Maggie, David McGuire, and I somehow birthed this particular insult slang on the way home from New England Webcomics Weekend last year. I can’t remember the exact mechanics as to why something lame is totally babies, nor can I remember why, exactly, babies McIntyre is a more virulent strain of babies. Regardless, Maggie and I still use the phrase in our conversations, and when I needed a title for this storyline, describing it as so incredibly babies felt like a good fit.
Apparently Robin agrees.
But is it UNI-BABIES???
Actually, I remembered a good counter-argument to Ultracar XD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6ga9Jvdw9U
Babies McIntyre..for a minute i thought that might be about Davan, but then i realized he’s MacIntire. had me going for a second though
Yay, I wasn’t the only one alone in that. I was pretty sure nothing had happened over in SP, so I was like what?
Babies McIntyre sounds like a Dick Tracy nemesis.
BABIES!
IT’S…BAAAAABIES! RAAAARGH!
would Muppet Babies be the opposite?
Like how bollocks is bad, but the dogs bollocks is good?
Um… dog’s bollocks is redundant, since bollocks are dog’s testicles.
No, bollocks are all testicles. See? OED’s online edition is subscription only, so no link, but the earliest cite they have for bollocks (or ballocks) is a translation of a biblical verse referring to ritual sacrifice, for which dogs were not used.
(a) British slang, (b) watch 51st State …
Holy crap, is this foreshadowing to finding out Robin is preggers? Or is David hinting that he and Maggie are expecting?
ahahahAHAHAHAHA-[dies laughing]
As soon as he HAS babies, he will know why anything lame is babies. labor, birth, the first 6 weeks, the next 18 years… expense upon expense upon expense, stress and fighting, pressure all the time… Everyone talks about how great and cute and awesome it is to be a parent, and that’s all true too, but for serious, it’s totally babies.
I may be killed for outing “THE GREAT PARENT CONSPIRACY”, but all that crap about how great it is to be a parent is just to convince people who don’t have kids to have them. what can i say misery loves company.(MWAH, HA, HA, HA….)
I think the problem with all this is there’s ridiculously emotionally charged stuff happening and I feel bad for the characters and then *BAM!* JOKE! And I feel bad about laughing. Which makes me feel worse.
So basically having funny parts makes this whole arc more painful. DYW.
Does the curse really work if you abbreviate it?
It’s weird. Robin seems genuinely upset and I kind of empathize with her, but still calling Leslie “My Lesbian” lessens my empathy quite a bit. She has a name you know!
It’s a pet name. If Leslie had a problem with it, it’d seem bad, but she clearly doesn’t so it’s not.
At least that’s how I see it.
Never really thought of it that way but I see what you mean. We’ll see if Leslie will still be Robin’s Lesbian after all of this!
Yeah, Leslie’s had plenty of opportunities to tell Robin her feelings about the name, and unlike Robin, she’s had no problem vocalizing her real issues in the last year or two. It might have started out kind of demeaning, since in their early days together Robin treated her like an accessory, but it took on another meaning as they got closer. And now it’s just poignant.
Leslie’s only ever objected to the name when Ethan tried it.
I’d imagine David would let us know he and Maggie are expecting a little one in a more spectacular fashion than this latest installment.
….. You’re new, aren’t you?
Title drop!
Hopefully Ultra Car has undergone enough character development to understand Robin’s silly human problems.
Babies MacIntyre sounds like a Batman villain.
Guess what M stands for.
ENTIRE TEAM IS BABIES!
Well, that’s ONE mystery cleared up. I kept trying to figure out how on Earth this was like the 2010 movie BABIES, featuring four infants from four different parts of the world.
It’s good to see that most of Robin’s focus here is on Leslie: Leslie’s pain, what’s real to Leslie, what action can Robin take to make things at least a bit better for Leslie. It’s that kind of maturity-when-it-really-counts that makes me root for her… even though it obviously deserted her during the Cadbury craze. (However important her frustration over dreams deferred was, there are lots of better ways to deal with it than what she did.)
She’s not 100% selfless, though. When she says “I even banged a dude,” I’m already hearing a bit of curiosity about what’s on that video, and what it felt like for her. Whatever else the future holds for her, I think some more learning is on the horizon.
So …would “Babies McIntyre” be the quivalent of… anti-”Streets Ahead”?
It’s totally un-Airwolf.
Damn you, Willis! It’s on the internet now. It cannot be stopped.
Ooh, my first “Damn you, Willis” felt wonderful, I can see why this caught on.
But, rule 34….
Oh, this will turn out badly.
No no no no no no NOOOO!
ANTI-34!!!
ANTI-34!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was wondering why the story was called babies!
Of course you can make up slang. Where do you think it comes from in the first place?
You are a complete Fjord, you know that?
No need to qwark all over his socks, my tot.
Enough with this nippywhack!
As Bill Watterson’s Calvin would say:
“Verbing weirds language.”
And:
“Don’t you think that’s totally spam? It’s lubricated! Well, I’m phasing.”
Groovy, fab, far out
Today, I am going to call someone a Fjord.
Additionally, when are we going to find out why she’s wearing her SEMME shirt?
That is to say: When is the other shoe going to fall?
Holy crap, she IS wearing her Semme shirt.
1. Dude, oh my god, I’m upset I didn’t notice this. As if to say I had to go back and check each of the comics to make sure I’ve been this oblivious the entire time.
2. Willis, she’s not wearing her stripe in the comic “Argument”
I think there are (or at least were) several strips where the stripe disappeared.
Maybe her shirt is incognito.
The Team Fortress 2 community has been using ‘babies’ as an insult for a while now.
Agh! Thank you. TF2 is where I heard it. And I suppose [unfortunately] started emulating it.
I was like, “Wait, if this is the first time I’ve been exposed to the slang babies, why am I 99% sure I used that twice last night?”
Forget Robin’s maturity level here, what about UltraCar’s? When did it turn into a fender to lean on when times got tough?
Oh, and Willis has a history of showing maturity in some of his most flighty regular characters (like Walky).
He’s a target of opportunity – Robin wanted a sympathetic ear and he was the first sentientish lifeish form that she encountered that wasn’t siding against her or having sex at the time, so she talked to him instead.
Also note that Ultracar didn’t play along and respond with Regeanesque insight and wisdom – he just waited out the squishy emotional stuff and responded unhelpfully to the unparseable linguistics.
Also, I always got the impression that Robin was one of the only people UC actually likes.
I love “But they still happened an’ so they’re still real to Les” – Robin is aware of her solipism and is trying to overcome it…
Oh god I am so going to find myself slipping this into conversation.
“Is she even my lesbian anymore?” broke me, Willis. IT BROKE ME.
WAITAMINIT
Something’s not right here.
Those boxes in the background; they’re right-side-up. Doesn’t that kill a running joke?
They are right-side up because WORLD PEACE.
ding ding
This is why I love you… err -your- comics! Esoteric sight gags few would ever notice. THIS IS COMMITMENT PEOPLE!
I was going to say…how the heck do you think slang DOES get made? There’s no damn slang committee down at the Town Hall.
Not at the town hall – it’s actually a senate subcommittee. Your tax dollars at work!
This. So this.
Robin should join the following group:
http://community.livejournal.com/we_hate_babies
Well, babies do suck.
Or is that, suckle. I can never keep that straight.
This is BALLS as TITS
“Babies McIntyre” sounds to me like an entreé. Like “Crêpes Suzette”.
…This implies bad things about me, doesn’t it.
Umm… yeah, but then look at the company you’re keeping.
Babies… sounds like something slipping out of her subconscious…
It’s perfectly rational. If something is tits, it’s awesome. Babies feed on tits, just as bad times feed on good times..
Plus, just as I was musing the other month, we say shit like “he’s gonna have kittens when he finds out” but having kittens looks pretty easy and peaceful.. whereas having BABIES has screaming because people use drugs they’re not supposed to use, then they wear off and you didn’t have your natural painkillers because drugs….
You know what I wonder? I wonder if Manley had settled into dating and loving a gay man, and is dealing with the same stuff as Robin now.
That would be CRAZY STUFF, man.
you know, ultra car looks kinda sad in the second to last panel. does that mean that he’s empathizing?!
IMO, aka, in my opinion, being one who has had babies, and knowing that it’s unlikely anyone’s gonna read this (in it’s own way a shame) I am going to explain what the slang word “babies” means (the real shame, as I’m trying)
Babies is something that in it’s own way is good, such as Roz’s having fixed the whole world’s problems, but also has a bad side, the problems of having babies, the late nights, the hassle, the tantrums and the stress of tying to raise the babies. And while it ultimately is something good, it can be a big pain on the small term.