pop-music
Original: pop-music on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1: A man with reddish flame-like hair sits with a woman who has dark hair.
Caption/narration: "I have an idea for a song in which I portray my cultural interest group as put-upon and misunderstood by society."
Panel 2:
Narration: "It features a young man and woman who feel shunned by the broader community. This feeling drives them into each others' arms."
Panel 3:
Narration: "Ironically, they engage in an entirely conventional act of courtship: sexual relations, and ultimately longterm monogamy."
Flame-haired man: "That sounds pretty typical for pop music."
Dark-haired woman: "Yeah, but in my version, they become aware of their own hypocrisy."
Panel 4:
Narration: "Realizing their love affair is so banal that it undoes all the little defiances that made them initial coupling romantic, they fall into a deep state of ennui."
Panel 5:
Narration: "One of them chooses to make peace with existence as an unexceptional and short-lived mammal, while the other falls into a self-deluding form of spiritual asceticism, whose demands he is incapable of living out."
Panel 6:
Narration: "Their orthogonal yearnings far apart, looking for meaning pull apart from any human connection that lulls the one and happy thing in either persons' life."
Panel 7:
Flame-haired man: "I'm not sure it has mainstream potential."
Dark-haired woman: "It's called 'Slave That Ass.' Girrrl."
Panel 8:
Flame-haired man: "Okay, that's better."
Dark-haired woman: "By the end the slaving is an uncontrolled response to a needlessly wasted lifetime."
Flame-haired man (now a silhouette): "Now, gee, you're losing me again."
Votey:
Mostly black panel with a woman's face dimly lit at the bottom.
Text (top left, handwritten): "Girrrl, all is dust"
Caption/narration: "I have an idea for a song in which I portray my cultural interest group as put-upon and misunderstood by society."
Panel 2:
Narration: "It features a young man and woman who feel shunned by the broader community. This feeling drives them into each others' arms."
Panel 3:
Narration: "Ironically, they engage in an entirely conventional act of courtship: sexual relations, and ultimately longterm monogamy."
Flame-haired man: "That sounds pretty typical for pop music."
Dark-haired woman: "Yeah, but in my version, they become aware of their own hypocrisy."
Panel 4:
Narration: "Realizing their love affair is so banal that it undoes all the little defiances that made them initial coupling romantic, they fall into a deep state of ennui."
Panel 5:
Narration: "One of them chooses to make peace with existence as an unexceptional and short-lived mammal, while the other falls into a self-deluding form of spiritual asceticism, whose demands he is incapable of living out."
Panel 6:
Narration: "Their orthogonal yearnings far apart, looking for meaning pull apart from any human connection that lulls the one and happy thing in either persons' life."
Panel 7:
Flame-haired man: "I'm not sure it has mainstream potential."
Dark-haired woman: "It's called 'Slave That Ass.' Girrrl."
Panel 8:
Flame-haired man: "Okay, that's better."
Dark-haired woman: "By the end the slaving is an uncontrolled response to a needlessly wasted lifetime."
Flame-haired man (now a silhouette): "Now, gee, you're losing me again."
Votey:
Mostly black panel with a woman's face dimly lit at the bottom.
Text (top left, handwritten): "Girrrl, all is dust"
Alt text
Eight-panel SMBC comic. A flame-haired man and a dark-haired woman sit talking. Over six dense narration captions, the woman pitches a pop song concept: a young man and woman feel shunned by society, fall into each other's arms, engage in conventional courtship and monogamy, then become aware of their own hypocrisy and banality, sink into ennui, and drift apart spiritually and emotionally. The man keeps noting it sounds typical and lacks mainstream potential. The woman counters that the song is called 'Slave That Ass, Girrrl' and that the 'slaving' is an uncontrolled response to a needlessly wasted lifetime. The man, now a silhouette, says 'Now, gee, you're losing me again.' The joke: a crassly-titled, ass-shaking party song wrapped around bleak existential despair. Votey: a nearly all-black panel with a woman's face faintly lit at the bottom and handwritten text reading 'Girrrl, all is dust' a nihilistic punchline echoing the song.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.