So, I was reading trough today's Boondocks thread, and was reminded strongly of another comic with a left wing radical revolutionary cynic protagonist (albeit, one who's a much older whiter gayer woman).
Who, if anyone here, remembers DTWOF (Dykes to Watch Out For)?
All I know is that's where the "Betchel Test" comes from. If she's anything like her fans, I don't want anything to do with her.
>>77658244
Aware of it, haven't read any of it beyond the Betchel Test strip.
However, I read her two autobiography graphic novels, Fun Home and Are You My Mother. Fun Home was terrific, while AYMM was hit and miss for the most part.
>>77658434
Do you also predicate watching the Boondocks on whether you support Huey's aspirations as a violent revolutionary?
30 years ago, Betchel quoted a friend's rule in her comic, and now it's all a lot of people know about her...
>>77658614
>Passing up Rambo meets Godzilla
What the fuck.
I've been working my way through the collection and it's good. The characters are really filled out and 3 dimensional. The plots are ok but kinda standard life stuff.
It's hard for me to remember it was a newspaper strip and take it like that, the collection I'm reading feels like it's stripped a lot of the one day gags for the straight drama/character stuff so I can't tell you how funny it actually is. Bc you can't put 30ish years of comics in one book. Hilarious that one from 08 is just like one from the 90s. They work better if you know the contextalso i probably agree politically with most of it so you can disregard the post
I really enjoyed Fun Home, but on the whole Dykes to Watch Out For always comes off as really up it's own ass to me. It's like Subnormality but maybe slightly more respectable since it's not always bitching about video games
>>77658678
If the facehugger/chestbuster don't count as a man, the big G probably shouldn't either, and women are bound to talk about Godzilla!
>>77658496
I enjoyed AYMM more than FH to be honest. It's less polished for sure, but that just makes it feel more personal to me.
>>77658825
>>77658678
Mothra could be in it
>>77658698
Not even the 90s, it's from 1985.
Like, it wasn't a web comic because there wasn't a web yet (just an internet)...
>>77658719
Well, it's certainly very focused on it's demographic, but that has it's own advantages in terms of depth vs breadth of coverage.
And, strangely enough, gamers seem to be more over exposed in terms of comics than lesbians (although I wonder if that was any different in the zine era than the webcomic era)....
>>77658434
>>77658614
I wonder if there's such a thing as an anti-Betchel test?
After all, no representation means no mis-representation.
>>77658434
>>77658614
>>77658678
The Betchel Test is by far the best exemple of "political webcomic disproves it's own argument as it's being made" I've ever seen, because if woman would pass on Rambo vs Godzilla then they don't deserve to open their mouths, much less vote.
>>77658614
Huey isn't a violent revolucionary, he is a parody of the usual "WE WUZ KINGS" muslim brotherhood youths that seem to think they are the only hope of the average young african american.
The events in the show contradict his beliefs as often as they do his younger and more naive brother.
>>77658434
I think the test gets misused. It's not that a movie failing it means that movie is bad, it's that it's sad how large a portion of movies fail it.
>Dykes to watch out for
>>77660739
The macro-trend being a negative implies a failure on the micro.
Honestly, fiction has no obligations to anyone. Fiction is a wonderful liberating thing that allows people to escape from their shitty fucking lives for a bit, it shouldn't be bogged down by hairy lesbians.
Star Wars, for example, fails the Bechdel test. Princess Leia is still a total badass. As it turns out, fighting an inter-galatic war is more important to her than chatting up another girl about hairstyles.
>>77658434
she apparently stated that it was just one way of looking at things that people should consider, not some official standard that all things should hold up to.
problem is people ignore that completely and shun things that dont pass
>>77661957
>implying you're watching out for said dykes
>>77660684
the Bechdel test wasn't proposed as a political statement in the comic. It was a single character's personal habit, wherein she comments that all it really does is prevent her from ever going to the movies.
It wasn't proposed as a serious measure of individual movies, and in fact doesn't do that job well at all. All it can really be used for is a general gauge of Hollywood as a whole on the inclusion of women as characters other than a love interest.
>>77661980
the failure on the micro is "casting women." Which indeed Star Wars didn't do, but that isn't necessarily a problem on the micro. There aren't any women in All Is Lost, either, but that film also fails to cast anyone who isn't Robert Redford, and it's still fantastic.
Things can be a problem on the macro that simply aren't problems on the micro. This year being 1 degree warmer on average than last isn't a problem on the micro, but as part of a trend is an issue.
>>77658244
Caught little bits and pieces of it over the years but never really sat down and read through it.
Like >>77658496 said though, Fun Home was pretty interesting though.
Anyone else feel really bad for her dad? He pretty much got fucked by being born slightly earlier time-wise and probably wouldn't have done so badly if he grew up in the same time period as Bectchel.
>>77658244
I do!
These days it's mostly famous for the Bechdel Test. Is it even still being written, or has she moved on to more artsy stuff like Fun Home?
>>77660719
Huey announces himself as a black revolutionary repeatedly, and stockpiles a lot of weapons (even if most of them are airsoft toys being treated as pseudo-real in a Calvin-and-Hobbes-esque game of pretend).
The fact that he's a parody of people you might hear about in real life, while also being an interesting character in his own right, is why the comparison to people in DTWOF is apt.
Both comics have extremely politically strident main characters that are often taken as the authors' mouthpieces (despite both authors saying they sympathize more with different characters), that none the less have a layer of deep and developing characterization that make them more empathetic and human than the caricatures as which they began.
>>77658244
>words words words words words words words words words words words words: the Graphic Novel
>>77658244
OP, you wouldn't happen to have the DTWOF strip from the late 90s where Mo is thinking about the impending intervention in Bosnia, and she keeps having to change her mind as every single person she talks to gives a good reason why the US should/shouldn't get involved?
I had it saved years and years ago, and now that have a reason to post it, I can't find it.
>>77663705
It hasn't updated since 2008, but no loose ends were tied up in the last strip, and it was announced more as a sabbatical than a retirement. ...so maybe.
>>77663789
Yeah, I remember that one...
>>77663879
>that circular reasoning conclusion in the student's paper
Deserved a lot worse than B-
>>77663557
Give it up to tumblr to miss the point so hard. It's like how women in refrigerators was a joke reference to a bad storyline and now people cit every time a women gets hurt ever.
>>77664028
>Drawing distinctions between ethnic cleaning and genocide as if they alter the point that it's a bad thing that should be stopped
This reminds me of people who say you can be guilty of prejudice but not necessarily racism if you're a minority
Like, is being prejudiced not still a bad thing that should be socially proscribed? Is there a sliding scale of acceptability for these things now?
>>77664204
No one seems to mind how non-Salafists are being cleansed from the Middle East and driven into Europe and that's happening right now.
>>77658244
Of course. When I was in the beginning of a friendship with a lesbian friend (who wasn't into comics, but had asked me to do some stuff for here Government-sponsored healthcare website), I bought her DTWOF for her birthday, then got all paranoid. @Cause she was a lesbian and I was giving her a comic about lesbians, you know? But she loves it and now digs Bechdel to fuck. I have a copy of "the Complete..." too, it's great to see her evolution over the years.
>>77664361
> non-Salafists are being cleansed from the Middle East and driven into Europe
That just means there's no civilian casualties when we nuke the Middle East into glass
>>77664794
Which we're getting closer and closer to doing as ISIS does it's best to make enemies out of literally everyone.
>>77658434
>>77658496
>>77658614
>>77659977
>>77660684
>Betchel
It's Bechdel
>>77664884
...oops, so it is.
>>77658614
Also Bechdel herself pointed out that it wasn't meant as a sort of "litmus test" of a "politically sound/good" film, merely an observation of Hollywood practices.
>>77664028
Thank you Anon!
It's even the same low-res shitty scan I got off the website a decade and a half ago.
I wonder if there's a better version of it out there.
>>77665829
Who knows, but it's not exactly the kind of comic one reads for the stunning imagery anyway...
Even without new material, it would be interesting to see it get reissued as a web comic; it seems like it would really fit that medium.
An animation based on DTWOF could be really interesting, but somehow I have trouble imagining the production of something like that working out...
>>77666407
Yeah, but it would nice if the text was more legible.
>>77658825
Well, many people (including the actors) got a female vibe off of the adult xenomorph, and the facehugger has a fairly vaginal underside. Both of those have far more wiggle room than Godzilla, who is explicitly male.
The chestburster is a straight-up penis, though. No argument there.
>>77670962
>Godzilla, who is explicitly male
I'm going to say [Citation Required] on that one. A quick google shows that while the american dub used male pronouns, the original Japanese was gender neutral, and there is speculation that Godzilla may have been a true hermaphrodite.
>>77658614
There's something I never got about the Bechdel Test. Do the girls have to say at least one penis-free sentence to pass, or do they have to do it the entire movie?
If I make a movie where two women sit in a cafe and talk about My Little Pony for an hour and a half, but then one says "Hey! That man stepped on my foot!" does it fail?
If I make a movie where two chicks in sexy lingerie sit on a bed and talk for an hour and a half about how much they love making out in front of guys, then one starts talking out the massive shit she just took, does it pass?
>>77672350
Didn't the 1998 Godzilla lay eggs?
>>77673281
People have pointed out that most lesbian porn passes the Bechdel test, despite the fact that it's targeted toward the desires of heterosexual men. Which defeats the purpose if it's intended to be a measure of how "feminist" a work is.
>>77674189
>>77673281
It's only one or two sentences, and the purpose isn't to prove anything meaningful it's just Bechdel didn't want to see movies where women were plot devices instead of characters and she figured that her guidelines would mean they'd have to have something outside being the romantic interest even if it was the bare minimum.
>>77674122
Matthew Broderick mentioned something about it being able to reproduce asexually.
And I'm pretty sure Godzilla was still referred to as "he" by everyone in the movie.
>>77676408
If Godzilla lays eggs, but plays a masculine role for the movie, wouldn't that be...
Godzilla, Drag King of Monsters!
>open movie with scene of two women
>Beth and Jill
>They introduce themselves to one another and talk about snowboarding
>immediately following this they are murdered and violently raped by orcs
>but the movie passes the Betchel test so it's a feminist masterpiece
Women are idiots. Like how they were spooging over Fury Road despite the fact that the one pregnant bitch gets crushed to death.
But hey, they payed lip service to our ideology so go them.
>>77664204
There's a huge difference though, and the Serbs were doing a good thing eliminating muslims. We should have let them.
It was a newspaper strip, right? Because the only ones we have are shitty condoritos (altough, who knows i barely even read newsapers).The quality of USA neswpaper strips amazes me.
I read Fun Home recently and it was great. If anyone has doubts about bechdel i asure you, its worth it.
also i dont know why people like >>77678176 post if they dont even care about the comics enough to read them
>>77678693
>also i dont know why people like >>77678176 post if they dont even care about the comics enough to read them
Because they're faggots.
>>77678804
I think someone forgot which comic we're discussing...
>>77678693
People like that post because they know of the Bechdel test and want to complain, and hope they can get someone to argue with them. Also American newspaper strips aren't always that great, this used to run in my local paper.
>>77680720
... Yeah, a low-budgetmedium really gives an author the freedom and room to work to make something great and interesting; but it also gives them the lack of editorial supervision to make something lousy.
that comic used to show up in the 'funny papers', whose actual name eludes me at the moment since I haven't read them in probably over a decade. They were a once a month collection of mostly liberal political cartoons and it was the only source of comics my parents allowed in the house.
I jerked it a bunch of times to the short haired lesbians because there was literally nothing else masturbate too in my house growing up and the art was the closest to what might be called passably attractive for political cartoons. I might have jerked it to some dudes too, I was never actually sure since my teenage brain couldn't really parse the text well enough to determine who was what gender.
