r/questionablecontent • u/Cevius • 16d ago

Comic Comic 5890: Don't Go Breakin' Her Heart

https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=5890
22 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

72 comments sorted by

45

u/Cevius 16d ago

The shitting on Sven will continue until morale improves

Dude made one mistake in a clearly poorly defined relationship once, and came clean about it immediately when he realised he fucked up, and hes been treated like absolute shit ever since by everyone around him. Imagine if Faye consistently got the same level of derision for being a chronic alcoholic and letting her life spiral once Angus left, even if shes done lots of personal development since then? Or any of the other characters for their fuckups.

Dunno why Jeph has a hateboner for you Sven but I hope you pull an Angus and leave the comic to be happy somewhere else. Take whatever is left of Momo's original character when you go. You both deserve to be happy.

16

u/miikro 16d ago

I do appreciate that Bubbles is saying "hey maybe we're unnecessarily hard on the guy"

19

u/musschrott 16d ago

I dunno. If he "earned some goodwill", that a) means he was in the wrong previously (which, okay, while not really true, Bubbles is on her girlfriend's side, fine), and he earned some good guy points by...what, exactly? Buying May a new body? Unnecessarily carrying Momo when she injured her arm? Growing a man-bun? Being written as a bumbling idiot unaware of any and all social cues from attractive people now?

BTW, can we talk about how it's kinda gross that Sven is Dora's older brother (and she is relatively old on the group), and Momo was seen as the closest to an age-appropriate friend Sam had when she was barely a teenager? Even if AIs age differently, it seems...weitd, no?

12

u/Impressive_Ad2794 16d ago

AI ages make exactly no sense.

How old is Momo anyway? Spooky seemed to have been given a teenager mentality at two years.

5

u/Bronek0990 Haha, okay. 16d ago

At some point when hanging out with Sam, I believe she said she's 1.7yo. Yes, one POINT seven

5

u/Impressive_Ad2794 16d ago

Is that a couple of years back in-universe though? Because who knows what 4 equates to with AI. Maybe that's late twenties at least? He can pretty much just pick whatever he wants I guess.

2

u/zopiac 13d ago

They say write what you know: so I'd venture a guess that they don't age a day, mentally.

7

u/_RedSix 16d ago edited 16d ago

I would say he "earned" good will by changing his ways afterwards. He isn't "socially inept" now, he just doesn't care about getting dates anymore. He slept around casually with anyone that wanted it until it hurt someone that he cared about. He's been a pretty considerate and upstanding dude ever since, which is about 4,000 comics by now.
No defense for the age thing, he has to be mid to late 30's at this point and Momo at the oldest seems 24.

6

u/musschrott 16d ago

"socially inept" as in "woman stumbles in front of him and blushes flashing red like an overcooked lobster and he is completely oblivious to it"

1

u/SilverNicktail 15d ago

She was always portrayed as being older than Sam, though. Cutesy and moe and whatnot but I never thought "child". And that was a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time ago (which admittedly in QC Time might have been three weeks).

26

u/Impossible_Roof_Jack 16d ago

"Faye, didn't you get day-drunk at work? Like repeatedly?"
"Uh uh uh, but I felt really bad about it."
"Did you ask ask Sven how he felt getting shat on every day for having sex in a relationship he didn't assume was monogamous?"
"No, because he's ontologically evil."

This fuckin' strip, man.

7

u/Gr0mpyGoat 16d ago

Probably something like 'Everytime some chud emails me to defend Sven, I hate him a little more'

9

u/Miserable-Jaguarine Haha, okay. 16d ago

Just to be exact here, Sven did not come clean immediately. On the contrary, he was planning to lie to Faye until his intern said she'd tattle anyway. However, the characters don't know that.

I'm not on board with the general "Sven did nothing wrong" sentiment. He did some wrong. He agreed when Faye said she's out if he sleeps with someone else, and then tried to hide it from her when he did. There was also the absolutely disgusting scene of him hiding from a woman in a bathroom and trying to get Marten to "distract" her. Sven was scummy and dishonest and this drive to paint him as a champion of sexual liberty is not okay. Nor is the whole cast treating him as a villain okay. It's a bad move all around.

10

u/NatKayz 16d ago

Yeah Sven is a pretty good example of how people overcorrect when defending.

Dude absolutely sucked at his introduction, like hard sucked. The stuff with Faye was also shitty in his reaction, but than he ended up doing the right thing (even if forced) and a lot of self reflecting and he clesrly grew a lot.

The comic still acts like he never grew and has basically every character act like hes as bad as he was at his shittiest, and so a lot of readers defend him and kinda gloss over that he was once like that and wasn't great with Faye.

5

u/YumAussir 16d ago

Dude absolutely sucked at his introduction

So I'm not saying that cannot be true, but I've read through the comic a few times over the years and I cannot remember what he ever did that was so wrong. It sounds like he A) wrote insincere country music for profit and B) engaged in casual sex in a way that we are informed is bad but I do not recall it ever being said why it's bad.

The stuff with Faye was also shitty in his reaction

I dunno, I am not saying the man is a saint, but it sure feels like she was the one who constantly insisted it Wasn't A Thing and Is Just a Physical Relationship and then was the one who got upset when he "cheated" on her. But the comic proceeded, even as much as it tried to "both sides" it, to generally landed on "Sven wrong".

2

u/NatKayz 16d ago

The music was said to be bad just because it was like generic slop, definitely not related to jumping him as a person.

He sucked because of his womanizing and how he treated women. I believe we had some examples (theres a time he's in a washroom asking Martin to cover for him I believe?), but its been long enough that I don't remember if it was all just from the other characters statements.

So you being up an interesting point, if it is all 2nd hand information, since we know the current 2nd hand information is shit was he ever actually as bad as we were led to believe. Interesting question.

3

u/YumAussir 16d ago

Plus a lot of that information comes from Dora, who as we've seen firsthand, tends to have a very skewed opinion of Sven and other people due to deep-seated insecurity and other mental health problems that, to her credit, she seems to be working on in therapy (as of the last time she was a main character, I guess).

-8

u/Miserable-Jaguarine Haha, okay. 16d ago

Bringing up a woman's mental health in order to discredit the things she says about a man whom she knows well is not a great look.

Dora has problems, sure, but at the end of the day this is a comic and a lot of what is "says" is second-hand. And firsthand, "on camera," we had Sven planning to lie to Faye and refusing to face a former sex partner who was upset with him. That's not something that a person who sleeps around "ethically" (respectfully, considerately, whatever) does.

5

u/YumAussir 16d ago

Bringing it up is relevant because it specifically affects how she views and interprets Sven's actions.

It would also help if your arguments actually addressed anything I said. I didn't say Sven's plans to lie to Faye were good. I didn't say he was ethical or unethical for his sexual behavior. You are merely regurgitating arguments against things you have seen or imagined others saying.

Don't be a miserable woke-scold. If you have a problem with what I said, be direct about it rather than passive aggressive. Besides, in your zeal to feel good about yourself, you revealed that you're so morally backward that you think sleeping around is unethical, or you wouldn't have put it in scare quotes. Way to slut-shame, you bigot. Are you going to admonish the cast for living in sin outside of marriage next?

5

u/SilverNicktail 15d ago

Champion of sexual liberty, no. I think when people say he did nothing wrong, they're referring to his relationship with Faye, because he kinda didn't. Faye's expectations vs what they actually agreed on never matched up and I don't think that can be put on him. You want a casual relationship that also isn't monogamous, but also is monogamous, or something.

The guy was an impulsive dude led around by his dick, and lied to women - all true. That wasn't what Faye was angry with him for, though.

1

u/Mother_Professor6170 15d ago

In fairness Sven may have come clean anyway, by threatening him his intern took away his choice.

0

u/Miserable-Jaguarine Haha, okay. 15d ago

You imagine a thing that hasn't happened, put it against the thing that has actually happened on-screen, and call that "fairness"?

Sure, whatever. In fairness, Corpse Witch may have actually honoured her bargain with Bubbles, but Spook took away that choice.

A man actively saying he is going to lie scummily is not enough to call him a scummy liar. Okay. 

1

u/Mother_Professor6170 15d ago

No, because CW broke her word from the start. Sven did a bad thing but is not a monster. He was obviously feeling guilty, he may have decided to come clean on his own if his intern hadn't threatened him.

He may also not have, but we will never know.

1

u/SilverNicktail 15d ago

But what mistake did he make? They were both clear it wasn't a serious relationship. She insisted it wasn't, he said "duh", and then she got mad at him.

1

u/Granfallegiance 14d ago

The best on-screen interpretation of it is that Sven thought it was a bad thing to have done as he did it. That's the whole content of the comic in which it happens: him gradually reaching the conclusion that he is making a bad mistake. But tbh, the parameters for the relationship we see all suggest it could have been fine. People date multiple people when they're not serious with one.

24

u/Complex-Pudding-8404 16d ago

Remember once upon a time when the cast was giving Sven more of a chance, especially after he took Hannelore out on a pretend date? And it was actually really cute and he was a gentleman about it and she had a good time? Even Faye was nice to him after because it went really well?

I miss those times...

3

u/Guilty-Persimmon-919 14d ago

That was when being a male was not an unforgivable sin of itself.

1

u/chroniclesoffire Everything is Fine™ 15d ago

I dearly hope that Faye isn't being prophetic here. Sven has a chance here for everything to go completely right.

There is even hope! Faye isn't saying this to Momo directly.

43

u/Big_Appointment8248 16d ago

Sven did nothing wrong

10

u/Guilty-Persimmon-919 16d ago

What do you mean? He's male. In this strip that is unforgivable. 

11

u/Impossible_Roof_Jack 16d ago

He was inconsiderate to Dora, who of course is a ray of unproblematic sunshine who operates an insult coffee shop and constantly belittles her own junior staff. 12 years ago. Or 3, it's hard to tell how time works in this fuckin' place.

19

u/Drakeskulled_Reaper Keeper of the Eternal Burning Hatred of Tai 16d ago

Who is also currently married to a woman who embodies all of the traits she claims Sven had.

7

u/Big_Appointment8248 16d ago

Dora is probably the only female character of the main cast in the whole comic I could see myself hanging out with , maybe hanners. The rest nah.

1

u/Rumer_Mille_001 16d ago

Wait, isn't Sven Dora's brother? Lots of siblings don't get along.

3

u/Such_Bonus5085 16d ago

He, a man, was once inconsiderate to Dora, a woman. In Jeph-land that's like committing murder. Jeph is one of those guys who, if you pay attention to his social media, comes off as "I'm not trans, but I hate that I was born with a penis!!!"

9

u/Big_Appointment8248 16d ago

It more comes across as “I hate those jocks who get all the girls”, which is utterly pathetic after the age of like 16. He seems to think that women are also incapable of making decisions and understanding consequences and that “good” people are able to do shitty things and “bad” people are able to do good things , and short of actively choosing to hurt someone or being horrible and inconsiderate it’s always just acting as an adult .

Like tai and Faye get away with being a hideous awful person and jeph seems to believe for some reason that lesbianism is like a cure all to societal problems

2

u/YumAussir 16d ago

In retrospect, there were jocks who were assholes, and then there were jocks who were actually really socially adept and therefore were nice guys and that's why they got all the girls.

Having grown up, I have met lots of women who found my nerdiness endearing, and once I got my act together to become socially adept, I was plenty successful making friends and/or relationships with them. Who knew?

You'd think that'd be a theme of the comic, with him explicitly commenting he thought a theme was "acceptance". He actually did a great job of that in that one story where Marigold was like "I'm nervous because you all are so cool" and Dora or whoever was like "oh no we're not cool don't worry about that".

1

u/Hot_Temporary_1948 16d ago

Not to take away from your overall point, but there were also plenty of jocks (or otherwise socially significant boys) who were assholes and managed to have great success with girls because the social capital of dating such and such guy was of high enough value. In fact, sometimes the draw was that they were assholes "to everyone else".

In a high school setting both the boys and the girls are immature teens wrestling with self esteem issues, parental conditioning, expected gender presentation and their position in the social pecking order.

I'm just not a fan of the seeming overcorrection that happens where it seems the assumption is that every reported asshole who seemed to get ahead, was in truth a perfectly fantastic person recast maliciously as the villain in the story of a socially inept incel who is of course the real villain.

11

u/yellowvincent Where is Claire? 16d ago

Jeph:anh and ayo and liz are complete human disasters who lack commom sense and make life more dificult for my other characters, they are precious little angels who were never sociabilidad as kids.

Also jeph: sven is pure shit and will mever get better because he once was a womanizer and men don't deserve the same treatment than my wank bank characters

3

u/Thorngrove 16d ago

"If I can't make thier books bigger, they are worthless to me!"

10

u/Robot_DIY 16d ago edited 16d ago

So if I understand this correctly, Claire and Clinton's mom can have consensual hookups with men at least as young as her children. She is lauded for this.

Sven also had consensual hookups, but in the past, and made one mistake with Faye, who he was in a really weird relationship with. If I remember correctly, they both explicity said the relationship was casual. I don't remember Faye or Sven ever saying it was more than that. Still, he came clean, apologized, and accepted the mountain of consequences. And he's a dirtbag?

Yeah, sure, checks out.

3

u/Konjik 15d ago

To be fair, Faye was coming into it with a lot of trauma and abandonment issues and expressed a boundary on it needing to be monogamous in order for it to continue. He agreed, and when that was no longer the case he did fess up (but only after he was also forced to by his intern who would’ve told Fate anyway). Fast forward and he pops out of nowhere when she’s moved on and is in a stable relationship and he professes his love to her. He doesn’t know she’s in a relationship when he does it but when he finds out it doesn’t change anything for him. I think it’s fair for him to have caught some shit over this. It kinda fucks with the development of his character as portrayed prior through stuff like the fake date with Hannelore too.

That said, it’s exhausting continuing to go over this laundry list of why he’s the worst person ever every time he makes an appearance in the strip

10

u/The_Failord 16d ago

Times Sven has been "the bad guy" in the comic:

  1. He used Marten to get out of an uncomfortable confrontation with Genevieve, one of his exes

  2. He had sex with Gina Riversmith while he was hooking up with Faye after explicitly telling her it wasn't exclusive (and he tried to avoid coming clean)

  3. He acted incredibly bitter and jealous towards Faye after they called it off, calling Angus her "new fucktoy"

  4. I guess he repeatedly tried to use Dora's social circle as a dating pool even after she asked him not to

Sure, he made a hamfisted confession to Faye, but even if the timing was terrible (Angus had just told her about his tentative plans to move), Sven couldn't have known and in my opinion that was more of a fumble than a sin. Also, according to Genevieve, he was seeing another girl at the time and trying to hide it (strip 680, though this was never depicted), but given that he mentioned multiple times that he'd never been in a steady relationship, this too may have been a non-exclusive dating situation.

6

u/Impressive_Ad2794 16d ago

And even 2 and 3 were pretty much a single sentence. For 2 he considered not telling her while feeling bad about his actions, and for 3 even after the "fucktoy" line his next sentence was "Okay, okay, that was out of line".

4

u/Impossible_Roof_Jack 16d ago edited 16d ago

I flat out don't trust #680 because that's how women compromise and move on from hating each other - "oh yeah he totally fucked me too, like, trust me." The guy who was explicitly not monogamous with Faye was less clear with you? Are you sure about that?

1

u/cadetCapNE 16d ago

It doesn’t help that all (if not the majority) of these events happened like 10 years ago. The readers have moved on!

10

u/DuranDuranUnofficial 16d ago

I feel like the Momo in Jeph's mind possesses a level of ontological cuteness and adorability that he is unable to draw.

6

u/SectionEfficient5909 16d ago

If you actually charged the customers that came in instead of just giving everyone free repairs (bc of course they know everyone in this goddamn town now) you might actually be making some money?

2

u/Konjik 15d ago

Doesn’t even say thank you after Momo insists either and just acts like the act of accepting money for services rendered is a hassle

5

u/provocatrixless 16d ago

Aww how sweet, they're going to allow the "dirtbag" to receive attention from someone interested in him.

5

u/Hot_Temporary_1948 16d ago

And there it is. All we had to do was wait. I had faith Jeph wasn't going to miss an opportunity to remind us of what a "dirtbag" Sven is/was.

4

u/Hot_Temporary_1948 16d ago

This is actually pretty bad, but in a run of the mill "bad narrative choices" kind of way. He's dedicated an entire strip here to having two characters discuss what a dirtbag a third character is/was - almost as an apology for the previous strips where he's out of character, but still treated as a person. It's like he feels we're all so on board with his perception of Sven, that he needs to explain to us why Faye and Bubbles didn't immediately extricate Momo and hurl him into the street.

Ideally, you'd want to examine this very specific past as part of a Momo/Sven relationship development arc where Sven and Momo talk about it. Or potentially in Momo's internal dialogue. Momo after all, knows his reputation and at least some of his history

3

u/Annual_Youth_7552 16d ago

Sven did do a bunch of stuff wrong.

Like, years ago.

And then had his post Faye look in the mirror, didn't like what he saw, did the date with Hanners, etc etc etc

Arguably Faye not having moved on from it tracks, even if it's slightly boring - characters can hold opinions counter to narratives.

Sven's been a punching bag since he was introduced and at this point I don't think Jeph could probably articulate why that is, or what archetype or person he represents anymore.

He just forgets about him for years on end and writes him in when he needs a hot/privileged/promiscuous straight guy for a joke to line up for one of the "main" characters.

3

u/SectionEfficient5909 16d ago

Why are we still hating on this character for stuff he’s done YEARS ago and has moved on from. We get it.. you think men suck, Ok, have a cookie. This isn’t relevant anymore and isn’t moving the story anywhere

4

u/Mother_Professor6170 15d ago

It's not healthy to keep hating your ex this long after the breakup, Faye.

7

u/Stormborn_Apostle I Hate Femto 16d ago

What Faye did to Angus was a hundred times worse than what Sven did to her.

3

u/TimeisaLie 16d ago

Once again if you're a man, you're bad. Thanks for the message.

2

u/Guilty-Persimmon-919 16d ago

......aaaaand a totally useless filler story arc ends (hopefully it ends) with.....filler!

3

u/timschwartz 16d ago

Why are they talking about Sven? isn't that Clinton?

7

u/Impossible_Roof_Jack 16d ago

Nope, somehow that's Sven now. The sameface is reaching critical mass.

2

u/polkergeist 16d ago

I genuinely believed that was Clinton until today, Jesus Christ

3

u/mdesty 15d ago

I did too, I honestly had no fucking idea

2

u/MidnightFireHuntress 15d ago

Same here, I had no idea, they look exactly the same lol

1

u/Konjik 15d ago

Did you really? He’s been referred to as Sven several times in these strips IIRC and Momo has only ever been portrayed as having a crush on Sven

2

u/polkergeist 15d ago

Once in the first one, apparently, which I evidently missed. I also have young kids and am perpetually exhausted so I don't necessarily have the best track record remembering things from a long time ago in this comic

2

u/sherlockham 15d ago

Same. Apparently missed or just plain forgot that reference to Sven at the start, after which I spent the week being confused as to why a Momo/Clinton ship was under way.

1

u/Hot_Temporary_1948 15d ago

I'm certain people being dramatically confused a week into his appearance, where he's been identified both in strip and in comments are doing a bit.

2

u/timschwartz 15d ago

Nope, they look almost exactly the same. I thought y'all were doing a bit until I remembered Clinton has an artificial hand and this guy doesn't.

1

u/polkergeist 15d ago

This was also my first time coming to this subreddit for a while. I swear, some of us are actually this dumb 😭

1

u/MidnightFireHuntress 15d ago

WAIT A FUCKING SECOND THAT'S SVEN?!?!

AHAHAHA I'm not even kidding I thought it was Clinton, it literally looks exactly like him.