Shades After 026
It’s Asexuality Awareness week! I’ll be taking part in a talk at Leeds university this Thursday on Asexuality in Media from 3-5pm. It’s open to everyone so come along and join the discussion!
Check out more info here:
http://www.leedsuniversityunion.org.uk/campaigns/ace/
Poof does not appreciate the ex wife’s(?) snide comments.
Bed head War is pretty adorbs though.
Poof does not appreciate anything. He is an adorable, fat, furry void of unappreciativeness.
So…he’s a cat?
Ex-wife, it seems, if you look at the hard edges of her chin. Poor Anwar, poor Chris – having to gather their wits (and fight!) first thing in the morning. Better hopp into a pool full of piranhas!
By the way, there seems to be a history of unintended outing in that relationship…
huh? How does her chin show she’s his ex-wife? I am so confused.
I don’t get it either, but I do agree it’s probably the ex-wife.
Hmm, does the ex-wife have to be so abhorrent? How long were they married? Surely they had something in common to get together in the first place. Some kind of attraction. Just saying ya know?
There probably was at one time, but unfortunately this is a reflection of what does happen to some couples who split. At least they’re on talking terms, that’s more than what some people I know have with their exes.
Plus they had an obviously nasty split. She had rigid ideas of gender/sexuality judging by what Chris has told Anwar, so her conservatism couldn’t handle the dissonance of finding out her husband was less conventionally masculine than she had thought. While abhorrent, you have to realize these are realistic traits for a person to have, and realistic reactions as someone with those personally traits!
You know, the story’s always made it seem like Chris’s ex-wife was an unpleasant lady all around. And even if she wasn’t totally terrible, something about being exes can make otherwise decent people act like total jerks.
With that being said, I feel like her immediate reaction is a little too strong to be believable or relatable. I certainly didn’t expect her to welcome the news of Chris’s new relationship with enthusiasm, but I was expecting a little more realism.
To me this does seem a bit realistic. If her reaction would have been to scream from the top of her lungs and run off flailing, then THAT would’ve been sort of unrealistic. Here, it shows that she harbors some bitter emotions for Chris. For someone who openly disapproves of “unconventional” lifestyles such as Chris had expressed, it’s easy to believe someone like her would see Anwar and regard him as just some other fetish thing Chris is into (hence the “Oh, you’re into THIS now!?” comment). I wouldn’t be surprised if she thinks the same as Anwar’s mom that Chris is a perv creeping on Anwar or something :/
Heh. If that reaction seems unrealistically harsh, you should meet my family.
Sounds perfectly normal to me.
…That says a lot about the way my family reacts to ex-es.
my mother and father where never really together more like just friend’s with an unexpected one night stand resulting in me. that never really ruined there friend ship so even when my mother,sister,and i immigrated to america they stayed in touch. he even went to my mother and step father’s wedding and was the MC at the reception. i was able to keep my father in my life i even though my mother and step father raised me i still had a deep relationship with my father who despite living far away from me did his best to be in my life and kept us connected through our mutual interests and just being there for important event’s in my life.
FINALLY GOT CAUGHT UP! …and ouch/ew/ugh. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, I believe is the saying?
I want to use a word on that lady, but I know it’s a bad word with some pretty bad connotations, so I’m just gonna indulge in a little daydreaming about slapping some sense into her. Literally.
Also, it seems kind of odd to me that Chris wouldn’t mention to Anwar that his ex might be showing up the next day; now that we can see this, it’s pretty clear that was probably what his anxiety was about the previous night. So maybe he was sort of hoping for this, in some way? Probably not that… person’s… nasty remark, but maybe wanting to show her that he’s happy and yet he was dreading the obvious awkward that’s happening right now? I may be reading too much into it.
Maybe she just stopped by without warning? Since Chris is still in his robe, that’s what I am thinking. I am not sure though. But I agree with you in regards to wanting to use some pretty serious words to describe her. I’ll just go with DISLIKE!
I’m not convinced that fantasising about assaulting a woman is any better than using a misogynistic slur about her to be honest…
Probably not. Trying to train myself out of it, but it’s a long process. On the plus side, I have NEVER actually had the urge to go through with any of those ideas.
And I think I found a word that’s not misogynistic but still conveys my opinion of this woman: shithead. There, now I feel better.
I have a question, which could probably be answered by just going back into the comic archive…. But maybe one of you very wonderful readers/commenters could answer for me… xoxo?
Was Chris engaging in BDSM/cross dressing behind her back while they were married? I can’t remember. But if he was, I can understand why she would be snarky/upset about it.
However, if he wasn’t and he just came out and told her – hey, this is something I like/would like to get into! and she shut him down and now treats him like garbage because of it… Well she can shove it. :\
I would like to add that even though I UNDERSTAND why she would be bitchy I do not condone her behavior. People like that stress me out and make me upset. :(!
It’s sort of the latter, from what I can remember. I don’t remember Chris mentioning that he went behind her back, but he mentions that he knew he had these feelings and kept them a secret which I think means he therefore never acted on it.
He did finally tell her and became more open with expressing himself, and at the beginning she tried to be tolerant about it, until she realized how deep he was into BDSM/cross dressing and THAT’S when they split.
I’m pretty sure he came out drunkenly at his wife’s sister’s wedding or something like that. They pretty much split after that to my understanding.
http://www.discordcomics.com/shades-of-a-extras1/
See also: http://www.discordcomics.com/shades-of-a-057/
Thank you, I was trying to find the page where Chris specifically says it but I forgot when that was.
Now I wait for some famous Anwar sass.
Chris’ ex might be unnecessarily (and gleefully) twisting the knife here, but she doesn’t really have a stake in the game. I’m hoping she’s just commenting for old times sake rather than actually trying to start a fight.
Think in her mind she does have a stake, in terms of how it reflects on her. The stereotype of a gay couple having to have one ‘playing the guy’ and one ‘playing the girl’ does get almost subconsciously projected onto any non-heteronormative relationship, so to her the idea that he liked ‘playing the girl’ with his cross dressing whilst still being attracted to her had a whiff of “you could play the guy” about it; discovering that he (from what she’s seen/assumed) also finds men sexyally attractive, it just cements the ‘insult’ that he liked her because she wasn’t as feminine as she should be. Completely misguided and self-centered, yes, but it makes sense that she sees all of Chris’ proclivities as an assault on her cis-womanliness and is getting defensively snarky.
That said, I can understand her and want to shake her stupid head at the same time, productive as either of those is not.
Kind of off-topic, but I don’t know if it’s the beard or the heavyset appearance, but I imagine Chris has a voice similar to Patrick Seitz, it just reinforces his overall image.
It’s Ace Awareness Week? Why am I just finding out about it halfway through the week?! :O
Oh, no, no no nononono.
Chris’s ex-wife(?) isn’t going to use Chris’s relationship with Anwar as a method to gain full custody of the children… right? D:
I SENSE TENSION. DRAMA. Oh my!
I think it was mentioned earlier that Chris’ ex already has full custody of their kids, and he doesn’t even have visitation rights, which makes me wonder what the ever loving fuck they’re talking about.
Maybe they have been trying to work something out so that he can see the kids with her supervision?
Seems like a legitimate reaction. She isn’t saying that it’s wrong to be gay, but she could be interpreted as rude by speaking about someone while they’re in the room. She could acknowledge Anwar firs, then ask about their relationship.
I wonder if she’s ignoring him because he looks so young compared to Chris? She may be assuming the worst along the same logic path momwar went down initially (older man with a little f*-buddy); the ex-wife being in the position she’s in, she may also see it as a sugar-daddy setup and is attacking the first and most obvious part first before striking at the age difference. With such a large age gap and her obvious dislike for her ex (Chris), if she sees the situation that way she may place all the blame on Chris and not feel a need to acknowledge “his toy,” as it were. Hate that attitude/behavior, personally, but it seems like a possible explanation.
She also knows Chris and may feel more comfortable taking a tone/attitude with him rather than this new person.
But that’s all just speculation. She could just be a rude individual, too!
Well, so far she’s acting more civil than Momwar, so I’m willing to cut her a fair chance.
She did say “gay”, not “pedophile”, so … I think she’s just pissed that, apparently, he was never attracted to her in the first place. She doesn’t seem to consider that he might be bisexual.
Ooh, hadn’t thought of that. That kind of thought probably stings like lemon in a paper cut.
I have to say, I like how all of your characters look like actual people. I mean some people really are skinny, but most of us have some meat on our bones. Very realistic, I’m loving it!
It seems to me that she is being snarky and annoyed by the fact that he had kept “yet another” secret from her. Looked like he was trying to civilly work out arrangements just before. I don’t interpret this as hateful, just hurt by the fact that it seems like ANOTHER “big secret” – and if he had been lying to her about being attracted to women the whole time, that is a very psychologically damaging thing to go through. Didn’t seem like a homophobic bashing, just a “what there’s more now? Where do the secrets end?” type of thing. But if it was gay-hating, it’s completely realistic (tame really).
On an unrelated topic:
Sleepy Anwar sprawled in morning sunlight: what a cutie!
Good grief.
Good morning to you too, lady. -_-