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Penny and Aggie: The Forum Wars
Penny and Aggie is a webcomic about two rivals in a high school: one stereotypically popular girl, and one stereotypically artsy girl, and how much intrigue and characterization you can get out of a very "stereotypical" situation.
The writing has suffered lately, but my favorite part about this comic is probably that Penny, the popular girl, is portrayed as being very sympathetic to others when she's in private, and sometimes melancholy about the inevitable end to popularity. She's actually quite mature. Whereas Aggie, the artsy girl, is actually way bitchier to Penny than Penny ever is to her -- even in situations where Penny is trying to help her -- and is still prone to teenage temper tantrums ("omg dad how could you do that I hate you waaah") and crushes.
I like it because it turns the stereotypes on their heads, and because this is not a comic about how the unpopular nerd we all were in high school is going to get revenge on the cool kids. Which I hate. You can have your wish-fulfillment; I just don't find it interesting.
One of the major themes in P&A, for a long time, has been sexuality. One of Penny's friends, Sarah, privately believes that the reason Penny and Aggie fight is because of repressed attraction for each other.
Since Sarah first came up with this idea, sexuality has come up again and again: we've had cause to question Aggie, Penny, Aggie again, Stan (lackey of Penny's ex Rich), and of course, Sarah herself (there in panel four), who sees gays and lesbians everywhere for a reason.
This is all well and good with me. But the P&A forums drive me crazy.
Guy has told his girlfriend repeatedly he has hang-ups about casual sex. She sneaks into the shower with him, grabs his cock, and smirks.
Forum reaction: "I don't like the way he's holding her arm! It's like he's going to hit her!"
Forum reaction: "He must be gay."
Forum reaction: "Of course this isn't rape! He could totally stop her if he wanted."
As we can see: crazy.
In the most recent strips, we see Sarah projecting some more onto Aggie, telling her to her face that she should go ask Penny to dance. Aggie, who has never heard this theory before, is kind of confused and thinks maybe Sarah is misunderstanding something, and Sarah goes off to sulk. But her projection is not unnoticed by Aggie's friend, who saunters over and essentially taps her nose. She seems to think it's very sexy though.
This provokes debate in the forums!!1 The debate?
Why do all P&A fans see lesbians everywhere? It's pissing off the more deluded members of the fanbase. These are crazy people who claim that it is "no less unsupported by the comic than, say Kirk/Spock," as if very seriously they watched episodes where Kirk's best friend told him to JUST! KISS SPOCK ALREADY! Then they go on to write long rants "disproving" everyone else's reminders of all the many many times sexuality has been an issue in this comic, and then tell everyone, "The funny thing is, I couldn't care less myself [whether or not they're gay]." You don't get to say that after you just spent your entire morning trying to tell people they're definitively not.
Just because they haven't made out with another person of the same gender doesn't mean that people are pulling the idea that some of these characters might be bisexual out of their asses. I'm pretty sure that it came from the comic.
The writing has suffered lately, but my favorite part about this comic is probably that Penny, the popular girl, is portrayed as being very sympathetic to others when she's in private, and sometimes melancholy about the inevitable end to popularity. She's actually quite mature. Whereas Aggie, the artsy girl, is actually way bitchier to Penny than Penny ever is to her -- even in situations where Penny is trying to help her -- and is still prone to teenage temper tantrums ("omg dad how could you do that I hate you waaah") and crushes.
I like it because it turns the stereotypes on their heads, and because this is not a comic about how the unpopular nerd we all were in high school is going to get revenge on the cool kids. Which I hate. You can have your wish-fulfillment; I just don't find it interesting.
One of the major themes in P&A, for a long time, has been sexuality. One of Penny's friends, Sarah, privately believes that the reason Penny and Aggie fight is because of repressed attraction for each other.
Since Sarah first came up with this idea, sexuality has come up again and again: we've had cause to question Aggie, Penny, Aggie again, Stan (lackey of Penny's ex Rich), and of course, Sarah herself (there in panel four), who sees gays and lesbians everywhere for a reason.
This is all well and good with me. But the P&A forums drive me crazy.
Guy has told his girlfriend repeatedly he has hang-ups about casual sex. She sneaks into the shower with him, grabs his cock, and smirks.
Forum reaction: "I don't like the way he's holding her arm! It's like he's going to hit her!"
Forum reaction: "He must be gay."
Forum reaction: "Of course this isn't rape! He could totally stop her if he wanted."
As we can see: crazy.
In the most recent strips, we see Sarah projecting some more onto Aggie, telling her to her face that she should go ask Penny to dance. Aggie, who has never heard this theory before, is kind of confused and thinks maybe Sarah is misunderstanding something, and Sarah goes off to sulk. But her projection is not unnoticed by Aggie's friend, who saunters over and essentially taps her nose. She seems to think it's very sexy though.
This provokes debate in the forums!!1 The debate?
Why do all P&A fans see lesbians everywhere? It's pissing off the more deluded members of the fanbase. These are crazy people who claim that it is "no less unsupported by the comic than, say Kirk/Spock," as if very seriously they watched episodes where Kirk's best friend told him to JUST! KISS SPOCK ALREADY! Then they go on to write long rants "disproving" everyone else's reminders of all the many many times sexuality has been an issue in this comic, and then tell everyone, "The funny thing is, I couldn't care less myself [whether or not they're gay]." You don't get to say that after you just spent your entire morning trying to tell people they're definitively not.
Just because they haven't made out with another person of the same gender doesn't mean that people are pulling the idea that some of these characters might be bisexual out of their asses. I'm pretty sure that it came from the comic.
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Why are these fans so dumb.