Better Days/YMMV

The webcomic:

• Acceptable Targets - Numerous. To name just a few:
  • Political: Democrats exist in the comic only to show how pathetic and stupid they are.
  • Religious: The pervert priests mentioned below. Also, once Tommy has sex with Lucy, he cheerfully (and creepily) renounces his Catholicism and declares it to be nothing more than a "crutch".
  • Feminists: They're horrible women who "temper" men and hate the idea of men being strong.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Was Fisk just a normal happy-go-lucky kid that suddenly and inexplicably became a stoic, infallible badass objectivist that would make Ayn Rand swoon? Or was he always a self-assured, rational, sometimes misinformed hooligan that became more and more withdrawn through repeated trauma? (Accidentally almost killing his sister when she was already sick, essentially being "semi-willingly raped" at about age 10, catching a man in the act of assaulting and raping his mother and smashing his head in with a bat, ending up sleeping with his sister however willing it may have been..) By the time he finds out about the truth of the end of his father's life, he doesn't "doesn't bat an eye." He reacts with an emotionless detachment. By the time he comes back from his tour of duty in the army, he's shown twitching while dreaming, and Lucy explicitly states "I've never seen you sleep so restlessly." PTSD doesn't always show itself with symptoms on the "manic" end of the spectrum. Of course, that doesn't explain how he seems to enter God Mode any time things get physical.
• Author's Saving Throw - Attempted, anyway. In the aftermath of negative reaction to Fisk joining a group of rogue assassins, Naylor made several journals attempting to distance himself from the character, claiming that he didn't necessarily agree with Fisk's actions and views (something he'd already occasionally claimed when too many people complained about this or that), and that Fisk was not his self-insert, nor was he ever intended to be. It was about this time he changed all of the avatars he used on various sites and forums from images of Fisk to other images. (He later changed them back once the fuss had died down.)
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Rachel, to the point where...well, read the Really Gets Around entry on the main page.
• Jumping the Shark - For some fans, it is when Fisk is confronted by a group of clandestine ex-military and US Government agents who inform Fisk that his father wasn't killed in Vietnam, but rather, while serving as a member of this organization, resulting in Fisk joining the group. For others, it was the final chapter, involving Fisk killing several people, and blowing up a good portion of a Mafia house with a grenade.
• Memetic Mutation - Many, including:
  • "Oh balls." * boom*
    • This phrase actually found its way into a recent Original Life comic, sans exploding grenade though.
  • Whenever Naylor releases a new comic, you can be sure someone will find a way to get an incest joke in.
  • SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK SMEK
  • Jessica's tongue.
• Straw Man Has a Point - In chapter 16, Tommy goes to his priest for advice on which girl to date, Lucy or Rachel. The priest points out that he could always Take a Third Option and find someone else, but Tommy ignores this and goes with Lucy.

The porn:

• Acceptable Targets
  • Overweight: Among its many offenses against literature, the "pornfolio" Puppy Love posits it's perfectly fine to cheat on your girlfriend if she's fat. And then have the woman you're cheating on her with insult and deride her for her obesity when you finally get caught.
    • Hildegaard, the fat woman in question, was actually said to be a complete bitch, which is partly why Robert cheated on her with Jessica. Robert was also shown having sex with Hildegaard, but looking absolutely bored out of his skull during the act.
    • From what I saw, the implications of "Puppy Love" can be summed up by two tropes: Beauty Equals Goodness and Dumb Is Good.