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May 7, 2005

Wednesday Burns-White: [w] Oops.

He was sick. (Seriously. He woke up with the ook, and then he took drugs, and the drugs made him all, like... you know, with the giant fucking Q? That thing. Thirteenth fuckin' step! High, kite, teeth green. Christmas, merry. Yes.)

And I was stupid. (Seriously. Everything I've said or done or written for twelve to thirteen days? Stupid. Moronic. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't write a grocery list. I went to the store for groceries, and I bought coconuts. Coconuts and the wrong prosciutto. And oxtail soup.)

So, there is nothing. You will have to tell us about your own free comic day. Or about CAPE. Or something.

Speak.

Now.

Dude.

I said now.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 11:59 PM | Comments (23)

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May 6, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Respect Through Skill Building

I have this tendency to want to try things out for myself. I'm struggling to teach myself piano via electronic means, for example, because I like music but also because I want to understand the inside rudiments of jazz from the side of practicing it, not simply appreciating it. I won't ever be a good pianist or even a competent jazz pianist, but if I can force myself to the mindset even once, I get to carry that with me for the rest of my life. And, naturally, it will vastly improve my writing.

I've manually plotted orbits before, with graph paper and skull sweat, and triple checking -- not because I'm going to manually plot an orbit any time I write Science Fiction (trust me, I'm not -- if the story's going to be hard enough that I need an orbit, I'll use a computer and ask my various engineer and scientist friends to give me a hand), but because I wanted to be able to convincingly write a character who did compute orbits. And so on, and so forth.

On the other side of things is an ever present desire to know my subjects as well as I possibly can. For example, it's a popular pastime among many aficionados of the written word to denigrate "Harlequin Romances." (So called because there are plenty of "Romances" in the Literary Canon, and "Romantic" means something very very different to a professor than to a mass market bookstore.) I did the same, when I was younger... and then I realized two things: 1) I had my own escapist trash, so I shouldn't throw stones at someone else's, and 2) having never read a Harlequin Romance, it was difficult for me to justify my vitriol. When one simply takes the word of others that something is trash, one is indulging in theology, not criticism.

So I read one. And you know -- it wasn't that bad. Oh, it wasn't good, in the sense that well written, thoughtful literature is good. But it was a solid piece of entertainment. Plus, it blew most porn I've read out of the water. (Why didn't anyone tell me there was pornography with plots on sale at the Supermarket? My teenaged years would have been completely different!)

Well, I have many projects on my plate at the moment -- and as always I'm considering my finances. There are many places in this world where being a competent systems administrator/information technologist will get you long green, but not-for-profit secondary education ain't one of them. So, idly thinking to my self, I thought "well, hell. I can always write porn." Which then made me think "well, wait. Why not write a Romance Novel? I could do that! I'd just need an appropriate pseudonym!"

Now, this was literally idle thought -- the kind of thing that crosses my mind with all the lasting power of thinking "I ought to climb Mount Washington, this summer." In other words, there's no way in Hell I'd actually do it. But it made me think a few steps beyond, and I had a realization.

What kind of unmitigated gall would have me think I could casually write a Harlequin Romance and have it be even slightly good at what it did?

I'm serious. I've read one stinking Romance Novel, many years ago. I don't know the genre. I don't know the conventions. I don't know the limits. I don't know what's popular. I don't know the pacing. I don't know the expectations. I don't know the marketplace. I don't know what editors want or need.

I don't know anything. I just naturally assume that because I do "real writing" here or there, I could toss something at the top of the Romance Novel heap off in a weekend if I really felt like it. And that is an insult to anyone who's ever sweated over 50,000 words of bodice ripping adventure. As is that sentence, really.

So, now I'm actually tempted to write a Romance Novel. Not because I think I can do it casually, but because I don't actually know the pitfalls, and it seems to me I should.

I don't really have time, unless I decide to devote this year's National Novel Writing Month sally to it. But the idea lurks at the back of my head. I ought to thumb through some primers on the subject and at least know more. Even if I never spend one minute writing the saga of someone named Winter and the roguish Gordon Lambert she hates and yet cannot help but stare at as he passes... knowing something about the nuts and bolts of writing such things can only increase my options.

Besides, I might want to put a romance novelist character into Gossamer Commons. You never know.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 3:55 PM | Comments (27)

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Eric Burns-White: On the other hand, with them all in one place Satan just needs a ground to ground missile for total victory.

(From College Roomies from Hell. Click on the thumbnail for full sized reunion special!)

There are six characters who I consider to be the College Roomies from Hell core cast. Mike, Marsha, Dave, Margaret, Roger and April. Somewhere along the way, Campos 'promoted' Blue and Diana to main cast status (along with... well, Fluffy, but Fluffy doesn't get to be in the ad banner). But these are the six that have been at the forefront since... well... since.

And they're all in the same room. At the same time. Sitting around the same table.

They're all. In the same room. Sitting at the same table.

I don't know when the last time that happened was. I have a sneaking suspicion they haven't all been together since 2003. I mean, there was the whole plotline on the island, and Margaret going off to the woods, and the Roger thing, and the Spa Treatment thing, and April's continued descent into evil, and....

You know. Stuff.

The dynamic between the six cast members (I hesitate to call them friends) is the core of the comic. We don't need to have all of them together -- these past couple of years have been all about that dynamic -- but to get them together involves a kind of renewal.

Plus, there's now five people at that table who hate April. I'm hoping for bloodshed, myself!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:13 AM | Comments (7)

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Eric Burns-White: Does the G rated version have oreos and melba toast?

(From Suburban Jungle and the good folks at Keenspot.)

I'd say "submitted without comment" and do the whole parenthetical thing on this, but honestly, how can I? It's not an in-strip reference. And it's representative, oddly enough, of an appropriate use of Websnark.

Not that there's really an inappropriate use of Websnark, barring quoting out of context. If someone wants to print it off and line birdcages with it, that's really up to them, isn't it? Though it might be a waste of printer ink. But I digress.

I'm impressed, first off, at the Cheese Nips Robey found. That's one Hell of a biscuit tin. I'll bet they're tasty, too. And shortbread is always a good thing.

More than that, though, I'm struck by the implications. When Penny and Aggie invoked Websnark in their Previews solicitation, it stunned me. Having gone through that, I take Keenspot Newsbox references a little more in stride than I might have three months ago. Don't get me wrong, I'm psyched. I have an ego like anyone else (well, save mine is hopped up on steroids and gin), and having a kind of validation related to what we do around here makes a guy pretty happy.

The thing that strikes me the most, however, is that there's no explanation. "Recipient of tasty, tasty biscuits." "Nominated for tasty, tasty shortbread." It doesn't say "Websnark's our bitch! YEEE-HAH!" It assumes the reader already knows that.

I don't know if it's a correct assumption or not, but it struck me. John Robey, at the least, feels the biscuit thing's well known enough that they didn't need to explain it. Whoever edits these things did too. That's a pretty solid compliment to be paid, and I appreciate it greatly.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:35 AM | Comments (17)

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May 5, 2005

Eric Burns-White: This is not to say I'd play Champions under him. But then, I'm weak.

In Role Playing Game design -- and indeed in any artistic endeavor or genre of fiction or non-fiction writing -- there are those people I naturally tag as the Ellisons. The Ellisons are named, naturally, for Harlan Ellison, and represent the argumentative, cantankerous, demagogic, disruptive, dogmatic... and utterly necessary creators who simultaneously hold extremely solid opinions and have contempt with those they feel are stupid.

Ellisons can drive you insane, but they do so in entertaining ways and when you actually read their creative work, they're frequently brilliant. They shatter old ways of thinking, sometimes through sheer gall. They don't compromise. Harlan Ellison may have pissed off half of North America at one time or another, but he also wrote seminal works of Science Fiction, Horror and Contemporary Mainstream.

One of the RPG-developing-Ellisons I go back to time and again is John Wick. John Wick is a polarizer. People sometimes passionately follow him. Sometimes, they despise him, far out of proportion of anything he says. My own experiences with John Wick were when he wrote a series of articles for Pyramid Magazine called "Playing Dirty." It was, essentially, a column on how GMs could make their games vastly better by shafting the fuck out of their players. It was something of a sequel to an infamous essay on using the disadvantages in Champions to shatter player characters into tiny, tiny pieces and make them wish they'd never been born that had any number of people out for John Wick's blood.

Never, ever get RPG geeks mad at you. I say this as one. We're like comic book geeks, only when you advocate screwing the characters, it's a piece of our soul you're talking about. In a way, Wick's columns were a precursor to what DC ultimately did in Identity Crisis. (Though DC didn't do it very well. From all accounts, Wick was and is a master GM.)

Does this all sound like I dislike John Wick? No. I probably wouldn't enjoy playing under him (but then again I might), but he had an impact on me and on my style of gameplay. I respect his command of written mechanics, his ability to think outside whatever box you want to. And close to six years later, I've come to respect his Playing Dirty columns from that time for what they were, not for what the community thought they were.

John Wick has written a 27 page RPG called Discordia -- part of the current microboom of RPG design. And in honor of Discordia Day (it is 05/05/05 after all, though of course there's something more discordant about 05/23/05 in my estimation), he's giving it away.

For today, hit this link, and you'll get twenty-seven mind expanding pages of the little game that represents a lot of Chaos. Maybe you'll love it. Maybe you won't. But dude, it's free, so why the Hell not?

After all, we need to cherish our Ellisons. And when one of them gives an impromptu command performance, the least we can do is show up for it.

EDIT: The Champions article mentioned above -- which, as I said before, makes people... 'unhappy' when they read it -- was greatly enhanced (and arguably redeemed) with an article in Pyramid magazine. Subscribers can have a looksee. I've sent a reprint request over to the powers that be to see if it could be opened as free content or if I can reprint it myself. In either case, it adds some perspective that might (or, for that matter, might not) explain some of what I mean in regards to Wick and GMing.

That being said... none of this changes what a kickass RPG developer Wick is, and I still recommend snarfing the free game while it's free. I mean, dude.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 4:34 PM | Comments (52)

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Eric Burns-White: Annotations on the Day

It's Cinco de Mayo, which means little to me because I'm not much of a drinker. Oh, I drink, but last I know Cinco de Mayo wasn't set aside for pretentious doinks to stand at the end of a bar drinking single malt and complaining about the state of criticism, so I have to invoke the Penny Arcade Defense on it -- it's not for me.

It's also the Fifth of May, 2005, making today 05/05/05. Which makes me think the world is about to be destroyed, because that's three pentads. But that's neither here nor there.

It's also Webcomics Appreciation Day.

Theoretically.

You remember Webcomics Appreciation Day, I trust. For years now, the fifth of May has been set aside for cartoonists to put up special strips commemorating everything people do for webcomics and the fact that they're (generally) free and the like. It was a good idea -- an idea to help build a community spirit and a sense of pride.

Much like Americans in regards to the British elections, however, this year few if any people seem to care. I would have forgotten it myself, but it got mentioned by Get Outta My Head, writ and drawn by Anne Gibson who is also our regular commentator Kirabug, with a link to the official website.

The official 2004 website.

Maybe there was a memo sent around that I didn't get. I seem to miss a lot of memos these days. Or maybe people gradually decided that the affair was a bit... awkward, at best. I mean, it's disconcertingly like a Public Radio Pledge Drive, even if folks weren't asking for money (and often they were). In the early days, there was huge support. Over the years, User Friendly, Schlock Mercenary, Queen of Wands, Basil Flint, Kevin and Kell, College Roomies from Hell and... well, a lot of others (I want to say Sluggy, but I may be making that up) pitched in, contributing strips or newsposts or both. Even the 2004 hub site is chock full of strips -- including some of the more recognizable names out there.

In doing some research for this snark, I found the Online Comics Day (what they were calling Webcomics Awareness Day, before) discussion on their forum, asserting there would in fact be one. And... well, fourteen replies. And today... well....

So, does that mean this isn't Online Comics Day? Or Webcomics Appreciation Day? Well, of course it is. You don't lose your day just because no one actually notices it. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with taking a few minutes out of the day to think -- really think -- about what this webcomics habit means to you. I mean, I subscribe to a lot of pay stuff at this point, but of the 200-300 webcomics I currently read (I remember when I thought I was reading way too much stuff back when it was 60), 90% or more don't cost me anything but time.

That's astounding. It really is.

Of course, at this point I'm also a creator. And obviously that means I have a stake in the public perception of webcomics. So am I disturbed that this year's event essentially wasn't?

No. Because while there's still a long way to go before we're really broadly regarded artistically, we've also come a long way. We're represented in the Eisners. Megatokyo is in most bookstores, shelved with all the other manga. People are making a living. We're seeing less and less mainstream articles on "gosh! There's comic strips on the web!" and more and more tacit acknowledgment. (When online cartoonists are a sidebar of an article about cartooning in general, that shows greater penetration than articles professing to be astounded that they exist at all.)

PvP just turned 7. User Friendly is also 7. Melonpool just turned 9. Hundreds of thousands (millions? Someone ask the Penny Arcade guys) of people read online comics every single day. People make money off merchandising. People make money off advertising. People make money because they ask their readers to give it to them. Webcomics have really just begun, but they have in fact begun. They're here. Where they go and how they grow, I don't know -- but they're here right now, and they're not going anywhere.

And that's something I for one can appreciate.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:09 PM | Comments (18)

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Eric Burns-White: Keeping one's ear to the ground. (Warning, politics.)

It's a day of tremendous significance to the United States of America, of which I am a citizen in (as far as I know) good standing. A day when the entire geopolitical position we're in may be inexorably altered, with far reaching consequences in every theater of foreign policy we're involved in.

I mention this because it seems to have slipped the attention of... well, everyone. At least, everyone in America.

For those who don't know, today's the day of the General Election over in the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Unlike American elections, people vote parties instead of individuals over there (officially, I mean. We pretty clearly vote parties over here too, only we lie about it), and also unlike American elections, there is at least some slight doubt as to the configuration of the final Parliament as a result. It's possible -- albeit unlikely -- that Labour will fail to hold the House of Commons and the entire British government will change. Even if it doesn't, there's likely to be a shift in the composition both of the majority and the backbench, and there will almost certainly be an alteration of policy corresponding to that shift.

This is of course of major significance to the Britons (do we still call them Britons? I never know), as well as to the European Union. Oh, and Australia. And Eastern Europe. The Pacific Rim is also keeping a close eye on this -- especially Hong Kong, despite the lack of formal ties. And the Mid-East is keeping a very close watch on what's going on. Great Britain, after all, has been the staunchest ally the United States has in the "Coalition of the Willing" up until now. Certainly, they're the strongest power to solidly stand behind the United States in Iraq and elsewhere.

Step away from American politics for the moment and take a look at American interests overall. (Taking the old aphorism "politics stops at the water's edge" as read for a minute, even though it's no longer true.) We strongly need Great Britain's support in what we do. At a time when America's international reputation is at a low ebb, we need as visible a set of allies as we can muster, saying in a clear, certain voice that we don't stand alone -- that for all the discussion of unilateral action, we are in fact a coalition, and we do in fact have allies of significance who agree with our stance. If Great Britain pulls significant support from Iraq, our costs go significantly up alongside the risk, and we lose a tremendous amount of what authority we have left in the region.

And make no mistake -- the United Kingdom's Iraq policy will change as a result of this general election. If Labour retains Parliament, they're not likely to pull out entirely -- but it would not be a surprise if they reduced their presence and role. Certainly, to maintain a significant presence and role, the United States is going to have to give them some reasons -- some stake -- beyond what they have, so far.

Which is why I find it... interesting that so few pundits -- especially online pundits like myself -- seem to care. American Livejournal members have barely acknowledged the elections, as near as I've seen. Instead, we're seeing the highly typical American response -- if it's not happening in America, it somehow doesn't matter. (It goes without saying that a vastly higher percentage of Canadians and Mexicans know who our President is than Americans know who their chief executives are, despite our sharing the continent with them.)

It does matter, though. Those Americans who want our own policies to change should be yearning for a significant Parliamentary shift. Those Americans who want our policies to stay the course should be hoping for Parliament to remain mostly the same. There should be debate about the significance, tracking of results, hopes and fears and doomsaying. It should matter to us, because it does matter to us.

Well, it matters to me. I'm keeping an eye on the elections today. I have my own hopes on how it comes out, and my own hopes for what it will mean for American Foreign Policy, for Iraq, and for our general positioning in the Middle East. More than that, I know that it's going to have an effect, and that it's an effect I have no ability, no matter how cursory, to control.

And through it all, I remember how clearly important the American elections were to British Livejournal users and pundits, and feel just slightly embarrassed on behalf of my nation that we haven't seen fit to return the favor.

Edit: And just after I finished composing this essay, I learned that explosives went off in New York City at three thirty this morning in the same building as the U.K. Consulate. We don't know more than that at this time, or what if any impact they were intended to have. According to CNN, there were no injuries, for which I for one am grateful.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:10 AM | Comments (22)

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May 4, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Stealth Pathos

(From Count Your Sheep. Click on the thumbnail for full sized conflicted emotional response!)

So. Let's talk about execution.

Execution is the pacing of a specific strip's joke from the first to last panel. It's how the strip itself works, discrete from the rest of the strips. Lots of strips that have fantastic pacing -- the development of the strip from one day to the next -- have only adequate execution. Some rare strips have fantastic execution but the pacing is off. (Heck, while I don't think anyone thinks my own writing execution is fantastic, I'm guilty myself of putting too much into execution and not enough into pacing, over on Gossamer Commons. Hopefully the next month will show improvement on that regard. Not that it's relevant to this snark.)

Well, Count Your Sheep is gag-a-day, so pacing isn't hugely relevant. We don't typically have continuity evolving as things go on. We have a premise and then the Funny is Brought. That, of course, makes execution vital. And today's strip is an absolutely perfect example of it.

Wait, you might say, it's not all that funny. And that's true. It's clever, and makes you smile a bit, but not laugh out loud. But that's not what's being executed here.

You read the strip. And have the basic joke strike you. "You say grades are an investment into the future. Let's cash it in now!" Heh. Cute.

Then you stop and reconsider. Katie is turning her mother's platitudes around. There's a statement being made here. Heh. Neat, and a little buried. Nicely do--

HOLY CRAP! We knew the family was in trouble but they're at the point of having to pawn the television?

And then the next level of subtext hits. Katie is concerned about losing the television, because she's a child and the television is huge. But she knows that they need money. She's actually earnest in her offer, here. She doesn't personally value the grades, but she accepts they're valuable. She does value the television. It makes sense to her.

And yet, the last sentence kind of punches you in the heart. "Please don't take the TV," she says in a smaller font and ergo a smaller voice. This is an entreaty. A prayer. And you want to Paypal these people some cash. This means so much to Katie.

Now look at the perspective. We're seeing things through Laurie's eyes. Katie is looking up to us. Offering an A+ -- an A+, when Katie's been having trouble academically. (That bit I said about there not being continuity? I lied. Nyah.) She's offering up proof she worked really really hard to do something she didn't care about, but Laurie -- and we -- do. Maybe she thinks the test can be pawned and maybe she doesn't, but underneath it all, as clear as day, we're hearing a little girl saying I was very, very good. Please don't take my television away. I'm sorry. I'll be good. I SWEAR I'll be good.

It's absolutely heartbreaking. It really is. Because you know Laurie doesn't want to take the television away.

I'm told by my mother that once my older sister got sick, when she was a little, little girl. And the whole time, in fever and in pain, she promised Mom she'd be good. Promised. Because to a little girl, the grownup is the giver of pleasure and punishment, to teach you the rules. It was heartbreaking to know that you would give anything to make that sick girl feel better, but you couldn't.

The further down you go in these three panels, the more depth there is to find. I didn't mine it completely out here. I could go on. But the essential point is clear.

This strip -- this little strip with the joke you've heard before -- is executed nearly perfectly.

Adrian Ramos gets a biscuit. A tasty, tasty biscuit.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:38 PM | Comments (12)

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Eric Burns-White: Had I known this yesterday, that snark would have run today

From what I'm given to understand, Scott Kurtz's PvP, formerly known as Player Vs. Player, is seven years old today.

The first strip seems almost alien, and yet if you look at it, the underlying humor shines through.

Damn. That means I took a job at the school I work at just two and a half weeks before Scott Kurtz inaugurated PvP. Now, Scott is an Image Comics artist, known internationally, supporting himself through his work, and interviewed by National Public Radio.

I... still work at this school.

Man, now I need some scotch.

(Congrats, man.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 8:59 AM | Comments (5)

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May 3, 2005

Eric Burns-White: Is it wrong to want to celebrate by eating twelve pies? Granted, they would kill me, but....

Though I often fail, I try to avoid doing "Livejournal" style updates as to my everyday life, health et al. That's not really what Websnark's for, in as much as Websnark's "for" anything. But every so often we have a threshold event, and I figure I ought to report it because... well, I have an ego the size of Montana.

So. Folks have gathered I've done some rather... extreme things to lose weight before I... well, died.

As of this morning, those have culminated in a 150.5 lb weight loss. I figure that once you break 150, you have to call it a threshold.

I've been saying as I went along that "I've lost my niece in weight," or "I lost a high school sophomore." Or "I lost my Mother."

However, 150 deserves something cooler. Therefore... I have officially lost one ninja's worth of weight.

I'm just scared he's out there, conspiring to get revenge. Ninja don't need bones, damn it.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:58 PM | Comments (24)

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Eric Burns-White: The Evolutionary Shuffle.

(From PvP! Click on the thumbnail for full sized ZING!)

Before I launch into the latest essay on the evolution of Player v. Player, I ought to make mention of something.

Way way way back in the day, going all the way back to the first week of Websnark (yeah, a whole nine months), I posted the PvP Update Pool, a cheerful joke about how you could never be sure when in the day Scott Kurtz would update PvP. It failed to actually be funny, however, and what's more it represented an unrealistic expectation -- Kurtz essentially never missed an update. Who was I to bitch about the fact that it might not be when I wanted it to update?

This is only significant because... well, since Kurtz went to five days a week plus two sketch days, there hasn't been a day where PvP doesn't beat me up in the morning. It's now updating like clockwork. Which makes me suspect M. Kurtz either has a buffer or at the very least treats each day like a deadline, even though the strip itself posts the following morning.

Like I said, the update thing was unrealistic and silly on my part, but I still owe Kurtz an acknowledgment of his new schedule.

But that's not why I asked you here today.

Change is a frightening thing. Especially when change isn't dramatic. And if there's been a theme for PvP this year, it's "change."

Kurtz has played with theme and meta-arc before. The best example, of course, was the year that Jade and Brent were broken up. There was a plotline there, of course, but there was also a general theme at play. Who do we become when the person we love stops being the person who loves us, especially when we still love them... and see them every day. Some of the storylines in the theme were gut bustingly funny. Some were bittersweet. But all of them related back. It's like brushstrokes in a painting -- each one might be masterful or pedestrian, but it's when you step back and look at the whole painting that you value the work itself.

We're watching a different painting being constructed now. A painting of evolution. Of alteration. Of change. Brent was pushed into giving up coffee, and then thought he'd lost himself. When the bad times came, Brent tried to leap back into coffee and ended up hospitalized, and then tricked into drinking decaf. He learned who he was without the coffee. And now he's drinking smaller amounts of it again. It's not whole hog or none -- it's evolution.

Cole was confronted with the loss of his own sense of self. For years, Cole has wanted to be one of the guys while also being the cool boss. He's wanted to improve his friends (thus the Brent/coffee thing) without them actually changing. He's wanted to be the core success without becoming corporate. And then he was confronted with the stark reality of finance. He considered moving the whole operation into a building that was falling apart rather than give up his sense of who he was... but in the end, prudence won out. He merged with Powerplay. He went to work for Max, essentially. Yes, he's still in charge of PvP, but he's not the boss any more. In one sense, he really is one of the guys now. He had to grow up a little. He had to let go a little. And he did it, and PvP was saved.

But he had to take a long shower. The expression on his face was the same as Brent's expression after he gave up coffee. He had grown up a little, and that change made him sad.

Reggie came in as the office receptionist. Marcy has been made an actual writer -- putting Francis yet again in a position of competition with her. Miranda has reentered the picture, but now is more of an equal with her sister (and is once again working her wiles).

It's change. It's evolution. I fully expect Jade will have her time in the chair. And then Skull. And somehow, I'm nervous about Skull.

Today was a signpost in that storyline. Max came into the room, and Brent just said hi.

And Max couldn't handle it.

See, I've said before that Max essentially isn't a bad guy. I stick by that thesis. He doesn't know he's been the antagonist of the story. He honestly thinks these are the guys he went to college with and they're essentially cool. In a lot of ways, Max was the catalyst for change. In a precursor to all this, he took in Robbie and Jase when the pair had finally walked out/were fired by Cole. Max took them in... and forced them to clean up their act, turning them into productive workers. And reinforcing Cole's own fears for himself. (And perhaps inexorably leading to the day Max took Cole's place as the guy who keeps the ship on course.) When Reggie and Miranda appeared on the scene, Max hired them.

So, if he doesn't realize he's the antagonist, naturally he gets disturbed when... well, people react differently to him now that he's a part of the team. That's what we saw, in brief, in today's strip. Max walked in, and Brent just said hi.

And Max couldn't handle it. Perhaps it would mean realizing his 'friends' didn't actually like him before (and probably don't like him now). Perhaps it would mean evolving the same way that Max himself is catalyzing change among the PvP crew. Perhaps it's because Max himself isn't ready to evolve either in role or attitude the way the PvP gang are. But whatever it is, Max blew a whistle on it. He essentially demanded that Brent treat him the way he did before. "Insult me!" he begged, metaphorically.

And Brent did. And Max slipped back into the role he was comfortable with.

I've said before, Max isn't a bad guy. But he's also not one of the protagonists. Brent, Cole, Jade, Francis, Marcy and Skull are, and they're changing before our eyes in a way Max can't. Not yet.

And that's why this series is called "PvP" and not "Powerplay Magazine."

(And yes, I noticed Max used the word "snark." But then I notice things like that. It's what I do.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:07 AM | Comments (9)

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Eric Burns-White: When Fan Fiction is Good Fiction: Special

There is something about the words fan fiction that people react to intensely. A good number of people seem to feel that fan fiction, by definition, is uncreative. That somehow writing fiction set in someone else's world is somehow less than other writing.

Obviously, Mary Sueism, slashficcing and the like has contributed to this. As with the furry subculture, people fixate on the pornographic when they discuss it. I'm guilty of it myself, even though I know a good number of fanfiction writers. Heck, I write In Nomine fiction myself, and that's certainly fan fiction. And once upon a time I wrote Legion of Super Heroes stories... because... well, dude. It was the Legion.

But there's nothing innately wrong with fan fiction. It all comes back to the basics -- does it tell a good story. Does it build believable characters. Does it create a response in the reader. Who cares if it's in Hogwarts or elsewhere, when you're reading it?

And sometimes, you come across fan fiction that takes the trappings of fan fiction -- the familiar -- and uses them as tools to tell a very different, very unexpected, and very poignant story.

And that brings me to Special: The Genesis of Cyclops -- a novel length X-Men novel with almost no mutant powers, almost no fight scenes... and a rawness of emotion you only rarely see in any fiction.

The novel is written by "Minisinoo," which is a pseudonym (well, duh) for a woman (she says) who is a published novelist (she says). And I believe her on both counts. Special is a series of interconnected, evolutionary short stories bound into one novel (though only sort of in the novel form) that shows expert levels of character development, pacing and revelation. It's the story of a version of Scott Summers -- somewhere between the movie version (and there are photomanips of James Marsden throughout) and some of the various backstory, but taken much darker. In the Comic Book universe (at least, back when I was reading X-Men), Scott Summers had lost his parents in an airplane crash (well, not counting the Starjammers thing) and ended up in Foster Care and then hustling pool to survive. Minisinoo brings that into a modern light -- 16 year old Scott Summers is hustling to survive, but it's not pool. The story is less how the X-Men formed, and more how a young man with a desperately injured soul manages to -- mostly -- heal over the course of years. It shows the evolution of friendships and romances (and not in the directions you might expect) cast through the eyes of a survivor who's been given the world -- but can't trust it and isn't sure he deserves it.

The X-Men have always been about being different, and being outcast. Scott's journey takes that to a different level. If there were no mutant powers in this story at all, it would be almost as effective -- but Scott's powers (and the handicaps they force on someone already barely able to cope) fairly shatter his newly found equilibrium (particularly in the way they're unleashed for the first time). More than that, however, you see a man wrestling with himself, with horrors... with pain.

This is not a pretty story, in a lot of ways. There is next to no sex in it, though it does come up here and there -- and given the connotations of Scott's past, this is definitely a story for mature readers. There is homosexuality, but it's not exactly what most people think of when they think "slashfic" or "fanfic." (Indeed, the true derivation of 'slashfic' -- the pairing of two characters with a slash between their names -- wouldn't apply to Special). But it is beautifully written, and in the end I think this is a story with hope.

I'm weird, in my own way. I've always liked Cyclops the best of the X-Men anyhow. More than Wolverine or Nightcrawler or Rogue or Storm. The hero of the bunch. The leader. The man with the shotgun, to use my friend Matt's vernacular. And yet, even though the confused and abused young man of Special hasn't found those qualities in himself yet, I can see the seeds of them. No matter how much darker this work is than the comics I read, I can see the kinship. And yet, this is not a story I'd want to see in those comics. I want the X-Men, rendered in four colors, to be something any 9 year old can pick up and enjoy.

But I'm glad I read this novel.

If you don't like the X-Men, you might still like this. If you do like the X-Men, you might still like this. If you don't see the point to the X-Men without Wolverine, don't bother -- he's not in it. This is Scott's story, with a hearty helping of Jean, Warren, Hank and Charles. If you don't know those names... this still might be worth your time, to be honest. If you hate all Fanfic, you might want to give this a try anyway. There is more of Sean Stewart and J.D. Salinger in these stories than Stan Lee or Chris Claremont.

I don't know who Minisinoo is, but if I find out, I'm buying her books. But this four hundred page novel is free. And, if you can cope with the painful subject matter, it's worth at least having a look at.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 2:02 AM | Comments (19)

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May 2, 2005

Wednesday Burns-White: [w] And when we run out of plot / what will we say / na na na na / na na na hey hey

These past two weeks, we've finished up watching Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. I wish I could explain what happened in any sort of sensible way, but I'm not sure they actually bothered to write a plot. They just kind of ... killed everything and then put it back. You know. Like you do when you're fourteen.

A few points, before I try and explain the end of the world.

The six-year-old catgirl sailor senshi who comes from a plushie cat? Not generally useful in combat. I don't think we really need to get into the problems inherent in wise plushie familiars. However, I think it follows that, should your plushie familiar transform mysteriously into a child with kitty ears, tail, and other nonsexual catgirl tropes, you shouldn't let her into battle. And, if you do let her into battle, you should probably come to terms right now with it: her CGI attack sequence is going to suck.

Luna Sucre Candy. Okay? It wasn't bad enough that she couldn't do panty cartwheels with the rest of the girls (actually, it was something of a bonus); it wasn't bad enough that her transformation sequence involved her making little paw motions and going "mew!" Everyone around you is attacking with things like fire, ice, chains, and lightning? I think it's highly inadvisable to project gumballs at your opponent. If nothing else, it shows a certain discontinuity with the elemental paradigm, by which I mean die.

It is possible to reassure oneself that it is not, in fact, as bad as Chibi-Usa's transformation sequence in the Sailor Moon S movie. This does not make the idea of catgirl candy CGI energy attacks against Power Rangers rubber monsters in drag any less painful, I assure you.

When you stab yourself, be certain not to do so in the hip. Dark general Kunzite attempts suicide in order to break the curse which binds him to Queen Beryl. Or something. Dude picks up his sword from an evil altar in the woods, unsheaths it, and WAAAAARGH, stabs himself in the hip. Or possibly the cloak. We're not sure. Petals started coming out, and so we were rather convinced that he'd somehow persuaded his spleen to escape from his nominal surface wound. Then, suddenly, an episode later, he was walking around later as though nothing had happened. It was nice of them to give that dead man another chance and all, but then dark general Jadeite had to go and stab him for real in the back. Goddamn, was that ever boring, not to mention pointless, what with the world ending and all.

It was pretty dumb for people to stick around by that point, so it was a good job that several other characters were smart enough to get out. We lost another general, Zoicite, through stupid sideswitching tricks (before he died, he managed to mime bad piano-playing and trigger auditory hallucinations in his counterparts, then have a nice long witter at Usagi about his master).

And we lost Sailor Venus in a very, very special episode of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.

Arrange to meet your tragic, nonspecific demise shortly before the final boss battle. Minako Aino, idol singer and Sailor Venus, has plot cancer. In the plot. Her elegant coughs and swoons, lacking even the merest hint of Moulin Rouge blood spatter, explain absolutely nothing at all about her condition. She's fine, she's great, she's happy, aw, hell, she's dying again.

Minako is merry and sweet in her professional life, but she seems a bit underwhelmed by it. So, because it's not like she's got a lot of hobbies these days, she goes out and becomes utterly committed to her past life as a warrior. Since she's dying, she figures that she might as well make certain Princess Serenity doesn't take everyone out with her selfish, abject despair. So she makes a great show of shedding her civilian identity, quitting idolhood after her second album. Only... oops! She can't transform! And then... oops! She decides to go and have the surgery after all, having discovered her true self! And... oops! Dead! Right before the final battle!

Shucks!

Also, her plush cat had just confessed undying love to her. That's a great time to die, especially when it hasn't yet demonstrated its ability to transform into, uh... Tuxedo Candy-Throwing Scary Catboy or whatever.

To her credit, Minako at least died properly: without any detail, offscreen, possibly not even during the surgery she got in order to completely fail to save her life.

Which is more than we can say for Kuroki Mio, the girl for whom the gob never stops. She wasn't smart enough to die in a useful fashion; instead, she stuck around, antagonizing Usagi, halfarsedly abducting Mamoru/Endymion, and lounging around on a brass canopy bed. When the time came for Endymion to stick the forces of ultimate evil inside himself, effectively becoming the final boss, she didn't get out. No, she stuck around, kidnapped Usagi (signing Usagi's little brother's stomach on the way out. He's like eight? Ew?), and tried to stage some kind of useless and redundant duel.

Instead, she got whacked by the ultimate evil. And, by whacked, I pretty much mean that she got up off the ground, jogged around a bit while waving her arms, and whined, "Saaaaaaaaaave me, Sailor Moon!" Then the ultimate evil waved a sword around and she got vaporised. Very unsatisfying.

Stupid ultimate evil. Didn't even have the common courtesy to, you know, cleave her in two or anything. I swear. I wonder why I bother. There's just not enough apocalyptic cleavage on these Japanese girl-sentai shows anymore.

Speaking of which: Beryl! Beryl tried to make the show all morally ambiguous and stuff, but mostly succeeded in getting crushed by a big rock. After Sailor Moon had gone and stabbed the ultimate evil to death, killing Endymion in the process Beryl popped out of nowhere and explained that, well, you know, Princess Serenity? Serenity sucks. Keeps Endymion out of Beryl's arms over two successive lifetimes, destroys the world and the moon once, causes a bunch of selfish destruction the second time around, and now she's gone and killed Endymion just to prevent the ultimate evil from taking over the world. So. Serenity? Evil. Also, brat.

Okay.

Serenity responds to this by exclaiming, "What? Endymion's dead? Shit." And so she makes the world end. Which, as you know, is the standard response to getting flamed by hot dominatrices.

The end of the world is actually pretty disappointing. Serenity just sorta ambulates away, leaving a horde of flunkies for the three remaining useful sailor guardians to fight off (they even get random powerup weapons in the process, which seems pretty pointless, since there's very little time left to market them). And then the guardians completely fail to take her out (there's a lot of them lying on the ground being soiled, which is kind of irritating). And then everything just... stops.

It stops with a lot of montage and white screen, of course. But it stops.

Whoosh.

Then, uh... commercial.

After commercial, the world's still gone. Endymion and Serenity go off into the desert (you know, the desert that naturally shows up after there's no more world to have a desert on), kiss under an archway, make the world come back, and die in some sort of euphemism for marriage and lovemaking. (I assume they're dead, anyhow, because they're lying in the sand, hand in hand, looking pretty ensconsed there.) And their earthly selves get sent back to earth to have lives. Possibly lives which start before the series starts, or possibly lives with amnesia. We're unclear on this.

And Minako comes back to life without any cancer.

You know, I'm thinking Minako got the most out of this arrangement.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 9:26 PM | Comments (7)

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Wednesday Burns-White: [w] The Saddest Thing

weds: "Lie-Bot, what is the saddest thing?"
  "Your most recent blog entry, Phillippe."
eric: Yeah, what is the *deal* with Phillippe lately?
weds: I have no idea. He is becoming increasingly fragile.

My command of stuffed otter child psychology is fairly limited. That said, I'm worried about Achewood's Phillippe. Ever since his bid for the American Presidency fell flat, the stars have turned even harder against him. I don't think he's going to come out well in the long run if this keeps up.

His living situation is already precarious. I'm not sure what his mother is thinking, housing him with such as Lyle; is it because, having no father available, she believes such as Lyle to be a suitable replacement? Chris is clearly now quite distracted. Teodor is arguably too forthright and, simultaneously, insufficently communicative. And it's not like Cornelius hears him out when something goes wrong.

(Then again, I've never entirely been sure what she's thinking. Her involvement with his life is restricted largely to phone calls and bizarre presents. The presents are everything from self-consciously affirming to dumbfoundingly outre. One wonders if, before she left him with these odd examples of male role models, she would read him M. Scott Peck before bed.)

I worry for little Phillippe. Everything, lately, seems to end up with him in tears. He didn't mean to put lubricant on food. He didn't mean to find Teodor's Fleshlight while making the bed. He didn't mean to make Click Bot jump up and brand him with obscenity. He did not mean to get in Trouble. And he really, really thought he was doing the right thing when he charted Baby Onstad's gas emission patterns. Phillippe only means to help. And, lately, he's just running and sobbing, sobbing and running, and occasionally ashamed of himself into the bargain.

And speaking to himself, not like a kid, but like a support group leader.

I'm starting to wonder if Phillippe will turn out like Pat, rather than the terse, plump gamer we caught a glimpse of once. It seems like the logical thing to happen: strangely traumatised once too many times, rejected again and again by Ultra Peanut, embittered by failure, the self-consciously affirmations by which he parents himself will collapse in upon him. Some day, Phillippe will be dragged into the street by the shards of a demonic banjo, and a squirrel will vomit upon him. And, in his happy place, he will talk to Moby about the pistachio nuts in his Walk-Around Butt.

And Moby will chase him out of the paper store.

Then again, I know nothing of stuffed cartoon otter child psychology. No one ever tells me anything.

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 11:32 AM | Comments (1)

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May 1, 2005

Eric Burns-White: I'm now trying to concentrate my way into twelve fingers on each hand. I am OCTOPUS MAN!

(From Butternut Squash. Click on the thumbnail for full sized evolution in action.)

It was inevitable that I would snark Butternut Squash. Beyond the fact that... well, it's a good comic strip, Ram¤n P»rez is the artist. P»rez, a few years back, also did the frontspiece illustration for my first major RPG publication. And if he ever wants to sell the original of that Alaemon piece, I want first shot at it.

But I digress.

The thing I like in today's strip is the metareference. Yeah, I know -- it's well known I don't like most metahumor. I think it's generally forced -- meant to be cute.

But the idea that three fingered cartoon characters just need to apply themselves, that Mickey Mouse is just a slacker who didn't want to be four fingered makes me giggle.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:27 AM | Comments (12)