> Suzy's done solo work in Whacky Candy.
I'll grant you that one. I skipped most of the first issue of Whacky Candy because it was mostly just exposition with no really TF content. Also, I didn't realise that was the same character to begin with because the way she's drawn has changed.
However...
> yes, Brian seems to do a lot more with how much information finding and shit he's done, setting up that whole decoding thing with his computer.
Precisely. He is seen to be contributing more, at the very least within this comic.
> But, they both seem to think of themselves as equals in all this.
Given the way Suzy treats Brian, I'm not convinced. She certainly doesn't seem to respect him much. I suspect she's actually just using him to save Carol because she's realised he has useful skills that she lacks.
> Despite the fact that Suzy assumed the worst of him at first, he was still able to recruit her.
Firstly, it's not necessarily the case that he recruited her, but possibly just that they decided to join forces. (A mutual decision.)
Secondly, as I say above, she might just be using him for his skills and not actually give a damn about him, which would explain why she's so ready and willing to allow him to be maltreated.
> pg117
Unfortunately I missed my chance to download that one.
I had been getting them from Kemono, but after page 112 the Kemono page stopped being updated, so I ended up missing some.
> Sure, it can be easy to overlook because it's the fetish, but it's all body horror.
Whether or not it can be classed as body horror really depends on how it's portrayed and the context surrounding it.
I'd say that although this comic (and most related comics) have portrayed the transformations as being generally negative, they generally haven't been portrayed as 'horrific', intentionally or incidentally. (Except perhaps for Pumpkin Race, which was done for Halloween.)
> 4th and 5th both have forced feeding, being bound, gagged, and tossed if you want traditional violence.
I grant that these fall into the category of 'violence', but the one of the important differences is that these are acts carried out by the villains. You expect the villains to do bad things, that's why they're villains.
The pepper spray incident is different for a number of reasons:
1) Because it's perpetrated by a non-villain.
2) Because one of the 'good guys' purposely allows it to happen (which implies that it's acceptable behavior).
3) Because it plays into the trope of the 'feeble nerd' by portraying the character as easily 'defeated'.
And, perhaps most importantly:
4) Because it's a very commonly used 'gag' that's used more or less exclusively by women against men.
I'm not saying that makes the author a misandrist, but rather that the author has, intentionally or not, employed some misandric tropes.
> Cor said as much here
That's a very recent page. Up until these recent developments nobody has really made any kind of comment on it. Katie's had a few 'almost-there' fantasies, and Brian has been shown to be very accomodating, but that's about it.
Besides which, when Cory asked, Katie outright said "He's not".
(Frankly, I think these recent developments have been very poorly handled in general, and the writing has been declining since the group got to the cabin.)
> Also there. More so implied, because she's saying "you really think he wouldn't be into this?"
She's not really 'calling Katie out' though. If she were doing that, she'd be criticising Katie, but she's not criticising Katie. She comes close with the 'and you think', but really she's just trying to show Katie that her belief doesn't reflect reality.
Incidentally, Cory basically hammers home the misandric 'socially inept nerd' trope by calling him 'a pasty nerd', saying 'he's a nerd, of course he's into freaky weird shit', and then following up with 'men will be attracted to anything remotely human shaped', which, again, is a pretty sexist, negative stereotype.
Suzy, on the other hand, criticises Brian directly for 'going on about curing her', then literally starts getting angry at Brian. We don't actually get to see what he said to spark that response so it feels unjustified.
The more I read it, the more it seems like it's actually Suzy who doesn't want Katie cured, and Suzy who thinks Katie looks attractive as a blueberry, which leads me to 'double down' on the jealousy theory. Having looked back, there's also a page where Suzy is clearly aroused when Erica's 'melons' fall on her.
> Cory's been calling Katie out since she met her, specifically about the fact she works at Whacky Candy in the blowing up women department
That's a bit of a different issue though. We've seen the evidence for what Katie's been involved in and the resentment is clearly justified.
Even if Katie isn't an inherantly bad character, she's done the immoral thing of assisting the villains just to save her own skin.
> Okay, yes, but the fault there was mostly the computer, not her console.
We shall never know how much was the fault of the computer and how much was the fault of the console. The console likely uses less power, but it could easily have been the straw that broke the camel's back.
That aside, the computer was actually doing something good and useful, the console was not.
> Actually, the controller was the handheld console. Some mixture of the Switch and DS I suppose. It's hard to notice but yeah.
Which actually makes it worse, because if she could have been using it in handheld mode then the power incident might potentially have been avoided.
You can see in page 71 that not only is she playing it on the big screen, but she's got a load of high-power speakers connected up too.
> Brian has been putting off a lot of the housework due to his obsession with Whacky Candy.
Why should it be specifically his responsibility?
Are the others incapable of doing any of the work needed on the house?
(Is this an example of the sexist trope of 'only men can do DIY'?)
Again, it seems like Brian is getting lumbered with most of the work and then criticised because he's putting saving the world above jobs that the others could probably be doing.
Meanwhile there seems to be no expectation for the others to contribute in similar ways.
Cory at least seems to be brining money in with a job, so I'll cut her some slack.
Erica might be about to do some gardening, but up until now she's just been draining the power with frivolities.
> my evidence for that is that they kissed in Fizzy Pop, and it wasn't like just to blow Suzy up, because they didn't know she could do that.
I must admit, it's suddenly occurred to me that I've never actually seen this comic. Initially I had confused the page of Carol and Suzy as being from the end of Wacky Candy 2.
Having tracked the comic down, it definitely demonstrates an attraction between the two (much more explicitly than has ever been shown between Brian and Katie, for that matter).
However, one kiss does not make a relationship, and relationships doesn't stop people being attracted to multiple people.
In fact, page 6 seems to imply that Suzy might have a fetish for 'blimped' women, which would actually support the idea that she could be attracted to oversized Katie and thus there could be some jealousy involved.
> I'm not gonna speak more on the misandrist stuff, because I'm not versed enough to understand.
Very well, it is a deep and complex topic.
To put it simply: when I say something is 'misandric', I don't mean that it necessarily encourages people to hate men, but rather that, more broadly, it is sexist (prejudicial) in a way that is negative or detrimental towards men. E.g. that it to devalues men or dismisses their suffering, particularly in a way that, if an individual were female, she would not receive the same treatment.
Had Brian been a female character, I doubt that character would have been portrayed as being a feeble computer geek, nor would that character have been portrayed as resembling a conspiracy theorist.
I also very much doubt that such a character would have been pepper-sprayed, because pepper-spraying a female goes against the sexist stereotype (that pepper spray is a weapon used by women against men).
For that matter, I doubt the character would have been shown to be lurking in bushes or treated like a 'creepy stalker'. Female stalkers used to be better recognised (e.g. Play Misty for Me), but these days it tends to be only men who are portrayed as stalkers (with the small exception of Baby Reindeer, but that's a very unusual case).
I'm not claiming the author is unique in this behavior, nor specifically culpable - they are just perpetuating a wider, largely unrecognised issue.
Don't feel the need to reply or continue this conversation if you don't wish to. As it is, I struggled to find the time to write this response.