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I think generalised extreme depression and Creative Person-itis.
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Oct 3, 2016 23:48
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Renaissance Robot posted:Remind me what his malfunction was? PFSC was really good. nah it was really bad
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Oct 3, 2016 23:48
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long john silvers
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Oct 3, 2016 23:50
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Renaissance Robot posted:Remind me what his malfunction was? PFSC was really good. Kickstarter and subsequent closure In May 2012, John Campbell set up a Kickstarter crowdfunding project to fund production of the second book of Pictures for Sad Children, entitled "Sad Pictures for Children". Some of the perks were outlandish or bizarre, such as Campbell drawing a comic under the influence of DMT, going to the dentist "for the first time in ~8 years" or putting up paste-ups in the donor's city under the risk of being arrested.[2] The campaign succeeded, with $51,615 raised from a goal of $8,000.[2] On September 19, 2012, Campbell posted an update to the Kickstarter project claiming to have faked depression "for profit".[3][4][5] This post was followed up by a post stating he had "faked faking depression".[3][6] On February 27, 2014, Campbell posted a final update explaining that 75% of the rewards for supporting the project had been sent out, and that no more would be sent out in the future. Attached was a video of Campbell supposedly "burning one book for every email received asking about the unreceived books", totalling 127 burned copies of the book. Campbell claimed that the funds to ship the remaining books were not available. "Two weeks ago, the stress of not being able to afford to mail the books prompted Campbell to burn 127 books behind a dumpster in an alley behind [her] apartment."[7] In addition, Campbell stated that one book would be burned for every email received after the update was posted.[8] Campbell also noted that the Pictures for Sad Children comic itself would be ending, and expressed discontent with money as a concept as well as the consequences of capitalism and its effects on relationships between people in society.[8] In an interview, Campbell claimed that "750 to 800 books (were shipped), while another 150 were undeliverable and returned". Campbell also said that no further books were sent out due to lack of funds to ship them.[7] However, in May 2014, Max Temkin, one of the creators of the popular card game Cards Against Humanity and himself a backer of the Pictures For Sad Children Kickstarter, took over responsibilities for the project. Temkin announced he would send surveys to anyone who paid for a book but hadn't received one, and that he would be paying for shipping costs with his own funds.[9] On July 17, Temkin announced they had managed to ship books to everyone who completed the survey.[10] In September 2015, the domain picturesforsadchildren.com lapsed. The web page became a GoDaddy advertisement offering to sell the rights to the URL. The page has displayed various contents since.
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Oct 3, 2016 23:51
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Hogge Wild posted:nah it was really bad I really liked it until how unironic it was hit me like a sack of bricks.  Poor dude.
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Oct 3, 2016 23:54
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Renaissance Robot posted:Remind me what his malfunction was? PFSC was really good. If I'm recalling correctly, the order of breakdown was: - Did a kickstarter for a book of PFSC comics. - Underestimated shipping costs, ran out of money. - Went off anti-depressants trying to save up money to ship the rest of the books. - Got depressed, posted about it. - Internet accused them of 'faking sadness' to avoid shipping books. - Had real bad breakdown, probably related to going off the anti-depressants. - Declared money to be a poison on society or something to that effect. - Filmed video burning copies of kickstarter books, declared that they'd burn more for every email they got asking where the book was. - Generally said some things that seemed designed to drive away anyone who considered them a friend. - Some real bizarre rantings about money, patronage, and how This Is Not How Things Should Be - The Cards Against Humanities guys offered to help ship out whatever books were left. This happened. - Radio silence. Overall, it came off to me as a rather depressing breakdown fueled by stress. Poor PFSC person.  edit: The 'faked depression' post was very obviously a sarcastic rant about the people claiming just that, but the internet didn't get it.
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Oct 4, 2016 00:01
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Hogge Wild posted:nah it was really bad I'll be honest I mostly only remember the airshow one
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Oct 4, 2016 00:06
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I think PFSC had its moments. It resonated a lot more with my friends who have had depression that it did with me, but I enjoyed it.
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Oct 4, 2016 00:09
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Nothing good happens when the story starts with "goes off meds to save money"
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Oct 4, 2016 00:09
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so how much cash are you guys throwing down for the chance to read campbells 250 page book in one sitting in a "room of their choosing" while being stared at if it helps, its like roadhouse
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Oct 4, 2016 00:25
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DreamShipWrecked posted:Kickstarter and subsequent closure Picking up from this, one of Campbell's last kickstarter updates included an email address to contact them if your shipping address had changed or wanted to be told any future updates. I got two emails, the first was a link to a temporary download of the pfsc website archive, that got yanked after people shared it. The second one talked about how they'd been living outside the economy and amounted to emotional blackmail asking to subscribe to the 'keep john campbell alive' project.
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Oct 4, 2016 00:27
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iirc campbell also had been doing a thing with dmt for at least several months prior
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Oct 4, 2016 00:31
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Esme posted:What failed comics were you all disappointed to see unfinished? Particularly ambitious or experimental ones. It's something of a slice of life comic in a world where history went a little differently and doesn't outright tell you how different things are, but nifty subcultures and apocalypse cults and above all the people made for my favorite webcomic. If it wasn't for 6KBD it would still be my favorite webcomic even though i haven't been able to read it for over a year. I hope she goes back to Templar, someday.
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Oct 4, 2016 00:42
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Bobulus posted:- Some real bizarre rantings about money, patronage, and how This Is Not How Things Should Be I was really sympathetic about Campbell and all her stuff because depression is awful but I do remember this part of the breakdown because it seemed like a real plea for "why do we pay money for things man?" without a shred of irony.
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Oct 4, 2016 00:51
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Bell_ posted:Templar, AZ. I can't link to it anymore because the site got bugged or hacked or something and it was too much trouble for Spike to fix. Before it went down her updates slowed to Achewood speeds but i didn't mind as long as she got there. https://twitter.com/Iron_Spike/status/781656132943314944 I mean, the Meek is back and going strong, so why not hold out hope
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Oct 4, 2016 01:15
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Wrist Watch posted:I checked the creators tab and was entirely unsurprised to see a person who's so pale I think she might be a vampire, who apparently got the inspiration from how she used to be a journalist/humor columnist in South Africa before she went to college. It is ok for people from Africa to write stories set in Africa imo
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Oct 4, 2016 01:28
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Typical Pubbie posted:It is ok for people from Africa to write stories set in Africa imo I for one am glad we have alternate history writers willing to stand up and examine tough questions like "what if things were even better for white people???"
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Oct 4, 2016 01:33
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Typical Pubbie posted:It is ok for people from Africa to write stories set in Africa imo everyone is allowed to do that she stole the setting from an awful scifi book series whose name escapes atm I haven't read it, but someone in the milhist thread described it
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Oct 4, 2016 01:34
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Straight White Shark posted:I for one am glad we have alternate history writers willing to stand up and examine tough questions like "what if things were even better for white people???" haha yeah the white privilege of being portrayed as racist aristocratic monsters lol
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Oct 4, 2016 01:35
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The webcomic is only like 10 pages in so it's entirely possible that it turns out to be bad, but judging it for being a story about Africa written by a literal African woman, or making the portrayal of whites as genocidal fascists out to be a positive is just ridiculous.
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Oct 4, 2016 01:41
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Typical Pubbie posted:It is ok for people from Africa to write stories set in Africa imo I'm not saying you can't, I'm pointing out that the author looks like this: E: something unnecessary was here And took her experiences of living in South Africa to create a what if story where white people own all of Africa and make tribes kill each other so population doesn't get out of hand. Wrist Watch fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Oct 4, 2016 |
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Oct 4, 2016 02:05
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They're the villains, though? I fully expect to be made a fool once the author trots out her tortured white savior self-insert but I think this is kind of a hosed up way to dismiss a webcomic that hasn't even finished its first chapter.
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Oct 4, 2016 02:23
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Typical Pubbie posted:They're the villains, though? I fully expect to be made a fool once the author trots out her tortured white savior self-insert but I think this is kind of a hosed up way to dismiss a webcomic that hasn't even finished its first chapter. Yeah, seconding. Also it's super weird how some of you will immediately decide that a white author must obviously agree with and condone the actions of characters who are very obviously the villains just because they are also white. There are absolutely white south African people who exist. A lot of them. I have no idea how you managed to pull all of those weird assumptions out of the ten-ish pages of this comic that exist, especially when it currently looks like it has more authenticity and research (and possibly lived experience!) put into it than most webcomics by white people about poc usually do. Maybe wait and see what happens before you make calls like that?
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Oct 4, 2016 02:55
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Ironic Twist posted:I mean, the Meek is back and going strong, so why not hold out hope this is what the fourth time its come back from hiatus?
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Oct 4, 2016 02:57
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Tollymain posted:iirc campbell also had been doing a thing with dmt for at least several months prior yeop it was a good comic but also a real golden age of Kickstarter when people would throw money at a very obviously mentally ill druggie on a death spiral then get blown away that they weren't a consummate business professional in command of all their poo poo shitpostmodern posted:Yeah, seconding. Also it's super weird how some of you will immediately decide that a white author must obviously agree with and condone the actions of characters who are very obviously the villains just because they are also white. didn't you get the internet memo, race mixing is a crime this year A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Oct 4, 2016 |
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Oct 4, 2016 03:26
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I wouldn't say that people are accusing her of siding with the obvious bad guys, quite the opposite. A lot of these stories go the "noble savage" angle and just end up being...just...awful.
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Oct 4, 2016 03:36
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It sounds like the allegory is too subtle and people are missing it.
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Oct 4, 2016 03:42
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shitpostmodern posted:Yeah, seconding. Also it's super weird how some of you will immediately decide that a white author must obviously agree with and condone the actions of characters who are very obviously the villains just because they are also white. There's a rich alt-hist tradition of writing white supremacist fantasies and then hiding behind the "but they're the BAD GUYS, just because I lovingly wrote 2000 pages about how awesome things are for them doesn't mean I agree with them" argument. There's not really much to go on yet and maybe it'll turn out great, sure, but I've read this story too many times to get my hopes up.
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Oct 4, 2016 04:08
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Straight White Shark posted:There's a rich alt-hist tradition of writing white supremacist fantasies and then hiding behind the "but they're the BAD GUYS, just because I lovingly wrote 2000 pages about how awesome things are for them doesn't mean I agree with them" argument. The opening of the comic portrays Mandela as a martyr and is pretty implicit that Bad Things happen after his death (white dominion over Africa for example). Still, I'm genuinely curious about examples of white supremacist alt-history that play coy with their message that colonialism or the confederacy or whatever was right all along. Typical Pubbie fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Oct 4, 2016 |
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Oct 4, 2016 04:45
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Hogge Wild posted:everyone is allowed to do that I'm vaguely curious to see where this comic goes, if only to see if there's ever an explanation of how South Africa conquered all of Africa from tip toe without any intervention from a foreign body or apparent roadblocks. I know the story seems to be one explicitly about racism and caste, but I wouldn't mind seeing some more about the history of how this hosed up fictional universe got so hosed up.
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Oct 4, 2016 04:51
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PBF updated a couple days back, dunno if anyone still cares about that.
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Oct 4, 2016 06:25
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shitpostmodern posted:Yeah, seconding. Also it's super weird how some of you will immediately decide that a white author must obviously agree with and condone the actions of characters who are very obviously the villains just because they are also white. Hold on, I think we're talking past each other. Let me be clear here: I'm not making assumptions and I'm not saying the author has to agree with the bad guys in the comic, I'm literally just reading the few pages available so far and the author's bio. If someone makes a story with one alien race being oppressed by another, or a story about orcs being oppressed by elves or something you at least have the abstraction of changing the race of the characters involved. Hell, I've enjoyed several stories like that for what they are. But choosing to eschew that abstraction and base your story on a situation that actually happened except taken to the worst possible outcome is just in bad taste, full stop, even if it were just as a background setting and not the main focus. At best it comes off as naively offensive and would take some serious chops to pull off properly but as an african american, the fact that the story opens with a half white character being portrayed as the only one "smart enough to see rituals for what they really are" sets off major red flags for any hopes that it'll turn out good. If it does, great, but the opening and background of the author don't have me hopeful at all. That ran a bit longer than I meant to write, but hopefully you get what I mean.
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Oct 4, 2016 06:40
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Also while writing that effort post no one should probably ever read I stumbled across this, so add Vibe to that list of comics that unfortunately got dropped I guess https://twitter.com/SoulKarl/status/783050751643750400
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Oct 4, 2016 06:42
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Wrist Watch posted:
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Oct 4, 2016 07:08
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Wrist Watch posted:At best it comes off as naively offensive and would take some serious chops to pull off properly but as an african american, the fact that the story opens with a half white character being portrayed as the only one "smart enough to see rituals for what they really are" sets off major red flags for any hopes that it'll turn out good. If it does, great, but the opening and background of the author don't have me hopeful at all. My impression is that she's not stoked about the ritual because she knew the other kids would use the mention of it to tease her about her white father, but I see how that could throw up a red flag.
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Oct 4, 2016 07:29
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Wrist Watch posted:Also while writing that effort post no one should probably ever read I stumbled across this, so add Vibe to that list of comics that unfortunately got dropped I guess Balls, I had wondered about it. Sounds like he and the Hiveworks guys sort of came to blows too 
ConanThe3rd fucked around with this message at 08:02 on Oct 4, 2016 |
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Oct 4, 2016 08:00
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ConanThe3rd posted:Balls, I had wondered about it. Shame. Though it kind of sounds like Hiveworks is a bit of a rolling shitshow over all. Like, a quarter of their of creator catalog has flatout stopped updating their comics, and they willing plug hot garbage like Goblins while rejecting actual good comics like Thistil Mistil Kistil out of hand. Who knows, maybe Ciurczak's in the wrong here, but it wouldn't at all surprise me to learn that Hiveworks is just as scummy and mismanaged under the hood as Channel Awesome is. Anyways, I plugged it about a page back but it gone buried under Pictures for Sad Children bullshit drama, but Color Blind is finally properly updating again after like half a year's hiatus 
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Oct 4, 2016 09:02
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An author writing a story about oppression retreats into fantasy or the past instead of dealing with something contemporary. What a surprise.
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Oct 4, 2016 09:11
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nine-gear crow posted:Shame. Though it kind of sounds like Hiveworks is a bit of a rolling shitshow over all. Like, a quarter of their of creator catalog has flatout stopped updating their comics, and they willing plug hot garbage like Goblins while rejecting actual good comics like Thistil Mistil Kistil out of hand. Who knows, maybe Ciurczak's in the wrong here, but it wouldn't at all surprise me to learn that Hiveworks is just as scummy and mismanaged under the hood as Channel Awesome is. If 4Chan can do a better job of writing an epilogue to your story-line (the context of the joke is that the bottom one is the real page) then you've royally hosed up). It doesn't help Hivework's image much that Mary got papped right in the poo poo at the top of the year with Oskar tapping out of (and sorry to bring it up) Sleepless Domain's art duties just at the end of it's prologue leaving her having to put Kiwi Blitz on hiatus and basically throwing the comic into the shadow those two comics on top of the intended shadow of (SD Spoiler) the characters who didn't get to live past the prologue at a moment where the tone was getting significantly more rough and an escape to Kiwi Blitz (even though that was and still is in its post-Empire Strikes Back movement) would have been appreciated. That said I'm largely ignorant of the larger politics in play as besides Mary's comics my pull list from there is Monsterkind, Paranatural, Alice in The Nightmare. I do highly begrudge their Comic Rocket policy though because RSS is a bit of a complete shitshow for comics and I'm starting to get really into using Webtoon and the like. It's not even them being anti-CR (which I get as a matter of HTML Injection), it's them not following it up with some way to keep decent tabs on their own stuff given the whole that dusts my doilies. ConanThe3rd fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Oct 4, 2016 |
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Oct 4, 2016 09:11
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Wrist Watch posted:Hold on, I think we're talking past each other. Let me be clear here: I'm not making assumptions and I'm not saying the author has to agree with the bad guys in the comic, I'm literally just reading the few pages available so far and the author's bio. So, we're going to ignore alternate history mainstream stuff that people eternally praise, like The Watchmen, V for Vendetta, the Fallout series and to a lesser extent, the Metal Gear series (Metal Gear 3 and its alternate cold war history take actually was what got me into that series at all, and I didn't actually enjoy any of the other games in the series because they were less about neat alternate history and more about Kojima jerking it to convoluted sci-fi that he literally inserted himself into. Also Kiefer Sutherland replacing David Hayter? No thanks.), then? Alternate history is fine--how many alternate history, post-apocalyptic America stories have you read and been fine with? Lots? Probably lots? And we don't question the intentions of the big companies that make those things because they're American. So why are we questioning the intentions of a small time webcomicer who has lived in South Africa before it has really left the gate? The colour of her skin does not negate her lived experiences, and I get that it's really easy to read things through a North American lens when it comes to white people, but the reality is that South African white people =/= North American white people. Growing up in a completely different political, social and economic climate makes for different people and different views. Hell, Canada is pretty much America Junior with all of our secret racism and two-faced politicians, but we follow American politics up here and so much of it is still bafflingly alien to us, because key differences in our social and governmental structures sometimes make your country look one step away from total anarchy (which, again, is why we follow your politics, because they're scary and have bigger implications for us and Mexico if things go bad than our own would have for you). I read the author's bio and it says she left a long and successful career as a writer and journalist to go to the US and get into directing--so, she was born and raised in South Africa and left her country so that her work could get funding and a larger platform, which is a good move. Living in the US now doesn't suddenly erase the decades she lived in South Africa and it doesn't take away her right to try and bring a fresh take to an idea that's been done a million times (by herself, even--One More Day, which she wrote and directed, seems to have a similar dystopian feel and a similar premise with forced euthanasia, only centred around possibly American and sometimes white people instead) by taking the setting to a place that she herself has lived in and isn't the usual corporate America or xenophobic Britain settings we all know and are thoroughly exhausted by. I'm not arguing that white authors always do a good job of telling stories about racism, classicism and caste systems, because they by and large do not. What I am arguing is that this author seems to have a leg up on most of the bad ones out there because she is 1) South African, 2) actually including words and phrasing in Afrikaans versus just having everything be in English for a lazy English audience and 3) seems to be interested in telling complicated narratives about touchy subjects if her directorial work is any indication--there's literally nothing simple about topics like forced euthanasia or lower caste tiers or loving Apartheid, so I'm curious as to why you think that she's going to treat all the baggage that would presumably come with being mixed race in an alternate history post-Apartheid South Africa with less care than any of those other things I just listed. I'm also pretty curious about why you think that the protagonist is going to turn into a lovely half white saviour situation based on ten pages where she acts like a a moody teenager with a lot of pressure on her from all directions in a world that has established right out of the gate that she's one step away from being purged from her district for being 1) mixed race, 2) a moody, unlikable poo poo and 3) rebelling against traditions that should bring her closer to her community but also serve as a reminder that no one thinks that she belongs to it. It seems like a pretty clear cut set-up for her to run off on a hero's journey where she avoids being purged, reconnects with those traditions and roots that she had previously felt alienated from and uses that new understanding to move closer to whatever endgame this comic is moving toward, which, again, is impossible to tell because it's only ten pages long so far. Like I see what you're saying, but my counter point is literally that you read the ten available pages and went "Bzzzzzzt, racist alert. A bad comic. Move along." as a kneejerk reaction. It is okay to walk that back, you don't have to double down just because other people, who are also looking at it critically btw, are telling you to chill and maybe give it another 20 pages or so before you firmly toss it in the 'another bad white saviour trope comic' bin. nine-gear crow posted:Shame. Though it kind of sounds like Hiveworks is a bit of a rolling shitshow over all. Like, a quarter of their of creator catalog has flatout stopped updating their comics, and they willing plug hot garbage like Goblins while rejecting actual good comics like Thistil Mistil Kistil out of hand. Who knows, maybe Ciurczak's in the wrong here, but it wouldn't at all surprise me to learn that Hiveworks is just as scummy and mismanaged under the hood as Channel Awesome is. Aside from Vibe and Olympus Overdrive, what else from Hiveworks has stopped updating? Their catalogue is gigantic. I'm also not sure how they're rejecting good comics to 'plug hot garbage like Goblins', because they have contracts with all of their titles and I imagine that thunt can and was making money on his own without Hiveworks, so whatever they offered him to sign on with them must have been enough to convince him that it was a better option than doing it by himself, but also enough of a benefit for Hiveworks to actually make that offer in the first place. Meeting their contractual obligations and promotional quotas seems like the opposite of poorly managed? Also, it's really weird seeing people get butthurt about specific comics not making it in--everyone talks about comics like TMK that you linked and Legend of Hare that ConanThe3rd mentioned, not getting in like it was some sort of personal insult to the quality of their work, but if you read the results of their recent submission session, they had twenty slots to fill and OVER 800 actual applications total. They read through all of them, and picked the twenty that they thought were the most suitable for their catalogue based on a lot more than what I think you're assuming. I'll be honest, here, I'm an old guard member of Hiveworks and I was very lucky to be recommended as a member internally by a current member that I didn't even know existed when they were still building their catalogue. I work really hard and really consistently, and if I wasn't already a member, even I would be worried about my chances of applying to them just with the vast number of applications they got. If they've only got twenty spots, and out of 800 comics there are a 100 really great comics with great art and great stories with reliable authors who update frequently at consistent quality, that's still 80 out of those 100 great, professional quality comics that don't get in, and it's at that point where they stop comparing quality and consistency (because they are ALL high quality and consistency) and start looking at specific genres of applications and accept ones that bolster the sections of their catalogue where it was a little thinner. A ton of good comics didn't get in, and, I'm not trying to be a dick here, just looking at the two comics listed above, TMK probably didn't get in because it 1) seems to update once a week and it's possible that, when asked, the author stated that they couldn't promise that they'd go up to at least twice a week updates at any point in the future and 2) is a fantasy comic, which Hive has plenty of already. Legend of Hare probably didn't get in because, looking at its consistency, it was updating twice a week back in early July, dropped down to once a week for two weeks and then just stopped updating. Now, I don't know how consistent its schedule was before that, because it isn't my cup of tea and I'm not going to flip back in the archives forever, but if their schedule was at all patchy or prone to just...not updating for a few months of time with no explanation, that shows a lack of commitment and consistency that Hive might not want to consider? I don't like to disparage any comic, because regardless of your skill level, comics are hard and time consuming. These are probably good comics! I don't know! But pretty much all of the comics that did get in that I have seen are gorgeous and compelling, many of them what I, personally, would consider to be professional quality work. That doesn't mean that these two comics are BAD, it just means that they were passed up for something that was also good, but perhaps a little more polished. It sucks to not get in, but again, it's nothing personal and is less likely to have anything to do with perceived slights against Willis or a boner for Goblins than it does the sheer volume of really great submissions, not all of which have officially launched yet. 
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Oct 4, 2016 14:55
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