am i allowed to not like the petty theft comic (or the artist tbh), AND think it's a massive scumball move for anyone to escalate into fucking weirdo parodies and art theft and general harassment

if anything i'm even more mad at all these fuckers because now anything i think has to be couched in "and also those guys are assholes"

i do not understand what kind of reaction the author is going for though, because she seems to have a habit of making comics about herself being a smug asshole for no reason and then that's the end, that's the whole comic. is she not aware this is how her protags look, or

like it puts a real bad taste in my mouth that the protag starts out doing something Relatable — ha ha, i get art block too! — and then their first interaction with another person, who is being perfectly nice to them, is this unprompted smug pity which goes completely unexamined

is that... is that what the artist thinks everyone's inner monologue is like? is it supposed to be so exaggerated and absurd as to be comical? i don't know because we immediately move on to petty theft (?!), so that lone thought bubble is left hanging

and then the punchline is back to the relatable part, the art block, which remains despite the protag having done absolutely nothing that would resolve it. it's not even ironic since it's not like sweeping pens into your bag takes a ton of time or effort

so it FEELS like the only point of bringing us back to the art block is to make ot relatable again, to put me in the protag's shoes. but at this point i don't like /anything/ i know about them so this is just weird and uncomfortable

but if i try to reread it assuming that i'm not supposed to take issue with shoplifting or looking down on retail workers, then the comic is just a few non sequiturs. so i don't get it. i don't understand what i'm supposed to take away, what i'm supposed to feel

and this was drawn against a backdrop of having already endured several rounds of (/vastly/ disproportionate) harassment for drawing comics about a character being a smug asshole, which makes it all the more baffling. is there some fundamental miscommunication here