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No joke today.
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Old Wounds: Part Ten

Chapter: Season Eight
  1. Brian
    July 31, 2017, 1:13 pm | #

    HOVER-TEXT: No joke today.

  2. Marcel Beaudoin
    July 31, 2017, 1:15 pm | #

    Wow. I was expecting the comic today to be in joke territory after the last panel on friday.

    This strip is taking the comic, in my opinion, in a much, much more interesting place.

    Thank you!!

  3. Anna Walker
    July 31, 2017, 1:18 pm | #

    Brian, you keep true to you and the stories that you need to tell. Pops would approve and so do I.

    Mama Anna

  4. klarg1
    July 31, 2017, 1:26 pm | #

    So help me Brian, if your storyline makes me cry… I’lll… I’ll…

    …

    …Probably have to complement you on the quality of your writing.

    That lacked the sting it probably needed.

  5. Scott R.
    July 31, 2017, 1:41 pm | #

    Damn. I’m glad you chose to drop this one on a Monday and not a Friday.

    • beckylunatic
      July 31, 2017, 2:00 pm | #

      I hear that.

  6. Valthonis
    July 31, 2017, 1:48 pm | #

    I know the feeling, Carlos.

  7. Nick
    July 31, 2017, 2:11 pm | #

    Goddamn this is a great arc. Maaaaaaaaaannnnnn

    • Nick
      July 31, 2017, 2:11 pm | #

      Also, your dad was wrong Carlos. Fuck that guy.

      • Sirly
        July 31, 2017, 3:01 pm | #

        Beat me to it. Fuck Carlos’ dad. Sideways.

        • S.A. Sims
          August 1, 2017, 4:40 am | #

          With a splintered barge pole.

  8. Mysterious Racer X
    July 31, 2017, 2:36 pm | #

    Wait did some peoples parents not hate them?

    • Matt
      July 31, 2017, 3:16 pm | #

      For all the gripes I’ve made about my parents in the past…I can at least say they didn’t hate me. I can’t imagine the hurt that feeling that could put on a person.

      • Random Guy
        July 31, 2017, 3:58 pm | #

        I have nine fingers and a scar on my back from boiling water.

        • Matt
          July 31, 2017, 7:04 pm | #

          Holy shit.

        • ClockworkDragonfly
          July 31, 2017, 11:03 pm | #

          Damn. I know the feeling, though at least in my case the scars are on the inside, literally… as in I have scarred lung tissue from straining to breathe after a fridge I was helping my mother move fell on me. My dad refused to help move it because I was “being a fucking crybaby”and was “no son of [his]”. I was around 8 or so, helping my mother move a refrigerator because his lazy ass wouldn’t.

          At least I learned how NOT to parent, and so far my kidlet is fucking awesome.

    • Sean Murphy
      July 31, 2017, 8:27 pm | #

      Mine didn’t hate me. My mom loved me, although she wasn’t very good at listening, but she tried, most of the time. I’m not really sure how my dad felt about me, but I’m sure it wasn’t the. Indifference, impatience, disdain, might have been something along those line…

    • Robin Bobcat
      August 1, 2017, 3:23 am | #

      Dad was chill. Mom too… *sigh* cancer.

      Stepmother didn’t like us kids much, was deliberately cruel to me in particular. Very emotionally abusive. Got angry I was ‘wasting my time’ reading when I should have been doing something ‘productive’ instead. Like digging her a goddamn garden bed in 110-degree heat. Routinely told me what a failure I would be, and deliberately sabotaged my first three girlfriends, just because she could.

      • Kittikin
        August 1, 2017, 1:18 pm | #

        NO offense but your dad stayed with that rotten POS?!

        • aaron boss
          August 1, 2017, 3:18 pm | #

          sometimes the POS can be very canny about picking their moments. Also, sometimes, the remaining parent will put up with it because ‘it’s a phase’, ‘they’ll work through it’, or ‘she didn’t mean it’. And then it’s too late.

    • Jason Thorn
      August 2, 2017, 2:11 am | #

      My parents loved me.

      They didn’t take my BS for a moment. They weren’t impressed by a lot of stuff I did (but that is to be expected from parents once they’d changed your diapers for long enough) My father was an alcoholic, and he did a lot of things I could hate him for, but he was sick and provided for us and tried to give us good things and good experiences even then.

      They were flawed and imperfect, and I wouldn’t trade them for any two people in the world.

  9. Reaver
    July 31, 2017, 2:48 pm | #

    Aw Carlos, I can empathize 🙁

  10. Jimmy
    July 31, 2017, 2:53 pm | #

    Awwww really want to give Carlos hug right now after I hug and thank my dad for being cool oh man so many feels

  11. Thorin Schmidt
    July 31, 2017, 4:10 pm | #

    I have a feeling that Carlos’ dad at one point made it clear to everyone that he(Carlos) had ruined some major family event. Could be wrong, but that is my gut feeling, and I’ve known about parents who sink to that level….

    • grenli
      July 31, 2017, 8:21 pm | #

      Can you post a link or a month for the archive?

      • beckylunatic
        August 1, 2017, 10:12 am | #

        I’m pretty sure this is just extrapolated from Carlos’ reaction to Trevor joking about ruining Christmas. “He (my father) was right. I’m so stupid.” (paraphrased)

        There is very little of Carlos’ background in canon, so far.

        • Tsapki
          August 2, 2017, 12:28 pm | #

          I believe Trevor specifically said that ‘Carlos cancelled Christmas’.

          It could well be that Carlos’ dad entirely cancelled one of the most important celebration to a young child and blamed the entire thing on Carlos.

          • beckylunatic
            August 2, 2017, 1:54 pm | #

            I’m not trying to poop on anyone’s theories, but I think this is WAY too specific and trying to make it about a single traumatic event.

            If Carlos’ father hated him, blamed him for everything, and ran him down at every opportunity, there doesn’t need to be one event. It was literally his entire life. 🙁

    • Sweeper
      August 1, 2017, 11:42 am | #

      I wondered if it was a family member who messed poor Carlos up, but I figured it was a sibling, not a parent

  12. Apep
    July 31, 2017, 4:12 pm | #

    Uh… whoa. I, uh, I have no words.

  13. Classical Conspirator
    August 1, 2017, 1:45 am | #

    Brian the “Telling Us The Warm Fuzzy Stories” Patterson indeed. 🙁

  14. Sita
    August 1, 2017, 6:23 am | #

    Wow. No, I didn’t expect that either. Well done! It’s a story that should be told. I’m very fortunate to have had parents who were very very good, and loving. Sisters, on the other hand… Families are the source of so much drama, so much pain, as well as the default belief of happiness too.
    By the way, I like Carlos’ face! It’s incredibly expressive – obviously he’s very upset now, but it’s a face with a lot of character.

  15. TheDmofDoom
    August 1, 2017, 7:42 pm | #

    God damn… Man I did not expect that one. Never expected a parent of all things…

    • Jason Thorn
      August 2, 2017, 2:12 am | #

      Which makes that kind of betrayal all the more obscene.

  16. Lorne Gringer
    August 2, 2017, 2:14 am | #

    You know, at first I thought “Kind of a weird direction to go in and to have that be the reason you’re upset at the joke at game night.” But no, that’s the thing. This kind of thing follows you for LIFE, and it follows you EVERYWHERE. You can find reason in everything to draw it back, especially when it traumatizes you enough.

    So good on you Brian. You’re taking the story to very interesting places, I’m excited to keep reading.

  17. David
    August 2, 2017, 4:22 am | #

    Couldn’t even begin to imagine it 🙁

  18. Nezumi
    August 26, 2017, 3:42 pm | #

    That… feels familiar. I mean, my father didn’t hate me, according to others… but… he oscillated between emotionally abusive and emotionally neglectful and our manifestations of autism collided in ways that tended to lead to blow-ups, especially with that constant fear and tension about setting him off or saying something that would unexpectedly upset him.

    • Nezumi
      August 26, 2017, 3:45 pm | #

      … To give some idea… he was so inattentive and unknowledgeable about me, he thought I was a teen well into my 20s, and his reaction to my being trans was… bad. Not violent, but ugly and mean and dismissive. I knew it would be, which is why I only came out to Mom, but Mom (who I’ve since realized was also an emotionally abusive person) outed me to him, which… is one of the major reasons I’m in my 30s and still barely starting on transition, despite realizing somewhere in the 12-to-14 range.

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