Webcomics

"Look behind you! A three headed monkey!" I shouted. My captor didn't believe me, until he heard the horribly croaked english words spoken through three mishaped mouths groaning "Kiiiilllll.... uuuussss....."

• 37. I read quite fast when I enjoy what I'm reading. I got through two 800 page fantasy novels in about three days . The main problem is that if what I'm reading doesn't have either A) Awesome kung fu, B) Knights riding people down, C) Giant kick-ace robots blowing crap up or D) Boobs, it has to be pretty damn special for me to enjoy it.

One of the best ways to tell a potential nerd from a nerd-lite/diet-nerd is to ask one simple question.

"Which Webcomics do you read?"

If someone can tell you who Gabe and Tycho are, they are a genuine nerd. If not... Well they've got some catching up to do, haven't they?

I'm a bit of a webcomisseur, myself. My list of regular-part-of-my-waking-up-ritual comics I check on a daily (or less, if it doesn't update daily) basis is as follows:

Non-Adventures of Wonderella
Commissioned
Ctrl-Alt-Del
Dominic Deegan (I got into the habit of reading it early on, when it was actually funny. It's still well written, just not what I traditionally go for)
Evil Inc.
Giant in the Playground/Order of the Stick
Least I can do
Looking for Group
MacHall (now dead. It's creators have moved on to Three Panel Soul)
PvP Online (same as Dominic Deegan. Now, the humour just isn't my style, but I'm still in the habit of checking it)
Questionable Content
Sam and Fuzzy
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (I love this one)
Something Positive (this is one of the rare ones that has completely changed tone since it started, but I think the change has actually been an improvement)
The Adventures of Dr. McNinja
The Noob
Three Panel Soul
Weregeek
Xkcd

As someone who's read ALOT of webcomics (including their 'making of' bits), I like to think I'm as expert on the matter as someone who doesn't make one can be.

Alot of webcomics suffer from what I define as:

"Attritionus dramaticus"

As the stories go on, they seem to kinda forget the whole 'funny' thing they had at the beginning, instead going for highly dramatic stories with overarcing plotlines and save-the-world stakes. This is fine if you start with it, but shifting gears so awkwardly just feels odd. Especially to new readers who go through your back catalogue in a couple of days. The reader is left sitting there going "Double Ewe Tee Eff mate? It goes from punning every page to dramatic fights for the sake of the world."

I think to the author, it can seem like a natural progression.
A) Funny comic
B) Put threatening character into the comic for the sake of a joke
C) Threatening character still around, make him do something threatening
D) Main character (who up to this point is quite bumbling) is the only person who knows about the situation, and has to end it himself

Every now and then, you get webcomics that start off kind of amusingly, but just... degenerate. El Goonish Shive started off as a kind of amusing High School romp through the wacky days of a couple of students. It soon degenerated into a "save the world" fight situations between half human, half animal hybrids, involving high school students who happened to be either incredibly powerful martial artists (for some reason), have fathers involved in secret government projects, or somehow be incredibly supernatural. Not to mention the RAMPANT super-tech pseudo-science guns that change people's gender, and the amazingly confused sexuality of everyone involved in the story.

WHAT.
THE.
F**K.


Some Webcomics, on the other hand, manage to handle sensitive and serious issues very well. Ctrl-Alt-Del might've alienated a few readers with it's non-joke storyarc where the main female character has a misscarriage of the baby she's having with the main male character, but I think the story was very tastefully handled, as well as the fallout of it all.

Another example is in Questionable Content, where the "Afraid of a relationship but otherwise very friendly" female character revealed in a flashback why she has relationship issues (I won't spoil it, I'll just encourage everyone to read it), and is encouraged by her friends to seek therapy about it all. It was NOT funny by any means, but it was very well written and tastefully handled, not playing light with the serious subject matter at all.


In short, just like everything that anyone can indulge in, there's alot of crap out there, but if you sift through it you find some gold.

In defence of Bay's Transformers

And so, that's how I lost that bet and had to allow Micheal Jackson to use my skin-tone.

• 36. I've always wanted to get a T-shirt that says, in Latin "Ask me about Grim Fandango". If anyone ever came up to me and asked about Grim Fandango, I would ask them why they bothered learning a dead language, and what was going through their mind when they thought "Hey, this would be a good plan". I would then feel jealous, since I've always wanted to know Latin.

Let me say something that will make me either shunned or celebrated among geeks everywhere. Everyone has an opinion, and it's nearly always the dichotomy view of A or B, there is no AB, aB or Ab.

I LIKED the new Transformers movie. As it is, even with the generous support of car companies it cost 120+ million dollars. That is a HUGE amount of money. A Fleich-tonne. You know what would have taken even more money? If the Transformers had had more time on screen. As it is it successfully carried across how huge and powerful these alien machines were. Let's look over some of the many complaints I've seen leveled at it.

1. Too much human stuff, not enough Transformers.
A. It is much easier to empathise with the humans then with giant alien robots. The Transformers cost ENORMOUS amounts of money to computer animate. They took HOURS to animate even one frame. The only way the movie could have been entirely about the Transformers is if they either made the Transformers look incredibly bland and supernatural with their transformations, or if they deliberately made the movie have a loss.

2. The Transformers look too different
A. Look at the cartoon. The Transformers don't actually transform, they just Morph. Their shapes only vaguely correspond with each other. Try putting that in the movie without it looking ridiculously stupid. I once saw someone put an animation test on youtube showing how Optimus Prime looked fine translating from the cartoon to computer animation. He really, really, didn't.

3. My favourite Transformer wasn't in it
A. Neither was mine (Sideswipe, the king of everything). But in general they could only fit so many transformers into the movie. Stay tuned for the sequel.

4. It's just a pro millitary vehicle
A. They had three options. 1. Don't get the millitary involved. Considering the movie is about Alien Lifeforms practically invading Earth and copying the looks of alot of military vehicles, that's not going to happen. 2. Film the military stuff without military support. The movie cost enough as it is, trying to film military sequences without military support would skyrocket the costs. 3. Film the military stuff with military support, and avoid making the military look like idiots. The lesser of three evils. Hell, real life gives the military bad enough press, might as well allow them this fictional victory.

5. Transformers? More like BAYformers! amirite?
A. No. No you are not, and don't try to pressure Ms Ami Rite to support you.

6. Shia LaBouf sucks.
A. I actually liked his performance in this movie. It was different to the "He's a strong and tough kid who is strong and tough when he needs to be". He nearly pisses himself when the Cops he thought would help him turn out to be a giant robot interrogating him. He does the right thing in the end, but he's not the emotionless warrior, he's just the guy with a strong sense of moral right caught up in something bigger then him. I haven't seen him in many other movies, but I'm willing to bet he plays a similar character in all of them. Meh, he plays it well, and I enjoy seeing it on screen, so I like it.


With all that said, is it a perfect movie? God no. My chief complaint.
Why did they kill JAZZ!? Of all the Transformers to kill, he was the stupidest choice.

A. If you're trying to show how incredibly powerful Megatron is (which I'm assuming is the purpose, since they also showed Optimus casually killing a huge Decepticon, Bonecrusher), why would you choose the second smallest Autobot on the team? Surely Megatron picking on the little guy doesn't seem as threatening as if he casually walked through the firepower Ironhide was putting out, then blew his head off with one blast. THAT would make Megatron threatening.

B. Of all the Transformers you could kill... of all the options available... You choose the BLACK one. C'mon guys. We're past this, aren't we? Seriously, do I have to say it?

C. He seemed like he'd been glossed over the entire movie. Ironhide has enormous guns and quotes old movies, then he does a god-damned Rocket-jump. Rachet gets to do an awesome flip thing against the tank, gets high on electricity and comments on Pheremone levels. Jazz calls humans 'little bitches' while breakdancing, copies Kup's move against the tank, and dies. He doesn't even get a close up, like every other Autobot did. It was like they included him just because they were expected to include Jazz, and so they had someone to kill off.

The worst thing? There are many ways it would be possible to bring him back in the next movie, but chances are they'll bugger up how they do that, making it seem like his death meant nothing, and setting a bad precedent regarding death in the movies.

The rules of the 'net-name'.

Three bars walk into a man. The pressure of having three enormous buildings crammed with patrons inside the frail mortal body caused him to explode violently, the shrapnel of his shattered bones destroying three nearby peach stands.

• 35. I lost religion in my life when, at a young age, I asked my scripture teacher if Aliens believed in god. I was told to stop being a stupid child asking stupid questions. From that day on they lost me. It wasn't until many years later I actually came up with any kind of logical reason not to be religious.

I was thinking about making an in-depth sociological examination of the conception of the Internet Alias (shorthand 'net name'. I just made that up). But then I encountered a problem.

Strictly speaking: There aren't any. I've gone by a LARGE number of net-names in the past, abandoning and taking up new ones I think will be accepted whever I go, but there are just as many people who go by the same name forever, or use their actual name (freaks).

Some names mean something (Nerdgasm is a portmandu of Nerd and Orgasm, implying getting EXTREME pleasure from nerdy things), while others are just high school nicknames carried on, while others still mean nothing (Zendulo (the alias of the girl of my dreams mentioned in this post (http://nerdgasm-unlimited.blogspot.com/2008/10/rare-species-spotted.html) doesn't seem to mean anything.)

For a while I went by the moniker 'The_Master' in my youthful forays onto the scary internet. Of course this led to many many jokes of "The Master Beta"

In general names seem to be completely random. Some very intelligent psychologist could likely analyse the individuals names a person choses, determining what it says about people (Nerdgasm = An unrestrained joy in nerdy things in life. The_Master = A desire for control of life. Etc etc), but in general I just think it's a case of stage fright. Being put on the world stage and told "Make up a name everyone will know you by" is a frightening thing. How the hell are you meant to react to that?

"You! Give us a name everyone you meet online will know you by!"

"Uh... Wait, I... Richard?"

"RICHARD IS TAKEN. CHOOSE AGAIN."

"Oh, crap, I... Super-Richard?"

"SUPER-RICHARD IS TAKEN. Our Databases tell us that in some locations, 'Dick' is a nickname for Richard. YOUR NAME IS SUPER-DICK."

"Hey, wait, I-!"

"SUPER-DICK HAS BEEN BANNED FOR HAVING AN OFFENSIVE NAME."



P.S. Check out Zendulo's videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/zendulo

P.P.S. Yeah, I used brackets inside brackets again. This is how I roll, yeah? ... I am so white.

P.P.P.S. I am actually qualified to make in depth sociological studies of things. I have a degree now. Man that sounds weird to say. Almost as weird of the photo of me receiving my degree from the Vice Dean, pushing out my stomach so you can see the Transformers belt I was wearing.

Pfft, I could do better then this.

... If we live in a world where lying to children for fun and profit is wrong, then I don't want to be right.

• 34. I am a large individual. Well over 6 foot and toping 130 Kg (although I don't think I'm THAT large, so I'm wondering where the hell all of it is kept. I'm the tardis of largess.) This, and a degree of experience, grants me an enormous advantage when it comes to drinking with friends. And yet the people I drink with try to keep up with me, beer (or other) for beer/other. This results in many humourous situations.

As a birthday present, my parents at one point bought me 'The Marvel Encyclopedia', a list of nearly all the Marvel characters. Since I am feeling lazy, here are some of my personal favourites in the list of the stupidest characters ever.

Ant Man II: The original Ant Man was just Giant Man using his powers in a different way (so his abilities were actually useful). But this guy ONLY had the ability to shrink. Seriously, there are only SO many situations that can be useful. "Where's Scott?" "He's looking under the couch for leftover change. Again."

Batroc the Leaper: He jumps. Seriously, that's it. He jumps really well. He jumps on top of people, apparently. His powers are listed as "Self professed master of Savate, the French form of kickboxing; allegedly an expert hand to hand combatant". The fact that they say 'self professed' and 'allegedly' to me makes it sound like... he isn't. And as much as I like the French (I genuinely do, I'm a fan of the French), they aren't known for unarmed combat. He's a crap practitioner of a bad martial art. Man, he's losing on ALL fronts.

Bi-Beast: One head on top of another. One has a full knowledge of an ancient race's warfare, the other their full knowledge of culture. That's it. He's just one of those ridiculously large, orange skinned aliens otherwise. With a large head with two faces. Whoever sat down and thought "This is gonna be SWEEET" should be put in a sack and beaten with a stick.

The Blob: Big, fat, tough guy. I get what his power is meant to be, it's just... c'mon... he's a big fat guy . Like. ROLLS of fat. More rolls-of-fat then man. You can't take that seriously as a supervillain

Boomerang: Yeah, he throws boomerangs. Some explode. Some release gas. They're still goddamned boomerangs.

Wolverine: I am doggamned sick of Wolverine.

Golddigger: She has no powers. All it really says about her is that she "Crossed paths with Captain America" Seriously, is a character wih no powers who gets screwed over that early REALLY worth a super-name? Even one as bad as 'Gold Digger'?

Jean Grey: Do I have to explain this? You real geeks out there will get what I mean. Amirite?

Left-Winger/Right-Winger: They didn't like the second Captain America, so they tried to have him killed, got their arses kicked in return. Wow. They were a good use of comic book pages.

Mad Thinker: An ugly guy who's really good with robotics. Wow, original. And dull as hell.

Madcap: I don't think I can do this justice, so I'll just type it all out. "A devoted member of a Christian church, Madcap began his descent into insanity following a terrible accident. He was traveling on a bus with his family and forty church members when it collided with a truck carrying an experimental nerve agent. Madcap was the only survivor and in the days that followed he developed the ability to heal himself and cause temporary insanity in others. He has used these talents to cause repeated havoc on the streets of new york. In between short spells in Bellevue Hospital, Madcap has encountered a number of superpowered individuals." Wow. Just. Wow.

I'm only halfway through the book, and I'm giving up there. There are a disturbing number of really... REALLY bad characters in comics.

Why MMOs are as evil as Ikea

Three things go into a bar, something initially humourous occurs, but upon later retrospection you realise the joke wasn't that funny, leaving you feel cheated and used.

• 33. I have a deep fear of joining the real world. Where I actually have to WORK for what I require. All my life I've been able to coast by with immense ease, that will soon change. I think that's why I'm writing so much crap no one will ever see, it's my own version of the Monkey-Shakespeare thing. If I type out enough crap, eventually there will be SOMETHING worth money.

What kind of nerd blog would this be if I did not pay tribute to the most visible nerd-ism in the past 50 years?

MMOs.

Avoid.

I say that as someone who played City of Heroes for two years.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's look at the general requirement for a computer game. "Entertainment". Now, let's make the following general assumptions.

Statement A: Computer game publishers are businesses, that are attempting to make money.
Proof: It's a common statement of fact that the point of businesses is to make money, and computer game publishers are no different.

Statement B: A large number of the more widely known MMOs are pay-per-month affairs
Proof: Google Warcraft, the most popular MMO ever. Pay per month. Granted this is a weak proof, but this is a commonly accepted idea. Some MMOs are NOT pay per month, but in general they are not the commercial (money making) majority, rather they make less money then their peers, at least in Western countries.

Statement C: It is easier to create 'time sinks' then genuine story arcs.
Proof: A Time sink is a simple "Collect X number of Ys" or "Kill A number of Bs", sometimes supported with a generic story ("Those Wolves sure are plaguing my sheep! Go kill fifty of them").

Statement D: A Time Sink is less fun then plot progression
Proof: Plot progression in a combat based game will involve fighting a vast, vast majority of the time. This makes Plot progression and Time Sinks both about killing things, but plot progression has the added factor of story. At very worst that makes plot progression equally as fun as time sinks.
Note: I have a bias here towards story arcs. However, even if someone actively dislikes story arcs, there is little way that doing so could actively interfere with their fun, since it is (literally) free experience to level up your character. Even then, chances are you'd still have to kill things, which is presumably what someone with no enjoyment of story is playing the game for.

Conclusion A: Statement A + Statement B = For MMO publishers to make money, they need you to be playing their games for a long time.

Conclusion B: Conclusion A + Statement C = MMO publishers want you to be playing for a long time and it is quicker to make time sinks then story arcs.

Conclusion C: Conclusion B + Statement D = Therefore they are far more likely to fill the game with plot sinks then story arcs, despite story arcs being of equal or greater fun. Thus providing evidence that they don't care about fun, so much as trying to keep people playing as long as possible.

And don't get me started on making people 'invest' in the game. No one wants to leave behind something they've invested so much time/social life/money into, especially when they realise how little they've gotten out of it so far.

I have READERS.

(Not an NSS. Trial replacement.) So a Horse walks into a bar and says to the bartender "I'll have a beer." The bartender replies "a talking Horse!? That's new." To which the horse replies "Have you missed the last 50 years of jokes? Tch, you'll be amazed at a chicken walking across the street next"

• 32. I am normally a very Zen person. Not spiritually, I'm just normally upbeat about most things, in a weird way. Kinda a "I know everything around me is shit, but it ain't gonna bother me, bitch. More alcohol" sort of thing. But still, a wave of depression hit me when I discovered Firefly after it had been cancelled. F**k you, Fox. F**K YOU.

So. I just discovered half the hits on this blog I'd assumed were me screwing up and having to re-edit some crap are actually unique visitors.

Duudes. Awesome. Considering over half of that are in Sydney, we should totally all get drunk some day.

... Considering a portion of that is probably people I regularly drink with anyway, not like it'd be a big stretch of the imagination.

Still, I should make an effort to put something in this post worth reading, other then excessive ego stroking.

Some of you may have heard of a game called "Left 4 Dead" (see, it's amusing because they've been left for dead, and there are four of them), a game about survivors trying to pass through zombie territory.

As those of you who know me know, I don't do Zombies. Zombies and me don't get on. If I'm in the same room as a zombie, I have to politely excuse myself from the party, since it just gets REALLY awkward. So you may have guessed that's not why I'm discussing it.

Left 4 Dead has a newly designed AI system called 'The Director'. Rather then having the zombies placed in the same spot on the level every time, it dynamically spawns them in a number of possible locations dependant on how much the players are struggling and how long it's been since they were attacked. If the players are really good and having an easy time, they fight more zombies. If they barely survived the last attack, are nearly out of ammo and just finished off the last zombie, they'll have a few minutes breather.

Why is this incredible?

This, my friends, is a simplified Games Master from Roleplaying games.

Someday someone will make a fantasy sandbox free-form game (a bit like Mount and Blade, but with magic) for something like Dungeons and Dragons, and they will use the Director to control the pace of the game, creating level appropriate quests out of a huge interchangable list of different variables, making it so the player always has things to do in a vast and changing world. Should the player be growing so powerful he has few threats, an entire HORDE of undead will show up on the horizon going "G'day mate", that he has to help a friendly city defeat. Should he be struggling a bit, a friendly NPC will turn up and offer to help him. All arranged by the Director/GM.

When that game is created, I will nerdgasm.

Then I will cry with joy.

Then my salty tears will make me nerdgasm again.

The fantasy cliche

(We (by which I mean 'I') interupt your regular NSS for an announcement: I am running out of ideas for NSS'. I either need assistance in writing them (email them to me at richosnotes@hotmail.com along with how you wish to be credited, and it'll be up) or a new idea for what I can replace NSS with.) (... Are brackets/parenthesis allowed inside brackets/parenthesis?)

• 31. I obtained an exercise bike three weeks or so ago and have been using it every day since then. MY CALVES COULD CRUSH YOUR FACE.

Fantasy novels, movies and stories in general usually do not vary enormously from the stock standard story 'roller coaster' conception that's common all throughout storytelling.

1. Bad sh*t goes down.
2. Heroes come up with way to fix stuff
3. Heroes encounter difficulties in fixing stuff
4. Heroes eventually win.

That summarises most common movies. Sometimes when the heroes are meant to be clueless the story will skip stage 2, and replace stage 3 with "Heroes bumble into the bad guys plan". For Greek Myths add a stage 5: "Hero dies horribly alone".

This is true in nearly all stories, so why does Fantasy get such a bad wrap for it all? The reason fantasy stories seem so much more simplistic then the standard story is because the ingredients of each stage is far simpler.

Since in fantasy stories the authors have such a wider range of storytelling abilities available to them (Wizards, Dragons, Spells, the ability to categorically state "This race of people are EVIL") then modern or even most sci-fi stories, so often the fantasy storyteller takes an easy road out.

It does somewhat declaw the evil villain if you know he can be killed just by putting the right magical artefact in the right shelf in the magical castle. With sci-fi and modern stories there's a genuine sense of threat in that you KNOW you have to find some way to beat the guy, you can't just side-step it by putting magical challice A into slot B.

No other Genre is so effectively able to say "Do this one task, and everything will be hunky dory". Yes, it does grant the task a great deal of weight, but at the same time you know once they do it, the war is over and won. Bugger that with the ring of power.

I blame Tolkein. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that the guy basically CREATED the fantasy genre as we know it, because of him I've spent many a fun evening smacking around Orcs (it's ok, they're all EVIL. Every last one of them). But at the same time everyone is just following in the footsteps. ("Ok Frodo, I need you to put magical item A into location B" "What was that, Gandalf?" "I mean, I need you to destroy the ring of power by throwing it into Mount Doom.").

Fantasy authors, writers and storytellers. Please, come up with something different. Feel free to use the "magical item A into location B" plot arc, but make it a smaller part, not the "Well, we've done that, let's all go home" bit.

Maybe destroying the magical item only weakens the enemy, and doesn't crush them uttery?

C'mon, you can do it. I have faith in you.