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 Post Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2023 4:32 pm 
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Like I'm doing another re-read and god it's hard to feel bad for her a lot of the time. Like she'll go out of her way to make things harder for herself and everyone around her.

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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 4:51 am 
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That's part of what make her interesting. In many aspect, she can be very superficial, even shallow, but when things get though, she always prioritizes her friends... Friend? You look back and you can see she really cares about Zoe and value her friendship. There a few things she put above her, if any.

And more often than not, she is the voice of reason, the true straight-man while Zoe might be more of a false straight-man, more than likely to be dragged down with the zaniness they often encounter than she'd like to admit. we have seen Gwynn being pushed to her limit several time and in those extreme, she always acted as a good person and tried to do the right thing, even if she'll make a point to remains as savvy as she can for as long as she can. When there is no other option, she will actually be ready to sacrifice herself, but make really sure first there effectively is no other option.

Her relationship with Torg is also interesting, because, while it might look just plain antagonistic, at first glance, once you take out Torg's crazier aspects of his life, you realise they have a lot of hobbies and interests in common and if they weren't so keen on pushing each other's buttons, they could get quite well along with each other more often. You could try to look at it from an objective point of view and claim that Torg has much more reason to have grievance toward Gwynn than the other way around, but you have to also acknowledge that Torg actually enjoy taking advantage of that and dangling it under her nose. And also, again, there is Zoe, which they both care about.

About that, maybe it's just me and internet has rotten my mind to a point I can't recognise a friendship relationship for its own merit, and it's likely it wasn't Pete's initial intent, but I sometimes think that Gwynn's caring for Zoe goes beyond just that. Mind you we all know how boy-crazed she can be, but the possibility of one exception is not forbidden and that one wouldn't surprise me. Then again, it might be just me reading too much into this, but it would recontextualise her antagonism with Torg quite a bit.

Her relationship with Riff is crotch-abuse based, but she has been working on that aspect.

To come back to and answer your question, she might not be mean to be likeable, at least not at first, but she is definitely meant to be interesting and she definitely is.


Last edited by GUIGUI on Tue Jun 20, 2023 11:55 am, edited 11 times in total.
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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 9:25 am 
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I agree that the role that Gwen's character has established over the years is the one of reason in the group. This isn't always the case, as we know that she will go to lengths with magic in the book etc.

However, her mindset often seems more realistic. For example, it was realistic of her to accept that Zoe and Riff had been killed in the explosion. She acted as a counter to Torg's hope that they were alive and even Riff's fear that Zoe was alive but in constant pain.

She is the outside perspective, often literally, as her stories are more often about herself than the group, and she often is only tangentially or reluctantly involved in their endeavors. She still gets real world jobs occasionally.

She also hasn't foregone individuals in the rest of the world. Even in Mohkadun, she sought to find her place within the society of that world, while the others tend to find ways to exist outside of it. Tellingly, in the Anima dimension, she got to make cheese while Zoe was a seer and Torg and Riff for monster slayers.

Most of the time, in other dimensions and other countries, Torg and Riff are concerned about the gang or the big picture of saving the world. Meanwhile, Gwynn finds other individuals to love, and those individuals become unique and important, like Marco in Poland, and are her motivation.

So, does she may not always be likable, she is interesting, as GUIGUI said, and she plays an important role and keeps the group grounded by treating whatever reality they exist in as reality...

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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 10:12 am 
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Her personality is partially plot-driven.

- The bug had to make her feel isolated from the world.

- It's easy to hate sluggy gang as an outsider looking in with all the crazy @$@# that they get into. It's impossible to live a normal, safe life around them.

- She still needs ONE connection that she can hang onto, to keep her sane and connected to the world. Her best friend, Zoe.

- Sluggy has never been a romance-based strip. They can just do things for plots and lols, which we have TONS of. One Torg-Zoe-based will-they-won't-they plot is moooore than enough (for me at least). Besides, it's hard to date when there's a world-ending bug in you.

- Did you ever objectively look at any of your circle of friends, family, or even work-related social circles and think "Yeah, it's kinda weird that we spend this much time together given that we don't have that much in common"? All normal human behaviour. Social circles are weird.

Anyway, yeah. All that to say that no, she's not particularly likeable most of the time. But it's not weird that she's in the group, and that they all get along, fight, etc. despite her lack of likeability.

I like that she's in the gang, but I don't particularly like her. And I like that I don't particularly like her. She's very likeable in her non-likeability.

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 Post Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2023 6:08 pm 
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Spirantz wrote:
Her personality is partially plot-driven.

That's a good way to put it! Her character is set up to react, whether it be to the bug or the gang's shenanigans, whereas Riff or Torg's actions drive the plot itself forward.

For example, in 4U City, where nothing would have changed without Riff's interference, or in Torg's stragems from the R&D Wars through the Oasis storyline resolution, what they do determines the plot.

That's why the current storyline, with Gwynn taking significant action to shift the plot, is so refreshing. We're used to Torg and Riff's methods, but less so with Gwynn's... We'll see where it leads us!

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 Post Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2023 1:44 pm 
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Like I'm re-reading Kesandru's Well and it got to the point where they found out Gwynn hid the money from the halloween party and she frames it as "they're mad at me now, shows you who your real friends are" and it's like you literally let your friends starve for months in a house with no electricity because you refused to share the money. You don't get to pull that card.

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 Post Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2023 3:24 am 
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maslego wrote:
Like I'm re-reading Kesandru's Well and it got to the point where they found out Gwynn hid the money from the halloween party and she frames it as "they're mad at me now, shows you who your real friends are" and it's like you literally let your friends starve for months in a house with no electricity because you refused to share the money. You don't get to pull that card.

Oh, she can be self-centred alright, to the point of being completely oblivious to what the ones around her might need and feel about how she behave, no argument about that there.

But when push comes to shoves she can not only grow self-awareness to realise her mistakes
(from the very same arc)
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but will also not hesitate to jump a her friends's rescue if she can do something about it.
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And she'll even consider self-sacrifice if she sees it as the only way (but only then).
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But that requires that she is made aware of such need in the first place and her self-centred, self pity-party attitude don't always make it easy for her to reach that point.


Last edited by GUIGUI on Fri May 12, 2023 9:34 am, edited 3 times in total.
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 Post Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2023 11:24 pm 
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Yeah, that just drives my point in harder. Weird stuff happens around her, or she does awkward stuff to push the relationships and plot forward.

Another way of looking at it is that the plot revolves around her a lot. She gets more than her fair share of attention from Pete!

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 Post Posted: Wed May 10, 2023 2:57 pm 
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Just got to Mohkadun again and GOD Gwynn's annoying in this. She spends most of the time in the past complaining about shoes and when Kron is explaining the whole revolution thing she's just thinking about diamonds.

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 Post Posted: Thu May 11, 2023 5:38 am 
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Interestingly enough, I think this is the arc where she mature the most.

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 Post Posted: Fri May 12, 2023 9:13 am 
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GUIGUI wrote:
Interestingly enough, I think this is the arc where she mature the most.

Gwynn's character development arc has been slow and long compared to Riff and Torg's particularly...

Perhaps in part because she's generally had to deal more with the real world than the others, having jobs, for example, instead of top secret science. Her magical actions have generally been personal... (Feeling this out as I write it). She reacts more than she strategically acts, perhaps

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 Post Posted: Wed May 17, 2023 12:31 am 
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I would put it this way: I don't always find Gwynn likable, but I do sympathize with her.

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 Post Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2023 12:29 pm 
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I kind of lost most of my respect for Gwynn during the Evil Plant Zombies arc, when we find out that she's a jerk to Torg all the time, and is a jerk about Torg to Zoe, because she's just so jealous that Torg is generally a good, happy person.

Like, that's some seriously messed-up stuff. Torg has saved the world, and your rear-end, multiple times over decades and you're still mean to him because... he's nice? I don't even know what mental illness that would fall under.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2023 6:13 am 
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It doesn't help that in early comics she gets assigned some pretty blah stereotypes that dump her into an antagonistic role more often than is fair. She starts out as Riff's cartoonishly jealous girlfriend, and sits for a while in "valley girl doing petty witchcraft" mode. Over time I think a loooot of work was put in by Pete to try and pull Gwynn out of that as a character and become a little more rounded, but since it's a foundational aspect of how she was written it still follows her around even now.

Even rounded Gwynn is depicted as a bit selfish/self-centered but I see it more as a character flaw than a flaw in her writing, so to speak. It's pretty clear that it's borne of her insecurities, and fear of being vulnerable around others.

VoxAdActa wrote:
I kind of lost most of my respect for Gwynn during the Evil Plant Zombies arc, when we find out that she's a jerk to Torg all the time, and is a jerk about Torg to Zoe, because she's just so jealous that Torg is generally a good, happy person.


The Flower arc shows that she has some jealousy still there regarding Torg that's frustrating to see after she's made so much progress, but I thiiiink it's because she's in love(?) with Zoe. It's hard to tell if Gwynn's attracted to her - her sex life has been almost nonexistent for most of the comic - or if it's more of a sibling love. But either way it's clear she's very protective of Zoe to the point that - aware that this relationship has become serious - she felt the need to vet Torg. And yes that can be annoying too, in the same way a suspicious dad being protective of his daughter is annoying. I think there's gonna have to come a point where Gwynn needs to open up about her honest feelings about Zoe and the group as a whole, and tbh I think it's pretty soon, assuming she gets through this arc without being trapped inside the book or somehow otherwise separated from them.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2023 11:19 am 
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Yodimus_Prime wrote:
(...)
her sex life has been almost nonexistent for most of the comic
(...)
We can tell she can be rather easily boy-crazed, with the most recent example being Kron (though she develop true feeling for him latter on).


It's interesting that the Captain Botanical arc is brought up, as it actually has Gwynn showcasing her most forward thinking and actual care for consequences in the grand schemes of things.
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But more significantly, it also shows her actual progress on how she sees Torg. Her dislike for him stems from thinking that he was an asshole and a jerk, so of course she couldn't stand him, especially as no one want their friend dating an asshole ever, so wanting to end this relationship, regardless of how you feel about that friend, is only natural. But she has come to see other aspects of him and learn to appreciate him better, especially during this arc.
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Mind you, it's not a straight line, as it's more often two steps forward and one step back. And like I have said before, Torg just know how to push her buttons. It comes at ease for him, sometimes unwittingly...
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It's a work in progress, really.
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Last edited by GUIGUI on Sun Jun 18, 2023 12:16 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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