FF #17 - How do you solve a problem like Johnny Storm

[sherkahn]

We saw the preview earlier, and at times I can hear The Hangover movie theme playing in the background as I read this fun issue, and at times I hear "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"

yeah, I'm weird like that.

So many choice pages to post, but I have already posted 2, so I can only do 2 more.








Yes, that is Mary Jane Watson getting funky with Johnny Storm.

Comments

[whitesycamore]

Plenty of royal marriages appear to have been fairly sex-free (or at least "sex until heir and a spare is produced" then sex free) for one reason or another.

I'm sorry, I don't really get how this relates to the discussion. It's not about whether Guinevere wanted (or didn't want) to have sex with Arthur - it's about the fact that there was no possibility for her leave Arthur to be with Lancelot in an 'honourable' way, either by modern or medieval standards.

Adultery was punishable by gruesome death, and divorce didn't exist. You suggest that perhaps Guinevere could have told Arthur how she felt, but as a wife Guinevere was expected to be a chaste, obedient possession. She'd already failed to live up to that standard by coveting Lancelot in the first place; I doubt that Arthur would have been understanding, since he would have been a man of his time.

Either way, debating whether or not their love was true, or if they behaved in an ethical way towards each other, ignores the fact that (if these people were real) they were operating under a very different understanding of what love meant.

I think the laws of the land sentenced her to that, and Arthur, like her, was subject to them (by his own decree).

Do you mean that he literally would have been powerless to save her, or that he felt *morally* bound to follow the law? If it's the latter, then I can recognise that he may have been living up to a sort of medieval code-of-honour, and that sticking to the laws of the land even though it was horrible to him might have seemed like the right thing to do.

However, from a modern perspective, "you have to die because the law says so" seems like a pretty paltry piece of justification, both ethically and romantically. I mean, it's not universal, but I think most people in our culture now would agree that cruel or unjust laws should not be obeyed.

I suspect Arthur didn't think of the law as cruel or unjust though, because again, product of his time.

[icon_uk]

I was thinking more that if her love for Lancelot was THAT powerful, to the extent that despite being fully aware of the harm it would do, she pursued it, then some sort of arrangement MIGHT have been possible. Again, royals being married but having lovers elsewhere is hardly unknown. It was the deceit which was partly the root of the ensuing problems

If the King is seen to flout his own law because it inconveniences him, then there goes his much of his authority, and he's no better than any despot. ("Well, I didn't vote for him")

And I think that Arthur, as King, since he would have to be the one to pass sentence on his wife, whom he loved, AND his best friend (who he also loved), would be pretty damned devastated by what he had to do.

[whitesycamore]

If the King is seen to flout his own law because it inconveniences him, then there goes his much of his authority, and he's no better than any despot. ("Well, I didn't vote for him")

So... therefore he should burn his wife because *not* burning his wife inconveniences him in the sense of undermining his authority? That decision would seem to be based on pragmatics, not morality--unless he was operating under a sort of Kohlberg law-and-order morality.

I personally think that if you don't burn women alive then you are a lot better than despots who do. And a lot worse than an unfaithful wife, for that matter.

[biod]

In some versions Arthur holds the hope that Lancelot will save her, since he had to uphold the law... Which makes the deaths of all the people Lancelot had to kill to do so extra unnecessary, but what are ya gonna do?