Chapter 4: Trouble Every Day, page 75

Everything zen. You know, like the song goes.

In other news, it appears my Wacom tablet no longer registers pressure sensitivity. Lovely.

If you’ve ever been inclined to get a little something from the shop, now might be a good time.

48 thoughts on “Chapter 4: Trouble Every Day, page 75”

  1. I have a crap ass small wacom tablet. Do you want to borrow it until you can get your quality replacement? It registers pressure sensitivity just fine, and I’ll be downtown on Wednesday probably. I can drop it off/hand it over.

  2. Another new reader reporting. Loved deal breakers, can’t wait to see what ransom concept You’ll come up with next. Either that or something music oriented in the main story. Like Moze handling his other instrument for a change. No matter how much talent you have, if you don’t work at it, ‘you ain’t got none’.

  3. About the tablet, are you using Photoshop? If so, it may not be an issue with the tablet itself, but Photoshop failing to recognize that the tablet is pressure sensitive. This is, apparently, a known bug – I had similar issues with it recently. If you do a google search on something along the lines of “photoshop tablet sensitivity” you’ll find more info on it. Fixing it is sort of a pain in the ass. There doesn’t seem to be any one right way, but there are some work-arounds. I just deleted the photoshop preferences file, which was mildly irritating, but did fix the problem, though it might happen again at any point.

  4. I’d love tshirts with the designs that are on the templar reclamation or sincerist patches. I’m not really a patch person, I’m not quite sure what you’re supposed to do with them. Sew them on your army disposals store overcoat? Haven’t done that since I was seventeen (BTW it was a home-made joy division patch, for archaeological dating purposes).

    But these days, tshirts I likes to buy.

  5. Hey, Scip. Maybe you could have decided you didn’t care before you blamed the victim and scared the living shit out of an abused kid, yeah? If you really didn’t care, you would have just thrown the file away after reading it. :P

    1. I would assume thats a ‘don’t care’ as in, he’s not going to kick her out or stop being her friend or abandon her for past actions, but a ‘do care’ to the actual facts and the truth.

      Its all great to sympathize with Pippi for her shitty past but here she is with a father figure who honestly cares about whats best for her and all he asks in return is honesty. Plus, I’m sorry, but some people need a little ass kicking when they’re out of line or they’ll just keep on playing the ‘poor me’ card forever.

      1. Honesty is a luxury that most abused kids can’t afford. It certainly was for me, anyway, and for any of the other abused kids I’ve since known or worked with. It takes a long, long time for that to go away, and it only happens *after* you’ve normalized enough to realize that such a thing as “someone who you can trust not to turn on you at the drop of a hat” actually exists, and it takes even longer to actually try out the trusting part once you’re aware it’s a possibility. Coming clean about any of your past indiscretions or dirty secrets happens even further down the road.

        All I’m saying is that there’s a process and this isn’t it.

    2. Wait, wait, wait. She’s not really a victim now is she? I mean, sure you don’t want parents beating kids, but if you have a kid who goes and fucks your boyfriend/girlfriend, then tries to tell other people that it was rape, I don’t really think you get to play the tragedy card. It’s more like she was a selfish backstabbing cunt to her own mother at this point, and Scip wants her to know that he won’t blame her or attack her. He’s prolly just going to try and find out what motivated her, and then try to patch the parent/child relationship if possible. Scip the infinite optimist.

        1. Arming herself with the nearest weapon at hand and bracing herself for a fight? That doesn’t say “I’m being a brat” to me, it says “I feel unsafe and think I may have to physically defend myself”. Especially considering she was behind a locked door. Scip couldn’t see her. That show wasn’t for anyone’s benefit besides the readers’. It was an act of desperation motivated by actual fear.

          Feral, nasty little snip of a thing she may be, but that doesn’t mean it’s not tragic that she feels she has to arm herself against the person giving her shelter.

      1. She’s not really a victim now is she? I mean, sure you don’t want parents beating kids, but if you have a kid who goes and fucks your boyfriend/girlfriend, then tries to tell other people that it was rape, I don’t really think you get to play the tragedy card.

        Any time you have a girl who is what – fifteen, sixteen? – sleeping with an adult authority figure, whether she’s ‘willing’ or not, you have a victim (and, in a lot of cases, statutory rape). Any time you have a parent who thinks that ‘beat the shit out of your kid’ is an appropriate response in any way for any transgression, you have an abused kid.

        It doesn’t matter whether Scip and the police report have the details right, or whether Pippi really was unwilling; the end result is an abused kid, a victim, and a tragedy. If Scip really didn’t care, he’d never have brought it up – so it’s plain he does. That said, it also looks like he’s not actually going to be a dick about it and can put it aside, which is good.

      2. Oh, honey. Any environment where you have a (pre)teen kid sleeping with an adult, especially an adult who was supposed to have been in a more or less parental role (mom’s boyfriend), is one where something is seriously fundamentally very wrong. Bad Shit(tm) was happening there. And any parent who thinks beating a child black and blue for ANY reason is okay is a parent who will have been abusive before and after. So even if the police report is true, Pippi is a victim and an abused kid, and she most definitely is a tragedy. I’m not trying to say she’s an angel or that she isn’t violent and irrational and half-feral and probably dishonest at the very least. She obviously is. I’m just saying there are reasons why people wind up that way, and invalidating it is a great way to prevent any kind of change. (And also we’re now debating stuff outside the realm of the comic, but I think it’s important to address these attitudes when they come up, wherever that might be.)

        1. Chelle is extremely right, guys. Kids don’t act out like that unless something is seriously screwed up in their lives.

          1. I’m glad things have changed in this day and age, because we sure did when we were young. We didn’t need a chain of misery or violence-that was bullshit fed to the family counselors.

      3. She’s a child, she cannot consent. She may have lied about the circumstances, but it is still rape. And we’re not even sure yet if she lied about the circumstances. She may have changed her story with the police and recanted because she didn’t want to see him punished, or because she thought it would make things better with her mother. We have no idea yet.

        As far as Scip handling it better…he’s doing the best he can and any mistakes he makes (and he’s making them~ he should never have shown the boyfriend before talking to her, among other things)…are done with the best of intentions. He’s trying. And he’s also showing her that he loves her unconditionally, no matter what happened then.

  6. I forget what it was you said you were talking about on twitter a while back for a bonus comic. But I remember the idea was awesome and if you did like a full story of it all pencil I would buy the fuck out of it. Like all of the fuck… would be gone.

    1. Wend,
      *warning: unpleasantness about animal husbandry ahead**
      In a former life I raised/herded chickens. Sometimes they have accidents, and interesting things™ happen: “running like chickens with the heads cut off” is a cliche phrase because, yes, indeed, chickens can run a few steps after losing their heads. Chickens are amazing, biomechanical-wise.

      I’ve been assuming Flora’s neck is broken. Unlike (most) humans, chickens can sometimes live fine with necks that no longer support their heads… so long as they don’t drown in a puddle.

  7. I gotta go with Chelle on this one. Glad to see Scip realized how badly he was fucking this up, though. Maybe now they can make some headway.

  8. …Well, I was sorta right…huh…how about that? Now let’s see if it still ends well. Which given that Scip is calm now, it probably will.

  9. Ok so we can all agree that her Mom beating her was bad. We can all agree that Pippi fucking her mom’s boyfriend was bad.Just for a second let’s look at it in a different light. Scip was caught up with what was going on, and I HIGHLY doubt he was angry. This was probably frustration and a momentary lapse of reasoning. For this story’s purposes the climax was very good and it will probably have a positive response from Pippi in the long run. This is the defining moment for Scip to show that he isn’t enraged by Pippi’s lie and won’t beat her. I don’t think Scip has done anything wrong and the story has been played out pretty beautifully. So maybe I look at this comic COMPLETELY different than most of you, because I’m just in awe of how this is being played out and most people are personalizing it in some fashion.

    P.S.
    TM says:
    August 16, 2009 at 8:56 pm

    He is probably just going to sit outside of her room until she calms down. Then sort things out.
    Prediction +1

    1. Good art IS personal and a sign of artistic victory is that your stuff makes people think, talk, or even argue. I think Spike would agree. :D

      1. Just because I appreciate the comic for a different reason doesn’t mean that I’m doing it wrong. Good art doesn’t have to pull everything to such a personal level and it doesn’t have to mean what you think it means in order to be deep. I take it for what I think it is and I’m done acknowledging all these petty arguments.

  10. Scip just got frustrated and lost his cool a bit. Gawd. Cut the man some slack. I doubt he’s had training on how to deal with fucked up kids.

    Also yeah, when he says that he doesn’t care in the last panel, he means he does not care about what she did – just that she lied to him. He’s trying very hard to defend her to other people (cough Reagan) and that’s hard to do when the person you’re defending is jerking you around. We’ll see if Pippi can figure that out – Scip might be the first decent person in her life, which makes him hard for her to understand.

    1. He kind of does have that training. The only time we saw him at work he was breaking up a cat fight between two extreeeemely fucked up kids and it was implied that most of his clients are kids.

      But I still agree with you. He’s only human etc etc

      Completely unrelated and of no importance: the curled half of Pippi’s hair looks exactly like mine when it’s cut short.

  11. Scip is being more than decent, he had a shitty approach in the beginning but now he’s letting across something that’s key: love as unconditional acceptance. He’s not blinding himself to the facts, he wants to know who she really is because he cares to see past the layers, and now that he knows he’s letting her know in no uncertain terms that he is still there for her no matter what. If there is a process, it begins here.

  12. On the tablet, that stinks if the hardware has gone bad. If I wasn’t struggling to make ends meet I’d help with the cost. If it is the hardware, hopefully you can just replace the pen.

    On Pippi, the question of her victim-hood, and “rape.” There are good reasons why under certain ages the law deems a person legally incapable of consent (statutory rape as Herald mentioned above). The reasoning is that if a person is incapable of understanding the nature and consequences of the act then true consent is impossible. So, depending on her age and the laws of the State of Arizona in the Templar universe, Pippi may have been raped even if she figuratively said “give it to me” by her words or actions.

    When it comes to teenagers and children, adults are rightfully expected to be the responsible person in the relationship and set appropriate limits. Presuming he’s an adult, Mom’s boyfriend is scum even if Pippi made advances towards him. I think Scip is realising he went over the line.

  13. Man, whatever that chicken is taking, I want in on that. Between screaming roommates, crazy gay men in the cellar and cultists banging on the walls, it’s a wonder anyone gets any sleep in this building. Scip is not the Zen Master. Flora is the Zen Master. Scip is just her apprentice.

  14. If Flora has been dead this whole time, and Scip and Pippi have a moment of sad pet death bonding before talking about the giant issues this arc just brought up, I would be happy, but I think Templar is not as sappy as me. :(

    1. Naw, I think Flora having quietly expired during this exchange would be really outta the blue, even for Templar. Methinks she’s just a harrrrrd sleeper.

      However, since my last prediction came out to be completely the opposite during the fight…poor Flora. :\

  15. You know, I feel for the kid, and yeah, maybe, you know, Scipp did not handle the situation appropriately, but then again, I mean, what characters in this strip actually would? Perhaps Reagan, she’s seems the most sane and rational person amongst the cast, but that’s another subject entirely. Regardless of the equivocal nature of the situation, two things seem apparent: Pippi, yeah, she is headed for a life of (even more) sociopathic/bi-polar behavior and sleeping with all the wrong people (like there are right people to sleep with, I know, I know), and Scipp-Well, he is gonna get cut and/or burned down or something in both the literal and figurative sense. Better person than I, though, I think, I am not sure. If this ended with Pippi somehow burning Ben on the face with the curling iron the whole emotional turmoil would be well worth it. Something has to wake up that damned kid.

  16. Is it just me, or did panel one change?
    I remember something different. It looks…better, I think. Or maybe I’m just noticing that earring now. But the eyebrows look different, and I think her face was more scrunched around her eye.

    1. I have the earlier version saved, and you are correct. You couldn’t see the earring and most of her face was different. I like the new one better, I might add.

  17. Yeesh … Pippi is feral and panicked. Scip is trying to talk to her and frankly, if Flora is dead. I think he’s trying to come to grips with that.
    People do lash out or try to focus on something else when a beloved pet dies and no one seems to notice. Pippi was asking for money as he picked up Flora. At least he’s realized “Oh crap, she thinks I’m going to hit her.”
    Sadly I don’t think her vocabulary is going to be much more than Fuck you for at least another 2 strips.

  18. Sorry to hear your tablet’s giving you problems- I’d hate for that to happen to my own. I been meaning to get volume 3 for a while now, so today I finally did it. :)

  19. Hope you get the tablet thing resolved *pets*

    Also, I am *pretty* sure something is wrong with that chicken. I have those myself, and they don’t lie like that unless they’re sunbathing or dead. And I don’t see a ray of sun *anywhere*. Even that racket would’ve woken her up by now.

    1. Or are honestly raised to be a pet and not a menace to God fearing Grass and Ants everywhere.

      I’ve got one I babied to death since it was tiny, and the thing will quite literally just flop all over my lap for pettings. Sure she’ll walk away when bored, much like a cat, but she’s got the whole ‘I am a boneless chicken’ thing down pretty good when she’s tired of moving. I’ve caught her curled in a pile of dirt in the shade happy as a clam, and only moved when I startled her by coming up on her. Thought she DID expire when it took so long for her to go ‘OHSHI- HI CATSU”.

      The other one thinks she’s a duck.

      … I may just have screwed up chickens.

  20. I swear that is a boneless chicken right thar.
    I’d give my own opinion on the Pippi Behavior Thing, but I’ll just leave it as “I’m very much on Scip’s side.”

  21. There’s still someone willing to say something as inappropriate as this: “…Some people need a little ass kicking when they’re out of line or they’ll just keep on playing the ‘poor me’ card forever.” …Completely inappropriate. It’s too bad some people insist on being so immature.

    1. Structure, as it turns out, can be introduced in a manner that fits the situation, and so can different degrees of discipline, if either does fit the situation. The human condition, however, requires a lot more respect than casual references to violence and abusiveness.

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