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I‘m not sure who drew the cartoon above, depicting the travails of a long-suffering “nice guy” as he tries to break down the emotional wall put up by a woman he has a crush on an obsession with.
It’s been floating around the internet for a while; on Twitter it’s been accompanied with the mocking caption: “A rare picture depicting the day to day life of our brothers in the friend zone.”
I doubt the original artist had any idea just how unsettling this cartoon really is. The pastel colors and delicate lines don’t save it from its inherent creepiness; if anything, they make it worse. Why is this dude so determined to tear down the wall his unfortunate crush is working so hard to construct? What’s he going to do once he breaks through, murder her with his love ax?
That last question isn’t even a joke, really.
Earlier this month, the cartoon was posted on the awesome blog A Good Cartoon, an ongoing catalog of cartoons that are not actually good at all, where it got the epic takedown it deserved.
One commenter asked:
how you gonna draw some shit that makes you look like Jack Nicholson in The Shining and still feel like you’re the victim
Another added:
I DON’T *CHOP* UNDERSTAND *CHOP* WHY *CHOP* YOU CAN’T *CHOP* JUST *CHOP* LET ME *CHOP* BONE YOU *CHOP* ON AN INDEFINITE *CHOP* EXCLUSIVE *CHOP* BASIS *CHOP* WHEN *CHOP* I’M *CHOP* SO *CHOP* NIIIIIIIIIIIICE *CHOP*
But it was someone called Digital Discipline who offered the ultimate retort, in the form of a poem (“The Craven”) by Edgar Allan Bro:
Incessantly, I heard a smacking,
as of some entitled dipshit whacking,
whacking on my chamber door.Resignedly, I placed another layer,
voicing a quiet, repeated prayer,
“This dude thinks he’s a player,
but I am not a point to score,
he should f*ck off and bother me no more.”Quoth the friendzoned, “F*cking wh*re.”
THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE
H/T — @catmara73
@Troubelle
Aww. You tired? In contrast I’m pretty awake (thanks to caffeine) but at least you have a bright side and got a kitty coming home soon.
(Hint: I’ve repeated myself, haven’t I?)
@Handsome Jack
Is it “is that,” “dumb,” or “nerd”?
also i’m still not sure what i’m supposed to be trANSLATING
I HAVE THE MORSE WHAT NOW
About a few months ago when I was working I had this man ask me out and I turned him down, my mistake was I made him my friend. I’m pretty sure he was just waiting for me to change my mind. So immediantly he started texting me wanting to know everything about me and demanded I should text him at a specific time and he called me nicknames like ‘babe’ and ‘girl’ and I got very uncomfortable and I told my mom and grandma and they were pretty quiet and told me to not be his friend anymore, I had to cut him off because I look like a teen and he was 29 years old and I think it was just inappropriate.
So I did and he got creepy and eventually became aggressive and we had to report him to the cops. I got really scared and plus I don’t trust the cops but mom wanted me to go anyway. My mom’s male friend threaten the guy and he never called back.
So in conclusion nice guys aren’t nice at all. They try to be nice, lure you in and reveal to you their true colors. This is indeed one of the many reasons why I don’t think I’ll ever get over my Androphobia and just having trust issues with people in general.
@Troubelle
Oh, contrasting the previous ciphers, you haven’t actually found what you need to decode yet. You need to find it first.
You know, now that I see you’re having trouble, you’re either gonna feel dumb or pretty bright after figuring it out.
@Handsome Jack
…
…
…
this isn’t fun anymore
i am a tired mime who has no idea what to do
@Troubelle
Brightness and contrast.
@Handsome Jack you motherfucker
….
fuck
all
of
your
butts
and
also
your
couches
(seriously though I’m laughing)
@Troubelle
http://67.media.tumblr.com/c5bb91e92b939864a0329b05aec68bef/tumblr_inline_o83qfayxer1tfzekw_1280.png
Enjoy the dumb message and misspellings. <3
@Handsome Jack
Well, uh, assuming that is what I think it is….cool headcanon, bro. And not out of the realm of possibility.
(Also, I don’t have any real photomanipulation apps, so I just used Paint as well and strategically used the fill tool.)
are you proud of me jack
@Troubelle
Yes, in fact I drew this picture for you where I totally didn’t forget how to draw Mabel’s bean head or arms or anything like that.
http://i.imgur.com/vvBx86Q.png
Also, that’s what you get for using a cipher to ask for a picture even though I made it before hand. And I told you it was dumb.
@Sinkable John
*offers hugs if wanted*
It sounds like you’re having a shit time right now, but it’s not your fault, you are valuable, and I for one am grateful for your presence here.
@ everyone
I went from a school around London, where everyone is incessantly conventionally ~beautiful~ but took each other seriously, to a university in the depths of Northern Scotland where it is too fucking cold to bother with impeccable makeup and not having several layers of knitwear at all times. Suddenly I became “desirable” by all my friends (read: one of few women in a male club) and was girlfriendzoned by every bloody one of them. I have some good friends now, but there’s nothing like six years having every one of your friends hit on you only to drop you like a stone when rejected (and suddenly ignore you completely in academic settings) to make you question your worth as anything other than a fucktoy.
So yeah, this is a very apt cartoon, and everyone sharing stories of scary “nice” guys: I feel you. I’ve had some pretty unpleasant experiences myself.
@Handsome Jack
bean head
And thanks for giving me the link back anyway. I plan to redraw it in some capacity before I get back to school.
ETA: @Fruitloopsie, FUCKING EXACTLY GODDAMMIT
If I may loudly and unprofessionally bitch with anecdata:
Last year, under January’s heavy flooding, the ceiling of my office collapsed, and we were temporarily working at the main branch of the company, 23 miles away. Since my flown-the-nest children were using my car, and public transportation took seven hours each way, I jumped when offered the chance to carpool to work with a co-worker and share gas expenses. This was an older gentleman, and very conservative, who just folded into himself in embarrassed terror when a member of my training class mentioned her pansexual orientation, and he was a large part of why I was generally not out at work. (Technically, I’m a lesbian. Practically speaking, it doesn’t matter, I am celibate and really, really not wanting to share my bed with anyone but a good book. I HAD been quite clear on the latter. I try to lead with it.)
On the way home on day one, I decided to start doing stomach vacuums every time this fellow said something misogynistic. By day two, my stomach was sore, in more ways than one, with all the times I forced myself to remain polite, level-headed, and heuristic in the face of all the “false accusations of abuse/ rape/ salary inequity/ global warming” blahblahs. Many, many red flags had appeared, and I quietly began making other arrangements to get to work.
The gentleman in question then started making a bit of a nuisance of himself— coming up to my desk and getting irritated that I was on the phone with clients and would not stop doing my job in order to talk to him, driving around the parking lot of my apartment at around 3 a.m., abusing our internal chat to talk to me, driving back to work at the end of my shift and following me around, getting beet-red furious and peeling out when I declined a ride, awkwardly and without warning blurting out questions about BDSM (with no conversational precedent even remotely close to it), finding me to physically corner me and loom, etc. I told our manager that I was nervous that he was getting a crush on me, and my organization handled it politely and professionally from there.
HAHAHA KIDDING. I got called into the division manager’s office for a stern lecture about my giving “mixed signals” and my “overactive imagination” and how I was “making myself too available” to him by sitting in my assigned cubicle. (My immediate manager, who is somewhat younger than I, had said, “OMG, I totally see that he is ALWAYS by your desk, but I didn’t think about it. How creepy!”) I was moved to a different wing of the building, one where I was totally alone and had to walk for a few minutes before laying eyes upon another human, and written up for abusing chat when I said, “I am not comfortable with using chat for personal interaction, as our employee handbook expressly forbids this,” to him. I was told that I was expressly forbidden to mention his flirting on company grounds, although I was welcome to set up and appointment with him and discuss it outside of work. (I did not feel safe doing this.) I was told that telling him my sexual orientation would be considered inappropriate and “harassment.”
He admitted to being “attracted.” I repeated, quietly and firmly, that I was not interested and never will be. To this day, I have to be guarded and never, ever let a single air of “hey, we are human beings who work at the same office; why do you think the hallway is mysteriously smelling of toast today?” pass my lips. Every interaction with this person MUST be conducted robotically and without encouragement. (Between my [now] former manager and me, we have a running joke about holding my coat over my head and yelling, “No! GO AWAY BEAR!”) That’s what it takes to keep this person from feeling encouraged to press his useless suit. I have plenty of people with whom I have gotten past crushes one-sided, two-sided, and even consummated, with whom I am great friends. This fellow, however, has obviously decided that 1. women are liars who try to “up their price” by appearing uninterested; 2. I am a woman, and must therefore have a price, probably involving marital commitment to this person of the incorrect gender who thinks I am a liar. Any encouragement whatsoever is treated like a foot in the door.
SOMEHOW [coff], it became known that a lawyer was being contacted on my behalf, given that I had a decent case for “hostile workplace.” I now work remotely and have a manager whom I have literally never met. (This may be unrelated to the lawyer thing; this is a VERY isolated incident of uncoolness on my workplace’s part, and indeed, part of the thing that made it traumatic for me was that it was so very unexpected.) I am sad to be working alone; I like my co-workers very much… but it’s so exhausting to be building that wall every. damn. hour. of. the. day…
Yet in the eyes of the MGTOW, I am the one who is being unprofessional and problematic.
By the way, the cipher discussion is highly entertaining.
And now I’m overwhelmed with the thankfulness, and emotional rollercoasters definitely aren’t nearly as fun as the name implies. Or maybe it’s just all rollercoasters right now, since I’ve had unhealthy amounts of coffee.
It probably would help though if half my sentences weren’t interlaced with half-assed sarcasm directed at myself. I mean that’s how I cope, but still. Please disregard that stuff (or laugh at it, I mean that’s what it’s meant for, and sometimes it’s even a bit funny).
I mean I know that just ’cause some people have it worse doesn’t invalidate my own troubles. I’ve known that since the first time I was told to “get over it”. And I was pretty lucky to figure that out early enough, too. But then when it comes to other people, that kinda doesn’t matter anymore, because usually they still tell you to get over it. Probably why I suck at talking about it, maybe. And also, it’s just, well, it’s kind of a pain to see myself still despaired over shit that happened enough years ago that I’m soon going to lose count, when just about everything else is going to hell at a speed that disproves special relativity.
Another thing is that France is pretty dumb in regards to mental illness. I only got diagnosed with depression in the summer of last year (I was 23) – for something I’d been dealing with since at least age 11. The treatment ? Why, put ’em in a near-empty hospital ward with closed doors and barred windows everywhere for about a month, and keep ’em heavily sedated the whole time, that oughta make anyone better ! And on top of that, the psychiatrist himself was his own particular brand of dumb, who constantly dismissed my insomnia on the basis that I slept while in hospital. Well obviously, you dumb fuck, you had me under massive Tercian doses for the whole time ! For the first time in my life I had trouble staying awake, for fuck’s sake. That “treatment” fucked me up even more, too. Now I just can’t sleep two nights in a row without weed, and don’t even get me started on what happens to my emotional state at the slightest sign of animosity from anyone.
So yeah long story short : dumb treatment, but also dumb information as to what exactly you deal with. Diagnosed with depression, fine, I kinda knew that already. Can you be more specific ? Oh, not to mention the other, “small” disorders that I only learned about later when I did my own goddamn homework on the subject, like Rejection Sensitivity. So yeah, you’re basically left to self-diagnose. Luckily in my case, the psychologist (a much more sensible person) was able to help with identifying that sorta stuff. And since it’s only been a year and half since I’ve started doing that work, I still don’t know how to actually deal with anything.
Oh yeah, not to mention that “mentally ill” is actually a slur here. Good luck trying to explain to people that no, you ain’t gonna murder them in horrible ways before using their severed limbs as candle holders because no, that’s not what it means, and also I only do that to people I really don’t like and I’m not a barbarian, I only use skulls for candles. I’m also pretty sure they’re all convinced that depression and/or insomnia actually means laziness, which is infuriating because I’m really proud of being lazy as fuck and I don’t want that associated with my mental illnesses.
So yeah, I lack the words and other means to express that stuff, and really for a good part of it I simply lack accurate knowledge or awareness of it. And that’s just the work that needs to get done before I can even pretend to look at the more mundane issues (like what I’m depressed about) and try to solve them or “get over” them. ’cause right now by the looks of it I don’t think I’m able to function in society anymore, if I ever was in the first place. Sure I can pretend for a while, wear a mask and all. But when you suddenly need to go cry somewhere for whatever reason, you realize pretty quickly that tears actually do fuck up even social makeup.
Teal dear : self-care gets pretty tricky when you don’t know where to start. Also I apparently don’t know how to engrish without expletives.
Tangentially related : this gravatar is an old self-portrait I made back in high school after a week of exams and caffeine abuse. Just saw my face in a mirror, and it’s still pretty realistic. It was an appropriate choice for an avatar. Disregard the squiggly lines at the top : they’re supposed to be long hair raised up on the head, but I obviously had no clue how to draw that.
@Sinkable John
All tired Trou can say is who the literal fuck thought that “””treatment””” was a good idea for anyone including you.
they didn’t go over that in ib&b
@Headologist: yup.
@ Sinkable John : Pansy Ass Pinko, Regicidal Beast-of-Burden: I’m sorry. You don’t need me to tell you that sounds awful (ETA and Troubelle is right, NOT the way to correctly treat just about anyone.)
W/R/T where to start with self-care, have you breathed deeply? Are you hydrated? Have you eaten? Have you stretched? Have you exercised? If the answer to the above is, “Yes,” was it enough? If the answer to any of these is “no,” do not proceed to, “but.” Unless you’re being put under anesthesia tomorrow, do these things. If you have to break a bakery window to eat, eat. If you have to pretend to be going to the toilet to stretch, stretch. Remember that pretending to be asleep and breathing evenly is actually better than shitty sleep, and about 70% as good as real sleep. (I like binaural beats or meditating to Pink Floyd to get to sleep, but my insomnia is not super-tough, and I hear weed is really good for that.) Is the room you are in orderly? If not, set a timer for five minutes and make a clean spot. Have you learnt something new and interesting today? If not, hit “random article” on Wikipedia until you do, or check out the “60-second Science” podcast for a few episodes. Shovel vitamin D down your throat like you’re trying to hide a body in there: we’re talking 1,000 IU, minimum.
Beyond that? Be kind to yourself. You are your first (and only guaranteed) lifelong partner; do not savage your partner, hoping that others will be merciful to you because of it; do not be cruel to your partner in order to bond with others. You were born worthy of respect; own that, because there are always some fuckers who will try to make you feel bad about anything they can, including being carbon-based. You got this far; that takes extraordinary strength and courage.
I don’t mean to be condescending; you’ve probably figured it out. This is only what it’s taken nearly fifty years for me to figure out, and it’s weirdly difficult for me to stick to it.
It’s an awesome drawing. I think of Robert Downey, Jr. probably would see it and say, “Hey, that’s me!”
@Sinkable John
IDK, arm candle holders look pretty cool.
But, for real, just do your best. It’s been so tough for you and it’s very hard but just know you always have someone to talk to here, at least, about anything.
I know you probably already know but there doesn’t need to be a reason to be depressed. Sometimes depression is situational, sometimes it’s a symptom of something else, sometimes you just get it and have it. Chronic depression and all that.
@Troubelle
Yes. To draw Dipper, Mabel and pretty much all the children on the show, I draw a bean because they’re heads are bean shaped. Also here’s (http://i.imgur.com/ oMejiAF.png) another thing for you involving pumpkin heads. (It’s too long to enjoy properly and, yeah, I drew them too wide but, like, whatever. It’s a doodle and it’s in Paint.NET and it’s cute.)
@Troubelle
(what’s ib&b ?)
Yeah that’s how they treat mental illness in public facilities in France… but hey, it’s free healthcare. Which is a great thing, unless your mental institutions haven’t really been improved in any way since the Third Republic.
Did I mention that anything with cords was prohibited ? ’cause you could hang yourself with it, apparently. Doesn’t matter that I could’ve very easily used my bed and the bedsheets for that – no, what matters is that if you wanna listen to music, yer gonna hafta get someone from the outside to buy and bring you a radio that runs on rechargeable batteries, and then hand said batteries over to the hospital staff so they recharge ’em. Do you know how long those things last ? You don’t wanna know.
Or that we had a room for smoking in, but we couldn’t keep our own lighters. Had to ask staff for that too. Sometimes they didn’t set foot in the ward for 5, 6 hours straight. Seriously, I actually tried to light a smoke using sunlight and another patient’s glasses (sedatives can sometimes make you more creative – not smarter). Then I got someone from the next ward to smuggle me matches.
Oh and mandatory nicotine patches, and pretty bad ones : they didn’t do anything regarding the need for a smoke, they just made said smoke taste real shitty, so you weren’t satisfied and just smoked another. When I got there, I was in the middle of a successful effort to quit smoking cigarettes. Well, that was short-lived.
And the food was shitty and loaded with something that only made us hungrier. Apparently to prevent hunger strikes. Hunger strikes. In a hospital.
Huge fucking hint : if you need to take measures to prevent hunger strikes in a hospital, there is something seriously wrong with your hospital. That’s like adding glue to a plane’s wings to make sure they don’t fall off : no way I’m getting on your plane.
Long story short : do not, under any circumstances, get treated for mental illness in France. Private clinics are fine though – guess they have to be, to compensate. And the other health sectors are surprisingly good.
I can laugh about it now because it’s over. But now I’m real careful about what I let through – there’s a file somewhere with my name and the name of the hospital and ward, and anyone who has access to that file probably also has the authority to send me back there for another round of merrymakin. And god forbid I ever get caught with weed in my pocket : the cops in this town already don’t like my leftist ass (especially now with the phony “state of emergency” and our protests against it) and theoretically they can have that arranged.
Go in with depression, come out with worse depression and a pretty strong basis to build some paranoia on. You always win something !
Still. I’ll laugh as long as I can.
@Aunt Podger
Err, well, hm… Yep, I think the answer is “no” for a bunch of those items. Well, mainly the ones about exercise and an orderly room. Y’know, the ones that involve effort.
But I learn a thousand things every day though ! That has to count for something, right ? No but seriously, I’m always reading about some new and foreign subject, right now I’ve got my eyes on a bunch of articles on dendrochronology, which reminded me of dendrophobia, which prompted me to look up “scary tree” on google and one of the results was pretty spooky and looked like the face of someone who was trapped within a tree and reminded me of an old polish legend so I set out to find out which and AAAAAH TROUBELLE HALP MY BRAIN ITSELF IS TURNING INTO A RABBIT HOLE WITHOUT ANY HELP FROM TVTROPES !
Seriously. That happened during the past hour.
Regarding sleep, weed is pretty much the only thing that works, unless I haven’t slept in more than 30-35 hours (sometimes I need 60 – the sleep-deprivation-drunkenness gets real fun around that mark). In recent years I’ve got to a point where if I can’t fall asleep almost instantly, I’m not gonna be able to sleep, period. Unless I’m high, which also makes me fall asleep quicker. The problem here is depression, which is a special kind of stupid because although I was pretty much born with insomnia, depression actually came later and was probably caused by insomnia in the first place, and now it makes it worse.
Stuff keeps swirling around in my head and making me angry and/or bitter and/or sad as soon as nothing’s grabbing my attention anymore. Weed suppresses that (sometimes it doesn’t, but at least it makes it bearable) on top of its more generally sleep-inducing properties, so that helps a lot. I love how something I started doing recreationally so quickly found a medical use that is absolutely not incompatible with the recreational one.
Now if only it were legal…
@Jack
Wait, arm candle holders ? With the flesh still on them ? That’s smart ! That way the bones don’t just fall off ! How do you keep them from decomposing though and, y’know, smelling awful ?
Teach me your ways.
Yeah, I know I don’t need a reason to be depressed, but I got a bunch anyway. That’s actually the one thing I’m kinda glad about though : y’know, just in case people start asking pesky questions. I guess it’s a bunch of things that I’m “overly” sensitive about, basically wounds that stay open no matter what. Even from my own perspective they mostly look petty though, and that probably doesn’t help my attitude in that regard.
Thanks for all the support, guys. The clock-day was awful, but hey, I don’t follow clocks since insomnia and all dat, so next time I go to sleep I can do so knowing that my actual day was much better than that. That really, really means something. Thank you.
How to have Cocteau candlearmbra without decomposing? You start out with bodies that have a really, really high blood alcohol… but I’ve said too much…
@Aunt Podger
Your anecdata is horrifying. I’m glad that the situation has improved — sorry about the big downside.
And your advice (water, exercise, etc.) is kickass. Thanks! 🙂
******
To everyone else who has gone through (or is currently going through) a very tough time, my heart goes out to you. Be safe. Be well.
@ sinkable john
I hope you don’t think this is trivial with everything else going on in your life, but you just reminded me of something.
The wings on modern fighter planes are glued on. The glue is incredibly strong but they found that, psychologically, pilots just couldn’t accept that. So now they put a thing called a ‘chicken rivet’ on the wing. It doesn’t actually do anything for structural integrity (it actually creates a potential stress fracture point) but people just feel better knowing it’s there.
I totally understand that though. It just doesn’t seem right gluing a wing on.
But if they’re actually dismembered, how ya suppose to get them to do this?
So who said anything about dismembering?
@Alan
Don’t worry – soon as I saw the blockquote in your post, I knew I was in for some weird fact I’d never heard about but would probably make my day.
I ain’t disappointed.
Hey, remember Icarus, right ? Even the ancient Greeks figured out that glue+wings is a bad idea, and they didn’t even have planes !
@Aunt Podger & Jack
Well, the reasoning goes that it requires a lot less maintenance than if the living human is still attached to it. Plus living humans are clumsy as all fawk. I don’t want ’em dropping my candles now, do I ?
The high alcohol content in blood is achievable even with severed limbs, though. The trick is to get ’em drunk before you start hacking off. Plus it dulls the pain, so it’s humane.