Jophiel said most of what I wanted to say, but I do want to respond [del]briefly[/del] to this.
Yes, it’s okay to punch someone who has just threatened someone else with grievous bodily harm. The threat is the assault. An assault is an attempt at intiating violence towards someone else, or threatening to do so.
And my frustration was basically this: you had the most evil character presented in the comic so far–one who right then was acting exactly like a mafia boss and threatening to rub someone out. And your focus is on the person who attacked that evil character.
It’s like reading Spider-Man and seeing Spidey punch a villain who just threatened to kill his friends, and then calling Spidey the violent asshole.
And, yes, it really bugged me that you brought up Faye’s drinking problem when it had nothing to do with her actions here. It just suggested you’re one of those who just really hates Faye and looks for reasons to hate on her.
The comic has always portrayed her as good, just with emotional problems. There’s a reason why Bubbles called her noble if rash–that’s how we’re supposed to see her. Not a violent alcoholic asshole.
I would think it would be incredibly frustrating to see such a horrible character in the comic never even be treated like she’s bad, or have any real comeuppance. Even her job loss lasted what, a handful of comics? And her boss is clearly being shown to be hypocritical for firing her.
That’s true for the fight club they’ve got going. It’s not true for everything she’s doing. She’s willing to threaten people like May, and we now know she has some cops on the payroll who are keeping her from getting in trouble. This is pretty big time.
Roko did say that they suspect there’s some exploitation of another kind going on, and we were even at this point pretty sure it was with Bubbles. Of course it would be the vet with PTSD who is discouraged from hanging out with humans and lives in the fighting ring.
And, yes, I know it’s more clear now the type of stuff Corpse Witch does. But I’d’ve said this back then, too. Subsequent comics have only confirmed what I thought.
Of course, the laws of the comic are whatever the author wants them to be. But in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I think we can assume the laws of the real world apply to the strip, specifically, the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where the strip is based.
I am not a lawyer or police officer, and I believe you are not either. I have however, taken a class in the self-defense laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It was part of the 2 day training required to obtain a License to Carry firearms. The legal portion was about 3 hours long, and was taught by an attorney certified by the state to teach this portion of the class. It was specifically geared towards the use of deadly force (i.e. a firearm), but the principals are the same.
Essentially, you are legally permitted to use force in self-defense as protection, not retaliation. If you reasonably believe that you are in imminent danger of bodily harm, you may use physical force. So if a person larger than you or with a weapon says “Get in the car or I’ll break your skull” you’d be in the clear for initiating physical force, since resistance or denial could result in physical harm. But imminent is an important factor - if someone you owed money to said “Pay me by the end of the week or I’ll cut off your thumbs”, then let you walk out the door, you would not be permitted to respond with physical force, since you’re not in immediate danger. The threat is still a crime, and you could absolutely report them to the police and have them prosecuted, but you could not initiate physical force in that situation. Note that this is the exact example that was used in the class as to when you could not respond to a threat with physical force.
This threat clearly was not imminent. May was free to walk away without suffering any physical harm, and could have gone straight to the police and told them everything Corpse Witch said and had her prosecuted. The fact that May would also get in trouble for being in the facility in the first place because she’s on parole doesn’t change that. She chose to perform an action that she knew violated the terms of her parole, that doesn’t somehow give her a right to perform an action that would otherwise be illegal.
Secondly, the laws are somewhat stricter for using physical force in defense of another. CW did not threaten Faye, she threatened May. The burden of proof is even higher in such cases. In this case, I’d say that if the threat was imminent, Faye probably would have been OK in punching CW in Faye’s defense. But a non-imminent threat against another person to whom you do not owe a duty of care? Not even close to OK.
Hey, I call them like I see them. She’s violent, she’s an alcoholic (neither is debatable), she’s combined them in the past and IMHO she’s an asshole. I’m not saying CW isn’t evil, and clearly the plot is going towards something bad happening to her, but that doesn’t make Faye not an asshole.
And I disagree that Dora was hypocritical, even if she thinks she was. There’s an enormous difference between the boss deciding to have a work party involving alcohol, even if it is spur of the moment, and and employee coming to work drunk and secretly drinking on the job.
Eh, IME violent people are generally just looking for an reason to be violent. Faye punched CW because she had an excuse to, not because she honestly thought it was the best response to what CW said to May.
Actually, I wouldn’t consider that lucky at all. I’d rather have a friend who lets me handle my own problems, instead of potentially making them worse by initiating violence on my behalf. Someone who “defends” their friends by throwing punches generally makes things worse, IME. And given BigT’s description of CW as a “Mafia boss”, do you think punching her will make her less likely to retaliate against May and Faye?
This was my thinking too. There’s a huge difference between a one-off semi-party and everyday hidden usage. But unless one wants to stretch that out over a week or two, there’s little time or place to really discuss the nuance. And that story wasn’t worth it.
I think we can also assume that until you brought it up, no one gave a crap about the legalities of punching a robot in the face - and I’m pretty sure they still don’t.
Actually, dzeiger first asked whether it’s legal to punch a robot. And at least 2 people besides me are interested, one of them interested enough to post a response almost 2 weeks after everyone else was willing to let the matter rest. But thanks for your opinion. :rolleyes:
This MiB AI chick who’s having Emily crawl around inside Bubbles’ mind-- what do you suppose her deal is? She doesn’t strike me as the type to be doing this out of the goodness of her heart, to put it mildly!
I figured it was a rather effeminate guy, not a chick and some lame pseudo-devil persona. Not really digging the turn it took but I guess I ride it out.
I got the impression he/she/it is more like one of those really powerful Minds in Banks Culture books and that he is just the ambassador of some shadowy cabal of those. It could have been done in an interesting way but just dropping him there like a deus ex machina? That doesn’t work well, at least not for me.
Now if it had been foreshadowed in some way and there’d been hints that such entities exist and this encounter had started a bit slower and not “bam! everybody’s asleep and by the way I’m a god” it could’ve been good.
