So you crossed universes to get me back.
on December 14, 2021 at 1:01 amThis is kinda the thesis of Shortpacked!? The strip was always pulling back and forth between Pop Culture Parodies and Stuff Happening, with the audience split roughly into those camps. Folks get angry when there’s no Batman for a while, and other folks get angry when there’s no Stuff Happening for a while. And I’m the weirdo who just likes hopping back and forth between the two as they please.
Regardless, I am satisfied that a story which at its hook was a continuity housecleaning band-aid what-have-you for AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COMIC STRIP… managed to end up having so much to say about the strip it actually took place in. Almost as if I’d planned it!!!! or at least was essentially the rationalization i gave myself for doing it
And because I’m gonna be me, the original Shortpacked!-website version of this strip copy-pasted the navigation arrows before you get to the big make-out panel at the end. Because I wanted to be tricky, and make you think that was it. Instead: SURPRISE RECONCILATION!
but here have it normal style
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I was gonna say, were you gonna replicate that
also screw anyone who complained about there not being enough Batman jokes/drama/whichever wasn’t what was happening that specific day
Agreed so much.
Look, I’m not a Shortpacked! customer sort. Video games? Action figures? Comics? Really not my stuff.
I like the Batman jokes, and don’t understand any Transformers in jokes compared to Willis (but who does?). The story arcs and characterizations are what I’m invested in.
Same. I just nod and go “uh-huh” at all the Transformers references, I get most of the comic book references, but to me the ongoing original plot was always the main course.
There were A LOT of “pop culture reference a day” webcomics back in the 2000s. Very few had such a fleshed-out backstory and lore as Shortpacked! did.
I’m in a wierd third (fourth?) camp. I enjoyed Stuff Happening, was mostly indifferent to Batman and Transformers jokes, and honestly didn’t even bother looking up who the latest pop culture reference was. I was there for the retail humor, because it hit way too close to home. Transformers? I think I saw an episode of that once. Galasso making the cast sell protection plans? My life, in a comic strip.
The original version doesn’t work with the current site version, which is a shame, but oh well.
I tear up every time I read this page.
Call me a hopeless romantic (I’ve never actually been in a relationship, so perhaps I’m not the best judge) but Shortpacked! Robin and Leslie’s relationship is just so goddamned beautiful.
It didn’t start that way, to be sure. Robin was a massive jerk early on. I mean, Robin’s first date with Leslie was just a ploy to make Ethan think she was a lesbian in hopes that his jealousy would somehow override his gayness— a ploy she didn’t even let Leslie in on, no less. And she was never supposed to show up again. Just a one-time bit character with a ridiculous pun name that was the only character trait she had…
And then she came back. And she started to become a person, even if her life was still largely Robin-centric. And Robin fell in love with her for real. And because Robin was a) terrified and b) Robin, it all went to hell. And so they were apart for a while, and so… they grew. We finally saw Leslie’s hopes and dreams and struggles. The shitty way her mom treated her, acting like tolerating her existence was some great act of kindness. The trauma from her upbringing, to the point that she wanted to kick Jesus’ ass when he joined the cast. All the ways in which she was the nicest, kindest, and strongest person in the store. And she became the heart of Shortpacked! And while all of that was happening, Robin grew, too, both from the realization of how badly she’d hurt Leslie and taken her for granted, and coming to terms with her sexuality. And then they got back together here… and from there it just got better and better.
On some level, it saddens me to say that I honestly hope they’re never a thing again in Dumbing of Age— the things that Robin has done are too close to real-life awful to just be forgotten. And maybe it’s fair to say that in a more realistic universe, these two could never have a “happy ending.”
But so what? Reality isn’t the be-all end-all. This Robin and this Leslie will always matter. The Robin who was right there for Leslie when she finally stood up to her mother’s bullshit by showing her that evangelical Christians wouldn’t recognize Jesus if he walked right into their house. Who gave Leslie the family she always wanted, even if it meant overcoming her fears of being a parent and getting back in touch with the mother she hadn’t spoken to in decades. Who got every last one of the people whose lives Leslie had touched to walk her down the aisle.
And the Leslie who made Robin not wanna run away anymore.
In conclusion: I fucking love Shortpacked!, this is probably totes incoherent cause I’m tearing up, thank you for coming to my TED talk, here’s a link to the wedding read it it’s beautiful https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/are-you-ready
Tears or no, it was beautifully put.
I couldn’t put it better than you just did, thank you.
I still miss this Leslie. I miss the version who, being told she’s facing an immortal alien who literally cannot die because of the timeline, says she thinks that’s bullshit. I miss the one who then proceeded to do a damn good job kicking ass for someone with no abductee powers whatsoever. I miss the one who went off on wacky hijinks and ended up confronting exactly how far she’d go to keep the person she loved with her, through someone she sees parallels in even as Pamela warped her entire universe around her. But DoA Leslie doesn’t need to be her, and DoA Robin, I agree, is just a bit too real world awful for me to buy the redemption arc she’d need any time in the foreseeable future. Even if there’s never another strip that makes me love Leslie Bean quite as much as this storyline does, these two still matter.
And god, do I love them so much still.
The fakeout genuinely enhances this strip to the maximum degree. I remember the first time I read this, barely holding in the tears because it was such catharsis, reaching the “end” and feeling that relief.
Only for the true ending to hit me like a ton of bricks as I scrolled down, and I started bawling. Easily the best Shortpacked strip of them all. It really is everything great about the comic encapsulated.
Agreed. That extra space to decompress before the last few panels really adds something.
There are a few Shortpacked strips that rival this for me, but they all come on the heels of this storyline. ‘You make me not want to run anymore’, for one. And the wedding strip, with Robin knowing Leslie’s feeling blue after finally telling her biological family to fuck off forever, offering an olive branch to her own mother, and reminding Leslie of just how many people love her because of how truly awesome she is. And the final shot of the Walkyverse itself, Leslie staring down another alien conqueror representing the endless soggy white tide of forced conformity and leading the rest of the staff into battle. But none of them would be possible without this storyline and this particular strip, and while I love the proposal and the wedding, they definitely don’t stand on their own anywhere near as well as this one. It’s an emotional gut punch in the best possible way, twice over.
This is why I still ship these two in DoA, though Robin has a LOT of maturing to do before that will ever be possible. Like, more than “Cadbury Cereal” Robin did.
Ah. The Leslie and Robin happy beginning.
**joyful glow**
That said, I got an artifical tree a few years ago and I’m never going back. It is too convenient to set up and store with zero upkeep needed on my part.
My mother got me one.
It’s one of the things I have to remember her by.
We’ve always had artificial trees. The first one was a budget model in the early 80s that looks like it’s made out of bottle brushes, and the second one is from 2000 and looks a lot better. It even sheds just like a real tree! (It was always fun finding fake Christmas tree needles in July…) We’re about due for another tree, maybe one of those fancy ones with the molded rubbery-plastic needles…
We even have the aluminum Christmas tree my grandparents bought in the 60s, complete with spinning motorized base and spotlight with color wheel. (It’s not a cone like in the Charlie Brown special, imagine a regular artificial Christmas tree except the “needles” are made of tinsel instead of green plastic.) We’ve never set it up ourselves though.
I have allergies and so does my dad. Artificial’s always been our method.
Not to mention it reduces the odds of getting a surprise squirrel.
“Things only die if they’ve got life in ’em to begin with” is one of my favorite lines in the entire Walkyverse.
Adventure Time‘s “Together Again” got some flack for having Finn realize he needed to stop living for Jake and start living for himself, only to be reunited with Jake at the end. And I can see the temptation for cleanness here–Robin has learned her lesson, and can take it forwards without Leslie. But I think there’s something beautiful about the idea that you can acknowledge finality without punishing yourself with it. All things end, sure. But not all things end right now.
I’m slightly disappointed that you didn’t try to replicate the button thing with this site. Oh well, it’s not like we didn’t know it was coming.
<<< didnt know it was coming.
But we all know they’re coming, or will be soon.
I have a nagging feeling that I’ve not actually seen the second half of this strip before. Still, I’m seeing it now, and that’s what’s important.
I kinda liked how the original had the fake navigation arrows and stuff. Though obviously that would’ve had to be changed for this site, since it looks different.
What does Robin do with the new drama tag?
My knowledge of Batman comes almost entirely from
a)Starkid’s Holy Musical Batman on Youtube, and
b)Shortpacked.
And I greatly prefer the story of SP to Batman jokes.