah, fucking Bloodrose, Joyce herself, none of these characters are required to accept Joe’s apology or spend time with him, and none of them do. Except Joyce, who has accepted Joe’s apology, who is interested in seeing how he grows as a person/character, and as far as we’ve seen he hasn’t gone looking for Sarah or Tall Rachel to try to get them to accept him. He just is in Sarah’s vicinity by coincidence and she hauls off and says “No, he cannot be forgiven.”
128 thoughts on “Following”
Ana Chronistic
“eye contact, my weaknesssssss”
Doctor_Who
She’s going to be a great lawyer someday. Juror selection will be a scream, she’ll reject any who are too hot for her to look at or speak to.
HueSatLight
simpson’s bus driver tapping sign meme, about how there are a lot of different types of lawyers, and even for defense attorneys most cases do not go to trial.
deliverything
To quote LegalEagle: “…the litigators and trial lawyers, the… let’s call them real lawyers. No I don’t want you to think that transactional attorneys aren’t real lawyers, I mean, they’re not real lawyers, but I definitely don’t want you to think that.” (followed by “I am gonna get some very well-worded angry emails from a bunch of transactional attorneys.”)
https://youtu.be/UfZgNamKbwc?feature=shared&t=486
Hof1991
My brother and sister are both retirement age lawyers and I’m not sure either of them were ever involved in a criminal case. My son has spent his career putting people in jail and keeping them out of jail. The other seven lawyers in the family were on the spectrum. I escaped, but have been directly involved in more criminal cases than my siblings (witness and juror).
anonymsly
She’ll also never win a jury case even if she manages to select a jury, because rejects little things like ‘tact’ and ‘persuasiveness’. She’d be like Rosa Diaz, “Look, I’m gonna make this REAL simple so even you dumdums can understand…”
Decidedly Orthogonal
Brave Sa-rah ran away!
Bravely ran away – away!
Michael Lanting
When Jacob reared his pretty head,
she bravely turned her tail and fled…
Makkabee
She liked to gaze upon his tail,
But conversation? Epic fail!
Eyebrow
This won the Internets. Neil Innes would be proud.
NGPZ
I mean my weakness too ??
Animedingo
Called her out
Yotomoe
BOOOO
shrub
Is Jacob even human, the amount of patience he’s displaying is otherworldly
Coatl
They say that the anger of a kind person is extremely dangerous…and we may see that in Jacob in the future.
shrub
I hope so because at the moment he seems less like a real person and more like an idealised caricature
Psychie
I don’t think he’s displaying patience at all, he’s annoyed by her being so blatant about *not* interacting with him, her behavior is making him uncomfortable so he’s trying to confront her about it. Patience would be passively dealing with the annoyance of her behavior and doing nothing about it, he’s actively trying to change the situation to be more tolerable for him.
JR
Funny, that’s how I feel about Sarah in these interactions. She’s being given such clear invitations by a guy she’s on record as attracted to, and even after all she’s been through, she still can’t take the win. She’s so assertive in every other area, increasingly comfortable with expressing love (see: Joyce, Liz), and has none of the sexual hangups of her loved ones (see: Other Jacob). That she falls to pieces and acts like such an asshole on purpose to this one guy who has every reason to dislike her and still lets her in…well, as one of the best fictional characters of the last 5 years put it, “Get out of your own way, man, because this woe-is-me thing you’ve got going on is just fucking ponderous.”
keithcurtis
Mentioning “Other Jacob” suddenly makes me realize. She (like most of the cast) really took off on Joe for his objectifying list. How is naming a literal sex object after a specific person any different? Now she is stalking the person she named a sex toy after. Sorry, Imagine the positions reversed. Sarah is just being extremely creepy.
thejeff
She’s not “stalking” him. As she says they share a schedule and she’s freaked out about interacting with him, which makes it weird, but that’s not stalking.
The sex toy is creepy, but it started as a joke.
And it’s still not nearly the problem that early Joe was.
HueSatLight
going to flip this for you. imagine being socially awkward, and you keep telling someone you find intimidating that you don’t feel charismatic to strike up a conversation with them, and they keep insisting you try and then scold you for being a bad conversationalist.
that’s a more accurate description than “she’s stalking him”.
Taffy
I just noticed, but is your current Gravatar a picture of Dorothy with Krillin’s haircut and scars?
Reaver
Imagine this really awkward person who never strikes up a conversation with, oogling you like a big ol hunk of meat all the time, and then volunteers to spot for you, only to continue to stare at you like a tasty hunk of meat.
Amara
We did see him get mad before. At the whole Joyce and breaking up with Raidah arc.
Reltzik
On the one hand, in Jacob’s situation *I* could display this kind of patience on a regular basis.
… but I would be doing it so I could delight in watching her squirm, and I don’t think that counts as the same thing.
Needfuldoer
I think he’s also a bit into Sarah, otherwise he might not have given her so many chances.
Jo_cubstar
Sarah Sarah Sarah… Just talk to the guy
Coatl
But she is determined to make it so difficult
Needfuldoer
Talking to people you find attractive is difficult!
Nono
(squints at Panel 2)
Is… is Jacob balding? There’s like gaps of scalp between the blonde fop and the part where he has some natural hair.
Jeremiah
I think that’s just a hairstyle.
Sirksome
It is. Those are supposed to be short dreads which will leave parts of the scalp exposed from the braid, especially if the hair around them is cut usually a fade.
anon
i just assumed it was an undercut/ fade
Jeremiah
Jacob is disappointed but not surprised.
RacingTurtle
Oh, Sarah
Sirksome
She’s just using him to block wind so she has less drag and conserves energy when walking.
DailyBrad
Sarah should ask Carla for a recommendation on some wheelies, on account of her need to escape her feelies.
M!a
FeelieWheelies! I like!
Schpoonman
Did we talk about how Sarah treats Jacob much the way she accuses Joe of treating women? No personhood acknowledged, he’s just eye candy.
HueSatLight
people have suggested that before. you can tell how accurate it is by how Joe has been too self-concious to even talk to any women and how it’s never been on Sarah’s mind since Jacob brought up being objectified.
Lumino
He brought it up directly to her at the gym. She looked introspective for one panel, and then instantly forgot.
HueSatLight
you can tell how she forgot by how she’s now too self-conscious to talk to him. When you find someone attractive and intimidating, it means you don’t acknowledge their personhood.
Sirksome
I think Sarah gets criticized too much for her relationship with Jacob. She felt extremely guilty for objectifying him to the point she completely gave up on pursuing him romantically for a while because she felt she didn’t deserve him. Even now she probably feels that way. Her antisocial traits are only even a problem because Jacob actually likes her and wants a real relationship with her which I think is ignored a bit here in the comments. It wouldn’t be difficult to avoid here if he was truly as creeped out as he says. He’s trying to break her walls to form a real connection. That’s why this keeps coming up.
Anon A Mouse
In my personal opinion, she doesn’t deserve him. She has been manipulative to him directly and indirectly and has even been (rightly) called out for objectifying him. By all accounts, she is the one who keeps setting herself up in these antisocial situations and he is doing his best to ease that and she reacts in extremely negative ways. Does she even deserve this much patience from him? Any relationship they form seems like it would be emotionally abusive.
Bash
Wasn’t she objectifying him in the gym scene a few days ago? I don’t think that was just anxiety.
Sirksome
She does objectify him and that is a problem but I don’t see it as the real problem. Jacob doesn’t have to give her the time of day, he chooses to. Because he likes her. Sarah just doesn’t like herself enough to be unguarded around a great guy like Jacob so she defaults to staring at him and keeping distance. I think Sarah doesn’t get any empathy because her personality is awful, but she’s really just a shy girl with a crush here and that’s pretty relatable to me.
I also don’t like taking away Jacob’s agency. He is trying to pursue some kind of deeper relationship with Sarah. He doesn’t have to walk near her just cause they’re going to the same class. I doubt she was intentionally stalking him. He’s just not letting Sarah get away with being shy because he wants to be her friend. It’s just not working well.
Morleuca
and to add this, I also think he is kinda, on some level, enjoying this whole….thing
Li
The readership really seems to be struggling with the idea that their personal dislike of Sarah might not be shared by Jacob.
Schpoonman
Almost every instance of him trying to open up to Sarah since the timeskip has been met with “Shut up, busy looking at my eye candy.” She absolutely reduces his personhood. His very first appearance after the timeskip, the first time we’d seen him in years, was to hear Sarah say “Hey, remember how I pointed a Joyce-shaped cruise missile at you and Raidah? Mind being that cruise missile for my own emotional gratifucation again?”
Jacob is free to like or dislike Sarah, they’re fictional characters. But fucking miss me with “She’s just nervous,” when she’s clearly not too nervous to stand over him and stare at him while he’s working out, explicitly shooting down every attempt at conversation.
Li
To elaborate on / clarify my point: I have genuine sympathy for all the folks who are waiting impatiently for an emotional catharsis (in this case, Jacob telling Sarah to go fuck herself and leave him alone forever) that just isn’t going to happen.
That must be very frustrating.
Mark
As someone who was once (well, thrice) a shy guy with a crush, I offer another possible factor: I didn’t know how to approach someone I was attracted to, and just froze up. It was awful. It took a long time to figure it out.
Li
@Mark: sympathy via light physical contact.
I have mixed feelings about the aggressive pathologization of “creepiness”. On the one hand, absolutely the worst guys on the internet and real life started claiming it was a slur and the worst thing you could accuse a guy of being, which is… revealing, heh.
But on the other, absolutely there ARE a lot of perfectly benign shy people with social anxiety who were already constantly second guessing themselves and worrying about how they came across and worrying about the impact just passively crushing on someone might have on the other person — and those folks did not need more ammo for their self-doubt. ?
anon
that’s def something she needs to reflect on, jacob did mention it when she and joyce had lunch with him but at this point, he can’t be the only attractive person on campus sarah can tolerate it’d be easiest for her to move on and find osmeon to have a fling with
clif
I hear Walky might be free.
anon
personality aside, i think she prefers someone taller/buffer b/c she wants them to be an ‘obstacle course’ (which also is kinda objectifying but i imagine there would be some guys into it/wouldn’t mind), tho dang even if she somehow admitted that walky was hot i imagine walky would stay far away from her lol
Schpoonman
She was in the group when he hair hit the right “intentionally long and messy” length and she was not immune.
Schpoonman
*his hair
Li
I think she’s said as much, though I might be confusing her with someone else (there is So Much DoA). Something about wanting to climb her boys like trees and not being so much a fan of boys climbing her like one.
Masumi
Then again, she’s only like this around Jacob, therefore we can assume it is caused by something about Jacob *as a person*. He’s not the only hot dude on campus, after all.
sakamism
She has something like a crush on him, but her objectification of him is a big part of it and needs to be disentangled.
Normally I find her really annoying when she’s interacting with Jacob but right now her anxiety and awkwardness is just too relatable
C.T. Phipps
I think Sarah doesn’t want any form of emotional intimacy with a partner and thus only wants a purely physical relationship.
Jacob, sadly, is a big cuddly teddy bear of muscles who is all about emotions.
someone
So what she wants is Joe, but the Joe from before his character growth. Might be why she claims it hasn’t happened.
Schpoonman
She just hates that she’s regressed while someone she had a legitimate problem with is progressing.
eh, whatever
Is she on record as finding anyone else hot?
anon
ethan fling aside, it would be mildly amusing if she somehow hooked up with asher just to get under raidah and jen’s skin
BarerMender
Jason wants to be kind to her, and she doesn’t know what to do with that. She knows how to act around abusive people, but not this.
Amós Batista
Are you serious?
thejeff
“The way she accuses Joe”? Is that different from the way we saw early Joe treat women?
And no, she really doesn’t. She does objectify him and that is clearly treated as a character flaw, but she’s not aggressive about it as Joe was. She doesn’t show up out of nowhere to tell a stranger how much she wants to fuck him – as Rachel phrased it.
Schpoonman
Yeah, that was some seriously fucked-up behavior Joe was engaging in months ago. Behavior for which he has apologized and he is actively attempting to better, but Sarah think she can declare that a mistake is forever.
Schpoonman
Tall Rachel, Sarah, fucking Bloodrose, Joyce herself, none of these characters are required to accept Joe’s apology or spend time with him, and none of them do. Except Joyce, who has accepted Joe’s apology, who is interested in seeing how he grows as a person/character, and as far as we’ve seen he hasn’t gone looking for Sarah or Tall Rachel to try to get them to accept him. He just is in Sarah’s vicinity by coincidence and she hauls off and says “No, he cannot be forgiven.”
Charles Phipps
I hope we get back to Ethan post-coitus soon.
We need him to comment on the new Energon comics that are basically violent R-rated children’s cartoons.
🙂
Coatl
Sarah, I don’t hate you, but why do you insist on making things so difficult?