Maybe Aimmee could get Bubbles’s on a loan. It’s pretty amazing just how many distinct personalities that body has gone through. Then compare to the short time Nick had it.
It took me a couple seconds to figure out that you were talking about the Violet drone currently inhabited by the water cooler, not the enormous armored ex-military battledroid from Questionable Content.
Me neither, and yet she is. Of course, Shaenon does have a long and renowned history of adorable characters, so in retrospect it’s not that surprising.
Quite true. I think I was wrong-footed by the angstyness implied by all the grimdarkness. Which begs the question: If Aimee’s not responsible for all this, who or what is?
Shaenon is also sadly not great about avoiding falling into awful stereotypes about sex and gender.
Like in Narbonic, when Dave was turned into a woman, suddenly he became weepy, emotional, and obsessed with romance stories. He was exactly the same in mannerisms, behaviors, and personal preferences… but then he randomly had certain “girly” behaviors spliced into his personality for no apparent reason.
I guess at least here with Nick, you could write off Aimee being effeminate and mincing in personality as being the result of Whimsy meddling, and the gender bias inherent to the corporate entity’s worldview?
Still, given how much it’s been trumped up that Aimee -IS- Nick, and therefor the two are supposed to be essentially the same, it’s really disappointing that Aimee has all these uncharacteristic differences spliced in just because she’s got a female form instead of a male one.
Shockingly, scienticians have recently unveiled provisory evidence that many eukaryotes, including mostly-bald plains-apes, utilize a novel type of reproduction tentatively termed “sexual” in order to enhance genetic recombination, diversity and adaptability.
In the naked ape, whose young suffer such a prolonged period of dependence as to effectively cripple females for years on end, females have developed a host of devices by which to secure males’ service as protectors and providers, from constantly feigning sexual availability and interest to neotenized facial features and behaviors subverting others’protective instincts. The same evolutionary pressure has favored males obsessively servile before familiar females (and through those, presumably, offspring which may or may not be their own) and desperate to assume all risks and difficulties in place of females.
In short, women manipulate others by displaying neediness and vulnerability while men must constantly advertise their ability. Yes, the Nick/Aimee variations on the same insecure personality fit just fine.
Also, there’s a lot less comedic value in similarity than in difference.
Ew, that’s really sexist and condescending to women, not to mention ignorant of how sex and gender actually work in different species. Also, this is a lot of analysis on both ends to attach to a pair of characters who, in this strip, are using THE EXACT SAME BODY LANGUAGE EXCEPT THE GIRL MAKES A FIST.
Could you link me to where you get this from? I’m always up for learning more about human evolution. You do have to be careful, though, as much of the research done before the late 1900s got warped by societal prejudice.
And, as always, somebody beats me to it. I was trying to be subtle, but Shaenon took a more direct approach.
I am actually interested in reading more, though.
Gemma,
More seriously, you may want to consider the possibility that it is the research done *after* the late 1900s that has been warped by societal politics instead. Historically, every era is parochial about itself and those who came before it but that does not mean that being so parochial is necessarily correct.
I’ve not kept up to date with the bleeding edge of biology and sociology but suffice to say Werwolf is not actually using actual peer-reviewed scientific findings or theories.
I actually thought Werwolfe’s post was an attempt at parody, not a statement of his or her actual beliefs.
Sadly, though, I have read articles — published in all apparent seriousness — that were just as over-the-top and unbelievable. So perhaps I’m not the best judge of the author’s intent.
I actually think the two are very similar besides the Whimsy-induced non-swearing.
As for Shaenon and gender swapping, the only time Dave got weepy was watching wrestling. He also was crushing on Mick Foley, but he also kissed the poster again after he swapped back. When he went on the date with Seth, it was so he could see LOTR; he was very up-front about the fact that he did NOT want to actually date him.
In the director’s cut, Shaenon spoke about behavior in gender-swap storylines:
“One of the problems that immediately emerges when I try to write a gender-swap story is that I don’t think the innate differences between men and women are all that vast, so I don’t have much to work with. It’s not like I’m inclined to write a comic where guys turn into women and are suddenly seized with the urge to go shopping and dress up all pretty.”
Yeah, it took me a while to figure out that this subthread was a reaction to Urlance’s comment that Aimee is utterly adorable–as if that’s a difference from Nick.
We’re also dealing here with a male character whose social upbringing has caused him to possibly act less quote-unquote “girly” than he would prefer due to fear of criticism; I certainly read that into his character, and it’s common enough in real life given that social enforcement of gender roles does penalize men for acting that way.
In short, you cannot assume that Nick-as-we-know-him is true-Nick-as-he-would-be-absent-gender-based-social-pressure. Nick with an edited set of memories and the belief that he’s female might very well act very much like Aimee.
Dave became emotional “for no apparent reason”? Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of hormones? Their effects on people aren’t completely understood, but that they have an effect is incontrovertible.
Now I’m shipping Nick and Amy as the cutest dorky couple in all of webcomicdom. I’d think that was wrong, but Jeff and Shaenon had an orgy with multiple iterations of Tip and Artie, so precedent.
Yes, sorry (I’ve never seen whatever it’s from, but I should have seen what she thought he was doing). I was probably looking for it after yesterday’s “we have the saddest ever secret lair”. Insulting people as soon as he meets them is pretty much Nick’s SOP, so it doesn’t mean much itself.
Oh, they’d be adorkable; I’ll give you that. But both of them would have to mature lot before they could be happy in any sort of serious romantic relationship, let alone one complicated by the issue of being pretty much the same person. I think that’s part of the purpose behind this story arc, actually: to help Nick confront some issues within himself and begin growing into the sort of person who could pursue a relationship with Dr. Lee. And Aimee is a bit behind-the-ball compared to Nick, in that regard; she’s still very much a shut-in and a loner. Nick, at least, is showing signs of coming out of his shell and of caring about the world and people around him.
Yo Aimee! Nick is quoting some weird cartoon about furry secret-agents going on government missions in America, mostly comedy stuff. It’s real niche, but he can bring you up to speed pretty quick…
If you’re into meta-fiction, you’ll love the story, trust me. 😉
wondering if Nick will break the news by saying, “Remember Princess Tutu?” 😀
Jonathan Fisher
Bi readers (and pan, ace, etc.) would throw off the count, but the gays would cancel each other out.
On a more general level, now all the male fans can see an opposite-sex Nick and all the female ones can see a same-sex Nick, which for some people does change the level of relatability.
The last panel is adorable. Come to think of it, how many panels has Shaenon drawn? Let’s see, 15 years, 365 days per year, average of 3.5 panels per day …
Ah, if the first panel is anything to go on, she does know that she’s an A.I. clone of him. If the rest of the comic is anything to go on, she doesn’t know he’s a helicopter.
That hair thing she’s doing in the last panel is adorably realistic.
Kudos to Shaenon for that detail! It was one of the first things I noticed, too.
I’m glad the possibility of realistic *odor* isn’t realized: Old take-out can smell pretty bad.
Would Nick even notice?
Probably nothing compared to the odor of smelly shut-in.
Can Nick smell things?
Aw man, Amimee is adorable. I just want to take her home and build her a robot body so we can sit on the sofa and watch Dragonball together!
Maybe Aimmee could get Bubbles’s on a loan. It’s pretty amazing just how many distinct personalities that body has gone through. Then compare to the short time Nick had it.
It took me a couple seconds to figure out that you were talking about the Violet drone currently inhabited by the water cooler, not the enormous armored ex-military battledroid from Questionable Content.
I am here for this crossover fiction, ayep!
Same
Or the guy from Trailer Park Boys
Ditto. But, whoah! What a mental image, eh?
…and she ends up dating Dr. Lee. Nick suffers the closest thing to an aneurysm possible for a brain in an aircraft.
It seems that Aimee doesn’t have all of Nick’s memories.
If she had all of his memories, she’d realize she was him. Clearly, major editing was required.
Aimee looks exactly like someone who would call Nick a button eating toast head.
Aimee has a Zero Wing t-shirt, which is *perfect*, but I can’t make out what Nick’s shirt is. And I agree, she’s dorkily adorable. (Adorkable?)
Nick’s got a Kid Icarus shirt.
Thus we can conclude that Medusa is CATS’s distaff counterpart. All your Skyworld are belong to her.
Zero Wing = Wing Zero? because if so I agree. Perfect.
Of all the reactions I might have had to Aimee, I wouldn’t have expected her to be so utterly adorable.
Me neither, and yet she is. Of course, Shaenon does have a long and renowned history of adorable characters, so in retrospect it’s not that surprising.
Quite true. I think I was wrong-footed by the angstyness implied by all the grimdarkness. Which begs the question: If Aimee’s not responsible for all this, who or what is?
Shaenon is also sadly not great about avoiding falling into awful stereotypes about sex and gender.
Like in Narbonic, when Dave was turned into a woman, suddenly he became weepy, emotional, and obsessed with romance stories. He was exactly the same in mannerisms, behaviors, and personal preferences… but then he randomly had certain “girly” behaviors spliced into his personality for no apparent reason.
I guess at least here with Nick, you could write off Aimee being effeminate and mincing in personality as being the result of Whimsy meddling, and the gender bias inherent to the corporate entity’s worldview?
Still, given how much it’s been trumped up that Aimee -IS- Nick, and therefor the two are supposed to be essentially the same, it’s really disappointing that Aimee has all these uncharacteristic differences spliced in just because she’s got a female form instead of a male one.
Shockingly, scienticians have recently unveiled provisory evidence that many eukaryotes, including mostly-bald plains-apes, utilize a novel type of reproduction tentatively termed “sexual” in order to enhance genetic recombination, diversity and adaptability.
In the naked ape, whose young suffer such a prolonged period of dependence as to effectively cripple females for years on end, females have developed a host of devices by which to secure males’ service as protectors and providers, from constantly feigning sexual availability and interest to neotenized facial features and behaviors subverting others’protective instincts. The same evolutionary pressure has favored males obsessively servile before familiar females (and through those, presumably, offspring which may or may not be their own) and desperate to assume all risks and difficulties in place of females.
In short, women manipulate others by displaying neediness and vulnerability while men must constantly advertise their ability. Yes, the Nick/Aimee variations on the same insecure personality fit just fine.
Also, there’s a lot less comedic value in similarity than in difference.
Ew, that’s really sexist and condescending to women, not to mention ignorant of how sex and gender actually work in different species. Also, this is a lot of analysis on both ends to attach to a pair of characters who, in this strip, are using THE EXACT SAME BODY LANGUAGE EXCEPT THE GIRL MAKES A FIST.
Could you link me to where you get this from? I’m always up for learning more about human evolution. You do have to be careful, though, as much of the research done before the late 1900s got warped by societal prejudice.
And, as always, somebody beats me to it. I was trying to be subtle, but Shaenon took a more direct approach.
I am actually interested in reading more, though.
Gemma,
“You do have to be careful, though, as much of the research done before the late 1900s got warped by societal prejudice”
Well, sure! Everyone knows that the Present Day is the highest pinnacle of human thought merely because the Present Day thinks so, right? ^_~
Gemma,
More seriously, you may want to consider the possibility that it is the research done *after* the late 1900s that has been warped by societal politics instead. Historically, every era is parochial about itself and those who came before it but that does not mean that being so parochial is necessarily correct.
It’s science, not human intelligence.
Science tends to progress.
I’ve not kept up to date with the bleeding edge of biology and sociology but suffice to say Werwolf is not actually using actual peer-reviewed scientific findings or theories.
I actually thought Werwolfe’s post was an attempt at parody, not a statement of his or her actual beliefs.
Sadly, though, I have read articles — published in all apparent seriousness — that were just as over-the-top and unbelievable. So perhaps I’m not the best judge of the author’s intent.
Did those two not realize that their body language mirrors each other’s in panels 1 and 4?
To clarify my question: Do Walker and Werwolfe not realize that Nick and Aimee’s body language are mirrored from panel 1 to panel 4?
I actually think the two are very similar besides the Whimsy-induced non-swearing.
As for Shaenon and gender swapping, the only time Dave got weepy was watching wrestling. He also was crushing on Mick Foley, but he also kissed the poster again after he swapped back. When he went on the date with Seth, it was so he could see LOTR; he was very up-front about the fact that he did NOT want to actually date him.
In the director’s cut, Shaenon spoke about behavior in gender-swap storylines:
“One of the problems that immediately emerges when I try to write a gender-swap story is that I don’t think the innate differences between men and women are all that vast, so I don’t have much to work with. It’s not like I’m inclined to write a comic where guys turn into women and are suddenly seized with the urge to go shopping and dress up all pretty.”
Yeah, it took me a while to figure out that this subthread was a reaction to Urlance’s comment that Aimee is utterly adorable–as if that’s a difference from Nick.
The Roger Rabbit rule applies here: Only when it’s funny.
We’re also dealing here with a male character whose social upbringing has caused him to possibly act less quote-unquote “girly” than he would prefer due to fear of criticism; I certainly read that into his character, and it’s common enough in real life given that social enforcement of gender roles does penalize men for acting that way.
In short, you cannot assume that Nick-as-we-know-him is true-Nick-as-he-would-be-absent-gender-based-social-pressure. Nick with an edited set of memories and the belief that he’s female might very well act very much like Aimee.
Dave became emotional “for no apparent reason”? Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of hormones? Their effects on people aren’t completely understood, but that they have an effect is incontrovertible.
Huh. I now realize that if I had to talk with a duplicate of myself (of either sex) I would communicate almost entirely in references.
Captain Picard would relate.
He would not.
Patrick Steward might, but Picard would not.
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!
Professor Plum in the Study with the revolver!
And didn’t he hate that.
Me too.
My family and I already communicate mostly with references.
Now I’m shipping Nick and Amy as the cutest dorky couple in all of webcomicdom. I’d think that was wrong, but Jeff and Shaenon had an orgy with multiple iterations of Tip and Artie, so precedent.
*Aimee*
I’m with you on this one. Let’s hope that this particular ship gets to leave the harbor in spite of Nick’s self-loathing. ^_^
I can’t see anything happening until Nick starts treating Aimee as an individual again. “My own anime reference” sounds really weird.
His “this isn’t really what I look like” was an anime reference, that’s what he’s talking about.
Thank you, Greenknight, I had no idea of that either. 🙂
Yes, sorry (I’ve never seen whatever it’s from, but I should have seen what she thought he was doing). I was probably looking for it after yesterday’s “we have the saddest ever secret lair”. Insulting people as soon as he meets them is pretty much Nick’s SOP, so it doesn’t mean much itself.
Oh, they’d be adorkable; I’ll give you that. But both of them would have to mature lot before they could be happy in any sort of serious romantic relationship, let alone one complicated by the issue of being pretty much the same person. I think that’s part of the purpose behind this story arc, actually: to help Nick confront some issues within himself and begin growing into the sort of person who could pursue a relationship with Dr. Lee. And Aimee is a bit behind-the-ball compared to Nick, in that regard; she’s still very much a shut-in and a loner. Nick, at least, is showing signs of coming out of his shell and of caring about the world and people around him.
Yo Aimee! Nick is quoting some weird cartoon about furry secret-agents going on government missions in America, mostly comedy stuff. It’s real niche, but he can bring you up to speed pretty quick…
If you’re into meta-fiction, you’ll love the story, trust me. 😉
wondering if Nick will break the news by saying, “Remember Princess Tutu?” 😀
Jonathan Fisher
Rule 63!Nick is cute as hell.
I suppose that means that half the readership gets to appreciate how the other half sees Nick normally?
Well putting aside that some percentage of the readership must likely be homosexual or bisexual, there’s also the matter of diferences of taste.
Plenty of female readers surely would disagree about Nick being cute, and vice versa for male readers regarding Aimee.
Bi readers (and pan, ace, etc.) would throw off the count, but the gays would cancel each other out.
On a more general level, now all the male fans can see an opposite-sex Nick and all the female ones can see a same-sex Nick, which for some people does change the level of relatability.
The last panel is adorable. Come to think of it, how many panels has Shaenon drawn? Let’s see, 15 years, 365 days per year, average of 3.5 panels per day …
It’s over nine THOOUUSAAAAAND!!!
You made me laugh, Eddurd. 🙂
Don’t forget all the wallpaper and Patreon rewards and book signings and other miscellania…
Anime = “an I, me” ?
Potential entendre on existence that makes sense in context, like “Aimee”
Or possibly just “AI Me”?
From where I sit, Aimee seems as real as Nick.
How meta are we gonna get here? YOU seem as real as Nick to me 🙂
Do we really believe this world outside our skulls is actually real?
Do you believe your skull is real?
Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him, Horatio…
Some of my best friends have been all or partially imaginary. I do not see a problem here.
Does this mean that Haruhi Suzumiya really did will us all into existence in a moment of boredom?
Before I can answer that for certain we would need to collect an alien, a time traveler, and an esper. ^_~
An alien, a time traveler, and an esper walk into this bar…
Hmm… Let me see what I can find…
Alien:
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/b4/bf/b4/b4bfb439538a5408bf4050338b901f85.jpg
Esper:
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kaneda_large_8728.jpg
Time Traveler:
https://nyoobserver.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/doctor-who-doctors-1-11-50th.jpg?quality=80&w=635
Okay, what next?
Aww crumbs! I had good money on that bet! Now what will I play monopoly with?
Ah, if the first panel is anything to go on, she does know that she’s an A.I. clone of him. If the rest of the comic is anything to go on, she doesn’t know he’s a helicopter.
I’ve read this comic twice now and I still wasn’t prepared for how cute Amiee is.