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Tortolia posted:Fringe is a fun counterexample as mentioned, because while it got a lot of the early press as “JJ Abrams does the X-Files”, I don’t think he was overly involved with it after conception. In fact, part of the reason the show worked so well was because the showrunners realized they needed to take one of the overarching mystery box reveals (the parallel world framework) and pulled it forward a season and a half or so to give the show proper momentum and really let the storytelling roll. (As an example, I wasn't planning on sending any characters to a hell dimension until maybe the very end of my comic but they're in there anyway now. If you sit on ideas too long they lose their lustre anyway.) Another problem with the mystery box approach is that long running stories have a tendency to move in unexpected directions. How I Met Your Mother was a sitcom based around a mystery box, and they made the sensible decision of putting something in the box right at the start. However they then did more seasons than they planned, and the characters changed, and extra plots were added, until finally the solution in the box didn't work anymore. They could have changed it of course, but they didn't. Now the whole thing is hosed!
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Apr 18, 2024 13:13
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SavoyTruffle posted:I love this approach. Sometimes if you're carefully building to something it can really give everything a nice jolt if you just shift it forwards. I've done this on a smaller scale in my comic; by hitting a climax or a punchline a lot earlier than planned you can find a lot of space for new ideas. I think most people have a sense for when you're building up to something, and a sense of rhythm that tells them how long they should have to wait for it. If you take too long you're just going to lose them, but if you wrongfoot them with a sudden revelation you're going to hook people. I guess it doesn't always make sense, but it's always worth considering in my experience. I don't remember if this was a fan recut or a DVD extra, but there exists a version that removes everything after Ted meets Tracy that is honestly far superior.
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Apr 18, 2024 14:32
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Neito posted:I don't remember if this was a fan recut or a DVD extra, but there exists a version that removes everything after Ted meets Tracy that is honestly far superior. So... just the pilot.
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Apr 18, 2024 15:48
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Inkspot posted:So... just the pilot. Tracy, AKA the Mother, doesn't exist as a character until toward the end of the series. Are you thinking of Robin?
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Apr 18, 2024 15:51
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I was being a tad facetious. Victoria would have also been a fine choice.
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Apr 18, 2024 16:45
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Inkspot posted:I was being a tad facetious. Victoria would have also been a fine choice. Literally anything but the extant ending would've been fine.
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Apr 18, 2024 16:54
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can't believe they had Ted marry Bran Stark smh
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Apr 18, 2024 17:47
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MikeJF posted:On the other hand JJ Abrams co-developed Fringe, although he wasn't really part of it after the initial development, and that show managed to pull off Mystery Box well. This was another reason why Abrams was able to build his brand, so to speak. He helped launch a bunch of shows and slap his name on them when all he did was like stand in the back of the writers room and go "why don't you stick a polar bear in there or something, that'll really gently caress with people" and then leave. Patrick H. Willems did a career autopsy on Abrams and came to the conclusion that Abrams as a storyteller made a career out of throwing the car in drive at the top of a hill and then jumping out before it really got going, so he never actually had to finish a story before. So that's why the one time in his life he was finally forced to (The Rise of Skywalker), it was a complete car crash that basically iced him out of Hollywood, I want to say "once and for all", but these fuckers always come back.
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Apr 19, 2024 05:22
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nine-gear crow posted:This was another reason why Abrams was able to build his brand, so to speak. He helped launch a bunch of shows and slap his name on them when all he did was like stand in the back of the writers room and go "why don't you stick a polar bear in there or something, that'll really gently caress with people" and then leave. Patrick H. Willems did a career autopsy on Abrams and came to the conclusion that Abrams as a storyteller made a career out of throwing the car in drive at the top of a hill and then jumping out before it really got going, so he never actually had to finish a story before. So that's why the one time in his life he was finally forced to (The Rise of Skywalker), it was a complete car crash that basically iced him out of Hollywood, I want to say "once and for all", but these fuckers always come back. Kinda reminds me of how Matt Groening has never written more than a handful of episodes for any of the TV shows he's ostensibly created and been the creative force behind.
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Apr 19, 2024 05:32
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To be fair it's pretty common for showrunners to only have written a small handful of episodes themselves; the opposite is way less common
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Apr 19, 2024 05:37
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drat. Forming's finished! After 15 years!? I never thought it would at some point but drat. I still barely understand any of what just happened though but thats what rereads are for.
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Apr 19, 2024 13:04
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hell yeah time to reread, thanks for the heads up
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Apr 19, 2024 13:08
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time to start going through forming for the fourth or so time again
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Apr 19, 2024 15:35
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Paladin posted:I checked up on College Roomies From Hell the other day: still going, Maritza posts a strip or two every couple of weeks (months?), apparently it is in its Final Arc... which I think is still freshman year, 1999? It was pretty big, yeah; it was actually one of the first webcomics I read (along with Sluggy Freelance and User Friendly) and I'm still friends with a bunch of people I met in CRFH fandom, even if the fandom-as-a-community has largely withered away. I stopped reading it for the same reason I stopped reading every other webcomic -- it moved too slowly for me to retain context on what was going on. These days I wait for interesting-looking comics to finish and read the whole thing. When it wraps up, probably sometime in the 2040s along with Girl Genius and El Goonish Shive, I'm going to reread the whole thing for old times' sake. ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Apr 19, 2024 18:49
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I'm glad Schlock Mercenary wrapped up when it did. Even though it's one of my favourite webcomics those last two books can be a bit of a slog. Also like, a year after it finished, Howard got a nasty case of COVID and basically turned into a lethargy elemental as a result so if it hadn't ended in 2019 it probably would have never gotten finished.
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Apr 19, 2024 18:52
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Gunnerkrigg has a very metal page today. (I'd post that in the gunnerkrigg thread but that is a cursed place full of naught but hate and suffering) Neito posted:I don't remember if this was a fan recut or a DVD extra, but there exists a version that removes everything after Ted meets Tracy that is honestly far superior. It was a DVD extra, it's an official alternate ending. It doesn't just cut off early, it's got a different concluding montage and voiceover. I guess by the time the DVD came out the reaction to the ending had gotten through to the show writers so they made a different one. Here's an upload of it. It's definitely a better conclusion, if a little generic. Neito posted:Tracy, AKA the Mother, doesn't exist as a character until toward the end of the series. Are you thinking of Robin? Tracy. (although that's actually a few episodes in) MikeJF fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Apr 19, 2024 21:38
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Today's Gunnerkrigg does indeed rule. I feel like the plot and characterization have gotten a bit hazy, but the dude can draw. And the implications of the Omega device being a person are also interesting! Hopefully things will turn around. The comic was so good for so long, that I think a weak year or two are not enough to write it off.
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Apr 19, 2024 21:56
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TBH I had to drop the Gunnerkrigg thread before it depressed me enough to drop the comic. I stopped going in there a bit after Anthony was introduced, because the thread was just page after page after page after page of back and forth hatred and fanboying over the guy. And then I went back a couple years later and it was just page after page after page after page of Loup hatred with like 20% Anthony back and forth. I don't know why, but I went back in there today, and was surprised that there weren't troll posts about how Omega might just be Loup in disguise!!1! or some bullshit. Like, the comic hasn't been great for years, I'll not argue that. But that thread is a special box of misery and masochism.
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Apr 20, 2024 03:28
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mock threads are loving poison and that's what the GCC thread became
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Apr 20, 2024 04:17
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The problem with mock threads is that eventually it becomes more about combing over the material to mine for new ways to angry rant about how this comic is the worst comic ever!!! so the takes get really bizarre, on top of everything else. I know "wanting to hate something" is a corny line but it's literally the case after a certain point.
mycot fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 04:33
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Also it can sometimes turn kinda vapid at a point where people are just trying to find ways to hate whatever's going on when it often doesn't really dip much below mediocre. And when you've developed that kind of attitude, you can point it at anything and find some kind of exploitable flaw, it's not very hard. You can quickly lose track of whatever you actually like out there. Something I really like about the "bad movie podcast" The Flophouse is that they're willing to admit when they just sincerely like something, and they also keep themselves anchored by recommending movies they actually like for viewers to watch. If you want to have fun with a bad webcomic, you need a comic that genuinely goes weird places and makes baffling decisions to keep it interesting. You might even need it to crest into actually good for a little bit so when it actually dips back down it hits harder. But you also want for the guy behind the webcomic to not be involved in actual crimes because that makes everything too dark.
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Apr 20, 2024 05:22
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Gunnerkrigg Court has committed the worst sin a webcomic can possibly do. A thread about a bad webcomic can possibly still have interesting discussion that isn’t just directionless hate. But not a thread about a bad webcomic that is also excruciatingly boring. I enjoyed watching GKC get progressively stupider for the sheer curveballs of it, but now it’s not even interesting enough to laugh at. RIP.
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Apr 20, 2024 05:25
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mycot posted:The problem with mock threads is that eventually it becomes more about combing over the material to mine for new ways to angry rant about how this comic is the worst comic ever!!! so the takes get really bizarre, on top of everything else. I know "wanting to hate something" is a corny line but it's literally the case after a certain point. Yeah I eventually stopped following the DD Legacy thread, kind of meandering while it finally wrapped up and then dipped after the weird post-legacy stuff happened. It's aggressively not a good comic, and some of it is just out & out "why would you ever in a million years do this and think it was a good idea", but for the most part it was just lazy & boring. Stuff to criticize, but even before the part i dropped off, after a while some of the drilling into it just felt...I dunno, superfluous? Or always perilously close to poop touching. I see similar hate spirals show up in other threads occasionally (GC was the focus here, but also things like Let's Plays or show threads or whatever) and communities, even about things that aren't that heinous. It always reaches a point where it starts feeling weird if you stick around long enough.
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Apr 20, 2024 05:33
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The GC thread isn't a mock thread, it's a mourning thread.neogeo0823 posted:TBH I had to drop the Gunnerkrigg thread before it depressed me enough to drop the comic. I stopped going in there a bit after Anthony was introduced, because the thread was just page after page after page after page of back and forth hatred and fanboying over the guy. Splicer fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 09:34
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Splicer posted:The GC thread isn't a mock thread, it's a mourning thread. the way people react to information in that thread is deranged
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Apr 20, 2024 10:51
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mycot posted:The problem with mock threads is that eventually it becomes more about combing over the material to mine for new ways to angry rant about how this comic is the worst comic ever!!! so the takes get really bizarre, on top of everything else. I know "wanting to hate something" is a corny line but it's literally the case after a certain point. And they often seem to turn into Kiwi Farms-lite stalking threads. And not even that lite sometimes.
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Apr 20, 2024 12:43
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Twenty Four posted:That's a pretty cool death metal album cover!
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Apr 20, 2024 14:09
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Dawgstar posted:And they often seem to turn into Kiwi Farms-lite stalking threads. And not even that lite sometimes. The final stage of hating is trying to find proof that your target is objectively evil so that any action against them is justified. That's why threads like this tend to turn into psychoanalyzing every panel for signs of the author's fascist leaning nature or whatever.
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Apr 20, 2024 14:50
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mycot posted:The final stage of hating is trying to find proof that your target is objectively evil so that any action against them is justified. That's why threads like this tend to turn into psychoanalyzing every panel for signs of the author's fascist leaning nature or whatever. The process is always like: 1) It dawns on someone that ragging on someone's work endlessly feels mean-spirited. Even if it's really bad, there's a limit to how much you can trash an artist without feeling like a jerk. 2) That's an uncomfortable feeling, so either people get some perspective and ease off, or a justification is searched for. 3) The justification is always "this person has a deep evil within them, perceivable through their work". 4) Talking about the work stops being the point, and talking about the author's perceived awfulness starts being the point. The contents of the work are now merely a vehicle for this. The old Strong Female Protagonist thread was a wildly good example. That strip's author is a big name in comedy and actual play now, and is evidently a nice dude. But back when he was a webcomic writer, goons spent a hundred pages ascribing all kinds of Secret Evil Beliefs to him based on the fact that they stopped liking a story he wrote.
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Apr 20, 2024 16:24
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Android Blues posted:The process is always like: I mean, it certainly helped that SFP frequently bungled its messaging and had a lot of pretty bad implications. But yeah, goons went rapidly from "oof they didn't really think this all the way through" to "these unsavory implications are definitely the author's real and true secret beliefs."
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Apr 20, 2024 16:35
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tbh I think in retrospect it might've been a lot of people ascribing endorsement of something just through depiction? I don't remember a lot of the comic, but I do think I remember the hero who could heal themselves forever dedicating themselves to a life where their organs were constantly harvested for the sake of helping as many people as possible knowing how brennan lee mulligan works now I can't imagine it not supposed to have that underlined with "yes this is bad and horrifying and an illustration of how this psychological belief taken to its extreme is broken" and I can just as easily imagine goons going "wow I can't believe they think this is a good thing"
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Apr 20, 2024 16:49
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The real problems with SFP started later. The first several chapters are quite good. The rough art style is as compelling as the question the comic is posing: how do you make the world better when your superpower is supreme violence? Then comic provides the worst possible answers while the art style smooths into something so bland it's honestly bleak.
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Apr 20, 2024 16:57
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flatluigi posted:tbh I think in retrospect it might've been a lot of people ascribing endorsement of something just through depiction? I don't remember a lot of the comic, but I do think I remember the hero who could heal themselves forever dedicating themselves to a life where their organs were constantly harvested for the sake of helping as many people as possible There was a splash page of her beatific sacrifice titled “Hero” at the time, so yes, the webcomic was explicitly endorsing her decision as a heroic martyrdom. We also repeatedly see people who were saved by her organs, and the eventual solution was to speed up her regeneration so she only had to go in on weekends for organ harvesting, which was framed as a lucky break. Going “but I don’t think Mulligan would endorse that, therefore the explicit in-text endorsement of this martyrdom on both narrative and formal levels is not real” is some wild parasociality. Anyways I don’t think that was even something people were annoyed at, that was a generally beloved chapter and character. E: Because I remember far too much of that comic, due to going through an extended mourning period hoping it would in fact get better again, I can go into more detail on Feral’s character and story but I really don’t think anyone was canceling the comic over ‘what if likable lesbian Wolverine became a full time organ donor.’ Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 17:07
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Clevin
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Apr 20, 2024 17:11
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both of sfp’s creators have moved on to better things, that was just a bad project that got much worse with time
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Apr 20, 2024 17:12
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Joe Slowboat posted:There was a splash page of her beatific sacrifice titled “Hero” at the time, so yes, the webcomic was explicitly endorsing her decision as a heroic martyrdom. We also repeatedly see people who were saved by her organs, and the eventual solution was to speed up her regeneration so she only had to go in on weekends for organ harvesting, which was framed as a lucky break. do you know what being parasocial means the guy's entire career rn is based around telling stories where his villains are capitalism and utilitarianism and other things that make living in today's world hell, it's just that he gets to look directly down the barrel of the camera and go "yes this is a bad thing" afterwards. you don't have to ~parasocially~ infer things about what he believes when he's got dozens of hours of videos of him explicitly outlining what he thinks. he's a philosophy major, he's gonna Tell You.
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Apr 20, 2024 17:21
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flatluigi posted:do you know what being parasocial means You aren’t actually talking about the work, though, you’re talking about him and what he ~really believes~ and, frankly, not remembering what happened in the work. For one thing, it’s explicitly a voluntary action presented as a philosophically coherent effort to do good in a way that’s entirely in line with the politics you describe; questions or efficacy and solidarity are explicitly discussed in the comic! You’re insisting he couldn’t have written what he wrote because you’re flattening it into ‘utilitarianism’ because that’s what the thought experiment is usually associated with, but the actual treatment is substantially more subtle. At the same time, the authors are clearly (at multiple points in the comic) uncomfortable with the conclusions that seem to result from their premises, and so return to them. It’s an honest, if a bit sophomoric, attempt to grapple with these ideas. But because he presents his ideas bombastically and with comedy elsewhere, clearly all that must have been… ironic? Unintentional?
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Apr 20, 2024 17:29
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yeah like I said at the top, portrayal isn't inherently endorsement and I could easily believe goons falling into that trap. the universe of the comic believing this was a good and correct thing for her to do doesn't mean that the authors actually believed it was a good and correct thing to do, and with no behind the scenes of SFP to point to I'm instead pointing to somewhere else the author has written in a character who chooses self sacrifice over everything and outright says "this is bad" maybe I'm wrong, but it certainly feels like you've been illustrating my point. either way the comic's long dead and I'm absolutely not arguing that it wasn't a mess like all first projects
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Apr 20, 2024 17:38
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yeah i don't recall anyone objecting at all to that chapter so much as, say, the one where that plot thread and most others are resolved through super-rape. Making up little stories about the inner life of someone you've never interacted with is the kind of tedious that you should really be keeping to yourself but the text is the text and it's right there for anyone to read and respond to. Probably don't do it like the gunnerkrigg thread does though
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Apr 20, 2024 17:45
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flatluigi posted:yeah like I said at the top, portrayal isn't inherently endorsement and I could easily believe goons falling into that trap. the universe of the comic believing this was a good and correct thing for her to do doesn't mean that the authors actually believed it was a good and correct thing to do, and with no behind the scenes of SFP to point to I'm instead pointing to somewhere else the author has written in a character who chooses self sacrifice over everything and outright says "this is bad" I’m not talking about the universe of the comic, but how the comic titled, framed, and analyzed this decision by a major character. The main character even got to make all the arguments against it, yet was very clearly in the (understandable) wrong for trying to pressure her friend out of doing it. The theme that the comic returned to many times over was “people need to do good as they can imagine it, and maybe collectively we’ll make the world better?” This is hammered on often in both the better half of the comic and the weaker half, where things are increasingly unsubtle. “Portrayal isn’t endorsement” but this portrayal was entirely structured to communicate both “this is heroic” and “this is still tragic and hard to stomach, and we desperately want there to be a better answer but we and the protagonist can’t think of one*.” *the later solution relies on another character having previously unknown powers that can make the organ donation without anesthesia a weekend gig, as noted; this is also tied into a bunch of other stuff I’m not sure the authors would agree with now but they very loudly defended on twitter and in the comments at the time. And there are in fact authorial statements elsewhere at the time saying ‘this is heroic, if hosed up’ - maybe Mulligan wouldn’t endorse those anymore! The author of the work is not them later, nor even exactly them now (per Barthes, Foucault) and in this case it’s very clearly an early work. That we can agree on. I’m being a stickler because I think that going “oh, this thread has become critical therefore it’s purely a product of broken goon brains” is itself a major force in how those threads become worse, because the level of good faith people engage with drops precipitously. SFP sincerely declined and that decline was interesting, though I would have preferred it to dig up; same’s unfortunately been true of GKC. E: brains were absolutely broken in that thread though, no disagreement here; there was a very clear tipping point where the thread was mostly edits of pages and such Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Apr 20, 2024 |
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Apr 20, 2024 17:48
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