I was wondering where Perrson was. Seeing as how he was one of the few humans in the Hall that did not come off as a prick to the non humans and his sleeve was absent from the cover picture at the beginning of the chapter I’m not surprised.
And it would appear that Caneghem is conspiring on the side.
Or perhaps he’s merely pretending to to remain in the loop? Don’t get me wrong, Caneghem does strike me as the type to take the winning side, but I doubt he’d give Reynolds a very private warning unless he genuinely didn’t want him to be hurt in… all this conniving going on…
Me thinks he exaggerates a bit for his own peoples sake and that of his non-human allies. He smells treachery and know s if the alliance doesn’t survive it no one in it will.
Look, Oamu, if you haven’t been reading long enough to get that sometimes we want to go fast, and sometimes we want to go slow, and just fucking deal with it, then just like… stop reading?
I don’t know anymore, man. I’m open to criticism but this is throwing tomatoes on stage at this point.
If you don’t like the show, no one’s making you stay.
You have plenty of people who give you nothing but positive feedback, surely you can’t be that upset.
Previously, I tried to offer genuine criticism (rather than throwing tomatoes, as you say), but after having paragraphs of the “I thought this out carefully” stuff shadow-scrubbed without warning, I thought investing more than a few words was likely going to be a waste of effort.
Real talk: Phil and I often have discussions about plot and pacing, sometimes shall-we-say energetic ones. But I don’t think either of us would have called these pages in particular to be slow-paced. I mean, assuming you actually care about the characters involved. We’ve apparently lost three Heads of House– the first one in three pages, the second in two pages, and the last in ONE page! I can’t say much about the implications that wouldn’t constitute some kind of spoiler, but some of them should be pretty obvious.
We have readers who seem to think ALL the Arkerra stuff is just our incredibly slow way of getting to the “real” plot in Sepia World, others who think Sepia World is the needless distraction, and yet others who start to nod whenever one of the Peacemakers, or even one of the original group of five, isn’t present. It’s your comic to read how you like, but none of those definitions of “the plot” really have anything to do with our aims. We’ve built two interrelated worlds here, we’re telling their shared story, and what happens to Gastonian government is certainly a vital part of that story.
My only real objection is that the strip continues to herniate, narratively. Instead of wrapping plotlines up, you continue to park them for 3 to 6 to 18 months, while establishing new plotlines, only to park them and repeat the process.
It’s hard to “care” about a character whose significance you’ve forgotten. It’s hard to care about a conflict whose parameters get less clear as the story numbers on. And it’s hard to care when the characters you are familiar with can’t be counted on to act with agency or consistency.
You’ve registered your complaint. At this point, it is only that you lobby it again and again and again that I’m really reaching the limit of my patience of putting up with you as what I basically consider a rude house guest at this point. You’ve brought this up time and time again, and my response continues to be
We fucking disagree.
This isn’t about a net positive praise/criticism, we don’t see it in those terms. This is you, criticizing us for not writing the way you think we should do it, for actual years, over and over again, and I’m just fucking tired, Oamu. I’m just fucking tired. We are obviously not changing based just on what you say. So for the love of God, please, knock it off.
You are actually the guy at the party who won’t shut up about how the playlist “isn’t doing it for him.”
We will continue to write this comic as it pleases us. Your criticism has been noted, and as may be legitimate surprise to you, actually considered, before perhaps ultimately dismissed. I hope that the fact that I haven’t just outright deleted all of this, given that I have VERY officially established that I am now in the practice of just deleting posts I don’t like (we are under no obligation to allow any content that we don’t care for exist on our own website), is a testament to the level that I actually respect you as a reader.
Nonetheless, continuing to harp on this note will result in RetCon, simply for the fact that it’s just pissing me off. And I really don’t want to be that guy.
While I’m more likely to meet this sort of thing with a shrug, I kind of have to agree that it’s not serving anyone at this point. We could argue till the cows come home about whether aspects of the story are bugs or features, what constitutes introducing a new plot or resolving an old one. I would argue that Chapters 35 and 36 wrapped up a whole BUNCH of threads or at least moved them into new cross-stitching, for instance. The current chapter, which seems to have motivated the complaint, strikes me as part of a larger story of Gastonian politics, not an all-new story we came up with just now. And there’s really no percentage in us wrapping up too much before the end of the series, to which we’re closer than the beginning.
But the first thing I learned when interacting with the reading public is that arguing someone into liking something never really works. We can’t please everyone, and it’s far more productive for those we can’t please to look for their entertainment elsewhere.
“We’re open to criticism, except when we don’t like it, and we’ll retcon you only if you’re abusive, except when we get ‘pissed off,’ and we don’t want to do it, but we’re totally threatening to do it.”
Crystal clear. You do whatever you think is right, Phil. Maybe just ask yourself why I piss you off so bad with my relentless “every 18 months” criticisms.
Because I take exception to those who believe that they aren’t being rude simply because they’re conducting themselves with polite language.
I take exception to those who are concerned more with “how I am handling their criticism” than actually respecting that I have heard, and disagreed, and leaving it alone.
I take exception to those who are told they’re throwing tomatoes, and feel so entitled to their criticial opinion that “Well, I guess I *had* to resort to tomatoes because otherwise you won’t get to hear my super cool opinion” and not giving a flying fuck whether or not it bothers us on *any* level. Any of your previous “well thought out commentary” that has been scrubbed is more likely to be because it was attached to someone else’s post that got scrubbed, and was an unfortunate byproduct, because contrary as it may seem, I usually *appreciate* it when you, specifically speak up, because I know how thoughtful a critic you are.
But this was just heckling at this point. And before you get to “any good performer had to learn how to handle a heckler,” maybe consider that’s just justification for rude behavior.
I don’t owe you anything, Oamu, much less an explanation. I just don’t.
Maybe just ask yourself why you seem to think I have to follow literally any of your suggestions or expectations. Maybe just ask yourself why you carry such a smug sense of superiority as you conduct yourself because “Oh golly gee, look everyone, the big bad comic creator doesn’t like criticism.”
How about I literally don’t get paid enough, or at *all*, to be willing to put up with it? How about you can go aaaaaaanywhere else on the Internet and say whatever the Hell you want about us, but I reserve the right to delete anything I don’t like *on my own website*? If that gives you, too, feelings of Pyongyang, then I have nothing left to say. Comments sections aren’t public forums. I actually own this space, in a *very* capitalist manner.
So don’t *heckle* me and *expect* me to appreciate it. Sometimes I’ll think it’s funny. Sometimes I won’t. I’m not obligated to live under some imagined code of conduct that creators on the Internet must maintain to win your particular brand of respect.
So, yeah: I’ll delete and retcon for whatever reasons I see fit, thank you very much. And if you don’t like it, feel free to go read something else.
I intend to continue to try and reason with you. As I have said, you are actually a critic that I trust. But your complaints are often either the same thing as always, or made too early.
I’m sorry I have to be big Boss man about it. I would sincerely prefer to keep you around, even if I get annoyed.
Oamu does make a significant point, though. It is hard to care about a character you can’t remember. For example, I can’t remember who Persson is, what they look like, or how they relate to the story. They’re not listed in the Tags, because they’re not pictured on the page. They’re not on the cast page either.
I could click on one of the tags that are listed, in hopes of finding a page where both they and Persson are both shown, but that’s a spoiler minefield. I checked the tags once, shortly after some new Sepia World characters were introduced and I couldn’t remember which character was which, and the first thing I saw was a thumbnail of people standing over that person’s corpse. And, the date was like two or three years ago, so that person is probably really dead. :(
My suggestions:
Reverse the order of the pages shown in the Tags. Showing them first to last would be much less spoilerific, and the first pages are more likely to have people calling one another by name.
Include tags for characters who are mentioned in a significant way, not just the ones who are pictured.
Add a “Tags” link to the menu at the top of the page, taking you to a Tags page, with a clickable alphabetical list of every tag available. Also, a description of how to combine tags in the url. I think T commented on how to do that, a while back.
Update the Cast page. We don’t need a ton of information on every character, even just a thumbnail, name, race, vocation and association would help a lot. After the main characters that are already listed, you could start listing chapter numbers and the characters added in each of those chapters. That way, we could stop scrolling down, when we reach the chapter we’re currently reading, to avoid spoilers.
The most helpful thing, but also the most work, would be to add a Who’s Who section to the side of the page, with a thumbnail, name, and title for each character depicted or significantly mentioned on the page. See Grrl Power comic for an example. That’d extremely helpful to me, because I’m always getting names and faces mixed up.
Again, I love this comic. Thanks for all the hard work y’all put into it.
I don’t have a problem with the pacing, but I thought the video was funny, and his post just feels like good-natured ribbing to me. Maybe be less defensive and just let people make fun of the parts of the story that are easy to make fun of?
I’d probably agree if this was the first time Oamu brought up this issue, but it’s practically all he ever talks about, except when he actually thinks things are moving too fast and is like “Ironic coming from me, huh?” Plus, as you mentioned elsewhere, it was kind of confusing. I had to watch it for a couple of minutes just to be sure I understood the point it was meant to make.
(And that reminded me why, for all its wit, I stopped watching MST3K well before it was over. Now THERE’S a series that can take forever to make a single point– that four-minute sequence could have been condensed to about forty-five seconds without really losing a thing.)
Word of God requested: I’ve been amusing myself by pronouncing Caneghem as “can aim” for a long time, but how is it actually pronounced? “Can egg ’em”? If so, where do you put the emphasis?
It seems to me Caneghem was trying to figure out what Ardaic’s game is. The man is just too hard for the elf to read. But Iwatani is obviously evil as hell. So when he shows up, it derailed Caneghem’s attempt to get the big picture. I’m interested to see how that plays out. Ardaic can’t just walk in and ask for his help. Not with an ear at every door. And that is something Caneghem is quickly becoming aware of.
So I don’t think is going to be an anti-non human thing. I think they want to do something pretty horrible and that they first need to get those that would obviously object to it out of the way, but such a thing has nothing to do with race.
I really hope Caneghem doesn’t die. He might be curmudgeonly and irritable, but I think the Good Guys™ need a win right now. This is, of course, hoping he doesn’t suddenly turn out to be a cultist or something.
Speaking from personal experience, I rather empathize with Caneghem here. People keep thinking he’s one of “you people” when he’s serving his own interests. Not the gnomes, wood elves or anybody else. Their unity as an alliance is just a convenient fiction and he’s under no illusions that they’re all sovereign powers cooperating out of necessity, not love.
The Gastonians are patronizing about his inclusion into their society and Dean Reynolds’s friendship is desperate and unwanted. He doesn’t want to be like the gnomes and Reynolds just looks naive and even a little pathetic from his view.
I smell a conspiracy…
yep. yep. yep. yepeyepyep.
Maybe not, I don’t think Iwatani’s lips were moving.
“Mister Iwatani and the Press Conference Rag! Notice how his mouth never moves… almost.”
I was wondering where Perrson was. Seeing as how he was one of the few humans in the Hall that did not come off as a prick to the non humans and his sleeve was absent from the cover picture at the beginning of the chapter I’m not surprised.
And it would appear that Caneghem is conspiring on the side.
Or perhaps he’s merely pretending to to remain in the loop? Don’t get me wrong, Caneghem does strike me as the type to take the winning side, but I doubt he’d give Reynolds a very private warning unless he genuinely didn’t want him to be hurt in… all this conniving going on…
Who’s the next to go?
Well, there’s a human coalition so…
POLONIUM.
MARCONIUM!
I just love then the avatars line up with what people are saying!
…sorry, my avatar this chapter requires that I end everything with an exclamation mark!
Caneghem’s looking a lot taller today. Usually he looks only about six inches or so taller than Ardaic, but now it looks more like two feet.
Maybe he fluffs up when he’s angry to look bigger and taller.
It looks like it’s probably just the perspective.
He’s only about a step closer to the viewpoint.
Looks like he took some enlargement pills. You know…for his body.
Now, he’s a bigger Head.
I didn’t think it was even possible to swell his pride any more than it was.
Like Gandalf, he can assume a Great and Terrible aspect.
Is the alt text a Home Improvement quote? Because, if so, I believe the line is “I don’t think so, Tim.”
So Perrson is the only opponent to this conspiracy (or whatever it is) that has actually seen the writing on the walls.
I’m thinking he really is sick. And His Grace Iwatani was the cause of it.
Caneghem thinks us all ants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X5wqw9dM5k
Me thinks he exaggerates a bit for his own peoples sake and that of his non-human allies. He smells treachery and know s if the alliance doesn’t survive it no one in it will.
Well, I AM sure!
Sudden development of “Black Lung” ?? As in when his chest suddenly was forcefully fed ore?
Caneghem is a snob.
I was watching Kindergarten Cop and suddenly I realised Frigg is one of the funniest detectives ever. They look so similar, but maybe it’s just me?
Look, Oamu, if you haven’t been reading long enough to get that sometimes we want to go fast, and sometimes we want to go slow, and just fucking deal with it, then just like… stop reading?
I don’t know anymore, man. I’m open to criticism but this is throwing tomatoes on stage at this point.
If you don’t like the show, no one’s making you stay.
You have plenty of people who give you nothing but positive feedback, surely you can’t be that upset.
Previously, I tried to offer genuine criticism (rather than throwing tomatoes, as you say), but after having paragraphs of the “I thought this out carefully” stuff shadow-scrubbed without warning, I thought investing more than a few words was likely going to be a waste of effort.
So, tomatoes.
Real talk: Phil and I often have discussions about plot and pacing, sometimes shall-we-say energetic ones. But I don’t think either of us would have called these pages in particular to be slow-paced. I mean, assuming you actually care about the characters involved. We’ve apparently lost three Heads of House– the first one in three pages, the second in two pages, and the last in ONE page! I can’t say much about the implications that wouldn’t constitute some kind of spoiler, but some of them should be pretty obvious.
We have readers who seem to think ALL the Arkerra stuff is just our incredibly slow way of getting to the “real” plot in Sepia World, others who think Sepia World is the needless distraction, and yet others who start to nod whenever one of the Peacemakers, or even one of the original group of five, isn’t present. It’s your comic to read how you like, but none of those definitions of “the plot” really have anything to do with our aims. We’ve built two interrelated worlds here, we’re telling their shared story, and what happens to Gastonian government is certainly a vital part of that story.
Wait, I thought he was asking you to slow the plot down.
My only real objection is that the strip continues to herniate, narratively. Instead of wrapping plotlines up, you continue to park them for 3 to 6 to 18 months, while establishing new plotlines, only to park them and repeat the process.
It’s hard to “care” about a character whose significance you’ve forgotten. It’s hard to care about a conflict whose parameters get less clear as the story numbers on. And it’s hard to care when the characters you are familiar with can’t be counted on to act with agency or consistency.
How about:
You’ve registered your complaint. At this point, it is only that you lobby it again and again and again that I’m really reaching the limit of my patience of putting up with you as what I basically consider a rude house guest at this point. You’ve brought this up time and time again, and my response continues to be
We fucking disagree.
This isn’t about a net positive praise/criticism, we don’t see it in those terms. This is you, criticizing us for not writing the way you think we should do it, for actual years, over and over again, and I’m just fucking tired, Oamu. I’m just fucking tired. We are obviously not changing based just on what you say. So for the love of God, please, knock it off.
You are actually the guy at the party who won’t shut up about how the playlist “isn’t doing it for him.”
We will continue to write this comic as it pleases us. Your criticism has been noted, and as may be legitimate surprise to you, actually considered, before perhaps ultimately dismissed. I hope that the fact that I haven’t just outright deleted all of this, given that I have VERY officially established that I am now in the practice of just deleting posts I don’t like (we are under no obligation to allow any content that we don’t care for exist on our own website), is a testament to the level that I actually respect you as a reader.
Nonetheless, continuing to harp on this note will result in RetCon, simply for the fact that it’s just pissing me off. And I really don’t want to be that guy.
In short, it’s time for the “Monk” in question to take a vow of silence.
While I’m more likely to meet this sort of thing with a shrug, I kind of have to agree that it’s not serving anyone at this point. We could argue till the cows come home about whether aspects of the story are bugs or features, what constitutes introducing a new plot or resolving an old one. I would argue that Chapters 35 and 36 wrapped up a whole BUNCH of threads or at least moved them into new cross-stitching, for instance. The current chapter, which seems to have motivated the complaint, strikes me as part of a larger story of Gastonian politics, not an all-new story we came up with just now. And there’s really no percentage in us wrapping up too much before the end of the series, to which we’re closer than the beginning.
But the first thing I learned when interacting with the reading public is that arguing someone into liking something never really works. We can’t please everyone, and it’s far more productive for those we can’t please to look for their entertainment elsewhere.
“We’re open to criticism, except when we don’t like it, and we’ll retcon you only if you’re abusive, except when we get ‘pissed off,’ and we don’t want to do it, but we’re totally threatening to do it.”
Crystal clear. You do whatever you think is right, Phil. Maybe just ask yourself why I piss you off so bad with my relentless “every 18 months” criticisms.
Because I take exception to those who believe that they aren’t being rude simply because they’re conducting themselves with polite language.
I take exception to those who are concerned more with “how I am handling their criticism” than actually respecting that I have heard, and disagreed, and leaving it alone.
I take exception to those who are told they’re throwing tomatoes, and feel so entitled to their criticial opinion that “Well, I guess I *had* to resort to tomatoes because otherwise you won’t get to hear my super cool opinion” and not giving a flying fuck whether or not it bothers us on *any* level. Any of your previous “well thought out commentary” that has been scrubbed is more likely to be because it was attached to someone else’s post that got scrubbed, and was an unfortunate byproduct, because contrary as it may seem, I usually *appreciate* it when you, specifically speak up, because I know how thoughtful a critic you are.
But this was just heckling at this point. And before you get to “any good performer had to learn how to handle a heckler,” maybe consider that’s just justification for rude behavior.
I don’t owe you anything, Oamu, much less an explanation. I just don’t.
Maybe just ask yourself why you seem to think I have to follow literally any of your suggestions or expectations. Maybe just ask yourself why you carry such a smug sense of superiority as you conduct yourself because “Oh golly gee, look everyone, the big bad comic creator doesn’t like criticism.”
How about I literally don’t get paid enough, or at *all*, to be willing to put up with it? How about you can go aaaaaaanywhere else on the Internet and say whatever the Hell you want about us, but I reserve the right to delete anything I don’t like *on my own website*? If that gives you, too, feelings of Pyongyang, then I have nothing left to say. Comments sections aren’t public forums. I actually own this space, in a *very* capitalist manner.
So don’t *heckle* me and *expect* me to appreciate it. Sometimes I’ll think it’s funny. Sometimes I won’t. I’m not obligated to live under some imagined code of conduct that creators on the Internet must maintain to win your particular brand of respect.
So, yeah: I’ll delete and retcon for whatever reasons I see fit, thank you very much. And if you don’t like it, feel free to go read something else.
This is the policy. Love it or leave it.
You do whatever you think is right.
I intend to continue to try and reason with you. As I have said, you are actually a critic that I trust. But your complaints are often either the same thing as always, or made too early.
I’m sorry I have to be big Boss man about it. I would sincerely prefer to keep you around, even if I get annoyed.
First, I love this comic and all its subplots.
Oamu does make a significant point, though. It is hard to care about a character you can’t remember. For example, I can’t remember who Persson is, what they look like, or how they relate to the story. They’re not listed in the Tags, because they’re not pictured on the page. They’re not on the cast page either.
I could click on one of the tags that are listed, in hopes of finding a page where both they and Persson are both shown, but that’s a spoiler minefield. I checked the tags once, shortly after some new Sepia World characters were introduced and I couldn’t remember which character was which, and the first thing I saw was a thumbnail of people standing over that person’s corpse. And, the date was like two or three years ago, so that person is probably really dead. :(
My suggestions:
Reverse the order of the pages shown in the Tags. Showing them first to last would be much less spoilerific, and the first pages are more likely to have people calling one another by name.
Include tags for characters who are mentioned in a significant way, not just the ones who are pictured.
Add a “Tags” link to the menu at the top of the page, taking you to a Tags page, with a clickable alphabetical list of every tag available. Also, a description of how to combine tags in the url. I think T commented on how to do that, a while back.
Update the Cast page. We don’t need a ton of information on every character, even just a thumbnail, name, race, vocation and association would help a lot. After the main characters that are already listed, you could start listing chapter numbers and the characters added in each of those chapters. That way, we could stop scrolling down, when we reach the chapter we’re currently reading, to avoid spoilers.
The most helpful thing, but also the most work, would be to add a Who’s Who section to the side of the page, with a thumbnail, name, and title for each character depicted or significantly mentioned on the page. See Grrl Power comic for an example. That’d extremely helpful to me, because I’m always getting names and faces mixed up.
Again, I love this comic. Thanks for all the hard work y’all put into it.
I don’t have a problem with the pacing, but I thought the video was funny, and his post just feels like good-natured ribbing to me. Maybe be less defensive and just let people make fun of the parts of the story that are easy to make fun of?
You know what? Anyone is welcome to make fun of the comic as much as they want. Anywhere else they want.
They want to do it in my house? Yeah, I feel I get to be the one that decides whether or not it’s “fun.”
I’d probably agree if this was the first time Oamu brought up this issue, but it’s practically all he ever talks about, except when he actually thinks things are moving too fast and is like “Ironic coming from me, huh?” Plus, as you mentioned elsewhere, it was kind of confusing. I had to watch it for a couple of minutes just to be sure I understood the point it was meant to make.
(And that reminded me why, for all its wit, I stopped watching MST3K well before it was over. Now THERE’S a series that can take forever to make a single point– that four-minute sequence could have been condensed to about forty-five seconds without really losing a thing.)
Yeah, I have to agree. If you enjoy the glacial, dead horse beating pacing of MST3K while thinking we’re too slow, I really don’t know what to say.
Word of God requested: I’ve been amusing myself by pronouncing Caneghem as “can aim” for a long time, but how is it actually pronounced? “Can egg ’em”? If so, where do you put the emphasis?
I’ve been pronouncing it as “Ca(r)-neg-hem” for the longest time. Not sure if intended.
I pronounce it Khan-Egg-EM, putting emphasis on the last part.
I keep saying kun-EEG-hem.
I say “CAN-eh-ghem,” with a hard “g” and silent “h” as in “ghost.”
No, T Campbell is clearly wrong. It’s supposed to sound like CANE-again, but with an M at the end.
It seems to me Caneghem was trying to figure out what Ardaic’s game is. The man is just too hard for the elf to read. But Iwatani is obviously evil as hell. So when he shows up, it derailed Caneghem’s attempt to get the big picture. I’m interested to see how that plays out. Ardaic can’t just walk in and ask for his help. Not with an ear at every door. And that is something Caneghem is quickly becoming aware of.
So I don’t think is going to be an anti-non human thing. I think they want to do something pretty horrible and that they first need to get those that would obviously object to it out of the way, but such a thing has nothing to do with race.
He’s positively dripping with sincerity!
I really hope Caneghem doesn’t die. He might be curmudgeonly and irritable, but I think the Good Guys™ need a win right now. This is, of course, hoping he doesn’t suddenly turn out to be a cultist or something.
Speaking from personal experience, I rather empathize with Caneghem here. People keep thinking he’s one of “you people” when he’s serving his own interests. Not the gnomes, wood elves or anybody else. Their unity as an alliance is just a convenient fiction and he’s under no illusions that they’re all sovereign powers cooperating out of necessity, not love.
The Gastonians are patronizing about his inclusion into their society and Dean Reynolds’s friendship is desperate and unwanted. He doesn’t want to be like the gnomes and Reynolds just looks naive and even a little pathetic from his view.