Nobody can push your buttons like family.
I think Tim and Abbie are gonna need to take a nap after all this. Their adrenaline has to be shot.
Nobody can push your buttons like family.
I think Tim and Abbie are gonna need to take a nap after all this. Their adrenaline has to be shot.
39 Comments
‘…gotcha’.
Yup. Alec has established his dominance by proving that he’s the badder bugger!
>8-)
When’s the last time Alec stopped? All it took here was one word. Also, no actual damage was done.
That’s the kind of awareness and control I can respect. Alec’s attempt to discredit his cousin may just have backfired spectacularly.
Alec. >:-(
Poetic justice would be Alec not only losing his band spot, but the security Kevin offered to be part of them has to keep HIM out.
There is a big possibility that his father (who is also an Elder) will hear about it..
Alec went too far this time
*chanting* Kick him out! Kick him out!
Seriously, it’s about time the jerk actually suffered some meaningful consequences.
Trust your family to know, if not always do, the things that will hurt you the most.
This comic does such a good job with having an already pretty big cast and still coming up with characters that are just immediately enjoyable & that I want to see more of. Both the manticores and Kevin this chapter I basically miss as soon as they leave the scene – they’re so well drawn over a relatively small page count!
Also the designs are great. I only recently read the comic for the first time & got caught up at the beginning of this scene, and it was really cool to see the art evolve (for example I looove how Abigail is drawn now, and Kevin’s whole look is great). Also! Very fun panelling here.
Anyways, Tim looking mad in the background, probably aimed at Alec mostly? While Kevin escalated, Alec was obviously pushing for it, so maybe he’ll get a talking to? Though I wonder to what extend they can even afford to do that – they DO need the security, and bugbears are just very helpful for that.
(I’ve been wondering the whole time if/how this whole debacle is leading to security being an issue at the party later… it’d be a nice set-up for a disaster!)
Ah. Yes. Alec may have pushed the buttons, but he’s also demonstrated who can keep their temper. Smug little turd that he may be, he’s not violent.
Absolutely not the same thing.
Kevin was having his buttons pushed over and over until he was pushed to the edge.
Alec was DOING the button pushing. He was NOT having his buttons pushed at all. He was NOT pushed to the edge.
And, honestly? I’m not sure Alec has better control over his temper. Look at how quickly he fell apart when he discovered that Kevin was in town.
And here, Alec went straight for the heart: insult Kevin’s ancestry, insult his parents, and then insist that he’s not a true bugbear at all.
Two very different things. Not remotely similar at all.
Indeed
Kevin has also just demonstrated, looking at Tim and Abbie, that he’s capable of regret and remorse.
So Alec, you’ve ever done that? He asked rhetorically.
Oh, I think this will have consequences for Alec…
i don’t know what’s worse, that in the previous page i thought Alec was a racist asshole, or that in this page, i think he just said that to piss his cousin off and show how unstable he is to keep his gig, still an asshole
Kevin seems full BB, “despite” having a human parent. These last few scenes may auggest that Alec reaffirmed his own racism.
W the concerns the Elders had, having his own son being a cause for additional exposure, may be embarrassing to the Elder. Unless he blames it on Kevin. Which, given the history suggest, he.may do.
Love the title of the chapter. Racism is indeed a v big monster!
IIRC, if a human and a medallioned non-human have kids, the kid is almost always the species of the medallioned non-human, or, very rarely, fully human. There’s not really any in-betweens.
Aye. Alec and his kin seemed to imply that since Kevin was born w a human parent, he wasn’t full bb. Alec seems to believe some of this, too,even if he might say otherwise.
Kevin didn’t say that his mom is a human; just that she’s not a bugbear. That leaves a whole lot of other possibilities. He could have siblings who are neither human nor bugbear.
Alec’s not anymore stable! He was the aggressor here. Look at when Lily dumped a bucket of honey on him, he probably almost destroyed Ike’s flat!
You obviously don’t lose your cool if YOU’RE the bully!
Look at Tim’s face, Alec is soooooo not playing on Halloween.
Yeah, if I were the bar owners here, I’d be giving Alec a ban from the premises. At least a couple months, if not an “Until you can prove you’re less of an asshole to people that already know who you are” kind of ban.
That sort of provocation is exactly what you DO NOT want happening in the middle of an important event, whether towards locals or newbies.
I would tie the lifting of the ban to a public apology to Kevin.
“If you can’t manage that, I don’t want someone who is willing to do what you two almost got to. I don’t need entertainment that *might* make things go wrong or security that is the source of insecurity. “
Tim is about to yell at a certain other bugbear next page, it would seem. And I don’t blame him.
What galls me the most is that Alec probably won’t get his much-deserved punishment. Hopefully I’m wrong.
“Okay, you’re both on security duty.”
Look at Tim’s expression, Alec is soooooo not playing on Halloween.
Honestly, Alec has gone from ‘charmingly douchey’ to ‘Oh. An Actual Douche.’ for me over the course of this scene.
Yep,…you just summed my feelings up perfectly… Disappointing, but so perfectly portrayed as part of this story’s development… And I’m betting there are even more surprises as part of the forthcoming fallout of all of this! What a great emotional rollercoaster, both for the characters AND for us!!!
Congrats, Kevin, on being the better bugbear. Alec may be smug now, thinking he won, but I bet he doesn’t realize what he did will come back to bite him, sonner than later. Like, a permanent ban is on the table now, Alec.
Unrelated to elements of plot, but trivia: name the connection between the band on the back and a band on the front of Kevin’s vest.
For all of this, I hope we see Kevin longterm. He’s shown himself to, in ways, be a better person and it creates an interesting family dynamic w Alec and other BBs.
The issue of who gets the gig aside – Kevin loses his cool, Alec gets to know he got his goat; Kevin cools down, Alec can spin *that* as him being too much of a wuss to commit to the bit. Either way Alec wins…in whatever baffling game he’s made up inside his head, I guess.
I think the previous elder’s fears need to be reconsidered.
I can’t think of a single redeeming quality of Alec’s
His receeding backside? I dunno. That IS a hard question…
I mean Alec is often funny, making other characters laugh even as they also groan, and he’s shown to be somewhat selfless (volunteering to help the Avalon, and acting as security for Tim and Abbie when, no matter what he’s paid, it ties him to the reputational risk should it go wrong)
He’s also a repellent bully who preferentially targets vulnerable and traumatized people (Ike, Tony, arguably Kevin) and possesses a racial purity-coded superiority complex. I definitely am not a fan of him overall, but he’s not *without* redeeming qualities. They’re, uh, just not enough to actually be redemptive!
Yeah, Alec is the type of family member you cut contact with just because of how unredeemable gutter trash they are.
How many bugs could a bug bear bug of a bug bear could bug bugs