Shortpacked!/Headscratchers


 * I'm a little confused by the fact that there seems to be a significant portion of the fandom that sees Mike as a victim in the Mike/Amber relationship. We saw Mike being manipulated into a relationship back in It's Walky!, and I don't think that Amber's tactics would have succeeded in keeping Mike if Mike had not allowed it. It was strongly implied that she only found out about his second job and personality because he wanted her to, and even if he hadn't intended for her to find out, it would have been simple to spin her attempt to blackmail him so as to make Amber look utterly pathetic. If anything, he manipulated her into manipulating him into a relationship. So how does this make Mike a victim at all? Is it just Amber hating?
 * Even if Mike willingly went along with it, the fact remains that she attempted to blackmail another person into dating her, which is generally regarded as "not cool, you guys" regardless of whether it works or not.
 * Jason's appearance seems like it was intended to clear this up; Mike doesn't do anything he doesn't actually want to, at least on some level. My guess is that he initially went along with it out of his general Jerkass nature; he intended to play boyfriend for a while, get Amber to develop deeper feelings for him, then break her heart. His comments (hurtful but accurate, which is Mike's M.O.) about their relationship being "not real" sort of back this up. Amber felt terrible and agreed to let him go with no further blackmail. Mission accomplished: he gets to keep his secret, get back at Amber for trying to manipulate him, and make someone miserable in the process. What he didn't count on was that he'd actually have feelings for her at this point, and not want to break up.
 * The character Omnios is a rather blatant Take That towards people who engage in PSL. Maybe it's only because it hits a little too close to home for this troper, but I don't know...it just bugs me.
 * The comic is by the guy who invented the phrase and uses it repeatedly as a Take a Third Option in reader polls on the Dumbing of Age website, so I doubt that was his intention. If I remember specifically, it's a take-that against a specific person on the Transformers wiki, but I'll have to double-check.
 * Actually, Omnios was a guy on the Allspark who wouldn't shut the hell up about how he wanted a character from My Life As a Teenage Robot to be his wife, and his Self Insert Marty Stu fanfiction he wrote about it. The whole "what if Transformers turned into sexy sexy animals" thing was another actual idea of his. Seriously.
 * Am I the only one that sees Leslie as being a tad manipulative in regards to Robin? Granted, no more than a heterosexual male character in such a setting. But she's portrayed as almost pitiable, even though her drive was to get a then-straight woman in the sack. And when Robin decides to pursue a relationship with her, there are a lot of times where it seems she's doing it just so Leslie won't feel bad. That's not even getting into Amber pressuring her because of the assumption that Leslie moving out would leave them all homeless (because she couldn't just sign the house over to anyone else, right?). Robin met Leslie because she couldn't get over Ethan being gay, and decides to be with Leslie because Leslie couldn't get over Robin.
 * Possible, but Robin manipulated Leslie first. When she first showed up, Robin was lying about her sexuality, and used Leslie simply as a decoy to get at Ethan. Leslie was heartbroken to learn the truth, so clearly she wasn't in on the plot. Then Robin bought her toys, a freaking house, moved in with her, etc. Could you blame Leslie for thinking Robin was just very in the closet?
 * Fair enough; Robin did use Leslie first (I'm wondering if Leslie was meant to be a throwaway character, used in a few strips before being discarded, but evolved into what she is now), so each is a Manipulative Bastard. Since two wrongs don't make a right, it comes down to whether or not Leslie can forgive Robin's trespass, and whether or not Robin can forgive herself. It seems the core of the relationship became Robin's feelings of guilt rather than love. You can do something nice for someone (yes, even buy a house) and not be romantically/sexually attracted to them. Robin gave, Leslie accepted, but still wanted more; she pushed the issue for selfish reasons. Usual caring demeanor aside...that kind of makes her a bitch. To paraphrase Batman, "At least Robin has madness as an excuse!"
 * How does that work with Robin's video message to herself? She equates losing Leslie with losing everything. And then there's how Leslie dumped her, after realizing just how much Robin had given up for her. The instant she thought she was holding Robin back, she pulled an I Want My Beloved to Be Happy. They fought because they both felt angry. They broke up because Leslie didn't want to be a Manipulative Bastard, even accidentally.
 * What is with Ultra Car being a jerk? He has it made in the shade. He seems to be complaining just to hear himself talk. Mike, at least, has motives, even if it's just 'I made you angry'. Ultra Car isn't even that.
 * Ultra-Car was always smug and self-absorbed--once he in Its Walky he tells everyone to "bask in his glory" or something along those lines. He only got himself upgraded to a more eco-friendly body because it'd give him something else to feel superior about. Him being a jerk is part that, and part him trying to find his niche.
 * Reagan is still alive/alive again, and he hasn't told or reunited with Nancy? That's cold, man.
 * We don't see that much of his personal life. For all we know, he has and she's just been keeping quiet about it.
 * "Leslie Bean." I could see particularly countercultural/dickish/"creative" parents naming a child this, but fundies? What the hell? That would be like fundies having a kid named "Lucille Furre." I know you're not really supposed to think about his Punny Names that much ("Dick Lesse," "Whit (Howard) Lesse," "Ruth Lesse," all raise the same questions, really), but I'm just trying to picture her fanatical parents sitting down and asking "what should we name her?" / "how about Leslie?" / "hmm - Leslie Bean! I like the sound of that...." I guess it's just that her parent's fundamentalism is a plot point, but really, it's hard to take her Freudian Excuse speeches seriously when you realize she's talking about the people who named her "Les Bean."
 * Wasn't she married, briefly? Maybe she kept the name? Maybe "Bean" has some sort of funky pronunciation we don't know about? Or maybe her parents are just such idiots that the notion honestly didn't occur to them?
 * Perhaps she simply never went by "Les" and since her parents were fundamentalists, the connotations simply never even occurred to them.
 * Malaya gets away with way too much bitching while contributing nothing at all. Mike and Ultra car's dickishness is at least mildly entertaining most of the time. Maybe it's just the amount of focus she's gotten lately, most of which is spent complaining and avoiding anything even resembling work and/or responsibility.
 * To be fair, how often do we see most of the main cast actually working? I mean, we see them on the job, sure, but unless it's required for a joke we mostly see them standing around talking.
 * From what I understand, that's most of what retail work is. If you don't have to move stock around, help a customer, or check them out, there's not a whole lot else to do.
 * Except there's almost always those three things to do. Take it from someone who works in retail, there isn't a lot of downtime.
 * Willis says he's incapable of drawing Barry Allen because he's a "white republican from the sixties", and thus boring. Well, isn't Wally West a "white republican from the sixties" as well? What exactly is different between the two besides that Wally is a ginger & never died. It bothers me when I come across fans who are hopelessly stuck in the past like him (and yes, I realize that I'm saying this about Dave Willis, but the point STILL stands).
 * So...he's stuck in the past because he's not interested with the character's (second) oldest incarnation and wishes he stayed dead? I don't know much about Flash, but the basic argument in the comments seems to be that Wally evolved, or at least changed, over time, and became less like the stereotypical-60s-Republican all supers were in the...well, 60s. Barry hasn't, and shows no signs of doing so.
 * ...What defines as "stereotypical-60's-Republican" anyway? Not being a jerk & being courteous to others? Not to mention that... well... what's wrong with a character who acts like that anyway? Between "Stuck in the 60's" Barry Allen & a Nineties Anti Hero (not talking about Wally, but like someone from the Blood Pack or Extreme Justice), I'd take the old school guy. And the reason Wally evolved was because Barry was dead. Not much character development can happen when you are dead. And Barry has changed, not by a lot but he has. Wally just has several decades of it more than Barry. Not to mention that if he didn't want to draw Barry, he didn't HAVE to, he could have just used Wally from Justice League. It just is Willis being a jerk to people who actually do like Barry as a Flash.
 * The issue is, Barry's resurection is just one part of DC's seeming crusade to eradicate all legacy characters from the comics. And to be honest, I agree with Willis, the "classic heroes" just don't stack up these days. They're relics of the silver age, hopelessly out of touch and lacking anything particularly interesting about them. I say this as a guy who's read every issue of the Flash since Crisis on Infinite Earths, via scans or trades, as well as a lot of barry allens tenure as the Flash. Wally has a more well rounded character, fits a much more unique role in the Justice League as the nice, fun loving one (as opposed Barry's trademark seriousness) has a far more fleshed out world, including a wonderful supporting cast as well as his interactions with other heroes. Besides, Barry Allen's new stories are, to be honest, boring. It's just nothing but Professor Zoom, time and again, which really gets old. And to the claim that Wally is a "white republican from the 60's too" I would point out that Wally generally falls on the liberal end of the spectrum, see his friendship with Piper for just one example.
 * I believe he was making what those in the business refer to as a 'joke'. He happens to like Wally (and drawing Wally) better than Barry, and gave a deliberately ridiculous explanation for it. Nothing more or less to it.
 * Where did the "if instead of doing [such-and-such], [person] was smoking and drinking, would we be laughing" meme come from in the comments section? I feel like I missed something.
 * I think it started when the arguments about Ethan's toy collecting was becoming a serious problem started happening with Drew. Someone likened Ethan's toy collecting to smoking/drinking and it spiralled out of control. The Shortpacked fanbase never lets anythign go, ever.
 * Yes, that is the origin. During the break up with Drew, people were so desperate to portray it as a crippling addiction that they started to compare it to drinking and/or smoking, disregarding the fact that there are numerous reasons that this comparison is complete bull. When the next strip featured Ethan writing on a chalkboard and Robin getting mad that this was "her schtick," I made the comparison to smoking or drinking as a way of illustrating the stupidity in that argument. It got a laugh from Willis, I thought I would turn it into a running gag, used it twice, dit find it nearly as funny as I expected, used it once more, then stopped. Did it become a meme, really, or just one guy doing it?
 * Being a guy, and therefore completely unfamiliar with the physical characteristics of birth controls pills of any stripe, I find it tough to swallow that Amber didn't know the difference between her birth control and the mints Robin was replacing them with. I'm having a hard enough time accepting Robin's role in all this, despite having long since established that her brain does not work along normal paths.
 * We discussed it on the comic itself and it came up that there are mint flavored birth control pills.