Annotated 23-10
I think both Phil and I were pretty eager to model correct behavior through E-Merl in this moment. If we’d done this story ten years earlier, we might’ve made him a little angrier, just for a regrettable moment or two, because hey, that’s human. I’ve had petty moments due to romantic and sexual frustration, and I’m pretty sure Phil has too.
But we’d seen too much of that elsewhere by 2013. I don’t think I’d heard the word “incel” too much at this point, but the sentiment behind it was becoming… rather hard to ignore if you had any ties to nerd culture.
Not that we could make E-Merl just shrug this rejection off. He’s a performer, but not a very convincing one when the subject is his own emotional vulnerability.
I have little to add to Rachel’s accounting of herself here that the story itself won’t get to in a few chapters, except that in a narrow sense, she’s right: E-Merl has needs (right now) that she is not in the right headspace (right now) to fulfill. It’s easy to look at their fates and say they waited too long, but Rachel lying about her misgivings and just giving E-Merl another kiss wouldn’t have been a better choice, in the end. He’d see the lie behind her smile, and it’s pretty clear he wouldn’t interpret it in a way that was kind to himself.
Sooooo only poly relationships are allowed? Maximally poly relationships? *wiggles eyebrows*
https://youtu.be/jgFyCuKoEGA
(Now I know the comment form doesn’t convert short form Youtube URLs to embedded videos.)
“And so anime was solved forever!”
Reflecting on E-Merl’s future, it occurs to me that “a woman who [will] always put you first” is not quite how I would describe Frigg.
Honestly, no Frigg isn’t really that person, but E-Merl isn’t the same person he was in this page either. Both of them grew up a little (in Frigg’s case very little) by the end of the story. She became a leader, and he developed into a confident and more self-assured person.
Considering they seem to be the Sisterhood of the Pants on their Heads because of the idolotry of Frigg perhaps she dost complain too much.
I don’t know if I’d go that far, but considering what the sisterhood does as a result (and is enabled to do because) of that idolatry, Rachel is basically engaging in the fallacious superhero trope of “not getting close to those you want to protect so that will theoretically protect them”.
The reasoning is about as sound, anyway. “I’ll put you first by putting you first the way I put everyone else first, by putting no one first (in bed)”.
Notwithstanding the fact that someone close to you already doesn’t have to be put in a dangerous situation merely because they know you – those situations aren’t exclusive to the “superhero-managed scenario” group, after all, especially when the “someone” in question happens to be a little bit superhero (and a little bit of a bungler) themself.
Rachel’s religious hangups here do seem a little strange, as others have mentioned, considering that she seems to be kind of making up her new faith as it goes along. Yet at the same time, I guess I can see how this might be something that made sense to her. Something she might have to process or work through. Unfortunately, it seems she won’t have the chance…