1297 - Cold Open

D?

brevity is wit

Okay, you got me

We need a name for when an author slides headfirst into an ideology that then overwhelms their work? Shit like the Goblin's comic or Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth, or any number of terrible web comics that I don't follow

>Sinfest Syndrome
Perfect. Especially considering the author did that TWICE.

Not that anon and not to get into it, but the creator Tats has basically done a loop and a half with horseshoe theory. Started off as a fairly milquetoast webcomic with generic character tropes and fairly low-tier stakes. Think bargain bin doonesbury with less social commentary and more sexy demon ladies. After doing this for several years, he suddenly took a sharp turn and had a radically anti-sex stance; men were evil, sex work (and sexuality in general) was inherently exploitation, etc. There were still scantily clad demon ladies. Gradually his obsession with current politics grew and after a few years of plateauing at one level of batshit, he went off the deep end again about standard-issue TERF bullet points and embraced various alt-right ideologies, seemingly choosing which ones to endorse at random. Demon ladies are nary to be seen.

One situation that can really press people is:

>Annoying Internet Person:
"What is your stance on <hot political topic>?"
>Author:
(might not even care strongly about said topic) "Uhhh no comment? I don't want to get involved in that shit."
>Annoying Internet Person:
"Aha. Your silence is deafening - you must be <from the side opposite from mine>, and you do not speak up because your position is radical enough you rightly worry about being justly condemned for it."

This kind of aggressive and dishonest interaction is, of course, more likely to push the author towards <from the side opposite from mine> than towards the Annoying Internet Person's, but the Annoying Internet Person has usually no preference whether he advances or sabotages his own nominal political goal, he just wants to feel like he had some sort of impact and also to score points in front of his fellows by appearing like a crusader.

One way out is to have no social media presence, and minimal channels of communication to begin with, so this kind of interactions are unlikely to take place. But that's harmful to reaching out to a wider audience.
Another is to just never respond, or point to a NO POLITICS ALLOWED sign that you previously set up. But it can be difficult to keep that up indefinitely.
At times like this, I'm glad I have no online accounts that especially matter to me, and none that are socially prominent or in charge of some project.

Tat's journey up his own butthole has been pretty interesting. His original take on his characters had heart and soul. They were all representations of screwed up people, but there was a sympathy for them, a recognition that they were flawed people but doing their best. His ever more extreme interpretations of feminism have turned Sinfest into a Q conspiracy signal booster, and the characters are no longer flawed people doing their best, but black and white straw men for his bizarre soup of ideologies. I wish he had just buried Sinfest and started a new comic with all new characters.

Dude, I'm being politically neutral here. If you cared to even understand my examples you see I listed an Ayn Rand fanboy. I don't care what the particular ideology is, it could be something like a pop culture obsession that overwhelms their work, to making every character a list a pronouns, to becoming hyper Christian, or a Trump supporter, idgaf. We need a name for it because it happens to a large amount of internet creators.

That’s hardly fair. Were that the case the shamans would have apologised for devil-worship every time they did magic, or the Swan of Tuonela would have been retroactively the Archangel Michael, or the fat guy would have given the autist everyone shipped him with a lecture on biblical chastity. She ended the comic because she didn’t feel like making it any more and was out of enthusiasm and ideas. Yes, that’s directly related to her conversion, and the stuff she’s doing now is less visually interesting and is even being made far more slowly, but she didn’t ruin or re-write vast swathes of the material or write a grovelling apology for being a gore edgelord in the pages of her gore edgelord work. She still has the Redtail’s Dream comic that explicitly calls Christian beliefs false up without any disclaimer. She even seems happier. Rich, Willis, Twats etc could never

The ruined cities were kino, and she's good at evoking a sense of wonder/mystery, I think. Not sure I agree on the fights. Do think the characterisation lagged a bit for some

It's a word for what V already was. V never gave a shit about gender, often failed to notice the gender of other individuals like when Roy had the belt of gender changing, and what their gender is or isn't has been a recurring joke from the start. They were outside the male/female gender binary and didn't give it much regard. 'Nonbinary' is a word with a lot of potential connotations but it's by no means an alteration or reinterpretation of what was already a well-defined character trait.

Everything has a political angle, dipshit. Action and inaction are both political.

I wish Rich would die.

The only way we'll be free of this webcomic is if Rich dies. He's never finishing it within a natural lifespan.

He's turning 50 in half a year so he might be able to coast on this until retirement

>50
>49
Holy frick it's like all those shitty webcomics on Ganker like Sinfest, Dave Willis and troonyfricker. All these webcomic artists are like 50 years old. And Bald and Piglike too. Except the Gunnershit Fail guy, I think he's only 38. I mean I knew all of them were middle aged, but damn this is their CAREER. Some shitty webcomic they came up with 25 years ago and put to paper became a massive project that ate up l their years. Wars, elections, riots, recessions, nuclear bombs etc. all happened and in that time they've out put out fricking 1297 pages.

Rich at least can probably go back to working on DnD material. I can think of web comic artists that have been fricked harder by the shadow cast by their web comic Andrew Hussie

He probably should have thought about that before he made a generation of autistic manchildren.

Is https://store.steampowered.com/app/1529810/Psycholonials/ any good? Anyone played it?

I feel somewhat bad for Hussie, he got his comic crowdfunded before it was a widespread thing and that gave him the mistaken idea that this was some special case and he should be beholden to giving the worst fanbase in the internet what they demanded for making him able to draw full time, which led to the awful decisions of hard Troll focus, the prank mode debacle, the post-reset character assassinations, and the absolutely stuffed with bullshit final act. Homestuck starting out was a nice, comfy coming of age sort of tale and could have been as good as Problem Sleuth.

I think they're probably proud of their work. Living off of your webcomic for 25 years isn't a bad thing at all. If things get really bad it also becomes a handy portfolio for your work. Many people change jobs yearly or even more. Like at this point it's a good stable income and not really a matter to be ashamed of imo.

Getting to profit off a webcomic you made when you were bumming around in your 20s or teen years for so long that you've never needed a real job is what a lot of artists strive for
I'd rather be doing that than being paid pennies being a wagie in a dying economy

I may not like Rich's opinions or recent(ish) writing much but that? That was great.
Are the other books at least half as good?
does anyone have a link to them?

It's always worth remembering that Oots is always straddling the line between a work that parses as individual pages and works that parse as a story. When he can do longform work his sense of pacing and structure is much better.

Death of the author as a concept exists as an excuse to ignore original intent and context in favour of dumbass interpretations like this, not the other way around. Sorry for the pedant shit.

It's cynical, but the essay which coined the phrase is that disingenuous and intentionally obnoxious. I see it getting misused a lot more often nowadays in the way you're describing, dissing authors and removing their agency for making shitty retcons. I do agree that it's fair and I am really just being a pedantic ass. I just hate the phrase's actual meaning.

Yes, originally V was something of a gay joke. But as Rich's own sensibilities adjusted in accordance with [Current Year], and V was already there and happened to fit the bill, things got shifted just a tad.
I don't begrudge him for turning V into a diversity character, I begrudge the occasional insertion of actual political leanings. That dumbass frost giant comes to mind...

I'm pretty sure Rich Burlew said something like that fantasy works should always reflect real world, though I can't be bothered to look for the exact quote beyond a single half-assed google attempt that gave me nothing.

What, this? I thought it was funny.

>originally V was something of a gay joke
the joke was that no one could tell V's biological sex.