Guesticus, you are beginning to make all of us here at Team Guilded Age feel very uncomfortable. Please: enough with the calling for violence on people, fictional or otherwise.
This is the third time we have brought this to your attention, and the last time we will ask politely.
There’s no problem with commenting about how much you dislike a character. Sure, it might break our hearts a little, but that’s an honest opinion.
Calls for violence upon characters get us a little tetchy, though. Maybe another time of the year, it would be fine. But lately, there’s been so much unwarranted violence and calls for action and people getting really out of hand on other corners of the world, both meat and cyber space.
So, y’know, these days? This week? Not a really good time.
I seem to be in the minority, but personally, I think you guys are being oversensitive. There’s a BIG difference between real violence and hoping a character in a webcomic gets bumped off (or a crayon stuck up their nose, for that matter.) Of course it sucks when people react negatively to one’s creations, but come on…crayons up the nose? How does anyone take such a silly comment even remotely seriously?
Heh, I could’ve sworn you stopped reading all the way back in Chapter 9.
Maybe we are being oversensitive, and there is clearly a difference between real violence and hoping a character gets killed. But I would say the bottom line is that we previously stated we don’t like what we’re seeing, and it continues.
We are focusing on the pattern that we’re seeing, not this individual comment. Again, maybe we are being oversensitive, and I will readily admit that Guesticus’ comments are not really being responded to in a way that would be proper chronologically (it’s hard keeping up with the timestamps sometimes). But y’know, we reserve the right to say “This kind of commenting is not OK with us.”
As for how does anyone take such a silly comment seriously? Well, I guess I would counter-ask why does someone have to use violence to express dislike?
Weighing in on comment matters such as this is never easy or simple, it’s always complicated. Still, this is what we feel is right in this case.
All we are asking is to cut it with the whole wishing violence on people you don’t like, fictional or otherwise. It’s just not cool right now.
Holy shit, you actually remember me? Out of hundreds of commenters? After FOUR YEARS?! O_O
Yeah, I did stop reading for a while after the “it’s all a computer game” reveal (which I still think should have been done much sooner,) but I came back after a few months. I’ve just been fairly quiet, partly because I felt a little bad for calling the storyline stupid and storming out in the first place. (Sorry about that. )
Anyway, it’s your comic and you have the right to make any comments policy you want, but think of it this way: If Frigg were a reader and a character got on her nerves, do you think she’d have any qualms about wishing they’d die? I think she’d make Guesticus’s comments look like something out of Sunday school, and you guys have written her as one of the main heroes. (Granted, this analogy is flawed since Frigg also kills people.)
Also: It’s not cool RIGHT NOW? So it is cool sometimes, but not when you happen to be upset about violence IRL? I mean, I’m sad about Robin Williams and that guy who got shot in Missouri too, but my moral code hasn’t changed.
In any case, I appreciate that you took the time to respond intelligently to my post, even though we disagree. If more people did that, the world would be a better place.
Yeah, I remember you because of how passionately you commented, how unique your avatar is, and how violently you quit reading, haha. No hard feelings of course, thanks for giving us another chance!
I wouldn’t say my “moral code has changed” because of current events but I do believe in the appropriateness of temporary moratoriums and the like? I dunno, I don’t see morality and ethics as some kind of permanent code that doesn’t change, I think there’s wiggle room and flexibility that are influenced by outside, often temporary conditions.
Like a DM would, I guess.
I, too, am glad we can have this discourse in disagreement!
And Guesticus, I’m also sorry for how much undue attention this is all bringing on you. However, if you used a real e-mail address to comment with, we could’ve handled it privately!
Meh, he probably would have ignored you privately too. I’d let it go if I were you–but then, if I were you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Incidentally, the same guy said something truly assholish a few strips back that y’all ignored entirely. (SotiAsshat, if you’re reading this, you can take any complaints about ‘y’all’ and stick ’em where the sun don’t shine.)
Annnnd now I’m wondering WTF I said that was so memorable. o_O
Thanks for the compliment on my avatar. After New Art Guy (I already knew three Johns and he said it was fine to call him that as long as I capitalized it) ignored my mostly facetious request for a custom avatar, I went and made one on…uh…some site I forget. It’s pretty much what I look like IRL, except now my hair is longer.
I like your avatar too, except for the fact that “I Am The Walrus” starts playing in my head every time I see it. ;)
As for moral codes, if you have to change yours when encountered with new events, that just means you didn’t quite get it right the first time. Staying open to that possibility should be part of any Good person’s code, whether they be Lawful, Chaotic, or Don’t Give a Frigg.
This discussion is straying away from the comic now, but you seem like a really interesting guy, so feel free to email me at my real email address that I didn’t know you could see until you mentioned Guesticus giving a fake one.
ARGH. I did NOT write that stupid walrus remark. My friend thought it would be funny to stick that in there while I was out of the room and I didn’t even notice. >_<
So let me get this straight:
You just did something I have complained about… and having done so, you recalled that I complained about it, thought of me, AND thought to address me because of it… in the midst of a completely unrelated conversation almost halfway down the page by this stage.
*Smug grin*
Clearly I made an impression.
And don’t worry… the sun doesn’t shine anywhere I go.
it’s hard to log a 15 hour day or be at the centre of every campaign when your character has been sucked into another dimension. I’m sure Best’s stats look the strangest of them all.
I kind of figured that Shanna already knew about the Five the Five, and Xan was now telling her about the non-embedded players that teamed up with them (Bandit’s crew) and are now so deeply involved that they’re actually screwing up HR’s calculations.
My bad. It now seems obvious that he’s just revealing that the people in the Bubble are actually playing the game. How could she not know have figured that out by now? That it’s all been about the game? What was her working theory, if not that?
He’s certainly going to make another appearance before the story ends, if only to reveal his fate, just because ‘he disappeared into a mystery hole, and nobody knows where he ended up’ is so damnably vague.
Well the one on the left struck me as a Skitter graph which is a retired program to visualize the logical topology of the Internet by graphing IPs, autonomous systems etc. One could imagine it is being used to visualize some of the networks players connect from here.
Only when the RoA world intersected mainly…like the tubes are always in color. I seem to remember another screenshot before, and little things like H.R.’s tie. Probably to suggest the influence of magic.
Now, now. This isn’t a witch hunt, or a blame game, or anything like that.
Our comments section has one rule: Don’t be a dick.
If you’re upsetting your fellow commenters (or us) significantly, we ask you to stop. If you don’t stop, we will ban. We have never had to ban before, as people have been very graciously accommodating to our singular rule, so I’m likewise hoping we all just agree to play nice and make terrible puns and whatnot.
There was one case in GA history where someone came to the comments literally only to shit on the comic and the other commenters, so I marked that user as spam from the get-go with no discussion on the matter (seriously, they were just going through the archives page by page at that point).
Will just say this about the matter: only saying that about Xan because he is a fictional character, in a webic in which characters die, in and out of the ‘game’
Oh, and if you feel the need to ban me, that will be fine, won’t stop me from reading (just have a real problem with anyone, fictional or non, who believe they are better than everyone else, and aren’t afraid to show, can’t stand Dr. Shelly Cooper for the same reason), only made up the email so could comment on “Girly” years ago and haven’t had an active email account since 2008 (still need to do something about that, one day)
I thought the rule was basically “Be righteous to one another”?
Did it change?
I mean the difference is all-important here… on account of the characters not technically being people in the full sense, and thus not intuitively subject to the rule of decency.
But of course, I only ask for clarity’s sake.
I know for a fact that Rule 0 is in full force: The rules are whatever the boss says they are… and you’re the boss (or one of them, at least).
Well, she’s doing a great job of making me like her less and less. “Nerdkid”? Really? Coming from a bird-nosed reporter in love with her own legacy that’s very hurtful.
I don’t think he’s pretentious, just cautious. What he said two pages ago was a test for Shanna as we now know so there’s no point holding it against him.
I was referring to the door buzzer. As Shanna correctly points out, asking if she’s with the government is a dumb pointless question because if she was, what is she going to do? Say yes? What’s more, if she is, what precisely is he going to do about it? Nothing.
So it’s less cautious, because it fails at actually achieving anything, and more being overly fond of the fact that you have a door buzzer you can coyly bullshit around with.
Hmm, well, on the left we have an obvious talent tree that has an awful lot of pips checked. Top right… list of skills and the points allotted to each (possibly along some chronology), possibly. Bottom right, I’d guess an overly vague representation of Stat point distribution.
She just talked to Mrs. Ackerton on the previous page, yet she doesn’t stop to say, “Hey! One of those is Mrs. Ackerton’s daughter!” Surely she must’ve seen a picture of the daughter at some point. Unless that whole phone call was a ruse.
If you promise to find someone’s daughter, it helps to know what she looks like.
Or, maybe she has a reason to hold back the fact that she recognizes the photo.
I dunno. I guess I’m just saying that I would’ve blurted out that I knew who it was. But, maybe that’s because I’m not a seasoned investigative reporter.
Xan. Xan.
No average person is going to learn any thing from that. Quit bein’ a nerd.
“Would you like me to use crayons?” – Xan
“Only if you let me see how far up your nose it can go!”
Guesticus, you are beginning to make all of us here at Team Guilded Age feel very uncomfortable. Please: enough with the calling for violence on people, fictional or otherwise.
This is the third time we have brought this to your attention, and the last time we will ask politely.
Just to be sure: I didn’t really mean this whole pitchfork thing.
He did it again lower down the comments list. D:
That is not the same thing.
There’s no problem with commenting about how much you dislike a character. Sure, it might break our hearts a little, but that’s an honest opinion.
Calls for violence upon characters get us a little tetchy, though. Maybe another time of the year, it would be fine. But lately, there’s been so much unwarranted violence and calls for action and people getting really out of hand on other corners of the world, both meat and cyber space.
So, y’know, these days? This week? Not a really good time.
I seem to be in the minority, but personally, I think you guys are being oversensitive. There’s a BIG difference between real violence and hoping a character in a webcomic gets bumped off (or a crayon stuck up their nose, for that matter.) Of course it sucks when people react negatively to one’s creations, but come on…crayons up the nose? How does anyone take such a silly comment even remotely seriously?
Heh, I could’ve sworn you stopped reading all the way back in Chapter 9.
Maybe we are being oversensitive, and there is clearly a difference between real violence and hoping a character gets killed. But I would say the bottom line is that we previously stated we don’t like what we’re seeing, and it continues.
See: http://guildedage.net/comic/chapter-33-page-12/#comment-574696
Also: http://guildedage.net/comic/chapter-33-page-11/#comment-572878
We are focusing on the pattern that we’re seeing, not this individual comment. Again, maybe we are being oversensitive, and I will readily admit that Guesticus’ comments are not really being responded to in a way that would be proper chronologically (it’s hard keeping up with the timestamps sometimes). But y’know, we reserve the right to say “This kind of commenting is not OK with us.”
As for how does anyone take such a silly comment seriously? Well, I guess I would counter-ask why does someone have to use violence to express dislike?
Weighing in on comment matters such as this is never easy or simple, it’s always complicated. Still, this is what we feel is right in this case.
All we are asking is to cut it with the whole wishing violence on people you don’t like, fictional or otherwise. It’s just not cool right now.
Holy shit, you actually remember me? Out of hundreds of commenters? After FOUR YEARS?! O_O
Yeah, I did stop reading for a while after the “it’s all a computer game” reveal (which I still think should have been done much sooner,) but I came back after a few months. I’ve just been fairly quiet, partly because I felt a little bad for calling the storyline stupid and storming out in the first place. (Sorry about that. )
Anyway, it’s your comic and you have the right to make any comments policy you want, but think of it this way: If Frigg were a reader and a character got on her nerves, do you think she’d have any qualms about wishing they’d die? I think she’d make Guesticus’s comments look like something out of Sunday school, and you guys have written her as one of the main heroes. (Granted, this analogy is flawed since Frigg also kills people.)
Also: It’s not cool RIGHT NOW? So it is cool sometimes, but not when you happen to be upset about violence IRL? I mean, I’m sad about Robin Williams and that guy who got shot in Missouri too, but my moral code hasn’t changed.
In any case, I appreciate that you took the time to respond intelligently to my post, even though we disagree. If more people did that, the world would be a better place.
Your moral code doesn’t change with the color of the leaves? This is the internet!
It’s a silly moral line to draw, but moreover, it maybe shouldn’t be drawn in nosecrayon.
Yeah, I remember you because of how passionately you commented, how unique your avatar is, and how violently you quit reading, haha. No hard feelings of course, thanks for giving us another chance!
I wouldn’t say my “moral code has changed” because of current events but I do believe in the appropriateness of temporary moratoriums and the like? I dunno, I don’t see morality and ethics as some kind of permanent code that doesn’t change, I think there’s wiggle room and flexibility that are influenced by outside, often temporary conditions.
Like a DM would, I guess.
I, too, am glad we can have this discourse in disagreement!
And Guesticus, I’m also sorry for how much undue attention this is all bringing on you. However, if you used a real e-mail address to comment with, we could’ve handled it privately!
Meh, he probably would have ignored you privately too. I’d let it go if I were you–but then, if I were you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Incidentally, the same guy said something truly assholish a few strips back that y’all ignored entirely. (SotiAsshat, if you’re reading this, you can take any complaints about ‘y’all’ and stick ’em where the sun don’t shine.)
Annnnd now I’m wondering WTF I said that was so memorable. o_O
Thanks for the compliment on my avatar. After New Art Guy (I already knew three Johns and he said it was fine to call him that as long as I capitalized it) ignored my mostly facetious request for a custom avatar, I went and made one on…uh…some site I forget. It’s pretty much what I look like IRL, except now my hair is longer.
I like your avatar too, except for the fact that “I Am The Walrus” starts playing in my head every time I see it. ;)
As for moral codes, if you have to change yours when encountered with new events, that just means you didn’t quite get it right the first time. Staying open to that possibility should be part of any Good person’s code, whether they be Lawful, Chaotic, or Don’t Give a Frigg.
This discussion is straying away from the comic now, but you seem like a really interesting guy, so feel free to email me at my real email address that I didn’t know you could see until you mentioned Guesticus giving a fake one.
…You’re still wrong, though. :P
ARGH. I did NOT write that stupid walrus remark. My friend thought it would be funny to stick that in there while I was out of the room and I didn’t even notice. >_<
So let me get this straight:
You just did something I have complained about… and having done so, you recalled that I complained about it, thought of me, AND thought to address me because of it… in the midst of a completely unrelated conversation almost halfway down the page by this stage.
*Smug grin*
Clearly I made an impression.
And don’t worry… the sun doesn’t shine anywhere I go.
Maybe if he used a label maker and a thesaurus instead :D
Post-it notes!
but he spent so much time making the data pretty for the luddite…what do you want him to do? print bar graphs?
It’s Best! I was hoping he really was dead and they just forgot to take his corpse from the bubble tube.
He could still be dead, for all we know. He did specify that only 4 of the 5 were anomalous.
He said all the five were anomalous, it just so happens that they aren’t five anymore.
“Among those, a group of four– which began as five, like your five– have been anomalous.”
it’s hard to log a 15 hour day or be at the centre of every campaign when your character has been sucked into another dimension. I’m sure Best’s stats look the strangest of them all.
Bandit, E-Merl, Rachel, Scipio, and…? I’m either blanking on someone obvious, or they’re still hiding something.
Xan’s five are Byron, Syr’nj, Frigg, Gravedust, and Best.
Shanna’s five are the missing people who were Tubed and became Byron, Syr, Frigg, Gravy and Best.
He’s walking her through why the five characters are connected to the 5 missing people, not talking about yet another five.
I… Am not sure whether nemui really meant it.
Well, shit. I did mean it, and now I feel stupid.
I kind of figured that Shanna already knew about the Five the Five, and Xan was now telling her about the non-embedded players that teamed up with them (Bandit’s crew) and are now so deeply involved that they’re actually screwing up HR’s calculations.
My bad. It now seems obvious that he’s just revealing that the people in the Bubble are actually playing the game. How could she not know have figured that out by now? That it’s all been about the game? What was her working theory, if not that?
How obvious it should be to Shanna is actually a good point. My guess is that she suspected something like that but wouldn’t have data to proof it.
Good point. He hasn’t been seen in 3 years or so anyway (in real time) but I’m still wondering if he may yet make a surprise appearance.
He’s certainly going to make another appearance before the story ends, if only to reveal his fate, just because ‘he disappeared into a mystery hole, and nobody knows where he ended up’ is so damnably vague.
Bandit is tagged on this page, but I don’t see her anywhere.
Conversely, Frigg appears in this page but is not tagged.
Bandit, the copper’s narc!
(“What kind of snark?”)
The subtle foreshadowing of some dark secret, maybe?
Don’t forget my observation from yesterday…
…nerd-boy has Bandit’s nose.
I’ll take that as a clue…
He’s not Bandit. He’s Penk.
Seriously. Do a side by side comparison of the two characters’ faces.
OHMYGAWD it is Payet Best! This is not like Sepia World to unfold so much so fast. I wonder what Friday’s cliff hanfger will bring?
Just read the alt text. hehehe What is that anyway?
Maybe that’s some sort of player-event interaction statistic, and then two totally random ones on the left.
Yup, sounds about right.
Well the one on the left struck me as a Skitter graph which is a retired program to visualize the logical topology of the Internet by graphing IPs, autonomous systems etc. One could imagine it is being used to visualize some of the networks players connect from here.
http://www.caida.org/tools/measurement/skitter/visualizations.xml
http://www.caida.org/tools/measurement/skitter/viz/hypview/hypskit.IP.xml
caida.org if you want to see more some stuff along these lines.
You are a helpful and informed person, Otaking. +1
Typo in third panel: Hurricane’s fudges their public stats.
To add detail: “Hurricane’s fudges” should probably either be “Hurricane fudges” or “Hurricane’s fudged.”
Whoa, didn’t expect their portraits to be in color. Other worlds indeed.
You mean their character portraits in colour is odd to you?
Isn’t it? Or do we have seen non sepia-colors (despite purple) in sepia-world before?
Only when the RoA world intersected mainly…like the tubes are always in color. I seem to remember another screenshot before, and little things like H.R.’s tie. Probably to suggest the influence of magic.
You’re right, I had forgotten about the tubes.
Haha I see that CAIDA graph.
TWINS.
“TRUST NO ONE. WHY WON’T YOU TRUST ME?”
I TRUST YOU!
BUT YOU ARE THE SAME PERSON!
AND YOU CAN TRUST US TO TELL THE TRUTH.
Seems Shana agrees with me about dicknerd
That he deserves to die immediately? I’m skeptical.
I was going to defend you when I saw Phil’s post up above, but reading your others, you’re damn close to being axe’d I think.
Now, now. This isn’t a witch hunt, or a blame game, or anything like that.
Our comments section has one rule: Don’t be a dick.
If you’re upsetting your fellow commenters (or us) significantly, we ask you to stop. If you don’t stop, we will ban. We have never had to ban before, as people have been very graciously accommodating to our singular rule, so I’m likewise hoping we all just agree to play nice and make terrible puns and whatnot.
There was one case in GA history where someone came to the comments literally only to shit on the comic and the other commenters, so I marked that user as spam from the get-go with no discussion on the matter (seriously, they were just going through the archives page by page at that point).
Okie dokie artichokie. c: I’ve never had artichokes. ._.
Will just say this about the matter: only saying that about Xan because he is a fictional character, in a webic in which characters die, in and out of the ‘game’
Oh, and if you feel the need to ban me, that will be fine, won’t stop me from reading (just have a real problem with anyone, fictional or non, who believe they are better than everyone else, and aren’t afraid to show, can’t stand Dr. Shelly Cooper for the same reason), only made up the email so could comment on “Girly” years ago and haven’t had an active email account since 2008 (still need to do something about that, one day)
I thought the rule was basically “Be righteous to one another”?
Did it change?
I mean the difference is all-important here… on account of the characters not technically being people in the full sense, and thus not intuitively subject to the rule of decency.
But of course, I only ask for clarity’s sake.
I know for a fact that Rule 0 is in full force: The rules are whatever the boss says they are… and you’re the boss (or one of them, at least).
Awww Best.
Being at the center of an MMO as a party of five would be pretty great.
No, that was a terrible show.
Well, she’s doing a great job of making me like her less and less. “Nerdkid”? Really? Coming from a bird-nosed reporter in love with her own legacy that’s very hurtful.
I deal with it by reminding myself that her heart is in the right place, and that her life has obviously not been an easy one.
But yes, Shanna has a way of making herself unlikable.
To be fair, Xan is being a bit of a pretentious idiot. See also: Door buzzer antics.
Nobody’s blameless. Everybody’s tense and it makes them do, and say, dumb crap sometimes. Hollywood superheroes they are not.
I don’t think he’s pretentious, just cautious. What he said two pages ago was a test for Shanna as we now know so there’s no point holding it against him.
I was referring to the door buzzer. As Shanna correctly points out, asking if she’s with the government is a dumb pointless question because if she was, what is she going to do? Say yes? What’s more, if she is, what precisely is he going to do about it? Nothing.
So it’s less cautious, because it fails at actually achieving anything, and more being overly fond of the fact that you have a door buzzer you can coyly bullshit around with.
So he’s paranoid and a little nutty, still don’t see the pretension.
Hmm, well, on the left we have an obvious talent tree that has an awful lot of pips checked. Top right… list of skills and the points allotted to each (possibly along some chronology), possibly. Bottom right, I’d guess an overly vague representation of Stat point distribution.
Possibly? Possibly. It’s certainly a possible possibility.
I hate it when I multi-use words like that. :/
Panel 3, seems as if Xan’s line should begin either
“Hurricane fudges”
or
“Hurricane’s fudged”
(stares at the infographs for a minute) “… you are simulating dandelions and designing better saddles?”
Smells good and cleans very well.
Why would he refer to the five if best has been gone for so long?
She just talked to Mrs. Ackerton on the previous page, yet she doesn’t stop to say, “Hey! One of those is Mrs. Ackerton’s daughter!” Surely she must’ve seen a picture of the daughter at some point. Unless that whole phone call was a ruse.
If you promise to find someone’s daughter, it helps to know what she looks like.
Or, maybe she has a reason to hold back the fact that she recognizes the photo.
I dunno. I guess I’m just saying that I would’ve blurted out that I knew who it was. But, maybe that’s because I’m not a seasoned investigative reporter.