# Hobbes was just plain terrible
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Tags:** comic-strips
**Created:** [March 10, 2021, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595 "2021-03-10T08:04:36Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/81 "2021-03-11T16:47:18Z")
And somebody who purports to be a practitioner of the healing art of psychology which depends utterly on trust yet routinely snatches the football from others placing trust in her. What a psycho hypocrite. Her license should be revoked; if she had one.
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### Author:  [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/82 "2021-03-11T17:56:35Z")
Let’s not pathologize Lucy. Clearly she is a victim of woefully inadequate parenting and a dysfunctional family system. Consider her brother Linus. He’s usually meek and passive, regressed to an early childhood state sucking his thumb. But periodically his bottled up rage explodes and he zaps someone so hard with his blanket that they fly upside down through the air. Is it surprising, given that they are being raised by parents who found it amusing to name their third child “Rerun”?
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/83 "2021-03-11T18:07:43Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#):
>
> Is it surprising, given that they are being raised by parents who found it amusing to name their third child “Rerun”?
Hey. Hey! Hey. What’s your problem with the name “Rerun”?
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### Author:  [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/84 "2021-03-11T18:28:10Z")
And how about Woodstock, whose very name suggests drug use? The damn bird can’t even fly in a straight line.
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### Author:  [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/85 "2021-03-11T18:28:49Z")
Like, Hobbes represents the Duality of The Conscience, or shit.
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#):
>
> I’d much rather have Hobbes for an imaginary friend than Snoopy, who had (imho) no redeeming qualities.
Snoopy was pretty good at making toast.
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### Author:  [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/86 "2021-03-11T18:46:14Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#):
>
> Snoopy was pretty good at making toast.
And he’s quite a good dancer.
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### Author:  [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/87 "2021-03-11T18:50:44Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> > [@Gatopescado](#):
> >
> > Snoopy was pretty good at making toast.
>
> And he’s quite a good dancer. -
And he can [retrieve soap bubbles.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eb_ugNBWsAAyrbI?format=jpg&name=small)
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### Author:  [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/88 "2021-03-11T19:00:38Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#):
>
> that if the essence of Hobbes’ nature in the strip is that it remain unresolved whether he is a real tiger or a stuffed toy, then creating a real stuffed toy would only destroy the magic.
Easily solved.
Market real tigers instead.
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### Author:  [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/89 "2021-03-11T19:14:39Z")
We may be overlooking the most egregious instance of child abuse here. The strip ran for ten years, yet Calvin never got any older. Were his parents giving him growth-hormone suppressors in order to keep their lucrative comic strip royalties coming in??
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/90 "2021-03-11T20:01:39Z")
Not to mention the unacceptable mogrifying of transpeople.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/91 "2021-03-11T20:19:43Z")
[The Annotated Calvin & Hobbes](http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1994/01/09/670685.html). The most in depth analysis of Calvin’s psyche, the influence of his pantheran friend Hobbes, and the educational system based on a single cartoon strip ever produced. The internal complexity and convoluted entanglement of socio-political philosophy, consciousness and state of mind is equally profound and sublime. Clearly, he, we, are Calvin, they are Miss Wormwood, but it is only Hobbes who truly knows us.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2021, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/92 "2021-03-11T22:10:02Z")
The van Pelts didn’t name their third child “Rerun”. That’s a nickname that Lucy came up with, because she was annoyed about the redundancy, in that she already had a younger brother, and who needs two of those?
I don’t think we ever learn what name their parents gave him.
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### Author:  [@Jay\_Z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jay_Z)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2021, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/93 "2021-03-12T00:06:12Z")
As if a switch had been turned, as if an eye had been blinked, as if some phantom force in the universe had made a move eons beyond our comprehension, suddenly, there was no trail! There was no feline, no tiger, no thing called “Hobbes” to be followed. There was nothing in the tunnel but the puzzled Calvin, who suddenly found himself alone with shadows and darkness! With the telegram, one cloud lifts, and another descends. Astronaut Thomas Hobbes, rescued, alive, well, and of normal size, some eight thousand miles away in a lifeboat, with no memory of where he has been, or how he was separated from his capsule! Then who, or what, has landed here? Is it here yet? Or has the cosmic switch been pulled? Case in point: The line between science fiction and science fact is microscopically thin! You have witnessed the line being shaved even thinner! But is the menace with us? Or is the tiger gone?
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2021, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/94 "2021-03-12T00:18:09Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#):
>
> Were his parents giving him growth-hormone suppressors in order to keep their lucrative comic strip royalties coming in??
More like what weird and maddening dark Art or Science did Watterson practice to force those innocent parents to suffer, _Ground Hog Day_ style, a full decade of living with a marginally sane 6yo boy.
We’ve all heard of character assassination. This was more a matter of character Chinese water torture.
> We feed him, we nurture him, and yet he remains but 6. What foul demon hast possess’d our course of days that we be becalmed thusly upon the Sea of Time? Outrageous Fortune hear our plea! Release us from this temporal Sargasso and bid him at least to 7 grow. But we’d _really_ prefer 18.
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### Author:  [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2021, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/95 "2021-03-12T02:22:42Z")
Chinese water son torture?
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### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2021, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/96 "2021-03-12T02:31:38Z")
You. Just go to your room, sit quietly, and _think_ about what you just did. Your father and I will have to have a talk.
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2021, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/97 "2021-03-12T02:41:02Z")
[Calvin is six. He’s always six.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffty_Is_Five)
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2021, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/98 "2021-03-12T03:01:58Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> Heh. My White second-grade daughter was disappointed in the _Fellowship of the Rings_ movie. “None of the characters were how I imagined them!” she said. “Sam is supposed to be skinny and Black!”
If you’ve grown up in a multiracial society, you may simply imagine that _all_ societies are multiracial.
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2021, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/99 "2021-03-12T03:51:55Z")
You’re all looking at this wrong.
Hobbes is real. Calvin is his imaginary playmate. Every character that interacts with Calvin is simply another ingredient in Hobbes’ imaginary playmate world. That’s why Hobbes appears to them as a stuffed toy - Hobbes isn’t playing with them, so there’s no reason for him to be anything but an inanimate, passive observer in Calvin’s unreal world.
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### Author:  [@swampspruce](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/swampspruce)
#### Post date: [March 12, 2021, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hobbes-was-just-plain-terrible/937595/100 "2021-03-12T23:35:26Z")
That would explain what the hell my cats are looking at when they stare off into space…
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