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Let's just hope this isn't just a retread of Ray Goes to Hell, like the Lash of Thanatos thing was for Cartilage Head. (goddamn this comic strip has the weirdest names for its story arcs)
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Dec 6, 2011 18:13
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Y'know how every now and then there's an Achewood strip with a detail that just socks you in the gut hard? "Medically speaking, Ray is partying" is followed by the three panels of the absolute worst thing in a hospital if you've ever visited someone comatose or dying. I'm talking about the beeps of the monitor and the regulated oxygen hiss-click as you hold a cold, unresponsive hand, tell them goodbye and that you love them and hope to God somehow they're hearing you. Three well-paced panels. And then there's a Scrabble joke to keep things from going too dark, and Ray isn't on Death's door yet anyway but still, it's goddamn evocative. I am impressed.
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Dec 6, 2011 23:55
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Calaveron posted:Let's just hope this isn't just a retread of Ray Goes to Hell, like the Lash of Thanatos thing was for Cartilage Head. Achewood has always been about the interactions of our favorite characters and various psychopomps. Trouble Man and No-No, Edison, Cartilage Head. I don't think I'd consider it genuine if we didn't go on these surreal rides every once in a while.
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Dec 7, 2011 00:51
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Fren posted:Achewood has always been about the interactions of our favorite characters and various psychopomps. Trouble Man and No-No, Edison, Cartilage Head. I don't think I'd consider it genuine if we didn't go on these surreal rides every once in a while. No but I mean that the Lash of Thanatos stunk of being all "hay guys remember CARTILAGE HEAD? He's back! In pog form! :iamafag:" Let's hope this isn't "Hey guys remember when Ray went to hell? Well here he is in an identical situation again! :iamafag:" Of course I could be wrong and this is gonna be awesome and classical and I'll happily retract these feelings.
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Dec 7, 2011 03:24
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Calaveron posted:No but I mean that the Lash of Thanatos stunk of being all "hay guys remember CARTILAGE HEAD? He's back! In pog form! :iamafag:" Still holding out for another Great Outdoor Fight with Phillipe and Cornelius...
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Dec 7, 2011 03:49
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To be fair, Cartilage Head is the best drat character in Achewood. The whole Thanatos arc was justified by the alt text claiming that although his baroque machinery is difficult and expensive to get ahold of, he refuses to use a Blackberry.
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Dec 7, 2011 06:48
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Oh wow a new Achewood. For some reason I don't remember 2012 at all, that year just blew by.
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Dec 7, 2011 06:58
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Cobweb Heart posted:To be fair, Cartilage Head is the best drat character in Achewood. The whole Thanatos arc was justified by the alt text claiming that although his baroque machinery is difficult and expensive to get ahold of, he refuses to use a Blackberry. Also to be fair, the Lash storyline was great. Repetition isn't in and of itself a negative thing, and apart from the fact that both storylines featured Cartilage Head and weird things happening to a cat I wouldn't really call them the same at all.
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Dec 7, 2011 10:44
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Jerusalem posted:Also to be fair, the Lash storyline was great. Repetition isn't in and of itself a negative thing, and apart from the fact that both storylines featured Cartilage Head and weird things happening to a cat I wouldn't really call them the same at all. And let's not forget that the arc leading up to it had two cats in elephant costumes having a public lesbian erotica write-off filled with deceit, and Onstad managed to write that and have it make complete sense in context.
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Dec 8, 2011 00:27
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Wasn't it one cat and a teddy bear pretending to be a cat? And it STILL made perfect sense?
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Dec 8, 2011 02:25
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God, that plot was so good. In the running for my favourite Achewood story ever. e: it starts on "Williams-Sonoma porn" and just gets even more electric from there. Gonna have to reread this. Android Blues fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Dec 8, 2011 |
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Dec 8, 2011 16:36
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Android Blues posted:God, that plot was so good. In the running for my favourite Achewood story ever. Goddamn, look at Ray shaking in the last panel of this strip - he NEEDS to know what happened at that mansion.
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Dec 8, 2011 22:45
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Jerusalem posted:Goddamn, look at Ray shaking in the last panel of this strip - he NEEDS to know what happened at that mansion. The Manchego Obfuscator. "But what to make of the obfuscator?" This strip is beautiful artistry. e: sadly, it has a sort of unsatisfying ending in that it just blends into the Lash of Thanatos and we lose Cornelius from the story too soon, too ripe. Alas! Android Blues fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Dec 9, 2011 |
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Dec 9, 2011 02:01
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Jerusalem posted:Goddamn, look at Ray shaking in the last panel of this strip - he NEEDS to know what happened at that mansion. The saddest thing about a missing achewood is just how expressive this man is with half naked line-art cats.
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Dec 9, 2011 02:28
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If the comic wasn't once so great, we wouldn't care nearly as much that it stopped updating.
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Dec 9, 2011 09:05
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If the comic had stopped being great I wouldn't have been so sad when it stopped updating and would have hoped it stayed finished. But right up to the end the quality was just as high as always, it was just taking longer and longer between strips.
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Dec 9, 2011 09:23
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Jerusalem posted:If the comic had stopped being great I wouldn't have been so sad when it stopped updating and would have hoped it stayed finished. But right up to the end the quality was just as high as always, it was just taking longer and longer between strips. I think the "Predictions for 2011" strip was really sub-par for Achewood, but otherwise you're right - the quality was drat fine all throughout 2010, it's just that the waiting for strips and wondering just what Nice Pete was going to do to Teodor got agonizing for a lot of people. The first strip of "Ray in Rehab" seemed a bit "off" to me as well, but the second one feels much more on-course. Speaking of Teodor, am I the only one who preferred it when references to his potential homosexuality were a lot more subtle? It seems like Onstad all but threw a coming-out party for him in 2010, whereas in strips past it was a lot more subdued and, to me, generally more hilarious. His dalliances with Hiram the Blacksmith strike me as funnier and more true-to-form than sucking dick in the back of Nice Pete's van. Then again, Crazy Things happen in High School.
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Dec 9, 2011 19:05
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I thought the entire Nice Pete storyline was increasingly uncomfortable and disturbing, and not like "David Lynch movie" disturbing, more like "your roommate suddenly starts talking about age of consent laws and won't be derailed from the topic" disturbing. I consider it a low point for the comic.
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Dec 10, 2011 01:02
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Lurdiak posted:I thought the entire Nice Pete storyline was increasingly uncomfortable and disturbing, and not like "David Lynch movie" disturbing, more like "your roommate suddenly starts talking about age of consent laws and won't be derailed from the topic" disturbing. I consider it a low point for the comic. That's the entire Nice Pete character for me.
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Dec 10, 2011 01:10
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Jerusalem posted:If the comic had stopped being great I wouldn't have been so sad when it stopped updating and would have hoped it stayed finished. But right up to the end the quality was just as high as always, it was just taking longer and longer between strips. Nah, Pete's high school arc and the North Korean magical realism arc sucked. When Onstad is on his is the best webcomic out there but let's not pretend he's perfect.
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Dec 10, 2011 01:23
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I'm certainly not pretending he's perfect, but I don't think the quality of the work declined - personally I found Pete's High School arc and the North Korean Magical Realism arc extremely funny (and touching in places). The Predictions strip wasn't all that great, but I don't think it was awful or anything. I think the fact that the time between strips getting longer and longer (and thus there being less strips) meant that the odd misfire stood out more strongly than it did when we might reasonably expect 3 or 4 other strips in that week to lift the quality.
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Dec 10, 2011 01:32
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Yeah, I thought everything up to the apparent end point was great. High School was an incredibly on-form arc in my eyes, it had bunches of cool and funny things, it was just slow.
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Dec 10, 2011 02:57
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I dislike Nice Pete as a character- I don't think he fits into the strip well. Then again I think the same of Todd, so I'm probably just wrong.
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Dec 10, 2011 02:59
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Pope Guilty posted:I dislike Nice Pete as a character- I don't think he fits into the strip well. I think much of the humour comes from how brutally the tone of his character clashes with the more light-hearted main cast. I mean, Pat rooms with a Silence of the Lambs-style serial killer and does reedy yells at him for not picking up his shoes or whatever. That's hilarious.
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Dec 10, 2011 03:09
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Jerusalem posted:I'm certainly not pretending he's perfect, but I don't think the quality of the work declined - personally I found Pete's High School arc and the North Korean Magical Realism arc extremely funny (and touching in places). I loved the North Korean Magical Realism arc. ENOUGH CHOCOLATE and Todd actually getting torn up over Lee's refusal to leave are both great.
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Dec 10, 2011 03:33
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To be fair to Teodor, we still don't know if he chugged Nathan's giant hog. For all we know he both did and didn't. Schrodinger's Van.
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Dec 10, 2011 04:01
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The North Korea arc owned, I think people just got pouty because he used the term "magical realism" again even though it was absolutely nothing like the other times. I loved the weird text adventure formatting and the characterization of Kim Jong Il. Todd is always excellent, too.
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Dec 10, 2011 05:30
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robot roll call posted:The North Korea arc owned, I think people just got pouty because he used the term "magical realism" again even though it was absolutely nothing like the other times. I loved the weird text adventure formatting and the characterization of Kim Jong Il. Todd is always excellent, too. I like a lot of bits about that arc, but I think the general gripe was that Achewood always had what was essentially magical realism -- the Volvo of Despair, Ray's dancing shoes -- but it never called it that. By extending the Mexican magical realism joke as a plot device, it felt like Onstad was using it as a kind of crutch to tell the story he wanted to tell, which was a text adventure about Todd and Kim Jong Il attempting to live out a classic children's novel. Also re: Nice Pete chat, to be a total pedant about it, he's also incredibly palatable if you read him as a grotesque Faulkner pastiche.
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Dec 10, 2011 06:10
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Actually I didn't like the North Korea magical realism arc because it was thoroughly boring.
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Dec 10, 2011 06:13
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I think both arcs, especially the Nice Pete's Highschool arc, would have benefited from a quicker pace. When something isn't funny or is awkward it's important to move quickly onto the next thing. When you have a month between "OH GOD SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH HIGHSCHOOL" and "OH MAN THIS IS WEIRD" and then "IS HE GONNA COLD HAVE A PETER IN HIS MOUTH" it ruins the flow. Flipping through the archives it's very easy to jump past a bad strip, but when you sit for 2 months at a time on something that really needs to keep momentum through it falls apart. I thought the weakest part of North Korean Magical Realism was the term, the rest of the arc was amusing.
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Dec 10, 2011 09:22
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H.P. Shivcraft posted:I like a lot of bits about that arc, but I think the general gripe was that Achewood always had what was essentially magical realism -- the Volvo of Despair, Ray's dancing shoes -- but it never called it that. By extending the Mexican magical realism joke as a plot device, it felt like Onstad was using it as a kind of crutch to tell the story he wanted to tell, which was a text adventure about Todd and Kim Jong Il attempting to live out a classic children's novel. The Mexican magical realism joke has always been perfectly useful as a plot device. It first showed up as the driving force behind the arc where Pat discovered he was gay! Really, it just seems odd that all the other weird junk in Achewood is okay to drive plots but touching the magical realism joke is verboten.
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Dec 10, 2011 13:10
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The title was indifferent but I thought that that was a great arc. The one that comes to mind when i think of an arc dragging is when they all went to Berlin, but I think Onstad himself kind of realized that.
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Dec 11, 2011 03:53
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Pope Guilty posted:I dislike Nice Pete as a character- I don't think he fits into the strip well. http://achewood.com/index.php?date=10172007 You are objectively wrong, read that arc again from the beginning. Everything Todd is great. Hell, that dude kicked off the GOF, in a manner of speaking. Android Blues posted:I think much of the humour comes from how brutally the tone of his character clashes with the more light-hearted main cast. I mean, Pat rooms with a Silence of the Lambs-style serial killer and does reedy yells at him for not picking up his shoes or whatever. That's hilarious.
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Dec 11, 2011 05:43
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Android Blues posted:I think much of the humour comes from how brutally the tone of his character clashes with the more light-hearted main cast. I mean, Pat rooms with a Silence of the Lambs-style serial killer and does reedy yells at him for not picking up his shoes or whatever. That's hilarious. Like the man said, there's a complicated power dynamic in that house. H.P. Shivcraft posted:I like a lot of bits about that arc, but I think the general gripe was that Achewood always had what was essentially magical realism -- the Volvo of Despair, Ray's dancing shoes -- but it never called it that. By extending the Mexican magical realism joke as a plot device, it felt like Onstad was using it as a kind of crutch to tell the story he wanted to tell, which was a text adventure about Todd and Kim Jong Il attempting to live out a classic children's novel. Ray's dancing shoes weren't magical realism at all, they were just sentient shoes.
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Dec 11, 2011 07:51
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Dickeye posted:Ray's dancing shoes weren't magical realism at all, they were just sentient shoes. The fact that this sentence is not nonsense is the best posterity to Achewood's brilliance.
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Dec 11, 2011 16:29
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Nessus posted:The title was indifferent but I thought that that was a great arc. The one that comes to mind when i think of an arc dragging is when they all went to Berlin, but I think Onstad himself kind of realized that. On the bright side the ending to that was pretty pro http://achewood.com/index.php?date=04202004
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Dec 11, 2011 18:14
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How the hell can you not think Todd is great, he is the best part of the one-offs
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Dec 11, 2011 22:27
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Tubgirl Cosplay posted:How the hell can you not think Todd is great, he is the best part of the one-offs Haha, I'd forgotten about that! My favourite Todd-ism of all time is still this, though: http://achewood.com/index.php?date=02102004 The last panel. How badly do you have to mess up your taxes to nearly get lethal injection? I want to know!
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Dec 11, 2011 23:12
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Tubgirl Cosplay posted:How the hell can you not think Todd is great, he is the best part of the one-offs  Don't you DARE do cocaine at me!You son of a bitch!
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Dec 11, 2011 23:17
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One of my favorite Todd strips is right towards the end of the Party arc. http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=04152002 Notice that your van is frikking awesome Notice No 37852
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Dec 11, 2011 23:34
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