GTS – Page 107 – Kidd Commander!

GTS – Page 107

by Aria on November 12, 2021 at 9:50 PM

that thing where old folks have to insist to strangers over and over that it was a good life, it was Fine

Thank you for your patience! I’m trying hard to get the special off to the printer by the end of the month so I’m kind of in crunch mode rn. Patron postcards are also set to go out by the end of the month, busy busy.

EDIT 11/19: Just checking in! I’m down to the last four pages of the special and the postcards are coming right along so I’ll have preorders and such set up here pretty soon. I’ll talk more about this in a proper news post but it would mean a lot to me to get this mini off my plate before the end of the year, so thanks for being patient while I do that <3 on the plus side I’ve finished like eight pages this month which is WILD given what I’ve been capable of for the last. two years. so that’s encouraging!

I will also talk about this more in the next news post, but if you’re sitting around wondering what’s going on with this particular comic artist, my fucking gofundme is here lmfao

Hang in there, be right back <3

marithness

I have to keep reminding myself that this friendly, sympathetic grandma chatting so civilly with Agatha now is the same person who called her a soulless, damned thing back on page 68. But that’s what people are like – you can have a hundred pleasant interactions with someone and it’s all smooth sailing, until you run smack into the iceberg of their prejudices and realize that what they showed you is only the surface 1/10th and what lurks below is massive, dangerous and cold.
- Aria
  
  Yeah it’s really rough with these types, they genuinely don’t see anything harmful about holding the belief that who they’re talking to has like “fallen short” somehow and is damned so they CAN have these kinds of interactions easily, they don’t see any wrongdoing so they don’t feel any guilt that might keep them from having a nice chat. Or understand why the other person might get upset once the mask comes off.
  - Chromoid
    
    Holding the belief that someone is sub-par isn’t bad, so long as the standard you’re comparing them to is a good one. That typically means it judges everyone evenly and doesn’t give certain people free passes to do what others cannot because of special privileges. I have more of a problem with a growing mentality in our society that you’re a “bad person” if your convictions draw unpleasant lines for other people- even if they also draw unpleasant lines for yourself. We can no longer allow anyone to be “sub-standard” because that’s considered “unfair” and “hurtful.” It leads to a whole lot of “do whatever you please,” and I find that this tends to make people weaker and less driven to hold onto or value anything (especially when it comes to morals) because nothing matters much when “it’s all good.”
    
    TL;DR, it isn’t wrong to hold convictions that don’t paint everyone in rosy lighting or makes everyone happy and comfy with you, but you better make sure those convictions are well-grounded and don’t play “favorites.”
    - Aria
      
      Hmm, it certainly isn’t my intention to say that there are no standards a person should be held to; it’s low hanging fruit but I’m pretty staunch in my conviction that the only good fascist is a dead one, for instance. And I refuse to associate with most of my family because they do in fact fall short of my personal standards for people I like to hang out with. I’m a very adamant person, I like people with conviction! But I think you and the commenter I responded to are coming at this from different places.
      
      When I’m criticizing Christianity’s practice of believing certain groups of people are “less-than”, to obscenely oversimplify things (since I think you and I are both already well-versed in this theology lol), my issue is with the fact that evangelism teaches us to view people outside the flock as potential converts in need of saving. It definitely doesn’t FEEL like that while we’re in it, we’re just trying to help in a way that makes sense. If you believe in hell and think someone is going there of COURSE you’d do something about it, the same way you’d pull someone back from stepping in front of a bus they don’t see. But no matter how good the intentions are, that belief being at the core of the interactions makes the people objects to be pitied and won over, rather than complex humans, and that means there will always be a divide that puts them on the inferior side. When you’re a closeted queer person listening to your family talk about other queer people in terms of how they’re lost ones who need us, the Better People, to come and fix them it’s devastating. When I find out someone has only been kind to me so they can invite me to church because I look like a project, it hurts and, frankly, makes me feel unsafe in the community.
      
      My issue isn’t at all with people having personal boundaries or standards for who they interact with, it’s about the fact that people are taught to consider others and often themselves as unworthy or somehow sinful for natural human things and this culture is so normalized it’s difficult to even explain how harmful it is. You’re right, peoples’ standards SHOULD be carefully considered. Someone can choose to be something actively harmful, like a fascist, and choosing that is abhorrent, so in that case they deserve to get milkshakes thrown on them and punched in the middle of interviews. But if the thing failing the test is an identity one is born with, or the fact that they aren’t ashamed of that identity when someone tells them they ought to be, as is the case for real life queers and ours here in the comic, I think probably that sucks and a better metric is needed. Especially when the identity in question is just human.
      - Chromoid
        
        I get where you’re coming from. I really do. The downside of believing what I do is that it is polarizing and absolute. I know I won’t win many friends by holding the belief that all of us are damned from birth, nor do I expect people to come flocking to hear what I have to say for claiming we all need help and are not “alright” on our own apart from God.
        
        But I still choose to hold that belief. Partially because if I try to finagle those less-appealing bits out of the core, the entire structure collapses completely (why would you need saving if there’s really nothing to be saved from? That negates the majority of the Bible’s core message about a perfect God saving sinful Man). The other part is simply because I cannot deny that I am not a “good” person no matter how hard I try, and that means I need help outside of myself from someone who is a “good” person. God’s the only one I’ve found who fits that description.
        
        At the end of the day, it’s my choice to believe these things are true, but it was not my decision to write them. I am, as you say, trying to tell people the bus is going to hit them if they keep walking in the street (as I once did), but I am not the one driving said bus. If that makes me more enemies than friends, I am sincerely sorry, but also not at all surprised. People do not like being told they’re wrong regardless of the subject. However, since I’ve yet to find enough evidence to even come close to disproving the validity of these writings, either I and millions of other people around the world are just very blind idiots- most to be pitied of all people for their delusions -or there really is a curse hovering over all of us and we need help. You just can’t have it both ways, unfortunately.
        
        Thanks again for being open to talking about this on your own webcomic. Still thoroughly enjoying the story. 😉
      - Aria
        
        Always happy to discuss it in good faith! I think it would be silly of me to write a whole comic about this stuff with the purpose of starting a conversation and then not be into participating in the conversation lmao
        
        Weird as it sounds, your viewpoint is honestly kind of a breath of fresh air. A lot of my Trauma™ and the huge majority of my issues with Christianity as an institution is that nobody acknowledges that it’s like. Old Testament, I guess? It’s very intense and if you do it right there’s no wiggle room; like, a kid killed himself when I was in sunday school and we had been taught suicide is a mortal sin, but when I asked the teacher about it she said “no God told me he welcomed him in with open arms :)”. That’s pretty indicative of most of my experiences, it’s fire and brimstone UNTIL they have to take it seriously and make people uncomfortable. The rapture is coming and it WILL be horrific and merciless but =) rejoice in the lord we should all be super psyched to burn =) That sort of cognitive dissonance shit from everyone else is what drove me to scrupulosity, and it sounds like you don’t have that approach at all.
        
        They’re terrible people, but I think the Westboro people are the only ones who read the same book I did lmfao. If you gotta follow a blood god I get it but at least cop to what you’re following, you know? The Bible didn’t sugarcoat things and neither do they.
        
        I’m glad to hear it!! There aren’t a ton of ex-pentecostal voices out there so I try to be unapologetic, but that doesn’t mean I take issue at all with religious folks reading. As long as y’all wanna stick around I’m happy to have you <3
      - Chromoid
        
        The hypocrisy in “churchianity” is usually the thing that makes most people walk away in disgust. Even if it looks like I’m following some unforgiving and merciless doctrine (which I am not, but perspective is key there), I do find that most people stomach it pretty well as long as it doesn’t somehow elevate me above them and the playing field stays level.
        
        Glad to have had yet another good discussion. It helps me be less averted to talking openly about myself and the things that define me, which is always a good thing for anyone to learn imo. 😉