Saturday Morning Cartoons: Loose Morals

Welcome to Saturday Morning Cartoons, a segment where four artists take turns delighting you with their whimsy, facts and punchlines on Saturday mornings! Our esteemed cartoon critters are Cameron GlavinAnna BongiovanniMegan Praz and Yao Xiao. Today’s cartoon is by Anna!


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Archie

I'm a cartoonist living in Minneapolis. Co-Author and artist of A Quick And Easy Guide To They/Them Pronouns. Author of Grease Bats, coming out Fall 2019 with Boom! Studios! If I'm not working I'm socializing. If I'm not out with friends I'm drawing. If I'm not doing any of those things I'm probably depressed. Support me using Patreon.

Archie has written 117 articles for us.

36 Comments

  1. I really like Andy’s first embroidery.
    I also really like how, after asserting themselves and protecting their boundaries like a badass, Andy then instantly becomes tearful and apologetic. That’s a whole lot of true.

  2. “I don’t understand what you don’t understand!”
    I am seriously thinking about printing out that frame and handing it to my thesis advisor and saying, “Look, we’re finally on the same page!”.

    I logged onto AS after a fraught morning hoping there would be a GreaseBats cartoon and LO! There it is right up there, a delight to me and the rest of the world. Thanks!

  3. I have never thought of it from Andy’s viewpoint before.. good point. I will think on this. With chips and wine. Actually I can’t eat chips because I just got a wisdom tooth taken out and I can’t drink wine because I’m taking pain meds. I need a soft and sober alternative… mashed potatoes and juice

  4. Ok Andy has a point and I definitely am always on the side of if two adults are consenting and happy than huzzah go for it BUT I make it my policy to ask friends about it before I go for an ex of theirs. Because my friendships are really important to me and people have mixed up emotions about exes. And every single time I’ve asked “hey how would you feel if” my friends have been “oh go for it, you totally should” but also have felt really respected and valued and considered and have thanked me for asking beforehand. I’m not asking because I think someone else should have control over my sex life, I’m asking because I want my friends to know that they are important to me and I want them to feel considered. And roommates just ups the stakes more. I have exes that I definitely want to have happy fun fulfilling sex lives and would recommend them to anyone to date or hook up with but I wouldn’t so much want to overhear them having sex one room over, you know? If my roommate wanted to date them I would want to have heads up and be able to think through and discuss what would help me feel comfortable in my own home, such as a heads up if they’re coming over. So, yeah, I agree with Andy their body their choice and nobody gets jurisdiction over any else’s sex/love/dating life but… I value giving kind consideration to my friends’ hearts too. On the other hand, Scout’s reaction (you can’t do that!) does call for some boundary-setting and autonomy-reminding too.

    This comic was good. Felt very real. :)

      • hear hear. Its not asking for permission so much as letting your friend get prepared for what might happen.

  5. Yeah, no, Andy is the one being really entitled here. Andy can date whoever they want, and bring whoever they wants into their living space, obviously, but that doesn’t mean they should. Andy and Scout aren’t romantically involved, but their friendship is an important, committed relationship – they’re roomies, they’ve been friends for a long time, they both seem to care about maintaining that relationship – and that means they are sort of obligated to consider each other’s feelings when doing potentially upsetting stuff.

    Like, leaving aside the dating part, Andy wants to bring a person who Scout’s uncomfortable with into their and Scout’s mutual house. This affects Scout, too – a person who makes her uncomfortable is going to be in mutual areas of the house, and Scout will have to hole up in her room (and still probably hear the uncomfortable-making person), go somewhere else, or be really uncomfortable, and like… she doesn’t have ownership over anyone’s social life, but she does have half the ownership of the house? Which doesn’t mean that Andy shouldn’t be able to have friends Scout doesn’t like or that they shouldn’t be able to have those friends in the house, but it does mean it’s an issue that requires some tact and diplomacy. Maybe they could approach the subject nicely and give Scout a little warning so she knows when to be out of the house – I don’t know, but they should treat it like something that legitimately inconveniences Scout, because it does.

    Don’t really know much about dating ex-partners of friends – I’d probably be okay with it if a friend dated my ex, but if they didn’t talk to me first about something that might be really upsetting, I’d probably feel like they didn’t really care about our friendship. Plus, I don’t really know what “everyone’s BFF is someone’s ex” has to do with whether you should be dating your BFF’s ex.

    Jeez, I vomited out so many words about this comic, but tldr: wanting basic consideration is not being entitled?

    • yeah! maybe! I dunno! I don’t really think either of them are right or wrong in the comic personally, but it was fun to draw the nuances of boundaries and expectations and when those things don’t easily align. Probably Andy didn’t realize it would bother Scout and will act differently in the future, but also Andy can get pretty defensive when it comes to their sex life so… ANYWAYS! I don’t disagree with you!

    • I really really like what you said here. Housemate relationships and dynamics are so tricky and they’re really not codified at all. We just don’t have very developed social expectations around how these relationships work–and that’s actually very exciting with a lot of potential for creative discovery, but also so many difficult negotiations. It’s like an improvised, often short-lived family of equals…with really loose commitments and unclear obligations. I’ve been on both sides of a dilemma like this–having someone brought into my house that I was super uncomfortable with, and also feeling really angry about being limited in my ability to bring my person round. Both suck. There’s definitely a need for communication, patience and mutual compassion. (And it’ll probably still be rough!)

  6. Yet another brilliant comic that made me smile :D
    I would 100% join the Neon-Nerd Embroidery Society, could someone make that a real thing? I think it needs to be a real thing.

  7. okay so dude bro went out with one of my dad’s sisters for about a year and then dude bro dated another sister and then another sister and they are married and have kids now and dude bro is my uncle.

    Family tree.

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