|
An example Lamps might be willing to defend would be Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, as Wolfe is quite literally on record saying that while writing is in theory linear, he finds it a poor showing if he can only make it say two or three things at a time. And we know Lamps holds Wolfe in some degree of esteem (personally, as a huge fan of Wolfe, I still wouldn't rate him as more literarily important than Gibson; Wolfe is a past master of technique but that's not the only value in literature).
|
#
¿
Sep 24, 2017 22:52
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 12, 2024 06:27 |
|
|
nine-gear crow posted:I found this on the side of the road somewhere and it really spoke to me A fair point, I just wanted an excuse to reference that bit of Wolfe; it may go a bit sideways, but it gets at both the linear nature of text in a, ahem, literal sense - and the fact that a lot of writing is concerned with circumventing or complicating that arrangement.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2017 02:28
|
|
|
the old ceremony posted:gunnerkrigg court is so boring now It does seem to have run out of steam, doesn't it? Hopefully it can still pick back up, if this was all planned from the beginning. If it wasn't planned out at the start this might be permanent.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 9, 2017 22:59
|
|
|
I mean... this is the first time I've felt this way. I've been pretty eagerly reading Gunnerkrigg Court for a long time now; I started in a pretty early chapter. Maybe it's me, but, I find myself following GC mostly out of habit, not because I'm excited for new pages. It sort of crept in over the last few months-to-years, I can't pinpoint a moment where I went from enthused to drifting away.
Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Oct 10, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2017 00:31
|
|
|
Actually I suspect part of my disenchantment is that arc ending? It was a huge part of the comic (the river, the divide, the mystery of that) and it feels as though it's just... done. And it hasn't felt like any of the other major mysteries of the setting have been coming forward. As noted, Annie's dad isn't really a mystery, he's just a distant and incompetent father at best. If there had been immediate results (that I can remember) to Jeanne's story ending, and the river no longer being 'guarded' it would have given a sense of continuity but I feel detached from the earlier plotting. It's highly subjective, obviously, but the comic really isn't feeling urgent or mysterious to me anymore.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2017 03:13
|
|
|
So, I just read all of Poppy O'Possum last night (and boy are my arms tired!) First off, I really enjoy the setting, the characters, the dialogue - the art and framing also went from 'workmanlike' to 'extremely engaging.' So, props to Morbi! However, I also have to agree that the change in gears to illustrated web serial novel is not working great for me. I really enjoyed the Chikadino page, which got across a sweep of backstory efficiently and directly. But the interrogation scene and the Boris scene both suffered from one of the sort of natural results of a shift to text: Pacing changes. I feel like (with the exception of the Chikadino page, which really used text like text) the issue to hand is that a comic's pacing is almost necessarily like greased lightning compared to text - and at the same time, art can stretch out a sequence in reading time while compressing it in time described. As it currently stands, I feel like the Poppy serial novel bits have been longer to read but shorter on punch than the comics pages, and that's a more important change than the comic-to-text change. As such, I really think the thing that Poppy-in-text needs is to tighten up. Chikadino's backstory worked because it was telling a text-shaped story that wouldn't have worked in comics form the same way; you could maybe make a montage page of him growing up work but I really think this kind of biography doesn't compress well into a comics page. However, the conversation with Boris felt like it was expanding to fill the space allotted - conversational beats that would have been glossed over or shortened to fit in speech bubbles becoming kind of dead weight. Poppy-in-comic has been really clever in presentation, fast in depiction, and concise in plotting. Translating that to text would be worth more than a few hundred extra words; I don't know if I speak for most readers, but I personally would happily accept shorter text updates with tighter pacing. Also, cutting details and descriptions down to the most relevant is hard work, in my limited experience, but well worth it. Just my 2c, since Morbi mentioned wanting feedback. Unrelated but that moment with the High Queen and her gorilla just screamed Kill La Kill to me, and was an excellent, excellent scene that I think would only work in a visual medium; attempting to describe it physically in text wouldn't really get across the style unless one went pretty aggressively impressionistic about it. EDIT Also for the record I've gone on too long about this because I really found Erfworld, a decent but not great comic, became borderline unreadable to me when they switched to serial novel format. I'd really like to see Poppy avoid the longwinded digressions the change seems to encourage, since they sap the story of momentum or urgency. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Oct 15, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2017 20:42
|
|
|
Rand Brittain posted:I actually adore all of Erfworld's digressions and wish they'd do text updates more often, so maybe I'm not the one to judge. I respect your opinion, but it's baffling to me. I feel like the Erfworld switch came at the cost of all focus in the narrative being lost. The character whose story in this world interests me, Parson, is barely relevant to the narrative any longer, and it really doesn't particularly feel like he was the catalyst for all this. The more weird background machinations are revealed and unexpected wizard business crops up, the more it feels like the sense we originally had (that Parson is a new thing on Erf, and will bring about vast changes to a stagnant and war-torn world) was just wrong. Parson's a little special, but vast and powerful things were already there and it was only an agreement to not disrupt the order of things that had Erfworld looking anything like the setting it was originally pitched to me as. That's kind of a letdown. Meanwhile, Poppy's deeper secrets were pretty well hinted at from early on, and I'm hopeful that the focus will remain on the main characters' stories, I'm mostly just worried about wordiness.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2017 22:50
|
|
|
PMush Perfect posted:Now it's more like a campaign setting than a story. I think that's an excellent comparison - and in fact plenty of RPG settings have an issue where the scope of player action and the scope of the setting's important action really don't line up. Often without warning players beforehand.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 17, 2017 05:02
|
|
|
Just wanted to chime in and say I really appreciated the brevity and punch of this Poppy update! It really felt like Comics Poppy, and not just because of the panels!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 2, 2017 05:16
|
|
|
Oh good it's not just me that saw that and went "I... don't think you're describing reality there." I am dead curious whether that's what I think it is though.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2017 04:47
|
|
|
Wittgen posted:Also we don't export any of the uranium from those mines. Also Hilary was part of one of nine or so organizations that approved the deal in question. Also Hilary doesn't have any political power right now. Also Hilary's primary tie with Russia is that Putin hates her. But she's, apparently, Shadow President. Also, like, once you have the irrational degree and kind of hatred the Right has for Clinton, none of that matters so much as the rush of emotions seeing her being pilloried gives you, I would assume. Nothing else could possibly explain it. I'd be hugely amused if Putin were to grit his teeth and try to make himself explain that actually, he loves Clinton, she's great, in order to help Fox News out with this one.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2017 05:31
|
|
|
A Wizard of Goatse posted:Boris straight up feeds off of popularity Boris is the size of his own self-image, not the size of the crowd. He's ego-driven, not popularity-driven.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 4, 2017 22:33
|
|
|
I feel like blaming Tim for Scout is pretty unfair, when A. she's her own person and B. she's pretty much extending the same logic Riley used when sabotaging Tim in the past. This is not coming from Tim's side of the family.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2017 19:45
|
|
|
wiegieman posted:If you had to have three Shelly-like half-sisters, you'd be a bit stressed out too. Shelly flits through life like a butterfly whose wing flaps cause horrible tornadoes of problems for everyone but her. That's not unfair but attempting to write them out of reality through a decades-long emotional manipulation of your own father, in order to get him back into a relationship that clearly made everyone miserable, that seems like a little much. Also Riley was pretty much openly training Scout to attempt the time-murder of Shelley Winters earlier in this chapter.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2017 20:36
|
|
|
A Wizard of Goatse posted:the guy was introduced trying to pitch his glow-in-the-dark duck That's more of a poorly marketed scientist. The threshold from 'eccentric, kind of useless' to 'mad' is pretty much the point at which your invention detonates, flees into the night, or learns how to shiv. EDIT: and if we're meant to believe that all the detonations etc. are the result of Scout-from-the-future, then Tim is just a really weird inventor, not a natively dangerous one. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Dec 6, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2017 23:45
|
|
|
Zero_Tactility posted:In Poppy, I feel like Petunia looking and acting more and more like an Asura's Wrath boss over the course of this scene bodes poorly for her. This is an extremely accurate description on every level. Also I'm a tad disappointed her main deal seems to be giant magic TK arms, rather than just supreme martial arts mastery.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2017 15:39
|
|
|
Wittgen posted:Poppy already pointed out that they obviously have a chance of winning. If they didn't, Mob Bird wouldn't be going after them so hard. So yeah, this whole thing is Petunia being stupid and awful. Her mom was also an abusive paranoiac who turned her into a combat juggernaut as seen here. Edit: as shown by her 'children HAVE done this' line during Poppy's basically impossible training. Also, mom's an implied germophobe given the 'queasy' faces. Thirdly, I'm pretty sure Petunia defaulted to 'fight Poppy' because she likes fighting and had to get herself cursed to give it up. ...it is also worth noting that Petunia literally can't do anything (combat-wise) about Chicadino, because she can't do violence to anyone but possums. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Dec 10, 2017 |
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2017 18:12
|
|
|
Zerilan posted:So the person who is in a somewhat privileged position but still low enough to be abused by the ones nearer the top has a self-inflicted condition that makes her literally incapable of fighting against those above her while being capable of using violent force only against members of an oppressed underclass. Yeah that wasn't a defense of Petunia, just an explanation of why she's not actually useful to change the status quo. Also she didn't realize that she could beat up on possums before recently, which I can only imagine is good for possumkind.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2017 19:00
|
|
|
I just meant that I suspect the narrative doesn't want us to just see her as an idiot, rather than someone in a weird position with some serious baggage who has become a tool of the antagonists through that. It's always a bit disappointing when a story suggests that what the main character did or set out to do is easy, simple, and really could have been done a long time ago. It devalues the story we actually got to read to hear 'and all of this was entirely unnecessary!' (Obviously social ills were never 'necessary' - I just mean narratively).
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2017 23:02
|
|
|
A Wizard of Goatse posted:It's not that it's "easy" or "hard" so much as that Poppy, the protagonist, has a completely different perspective on the treehouse animal society and wants completely different things out of it i.e. she has nothing invested in the status quo and risks losing nothing personally from burning the whole thing down over how its higher ranks treat possums. Any idiot with a knife can do surgery if you don't see a problem with killing the patient. Yeah, absolutely! I agree - and I think hers is basically a healthier perspective, as well, in the long run. I just think that Petunia has a little more going on than purely moral cowardice (that's a good part of it, to be clear, but I think 'intense desire to do violence' is also worth noting).
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2017 05:24
|
|
|
australiar posted:webcomics needs something intensely weird and different that has staying power, there's been a few really original first chapters come out in the last few years but they've always collapsed by the third chapter and disappeared shortly afterward Have you heard the good news of Kill Six Billion Demons???
|
|
#
¿
Dec 23, 2017 08:21
|
|
|
A sad question: is Poppy dead?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2018 18:27
|
|
|
PMush Perfect posted:Morbi sounded pretty discouraged by the response to Poppy's new format. If the new format's too unliked and the old format's too hard on her, then maybe. That's unfortunate. I wish Morbi the best for future projects.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2018 19:26
|
|
|
Honest question does anyone know what's happening in Poppy? I can't tell if this is a vision of the primordial history of the world (that Petunia seems to be standing on a tree branch concerns me) or just Poppy radiating hella dragonpower that Petunia's picking up as some Asura's Wrath cutscene imagery. Or if Petunia's having some kind of flashback.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2018 16:55
|
|
|
Nuns with Guns posted:Ideal Girl Genius ending: Agatha runs away with one of the castles (a female one) and leaves all the boring male, human love interests sealed in an underground vault together to eat each other. Weak, the real ship is Tarvek/Gil. If one must get further away from human, then they both drink Jagerbrau and become weirdo troll monsters.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 14, 2018 05:13
|
|
|
Neophyte posted:Nothing can be as bad as their pinkeye comic and, god willing, ever will be. The god in question is Sithrak, so... quite possibly we'll be subjected to something worse. I don't want this future.
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2018 06:04
|
|
|
Oxxidation posted:salman rushdie's the first one that always comes to my mind Ngugi Wa Thiong'o's The Wizard of the Crow is magical realist and also excellent. I do think there's a relationship between magical realism and postcolonial literature, though I'm not entirely certain how to describe it.
|
|
#
¿
May 30, 2018 20:09
|
|
|
Tollymain posted:monster pulse is currently really heavy and really uncomfortable god drat I'm with Bina here, mortality sucks and I want to be limitless. It's a good comic.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 1, 2018 15:38
|
|
|
SardonicTyrant posted:I'm not quite sure why I keep reading Schlock Mercenary. I can never understand what's going on, and it feels like it's making fun of me when I try. Honestly it's gotten significantly more convoluted in the last year or two, a lot more like a mil-SF espionage story than a comic Space Mercenaries Get In Trouble story. I'm not positive the writing and art are clear enough to juggle that kind of story tbqh
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2018 03:21
|
|
|
nine-gear crow posted:Having listened to Howard Tayler for about 8 years now on Writing Excuses... you're probably not wrong. I'll be brutally honest but I've always been sort of confused that he has a writing podcast. Schlock Mercenary is decent at comedy, and good at a kind of standard military-SF tone and characterization, but it's not like he's a master of the craft. He's good at producing writing but I wouldn't really want to mimic anything he does well, you know?
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2018 04:29
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2018 05:10
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2018 07:30
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2018 19:12
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2018 07:44
|
|
|
Regarding Poppy, I completely missed that the magic secret police superior officer is human. It raises some weird questions! Also, I'm hugely enjoying this fight but honestly at this point I would extremely like the narrative to give Poppy a chance to cut loose, go full As In The Beginning with her extremely anti-magic heart, and tear through a good portion of Chicadino's henchmen. Also, I can't tell if eyes that are a bunch of concentric circles around the pupil are a specific magical thing in-setting, or just a depiction of Really Intense Staring. This is doubly interesting to me given the dragon-like appearance of what I think is the Possum God in Petunia's vision of Poppy and the way dragons all have circle eyes like that. Weird eyes are definitely a major magical thing in the comic...
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2018 04:08
|
|
|
A Wizard of Goatse posted:coupon kids owns Gotta second that The Sword Interval is both good and a lot like what you describe, just with a Hellboy aesthetic rather than body horror.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2018 18:10
|
|
|
Wow I just went and read like... the last 20 pages of Sinfest, since the last I'd heard it was an extremely anodyne comic. I'm not sure where a giant flying pimp robot following a giant flying Uncle Sam robot to recruit refugees as prostitutes fits into, well, anything. Other than a convincing argument that I made a bad decision when I went to that website. Also, the whole thing oozes misogyny of the 'oh you're not like all those filthy other girls, and I respect you' type.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2018 21:21
|
|
|
jalapeno_dude posted:ok I'm getting bored of hating on Sinfest Gone on hiatus until the 24th, depriving the thread of new bad content to dissect. Sorry. EDIT: Also yeah that happened, but it feels like it was forever ago already. Though, given the pacing, the actual punching of mental illness was a while back. Oh, and also the next chapter is going to be the last one, but also they promise the chapter will last years. Betting is now open on which plot threads will be lucky enough to get a conclusion.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2018 07:57
|
|
|
Doesn't the SFP thread OP know that this means all the Clevin memes and terrible posts will come here now? As will the mediocre posts, like mine. That or they'll flood the K6BD thread which would be a tragedy. ...also does this mean the OP finally admits it's not getting better?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2018 04:30
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 12, 2024 06:27 |
|
|
Galvanik posted:Summary bans for anyone who does this imo. Nuebot posted:Alternative option; mandatory clevins in every post. As a local Clevin expert, please, do the first one. It's the only way to save the K6BD thread, which deserves life.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2018 07:28
|
|