[0615] Fox Fan
└ posted on Thursday, 11 September 2014, by Novil
- Lydia: Is something wrong, Steve?
- Steve: I… forgot to turn off the stove. The roast’s completely burned!
- Lydia: Oh, that’s too bad. But I’m full anyway.
- Steve: I’m not feeling so well, Lydia.
- Lydia: Yeah, you’re quite pale. I hope you won’t get sick.
- Lydia: Maybe I should go.
- Steve: Yes, maybe that’d be better.
- Lydia: But before that I want to take a look at your fox collection!
- Steve: Then this way, please.
- Lydia: Is it true that you have over fifty paintings and prints?
- Steve: Yes, I love foxes!
- Steve: I have a very bad feeling about this.
- Lydia: Maybe a little too much, don’t you think?
![[0615] Fox Fan](/comics/2014-09-11-0615-fox-fan.png "[0615] Fox Fan")
Bow chicka… bow wow?
So… Hi.
I found out that “Sandra and Woo” doesn’t have a wiki. So, I created one.
It’s still in development.
@ Annaphylactic Shock:
Actually homosexuality is a matter of choice… as is pretty much everything in life.
Here is the website
http://sandra-and-woo.wikia.com/wiki/Sandra_and_Woo_Wiki
Ok…
Okay, let me get this straight. Guy who loves nature and animals takes of what he believes are none sentient beings, foxes, cuddling and spending time together, then shares online for other nature lovers to enjoy. Angry, Woo and his friends decide to drug him, invade his home and set a cruel and elaborate trick trick that’s more likely to traumatize the guy than get across some-kind of message.
One did what he did out of a love for nature. The other acted out of spite.
Woo you went to far, and may have ruined this man’s chances at getting a mate.
YEE-IKES! >_<; That is a LOT of fox-porn!
I like how, ever since the radical feminism arc, half the comments take everything in this comic infinitely too seriously.
@ demarion:
What mattered was not that Dorothy was a prejudiced and insane nut job, what mattered was that she wielded actual violence against children. She used the power of the State to violently oppress others. This is why Ye Thuza’s actions are morally defensible. It fell squarely in the self-defense exemption to the non-aggression principle. You are in real danger of becoming a moral mirror image of Dorothy Cambridge when you talk about wanting to use violence against those you simply disagree with rather than in tangible self defense.
This arc perplexes me. Steve has no reason whatsoever to think he has done anything wrong. Woo admitted that they may have gone too far, but he should have realized that on the planning phase.
They are not only ruining Steve’s date, but they are also ruining Lydia’s date as well. The only difference is that she doesn’t know her date has been sabotaged. This does not however change that Woo’s sabotage may result into two people who otherwise would have made a happy couple doesn’t become a couple. Granted, they are just dating now and most likely they’d find out that they aren’t a match anyway, but there’s always that chance they’d become a couple.
This can also ruin Steve in various ways. If Lydia tells people what she saw, this may be a disaster for Steve. I’m getting the impression that she’s more sensible than that, but there’s no way Woo could know that in advance. Second, unless Woo plans on revealing that animals are behind the sabotage, Steve has to think it’s a human is behind it. If an unknown perpetrator drugs you, breaks into your house and elaborately rearranges it, would you ever be able to feel safe? Steve has to think that at any day the perpetrator may return and ruin his day again, possible in a worse way. This point is somewhat null if Woo let Steve know why he was punished though.
Anyway, some people have drawn parallels with how Dorothy and Harriet were dealt with. I see some problems there too, but their cases were not as severe as this.
Dorothy didn’t just have her rather extreme views, she also enforced them on children. One should also bear in mind that she inserted herself by abducting the biology teacher, so Ye Thuza doing the same to her in the end is the story coming to a full circle. That said, some comments are suggesting that Dorothy deserved her punishment because of what she is rather than because of what she did. That does worry me a bit.
Harriet may have legitimate reasons to disapprove of her son being together with Larisa, especially if she only see Larisa for what she is on the surface, but her actions completely defeated any purpose preventing them being together would have had. She forbade her son by such a mean and threatening manner that she made herself appear as a genuine danger to him. Feeling unsafe in your own home is a very bad thing and it certainly doesn’t help if the danger is your very mother. So, even if Harriet’s motive was to protect his son from, in her mind, an unhealthy relationship, she did so by creating an unhealthy relationship at home instead.
If you somehow get into a situation where you have to hurt your own child to prevent it from hurting itself, obviously you have to hurt your child less than it would have hurt itself had you done nothing, else there’s no point to it. If someone were to ask me what’s more dangerous, having a girlfriend like Larisa (let’s also assume I don’t know that Larisa is gentler than she appears to be on the surface) or having a mother Like Harriet, I would have answered the latter.
Trigger wrote:
No kidding. It’s bizarre! But it goes back further than that. Remember the Ruth arc? Some people vowed not to read the strip after that. I’ll admit that arc wasn’t very funny though. But this one is clearly funny, clearly absurd craziness with no connection to reality, and everybody is empathizing with the victim as though he’s a real person and not a hapless cartoon patsy who has fallen into a comically awful situation.
Darkkitsune wrote:
Is being left or right handed a choice?
What about being born with X color skin/eyes/hair?
I understand Shadow being a little irritated here, but I think Woo and the gang are being a little short-sighted.
Nature photographers are an important part of the overall conservationist effort. The more people are exposed to animals, even if just via pictures on the internet, the more sympathetic they’re likely to be. And the more sympathetic they are towards animals, they more likely they are to oppose plans which might harm them or their habitats.
Congratulations, fellas. If your little stretch of woods gets demolished to build a strip mall, part of the blame will be your own.
did u have to censor it, lol. i would have love to seen the reaction to that
In a year, all this comic will consist of is a single image of someone being brutally tortured to death because of a mild disagreement with Woo’s beliefs.
Lots of people switch back and forth between Same & Opposite Sex partners.
But, that orientation is called Bi-Sexual, not Homosexual.
It helps to keep the various terms in mind.
The fact that Bi-Sexual people can live with Either gender partner does NOT make a Homosexual orientation a Choice.
Bi-Sexual, Homosexual & Heterosexual people are just what they are.
Stop trying to use One orientation to form your arguments about another.
This is a little bit off topic, but still relates to Dorothy and her story.
While I realize that it’s true of pretty much every story, you have to keep in mind that Dorothy was intentionally written the way she was to justify murdering her. (Technically kidnapping, but seeing as there is no way to remove her from society so utterly that she can’t possibly get back home without putting her somewhere that her obnoxious personality would get her killed… Yeah, I’m just gonna call it murder.) Her character existed for no other reason than so that we got to see her get murdered.
Since there were (At least so far) no lasting consequences to her actions whatsoever, and judging by the track record of Sandra and Woo there won’t be, we can consider the storyline to be a closed set. So, first off we’ve learned that murdering people who are assholes is totally justified and completely consequence free. But that’s not what I find most disturbing.
Let’s thing about Dorothy for a minute… How exactly did she become the person she is today? (Or rather the person she was, until her murder.) You don’t get that radical unless you were either horribly traumatized, mentally deranged, or raised by someone similarly psychotic. (Or a combination of any of the three.) Either way, you’ve got a character who has been abused in one way or another and never received any help in the matter. And so what does she do? She tries to help the world! Yes, her methods were extreme and had vast negative consequences, definitely. But in the end, you’ve got a poor, abused, mentally unstable woman trying to do everything she can to improve the world. So what do our ‘heroes’ do? Why, murder her! Of course!
Behind every dangerous persons a history that led them there, and it’s never a good one. She needs help, not a gun to her head.
(This is aside the point, but if this happened in real life it would immediately become a polarizing political issue, draw more radical supporters to the feminist movement, and cause vast and massive problems for our heroes even if they weren’t implicated in the murder.)
@ Max:
Yes she was intentionally intolerably written. There were no lasting actions to what she did because she was ‘taken out’ before she could do lasting harm. She had the power and promised to use it so yes she was a straw (wo)man but you don’t have to wait until the knife is in your heart to defend yourself.
As for her background, yes most sociopaths are made, not born. That’s not a reason to not hold them accountable for their actions or to not defend yourself or your children. A rabid dog is a rabid dog even if the rabies were injected by someone else. It’s not about punishment.
That being said, Sandra and Woo is getting darker as it goes. It’s becoming less of a funny strip and more of a political commentary.
@ Xezlec:
If a comic strip starts to tackle serious issues head on without allegorical layering, then yes people will begin to treat it seriously.
As for people having empathy for the photographer as if he were a real person, well of course. Are you claiming to have no empathy for any of the characters in this strip at all? Are you bored when the comic strip delves into their thoughts and feelings and relationships? This strip is half soap opera and most people reading it can empathize with comic characters or else they would not be reading the comic strip at all.
Over 50 pieces to his collection and those are the Tame ones.
@ GnarlyDoug:
But does that really justify *murder*? We’ve clearly seen that Sandra/Woo and Co. apparently have infinite resources and cleverness, depending on what they need to accomplish. Why not just take the power away from her? It wouldn’t be hard to find, plant, or fake some evidence that undermines her support out from under her. Since I refuse to believe that two men in Ski Masks were all the people backing her up when she changed the school (She would have had to have the Principal or School Board behind her,) it would have made for an equally strong resolution to just take away her support.
Not only that, but then she’d still be unable to do this again: Anywhere she goes, she’d be the hypocrite who was laughed out of the last place she went. She’d be forced to reconsider her viewpoint or at least stop acting so strongly, and you wouldn’t be advocating for the murder of feminists that way.
Taking away her power is protection. Murder or relocation and utter removal from everything and everyone you love is punishment.
@ GnarlyDoug:
Come to think of it, that would have been a PERFECT instance for a revenge plot like this. She has to talk to the superintendent or something to get her rules put in place permanently, so everyone sneaks into her house and replaces her awards from some feminist organization with pictures or statues of busty dudes or something. Maybe plant evidence that she has a blog where she openly criticizes all women and acts all misogynistic or something. It would have worked great, made sense, and not involved murdering her.
Trigger wrote:
Sigh yup. 🙁 The comment section has turned into a battlefield. There’s long wordy comments and people going back and fourth at each other. What does a guy with a fondness for foxes have to do with Homosexuality ??????????????? Guys it’s just a lie Michelle told Landon’s mom so he could be with Larissa. To quote DomBB’s comment If ya don’t like it, Don’t read it.
@ John:
*gasp* you arn’t me! IMPOSTER!
@ Darkkitsune:
No it’s not, please castrate yourself before you breed, you moron. If you’ve already bred, then I now supoprt EXTREMELY late term abortions.
@ Trigger:
No, they ALWAYS have. Go back and read about the ones involving any kind of sexuality with the kids, for a GREAT example.
@ Switch Master:
I wasn’t comparing the two as any argument about sexuality or anything particularly serious, I was just using both as completely separate examples that the main characters in the comic were starting to act like bullies. That is all. Since the past few story arcs where this applies includes a lie about someone being gay and a guy who likes foxes, they both came up.
Way to miss the point.
@ Trigger:
Whether or not this is true, what a surprise! If you start bringing up serious topics about real-world issues, people are going to talk about things seriously! Oh my gosh, I’m shocked!
With the problem that feminists are trying to deal with (And the problems that radical feminists are causing, too,) it’s a relevant and extremely serious issue that needs to be dealt with, and the author decided that bringing it up was important. If he thinks that addressing (Or at least bringing up) serious issues with modern society should be a part of Sandra and Woo, who are we to disagree?
Oh dear God, his gf is soooo going to dump him by the end of the evening.
Did anyone else notice the foxes in the bottom left? Seem familiar?
@ Rayman:
i bet the person who downvoted for your comment knew what was it. come on downvoter, tell us why.
Hmmm… I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Oh yes, Steve has learned something. The next time, he sees the foxes, he will put down his camera and pick up his rifle.
I think that the author is going in a specific direction with this that’s going to end with some sort of moral lesson about what the woodland creatures have done here being “too far”. It’s not going to justify, in any way, what they are doing, at least not past the part with whatever that was in the oven. And this shouldn’t be too difficult for our photographer friend to explain, as he could say he was trying out some different themes, and forgot to change which prints he had displayed. I can’t blame Shadow for being upset, but I also don’t think his behaviour is acceptable.
As far as Larisa and Landon, while Larisa DOES like fire, I don’t think she’s ever actually burned anything down in an illegal fashion, and I also don’t remember her actually committing a felony. So, maybe Landon’s father got drunk, but I don’t think that’s a negative thing. As far as her wanting to do sexual things with Landon, and being open about it, well, that’s probably a lot more healthy of an attitude than ignoring how you feel sexually, and I think that Larisas parents would have had this discussion with her about sex facts already, so as long as she’s safe, educated, and keeps discussion open with her parents, there is nothing wrong with that. And with what Larisa said at Landon’s parents, I feel like most of that was in jest/her trying to gauge what his parents are like. And I don’t really like Landon’s mother. It’s subtle, but she doesn’t like a very nice or tolerant person, especially considering her reaction to the possibility of her son possibly being homosexual. And the classmate of theirs who called Landon’s mother is clearly a person who sticks solidly to the rules, so if she was willing to intervene with Harriet’s decision, then I find it hard to see any issues with it.
@ Max:
Yes, it would have been both funnier and better IMO if the gang dealt with Dorothy themselves. In fact in the comments of the previous strip I said it would be bad for various reasons if Ye Thuza handled it instead of them.
As for if murder was truly justified in a real world sense, obviously not. Everyone who cared about their children would just pull them out of school, raise cane, etc. The school district would dump her like radioactive waste before she got them sued into oblivion. The stuff in Sandra and Woo is a bit of a snow globe however, real world contexts don’t apply. In the abstract (this lunatic is about to do irreparable harm to the children) murder was justified here.
GnarlyDoug wrote:
This isn’t a serious issue.
It’s like if someone were to watch The Nut Job (the Tirrel short, not the recent movie) and get all upset because Vyle Ltd. was just trying to make a decent product from a sustainable source and had no way of knowing that squirrels were sentient (a perfectly defensible position IMO, especially considering that squirrels typically over-hoard).
Or maybe it’s like watching a sporting event and not being able to root for one team because you’d feel sorry for the other team. Normally, you designate one side the “good guys” and root for them and treat the other side as the enemy.
Mildly and selectively. It’s clear who we’re meant to root for, so I do.
Sometimes, but S&W does a pretty good job of keeping it interesting compared to some soap opera comics.
I think it’s a matter of degree. I guess some people just feel way more strongly toward comic characters than I can. And they have less conscious control over who they’re rooting for than I do, apparently.
@ TerminaEst:
Actually, contrary to what homosexuality *advocates* say, and despite all the reseach and funding, scientists can not find a “gay gene”. There are certainly pychological reasons a person might develope homosexual tendencies but not genetic ones. So you cannot compare it to being born left handed or with a particular hair color.
Crap, my parents walked in while I was reading this. They saw the Fox porn. ._.
@ Bobby Bob:
Well it would have been worse if you were looking at the one where Sandra was half naked. But I never got why she was naked in the first place. But don’t worry this isn’t a Pr0nzor C0/\/\1(. 0/\/\ g 1337 15 5o mu(h 1=un.
@ PeoplePerson:
This is mainly because our understanding of genetics is vague, sexuality is a broad and convoluted subject, and being gay isn’t an ‘On/Off’ switch. There isn’t one random gene that makes you gay or straight, there are lots of different genes which control hormones, tendencies, and personality. Some of which influence whether or not someone will end up gay, bi, straight, or anything else. (For example, testosterone is a pretty huge factor.)
Research HAS found that boys born after their mothers have already had lots of boys are likely to be gay, due to hormones. (The long and short of it is that the mother’s body builds up a natural resistance to the male hormones of the babies.) This is true even when you remove environmental factors from the equation.
So no, there isn’t a ‘Gay Gene’, but that’s like saying there isn’t a ‘Good at Basketball Gene’ or a ‘Skilled Mathmetician Gene.’ It’s not a binary result, you need lots of factors to line up properly and environmental exposure still changes the outcome.
And then after seeing all the “fox porn” Lydia actually said “This is TOO much Steve. It’s making me so wet and horny!”. She howled like a vixen in heat, stripped off her clothes and jumped Steve’s bones. Little did they know that when Woo averred that they may have gone overboard he was referring to the liberal use of musk and pheromones they dowsed everything in. The urine mixed with the wine was vixen urine loaded with estrogen which went right to Lydia’s crotch! 😉 Needless to say Woo and company got a sh!tload of explicit footage they uploaded to Animal Planet under the title “Secret Mating Rituals of the Elusive Naturalist Photographer.”. Steve was recognized and offered an exclusive network option for more of the same. Woo’s only regret was that he didn’t negotiate royalties. LOL
@ Xezlec:
We’re not just talking about this storyline, we’re talking about the stripas a whole. The current storyline has little social context, but recently we’ve dealth with moral quandry, feminist extremism, and religious intolerance. Those are pretty darned big.
Also… If someone writes a story where the main character is (Eh, I’ll invoke Godwin’s law,) Hitler, would you root for him? We’ll assume he does everything just like real life, but they write him as a ‘Good guy’ and it’s clear the author wants you to like him as he spews racist genocidal hate. Since you apparently decide who you root for purely off of the author’s intent, the character’s actions don’t matter, and you can mentally ignore the plights of minor characters, would this be a problem for you?
@ Xezlec:
/\/0 /\/07 p#urr¥ Pr0/\/!!!!!!!111!!! That’s NSFW.
I really don’t see why people have that much of an issue.
The arc’s not over yet. You’re all making assumptions that Steve/Lydia’s lives are ruined from this revenge, when it is fully possible/probable that’s just what we’re expected to think. (If there’s one thing Novil’s good at doing, it’s at keeping us guessing and yet always managing to surprise us anyways!)
I, for one, personally believe that the (relatively) minor offense Steve did will, therefore, have only a minor consequence, such as the major embarrassment shown above. One of the largest things that’s been consistent throughout the comic is karmic punishment, with the punishment appropriate to the crime.
Whisk Woo away and cause Woo’s human concern, get your eggs eaten. Have a shot lined up on Woo but not take it, get written off as crazy. Cause actual injury to Woo, get actually injured. (All those from the same arc!) Abuse Woo, and get locked in a cage. Be controlling of your child and discriminate against who they like, and be manipulated via discrimination. Cause serious harm beyond all reason, and be *piff*ed out of the comic. Take some embarrassing photos, and…
…Get seriously embarrassed yourself, seems to be the logical step, honestly.
Does that make it the best idea to do, no. You’re asking an animal, who is the pet of a young human, who is friends with Larisa (not exactly a beacon of morality), to act in the best way humanly possible. That’s not going to happen. They’re not perfect. However, in this case, there’s no reason to say they’ve gone too far until we see the final results.
Overall, in S&W–and this has been consistent since the beginning (the comic has NOT, in fact, gotten darker; it’s just taken people until now to see it)–the protagonists act in ways that might not be the morally right way to go about things, but which are the most karmic way of delivering punishment to their opposition. And, honestly, that’s the most realistic way it can happen.
Good lord. A bunch of people have turned a nice, edgy webcomic into – as has been said – a battlefield.
Perspective, people. Perspective. If you don’t like the direction the webcomic is headed, don’t read it. It’s merely a fictional world created by one person. Some of us happen to love it, and its characters, and its edge, and its cuteness, and its forays into the “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane” realm. If you don’t like it, I’m sure you’ll find a webcomic you DO like.
I mean, expressing disagreement is one thing. What’s happened here is another thing altogether.
I’m frankly baffled especially by the “Woo went too far” comments. Like no one in this webcomic occasionally went too far, like going too far is not one of the hallmarks of comedy, like this was not foreshadowed by Shadow originally wanting to pour molten lead into Steve’s orifices.
You’d think Woo was actually someone’s living, breathing pet, doing these things to real-life people.
Also, narratively, this has been set up so that Steve is the offender and Shadow the injured party taking revenge. Sympathy has been created towards Shadow who was shown as having been violated in his privacy, and Steve was set up as a paparazzi, exploting another’s private life.
Whatever other readings you attribute to this, including “Steve thinking he was taking pictures of a non-sentient animal”, is completely beside the point as far as this narrative arc is concerned; so far, at least, he’s been set up as the offender and then as the punching bag. Everything else is cosmetic.
This might, of course, change in the near future, or it might not. But so far there’s no reason, narratively speaking, to even root for Steve. All the reasons you have to feel bad for him are extraneous to this context.
@ The Doctor:
Replace the word “gay people” with “black people” or “jews”. That’s how your opposition sees the situation.
@ Jeremy K.:
I know that, I’m not an idiot. But in the comic Shadow evidently does feel shame.
I thought that what I meant would not have to be explained, but there are some complete morons like you in the world and you have to break down everything to them. Get it now?
@ Landbark
I could see your point and accept your views and let this all rest (in the sense that different people will empathise differently with different characters, which is good and fine), re Steve…
…if he didn’t have picture of foxes defecating (and even foxes mating, as Shadow was about to do, come on…). Taking pictures of nature in action is one thing. Seeing images of animals mating or defecating for a few seconds inserted into a much larger nature show is one thing (and I personally never saw a documentary that showed them defecating). A snapshot of a defecating foz, or a video showing exclusively that, show us that Steve is crossing the line, even for human sensibilities.
PLOT TWIST! PLOT TWIST! PLOT TWIST!
“Maybe one or maybe most of them but the strip didn’t acknowledged that.”
Exactly. Because it was not part of the author’s intention that anyone be rooting for Steve. The author did everything narratively possible to justify what was going to happen next and for us not to feel TOO sorry for him (well, you do feel somewhat sorry for him, because he’s getting a horror show, but the way it was narratively portrayed it has a justification, it is not gratuitous. Over-the-top? Yeah, because that’s what the characters are like, that’s nothing new.
And yet people still are rooting for this guy. As though they want to defend themselves against rampaging racoons taking over their lives, as though they themselves project some fault of their own in Steve and think that if what Steve did is all right, and what Woo is doing is criminally wrong, then they must be in the right.
But still, I don’t find that as strange as rooting for the bigot mother, who is clearly very very close to Carrie’s mother (both the book AND the Piper Laurie version). That I find patently disturbing.