[0774] A Strip For Peace And Tolerance
└ posted on Monday, 4 April 2016, by Novil
- Banner: Zootopia – A Message of Peace
- Woo: … And if Zootopia has taught us one thing, it is that predator and prey can leave their old differences behind and live in harmony with each other!
- Sprint: Very well said!
- Hammond Hoppiton: Peace! Frieden! Paix!
- Woo: So let us then join hands to herald the start of a new age of peace and tolerance!
- Shadow: Mister Hoppiton…
- Shadow: It’s called a hustle, sweetheart.
- Shadow: I love these Disney movies.
- Sprint: We all do.
S&W in German/auf Deutsch
![[0774] A Strip For Peace And Tolerance](/comics/2016-04-04-0774-a-strip-for-peace-and-tolerance.png "[0774] A Strip For Peace And Tolerance")
@ Seraph77:
Welcome to every real peace treaty, ever.
My first thought looking at the first panel was simple “how do the carnivores expect to eat?”
Nice job. Well done.
@ aerion:
Kimba the White Lion
this is Kevin & Kell levels of cringe, but it looks like you’ve been heading down that road for a while 🙁
I’m waiting for a deadpool reference…
Who’d Woo eat?
How sad… 🙁
I don’t know why you are all complaining about how dark it has gotten. It has been like that since Woo ate Tweety. Actually the only major subversions Ruth, and the other squirrel. There is tons of Grim humor in this comic.
…Actually I think it is Satire.
Though I must admit I am slightly tired of Zoos but he has not gone overboard with it.
I’m glad humans aren’t carnivores.
@ Zahariel:
They specified mammals only in the movies. Guess the birds and fish were screwed.
The strip is funny, but I’m still not really sure I like it. I think it has to do with Shadow here, since the only time I can remember seeing that kind of face on him was when he saved Sid from Woo. I’m OK that he hunts since that’s part of the natural order, but this is just downright dirty.
Well in Zootopia both the Predators and Prey have their own food source so they don’t really have to eat each other for food…..How ever….where does the Meat come from for the Predators to eat
Reminds me of the definition of democracy: a pack of hungry hounds and a rabbit deciding what’s for dinner. This is what Alexis de Tocqueville referred to as the tyranny of the majority.
Main question about Zootopia: What do the obligatory predators eat? Not all predators are omnivores. Some only have the option of eating meat, because they cannot digest plant matter. So what’s the deal?
Almost no complaints in the comments?! I swear, the last few strips like this drove the comments section nuts! Maybe people are getting used to the fact that this comic has a slight edge.
Aohaku wrote:
I’ve thought about that a lot and come up with two possibilities:
1. Those who die (of natural causes) are quickly frozen and shipped to supermarkets. This leads to a pretty amusing world the more you think about it.
2. Synthetic nutrients, thanks to science.
Aohaku wrote:
A fish market is shown in the movie. No love for non-mammals in Zootopia…. This is the same “solution” arrived at in the movie Madagascar.
I guess this strip doesn’t bother me as much as it seems to bother some other people. Ironically, I’m a vegetarian, and some of the people who don’t like the strip have admitted to being meat-eaters… To me, raising farm animals for slaughter is at best pretty much the same situation as what’s shown here (free range, lured into an abattoir), and is usually much worse (small pens, forced feeding, etc., and then herded into that same abattoir). The animals most humans eat, they don’t even kill themselves– they pay someone else to do it, and try to know as little about the process as possible.
If I or my family were starving, I’d hunt and kill animals and eat them. I feel quite fortunate to live in a time and place where I can choose not to. I don’t expect anyone else to live by the dietary rules I’ve chosen to impose on myself (my spouse and kids eat meat). But I always find it ironic when people who eat meat object to anything that reminds them of where it comes from.
It’s been so long since I had a lovely young Pacifist over for dinner, I’ve almost forgotten what they taste like.
Good thing for them then that Everyone agreed Ruth should not attend.
You can’t use “hustle”, that’s a spolier!
Xezlec wrote:
It doesn’t work like that. The audience may sometimes accept a strip with an edge that’s hardly slight while other times a strip with a slight edge can get under fire. There are far more factors than how much of an edge a strip has that is at work.
This will be the only time the Hammond hoppiton tag will be used.
Rest in pieces.
Tbh quite creepy a setup …
That was horrifying, yet I was hoping for it.
@ Tunaro:
Nope, but I heard the Rain of Castamere….speaking of lions
Here were recently parliamentary elections in my country… I do not know why this reminded it to me… just hope that it will not ends the same way…
Peace is lie, there is only passion,
Through passion I gain stength, trhough strenght I gain power,
Through power I gain victory, through victory my chains are broken,
the Force shall set me free!
Wow, the bird was shot with a bow. Ruth uses a pistol, but it was part of her scary uniqueness until now.
Hey, ya gotta eat.
Was the Hoppiton character inspired by Neville Chamberlain?
Same moustache and same naiveté. Or am I reading too much into it?
Nekokami wrote:
Where are these forced feedings you’re speaking of? I live on a ranch, and no one I know of would waste the time.
A few use silage, which is pretty much beer, to induce the livestock to overeat, but that’s different.
Personally, I suspect what bothers those readers is the idea of a character eating another character. When it’s Woo stealing a marinated steak, it’s meat. When it’s a rabbit celebrating the new future of peace between traditional enemies, it’s not.
I don’t think it’s even the treachery of the scene, but the idea that what is food had some value as a living animal before it was reduced to food. That it was a character, however briely. Consider how many people object to eating dogs, or horses. We’ve established dogs and horses as man’s partners in our minds, not as man’s supper.
Consider how much sadder seeing a dead dog on the road is likely to make you over seeing a dead opossum. One is “family”, if distant, and the other isn’t.
The only strip that shocked me was [0141] Raccoon Sweet And Sour.
They may have had an easy hunt but Mr Hoppiton looks old and, therefore, tough, chewy, poor quality meat.
@ SeanR:
Well, the truly dark aspect of Sandra and Woo is that the animals are self aware free willed sentients. They are thus ‘people’, not animals. So what is truly disturbing is that this is people murdering and eating other people and enjoying it, which makes this a monstrous reality if you think about it too seriously.
SeanR wrote:
Re: forced feedings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foie_gras
This is what I meant by “worst case.”
Feedlots and other intensive animal farming methods aren’t much better, to my mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_animal_farming
As for how sad I feel seeing a dead dog vs. a dead opossum, I recognize that the dead dog (or cat) likely represents a sad human family somewhere, and that does affect how I feel, but I actually do feel quite sad when I see other dead animals. I also recognize that different people have different levels of empathy for non-pet animals, and different boundaries around which animals count as “pets” or “cute.” Some people won’t touch venison, but have no problem with beef. Guinea pigs are food animals in much of the world. To me, they’re all at the same moral hazard level.
My main point is that all the animals in this strip (apparently) can talk and are human-level sentient, and they still eat one another as a part of their daily lives. Oddly enough, Ruth is the only one who has ever shown any remorse for this, but she’s the one who gets the hate comments. I guess the morality here is “it’s ok to eat sentients, as long as it isn’t someone you know personally”? Would it be ok for Shadow or Woo to eat a human who hadn’t been introduced by name? (Would it surprise us if Larisa were willing to eat another human, under certain circumstances?)
I prefer the term psuedo-cannibalism … So long as it is not the same genus it is generally safe to eat no matter its sentience or lackthereof 😀
@ Jerry:
If it’s Mr Hoppiton, you’ll probably still be waiting.
@ Andy Wong:
Well said.
Zahariel wrote:
Well, to be fair, the predators were a fox, a bear, possibly some other guy, and maybe a hedgehog (there was a hedgehog, I forget if he was predator or prey – from what I remember of real hedgehogs, they could be either, and I feel like he wasn’t a very nice guy in the play)
So, generally speaking, predating wasn’t anyone’s main food-source; Even the fox probably eats more carrion and berries, especially since this was a particularly lazy fox.
But these plays and stories always take place in an alternative world were nutrition, and many other things, are simpler; Brother Fox eating meat is always going to be a choice he makes, or simply part of his ‘evil nature’, rather than something he’s forced to by his biology.
Not that I’d trust the prey to do the cooking anyway; The play also includes a baker-apprentice putting a kilo pepper into their cinnamon cookies (they messed up a line of their ‘how to bake cinnamon cookies’ song) – I mean, it’s understandable, prey’s never going to have the brains of a predator 😛
I’m still waiting for a movie called Wootopia, where predators are the majority led by tyrants and their respective prey are required to present sacrifices at appropriate intervals (possibly in exchange for protection and education as incentive). Very grim and terrifying, but lots of potential for storywriting; organized resistance, predators secretly helping herbivores…
@ Nekokami:
Actually, you’d be surprised. Most herbivores will eat meat if they get the chance. They just don’t go out of their way to obtain it. But present them with an easy opportunity, and they chow down.
Brett Bellmore wrote:
Granted there are very few true obligate herbivores, especially among mammals (the panda being an obvious exception). Digesting meat is less complex than digesting plant matter. On the other hand, animals that have evolved as habitual herbivores are not necessarily going to be very healthy on a high-meat diet: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2038456
So the truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle — most herbivores can (and occasionally do) eat animal protein, and most carnivores, even obligate carnivores can (and occasionally do) eat some plant matter. I suspect a squirrel would not be able to survive as an exclusive carnivore for very long in our world before developing a variety of health issues.
None of this affects my enjoyment of Sandra and Woo. 🙂 We’re talking about a universe in which a pre-teen girl with an extensive record of prior activity resulting in a long list of restraining orders sent a nude picture to everyone in North America and the sole lasting fallout was that one guy, not even associated with the character, went to prison. Talking animals that change their diets (or don’t, in this strip) are hardly the point at which I lose my ability to suspend disbelief.
Does anybody remember Tweety ?
Read this and the next strip. Great joke !
http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2009/03/23/0044-puddy-tat/
Did anybody else imagine Humphrey Bogart’s voice there?
As an aspie, this is why I know better than to go to any conferences hosted by Autism Speaks…
As an apex predator and as one of the girls raised on my grandparent’s ranch, (where some winters saw us eating grilled deer, rabbit and coyote… hunted, trapped, killed and skinned by my grandfather in order to avoid malnutrition) I fully endorse this comic.
Too often I hear people whine about the rights of animals when people are starving. Plus rabbit is more than tasty, the fur can pay mortgages. 😉
DoomedElf wrote:
Was anyone upset (besides the old lady) when Tweety got eaten? I thought there was general rejoicing. Where it was going was evident when Woo ate the snake vs the apple.
What’s really dark is Concentrated Animal Feeding operations. Life (if you can call it life in prison for sapient beings just because of their species.) The animals in this strip had normal lives for their species and got eaten because of their stupid idealism.
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OMG, 4 years later and the comic lands on ZNN. I didn’t remember it though and I read you comics lol