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Just Offscreen posted:Thats was a smart move. I think Onstad recognized that aside from being an objectionable character for what he does, Nolan’s characterization could be interpreted in some pretty ugly ways pretty fast and dropped him as soon as he could without having to write or show any more of him. Nolan is written and coded in a way that’s comically effete and erudite, and after a certain point it starts to drift uncomfortably close to some really ugly homophobic tropes (remember that he’s also introduced to the strip through Nice Pete and Pat’s peripheral world, and through Lyle’s coffee venture) about the kinds of dudes that are into playing franks n sacks with kids and what a sexual predator looks like. Like why isn’t he just a nice baseball coach-type? Or a youth leader? He’s introduced as a strange man with strong feelings about having his coffee dildoed and writing letters to consenting strangers from the toilet, and other such things. He’s a hilarious pervert and it’s really really funny, but then it suddenly veers hard and this comic relief one-off character becomes a serious monster and a threat. The comic basically treats it like an obvious and foregone conclusion that he’d be a child predator, and it feels almost queer-phobic and kink-shamey in hindsight. Also what do you do with this story? Like how do you move it forward? Is he gonna be a big plot villain? Are we gonna show Philippe getting victimized, or almost victimized? Do we raise the stakes and have Philippe meet him? Do we lower the stakes/drop them and just let the situation slide? If nothing comes of it, how do you bring that character back at a later date without the baggage of “he was gonna molest Philippe”? It produced some of my favorite quotes but it’s a narrative on-ramp Onstad shouldn’t have even gotten on. It would’ve ended worse than the ‘Téodor-gets-kidnapped-by-Nice-Pete’ arc if he’d kept going with it. trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Aug 10, 2020 |
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Aug 10, 2020 16:31
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Oxxidation posted:iirc nolan had absolutely no idea philippe was a kid, he was just into extremely niche but otherwise harmless fetishes and philippe's circular caught his eye Yeah, that’s the other thing too. We get zero sense that he knows who Philippe is or that he’s a child. So Beef and Ray jumping to putting a hit on him feels weirdly extreme.
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Aug 10, 2020 16:46
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Time to cancel Onstad- he hates environmentalists and also kinky weirdos
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Aug 10, 2020 16:52
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Daktar posted:
Totally forgot that panel. Also gonna toss in an obligatory ‘gently caress cops’, on account of the times. 1) In real life they would never actually catch a child predator like that or put in that kind of effort without significant outside pressure, let’s be real (and also look at the stats) 2) statistically speaking, at least one of those three cops has his own CP or victim of another form of abuse and the other two are at best knowingly enabling him. Idk, it’s weird seeing older depictions of police in media nowadays. Like it’s harder not to go through the lens of current events. The first time I read it years ago I just assumed Connie would get arrested and have a bad night. But my gut split-second response to seeing that panel now was holy poo poo, Cornelius is gonna loving die Is this what the GBS kids call *crack, ping?* trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Aug 10, 2020 |
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Aug 10, 2020 17:17
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Both true. I guess the stakes just feel immediately more dire, but also I’ve been mainlining police brutality footage for the last 2 months along with many other goons
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Aug 10, 2020 18:13
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Javid posted:Ray ridiculously overreacting with almost no information is pretty true to character, and there's no indication beef is in on that phone call to any extent, had always been my read on it Ugly In The Morning posted:If anything he thinks it’s associated with Lyle, since he gets excited when he sees it has the same logo as Lyle’s dildo coffee stand. Some goons already pointed out deep cuts where it's either (very strongly) implied or basically stated that Nolan's a child predator, but I haven't reread the whole comic since like 2014 (I read the last few strips to the end when they were published) and that's a higher plane of chochacho-dom than I could currently muster
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Aug 12, 2020 02:11
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How Wonderful! posted:This is dumb. Yeah, it seems more like he just got sick of making it, especially when you put it in the context of his former marriage, his health/substance use, and the open comments he’s made about burnout and about being stressed all of the time and ignoring his family in order to keep publishing stuff that was up to standard. Achewood’s clearly an extremely painstaking comic to make, from the writing to the art. Just the language alone has to take such a combination of inspiration and editing/work to pull off well. And then the final comics are these wonderfully elaborate and impeccably designed works of art when they’re at their best. Some of those are the product of hundreds of hours of work. That’s a hard thing to keep up for fifteen years, and quadruply so when the need to earn an income for your family pushes you to overwork, overstress, and eventually self-destruct.
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Aug 13, 2020 04:20
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Apropos of books, I’m really bummed that the Dark Horse books stopped getting made past A Home For Scared People. I was looking forward to getting the whole strip on book.
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Aug 28, 2020 04:40
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Halloween Jack posted:Apparently he's also into Robert Fripp. Mustaine is a chud, Pat’s not going there, no. And Wilson is very mentally ill, so ragging on him for “alienating his band” while literally losing his mind and also pushing the boundaries of pop music instead of “sticking to the formula” seems dumb We know Pat likes Moby (though that’s pretty low hanging fruit as far as “obnoxious new age, goody goody musicians” go). I feel like Pat’s very much a Pat Metheny guy, given the Fripp fandom and also because obviously (not the shared name). Also Polyphonic Spree. And Pat’s definitely one of those TMBG fans Name the most Pat bands/albums trilobite terror fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Sep 17, 2020 |
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Sep 17, 2020 23:13
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Daktar posted:I wonder if Pat would admire Morrissey or hate him for stealing his shtick? Most Smiths/Morrissey fans went through a period of deep  when he started going all national front a few years ago.On the one hand, Pat’s super “progressive” so the hunch is to assume he’d be disgusted, but the whole joke with Pat’s that he’s really insanely intolerant and even bigoted under the thinnest veneer of being a world-style hero. Pat would get into a huge yelling argument with Téodor about it that would hinge on T calling Morrissey a Nazi with an unchecked mood disorder and Pat at various points going “no, you imbecile, he actually happens to have a point—” before saying something wildly racist about the eating habits of the Chinese. Libra posted:I feel like Pat definitely has a bunch of musty old tapes of obscure traditional musics from around the world that he recommends to people in order to look cultured and enlightened. (He secretly hates them) Jill Stein’s music. One of my former roommates is this awesome super lefty woman who would only ever listen to CDs of a cappella music, made by like, student activist choruses and local Green Party candidates. Like the worst music with the best intentions. But then also a lot of cool socialist folk music from the early 20th century, just sung in a way I wasn’t really a fan of. But then also a lot of, like, fingerstyle guitar beard dad songs about Bhopal recorded in the music studio of a mid-tier liberal arts college. And you know that the guitar looked like this: https://www.guitarcenter.com/Ovation/CE48P-Celebrity-Elite-Plus-Acoustic-Electric-Guitar.gc An earnest, Dylanesque song by an earnest boomer dad with a two minute breakdown segment wherein he pretends to arrest George W Bush.
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Sep 18, 2020 01:11
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THE HEART OF THE CHRISTIAN SHALL RUN THICK WITH THE SEWAGE OF SODOM! THE HOG SHALL LAY WITH THE PRAWN! AAAIIIIIGHT!
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Sep 19, 2020 08:53
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He Gets With Ladies But In The End They Do Not Like Him!
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Sep 19, 2020 08:59
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KICK BAMA KICK posted:hooray
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Sep 22, 2020 01:59
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drrockso20 posted:Just watched the old animation test reel, and honestly I can see why no one was interested in it, it was honestly really bland Yeah, I wasn’t impressed.
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Sep 24, 2020 04:57
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Is “Ray Gets Sort of Stoned” like far and away the best-selling strip to get printed? Like, I just picture Onstad’s warehouse with like a small pallet of them ready to go and literally every other strip is “order as needed”.
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Sep 24, 2020 17:54
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He switched... From red to black, Thinking he’d thrown them off his trail. How would they know it was him? Anymore. A construction guy. A clean slate. The stick. A remote trigger, Buried in the licorice. Pressed by a tooth. A microchip. On his right ventricle. Implanted when he joined The Agency. Oh shiiiiiiit!
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Sep 24, 2020 21:07
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from USPOL, about the debate
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Sep 30, 2020 05:31
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Y’all should come to the bonsai thread if you actually wanna talk pollarding.
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Oct 3, 2020 23:07
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Like a lot of serialized media, Achewood has a fairly consistent problem with its endings. The beginnings and middles of arcs are usually very strong in terms of things like story/concept and set/setting but then they just kind of peter out.
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Nov 10, 2020 14:22
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Phy posted:It's got Pat's loving carob prunes and Todd's shank artistry, it's got "Your activities are so poorly conveyed" and Teodor paying Little Nephew way too much for pot, it's got Ray Gets Sort Of Stoned. $150 still isn't terrible for a half o at all, assuming it's quality. Pretty sure LN circa 2005 isn't carrying any fire tree tho
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Nov 10, 2020 22:09
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Ugly In The Morning posted:That works out to two hundo in today's money, though. I could go down the road and get a half ounce of some truly insane stuff for less than that right now. Even less with my medical card! Though that's a weird confulence of price and "weed is legal now" that doesn't really map to 2005 ditch weed. well yeah, if we're talking inflation. Any top shelf half in my neck of the woods sold recreationally is gonna be like $180-$190 including a heavy tax, substantially less medicinally. and with dispensary prices like that the dealers don't really have an incentive to go below, like, $140 for the same quality-- and that's like "friend prices", more likely you're looking at $150-160 a half, and it's been that way since I became aware of those things in 2012. I can't imagine that $150 for a half of "whatever weed you could get your hands on in 2005, but probably pretty solid since Achewood is supposed to be in California and medicinal's already been a thing"- quality is that far off the mark for the time.
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Nov 10, 2020 22:28
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Schwarzwald posted:The print doesn't have measurements! Each "square" of the chocolate bar could be 2 ft square, for all we know, and with an equivalent payload. It's one of those 5 or 10 pound novelty candy bars You just casually show up with it to whatever place you intend to covertly destroy. "I won a raffle!"
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Nov 10, 2020 22:56
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Magnus Intactus
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Nov 11, 2020 00:38
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Gnoman posted:Am I crazy, or was there originally an entire arc about how Corenelius got his bar? No that happened. I don’t remember it, but I remember Ray and Beef talking about how the Dude was good for Connie, and how they were happy that he had a place to go and spend his time It’s not the Badass Games tho. He got a (really dumb) bus for winning those
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Nov 11, 2020 00:41
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Oh no I grew Pubics Daddy is gonna kill me for sure
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Nov 11, 2020 05:17
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But also his repertoire of references is incredibly vast and deep
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Nov 11, 2020 05:18
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Nessus posted:You could probably get a paper out of Achewood's approach and inclusion of Latino/Mexican culture and what it says about white guys who make craft soda. You could get at least a Masters thesis out of breaking down the comic’s gender representation
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Nov 11, 2020 06:33
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drrockso20 posted:It's weird, on the one end you have Molly who is an excellent character, and then on the other hand you have Ultra Peanut who is the worst recurring character in the comic, not to mention whatever the hell Onstad was doing with Tina and Philippe's mom towards the end of the comic Alternatively, Molly is a literal angel from heaven with super rad coding skills and kinky sex interests who spends her entire run on the comic acting as a surrogate parent for Roast Beef at his least functional and doing poo poo like showering at the gym because Beef forgot to pay the water bill. She is only ever shown in the context of being Beef’s partner. If she speaks or acts it’s about/because of Roast Beef. We never see her be an individual or have individual experiences or interests without him around, and we literally have strips that center Nice Pete and Pat as main characters. We know a lot more about what drives and motivates Nice Pete than we do Molly and she’s by far the most important female character, literally the spouse of one of the lead protagonists. Like Achewood couldn’t fail the Bechdel Test any harder without becoming a smut webcomic. And it doesn’t help that Beef is such an incredibly horrible partner to Molly. He’s awful. Half the time he’s having a personal catastrophe and needs her help, and the other half seems to be about picking fights with her. They live in Ray’s poolhouse and we never see Beef hold down a job for very long, though we’re led to understand that even without Ray’s help various schemes have paid out and netted him an undisclosed amount of income. He obviously doesn’t mean to be dysfunctional or combative or unstable or unable to self-actualize, but we get no sense of Beef ever seeking treatment for his mental illness either. Heck, the one time we see Beef doing anything remotely resembling therapy, it’s because Molly bought him a daylight for his seasonal mood shifts, which he immediately gives to Todd. He wallows in his poo poo, does nothing to try to get out, and then forces her to live in it too. And even when he isn’t doing something that would cause a real woman to leave, you’re still left with the canonical fact that Molly left literal Heaven to go live first with Gramma K, and then in Ray’s poolhouse. Forever they will just depend on Ray, never really doing anything or being independent as a couple. Molly falls in love with Beef because of his coding ability and their shared love of computer touching. But aside from that Beef doesn’t seem to bring anything else positive to the table—quite the contrary, a lot of the time we see him behaving in a manner that is actively detrimental to Molly’s happiness and wellbeing. Now that I’m a decade older than I was the first time going through Achewood, and now that I’ve had the benefit of being both the Beef in a toxic relationship and also the Molly in a toxic relationship, the whole thing with Molly kinda comes across less sweet and touching and more like toxic wish fulfillment.
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Nov 11, 2020 08:22
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Stringent posted:I always thought it was really lovely how he never portrayed the rich community life of Welsh agrarian society and just used it as a prop for Little Nephew. Stringent posted:All of this is just dehumanizing to welshmen. we get it, you think there's "good achewood chat" and "wokescold achewood chat" but doing two of these is less 'cool oldschool internet dude' and more 
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Nov 11, 2020 18:01
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World War Mammories posted:"a screaming clear area with a wig on and a large middle where the smells come from" is probably high on the list of (intentionally) creepy achewood sentences I wish my sister was cool enough to like Achewood
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Nov 11, 2020 19:12
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MizuZero posted:is nice pete bottomless during the basketball game? yes. also, Pete's mind's eye perception of the waitress is far and away the best part of the high school pranks arc.
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Nov 11, 2020 19:22
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Johnny Aztec posted:Rays would be a room filled with sheet cakes getting mashed up around ladies bottoms. just one giant cake and one giant bottom. Big as the eye can see. Just coming together, over and over and over for eternity. Just smash smash smash smash
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Nov 11, 2020 19:56
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Tbh I don’t know how you properly flesh out the internal life of a seventeenth century Welshwoman who’s been living in an afterlife that appears to culturally keep pace with the living world for four hundred years and now lives with Beef and Ray. Like I sure as poo poo don’t fault Onstad for basically dropping any and all references to that and basically just writing her as a well-adjusted contemporary woman 99% of the time until the wedding arc
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Nov 12, 2020 04:26
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LordSaturn posted:does he, though? she never, like, goes to anyone's house, or does anything, except in the context of Roast Beef. the camera does not follow her, it follows him. imagine for a moment, a strip where Molly is out buying groceries, and something happens, and she responds somehow, and it has nothing to do with Roast Beef before during or after, the same way RB and Ray can encounter the Little Corn Salesman without Molly being involved. Onstad absolutely does not do this, ever - she exists only as Roast Beef perceives her, to a point that would be artistic if he did it intentionally there’s that time that she looks at a thing Roast Beef did and she smiles because of her love for Roast Beef. Wait, poo poo. I mean, she’s well adjusted by the standards of Achewood. She goes to the gym in one strip which is literally more than you can say for any of the other main characters in terms of healthy living, except for maybe Pat, Pat’s dad, and Phillipe.
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Nov 12, 2020 06:38
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Stringent posted:I thought Teodore goes running a lot? in the future before he dies, yeah and he, like, can’t make rent and poo poo and lives in relative squalor, so he’s still not doing super great even though he’s a smart gourmand and he’s arguably the most responsible for Phillipe. Onstad always said that T was the character that he felt most reflected his view of his own life, cursed by poor luck and frustration even tho Beef’s the one we see always experiencing pathos
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Nov 12, 2020 07:14
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whoops
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Nov 12, 2020 07:29
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Hiram the Blacksmith is a joy I hadn’t remembered
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Nov 12, 2020 08:00
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Ray is apparently worth fifty dollars and the sign from the time he is “lost” (at Tina’s) says he is neutered, although he claims it was only a vasectomy
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Nov 12, 2020 19:16
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I mean who hasn’t killed a D&D game by breaking up with one of the other participants?
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Nov 20, 2020 01:03
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CannonFodder posted:Gotta be dating someone to break up with them. :roastbeef: I only ever get into D&D campaigns through dating somebody who belongs to a D&D group :Molly:
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Nov 20, 2020 20:32
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