geez, beth sure is just lashing out at everyone around her unprompted huh. i get why but it’s deeply frustrating to see. she doesn’t want an actual conversation, she just wants other people to feel as bad as she does in the current moment
How is this unprompted? Her “best friend” just used her for her body and then dumped her, and is now invading her privacy after she repeatedly said she needed space… are you dense? 💀
Hey, so you know she also participated?
There was never any discussing or plans before they messed around that ‘oh if we do this, we’re suddenly boyfriend/girlfriend’ It was a messy, at the moment thing when they were high. THEN she went to her mothers right after, and they didn’t get to talk till after she got back, so she got it in her head in her head that he was avoiding her.
You don’t need to respond snarkily to folks.
Jeordie made a series of short-sighted mistakes. He’s a teenager.
So is Beth. She is clearly in distress, both physically and emotionally and now she’s having a full-blown melt down and taking it out on all of them.
aw poor beth 🙁 she’s literally lashing out in pain and her worst interpretations and thoughts are coming out, stuff she probably doesnt actually believe when she is in her right mind that’s not fresh off of a toxic gladys encounter/broken arm/lack of sleep/etc. It’s sad to see her hurt her friends because shes’s in so much mental and physical pain. incredibly realistic depictions of humans and hurt here. and sadly, the one who will end up the most hurt, who stands to lose the most, is beth herself for damaging her relationships in this moment of self-hate turned against everyone else. Beth I hope you get that arm looked at soon. and IDK what will happen with Gladys but I hope her friends don’t hold this moment against her.
beth is lucky to have such nice friends honestly, she’s been an absolute nightmare for pages lol. just lashing out at everybody and everything and playing the victim the entire time… im sorry beth the only person making you look insane is you yourself </3
I’m so nervous about people not understanding Beth. She’s a teenager, she’s mentally ill, she’s traumatized, she’s in excruciating pain and her entire life is about to be ripped away from her
I know what’s it like, this type of life. Feeling like you can’t tell anyone anything, because it always feels like it bites you in the ass. Keeping it all in until you explode, then being treated like a villain. Spewing anger because nobody helped you learn how to process your emotions and getting brushed off as a “psycho”
Yeah. I really hope it’s mostly adults reading these past few weeks of comments and not teens or really young insecure adults who might get the impression that Beth is somehow in the wrong or screwed up here and deserves the harshness from commenters who I really hope are kids themselves. It’s too blinkered and absolutist a worldview for an adult.
It’s one thing if someone makes a habit of unloading their feelings on the people around them. Or accuses people of things that aren’t true, or goes out of their way to harass or hurt people. But this isn’t that. This is what happens when you have someone who’s been treated at best thoughtlessly and callously by someone she trusted as a real friend, who has been patient and tried to explain her feelings multiple times and been ignored, who’s been cornered by someone she’s explicitly been trying to get away from, whose *arm is freshly broken*, and who’s under the crushing stress of facing the prospect of being trapped for the next two years with abusive parents who don’t let her feel like a human being.
If you’re ever in so much pain that for the first time you call people out on their bullshit accurately, without being especially nice about it, and tell them what you need (like “listen to me instead of white knighting for me”, or “give me space”), then however badly you express it I hope you have people around you who will cut you the slack you need and pay attention to the content of what you’re saying, not the tone of it. And I hope you do the same for them.
This is a comic that goes out of its way to find the humanity in its characters and to look at them generously and sympathetically. That’s what makes it good. Withholding that generosity when reading it seems like missing something important.
(Also, to any hypothetical person who needs to hear this: if your best friend sleeps with you and then *ghosts* you and then is like “yeah, I like you but I’m not in a place to start a relationship but I’d rather get defensive than acknowledge how that must feel for you or consider how maybe I wasn’t thinking about your feelings when I initiated sex with you even though I knew full well that you’re vulnerable and have insecurity issues and that you live an isolated life and I’m one of the only two friends you have, and truth I probably would have dragged out this rejection as long as possible had you not finally pinned me down, because it’s uncomfortable” – you would not be wrong to feel like you deserve better than that from an acquaintance, let alone a friend. It doesn’t make them a villain and definitely doesn’t mean they owe you a relationship. But everybody deserves to be treated with much more care than that.)
And I really hope that any young people who read this do not take her actions as an endorsement of the way to behave to stress. You do not attack your support systems nor ignore what your friends are telling you. I really dislike how people are now justifying Beth’s treatment of Anna with this. She is in pain, she’s in a bad place but that does not excuse any of her actions. Or doesn’t excuse people’s adultification of Jeordie or their attempts to ignore the issues a teen who is questioning his sexuality is facing, especially since for as perfect people treat Beth she revealed his deep secret to someone else casually.
Beth’s feelings are valid but do not excuse her actions. Jeordie and now Anna apparently are being treated as the bad guys and I am really hoping that Frank sets her straight. Also ya’ll really want Jeordie to let his friend wander around in the snow with a broken arm after making numerous hints at self harm. Unbelievable.
beth isn’t real so we can say whatever we want about her. anyone who is overly relating to beth and caping for her this hard – when she is a fictional character – makes me suspect that perhaps they were someone who acted similarly and is feeling some collateral damage from criticisms of her behavior… which means it’s even more important to call out that she’s being radioactively toxic in how she’s treating everyone around her. and as an adult who was around people like her when i was a teenager, it was just as unpleasant at the time as it is looking back on it in retrospect and if anything i wish i had gotten away from people like her sooner instead of bleeding my heart dry of sympathy.
feelings are not an excuse for lashing out, being from a crappy homelife is not an excuse for lashing out and that so many people want to protect beth without regards to any other character just feels like projecting too much of yourself onto her. she’s not real so i can say that she’s a total jerk and it doesn’t matter because she is fictional so it’s not as if she can get her feelings hurt.
I’m gonna say it, reactions to Gladys were the canary in the coal mine. People were trying to make her the villain in her interactions with her mother in law lmao
I truly feel for Beth and Jeordie both. But honestly it’s pretty wild to act like Jeordie should have just been like “well, she established a clear boundary!” and let her leave. People wandering off injured into the snowy woods is how some people end up dead. I think it’s ok to cross boundaries when it comes to that kind of situation lmao
The comments section is pretty wild lately. Can we remember to be kind to each other and have a civil conversation without tearing at each other? Let’s do better than the kids in the comic, yeah? XD I’m pretty sure every single one of us is older than they are. Let’s show the comic kids how to be good examples of civil and engaging discussions.
geez, beth sure is just lashing out at everyone around her unprompted huh. i get why but it’s deeply frustrating to see. she doesn’t want an actual conversation, she just wants other people to feel as bad as she does in the current moment
How is this unprompted? Her “best friend” just used her for her body and then dumped her, and is now invading her privacy after she repeatedly said she needed space… are you dense? 💀
Hey, so you know she also participated?
There was never any discussing or plans before they messed around that ‘oh if we do this, we’re suddenly boyfriend/girlfriend’ It was a messy, at the moment thing when they were high. THEN she went to her mothers right after, and they didn’t get to talk till after she got back, so she got it in her head in her head that he was avoiding her.
You don’t need to respond snarkily to folks.
Jeordie made a series of short-sighted mistakes. He’s a teenager.
So is Beth. She is clearly in distress, both physically and emotionally and now she’s having a full-blown melt down and taking it out on all of them.
aw poor beth 🙁 she’s literally lashing out in pain and her worst interpretations and thoughts are coming out, stuff she probably doesnt actually believe when she is in her right mind that’s not fresh off of a toxic gladys encounter/broken arm/lack of sleep/etc. It’s sad to see her hurt her friends because shes’s in so much mental and physical pain. incredibly realistic depictions of humans and hurt here. and sadly, the one who will end up the most hurt, who stands to lose the most, is beth herself for damaging her relationships in this moment of self-hate turned against everyone else. Beth I hope you get that arm looked at soon. and IDK what will happen with Gladys but I hope her friends don’t hold this moment against her.
….at least frank is entertained, lol
beth is lucky to have such nice friends honestly, she’s been an absolute nightmare for pages lol. just lashing out at everybody and everything and playing the victim the entire time… im sorry beth the only person making you look insane is you yourself </3
I’m so nervous about people not understanding Beth. She’s a teenager, she’s mentally ill, she’s traumatized, she’s in excruciating pain and her entire life is about to be ripped away from her
I know what’s it like, this type of life. Feeling like you can’t tell anyone anything, because it always feels like it bites you in the ass. Keeping it all in until you explode, then being treated like a villain. Spewing anger because nobody helped you learn how to process your emotions and getting brushed off as a “psycho”
I really hope she gets the help she needs
Yeah. I really hope it’s mostly adults reading these past few weeks of comments and not teens or really young insecure adults who might get the impression that Beth is somehow in the wrong or screwed up here and deserves the harshness from commenters who I really hope are kids themselves. It’s too blinkered and absolutist a worldview for an adult.
It’s one thing if someone makes a habit of unloading their feelings on the people around them. Or accuses people of things that aren’t true, or goes out of their way to harass or hurt people. But this isn’t that. This is what happens when you have someone who’s been treated at best thoughtlessly and callously by someone she trusted as a real friend, who has been patient and tried to explain her feelings multiple times and been ignored, who’s been cornered by someone she’s explicitly been trying to get away from, whose *arm is freshly broken*, and who’s under the crushing stress of facing the prospect of being trapped for the next two years with abusive parents who don’t let her feel like a human being.
If you’re ever in so much pain that for the first time you call people out on their bullshit accurately, without being especially nice about it, and tell them what you need (like “listen to me instead of white knighting for me”, or “give me space”), then however badly you express it I hope you have people around you who will cut you the slack you need and pay attention to the content of what you’re saying, not the tone of it. And I hope you do the same for them.
This is a comic that goes out of its way to find the humanity in its characters and to look at them generously and sympathetically. That’s what makes it good. Withholding that generosity when reading it seems like missing something important.
(Also, to any hypothetical person who needs to hear this: if your best friend sleeps with you and then *ghosts* you and then is like “yeah, I like you but I’m not in a place to start a relationship but I’d rather get defensive than acknowledge how that must feel for you or consider how maybe I wasn’t thinking about your feelings when I initiated sex with you even though I knew full well that you’re vulnerable and have insecurity issues and that you live an isolated life and I’m one of the only two friends you have, and truth I probably would have dragged out this rejection as long as possible had you not finally pinned me down, because it’s uncomfortable” – you would not be wrong to feel like you deserve better than that from an acquaintance, let alone a friend. It doesn’t make them a villain and definitely doesn’t mean they owe you a relationship. But everybody deserves to be treated with much more care than that.)
And I really hope that any young people who read this do not take her actions as an endorsement of the way to behave to stress. You do not attack your support systems nor ignore what your friends are telling you. I really dislike how people are now justifying Beth’s treatment of Anna with this. She is in pain, she’s in a bad place but that does not excuse any of her actions. Or doesn’t excuse people’s adultification of Jeordie or their attempts to ignore the issues a teen who is questioning his sexuality is facing, especially since for as perfect people treat Beth she revealed his deep secret to someone else casually.
Beth’s feelings are valid but do not excuse her actions. Jeordie and now Anna apparently are being treated as the bad guys and I am really hoping that Frank sets her straight. Also ya’ll really want Jeordie to let his friend wander around in the snow with a broken arm after making numerous hints at self harm. Unbelievable.
beth isn’t real so we can say whatever we want about her. anyone who is overly relating to beth and caping for her this hard – when she is a fictional character – makes me suspect that perhaps they were someone who acted similarly and is feeling some collateral damage from criticisms of her behavior… which means it’s even more important to call out that she’s being radioactively toxic in how she’s treating everyone around her. and as an adult who was around people like her when i was a teenager, it was just as unpleasant at the time as it is looking back on it in retrospect and if anything i wish i had gotten away from people like her sooner instead of bleeding my heart dry of sympathy.
feelings are not an excuse for lashing out, being from a crappy homelife is not an excuse for lashing out and that so many people want to protect beth without regards to any other character just feels like projecting too much of yourself onto her. she’s not real so i can say that she’s a total jerk and it doesn’t matter because she is fictional so it’s not as if she can get her feelings hurt.
Webcomic Readers Engage with Works About Flawed Female Characters Without Being Vaguely Misogynist Challenge [IMPOSSIBLE]
I’m gonna say it, reactions to Gladys were the canary in the coal mine. People were trying to make her the villain in her interactions with her mother in law lmao
I truly feel for Beth and Jeordie both. But honestly it’s pretty wild to act like Jeordie should have just been like “well, she established a clear boundary!” and let her leave. People wandering off injured into the snowy woods is how some people end up dead. I think it’s ok to cross boundaries when it comes to that kind of situation lmao
The comments section is pretty wild lately. Can we remember to be kind to each other and have a civil conversation without tearing at each other? Let’s do better than the kids in the comic, yeah? XD I’m pretty sure every single one of us is older than they are. Let’s show the comic kids how to be good examples of civil and engaging discussions.