And it looks like the Aesop isn't "Not all preachers are hypocritical phonies" but "Catholics are lying liars who lie. Wickedly."
The author is a Baptist, and is highly unlikely to apologize for sticking to the Baptist doctrines about grace and salvation. And what else would you call someone who told a distraught girl that her dead best friend was burning in hell? Even a staunch "All suicides are gonna burn burn burn" priest would be loth to say something of that line to a grieving girl. Unless he was a complete horse's patoot, of course.... but that brings us full circle, doesn't it... apparently Penny hasn't had much luck with preachers of late—- the radio evangelist, H.Lee Roller, and whichever clergymen, unnamed, convinced her that her fellow Christian and best friend was burning in hell.
As to claiming Lily was in the wrong, apparently some people were raised like barn animals, but screaming at the preacher and swearing in church would get your BLOCK knocked off in most churchgoing households. Lily and Ben were "in loco parentis," which means they had the duties and authority of legal guardians. And while that might fly in Berkeley, a single slap in the mouth for profanity and disrespect is not assault and battery. Anyone who has SEEN real assault and battery would be insulted at the claim. It was a short, sharp, slap to the mouth to halt to someone who was getting way out of hand.
Yes, quite a few "Shut up Hannibals" have been delivered in the comic. You will note however that they were given out AFTER Ben and/or Lily had bent over backwards to try and reconcile with the individuals aggravating them. The standard routine with both of them has been to back off repeatedly, and only let loose when finally pushed into a corner.
It's not the first time the law has been laid down, either. Penny got grounded for being rude to a customer. And Ben threw OUT one of his regular customers who started swearing in the arcade. (Pattern established....)
And yes, he let Penny tear into Peckansniff and Beltane—- after Peckansniff and Beltane both had created a spectacle in his business and his own house. Even then, he dragged her off before she finished venting her spleen (at the pastor who had just arrived; yet another pattern established.) Unfortunately, as another reader has noted, that seems to be Penny's default response to everything... immediate snark and attack. So again, how long have Ben and Lily been patiently putting up with Penny's acid tongue? (which brings us back to Ben and Lily's pattern of longsuffering till pushed too far....)
And what else would you call someone who told a distraught girl that her dead best friend was burning in hell?
I would ask where she heard such a thing, since most of your media evangelicals - especially of the "Fire And Brimstone" stripe, tend to be Baptist or Methodist, whereas the "Suicide is unforgivable" thing is mainly Catholic dogma.
And I would've simply said "Somepeople believe that. I don't, and neither does my congregation."
I certainly wouldn't have printed said accusation of lies in a comic for the world to see - not without expecting a shitstorm to come flying back at me.
As to claiming Lily was in the wrong, apparently some people were raised like barn animals, but screaming at the preacher and swearing in church would get your BLOCK knocked off in most churchgoing households. Lily and Ben were "in loco parentis," which means they had the duties and authority of legal guardians. And while that might fly in Berkeley, a single slap in the mouth for profanity and disrespect is not assault and battery. Anyone who has SEEN real assault and battery would be insulted at the claim. It was a short, sharp, slap to the mouth to halt to someone who was getting way out of hand.
And in the churches I've been to, either Penny would've had to wait her turn to call out Rev. Roller or would've had several sisters backing her up. (Memphis, TN - C.O.G.I.C. headquarters, in case you were about to ask).
And as I've stated elsewhere: Penny had said her piece and was leaving. Lily made an already out-of-control situation worse by demanding someone she knew was on a razor's edge go back into the lion's den. She could've - and should've - waited until things cooled down until she rounded on Penny. Or apologized herself, if she was that mortified.
Penny may have been wrong, but Lily definitely wasn't right.
Yes, quite a few "Shut up Hannibals" have been delivered in the comic. You will note however that they were given out AFTER Ben and/or Lily had bent over backwards to try and reconcile with the individuals aggravating them. The standard routine with both of them has been to back off repeatedly, and only let loose when finally pushed into a corner.
Not too difficult, given the usual nature of the strawmen set up to get pwned in the comic.
It's not the first time the law has been laid down, either. Penny got grounded for being rude to a customer. And Ben threw OUT one of his regular customers who started swearing in the arcade. (Pattern established....)
And when, in either one of those cases, were Ben or Penny personally called out by the jackass in question?
I think that most of the outrage here comes from Lily being portrayed as 100% in the right on this, and a mere "You were wrong in reacting the way you did, but so was I." would do wonders for smoothing over the ruffled feathers of the readership. I find it a bit telling that RH Junior is putting more effort into defending Lily's actions that he has Lily putting in.
Edited by Freezer My name is Freezer and my anti-drug is porn.
As to claiming Lily was in the wrong, apparently some people were raised like barn animals, but screaming at the preacher and swearing in church would get your BLOCK knocked off in most churchgoing households. Lily and Ben were "in loco parentis," which means they had the duties and authority of legal guardians. And while that might fly in Berkeley, a single slap in the mouth for profanity and disrespect is not assault and battery. Anyone who has SEEN real assault and battery would be insulted at the claim. It was a short, sharp, slap to the mouth to halt to someone who was getting way out of hand.
And in the churches I've been to, either Penny would've had to wait her turn to call out Rev. Roller or would've had several sisters backing her up. (Memphis, TN - C.O.G.I.C. headquarters, in case you were about to ask).
Seconded. I've never been to a church where it's even remotely OK for a preacher to single out a parishioner for public shaming - let alone one whose sins he doesn't actually know, let alone a kid. And if I had been to such a church, and the preacher had chosen me for public humiliation, my family would have done the screaming and swearing for me.
Apparently this church doesn't believe in open confrontation on the subject. See a later strip in which Morty calls Lily out on that fact — that rather than express open disapproval on-site, Penny should have done what most churchgoing families do and talk about him behind his back on the ride home.
Ahem, this discussion is more than 3 years old.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Sorry, I don't get into the Discussion tabs very often. I wasn't aware there was a moratorium. I'll observe it in future.
There is no moratorium, just that replying to a post 3 years old is slightly pointless.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
This is important. Someone find a trope!
- Do We Have This One: The "DGR" Rule.
The Darned Good Reason Rule. As in "Nobody becomes an adventurer without a darned good reason to think they'll survive it."
Well, it's an example of a House Rule as well as The GM Is a Cheating Bastard (except on the side of the players in this case). As mentioned in the final panel, Ben is trying to preserve the Rule of Fun (because having Fred roll up a new character every session is not fun) by invoking the Rule of Cool through extra "inherited" or "discovered" items that overcome the limitations of Character Level mechanics. Note that the only two openly acknowledged were designed to overcome a character's limitations: A +5 Belt of Giant Strength to give a wizard some hand-to-hand power (for when the spells run out) and a Vorpal Scythe to give Penny's pixie some offensive oomph. (She could have gone with the Necklace of Magic Missiles, after all. The big ones verge on Fantastic Nuke territory.)
Under "Aborted Arc," I'm a little puzzled as to what the troper means by saying he's puzzled at "someone of Ben's skills and intelligence" working as a janitor. His only unusual skill is his ability to speak Navajo, and though no dummy he's really done nothing to indicate he's exceptionally intelligent. Any special achievements he may have made are due to luck, a little desperate quick thinking or (quite frequently)a lot of clever intervention on the part of his Goblins.
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In the days when it was still Under The Lemon Tree, Ben made mention once or twice of not being a nice guy in the past. He hinted at past failed buisnesses and bridges burned. The obvious implication was taht there was more to Ben than what we saw. But as noted, that pretty much got shelved once the comic became Goblin Hollow. Thanks to RH Junior's archive shuffle, the comics where he mentions this (as noted, it was only once or twice) don't seem to be there anymore.
My name is Freezer and my anti-drug is porn.
And now that I recall, I'm pretty sure the lines in question were at the tail end of the Schlock Mercenary crossover.
Edited by Freezer My name is Freezer and my anti-drug is porn.
Those past failures and "bridges burned" referred to the sort of embarrassing or even tragic mistakes we all have in our past. An ordinary past is dramatic enough when you're the one living it.
Keeper of Porn
Re: Lily's side of the family:
Given what we know about Lily's family, that just might be the case.
- How so? All we've seen is Lily's father cracking open what might be a beer, and one cousin who pretended to smoke to shock and annoy the rest of the family.
You mean besides Lily's parents dumping Penny on her and Ben without so much as a heads-up on Penny's issues and Lily's openly racist grandfather?
Edited by Freezer My name is Freezer and my anti-drug is porn. Hide / Show Replies
None of which has anything whatsoever to do with drug use, which was the original topic.
Wall Banger now potholes, moving it to the discussion in case anyone wants to borrow text from it.
- Wall Banger: See Values Dissonance. Since this was the same type of Shut Up, Hannibal! speech we've seen Ben dish out repeatedly, it also comes with a side of Moral Dissonance and Informed Wrongness.
- Ben? Heck, Penny herself under other circumstances, which makes the Wall Banger that much more jarring. Especially because most of the audience took it as Character Development that moved Penny out of the category of Bratty Teenage Daughter, but Hayes himself did not.
- The earlier Shut Up, Hannibal! speeches were the character development. The Crowning Moment Of Awesome involved no swearing. The swearing took place in the parking lot after some fairly serious provocation. If that's enough to put her in the wrong, I can only invoke Values Dissonance again.
- And it would seem that an attempt at a saving throw will just make things worse: It's not that Penny is mad at that preacher - she's mad at ALL preachers. (Hollywood Atheist: Dead Little Sister flavor - Check!)
- The author, coincidentally, is the son of a Baptist preacher, and actually has some front row seat experience with this sort of Church Family drama. People, out of bitterness, abandoning the Church, or outright declaring they have no use for God anymore because God "took away" their parent or spouse or child or friend, are not uncommon.
- If it were uncommon, it wouldn't be a trope.
- Besides, just because something is occasionally Truth in Television doesn't mean that a particular depiction of it can't also be Narm, especially when you're working with this level of Values Dissonance. Hayes might have thought that Penny's behavior up to this point indicated a true loss of faith, but most of the audience just saw a teenager who didn't want to go to church (it might have helped if we'd seen at least a few flashbacks of the "happy Christian girl" she used to be). Since we didn't see a problem nearly as serious as Hayes was trying to portray, the Dead Little Sister came as a Shocking Swerve, almost an Ass Pull.
- Later on, we do get to see the happy little Christian girl she used to be and how it happened. What the slap really was about was that, from the point of Ben and Lily, Penny went from putting the man in his place, to doing the same thing that he did. (He was saying "Teenagers are troublemakers" so she said "Pastors are liars".)
- Ben? Heck, Penny
In response to the Values Dissonance entry, Troper 75.109.101.98 wrote:
And my - and the vast majority of the readership's - point is that Penny just got through calling out the asshole who basically called her an out-of-control delinquent. Lily made a tense situation worse by demanding she go back right then and there and apologize, even though everything she said was on the money. If an apology was mandated, there was nothing that said Lily couldn't have sent her back after Rev. Roller was gone. That she actually slapped her was just the cherry on the What the Hell, Hero? sundae. Penny may have been somewhat out of line, but Lily was utterly in the wrong. (Not to mention, legally, if not morally, Penny would've been justified in jawjacking Lily right then and there.)
And as noted, the fact that this whole angle seems to have been a setup to deliver a "Not all preachers are hypocritical phonies" Aesop just adds a layer of Narm to the whole thing.
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