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Eric: On the other hand, at least they all wear clothes. I've never quite figured out how Suburban Jungle's clothing mores are supposed to work...
(From Kevin and Kell. Click on the thumbnail for full sized... wait a minute...)
By nature, I'm not easily disturbed by webcomics. I mean, I don't always agree with a webcomic or think a webcomic works, but it takes quite a bit to get to the point of "disturbed." When it does happen, it's as (or more) likely to happen from implication than from anything overt. (Admittedly, this may be my choice of reading material as much as anything.)
Well, as weird as it is to type these words, Kevin and Kell got there. I'm officially disturbed.
See, Dorothy, Kevin's mother (and militant herbivore... if that makes sense) is a physical therapist with a sports P.T. emphasis. As such, she was recruited (somewhat reluctantly) to help train and condition the Caliban Academy hunting team. She found the prospects repugnant at first, until it was explained that the hunting team never hunted rabbits (as they burrow, which makes for bad television). She therefore agreed to help their cardiovascular training.
Well, now the hunting coach has been injured, and it's up to Dorothy to take over....
...coaching... carnivores... to kill and eat herbivores.
Look, I'm willing to accept that this is a world where it's considered acceptable for one class of sentient being to attack, terrify, slaughter and consume another class of sentient being. I mean, heck. I'm open minded. Law of the jungle. Walk on two legs, not on four, to walk on four legs breaks the law. I'm down with Boingo too, you know.
But right here's the point where the implications become downright creepy. It's been established that killing someone neither in self defense nor for food is in fact murder on this world. So, given that the carnivores themselves aren't going to be breaking any laws, does that mean that Dorothy Kindle would be an accessory to murder?
Now, I know from Bill Holbrook. I suspect we're building (however slowly) to a dramatic reveal. Kevin and Kell's stock in trade is dramatic reveals. When Dorothy first met her half-wolf granddaughter, the resemblance between the two was remarked on -- as was Dorothy's hope to "steering" Coney towards being an exclusive herbivore. That, plus the ease and comfort that Kevin has had in the past with role playing carnivores (and "stalking" his herbivore prey) makes one suspect that Dorothy is herself part carnivore. (See also when Corrie the sheep, wearing wolf's clothing, became a cheerleader for the carnivore team.)
Still... building to that reveal by having Dorothy help coach people to kill and devour her class of species?
It's creepy, that's all.
(For the record, Angelique never creeped me out. She was eeeeevil. Evil gets to betray her species and class to get ahead. It's in the handbook.)
Posted by Eric Burns-White at August 22, 2006 12:37 AM
Comments
Comment from: Abby L. ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.websnark.com/nav-commenters.gif)
posted at August 22, 2006 3:48 AM
Huh. I see what you mean. But I can also see how Dorothy wouldn't think so... Since none of the prey animals are rabbits, and in an earlier strip she was shown to view the hunting of non-prey animals as 'getting rid of competition,' she might not have moral objections to it.
...It is a bit freaky, though...
Comment from: thok posted at August 22, 2006 3:52 AM
If this is building up to a dramatic reveal, one that would make more sense to me is that Dorothy had an affair with a carnivore (resulting in Kevin). That would tie in nicely with the upcoming Kevin in politics story and possibly even with the Danielle's going to have a really weird child story.
Although I'll agree that this comic was quite creepy.
Comment from: Nentuaby posted at August 22, 2006 4:58 AM
Eeeeyush. You got quite a bit further than me.
Definitely lost me at the "sentient beings slaughtering and eatinng each other" bit.
Comment from: Kaychsea posted at August 22, 2006 9:28 AM
But that's the point. They're not her species, they are taking out competition in her eyes.
Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at August 22, 2006 9:28 AM
"See, Dorothy, Kevin's mother (and militant herbivore... if that makes sense)"
If that doesn't make sense to you, you've not met enough vegetarians.
Actually, all this doesn't phase me. After all, she's shown remarkable abilities to gloss over something a carnivore is doing with her so long as she's not actually killing (like when Dorothy played badmitton with Rudy). She'd actually be taking a less active role in this one.
Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at August 22, 2006 9:54 AM
Holbrook's problem in K&K is that he just works his metaphors too hard, which makes them start to show cracks. Is cross-species marriage supposed to be inter-racial or same-sex? Is domestication homosexuality, or is cross-vorism? Etc. The reader is forced to pay too-close attention to the thin veneers he puts over his polictical statements, and then when the veneer is meant to be taken literally, it all comes apart in a mess of splinters and glue.
Comment from: ItsWalky posted at August 22, 2006 10:15 AM
What do you mean, Dorothy's not evil? She's a mother-in-law!
Comment from: elvedril posted at August 22, 2006 10:51 AM
Wait am I the only one bothered by the fact that every other problem is solved by the "heroes" literally hunting down and killing intelligent beings (or arranging them to get killed y others).
The one that got me was when the bat guy got charged with murder for eating bugs in some country he was flying through, where randomly attacking insect citizens was not allowed. Would have been an interesting story except that it ended in a rather creepy cop-out when the foreign prosecutor was simply jumped and killed in the middle of the court room. Yeah, that'll show those no-good foreigners to try to hold our citizens accountable for breaking laws they didn't even bother checking before flying into their territory. *eyeroll*
That last part probably bothers me more because everything in K&K is thinly veiled political commentary, and I can't help finding it even where it probably wasn't intended...
Comment from: Phil Kahn posted at August 22, 2006 11:29 AM
I wasn't even able to get past the sentient-beings hunting and eating other sentient beings angle, personally.
Comment from: Eric Burns posted at August 22, 2006 11:40 AM
I wasn't even able to get past the sentient-beings hunting and eating other sentient beings angle, personally.
See, that didn't bother me so much. I guess it's because it's endemic to the genre -- Suburban Jungle works the same way. Different animals have different diets, predation occurs, but society has rules to control it. (The "No Predation Allowed" rule at the Watering Hole bar, for example.)
Yeah, there's a degree that it works specifically because the webcartoonists say it works, but still.
Comment from: Brendan posted at August 22, 2006 12:03 PM
The thing about Suburban Jungle, though, is that there it's practiced as a necessary evil; in K&K, it's a sport.
Comment from: Egarwaen posted at August 22, 2006 12:58 PM
It's not just a sport in K&K. It's big business.
Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at August 22, 2006 1:17 PM
in K&K it's a fact of life that's a competition to some and a business to others. Like eating in our world is.
Comment from: elvedril posted at August 22, 2006 3:42 PM
Also in K&K it's not a necessary evil. We know that a carnivore can become a herbivore through a quick, cheap, and simple stomach operation. So much so that a kid still in school was able to swing it as if it was completely normal. Being a carnivore is a choosable evil.
Comment from: Miller posted at August 22, 2006 4:12 PM
I always have a lot of trouble getting past the whole predator/prey thing in these sorts of comics, but what ultimatly killed K&K for me was one too many revelations that two long-established characters were related to each other. If I lived in that comic, I'd be terrified to get romantically involved with anyone, for fear I'd find out six months later that it was really my aunt, or something.
Comment from: Doug Wykstra posted at August 22, 2006 5:51 PM
Well, when you put it that way, it is creepy, Eric. I have a hard time with a lot of comics like these, but for some reason, Pearls Before Swine just works for me. Maybe it's because Stephan Pastis is so straightforward about it: There are animals living in houses in the suburbs. The carnivores try to eat the herbivores. Since it's the suburbs, the police are only called when the carnivores cause a disturbance while trying to murder and devour their neighbors. Murder that doesn't wake the neighborhood is probably condoned, or would be if the carnivores were ever able to catch their prey, which they don't (because it's in papers, PBS always follows Bugs Bunny Laws).
Comment from: Michael Weaver posted at August 22, 2006 6:08 PM
Although I much prefer the "If it talks, don't eat it" rule myself, I can sometimes let this predation stuff slip by. After all, the same comics often have reasons for what they do. They can model speciesism to racism, and predators/prey to the class system. The cross-species mating things drive my inner biologist to tears, but even that can be ignored, since it's just a comic.
Then I run into something like this. As far as I'm concerned, when you set up a rule in a story, even a moral rule, you stick to it. When it gets broken, even in smallish ways like this, it worries me.
Murder bad, right? But not if they're doing something you don't like, I guess. Racism bad, right? But helping a predator group that doesn't hunt your specific species, well that's just fine and dandy. If they're not smart enough to burrow, let 'em run for the camera, right?
Ack.
Comment from: The Gneech posted at August 22, 2006 7:00 PM
For what it's worth, in -Suburban Jungle- I intended it to be creepy. The idea that "it's amazing what you can bring yourself to get used to" has always been one that fascinated me, and there are lots of societies, subcultures, and individuals who do things that I find just as freaky as predation if not more so.
Plus, well, I'm not a vegetarian, and I have no intention of becoming one; and I'd be mighty sad if I had to do without my leather jacket.
I'm wearing the tanned skin of a cow as a fashion statement, and nobody thinks twice about it. How creepy is THAT?
-The Gneech
Comment from: The Gneech posted at August 22, 2006 7:03 PM
PS: Bonus points for the Oingo Boingo reference, and an obscure one at that.
-TG
Comment from: kellandros posted at August 23, 2006 2:02 PM
Looking at the last few Freefall strips, I'm starting to see similarities with Kevin and Kell, more with the robots than Florence.
Where a bunch of strips appear to be more demonstrating a non-human culture's approach to human situations(robot form of first aid vs. the Wild as herd thinners outlet mall)
Comment from: quiller posted at August 23, 2006 7:04 PM
Is No Spill Blood that obscure? I mean all Boingo is obscure compared to Dead Man's Party, or Weird Science but it isn't Insects...
Of course, being able to make a Boingo reference and an HG Wells reference all it once is cool.
Comment from: B. Durbin posted at August 24, 2006 10:04 PM
Insects make me make me want to dance!
I never try to wrap my head too far around these things. I just go along for the ride.
Comment from: Wistful Dreamer posted at August 24, 2006 10:18 PM
I've always had a love/hate relationship with Kevin and Kell. On one hand, the characters are well distinguished, act on consistent personalities, and has a general friendly feel to it. On the other hand, even the most cursory examination of the logic of the comic causes the whole thing to fall away in threads.
The basic moral premise seems to be: it is really funny if a creature is caught and eaten, unless they happen to be part of the primary cast. It isn't preditor/prey related, it's just main character driven. Tiger boss about to reveal Kell's domestication? Have Connie eat him, everyone cheer! Fiona's wearing a sheep costume and is about to be eaten by puma's? Oh No! Better have Corrie's predator nature surface out of left field and eat them! I think it's best exemplified by the current comic: forget about the fact that the moose is being chased to be eaten, he just ran into the team coach, somebody get him an ambulance! (Anyone else notice that the coach is a male calico? Does he have Klinefelter syndrome or is this like that new barnyard movie with male cows with udders?).
Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at August 24, 2006 11:57 PM
They explicity say he's a male calico early on. They've never gone into it much, but presumably he is sterile like the few male calicos in real life that manage to survive. From what little I know of feline genetics, it is possible for that to happen without the feline version of Kleinfelter's kicking in, but it happens less than 1% of the time.
Comment from: Wistful Dreamer posted at August 25, 2006 8:12 PM
How? Calico coloration is a Barr body distribution effect. If they didn't have some form of polysomy X, they would simply be normal 'white+one color' marked cats, right?
Comment from: 32_footsteps posted at August 25, 2006 11:01 PM
Well, here's a good article I've found on the subject of male calico cats:
http://messybeast.com/mosaicism.htm
One prospect that's mentioned early on is a genetic chimera, which could also result (depending on which genes kick in where) in a fertile male calico.
Another is simple mutation, where some of the cells undergo a mutation to produce different colors of fur. That can produce a calico cat depending on when the mutation occured.
There's a few other possibilities that arise, but apparently the belief is that chimerical cats explain most of the male calicos out there, at least according to modern belief.
Comment from: abb3w posted at August 26, 2006 7:44 AM
I've never quite figured out how Suburban Jungle's clothing mores are supposed to work...
FWIW, that's effectively summed up here: "clothing optional". You like pants, you wear pants. Not a fan? Skip em. They're worn mostly for fashion, not climate protection, since most species still have fur. There seem to be a few practical exceptions. Similar to the "no predation" rule in bars, evidently swimsuits are required in at least some pools. (Perhaps as some minimal attempt to cut down on the fur in the pool filters?)
Still, that doesn't explain what the local appeal would be of a "Lions and Tigers Go Bare, Oh My!" photoshoot would be, unless they're doing a bit more than going bare. Or it may be there are some folk who are a bit weird-wired, just like here.
Comment from: otter posted at September 4, 2006 10:40 PM
Re: male calico, what about Klinefelter mosaicism? Rare, but it would explain a) fertility and b) the mostly cosmetic level of expressivity.
(I don't really follow K&K. When I read the archives a while ago, though, I thought there was something interesting going on there, something a little deeper than "these situations are sort of like human situations" and more a flirtation with the uncanny valley
Comment from: otter posted at September 4, 2006 10:40 PM
Re: male calico, what about Klinefelter mosaicism? Rare, but it would explain a) fertility and b) the mostly cosmetic level of expressivity.
(I don't really follow K&K. When I read the archives a while ago, though, I thought there was something interesting going on there, something a little deeper than "these situations are sort of like human situations" and more a flirtation with the uncanny valley
Comment from: otter posted at September 4, 2006 10:40 PM
Re: male calico, what about Klinefelter mosaicism? Rare, but it would explain a) fertility and b) the mostly cosmetic level of expressivity.
(I don't really follow K&K. When I read the archives a while ago, though, I thought there was something interesting going on there, something a little deeper than "these situations are sort of like human situations" and more a flirtation with the uncanny valley
Comment from: otter posted at September 4, 2006 10:43 PM
Oh, for Christ's sake. Not only was that a triple post, but someone wrote about mosaicism about five lines up from me. Just haul me out back and shoot me.
(the post is supposed to end "the uncanny valley of relationships and societal organization," if anyone was still reading by that point)
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