Such a healthy relationship. I think there was only one person from yesterday’s comments who guessed that she got pregnant to keep Thomas from leaving her, which hey! That’s not okay! You should always be able to trust your partner to be truthful about birth control, friends. And if in doubt, use multiple methods so you don’t end up with a werewolf baby who’s going to slowly kill your possibly-ex???-girlfriend.
Anyway, take note that Flora/Connie’s main beef here is him being mad at her, not that she did something fucked up. A recurring theme in abusive relationships is that one partner won’t accept the other partner having negative emotions, even if they’re very valid. It’s one thing if your partner is flying off the handle all the time, in which case, yeah…those aren’t valid negative emotions. But when you’re mad for a very real reason (“you said we were protected from getting pregnant, but then you stopped using birth control without telling me????”), your partner should be able to discuss that with you, even if there’s an interim cooling down period needed to have an actual conversation. And hey, if you need a cooling down period to have that discussion, your partner should be able to accept that. Not everyone fights the same way, and pursuing a fight when one person needs space for a little while first only escalates things.
(Part of the problem is that I think there’s a very satisfying primal feeling that fighting with someone creates. I think as much as we all would like to be happy, being angry triggers a lot of the same chemicals in the brain. Someone has made you mad! You get to yell at them! But not being able to get control over those emotions means that you could destroy your relationship, assuming it’s healthy and otherwise worth saving, or things could escalate unsafely on both sides and lead to violence. Part of being an adult is learning how not to be an asshole and not giving in to satisfying primal anger, even if it feels good at the moment. And, you know, confronting and managing that anger when it does pop up so you’re not just shoving it all down like a bomb waiting to explode later on. Go for a walk or something, IDK.)
If you’re like me and you don’t like watching assholes fight out their relationship issues for pages on end, don’t worry. We’ve got two more pages of regular abusive relationship fighting before the more fucked up supernatural aspects of this flashback kick in. But you need to see this part for the rest of it to matter.
In other news, I’m trying to set up my files for printing for the first few issues of this series, which I’ll be selling at C2E2 in Chicago in April! Coming into this comic, I already had a decent background in graphic design. It’s a lot of stuff I learned sort of trial-by-fire, and I’ve improved a LOT over the last five years or so. So I already knew to set up all my files at a high enough DPI, large page sizes, bleeds and margins etc. And my main plan was to just set up a batch action in Photoshop, run it, and my files would be ready! BUT NOOOOOOO. It never seems to work out the way I want things to. Each page is somehow off JUST ENOUGH that it’s better to go through and make sure everything lines up. Also, for some reason, part of my Photoshop action is pasting in the template, sizing it up and centering it to match the other page sizes, and then cropping based on the template layer. Aaaand PS just sort of ignores the “sizing up” part. I have no idea why. It’s in the action! Size up 150%, center horizontal and vertical, select layer, crop, delete layer. It does all that except the 150% resize part. Thanks, Photoshop. I love you.
“A recurring theme in abusive relationships is that one partner won’t accept the other partner having negative emotions, even if they’re very valid.”
Unfortunately very very true.
…that was my mom and me. She lost her temper with me all the time (often for tiny things that you could never predict), but I was never allowed to be angry back. Because then she might get an anxiety attack and die.
The weird thing? I still love her.
I think it’s pretty normal to love your family even if you realize that sometimes they’re irrational or handle things poorly or are straight up abusive. It’s hard not to love your family, sometimes. And sometimes, it’s VERY hard to love your family.
I know a mom who not only lost her temper but became violent. When the son raised his arms to protect his face she became so mad that she got a small stroke.
Also true of abusive governments. I’ve been reading about historical Chinese societies and… hoo boy! One big reason why Chinese citizens tend to be VERY defensive about their current government is that it really is a giant improvement from the Imperial System they had before. They can even say politely negative things about the government now! (And occasionally less-polite things too (if they are clever/funny about it))
Well, I guess progress is progress.
Reading all of this (and some other stuff lately) has made me realize that I was abused more than I thought I was and that I maybe wasn’t as horrible as I was led to believe. This is… huh.
Anyway fantastic comic I love this story so far
I have actually been thinking about this page and about the bit about not allowed to feel negative emotions. I am been catching myself in judgement where I think nobody is allowed to be angry at all, for anything. I am wondering whether I am a bad person (then again, I am pathologically obsessed about being a bad person), am having unrealistic expectations, unable to deal with other peope angry or just making things up to beat myself with.
Nah, I think you’re fine. I’m not a fan of people being angry with me, mostly because I hate when people jump straight to being mad at me without communicating with me at some point before escalating to getting in my face about something. And I’m not a fan of being around angry people in general, because it freaks me out.
The issue with not allowing other people to have negative emotions in a relationship is more like:
“Hey, when you call me names, it upsets me and makes me feel bad about myself, and I don’t want you to call me names anymore.”
“Well, that’s just how I react to people. I call everyone names, and I’m not going to stop calling you names.”
“But it upsets me when you do that.”
“That’s your problem and I shouldn’t have to change.”
See the difference? That’s not healthy. If your partner comes to you with a concern in the relationship, sometimes you might not be able to change something or change it right away, but you should reasonably try to stop doing things that upset your partner, and be willing to listen to how they feel about things rather than blaming them for feeling that way in the first place.
Thanks. I get what you are saying. I’m still not sure whether it applies to me or whether I really should be worried, but explaining that would be a big load of my issues here and nobody wants that.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck her. I despise her. She’s awful.
AND the way she treats her daughter AND that she’s kidnapped children AND been abusive to them AND made them into werewolf-batteries… I haven’t seen a single redeeming characteristic.
Thomas is an idiot.
Considering Thomas isn’t in the picture at present, I’d hold off on calling him an idiot as he seems to have gotten out of this relationship. He was more likely ignorant of these particular flaws up until this moment.
Poor Thomas just didn’t know her as well as he thought.
Thomas isn’t completely blameless here by the end. He’s just got issues in different directions than Connie >_>
She’s probably able to fake being nice, at least for a short while. But with Aubrey and the rest, they’re pretty much stuck under her thumb (or she’s made them believe that) so she doesn’t have to bother much.
I suspect this is her crossing the moral event horizon, actually (or more precisely, getting caught having done so). It’s perfectly possible to have a ‘bad’ relationship without either partner being abusive per se, but they often lead to the participants escalating their negative behaviors in ways that cause a spiral.
I usually refer to relationships still in that stage (where neither partner is being outright abusive, but both are, perhaps, doing things that their better selves would frown upon) as ‘toxic’. If you can recognize your relationship has gone toxic, it’s possible for the two of you to turn things around, or to realize it’s time to bail. Failing to do either, of course, just leads to disaster.
As a for-instance, there’s all kinds of behaviors a person who is overwhelmed by how intense a relationship is can indulge in that seem to take the pressure off of themselves, but at the cost of raising it on their partner, feeding a cycle of insecurity and possessiveness. It’s highly likely he WAS distancing himself from the relationship a bit prior to her Very Bad Decision. And if he was doing so without communication, she might’ve been pushed into a panic.
BTW, as horrible as the VBD was, she obviously followed it up with the even worse one of just disappearing, rather than coming clean. Had she done that right away, things probably could’ve been handled much differently–he might’ve even been willing to come around and decided to at least help her through the pregnancy and to raise the kid.
Oh wow… this is just… wow. But on the other hand I think you are capturing it really well, so good job!
Thank you! I wish I could say I weren’t super familiar with some of this 😛
That “I left because I knew you’d be mad, and I don’t like it when you’re mad (nice unspoken ‘at me’ there)” seems so familiar…..
ahhhh, here we go “Don’t take that tone of voice with me, Aubrey. What you don’t know isn’t my fault.”
Clearly Flora/Connie likes to use the “It’s not my fault I don’t tell you things” defense.
Oh, it’s definitely her go to defense. If someone can’t read her mind, that’s not her problem.
Well, I guess it’s good information to know that she hasn’t changed in the last 20+ years.
Yep! She’s still a terrible person 😀
Well, this has established beyond all possible doubt that Connie/Flora should not have a relationship with or responsibility for anything more sapient than a plastic cactus.
Also, that logic. “I was scared you were gonna leave me, so I did something that would make you upset in order to keep you, then I realised it would piss you off so I left *you*.” How much of this was her actual reasoning and how much of this is her trying to keep control over this mess of her own making?
She could probably handle a real cactus, but she’d eventually suck it dry for energy. Or waste a lot of magic to keep it alive without sunlight, because she’s like that.
It’s more like, “I was worried you’d leave me, but if we have a kid together, you HAVE to stay, but I left *temporarily* so that I wouldn’t have to deal with you being mad at me, and you should have known that I’d show up again eventually.” It makes sense in her own mind and that’s what counts!
That kind of thinking is not only illogical but really abusive. I mean, Connie decided to bring a thinking, feeling PERSON into the world just to mess with her boyfriend’s emotions. She was screwing Aubrey over before the poor girl was even conceived!
Yeeeeeeeeeeppppppp she’s not a nice lady.
It`s so scary how real the dialog is in this page =( Those small unkidnesses that grow until they are so wrong is almost worse than physical violence. I hope the pack manages to get away from her ;-;
It’s all dialog drawn from the same patterns of abuse that show up over and over and over again, unfortunately :(. We’ll see how they manage to get the hell away from her!
Not that I felt sorry for Connie before since we’ve seen what kind of person she is early on, but I double don’t feel sorry for her now. At least Tom is smart enough to know manipulation when he sees it, and hopefully it’s true that he walked away (and not that she killed him when he refused to play by her rules). Such a shame it didn’t kill her and save us all this grief later. 😛
Thomas is no saint, but he’s used to her bullshit, so there’s that. None of this ends well 😀 😀 😀 😀
Does Inkscape work for you? It’s great for scalable graphics, but my graphics aren’t remotely like art.
Not so much in this instance! I use it when I need to make vector graphics, but this is more of an issue of needing to be very precise with my page set ups, which is best done in Photoshop or possibly InDesign
I had a feeling this may have been the reason. I just didn’t want to believe it.
Happens all the time, unfortunately! Though it shouldn’t.
If stuff like this happens all the time, that might contribute to explaining a few things, like why marriage is on such a steep decline.
Actually, this sort of reminds of what happened to someone I know. He got married, but then was divorced shortly after they had a child. Later, she told him that she only wanted him for his sperm – she wanted a child by him. He was devastated by that.
I had a feeling I’d be posting this song.
This song is very apropos and also Hozier could sing the phone book to me and I’d enjoy it.
Yes. I’m pretty sure his voice should coming a warning label for epic quality.
…Yeah, cuz he won’t be mad when you come back… Even though you only just told him why you left… Connie’s not good at logic is she?
She’s great at logic that suits her own needs, which is that she’s right in all her actions and no one’s allowed to be upset by them 🙂
Pro tip: if you don’t like when your significant other is mad and you wanna do something you know will make ’em mad…ask yourself if you really should be in that relationship to begin with. Prooobably not healthy to hang on.
-grabs bag of popcorn- but it makes for good page drama!
At times like these in a story, I really wanna go back fur-ther and find out how it even began *_*
This is true! And even on a small scale, if you do things because it makes your partner annoyed and upsets them because you think it’s funny, and don’t stop if they ask you to stop, perhaps you don’t actually like that person? Or you’re a bit of a sadist.
These two got together like any people get together who probably shouldn’t be: they had great physical chemistry and ignored all the other things they hated about each other 😀 😀 😀
There’s the Connie we know….
This and the discussion about “being an adult” and controlling your emotions and primal instincts, made me think about the Bene Gesserit from Dune and their test for “being Human” requiring total control of your emotions and instincts, and yet most of them pretty consistently act like Connie. Seeing as how one of their main attributes is that they do have total control over their emotions, instincts, and even their biology and metabolism, then they’re NPD by choice specifically as a method to control everyone else. I’m not sure if that counts as NPD, or is something else, but it also seems worse, though I guess it’s effective for their goals/political intrigue.
I don’t think you can be narcissistic by choice :). But you see the issues with emotional control as a recurring theme in a lot of sci-fi, like with Vulcans in Star Trek. Complete control of emotions is sort of impossible, and tamping them down is unhealthy and results in violent explosion. So the best course of action is to understand how you react to things and find healthier outlets for those more primal emotions, so you’re not just running around being an asshole in all your relationships.
The things you learn when you take psychology classes. As in, last week we covered research that demonstrated that people make objectively worse decisions when they don’t feel emotions. They’re a crucial part of how we learn.
I don’t suppose there’s a way for someone who can’t make it to the convention to be able to get one of these elusive physical copies to share with family? (he subtly drops into the conversation)
Shawn wrote about this a few updates back (30 Jan, I think): “I’ll be printing a handful of two issues (chapters 1-3) and selling them at C2E2 in April. I’ll try and sell the rest to you guys afterwards, and if there’s enough demand, I’ll get them reprinted :). I also plan to put them up on Comixology so you can buy the digital version.”
Yep! First I’m going to see what I sell at the convention, and whatever I have left, I have to figure out the logistics for mailing stuff out to people and international rates and whatnot. It can get a bit tricky.
Witches be crazy.
I’ll expand that with ‘Never stick your dick in crazy!’ XD
Mostly only this one, at least in this story!
AAAAAAAH!!! All the Connie scenes are really hard for me, so I am glad you are writing them and not me, but they are also super therapeutic, so in a fucked up way, I look forward to them. You’ve got this NPD shit nailed so hard that I feel safe in your hands, LOL. It feels so good just to see that other people GET IT! Like REALLY get it!
Also I need my crushing emotional explorations tempered with jokes and animals, so you and Bojack got me covered, lol.
Ah shit, I meant to make that it’s own comment and not a thread response…
but I LOL’d IRL at “witches be crazy.” XD
Ugh, yeah… I think we have covered the emotions many of us feel towards Connie at this point…
As for having a healthy relationship and primal rage/anger and all of that, this is all why I want to take martial arts because I admittedly have a good bit of bloodlust, I blame my Viking ancestors/genetics, and I know that’s a good outlet for much of that and hitting a person shaped punching bag is better than hitting a person shaped person. And I kind of get a bit of joy(?) out of seeing others argue/ fight, like I want popcorn I don’t care what it’s about.
See, and my default is generally being calm and quiet, and when I’m angry, I usually take a walk and talk it out to myself or call someone. Generally people making loud noises is the opposite of my comfort zone, so I just retreat somewhere else lol
My preferred outlet to “frustration and anger” is to find a decent sized inanimate object, and turning it into lota of smaller inanimate objects that can’t fit back together… very theraputic
This far Thomas doesn’t seem that messed up to me. He’s having a perfectly understandable reaction to what Flora did. I guess the leaving her to die is the messed up part. I feel for him…
He does have a very understandable reaction here! But he’s also no saint, in the end.
Somehow I’ve started reading almost as much for your diary length editorials as much as for the comic. Thank you for your words as well as your art.
Thanks for reading them! Sometimes a lot of words are trapped in my brain, and it helps to let them out by rambling twice a week 🙂
Poor Thomas. Poor Audrey. Poor Ziva.
I say poor Ziva because I’m calling it now that Thomas is somehow related to her. I’d say either a brother or one of her oldest sons. Why else would Flora and she even know each other?
Also Flora is an absolute butthead.
Eh, don’t feel too bad for Thomas just yet. He’s not necessarily blameless in the end.
So she got pregnant to get his attention?
Am I wrong in the thought that a woman like this should never, ever be a mother? At least not without deep change?
She got pregnant to “fix” the relationship, so to speak. And yes, she should never be a mother.
I think “violence” is less of an issue than “harm” (although I’m pretty sure the implication is “violence resulting in harm”). Sometimes violence, properly directed & controlled (go beat on a literal punching bag or something), is a viable release mechanism. Too much stress, unvented, can cause as much harm to a relationship as abuse of any sort. It can even be argued that demanding that one’s partner never express anger is a type of abuse itself. That said, some of this comes down to levels of trust, and knowing your partner; if a person needs to physically express their anger or frustration, they need to do so in a way that doesn’t cause either physical or emotional harm. Different people have different “harm” thresholds, and different relationships have different levels of trust.
Well yeah, the idea is that you need to be able to handle yourself so you don’t build up stress over time and just explode, and that might mean going to the gym or running around or whatever. And also actively addressing things before they turn into problems and resentment. You can be angry with your partner in a way that’s actually constructive and solves an issue by doing whatever you need to calm the fuck down and then discuss things when they aren’t so heated, but you’re not going to get much accomplished if that involves a lot of yelling and screaming. Like personally, for me, if someone raises their voice at me, I’m finished talking to them. That’s not a conversation, and it only serves to scare the shit out of me and not trust them. I don’t think expressing anger towards another person that way is healthy.
There’s a really big difference between being angry at someone and being violent, and I think the onus is on the individual to examine and understand how to handle their anger appropriately, and to vent their stress in a way that doesn’t degrade their relationship.
It’s also on that person to know what their partner can handle (that “harm threshold” I mentioned), or to step back so they don’t cross a line they didn’t see. Some people find that a yelling match is a good fit, gets the emotions out in the air; they trust their partner enough to know that no matter what, their partner isn’t going to harm them. Others don’t want anything to do with that; trust or not, they can’t deal with it (emotional harm). Sometimes the relationship is new enough (or changed enough) that one or both partners don’t know how far is too far (levels of trust); they need to steer well clear of any gray areas. And sometimes, no matter how much control they have, someone might need to stop the conversation, walk away, and go chop wood for a while. Because people make mistakes, sometimes big ones; that’s when you need to take a good look at the relationship, make sure you want to salvage it, & you need a clear head to do that.
Just found this on another webcomic, hope the link comes through right
http://thebancast.com/store
Am I the only one making punnet squares in my head to figure out how Aubrey looks like she does from Thomas and Connie/Flora’s apparent genetics?
I mean, at least blond hair is a recessive gene. I always cringe a little when authors, movies, etc. give two characters with blond hair a biological, dark-haired kid. So, kudos for doing that right. Science nerds all over the cosmos thank you.
I’ve kind of taken her genetics from my own family’s weird mix. My dad’s family is either blonde or strawberry blonde, and the other half came out dark haired. So I have a few pasty blondes in my family who came from dark-haired parents :). Also I have a bunch of super tall family members, and I ended up at not even 5′ tall, so it’s just that fun mix of recessive traits getting together to make a person!
It’s a little more complex than just recessive and dominant genes. For example, I have a friend who works at Parabon Nanolabs, using their DNA Phenotyping software. With just a DNA sample, it can produce a composite sketch that includes eye color, skin color, hair color, face morphology,
I asked her about this, and she says “actually, when determining hair color, the genes for redness have to be determined separately.” There’s TWO types of pigment that give hair its color: eumelanin is the one that determines where you are on the brown/blond spectrum. pheomelanin determines where you are on the non-red/red spectrum. Also, non-red is dominant, red is recessive.
Furthermore, the two-gene model does not account for all possible shades of brown, blond, or red (for example, platinum blond versus dark blond/light brown), nor does it explain why hair color sometimes darkens as a person ages. (Mine did… I was straw blonde as a child, but it’s brown now.) Several gene pairs control the light versus dark hair color in a cumulative effect.
So it is possible, though very rare, for two blond parents to have a darker-haired child. I’m guessing that it wouldn’t be dark brown or black, but various shades of auburn and red should be possible because of the cumulative effect I just mentioned.
I was thinking more along the lines of dark brown or black haired offspring from light haired parents in my comment. Thanks for your response though. Interesting to learn hair color works like that, though I was aware of red hair being from a separate gene. Usually brown/blond hair color is presented in a more Mendelian pattern of inheritance, while height is the example that is given for multi-gene inheritance.
Ohh, I see. Ugh, black hair from blond / auburn-haired parents? Yeah, I agree with you, I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen, at least not in humans. There are some species (e.g. cats) where all genes for hair/fur color are equally dominant, and in them it’s possible for that to happen.
In humans, it would require a specific mutation in a specific set of genes sometime in the first trimester or two. (The baby starts to grow lanugo, a soft fine hair that eventually covers the entire body, around week 12. The hair on their head starts to grow at around week 30, and eyelashes and eyebrows are fully developed around week 32. So the mutation in the hair color genes would definitely have to happen before week 30, if not earlier.)
And also congrats on making me cringe. This relationship is messed up.
wow, you really made him look like her. I am very impressed.
That he looks like Aubrey? She definitely got a lot of Thomas’s bulk, though she’s got Connie’s hair and skin (though lighter).
Interesting most people are going on about Connie, and not a word about her were-boy-friend. (yes, connie is manipulative, devious and selfish, etc. etc.)
From my perspective sex is a promise, not everyone agrees, but I think on a deeper level almost everyone feels this, whether they believe it or not.
Having sex is a promise to forever. Particularly when its man and a woman, the ultimate design/result for sex is children. Sex creates/releases hormones and chemicals that are meant to tie two people together to help make forever work, so children can have their parents. For any other mash up, sex is a great way to connect and build the relationship and trust, in a good situation.
So what I see here is a guy knowing full well he does not want to ever make good on the promises he was making with his body, yet as we all know attraction is a fickle thing. So while he may well be not wanting to ever have children with Connie because of merited safety, and pressured social reasons (it was hinted at that at the time weres and witches getting it on was taboo?) he still has made the choice to become part of connie (knowing connie, ew dude.) and not willing to accept the possibility of having a child with her. Seems like a dick move to me. I guess i’m not ready to just assume he’s a great guy and is the victim here.
I very much doubt Thomas is blameless here, and heterosexual sex always carries a small degree of risk, but saying “Having sex is a promise to forever,” feels creepy as shit. 99% of the sex humans engage in has nothing at all to do with children, so I feel like that perspective is just mistaken. Sex does all kinds of things, most of which have absolutely nothing to do with “forever” or children. Sex can also be a handshake, or boredom, or frivolousness, or stress relief, or an addiction, or non-romantic bonding, or a job, or a mistake, or an experiment, or a learning experience, or any number of other non-forever things. As long as one is honest with one’s partner(s), sex can be almost anything one wants/needs it to be just fine. And *that’s* the real fucked up thing about this situation: Connie/Flora’s lack of honesty about such a deeply, massively important thing.
And all the rest of her belittling emotional manipulation, obv, but that’s separate from the sex issue.
It is obviously dangerous for a witch to have a child with a werewolf, so Toms reason to believe her having precautions is totally understandable. So tricking him into a child, disappearing for month as if it was a total break and then trying to blame him does not give him a bad hue watsoever. Just making her a total bitch.
What i’m trying to convey, is all through nature reproduction is a driving force. A such, there are many subconscious and chemical, hormonal structures in place to not only drive the desire for sex, but also in many species to bond together to raise their young. Humans are no exception. And as much as we want to have the, free sex, etc. those chemical and subconscious ties still hold.
Wolves especially, tend to mate for life, or close to it. And if im remembering correctly with wolf pack structure, only the alpha male and female are allowed to have offspring, any other member of the pack that breeds, the pack will kill the young at birth.
I would think that werewolves would be far more conscious of this primal, natural, order? And as such this guy is acting morel like a player, but as of yet we know very little of him. I suspect in this situation, it is two bad people.
But I am making light of the fact Connie could have a very different view on what sex meant to her, a promise, and as he started to distance himself (from her perspective) she essentially was “cashing in” on that promise. As many couples wrongfully/mistakenly do, they think, “we have a baby now, that means we will/should stay together.” If this is how Connie felt, she obviously didn’t communicate that, i’m guessing that most of this relationship has had horrible communication…
Actually, it’s rare but not unheard of for wolves other than the alphas to mate. The main reason that usually just the alphas mate is to prevent overpopulation… too many wolves competing for limited resources. According to research, in any given year, 20 to 40% of the packs with two or more females will produce two litters, especially in the arctic (because of the harsh winters, more litters means a higher chance that at least some of the pups will survive).
As for the “mate for life” thing… it turns out that’s not true either. Some males may bond to different females in different years, destroying the “mate for life” myth.
MSpears, thusly the “close to it” for mating for life. As research shows, there are deviations, but it is rare. As a rule, they tend to be fairly monogamous, only the strongest get to mate (most typically only the alphas) thusly strengthening the pack and not stretching resources too thin.
The point i’m making is there is an order engrained into us by nature, and design. Which drives certain expectations, particularly subconscious expectations. Lots of hurt and brokenness can come from ignoring this. Leading to people sitting around a table learning of a history about “two very messed up people in very messed love”.
No. Wolfpacks are families. The “alphas” are the father and mother. The rest of the pack members are pups that will eventually disperse from the pack when the right time comes. Other cases do happen, especially when one of breeding members disappear for whatever reason. Which makes sense for predators of wolves’ size and energy needs.
The order and “design” in nature seems is flexible and adaptive.
People manage to have relationships with sex with a deliberate lack of children in the modern world. Quite often. People are not animals in that way. “Forever” and “sex serves mainly for reproduction” is just… a naive and/or severely outdated look at reproduction in nature.
I’m not willing to write off the guy as a saint, but from what we had seen from this situation, Connie is hoarding and doing all the potential assholishness there is to be from this situation. Considering this conversation, he actually had several opportunities to demonstrate his failings and seems to be keeping himself under control.
I mean, any sex has a non-zero change of producing a kid that the people have to accept when they do it. But this isn’t chance, this is all her, all a betrayal of the thrust he put in him and all deliberate on her part.
You nailed my response to this thread lol. I would add that in a committed relationship, there’s probably a point where you negotiate how you’d like to handle birth control, and then there is the expectation that the birth control method will be adhered to by whoever takes on that responsibility. And that if things change (antibiotics, for example, will make a lot of birth control pills ineffective), then a different method will be used. But telling someone you’re doing something and then not doing it, or sabotaging birth control, is a form of abuse. And occasionally, considered assault!
You know, on second thought, I should not beat around the bush and just ask: taking all your “sex is forever” and so on, what should have Thomas done? Never have sex with her (a wisdom I think he realized on his own in hindsight)?
Because Connie here isn’t having a child because she wanted a child. She is having a child because of her abusive, emotional dysfunction that would probably need an entire psychology department to dissect.
Not much space between witch and bitch here.
This is very facts.
It’s dangerous in a kind of social way, or in a biological/magic way ?
biological/magic way firstly, and secondly socially (I believe it was said at some point that back in the day it was less kosher for witches and weres to get down): chapt 7 june 06
http://www.howtobeawerewolf.com/comic/the-most-bizarre-punnett-square-results-you-can-imagine/
Yep! Dangerous in a “this baby needs a fuckton of magic that you cannot provide alone” kind of way.
Happy First-Time-Malaya-Went-Wolfish day! I was rereading the comic and today is the day it read on her phone when Vincent was holding it after Aubrey attacked her and she ran to find Eli. 😀
Yay! Thank you for noticing! That’s a pretty good anniversary, actually :D. For me, not for her. For her, it was only like a month and a half ago lol
That moment when you realize you still have a day and a half before the comic is updated, but you’ve still checked the page twice in a day. Either I really need to get a life, or this is one engaging story. I think I’ll go with the second option because it makes me feel like a well-adjusted adult.
Hahaha well, you need to convince people to start writing fanfiction to help supplement everyone’s reading while I’m over here drawing all this real slow like 🙂
JERRY JERRY JERRY!
Excellent context for this lol
Oh gods, we all know how this is going to end. Sometimes I think everyone should have a month in therapy before we’re allowed to start dating. Particularly these two.
I would up that to multiple years in therapy, plus classes on basic interpersonal communication from childhood.
So let me be clear here. She felt her weretoy was getting a bit distant, so her plan was to get pregnant, which could kill or severely hurt her in order to guilt him into staying? And now on her dramatic reveal she’s going to try and guilt trip for being upset about this?
She’s not just an abusive selfish monster… She’s kinda of a dumb abusive selfish monster.
Yep! She’s not actually dumb, she just doesn’t subscribe to regular logic. She knows how to manipulate Thomas into doing what she wants, even if the potential end game isn’t healthy for her.
Oh dear sweet…okay, she really is just a bundle of issues.