feelings-2
Explanation
This comic is divided into two time periods. The top half, labeled "High School," shows two girls looking at a brooding, dark-haired young man. One says: "Wow, Gary's so dark and brooding. So MYSTERIOUS." The other declares: "He's mine! Mine!"
The bottom half, labeled "Ever After," shows the same Gary, now older, sitting with visible emotional distress. One woman observes: "Uh oh, Gary's feeling emotion again." Another responds: "He's nice but I wouldn't want that kind of baggage in my life."
The comic skewers the romanticization of emotional unavailability and brooding masculinity. In high school, Gary's emotional distance and dark demeanor are perceived as attractive -- mysterious, deep, intriguing. The same traits that make someone seem romantically compelling in adolescence are reframed as red flags and "baggage" in adulthood. The joke is that nothing about Gary has actually changed; what changed is the framework through which his behavior is interpreted.
There's a deeper irony at play: "dark and brooding" is often just a romanticized way of describing someone who is struggling emotionally. In the "Ever After" panel, Gary is described as "feeling emotion," which is treated as an alarming event rather than a normal human experience. The comic suggests that what teenage girls found attractive was not Gary's depth but his suppression of visible emotion -- and once he starts actually expressing feelings, he becomes undesirable. The phrase "that kind of baggage" is particularly cutting, reducing someone's emotional life to an inconvenience. The comic ultimately comments on how society romanticizes male emotional repression while simultaneously punishing men for either maintaining it (by remaining "mysterious" and unavailable) or breaking from it (by having "baggage").