Nope, I honestly believe that there is absolutely nothing problematic about the comic, and that the criticism of the “girls with a time machine” format doesn’t apply. My previous replies are honest accounts how I feel about it.
No mention of the dream being funny is made at all.
That’s true, but I don’t understand why you’d say it. Certainly, I didn’t claim and don’t claim that it’s “mentioned”, I just claim that it is. Maybe you would wrongly accuse fewer people of bad faith if you explained things a bit more…
I can only think that you’ve misunderstood what I’ve said, so I’m going to try and explain it again. Afterwards, I’ll explain why I think you must have misunderstood and offer a final reflection.
The meme format, at least in the form criticised by your initial response, works by presenting one boring and one funny situation. It presents them with pairs of archetypical, gendered characters, rather than individual (though still gendered) ones.
This lays the meme format open to the criticism that it is stereotyping woman as boring. But it doesn’t work against the comic for two reasons:
the woman in the comic is not presented as boring. She imagines that the dream is about sex, but that’s not boring. Maybe if there were a negative stereotype that women are horny all the time and that’s a bad thing, this would be concerning, but that’s not the case. If you disagree on this, it would be worth saying what you think the comic is saying about women, and why. You said that it’s “only there to highlight how wacky the man’s dream is” without justification.
the two perspectives in the comic are not presented as typical. With just one woman and one man, it doesn’t present a false unity among multiple men and multiple women, with the perspectives contrasted by gender. Instead the contrast is between two individuals. And the characters aren’t the stock representations of gender that the “trad girl”, “doomer girl” and “chad” figures are. If you disagree on this, it would be worth saying why you think the comic is saying something about women rather than about the specific female character.
Those differences, hopefully, also explain why I don’t agree that it’s the “same joke” in the comic as in the meme format: the joke in the criticised meme is, “lol, woman are boring aren’t they? not like men who are interesting.” The joke in the comic is, “lol, this person wanted the dream to be about sex (hehe), but really it was complete nonsense (hehe) and now she’s got mental whiplash from the unexpected turn”.
And I think you must have misunderstood, because none of this can reasonably be called “reading things into the comic.” I’m explaining the joke in the comic for you, because you haven’t understood it correctly. You said “No mention of the dream being funny is made at all” which sounds to me like you think something in my explanation of the joke required that the joke was explicitly mentioned. That’s a very peculiar interpretation of how jokes work, but you’re not really explaining your thought process at all so I have no way of knowing whether I’ve misunderstood you. Presumably I must have, because your assertion that her dream is “only there to highlight how wacky the man’s dream is” is not referred to in the comic either.
Finally - and it probably is final, because my experience with this kind of conversation is that you are probably not really invested in it to the point where you’re willing to read a reply of this length, so there’s little point continuing - your first reply was a single image, with no comment from you. People reading had to infer that you were criticising the comic from OP. I asked you about it, and you replied with a scant 6 words. From there, you only made one, brief attempt to explain yourself and refused to elaborate further.
People come at discussions from different places. You offered a criticism but were never on the same page as me, and never put the effort in to get us on the same page, even though I tried, and you instead resorted quickly to unpleasant accusations. Let’s try and be better than that.
Yesterday was not a great day and I wasn’t really putting my best effort in. I took the opportunity to read your reply with a good night’s sleep and you made some good points, which I’ve alluded to in other comments.
Your second point about them both being interesting characters I just don’t see myself, and immediately clocked it as a matter of personal interpretation, and I also said it would be an escape from falling into the trope. I really do think a sex dream with hearts is boring and that’s it’s not a first punchline but a setup, but you don’t, and there’s not much to discuss there. I’m not saying your point is valid, I’m saying it’s a personal interpretation.
Of course, my personal interpretation was framed as “obvious”, which is only obviously obnoxious; sorry for that framing.
I don’t think it really requires that much effort to understand “girl boring, guy quirky,” and it is a perfectly valid and obvious reading of the comic, though obviously it doesn’t make that case explicitly, which is why I brought up the meme, which is itself a reference to a large body of work.
Your assertion that panel is 3 is somehow “interesting” really doesn’t make any sense to me, but someone did introduce an alternate explanation of “girl thinks guys are always thinking about sex” which makes it a little different than the girl boring, guy quirky. THe problem is that her expression is really hard to read one way or the other.
But it does take effort to put ourselves in your mind where you think “girl boring, guy quirky” applies to this comic. This is what I’m still trying to understand. I’ve set out in some detail why I don’t think it applies which you’ve not engaged with at all (other than to re-assert that yours is a “perfectly valid and obvious reading” which, just to be clear, doesn’t explain why) so bye.
Nope, I honestly believe that there is absolutely nothing problematic about the comic, and that the criticism of the “girls with a time machine” format doesn’t apply. My previous replies are honest accounts how I feel about it.
That’s true, but I don’t understand why you’d say it. Certainly, I didn’t claim and don’t claim that it’s “mentioned”, I just claim that it is. Maybe you would wrongly accuse fewer people of bad faith if you explained things a bit more…
You are reading things into the comic that are literally not there nor implied but support your argument. I find that bad faith.
I can only think that you’ve misunderstood what I’ve said, so I’m going to try and explain it again. Afterwards, I’ll explain why I think you must have misunderstood and offer a final reflection.
The meme format, at least in the form criticised by your initial response, works by presenting one boring and one funny situation. It presents them with pairs of archetypical, gendered characters, rather than individual (though still gendered) ones.
This lays the meme format open to the criticism that it is stereotyping woman as boring. But it doesn’t work against the comic for two reasons:
Those differences, hopefully, also explain why I don’t agree that it’s the “same joke” in the comic as in the meme format: the joke in the criticised meme is, “lol, woman are boring aren’t they? not like men who are interesting.” The joke in the comic is, “lol, this person wanted the dream to be about sex (hehe), but really it was complete nonsense (hehe) and now she’s got mental whiplash from the unexpected turn”.
And I think you must have misunderstood, because none of this can reasonably be called “reading things into the comic.” I’m explaining the joke in the comic for you, because you haven’t understood it correctly. You said “No mention of the dream being funny is made at all” which sounds to me like you think something in my explanation of the joke required that the joke was explicitly mentioned. That’s a very peculiar interpretation of how jokes work, but you’re not really explaining your thought process at all so I have no way of knowing whether I’ve misunderstood you. Presumably I must have, because your assertion that her dream is “only there to highlight how wacky the man’s dream is” is not referred to in the comic either.
Finally - and it probably is final, because my experience with this kind of conversation is that you are probably not really invested in it to the point where you’re willing to read a reply of this length, so there’s little point continuing - your first reply was a single image, with no comment from you. People reading had to infer that you were criticising the comic from OP. I asked you about it, and you replied with a scant 6 words. From there, you only made one, brief attempt to explain yourself and refused to elaborate further.
People come at discussions from different places. You offered a criticism but were never on the same page as me, and never put the effort in to get us on the same page, even though I tried, and you instead resorted quickly to unpleasant accusations. Let’s try and be better than that.
Yesterday was not a great day and I wasn’t really putting my best effort in. I took the opportunity to read your reply with a good night’s sleep and you made some good points, which I’ve alluded to in other comments.
Your second point about them both being interesting characters I just don’t see myself, and immediately clocked it as a matter of personal interpretation, and I also said it would be an escape from falling into the trope. I really do think a sex dream with hearts is boring and that’s it’s not a first punchline but a setup, but you don’t, and there’s not much to discuss there. I’m not saying your point is valid, I’m saying it’s a personal interpretation.
Of course, my personal interpretation was framed as “obvious”, which is only obviously obnoxious; sorry for that framing.
I don’t think it really requires that much effort to understand “girl boring, guy quirky,” and it is a perfectly valid and obvious reading of the comic, though obviously it doesn’t make that case explicitly, which is why I brought up the meme, which is itself a reference to a large body of work.
Your assertion that panel is 3 is somehow “interesting” really doesn’t make any sense to me, but someone did introduce an alternate explanation of “girl thinks guys are always thinking about sex” which makes it a little different than the girl boring, guy quirky. THe problem is that her expression is really hard to read one way or the other.
But it does take effort to put ourselves in your mind where you think “girl boring, guy quirky” applies to this comic. This is what I’m still trying to understand. I’ve set out in some detail why I don’t think it applies which you’ve not engaged with at all (other than to re-assert that yours is a “perfectly valid and obvious reading” which, just to be clear, doesn’t explain why) so bye.