By David Futrelle
When they’re not talking about women having sex with dogs, or celebrating their favorite mass killer, the regulars at Incels.co sometimes have normal internet discussions on normal internet discussion topics like, well, Garfield and Charlie Brown.
In a sort-of-recent thread, the regulars at the popular incel site discussed the burning question of whether or not Jon Arbuckle — the owner of the famously sarcastic orange cat — was an incel. The general consensus: Absolutely.
According to several commenters, the real pathos of Jon’s life was revealed by the cartoon art experiment called Garfield Without Garfield, which removed the cat from the strip and left Jon talking to himself in an empty apartment.
“Garfield without Garfield is basically pure incel despair,” the original poster agreed.
As it turns out, the incels are wrong about Jon: though his romantic failures were a long-running theme of the strip — he got turned down a lot and when he did go on dates they often ended up being disastrous — he did ultimately connect with Garfield’s vet, eventually even marrying her (in the Garfield Cinematic Universe, at least, if not in the strips) . As the Garfield wiki explains:
His biggest crush is Dr. Liz Wilson, Garfield and Odie‘s vet. Over the years, Jon had asked her out on dates numerous times. She usually turned him down but sometimes agreed, however those dates were usually disastrous, often due to Garfield insisting on accompanying them. In the live action films, Garfield: The Movie and Garfield’s A Tale of Two Kitties he became Dr. Liz Wilson’s boyfriend. This later became the case in the comic strip too, from July 2006 onwards. In Garfield’s A Tale of Two Kitties, Liz marries Jon, but this never has become possible in the strips.
One incel stepped in to correct his colleagues on the Liz Wilson question, then offered his own thoughts on another cartoon character often assumed to be something of an incel himself: Charlie Brown. (I mean, by incel logic, how could he not be? He’s a chinless bald child and sort of the ultimate beta.)
Turns out that in the final years of the strip, before creator Charles M. Schultz’ death in 2000, Charlie Brown finally found himself a little red-haired girlfriend (though she wasn’t the little red-haired oneitis of his dreams).
FrothySolutions began with a reference to Jon Arbuckle’s girlfriend before going on to praise Charlie Brown’s apparent pussy slaying prowess:
I have to admit, that last highlighted sentence is not one I ever expected to read in this lifetime, and I doubt you did either. But consider yourself Incel Wisdomized for today.
We Hunted the Mammoth is independent and ad-free, and relies entirely on readers like you for its survival. If you appreciate our work, please send a few bucks our way! Thanks!
I saw a Garfield cock ring yesterday and had to explain to my fiancé what a cock ring was.
It’s less horrible than the usual incel fare, I must say. They almost sound like run-of-the-mill misogynists, rather than the wannabe serial killers they usually sound like.
He doesn’t understand how lesbians work, does he.
I’m in incel overload today. Just had a talk with a friend who was just assaulted by an incel ‘friend’. She was sitting a couch and he just jumped on her, pinned her down, and started kissing and biting. Biting. She managed to push him off and he said it was her fault because she tempted him. This is a guy who complains all the time about how no women he dates are smart enough or pretty enough, and women don’t like him because he’s short.
Send them to the moon, every last one of them.
I don’t think others will say that. I actually think you are the first person to ever say that in the entire history of the world.
It is true that unrequited love is one of the major themes in Peanuts. But all the characters suffer from it, girls as well as boys. Sally pines for Linus, Lucy for Schroder, Peppermint Patty and Marcie for “Chuck”, Linus for Miss Othmar, plus a whole bunch of other minor characters. Most of the main characters are both sufferers and recipients. Charlie Brown isn’t alone in being lonely.
Another major theme of Peanuts – and I cannot emphasize this enough: THEY’RE CHILDREN. I know incels are furiously trying to drag every single thing in the universe down into their crab bucket singularity, but innocent unrequited schoolchild crushes =/= incels’ violent entitlement towards women.
As a kid in 1990s I saw a few episodes of the animated Garfield Series on Finnish TV.
I specifically remember parts of one episode, where Jon decided to “get a life” socially speaking, and tried to learn from a few self-help gurus, the kind who promise to help you become a cool and interesting person by some simple tricks. They were all sleazy and silly, and at the end Jon just randomly found his own persona to be kinda syncing with Liz.
Much later, I thought it was actually a nice parody or pick-up artists, among other such scam artists. Of course back then I didn’t get most of the jokes, even via translated subtitles.
I’m gonna be real for a moment. I have never seen a single peanuts episode in my life. Not even the Halloween thing that most people see of it. I think the closes thing I’ve seen of it was the fairly odd parents making fun of it when I was a kid.
Re the incels’ interpretation of Peanuts, I think the best response I can make is “Good grief!”
One of the “simple tricks” to appear interesting was to learn Canadian, because it supposedly passes for a foreign language, and you can speak it easily by just adding “eh” at the end of every sentence. The Finnish translator had substituted this with a similar local speech pattern associated with the Finnish city of Tampere. My parents (who understand English better than I did back then) found this combination of original joke and makeshift translation hilarious, especially since my mother is from Tampere.
I’m disappointed there was no discussion about how Doug, with his crush on Patty Mayonnaise, was an incel. I guess I should feel relief that the men in my age group aren’t in this incel community though.
There was also a missed opportunity to discuss how Heathcliff was an alpha male thug chad cat compared to the beta cuck Garfield, who is fat and hangs out with his human all day instead of cruising the junkyard for stray Stacey cats.
If they are, it’s only because the term “incel” hasn’t been in common parlance for more than a couple years… unfortunately, people who think “lesbianism” is purely performative, or that it only exists because some women just hate men for petty or irrational reasons, and all
lesbianswomen really lust after men deep down, have existed since forever. In modern times, they point to the existence of dildo-using lesbians as “proof” of this assertion. They’re a particularly assholish minority which even includes more than a few straight women, but they do exist.And then there’s the (completely separate) idea that all women are bisexual. If that were true, I’d have dated more women and fewer men.
[troll]All women are bisexuals, bisexuals don’t exist, therefore there are no women, and that’s why incels have so much trouble.[/troll]
…Also, while I’m sure adult versions of Peppermint Patty and Marcy are lovers in many a fanfic, I don’t think that this is anything more than common headcanon. (Please do not give me links to Peanuts erotica fanfics.)
…
Aren’t the Peanuts characters, like, 9 years old?
At least primary school age?!
How young do this brain amputated dick wads think people start having sex?!!
Fucking hell. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
@Snowberry
All very true and good points. I should have specified that I meant he is the only person to say it in relation to these particular cartoon child characters. You’re probably right in a broader sense, though.
I didn’t know that Jon hooked up with that vet. Isn’t she the one who was kinda responsible for him drinking dog cum that one time?
This Garfield thing bothers me. Mostly because… that isn’t some great reveal, that’s just how comedy with a buttmonkey protagonist works. If you turn off the laugh tracks in most sit-coms, they turn into tragedies. If you read old Carl Barks comics and imagine that Donald ever catches his nephews with the birch branch, they turn into terrible child abuse.
Comedy often has a dark undercurrent.
Charlie Brown has two lesbian girlfriends? Wow, I had no idea. I thought Peppermint Patty liked “Chuck”, while Marcie tags along after her calling her “Sir”. Also, didn’t Charlie have a never-requite thing for “the little red-haired girl”, whose name only belatedly turned out to be Heather?
Incel “logic” is a never-ending confuzzlement.
Well, that’s true, but the next two shocked me even more, coming from an incel.
“His life isn’t that bad. But then, whose life is, really?”
@Prith kDar
Too much self awareness from them.
Actually I’m surprised I haven’t seen them try to claim Jon before. Yeah, he found success with the veterinarian eventually, but for most of the strip’s history basically his defining trait was his romantic haplessness.
Jon lacks the homicidal rage characteristic of the incels, though. He’d be more inclined to hang around the ForeverAlone subreddit.
Didn’t they get together in the movie? I guess it was a little bit ambiguous. But I also thought it was pretty clear throughout the series that Patty also kind of liked Doug as well, but (like Doug) was too shy to really act on it.
That was actually sort of a theme throughout the series – we only ever got to see inside Doug’s head, but it’s repeatedly emphasized that the other students largely share in his insecurities and struggles. Not a bad message for a Nicktoon.
I wonder how the incels would feel if they read Dog Sees God. It’s a play about the lives of the Peanuts kids in high school. It opens with Snoopy’s death and over the course of the play, Charlie Brown discovers that he’s actually gay. It’s a very good play that I highly recommend, although it’s also incredibly sad.
‘Charlie Brown, Poonslayer’ is not a take I’d ever have expected. I’m still not sure whether it’s awesome or creepy… it’s kinda both.
@BBBB
Just straight creepy bro. Ever breath, their very existence. Every single thing about these guys is creepy.
Must these guys taint everything they touch? I feel like they leave a thin layer of grime over everything.
@Mabret (née Laugher at Bigots)
Awww. That’s just about the sweetest thing anyone would (or — let’s face it — could) say about incels.