2953 Friends Till The End.

Mmph!
No! no, it isn’t true! Jackie’s [not] making me cry with his great writing.

…Ok, he is!
[sniffles.]

*walks off to soothe my sorrows with lots of Oreos + root beer*

Pro-tip, blame the onion cutting ninjas, they’re everywhere and nobody can prove it WASN’T them!

Hee, hee, hee! :D

I wonder if Alex has yet to tell Reggie about her sister and Nina…..

It’s wild how Reggie started off as one of the most insufferable character to becoming one of the most interesting and endearing cast members.

To be fair, it wasn’t really that surprising. It was alluded to fairly early on that Thomas was intentionally stunting Reggie’s emotional growth for a very long time. After watching Thomas interact with everyone and him monologuing his machinations about being a control freak, it was fairly obvious that he was keeping everyone in Megatainment in vicious cycle stagnance.

Granted he did it from a place of pseudo-benevolance. But I think on a reread of the earlier chapters it was obvious he was projecting a lot of his pessimism onto the crew. Things would have been significantly different if he had been proactive much much sooner. Even if just by working to resolve some of the conflicts between the crew. He left those conflicts in place specifically to make everyone easier to manage.

Reggie is just the one to suffer from it the most. His egregious self importance aside Reggie did have some legitimate grievances with Brooksie. Which is where I think a lot of the flack came from. Not that he was intentionally pleasant or anything. But that I could infer that his friction with her could easily make it difficult for him to form relationships with the rest of the crew. Since most people understandably liked her and wouldn’t have been friends with him if it meant not being friends with her.

This in turn left him with no real tangianble recourse for growth. Since you only really grow through experiences, and the only person willing to engage with Reggie was the one person who absolutely wouldn’t let him grow.

Even if you wanted to suggest that Reggie should have grown outside of the store. Through relationships he didn’t have or other experiences. You have to remember the scene where Reggie and Edward connected, laid down the law with each other, and grew as two individuals together. Thomas had undermined this growth in less than an hour and had Reggie regressing.

It’s all the more vexxing when you consider Thomas specifically did this just so he could have an early alarm system for corporate. Something he could have still had if he had managed Reggie differently. Framing it as protecting the store and staff from uncaring beuracracy. Something Reggie deeply understands. Even just framing it as protecting Nina would have done it, since it’s been implied physical book sales have been down for a long time.

I love all the cast, even Thomas. But sometimes I don’t think he rightly gets the flack he deserves for his machinations. Especially him basically stunting the growth of all his friends for years, just for comfort and because he didn’t want to move forward.

It’s feasible I misread the context, but I remember Nina saying something to the effect of liking Reggie. But not wanting to be around him because of his ego and how he treats others. I don’t know if their relationship would have become romantic or not. But Reggie would have had a legitimate shot.

If Thomas had moved on years ago, or at the very least let others move on. The situation would have been very different. Not necessarily better, but at least different. That said, Jackie really writes a compelling narrative and characters. It’s been a hell of a ride.

I know Jackie has stated before that Reggie and Thomas (and also Ed?) have similar personalities, and has also said about how long it would take for people to turn on Thomas.

The character writing is very well done, and I think this comic is a great example of the first introduced becoming our anchor to explore the story. A far more blatant and extreme example would be BoJack Horseman – objectively a character we should or would stay clear of but as he was first introduced we root for and hope he improves, or even seeing him or his friends as “right” when objectively they aren’t. Thomas was shown first, so how he views Reggie becomes the default for us.

Having had his comment on elseworlds and pairing compatibilities between others in the cast, it’s also an interesting exercise to think of how we viewed the characters if someone else had been our intro, such as Reggie.

That’s fair, a perspective shift does a lot. Had Reggie been the jump off point, the story would read significantly different. Especially when meeting Thomas.

This is a crazy unkind framing of Thomas. You act like Reggie could be trusted from the off when he clearly couldn’t be. Thomas has been easing him into the idea of not being a jerk since the beginning. You’ve just got hindsight now, Thomas was working with Reggie based on how he continually acted.

It’s actually exceedingly fair framing. On arrival Reggie was exceedingly kind. Naive but kind. Re-read the arc where we find out Reggie got fired over something him and Brooksie did.

This combined with his other traits, like hard working, promptness and honesty. Reggie is actually a really likable character. After getting framed and promptly fired, that is where his need for validation and recognition got twisted. After pulling a reverse uno card against the previous manager.

Thomas chose specifically to use the worst parts of Reggie and to a lesser parts the rest of the cast because it made them more managable. The proof is how as soon as Carol and Thomas got together and how she said in passing she wanted the store to change and the crew to stay, he pushed back. Saying it was easier to manage controlled losses and continue on as is. Keeping a perpetual stalemate as opppsed to dealing with unknown variables. When Carol said she didn’t care, that she wanted it regardless. Thomas immediately did a 180 and tried fixing all the things he knew needed fixing. It was even rediculously easy for him to do so.

I like Thomas a lot, I think he is an exceedingly intelligent character. I even think he is to a lesser extent correct in some of his actions. But this isn’t Machiavelli’s Italy, he absolutely did not have to leverage his friends like this. Especially Reggie.

As Switaj said above, narrative and character framing is paramont here. If you start the story where it did originally, yes. What I said feels as an uncharactaristically rough framing on Thomas. But if you start the story from the incident of Reggie getting fired, it’s another matter entirely.

Thomas’s and Reggie’s history preceed the start of the story. He absolutely could have prevented Reggie from reaching this point. More over it’s implied Reggie being that way is his intention. Given how fast he was to undo Reggie’s personal growth with Ed.

You can write as many essays as you want but that arc still showed Reggie from a limited perspective. I think your read is unfair. Simple as.

Of course it showed a limited perspective. It was a flashback. I can’t really change your mind if you think it’s unfair. But I think Thomas would agree with my assesment. If you go back and read the early 1000’s chapters Thomas exponds on his opinions on manipulation.

He asserts that manipulation in and of itself isn’t malicious. He is even shown actively manipulating Carol intentionally around a 100 pages later so she won’t take the assistant management posistion because he thinks it’s bad for her.

Thomas has never been a “good” character in a sense. Between his predisposition for manipulating people in ways he assumes is for there betterment and a literal scene where Ed manages to talk some sense into Reggie and less than ten posts later Thomas undoes the character growth because it’s inconvienent for him. I think my framing is more than fair.

Reggie isn’t perfect character by any stretch of the imagination. But Thomas factually prolonged and incited the worst parts of Reggie because he was more convenient that way.

Honestly the most interesting writing from BF in my opinion come from Thomas getting called out for this behavior. It’s why I think Carol is such a great foil and interest for Thomas. Because everytime he gets ahead of himself she trips him up. Leading to interesting philosophical discussions between the two.

You use a lot of words only to keep being wrong.

That we disagree doesn’t make me wrong. I’ve brought examples for my reasoning. Do you have any to counter mine?

Especially since I went out of my way to point out key story points that not only back up my views. But often times include Thomas either openly admitting to or displaying his predisposition for manipulating others.

Never argue with a fool, he will bring you down to his level and beat you with experience.

You can act smugly superior all you want. But I at least argued in good faith and attempted to leverage relevant evidence to my case.

All you’ve done is argue counter to my point without providing and arguement of real substance.

I suspect they would have kept baiting you if you hadn’t met the site’s thread limit. I haven’t seen that happen in quite some time. I can only reply because I’m an admin, obviously.

@Jackie
Probably. It was amusing while it lasted. It’s a shame he couldn’t be bothered to at least offer a counter arguement. At least BWM brought some interesting counter examples. Exen if I still think they were wrong.

Cheers for more great story telling. I hope you’ve been having a good week so far.

So we’re just ignoring Reggie’s established personality, and the effects of his own family and upbringing, to focus all negative attention solely on a coworker Reggie doesn’t even like that much as the cause of all of his negative traits, based entirely on a flashback from a guy who has been proven to have a memory that can be both poor and melodramatic when it suits his ego? I like Thomas but he can massively overestimate his own abilities, and saying “Oh yeah, I totally transformed this nice kid into an angry little goblin to facilitate my own comfort” is exactly the sort of a lie a man who is deeply insecure about things happening outside of his control, and fear of abandonment and change, would say.

Also, his sister doesn’t appear to back this up. I don’t mean she openly states it is wrong, of course, but she acts as though Reggie has long been them clumsy twit we’ve always known him as, not a totally sweet and naive brother who, not long ago, suddenly started changing into aforementioned twit. I feel like you theory ignores the more current information we’ve learned about him and his life; we were just told his mother constantly berated him and told him he’s literally better than other people, so I can’t help but feel like that’s why he thinks he’s literally better than other people.

The flashback is from Brooksie’s point of view and starts on 1219. Thomas admitting to manipulating Reggie openly is on 1283.

Thomas exacerbating Reggie’s worst character flaws doesn’t absolve him as a person for the responsibility of his own actions.

I just find it really weird that everyone finds Reggie being a legitimately likable character odd. When it is specifically show cased that he started out as a rather docile if haphazzard person with lots of redeeming qualities.

Yes Reggie has a myriad of flaws. But you can actively read the story and see Thomas specifically manipulate Reggie to continue to act this way. Yes Thomas has a soft spot for him. He’d probably love for him to be significantly less insufferable. But if he had to choose between a pleasant Reggie and someone whom would hubristically brag about corporate secrets. He’d choose the latter.

Thomas specifically says as such when explaining to Ed why Reggie is specifically an asset to the team. Thomas doesn’t somehow mystically manifest Reggie’s flaws from the aether.

As you pointed out these likely stemmed from his childhood and need for validation amongst other things. I just find it weird when Thomas, plainly and openly admits to manipulating people. That he finds absolutely nothing wrong with this. That he believes what he does is for the betterment of the team and those around him. That people push back on this, is odd to me.

I’m just pointing out that Reggie being long standingly insufferable is a by product of Thomas cajoling him in this direction. We’ve seen how easy and frequently Thomas manipulates others. That Reggie persists in this behavior is indicative that Thomas wants it to persist.

To be fair, it’s feasible the meta answer could be the nuance around Reggie changed from him being an antagonist over the years. But while I don’t quite remember the page, I vividly remember Thomas telling Ed that Reggie is specifically useful because he can be manipulated for information not privy om a ground level for corporate by exploiting his arrogance.

I believe he intentionally fed the worst parts of Reggie to keep him this way for his own comfort, yes. Because that information could be levied to protect the staff on a ground level.

You or I would maybe argue that it would be more prudent for him to just let Reggie in on it after letting him in on it. Thomas would probably assert that doing so would lead to greater chances of discovery by Reggie dropping the ball.

You can see this clearly from around 1000ish to 1100ish? Where Thomas explains his views on manipulation and how it’s sometimes good to “trick” people into doing what you want for their own betterment.

I use trick loosely because it’s an over simplification of Thomas’s nuance opinion on the matter. But it’s been a long standing theme that Thomas thinks he’s smarter than other people. His manipulations are generally benevolent in nature. But they come at the cost of the agency and considerations of others.

If anyone wants to reread Thomas talking about Reggie’s hiring, it’s at 412+.

Technically the encounter starts at 404 and Thomas stops being a wise ass on 407 I think?

But the logical through line I followed to arrive at my conclusion was referencing the narrative by refering to: 1017-1020 For Thomas’s thoughts on manipulation. 1039-1042 to Thomas manipulating Carol.

Those are to showcase that he has no qualms with manipulating others. There could be a valid arguement to be made that they eventually ended up with a democratic solution. But I’d posit that Thomas framed the discussion in a way that he knew he’d get more favorable out come for him.

I then followed this up by referencing 1219 for Brooksie’s flashback. I think she gives a fair read here for Reggie. Showcasing he had positive forward facing qualities in general. It is interesting to note she does later in the flash back acknowledge she got first had experience on his less pleasant ones after. Indicating he likely had a lot of his currently less pleasant ones. Inability to take responsibility and combativeness, etc.

1283 in conjunction with 1017-1020 do a lot of my heavy lifting in my opinion. You could argue that 1283 is a benign manipulation since it mostly showcases Reggie trying to act like Thomas a few strips later.

But in my opinon following it up with 404 forward explaining the reasoning behind Reggie’s usefulness. I would posit that Thomas was actively prolonging Reggie’s worst tendencies because allowing him to mature would have feasibly cut off a source of information from corporate.

If you read some of the earlier chapters of BF Thomas was a lot rougher around the edges with his devil may care additude. I see no reason why he would endeavor to not exploit Reggie’s hubris and stunt his growth.

It’s been a while but I think it’s implied the situation went on for roughly three years. Or three managers. I posit that would be more than enough time to whip Reggie into a less coarse person over all.

I think a lot of has to do with how a lot of people frame experience Reggie as someone you have to deal with versus want to interact with. I don’t think until that adventure with Alex and the crew in the bunker, Thomas really respected Reggie out side of his potential maybe.

I think from a pragmatic point of view, Reggie was simply more useful as is and you don’t need to fix what isn’t broken. That said, it’s more than feasible that Jackie will introduce more interim chapters of the Before Times as it were. Exploring Reggie and Thomas’s relationship. But I think I laid a fairly tight case as to why Thomas is likely to have done what I said.

Granted this in no way absolves Reggie from practicing Dickcraft as John would say. As a devil on your shoulder is just that, an impulse so to speak.

But I think Thomas deserves a little more flack than he gets credit for with these stunts of his. He’s written phenomenally well, but if my theory is correct, he does hold some responsibility for stunting another person’s growth. Even if he’d frame it as protecting the team.

But I mean that’s honestly all I got. It’d be rad if I was right. But honestly it feels like arguing obscure details on a niche cartoon. Which I mean I guess it is?