Shortpacked! by David Willis
Toys are serious business.
Convention appearances:
Calgary Expo Calgary, AB: April 26-28
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
Phoenix Comicon Phoenix, AZ: May 23-26, 2013
BotCon San Diego, CA: June 28-30
San Diego Comic-Con San Diego, CA: July 18-21
SPX Bethesda, MD: September 14-15
Multiplex
Sorcery 101
Templar, AZ
The Transformers Wiki
Hail to the Slash
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Comics Curmudgeon
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Two Lumps
Wapsi Square
Wonderella
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Frumph.NET
Sorcery 101
Templar, AZ
The Transformers Wiki
Hail to the Slash
80 page GIANT
Axe Cop
The Book of Biff
Butt-Taco
Comics Curmudgeon
College Roomies from Hell!!!
Diesel Sweeties
Dinosaur Comics
Dr. McNinja
Dresden Codak
Fans!
Fleen
Gastrophobia
Girl Genius
Girls with Slingshots
Goats
Hark, a vagrant
Hijinks Ensue
Intrepid Girlbot
Legend of Bill
Medium Large
Not Invented Here
Octopus Pie
Overcompensating
Penny Arcade
PhDcomics
Power Nap
Questionable Content
Real Life
Rob and Elliot
Bad Machinery
Schlock Mercenary
Sheldon
So Far Apart
Something Positive
Two Lumps
Wapsi Square
Wonderella
Wondermark
Frumph.NET
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There’s a dick theme today… 8=D
Well played.
Now I’ve got the “Dick Riding” song stuck in my head. Darn Thugnificent…
DAMN IT! Now I have it stuck in my head too!
HAHA i have never heard it so i am immune to your mental influence….*must resist urge to go to youtube*
i love everything about the last panel
Damn you Jen Aside.
Ah so the heart of the issue is the fact that Robin had to give up on some of her hopes because she was with Leslie and it came out because of her sugar high…
All i gotta say is return to good, Robin! Return to good!
I am not sure Robin is the bad guy here. Look at the title of this chapter. Robin wants babies. It is a natural desire for a young woman.
And further to Leslie’s point, subsequent comics should have a meter, in the right-hand corner of each panel, with a running tally every time Roz opens her mouth.
This!
FUNDITFUNDITFUNDIT
You know, I do sort of feel bad for Robin giving up so much of her hopes, but cheating on her girlfriend kills a lot of my sympathies.
I’m not sure that’s what happened yet. Robin had sex with Jacob, but she and Les might have been broken up. Roz isn’t exactly the most accurate person.
I do like the bubble panels… very muchly <3
For some reason, my first thought upon seeing the thought bubbles was that those events happened “out here”, in the real world.
I second Alice’s suggestion.
I’m not sure if this is physically possible, but I think I’m beginning TO HATE ROBIN MORE THAN ROZ.
THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?
Where’d you get that gravatar? It’s awsome.
4chan. Ironically, in a thread about…….THE SPIDER MAN BROADWAY MUSICAL *shudders*
Welcome to my life. I’ve ALWAYS hated Robin more than Roz.
…Actually, much of the time I don’t hate Roz. Short of her treatment of Jacob, I’ve actually kind of like her – I tend to think of her as “Robin if Robin wasn’t the most annoying person in the world”.
This.
Robin could, perhaps, be less annoying if she knew more than one word for having sex.
So the Flashbacks are EGGGED!Robin or allusions to the Relationshipacolypse? I cant tell which. And I hope we get TimeSkipped! Ethan Amber Mike etc. in, I’m BEGGING for someone to get an eye patch
Did someone get knocked up in this story?
Congress sex tape returns 1 million hits on Google. Just for the record.
One Million and Fifty Thousand, to be exact.
Given up so much? Really? Let’s see, off the initial list…
Lesbians can become Rock Stars,
If Robin tried hard enough she COULD own all the Skittles in the world,
She can’t marry Doogie Howser because he’s fictional and even if he weren’t fictional, he is homosexual (not Leslie’s fault),
It’s not like she didn’t have ample time to bang a dude prior to Leslie, but even if she gave that up for Leslie – isn’t that kind of a no brainier when you get into a relationship with a female?
Leslie also has nothing to do with the kids from Glee.
So, the most you could (maybe) get upset at Leslie for is the fact that she didn’t like her Girlfriend making out with another girl (though she did offer to let Amber stay and tried to patch things up) and she would prefer Robin not… bang dudes while she’s dating her.
And if “having a baby” ends up being a later addition on the list that would be later revealed to us and Robin thinks she can’t do that because she’s in a relationship with Leslie (or was, rather) then… seriously. There are other ways to go about that sort of thing.
I feel bad for Leslie.
Well let’s not forget she was doped up on Cadbury Cereal. So a few things said may have been true or may have been an exageration on Robins part.
I suppose you might have a fair point. I still have a hard time sympathizing for anyone who willingly overdoses on a substance that makes them unpleasant/makes them completely unaware of previous actions.
Completely unaware I’ll grant you, but the last time she used Cadbury cereal, she accomplished something significant and reasonably positive – i.e., getting elected to Congress. Even so, she didn’t dare tap the power of Cadbury cereal again until she became desperate. Unfortunately, that power is too great to ever be used safely…
Positive or not, Robin knew that what she was doing would leave her with no control over her actions. And she did it anyways. Which is completely unsurprising – Robin is, as best as I can describe her, almost 99.9% Id.
Am I saying that Robin doesn’t deserve to be forgiven? No. Am I saying that Robin intentionally meant to do Leslie harm? No.
But, Robin does unselfish things for selfish reasons as many people do. She does stupid things without thinking about the consequences, as many people do. She’s going to have to buck up and apologize for her actions just like everyone else has to if they want to ever return to some sort of positive relationship with the ones they’ve hurt. Doesn’t matter if she can’t remember it or if it at one point did her some good. I have some friends who drink a bit much and write fantastically while they do so, but you know what? I would not tolerate them getting drunk, doing hurtful things to me and then saying, “I didn’t remember that. I was drunk.”
I’m interested to see where the argument went and what was said. Perhaps we’ll find Leslie needs to make an apology herself. Perhaps not. But, as a reader, I can empathize more strongly with Leslie at the moment.
Yeah, Mary Sue, I have to agree that the list of dreams given up for Leslie looks mighty flimsy based on what we know. Leslie’s “some of them” makes me wonder if there’s more to that list that we didn’t see.
One way or another, it’s a classic conflict. Relationships of any sort demand compromise. There are things you have to give up to be with someone else. But Leslie has always been so accommodating, practically a Stepford wife. The sacrifices Robin’s made are nothing compared to what we’ve seen even Ethan make for Drew. So Robin can’t help but look like kind of a brat here, even when she’s standing next to Roz, and that takes some doing.
You know, I can’t find any compromise that Robin actually asked for other then space and time… It’s only called compromise if it’s something the other person makes an active request to change things. There has to be agreements, not just one person changing things because they think they need to for another.
Also, like everyone else is saying…. we have no confirmation there was cheating, we only have confirmation that Roz was against hte possibility of cheating.
There’s a video tape? That seems like proof to me.
Exactly what has Ethan given up for Drew that was such a big deal? Storing away his toy collection to the closet? Please. To me it seems much bigger a sacrifice for Robin to give up ever having heterosexual sex, especially when she’s been trying real hard to lose her virginity over the years, and probably has identified herself as heterosexual for most part of her adult life.
I agree that we know way too little so far to take sides yet. (Although I am disturbed to learn that the intercourse seems to have been premeditated.) I mean, what was the point in doing it with Manley *on camera* if Robin just wanted to bang a dude for her own inner peace? AND HOW DID THAT LEAD TO WORLD PEACE?!
I mean, even Ozymandias’ plan for world peace was easier to believe.
Giving up on sex with one orientation is kind of a basic requirement of monogamy. Ethan has been defined by his toy collection far more than Robin has been defined by her desire to get the boy.
Robin isn’t straight and just humoring Les, not with the evidence of Amber to the contrary. Admittedly, there’s no compelling evidence that Robin was drawn to Les physically, though they seemed at ease enough with each other in recent bed scenes.
I’m not saying I completely don’t understand this. Getting my first serious girlfriend made me wonder if I was ever going to get to sow my wild oats. Shameful, but there it is. But if you’re acting upon that desire, then you either don’t deserve the relationship, or you’re not really in one.
We don’t know the whole of it, but there are a couple of possibilities for the tape.
Robin was mad at Leslie at the time and did it to get at her.
Jacob Manley was a sleazy person and we didn’t really catch that from his brief appearance.
As for the world peace part, there’s a chance that it had absolutely nothing to do with world peace outside of giving Robin insight into something that was missing from her plan, the tape was just an oversight.
Quite – I am thinking there’s probably a bit more to that list than we know of as well since it seems to be a living document.
Though I’m still not keen, and it seems you aren’t either, on what we’re seeing so far regarding Robin’s behavior and reasoning.
As you said, relationships mean compromise. If you’re dating a lesbian, yeah, you can’t bang dudes. If you’re in a monogamous relationship, yeah, you can’t be making out with other girls and figure it’s okay with your partner. While I can’t say I agree with Ethan’s sacrifices being any greater or less – Ethan doesn’t quite have the… strong personality that Robin does. Ethan started out with simply spending more time at Drew’s and then “cleaning up a bit” at his own place. There was also even a small conflict between himself and Drew (i.e. not one as the byproduct of sugar) and they came out better from it.
Had Robin and Leslie had a heart to heart about this earlier – maybe this could have been avoided. But that’s not quite in Robin’s character. I mentioned above that she does unselfish things for selfish reasons and I don’t particularly mean that in a bad way. Robin felt unloved and then suddenly there’s this person who loved her unconditionally. It makes sense that she would do everything she could to make her happy and keep her without giving too much thought to what she actually wanted she went for what was there. But from what we can see it looks like it’s backfired on her.
(Just a note, I do understand that character bias and like or dislike aside… happily resolved conflicts don’t always make for good entertainment.)
Oh, and just ‘cuz no one else seems to have mentioned it…
Using infidelity as escape, Robin, to assert your own independence no matter who it hurts? Does that, perhaps, sound like someone you grew up with? Not Roz, not your mom? Someone you resented Joe for resembling? Oh, right, forgot who I was talking to here: I’M TALKING ABOUT YOUR DAD.
wow NICE catch.
& Very true.
Hmm, before today’s strip I was actually wondering if infidelity was actually just an assumption on everybody’s part. Roz is the first person to say the word “cheating”, and I was hoping that Robin broke up with Leslie before she went off to start bluffin’ with her muffin.
Damn, for a brief second I thought that maybe Roz was a half-way decent person by showing a sense of moral outrage of her sister cheating on her girlfriend. But no, it’s because she’s the only cam-whore in that family dammit! hehe.
I really am surprised that Robin actually had that suppressed anger towards Leslie. I honestly didn’t see that aspect of the story coming.
Damn you Roz, keep quiet we want to hear the exposition.
But if Roz would just shut her face-hole (sorry, FAAAAACE-hole) Willis wouldn’t have a way to keep us on edge until next week.
As much as I adore Lesbian, I have to go Team Robin.
…How? Not trying to be rude or anything, I’m just honestly curious.
I just hope this ends in a way that is less awful then everything seems right now.
I mean, we’re clearly missing some parts of the story & I…I don’t know, something feels really off. Like…sugar-induced-dream-that-reveals-Robin’s-insecurities-off. Or is Shortpacked! going to exist in a Utopia from this strip on?
Or maybe that’s just my unwillingness to accept such a painful scenario? I don’t know…
Once again Willis has created a scenario with his wonderfully realistic characters that illicits a loud and apparently emotional response from his readers.
You sir,get the “OMG Response!” award d^^b
=p
I may have a fuzzy memory here, but isn’t it Robin’s OWN HOUSE that she’s getting kicked out of? I remember her buying it and having her friends rent rooms and she also had Leslie move in, but Roz snuck in. Help me out here!
Robin bought it, yeah, but she bought it for Leslie. So Leslie owns the house.
In actual fact robin purchased the house for Les
http://www.shortpacked.com/2008/comic/book-7/07-everyone-moves-into-a-house/millenniumfalcon/
for proofzies
She bought leslie the house.
What’s relevant is not who paid for the house, but whose name is on the deed. If it’s Leslie’s, and only Leslie’s, name on the deed, then by law it’s hers and only hers.
After reading panel 6, I now officially love Leslie.
glad im not the only one that saw that, my god its like willis wants to reveal whos the diehard fans of leslie/roz/robbin and whos not.
A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
Robert A. Heinlein
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own… Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy.
Robert A. Heinlein
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mohandas Gandhi
Man, I guess you’d better hope that anybody gives a fuck what Robert Heinlein thinks.
Well, I personally have incorporated elements of Heinlein’s attitude towards life into my own approach to relationships and happiness. Since I have been in a happy committed relationship for over 25 years now, I can only say it works for me.
I know from watching others destroy their relationships that jealousy doesn’t work. Most people have to learn from their own mistakes and insecurities, though.
Don’t know if anyone around here cares what Heinlein says. Obviously Mssr Willis does not. However, I would highly recommend reading Time Enough for Love before rejecting everything he has to say outright.
Dude, Heilein is fine and dandy, but he was writing sci-fi novels in the time of the sexual revolution. He was a futurist reacting to the radical social change around him. Also, WTF, you’re not quoting Heinlein, you’re quoting characters he wrote. In a sci fi book. That second one I’m pretty sure is from “Stranger in a Strange” Land (Jubal, right?), and google tells me the first is from either “Time Enough For Love” or something. Those are fictional characters living in a speculative world.
Though now that I think about it, I do scream at funerals to let my honored ancestors know that a klingon warrior will soon be among them.
Oh please. If you want to proselytize for self-centered, hedonist philosophies, get a blog. This is not the place to try and convert people. Your behaviour here is no better than that of Internet libertarians and objectivists who feel the need to spread the Holy Gospel of MeMeMe everywhere they visit online.
Crap, now I can’t help but think about all sorts of science fiction societal conventions that I want to try to impose on people in my life.
We should totally fight wars like we did in Robo-Jocks.
@schtroumpf: I’m sorry, perhaps I’m missing something, but I see no preaching. I see Mr. Willis saying “fuck you” and the guy being told to fuck off responding in kind.
“Since I have been in a happy committed relationship for over 25 years now, I can only say it works for me.”
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
Which is well and good, but I don’t think jealousy is the issue here. It’s betrayal. While sexual fidelity clearly isn’t an issue in your relationships, suppose your significant other instead, say, randomly attacked and harmed members of your family, or sold or destroyed all your most cherished possessions for no particular reason. Or simply said, “Nice relationship, but screw you, I’m out” with no explanation.
Of course I would not be accepting of violence or property destruction but then hopefully I wouldn’t be involved with a psychopath in the first place. As far as just saying we’re done without explanation, that would be perfectly acceptable. I don’t own her and if the day comes when she no longer wants me in her life than I would be acting irrationally to be upset over it or continue to impose myself upon her. She’s already had to deal with one creepy stalker in her life. I certainly don’t want to be one.
Merely being sad because you lose someone important in your life is not irrational, not in any possible meaning of the word. If the other person feels inconvenienced that you’re not a robot, then maybe they’re a self-important dick.
Some people aren’t wired like everyone else, and that’s fine by me. They can find what makes them happy, and they’re certainly welcome in the society in which I live, guaranteed the same rights I enjoy. They aren’t harming anybody. But if they’re going to look down their nose at everyone else for perfectly reasonable emotional responses, then they’re no better than the folks who discriminate against them for being different than “normal.”
One of the best things I’ve ever learned is that just because something makes me happy doesn’t mean it will or should make everyone else happy. What makes me happy is investing myself in one person, and them in return. If this makes us both happier than the alternatives, and no one else is harmed or diminished unfairly, then how dare you call that wrong.
Guess what, I’m not a robot!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_oMD6-6q5Y
Also, ditto what Willis said.
What’s that got to do with jealousy?
So it seems this strip has thoroughly fried people’s hopes/belief that it was Roz and not Robin.
I’ve noticed that in the first strip of this arc when it first came to light and the second one that a lot of people were saying/suggesting that Les should just be okay with Robin cheating on her or claiming that by being hurt, Les is trying to “own” Robin.
It’s very easy to say how you would react in that situation when you’ve never been in that situation. But I don’t know one person who has been cheated on who just laughed it off and was perfectly okay with it. It’s really hurt the relationship and it took a long, long time for that damage to even resemble being repaired.
And I don’t think Les being hurt by Robin’s actions is necessarily her trying to “own” Robin, more I think she’s just…reacting how I know people react when they find out their partner was unfaithful to them. The only time I’d say Les was being unreasonable was if she and Robin had discussed and agreed to being non-monogamous/open in their relationship.
…That’s my 2 cents. Sorry.
I have a hard time believing that someone who is “high” on something to the level of not remembering what they did is somehow their “true self” coming out. So I’m sorry, but if Robin doesn’t remember it … it didn’t happen for her, I don’t care if there is a video. And yes, she knows what C-Egg cereal does to her, but last time she became a Congresswoman … a positive thing. She went into it logically (for Robin).
She can take responsibility for her sugar high actions, but I think the real reason Leslie is angry is that she has her own insecurities. She can’t both know full well what a massive sugar high does to Robin and treat her actions as “what she has been feeling deep down”.
In vino veritas. Or, in this case, in saccharum veritas. (Probably botched that one, slightly, but…point stands.)
“it didn’t happen for her, I don’t care if there is a video”
But it DID happen for Leslie. Which means that even if Leslie accepted the ‘I was high, I can’t be blamed for it’ explanation, she’d be living the rest of her life having experienced a hurt that never gets validated. Being subjected to some form of abuse and/or betrayal and the person who did it completely forgetting, and thereby avoiding all responsibility or even having to admit it happened if they feel like it, is pretty awful and dehumanizing.
Sure, it’d be sucky for Robin to accept the blame for something not technically “real” to her or a deliberate act of harm on her part. But we all do crap that hurts people without meaning to or realizing we did it. Sometimes being a good person means accepting the reality of someone else’s experience and acknowledging our part in causing it.
Oh, good. For a minute there I was afraid I was starting to find Roz sympathetic.
From where I sit, it looks like Les is handling this in about the best possible way. There are no attacks, no accusations, very neutral language: “We had an argument”, etc. She’s being as calm as she can while she lets Robin know what happened while Robin was Mrs. Hyde.
At the same time, Robin took the Cadbury cereal with the best of intentions. After what happened the last time, she’d never dared to touch Cadbury cereal again. But she saw how much time she’d wasted, how her chance to do something great was slipping away, and she – after long, careful consideration (for her) – rolled the dice.
Which came up snake eyes, apparently. I mean, we don’t even know if the new utopia is her doing. It could be Sydney Yus’s.
I think the fact that Robin cheated on (or dumped) Les may be secondary to the fact that she said some incredibly hurtful things and vented some feeling even she didn’t know she had. A sugar-crazed tumble in the sheets that she can’t even remember might have been more forgivable than saying “You’re the reason my life sucks”. Leslie may understand and forgive her completely, yet still not take her back because they’ve become bad for each other.
In other words, there is no bad guy here, which makes it hurt that much more.
Actually, no, Robin’s a bad guy. If you run over somebody while on a controlled substance you willingly imbided, you don’t get to say “hey, not my fault” either.
She ate the eggs to try to secure her legacy before she was out of office. She wasn’t doing it to help anybody, she was doing it fundamentally for herself. As she has done everything. So far it seems the only thing the cereal did was reveal the ugly self absorbed thing she always was.
No, you’re a bad guy. FAAAAACE!!
I already knew that. You have no idea how hard it is convincing people that I’m actually despicably evil.
If I knowingly take a controlled substance when I am nowhere close to a car (something I have chosen not to use for personal reasons), and then kill someone by hitting them with a car, I am responsible for that person’s death.
If I am a bad person, however, it is not for the reason for something I couldn’t foresee myself doing even while under the influence. It may very well be for how badly I respond to being confronted with the damage I have done, but it is not in the damage itself.
So… much… psychological analysis… of… webcomic characters
My therapist told me to obsess about the mental damage of fictional characters to avoid obsessing about my own damage.
Hah, I lied, I got kicked out of therapy.
You know, the comments thread seems like it needs some devilish advocating. So, here goes: Robin doesn’t deserve all this villainization.
She’s never really been gay. She’s been open-minded, and willing to reciprocate the romantic feelings Les had for her, but up until that point she’d spent her life wanting the cock. She got with Les because the alternatives were either hurting her and losing her friendship, or continuing to string her along.
Yeah, cheating on Les (if that’s what happened) was terrible of her, but in the long run, isn’t it better for both of them that she’s finally honest with herself (and Les) about how she prefers oysters to clams? Better to get it over with now, rather than having Robin trying to keep living a lie.
A) Can’t she like both? Not everyone can be simplified into gay or straight.
B) Even were it true, it’s a rather villainous thing to do, manipulating someone’s genuine emotions for your own benefit.
C) We’ve never seen that it’s been a lie that she adores Leslie, nor that she had a crush on both Amber and Ethan. She desires affection, obviously, and it doesn’t matter as much from who. When things got rocky in her own relationship, she sought affection from someone else that was close at the time. That’s kinda mean, really.
Soooo am I the only regular reader that doesn’t have a problem with Roz?
No. I don’t have the energy for that.
The relationship always seemed like it was a little bit on shaky ground, with Leslie wanting Robin far more then Robin wanting her.
Leslie eventually forced Robin to stop playing with her feelings and make a serious commitment, and while she eventually went towards that direction with sincerity, it always felt like it was more of a resignation on her part. Which would eventually lead to resentment and depression.
I also think the fact that Robin is more sexually attracted towards men over women (this might just be conjecture though) might play a huge role in this, and her actions as well.
Still, Robin is entirely in the blame for all of this, although Leslie’s fawning nature probably made it easier for Robin to do her wrong in the end.
Aha, leslie is gonna make atleast 500$ off this or im gonna be mildly upset im mostly hopeing for roz to comment alot, ignored till when robin finally just walks away, then leslie with crossed arms and a strieght face finally saying “You owe me 500$.”