There is a series of free online games called Super Stacker, Super Stacker 2, Super Stacker 3, featuring these characters. You can look it up or see an image clip here.
I didn't take the comic to mean anything that way, but if it is supposed to, I agree with you.
I mean theres plenty of stories and even history books that essentially say "look at our utopia of perfection! Just dont look into the mass gaves its built upon...".
For one from my own country, Canada has a very brutal and dark history with the native population, one that is still on going in some regards, which included genocide and still very current racism. Hell as recently as the 1960s, the Canadian government was still kidnapping native kids to shove them into bording schools to literally beat the native out of them, so this isnt ancient "Britain doing a colonialism" bullshit from the 1700s, its recent enough for the survivors of it to still be alive from the event.
But that gets glossed over and whitewashed as hell for "haha canada polite until war crimes", even in our own history books.
This comic can be interpreted in that direction too, and not just the "the only way forward is to kill those that dont fit" direction.
the comment can be interpreted in that direction too
Can it? You spent three paragraphs arguing about this and didn't even say why.
Media literacy is very important. In this case, the juxtaposition between the third and fourth panels makes the authors intent pretty clear. The author brings you up, up, up, then shows the brutal reality of the situation, that there's no perfect society where everyone gets along.
Someone doesn't need to shout something from the rooftops for their meaning to be clear. The reader is supposed to interpret the art piece they're reading, not have it spoonfed to them
I'd argue the comic could very easily be advocating for it.
All you have to do is get rid of the circles, and society grows and prospers. They were the only thing standing in the way, because they don't get along with any other shapes, and actively hurt any effort to build things together.
I'm not even really seeing how it's arguing against it.
If it was advocating for it, why was the mass grave for circles shown so grimly in contrast with the rest of the colorful comic? My friend, if the author was making a "genocide good for shape world harmony", circles would be demonized and the "solution" for being rid of the circles would be glamourized for it to be propaganda that you are seeking this art piece to be.
But.. it's doing exactly what you said it would be, if it was a "genocide good for shape world harmony". Circles are demonized. They're all upset with each other in the 1st picture, and the moment the circles are gone, they're all happy, and can finally work together to build something.
Not to mention, the picture of the city being all picturesque in the sunset, like this is what society could be if only one thing was removed.
I wouldn't even say the picture with the circles are all that grim. It's just showing what happened to them. As in, "This is what the world could be, if just one piece was removed, by force".
I don't wanna pick on you, but this is why media literacy is important.
The NARRATOR clearly agrees the circles being removed was good. The AUTHOR does not necessarily believe what the narrator believes. When determining an authors intent, you want to look at what emotional response the author is trying to invoke in their target audience, NOT their words.
In this case, because an overwhelming majority of people are against genocide, the emotional response would be negative. The author is trying to reach people who see a perfect world where everyone gets along as a good thing, and make them realize it wouldn't be.
On the other hand, many actual presented solutions melt down to "no, those arent The Bad People, this group is The Bad People", and as somebody living in the usa i can only really trust moderate democrats to not go down that road. And they're unpopular exactly for their reluctance to play into that tribalism hatred.
Tl dr, my faith in humanity isn't high enough to be sure.
It reads to me more like commentary on human nature and that second panel specifically than advocacy for genocide. Why would someone who wants that to happen show the negatives of the aftermath?
Hello. This is doing well. That's nice. I used to post here years ago, but only slowly back in the game. Is social media dead in the AI world? Probably. Anyway, here's my new Victims of Comics Instagram. I'm old now.
My take was that this was making fun of popular history taught in the US and elsewhere that emphasizes stories of progress, strength, and inevitability and glosses over the enormity of the historical wrongs that were committed.
While OP is pretty clearly in the "genocide is bad" camp here, there is absolutely a large chunk of the population that would enthusiastically agree with the "message" that the solution to all our problems to to exterminate the ones "responsible."
Just replace the circles with "Jews," "Muslims," "Immigrants," or a whole litany of historical scapegoats.
But it shouldn't mean you want them all dead. I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy a sudden death or extermination. If people do bad things, punish them for what they did. (I myself think death is too much)
You are correct, it shouldn't, sadly it's what some truly believe and take action on. If you wanna hear about the history of how this looks in the US, check out Weird Little Guys podcast, a surprising number of episodes deal with present day nazis. It's really disappointing.
Perhaps they should have added "physical" in front of traits.
And even pedos and rapists shouldnt be killed. They should just lose their outside privileges forever. As far as I'm concerned, the bar for the death penalty is so high, it should be practically unreachable.
They should just lose their outside privileges forever. As far as I'm concerned, the bar for the death penalty is so high, it should be practically unreachable.
Shouldn't that be left up to the convicted? I would personally rather die than be sentenced to life with parole, and I can't imagine I'm the only person who feels this way.
The death penalty serves a purpose imo at being an alternative to life without parole, only to be chosen if desired by the sentenced.
If the convicted had their way, they would never suffer punishments fitting their crimes. If anyone should have a say in what convicted criminals should suffer, it is their victims. And even then, not really. E.g, everyone who thinks rapists and pedophiles should suffer genital mutilation.
There's a reason we invented court systems and trials by jury. The public has a long, rich history of proving why they can't be trusted to hold people accountable for their sins.
If the convicted had their way, they would never suffer punishments fitting their crimes
The primary goal and severity of the punishment doesn't change with my suggestion: the convict still is completely and permanently removed from society. The only thing that changes is that we can better avoid doling out "cruel and unusual" punishments, because that is in fact a subjective judgement.
If anyone should have a say in what convicted criminals should suffer, it is their victims
Absolutely not, which you admit right afterwards. The victims are often even more hellbent on revenge, understandably so given the trauma they suffered at the convicted's hands. But that is not humane treatment.
The public has a long, rich history of proving why they can't be trusted to hold people accountable for their sins.
I agree wholeheartedly, which is exactly why I am advocating for giving a modicum of that control back to the sentenced, specifically when faced with the most severe punishment of all.
Isn't this how everyone that advocates for some kind of genocide, feels about their target?
Rape is an action and so it's a crime to be handled like other crimes, but isn't pedophilia wired into the brains of the pedophiles? They're born that way. Or develop that way in puberty or whatever, either way simply being one isn't a choice, as far as available research seems to indicate. I think that needs to be handled with a 'rehabilitation and ongoing management' approach rather than just rounding them all up and burying them in a mass grave. And that - Rehabilitation and ongoing management - is a form of fitting them into our society, in my opinion.
Deciding that a certain type of person is born wrong and they all need to die, seems evil.
No nation is free of sin and no nation has not suffered. If you go back far enough every nation, every people, is both abuser and victim. It’s weird. History’s weird like that.
lol I was just thinking it recently, because I was reading up on the Norman conquest. It’s fascinating because in modern terms the Normans instituted an apartheid system on the English. 1000 years ago English people were the oppressed, and now look at them. Weird!
Like I get what you're going for, but the circles objectively couldn't fit and were always going to make things not work. Also the fact that the circle in the first panel is orange and making the rest of the shapes fight each other threw me off at first
I see your point and honestly the purple piece only really fits at the top. We should probably go ahead and optimize the system even further by removing them to truly give the other shapes the space they need to be prosperous
Agree completely, its the really the Final Answer to this whole conundrum. The squares are the most populous anyway, I'm sure if they simply removed each group one by one they could have a square-supremacist utopia without much push back.
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u/elhomerjas 1d ago
very clever work