1501 Magnets, How Do They Work?

by

It’s funny how number 1500 is special, but 1501 is just another page. What pages would be special if out number system wasn’t base ten?

You know, I wonder how many readers are actually serious gamers now. I used to mention them enough that they were a thing, but now, since I can no longer play seriously, I rarely do. I feel like I’ve traded one kind of reader for another over time, or maybe they evolved with me. I remember, back when I started, that a lot of comic guys played WOW and stuff. I could never understand where they found the time. They had guilds and shit. I’ve only ever been able to play Animal Crossing New Leaf with readers for any length of time. I kinda hoped that someone would play Splatoon, but it seems like hardly anyone has a WiiU. I play at such insane times, or in such irregular bursts, that I can’t schedule times for it. Or at least I don’t want to live with a play schedule…

My friend Chris is way into classic games. I just sent him a box of NES games that I couldn’t remember how I acquired. I know they were games I already had, or didn’t like. Metal Gear, Astyanax, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, Tetris 2, Batman… I should’ve sent him Startropics. Fucking Startropics.

Ages ago I was talking shit on Startropics and a dude flipped the fuck out. It was one of those perfect “this is why people hate gamers” kind of things. The idea that I thought Startropics was cocking shite was intolerable to this person. I mean he flipped out hard enough that I remember it all these years later. Something just connects Startropics to his very soul, I guess.

Kind of reminds me of the time a dude flipped out because I was talking shit about that Seth McFarlane movie with the Peter Griffin bear. He was like “I saw what you said about Ted!” Then went on to tell me why I was human garbage, or whatever. I remember it because of that opening line. In my mind I imagined this guy storming up to me and being furious. I saw what you said about Ted, mother fucker! BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! How funny. Ted isn’t even that bad. I enjoyed it, but I’m still gonna take the piss out of it.

If the internet is going to have a page dedicated to how shitty my comic is then I’ll talk as much shit on whoever, or whatever I want. Like Least I Could Do, which I can’t stand to this day. I fucking hate that comic. I don’t usually talk shit on an artist, but I fucking detest how that guy draws mouths. It drives me nuts. Every so often I accidentally draw a mouth the way he does and I’m like “Oh shit, Jolene has Larmouth.” Erase erase erase. I don’t know the artist, but he seems like a good guy. For the most part I think his style is good, but I can’t stress enough how much his mouths bug me.
There really aren’t a lot of comics that I hate outright, but LICD is like this perfect storm of shit that pisses me off.
I could actually read CAD, but it never drew me in. The level of hate it gets compared to the love people have for LICD is strange to me.

Is CAD even a thing anymore? I only ever see people talking about the miscarriage arc still. That’s it. As far as I know he just fell off the world. Kind of like XKCD. I never hear about it now. It was all fucking XKCD when I started. I never got drawn in enough to read a bunch of them, but the ones that weren’t too smart for me were funny. Sometimes I wonder if people didn’t just say they liked a lot of the comics because they were embarrassed to admit they didn’t understand math jokes.

Order of the stick was always a comic people mentioned. I can’t even remember what it looks like. People who I hated always loved Order Of The Stick. Maybe that poisoned the well. What was that pencil draw manga looking one…? Mega Tokyo? I had at least one friend that was all about MT. Couldn’t get into it. People always brought it up back then.
So Many comics have come and gone since I started.

I’ve always been in this weird shadow area. Not the best, not the worst. Just there. My entire existence has basic ally boiled down to just being there. I occupy some sort of constant comic purgatory. Just good enough to get by. My comic is the personification of my life and an ironic representation of the themes it explores.

The funny thing is I know so many artists that would kill to be where I am. That’s human nature though. We’re always looking up. I want to do better, while other people want to do a well as me. In ten years I met a few of my goals, but fell well short of where I wanted to be art wise. Always having something keeping me from getting more practice in, learning more, really sucked. Of course it’s possible that this is as good as it gets. I’m as good at art as I’m ever going to be, and no amount of learning will help. How depressing is that. It’s like I’m late seasons Krillin. I have some sweet moves, but all I’ll ever be is Goku’s little buddy. At least I’m not Yamcha. I’d fucking kill myself if I were Yamcha.

I’m really glad that I’ve drawn in such a loyal following. I can’t even imagine what my life would be like if this hadn’t worked out as well as it has. I’m not sure I’d have one at all really. Makes me think of a guy who was a friend of a friend. He fucking hated me because even though I was good at art I refused to do anything with it. It made him furious because he wanted to do what I could, but wouldn’t. I can still see the look of contempt in his eyes, even though I can’t remember his name. And the funny thing is he was right. If I had actually believed that I could make a living with cartoons back then I would have been so much better now.

At the same time if I had just done art I wouldn’t have had the same soul crushing experiences that made it possible for me to write Between Failures. It’d be some other kind of thing. Something from the perspective of a different person. Some ghost of a fate I denied. I probably would have ended up an arrogant artist who never tried hard to do anything, and just pissed out something that wouldn’t ring true with anyone. I had to fail my way to where I am now to succeed the way I have.

84 Comments

Base 12? 144, 432, 864, 1296 and 1728. Which would be 100, 300, 600, 900 and 1000, respectively (remembering that there would be 900, A00, B00, 1000 sequence).

Or simply binary.
Would be 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096 and I’ll stop here.
Would be logical because it would be each time you double the number of pages.

I can actually imagine a civilization running on base 12 where all the people are fully functional bilateral postaxial polydactyls (6 fully functional fingers on each hand). It would be interesting to see a science fiction story written where males and females had different numerical systems based on having a different number of digits.
I also seem to remember that the Mayans used a vigesimal (base-twenty) positional numeral system. I guess that gives good evidence that they used open-toed footwear. :-)

… and for extra nerd/geek points – the ancient Klingons used base 3.

Base 12 actually used to be pretty common among ancient humans. Each fully formed finger (not counting the thumb) is divided into 3 segments. So assuming you have 4 fully formed fingers and a thumb, you can easily touch 12 different segments with the tip of your thumb.

So with humans, the logical counting systems were either base 10 using both hands, or base 12 using just 1 hand. I don’t know why we wound up settling on base 10.

There have been cultures wherein the hand itself is considered a digit to count upon. Thus we have words like “Dozen,” and the 12 hour clock. The Babylonians had a system based on 12 and, somehow, the number 60, which we still have in our present day timekeeping. There have also been people who worked on a base 20 (fingers and toes) and, not too surprising, base 24. What we haven’t seen yet, anywhere, is a numerical system based on an odd number.

Which is odd, base 5 should be fairly obvious to someone.

Meanwhile 1500(10) in base 12 is A50(12), which still would be an important-ish number. However, in base 13 it is 8B5(13) and in base 17 it is 534(17), a completely unimportant number. We put meaning behind things we think are important from our own perspective, but in actuality just looking at things another way shows us that it’s practically meaningless.

As I was reading your rant, I realised just how many webcomics Ive read over the years. Funny thing is, LICD is one of my top reads at the moment. I know its stupid, but it entertains me. Same with a couple others you mentioned. I read Mega Tokyo and CAD years ago, and now when I try to pick them back up I cant. Funny how your interests change over the years.

Well you can read whatever you like and I can fuck right off. I’m not the king of you, so you enjoy them as much as you like. I think Dune is one of the best movies ever, so I can’t always be trusted.

Dune was pretty good, but the movie version was too compressed. It should have been a Masterpiece Theater type series.

For the record, my all-time favorite movie is My Neighbour Totoro. That movie just absolutely nailed the characters of the two children in the family.

The problem with CAD was that once he decide to go away from being a story and simply comment on the gaming problems of the day, he lost so much of his audience who hated him for his characters. If you start out as a story comic that intermingles with gaming critique and then removes the story ? of the way through, you’re going to lose so much of the audience.

Enjoy the 75? weather this weekend.

This, so much. CAD was one of my favorites until it went from a continuous story with loveable characters to simple gag(mewithaspoon)-a-day funnies.

In My Not-So-Humble-Opinion…
I still enjoy LICD – the cartoony mouths don’t bother me that much, and the main character doesn’t take himself that seriously. Also they do the occasional entertaining F*** You to loathsome people like the previous Australian Prime Minister.
XKCD has a higher miss-to-hit ratio than it used to, but the last few have been pretty funny.
I finally gave up on Megatokyo when I realised that I didn’t have the faintest idea who anyone was or what they were doing, having forgotten in the long intervals between strips.
I’m still reading CAD, but wouldn’t cry if it stopped tomorrow.
Non-assholes like Order of the Stick too – it manages to combine humour with epic and emotional plots in a way that Sohmer and DeSouza’s (as in LICD) Looking For Group fails at. The latter has a tendency to mood whiplash.

Going with the Mayan base of twenty would give us some interesting numbers. Mainly 400 and all it’s multiples. So, we’d treat 800 like we normally treat 200, 1200 like 300, 1600 like 400, 2000 like 500, and so forth. Except 8000 would be really important to us since it’s 20^3.

It’s never easy to look in the mirror of your soul.

That’s interesting.

There is a story about the Irish playwright, George Bernard Shaw.
Sometime when he was very famous + popular, he went to a house that a lot of people in it.

He spotted a guy in the room, dressed LIKE HIM!
He angrily crossed the room to tell the guy off, for wearing a costume, to make fun of GB Shaw!

Shaw got to the other side of the room and said: ” Oh, it’s not a man. It’s a very big mirror”.

Actually, one I really ought to quit reading is Sinfest. It has been really preachy about sexism for some time and isn’t showing any signs of stopping.

I had to quit sinfest almost 2 years ago for that exact reason. I used to love it, but I do not want to be told I am guilty of everything because I am a man.

I’m like, “CAD, huh? Never learned how to do that. Is computer aided drafting still a big deal?…”.

Maybe they’ve moved on to Computer Aided Design. Or Completely Awful Desserts? Cantankerous Adults for Donald? Committee for Anal Destruction? Cats of the Alsatian Desert? Cows Are Delicious? Creepy Alpacan Dromedaries?

…what were we talking about again?

No, no, no. It’s cad n. (obs.) an ill-bred man, especially one who behaves in a dishonorable or irresponsible way toward women.

Unless you’re referring to the Canadian Dollar ($CAD). It’s a whisker over $1.38 CAD to $1.00 USD today. So having a largish sum in Canadian Dollars does not translate to having SCADs of American moolah.

Yeah, and there’s that American Civil War soldier, George “Cad” Cadwladr. His webcomic is so bland. I stopped reading that, too! ;D

OoTS is good. Doesn’t get preachy.

An artist style is just to subjective. I mean, I enjoy OoTS, but if I had seen it’s art without the story, I wouldn’t have been interested in it.

That said, some comics I read because I always have, having only stopped reading a few that I think just went way to crap for whatever reason :p Some I never pick up, because reading them right away comes off as way to preachy on whatever subject they want to preach about constantly.

I started reading OotS. I got used to the art style of OotS. I was mildly amused by the occasional self-reference to the art style of OotS. Then I got really, really, REALLY SICK of OotS. The bad guys have the Power Of Retcon. Can’t possibly win because the good guys have Int > 15? Retcon them getting dropped on their heads as children. Int 3, easily deceived, problem solved. Stuck in a desert? Retcon yourselves a frickin’ helicopter. Nuclear bomb hit your hideout square-on and turned everything within a mile into radioactive glass while you were gardening? Retcon yourself a garden that’s five miles underground and lit by captured fire sprites who are being tortured because you’re the bad guy.
Basically, if it was a video game, I got sick of the bullshit end-of-level-not-of-the-game cinematics and rage-quit.

Having read OotS for a number of years, none of these sound familiar. Especially this business of someone’s intelligence getting reduced

I’d be happy to friend you for some Splatoon matches (my NNID is weirdAbacist, my backup when PieNinja or Pie is invariably taken) but I rarely play outside of the Splatfests. Here’s hoping that Team Blue aka Team Blastoise will follow the trend of the unpopular team being victorious!

As someone who compulsively keeps up with many webcomics, I admit that I read LICD even though I find it annoying most of the time. CAD was one of the few webcomics I actually quit reading, for no main reason other than I lost interest. XKCD is hit or miss for me, but I still keep up with it. And I read through the archives of MegaTokyo years ago, but haven’t kept up with it since.

Order of the Stick is really good though, so if you can look past the simplistic art style you’ll find an engrossing story with lots of interesting characters. I also recommend Leftover Soup if you want something character-driven that dabbles in light philosophical and/or thought-provoking discussion at times; it’s a bit more surreal than Between Failures, but I feel like the two are similar.

I also recommend Leftover Soup if you want something character-driven that dabbles in light philosophical and/or thought-provoking discussion at times;
Seconded!

I actually play Splatoon as often as I can.

I lack home internet,So like you it’s not something I can regularly schedule.
But I always manage to find a place to set up during Splatfests.

Team Pokemon Red for the Win!

See, I started really caring about Between Failures when you made the switch from black-and-white to colour. I was probably like 14 at the time and even though I read what I considered at the time to be a lot of comics (spoiler warning; it wasn’t) I remember thinking of that transition to colour as something beautiful, and poetic and, romantic.

I read a lot of the other webcomics that you mentioned, mostly out of form. LICD was one of my first, so it still holds a special place in my heart, along with Looking For Group. CAD was the go to nerd comic back in the day, and I still enjoy it, but it really feels like it’s lacking something now. I actually enjoyed the miscarriage arc (which is a fucked up thing to actually say), since it gave me some sense that the characters were actually evolving. I miss Ethan and Lucas, but not terribly so.

I’d add in a screenshot of my comics tab in my browser, which you would probably hate half of, but there are still some comics that are going that aren’t shit. Left Over Soup, as Pie mentioned above has become one of my favourite comics. It’s odd, LOS is, to me anyway, a mix between XKCD and Oglaf (which is awesome but usually sex-centric) and even though I don’t get all the jokes, I am rather stupid at times, I like characters and backstory, which Left Over Soup does well. Also, check out Whomp! if you haven’t already. And Manly Guys Doing Manly Things. Both are comics that I thoroughly enjoy, and I wish more people know of.

I know my words probably don’t do much to help, but I wanted to thank you, Jackie, for helping a 14 year old Australian kid understand love.

I’ve said several times before that Between Failures’ transition from b&W to color was the best I’ve seen. Between Failures had already intrigued me enough to plumb the archives, but that moment cemented it as a favorite.

I guess I’m a bit more forgiving than most. I don’t know. A comic has to push me away repeatedly before I drop it. Sluggy Freelance was the first Webcomic I ever read. It took years of awful stories for it to finally drive me away. But I felt better after doing it. Now it’s easier to drop a comic I don’t like anymore.

Sludgy freelance is another one of those comics that came up constantly back in the day. I think they banned me from advertising there. It’s been long enough I can’t remember. XD

I stopped reading LICD a couple years ago. I like the author and the artist, but I just got tired of the comic. It was hard cutting it loose because Sohmer was really great at getting comics out on time even with so many irons in the fire. Art wise as a fan I can deal with most things as long as the characters look human (or whatever they’re going for). I do hate the way David Willis draws noses, but Dumbing Of Age is still a comic I enjoy so I overlook it. I stopped reading a couple comics because I made the mistake of following the artists on Twitter and it turned out they were pretty shitty people. Now I don’t follow artists on Twitter.

CAD ended, and then got rebooted, and now it alternates between the reboot (which is a gaming-themed Batman parody with the original CAD cast), one-offs starring the Players, a tabletop campaign arc also starring the Players, and a space opera that’s completely unrelated to the rest of the comic. I enjoy it (especially the space opera), but wouldn’t call it essential reading.
MegaTokyo dropped off the radar for a long time, and when it came back, I had no clue what was happening anymore, and wasn’t interested enough to reread the archive.
xkcd is still going strong. I still follow it and still see people sharing it on social media occasionally.
I don’t think I can shower Order of the Stick with enough praise. It’s one of my favorites.
As for LICD, I too despise it with a passion. Solidarity.

The thing, for me, about LICD was that the main character came across as a total arsehole to such an extent that he convinced me he was drawn by one.

That is LICD in a nutshell. I don’t like the art, but it’s not so bad that it alone would turn me off. It’s the asshole characters (protagonist especially) and crude, immature humor that make it unbearably awful and deserving of vitriol.

I enjoyed CAD right up to where it ended. The reboot never quite made it to the same level for me and it faded from my consciousness.

I’m still reading XKCD but as I’m a scientist it might help
I don’t read that much comics.
Only you, XKCD, PhD Comics (science !!), Shotgun Shuffle and Sandra and Woo.

I think I started reading Between Failures around when Ed’s first day at the job ended (back when I used to go as braingoblin on twitter). And I remember being in this weird area of “The pacing for this is really slow” and “I’m identifying with all the retail humor here.” So I stuck with it.

Since then, your art, pacing, and writing have improved and I enjoy all the characters even more than I already did. Between Failures is one of the few webcomics still in my ever changing rotation because I can identify with most of them.

(Also, I totally agree with you on LICD…..the mouths always bugged me, but also his total lack of proper shading following a proper lightsource.)

I wish I could afford internet and a WiiU to play Splatoon. I work weird hours, so I’d probably pop yp in a few matches if I could.

Though, I promised myself Fall of Cybwrtron

Whoever programmed the virtual keyboard for Alcatel phones needs to be strung up by tgeir big toes and beaten with a cricket bat.

Hated you for your gift?
“Don’t you see? Your hand may be stilled, but your gift cannot be silenced if you refuse to let it be… The gift does not lie in your hands. I have hands, David. Hands that can make a scalpel sing. More than anything in my life I wanted to play, but I do not have the gift. I can play the notes, but I cannot make the music. You have performed Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Chopin. Even if you never do so again, you’ve already known a joy that I will never know as long as I live. Because the true gift is in your head and in your heart and in your soul. Now you can shut it off forever, or you can find new ways to share your gift with the world–through the baton, the classroom, or the pen. As to these works, they’re for you, because you and the piano will always be as one

David Ogden Stiers never got enough praise for playing Major Winchester in M*A*S*H. That still remains one of my favorite scenes from the series.

Man, Order of the Stick is one of my favourites. It was the first webcomic I found, leading me to this whole hobby, and the site also hosted Erfworld for some time, which is also one of my absolute favourites.

I follow 4 webcomics right now, This one, Questionable Content, Alice Grove and Gunnerkrigg Court. XKCD does pop up in my RSS reader but it seems like it’s becoming less interesting every day.
QC and BF are my favourites right now. AG seems like it will become interesting, but it’s sooo sssslllllloooooooowwwwwwww. Esp with only 2 comics a week. QC have gone up and down for me, there are storylines that are really good but sometimes it just runs on and on waiting for the next interesting thing to happen. Like right now – after the last timeskip the comic have mostly been about showing off all characters and where they are now, and we’re still waiting for the next big storyline to take off.
BF on the other hand is another comic that I’ve had in the RSS reader for a while, but not getting all interactions because I hadn’t done an archive binge. I’ve tried a few times but never got past the first 100 pages, partly because they seemed so gloomy in B/W. Then a few weeks ago I decided that I just had to get through everything, and now I’m a big fan. Brooksie most of all, though I’d love to see her speak more in quotes.

The problem with her speaking in quotes is that she only does it when she’s feeling vulnerable and she’s feeling very safe right now. I’ve been thinking of some stuff for some future bits though.

I’m pretty sure that if you’re Krillin, then I’m Yamcha, or worse Oolong. I mean, I do appreciate women’s underthings perhaps a tad too much.

Megatokyo was cool for a while, then the creators had a difference of opinion and split, then it updated erratically… Now I wonder if the story ever ended, or if it just drifted off? There’s a bunch of those on the net, still. Stories that were going somewhere, but life happened (r ended), and the end never comes. Not that everything needs wrapped up or anything, but I appreciate Japanese comics in part because they have an end. Without an end it isn’t a story so much as… I don’t know? something else. Or maybe I’m getting old and I want to see how things turn out before I do?

I game. I play Star Wars the Old Republic online and several other games from a company called AeriaGames (one of those freetoplay but always hitting you up to buy their ‘gems”ap”whatevertheyarecalled’ companies. I used to play Lord of the Rings Online as well, but not enough hours anymore. I play with a small group of gaming friends that I’ve been playing with since EverQuest (1997?) … geez, has it really been that long? Two are my own kids (now adults in their own right) and one is a friend who lives in California (I live in Virginia on the other coast). I met her once in person. I’ve been playing games with her through a marriage, death of her husband, grandkids (3) being born and now over 10. It’s funny how close you can actually become with someone you’ve met exactly once for 2 hours, 6 years ago. In some ways I know more about her family than my own extended one, most of whom I can barely tolerate.

I read QuestionableContent, CtrlAltDelete, TwoKinds, BetweenFailures (of course), DumbingOfAge, AliceGrove, ShotgunShuffle, StandStillStaySilent, BloodSpatteredSocks, MisFile and OutThere.

Boy, Jolene is applying the wake-up juice to Jess’ eyes, big time! In the words of Robert Burns,

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

Numbers. Numb-ers. Well, let’s see. In base 16 (the hexadecimal programmers like moi use) 1501 is (tap, tap, tap) 5DD! Woo hoo! Congratulations on reaching 5DD comics! In octal (base 8) it’s 2735 (meh). In base 2 (decimal, like computers really use) it’s 10111011101. That’s a palindrome, reading the same forward and backwards. Bender Rodriguez would appreciate the subtlety (any excuse for a beer).

It seems that everyone on the internet has an axe to grind. “You suck because you like/dislike (whatever),” is a sentiment too often posted in forums and the like. Personally, I have a kneejerk reaction to summer movies — as a group, they pretty much all stink. You know the type: people only went to see them because theaters have air conditioning. That’s got to piss some types off.

I have to say, I agree on the LICD opinion. My buddy reads it, so I’ve caught a few of them en passe, and it’s impression on me has been…unfavorable. I couldn’t really read it for the same reason I can’t really read Two Guys and Guy; the characters kinda just strike me as irredeemable jerks.
This was actually my first webcomic, so maybe I’m biased, but I’ve always thought Between Failures is my favorite. The characters are just that, CHARACTERS, having mixed bags of quirks to go with simple themes. And not one, thus far, has been completely painted irredeemable. Even Reggie, which surprised the hell out of me, but I digress.
Nowadays, I keep on a few comics, namely this, QC, and El Goonish Shive, with a smattering of others as they update. Sleepless domain (as well as other comics by that same artist) is (are) also pretty sweet. But Between Failures is always my first stop when checking for updates, and it is the only comic with the honor of having a spot on my browser for its bookmark.
I just can’t help coming back. Realistic character drama and rapier wit are rarely in short supply with this gem, and that is a disposition I rather like in my webcomics. I keep hoping you continue to do what you do, for as long as you feel you can.

I generally don’t read most of the webcomics in the list.

I enjoyed order of the stick, but it’s one of those comics that you forget about for a year so there’s actually something to read when you return. the ones that update slowly enough you might as well forget about them and just archive binge.

Freefall is pretty impressive. It starts out as low-scale comedic hyjinks, and mixes in a simple but somewhat deep plot. I find it to be highly enjoyable, but apparently it’s either obscure, or an unusual opinion.

ps238 was nice, but it doesn’t update fast enough- we got 3 arcs in ~3 years, i believe, at 1 page per week.

Cucumber quest has an interesting sense of humor, but isn’t updated often enough to win on plot, and isn’t funny enough to win without it. probably best read like a manga, all in one go.

You definitely write the best low-to-no plot dialouge, with the possible exception of QC.

Leftover soup can be nice, but some of the opinions are weird, and there are plotlines that made me uncomfortable. (the wedding incident?)

OMG, I can’t unsee the shitty mouths!!

Stopped reading LICD a long time ago. It started out charming, but it ended up being some really dull gary-stu kind of comic.

My comic passion these days (aside from Between Failures :D ) is El Goonish Shive. He’s one of the artists who keeps trying to improve and you can see it. He also doesn’t mind throwing in male-centric fanservice, so there’s that >_>

If there’s one thing we can all appreciate about EGS, it’s the equality of the fan service. I really like the rest of it too.

Wow, Just wow. Honestly I haven’t had enough time alive, or interest since I only got heavily into webcomics at the begining of last year, but since them I’m already caught up on 20 active comics, and a few dead ones, and you guys just show me all this other stuff I never would of found. As for the whole art thing, There’s no point for you to dwell on the past Jackie, the only thing you can do now is go in the direction you chose.

I used to read CAD. I quit a couple months ago. I also read LICD guy’s other comic Looking For Group. I quit reading that about a year ago. CAD got unpopular for a few reasons, but the main one is people really dislike the guy who makes it.

As for OotS, I think it’s great. A lot of people have already said what they like about it so I’ll just say I agree. The only problem with reading is if you haven’t played D&D (3.5 edition, specifically) you might not understand the rules of the universe, as it’s based in a world that’s based on those rules

I am a gamer, have been all my life, right now mostly centered on SWTOR, but also play hard core flight sims, realistic shooters (ARMA) and RTSs, and I am looking forward to the Doom reboot. Also play(ed) Pokémon, Advance Wars, Chronotrigger, Fire Emblem, etc., and I have found myself recently getting more interested in anime and manga.

I read all the webcomics you mentioned, and most of the ones others have mentioned, and like them all, for the most part, my favourites list is over four hundred entries. I will admit that I am loosing patience with Sinfest, I am uncomfortable where he is going. I have about twenty webcomics I consider to be in the inner circle, yours is one of them, up there with Questionable Content, Something Positive, Girls with Slingshots and anything Willis does. I read LICD, mostly because I fell into it from Looking for Group, which I love. I have met Lar, and he is a great guy, you would probably like him. Sohmer on the other hand, you would either like, or want to kill on sight, his personality is that polarizing.

I do read OOTS, but I tend to binge it, after not reading for months. The thing is, what attracts me to a webcomic is the storytelling, for that I can tolerate poor artwork; good artwork is merely a bonus, which is why yours is one of the good ones, I get both. I would also second the comment about El Goonish Shive, it is one of my favourites; and watching his art improve over the years was fun to watch. MegaTokyo I believe is brilliant, and very well drawn, but has been slow lately, mostly for personal issues with Fred’s family. One I have not seen mentioned is Girl Genius, which I consider one of the grandmasters of the art form, well written and amazing art.

I’ve got a few webcomics on the go, at the moment. 15 (Between Failures included) to be precise, due to some having rather dodgy upload schedules.

I do read Order of the Stick, but that started perhaps because I play Dungeons & Dragons anyway, then I stuck around for the narrative when it stopped making fun of applying the rule system to a person’s reality. Other than that it’s Grrl Power, Twokinds, TwoGAG, Sequential Art, Girl Genius, Skullkickers (ending soon-ish, sadly), Freefall, League of Super Redundant Heroes, Weregeek, Erfword, Spinnerette, No Pink Ponies, & Mystic Revolution.

Somehow I don’t feel like that’s as many as some people on here read, but I do read physical copy books still these days (don’t like e-books) and alongside various commitments I’m at least a frequent gamer, though I don’t know if I’d say ‘serious’ as I’m not sure what the context is for it here. But they do exist, I can guarantee that.

Well, when I started reading your comic I used to play a lot of games. It was a heady time, I started a new job, just moved out with my girlfriend into an apartment and I had more time than ever, but not much money. Since then I play a lot fewer games, though a number of things have happened in the intervening time. I got a a cat, a promotion, bought a house, had a child with my girlfriend, got another cat, switched positions in the company I worked for and had another kid. Mind you it’s been nearly 10 years! I still game, though now I only have time for a couple nights a week for gaming so tend to only play one game for a stretch, finish it and move on to another. There are a lot of games I’d like to play but I haven’t the time.

Are we talking about webcomics we like and don’t like? This might get lengthy.

Webcomics are a lot like TV shows, which shouldn’t surprise anyone with half a brain. You like one for a while, then your tastes change and you move to something else. Nothing wrong with that.

-First, I am a major gamer, but that’s not why I come here. Between Failures is one of my current favorite comics, mostly because I see myself and so many of the people I know in it’s characters. My relationship with my wife can be perfectly mirrored in Thomas’ relationship with Carol. I have friends who are just like John, Nina, Ed, and Jo. (And one friend who is kind of an Ed/Jo fusion, oddly enough.) These relationships keep me coming back.

-Never cared for CAD, although I find the hate that it gets really amusing. Listening to Scott Kurtz talk about Tim Buckley is hilarious.

-Sinfest was great until it went ultra feminist, but I check in every once in a while to see if it’s gotten better. It hasn’t.

-Penny Arcade was a long-time favorite, and like many people, I think it was one of the first comics I ever read. I kind of hate the art nowadays, though.

-Megatokyo was probably the second one I ever read, and I followed it for years until, like the guy above said, I suddenly realized that I had no idea who the characters were or what was going on.

-I LOVED Fanboys until it stopped updating. Manly Guys doing Manly Things is a good substitute, though. I also really like Nerf Now, except when it goes on and on about Dota 2, which I don’t get at all. XKCD is fun, but it’s hit or miss.

-When I was much, much younger, I really liked Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire. (I know, I know, but keep reading.) I went back and revisited it recently and was kind of horrified. I guess I had somehow glossed over a lot of how bad that comic was.

-El Goonish Shive is a guilty pleasure of mine. I read it for the story and the complex relationships between the characters. Really. ;)

I always thought you had to make an account to comment on this… now I know not. I just wanted to say I have been following with this web comic for while and that I find great enjoyment when reading Between Failures and has been one of my small luxuries in my everyday life.

I generally avoid posting anywhere but your post comic rant today got me thinking about webcomics in general.

Main thing I want to say is that I love your comic and the little world you have created. It is difficult to describe but there is something almost magically innocent about it and for some reason just screams like it is a soulful piece of work. As with many things it has its ups and downs for me, but that is mostly due to cycling through characters I am less interested in (I am the same way with most media) so I have less interest. But I do truly enjoy the fact that this comic, despite moving slowly; always feels like it is moving in a general direction, not just simply keeping status quo. At the moment between the 10 or so webcomics I regularly read, I think Between Failures is my favorite.

One webcomics I am currently thinking of dropping from my routine is a sex/comedy one called Menage a 3. Which speaking of status quo has gotten stale lately and has devolved into really really outlandish storylines just to do something new. When it comes to CAD I am sort of on the wall, I disliked the old storylines and actually quite like everything after the reboot, its art is generally better and its stories are more focused and sometimes I actually want to know what happens next. For those who haven’t found it yet, there is a wiki called Explain XKCD which explains those complicated XKCD jokes that reference something the layman probably never has heard of, and it is possible to archive trawl the wiki, which sometimes is quite interesting.

And as a little tidbit, in Australia we are legally obliged to vote for our government (at penalty of fine). As I generally have to take time off work or something I am rather pissy about this. To vote in Australia we number our electoral candidates from highest to lowest (depending on the number – there are usually more than 20). So as my way to fuck with the vote talliers I vote in base 3… and leave a little message ‘this ballot was filled out using the base3 numeral system and is left as an exercise to the reader’. Fun Fact: That is a legal vote. In my previous local election (now also mandatory) I voted in Sanskritt numerals.

Love the comic. I’m actually a Math teacher so I get most of the xkcd math jokes. Some times there funny because only we really know what they mean. Other times its more for stroking the egos of people of the kind of people willing to put the years of work into what they mean. However A LOT of the time, the jokes fall flat as being clever enough, but not really funny. I do still see xkcd often though, maybe its the circles I run in

hey guys! hey wait up!

I’ve read BF for a while, not sure when I started but I remember getting censored here when I complained about the beginning of girl on girl action lol. That idea has worked better than I feared though, I’ll admit that. Recent stuff, I think Reggie and that little hostile cat girl (uh, you know who I mean) would shoot sparks. Anyway, keep going however you like it, it’s great. I even look forward to the commentary.

Used to read QC but it seems so self indulgent nowadays. I’m just waiting for Marten (and the author?) to come out of the closet, then I will have lost all interest in it. Like everyone else, I read MegaTokyo for a while until it made no sense. Likewise for Sluggy Freelance. Lost interest in PVP too when it became a bit obsessive about … farting? Sure dude, get it _out of your system_ whatever way you can.

Freefall was mentioned by someone, I like it too. Haven’t caught up with it yet.

Girl Genius and Skin Horse, great job by Shaeaeaoaenoaeaon Garrity (sp?). Manages to be zany/crazy/funny for years at a time, which is a bit harder than it looks.

Blaster Nation is okay too, a bit like a kid brother to BF. Gamer slice of life.

Media stuff: Darths and Droids is funny. DM of the Rings too.

Multiplex and Out There are a bit like BF too. Multiplex is about a cinemaplex, Out There is about … a bar? I guess it’s about a bar. Both are slice of life. Octopus Pie can be good now and then too, I like the drawing style but the stories are a bit blah so far.

Also, take a look at Scary Go Round and Bad Machinery. It just might make sense, he said cryptically.

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