Comics 898 and 899: Cuddlefish! It's You And Me, You Know I'm Just Pandering

[Satanic hell-bird "Ravenzomg" threatened to kill me if I didn't post this guest review. -Ed.]

Hello, this is Raven "I need a real career-path/date/academic-field" Zomg of Ravenzomg fame, here with a dual review of XKCDs 898 and 899 so that comic 900 can have its own special! Let's get ready to be disappointed/confused/aroused, everybody!

For ease of reference:
XKCd #898

Title: Chain of Command. Tooltip: You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! Haha, just fucking with you--you WISH the original was that good instead of a faulty trainwreck of logic that just stops for no apparent reason (other than that it makes Randall's life easier/punchier (and the fact that trainwrecks are generally stopped (but this is a metaphorical trainwreck as well as a pun on the expression "train of thought" that went awry, so stfu))).

XKCD#899:
Title: Number Line. Tooltip: The Wikipedia page "List of Numbers" opens with "This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it."

Comment 1: At least Randall is admitting that this latest abortion was born of Wikipedian seeds. We've all suspected it, and here it is. The proof. But this doesn't feel remotely fulfilling. It's like having your party lose an election spectacularly, and then afterward admit to making some poor decisions. You've already been crushed by the poor show, and the post-failure admittance is little more than a cherry on top of the ruins of our democratic civilization.

{Interlude in which Raven wonders how obvious the country/political party which were lived in/voted for are}

Comment 2: #898 is nothing more than that arrogant "but really, it's scientists/engineers/mathematics/the academics (except the "Liberal" "Arts" "People" of course) who control the world, amirite or amirite?", met with a raucous round of one handed applause and cries of "Goomh, I was just telling my friend that we physics students are actually the ones who'll shape the world, but then our 5-minute break was over and we had to go back to serving customers at the Lard Grease 'n Fat Hut or Tony would've totally fired us".

{Interlude in which Raven admits to being poor/poorly employed enough to have lived a whole week off of discounted/expired baked goods}


Comment 3: #899 is nothing more than a short list of cute written references. The "graphic" element is a line and a hazy bubble. That's it.

Now, he has a bl(a)og, which is a place where words go with a few graphics. He also has a webcomic.

I want to hate #899 for being basically empty of content, largely non-sensical and not in an entertaining way, and entirely sourced by the cross product of Wikipedia and Randall's "imagination".

{Interlude in which Raven admits to thinking 899 was "okay". 898 was the arrogant/meaningless shit that is dragging the scientific academia down due to a sense of "entitlement" that is not inherited but earned by virtue of that combination of brilliance, passion, and determination that make the great scientists great.. But no, apparently by virtue of being accepted to a series of programs that accept the upper 35% of the population is enough to qualify you as "better than the filthy Plebs". It's bullshit, and if you want to actually be better than the common man, then you should actually go and prove your brilliance beyond an acceptance letter! Why don't I go do that? Well I'm not a science student -- I minored in math, and my major's in the social sciences. I have zero obligation to be a productive member of society, yessss.}

Comment 4: 899 was okay. Honestly, it's not great, but it's not awful. Passing marks! Why? Because this is the sort of lame joke you and a group of friends scribble between pages, and in a way this comic is terrifically true to the original XKCD spirit of "things from Randall's sketchbook". No, they weren't all diamonds, but this sort of crass and foolish creation (even given that it is a Wikipedian infection) is the sort of thing that is geeky and universally so.

{Interlude in which Raven admits to being awful as a geek, and awful as a human being in general}

Comment 5: Words. Fuckin' words everywhere. Going back to Comment 3, I present to you a graph of "word density" for the past 10 or so comics. Put simply, it measures how much space is taken up by words. The Y Axis is measured in "words per 10 Kpel" for you monstrous pedants. I didn't count numbers as words for some reason, which I honestly forget.



{Interlude in which Raven declares the necessity of going outside and interacting with real people}

Comment 6: The peak there is the abominable comic about female role models in science. Now then, just to quickly remind you: This is a blog post. There are words. That is what a blog is about. If this were a webcomic, I'd be FAILING. We're dealing with densities even above the "Subnormality" level this past month, really.

Say then, why don't we do a comparison to two other webcomics. I was going to list several Subnormality comics, but after reading the latest and counting well over 800 words I said "fuck you, Rob", so instead I did a series from a webcomic that I believe is doing it correct:



{Interlude in which Raven points out that MS Paint is an awful medium for saving image files}

Comment 7: Optipess is notable as a comic that is beautifully transcendent of culture pointedly because the wordcount is quite often "<1", or numbering in the single digits when we get asinine enough to count labels or unspoken words, and when words are used it's almost universally "efficient", in that the page is never bogged down with unnecessary text. Anyways, enough fan-writing from me, let's leave it to you fine monstrous caricatures of human beings:

Compare this with this. Tell me which one engages you more, and which one makes you simply think about closing the tab and pretending you know what I'm talking about.

{Exitlude in which Raven gestures at the graph again for emphasis}