Page 45. Time for bed.
And this is when I tell everyone that I am taking off the rest of December’s update days to finish other projects. I know, I know. If you think I’m blueballing you, pay attention to my Twitter and Tumblr and you’ll see something there soon that you’ll enjoy. OHS will resume January 5th. Happy holidays!
Gah! No fair! Lol, this chapter was gettin’ so close to NSFW :3 Brendan better teach Al a lesson…in bed!
Zodiac! O.O
XD My sister can be such a perv. Anyhow, I was sitting in geometry class with my heart hammering because I was expected Al to be naked XD UGH! All of my favorite things are postponed until January D:
I was actually expecting angrier talk or an actual serious fight to start. Even if we have t wait until January the 5th (which is just around the corner, really) I like to have this last panel to look at during the rest of December (and maybe draw something inspired by it, hum)
Have a nice time, Blue :)
Oh man, and it’s not even Christmas yet! Thanks, Blue!
Uh-oh.
I mean, at least they’re not fighting, but this reminds me of when Brendan said he could “fix” that Al doesn’t get along with people. Al can be standoffish, but in some ways he’s very passive and eager to please. But how far can he be pushed, I wonder?
“You need to work on being more assertive.”
“Okay, I’ll always do what you say.”
Missing the point a little, or at least jokingly stepping around it. :-}
THIS is how you make up for wrongdoings. World leaders take note.
I want to point out the last panel with the scratches(?) on Al’s upper armpit area. Is it just me or it’s a lot more there than last time…
gah, you have good eyes!
however, i am inclined to note that this is the first time these skritches—al’s self-harming wounds/scarring**—are this visible (even though i didn’t catch them, before you had pointed them out, Yoshter), in alastair’s timeline; as something of a “subsidiary,” those skritches are also slightly visible in panel 2 (which is why i deliberate, that at present, the marks have remained the same as they had last appeared)
** assuming, of course, they’re not actually one of the symptoms of That Which Afflicted Al
There are six marks, and the number has not changed since the last time we’ve seen them.
I’d never noticed them, wow :O
RAWR.
Ugh I feel so conflicted about appreciating Al’s beefbus body while knowing it’s not the body Al wants.
i’m intrigued by the possibility, that in spite of al’s not wanting “that body,” he certainly hasn’t done anything to get his visagé, his æsthetiqué more aligned with [the “culturally-normative”] appearance of that gender, which is theorized al desires
======
of course, my experience and knowledge is not that vast, in the gender|queer spectrum of That Which Is Not-Heterosexual/Heteronormative.. ..which is what leads me to believe, that the (vast) majority of individuals who [feel they were born in the “wrong” body] typically tend to take measures to ‘fix’ that.. ..or, at the very least, not take themselves further away from that “ideal.”
I just want to point out that we don’t technically know that Al *has* the same gender issues as Sulla. Sulla felt that she was created in the wrong body, but that’s not necessarily the same case for Al. So far, the comic seems to suggest that Sulla and Al are NOT the same person, despite Brendon’s original intentions.
My reading so far is that Al’s issues are more on the internalized homophobia side of things than the gender dysphoria side. I could be totally wrong, of course. Only time will tell.
that is correct, GrandR
i DO feel confident enough—based on what blue’s thus far presented—to assert that Al definitely “identifies,” in some notable-measure, with what some might describe, as (part of) his ‘feminine’ side.
or, rather, that, Al has an “affinity” for the [culturally-normative] female image, and a ‘different’ sort of appreciation for the Female Gender.
al is one of those queers.
(heh heh heh.)
perhaps, after all, Deep Inside, our ‘true al’ is quite the docile, submissive person (though neither of these qualities, of course, are “inherent” to the ‘fair gender’) — in direct opposition to the Gruffness he is fond of projecting (perhaps to thwart Suspicion).
in which case, then, we’d have to ask, (if al feels he’s playing up to his ‘feminine side’ more, in being “that way”), who taught him that’s how Women are?
perhaps, then, his resentment of Lucille stems from her not falling within that Ideal alastair has.
======
i don’t currently sense gender dysphoria in our “beefbus” focal character; as i said before: if al does, secretly, want to be a woman, blue has not made this desire explicitly clear to her audience.
***
it’s cool if al doesn’t even want to talk about This with his little buddy, bren-bren.
(an aside: we don’t know how “experienced,” with other members of his sex/gender, al was.
so, if brendan is al’s first In Flesh {doubtful}, or al’s 698th. . . . .
. . . . .i think it is safe to say, al’s not so very “experienced,” since he hadn’t ‘figured it out’ by the time he hooked up with The Young Dynamo up there)
but, not even an “Verbalized Inner Monologue” Panel has yet grazed this story.
***
if it is her preference to obscure this ‘particular,’ about Al, until she feels it is opportune to Reveal, then of course blue may do so.
i’ve challenged blue to “Word of God” me, but miss delliquanti tends to be a shy one, rarely coming out, except to break up the occasional skirmish on her comment section
l.m.f.a.o.
I think you’re using words that are trying to typify a trans experience. Also: I very much want to note that Gender Dysphoria is not synonymous with a trans experience.
To me, Al’s experience has plenty of elements that hint that he might in fact be trans. One of the biggest things is actually related to Lucille and his apparent dislike of her. Lucille is a woman who was (born?) with a body that falls well outside the standards of what an idealized body (especially a “female” body – thanks, misogyny!) is “supposed” to look like. And yet she is completely comfortable and happy with her situation, even going to the point of improving her situation. For Al, if he identifies as female, her situation is how he wishes he could approach his own situation. And when he can’t, he feels powerless and removed and so his frustration turns into dislike. It’s a form of jealousy that many trans people are familiar with – people who don’t pass as well are sometimes jealous of those who do, and there’s often the frequent implications of society that seek to undermine their existence, and they might envy those who don’t have to deal with that constantly.
And obviously whatever happened in Al’s past could be even more specific about his dislike. There might even be the level of jealousy that his attraction to guys would be deemed acceptable if he was recognized as the correct gender.
Ultimately, we won’t know for sure until it’s revealed, but there is plenty there to suggest that he might be. Trans narratives aren’t this thing that follows some textbook, and it really has nothing to do with wanting to align yourself with society’s ideas of what your gender is supposed to be. There are transwomen who hate wearing dresses and like things that we consider masculine things like working on cars, and transmen who love being feminine (but are still men). Some transpeople can be completely comfortable in their bodies, while clearly others aren’t. And that’s not even considering non-binary folks, who aren’t even given a “model” to work for by society.
nommie, i’ll have to see you at ( http://ohumanstar.boards.net/ )
you’ll dance with me, there, i hope?
We still don’t know exactly what’s not right with Al. Body dysmorphia? Bad parents? Someone said the wrong thing at the right time? What we know is that this is a story about Al, remade in his own image, back to finish saving mankind from death and old age.
I know if you get 100 people with gender issues together, you’ll hear 100 different stories. Everyone wants what they want. And that’s not including furries(which would be a different comic).
in my opinion, blue is the kind of author who will, for the sake of her audience, throw a curveball our way
even if it has to take years to accomplish
;-D
Somehow the poster is key. The woman in the poster means something to Al, and we haven’t been told what it is. Ideal mother? Ideal self? Jungian Anima? It is a powerful symbol to Al; it comes to him in flashback when he is waking from death. All our guesses will fail for lack of that key, so I’m gonna just assume that, like the rest of the world, we won’t hear Al’s secret until he is ready to tell it.
I got stuck on page 42 because the next arrow never worked to show me the next page. Please make sure to have the next arrow work when you post new pages! I thought you were on hiatus for 3 weeks without any news or info about it.
I’ll look into the issue, but in the past this has often been solved by clearing a cache on the reader’s end. If you are uncertain whether or not I’m on hiatus, I keep readers up to date on my Twitter or Tumblr, so those may be good places to check in the future. Thanks for letting me know about the issue!
Can we just take a moment to admire the adorable hairy belly Al has?
i really am piqued by the idea of Old Al playing “sub” to young brendan, y’know.
blue, i’m not sure whether to laud you infinitely or to cry “bloody murder” for your timing of this hiatus.
one thing is for certain: i will be waiting with bated breath, verily.
i need my “fix,” y’know.
actually, i didn’t know al had been taking up the “igor” role in their relationship … or, should i amend, had been submitting to The Young Dynamo.
:-(
there is so much i don’t know, in the back story!!
but, what i do know is, i don’t feel allie has yet properly atoned for his ‘sin,’ as it were.
though i do understand, the “circumstance” under which the transgression occurred was extraördinary: al does not know, the next time he’ll get multiple-millions of dollars contributed towards their work; however, al is quite cognizant that brendan won’t be too thrilled if this “opportunity” to furtherly-advance Their Word is lost.
and, if the missus ain’t happy, he won’t be happy.
We know Al is inexperienced and that Brendan had to lead when they first danced. Here’s Al making the first move. Bravo, Al! Reach out to him. Don’t be such a dork all the time.
Hmmm, I wonder if they can replicate Brendan into the huge Gimel in time for the demonstration Saturday? “Cower, puny hu-mans! Who’s a little spokesman now?”
(that would be an “alternate timeline” sorta scenario there, scrod
{silly})
it is likely, brendan shall elegantly put Colonel Lee into his proper place.
or, we might finally be witness to seeing the “beginning of the end,” in which al was all by himself, at the opening of this story
======
brendan seems taken aback by allie’s declaration, that al actually does put the old college try into obliging his little buddy.
(apparently this was news to brendan, too.)
this is another part of the story, which we have yet to personally witness
One of the best things about Sulla is that gender wasn’t allowed to become an issue. You want to change? OK. Well, if you’re sure you won’t want to change back in two days, OK. And then he just fixed it.
God, people jump off bridges over this issue. They go for plastic surgery that still can’t give them gender-appropriate glands. They agonize and feel guilt and fear. Sulla skipped all that. THAT is what Al is, and what Al means to mankind. Any body you like, no big deal, and we all live forever.
oh.my.god
Brendan’s FACE on that last panel sfhjshdfhjdf can’t wait till the 5th<3
Look forward to seeing what else you are working on – OHS takes a break just before I fly over to MN from the UK, then resumes the day before I get back ^_^ Hopefully going to visit the Foshay Tower and the library, after first seeing them both here!
Hugs make everything better. ;_;
Interesting trends across the webcomicverse lately. Questionable Content for example; without any noticeable drama, Marten is now dating a trans girl. In SINFEST, the Devil Guy is losing control of his Fembot factory due to women’s lib. And the creator of MAGELLAN has changed gender in the middle of a story!
I just discovered this comic. I spent the entire night reading every page. Its’s great!
Hey! I did the exact same thing on the exact same day!
The desire for more story to consume is killer.
Ahaa, and here I thought a terrible, ugly, huge fight was building up. I’m so glad it’s settled (for now).
Happy holidays, Blue!
I am so glad you did the comic for Oh Joy Sex Toy! Just spent the last few hours reading all of this, and I’m so in love.
Hmm. Just stayed up all night reading this, after the guest comic on Oh Joy Sex Toy, which was gorgeous!!
Now, onto the comic and the discussion of Al’s gender…
I’m not an expert and obviously haven’t studied the comic as much as others, but frankly I would be surprised if Al does identify as having a stronger female lean than a masculine one for his* gender. I feel like the case with Sulla is making a point not so much about Al and his* gender as much as making a point about the idea of Nature vs Nurture. (*using male pronouns for now for Al.)
Remember how when they first talked about it at the bench during lunch? The idea was that the copy was entirely different from the original as soon as any time passed between them, due to different experiences. (Again, Nature vs Nurture being a central theme.) Only the framework was the same between the robotic clone and the human original, because as soon as that clone turned on, they would have different experiences than the original. So I think of the case of Al and Sully more like identical twins; they have the same DNA, but their different experiences would make them entirely different people. So just because one twin realizes that his/her/their gender does not match up with the sex he/she/they were born with, does not mean that the other will as well.
Of course, the issue with Sully having some of Al’s memories in dream-form does possibly ruin this theory, but I’m going to throw my thoughts out there. I’m also definitely someone who believes more “strength” lies in the nurture side of life vs nature, so someone who believe opposite would disagree.
As for the poster and the self-harm, I think both are tied in, in a way. The poster in particular reminds me of various portrayals of Venus, and therefore, love, beauty, sex, desire, fertility and prosperity. Almost all of those were, or are, missing from Al’s life, especially in the familial and friendship sense. He found romantic love, but it’s been clear that friendship and maternal and paternal love is something absent from him.
Which brings me finally to the possible self harm. While gender dysphoria as a cause, I doubt it, just because it doesn’t seem to be the case. I more think it might be either a case of body dysmorphic disorder that is not related to gender but due to his age relative to Brendan’s (which has been shown as a large and daunting problem for him), or a hate of his mental state, in that he has trouble not only relating to others, but especially in his difficulty of relating to Brendan and in predicting what he wants.
I’m actually wondering if Al might have a case of “savant syndrome” (not sure if there is a more proper term for this, so if I used a rude one, my apologies), and therefore, some disorders on the autism spectrum. This would explain his difficulty relating to others, his desire to work alone, and his great ability with robotics and technology.
I would agree that Sulla being female doesn’t necessitate that Al is also female, but I think that it’s important to remember/understand that a person’s gender is formed by the time they are 2-3 years old. So it’s not really “nurture” that influences a person’s gender, at least not in the way we usually think about it. The actions of a parent towards their child before 2-3 years old has been shown to not have any correlation to that child’s gender. This also points out how the assumptions that some have that trans people are trans because of some traumatic childhood experience is completely off base (tangential: trans folks are more likely to have had a traumatic experience than cis folks during childhood, but this has been attributed to the greater liklihood of society to treat trans children poorly).
Similarly, it’s certainly not a purely genetic thing either. Identical twins sometimes have different genders. I’m sure if we did human cloning research we would find that clones similarly don’t necessarily have the same gender as their progenitors.
What this implies is that it is something that develops in the brain or brain chemistry as part of the formation of self-identification (around the same time as a baby learns to recognize themself in a mirror). This would mean that the development of gender is likely influenced by chemical balances (hormonal balances, if you will), but is specifically shaped due to stimula that we don’t yet understand.
Quick little caveat, too: it’s not that a person’s gender doesn’t “match” their sex; that is a very common misconception about trans people (and about the intersections of sex and gender). Trans people are assigned the wrong gender at birth, while cis people weren’t assigned the wrong gender at birth. None of it has anything to do with their assigned sex, and especially has nothing to do with actual “biological sex” (which isn’t something we actually ever discuss when talking about humans). It may seem like I’m splitting hairs over semantics, but those semantics are actually really important. Putting it in relation to “assigned sex” is quite exclusive of intersex people and of non-binary folks, as it assumes that “assigned sex” is based on something realistic to the human experience, rather than the fact that “assigned sex” is just as random and ridiculous as assigning a gender at birth.
I see what you mean; I guess I was using the wrong terms, then. The reason I spoke the way I did because my trans friend told me that his sex is/was female but his gender was male-leaning (even if not entirely male on a binary scale), at least when he first told me he was trans. So I think/wonder if the usage of it is different amongst different people and different segments of people and communities; because I was just using it as he has taught me. He always talks about how gender and sex are two different things; he says that sex is what is on his medical forms and what his body “is”, but gender is who he really is. But this could just be a case of he was explaining it to me in a way my limited understanding would grasp at the time?
But even on a cultural anthropology level, I’m even more confused, honestly, since in my class (which ofc is not 100% accurate but at least covered gender as a societal construct and sex as a somewhat physical one) we disccused on several genders, such as how muxe are male “biological sex”, but muxe is gender.
So I’m a bit confused on what you mean by biological sex not existing, as I’ve never heard that being brought up in the LGBT community or with my friend, or in sexual/cultural anthropology classes. I mean, yes, it’s a random thing on a piece of paper, based on physical aspects and in many cases, whatever the doctors decide to go with because it looks the most right or whatever, but… Is that what you mean? Like because it’s just because the doctor going by what society says and therefore it doesn’t exist, or am I really misunderstanding you?
Again, I am not saying all or any of my sources on these are right, just explaining why I said what I did, the way I did. My friend specifically uses the term biological sex to explain trans to other people who don’t know what it is as well. I’m also not exactly knowledgeable on any of this so I’d appreciate help/corrections.
I also didn’t mean to say that how someone is raised influenced their gender, and I guess I don’t use nurture in the sense that is “commonly” used, so I made a mistake there and apologize for it. I more meant to explain how just because the two are biologically identical, it doesn’t mean their genders are or that their personalities and other aspects are. To me, nurture is anything someone experiences/thinks/feels after birth, aka, their hormones or whatever else influences us to identify the way we do about everything. So, again using the twins idea, to me, one identifying as male and another as a different gender would count as nurture instead of nature to me, because to me nature would just be their base DNA. But I definitely see where my phrasing could be considered harmful and is definitely misleading. Also please bear in mind that I could definitely be misremembering what my friend said, or misrepresenting him, or he explained it in a way that I would understand at the time using terms he might normally not have, etc. I just can’t know or speak for him.
Now that I’ve sat on it a bit, I’m wondering if the problem was that I said the word “match”, because it implies that someone who doesn’t have what I called their gender and sex line up is
mis-matched” and therefore “wrong”. But that wasn’t my intention at all. I more meant it in how I wouldn’t say a blonde matched a burnette. Or maybe just that I was using sex and gender as two things when it should be one because one of them shouldn’t matter? I am unsure…
I’m sorry if I offended anyone with what I said, or if I said anything harmful. It was not my intent at all.
Yo. I got here from Oh Joy Sex Toy. I came for the man lovin’ and I stayed for the feels. Seriously, I read this about four times. Here’s to like, a million more. :)
hey there… I’m sure there’s an obvious answer somewhere, so apologies for the possibly out-of-place question! is there a way to buy the “Volume 1” book (the one collecting the first 3 chapters) if, say, you only found out about this comic two days ago, way too late to get in on the kickstarter, but then read it beginning to end twice and started to read it a third time (before realizing you were going to mess up all your projects if you kept re-reading comics all stinkin day)? not that that happened to anybody I know. you know. just asking… :D
Volume One is at the printers now, and will become available for purchase in March. Just keep an eye on the posts and I’ll announce when they’re ready to go. Thanks for reading!
Just a general housekeeping post: I have a commenting system where certain comments may be held for moderation before they go live, and you may not see them right away. I try to be prompt about approval, but I do have a day job.
We’re getting to the point where comments are getting really really long. If you are interested in discussing OHS topics in a non-commenting format I encourage you to try using the forum. (http://ohumanstar.boards.net)
okay you guys.
i just poured my heart out at the boards, per blue’s suggestion.
i’d hate for all of my work to go fading in wind: a voice never heard.
so please go there.
failing that, i’ll re-try my post, on this site, by breaking it up into 2 or 3 parts.
let’s see what happens!
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
… Holy shit did he try to slash open his brachial artery?
Are those *suicide attempt scars*!? O_O;
The Surgeon General back there wants Al to be a superhuman genius who doesn’t really need the little people around him, as I understand. Which is a really weird thing to want. He so resents that the “nerd” and the “skirt” might actually have great things to offer, and he bends over backwards to construct a scenario that will prove to him the strapping big white man with the deep voice is the one who’s worth all those millions.
So I think you can see why Al would not try super hard to unpack all that for the general when he’s at the end of his spoons after an exhausting day of social pressures, Brendan. (I’m joking about the tone, of course it feels bad when the big jock dehumanizes you to your friend and he doesn’t stand up for you.)