It’s always fun to stick characters together who haven’t interacted a lot. Maddison may not be the brightest, but she is a ray of sunshine. She very much likes the smell and taste of crayons. She also likes her various jobs because she enjoys the simple efforts of cleaning and sorting. Maddison has an affinity for work and activities where she has a clear goal with very obvious results. A floor is either clean or it isn’t. As long as you know how to clean it you’ll know when you’re done at the end. That isn’t strictly true really. When I was young we always had to ask our dad if the floor was clean because he has levels of clean in his mind that go beyond what most people see as clean. I used to test out if he actually paid attention to this unknowable standard by asking then not actually doing anything for about ten minutes, so I could verify that the standard was basically arbitrary. If nothing else, when it comes to Alex at least, Maddison knows what counts as clean or not clean, so that’s what matters. She is an example of that rarest of humans: someone who is kind for absolutely no reason. She is nice because it’s nice to be nice. I’m not sure if the world would be better if there were more Maddisons in it, but I feel like it would be.
Anyway, I’m late posting again so I won’t go on at any more length than this. Now I will casually point at the various support links. Up, and your right, probably lower down the page if you aren’t using adblock. I hope your week is progressing well and things are trending up. We can catch up about how things went on Friday if you feel like coming back. Until then, collect to combine!

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I do love the idea of Maddison being incredibly emotionally intelligent despite lacking in many other over prioritized forms of intelligence, especially given many of the cast deal with complicated and confusing situations. I wish everyone a bright sunny healthy friendship.

Dang, John is so blown away by her astuteness his beard patch keeps disappearing in shock!

Clear your cache, smartass.

Was just mentioning it, thought it was funny, sorry if it offended you. Love the comic, keep up the great work!

No worries.

I wish I could have seen no beard John lmao.

Maddison is accidentally the cutest thing in the world rn

There is another web comics character who is relentlessly nice and sunny. Kaylee, from the comic On the Bright Side. Sadly this comic is no longer being updated. Its original hosting is long gone, but it was uploaded to Tapas and you can read it here:

https://tapas.io/series/OTBS

There is a subplot where some of the mean girls in high school tell Kaylee lies to try to poison her against another student, and this fails immediately because Kaylee is just too nice. “I’m sure she would never do that. Sorry, I have to leave now.”

There are times when I stop and think “I would be a better person if I was more like Kaylee.” Maybe the same goes for Maddison.

Jackie, you have to tell us: did leaving the floor for 10 minutes and then telling your dad it was clean work?

I eventually learned that there was a point after which his judgement was functionally arbitrary. My theory is that he intended tasks to take longer than it took me to complete them. I suspect it was an effort to keep me from pursuing whatever my own goals were, which was usually enjoying myself indoors.

My dad was like that sometimes, although for him it was generally less to do with the length of time spent working and more about the technique I employed while cleaning. If he walked in while I was cleaning something, he’d yell at me to stop playing, when I wasn’t playing, I was cleaning in the manner that made the most sense to me, so I’d ask him how I was supposed to clean, and he’d tell me to do it in a way that took like three times as long as what I was doing when I was “playing”, but on the occasions when I’d finish before he caught me “playing” he’d always be shocked at how quickly I finished, but upon inspecting my work under the assumption I’d half-assed it, it was always just as clean as if I had wasted time doing things his way, so he couldn’t argue with the results. He would still insist on doing things the “right” way, even though it was slower and yielded otherwise identical results, if he ever caught me doing things my way.

I will admit that I will force my daughter off of her laptop and phone to go outside. I don’t make excuses for it. I simply say straight out – “You need to get outside and walk around for at least 15 minutes”. Heck, if she wanted to go out and sit under a tree for an hour, I’d block my wife from interrupting. If there’s a chore, I tell her to do the chore. I don’t force her to do something in a specific manner unless she clearly half-assed the job.

The world would ABSOLUTELY be better if there were more people like Maddison in it. I love her so.

They theenk I’m crayzee.

But I know bedder.

Eet ees THEY who are crayzee.

Meanwhile, eet ees I who am mad!

Honestly, I agree with Madison here, I keep hearing about how supposedly neurotypicals are better at communicating than those of us on the autism spectrum, but only ever see evidence to the contrary. Supposedly this is due to them being able to utilize nonverbal cues, but having studied body language as a second language, and read studies on the matter, I don’t think it’s actually correct that neurotypicals are much better at using nonverbal communication, they just don’t doubt themselves as much, trusting their assumptions as correct rather than verifying with words, even when the words blatantly disagree with their assumptions. Nonverbal communication results in around 30% of the information intended to be communicated getting lost, according to one study I encountered years ago. IMO it’s much better for absolutely everybody to just say what you mean, mean what you say, use as precise language as possible, and leave as little unsaid as you can manage, which is what most of the people on the spectrum I’ve encountered seem to do, myself included. This practice is especially better in this day and age of text being our primary mode of communication, where you can’t hear the tone of voice and you can’t see their body language, all you have are the words they write, so it is simply best to get in the habit of not leaving a majority of your message out of your words because then nobody will understand what you mean as all that remains is mind reading, which is impossible for any of us, at best some will correctly guess at what you meant, but others will guess incorrectly, but beware using the false positives as evidence that your manner of communication is in any way effective, as I see many doing.

I can’t remember, has John’s age ever been stated in the comic? I know he’s older than Alex and Vicky but not by how much.

I thought he was basically Thomas’ age.

I just keep thinking that John’s overlooking someone. No guarantee that after he gets over being hung up on Alex (if that is how things run) that Victoria will not be attached with a fellow.

Jackie, I don’t know what combination of influences is making me ask this today but, are you a fan of The Venture Bros? I feel like you could be, if nothing else I think you and its creators share an appreciation (and a similar depth of appreciation) for some of the same things.

I have seen most of the series and enjoyed what I saw. I even have it on physical media up to the point that I lost track of their weird release schedule. I don’t know what could cause you to draw a correlation, between our works though.

I really like Maddy. She’s a great character. Portrayed as not too bright, but also not an idiot, it’s actually a delicate balancing act to get that right. She knows what she likes and what she wants to do, and honestly, that’s more than a lot of us (including me) can say.

I think her and Veronica are probably my favorite characters of yours. While both fairly minor characters, they both portray interesting and somewhat nuanced personalities.

I think that’s actually one of the greatest strengths of your comic. Love a character or hate them, I think most of the side characters are developed enough to remain interesting.

She is particularly difficult to write because I don’t have as solid of a connection to slower modes of thinking. I have to be mindful not to slip into the more common modes of speech of quick witted characters.

I had a much longer comment about Maddie looking directly into frame, but I think I got a bit carried away, so I am going to amend it now and say Maddie is adorable when you see her face the way you would in real conversation.

2892 It Is I Who Am The Best!

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