Tactical Question - Haley

[zimmerwald1915]

*looks up*
...Nah, you know what? I'll let that pass, too obvious.

That's kind of you. Just for the record, it seems there is no longer room for doubt; the Empress is evil, and has a bodycount.

[Kish]

And is an adult, which surprises me (because, yes, her attempting to gain mass to substitute for age categories in order to figure out arcane spells had me thinking she was legitimately too young to cast arcane spells, rather than having a Charisma penalty).

[Grey Watcher]

First, I'm impressed that this topic went so far off topic that it ended up back at The Order of the Stick.

Apparently the comic is the alpha and omega of forum discussions.

[AgentofHellfire]

Question, then. How "universal" does this 'male rule' thing need to be for the power imbalance to be acknowledged? Or rather, how does the fact that the system is imperfect change the idea that it's still biased heavily to empower men, at the expense of women more often than not?

The fact that it is utterly impossible for any discussion on mistreatment of women to happen without the mistreatment of men butting in - as if two wrongs make a right - is a problem.

I agree. But the reason why it's a problem is because the discussion is framed as, pretty often, a one-sided conflict, which is of course going to put people on that "side" (especially those that don't completely benefit from it, of which there are quite a few) a little bit off.

I'm not saying that women's treatment isn't an issue because of men's treatment, in other words. I'm saying ignoring men's treatment is part of the reason why women's treatment gets ignored, and if we are going to frame things from the perspective of changing what people say for the benefit of a movement, feminists (as a movement, not a beliefset) are going to be evaluated too.

For one thing, I think it would be a reasonable default assumption that that sexism has a common cause, as gender dynamics have always been defined in relation to each other. For 'strength', for example, to be considered a sign of masculinity, it needs to be juxtaposed with a group that is not considered to have that attribute. So perhaps a better question is, why wouldn't it have a common cause, or at least be closely tied?

That's not the kind of separation I was talking about, actually.

I definitely agree that to have a female gender role, you have to have an opposite male gender role, but you don't have to have every female gender role to have a particular female gender role at all. (Same with male ones).

It is not the job of feminism to actively go out of its way to object to certain portrayals of men. A movement that is preoccupied foremostly with the rights of women should not be expected to give the occasional pat on the heads of oppressed men as a condition for being taken seriously. That, in and of itself, is a form of expression of privilege. Feminism isn't about men, even if men suffer from the same problems it is trying to combat. Saying 'but feminism should take the time to acknowledge men's problems' too is both derailing to the problems that women are facing and speaks of a staggering entitlement, like one cannot bear to not be considered important in any movement. It's like the guys who try to make the concept of lesbians to be all about women who got 'burned' by guys, even though it's the one orientation that literally has nothing to do with men.

1. I would agree that any given movement doesn't have to work at dealing with every social ill, but feminism isn't, and doesn't claim to be, solely a women's rights thing. Its billing is as a gender egalitarian movement, and so it can't ignore things related to gender equality (or at the very least it can't then claim that dealing with those--important--things is a part of it)

Actually, you know what: If it's the job of random bystanders to deal with feminist issues, it's the job of feminists to deal with issues that, while not the first thing they talk about, are issues of gender equality.

2. More importantly, well...you made my argument for me: A gender role can't exist without its opposite. By not combatting the idea that certain traits are "male-preferred", you're preventing them from ever really becoming equally male and female preferred.
3. ...and we've already worked on, in media at least, a huge amount of the female stereotypes. There are already plenty of heroines now where before they were just the romantic attraction, there are a fair deal of women that don't fill the nurturer role, and so on. The male ones...are exactly the same. Order of the Stick (well, and this one other webcomic) is pretty much the only one I can think of that has done anything with this (and that's basically what Elan is).

Furthermore, there is a vast difference between oppressed men and oppressed women: Men are far more capable of fighting their own battles. Men are, while not guaranteed, far more likely to be heard and taken seriously when they speak out. Men don't need women to acknowledge their problems to try and make things better for themselves, they only need the initiative to go out there and educate themselves using the information others have gathered before them.

Yes, obviously not every type of man will be taken seriously by his social circle when he calls them out on, say, a prison rape joke, but if it were a woman, you could be damn sure she'd be waved off or dismissed as having no sense of humour or being oversensitive no matter if she were gorgeous or unattractive, fat or thin, weak or muscular, popular or socially awkward.

1.The outcome of this very thread kind of says otherwise, actually. (And hell, so's my own personal experience, but whatever)
2. You're certainly right, though, that there are a lot of times women do get ignored (not with regards to jokes, though, and frankly I don't even think those are a problem, but enh), but making it clearer that you don't just want things for your own group would help deal with that.

[DaggerPen]

Yeah, this is going into my signature.

I'm seriously considering sacrificing a quote for it, myself.

As for what's passing for the topic at the moment, I actually had assumed that the Empress not being able to cast spells meant that she was pretty young, too, especially given Tyrinar's age. But it makes more sense for her to just have low charisma, now that I really think about it.

[Doug Lampert]

Interestingly, it seems that it's easier to accept magic and dragons as believable than some changes in human nature. Perhaps it's generally easier to accept big differences to the real world, or perhaps it's because we intrinsically know humans better than we know the laws of physics.

I identify with characters, it's why people read fiction when all's said and done. Stories are about people. People act like people, that's how you can tell that they are people and identify with them. If they don't act like people, then the story isn't about anything.

Maybe the people are aliens and have differences from us, and the story is about those differences and their consequences, maybe the people are from a different culture or time and their reactions aren't like ours, but they're still people.

But when the character's act unrealistically enough it destroys the story in a way that no number of fireballs or flying dragons can.

An impossible premise in the story is fine, but unjustified unrealistic actions are not.

What's worse, when stories vary from what's real, the stories still need to be internally consistent. They actually need more internal consistency and consistency of things like whether coincidences happen than the real world has. (Something like 5 people have survived being ejected from a plane at high altitude without a chute. Unless it happens PRIOR to the main action of a story this is totally unacceptable in a story. Or read most Medal of Honor citations, you couldn't put that stuff in a story, no one would believe it. Audie Murphy's exploits were substantially toned down for the movie, because no one would believe the reality, and unusually Audie Murphy was allowed to star despite "not looking like a hero", whatever that means.)

Fireballs and dragons are fine as long as they work according to some sort of consistent set of rules, part of why OotS works is that the D&D rules provide much of this consistent framework. "Unrealistic" character actions are almost always decried as unrealistic BECAUSE they appear inconsistent.

TLDR: Fireballs are not a believability problem at all, but unrealistic behavior is story killing by its nature, since the story is about people and their behavior, and unrealistic behavior means we don't have that.

[Doug Lampert]

EDIT: A version of this post that actually captured how I really feel was eaten by the forum's very restrictive limits on how long I have to make a post without being logged out automatically. This happens to me about every other post. This version is cruder and mildly overstates my interest in defending the indefensible.

Prior to hitting "post", hit Control-A followed by Control-V (if on a windows machine), this puts the entire post, including any quotes of other posts, into the clipboard. Then when the board eats your post, simply log back in, select all again on the post you're working on, and Control-C to copy in your original post.

[GrayGriffin]

Prior to hitting "post", hit Control-A followed by Control-C (if on a windows machine), this puts the entire post, including any quotes of other posts, into the clipboard. Then when the board eats your post, simply log back in, select all again on the post you're working on, and Control-V to copy in your original post.

Fixed that for you.

[Doug Lampert]

Fixed that for you.

Yeah, it probably works better your way. I can't even plead dyslexia on this one.

Actually, this is the internet, my claims need have no actual validity.

Obviously you're just trying to persecute me because as a dyslexic I got two letters in the wrong order! You probably kick puppies too.

Sorry about the first reply, I forgot where I was for an instant.

[Carl]

@Giant: I admit I've skimmed the thread reading your replies only.

I think the big reason so many are trying to reassure you over the joke is regional related, thanks to a board i frequent elsewhere i'm aware that the US, (where i believe you live), has some real oddities by the standards of other parts of the world.

I can't speak for the whole world but here in the UK at least tramp isn't necessarily always a huge insult. In fact it's considered pretty archaic here in the UK to the point you'd get a weird look if someone called you a tramp, in fact most would assume you where calling them scruffy without context because it's usually used to refer to homeless. When i let my beard grow out over-much my gran often mutter "it makes you look like a tramp".

Hussy is so archaic it would be considered barely insulting as well, and Skank was a playground insult in early teens and earlier when i was at school 10+ years ago, an adult would laugh in your face if you called them that, (it was also cross gender at school). I'm aware of the old usages so i could interpret Haley's use of it, but again it's not especially insulting.

I read the original Joke in that light. I just assumed you and Haley where using Tramp, Skanky, and Hussy as a non-odd sounding way of pointing out that many of Haley's enemies have been particularly active sexually. I didn't even read them as properly insulting. Haley was just pointing out facts in a deliberately jokey way to show how annoyed she was about the whole thing.


I also found your comment vis a vis needing to point flaws out because their heroes confusing. Yes you can't act like they're perfect when they do things wrong, but you also shouldn't feel the need to point every problem out either, the simple fact that you point them out as they become plot relevant on occasion shows that these aren't perfect characters so as a reader i expected flawed characters. That of course doesn't mean you shouldn't call things out, just don't feel every single one has to be brought up for the reader to understand it and acknowledge it, the mere fact that they are flawed heroes is enough in itself.


V i think fell afoul of one issue with the black dragons. Tiamat's reaction. Until we knew a bunch of actually non-evil part dragons where killed off it looked like the vast majority of the casualties where of an evil persuasion, so whilst it was grossly unjustified in many senses, (killing should always be a last resort when nothing else can be done IMO), the simple net good vs Evil ratio looked like it had prevented a lot of suffering via Dragon attacks at the expense of a bunch of apparently only evil beings. Not ideal, but overall net good to many. This was a case where keeping the draketooth's deaths secret for plot reasons got in the way of pushing home how bad things where. It's a difficult area to dip into as well as where getting deep into the cost of the mean's vs the value of the end's achieved, and that's a really tricky area to get right IMO.

Hope that helps you in some way.

[AKA_Bait]

Apparently the comic is the alpha and omega of forum discussions.

::checks the forum title:: Just making sure I'm still in the right place.

[Martichoras]

I made a deliberate effort to not sexualize her, even, since I realized a while ago that I was subconsciously "sexing up" almost all of the female characters. The fact that she still rates these kind of comments is very disappointing.

Thank you for setting right the one thing that has been bothering me about OOTS. Seeing you post this comment has increased my appreciation of the comic further (and it was already my favourite plot-driven web comic).

I have the same problem in my own creative work, by the way

[Grey Watcher]

@Giant: I admit I've skimmed the thread reading your replies only.

I think the big reason so many are trying to reassure you over the joke is regional related, thanks to a board i frequent elsewhere i'm aware that the US, (where i believe you live), has some real oddities by the standards of other parts of the world.

I can't speak for the whole world but here in the UK at least tramp isn't necessarily always a huge insult. In fact it's considered pretty archaic here in the UK to the point you'd get a weird look if someone called you a tramp, in fact most would assume you where calling them scruffy without context because it's usually used to refer to homeless. When i let my beard grow out over-much my gran often mutter "it makes you look like a tramp".

Hussy is so archaic it would be considered barely insulting as well, and Skank was a playground insult in early teens and earlier when i was at school 10+ years ago, an adult would laugh in your face if you called them that, (it was also cross gender at school). I'm aware of the old usages so i could interpret Haley's use of it, but again it's not especially insulting.

I read the original Joke in that light. I just assumed you and Haley where using Tramp, Skanky, and Hussy as a non-odd sounding way of pointing out that many of Haley's enemies have been particularly active sexually. I didn't even read them as properly insulting. Haley was just pointing out facts in a deliberately jokey way to show how annoyed she was about the whole thing.

Burlew may correct me if I'm wrong, but I read his point as being less about the particular words used, and more about the content. Even if he were to go with as silly and archaic a word as "floozy" the point still stands that the go-to way to insult a woman is to suggest that she's having too much sex or wants sex more than is appropriate. And he feels uncomfortable reinforcing that tendency by repeating it. Hence, trying to do better with his female characters than he did in years past.

...

V i think fell afoul of one issue with the black dragons. Tiamat's reaction. Until we knew a bunch of actually non-evil part dragons where killed off it looked like the vast majority of the casualties where of an evil persuasion, so whilst it was grossly unjustified in many senses, (killing should always be a last resort when nothing else can be done IMO), the simple net good vs Evil ratio looked like it had prevented a lot of suffering via Dragon attacks at the expense of a bunch of apparently only evil beings. Not ideal, but overall net good to many. This was a case where keeping the draketooth's deaths secret for plot reasons got in the way of pushing home how bad things where. It's a difficult area to dip into as well as where getting deep into the cost of the mean's vs the value of the end's achieved, and that's a really tricky area to get right IMO.

Hope that helps you in some way.

Well, personally, I'm of the opinion that, to quote Benjamin Franklin (who was riffing on William Blackstone), "It is better 100 guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person should suffer."

And to judge by some of the half-dragons in the comic where Familicide happens, it looks very likely that some of them were adventurers possibly doing good-guy adventury stuff until they were struck down without warning because they're distant cousins to Mama Black Dragon. Also, reasonably certain that those dragons still in their unhatched eggs have not yet become Evil.

On the subject of Tiamat herself, while she is Evil, she's also the Patron Goddess of the Chromatic Dragons. Including the ones who aren't actually Evil themselves. (Just as Nergal is an Evil God of Death, but death, in and of itself, isn't inherently evil. It's just an event.) And ss their patron, Tiamat's got every right (and, arguably a duty) to be enraged at the death of so many of her chosen people, regardless of her own or the victims' alignments.

Let's imagine an alternate reality in which the Starmetal Cave was inhabited by a, I dunno, Bronze dragon an her son. Order stumbles in, gets into a fight, Vaarsuvius kills the son, Mom comes back and swears she will seek to visit justice upon the murderer of her child. She attacks Vaarsuvius on the island, and, as a believer in eye-for-an-eye style justice, runs off to kill V's own children. V makes his deal with the IFCC, kills Mama Bronze Dragon and proceeds to use Familicide to wipe out her relatives. Now, are you telling me that Bahamut, Patron of the Metallic Dragons, is not going to be royally pissed off at this turn of events because he's listed as Lawful Good?

[Carl]

I made a deliberate effort to not sexualize her, even, since I realized a while ago that I was subconsciously "sexing up" almost all of the female characters. The fact that she still rates these kind of comments is very disappointing.

Meant to respond to this as ell.

I don;t think you strictly failed, she's not in any way super sexy on her own, but the way she keeps smiling at Tarquin and Tarquin's charmer status with many wives does kind of encourage this. She also doesn't look 50 to e fair, not enough grey IMO, she should have a few streak's, or mention the dye's . In fact without the mention of an adult daughter i'd have pegged her a no more than 30., maybe even upper 20's. Can't say why though, nothing overt, maybe just something about her personality comes off young instead.

Also i don't think you can totally avoid the sexing issue in a stick comic and still make your characters obviously female at a glance. Art style klimits probably also factor into Laurian's age.

[oppyu]

Meant to respond to this as ell.

I don;t think you strictly failed, she's not in any way super sexy on her own, but the way she keeps smiling at Tarquin and Tarquin's charmer status with many wives does kind of encourage this. She also doesn't look 50 to e fair, not enough grey IMO, she should have a few streak's, or mention the dye's . In fact without the mention of an adult daughter i'd have pegged her a no more than 30., maybe even upper 20's. Can't say why though, nothing overt, maybe just something about her personality comes off young instead.

Also i don't think you can totally avoid the sexing issue in a stick comic and still make your characters obviously female at a glance. Art style klimits probably also factor into Laurian's age.

*tries to find one instance of Laurin smiling at Tarquin*.

Also, it's been implied that Tarquin isn't so much as a charmer as a despicable tyrant who tortures women into marrying him and then rapes them.

[Aard_Rinn]

Meant to respond to this as ell.

I don;t think you strictly failed, she's not in any way super sexy on her own, but the way she keeps smiling at Tarquin and Tarquin's charmer status with many wives does kind of encourage this. She also doesn't look 50 to e fair, not enough grey IMO, she should have a few streak's, or mention the dye's . In fact without the mention of an adult daughter i'd have pegged her a no more than 30., maybe even upper 20's. Can't say why though, nothing overt, maybe just something about her personality comes off young instead.

Also i don't think you can totally avoid the sexing issue in a stick comic and still make your characters obviously female at a glance. Art style klimits probably also factor into Laurian's age.

I'd agree. Besides, you'll have a hard time avoiding this unless you make her a complete hag - and it's not just the ladies. Believe me, the men don't get out of jail free on this one; I have been a busy little bee, working hard on my Tarquin/Scoundrel fanfictions, and they've shown no signs of being interested in each other except the unfortunate use of the word 'shag' in the last comic. Although that may be a bad example, since they're both supposed to be hot guys - but I've seen enough Roy/Durkon stories to know that people are really, really good at adding romantic/sexual subplots where none were intended to exist.

I mean, geeze, this was just suggested in the discussion thread for the latest comic.

Now that does bring up a possible idea. We have got to get Scoundrel out of this story. He is just too much of a lead character not to be allowed to horn in on the Order's story. But how to get rid of him. Right now he looks to escape pretty easily, but then what? He hardly seems to be the type to run away from the big scene, and even if he did, we would be thinking of his return for the next two books.

So alternate series. Our psion comes back and hits Scoundrel with another stun power. This knocks him out, at which point she claims him as her favor, and uses some mind magic to keep him prisoner. Whether he ends up as her toy or her daughter's, he can be presumed to be a prisoner for the next few weeks until the story is finished and thus at least not dominating the plot even if we still have to suffer constant claims he will escape and will appear next strip.

Yes, you did just read that. People are just pervs, sometimes - it may or may not have anything to do with sexism or society's misogyny or what have you. Sometimes a perv is just a perv, guys. And to a certain extent, that's ok, as long as they keep their creepy, creepy fetishes off of childsafe forums.

Brrrggghhh. I need to go wash my hands.

[Carl]

*tries to find one instance of Laurin smiling at Tarquin*.

Also, it's been implied that Tarquin isn't so much as a charmer as a despicable tyrant who tortures women into marrying him and then rapes them.

She tends to be smiling when she talks to him.

It's also not clear all his wives are unwilling, Elan's mum doesn't sound like she was and since Julio didn't crash the wedding I'm guessing Penelope wasn't.

@Aard_Rinn: If you want weird try this one on for size that ran through my head after one very weird dream of me reading OOtS.

Shojo decides the best way to mellow Miko is to find her someone, he knows however that's going to be hard so he comes up with a cunning plan. He buys a Rod of Hideous Lust off Julio, (Presumably looted from one of Tarkies weddings), and tells her it's a Rod Of Command that will give her command over a specific evildoer he wants her to stop. Belkar.

I'll let you fill in the details ...

[Aard_Rinn]

*Highfives Carl*

There, you see? Exactly.

But let's not discuss this particular topic further, lest we summon the hammer of ban. I merely intended to illustrate my point... Sharing really isn't necessary.

Brrrrr.

[oppyu]

She tends to be smiling when she talks to him.

It's also not clear all his wives are unwilling, Elan's mum doesn't sound like she was and since Julio didn't crash the wedding I'm guessing Penelope wasn't.

@Aard_Rinn: If you want weird try this one on for size that ran through my head after one very weird dream of me reading OOtS.

Shojo decides the best way to mellow Miko is to find her someone, he knows however that's going to be hard so he comes up with a cunning plan. He buys a Rod of Hideous Lust off Julio, (Presumably looted from one of Tarkies weddings), and tells her it's a Rod Of Command that will give her command over a specific evildoer he wants her to stop. Belkar.

I'll let you fill in the details ...

Moving right past your little fanfic idea (you realise that a Rod of Hideous Lust is basically a magical date rape drug right? So anything that happens under the influence of that is rape) I've gone through all of Laurin's appearances (yes, I'm obsessive.) She smiles exactly once, when she's extorting a favour from Tarquin in return for her helping to kill some people. Not sure if that qualifies as a tendency.

And there is absolutely nothing in the strip that suggests that she finds Tarquin at all attractive, or that Tarquin is remotely charming. When he was flirting with his son's girlfriend (ewwwwwwwwww), Haley certainly didn't seem charmed at all. Despite the fact that we can safely argue that Tarquin may not have raped all of his wives (which is very high on the list of desirable qualities in a man).

[Carl]

Lol, just wanted to see the reaction TBH, but yeah lets leave it there. Honestly imagining the horrified audience reactions was the funniest part of that going through my head.

[Aard_Rinn]

IDK - the first woman we see him trying to seduce, right after Elan met him - I'll find the strip in a bit - certainly seemed charmed until she realized that he had betrayed her... So deceptive, sure! Rapey? Perhaps! But definitely charming...

He seems like the sort of smooth villain who'd be good at charming his way into women's confidences, if you catch my drift.

And of course Haley wasn't interested - she has preexisting romantic attachments. But if she had been single, and just a bit less mistrustful, who's to say that she wouldn't have been charmed by the interests of a handsome older man? It seems perfectly reasonable - after all, some girls are into older guys, and he's famous, rich, powerful, domineering, attractive, and just the right amount of misogynistic - after all, that basically describes Dorian Grey, and a lot of girls are into that sort of a guy. I doubt he'd have any trouble finding willing ladies, were he to put his mind to it.

In fact, I can see him and Scoundrel having something worked out, TBH - Tarquin gets to the altar with a lady, and if they're unwilling, Julio flies in and scoops them up. After all, they've both shown a deep-seated love of a good story - I can see Tarquin wanting to play the part of a Bluebeard, and Julio, of course, is the dashing rescuer who saves (and ravishes! ) the ladies. Of course, that's unlikely, given the dialogue between the two, but I can totally see them doing it - a you-scratch-my-back, I-scratch-yours not unlike Tarquin&Co's rule of the continent, more geared towards appearances and adherence to character tropes than anything.

[Math_Mage]

That sort of arrangement is Tarquin's thing, but emphatically not Scoundrel's. He has no reason to plan his encounters that way, and no reason to plan them with Tarquin of all people.

[Aard_Rinn]

Maybe not by arrangement, but if there's generally a profusion of unwilling wives-to-be in Tarquin's area, I bet he'd catch on and realize that he has a good opportunity to bed a series of grateful princesses/senators/ambassadors/comely tavern wenches, and possibly receive a reward from their grateful nations. And there's no good story in 'rescuing' a willing wife, so of course he'd only save the ones who want to get rescued... After a while, I can see things working out so that when Julio swoops in to save one of Tarquin's unwilling victims, he just quietly waves down the mages, fires a few good ballistae shots across the bow of the Mechane, and grumbles good riddance to himself as he goes about seducing the next attractive woman. After all, he's got to keep up appearances...

I can totally see the two of them just quietly going about their business, constantly marrying/saving young ladies, leaving a path of twitterpated young woman across the continent... Maybe not a formal agreement, but a sort of... understanding between the pair, themselves never able to speak of the true passion that drives their actions, a forbidden lust for... each other...

Huh? What? Sorry, I drifted...

[Carl]

@Aard: Lol, yeah not Julio's thing but funny to imagine.

@Oppyu: Actually hideous lust is probably a misnomer in naming, (blame shojo's account to the order ok), love potion in a rod would be a better description of the effects, (and level of NSFW, i.e. none), just to clarify that so no one gets the wrong idea .

[oppyu]

@Aard_Rinn Ugh, I swear to the Gods that up to this point I somehow missed the fact that Amun-Zora and Tarquin slept together. Just... wow. *facepalm* Dude certainly seems creepy as all hell, but there's no accounting for taste I suppose.

@Carl Aaaaaaand what makes you think that a love potion is better than a date rape drug? If anything, it's absolutely worse, since it presumably lasts longer than one night.

[Kish]

IDK - the first woman we see him trying to seduce, right after Elan met him - I'll find the strip in a bit - certainly seemed charmed until she realized that he had betrayed her...

She seemed pleased when the first thing he said to her was, "Certainly, I am nearly as eager to give you everything you came here to ask for as you are to receive it." He could have been a woman or a lizardfolk or a flying kobold; not being pleased would indicate she was either crazy or already suspicious.

Her ever showing the slightest trace of positive reaction to Tarquin hitting on her is in the same secret only-on-your-computer bonus strips where Carl sees Laurin smiling giddily at Tarquin.

But if she had been single, and just a bit less mistrustful, who's to say that she wouldn't have been charmed by the interests of a handsome older man?

Who told her she had perky breasts immediately after meeting her? Yeah...no, and your post gets worse after that.

Edited to add: Go back to "missing" that they slept together, oppyu; they didn't. He called her to his room, she told him she was already married, he acted like it didn't matter, she got creeped out, and that's the end of it.

[Aard_Rinn]

Ah, yes, I'm sure I don't understand the ladies at all. Nope. No understanding of women, that's me....

And yeah, I didn't remember the exact line he used on Haley. I'll give you that one, sure; he was way to blunt, although in light of her relationship with his son, I can see that being a mysogynstic joke rather than an actual attempt to seduce her. But in a world where 50 Shades of Grey is considered a hot romantic story, "porn for the 40's set", can you honestly tell me there aren't women who are attracted to guys like that, or don't find the concept appealing, even if they might not actually get with a guy like that?

Hell, if I were to meet him, I would find that sort of confidence and self assuredness attractive. I would find the attention from an older, powerful, physically appealing man attractive - I'm usually into topping, but there's always exceptions, and I do have a thing for grey hair... Even the whole 'evil' bit isn't necessarily a turn-off, TBH - a lot of women have fantasies about being the one-and-only person a bad boy shows his gentle side to.

To say that someone "doesn't begin to understand women" because their interests in sexual partners differs from yours... well, you might as well have just turned on bold print and written "Self-righteous, condescending prat", TBH. I'm a woman - I know what appeals to me in a partner. I see other woman in the world around me - I'm not blind, I can pick up on what makes an appealing sexual fantasy when Twighlight and 50 Shades top the best-sellers list, with their domineering, controlling, rapey male leads. So don't tell me about how terrible I am for saying that I can understand why women might find Tarquin attractive. I never said that he wasn't a terrible person - I merely said that I could see him having women willing to sleep with him regardless, and then proposed a humorous anecdote about how he might deal with unwilling wives if he weren't a rapist.

[Carl]

@oppyu: I think i need to take this to PM as otherwise we'll go wildly off-topic, got to go out first though.

@Kish: where did i say giddily? I just remember her seeming remarkably cheerful sounding and happy around tarquin.

Also the Tarquin charisma debate has already been had pretty conclusively elsewhere by other's.

[Kish]

@Kish: where did i say giddily? I just remember her seeming remarkably cheerful sounding and happy around tarquin.

And, you know, it's a funny thing. If I actually look at those old strips, it looks like she's constantly annoyed with Tarquin. So, um, yeah. You'd have a better case that both Malack and Miron want to have sex with Tarquin.

[oppyu]

@Kish Oh good, that was my original and preferred interpretation.

@Aard_Rinn ... yeah, looking back, I could see how my post could have come off as seeming self-righteous, condescending and prattish, in that I was embodying all three of those traits. I... uh...very sorry about that. In my defence, I wasn't personally attacking you, I was attacking all women who had that taste... because that's totally better... I'll stop typing now. Sorry.