2950 The Struggle For Snuggles.
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Well, I have about seven minutes to post before the page is supposed to go live. My weekend was not very productive. It really feels like I’m not getting ahead of anything at all. I can’t even convince myself to play a game or something because I feel like I need to save that for monetizing somehow. The internet really is trying to turn us all into performing monkeys. I’ve been having a very hard time focusing because I have no glasses that even approximate anything approaching normal vision. I can’t maintain mental focus because my eyes are always so tired from trying so hard to bring things into some kind of visual focus. I have to pay off my other medical bills before I can look into doing something about my eyes. Not being able to see is impairing my productivity and it’s on the verge of becoming a vicious cycle.
Anyway I better just get the page going. I hope you had a nice weekend. I’ll be back on Wednesday, as always, with more comic. Until then, thank you for choosing our services.
PS: “Thank you for choosing our services” was written on my radiology bill, but I didn’t get a choice of which service to use. If I had a bunch of choices I bet it wouldn’t cost so much…
29 Comments
Really hope Victoria and John find something themselves, they seem compatible xD though it is a consequence of all the characters in this story being highly likeable and good matches.
“Fuck palaces” am I rite?
That was supposed to be a reply to the first comment? Did something go wonky on the site?
Dunno, boss, but lemme just say I love your dedication to the name that is sufficient to have that many vowels included in it.
Yeah!
Be creative for the fun of it!
:D
Victoria’s definitely good at making sure her feelings for John aren’t obvious.
When had a woman ever just told a man she likes him? Probably never in the history of time.
I’ve actually had it, back in the days of MSN messenger, and it was someone I worked retail with.
Twice.
A few times but then again being Deaf and living in places with deaf communities, people tend to be a bit more…. Blunt when it comes to romance or even just sexual encounters.
I mean, you remember when Nina first met Ed? She may not have explicitly said it right away, but it was very obvious.
If she is interested, this conversation is basically an exercise in “I can wait until you’re not, but only that long.
It would be nice to be the main character sometimes, although it’s probably a lot of work.
The last frame looks like a lampshade for some reason.
Love the “snuggles/struggles” wordplay. I have a bunch of different hospitals available to choose from where I live in the US, and the sticker prices on bills are also ridiculously high. Insurance brings it down somewhat, but even then it seems high (I think overhead is really expensive for hospitals).
Always love a good alliterative turn of phrase; am hoping for the best for John short and long term, regardless of if Alex, Victoria, or even just taking time to get himself squared away first.
“Thank you for choosing our services” or “Medical Tourism is a thing we pray to our dark god you don’t ever look up.”
“
We’re the only airplane that isn’t two pterodactyls carrying a log going from here to your destination.We realize you have a choice in air travel…”*snerk*
I only wish that, your idea of [only Flintstones-like, cheap airplanes, or airplanes powered only by large, flight-capable beasts], as being the only choices available to fly, were not so realistic.
:D
“It’s so funny, because it’s true!”-The Simpsons.
Have you considered posting goals on kofi and other services to see if that helps with the medical bills. I know it’s not for everyone. But some people may not read the comment section frequently and may be unaware you need glasses to help produce the comic. I don’t know if it’ll help with major issues. But maybe the community can cone together for smaller ones. Even a couple bucks goes a long way sometimes.
This is probably not very smart of me, but I figure if people don’t want to support the comic unless I’m in some kind of dire straits I deserve nothing. If I can’t provide a service worthy of support I am without value.
I think that’s a bit of a reductive way to look at it Jackie. Sometimes people are dense. It’s feasible that many people may just be unaware of the situation and presume that things are well or that others have taken care of the situation. Putting up a stretch goal is like putting up the kofi and patreon links. A small advert for those who’d be interested in giving you a hand. There are lots of reasons people could choose not to support you that don’t imply your without value. Them being ignorant to your circumstances is one of them.
You may well be right. I have a hard time altering these core beliefs when it comes to stuff like that, but I’ve softened my stances on other things before. I won’t rule it out.
Best of luck. I can understand the angle your viewing it from, I just happen to disagree with it. It’s admirable to want people to support you from a place of genuine desire, rather than a place of pity or charity. I just think it’s more that fair for you to advocate for your needs, especially on your own platform. In todays attention economy, I think it can be easy for people to forget that web comics or other services with semi free prices, do in fact cost money to create. It’s a bit old school, but I think: https://missmab.com/ has a good system by advertising a donation goal on the side of the comic. But that’s just my personal opinion. That said I wish you the best, it’s sincerely always a pleasure to see your works and speak with you.
I, for one, support the comic because I quite enjoy it. I admire your willingness to allow your readers a glimpse into your personal struggles, but you don’t ask for pity or for charity.
What would happen if you donated a dollar to every charity and cause worthy of support?
Even a wealthy misanthrope would end up broke.
And so it goes with everything where paying is optional. There is a certain psychology of crowds effect going on.
There are just too many internet dancing monkeys, and not enough dollars to stuff in their tip jars. But that doesn’t mean the best monkey gets all the dollars. Not always. Some people love to join in with overstuffing one monkeys tip jar to bursting, because seeing the monkey develop a drug addiction and have a public breakdown is very amusing. But not everyone wants to join in with that. Why donate your few dollars to someone who already has more than you?
And sure, there are lots of monkeys doing their sad little shuffle and waving their empty tin around, always doing more begging than dancing. But there are too many of them to choose from, and we have seen that act so many many times already. I suspect they get more than the monkeys who never rattle the tin, but not much.
But if a monkey never rattles his tin, or doesn’t even have a tin, of course they get nothing. We assume they don’t have any real need for our loose change.
So, the value of the monkey’s dancing is very hard to put a price on. The supply of high quality monkey-dance is very high. The real problem is finding it amongst all the low and mid quality monkey dancing, and the infinite amount of AI fake monkeys dancing away. When people find a good monkey that dances well and often, they tend to stick around and watch.
But do you donate or not? It is game theory. You don’t want the monkey to stop dancing, but you don’t want to end up paying for all the monkey feed either.
So, you know. The monkey has to say something when he is hungry or needs new dancing shoes. Then people donate a bit, the monkey starts dancing again, everybody goes back to watching. As long as this cycle doesn’t repeat too quickly, everybody is happy.
So, don’t confuse worth with value or price. Nowadays these are totally unrelated concepts. Look at all the worthless monkeys with big price tags on them.
There was a discussion recently about genre awareness – characters being aware (or, more usually, unaware) of the genre of the story they’ve landed themselves in. People in horror movies open the door you know they shouldn’t open because they don’t know they shouldn’t open, for instance, because they don’t know they’re in a horror movie.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an in-story discussion of a character being a secondary character. I mean, aren’t we all the main characters in our own lives, at least in our heads? Poor John.
The teacher who taught creative writing at my high school had us do a simple assignment as a unit introduction where we wrote a scene that took place in that class. He looked over them quick while we did a self reading, then handed them back and let us know that of the 18 of us we were all the main character in exactly one writing – we were at best supporting in the other 17 if we showed up at all. His point was that everyone has motivations, fears, etc even if they are never explored on the page: just remember that they are “real”.
But John is not referring to himself as a character – secondary or otherwise – in a comic strip. So this has nothing to do with “genre awareness”.
He is likening life to a story, and he referred to himself as “a side character in my own life” after Reggie held the spotlight in their ghost-hunting-turned-mystery-solving adventure at the old hotel.
Lmfao starts singing:
“EVERY day I’m Snugglin’, Snugglin’!”
Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, dooooo…