September 30, 2013 - So... the trigger warning text is gone for now, but, uh, obviously today's comic still deals with a rather sensitive issue with gun violence. This plot has been planned for a long time, and unfortunately a lot of tragedies have happened recently involving gun violence, only making this idea all the more important to discuss.

I think an important element of all these tragedies is the amount of emphasis placed on the perpetrators while victims are only listed as statistics (take for example this list of recent US shootings, note that all the shooters names are mentioned while almost all the victims have their identities reduced to a number). This storyline has obviously been about victimization (albeit sexual assault not involving a weapon as opposed to what's presented in today's comic -- and there are some distinctions I should be making about conflating the two, but I want to focus on their commonalities). The scary thing about being a victim is that as much as people may want to justify that they "couldn't be a victim" for whatever reason, anyone can potentially become a victim whether you're as brazen as Star or as cautious as Mary.

I'll obviously discuss this a bit more as this week's comics progress. For now, I should probably post a link to Emily's latest column before things get even more intense. And I'm also gonna link this anti-gun ad which is somewhat related to her article and today's blog, though it's worth noting some of the criticism of the ad.

-D