2288 Sixes.

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I have made myself a passive goal of having 1000 supporters by the end of this year, combining Subscribestar, Paypaly, & Patreon. I have about 890 without looking at the exact number. So, I’m going to make an effort to mention these things in the blog more often. On youtube they say stuff about them at the start and end of most videos. For me it’s only going to be for people interested enough to come to the blog, but still, if you don’t mention it people don’t think of it. I always forget to “like” videos if the person doesn’t remind me, so that should be proof enough that I need to be more active about promoting these things. Having lived through several accepted monetization eras in webcomics now I’ve done pretty much everything. Website ads, on demand merch, subscription services… Far and away the subscription model has been the most profitable for me. There was a nice midway point when ads were really valuable, but that was ruined & everyone moved on to subs.

Although actually I’m not sure if everyone did… The webcomics “community” is less of a community now than when it was a “community” before. I don’t talk to other comic creators almost at all. There’s a handful on twitter who mutually follow me, but our interactions are largely superficial. People who I thought of as friends abandoned me once my usefulness was expended & they no longer needed someone to help promote them. Many people who read my work tell me than I’m the last webcomic they read now. A lot of creators have pushed many of their audience members out with their extreme political views & incessant ranting about it. These divisive times have taken a toll on every community, no matter how loosely confederated it was…

Twitter has certainly increased my paranoia over time. It’s such a shame too because it was a lot of fun in the beginning when you could say something at any hour of the day & someone would answer back. Now it’s openly hostile most of the time. Some of my favorite accounts have been banned without even being given a reason. I’ve tried other platforms but the fact of the matter is that most of them aren’t interested in comics at all.

I actually only read one other serialized webcomic now. Questionable Content. Every other one I read either stopped, or the author did something I found too heinous to tolerate. Dumbing Of Age was the most recent one I stopped reading. People often ask if David Willis, the writer of DOA, & I get along because we both like Transformers. The answer is he doesn’t know who I am, & even if he did I expect he would be openly hostile to me anyway. I actually stopped following he & Jeph Jaques, the creator of QC, on social media because I wanted to keep enjoying their work, but knowing their opinions was hampering that severely. I abandoned political talk on social media because of that, & try to just be entertaining. Although my sense of humor is extremely mean a lot of the time. I don’t really mean anything by it, I just find mean things funny. It’s more nuanced than that really. I don’t like watching people hurt animals or something, but the sarcastic banter, much like what I write is what I actually find funny.

That and wordplay, which is what I do the most on social media. Of course if you’re down here reading this you already know how much I enjoy labored puns & absolutely stupid wordplay. I’m always more pleased with myself than any human has a right to be when I think of something too.

I dunno, I’m just kind of thinking as I write at this point. I’ve gotten away from doing that in the last 4 years or so because of how awful everything has slowly become. I worry that I’ll say something I don’t think of as problematic that will cause trouble I don’t need. I’ve already been scolded by my family many times over things I’ve said on social media, so now I just act like I don’t have family most of the time. Authenticity is radioactive & opinions are toxic… That where it feels like we are as a culture the world over at the moment. Maybe it’s better to just ignore it & enjoy this make believe world I’ve crafted. At least until the world forces us to pay attention…

115 Comments

“The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those that speak it.” George Orwell. Culturally, we’re in a dark place. It looks a lot like some other dark points in history. Six years ago I would have laughed and called that statement hyperbole. Now I see this moment in time as the beginning of the sort of cultural movements that ca end up in genocide.. The only webcomics I’m reading now are This one, Girl Genius, El Goonish Shive, How to be a Werewolf and Grrl Power.I used to read a lot more. I stuck with Dumbing of Age longer than I might have out of nostalgia for Here’s Walky and Short Packed. I dropped Wapsi Square after the artist blocked me on social media for pointing out that as a concealed weapon permit holder assaulting people would result in some pretty stiff felony charges. I have an Aunt who was born in 1935. She predates television. She recently told me that she has lived through harder times, but these are some of the strangest times she has ever seen.

When you consider the fallout of everything that had occurred under U.S. politics the last 4 years plus the pandemic, it’s gotten to the point where everyone is starting to second guess everything that defines the societal norm.

And the scary part is that we have no clue how further down this river we’re going to continue!

Try reading the Book of Revelation, starting with chapter 5 (along with a good explanatory commentary: that cross-cultural imagery can get confusing), along with the book of Daniel, starting in chapter 7 (same note.)

The Bible’s prophecies have been pretty accurate so far. Might want to give the ones still pending a look-see.

It’s easy work matching selected prophecies to events after the fact. It’s also proven to be impossible to use prophecies to manage events before hand, except for convincing people to give you money. Prophecies are great for raising money.

Now Jackies efforts to raise money are completely different. He _creates_ wealth. He surely deserves money from me, and if (excuses) I would send some his way. I supported other artists when I had the funds. I’m trying to get my head out of my ass so I can be that person again.

Jackie, thank you for sharing your work with us. It is a highlight of my week.

Oh, my, yes! Jackie deserves all the money we can give him!

And matching prophecy with events “after the fact” is, I believe, one of the definitions.

It wasn’t clear where this was going. So I went for a google walk.

“A prophecy is a message that is claimed by a prophet to have been communicated to them by a deity.”
–wikipedia
and
“[Prophecy] understood in its strict sense, it means the foreknowledge of future events…” –Catholic Encyclopedia

But in looking it up to clarify for myself, I may have found to that which you are refering:

From a skeptical point of view, a Latin maxim exists: “vaticinium ex eventu” or english “prophecy written after the fact”
— wikipedia

If authenticity is radioactive, then I’ll see that it gives me super powers instead of cancer!

The times are amusing. Flocks of sheep accusing other flocks of being sheep. As far as Orwell, the problem with even quoting him is that every flock believes the goat leading them owns Truth.
You are doing great, Jackie.
Knowing that neither your opinion nor groupthink constitute Truth is an important part of sanity.

Yeah, I hear that. I too gave up following nearly every webcomic. QC was also one of the last ones I read, and I stopped not because of the creators personal views on Twitter, which I don’t even have, but because the comic itself was increasingly about everyone being a lesbian, except for the trans character, the non-binary character, and the gay guys. I don’t have a problem with any of these, I really liked Bubbles and Faye together, but it just became the entire focus of the comic, with other characters shelved indefinitely to write more lesbians. It was no longer about telling a story or being entertaining, it was just ACCEPT ALTERNATIVE SEXUALITY even though I bet 90% of his audience, at least, already did. I LIVE with a lesbian, I don’t need to told how great it is every day.

I will say that I also quit some other webcomics for just being bad at their job; for example, not updating. Or one that I quit because every “chapter” had a title page, then there was the (very short) chapter itself, then an end page, then a week’s worth of early drafts and concept art filler, then another title page to the next chapter, etc. Half the comic was filler. And even many of the “real” pages were just one single scene. Another webcomic creator started missing updates so she could focus on commissions; I get it, but why would I stick around an already glacially-slow comic if it’s going to be slowed down even more?

Speaking as a content creator myself, sometimes unexpected crap just happens, or even expected crap. I don’t write a webcomic though — I have an ongoing story blog where I track one of my Skyrim characters as I play, and then I create a story around what happens to them in-game. I gave the character only three lives so that the blog wouldn’t go on indefinitely. (It was supposed to be just one life, but thanks to an Alternate Start mod, she got thrown into a pretty dangerous situation right off the bat, and I wasn’t at all sure I could play her way out of it.)

Anyway, fast-forward five years, and the blog is still going because the character isn’t dead yet. It takes quite a lot of work to play, take notes, take screenshots of the action as it’s happening, go through the screenshots, figure out a story line, and then write and edit the blog post once a week. I have to take months-long breaks because I start getting burned out from both the game and the blog, plus I often get migraines and if I’m stressed out enough, it makes my migraines worse. (Also my neurologist and I were still going through different meds to see if we can find one that will work reliably, and sometimes switching meds causes more problems than it solves. Obviously that process has come to a halt since Covid, but that’s also left me with no reliable migraine meds so I have to rely on OTC painkillers, which only sometimes kinda-sorta work.)

So I’m not nearly as regular as Jackie is, and honestly I’m somewhat in awe of his ability and drive to keep going on a regular schedule while still struggling with his health issues. I’ve lost readers as a result even though I’ve tried to keep them updated, and I’ve accepted that they’re probably not coming back. Fortunately I don’t rely on my blog as a source of income, it’s just a hobby and completely free, so I don’t have that stress hanging over me. But my experience has made me more aware of the kind of struggles content creators go through, so I’ve become a lot more patient as a consumer and tried to keep supporting them when I can. It’s helped me gain some perspective. (I have a short list of content creators that I sponsor on Patreon, tiny ones that don’t have much of a following at all, and I’m aware that every dollar I give them is probably worth a great deal.)

I get that things happen. But I am talking more about people who don’t even give explanations. Or who don’t think it’s a problem to pad out their work with tons and tons of empty pages (just update less if that’s all you can do, don’t waste my time with updates of nothing). Then there are people who try to make their webcomic their sole income long before that’s reasonable, hence the one I mentioned who started cancelling updates so she could do commissions. I understand “the dream”, just like with YouTube, but telling 99.9% of your fanbase to sit down and wait so you can make some extra cash on that remaining .1% is not really a great strategy. She said she HAD to to pay the rent, but that just tells me she put all her eggs in that basket. I wouldn’t mind so much except it was a very, very slow, very long comic.

When there is an actual narrative to keep track of, there is definitely a consideration that has to be made for the audience. Your project is a little different, but people who clearly have a story to tell, with a beginning, middle, and end planned out to some degree, need to keep in mind their medium. Webcomics are fairly slow to unfold, so telling a very long story is risky. People begin to forget names, places, and events (hell, I have seen the CREATORS forget their own details). This is where it really irks me to have alot of filler stretching it out even more. And while, yes, I could just reread it, that’s a heck of alot to reread just to try and remind myself who that one guy is who was just re-introduced. Jackie is very good at just outright giving us details in the blog post in case we forgot, or maybe a link to a specific comic for reminders. There’s just stuff outside of the art/writing that matters, too.

I enjoy listening to “Real Coffee with Scott Adams”. In his video today, Scott Adams said he found out that liberals are now afraid to talk freely with their friends, for fear that they will accidentally say something that is unacceptable in 2021, and the friends will tell everyone what they said and they will get #cancelled. I just found it again; this segment starts around 47:22 in to Episode 1303.

“Cancel culture” is out of control. Disney fired Gina Carano because a relatively small number of people on Twitter made the tag “#fireginacarano” trend. She was fired for the crime of telling people that ginning up hate is a bad idea that can lead to bad things happening. (The [i]way[/i] she said it was unfortunate, but that is a fair summary of what she said.) Disney did this despite it angering a large chunk of Star Wars fans, angering the toy companies who were happy with sales for the “Cara Dune” action figures, and really angering Jon Favreau (who is the goose who is laying golden eggs for Disney right now).

The funny thing is that the people who want to #cancel other people think they are the “good guys”. But they have absolutely no forgiveness in them and not a lot of nuance.

As far as I can tell, the thing that convinced the Twitter people to hate Gina Carano was when someone demanded that she put her pronouns in her bio, and in response she put “beep/bop/boop” (R2-D2 noises). These people decided that the only possible explanation for why she might put R2-D2 noises in her bio is that she hates all trans people, and therefore she must lose her job and never be allowed to work ever again. I imagine they are hoping she will kill herself too.

We canceled our Disney+ subscription and in the box where you can leave a comment left a note saying we were doing it because Gina Carano was fired. Once a new season of The Mandalorian drops, I guess we’ll sign up for one month and binge-watch it, and then cancel service again. Before this, we were content to just pay every month for Disney+ so they are losing money now.

If you collect action figures, I hope you already got your Cara Dune figures, because they are becoming crazy expensive on eBay now.

Wow. Thanks for the write up. I hadn’t followed enough of what was going on GC. That sounds insane. Time to do some research, but yeah NO-ONE should be /compelled/ to self-identify. Given the option to, sure, and necessary for benefits associated with being an oppressed minority. But all of that falls under privacy. It’s nobodies business what gender someone else is, even in Hollywood.

As I understand it, there are many in the trans community who want to make it common practice that everyone shares their pronouns; it’s important to them that everyone call them by their chosen pronouns, so they want it to become normal for people to share their pronouns and normal for people to carefully remember the pronouns for each person and use the desired ones. Thus they are pressuring famous people to share their pronouns in the hopes that other people will follow suit.

It’s not everyone, but a few of them are really aggressive about it. Some people are aggressive about anything.

I watched Gina Carano’s interview with Ben Shapiro, and she said that at the time she didn’t really understand the pronouns thing. (She said that Pedro Pascal explained it to her and she understands it now.) All she knew was that some strangers on the Internet were being really demanding over social media. So my take on it is that it’s just like if you tell someone “you should smile now” and then they make a crazy smile instead of a normal one… a joking way to not comply. She says she doesn’t hate trans people (or anyone) and I believe her.

There are rumors now that the woman in charge of Star Wars is trying to sabotage Jon Favreau, and that she is trying to cause damage to Jon Favreau and _The Mandalorian_ any way she can. I didn’t mention those because I have no way to tell if someone just made them up, but I find them believable. According to one of the rumors, this person has been telling Disney management “it’s not my fault that _The Last Jedi_ and _The Rise of Skywalker_ and _Solo_ underperformed… it’s impossible to please the fans, especially because the fans hate strong female characters.” Now Cara Dune is super popular: supposedly she’s a woman who could beat up most men, and she’s played by an actress who actually could beat up most men; and she’s quite good-looking and has a good screen presence. Rey action figures didn’t sell very well, Rose Tico action figures didn’t sell at all… and Cara Dune action figures sold very well. So, the rumor goes, the woman in charge of Star Wars hates her because she is proof that the fans don’t hate all strong female characters, i.e. proof that actually the movies made under her management have just not been good. So, according to the rumor, a chance to paint Gina Carano as “antisemitic” and “hates all trans people” was a golden opportunity to sabotage _The Mandalorian_ while firing and degrading an actress who was a problem to her. (According to one rumor she expected _The Mandalorian_ to be no big deal; she figured that since the fans are impossible to please, the fans wouldn’t go for _The Mandalorian_ either. She didn’t _want_ it to succeed, but it did.)

It’s really hard to understand what’s going on at Disney right now. Even setting aside those rumors as unprovable and possibly outright fantasy, it’s just fact that _The Mandalorian_ is a huge success for Disney and the firing of Gina Carano was Disney shooting itself in the foot. Even if it had been better for Disney to fire Gina Carano, the _way_ it was done (using the words “unacceptable and abhorrent” to describe her social media posts) was shockingly unprofessional and made the backlash stronger and faster. And _The Mandalorian_ has been a smooth-running operation that the fans loved, while the actual Star Wars movies have had a much more turbulent history. So how long will the senior executives at Disney allow the Star Wars branch of the company to keep shooting Disney in the foot?

According to some rumors, the woman in charge of Star Wars is actually happy that so many people are canceling their Disney+ subscriptions because she is telling the Disney executives “see all the problems coming from _The Mandalorian_ and the Star Wars fans?” If that’s true, and the Disney executives are buying it, then all hope is lost.

Weird, I’m pretty liberal and I have no problems telling my friends what I think. Maybe something’s being blown out of proportion, or it’s just the spends too much time on twitter crowd.

My memory is hazy on the Gina Carrino thing, but Disney really likes their actors to be squeaky clean; I think the thing around her tweet was something like her tweet compared people being mad at racists to Nazis demonizing Jews around the holocaust. Something around that ballpark.

> I think the thing around [Gina Carano’s] tweet was something like her tweet compared people being mad at racists to Nazis demonizing Jews around the holocaust.

What she said was that before the Nazis rounded up the Jews, the Nazis ginned up hatred against Jews, sufficient hatred that common people beat Jews in the streets. She put a “sad face” emoji after this comment. Then she finished by saying that similar hatred is being ginned up against people in current society. She never mentioned “racists”; you imagined that part.

Her exact words: the Nazis “first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

I think it would be fair for someone to say that this is a bad comparison because it trivializes the Holocaust. I wouldn’t argue. But I reject the idea that this is in any way “antisemitic”; clearly she was expressing disapproval of hating people “simply for being Jews”.

Her post was reported as “hateful antisemitic comments” and an official Disney spokesperson said it was “unacceptable and abhorrent”.

The rumors say that the faction that hates Jon Favreau and _The Mandalorian_ was just waiting for something they could use as an excuse to take down anyone associated with _The Mandalorian_ and Gina Carano in particular. I have no way to prove this; one person could have just made it up. But it is bizarre that an official Disney spokesman would use these words:

“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”

Usually when someone is laid off, everyone lets everyone save face. “Gina Carano chose to pursue opportunities elsewhere.” Or even “We don’t have any scripts using her character and it’s unlikely she will return.” To publicly excoriate Gina Carano’s character like that based on a frankly dishonest reading of her words is… very unusual. It’s *possible* that someone at Disney really did read her words and think “Gina Carano hates Jews!” but it seems like a stretch. One of the rumors was that the anti-Mandalorian faction was looking for anything they could use, and Hollywood considers antisemitism as a “hot button” issue, so willfully recasting her words as antisemitism was the most effective kill shot they could have asked for. I have absolutely no proof that this is true, but it would seem to fit the facts better than anything else I’ve heard or could think of.

So unless some previously-hidden facts emerge that change my mind, I will believe that Disney not only fired Gina Carano but also tried to destroy her utterly, make her unemployable as an actress. I’m not okay with that.

> Disney really likes their actors to be squeaky clean

Not necessarily. Pedro Pascal made a social media post comparing the Trump administration’s handling of children illegally entering the country to the Nazi treatment of Jews, and he wasn’t publicly fired and branded as antisemitic. He doesn’t appear to have gotten into any trouble at all for it.

And I don’t want him to get into any trouble for it. I think it was a vile thing to say, and he should feel ashamed he said it… but I don’t consider him a role model. He shouldn’t be fired for his free speech. But neither should Gina Carano fired for her free speech.

So it’s clear that some people at Disney can say whatever they want on social media, while others are held to a completely different standard. And this is why the Gina Carano thing blew up as a big deal.

James Gunn got fired by Disney for 10 year old deleted tasteless jokes. They eventually rehired him because people liked him a LOT, he’s talented, and he apologized for his old bad jokes. (Actually, I think he apologized even before they fired him? That whole thing was kinda weird).

Gina Carano is…not apologetic at all, was warned for her earlier tweets and they were starting to look for more bad behavior to get rid of her. And the tweet was apparently comparing criticism of US conservatives to hatred of jews from what I’m reading, so that’s probably where the defense of racists part came from.

Because when conservatives are complaining about being criticized it’s usually because they’re mad they can’t be as racist/sexist/whatever as they want to be without people getting angry at them over it. Or mad that they can’t make 4-chan level jokes about trans people.

Pedro I can’t comment on, mostly because I don’t care enough to spend any more time looking this stuff up.

> Gina Carano is…not apologetic at all, was warned for her earlier tweets and they were starting to look for more bad behavior to get rid of her.

On the contrary, she has given clarifications and apologies at all points. What she did not do was allow anyone else to write the statements for her; she preferred to speak for herself.

It would have been wiser for her to not post anything on social media, but others at Disney post all the time without any worries.

I think we should drop this discussion thread as this is Between Failures, not a message board for discussing Star Wars news. I’m sure we have both worn out our welcome on this topic.

As for your statements that most conservatives in the US are racists and sexist and wish to “make 4-chan level jokes about trans people”… I’ll just say that you are painting with a rather broad brush, and leave it at that.

This is my last post on this topic. Or, as Kuiil would say: “I have spoken.”

The statement wasn’t “most conservatives are racist and sexists”. It was that when they’re complaining about being criticized, they’re usually being criticized for said behavior.

Also the 4chan level joke comment was a reference at the beep pronoun thing she did. It’s on the level of the “I identify as an attack helicopter” 4-chan joke. The “joke” is that identifying as a different gender is as absurd as identifying as an attack helicopter. Or in this case, as identifying as a robot. It’s the same “joke”, reworked a little.

“It was that when they’re complaining about being criticized, they’re usually being criticized for said behavior.”

No, it’s that they are being falsely accused of engaging in such behavior, aka, slander and libel. For example; don’t agree with cutting funding for the police? Racist. Never mind that most black people oppose cutting funding for police according to Pew Research–you’re a racist. When society reaches a point where anyone who doesn’t champion the party line is shamed, fired, cancelled…yeah, that’s the precursor to worse things. It wasn’t the Nazis that did that to the Jews; that was happening to Jews before Nazis came around, and it was BECAUSE of that growing and widespread hatred of “those people” that the Nazis made a platform out of racism and won elections and then we all know the rest. But no society goes from “Everything is fine” to “Everything is on fire” overnight; there’s a process of things getting worse, and we’re in that right now.

Nothing unites like a common enemy. Especially handy if that common enemy is poorly equipped to defend itself. I assume GC will definitely be suing for something with lots of zeros? Enough to buy her a significant stake in Disney, were she so inclined? I haven’t actually seen any episodes, but lots of baby Yoda clips.

Sinfest is a webcomic that for me is becoming more political, I mean it had this underlying vein to it since the beginning, but the main characters still had their own plotlines going for them. I don’t have a problem per se with the direction the author is taking because in the end of the day it IS their creation. However, it does really feel that Sinfest and its characters and story now serve as a platform to showcase a viewpoint and are forced into that mold rather than the story centering revolving around the characters. IDK if that made sense?

What I find harder now to navigate in social circles (online or IRL) is that temperance has become frowned upon as a “on-the-wall” stance. People are forcing you to choose sides and the middle-ground is now a sort of place people with no backbone or lacking self-discovery are labelled. Undoubtedly, some topics have clearer “yes” or “no” divisions, but a good many others don’t. I have always been vary of radical viewpoints, because usually there is a good deal of emotion mixed into it. Lastly, a viewpoint, is a viewpoint, it is not the whole picture. Getting the whole picture takes a lot of investigating, probing, questioning, time – basically effort. With the rapidity of misinformation, the tendency of relying on opinions as facts, just means that gap in time to reflect, let the dust settle just doesn’t happen as often as it should.

well that’s my opinion at least!

I only follow Sinfest on the Pettyfest Reddit.

That comic hasn’t just gone political, it’s lost its damn MIND.

I loved sinfest until the author fully embraced misandry. I’m all for feminism and equality, but extremes in any direction suck

Yeah, the middle ground could really do with some radicalization. Obviously it’s a joke, but it’s fun to advocate that everyone advocating for extreme positions should be shot. It certainly leads to interesting conversations over a pint.

Bump in the Knight is my favourite oun of yours.

I know an artist if that might still be a thing?

Cling to liberality, friends! Look the word up in the dictionary, live up to that definition!
I had a neighbor who couldn’t wait for Limbaugh to die.
When I pointed out that liberals defend dissident points of view, and that, opposed as he was by every media outlet but Fox, he could be considered dissident….

Your defense of Limbaugh seems to be running into the Paradox of Tolerance. The basic gist of the paradox is that tolerance without limit is eventually destroyed by the intolerant, so to defend tolerance you have to be intolerant of intolerance.

For context: Rush Limbaugh had run segments where he celebrated gay people dieing to AIDs, for just one of the many awful things he did.

Still not a fan of celebrating deaths myself, but I’m not going to mourn him either.

Tolerance is a treaty, not a moral imperative. It happens when getting along with each other is better than having a fight. It fails when an opposing party breaks the treaty.

Tolerance means precisely that. You tolerate something. It doesn’t mean advocating it, it doesn’t mean giving it preferential consideration. It means not actively working against, or advocating action against.

Have you tried Sandra and Woo? It’s a pretty great comic, kinda similar to Calvin and Hobbes, new strip gets posted twice a week. Also I don’t think the creator’s an asshole, so bonus points there too

I follow that one too. Really nice comics. Although I have to admit it is political half the time.

I like Sandra and Woo a lot. I have no idea what you are talking about with respect to politics. Maybe you are confusing it with some other comic?

The only Sandra and Woo cartoons I don’t like are the ones where animals are talking to each other in context of eating each other. I’m okay with carnivores eating prey animals, I’m okay with talking animals, but when carnivores are telling the prey they are going to eat them, it squicks me out. The squirrel with a revolver who kills and eats carnivores is kind of funny as an abstract idea, but I don’t really like those comics either.

But the ones I don’t like are few and far between. I consistently like Sandra and Woo.

The good thing about the politics in S&W is that they tend a little more towards equal opportunity mockery than heavy-handed wokeness. Plus, most of the story lines are relatively short, so if you don’t like the current bit, they’ll probably be doing something else soon enough.

Sandra and Woo has a strong tendency to advocate kindness; the animals-eat-animals aspect of the comnent reminds us that few parts of nature work that way.
Humans can survive with kindness because we use co-operation to build our tech.
Bees co-operate because their males are haploid and female bees do a better job of replicating themselves by having their mother (the queen) do it. The queen is a sister-spawning slave.

If it’s any consolation, while I am quite the ghost around here, I’ve been here for like a decade now, possibly more.
I am tentative about whether or not I wanna know what QC’s author thinks about things because I do still read the comic, though sometimes I wonder if I even read webcomics at all out of force of habit/”it’s something to do”, no offence meant to webcomics or their creators (yourself included, Jackie). I used to read a TON of them, and over time, one by one they’ve fallen, for one reason or another. I wonder if it was from some “childish (for lack of a better term) sense of exploration”, just wanting to watch or learn things to expand my horizons. Maybe now I only read these things to get a sense of closure on a thing I’ve been keeping up with since I was a kid, wanting to see how it will end, if it ever does.

For funsies, a list of current and past webcomics:
– This’un here [Between Failures]
– Questionable Content
– Modest Medusa
– Mokepon
– Order of the Stick (my god I’ve been reading this one for like TWO decades!)

– 8-Bit Theater [finished] (one of my firsts, naturally for a Final Fantasy nerd)
– Secret of Mana Theater [permanent hiatus] (another 2 decader and my first ever read Webcomic; it’s a shame he had to stop for monetary reasons, I love SoM, and further enjoyed that it was animated; used to run his forum for him, for a while, back in the cringey teen years)
– Nerf This [permanent hiatus] (never came back to it, just one day… stopped. No messages, warnings, or heads-up, just ghosted us. Shame too, it was damn funny.)
– Gamercat [presumably temporary hiatus] (hasn’t posted since plague hit, which is understandable, last announcement was like a year ago, in March)

I’m sure there are others, but these were the only ones I stuck around with for a long long time.

I’m old. When an long-term acquaintance stops replying to me I always wonder if I’ve missed the funeral. I think people who write series should leave a summary of where the current plotlines are going so that if tgd occasion arises the executor of the will can tell them how it all ends.

Yes, I know tgat writing often does not go according to plan. The plan will change. So should the in-case-of-death summary.

I keep an “in case I die” document so it can be posted if I randomly drop dead someday. It needs to be updated but the broad strokes are still enough to see where I’m going.

At least you’ve made provision for it. Most don’t.

I kept wondering what the hell happened to the first webcomic I followed… Loserz by Eric Schoenek.

It was like he just decided to vanish one day, and it was so sudden and so complete that I became convinced that he died.

Last year he made a minor revision to his DeviantArt profile, and I fould out he still has a (semi) active Twitter page… so he isn’t dead, but he doesn’t answer any queries, his comic archive has died, and his professional work for the Slipshine site is gone…

You’d think he would have posted *some* kind of notice for his fans, even if it was only “Fuck You, I’m Done.”

For getting closer together again, I’d call to TrustRoots (avoiding toxic partisanship in politics) as well as signing the protruth pledge, and then subscribe to constructive journalist outlet for more perspective. Constant negativity and criticism can become a habit for its own sake. Let’s afford ourselves and others some learning time. We also need to be open to the possibility of being wrong and with a growth mindset that that’s actually ok, but to appraise things accurately a bit of calm is needed, so I try to avoid commenters on edge. That’s I’ve enjoyed this comic so far as it brings people together with their strengths and weaknesses in an honest, but also kind way deep down. The creator’s political views are a different domain, which I don’t know much about, but which may or may not fit with their social worldview of how to be decent in a small group… I also enjoy white-noise-comic for it’s tenderness towards the characters (sure many are non-binary characters, also in relation to the author, but it’s more about how to be sane about it and navigate the challenges), and taleoffiction for it’s not giving a fuck.

I read Terry Pratchett’s last book. Edited–or maybe finished–posthumously. The magic was gone.

Sometimes it’s not about the magic, but just taking one last walk along a familiar path with the memory of an old friend.

“but just taking one last walk along a familiar path with the memory of an old friend.”

And there it is. I read The Shepherd’s Crown, and I liked it–it was a goodbye from Pratchett, and a good end. Of course, I also loved Raising Steam where lots of people didn’t.

I gotta agree with Chaos on the suddenly’dead’ comics, wtf?
I LOVED The girl next door by Tempest Lavalle. I guess you could see it coming by how sporadic her updates were. Then there was Coming up violet, the only furry comic I read. The author was having some serious health issues and just ghosted (no pun)
Pictures of you was/is my all time favorite webcomic, it ended when smackjeeves went to a webtoon format.

I still have a nice list of comics. I stick with Questionable Content and Something Positive, though it’s getting pretty deep-core liberal out that way.

The Whiteboard is a personal favorite because that guy tries HARD. And most of what he does is at least fairly funny, even if he can get bogged down in his own plots.

Shotgun Shuffle is a work of genius produced by a guy with terrible luck. His update schedule is “eventually”, but pretty much everything he releases is of a truly spectacular quality.

Still read Weregeek, but getting tired of literally every agenda on the planet shoveled down my throat at light speed. The comments section is even worse.

Order of the Stick is still awesome and has been for years.

Dead Winter is a favorite of mine but it’s a deeply depressing read. It’s a zombie apocalypse comic that updates at a glacial pace. I once remembered it after two years of not reading. It took less than three hours to be completely caught up. Even slower than Shotgun Shuffle, and without the awesome art to support it.

Girl Genius is some deeply fun and wonderfully well-illustrated stuff as long as you can tolerate a two-month Christmas special.

Penny Arcade is pretty much the exact same thing it was ten years ago but since it riffs off gaming news it’s still somehow fresh.

Full Frontal Nerdity only occasionally gets irksome with its politics but is still quite fun.

And then there’s this thing called…um…”Among Calamities” or “Between Failures” or something like that. Some one-man show you’ve probably never heard of but I read every update because the characters are wonderfully relatable and have been developing for years.

Started reading Dead Winter.
Page 3 brings back memories.
“A nice quiet time, when my mop and I dance our soapy tango”
During my PhD studies in the late 60’s I lived in a co-op residence an my job was to mop the floor in the dining room once a week. It was indeed a nice quiet time.

I’ve been an avid reader of webcomics for about 15-20 years now. I once had a bookmark folder with over 100 daily webcomics I checked daily and now I’m down to about 6-9 webcomics I check on a m w f schedule. Like 1 I check daily (SMBC, it was 2 but Schlock Mercenary ended). I actually cMe to this work from your previous webcomic.

I have to come to the opinion from what you’re saying that my politics couldnt be further from yours: I’m a queer, poly-am, culturally “correct”, socialist. I’ve always picked up that your politics might be a bit staid but I’ve always enjoyed that your comics dont touch on that very often and it is a character driven plot with relatable characters to someone from a poor rural area. That said even QC was becoming a bit much for me (I dont dig performative “wokeness” and have always hated how straight dudes love to focus on monogamous lesbians and use the “I was a straight woman for half of this story but now I’m a LESBIAN” as a kind if “aint I woke” badge) though honestly the kicker for me on QC is I was really hoping for a Triad with Brun and the guys which he had very much been teasing but Jeph clearly gets his kicks teasing and then denying ships that dont appral to his particular tastes. I suspect readers who continue will see the new gay couple slowly vanish frankly as they arent “cute big booty lesbians”, and bisexuals arent allowed in his universe. /tangent

Seeing the state of the webcomics community really depresses me. I like to write and I’ve always hoped I would find an artist I could collab with and join this community I had only read about from afar in various semiautobiographical web comics. Even if I can someday get a good webcomic going I think the geek community I once longed for is dead. I watched it happen with my older brother and his friends, as by the time I was in high school I was unable to find any similar camaraderie. Im not the lonely kid I used to be, I have partners, stepkids, friends: but there was just something so magical and frankly democratic about webcomics. I’m still going to pursue webcomics and webnovels as a form of self publishing and episodic creativity. But I know itll never be as it was and sometimes I have to question if it ever really was…

I hope to resubscribe to your patreon when I’m financially stable again, covid hit my bank account hard, but you seem like a good guy and I enjoy your work despite any perceived political differences. I certainly intend to read your work as long as you keep making it and I should be able to support that endeavor: I just hope you realize that liberation for others doesnt mean less freedom for you. Twitter is a dark place for many reasons but open acceptance of the lgbt community isnt one of them.

Greetings. I’ve never really commented before on this site. I just like reading them. People here are for the most part respectful and decent humans. But your comment struck a chord with me. It was well thought out, respectful, and just nice to read. Sifting through comments sections on the web these days is an exercise in practicing patience and face-palming. Trying to make sure you don’t piss someone off or get banned, even though you may want to comment because you think you can add something to the conversation, you hold back. You don’t want to get crucified. So I appreciate your demeanor. Based on your self-description, we have some differences in opinion for certain, but I feel that if I met you in real life, I could have a meaningful conversation with you and neither of us would have to raise our voices, get angry, or walk away pissed off. That’s saying something in this day and age. Being a person who leans more into the conservative camp, it’s hard for me to have conversations about issues with those on the other side of the fence. I always strive to see where someone else is coming from, but when they don’t like to see the validity of my argument, believe actual facts that I research and place in front of them, or just resort to screaming at me and calling me an idiot for my beliefs, its a wonder that I bother talking to anyone. So good on you for sounding like you are level-headed and a calm individual. Stay happy. Stay healthy.

I think the only triad relationship I’ve see in any media is the main three in Star Driver (a fabulous robot anime). At least, the only one I can really remember.

I’m down to just 2 comics at this point, this one and Darths and Droids. This has reminded me I need to catch up on Darths and Droids.

Girl Genius; Daughter of the Lilies; QC; Obviously, BF; Empowered; Atomic Robo; Something Positive. Rising sand, if it comes back.
Shotgun Shuffle, yes, but updates almost as irregularly as Dresden Codak.
Gone, not forgotten: Nerf this; Schlock; Golden Age(?); Vinnie(?) by Bachan; Edison Rex….
Many more I’ve tried, just looking for light reading with morning coffee. So many I cannot stomach.
I will not be proselytized.
Too old, watched the process of paving that particular Road To Hell too many times.
I mention so many because i see what all of you like and assume you have tastes like mine.

I mostly just read this these days. I check up on QC sometimes, but it’s more just a morbid curiosity of ‘where is this going now?’ rather than me actually enjoying the content.

Seems like I’m in a similar boat as to what webcomics I read as everyone else. I tend to stay away from comment sections, especially if they delve into anything other than the web comic itself. I used to read David Willis stuff as well, but I don’t care for rewrites even if they are well done so I dropped it around the end of SP.

One of my favs these days that haven’t been mentioned is “Stand Still, Stay Quiet”. Not a genre I would normally get into, but it’s well done with some good humor bits thrown in. “Why is food not opening the door? Let us in food.” Plus I love me a good “world gone bad” scenario.

I also enjoy “Terminal Lance” which is about the Marine Corps. The author doesn’t delve into politics other than a glancing blow now and then. He makes fun of the corps from a marine’s perspective and of marine veterans who love to yell about how it isn’t like it used to be.

I’ve heard many people recommend “Stand Still. Stay Silent” (which I’m guessing is what you meant to type), and it’s on the to-read list. In principle it shouldn’t take long, as there’s “only” some 1400 pages, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d just want to skim, because of the art.

Speaking of “genres I wouldn’t normally get into” and “world gone bad”, I’ve been enjoying Sleepless Domain. Never thought I’d read a “magical girl” comic, but there’s just something about it.

Hey Jackie, you and I have had conversations directly over email and I do consider you a friend.
My own webcomic stalled and died when my son was born, I just couldn’t keep up.
My daily rotation is;
Questionable content
Wapsi square
Misfile
You
And ennui go
I’ve noticed a lot of the webcomics are going to a WEBTOON style format, while it’s not bad, it’s not quite the same. At least from my end.
And I have a LONG list of WEBTOONS I read daily as well.
I hope you keep this up; I’m not ready to say goodbye to these characters yet. At least a spin-off or two…
You oughta know you’re loved by now, look at all these people here.
Maybe once we get moved to Kansas, we’ll come up for a visit……stay tooned.

What the fuck is a web toon format?

It’s a very vertical format intended for scrolling on your phone. Check out the webtoon app (by webtoon entertainment) or webtoons dot com. I read about a dozen comics there, but I still read 22 comics just on the web via my rss feed.

Webtoon comics are designed to be read only on a computer, not on paper. They take advantage of vertical scrolling (“infinite canvas”) and one kind-of-neat thing is that sometimes for a wide-angle action shot they will turn the action shot 90 degrees so that it can be part of the vertical scrolling. (I say it’s kind of neat, but it’s not ideal when reading on a desktop computer!)

One of my favorite webtoons is Blindfold, a near-future science fiction story that also features a romance between two hot women. Celia is a cop.
Mitsu works as a designer at the big company that provides “augmented reality” (AR) service for everyone… you can use the Internet without an obvious computer, with images inserted into your vision (seemingly floating in air near you). It can also be used in fun ways, for example if you use the correct app while watching a dancer you might see artistic flames on the dancer. There’s a mystery, though… someone is using AR for nefarious things. If you can hack someone’s vision and make the person see things, you can trick the person into an “accident” and it doesn’t look like murder. At the start of the story Celia is using men for sex but doesn’t have any romance in her life; as soon as Mitsu sees her, Mitsu starts pursuing her romantically. The woman who writes and draws this comic is Russian, and her English is kind of weird at times, but I don’t mind.

The first chapter in the story:
https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/blindfold/blindfold-ch1-humans-are-so-predictable/viewer?title_no=173612&episode_no=19

Using AR for a party in a nightclub and artistic flames on the dancer:
https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/blindfold/blindfold-ch10-damn-conspirators/viewer?title_no=173612&episode_no=30

An example of using the infinite canvas, turned sideways, to make a wide image: (about 2/3 of the way through the comic, after dialog “Now look in the mirror”:
https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/blindfold/blindfold-ch12-do-you-think-i-need-new-friends/viewer?title_no=173612&episode_no=33

That blindfold comic keeps redirecting me to their main page whenever I try to click on one of its chapters for whatever reason. I’ve not had that issue with any other comic on their site.

The webtoon comic format started, or at least was popularized, with Korean webcomics. Most of the comics in this format that I read are on the webtoons.com website. Some of them are originally Korean comics that are translated, and now there have been a lot of originally English ones popping up on the website.

Two completed comics in the webtoon format I’ve enjoyed that finished are Gourmet Hound (one girl dealing with her grandma’s death, finding herself, and a little bit of romance) and Apocalyptic Horseplay(some kind of supernatural drama involving the four horsemen not wanting to end the world, I think there was a bit of comedy )

There’s also a bunch of ongoing/on hiatus comics I read there including Newman, Mage And Demon Queen, Eleceed, Pound, unOrdinary and Hardcore Leveling Warrior.

I think the first webtoon format comic I read was a translated version of Orange Marmalade (romance story involving a vampire girl trying to hide she’s a vampire because of fantastic discrimination, the vampires in that world don’t need to kill to feed and can survive without blood), but it was somewhere not the webtoon site. And the webtoon site doesn’t have anywhere near the full comic translated.

My favorite comics on Webtoon:

* Blindfold (yuri romance and science fiction mystery suspense)
* I Love Yoo (comedy and possible romance comic; I laughed out loud at some of the early comics)
* unOrdinary (a fantastic story set in a world where almost everyone has superpowers, and the society believes the strong should rule the weak)
* Let’s Play (comedy and romance)
* The Four of Them (a “slice of life” story set in Argentina)

Someone who likes Between Failures will probably like the last two.

I think I dropped Let’s Play not long after the ship with Link got sunk. And the depiction of the in game fictional game she made seemed unrealistic to me for a solo project as someone who knows a lot of indie devs, although I don’t remember if the amount of time she supposedly spent making it was ever mentioned in comic. It was some weird amorphous thing where somehow a single dev has accounted for pretty much everything.

Those kinds of projects generally take years and have very crude graphics (a lot of rogue type games), or involve a lot of devs and involve running into a lot of issues where you have a lot of choices but they’re definitely not whatever the player can imagine (fallout type games)

Also didn’t really like the other two characters she was being ship teased with.

To clarify a little, the video game didn’t really bother me that much, it’s mostly just the other two characters she was being shipped with.

The streamer seemed to already have a decent relationship he was already in, and the comic didn’t show any poly signs at all, so for that ship to move forward would involve that relationship blowing up in some ridiculous way.

And the boss well, he’s her boss and that’s just problematic to begin with. And he shows so many signs of being a toxic manipulative person. I don’t like when romance stories push unhealthy relationships a lot.

Let’s play
Unordinary
The four of them
The yomanville gang
Hooves of death
Cursed princess club
American road trip
The kids bet
Marry me
Avas demon
Random chat
My giant nerd boyfriend
Four leaf
Lone
Boyfriend of the dead
The last human in a crowded galaxy
Brass and sass
Dice
Down to earth
Little trashmaid
Bad signs
Odd girl out
Age matters
Lose to me
Soul on hold
Room of swords
Uriah
Seed
Heart anthology
Love me knot
Back to you
Dating with a tail
Kind of love
Jackson’s diary
Nice to meet you
Jesus Christ I read a lot of them!! Several are on hiatus currently.
I hope the author of Pinch Point makes another go of it, that one was great!
Most of them I read because I like the art style, some art is really simple but the story is really deep.

I only read this comic and Questionable Content anymore, well and oglaf, too. I really don’t know why I still read QC, though. I stopped caring a long time ago. The last time I recall when I was at least somewhat invested was when Faye and Bubbles got together, whenever that was. All those new characters and all that robot stuff.. I just don’t care. Even those “jokes” Jeph Jacques seems to be so proud of are very rarely funny to me. But it’s a quick read and provides some distraction, I guess *shrug*

I abandoned social media a couple of years ago (4-5). I got turned down for a job at Hobby Lobby when I told the interviewer that I didn’t have a Facebook or Twitter account. She asked if she could follow me and acted like I told her Jesus ate human flesh and flew a spaceship powered on termite farts.

Yep, I’ve never been on either Twitter or Facebook and I doubt I ever will, especially because neither one seem to take privacy concerns seriously. Also I’ve never felt the need to follow any individual’s every last post or tweet — if something truly important happens, I seem to find out through other means anyway. There’s too much useless noise to sift though most of the time.

Other people just don’t know how to react to that though. Some treat you like a complete dinosaur, and others say they envy you but they won’t give up social media themselves. It’s weird.

I’m on Facebook *only* because I am in two offline social groupings that co-ordinate their events usung facebook. Presumable because the others are facebook users. But it is an extremely distracting time-waster for someone with attention deficite.

I miss Shlock Mercenary.

Same, though Howard did say he still has stories to tell in that universe, they’ll just be stand-alone “books”, story-wise. And he’s using the current break to re-learn how to do things, because a daily comic schedule leaves precious little time to completely up-end the techniques you cobbled together out of necessity. In the meantime, I think I’ll set aside a chunk of my Easter vacation to a full re-read.

I miss Terry Pratchett. Howard is still around, I have hope he will do something amazing, something that will make Schlock look like a long apprenticeship.

SpaceTrawler and Drive are pretty good space scifi comics with heavy setting building if that’s what you’re looking for. Freefall is another good sci-fi comic with heavy world building, but it revolves around a single planet and has no fight scenes, if that’s something you’re into. A lot more exploration on the concept of humanity.

I find it amusing that just a few days ago I finally give up on Dumbing of Age for good (I don’t know what took me so long, honestly), and then here I read that you recently did the exact same thing. I’m not quite in the same boat as you and a lot of people here as I’m still actively following over 40 comics, but considering I used to follow hundreds, that’s still a clear decline. Granted, most of the decline comes from webcomics I read no longer updating and a dwindling interest in finding new ones (I discovered webcomics at a time in my life when I had a lot of free time and not much to do with it, but now with both less free time and having discovered more things to occupy myself with, a big archive binge to catch up on something is far less appealing), rather than me making the conscious decision to stop following them like with Dumbing of Age.

It’d be a bit long to list every webcomic still regularly updating that I follow, but some of my favorites are Dan and Mab’s Furry Adventures, Girl Genius, El Goonish Shive, XKCD, and Darths & Droids.

I’m a patron, I dig your comic, and I respect your work ethic and your grit. That’s all. :-)

This webcomic is one of two (of the dozen or so that I regularly check) that has characters that I like and can relate to. Most of the rest are just eye candy to look at during the transits. A lot of others I have given up on as I find the desperation tactics of overt political correctness, perversion and fetishism gets boring rather quickly.

I read this,

Girl Genius

Brimstone & Roses

Wilde Life

Dinosaur Comics

and
El Goonish Shive.

I used to read QC, but after a while it was just boring.

This comic and Order of the Stick are my two that i have held to.

“We have become stupidly politically correct, which is the death of comedy,”
-Mel Brooks
hope you can keep rolling and not get strung up for doing what you have always done, because what you do is great. The nuance and each character having such depth revealed over time is elegant and entertaining.
I’ve been meaning to get back on board with a small monthly contribution via paypal (did patreon a while back, but had to cut expenses for a while and stopped reading all comics, but i have returned to yours and OOTS and caught back up, glad i have.)

Well, on one hand is Mel Brooks, who was compelled to hand-write letters to (his words) “every rabbi in New York” who didn’t understand The Producers as a satire in the late ’60s.

On the other, there’s every right-wing comic and social critic with no sense of target, who afflicts the afflicted, punches down instead of punching up, and who never could have made “Blazing Saddles” to begin with, complaining that the proverbial “you” “couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today”.

Also, Brooks may not have a handle on how meaningless “politically correct” has become in the thirty-odd years it has been a term.

“Also, Brooks may not have a handle on how meaningless “politically correct” has become in the thirty-odd years it has been a term.”

Sort of like “punching down” has been rendered meaningless; it used to be that “punching up” was risky so you “punched down” to play it safe, but now that’s reversed, as “punching down” ends your career but “punching up” is celebrated. But folks still want to use it in the old way to shame people…

I am not entirely sure I understand your position. If you believe in “authenticity”, or expressing controversial opinions because you really believe in them, is this not what other people are doing when they express an opinion contrary to yours? This sounded a little more harsh/rude that I intended, I am not trying to make a scarecrow of you, I just trying to understand what exactly is your point. It seems to me that you appear as actor and object in this text. You seem tired of others belittling you because of your political opinions, and at the same time had stopped following other’s works because of their political opinions. You say web comic authors brought politics into their works and then you indirectly do the same with this post (the fact you just say people admonish you because your political opinions, but not give any examples, gives some space for imagination, and may leave a reader like me a little uneasy). At the end, you seem to just be reaching the conclusion that you need to be brave to just say what you believe and take the backlash for it, but you do not have the energy for that anymore.

Now, from my viewpoint, I find the diversity of perspective between you, me, and other commenters very interesting. You stopped reading DoA because of Willis’ politics but kept reading QC, somebody else in the comments stopped with QC because of its politics; I started reading both long ago, I started DoA because of the politics (in the comic) while that was not the case for QC, but what keeps me interested in QC right now is exactly the politics side. Also, someone suggested Sandra and Woo as a comic with little politics involved, for those tired of politics; this is ironic to me because what kept me reading S&W was sheer boldness of some arcs in dealing with controversial topics, and what made me abandon it completely was the fact the writer started making some very open-ended-interpretation political strips that many sides on the same issue identified as being favorable to their side, the boldness that interested me first became fence-sitting and really did not sit well with me.

As far as DOA goes Willis’s politics are the least egregious of his sins. I didn’t stop reading because of them. QC’s political leanings are functionally identical & I keep reading it. The problem with their social media was the vitriolic tone that became perpetual to every interaction. I stopped reading it so I could maintain some level of enjoyment of their work. Willis managed to destroy that without the help of his social media presence. As far as the rest of it goes, whatever. Believe what you like. I don’t have the time or inclination to go over a blog post I wrote off the cuff. I’m so good a writing I can understand why you would think my points are very well thought out though. I just can’t help being so clever & interesting.

There is a difference between allegory and shoving politics down people’s throats. Like, everyone knows X-Men is about racism, in a way, but it still has it’s own identity and characters and stories. More and more people these days seem to make their work nothing but preaching their politics directly to our faces. Or, say, there is a difference between telling a story about a gay person that is just a normal, relatable story that ultimately says “See, gay people are not mutants from outer space, they are just regular folks”, and telling a “story” that is just informing us that “Everyone who isn’t 110% comfortable with gays and everything in gay culture right this second is no better than Hitler.” My dad used to be very iffy on everything LGBT, but we’ve gotten him to come around over the years–but many people today would have destroyed his life over that, if they could have, instead of giving him the chance to grow.

You have to be careful with encouraging a kind of “no politics” stance. It can be nice to have a lowkey space without much conflict, a bit of a peace treaty zone, but there’s a significant body of assholes that complain about things being too political because they don’t want there to be any consequences to them being assholes. Some of those people will hear someone saying they’re sick of things being too political and think they’ve found a new space to be assholes in.

There’s some things that need to be pushed back on. That should not be normalized. If you’re perceiving that as nastiness, well, maybe it might be time for some self-reflection.

“There’s some things that need to be pushed back on.”

But not here. That’s the point. People on the extreme left and extreme right who want to politicize everything, who want to make every single thing ever made or event that occurs into grounds for political change, not only make life rather miserable for the rest of us, but ruin the very things they are talking about, or platforms they are on. We don’t have to discuss “srs bizniz” literally everywhere.

I wonder which blog posts spur the highest word counts in comment sections

You know, even after all this time, it’s impossible to predict. I’ve written posts that are functionally identical where one version gets a lot of interaction & one goes largely unnoticed. It seems like people are reaching a point where desire to express themselves is outweighing fear of reprisal though.

I find your occasional posts on cancel culture interesting. I think all sides agree that Twitter can be really toxic, and it’s not…ideal…that half-thought-out jokes you really only intended for your friends can blow up into you becoming the villainous main character of the internet for the day. But there will always be a large faction that agrees with you regardless of your opinion, so I wonder what makes you think saying something that doesn’t go along with woke-ism or whatever will lead to your ruin.

I grew up during peak irony/mean humor – the Southpark generation, if you will – and while I laughed along with everyone else at the time, I get why it’s not to the younger generation’s taste! They don’t see ironic detachment as cool, and perhaps they are healthier for it…

peak irony/mean humor – the Southpark generation

South Park’s nihilism is an easier thing to do when, like Parker and Stone, you’re a straight white male of some means. And their bothsidesism runs rampant.

I do like their construction. One of them has said “You have the audience when you feed them a scene and the next scene depends on the previous one, or a scene which follows that exactly counters the expectations. That gets interesting. It’s death when it’s just ‘this happens, then unrelated that happens, then unrelated other thing happens’ .” (Paraphrased.)

And I like writing and voice-acting among the four kids (and their assorted pals). It does remind me of that age.

South park is very inconsistent. They can have really good episodes, like the one about Amazon. Or the one about how chummy a lot of businesses want to be with China. And then they can suddenly have an episode mocking the idea of trans people in sports.

As far as I know, the current science on this issue is that after 2 years of hormone therapy any advantage a male to female trans person had from hormones is gone entirely, and anyone that transitioned before puberty never had that advantage to begin with.

I guess with how fast they make episodes they don’t have much time to second guess what they’re doing? (they make an episode in like a week if I rememeber right?)

Not being able to take a joke is certainly not healthier. When speakers at universities have been literally chased away by angry mobs, that’s not productive, and it doesn’t speak to a healthy mindset. Because alternative points of view are always beneficial; even if they are 98% wrong, that remaining 2% is still valuable, and should be heard, and worked into the “correct” view, and that can’t happen if everyone is immediately silenced for deviating in the slightest. It’s not just a matter of different taste; it’s that they don’t believe in basic human rights, that things like freedom of speech, press, worship, even gathering, shouldn’t exist–those are privileges granted only to those with the “right” views, no one else can have them. And even if you have the “right” views, well, you might be denied because of your race, gender, or a number of other things–we don’t “need” any more of “you people” sharing your voice, even if it’s saying the exact same thing we like.

“As far as I know, the current science on this issue is that after 2 years of hormone therapy any advantage a male to female trans person had from hormones is gone entirely”

Their muscle growth and bone density is gone? I’d be curious to see the science, as I have not heard this claimed either way. However, the current controversy doesn’t specify “trans people with 2 years of HRT”–quite the opposite, people are calling for no requirements at all, you can just call yourself what you like. That’s the problem; young men with all the advantages of young men can just change which box they tick and now dominate over women. Even if you want to argue it’s totally justified for various reasons, you should be able to see how reversing 100 years of policy (that’s about when they started testing athletes to confirm their gender and ensure they weren’t using hormones to gain advantages) is something that is going to be jarring and should be discussed, not just rammed through.

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