OK. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I hate this comic. It's getting a lot of lukewarm response from a lot of people who should know better, and I really just have to put a stop to that. This is terrible.
This is "What if Pop Culture Thing A and Completely Unrelated Pop Culture Thing B were combined in some way? What would it look like?" It's basically like comic 575. This is the author saying, "I can combine things and imagine the results!" But this one is even lamer than that, because the result is so stupid. Yes, the dude from Rain Man was obsessive about counting things. So hey, he knows the answer to Dirty Harry's question! HA. He likes to count, get it?
No attempt to explain how the situation occurred, no further result than this one conversation, nothing else. This was just thinking of how one character would act in one scene of another movie, and calling it a day. That's just dumb. Super, super dumb.
Also, the alt text: "Sci-fi has energy weapons because otherwise the people like me who watch it get distracted counting shots." Ugh. "people like me" = "look at me, I'm a quirky dude who likes to be a tiny little bit obsessive sometimes, do you do that to? Let's pretend this is actually a big deal and we are somehow autistic, and people will love us or at least be nice to us."
=============
update: Commenter Bilbo, below, comes up with a great twist for this comic - instead of Rain Man, have The Count from Sesame Street. This is so much funnier. For one thing, the level of counting (all the way up to six!) is far more suited to the Count, who is, as we all remember from childhood, mostly interested in slowly counting up to fairly low numbers. But more than that, we all know that I love humor by contrast, and the contrast between two characters from Serious Movies For Grown Ups is far less amusing than a contrast between Character from a Serious Movie for Grown Ups and a muppet character from a Less Serious TV Show For Kids.
god, bilbo, that was a great idea. i am still laughing, in my mind.
This is "What if Pop Culture Thing A and Completely Unrelated Pop Culture Thing B were combined in some way? What would it look like?" It's basically like comic 575. This is the author saying, "I can combine things and imagine the results!" But this one is even lamer than that, because the result is so stupid. Yes, the dude from Rain Man was obsessive about counting things. So hey, he knows the answer to Dirty Harry's question! HA. He likes to count, get it?
No attempt to explain how the situation occurred, no further result than this one conversation, nothing else. This was just thinking of how one character would act in one scene of another movie, and calling it a day. That's just dumb. Super, super dumb.
Also, the alt text: "Sci-fi has energy weapons because otherwise the people like me who watch it get distracted counting shots." Ugh. "people like me" = "look at me, I'm a quirky dude who likes to be a tiny little bit obsessive sometimes, do you do that to? Let's pretend this is actually a big deal and we are somehow autistic, and people will love us or at least be nice to us."
=============
update: Commenter Bilbo, below, comes up with a great twist for this comic - instead of Rain Man, have The Count from Sesame Street. This is so much funnier. For one thing, the level of counting (all the way up to six!) is far more suited to the Count, who is, as we all remember from childhood, mostly interested in slowly counting up to fairly low numbers. But more than that, we all know that I love humor by contrast, and the contrast between two characters from Serious Movies For Grown Ups is far less amusing than a contrast between Character from a Serious Movie for Grown Ups and a muppet character from a Less Serious TV Show For Kids.
god, bilbo, that was a great idea. i am still laughing, in my mind.
I chuckled at the comic, mainly because the plain stick-figures meant I went into the joke blind, plus the combo of movie characters made me laugh. Simple as that.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think the alt-text is exactly the sort of wankery you call it out to be, and I doubt Randall and I could watch movies together in a group. For reference: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1371#comic
This comic really puts the 'idiot' in 'idiot savant'
ReplyDeleteDoes this "Rain Man" character rob banks?
ReplyDeleteI mentioned it in the other post but having an impecable ability to count bullets doesn't mean anything if you don't know what the capacity of the gun is, that would mean you would also have to know the model of the gun the character was using (and like I said, Harry could've just mindfucked the poor guy into thinking he'd shot 6 shots when it would be irrelevant if he had an 8 shooter but who the fuck cares about that, right?)
ReplyDeleteIn short, Ravlov is doing a "I can count bullets while watching a movie, do you people do it too?!" to which I respond "Hey Ravy, how many bullets are in an M9 (or a Beretta 92F, same gun)?" so he can count as many as he wants but if he doesn't know that the clip size is 15 then his counting game kinda goes tits up
Protip for Randall: if you saw somebody appear through a magical glowing hole in your wall, the first thing you would say is not "holy crap, a portal". Here are some pieces of dialogue that may be more accurate:
ReplyDelete- "oh god what is this"
- [i](stunned silence)[/i]
- "That's awesome!"
- "Hey, that's pretty cool. Say, can I do you without a condom?"
- "holy fucking shit on balls shit shit fuck"
(last line is dependant on age, drunkenness and whether you are poore or not)
whoops I screwed up the italics, how unfortunate
ReplyDeleteOk so xkcd sucks because it can't withstand extreme scrutiny or doesn't contain award winning humor in every comic?Sometimes xkcd kills me, sometimes I just smile and sometimes it just meh.But to make a blog about it...spoiled as a kid much?
ReplyDeleteI don't know, I can believe "holy crap, a portal" from a sufficiently young child. It's not great, but I can forgive it in this case.
ReplyDeleteI think this joke was otherwise set up decently, and I'm fine with "what if we take this common movie plot to its logical conclusions beyond the story's end" but the punchline wasn't well-executed. The alt-text seemed like he was channelling Penn Gillette.
"Ok so xkcd sucks because it can't withstand extreme scrutiny or doesn't contain award winning humor in every comic?Sometimes xkcd kills me, sometimes I just smile and sometimes it just meh.But to make a blog about it...spoiled as a kid much?"
ReplyDeleteHow do you not get the incredible irony that you're doing a post xkcd sucks, and therefore you are subject to the "I'm rubber and you're glue" argument?
Hey Don, I'm not surprised you like xkcd, because you probably also enjoy rape.
ReplyDeleteI always have a problem in movies where a teenage kid who practices with a sword for a few hours is somehow a better swordsman than grown men who have probably been training their entire lives. Yeah yeah, I know, it's fantasy, but still...it bugs me.
ReplyDeleteWhy can't the guy know it happened and remember it fondly but still refrain from telling others because he knows they won't believe him? Digory from the Narnia books did just fine with it.
Believe me, I've been as exasperated as anyone by recent xkcd output, but I laughed at this comic.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny. That's all I ever wanted. I never cared about it making sense.
"Why can't the guy know it happened and remember it fondly but still refrain from telling others because he knows they won't believe him?"
ReplyDeleteBecause he's SMART, and SMART people have PROBLEMS, they're not SHALLOW like those NON-SMART people who can just act NORMAL. SMART people want to be SCIENTISTS, like RANDALL, and they THINK about THINGS.
Geez, why is it so hard for people to be as SMART as RANDALL?
Before you ASK, I actually ENJOY talking like a CHARACTER from BENEATH A STEEL SKY.
turn into a jet!
ReplyDeleteI adore those mindfucks where you end up with no conclusive evidence that the whole thing was not a schizophrenic delusion, though. By the way, did anyone watch Life on Mars? That actually had the hero escape into fantasy after recognizing it as such.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, about 692, what silly rock paper scissors logic. It's almost like a pokemon battle:
Suddenly, wild DIRTY HARRY appears! Go, RAIN MAN!
RAIN MAN uses AUTISM. RAIN MAN's COUNTING has greatly increased!
DIRTY HARRY uses 5 OR 6 BULLETS. No effect!
RAIN MAN uses MONOLOGUE. It's super effective! DIRTY HARRY takes 87 damage. DIRTY HARRY has fainted!
Oh? RAIN MAN is evolving... RAIN MAN has evolved into JOHN NASH!
Wait, what was I talking about?
I was going to be a scientist, but that seems silly now. Magical worlds exist. I've learned a huge truth about our place in the universe. I'm supposed to care about college? I mean, FUCK.
ReplyDeleteIs it just me, or is the alt text just a bunch of stream of conciousness writing he added right before uploading?
"Why can't the guy know it happened and remember it fondly but still refrain from telling others because he knows they won't believe him?"
ReplyDeleteThis. This exactly. It's not like his afternoon is gonna be, "Hey, dude, you know what didn't happen to me this morning? I didn't go through a portal into another world. What about you?" "damn damn damn damn damn"
"Oh, but it don't have to be realistic!" But the comic is about contrasting fantasy with reality. You can't make funny from contrasting fantasy with more unique fantasy.
I did quite like the Harry one though. Simple joke, I laughed. Or smiled. Or something.
The new one was somewhat amusing.
ReplyDeleteI liked the Dirty Harry one.
They both suck.
ReplyDeleteThe Dirty Harry one was pretty funny because Blahblah Author's Name put the text at the bottom, for once. He actually made what the humor industry might call a "punchline" by setting up a confusing situation and then explaining it in a quick and snappy style.
ReplyDeleteThe fantasy world one had potential but then Blahblah Author's Name got his dumb all over it.
I'm gonna step up in defense of Monday's comic because, well, I can.
ReplyDeleteThis has been the first xkcd I've liked in a very long time. Why? Because it had a legitimate joke in it. It's not alienating, like so, so many of his comics are. It doesn't try to make Randall look special, or a particular 1/100th of the audience feel special (unless Randall believes he has actually been teleported to a magical land - hey, you never know), or do anything other than attempt a joke.
And it works: it's a deconstruction of fantasy stories where a young child is whisked away to a magical land. I can bet you anything that there is an entry on TVTropes for this kind of plot, but I'm too damn lazy to look it up.
Also, Randall's typically horrific dialogue actually works here because it's a deconstruction. The characters sound bizarre and hollow (ex: panel 4) but that's okay because it's supposed to be sarcastic. I have no problem with "Holy crap, a portal!" for example because the comic's about parodying bad writing. Intentional or no, it still works.
A joke. That's all I could ever expect from a webcomic, and that's what xkcd has finally delivered for the first time in a long time. All of Carl's nitpickings would be invalid if xkcd actually managed to be funny, because that's all I could possibly care about.
So in order to like it you have to make a lot of excuses for it.
ReplyDeleteWell, whatever works for you!
So in order to like it you have to make a lot of excuses for it. Well, whatever works for you!
ReplyDeleteI'm not excusing it, just explaining why I liked it by pre-emptively addressing common arguments about xkcd in general. I'm not excusing the bad writing - just explaining how it works to his advantage in this context. My main point is, I liked it because it wasn't alienating, something xkcd often is as a way of making a small percentage of the audience feel "special".
captcha: randliyze (something like that). Verb: 1. To make something suck.
"No attempt to explain how the situation occurred, no further result than this one conversation"
ReplyDeleteWhy would he need to explain the situation? Isn't the point of one-panel comics precisely that "this one conversation" is the joke?
"This is the author saying, "I can combine things and imagine the results!"", "This was just thinking of how one character would act in one scene of another movie"
Well of course! I know you mean (and I agree) that the combination was easy to come up; that the situation he imagined was not clever, and thus, it sucked. But "This was just thinking what would happen if [situation] happened" is something that could be said of practically any comic ever (the difference would be the level of "thinking").
Comic 693 was OK. The punchline was too wordy, and I never really felt this way about any fantasy books I read as a child (maybe it's just me, but in every one I read, there was always someone else in the "real" world they could talk to about the "fantasy" world) but the joke was funny. Still, it could have been better. I was annoyed at the lack of consistency. At first, the boy is fine with everything that happens, but then in the last panel he starts pointing out the holes in the narrative. It would have been better if he had been skeptical and unwilling to suspend disbelief from the beginning. Randall has the ability to use as many panels as he wants and I was disappointed he did not exercise that ability.
ReplyDelete[Scene 1]
Boy: What is that? It could be a portal, another phenomenon, or a hallucination. Perhaps I should get someone else to take a look.
[Princess appears from the portal]
Princess: Come with me!
Boy: Why should I believe you? For all I know, you're a malicious spirit who--
[Princess pulls boy into the portal]
[Scene 2, castle]
King: We need you to save our kingdom!
Boy: It's highly unlikely that a 12-year old could save your kingdom. Anyway, don't you have children in your universe?
Princess: Just shut up and do it, OK?
[Scene 3]
King: Well, now it's time to say goodbye.
Boy: Now that I've had time to think about it, this has been rather convenient. The odds are that in your universe, life might be silicon based and the food would be poisonous to me. Or your planet could have had a methane atmosphere. It's highly unlikely that a parallel universe would resemble earth in every way but with a lower level of technology. Also, the mechanisms of your magical spells seem inconsistent. For example....
[The princess pushes him into the portal back home].
[Scene 4]
[As per the comic, but less wordy].
Oh, and the part about the ring was completely superfluous. It could have been removed without any consequence at all.
It's believable that the kid could've been swept up in all the action / no longer wanting to be a loser anymore, and it was only upon reflection that he realized how much life was gonna suck.
ReplyDeletePunchline was wordy, but at least it was there.
You make a good point about the punchline, but your rewrite just makes everything else more wordy. Besides, pointing out holes the entire way through prevents the final panel from packing as much punch as it does.
The punchline could stand improvement, but I still managed to appreciate it. Somehow.
I think you could get away without expicitly stating the punchline - something like in the first panel, the kid is happily sitting playing video games. Then he goes to the refrigerator for a snack, opens it, and finds the portal. The princess comes out and wisks him away, he does his world-saving thing, and they return him home. He goes back to the couch, starts to play his game again, pauses, and drops the controls, and lets out a sigh, bored with his previous life, as entertaining as he found it before.
ReplyDeleteI think something like that gets the point across without him having to say anything at all... I think it's a better spin on the situation than the notion that he has to keep the secret to himself or appear crazy.
also, why is it, "...knowing that everyone I love thinks I'm crazy"? Why not just, "...knowing that everyone thinks I'm crazy"? Thinking someone is crazy that believes they travelled to a fantasy universe has little to do with love, and it just makes it less believeable that a kid would ever say something like that.
Latest comic was really good, pacing was actually done well for once. And I kept thinking back to the Chronicles of Narnia the whole time. I've always wondered how being adults for all those years, then suddenly reverting back to children, would affect them socially and psychologically. At the very least, I'd expect them to be completely unable to fit in with their peers anymore, or something...
ReplyDeleteAr-Pharazôn, your comment is full of win. That made my day :)
ReplyDeleteOh, well, I'm glad it did. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, you guys, look what word I made up with the Doc's help: Randalize, it's what happens to wiki articles of things mentioned in xkcd! Get it? It's like vandalize, but with Randall's name, because it's hos fans who do it!
L.O.L.! (That means Laugh Out Loud, and you should!)
Randalize is the perfect word for that. Well done, all.
ReplyDeleteI still don't understand where the joke for 693 went to. If it's that "OMG NO ONE HAS EVER THOUGHT ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF FANTASY WORLDS BEFORE", I call bullshit. It's been part of every story I ever read as a child.
ReplyDeleteI guess Randall's a little too concerned with counting shots to pay attention to the stories?
anon 7:08 - wow you just nailed why i didn't laugh at 693 but at the same time didn't really feel it was just a bad joke.
ReplyDeleteit's because...well, i read fantasy books as a kid. i know the story scenario randy's toying with here. and he's trying to work as a joke what authors like CS Lewis wrote into their books anyway. there is literally NO joke here. there's not even a spinoff idea that's trying to be a joke. what we see in the comic is what actually happens in a whole bunch of fantasy kid's books. the only difference is that the comic has an eyebrows-raised eagerly-anticipating-laughter face, and the kid's books don't.
there is NO joke here.
or, randy's basically said the equivalent of "hey wouldn't it be funny if the couple from a romantic film like The Graduate actually weren't made for each other and split not long after the film ended HAHAHA!?"
y'see what i mean? that's exactly what's implied to happen in The Graduate there is NO joke here.
one last time:
there is NO joke here.
re-reading that, i feel anon 7:08 deserves bigger props for their insight that gave me my rant.
ReplyDeletethanx yo <3
@Anon 4:23:
ReplyDelete"And I kept thinking back to the Chronicles of Narnia the whole time. I've always wondered how being adults for all those years, then suddenly reverting back to children, would affect them socially and psychologically."
Uh, if you read the books after LWW you'd realize that they talk exactly about all that stuff you just said...The Chronicles of Narnia is more than just that one book y'know.
Other than that Keep has basically summed things up better than I ever could.
@Nate, I never noticed any discussion about them reverting back to children.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the other books have different characters in for the most part.
The other books DO have different characters mostly, but there's only two out of the six books where the Pevensie children don't appear (although one of them hardly counts, since A Horse and His Boy takes place while they're still adults during their first visit).
ReplyDeleteThey talk about the change from adults back to kids at the beginning and a bit during Prince Caspian, and while my favorite in the series I don't know if it's mentioned or not in Voyage of the Dawn Treader (it might not be though). It is mentioned during The Last Battle though, especially regarding Susan.
If he had used The Count from Sesame Street I would have been more amused.
ReplyDeleteWhew! There certainly are a lot of dullards commenting about the wrong comic strip here.
ReplyDeleteI now see the target audience for this website ... barely conscious sophomores.
Assuming anon 5:46 is an XKCD fan you just exemplified what it is to be an XKCD fan: oblivious.
ReplyDeleteWell I generally don't agree with most of the comments on this blog (specifically when people attempt to "improve" the comic by writing their own script LEONARD I'M LOOKING AT YOU)...
ReplyDeleteBilbo... I laughed out loud at the thought of using the Count.
But, let's be honest. It's hard to stick-figurify the Count and actual drawing is haaaaarrrrrd.
The rewritten scripts are nearly always awful. We all know Randy's writing sucks, but recognizing writing that sucks doesn't suddenly make one a good writer. Stuff like "It's highly unlikely that a 12 year old could save your kingdom" is exactly the kind of horrible dialog and smart-alecy stuff we dislike in XKCD itself.
ReplyDelete"Whew! There certainly are a lot of dullards commenting about the wrong comic strip here.
ReplyDeleteI now see the target audience for this website ... barely conscious sophomores."
Dry those tears, man. DRY THOSE TEARS!
The rewritten scripts do quite often suck, but you don't go to comment threads with the expectation that every single post is going to be insightful and hilarious anyhow. Every so often someone comes up with an amusing idea that makes the thread worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteI liked this comic, anyway. Yeah, you can find faults if you analyse it hard enough, and it's not like "hey people will think I'm mad if I tell them" is even remotely original - Narnia addressed this, as mentioned, and the Thomas Covenant series was powered by the protagonist himself believing the fantasy world to be a hallucination the whole time he was in it - but still amusing.
The alt-text is irritating, though. I can understand going to school and stuff being a let-down afterwards, but why is science not worth studying if magic exists? Has science not also given the world lots of cool and amazing stuff to provoke people's sense of wonder? Do the Hubble pictures lose their grandeur once you've seen a unicorn shoot rainbows out of its rear end? Annoying.
I'm pretty sure dullardry is what we're best at here.
ReplyDeleteInnit?
It's the old "if something happens that science can't explain, science is invalidated" philosophy. Closely related to the God of the gaps theory; this one, however, holds that there are no gaps, and that science can explain everything.
ReplyDeleteWhile the God of the Gaps is killed by closing those gaps with science, the "science is all" theory dies when you expose a gap. It has to be something the adherent soundly believes to be impossible and something that would be inexplicable in terms of science; if they didn't immediately re-explain it (much as the God of the Gaps merely shrinks every time a gap is closed) as being a scientific phenomenon, it would make sense that they would abandon their interest in science. The core of their faith rests on the idea that science is the only thing which is necessary to explain anything. Once that's shattered, they lose their faith in the very idea of science. If it can't explain fat unicorns eating rainbows, how can it explain planetary motion?
"The rewritten scripts are nearly always awful. We all know Randy's writing sucks, but recognizing writing that sucks doesn't suddenly make one a good writer. Stuff like "It's highly unlikely that a 12 year old could save your kingdom" is exactly the kind of horrible dialog and smart-alecy stuff we dislike in XKCD itself."
ReplyDeleteYou're missing the point. The dialog is supposed to be smart-alecy. Instead of going through the entire fantasy journey the normal way and then becoming suddenly cynical in the last panel, it would be better if the characterization was consistent (which is something Randall has a hard time with unless the characterization is "I like bakeries"). If the boy constantly complains about the implausibility of the events happening to him, the entire trope of the fantasy world improving the child is subverted: the protagonist remains as cynical and unhappy as when he started. Furthermore, it is also a dig at people who always complain about the plausibility of the movies they are watching (the same kind of people who count the number of bullets fired in action movies...sound familiar?), failing to get into the spirit of the adventure.
Of course, it's possible that I'm only managing to polish a turd. Perhaps I should just be grateful that there are 1.5 panels without any of Randall's dialog in them (the small one counts as .5) and that he did a relatively good job with the art (nice use of hats to characterize archetypes--a welcome improvement after 692).
I have a philosophy of humor: jokes should either be short and to the point, or, if they are longer, contain mini-jokes along the way, leading up to the funniest joke of all (the punchline). Since this comic involves an epic journey, it's going to be relatively long (if not in number of panels, then in number of words and details). I attempted to at least add humor to the preceding panels in the form of friction between the boy and the fantasy people. Randall did not, instead burdening us with inane details (WHAT is the point of the ring?!?) before handing over the punchline.
But Rob,
ReplyDelete"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
Portals to other worlds do not invalidate the scientific method just because they exist, if the model can't explain something, the model just needs to be improved.
Also this: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1763#comic
And This: http://i.imgur.com/hrFkp.jpg
(I also like the dirty harry comic, though it could be improved with the use of The Count.)
Capn,
ReplyDeleteI am not saying this is a good theory. I am just saying it is the theory Randy is using.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/2010/01/the_best_webcomic_its_time_to.html
ReplyDeleteHey look, XKCD is winning. Fuck.
Looks like "Least I Could Do" is winning.
ReplyDeleteAs far as XKCD being rated so highly there are a few reasons:
More people are probably familiar with XKCD than most of the other comics on there due to the zealots that show it off at every opportunity.
It is placed at the bottom of the list. Anything at the bottom will automatically get votes.
Anyway, winning a popularity contest amongst the keen readers of the washington post is truly a great honor, i'm sure.
That's a really crappy poll. It doesn't even have Dinosaur Comics or TfD on it.
ReplyDeleteWhen I checked, the comic in the lead was something called "Least I Could Do". I read a few of the strips and they were even worse than late-period XKCD (maybe even worse than newspaper comics?).
Oh man, I just looked up "Least I could do" on wikipedia. It's about the sexually promiscuous adventures of the protagonist, Rayne Summers. Oh, and the author of the comic is Ryan Sohmer. It sounds like a distillation of all the bad parts of XKCD, but without any of the endearing humor that made me start reading it in the first place.
Perhaps there are worse things than XKCD winning a dumb internet poll.
What's TfD?
ReplyDeleteToothpaste for Dinner.
ReplyDeleteAh. :|
ReplyDeleteThe LICD guys have promoted that poll through their twitter accounts and the site header.
ReplyDeleteI don't know which is a worse outcome... xkcd winning or licd winning.
licd would completely invalidate the contest, but I don't want to live in a world where it's been voted the 'best webcomic'.
xkcd... It is shite, the guy spends fifteen minutes a week on each comic, sometimes a little more (his job.) It is at the level of a fifteen year old's class doodles. And if it wins, everyone will celebrate that "Xkcd has been officially voted the best webcomic of all time!)
I think the others would have to link the site and get their other webcomic guys to do the same to even have a chance of winning.
Whoever wins, we lose.
Penny-Arcade just linked to it earlier. I'd be surprised if they don't ultimately win.
ReplyDeleteOh good. A comic that actually deserves to win, and has been around throughout the decade.
ReplyDeleteThe worst part is that this might have been funny back when Rainman first came out, just like the "I'll build you an amp that goes to 12" may have been funny when Spinal Tap first came out. But hopelessly behing the times, I read this and hear Clara Peller shouting, "Where's the joke?!"
ReplyDeletePBF is not wiping the floor. people are stoopid.
ReplyDeletebut i would have no problem with that competition if it was called "the most-fanboyed webcomic of the decade". titles are stoopid.
Bilbo: YES. brilliant. I am adding that to the post.
ReplyDeleteRight now: Penny Arcade is at 24%, LicD is 20%, xkcd is 18%, and my favorite of the bunch, PBF, in a distant 4th at 7%.
Seeing Hark A Vagrant / Kate Beaton on that list weirds me out. Most of the others - the ones I am familiar with, that is - strike me as generally immature, silly, very guy-centered comics. Kate Beaton is like the one adult in the room. She deserves better than to be compared to those.
It's the old "if something happens that science can't explain, science is invalidated" philosophy...
ReplyDeleteThat makes sense! Well, your explanation makes sense. The thing you explain makes no sense at all, and makes the alt-text even dumber. The only people I ever heard of who think science would be invalidated by magic or the supernatural are the people who think magic and the supernatural don't exist anyway - so this kid's stay in magicland has had the effect of making him think like a hardcore positivist or something.
Also what Capn said. If the kid cannot say, "maybe there is a rational explanation for the portals and maybe the magic!" or "why should study of this world's laws be worthless just because other worlds have different laws?" then he is just not trying.
I don't know. I think Kate Beaton's comics are crappily drawn and most of the comedy comes down to "Ha this historical figure says fuck."
ReplyDeleteNot that I don't think swearing is funny, of course.
I think that the way she draws characters makes them wonderfully expressive. read this and tell me it isn't awesome: link woo
ReplyDelete"I don't know. I think Kate Beaton's comics are crappily drawn and most of the comedy comes down to "Ha this historical figure says fuck."
ReplyDeleteNot that I don't think swearing is funny, of course."
Agreed. For now.
You know Fred, Kate doesn't swear that often and when she does, it just means she's using our language in exchange for words that would have been used in the same scenario in the time period, hell for her latest she actually said she doesn't like using lots of swears in her comics, it's just that the Mystery-Solving Teens swear a lot (like teenagers in real life? I dunno)
ReplyDeleteWhoa, whoa... Carl. No love for Girl Genius, Questionable Content or Order of the Stick?
ReplyDeleteWhile silly, yes (GG is about mad scientists and OotS is based on tabletop RPGs) they're seriously good- well written, good pacing, distinct characters and personalities and-- your favorite-- actual art.
Well, okay, OotS isn't really GREAT art but... it's better than stick figures?
I liked QC for a while but ultimately it's sitcom humour in comic form, and stuff like Friends is even less funny without actors.
ReplyDeleteQuestionable Content is god awful. As scottmctony said its basically a horrible sitcom.
ReplyDeleteCourse, calling something a "sitcom" is predicated upon the fact that it has comedy. QC does not.
Haven't really checked out girl genius or order of the stick.
Girl Genius, Questionable Content or Order of the Stick all make me sick to my stomach and then I puke.
ReplyDeletecaptcha: dessist. I want those three to cease and dessist making crappy comics.
What's so awful about OotS?
ReplyDeleteToday's xkcd, on the other hand: blecherous. "Ha ha you use Windows what a fool"
I don't get it. "Haha OLD THINGS ARE OLD."
ReplyDelete[?]
I predict that Carl will analyze the new comic in the worst possible light. I'm just prescient like that. Don't all congratulate me at once.
ReplyDeleteIt will be analyzed in the worst possible light because it is just another stupid pun comic. RETROVIRUS, haha, OLD THINGS, haha.
ReplyDeleteCarl: it's not awesome.
ReplyDeleteReally, I don't get the appeal. The 'punchline', for lack of a better word, sucks, and the drawings look like the kind of drawings someone would do for the high school newspaper because they think they can draw.
Expressiveness, granted. But everything else about it screams "I can't draw but THAT'S MY STYLE!" to me.
Girl Genius is ok once you get past the offputting art and the creepy fetish vibes.
ReplyDeleteI like Order of the Stick. It's not the best thing in the world as some fans would have you believe, but it's pretty good.
Questionable Content is the worst. I know he's improved at his art, but it still looks like shit.
New comic: horrible, but at least the alt-text was unexpectedly self-deprecating compared to his usual "everything that's not Linux is inferior" fare.
ReplyDeletehttp://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=55819#p1984598
ReplyDeleteHahaha, this guy. Hits you with second hand embarrasment right from the "a REAL operating system" line. He even does the 'm$' thing in a subsequent post.
^What Fred said first. I did like the alt-text because it made a pretty funny contrast to the comic itself. Funnily enough by being pretty funny it was also a contrast to the comic itself.
ReplyDelete"What's so awful about OotS?"
ReplyDeleteEverything.
Oh, that explains it. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteHas a way with words, does Mr. Lostman.
ReplyDeleteI agree! He MUTILATES them!
ReplyDeleteWhy, each aborted proto-thought of his is by itself an abomination unto the Mother tongue! A total and utter butchery of an innocent language!
Myself and several of my colleagues (fellow philologists) would agree to my statements without question or pause.
Even his continued existence is yet further proof that THERE! IS! NO! GOD, As every brainfart of his is so retardedly insipid that I have been forced to conclude him the "honour" of being the gayest troll in all human history.
Anti-congratulations you mouthbreathing neckbeard.
-William Monty Hughes
IQ 224
"Cogito Ergo Sum"
Alternative post:
ReplyDelete"Has a way with words, does Mr. Lostman."
In that he commits sodomy to their sacred rears without permission? That, is not charisma. That, is RAPE.
Yes, I said it. "Mr." Lostman is a rapist. A rapist who hates "Xkcd."
Coincidence???*
Good day.
-William Monty Hughes
IQ 224
"Cogito Ergo Sum"
*Whether it is or not is an exercise for the reader.
Let me get this straight... this is a "Character From Movie A Meets Character From Movie B" comic, and one of your complaints is: "No attempt to explain how the situation occurred, no further result than this one conversation, nothing else. This was just thinking of how one character would act in one scene of another movie, and calling it a day."
ReplyDeleteIf you made this demand of ANY other comic but xkcd, the same people who are agreeing with you here would rightly be calling you someone with no sense of humor whatsoever.
(oh, and I think if there were an explanation, you would be bashing the comic by saying, "We don't need to know how they got there, it would work better as a single panel." You will twist any comic around until you find some excuse to insult it, just like you always do)
If you link to another comic that has done this, I can tell you if I think it avoids the problems I see here, or if I think it also sucks.
ReplyDelete