You think this is personal. Ha. I wish.
This brief arc takes place in tandem with
The Race Card and reveals why Aggie hates Penny so much. Nick receives a call from the school about Aggie having publicly called Penny a racist and "worse than Hitler," earlier that day. He tells Aggie he expects better from her, and that a grudge isn't worth abandoning her pacifist values over. Aggie responds that her problem with Penny is
precisely because of her values. Specifically, she takes issue with Penny failing to use her intelligence, wealth and popularity for altruistic causes. Nick suggests influencing Penny to help others by example, and maintains that Aggie doesn't really "hate" her. Aggie shouts "Don't tell me how I feel!" and storms out.
Tropes
- Popular Is Dumb: Played straight in the first strip
, where Aggie, as part of a writing exercise, inadvertently ends up picturing Penny as a hunky ladies' man...who's extremely stupid. Subverted in the story proper, when Aggie says she'd thought Penny was stupid but then learned otherwise (in the previous arc). However, in Aggie's opinion that's all the more reason to hate her, because she doesn't use her intelligence the way Aggie thinks she should. - Rule 63: An in-comic (and non-pornographic) example occurs in the first strip, where Aggie, for a writing exercise, imagines herself and people she knows as someone of the opposite gender.
