Anime Club

I am so ready for these guys to hook up. They are frigging adorable together.

NeverRude

High school IS a miserable place, and it's a thousand times worse if you didn't have a group to be part of. I think I'm lucky I got out of it before I killed someone.

Churchill (formerly TeaBear)

I never think of things that way. Thanks !

Sarah Buisson

It depends on the system. For most of them, I believe that's the case, but there have been some systems developed with nine or ten rabbits to the rabbyte. I think I've heard of one with twelve rabbits to the rabbyte.

Some Ed

"High School was the best time of my life" people were well-adapted to the school environment they'd been in since the first grade. They were extra adaptable when they were younger, and they'd managed to do it well. Middle school or junior high was better than elementary school, and finally in high school they got it all right. And then that ended, and there's not been anything in their lives like that since. Even if they went to college, that is a tremendously different experience than what came before it. For basically their entire secondary schooling, they were simply refining their social process, and didn't need to make major changes to it. For the rest of us, high school was a time of trying major shifts to adapt to this environment in which we were never comfortable but was becoming increasingly intense. If we went to college, it was probably more or less the removal of all of the social structure that they had grown dependent on, and we saw this as a good thing because we had been unable to adapt to it, or had been randomly placed in an uncomfortable position in it. For me, college was basically a removal of almost all of the negative elements in high school, the addition of the woman of my dreams, and served as a bridge into the rest of my life. She never really seemed to like who I was, so that was a helpful though painful introduction to living without her anywhere around. Since then, my life has just been a slow evolution towards self quarantine. For a lot of people who didn't go to college, entering the workforce was a removal of a lot of that social bullshit. One of my high school classmates who didn't go to college explained at one point that for him the big difference between high school and work that made work so much more tolerable was that there wasn't some invisible social hierarchy to follow which kept shifting based on events he was never a part of. There was still a social hierarchy that he needed to follow, but it was codified in an org chart that he could easily reference, and it wasn't always changing.

Some Ed

If you read enough comics, it's statistically guaranteed to happen. It's especially likely to happen if you read a bunch of comics that feature numerous characters who talk about social theory, like El Goonish Shive and QC. I can't remember if either cartoonist reads the other right now, but if one or both reads the other, then that likely increases the odds unless they opt to carefully plan to avoid it. Of course, intentionally making something like this happen via agreement between the two artists would be very difficult. Both of these comics came to this point through involved bits of story telling, and while there were multiple points before this for each of them where this discussion could have happened, I don't think any of them would have felt as readily fitting into the story as this, and I don't think they were as close together in temporal proximity.

Some Ed

That sounds more like a rule imposed by the outside world. The anime club I was in didn't have any such rule, at least. I think the first rule of our anime club was if you made a mess, you cleaned it up.

Some Ed

My twitch is people saying "and" instead of "an". But somehow I manage to keep it bottled up long enough to not yell at anyone over it. I will admit that I do have a special bit of twitch for MicroSoft's grammar checker, which has both recommended that I use "would of" instead of "would've" and highlights every use of both "its" and "it's" as potential grammar problems despite the fact that it is a grammar checker, so should be able to tell when a contraction with a verb might be appropriate.

Some Ed

Middle school and high school were miserable for me.

Hugh Eckert

ah, but are eight rabbits a rabbyte?

David Howe

Love the direction Clinton's hair has taken. Maximum floof.

M Cohen

I would never ever want to relive high school. I mean, things that happened during that time are focal nowadays to discussions in therapy. :-P

R. Francis Smith

Excellent conversation.

Maurice Kessler

Yes, high school was hot garbage. I'll never understand the "oh, high school was the best time of my life!" people.

Derrik Pates

Here's to not being insufferable little shits any longer

Bagge

Please continue getting comfortable with casual physical contact, boys :) we live vicariously through these adorkable idiots.

Stephen Wells

Jeph, why you calling me out like this

Sure, but the nerds never grabbed your folders and whipped them down the hall, scattering your papers.

Richard Riley

Not wrong at all. Many people had a decent-to-great time there. I did not have a lot in common with any of my classmates but all of them were decent people who had respect for each other. Even the jocks. Might be a cultura thing (Im from Sweden). I found my friends in other classes but I have nothing bad to said about my class.

Rodrigo Ourcilleon

High school was pretty miserable for me. Jocks were BMOCs, and freely bullied.They were bastards then, and now -- 60 years later -- they are still bastards~!

In high school, I was the guy who would pick up an chair in study hall to hit a bully behind me and find out it was a teacher. ugh. Had a classmate (8th grade?) who would stick me in the back with his compasses needle, until I turned around and hit him on the head with the edge of my English text. Teacher looked over, I shrugged, she ignored it. Never saw him after that class. I wasn't big or anything, but I had limits to what I would tolerate.

allanfranta

and nibbles.

The current main story arc of El Goonish Shive just spent the last two weeks or so talking about what is or isn't a nerd. I find it a bit weird that two of my daily read web comics talk about the same thing at more or less the same time.

J. Michael

I remember in high school listening to the best and brightest academic students, those who will be on the senior “top ten” list (my high school has never recognized the valedictorian & salutatorian since probably the late 1980’s), talking about the kinds of alcohol they drank and trying to sound all sophisticated about their alcohol consumption. Kinda made me realize the geeks weren’t that much different than the jocks.

Miyaa

God dammit when will the boys kiss?

Daniel Burnett

first rule of anime club is: you do not talk about anime club.

Joe

I don't know where to begin with that grammatically. shit. I think I'm 'that guy'.

Joe

Is it wrong that I remember High School fondly? That my nerdiness found companionship despite all else? (1980's)

Alacrity Fitzhugh

I'm so happy to be nothing like I imagined I would be in high school. I am so grateful for all my friends since then who helped me become a better person. For their patience and understanding, I will always be thankful. Be kind to yourselves, everyone.

I like to think of it as a Scandinavian pronunciation. “Hjigh Schjule”

HOW MUCH DID KC GREEN CHARGE FOR THE TITLE OF THIS EPISODE?

Ami

I remember being picked on and such, but I also learned to stand up for my self. Now 40 years later I'm finding these guys on Facebook and, we've become friends.

Elizabeth Siemanski

Memories of public school growing up are all the reason I need to never have kids.

He's looking away because he's still ashamed of who he was. That doesn't mean he didn't see Elliot raise his fist.

awgiedawgie

Looks like a park path.

awgiedawgie

I’m impressed that Clinton has his hand raised for a fist bump while still looking away from Elliot.

Erin Hartshorn

I think it gets exaggerated in a lot of media to make it more narratively interesting. While many of us are dicks as teenagers, I think for most of us it doesn't quite turn into the elaborate social games you see on TV. Like when I was seventeenish I loved to write. I went to some big church event where we met a bunch of other Mormon youths. Met this girl who also likes to write. She gushed about some self insert story where she was the reincarnation of Cleopatra dating some vampire boy or something. I was polite but inwardly thought a lot of condescending stuff about how that wasn't "real" writing like my cliched swords and sorcery adventures. Never called her back or pursued the relationship any further, even though she was probably pretty cool. A poor reflection of where my head was at but I probably didn't actually hurt anybody or anything. Of course, that's not an interesting story. In a highschool drama, I'd say all those condescending things outright, and then we'd engage in some sort of catty schemes to hurt eachother through convoluted social machinations. The clashing ideologies around writing turn into a more literal interpersonal clash that brings our douchebaggery to the forefront in cinematically interesting ways.

Mitchell Sealy

...Okay I really like that.

Morgan

I think that's pretty normal. In my opinion it's weird when people cling to highschool cliques as an identity well into adulthood. A lot of that stuff can still be a source of joy to a certain extent but if you're like a dick to your adult coworkers because they don't understand Grunge Music or whatever your scene was in that weird transitional period then what are you doing?

Mitchell Sealy

I once read, "If you look back in your life and have no regrets you had a very shallow life."

Michael

Is there a typo in the subtitle ("hjgh" instead of "high")?

Michael Russell

Kinda looks like they've left town, and are walking through a forest, now. Where are they headed, again?

Michael Voorhis

BRB, constructing a wormhole to send this comic back to high school me.

Emma Humphries

Sometimes I feel like I want to high school in a fantasy land. We had "cliques", but they weren't mean to each other (they weren't particularly nice to each other, they just didn't care about each other). And plenty of people were in multiple cliques. There were plenty of jocks also in honor classes, and lots of different types of people did theater. Sure, there were tons of petty, snobby and mean students, but it was done on an individual level, not group.

JD

How much time *has* elapsed? We've got to be past the "3-6 months" that Jeph used to say.

schmod

Clinton's hair looks so good though.

Alexander Rueda

Had my share of unpleasant encounters with members of numerous cliques and I recognize when I was a knob-end as well now. So Jeph is right. So is Cody.

Douglas E. Smith

Times like this make me wish we had a more concrete chronological timeline/calendar, because the "high school" Clinton he's describing sounds not unlike the Clinton we first met thousands(?) of strips ago. I'd like to know how long it took for him to mature like he has and come so far emotionally.

A.A. aka Double

NGL, these two are my Lincoln class carrier right now. (Big ship)

Forgettable

Don't worry, Clinton, mine does too. My whole body trembles with rage every time I see someone use "of" when they meant to use "'ve" so I think I might still be an AP lit snob.

Forgettable

If it weren't for my abhorrent grades I would have loved high school. Alas my ADHD was rampantly wild back then as opposed to the dull roar it is now.

That is suave AF for Eliot.

Jeremy

Clinton speaks nothing but the truth. In my personal experience, other nerds were always shittier to your face than jocks were.

Alexander W Couzens

I know from whence Clinton is coming from.

Michael Boettger

just bang already god

Cody Renton