Original - 12 - HD

Harmony Petersen

I bet Grace is thinking: "I got Sarah partway into our polycule - I mean cuddle pile, next I shall get Ashley, and then Elliot will have no choice but to join, and thus my long-awaited dream of seeing Tedd and Elliot kiss will come true! Muha ha ha ha haaaa!" Except somehow more ominous except not ominous at all, and all giggles and cuddles.

ijuinkun

I always thought that Ashley's hair reminds me of the "crab hair" of the character Washu from "Tenchi Muyo". https://tenchi.fandom.com/wiki/Washu_Hakubi

jubs

Just to add, on the "so words that end in a consonant sound in English get a tacked-on "u" at the end", the main exception being if the word would end in "t" or "d", since they don't natively have a "tu" or "du" sound (instead they're "tsu" and "dzu"), so they tend to use "to" and "do", as in "deddo" for "dead". I say "don't natively have" tu and du, they have come up with ways to write those, namelyトｩ and ドｩ. But these, along with many others are quite new developments and not traditional ways of using the system.

A Red Mage Named Blue

I'm a bit late to say this, but "Called it!"

In the last panel Ashley's hair strands look a bit like segmented legs, like a crab or spider. So if someone leans in to kiss her, the trap is sprung and the hair-legs will snap in, holding the victim's head to Ashley's so that she may suck out their fantasies via her kiss without them escaping. Diabolical.

Daniel

Yes, "waifu" is jargon, or slang, used in certain subcultures to that effect. I mentioned that, specifically. That does not equate to the word being used in either English or Japanese *in general*. It is still true that pronouncing the "u" IS incorrect when attempting to speak the English word "wife" in Japanese. Context is important. Also, I didn't say it was incorrect when used in context. I was explaining the etymology, more than anything.

Platus

Grace is exactly the sort of friend Ashley needs. Ashley's got such a vibrant imaginative life, but as we see over and over again she's just wracked with guilt and shame over some pretty darn tame fantasies. I feel really bad for her! She needs to learn to take pleasure in her sexuality without treating it like some kind of dark secret. Spending a lot of time with Grace, who's on the opposite end of the shame spectrum, will probably be good for her, and should get her on the way to a healthier relationship with her desires.

Stephen Gilberg

I've had moments like that. "Oh, hello, I was just talking about you behind your back."

Daryl Sawyer

Certainly, ワイフ was originally intended as a transliteration of English into Katakana. But language is not static. In this context, ワイフ is not just "wife" transliterated, but a fandom term referring specifically to female characters we like from a show. It shares etymology with the original word,. but has become its own thing. Thus, it does not have to be pronounced the same. Voicing the 'u' in フ may have began as a mistake, but many language features begin as mistakes, sometimes by foreign speakers. Thus, it is not incorrect to voice the 'u'. When we say "waifu", that has very little to do with the woman we married.

Narzain

And the breaking of Ashley's brain progresses.

Daniel

The intention is for the "u" to be silent. The reason they use it in the first place is because of how Japanese syllables work. A syllable must always have a vowel sound (except for n), so words that end in a consonant sound in English get a tacked-on "u" at the end. But Japanese have trouble pronouncing English (in part because of how the syllables work), and they often mistakenly pronounce the tacked-on "u", which leads to stereotypical "Engrish" sounds like "waifu"; they might not even know it's supposed to be silent (though the same convention appears for native Japanese words). It doesn't help that non-Japanese fans of Japanese media embrace those mistakes, thinking they are quaint. But it's supposed to just be the English word transliterated into Japanese using the Katakana alphabet. It isn't actually adopted into the Japanese language. But it has also become slang for a fictional character they like, as you noted -- certainly in English, and possibly even in Japanese, though I'm less certain about that. (The more English-speaking and Internet-savvy Japanese might use it, as they likely encounter it online, but I'm skeptical about how ubiquitous it is.)

Dan Merget

Those six strands of hair in front of Ashley's face have really taken on a life of their own since https://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/oc-06. There are a few earlier examples in which they straightened a bit when she got excited, but lately they've been completely changing shape every time her mood shifts: lightning bolts when brainstorming, wilted sine waves when embarrassed, bent rods when shocked, etc.

Dalek2150

Dang it Grace.