YMMV / Better Days

• Accidental Aesop: Sheila Black, a woman who dresses provocatively and has a very active sex life, gets raped by Principal Longfellow. The event is portrayed as utterly horrifying, with Sheila as a victim who gets deeply traumatized by the experience, and Longfellow as a monster deserving of death. While it's doubtful Naylor had this in mind, the whole event sends a message that someone wearing sexy clothes or being promiscuous doesn't make raping them any less of a horrible thing to do.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Fisk a rational, pragmatic soldier and eventually parent dealing sensibly with various trauma who is afraid neither of getting his hands dirty nor appreciating the beautiful things in life, or a sociopathic extremist hiding behind a veneer of patriotism, philosophy and laissez-faire parenting?
  • Fisk writes an incredibly bigoted essay about Native Americans,^note though an earlier strip implies he writes some deliberately inflammatory essays to troll his teacher, so one could make the argument that he doesn't actually believe it his mother owns a commemorative Robert E. Lee lawn gnome, and her mother still uses the N-word despite knowing it's not appropriate anymore. It's easy to think Sheila is somewhat of an armchair racist (well, she does live in small town Georgia) who came from a racist family and has influenced Fisk that way.
    • This also casts some other aspects of the story in a different light. For example, one chapter involves Fisk going to a school dance with a girl he doesn't like. While he probably wouldn't have liked her anyway, since she's an annoying Soapbox Sadie with far-left political views, the fact that she's Native American raises the possibility that he might've been biased against her from the beginning because of her race.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Jessica, for essentially being a walking Funny Moment.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Lucy tells her friend she’s not looking to date, being simply ‘content’. Her friend tells her that ‘content is for old people’. Come the next chapter, it’s Sheila’s father’s last words.
  • Persia’s plan to run off to L.A. come across as chilling considering how it turns out eventually.
  • D’Anna spreading Malicious Slander about a policeman accused of shooting a boy comes across as much, much harsher in 2014-5, when fatal police brutality against teenage civilians became much more of a hot topic after Michael Brown’s death.
  • The comic in which Mrs. Catadze sending Fisk to Israel to learn to fight in urban areas was published in May 2008, just a few months before Operation Cast Lead and the following rounds of violence between Israel and the Gaza Strip, that cost far more civilian Palestinian lives than Hamas fighter lives in great part because the city of Gaza was densely populated.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Lucy pretty much predicted the ‘but that’s none of my business’ meme.
• Just Here for Godzilla: For all the people who criticized the comic for one of its most controversial stories, there were plenty of others who had seen Naylor's pre-comic art on this theme and were waiting eagerly for it.
• Memetic Mutation: Many, including:
  • ‘Oh balls.’ (BOOM)
    • This phrase actually found its way into a recent Original Life comic◊, sans exploding grenade though.
  • Whenever Naylor releases a new comic, you can be sure someone will find a way to get an incest joke in.
  • SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK

• Jessica’s tongue.

• Moment of Awesome: When Fisk sees his mom being raped by his school principal, his response is to knock the scumbag out with a baseball bat. Keep in mind, Fisk is still in elementary school at the time.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Principal Longfellow is a manipulative, dishonest sleazebag, but he crosses into irredeemably evil when he rapes Sheila.
  • Randy definitely crosses it when he lies to Lucy about wearing a condom, without knowing she was on the pill.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • One night, Fisk is home alone with his sister, who has a cold. He naturally asks his mother where the medicine is; she tells him they're red capsules, which he finds and gives to Lucy offscreen before leaving her to sleep. Later Sheila gets home and goes to check on Lucy... only to let out an Earth-shattering scream before calling 911 because Fisk accidentally gave Lucy their mother's blood pressure meds instead of the cold medicine he thought he was giving her. Fisk ends up curled against the wall in horror as Sheila tries to make sure Lucy is stable enough to make it to the hospital.
  • Principal Longfellow raping Sheila.
  • The Reveal about Nikki's home life: not only does it turn out that she's being molested by her own father, but also that her father is a wanted rapist and murderer. The idea of a monster like that being close enough to be practically a neighbor is enough to make anybody's blood run cold.
• Strawman Has a Point: Ms. Bedbutter, young Fisk’s teacher, is appalled by the contents of Fisk’s essays and the sarcasm he laces them with, and calls his mother over to discuss the issue, but she thinks he just has an open mind and doesn’t succumb to his teacher’s indoctrination. While some essays do have a good point (e.g. espousing a more positive view of the US as a whole and denouncing the overwhelming support Jimmy Carter has in his native Georgia simply for being from Georgia), he uses some very inappropriate language for his essays (e.g. ‘suck’ in the derogatory sense, ‘big-ass whale’) and out-of-place sarcasm (he mentions a ‘retarded’ boy from Georgia as an example to counter the admiration for Carter) as well as some factually incorrect statements about Native Americans, mixing up various cultures and throwing in some religious intolerance to make them sound particularly barbaric (‘the native tribes were a pagan, stone-aged peoples [sic] stepped in outdated ways, including [...] child sacrifice’) to justify white colonialism in the Americas.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Fisk desperately praying for Lucy to recover.
  • The tragic turn Fisk’s and Lucy’s relationship takes, and the toll their feelings for each other take on their ability to form new relationships.
  • Fisk seeing his father’s name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
  • Nikki’s backstory of Parental Incest and how it affected her and her relationship with her adoptive parents.
  • Beth tells Fisk he’s the one she’d give up her Polyamory for... only for him to take a job that makes their relationship virtually impossible.
  • Elizabeth's reaction when Lucy makes he realise she’s wasted her life catering to the will of those around her instead of her own.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Fisk's date to prom's worst crime is being Wicca, vocally against Christmas, and talkative, but within an hour of speaking to her Fisk is already considering suicide. The point of her existence is, of course, to be a lesser alternative for Fisk to be with.
• The Woobie:
  • Fisk and Lucy, who suffer having feelings for each other they can’t act out on.
  • Fisk’s war buddy Carlos, who loses his ability to walk and becomes clinically depressed after getting injured in Iraq.