'when was the last time you played a truly great game' uh, a couple weeks ago?
to just be a bit more charitable for a moment, this is an old comic, and people have been debating the possible issues with the AAA games industry for a while now
in recent years we've seen the indie scene in America and the auteur movement in Japan moving to fill certain gaps in the market, making complaints like this seem sillier than they might have done back then
not that the presentation, the insularity and the general hysteria weren't always ridiculous, but times have moved on
I'd imagine at least part of the reasoning behind keeping PA around is because it's associated with the PAX brand and, for better or worse, essentially codified the "gamers on couch" trope and has become a part of the culture as a result.
I look back on it with both nostalgia for the days when I found it consistently humorous and revulsion for some of the bits I can't enjoy anymore due to their nature (the vulgarity is fine, but the once-frequent rape jokes/banding around of various slurs are not OK). It's the type of thing that I enjoyed as a middle schooler but mostly grew out of as time went by.
All of that said, I actually really like both The Trenches and PvP, though the latter is so long that I've never been current on it and I only peek at the former on occasion. It helps that those two have more diverse sets of regular characters, and Scott generally seems to stay away from Jerry and Mike's more uncouth traits.
Now, most of the link in question is just flaming and “he’s full of shit,” and I don’t care about that, because either you enjoy reading John Solomon and company’s rants or you don’t. It’s a taste. Presumably the people who don’t like reading John Solomon likewise have an intense dislike for the works of Joe Queenan or Ambrose Bierce or Lester Bangs, and this is, I believe, their loss.
(It’s certainly stupid, of course, to suggest, as some have, that John Solomon is a “bad writer.” I recognize the need to claim bullshit as gospel truth out of a sense of spite, but come on – either you recognize simple writerly skill at crafting inflammatory rhetoric, or you don’t. As Penny Arcade once said, paraphrased – which is it, are you stupid or a liar?)
But one thing about it caught my eye – not least because the author took double-plus care to make sure it would catch any reader’s eye by bolding and italicizing it, so I don’t think it’s presumptuous to think this the main idea he wants to communicate with his essay:
The moment you really give a shit what a site like this (or any other) says about your webcomic, you lose.
when i woke up this morning i really did not expect to see a conversation comparing the fuckability of the vgcats
brb applying acid to brain
Bee, please, consider the forum you are on. Introduce a comic where the protagonists are adult animal-people and the subject of their relative attractiveness will come up at some point.
People who write riffs about bad webcomics tend to be really bitter and obnoxious more often than not, particularly the sort of people who contribute to things like the Bad Webcomics Wiki. I suppose it has to do with the average personality of someone who wants to make fun of incompetent entertainment available for free on the Internet and would actually have the druthers to make a point-by-point takedown, but still.
John Solomon was a dude who wrote shit like this for a few years, decided it was all a dumb idea, deleted it, and then had to deal with people canonizing work he wasn't proud of.
...holy shit, know I know where Andrew Hussie got his idea for Karkat from. Aside from the lack of ALL CAPS (outside of the initial message), the speech patterns are almost identical.
I thought the Bad Webcomics Wiki would be really my style, because I like looking at dreck; found out about John Solomon through his Shredded Moose write-up as well as the wiki page, was amused, and was sorely disappointed when I looked at more of the wiki. An utter lack of QC, insulting developing artists for an unwarranted sense of superiority (as opposed to reasonable criticisms or write-ups of how the art etc could be dome more effectively), and just an overall pretentious and tedious tone to it. Insufferable overall.
Not like I generally go in expecting good media analysis when I'm fussing about online, but it's especially hard, at least for me, to find good write-ups of gross or just plain not very well done crap, without coming across a whole lot of tedium. Which sucks.
Finding out the dude's something of an ass, as Myr just linked with him wanting his shame removed, does not endear him to me any either.
I generally liked Questionable Content until I stopped following it a few years ago when I realised that even the big cast shakeup wasn't going to kill its inertia, but I have never felt that it truly *sucked* at any point. It peaked somewhere between strip 666 and the whole sledding mini-arc around 1350, but it's less that it became bad than that it just started to coast and failed to see any real change for the better, either in art style or character development or plot or even humour.
So I can't say it's bad enough to deserve a full dissection. But then, I haven't been up to date since the bit with the house by the lake.
Everything else I totally agree with you on, however.
I generally liked Questionable Content until I stopped following it a few years ago when I realised that even the big cast shakeup wasn't going to kill its inertia, but I have never felt that it truly *sucked* at any point. It peaked somewhere between strip 666 and the whole sledding mini-arc around 1350, but it's less that it became bad than that it just started to coast and failed to see any real change for the better, either in art style or character development or plot or even humour.
So I can't say it's bad enough to deserve a full dissection. But then, I haven't been up to date since the bit with the house by the lake.
Everything else I totally agree with you on, however.
I suspect Crystal meant quality control rather than Questionable Content.
QC was fun to binge, and it was quite enjoyable for the few days I was bothering with it. I think at the time there were only 1400 pages, give or take a couple hundred? Anyway I kept reading for a time before just dropping it. Not bad, but simply not engaging for a fair, fair while, although I have trouble pinpointing when exactly. I think it was 2012-2013, since I haven't bothered with it for at least a year, surely much more.
QC is one of the worst cases of artist complacency I've ever seen. I know JJ can do better. I've seen the Yelling Bird strips.
That said, he's been making the occasional venture outside of his comfort zone as of late, so I'll give him two cents for that. And his hackneyed, awkward and inept attempts at supporting social justice aren't nearly as bad as what Willis just did
Comments
"Gamer humour" has always been a dubious arena.
to just be a bit more charitable for a moment, this is an old comic, and people have been debating the possible issues with the AAA games industry for a while now
in recent years we've seen the indie scene in America and the auteur movement in Japan moving to fill certain gaps in the market, making complaints like this seem sillier than they might have done back then
not that the presentation, the insularity and the general hysteria weren't always ridiculous, but times have moved on
that is not what i expected
It's just more proof that they should've just quit doing PA and moved on to more fulfilling projects a long time ago.
I look back on it with both nostalgia for the days when I found it consistently humorous and revulsion for some of the bits I can't enjoy anymore due to their nature (the vulgarity is fine, but the once-frequent rape jokes/banding around of various slurs are not OK). It's the type of thing that I enjoyed as a middle schooler but mostly grew out of as time went by.
All of that said, I actually really like both The Trenches and PvP, though the latter is so long that I've never been current on it and I only peek at the former on occasion. It helps that those two have more diverse sets of regular characters, and Scott generally seems to stay away from Jerry and Mike's more uncouth traits.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
definitely an improvement on
you know
webcomic
I admit that when I first stumbled upon the comic I found Leo reasonably attractive... and still kinda do.
We deserve each other.
And yes, the new art style is incongruous but I like the style itself. It's interesting, and would probably animate well, odd as that sounds.
Now, most of the link in question is just flaming and “he’s full of shit,” and I don’t care about that, because either you enjoy reading John Solomon and company’s rants or you don’t. It’s a taste. Presumably the people who don’t like reading John Solomon likewise have an intense dislike for the works of Joe Queenan or Ambrose Bierce or Lester Bangs, and this is, I believe, their loss.
(It’s certainly stupid, of course, to suggest, as some have, that John Solomon is a “bad writer.” I recognize the need to claim bullshit as gospel truth out of a sense of spite, but come on – either you recognize simple writerly skill at crafting inflammatory rhetoric, or you don’t. As Penny Arcade once said, paraphrased – which is it, are you stupid or a liar?)
But one thing about it caught my eye – not least because the author took double-plus care to make sure it would catch any reader’s eye by bolding and italicizing it, so I don’t think it’s presumptuous to think this the main idea he wants to communicate with his essay:
The moment you really give a shit what a site like this (or any other) says about your webcomic, you lose.
Bee, please, consider the forum you are on. Introduce a comic where the protagonists are adult animal-people and the subject of their relative attractiveness will come up at some point.
People who write riffs about bad webcomics tend to be really bitter and obnoxious more often than not, particularly the sort of people who contribute to things like the Bad Webcomics Wiki. I suppose it has to do with the average personality of someone who wants to make fun of incompetent entertainment available for free on the Internet and would actually have the druthers to make a point-by-point takedown, but still.
So I can't say it's bad enough to deserve a full dissection. But then, I haven't been up to date since the bit with the house by the lake.
Everything else I totally agree with you on, however.
Quality control is definitely a problem with sites like that.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead