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Reading through that Sinfest tweet thread and jesus it really does feel like his brain is dissolving into goo, like some modified version of the old n*****stomper58 postquote:im permabanned poster Tatsuya Ishida. i first started reading radfem lit when i was about 32. by 33 i got really obsessed with the concept of "feminism" and tried to channel it constantly, until my thought process got really bizarre and i would repeat things like "porn is rape" and "gender is facism" in my head for hours, and i would get really paranoid, start seeing things in the corners of my eyes etc, basically prodromal schizophrenia.
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# ? Apr 26, 2022 14:29 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 13:02 |
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Captain Oblivious posted:Loup who has the memories of Annie’s father figures is now developing tsundere anime boy crushes on her in the guise of a robot teenage boy. hi i've read gunnerkrigg court from since it started up until just yesterday and these sound like the takes of an absolute lunatic
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# ? Apr 26, 2022 23:06 |
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up until today i would've thought the most powerful criticism you could lay at gunnerkrigg court's feet would be that it should get on with things and wrap up 5 years ago but apparently it's some sort of tantric exercise in sociopathy, abuse, and emotional labor and not just "a kind of generic YA comic with some neat theology/technology musings ala diet neil gaiman about a kid growing up in a weird science boarding school"
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# ? Apr 26, 2022 23:36 |
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it stopped being that years ago, now it's a kludgy sleep aid that occasionally wakes up long enough to espouse some Interesting Views on parental neglect
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# ? Apr 26, 2022 23:48 |
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well i'd say that's complete horseshit but i admit i don't have a degree in armchair psychology from tumblr university
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# ? Apr 26, 2022 23:49 |
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Cowcaster posted:well i'd say that's complete horseshit but i admit i don't have a degree in armchair psychology from tumblr university no, it's just simple reading comprehension. this is not a misrepresentation: Rand Brittain posted:Gunnerkrigg had a long and controversial arc where a bunch of characters began asking each other "should we do something about how Tony is an abusive parent and isn't doing anything to get help with the many, many issues that make him incapable of raising child?". the story debuted annie's dad as a guy who publicly humiliated her in front of her classmates, isolated her from her friends, and literally shut her into a featureless white room while divesting her of her hair and makeup. nearly his every appearance onward consisted of either justifying his behavior as the product of some tortured internal angst (which amounts to "he gets nervous around other people") or playing him for laughs, culminating in the above scene. people got hung up on this whole saga because for years the comic has been so relentlessly anodyne and meandering that it was pretty much the only regularly noteworthy aspect of it, at least until the latest chapter, in which a sexually naive robot girl flashes her tits at some elves until they go "eyyy your place or mine" and get chased off by a conveniently placed guy. and even that was just embarrassing and amateurish compared to the Tale of Tony
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# ? Apr 26, 2022 23:57 |
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I feel like Siddell's take on Annie/Loup is basically: 1) Loup is not meaningfully older than Annie, even if he is a fusion of two beings who are. 2) Loup is not a father figure to Annie, even if he is a fusion of 1+ beings who are. 3) I'm not even sure why 1 or 2 would ever come up given the several thousand other, better reasons why Annie should not date Loup. And I think you pretty much have to take that as a premise if you want to engage with the story as it's being written, rather than trying to twist it into "ugh, Annie is being pushed into dating her wolf-dad", because it seems pretty clear the author isn't writing it with that in mind.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 00:00 |
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I think it's trying to wrap up now, so a lot of dangling issues are getting pretty sudden "this matter is closed now" resolutions. Which, for the most part, are kind of abrupt and speed past any follow up questions. The seeming final statement on Annie and her dad is uncomfortable, and setting up a naive robot girl for some contrived "Loup saves her from 'an encounter' way out of her depth" thing was plain strange and ill-conceived. There's not much else to say.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 00:00 |
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Rand Brittain posted:I feel like Siddell's take on Annie/Loup is basically: i also think it's overblown because there's been no indication that his affections are reciprocated lifeless and predictable yes, problematic no
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 00:02 |
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Oxxidation posted:no, it's just simple reading comprehension. this is not a misrepresentation: it's a YA comic. establishing that the protagonist has a hosed up little man of a dad, he's a hosed up little man of a dad because of a tragic backstory, and accepting that her dad is a hosed up little man that she can't fix or change is so boilerplate it comes on rubber stamps. not to mention the shonen-rear end anime nonsense of a bunch of bullies doing something lovely and getting chased off by someone they underestimated, there's probably a stupid tvtropes page for it. this is borderline supermechagodzilla psychoanalyzing a goofy movie to be about child molestation.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 00:04 |
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Cowcaster posted:it's a YA comic. establishing that the protagonist has a hosed up little man of a dad, he's a hosed up little man of a dad because of a tragic backstory, and accepting that her dad is a hosed up little man that she can't fix or change is so boilerplate it comes on rubber stamps. not to mention the shonen-rear end anime nonsense of a bunch of bullies doing something lovely and getting chased off by someone they underestimated, there's probably a stupid tvtropes page for it. this is borderline supermechagodzilla psychoanalyzing a goofy movie to be about child molestation. well you certainly appear to have more experience with YA than i do, but i get the feeling that "acceptance" of parental abuse/neglect probably shouldn't be followed with the implication that it's the healthiest option and that she becomes a better person for it. seems like a messy implication. seems sub-optimal
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 00:06 |
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somehow i get the sense having an entire story arc revolving around annie's legal emancipation and estrangement from her father would not be a massive improvement to the already plodding pacing of the comic, despite it being the healthier realistic outcome, and i also get the feeling that the people who are already scrutinizing the comic in such a bizarre way wouldn't be satisfied with it anyway.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 00:13 |
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Cowcaster posted:somehow i get the sense having an entire story arc revolving around annie's legal emancipation and estrangement from her father would not be a massive improvement to the already plodding pacing of the comic, despite it being the healthier realistic outcome, and i also get the feeling that the people who are already scrutinizing the comic in such a bizarre way wouldn't be satisfied with it anyway. On the contrary, seeing Annie tell Tony to get out of her life, or possibly just have Donald tell him for her, was pretty much exactly what we wanted to see.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 00:16 |
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If Gunnerkrigg was really a shonen anime she would’ve dragon upper cut her dad in the middle of an afterlife tournament arc and it would’ve been pretty cool and tear jerking.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 00:17 |
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Can I just say that Al Columbia rules
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 00:18 |
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shirts and skins posted:Can I just say that Al Columbia rules fair enough alas from what i've heard he's an incredibly toxic up-his-own rear end artisté with a é to work with though Rand Brittain posted:On the contrary, seeing Annie tell Tony to get out of her life, or possibly just have Donald tell him for her, was pretty much exactly what we wanted to see. well maybe the YA lesson here is "sometimes people keep around hosed up little mans even though they're hosed up little mans", then edit: anyway, sorry for steamrolling the thread, i fatfingered this link trying to check up on kill six billion demons and just started flipping through it and the takes, they were simply too spicy Cowcaster fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Apr 27, 2022 |
# ? Apr 27, 2022 00:19 |
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Cowcaster posted:these sound like the takes of an absolute lunatic
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 00:41 |
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I thought I unsubbed from the Gunnerkrigg thread when I removed the comic from my RSS feed.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 01:09 |
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Cowcaster posted:well maybe the YA lesson here is "sometimes people keep around hosed up little mans even though they're hosed up little mans", then If we're going to have Gunnerkrigg discussion here I guess I'll try to give an earnest post and see if it can be managed without this whole "blowing past the other and firing into the hay bales in the distance" thing. I'm going to spoiler Gunnerkrigg posting for the sake of people that don't want to see it or specifically don't want to see discussion of child abuse. There's a difference in degrees of perceived wrong when it comes to Anthony and how readers react to him. Like sure, he can go on being a hosed up little man, but his hosed-upness isn't contained to just himself. I think to most readers who aren't really happy with how things resolved, he's an abusive parent. He's been emotionally neglectful in ways that have also hosed Annie up a lot. She was 12 in volume 1 of the comic, when he first abandoned her at the Court. She was like 13? 14? when he called her for supplies and nothing else. He used those supplies to enact a magic ritual that only didn't kill her because Zimmy cold clocked him through Annie's soul. He very suddenly reappeared six months or a year later, humiliated and isolated Annie, and upended her whole fragile little life she'd had to build for years without him. Adults around Annie have all shrugged and gone "Well, he's just hosed up." He's gone "I'm so hosed up." Kat went "Well I guess he was hosed up to you and I used to be mad about that, but he's been cool with me so I'm over it." Annie's resigned herself to her dad being "hosed up." It's all been on his terms, accommodating his needs, he's making his just-now-16 daughter be the "adult" in the situation. And yeah, life is like that a lot. We say we'll cut ties with abusers, but they're also our family and we decide we can live with them on their terms so long as they don't drag us down with them too bad. But if you're going to throw up "Well this is a YA story" well I think it gives kind of a lovely message to give young readers. The comic has over and over again said to Annie "Your dad is hosed up to you, no adults in your life will support you or intercede on your behalf, your friends won't have your back, resign yourself to your father who has never been there for you and love him as deeply as possible." Because I don't think most kids in even vaguely similar situations have parents whose abuses can be redeemed or pushed aside by having a deeply-buried kernel of love for their kids. Parents can be awful and lovely, but it certainly never feels like Annie is given any choice about whether or not he should be in her life. The only person who even floats something like that is Eglamore, who keeps getting dismissed in this regard as the bitter cuckold because Tony scooped his girlfriend out from under him. I can't really address your broad "Whatever it's YA tropes!" thing more than that because that just sounds like a weak excuse and I don't think you could rattle off a case like Annie's that ends up with the same frustrating lack of catharsis. Even if you could, or whatever angle you were going for with Loup and shonen anime comparisons, saying that other media uses some dated or problematic conception of chivalry or daddy issues doesn't mean it's acceptable or appropriate. Maybe the resolution as it stands would've been more tolerable if it wasn't the end to a constant background tension for 70% of the comic since it started in 2006? I am getting a strong feeling now that Gunnerkrigg's sedate pacing is kind of coming back to bite it in the rear end because I don't know if it's really possible to properly pay off what amounts to 20 years of buildup. Pulling this last bit out so my post has some worthwhile contribution to the thread, but I've been back and forth on my feelings on Never Satisfied, but I certainly appreciate the writing of the numerous lovely parents and adults there a lot more. Maybe it's just how the generally disastrous nature of every person in the comic is wound more tightly to the narrative? How you can see the ways the adults loving up is impacting the kids, and how they push back against that in a big range of ways? Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Apr 27, 2022 |
# ? Apr 27, 2022 02:23 |
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Nuns with Guns posted:If we're going to have Gunnerkrigg discussion here I guess I'll try to give an earnest post and see if it can be managed without this whole "blowing past the other and firing into the hay bales in the distance" thing. look i'm sorry to just dismiss you out of hand here because this is obviously very important to you but all i can think about is that guy who entered The Discourse a week or two ago because he was outraged that the children's movie Turning Red didn't once reference 9/11 or the traumatic impact it would've had on the children's lives. i'm running through all the possible comparisons in my mind to what this whole argument comes across as and all i can come up with is someone calling out calvin's parents from calvin and hobbes being neglectful, abusive monsters who deserve child services to come down on their asses for not paying attention to their struggling child and not just an archetypal plugin of "disinterested parent"
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 02:42 |
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Cowcaster posted:look i'm sorry to just dismiss you out of hand here because this is obviously very important to you but all i can think about is that guy who entered The Discourse a week or two ago because he was outraged that the children's movie Turning Red didn't once reference 9/11 or the traumatic impact it would've had on the children's lives. i'm running through all the possible comparisons in my mind to what this whole argument comes across as and all i can come up with is someone calling out calvin's parents from calvin and hobbes being neglectful, abusive monsters who deserve child services to come down on their asses for not paying attention to their struggling child and not just an archetypal plugin of "disinterested parent" that you think this is actually the reasonable levelheaded interpretation of GC
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 02:49 |
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Cowcaster posted:look i'm sorry to just dismiss you out of hand here because this is obviously very important to you but all i can think about is that guy who entered The Discourse a week or two ago because he was outraged that the children's movie Turning Red didn't once reference 9/11 or the traumatic impact it would've had on the children's lives. i'm running through all the possible comparisons in my mind to what this whole argument comes across as and all i can come up with is someone calling out calvin's parents from calvin and hobbes being neglectful, abusive monsters who deserve child services to come down on their asses for not paying attention to their struggling child and not just an archetypal plugin of "disinterested parent" Okay, thanks for comparing me to the racist, COVID-19 conspiracy theorist guy, I guess. I was able to appreciate Turning Red the normal way when I saw it, but I guess we're just doing this.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 02:54 |
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the holy poopacy posted:that you think this is actually the reasonable levelheaded interpretation of GC look if i need to be the weirdo fucko the thread hates now that's fine i'll make it to tomorrow somehow
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:00 |
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Cowcaster posted:look i'm sorry to just dismiss you out of hand here because this is obviously very important to you but all i can think about is that guy who entered The Discourse a week or two ago because he was outraged that the children's movie Turning Red didn't once reference 9/11 or the traumatic impact it would've had on the children's lives. i'm running through all the possible comparisons in my mind to what this whole argument comes across as and all i can come up with is someone calling out calvin's parents from calvin and hobbes being neglectful, abusive monsters who deserve child services to come down on their asses for not paying attention to their struggling child and not just an archetypal plugin of "disinterested parent" what is it about modding Games that makes people act like this or do they only pick people who act like this to mod Games
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:01 |
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Nuns with Guns posted:Okay, thanks for comparing me to the racist, COVID-19 conspiracy theorist guy, I guess. I was able to appreciate Turning Red the normal way when I saw it, but I guess we're just doing this. i'm saying you're overanalyzing something on a level that completely doesn't match either the authorial intent nor the target audience and that's just the first example i thought of
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:04 |
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you, an idiot: child abuse is a complicated and delicate topic that a YA webcomic is poorly equipped to fully explore with the seriousness it deserves me, a brain genius: anthony carver is basically calvin's dad
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:09 |
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the holy poopacy posted:you, an idiot: child abuse is a complicated and delicate topic that a YA webcomic is poorly equipped to fully explore with the seriousness it deserves quote:The sound of metal chains whipping against bare flesh hang heavy in the air, like a bird flying into a headwind. The room is damp and sparsely lit. SUPERMECHAGODZILLA’s scarred jowls are illuminated by a desk lamp laying sideways on the floor
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:10 |
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I think it's kind of sad that a point like "abusing your kid is bad" is "overanalyzing it" and "doesn't match the target audience". Like there's some brain-as-smooth-as-an-egg-shell takes about GK and webcomics in general but oh wow.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:10 |
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Cowcaster posted:i'm saying you're overanalyzing something on a level that completely doesn't match either the authorial intent nor the target audience and that's just the first example i thought of I'll also say that at least since Annie stopped having a rhombus-shaped head, the characters in Gunnerkrigg have always been depicted in a more grounded, realistically human way than Calvin's cartoon parents, or Homer Simpson, or idk Batman. Annie and her dad and all the other talking things the comic are more on the level of, well hey how about Turning Red? Another story about parental abuse and generational trauma. It was very sad at points, but also very sweet and fun and even when Mei forgave her mom it felt better earned and I enjoyed it. Good movie.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:11 |
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if you read something other than YA fiction then maybe you'd have a better frame of reference than old web forum posters
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:12 |
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Nuns with Guns posted:I'll also say that at least since Annie stopped having a rhombus-shaped head, the characters in Gunnerkrigg have always been depicted in a more grounded, realistically human way than Calvin's cartoon parents, or Homer Simpson, or idk Batman. Annie and her dad and all the other talking things the comic are more on the level of, well hey how about Turning Red? Another story about parental abuse and generational trauma. It was very sad at points, but also very sweet and fun and even when Mei forgave her mom it felt better earned and I enjoyed it. Good movie. to be completely honest i haven't actually seen turning red, just that one guy's loving galaxy brain take on it. i'll probably end up seeing it when i visit my family sometime!
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:16 |
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when you think about it, abandoning your preteen child at a boarding school for multiple years without any attempt at communication and then showing up again only to insult and humiliate them is basically the same as pulling their legs about where clouds come from or wanting to drag them along on a fishing trip they're not into, and calling any of these things abusive is equally unhinged
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:18 |
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Oxxidation posted:if you read something other than YA fiction then maybe you'd have a better frame of reference than old web forum posters i'm worn down, i promise i'll shut up now
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:18 |
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did you storm into like, the Fallout: New Vegas thread every so often to tell people "wtf are all you psychos talking about, this is a video game for children, none of this poo poo was intended, stop overanalyzing it"
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:18 |
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Cowcaster posted:i'm worn down, i promise i'll shut up now
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:27 |
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Cowcaster posted:to be completely honest i haven't actually seen turning red, just that one guy's loving galaxy brain take on it. i'll probably end up seeing it when i visit my family sometime! It's a very charming movie, even if it has tragically little to say on the Global Legacy of Colonialism.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:32 |
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given cowcasters *history* this isnt surprising
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 03:48 |
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yknow those middle school kids who think they're fantastic comedians but the only jokes they tell are about how their teachers keep making them practice media literacy and write papers about the symbolism of curtains? yeah.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 04:28 |
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this webcomic that should've ended five years ago is VERY important to me and I will hear NO SLANDER of it
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 05:03 |
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# ? May 28, 2024 13:02 |
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I would like to point out that I was someone who liked Tony's character and was infuriated at how that arc ended. Through the comic, Tony was shown as someone who was deeply regretful over his prior actions, recognized that his wife was dead and his child needed a father, but couldn't progress past his mental block. There were plenty of interesting places this could have gone: Maybe Tony finds a way to overcome his issues, or at least have some kind of heart-to-heart with Annie. Maybe she finally decides she's done with his poo poo and finally severs his relationship with him, to which he could have reacted in a number of interesting and compelling ways. Maybe we could find out why the hell he's like this, or some more insights into his relationship with Surma! but nope, we just get a big, long, meandering chapter where a bunch of tertiary characters talk about how tony's kind of poo poo, tony saying "yeah I'm kinda a poo poo, I hate it," and ends with annie saying "yeah he's kinda a poo poo but I love him anyway." It is the most boring, blandest possible way to end a long-running character arc I have ever seen, didn't resolve anything and was just immensely unsatisfying. just objectively really bad storytelling.
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# ? Apr 27, 2022 06:13 |