2011-08-17: (scroll)

[Freemage]

For everyone saying they don't understand Penny's side of this equation....

You have to understand, Penny isn't necessarily bisexual in the usual terms. Hell, I'm not even sure she's Aggisexual.

She's ragesexual.

Don't believe me? Take a second look. There's a direct line between that comic and this one. I understand folks being uncomfortable, even disapproving. But the groundwork has been laid for a long, long time. This is not coming out of left field in the least.

[Alice Macher]

Don't believe me? Take a second look.

I C wut U did thar.

[BMPDynamite]

...Huh. Was not expecting that.

...Is it weird that all I can think to say here is: "Is THIS enough struggle for ya, Penny?" XD I'm thinking this will be MUCH more satisfying for her than last time.

*sigh* So predictable. So dull.

Was hoping for some actual conflict resolution....no such luck.

They'll get to it in a minute, when they're more relaxed and able to think without hormones clouding their judgment. Just let them ride this out first (OH GOD PUN).

Ahh, to be a teenager again :3

I am so glad that T did not change their relationship at all from where it started. Penny and Aggie were always meant to be rivals. There is nothing wrong with having your rival be your lover at the same time.

This. This with cherries on top. Thank you, McCleverly. This is HOW THEY ARE, and that is always going to be the case.

She's ragesexual.

Don't believe me? Take a second look. There's a direct line between that comic and this one. I understand folks being uncomfortable, even disapproving. But the groundwork has been laid for a long, long time. This is not coming out of left field in the least.

...Holy moose, you're right. I was WONDERING when that would come back. Yay re-strung threads!

[Zanosuke Kurosaki]

There is nothing wrong with having your rival be your lover at the same time.

I'm not sure Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy would agree with you. In fact, go suggest it to them. I could sell tickets to the resulting sequences of Transfigurations they use on you... XD

[CBrachyrhynchos]

I'm not feeling it because this entire episode has felt a bit rushed with too many dramatic mood swings, sometimes from panel to panel.

[Rowan Hawthorn]

Ele said: Well, actually, everything I just re-activated my account intending to post...

Seriously, at this point I'd be surprised if either Penny or Aggie is completely clear about her feelings for the other, and a combination of raging hormones and pent-up emotions is an explosive stew.

[greenglowinggoo]

For everyone saying they don't understand Penny's side of this equation....

You have to understand, Penny isn't necessarily bisexual in the usual terms. Hell, I'm not even sure she's Aggisexual.

She's ragesexual.

Don't believe me? Take a second look. There's a direct line between that comic and this one. I understand folks being uncomfortable, even disapproving. But the groundwork has been laid for a long, long time. This is not coming out of left field in the least.

Anger was never a big issue with her and Rich when they started doing it. I don't think it's the rage, but Penny gets off on powerful or forceful people. People who know what they want and go after it. Duane was too soft, but when he showed backbone, it got a reaction. Stan is basically a force of nature, and she reacted when he went in for the kiss. Rich is rich... Penny's angry here because Aggie isn't taking Penny's perceived (sudden and kinda arbitrary) need to get serious about THE FUTURE (uture uture uture). A sign of weakness to Penny, not the strong forceful person she expects Aggie to be. Penny takes what she said in this page very seriously.

[flmnmallow]

:shock:
...I'm sorry, but I just can't take this rubbish anymore and continue to be silent about it.

I feel like this superb webcomic ended (a little unresolved, but satisfying regardless) with the final page of the Popsicle War arc, and was spun-off into a disappointing and dull continuation. The only two shining things about P&A post-Popsicle War (to me) was Charlotte's ongoing storyline (even if the conclusion of it, the psychopath showdown, was a little farfetched-it was enjoyable and satisfying nonetheless), and the introduction of Lucy (who I would have loved to see Sara get together with-because unlike Sara/Daphne, Sara/Lucy had great chemistry). Everything else that's gone on in this comic aside from that has either had me yawning or rolling my eyes. I think this latest page is the straw that broke the camel's back for me, this is just ridiculous.

To be fair though, the Penny/Aggie pairing has been hard to swallow since its random beginnings when Penny suddenly got blushy around Aggie and shoved her new friend into dating to try and hide her apparently brand spank'n new lesbian feelings back in the Darren storyline. Aggie has shown signs of bisexuality from the very beginning; I'm not going to deny that because it's so clearly there. But Penny? Pre-Popsicle War there were NO signs whatsoever that she was swinging that way, every time there was talk about Penny/Aggie as lovers in the comic (all of which was from Sara, the at-the-time closet lesbian may I remind everyone)-it was done as a joke, not in a manner to be taken seriously. The only time it wasn't done as a joke was the 20 2020 Pennies storyline (which featured Penny as every possible type of person anyone could end up being, including a robot...so again, I doubt that was supposed to be taken seriously)-but the Penny/Aggie we saw there is a far cry from what's been smeared over our screens lately.

I would have loved to see Aggie with Lisa if they really wanted her to explore her sexuality, because they have that couple-chemistry (even with the lack of evidence supporting it pre-Popsicle War, it still seems so much more believable to me). Penny playing the role of Aggie's girlfriend just doesn't work though. It's felt so forced, that I'm practically choking on it. And it's gotten progressively worse as their so-called romance has "developed".

I could go on about the many things that have disappointed me and annoyed about this comic since The Popsicle War story arc ended, but I don't think I could stop the oncoming storm if I did. So I'll just let my frustration end here, and hope that rotten fruits and veggies don't get thrown at me for my honest opinion.

For the record, I agree with everything you just said.

I also want to add, and I really want to this in a way that is constructive feedback for T., so, here it goes:

It just feels like there was this point in P&A (arguably after the Popsicle War, possibly sometime after the Charlotte/Cyndi incident) that the comic fell through the proverbial rabbit hole and has never been the same since.

Everything feels “surreal” to me. P&A had a cast of significantly fleshed-out, wonderfully thoughtful characters. Their actions made sense in the context of their goals/ideals/personality traits, but now it feels as though P&A has suffered a case of the “body snatchers”. Who the hell are these characters and why are they acting this way?

While I understand a majority of the main characters are high school-aged teens that are growing up and changing, their resemblance to the characters pre-Popsicle War seems superficial at best. There are occasionally instances where the characters current actions actually mirror thought-processes from the past, though they feel few and far-between.

I have grown to love and loathe and care about these characters, and am sad to say it feels more and more like they are puppets being manipulated in ways they weren’t “made” for. These characters still had stories to share after the Popsicle War and it feels increasingly like they were plunked into an alternate universe rather than progressing naturally from where the Popsicle War/Cyndi Incident left off.

Everything feels jumbled, rushed and extremely forced. If this is intentional on T.’s part and is all “part of the plan”, I tip my hat to him, but I have to say, it feels more like “oh shit, the comic is drawing to a close and we need to wrap this up” rather than any grand masterminding. Like Penny said on Monday (or was it Friday?) “We’re running out of time”, and unfortunately, the comic very much feels that way.

I want to see P&A through to the end because I have been a fan for so long, but after the last few weeks (and especially today’s comic), I’m considering throwing in the towel.

I'm really not intending to offend anyone (especially T.), but this is how I've been feeling for a while, and it seems like I'm not the only one and wanted to share my thoughts. So... thanks in advance for reading and/or sharing your opinions.

[NobodySpecial]

In all seriousness, I get why people feel ooky about this panel. Hell, I feel ooky about this panel, if only for the seeming complete lack of control by either of them.

That said, my cerebral side also gets the arguments about why this works and why this happened that Freemage and others have put forward. (And it's really a testament to the writing that you CAN point to those, just like it was when the good ship Agenny first sailed oh so long ago.)

My main concern is that, after the afterglow, they will both realize that this is no way to run a healthy railroad. And it's much too late now to address that fact. So it looks to me like this is breakup sex, because one or both will realize that this can't go on like this.

[Alice Macher]

In retrospect--though without, of course, my knowing yet how it's all going to turn out--it seems to me that T set us up in "May" and "June" to expect a conventional same-sex schoolgirl romance, with the intent of subverting and complexifying it from "July" onwards.

Let me elaborate. In "May," we saw Penny acting very much like a coy, traditionally "feminine" suitor, with the clothes-matching and the grooming (if people still used cloth handkerchiefs nowadays, I could imagine Penny at that stage dropping it for Aggie to pick up ). Then she got a little bolder with the Switch game, and bolder still with the first kiss. All very sweet and romantic, with the starlit night backdrop and such. Moving into "June," we had both girls pondering what it all meant, talking with friends about their uncertainty as to where to take things after the kiss. Penny got bolder still with her innuendos and makeover ideas, but still very much within the genre conventions. The same with Aggie, when she began to take a more active stance, first with the jogging scene ("Just hold my hand") and then with her "come hither" invitation to Penny at Hawt Couture. Still sweet, still romantic, like how we'd expect girls in a "girls' love" story to act.

"July" seemingly began the same way, with Aggie's sonnet reflecting on how things have been with the two of them in the past and wondering where they may go in the future, and with the lovely illustrations of Penny accompanying it. "And then," to quote T's "Guide to this feature" blurb on his web page, "things get a little more complicated." The beach scene raised more than a few eyebrows with Aggie addressing Penny as "bitch," not the most conventional choice of endearing terms. The wrestling scene went over better with readers, as I recall, and yet, in hindsight, it was the first bit of foreshadowing that their relationship would take a more combatative turn, tinged with lingering rivalry and anger from their days as frenemies or even outright enemies.

Passing over the "death of Finister" scene which, while significant for their relationship, involved neither especially "sweet" nor especially "slap slap kiss" undertones, we come to "August" and their first sexual encounter. The moment where Aggie takes a dom role, telling Penny to struggle against her, taunting her with "You getting tired, bitch?" and licking her ear, was the first sign for me at the time that T was taking this relationship in a direction I hadn't expected. Although the scene ended with the two of them making love more gently, there was still the sense that this wouldn't be, as NobodySpecial put it, a "Harlequin romance."

And now, in the present scene, following a bitter fight amongst Penny, Aggie and friends, we're seeing that dynamic with a vengeance. Penny and Aggie, this time, aren't playing at being angry with, or fighting, each other; they are angry--enraged--with each other, and they are fighting, dirty, savagely, seemingly oblivious to where they are (Nick's study) and who might still be home. And yet they're clearly about to have mutually-initiated sex (they're both taking off their own clothes, so this isn't rape).

So...where is this going? Is this the template for how their relationship will be from now on, a love/hate, angry/tender dynamic? Is this the beginning of the end for them as a couple? (I doubt it, but I'd be lying if I denied it was a possibility.) Or is this where they finally get all their angries out, all their lingering tension and resentment and fear, and return to the kindler, gentler romance of "May" and "June?" I don't know. I suspect, as do a few others here, that it's going to be the first one. It seems from the Rumy/Rikk/Ally relationship in Fans and the current situation in P&A that for T, the love/hate, violent/gentle relationship as a fictional motif is more intriguing than the conventional storybook romance. If so, it's not how I'd imagined Agenny turning out, but then I'm not the one writing the comic, and while part of me still had hoped they'd be like the couple in my own fics (both the silly and serious ones), there's another part of me that genuinely likes being teased and shocked. Kudos to T for that.

[Ele]

In all seriousness, I get why people feel ooky about this panel. Hell, I feel ooky about this panel, if only for the seeming complete lack of control by either of them.

That said, my cerebral side also gets the arguments about why this works and why this happened that Freemage and others have put forward. (And it's really a testament to the writing that you CAN point to those, just like it was when the good ship Agenny first sailed oh so long ago.)

My main concern is that, after the afterglow, they will both realize that this is no way to run a healthy railroad. And it's much too late now to address that fact. So it looks to me like this is breakup sex, because one or both will realize that this can't go on like this.

I desperately hope you're wrong, but in my gut I think you're right.

[AngFdz]

Okay. After digesting my thoughts I guess I want to write them down.

I agree with a lot of people about how the whole Agenny thing seems forced, however if that's how T wanted the story to go, I'm accepting it as cannon.

I never believed their relationship until Aggie called Penny a bitch. It was just not real, and I couldn't see the attraction until that moment. But it's more understandable to me if part of what attracts them to each other is the fact that they're both incredibly strong personalities, and the fact that they've had this long rivalry going on. They're similar people, and at the same time very different... that's a lot of chemistry.When I was seeing the school-girl romance, that's when I didn't believe it. Especially Penny's side of it, that's what I had the hardest time with. Because she just seemed so straight, and without that kind of anger from Aggie I couldn't really understand the attraction. But as soon as it became clear that that was what it was really about, I began to understand.

I also agree with Alice, about how T might be trying to subvert that school girl romance genre. This relationship feels a lot more complicated. I guess the whole weird connection has really come into play in these latest chapters. The connection between Penny and Aggie, their rivalry... All of that. I can see that leading to this kind of sex, to these kind of problems.

But. But I am still totally confused about how they're getting here at this moment. I feel like both of them have unresolved frustrations that they're not talking about. Penny changing the subject from the Stan thing to the future thing is a big clue.

I guess I agree with Ele:

"What am I getting at? That this is a remarkably complex relationship and that’s based on only TWO MONTHS of comic time. You have two teenage girls still feeling their way through a relationship neither of them expected to be in: two former sworn enemies now contemplating building a life together. They don’t yet fully understand how to relate to one another, though they’ve made huge strides in this area. They don’t yet fully know what they mean to one another, though they’ve made a lot of progress. They DO know how to fight. They know how to push each other’s buttons and how to get a rise out of one another, though whereas once that led to soda in the face now it leads to sex. Why aren’t they sitting down and having a rational discussion, people are asking? Because that’s not who either of them are, and that’s not the way their relationship has ever worked except during that brief span when they didn’t know how to act around one another. Why isn’t their relationship progressing in a loving, nurturing, romantic fashion? Because they’ve never had that kind of relationship. That DOESN’T mean it can’t take on more and more of those aspects as time goes by, but they’re never going to have a “traditional” romantic relationship, because they’ve never had a traditional friendly relationship."

I've never been a huge part of the Penny and Aggie ship, but this is... an interesting way to develop their relationship. It feels real. And even though I'm totally baffled at this page, it's more like I'm baffled at what they're doing as people, not because of a misrepresentation of character.

I think there's a lot more going on here than just 'I'm mad, now I want to bang you'. Mainly it has to do with... I think someone mentioned this earlier but I don't remember who, but the fact that they really need to stop playing house if they want this to work. They really need to see each other.

ALSO, they're both changing a lot anyway. Who they are as people isn't solidified yet. It's a huge challenge to maintain a sort of volatile relationship during this stage of your life. They might be able to do it, but who knows. This might end in tears, yet.

[Fhqwhgads]

I'm still not sure what to think.

I posted this in the daily strip thread but I think it got taken as a rhetorical question: Is Aggie seriously delivering a right hook in the upper right corner of this strip?

Momentum from the girls fall onto the desk has carried their arms over and behind it.

But as long as they're not actually punching each other, I'll stick around for it.

[Zanosuke Kurosaki]

I think there's a lot more going on here than just 'I'm mad, now I want to bang you'. Mainly it has to do with... I think someone mentioned this earlier but I don't remember who, but the fact that they really need to stop playing house if they want this to work. They really need to see each other.

I think that was me. I've lived through or seen my friends go through just enough bad relationships and attempts at such where they just didn't work because one or the other of us/them just didn't quite see the whole of our/their personalities. As such, Lisa's words resonated strongly enough with me that I honestly believe that people who aren't really seeing each other, are headed for trouble (and I'm grateful for Lisa's words, because now I have a much better way to express something I was already starting to believe, just couldn't find the proper expression for.)

Also, and this is a biggie (and it's where some of my emphasis on "Penny's not been growing enough" comes in), one of the biggest tricks to seeing others clearly is to see yourself clearly. No illusions, no self-deceptions, no justifications, no excuses. It's why say, Katy-Ann and Jack, can work out better than Penny and Aggie, right now. KA+J have been working very hard on seeing each other and themselves. P+A, not so much. I think Aggie has a much clearer view of herself than Penny does, and Penny is only now coming around to realizing she's not been thinking about things nearly enough, and will probably start extending that into some introspection, too. Heck, it's why Stan and Brandi failed. Brandi, by her own admission, saw Stan perfectly clearly, but kept putting off that look in the mirror for herself, and so got a nasty shock when they both smacked headfirst into something that outright forced her to take a closer look at what she was willing to do/not do/etc, to be with him. And yet, *Stan* is blamed for that... =P

[rebochan]

So...we're just kind of ditching the storyline for...fan service. For the lesbian BDSM crowd.

...k. I...okay.

I dunno, I feel like Aggie should be...I dunno, making a sanctimonious speech the entire time just to stay in character? Is that the right feeling?

So I guess I should ask why the comic so obviously condemned Nick and Melody's sex-fueled relationship and is totally onboard with Agenny doing exactly that. It's not like they've got anything besides the apparently similar sexual tastes.