Websnark

« December 17, 2006 - December 23, 2006 | Main | January 7, 2007 - January 13, 2007 »

January 6, 2007

Eric Burns-White: On my way....

...way down south, to pick up Weds at the airport. So this will have to do for today's post. (Really, from my point of view, the "Girls with Slingshots" snark from last night was really from today, since it was posted after midnight. On the plus side, we may have resolved the oddity that prevented posting as an East Coast blog, so my time and Websnark's may yet reconcile once more.)

I will see you all... tomorrow!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:31 PM | Comments (5)

January 5, 2007

Eric Burns-White: Interestingly, these *are* powers you can have in City of Heroes.

(From Girls with Slingshots! Click on the thumbnail for full sized Superpowers!)

I shouid really post this sometime after three in the morning, my time, so it comes up as today's post instead of yesterday's. However, we're testing some new scheduled post stuff, and I don't want to stay up that late. I'll rework the time tomorrow. Damnable Pacific Time!!!

Secondly, this is a relatively short post, but a cheerful one. I don't have anything deep to say about Danielle Corosetto's latest Girls with Slingshots. It just makes me laugh. I think in part because it's well executed, and in part because I know girls like Jamie. Girls who have it. Girls who work it. Girls who never buy... well, anything.

Hell, I used to work at Renaissance Festivals. As near as I can tell, breasts are the one universal currency accepted at all Renn Fests. I remember every so often a directive would come down that we had to tone down the sex and tone up the morbidity, so they could claim it was all "family entertainment." Which worked great for three minutes after the opening of the gate, when half naked biker babes and hot chicks in chainmail bikinis would buy tickets, walk onto the grounds, and pay for absolutely nothing through the day.

None of which has anything to do with this strip, but dagnabbit, it's fun to remember.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:14 PM | Comments (9)

Eric Burns-White: And here we go!

Here we are, and now the site is officially on Pacific Time. We will see how quickly we get comments back (it's looking hit or miss right now), but by two am on the East Coast they should be there.

Enjoy!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 9:01 PM | Comments (6)

Eric Burns-White: Because Movable Type is Weird....

...we need to match the system clock of our hosting company to the Movable Type clock to make certain things Go, all Pakled style. Which means despite the fact that Weds and I both live in the Eastern Time Zone... Websnark is moving to Pacific time. For now.

In practical terms, Movable Type is going to fall back three hours in time. Which is all fine and good, only it will then think anyone who tries to post in that three hour block after we do the reset is trying to spoof the system, and will reject the comments.

So, at 11 pm EST, we're going to reset the system so it thinks its 8 pm PST instead. No one will be able to then comment until roughly 2 am EST/11 pm PST/who the hell can figure out Mountain. Not that I figure anyone will deeply care.

In conclusion... EXCELSIOR!

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

Eric Burns-White: Of course, if Clango had just gone to Doc for his memory purge in the first place, we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?

(From Diesel Sweeties! Click on the thumbnail for full sized seven year old callbacks!)

Say what you like about Mr. R. Stevens, he is not afraid to shake up the status quo.

I made reference to this two years ago, when Clango dumped Maura after she got drunk and cheated on him. And can you honestly believe it's been two years (from last December) since Clango dumped Maura after she got drunk and cheated with him? Jesus Christ I'm getting old. But I digress. And now, we've had a significant move in the opposite direction. Indy Rock Pete took a left turn into full on evil (which will backfire on him, because Pete is too stupid not to take credit for things he should just shut up about. I predict this to be true) by destroying Clango's backup disk when Clango reset his brain to null to wipe out events that Clango's current girlfriend, Pale Suzie, found suspicious. In effect, Pete decided to kill Clango (though as Collin said, the unliving can't truly be said to die) so he could hook back up with Pale Suzie.

Absent a normal backup, Clango needs to be reconstituted from the most recent backup they have -- namely, an old backup disk that Maura had from back before they broke up. A backup disk which, if today's strip is to be believed, dates back to 2000. Which it is worth noting, is when Diesel Sweeties first began.

Got that? As of this moment, one of the leads in Diesel Sweeties has essentially been reset all the way back to the first strip. All the adventures, character development, and stuff that's happened since then is just plain gone. As far as Clango is concerned, he and Maura are still an item, he doesn't even know who Pale Suzie is, and for that matter, he doesn't know what kissing is.

It's possible that Stevens is resetting things in the strip to the point that he can synchronize situations with the new newspaper syndicated version of the Sweeties. And that's perfectly fine. It's all right to push the magic reset button if you justify it, and this particular plotline is a perfect justification. For newcomers (especially those out in the world of newsprint and paper), the situation is going to be less complicated than it would be for us. At the same time, we still have a continuity of events that makes sense and works for us.

And, as we know the web strips and the newspaper strips aren't going to be the same, we now have a rich and full and almost certainly drunk and embittered expanded cast that Stevens can play with on the web that won't need to cross back over into newspaper comic events. And that is a very good thing for both populations of readers. I only hope that the Newspaper Sweeties will be showing up on the web as well, so I can keep up with everything regardless of whether my local paper picks it up or not.

The best compliment you can give a daily comic strip is to say you can't wait to see what happens tomorrow. Diesel Sweeties is there right now, and that's monumentally cool.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 10:18 AM | Comments (14)

Wednesday Burns-White: Upgrade complete; enter when ready

Essential site maintenance was performed tonight. If all has gone properly, you should perceive nothing out of the ordinary (except possibly some extraneous entries on your RSS feed).

As we all know, nothing ever actually goes properly. Worlds collapse, goals fail, and no one loses those fifteen vanity pounds for more than like three weeks before they like pie again. Archie tries out that one thing with the new character designs, and a bunch of people who are really too damned old to care just lose it.

Also, long-overdue CMS engine upgrades have a habit of going slightly batshit.

The usual.

So, if something is actually breaking for you, we'd like to know. It's the only way we can keep things from operating in an expected fashion.

Use websnark (location identifier) gmail (full stop punctuation or decimal point) com if you prefer private communications, or comments are not working for you.

Please provide as much information about your browsing environment (browser, browser version, operating system, version of operating system, phase of moon, if you happen to be reading via feedreader/Livejournal/whatever) when offering up a feedback report, and try other browsers first if you can before making a report. The more information you can give us, the more readily and rapidly we can address a problem.

Thanks!

Posted by Wednesday Burns-White at 3:03 AM | Comments (18)

January 4, 2007

Eric Burns-White: My single favorite search query string *ever....*

...came over the statistics page yesterday:

fucking let me read some boondocks comics damn it

I can but provide.

(From the Boondocks page at goComics.)

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 5:45 PM | Comments (10)

Eric Burns-White: Eight is the Charm: the periodic City of Heroes post

It's a new year, and so it's time to talk about City of Heroes. You knew it would be coming one of these days.

I'll admit, I got very, very close to cancellation there. The game had simply stopped being fun. I felt like the people in charge were focusing on their internal vision of the game to the exclusion of the actual fanbase who were playing it. After a full development cycle for the City of Villains expansion (at this stage, one really can't call it a different game), followed by nearly a full "expansion issue (number 7, for those playing along at home) focusing on City of Villains and a staggering amount of development for a Player versus Player system that only the tiniest percentage of the player base used, this meant that many, many months had gone by with no love for the game that had brought the players to the table.

But, if people were feeling ignored, that was okay. There was also several months of "play balance adjustment" to make us feel loved. Powersets being changed to 'balance' them. "Enhancement Diversification" to force players to use the enhancements system the way the book said they should instead of the way they actually did. And, of course, arguments arguments arguments.

Things seemed pretty dark. I'll admit that. But then, a change happened -- one that would reverberate throughout Paragon City like an earthquake. Jack Emmert, Lead Designer for City of Heroes (and known as "Statesman," the top superhero of the city) got a contract to make a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game for Marvel Comics, and passed the lead designer duties over to Matt "Positron" Miller. And Matt Miller seemed to understand that his game was in trouble.

Immediately, there were shifts in how things were done. The (very) occasional events that took place in the game before (like the Halloween event of a couple years previous) were ramped back up in a clear effort to make the city seem dynamic. Information about Issue 8, a new free expansion that would heavily favor City of Heroes was seeded. And "accidents" began happening on the test server. Accidents like the upcoming crafting and auctioning systems being previewed "by accident," generating buzz through the community.

Now, maybe it's unfair to lionize Miller and demonize Emmert for these decisions. After all, events like the recent Winter event (more of which I'll discuss later) clearly took months to develop. It had to have started when Emmert was at the helm. But what Miller clearly and solidly brought to the table was an understanding of his fan base. He knew how to get very jaded fans interested, and he knew how to whet their appetites for more. In short, he understood that the war to save his game was a public relations war, which Emmert never seemed to get.

So. Now we have had Issue 8 come out and be solidly tested. We have also had both the Halloween Event and this year's Winter Event take place. The focus has been heavily on City of Heroes while still allowing the bad guys the chance to enjoy Christmas fun. And what, precisely, has taken place as a result?

Many, many good things.

Let me start with the major events. Unlike before, there were tangible benefits for participating in the events. The original Halloween Event from a couple of years back was fun, mind, but had little true, practical, enduring benefit. The major perk you could get from punching out ghosts, ghouls and oddly hot witches were badges. The badge system is designed to reward doing things or seeing things, and that's a nice enough perk, but people stopped really caring about it almost immediately, with the exception of those few badges that led to bonus powers (like the accolades). Well, this year you had the chance to earn bits of costume salvage which could then be 'turned in' for a whole new costume slot. That was a perk that was seriously worth earning, and players burned through the game getting costume pieces and setting up supergroup bases and salvage racks for putting spare costume pieces into, so that they could continue to redeem pieces for costume slots through the year.

We just had the winter event, and like other winter events it had badges and temporary powers you could earn (such as "snowball," which is just good clean fun). Unlike other winter events, it also granted new costume items to characters that they could add to their costumes permanently. One showed up just for logging in. Others could be earned. This was extremely popular, and encouraged people not only to run through trials and earn winter boots and gloves and earmuffs on all their characters, but in fact encouraged them to change their costumes into good 'winter outfits' to get into spirit of the season. Further, a whole transdimensional ski chalet was set up for heroes and villains alike to congregate in and ski down the slopes together in.

Which leads to another common theme to both the Halloween and Winter Events: task forces were set up that heroes and villains could participate in together -- true common Player versus Environment events, to unite against common foes, save time itself, and rescue the ugliest baby known to polygons. This was a blast. I did a couple of runs with a mixed group, and it was truly fun to have corruptors and masterminds fighting alongside defenders and scrappers. It felt comic-bookish, and that is nothing but a good thing.

Next, let's discuss rewards. Two different rewards became available recently. One came when one bought the City of Heroes/City of Villains Good Versus Evil pack. As a side note, if you've never played this game and you want to try it out, this is the version to buy. Period. The pack-in powers are that good. But, you can also get the in-game powers for a pittance on the PlayNC website, and they're totally worth it. Beyond some nice costume stuff (which was an important thing), there is the VIP Pass to Pocket D -- a transdimensional aperture and nightclub with exits into several city zones -- and a jump pack that gives 'flight' to low level characters. (I put it in quotes because the jump pack is more a thing that flings you though the air and speeds your travel powers up, rather than a true flight device.) The VIP pass gives you an ability to teleport from anywhere in the game into Pocket D, then emerge from one of the other points. This is a monumental perk -- one of the worst aspects of the game was the deeply boring trudge from one zone to the next to get to your missions. One of the least satisfying of all the missions was the dreaded "pizza run," where you had to cross two zones and use two different mass transit systems so you could click on a contact back in the Atlas Park zone to get your next mission. As it turns out, this is not even slightly fun, and anything that mitigates it is an unqualified good thing.

Which brings us to Veteran Rewards. Now, City of Heroes grants certain powers, costume parts and perks based on the length of time someone is a player in the game. This is a great thing -- of course, I was one of the first players of the game, so I get the rewards essentially as they're released, but that's neither here nor there. This includes strongly desired costume parts like wings or trenchcoats, permanent powers that give you more attacks, and a supergroup base teleporter which works similarly to the Pocket D teleporter.

As a side note -- Superbases have been a disappointment all along. They were designed essentially for PvP, originally -- the idea would be superteams would create bases, and then rival teams would raid them for a series of Perks and Good Things that would be passed around by whoever was... well, best at PvP, I suppose. However, the base raid system and the Item of Power system has never worked right, and as it turns out most players don't really give a damn anyway -- they want a base that gives them tangible Player vs. Environment benefit.

Well, one of the base items you can get are teleporters. And those teleporters can be aligned to the different zones when beacons are earned. Get enough teleporters and enough beacons, and you can go to any zone in the game with a click. Add that to the Veteran Reward that lets you automatically teleport to the base, and between that power and the Pocket D teleporter you can almost eliminate the aggravation of the pizza run.

Almost.

Which brings us to the big prize. Issue 8. The new content.

Wow.

Issue 8 does many new and shiny things for superheroes. First off, one of the in-game zones that had been a devastated landscape of horror and misery (called a Hazard Zone in the game's parlance) has been remade into a partially repaired landscape of horror and misery. With a donut shop. And opened as a standard zone in the game instead of a wasteland. This gives us a sense that maybe -- just maybe -- the efforts of the players to reclaim Paragon City after the Rikti War of several years ago has borne some fruit, and the city is beginning to rebuild. There are also new contacts and mission trees to be found in this rechristened Faultline -- and these missions are actively superior to the older missions in the game. The developers have learned a lot about designing fun missions that seem distinctive, and it's a blast to go ahead and run through it. There's also a greatly improved sense of storyline that runs through them.

And you get to sink submarines! How cool is that?

Sorry.

In addition to the new zone, however, there's also a sudden and pronounced renewal of police presence in the city. Patrolmen and Longbow now walk the streets and help engage the enemies. There are now precincts in every zone. Once again, we've got the idea that Paragon City is recovering from the war, and redoubling its own efforts. And hand in hand with this new police presence are Police Band Missions. Essentially, the Newspaper system of City of Villains, which let players look up missions in the paper and take a proactive approach in spreading mayhem instead of waiting for a contact to tell them to spread mayhem. Now, players can listen to the police bands and hear about crimes in progress, running to them and engaging them immediately, once again without a need to go running off to contacts.

And -- and I can't say this clearly or strongly enough -- these missions, either Police Band or new missions in Faultline -- can be done by a solo player. You don't have to be on a team to succeed.

This is major. You see, it was the stated philosophy of the developers during the Emmert era that the game was meant to be played by teams. You could solo, but it was much harder and there's stuff you just couldn't ever do. As stated above, it was a triumph of the vision for the game actually trumping what the players who played the game wanted, and it sowed discontent. Casual gamers, gamers who preferred soloing, and shy gamers were discouraged from playing the way they wanted to, and ultimately that turned into them leaving the game.

Well, now the game can be soloed. In fact, the game subtly reconfigures itself around soloing versus small team versus large team play. The ultimate enemies of mission trees are where this is most obvious -- in the old days, a lot of missions culminated in Archvillains. And Archvillains were meant to be beaten by teams. Period. When a Tanker was able to solo an archvillain, that was publicly held up by Emmert as a clear design flaw that needed to be corrected -- generally by wrapping the tanker's hands in soft foam while handing his enemies kryptonite.

Now, if you're soloing or have a small team, that Archvillain isn't an Archvillain. He's an "Elite Boss." A really tough fight, mind, but one that a solo player can win if they're smart. Elite bosses don't give as much experience as Archvillains, and Archvillains give everyone a really nice enhancement when they're beaten (which Elite Bosses do not), but it's fine to have tradeoffs like that. If I choose to solo, I should have a different experience with different rewards than the folks who exclusively play in teams of 8.

In other words, supervillains now scale.

I wish I could take credit for this -- that my essay back in 2005 lit some fires and made people change their minds -- but let's be honest. It was an obvious idea with too many obvious advantages not to simply do it, and the developers figured that out.

Finally, there's also a perk to doing Police Band missions. Do enough of them, and you get a Safeguard Mission. A major villain and a pile of mooks are robbing a bank and wreaking havoc in a section of the city. It's up to you to stop then. Beat the main villain and you get a certain amount of time to run around the zone finding sub missions and smaller side quests and pummeling evil. It's an experience point bonanza and heaps of fun, and the missions often have really cool temporary powers you can earn in them. Most particularly, the early missions have temporary travel powers, like a superjump-faking zero G pack, or a true flight harness. This means that the traditional near requirement that you tailor your character around getting a travel power as fast as possible has been lifted. It's now optional -- do it when you feel like it.

The result of Issue 8 is a much faster paced game that's eminently soloable and deeply satisfying. Heck, if you stick to Police Band Missions, you have absolutely no pizza runs, no running back to contacts to get your next mission, and all your missions are in the same zone as you are, no exceptions. That increases speed of play and the overall fun factor exponentially right there.

It's worth noting the developers have figured a lot of this out. Every contact has a cell phone. Work with them long enough and they give you their cell phone number so you don't have to run back over to them to clear the mission and collect your next one. It's really nice and a massive time saver. And all of the faultline missions (for example) allow you to get your contact's cell phone number within one or two missions, so that for most of the mission tree you have it.

Well, I have a character in the thirties now (more about this in a moment), and I'm in the Brickstown zone, where I've never spent a lot of time, so I decided to do the traditional contact run instead of the police band missions, at least to start. And these are are old missions, developed early on in the game.

And they have me running to half the other zones, going on pizza runs, and six missions in these bastards won't give me their cell phone so I have to run all the way back to Brickstown, then go see them to click them in person. I'm beginning to think they don't want me helping them out. And that's fine with me -- I got a police radio right here that'll give me missions in the same stupid zone I'm already in, pally!

It really, really highlights how much the developers have learned over the years.

Going back to the character in the thirties, and the speed of the revised game. Bear in mind, I've played this since 2004. I'm old school. And yet, during this time I never had a hero go higher than level 29. I liked playing alternates too much, and the lack of soloing options meant that I had to wait for when my friends or teammates were on and in a mood to play characters of that level to advance.

Now? I can play whenever I damn well feel like it and be successful. And so a character (admittedly, a dark/regen scrapper -- one of the best soloing options) I created since Issue 8 came out has rocketed past all my other superheroes into the 30s, and is on track to be my first L50 character. This scrapper's now within one level of my highest level character ever, a Villain Mastermind -- Masterminds practically being powerlevellers by design.

And I'm having a monumental blast. And I know that decent crafting that's worth the effort and an auction system are on the horizon, and I'm excited by them. Hell, in just a few months, City of Heroes will reach that exalted peak -- a game that's essentially as good as World of Warcraft was at launch.

But I kid, I kid....

To sum it all up, under Miller City of Heroes has made a dramatic comeback. It's not perfect -- I had a friend who went on a run with me and my regular friends in City of Villains one day who had fun, but noticed that the maps were essentially the same, and that there wasn't enough real change to catch his interest. That friend would feel the same about much of issue 8. But there's hope, now. And Miller knows Public Relations -- something the developers have needed for a long time -- and knows how to get us excited for what comes next. I can't wait for Issue 9. I can't wait for the next seasonal or holiday event. I can't wait....

And for a three year old video game, that's a very good thing indeed.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:29 PM | Comments (28)

January 3, 2007

Eric Burns-White: Strange Homes, Strange Times

(From Home on the Strange.)

There's been plenty of discussion, over on the internet byways, about Questionable Content's core premise. The debate, simply put, is whether or not Questionable Content is specifically a romantic comic strip -- and whether the core relationship between Faye and Marten is the centerpiece of the strip -- or if the comic is a more general comic about a group of people and their various relationships and oddities. As late as last year at this time I would have solidly said it was the former. These days, I'm not as sure. Still, for a good number of Questionable Content's readers (and various obsessed thanksgiving turkeys), the question remains "when are Marten and Faye going to hook up/have sex/declare everlasting love."

I'm not here to talk about Questionable Content today. I realize that might be slightly confusing, but bear with me. You see, I'm here to discuss Home on the Strange. And it's hard for me to discuss Steinmetz and Pare's strip without at least having Questionable Content come to mind. Because if the central question of Questionable Content is "when are these two going to get together," the central question of Home on the Strange seems to be "when are these two going to break up already!?"

In this case, "these two" can refer to either of the major couples in the strip. Tom and Karla are the primary couple -- theirs is the home which is apparently on the strange. Izzy and Tanner are the other. Not long ago, I read a comment by Steinmetz about how Izzy and Tanner were the "more dysfunctional couple" of the two, and I agree with that -- but it's like saying a 36' sloop is "pricier" than a powerboat. That's very true, but that doesn't mean the powerboat's cheap. And you can't exactly call either relationship a pillar of understanding and stability.

Not, I hasten to add, that there is any problem with this. Home on the Strange is a strong strip and all the characters are believable. So don't take this as your old pal Eric panning a strip he in fact loves. I'm not. This is analysis. You remember that, right? I used to do that sort of thing, once upon a time....

Let's pause for a moment and examine how the two relationships are similar. Both involve a male and a female. In both cases, the woman has taken a dominant position -- this isn't absolute, mind, but it's persistent. In both relationships, the woman is setting the tone, the rules and the agenda. When the male is setting out on a misadventure of some sort, the woman is generally being indulgent (or finds out too late to do anything about it, which leads to the argument). When the woman sets out on a misadventure, it is generally against the advice and better judgement of the male. (In fact, more often than not, it's against the better advice of Tom, who has been generally cast as the sanest and most well adjusted of the characters -- the Mary Tyler Moore to Izzy, Karla, Tanner, and the rests' Ted Baxter, Murray Slaughter, Lou Grant et al.) Both use various geek reference points as channel markers, and both are largely based on sex.

But more about sex in a bit.

Finally, both are marked by a strong desire on the part of the woman in the relationship to have the world be the way she wants it to be, while both are also marked by a strong desire on the part of the man to have the woman be happy while actually living in the real world. Which is where we get to the nub of things.

This is actually best demonstrated between Karla and Tom -- the 'less dysfunctional couple.' Karla is a woman who sees the world dogmatically. She typifies a geek trope, actually -- she believes her opinions and experiences are natural laws. When she meets Izzy -- a "fellow nerd" as she puts it -- she proceeds to "pour all her favorite fandoms into her." It's a cute, funny and very real strip. I've seen the phenomenon between geeks many times... right down to "we do not talk about season five."

Which is the nub of Karla, in a way. She loves Babylon 5, but we do not talk about Season Five. The same with Buffy. She loves Buffy. She talks about Buffy constantly.And if you haven't seen Buffy, you will see Buffy. Karla's world is the way Karla wants it, and when it isn't the way Karla wants it, there's trouble.

Which is where a lot of the conflict of the strip comes in. Karla has a new friend, and she has a lonely friend in Tanner. So she sets them up (against Tom's advice). The date goes as badly as Tom thought it would, and it looked like Izzy was on her way out of the strip. Tom manages to patch things up.

Then, Karla wants Izzy involved in Seth's roleplaying game. Now, she doesn't acknowledge all the warning signs that Izzy isn't like her when it comes to roleplaying, because Karla can't comprehend that another girl gamer might not want what she wants from roleplaying. So once again, we hit disaster -- Izzy nearly destroys the campaign. (And naturally, it's Tom who saves it. See a trend? Thought you might!)

Izzy, on the other hand, is generally more than happy to live her own life and let Tanner live his -- so long as the terms of their life together are absolutely locked down. After their disastrous first date, Izzy declared they would never have a relationship. There was no romance. Now or ever. But, of course they could have sex. Eventually, they clearly settle into a committed relationship -- only Izzy refuses to admit there is a relationship. Eventually, this becomes problematic -- Tanner wants there to be something he can point to. Izzy simply doesn't. It leads to arguments which leads to problems. Now, obviously the last panel is the evocative one there, but the most significant panel of that strip, to my mind, is the third. Tanner says "oh! So you set all the boundaries in this? I don't get a say?" The answer, unstated, is of course yes. To the point that Izzy refuses to tell Tanner she's moving to a new apartment on the chance he might want to live together.

Which brings us inexorably to sex. Obviously, the one area where Tanner and Izzy do see eye to eye is sex, right now. And it's pretty straightforward. For Karla, on the other hand, sex is power.

And more to the point... sex is currency.

In its most benign form, sex becomes a reward. Tom saves Seth's RPG campaign, despite the fact that Seth is actively trying to sleep with Karla (which Karla apparently knows, which says something). He does it because it means a lot to Karla. So Karla rewards him with hot Cosplay sex. Which is successful. In fact, it seems pretty much always successful. (Possibly because Karla is absolutely attracted to Tom's conversational skills, as opposed to his body.) Later, Karla -- having learned absolutely nothing from her experience with Izzy and roleplaying -- wants Tom to teach Branch how to roleplay. Branch is a monotoned creepy girl and Tom knows this is a desperately bad idea, but Karla sees herself in Branch (see above: Karla sees her experiences as universal) and wants to draw Branch out, the way she wishes someone had drawn Karla herself out as a teenager. Tom absolutely refuses. As he says, there are limits, and she just hit them. The way Karla gets around it? Cosplay sex. I'm reminded of the old Berkshires circuit joke: a prostitute is a woman who has sex for money. A wife is a woman who has sex for a new refrigerator.

Well. In the last couple of weeks, we've absolutely hit pinnacle point with both of these relationships and all of these relationship trends. Tom is running a play by e-mail campaign with Branch, and Branch wants to go sexual. Tom is opposed to it. He knows this is a bad idea. Karla, still embodying herself in Branch's experiences, demands he go through with it -- to the point where she takes over writing the sex scenes to live out the fantasy. Only they learn that Branch is a virgin.

Tom freaks. This is way out of his comfort zone. He refuses. He knows this is a bad idea, and when Tom knows things like this, Tom is always right. Karla, on the other hand, is still convinced that this is a safe way to bring Branch out of her shell, and she continues to see herself in Branch, so she pushes. And when Tom doesn't budge, she uses sex to entice him once more.

Okay. Two things, before we go on.

First off? We already know that Branch has become romantically... let us say interested... in Tom. Not in the game, mind. In Tom. Which means yes -- Tom is right. This is absolute dynamite and Karla's lighting the fuse while smoking in a room full of gasoline. Which is not a complaint, mind -- we the readers are waiting patiently for the Earth Shattering Kaboom.

Secondly, however... this is staggeringly creepy. Think for a moment if Tom was the girl and Karla the man. Consider a wife being pressured to consent to explicit cybersex with someone she finds creepy and clingy and problematic by a husband who sees this in terms of a fantasy and who sees himself in the potential stalker? This would not be the adorable misadventures of a geek couple in an odd world, this would be grounds for the wife's friends offering to give her a place to stay until she can get her feet under her. I'm pretty sure Lifetime's done three or four movies on this topic. Pushing your mate past their comfort zone in sexual matters is never good. Pushing your mate past their comfort zone in sexual matters with someone outside the marriage is not cool, man. It's just not cool.

Over on the other side, Izzy has learned that Tanner continues to talk to the ex girlfriend who cheated on him. Now, let me open by saying Tanner's a fucking moron. I'm sorry, but if a person cheats on you multiple times, stiffs you on large amounts of money, and actively uses you, and you give that person any opportunity to continue to screw you over, you're an example of evolution in action and should not be permitted to breed. Please let us stipulate that before we move forward.

Izzy is not reacting as a friend who is concerned. She is acting as a girlfriend who is pissed off. She is demanding that Tanner not "keep secrets" from her. And when Tanner (rightfully) points out that she moved apartments without telling him, her response is "I never fucked my apartment!" When she continues to scream at him for "going behind her back," he answers that he thought they weren't dating, and is angrily told to "stop using my own logic against me!" It's all a very clear call back to the last argument. Izzy wants to set the boundaries. She wants to be able to live her life exactly as she's comfortable with. She wants Tanner to mold into that boundary without complain. And she doesn't want him to push those boundaries or set boundaries of his own. In particular, she wants him to act as a boyfriend would, without actually letting him even talk about her to others as a girlfriend.

And then goes on to talk about how she has decided what movies they're going to watch on Christmas, because after all this is setting a tradition for next year. And the readers start thinking expletives about this woman, while Tanner quietly -- veeeeery quietly -- rebels.

So.

Like I said at the top, this strip has become an interesting contrast to Questionable Content. Both strips are entirely about relationships and interpersonal interactions. Questionable Content's conflict and tension derives from wondering just how the romantic tension between the cast members will finally, ultimately resolve. Home on the Strange, on the other hand, has developed the opposing tension. We can see that these things aren't going to end well. There are going to be explosions, on all sides. Which could lead to severe ugliness.

And that's why we like this strip. It's one thing to rubberneck at a train wreck. It's another to watch two trains very slowly head for each other on the same track.

And you will note: Tom and Tanner can both see the trains coming.

Ain't that a kick in the head?

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:29 AM | Comments (32)

January 2, 2007

Eric Burns-White: Waking up from Slumberland: The End of Narbonic

(From Narbonic.)

Endings and beginnings. Narbonic is over.

We knew it was coming, of course. Shaenon Garrity never made any secret of the fact that she had a story to tell, in many chapters, and when it was done, it was done. And now that we're on the far side of it, we can have a reckoning.

And it was amazing, in these last several weeks, to have callbacks to references none of us ever considered appear. We met a time traveling daughter we never suspected was related to the cast in her two earlier appearances. And like a lot of Narbonic fans, the moment she made a reference to those two times, I tore through the archives until I found them. We had the swimming pool get filled, the future change, Dave go mad, and most horrifying of all Mell becoming a Lawyer.

This last bit of Narbonic, entitled "Genius," was not as frenetic or insane or action packed as... well, any of the chapters that came before. And this was fitting. "Madness," the arc that preceded it, was the climax of the series. It was where the basic conflicts came to a sudden, titanic conclusion. It was the end of the saga.

"Genius," on the other hand, was denouement. The end of the story. We tied up loose ends. We saw people actually moving on with their lives. We checked in with Mell, with Artie, with Lovelace, with Madblood (back, as always, at his mother's). We saw Dave, now through the painful and violent transition into true Mad Scientist, settle into his new existence. He got work, found purpose, found (fatherly) love, and went to make things right with Helen. It was a quiet story, with few explosions and no one dying on screen.

As said, it was appropriate.

The last strip was, as we have seen every New Year's Day since the beginning, Dave in Slumberland. This has always been one of the great strengths of Narbonic. Garrity is a true student of the art and history of comic strips, and these flights into the mind of Windsor McKay's Little Nemo in Slumberland have always been note-perfect and, with the strength of hindsight, eerily predictive of what was to come. Garrity has played a subtle game, and we feel all the more amazed to see she put every piece of the puzzle right out onto the table for us to see, and even gave us occasional walkthroughs to follow. And, as with all the Dave in Slumberland strips, we are given glimpses into the future. Only this time, it's a World According to Garp/Animal House style glimpse, where we're told bits and pieces of what happens to our heroes and the supporting cast over the coming years. (One of the pictures is an explicit shout-out to Animal House, in fact.) And it seems to me that everyone more or less gets what is coming to him or her.

Narbonic is over.

I feel an odd emptiness in typing that sentence. I've made no bones that Narbonic is my favorite comic strip. It got it right. It got everything right. It was well drawn (though Garrity begs to differ. Because she is wrong. With wrongness.) with a perfect blend of Story and Funny. It had astounding pacing, from one strip to the next. And yet, each strip's individual execution was crafted and superior. Garrity knows her trade and knows her craft and Narbonic is a master class in the art of the hand drawn, four panel comic.

Which leads us into our own future. Narbonic is over, so long live Narbonic: starting on the First, Narbonic: Director's Cut began. Taking a page out of Aerie's handbook, Garrity is now republishing Narbonic from day one, seven days a week, with commentary on each strip. And the first two strips have incredible commentary, including links, callbacks, references to her pre-Narbonic work, notes on who in her real life inspired what characters... I called Narbonic a master class before -- well, now we're getting the lecture notes.

And of course, when Queen of Wands did its commentary reposting, it was going from a 2-3 day a week strip to a 7 day a week strip, so it finished up in (relatively) short order. Narbonic has been seven days a week for... well, forever. Going back to the very first week of Narbonic strips, I see six strips and a full color Sunday strip. Which means that the six and a half years of Narbonic will take six and a half years to actually process through to the end of the director's commentary. That means that Narbonic: Director's Cut will live in my daily trawl until August of 2013 -- and since that's after the Mayan end of the world where the entire universe will collapse in on itself and we'll all become Orks and shit anyway, that essentially means forever, at least from my point of view.

And that's great. That's wonderful. I'm really looking forward to it.

And of course, Garrity is still writing Smithson and Li'l Mell, not to mention freelancing over at a little company called Marvel and editing Modern Tales. She's not going anywhere. I have no reason to feel badly. There's daily Narbonic, continuing Garrity writing... what else could I want?

And of course, the answer is "the next chapter of Narbonic." I want it so badly I can taste it. Or failing that, a sequel series full of the same joy. Maybe the adventures of Artie as he moves into the (banal) real world. Maybe a coffee shop banter series starring Caliban! I mean, Hell -- Questionable Content has snarky baristas, but Faye didn't actually fall from grace into the Pit of Hell in her last job, now did she? Or maybe a tight legal drama with pistols starring....

...but it's not happening.

Narbonic is over.

For the first time since September 3, 2004, I don't have an answer to the question "what is my favorite comic strip?" The dream's over.

Time to face the day.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 11:48 AM | Comments (27)

January 1, 2007

Eric Burns-White: A new year, a new challenge

So here's the thing. It's time to get back to work.

2006 was a transitional year for me, in a lot of ways. This was the year of Wednesday, of travel, of Canada, of Modern Tales. In sports terms, this was a rebuilding year for me. For the first time in about six years, my writing output in all media was under two hundred thousand. Clearly, I needed some time off.

But that's done, now. It's 2007, and there's bills to pay and work to be done. Here and elsewhere. It's time to get back to work.

My quota, starting today (January 1, despite the fact that I'm writing this on the second) is 1,500 words a day. That can be here, or in stories, or whatever -- though I now have an aim to have something on here each and every day, whether fifteen hundred words or not. I won't count Livejournal posts to that quota, mind, unless said Livejournal post is a proper essay (which most of them aren't.)

Done properly, that will mean no less than five hundred and forty-seven thousand, five hundred words of productive work done by December 31, 2007. That's quota. That's not exceptional, that's just showing up to work. If I want to feel good about myself, I need to do better than that.

Websnark, as stated, is a part of that process. Days I miss, I'm going to try to make up. If that means I do multiple posts and officially call them "earlier days' posts" a la Milholland, then that's what it means and I won't feel guilty about it, neither. I'm also going to try to bank posts 'in advance' as I do this, to get some buffer, though some things will need to be done more quickly than that, of course. I want to have at least 365 posts at the end of the year.

Folks will also notice the Tip Jar has been reset back to Websnark, instead of Lea Hernandez. People have done some amazing things for Lea over the course of the last few months (and she announced a pretty amazing thank you as a result), and I'm leaving the post with the donation paypal button up for people who have linked to it and anyone else who wants to pitch in and help the continuing efforts to help out over there, but quite honestly things have been tight enough at Casa Websnark that I really need to at least give people the option to tip if they feel it's appropriate to tip. It's never a requirement, mind, but the option is there for folks, and I appreciate your consideration as always.

Let's do this thing.

Posted by Eric Burns-White at 12:00 AM | Comments (18)