ETA (7/16): Another delay, obviously! There’s been a bit of a reference-picture snafu. Will be sorted out by this evening. Hang tight.
Today’s page will be somewhat late. To tide you over, have some sketches crossposted from the BICP Tumblr:
I try to avoid making statements about How To Interpret The Comic, but some of the insults thrown at Miranda are just baffling. Especially when, if you really need a character to snap at, there’s another character right there who’s been far more damaging….
Bennett: “So the readers think we should make out now.”
Cohen: “O RLY?”
Shippers gonna ship.
Gosh, I hope I haven’t been one of those readers. Because Bennett inspires “you really thought that would work?” snark in me, but it does make since he made anti-being stuff his platform that he would try it. Miranda just gives me urges to spank her spoiled butt and send her to therapy. :p
sense, makes sense.
Paying job is HELL this week and it has now affected my edit functions. :p
I think that Miranda is spoiled and abusive but the other character deserves death. For Miranda, spanking would suffice.
Perhaps some of the difference is because ‘Get Patrick Back” can be read at ‘reclaim my slave – which is my property’… while Bennet seems content with the Being he currently ‘has’. (And she with him.) Increasing one’s political clout is always morally neutral on its face. (The positive or negative value comes from what one wants political power *for*… and we do not have any information on that subject yet.) That she has ‘chosen’ is also morally neutral – in as much as we do not know what the Being in question chose ( or what power they had to make a choice.)
IMHO? No one has yet shown enough of their ‘cards’ to deserve karmic death – or karmic anything. Except maybe the priest – who at least gives some volition over to his Being. (Has stated he want’s a future where ‘you don’t have to obey any orders’.)
…I kinda love you.
miranda may be spoiled and kinda bitchy, but bennett deserves a karmic demise. at least miranda seems to care about poe
YESSS. I like this.
I haven’t really thought about Bennett much after the subway rampage. Didn’t seem to make any sense at all. I’m waiting to see what the motive was behind it. Right now it just seems OOC. (Also, Jany is distracting.)
As for Miranda, she treats her Being as a boytoy, which on one hand can be played for laughs but on the other hand is all kinds of implied rape and creepiness. I put that further out on the karmic scale of evil than random unexplained property damage.
There’s also the “what do we know” factor. Bennett still has the air of “We don’t know what he’s thinking” to him, since all previous statements and attempts to interpret him have been met by the author with, “He hasn’t been in the comic enough!” So we know there’s more to him than the cliched “guy who is evil and also represents a political view I don’t like” paper tiger setup. And until we know what that is he could still turn out to be some kind of sympathetic figure who was trying to do good all along. Or he really is evil (which is just boring and hence unlikely).
Miranda, on the other hand, has been nothing but the spoiled rich girl. Cruella DeVille comes to mind with how she’s been characterized so far (again, creepy overtones of rape abound – at least Jany can be forgiven for not knowing better). And unlike Bennett, there have been no suggestions that there’s more to her character to come. We’ve got her main characterization out of the way and she’s not a good person.
Walker’s been suggested as a shadowy villain type, too, but, like Bennett, we don’t know enough about her to say she’s evil. With Miranda we do. There’s your key difference: the amount we know about them. If you want to fix that, the solution is obviously to tell us more about Bennett so we can figure out if we’re supposed to hate him or feel sorry for him. You only have yourself to blame for the ambiguity there. :P
Dude, when a relatively minor character does something that doesn’t fit with your projections about them, your response should be “whoops, guess I should rethink my interpretation to include this new evidence,” not “ugh, so OOC!” His motivation has been stated pretty blatantly; I don’t know how you missed it :/
We haven’t seen Miranda so much as kiss Poe yet. To go from “she makes him put her shoes on” to “morally speaking, she’s basically raping him” is a hell of a leap. And I’m glad some readers have noticed the pages that imply more to her character than “spoiled and only wants Patrick because she’s greedy/needs a new coat”, even if you haven’t.
Sorry, I meant that I was flummoxed because it didn’t seem to jive with anything. I’m not saying it WAS OOC, just that it’s how it felt because it seemed out of place. I am sure there is an explanation, I’m just at a loss for what it is at the moment. I’m in a holding pattern, basically.
His motivation seems to vary from a) catching corrupt politicians, b) avenging some kind of lost childhood love? to c) causing mayhem for political gain. And I’m guessing the list isn’t complete yet.
Your point on Miranda is true – her statements about him being a boyfriend, plus the fan service sequences, lead to the implication she was using him for sex. That has decreased in likelihood because of some of the scenes recently. (I haven’t updated my analyses to account for the recent plot stuff due to the job hunt; I’m catching up in bursts.) So she’s moved away from being as Black Hat as she was.
Miranda still falls under the antagonist category and is currently the primary one, she she has a purpose that puts her more clearly at odds with the three leads than Bennett, who has served as a more environmental/background hazard for the most part. It’s less heinous to cause problems for unidentified mooks than it is to cause a problem for the lead characters. Patrick’s been caused serious harm by her actions. Bennett’s just annoyed a lot of folks.
Oh, and I think most people safely assume that there is no way you’d ever make a Colbert clone truly evil. So obviously he’s just misunderstood.