Here's a link to today's strip
As he struggles to stow Summer's crutches in the back of their tiny Batiukmobile®, Les halfheartedly opines that maybe a basketball career isn't in the cards for his daughter. Plucky Summer sees through his BS, and shuts him up with a non-sequitur which I'm convinced Batiuk found over at tvtropes.org. I was so excited when I saw this that I posted to the forums there, only to have the tropers dismiss me as a n00b.
I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener
Then everyone would be in love with me…. a much more tastier chew toy .
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Whoa – where did Les' mouth go in the last panel? TB's too busy with c&d letters to draw lips?
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"If you just quit now, like your teammates did, you'll avoid being even more disappointed later. Besides, I haven't been to work in months and I'm not sure if my health insurance is still valid."
"No way! I'm not letting fate use me like you used Mom to sell books and smugly flirt with lonely soccer moms at your book signings! You tell Patella to get out that scalpel and start carving that knee up like Uncle Funky going to town on a large Sicilian with everything!"
With all the excitement around here lately, I seem to have forgotten the panel where Fate shoved Summer from behind onto that pile of players chasing that loose ball. You're a Westviewian, Summer; fate hasn't even started messing with you yet.
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Boy, TVTropes has gone downhill.
In other news, Les can't even get emotionally invested in his DAUGHTER GETTING SURGERY.
A mystery phone call gets him frothing mad. A chance encounter with an old school friend has him rewrite history itself in order to make himself look good.
Summer getting surgery? Eh. You can tell that even now, he's just aching to get back to that book tour.
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I was thinking the same thing, Epicus– Summer still has all four limbs, both eyes, her hearing and she was only temporarily struck mute. Fate has been far, far too kind to Princess Basketball.
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I'd have preferred Summer saying she wasn't going to be fate's butt monkey; but Batiuk rarely if ever consults me first.
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Sum'mor knows only too well the fickle nature of the cruel and malicious Deity of the Fu(kyverse. He will indeed use her as a chew toy; it is her only destiny. That's what it means to be a character in the comic strip fantasy of a passive aggressive, has been cartoonist with delusions of profundity..
Accordingly, his avatar, Loser More, continues to be just oblivious to all that is not The National Book Tour and is trying to talk her out of an inconvienent hospital stay that may keep him from satiating his clueless spinster "fans" with depressing tales, cruel and dismissive remarks, and snide smirks.
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You know, this sort of surgery is just … not a gigantic decision. Certainly not one where you have to declare dramatically that you Will! Not! Surrender! I mean yeah, it's no fun, but dang, you'd think she was deciding to have her leg removed completely or something.
Incoming bullshit platitudes about how Summer is so totally like her dead mom with that fightin' spirit!
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I was vaguely hoping I wouldn't be the one to do this but …
No, Cruel Fate won't use Sumz as a chew toy, but Keisha sure will.
In other news, boy they really eat their young over at tv tropes, amiright?
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New here. The official FW is Dead To Me as of this latest arc (it was the forfeit that did it), but I stumbled on this place about the same time as you lost your WP site and can't help coming back here.
1) Um, is NOT having the surgery really an option here? Can a torn ACL just repair itself without, I dunno, inducing pretty terrible results? Just askin'.
2) Does TB really intend for Les to be such an asshole? (Or Funky, for that matter.) I mean, that would be weird enough. But I seriously wonder — could it just be that he's completely clueless as to the way the characters really come across and instead thinks they're just sort of ordinary, flawed-but-trying-hard-to-be-noble characters? Which, if he thinks that, would be even weirder. This is a serious question.
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I tore my ACL years ago playing softball. In my experience, surgery IS just an option. It doesn't repair itself. I've continued to be active on it for over 20 years with the use of a kneebrace. The only surgery I had was arthroscopy to clean up the damaged area. A repair would involve adding a new piece from a cadaver and months of rehab. If she's playing again soon, I call b.s.
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Gee Doctor, Will I ever be able to play the violin?
Well after proper rest and rehab I don't see why not.
Thanks great doc… I could never play before!
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Summer is, oddly, defiant in this matter where most every other member of the Batiukverse would not be. She doesn't get this fighting spirit from Lisa, and she sure doesn't get it rom Les, so… Cory?
Good to see Les is back driving that light blue Toyota Paseo. It's a classic right up their with Funky's white Ford Windstar and DSH's 1984 Oldsmobile.
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Sgt Saunders: In other news, boy they really eat their young over at tv tropes, amiright?
Serves me right, I guess, for sticking my nose into their little corner of the web. TVTropes deconstructs and categorizes pop culture, identifying various clichés that appear often. Their Funky Winkerbean page is very good, and in fact gives a shout out to SoSF. That's where I came across "chew toy", and I still think that TB picked it up there too, and that he's giving them a Take That in today's strip.
My theory was met with a collective “Meh” over at their forums: one poster (with a particularly douchey avatar) commented thustly:
It amazes me seeing some of the terms tropers think this site invented.
Well excuse the hell outta me, fanboy!
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DairyStateDad: New here. The official FW is Dead To Me as of this latest arc…but I stumbled on this place about the same time as you lost your WP site and can’t help coming back here.
Welcome, DSD. I recognize you from over at Comics Curmudgeon. Enjoy Funky Winkerbean through our eyes; it's much more bearable when you have company!
Does TB really intend for Les to be such an asshole? (Or Funky, for that matter)
No, and yes. TB has made Funky a workaholic, self-centered, greedy, miserable asshole, totally on purpose. That way, the people around him who (God knows why) still care about him, can try to redeem him.
Funky's lifelong friend Les is every bit the asshole Funky is: also self-centered, plus passive-aggressive, rude, sarcastic, and oblivious to those closest to him. However, we're expected to like and relate to him. After all, he's Batiuk's stand-in.
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The difference is that Les is an –AUTHOR–, therefore automatically and innately Wise and Good.
(Yeah, TVTropes has deteriorated a bit the past couple of years. Some show pages have completely been taken over by the fetishes and private kinks of the people watching. And they take so much pride in their alleged niceness and openness over other wikis that some truly rude, unpleasant people have managed to slip in. Ah, well.)
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Y' know how sometimes Bat*uk just drops a story mid-arc and never comes back to it (because "endings are earned" or something)? I really, really, really hope he does that with this story. Because a story this crazed cannot end well. If Summer hobbles into the double-forfeit do-over playdown game at the last moment and scores the winning basket…well, I won't be held responsible for my actions.
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The question shouldn't be "are you sure you want to go through with this surgery", the question should be "are you sure you want this marginally competent orthopedist to be poking around in your precious knee cartilage". For all we know, they've gotten Summer's records mixed up with someone else's, and all she really has is a sprain.
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"I mean, playing basketball isn't all there is to life, right? There are other things."
"Like what, Dad?"
"Like boys. I know I've been all weird about your blossoming sexuality in the past-"
"DAD. We discussed this. Using terms like THAT is the weird, creepy thing."
"Huh? What's wrong with discussing how my daughter has become a young woman? A woman who Lisa, who died of cancer would be proud of. You know, Lisa and I made so many plans for our life, before she died. But they didn't come to pass, because she died. Died of cancer. I grow nostalgic for those plans. Homesick for places I never visited, things I never di-"
"GOOD GRIEF, POP!"
"…oh, right. So, Summer, have your blossoming sexual desires kicked in yet? I've promised myself I won't be weird about them anymore."
"…*…surgery. Must…get…surgery. Must…have….escape hatch."
"Hmmm? What was that?"
"I said I love basketball."
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Les is trying to be noble, but what he's really saying is: "Are you sure you want to go ahead with the surgery, Summer? Because, you know, even if the doctor does repair your knee who's to say the ligament won't tear again all by itself, the same way cancer mysteriously returns after chemotherapy. Aw, f–k it, kid, you're probably gonna die anyway!"
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"Are you sure you want to go ahead with the surgery, Summer? Because if you don't, there's absolutely NO chance you'll die on the operating table, furnishing me with a rich vein of subject matter for my next life-changing grief opus…wait, I said that out loud, didn't I."
I kind of like how Les seems authentically slouched and middle-aged in panel one, shlepping along with his windbreaker open to the gut bulge in his Zip-a-Tone sweater…but when Summer busts out the defiance of her chew-toy fate, his eyebrows hike up juuuust a little. It's like he's coming back to his customary holier-than-thou self after this little parental speedbump.
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Surely Les realizes his daughter is not merely just a kid who enjoys some basketball: she's developed to the point where she can DUNK, for crying out loud. She could be looking at a full-ride scholarship down the line, a scholarship that could save Les tens of thousands of dollars. His nonchalant attitude (or mortal fear of doctors & hospitals) makes no sense here, not even "FW"-sense.
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