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nimby posted:I'm mostly confused about why there are galactic mercenaries in the first place. With the level of technology being what it is, the Schlock universe should be a peaceful utopia. Well back when it was a fond parody of libertarian space military rail gun porn, it made sense. Also the Culture novels and Star Trek both do a good job of describing technoutopian societies that nonetheless end up at war.
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Jun 8, 2018 05:10
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nimby posted:I'm mostly confused about why there are galactic mercenaries in the first place. With the level of technology being what it is, the Schlock universe should be a peaceful utopia. It's the latter but the AI likes mercenaries SlothfulCobra posted:The comic wrote the mercenaries into too much success and now it's very clumsily trying to dismantle that success, and jumping between 3 or 4 mostly unrelated subplots to do so. None of the plots are really getting enough attention to get any good, and half of the main cast may or may not be dead so everything's resting on small clusters of newer secondary characters. yeah basically. The scope of everything just keeps on getting bigger and bigger but he's still chained to all the writing conventions of Dilbert so it's just a convoluted mess of ever-larger superweapons blowing each other up in his extremely poorly rendered style for increasingly abstruse and incomprehensible reasons, and then the blob man says a punchline about poop or eating people.
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Jun 8, 2018 05:10
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I think the narrative's been able to scale down from being too big once or twice before, but they spent so much time on how they had infinity plus one money and had conquered death itself, and they had access to apocalypse level technology.nimby posted:I'm mostly confused about why there are galactic mercenaries in the first place. With the level of technology being what it is, the Schlock universe should be a peaceful utopia. Let me weave you a tale about a little thing called human nature... Although offhandedly I'm not sure what you mean, they're not really in a post-scarcity society. They still get their food out of cans.
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Jun 8, 2018 05:24
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Guilded Age posted its final page today, completing its near nine year run. It is a decent enough fantasy comic and, hey, its finished. First Page
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Jun 8, 2018 07:15
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World Famous W posted:Guilded Age posted its final page today, completing its near nine year run. It is a decent enough fantasy comic and, hey, its finished. Be warned, it has one of the most pointless twists I've ever read. It's a decent high fantasy comic with parody elements but the twist is just utterly unnecessary and nothing is done with it.
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Jun 8, 2018 07:30
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Joe Slowboat posted:Be warned, it has one of the most pointless twists I've ever read. It's a decent high fantasy comic with parody elements but the twist is just utterly unnecessary and nothing is done with it.
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Jun 8, 2018 08:00
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PMush Perfect posted:Is that the it's actually an MMO! one?
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Jun 8, 2018 08:10
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Yeah, it's definitely a story that succeeds in spite of itself. Still, it's worth a read, and I respect any webcomic that actually tells the story it wants to tell and then has an actual ending, even if there was a lot of painfully extraneous bullshit along the way.
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Jun 8, 2018 08:38
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SlothfulCobra posted:Although offhandedly I'm not sure what you mean, they're not really in a post-scarcity society. They still get their food out of cans. They have as good as limitless energy and nano-bots that give actual immortality. Cat Mattress posted:Heh, Girl Genius is revisiting a backburner plot from nearly 14 years ago. It looks like it not just revisiting it, but retelling the flashback!
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Jun 8, 2018 10:24
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Girl Genius characters drawn in profile are cyclopean horrors
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Jun 8, 2018 12:38
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Jackard posted:Girl Genius characters drawn in profile are cyclopean horrors They're made out of huge, irregular stones?
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Jun 8, 2018 13:20
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think the narrative's been able to scale down from being too big once or twice before, but they spent so much time on how they had infinity plus one money and had conquered death itself, and they had access to apocalypse level technology. I stopped reading it years ago after the whole Petey Entity and Gatekeeper War stuff where suddenly the koala AI was an unstoppable god-being. Did things get walked back from that?
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Jun 8, 2018 13:23
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Those last two panels of Mildred today have strong av potential
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Jun 8, 2018 13:54
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Mors Rattus posted:I stopped reading it years ago after the whole Petey Entity and Gatekeeper War stuff where suddenly the koala AI was an unstoppable god-being. There is now another unstoppable god-being with guns that shoot through teleports and it's seemingly gone rogue.
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Jun 8, 2018 14:45
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nimby posted:There is now another unstoppable god-being with guns that shoot through teleports and it's seemingly gone rogue. ...so how can you tell that one apart from the one shaped like a koala
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Jun 8, 2018 15:14
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Mors Rattus posted:...so how can you tell that one apart from the one shaped like a koala It chews the scenery more.
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Jun 8, 2018 15:20
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Mors Rattus posted:I stopped reading it years ago after the whole Petey Entity and Gatekeeper War stuff where suddenly the koala AI was an unstoppable god-being. Mostly. After the gatekeeper war, he mostly went off to another galaxy to fight a war with mostly invisible antimatter creatures. For a while he'd show up every so often with his near-infinite power and muck around, but after a point, he got tied up enough in his offscreen war that he couldn't fool around in the milky way without it costing him in the war. And of course, when he left the mercenaries were left with much less, so they had to go out and get employers and do jobs.
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Jun 8, 2018 15:26
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SlothfulCobra posted:Mostly. After the gatekeeper war, he mostly went off to another galaxy to fight a war with mostly invisible antimatter creatures. Dark matter, not antimatter. Pretty different. The thing with dark matter creatures is that the only way we can interact with them (and them with us) is through gravity (and the teleportation gizmo). Antimatter creatures would be much easier to deal with, just expose them to matter and they'd explode.
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Jun 8, 2018 18:46
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nimby posted:It looks like it not just revisiting it, but retelling the flashback! The first time it was backstory. This time it's probably going to advance the plot in some way, like maybe connecting Zetha's carnage to the destruction of Bang's pirate base by an unknown attacker. Also, I think 14 years ago is not unreasonable to do a recap. TV shows do "Last time on..." showing stuff a week old. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Jun 8, 2018 |
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Jun 8, 2018 18:54
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:The first time it was backstory. This time it's probably going to advance the plot in some way, like maybe connecting Zetha's carnage to the destruction of Bang's pirate base by an unknown attacker. Also, I think 14 years ago is not unreasonable to do a recap. TV shows do "Last time on..." showing stuff a week old. Yeah I thought that 'Zeetha wiped out Bang's pirates' was more or less obvious, as is the connection between Skifander and the Queen of England (also, the Geisterdamen are clearly another offshoot of the same hypertech-having lost civilizations, which may or may not have been founded by Lucrezia with time travel). So I imagine the Zeetha plot threads are going to come due in England, hopefully including her and Gil being siblings. In theory, they could clear the deck of a hell of a lot of standing plot lines by just having the Skifander situation get cleared up in this castle. ...I've been rereading GG, it remains incredibly silly but I have to say, it's still a lot of fun. Also I may be aberrant in that I liked the Castle Heyerodyne arc more than the Circus/Sturmhalten arc, if only because Klaus and Gil are two of my favorite characters. RIP both of their prior characterizations though, the plot needed to push Gil and Agatha apart.
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Jun 8, 2018 19:12
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Caught up with the last 5 months of Scurry. Lookin' good still. I should buy the books. Also, old news naturally, but I am looking forward to Cheap Thrills returning in 2019. 
Agreeable Employer fucked around with this message at 02:05 on Jun 9, 2018 |
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Jun 9, 2018 01:57
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nimby posted:They have as good as limitless energy and nano-bots that give actual immortality. Schlock Mercenary's three shortages are PTUs (which are used to make powerplants), data, and developed habitable space. Most of the conflicts in the story are related to the first two. Schlock's not the biggest standout in either art or writing but it's still relatively clever and engaging enough to keep me glancing at a daily strip in the morning. Besides, I've been reading this thing since I was like fifteen.
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Jun 9, 2018 06:34
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Nah, I don't think it was Bang's pirates. Something would've come up one of the times that Bang and Zeetha met up. Bands of pirates are just one of those things that you'd expect to find plenty of in some kind of pulpy 19th century setting, just like lost civilizations full of beautiful women. Of course what's annoying me now is that this current crop of eccentric academics and socialites seem too much like the academics and socialites that the story just left behind in Paris.
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Jun 9, 2018 07:15
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SlothfulCobra posted:Nah, I don't think it was Bang's pirates. Something would've come up one of the times that Bang and Zeetha met up. Bands of pirates are just one of those things that you'd expect to find plenty of in some kind of pulpy 19th century setting, just like lost civilizations full of beautiful women. I think it's Bang's pirates because neither of them ever saw the other during the whole pirate fiasco. In the same way, the lost civilizations of beautiful women all seem to know each other and descend from a single source. Also, you're right that the current crop of academics and socialites is pretty samey. I think the problem is that both Paris and England are defined by being havens of peace and some kind of culture, kept together by single all-powerful Spark overlords. They're sort of avoiding the whole 'Pax Transylvania is collapsing' element of the setting by focusing on the parts that haven't blown up. It's a welcome change of pace from Mechanicsburg and Slaver Wasps Forever Nothing But Slaver Wasps, but it's still kind of samey between the two.
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Jun 9, 2018 07:44
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Agreeable Employer posted:Caught up with the last 5 months of Scurry. Lookin' good still. I should buy the books. Old news? I only caught a hint because the RSS updated for the first time since 2013, linking to Rigsby, WI.
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Jun 9, 2018 08:13
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All you need to know about Howard Taylor's comic is that a long time ago he read a much better milscifi series called Hammer's Slammers (which isn't even that good) and everything that has resulted since is a poorly implemented fanfic.
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Jun 9, 2018 09:30
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Agreeable Employer posted:Caught up with the last 5 months of Scurry. Lookin' good still. I should buy the books. So...it looks it was a furry webcomic that is now being rebooted as a non-furry webcomic? I know nothing about Cheap Thrills except what I can glean from those tumblrs. Yvonmukluk fucked around with this message at 10:20 on Jun 9, 2018 |
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Jun 9, 2018 10:17
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Yvonmukluk posted:So...it looks it was a furry webcomic that is now being rebooted as a non-furry webcomic? I know nothing about Cheap Thrills except what I can glean from those tumblrs. It was a much-loved comic in these threads all those years ago (despite it being furry), and one of the main characters had started making Big Mistakes, and we were all disappointed when it got abandoned. I think the artist basically dropped off the internet.
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Jun 9, 2018 17:14
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Pyroclastic posted:It was a much-loved comic in these threads all those years ago (despite it being furry), and one of the main characters had started making Big Mistakes, and we were all disappointed when it got abandoned. I think the artist basically dropped off the internet. Oh, OK. But I am correct in my assessment those are non-furry versions of characters from the story? I can sort of see the resemblance. I'll give this new version a look, I trust goons' judgment on matters of webcomics and I dig the vibe of the teaser.
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Jun 9, 2018 17:43
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Joe Slowboat posted:Be warned, it has one of the most pointless twists I've ever read. It's a decent high fantasy comic with parody elements but the twist is just utterly unnecessary and nothing is done with it. GA also felt like it just couldn't sit still. Right when you think you might be in for some character development, it just zipped off to the next thing.
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Jun 9, 2018 17:55
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Yvonmukluk posted:Oh, OK. But I am correct in my assessment those are non-furry versions of characters from the story? I can sort of see the resemblance. IIRC that's the name of the lovely town they were in so yeah, def same characters
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Jun 9, 2018 21:08
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Pyroclastic posted:Old news? I only caught a hint because the RSS updated for the first time since 2013, linking to Rigsby, WI. Enh, figured it was and didn't want to post all 'omg! Guess what is returning!' when others would be all " We knew this for months..."
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Jun 9, 2018 21:23
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wiegieman posted:Schlock Mercenary's three shortages are PTUs (which are used to make powerplants), data, and developed habitable space. Most of the conflicts in the story are related to the first two. As much as I admire Howard 's incredible work ethic, I think his comic would be better served with fewer, deeper updates. There was a bit in the current are where there was a .5 microsecond AI war bookended at each end by characters in machine time trying to clear meat-brain civilians from the collateral damage area which was actually really good, but all intensity was spoiled by stopping to tell a couple of Dad jokes on the weekends.
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Jun 10, 2018 13:55
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Keep in mind, too, that Schlock Mercenary is probably in it's penultimate story arc. Tayler has said it would end at Book 19, and currently it's late in Book 18. Also it may not be the best sci-fi, but it's got some interesting ideas and it's there every day, so I keep reading. (Also jfc stop giving the "burninate everything" AI second chances and just loving wipe it, you should have just let it die the first time it committed suicide.) rndmnmbr fucked around with this message at 03:14 on Jun 11, 2018 |
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Jun 11, 2018 03:11
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So, uh, content warning: discussion of child pornography and the Ava's Demon creator doing porn of child characters for patreon bucks.
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Jun 11, 2018 13:06
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what the gently caress. I liked that comic despite the release pace.
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Jun 11, 2018 13:48
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Well that just makes me feel sick.
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Jun 11, 2018 14:22
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apparently she also tried to solicit doxx of the person who called her out on it? webcomics drama is a dismal scene
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Jun 11, 2018 14:26
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Like, how NSFW are we talking here? Is this "Odin slipping out of a bathrobe" or "Ava doing unspeakable things to Gil" territory? Also frankly I have a hard time imagining sexual attraction to most of these characters, less because they're seventeen or whatever and more because most of them are awful, awful people. And the least awful person there is the mass murderer! (Well, maybe Odin is less awful? We don't really know his situation.)
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Jun 11, 2018 14:30
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