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
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
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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©2005-2013 David Willis | Powered by WordPress with ComicPress | Subscribe: RSS | Back to Top ↑
“Down, bad Ethan! No track shelving for you!”
Get him with the water bottle.
“How do you get the girls to line up alphabetically like that?”
Wait, I’ve got a much worse one!
“Are any of them mint in bo-well, no, I guess they wouldn’t be would they.”
I LoLed
I laughed. >_> Does that make me a terrible person?
What’s he been collecting? Women? That…that’s kind of disturbing.
Notches on his bedpost.
He’s collecting sex.
With his PENIS.
He needs to be careful or he will end up collecting VD via the penis.
It’s like a ring-toss, but the other way around.
I apologize for making fun of a serious subject like sex addictions.
If it makes it any better, I was thinking about Joe at the time.
The term “sex addiction” is a subversive idea that villifies the human urge to reproduce. You can’t become addicted to sex any more than you can become addicted to breathing. It’s a natural part of being a living creature and the urges should not be punished or made to seem abnormal.
Sex addiction doesn’t exist in the same way that game/internet addiction doesn’t exist. They are compulsions, which can still be self destructive. It is, in my opinion, a small but important distinction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_addiction
Admittedly there’s a case to be made, but it’s a case of semantics over which term is preferable.
Whether it’s an addiction, a disorder, a condition, or what have you it’s still real and addiction is indeed a word that is used to refer to it.
Is it the best word that could be used? I’ll let the doctors and linguists worry about that. Nevertheless it is indeed a word that has a generally understood meaning which applies to this situation.
Eating is a natural part of the human experience. You can still become addicted to eating to the point where it is physically and mentally unhealthy.
Sex addiction doesn’t mean “wanting to have sex on a regular basis” but “wanting to have sex to the point where it dictates your life.” It’s when you lose your job because you know they’ll fire you if you’re late, but the prospect of just one more roll in the hay is too much for you. It’s ruining relationships with people you’re emotionally intimate with because you can’t turn anyone down who offers you a romp in bed. It’s allowing your sex drive to rule your life and not the other way around.
Sex addiction is a real thing. Yes, humans are sexual creatures and having a healthy sex drive is fine and dandy. The key word there is “healthy.”
And now you know.
I have had limited exposure to a sex addict. Wasn’t a pretty sight. There’s the regular reproductive drive that most people have and then there’s that. Definite downward spiral there. The things he would say and do. Nothing else to him either. No room for anything outside of those sexual pursuits.
Joe enjoys sex. Joe also enjoys an active social life and maintains hobbies and a professional life. There’s a difference there.
soo the banana is saying that you can’t be addicted to something because it’s PC and natural.
That is retarded. You can in fact have too much air/food/water/etc.
He has an addictive personality, I’m sure he’s taken up hording at some point in time
Track shelving.
Based on the comments a few comics again, I think he’s referring to the thirty rotting pizza boxes.
Ethan needs to watch a marathon of Hoarders episodes.
Or just one, as watching more than three of those is bad for your sanity.
I collect episodes of Hoarders.
Masterful, good sir.
Have they done an episode featuring a toy hoarder yet?
They had one on a woman who collected dolls. She filled up her whole house and a trailer behind her house. So…yes?
Yep. There was this guy who obsessively collected toys and games he’d loved as a child as well as collecting whatever was the particularly hot toy or game of the year as his kids grew older until he had a massive toy collection that took over his entire house. He did this because apparently when he was younger his mother would throw away his toys when she decided he’d outgrown them.
Yes Ethan, you should pay attention to the way it is organized by cleanliness, year, and vintage-ness.(What the hell’s in there?)
Given what we know of Jacob, probably comic books. Or the underwear of the many women he’s bedded.
Either way, I bet they are polybagged.
Yay! Jacob’s gone back to making sense.
Given what Jacob knows of Amber and Mike, he hasn’t stopped making sense once. And I’m still not sure he’s wrong.
I agree – he may be leading a destructive lifestyle, but he knows where he’s at, and where he needs to be. He’s actually one of the saner people in this comic.
Even if there is truth to his relationship advice, he’s not exactly putting it in a way that does.
I so need more track shelving…..
Jacob, you just became my new favorite character. =D
I’m closer to Drew than Ethan in this little debate, I suppose. (I’m pretty sure I know which way David leans.) I’m a big believer in doing what makes you happy, but I’m not so wrapped up in things, and I do have to wonder, when is enough enough?
Ethan has piles of toys in storage. If he just keeps buying more stuff, it seems to me like he’ll never have a reason to take the old stuff out, except for the occasional reorganization. So what’s the practical difference between having those toys and not having them? I understand the excitement of getting the latest thing and of holding on to some old favorites, but it shouldn’t just be to please Drew that he pulls out before he gets crushed under a pile of boxes like in an episode of Hoarders. (Disclaimer: have not actually watched Hoarders.)
That said, while I’m not as keen to acquire things, I am bad at getting around to throwing things away. Hey, you never know when you might want it, right?
My guess is that the main difference between having and not having the toys is the crushing sense of futility and helplessness that comes from being spiritually shackled to this huge, anchor-like pile of possessions.
“So what’s the practical difference between having those toys and not having them?”
Oh man I know. I just moved out of my parents house lately and have a fair number of tubs of old toys I have no touched in ages. I have been giving away some but it is so hard!
So, my resolution is to get rid of anything I do not have room to display. If I cannot fit all my he-mans, mlps, pokemon figs, carebear dolls and figs, and misc stuffed animals and action figures on to shelving that can fit in my 2 bedroom condo along with my books, dvds, video games, cds, comics, and vhses (or whatever the plural of vhs is??)(also: lol I am hoarding vhs tapes that is really sad) then they have to go! Not sure about my barbies though, I only have a few dolls but I have a shit ton of clothes…
The fact I no longer have access to an outdoor storage unit or a garage helps. I would have to pay for a monthly unit to store as many toys as Ethan has, haha. I do have closets and a very small outside unit built into my balcony, though. I am going to have to try and limit those to seasonal items and art and craft supplies.
I guess what I am saying is that I understand both sides of this issue, and seeing as how I am struggling to keep my collecting under control I want Ethan to be as well >.< Of course when my dad goes off trying to guilt me about have a big ol' pile of care bears I wanna kick his ass a little!
Sorry to tl;dr you!
Oh Ethan don’t you see that your own personal well being doesn’t matter and Jacob and Drew are just bad abusive people because they don’t want you to live your life for your collection well it slowly erodes away at every other aspect of your life, because obviously those other aspects of your life are totally unimportant…
Yes, I am mocking someone who called Drew abusive because he want Ethan to get his priorities in check…
I mean really – what they hell. Jacob is not a bad person for saying Amber is to good for Mike; a man who would probably crush her self-esteem into dust after a few years a marriage (not to mention they are ignoring the fact that he obviously doesn’t want to marry her, but who care about a mans feelings on marriage anyway right?).
And Drew is hardly abusive because he rightfully pointed out a flaw in Ethan’s personality and the fact that his addiction is destroying their relationship! (Then again I suppose only Ethan’s feelings matter; to hell with Drew’s feelings right?)
Maybe I’m kinda new, but it seems to me so of you need to get your priorities in line too…
Sorry – that was a little rant-like of me, but seriously – wow! I was gonna post something like this in the other one, but I lost power and wasn’t able to…
People I know you like the characters; I like them to, but if you really are fans and are going to have an emotional investment in them, can’t you have one that involves their best interests instead of just wanting them to be your fantasy fulfillment avatars…
~~~
On the other hand I can totally understand not wanting to give up something he loves; the problem with addiction’s like these is it’s hard to find the happy medium because your mind is always gonna say “one more won’t hurt, they’re just toys!” as you proceed to alienate and neglect other aspects of you life…
I wanna hug Ethan – of course I wanted to do that before so It might not count…
Also – those must be some shelves…
I’ll gladly agree with you on the subject of Ethan and Drew. Drew’s stance on things is anything but abusive, and though some of his personal annoyances with Ethan’s habits do play into it, Drew’s a sweet enough guy that I genuinely believe he’s worried about Ethan’s well-being. Drew’s been nothing but patient with Ethan’s toy-collecting for as long as they’ve been together and has put forth the effort to be supportive. Now it’s time for Ethan to put forth some effort of his own and start realizing that, while he doesn’t have to stop his collection, that collecting at the level he does is an unhealthy obsession….
What I do have to disagree with you on is the Mike/Amber situation. From what I know of Mike, if he wanted to, and I mean if he really wanted to, he would have crushed Amber to teeny tiny, sobbing bits, brushed into a pile that vaguely resembled a fetal position with bits of her thumb mingled with bits of her mouth. He’s shown that he knows exactly how to get to a person, exactly what aspects of themselves to exploit, and exactly how to get them to feel like utter sludge. That he hasn’t done this to Amber yet, is a huge mark in her favor.
What’s more, he doesn’t strike me as the type to ever get wrangled into doing something that he flat-out doesn’t want to do. If he wanted out of the relationship, or really wasn’t even considering the possibility of getting married, I think he’d have done something about it already, or will in the very near future.
Thing is, Mike’s feelings are always insanely hard to pinpoint. His constant state of scowling hatred makes him insanely hard to read and, for all I know, either one of us could be right in this situation. Maybe his distaste is completely sincere, and he’s truly flummoxed by the trap he’s apparently fallen into, or maybe it’s just Mike being Mike, and he doesn’t dislike the situation s much as he lets on. For me at least, it’s really hard to tell, and thus I take his stance on his more complex personal issues like this with a grain of salt.
On Drew: I know; I can’t believe anyone could claim he’s abusive, because of this. Yes he has personal issues, but he seems sincere. Personally I feel people are doing exactly what Drew is afraid is going to happen to Ethan – they are flattening him into nothing more than “the toy collecting guy with lots of stuff”.
~~~
On Mike: You do have a point about Mike; and it might have been jumpy of me to take him at face value with the marriage thing. He is both a complex character and a flat character depending on how you look at him… (can someone be so complex they are flat or so flat they are complex? Damn that’s confusing!)
Of course other than that – I did say after years of marriage. Mike’s behavior seems uncontrolled for the most part – years of that would break her even if he didn’t do it on purpose. Mike doesn’t seem to grow much (if at all) as a person well Amber does. Amber would either get broken or live in regret if she married him…
I actually think he might really like Amber in his own (twisted) way, he’d just make an awful husband…
To anyone really…
~~~
PS: I like Mike – I’m a Mike! I mean my name is Mike – I don’t act like Mike…
Except when I do…
Sometimes…
~~~
…
Damn those wonderful shelves (seriously all I can think about are the shelves!)
Yeah, I guess I can see your point. Even if he did genuinely like or even love Amber, years of being around Mike and being constantly subjected to his, for lack of a better word, Mikeishness would be enough to wear on anybody, even this new, confident, self-assured Amber. Still, I can’t help but root for them out of some hope that somehow, their personalities will click, be it through the power of love, the force of the cosmos, or simply straight-up Word of Willis.
I’m not sure why, but I just like seeing them together, regardless of the logical complications that would definitely occur if they stuck together for the rest of their lives.
I can get pretty biased when it comes to these things.
But enough about all of this!!
THE SHELVES, MAN! THOSE BLASTED SHELVES ARE SIMPLY TO PERFECT TO EXIST!!
My grandpa would give Mike a run for his money. Happily married for sixty five some odd years. I’ll never know what grandma saw in him but they made it work somehow.
Not to say it still wouldn’t kill most marriages though. Just that some people with the right combination of luck, skill, effort and chemistry can make these things work.
Personally I don’t see anything wrong with shipping them or anything; my issue is more that people ship them and then just ignore the fact that Mike is; in all honesty, a bad person.
Cute together – yes.
Wanting to be together – fine.
Thinking them being married would be good – okay; who knows maybe it WOULD be good for both of them.
Bashing other characters who rightly point out that Mike is bad and come to a perfectly logical conclusion that Amber could do better – not good.
Ship away, but ship realistically – otherwise you’re not shipping them, but some creepy perfected version of them. (Not saying that’s what you do, just saying in general…)
That’s quite legitimate, but only under the presumption that “You could do better” is ever a terribly valid thing to say.
If you feel that people should only be with others in their own league, or that there is some sliding scale of worth that a couple must be within a couple categories of eachother then yes, it’s ridiculous to criticize Jacob for pointing out the blatantly obvious fact that Mike is way beneath Amber.
Personally, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. He’s not at his best right now. We can cut him some slack. You do stupid things when you’re in that state. Like give up a good, drive away true friends, and patently make it difficult to help you kind of stupid. Hurting the people you love kind of stupid. This is practically textbook behavior for someone in his situation when you get down to it. I would question what separated him from the other sexfiends of the walkyverse if he’d been able to meet Amber like a normal person, bring her into a clean apartment, talk to her amiably and end the encounter on good terms.
However there are always those lacking in sympathy. Most of the time I’m one of them. I can certainly sympathize with those who don’t find Jacob’s situation sympathetic
I’m not saying people have to date within their own league as that is a vague concept that wasn’t even what Jacob said!
“But wouldn’t it be nice to spend the rest of your life with someone who ISN’T just a pile of issues?”
He never even said she should date someone with NO ISSUES, Amber takes it that way…
Normal people aren’t generally bogged down by their issues to the point where they act like assholes for the sake of acting like assholes.
Normal people’s issues tend to be (relatively) under control…
Of course normal is relative and everyone does have issues, but I think you get what I am getting at…
Normal = doesn’t let their issues be all they have to them.
Right. It keeps coming back to Mike not being good enough for her. But that’s not how it works. The sliding scale of worth is irrelevant.
Are there better men out there? Hells yeah. Are there other men who Amber wants? No.
And that seems to me to be perfectly legitimate. If someone says “You could do better” and you think “but he’s all I want”, then you’re in the right.
I mean Mike has faults. Serious large scale faults. Let’s ask some other questions though. Are they compatible together? Well yes. Don’t ask me how but they do somehow get along famously. Do they make eachother happy? To a fucking ridiculous degree. Yeah. Is this a two way street? Once again yes. For all Mike’s reticence he is constantly doing things to make Amber happy and to help her out. She expresses an interest in the moon and he reaches out and grabs it for her. I can’t think of what Amber’s done for Mike in that department but I’d have a hard time believing that Amber was the leech in this relationship. Either way it’s not Amber’s contributions to the relationship that are being criticized. Let us assume that both are consistently engaged in service to eachother.
For all that Mike’s the one who “Doesn’t grow” he has shown a willingness to put his issues aside when Amber requires it, as evidenced by his getting sauced for Amber’s mom when Amber was worrying about what kind of impression he was making. He’s done multiple things for her that he was blatantly uncomfortable with, but could suck it up just to make things work.
Further questions we could ask. Do they trust eachother? I don’t even feel I have to detail how much they trust eachother. You see them. Amber knows all Mike’s secrets and Mike knows all Amber’s shit. They’ve both quite literally entrusted eachother with the ability to destroy eachother. It doesn’t get much more trusting than that.
“She could do better” is a completely bullshit premise. Gauging worth is a completely backwards way of looking at things. Tear apart his faults. What’s that saying? I think it goes “We like people for their qualities, but we love them for their flaws” but I might have the wording wrong.
Either way, looking at a happy couple looking to get married and telling one of them they could do better is complete bunk. If he doesn’t know them well enough to know they’re a happy couple then he doesn’t know them well enough to make such a claim even if they weren’t at such a stage in their relationship. He’s not “Pointing out the obvious”. He’s using faulty reasoning and applying it to the barest surface appearance of the situation. They have all the elements of a working couple as near as you could dissect something like that.
I will of course reiterate that it’s not that big a deal. The guy is unwell. I’m sure he would never have done this if he were in a halfway decent headspace. This being said he’s still quite incorrect. Plus it would have been a dick move regardless of who he said this to or how correct it was short of it being a case of spousal abuse. None of what he’s said from the moment he announced his lovesickness to a woman in a committed relationship was at all proper. He is quite clearly not on his game right now. I mean he started the conversation by slamming the door on Amber’s foot and then awkwardly backing down and apologizing for his outburst. He is not at all together right now.
(Only replying to this one because I can’t reply to the other
)
I’m not saying Mike is or isn’t “worthy” or “doesn’t change”. I was at first, but well crafted arguments have changed my opinion. I’m trying to give a third party assessment that might affect Jacob’s view.
Do I think they are right for each other – if you had asked me before talking with you and others I’d have said “NO he‘s dangerous“ now I‘m in a “who knows, they could make it work“ territory. Relationships can be incredibly complicated and are much more difficult to turn into right or wrong – doesn’t stop human nature from making people try to make it that way.
I’m saying Jacob isn’t wrong in thinking that he isn’t being that he has no reason for HIM to believe Mike is good for Amber. He seems to think highly of Amber (since he likes her and all) so that could be color his perception on Mike combined with the fact that Mike is blatantly rude and cruel to almost everyone.
There is a tiny flaw in what you said as well; just because Amber likes Mike doesn’t make him good for her. People can and do fall in love with people who can be downright hazardous to them or just plain bad for them.
In fact liking someone can block out the ability to rationally ask yourself if that person is good/right for you. (Not saying Mike is or isn’t, just pointing that out) As I agreed through right and wrong are difficult to assess.
On the other hand I do think Jacob is wrong in assuming that it’s all because of Amber’s self-esteem issues. She seems to have some awareness of what she wants for right or wrong.
It’s just I don’t think it right to be so harsh on the guy about his assumption as it does have grounds in reality and what HE knows about the situation.
It’s a very normal thing that everyone does and if we can’t sympathies with him at all; right or wrong, it would make us hypocrites…
It’s not like Jacob has been reading the comic with us, he only know what he knows.
Jacob’s possible PoV: Amber; a girl with known self esteem issues who he likes, is dating Mike; a guys who is known to beat people up and casually throws nasty insults at everyone. What is he supposed to think?
(I’m not sure if I sympathies with Jacob – I just try to see where he’s comin’ from. I also try to see where Amber is coming from – although I did start with a bias which I am thankful is now gone…)
We have the ability to dissect the situation in a way he doesn’t and I try to keep that in mind as I read and apply sympathy.
Or at least before I complain about somebody.
On a side note: I actually found conversation to have been quite entertaining and enlightening; it made me think about things I hadn’t considered and I have been greatly educated by it. I wanted to say thank you for that!
Fair enough. I agree that it was a reasonable conclusion for him to come to. I just don’t agree that it was his place to vocalize this.
I have all sorts of reservations about my friends relationships. You’ll probably never see me lecturing my friends on the lack of wisdom apparent in marrying someone when you’ve known them for six months. Most of us understand that we’re not doing our friends any favors by saying these things, we’re just being dicks. I sincerely believe that were Jacob in the state Amber first met him in he would know that saying these things isn’t proper.
I do agree that people have been overly harsh on the guy, for a variety of reasons. Part of it though I think is also that it’s hard to actually approve of his actions, and it’s hard to make disapproval sound mellow.
I definitely agree with your point about Amber liking Mike not necessarily giving her the ability to assess this with a clear head. Love is blind. Love makes people do crazy things. Etc etc all that sappy stuff. Personally I’m actually quite sure that romantic love is a form of insanity. It blinds you to reason, obscures facts, alters your perceptions, and impairs your judgement. People who choose to pursue it pretty much have to accept this, since near as I can tell there’s no real way to avoid these side effects.
And thank you to you too. I’d be lying if I said your perspective hasn’t been enlightening. This has all been quite pleasant.
To be fair Mike’s got like what, twenty years on Amber? Of course Amber’s constantly growing. She still hasn’t found her happy place yet. She had her traumatic upbringing, moved out, found her support group and immediately started working towards recovery.
Mike on the other hand, he’s always been Mike. He had a long history of being Mike when he met Amber. She was somewhere around twenty, on her own for the first time and being exposed to positive influences for the first time. He was forty year old grouch who’d been a wound up ball of anger before entering the war and hadn’t exactly found fighting aliens to be the kind of uplifting experience that would counteract that.
Mike had passed Amber’s landmark period of growth discovering the world twenty years prior. I’m sure he learned and grew from it the same as she did. He just didn’t grow in a way that negated his issues. If anything his discovering of the world being what it was is probably as responsible for his problems as anything.
Yes that is true, but some people treat it like that makes him a good person or good for Amber which is my problem. That is somehow justifies them bashing say Jacob for telling Amber how he feels about it…
Once again I am fine with pairing Mike and Amber; as long as the are pairing Amber with the same jerk in the series that I love and not the ‘perfect’ version they seem to see him as.
Instead it becomes “Jacob’s awful because he said bad things about our wonderful and oh so perfect Mike!” (Obviously some exaggeration was taken)
Well no, an explanation for why something is neither excuses that it is so nor removes the consequences of it being so.
Though in this case the explanation was also false, so that doesn’t help either DX
Mike is absolutely not forty. He’s no more than five years older than Amber.
Oh, dude. Sorry about that. Thought it was a lot more than that. It was truly a genuine mistake. Didn’t mean to go spreading falsehood there.
I thought it sounded odd but I just figured I missed something…
Thanks for sweeping in and correcting that.
Although the point of whatever makes Mike Mike not really justifying his (amusing) behavior stands!
Actually, on the situation of Mike, he’s fairly easy to read when he gets emotional. Particularly when he gets flustered. The fact that he flipped when she mentioned marriage showed that he realized she was right, and that he couldn’t argue with it. She’s the one person (at least that I’ve seen) who has taken Mike’s worst when he had the perfect setup and instead of breaking, Amber rebounded and socked him hard (standing up to him.) Dina came close, she didn’t stand up to him I mean, but she got under his skin in the perfect way, and all of his insults seemed to completely unphase her.
Amber not only stands up to him when he tries to push too hard, but she can actually understand him well enough to know what he intends. When he makes jokes, she knows where he’s going (Arby’s.) When he’s genuinely angry, she’s able to poke his weak spot (Forehead Proposal and Cats.) And she’s also the only person that he actually ALLOWED to know him entirely (Giant Honey Bun) instead of just physically (Ethan and Amber at the same time), and even goes out and HELPS (Respect. There’s no real defining feature of the comic so I gave it’s name instead.)
On top of all that, while drunk (I know people tend to discount that), he has admitted albeit indirectly, that he does really care about her and that taking care of her is a priority (at least in keeping her from suffering the revelations of half-siblings more than once a day, and offering hugs) that he would even suffer leaving a place he enjoys (same comic, Revelation) to help her. And if you still need more proof, Mike also made a point in the comics before that to poke her ‘I love you for you’ comment, but still went out of his way to appear nice for her mother, showing that he at least cares enough to -try- to make nice when it’s something that’s important to her.
I have to agree which is why I have no problem with people thinking they make a cute couple; they do seem to click.
However caring about someone and being good for that someone are different things…
You can care about someone and be awful for them…
Mike making a good husband regardless of his caring about Amber is questionable given his well – Mike-ness and my major complaint it peoples general hypocrisy and lack of sympathy towards Jacob based solely on shipping instead of logic.
From a third person perspective Mike is – well – MIKE! And some act like Jacob just slapped Amber and screamed “break up with Mike and be one with me for Mike is evil and I am GOOD” as if Mike is a knight in shining armor and Jacob is evil for suggesting that he thinks Amber is to good for him. They don’t even acknowledge Mike as the jerk we all know and love because that would justify Jacob’s concerns and of course in all situations there must be a RIGHT GOOD guy and a WRONG BAD guy…
Same thing with Drew really; they throw around the term ‘abusive’ and other such things – these are very serious terms which don‘t mesh with the character simply because they have taken his words to mean Drew hates Ethan‘s collecting instead of him generally being concerned about him.
These people also seem to only see Ethan as a toy collector with no other traits that could be negatively effected by his addiction; this would suggest they see Ethan as a fairly flat character who is only worth being cared about if he collects toys.
Of course they also act as if Drew is screaming “give up collecting you FREAK” instead of voicing his growing concern.
It’s really quite disgusting; disagreeing is one thing, but people take it personally and overblow it to the point where you’d think Drew was beating and manipulating Ethan constantly just to get him to stop collecting as opposed to him being worried about their relationship or that Jacob was trying to get Amber out of a ‘loving and stable’ relationship to break her so she would date him instead of being generally concerned about her…
Note to everyone: These people are not evil – they are not evil just because they questioned something that they may have legitimate reasons to be concerned about! In the case of Jacob you could make the argument he is being nosy, but he’s concerned and it is a legit concern given Mike’s established behavior.
And yes, those shelves must be IMMACULATE.
Just want to say that I’m so glad to have Jacob back.
Wow, first I start liking Amber again and now I’m starting to like Jacob. Quick, write Ninja Rick and Robin into this story so I can start liking them too!
I’m trying to reduce my collection, so this comic is kind of relevant to me. I’m giving up on G.I. Joe collecting and I’m focusing on Transformers. Aside from the clear variant of Wraith, I bought all of the 25th anniversary figures and I had a substantial vintage Joe collection which recently unloaded.
Good thing Jacob isn’t gay. Could you imagine what their apartment would look like if he and Ethan were dating each other? The people who appear on an episode of Horders would probably look normal in comparison.
jacob likes power rangers and marvel comics. it would never work!
Sure it would. Opposites attract! So long as they don’t mix the toys, they’d be good.
He’s back to collecting toys, on top of the sex, drinking, and eating? Oh man, he has really hit bottom.
You must never own more than five things, or the things will own you.
… I’m totally owned by my gaming miniatures.
Hmm, mattress, frame, pillow, sheet, blanket, pillowcase – dammit!
I’m living in Grandma’s old house, in the room that housed her loom and her weaving supplies. I’ve got a pegboard over the head of my bed. I use it.
From here I can see unopened Beast Wars figures: Cheetor reissue, Dinobot reissue, Tripredicus Agent and Bruticus. Also, Grand Moff Tarkin, Endor overcoat Han Solo, and Ari, from Tim Burton’s Planet Of The Apes.
I just realized I’m like Jacob
Without the sex life
Poor Ethan. I hope he manages to get over his sickness.
At least he has someone to help him.
What sickness?
It’s a hobby which (by the power of miracles and fairy dust) he seems perfectly able to afford on his retail salary. It makes him happy, isn’t self-destructive, and doesn’t hurt anyone – and no, being scared by the ten thousand little plastic eyes watching you doesn’t count as hurt.
I’m serious here – Ethan’s toy collecting is not a sickness, any more than liking football is a sickness. Drew may be uncomfortable with it, the same way I’m uncomfortable with the idea of getting painted up and frenzied over a couple dozen guys fighting over a prolate speheroid, and Drew’s personal problems with Ethan’s harmless hobby might reasonably lead Ethan to choose to make a choice between two evils of hindering his hobby and losing Drew, but that doesn’t make Ethan’s hobby a sickness. No matter how much it comforts Drew to imagine his personal biases as being somebody else’s flaws.
Ethan has surpassed being a mere hobbyist to being a completionist. He’s not just buying toys, he’s buying all the toys. You can’t be a completionist and maintain things like a significant other. You can never have all the toys any more than you can ever have watched all the television or read all the comics. There will always be one more episode, one more story, one more figurine.
Ethan is at a crossroads here. Either he mellows out on the toys just a tad or he will lose his significant other. There’s nothing wrong with dedicating your life to such a pursuit. Someone can be very happy by pursuing their singular source of happiness and disregarding others. It’s important though that he know that he’s making this decision when he does so.
Right now he’s trying to have all of both worlds. All the toys. All the romance. The best of both worlds is the most anyone can do though.
If his romantic life were threatening to become something that would exclude his ability to buy toys it would be a concern on the same level. Guy’s gotta know what his priorities are and if a romantic partner is a priority for him he’s gonna have to make room for it. If not then he should really ditch Drew right now and just enjoy the single life for the bitchin ride of freedom that it is.
Bull. The only difference between owning %100 of something or %99 of it or %50 or %1 of it is cost, space, and time spent. And even at %100 fervency, Ethan managed to cover expenses, store it all, and have plenty of time to have hot cosplay sex with Drew. Ethan was handling both his hobby and his relationship just fine. It’s Drew who has the problem.
And there obviously nothing magical about being a continuing collector with a large collection that precludes having a significant other – Willis is married. QED.
Willis I’m sure has a healthy obsession and that leaves time for his wife though his personal life is none of my business. We’re in preliminary stages right now but what have we seen of Ethan in the social department lately?
Went to the transformers movie. Brought Drew with him to Botcon. Went out for drinks with Amber and Mike after during a moment of perspective after initially turning her down to buy more toys.
Maybe Drew would like it if Ethan could fit some time in the schedule to actually do things together. You know, like not toy things. Things that normal couples do just because they like to spend time together.
It could turn out he’s being a dick and Ethan’s been giving the guy what he needs and Drew just has a hangup about toys. It could just as easily turn out that Ethan’s obsession is currently eating up too much of his time and he needs to just mellow out a little bit and understand the the toys will still be there tomorrow once in a while.
The only sickness Ethan has is being in a relationship with someone who thinks his hobby is creepy and a sickness and should be abolished.
Am I the only one who thinks there’s a subtle irony in a gay man proclaiming another person’s harmless, consensual, personal activities a “sickness”?
History repeats. First as tragedy, then as farce.
Yeah, Drew *totally* loathes toys and collecting them and thinks it’s the devil etc. Which is *obviously* why he went to BotCon with Ethan.
The only thing he’s worried about is Ethan’s borderline obsessiveness.
Ethan and Jacob are gonna bang!
I ship it.
Why is ‘hoarders’ the new buzzword for collectors?
Hoarding is believed to be a sickness wherein the person in question compulsively collects. They have no control over it and refuse to get rid of anything.
So in simpler terms, all hoarders are collectors, but not all collectors are hoarders.
The statements you make are true, but the ACTUAL answer to his question is that ‘hoarders’ is the new buzzword for collectors because there’s apparently now a TV show about excessive accumulation of stuff entitled “Hoarders”, which has shoved the word into the forefront of the collective consciousness.
“At least you still value your relationship with him over toys. That’s a good sign.” That’s the voice of experience talking, methinks. He was reformed once, wasn’t he? So he’s seen both sides.
How is that a good sign? Valuing a relationship over a collection is a terrible sign. of course collections should come first!
Oy. I can’t believe I’m actually saying this but can we get back to the Malaya plot? At least it was annoying in a way I could justifiably hate.
I’d be more inclined to side with Drew on this situation if he’d shown any acceptance or tolerance of Ethan’s collecting. But from Day 1 he’s wanted the figures put away because he finds them creepy. So it strikes me as “I don’t like it, so you can’t do it anymore”, not “I’m worried about you”. Should Ethan cut back, be a little more selective? Probably. But I’m sure he’s got figures he doesn’t care about that he could give away or sell rather than a major TF character that he obviously still wants.
Right now IMO Drew’s a bigger asshole than Mike.
I’m not on Drew’s side on this issue, but to be entirely fair he *has* shown a fairly high tolerance for Ethan’s rather eclectic interests: he’s hung around this long. Not to mention the batman/riddler sex (though, admittedly, he was getting hawt sex out of that particular bit of tolerance).
His issue with Ethan’s collection is his problem and not Ethan’s, though. (Excepting that he’s making it Ethan’s problem of course.)
I think this is the only site where the comments for the comic become an intelligent discussion, with resources (albeit WikiPedia).
My fellow readers never cease to make me smile, and always give me hope that future generations will not completely lose the ability to, you know, think.
^_^
I think this is actually a really interesting turn with Ethan’s character.
Or I like suffering. I don’t know.
So I got to the punchline of today’s strip, and was inexplicably reminded of this: http://www.shortpacked.com/2005/comic/book-1-brings-back-the-80s/09-independent-man/seduction/
How does Jacob afford collecting anything, pizza, and an apartment with no J.O.B.?
Perhaps he’s charging for his ‘services’?
Or maybe he’s getting his money from the same place everyone else is – authorial mandate. Jacob becoming a penniless homeless drifter wouldn’t be good for the plot, so he (like everybody else in the comic) has exactly as much money as the story demands; no more and no less.
It’s porn, right? Am I wrong for assuming he has tons of porn?
I’m guessing it’s panties. He probbably collects the underwear of the women he’s been with.
Yea, that was my first thought to. Mostly because there is no way his apartment is big enough to store all the women he sleeps with. He could be saving the condoms, I suppose.
Leave it to Ethan to miss the point so entirely that he learns the WRONG lesson.
Yeeeeah, gonna agree with Drew on this one. I am glad to see Ethan trying to change. He is not at hoarder level yet, and calling it a sickness may be a bit much, but at 30 some years old he could probably quarter-ways to paying off his own home by now if he were not spending so much on toys. Well maybe not in SanFran (um, that is where Shortpacked is located, right?), but he could certainly be making progress, as you might expect from a presumably educated, white male his age.
*shrug* Relationships are about compromise, and it sounds like Drew is compromising a bit himself. Maybe in the end they will not be able to compromise enough to stay together, but I think Ethan can grow as a person by moderating his collecting habit. It certainly cannot hurt him any.
As a side note, I am loving Jacob! So good to see him again, I hope he can get himself well.
There’s no indication whatsoever that this is about money. Drew’s problem is simply that Ethan has too much stuff. That’s been the issue from the start, and that’s what it still is. And Drew calling it a sickness takes this beyond the pale – this isn’t Ethan’s problem, it’s Drew’s. Has been from the start and still is.
And Ethan knows this. “That’s just…I don’t know.” Drew is the one with the problem, but Ethan is willing to “compromise” by single-handedly and apparently unilaterally moving to reduce his collection to make Drew less bothered. Drew, on the other hand, started off with a certain amount of tolerance for the collection and it’s apparently been decreasing of late. That isn’t compromise; it’s the exact opposite.
And as for the money issue – Ethan seems able to spontaneously purchase the most expensive of toys (even imports) as soon as they appear without it impacting his finances in the slightest – or his finances impinging on his ability to purchase. This can’t possibly happen on a retail salary; he must be pulling his toy money from a magic wormhole or a money tree. Presumably his ability to pull house money from the same source is limited more by the demands of the plot than by whether he buys fewer new toys. (And either way, throwing away toys he’s already purchased wouldn’t help at all.)
Mmm, yeah, it is his buying habit that needs to be curved. Drew made it preeeetty clear the main problem was that Ethan’s collection keeps growing.
And just because he has magic plot convience money does not change the fact that making toys a finiancial priority over, like, retirment savings and stuff like that (I consider home purchase a type of retirement saving) is sort of a sign that a person MAY have a problem. I mean we can only see that he manages to afford esentials in addition to his collecting, he could be racking up debt or not paying insurance or any number of risky things to feed his habit.
Sorry, but, no. ‘Could be’ is not enough for an argument on what is happening in something. You have no evidence, for all we know he’s perfectly fine financially. Can you cite evidence otherwise?
OK, so fact we do not know either way what his financials are like means there is no way he is having financial difficulty? Because I only suggested it was a possibility, and a very real factor in actual collection addicts. People keep saying ‘waa but he is obvs not having money troubles’ when there is no prove either way.
And, like I said, he is 30 some and still rents.
His buying habit only ‘needs’ to be curbed because Drew has a bug up his butt about it. There’s no reason whatsoever to believe that it’s a problem on its own.
And you have no idea how much money he is or isn’t saving. Or whether he wants a house at all. Or whether he’s putting his money in something more stable/portable like a 401k instead. Or *anything* on the subject of his finances. You simply don’t have the information.
So curbing his compulsive buy is ONLY going to benefit Drew? There is NO way it could be good for Ethan as well? Because we do not know for a fact how much money he has?
On the subject of Amber and Mike…”
(Reading archives. Always fun.)
I think I kind of understand both points of view on this one.
My wife and I are both collectors, of several things. We own a SMALL house, because that’s what we can afford on one salary and one SSI disability check.
We don’t spend to the point that we’re in trouble, and we DO get rid of parts of our collections that we’re willing to part with, but in the past few years, we’ve mostly gotten rid of what we’re willing to lose, but the parts of the collections that we’re NOT willing to give up keep expanding anyway.
So now it’s like, “where are we going to get the money for a bigger house?”
But at least we’re both collectors, so no one gets on anyone else’s case about it. (In fact, it always upsets her when I sell something of mine.)
All this says to me is that Ethan is poor. Because a rich person with this problem would only be considered slightly eccentric. Very slightly
I think Drew does have a right to voice his concerns because it does seem like Ethan is going overboard with his collection and they are after all in a relationship. However I’m sensing some past issues contributing to his current anxiety. I wouldn’t be surprised if Drew maybe has a past relationship of some kind that was ruined by issues with addiction. It might have lead to him being hypersensitive to excess behavior and on the look out for signs of addiction. There’s also the fact that they’ve been together for awhile now and if Drew and Ethan are seriously considering a real future together Drew probably doesn’t like the possibility of them not being able to afford their own home or being the primary breadwinner because his boyfriend has no savings and spends most of his money on toys.
When I read Jacob’s lines, I read them in the voice of Cyborg from the Teen Titans cartoon. And now, possibly, you will too.