Latest Chris & Trilby comic: no. 0065 - An
Interactive Comic!
12/1/05:
Comic capers
Hey,
how're we all doing? Good? Smashing. Donations
for the 5 Days A Stranger SE have been coming in
nicely, especially after Richard Cobbett The
Journalist plugged it on his blog. You
remember him? He was the same bloke who plugged 7 Days A Skeptic in PC Gamer. I think he
must have a soft spot for me.
Rotate
your eyeballs northwards to the top of the page
and you'll see a new banner. Yes, Great Works Preserved are going to be
advertising with us for a couple of weeks.
They're a bunch of people with the noble goal of
bringing hard-to-find works of classic literature
to the plebs, so why not check them out and help rationalise my
extravagant fees.
What
else. Oh yeah. If you speak German, you can read
an interview with me at Adventure Treff. If you can't, then...
you could go and read some piece of classic
literature instead.
Getting
back into doing Chris & Trilby now. The problem was a
storyline I was bored with, so I'm getting as
quickly as possible onto something a little more
fun. Like Robert Kuhne's guest comic implied, I need to get
back to the roots. Trilby is a devilishly suave
and cunning cat burglar, and Chris is a lunatic
some irresponsible person gave a gun to. We need
to roll with that.
I've
found myself reading a lot of webcomics lately,
because goddammit I get so bored when it's too
hot to work, and I have to find something to do
on the internet while I'm waiting for some
illegal rips of Hellblazer comics to download.
Being a threetime webcomic creator (four if you
count Cowboy Comics, five if you count that Rorschach thing, six if you're a twat
who can't add up properly), I figured I'm in a
good position to give advice to anyone else
planning to make another addition to the bloated
planet-devouring slime creature that is the
internet comic collective.
A
good way to get your webcomic noticed is to not
do what all the other webcomic artists do. With
that in mind, don't do any of the following.
1.
Make Yourself The Main Character
You
might give your main character a different name
to your own or a slightly different look, but we
can always tell. People who write fan fiction
have a word for this - they call it the 'Mary Sue' phenomenon, wherein a
main character in a story is obviously a
wish-fulfillment representation of the author,
and who generally tends to be wise, powerful,
incredibly beautiful and loved by everyone and
their dog. It's generally sneered at by fan
fiction writers. And when a fan fiction writer
thinks you're pathetic, that's a whole new low.
That's only one step up from using water balloons for
erotic purposes.
Webcomic
artists are a little more subtle. Since webcomic
artists apparently have much less self-esteem
than fan fiction writers, you can spot the author
surrogate character a mile off. They'll be made
out as utterly pathetic and have problems with
the opposite sex. They'll be described as ugly,
even if they are obviously not. Misfortune will
befall them constantly, whether in the form of
physical pain or tragic heart-rending loss of
jobs, homes and loved ones. However, storylines
always centre around them, they always manfully
strive through their tragedy, will always get the
funny lines, and act with absolute nobility and
righteousness. After a while one (or several) of
the female characters will start finding him
attractive, and after that, sex is inevitable,
probably because the artist is going through a
bad patch and wants to feel he can at least get
laid by proxy.
2.
Female Characters
Almost
invariably, when a webcomic is drawn by a man (as
in most instances), they will include female
characters. Female characters almost always fill
the same role - a 'straight' character to play
mother and complain when the male characters get
into their wacky antics, and who exerts physical
violence upon them with alarming regularity. This
is because male webcomic artists wish to appear
politically correct, and know of feminine
empowerment, but don't quite get it.
Female
characters in webcomics are always hot. Without
exception. Even in ones drawn by women. This is
because, as I have observed, women favour
wish-fulfillment self-insertion, while men in
general seem to prefer to self-deprecate, or
self-harm. Since the female character is hot,
they will also frequently get naked or
semi-naked. Again, this doesn't seem to change
when the author is female. Women admire naked
women as the kind of body they would like to
have, while men admire naked women as the kind of
body they would like to have tied down and
squealing on the end of their dicks. Then again,
it could just all be a ploy to bring in more
readers. If that's the case, it's a depressingly
successful tactic.
3.
Mascots
In
the early 90's, the anime series Neon Genesis
Evangelion was credited with sparking a
renaissance in Japanese animation. It was
action-packed, well-characterised, and often very
thought-provoking. Why, then, amongst all the
extremely serious drama and astonishingly violent
battle sequences, the show decided to
incorporate, for no conceivable reason, a little
adorable penguin mascot character, is a mystery
to all but those crazy bastards of Nippon.
So
then, the mascot character. These have become a
virtual staple of webcomics, mainly because
everyone needs something to put on the Cafepress
shirts. Mascots are usually small cute animals
with some kind of unusual element, usually the
power of speech. Most of the time, the small cute
animals have a hostile attitude, because HA HA
JUXTAPOSITION IS FUNNY.
If
you had any love for me at all, you would make a
webcomic expressly so you could introduce a small
cute adorable mascot, then kill it violently in
the next panel. With sticks.
4.
The Crazy Inventor
The
Crazy Inventor character is there to facilitate
all the crazy wacky storylines you will need to
do to maintain your interest in the project. When
you're running out of ideas, have your Crazy
Inventor come up with some crazy wacky invention
that they have apparently invented before all the
other scientists in the world despite having an
infinitely smaller amount of money and education.
If
you can't think of a storyline, just make your
way through the following list.
First
mental block: Time travel storyline.
Second mental block: Alternative universe
storyline.
Third mental block: Armageddon storyline, kill
all characters, start a new comic.
5.
Put No Thought Into The Setting Whatsoever
Every
other comic on the Internet goes by, or some
variation of, the general 'bunch of people in a
flat' theme. Sometimes 'bunch of students in
university dorm', and often with the suffix '-
who play a lot of video games all the time', but
rarely any variation beyond there. These are
generally consequences of the author wanting to
write about their own life. There is a simple,
logical reason for why you shouldn't do this.
-
If you want to make a webcomic, you must be very
bored.
- If you are bored, then your life is boring.
- If you base your comic on your own life, then
it, too, will be boring.
- If your comic is boring, you will be eaten by
dark elves.
It's
not like there are so few ideas in the world.
Nobody's made a comic about lighthouse keepers
yet. Make a comic about lighthouse keepers. From
space. Who are gay.
- Yahtzee
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Last Week On
FullyRamblomatic...
8/1/05:
Make me happy
Y'know, I've
been doing some thinking lately, and I feel kind
of guilty about making people feel kind of guilty
until they give me money. Somehow I feel I could
be doing more in return for their hard-earned
cash. I know I update the site and release games
for free, but somehow I don't think I've been
doing that often enough to justify the generosity
of some people. So I've decided to concoct a
bonus incentive for paying my electricity bill.
So, allow me to
introduce... the 5 Days A Stranger
Special Edition!
That's
right, kids! Donate at least $5 to
my Paypal account and I'll set you up with a
download link for the 5DAS SE. It's the full
original version of the multiple award winning,
critically acclaimed
game-that-is-my-most-popular-by-far, and also
comes with a few bonus features, such as Author
Commentary!
Running
through the entire game from start to finish, I
offer trivia on the game's development process
and a whole bunch of self-deprecating humour.
Learn the origins of the characters! Find out
exactly what I'm whispering in that scary ambient
sound!
But
that's not all! There's also a new Interview
Scene!
A
brief comedic interview between Simone Taylor and
an adolescent border collie channeling the spirit
of me! Surely that's worth the price!
ALSO,
this version of 5DAS comes with three concept
sketches, and the game's four music tracks in
MIDI format, still as freshly pinched from RPG
Maker 2000 as they always were.
Beat
the rush! Pop over to the donate page today and earn your
reward! I used a lot of exclamation marks in this
update!
- Yahtzee
updates - features - essays - reviews - comics - games - novels - about - contact - forum - links
Last Week On
FullyRamblomatic...
5/1/05:
This and that
Well, slap me in
the nuts if I haven't written a Horror Movie
Sequel review. Wishmaster 3, to be precise. You
can enjoy it by clicking on the funny blue words. Bon appetit. I'll be
here when you're finished.
Finished? Good,
wasn't it? Well, here's another helping: an
article by me at Adventure Gamers. You can read
that by clicking these funny blue words, not to be confused with
the other ones. Do return here when you've read
it, we have one more item of business.
Hello again.
Hey, David Thomas donated me twenty bucks. What a
cool guy. Don't you wish you were as cool as
David Thomas?
Oh yeah, happy
new year.
- Yahtzee
updates - features - essays - reviews - comics - games - novels - about - contact - forum - links
Last Week On
FullyRamblomatic...
31/12/04:
Something Rules OK
Thanks to Garry
Runke and Daniel Evans for a combined total of 70
dollars American in donations. Ah, the game becomes a
lot more pleasant once the guilt trip card is
played. What else? Oh yeah. Datazoid is posting
about our Erwin Wurm-related day out from his
point of view, so Yahtzee completists will have
to go over there to get the low down on
what I had for lunch that day.
Now then now
then now then.
I've been
reading Wikipedia a lot lately. It's
amazing how much trivia I can absorb just by
searching for things that interest me and
following link after link after link. I'm sure
it'll come in handy next time I'm at a boring
party. I can just sit down somewhere, begin by
saying "Apparently," in a really smug
tone of voice, then go into autopilot until I am
forcibly removed at three in the morning.
Of course,
Wikipedia is authored entirely by members of the
public. And when I say members of the public, I
mean those members of the public who have access
to the internet. And when I say members of the
public who have access to the internet, I mean
members of the public who have access to the
internet and who GIVE ENOUGH OF A SHIT ABOUT
SOMETHING TO WRITE TWENTY PAGES ABOUT IT, and
when I say that, I mean NERDS. That's why you'll
find about four thousand essays about the Star
Wars universe and about two pages on Rugby
Football. These, ladies and gentlemen, are not
the sorts of people who will ever need to install
ticket machines and suggestion boxes in their
boudoir. And I mean that in the nicest possible
way.
One thing that
struck me recently while idly clicking through
the collective miscellanea the nerd collective
has secreted thus far was that the term 'Chewbacca Defense', a joke from a South
Park episode, is actually becoming a recognised
turn of phrase to mean any case in which a lawyer
attempts to flood the jury's empty little minds
with irrelevant garbage in the hopes of confusing
them into finding for the defendant.
Suddenly, I
realised my new goal in life. I pledge that, some
day, some how, I will invent a new turn of phrase
that will enter the collective consciousness as a
recognised linguistic term. I'll be like those
people who made up all the urban legends and sent
them anonymously lurching off into the world like
Frankenstein's monster, unsung but satisfied at
having made a contribution.
So, to this end,
I've come up with a few common scenarios and
rules of thumb that don't have a proper name and
given them a title of my own devising. Now, if
this plan is to work, I need all of you to start
using these in common situations. Try steering
the conversation at the office lunch table to an
appropriate subject and throw one in casually. Or
you could stand on a chair in a busy city centre
and blare them through a megaphone.
The
"You Had To Be There Rule"
The rule which states that a joke told
by a stand-up comedian becomes 50% less funny for
every hour that elapses between you hearing it
and you trying to tell it to someone else.
The
"Doug Naylor Gambit"
A device used in sitcoms wherein a
character loudly proclaims that they will not do
something, before instantly cutting to a new
scene in which they do it. I can think of at
least one prime example in all of the three most
recent series of Red Dwarf. Also favoured by
American sitcom writers, because it offers an
escape from doing anything genuinely creative so
they can quickly get back to eating cheeseburgers
while children in Africa lick moisture from each
other's eyeballs to survive.
The
"Oompa Loompa Evasion"
The act of making up nonsense words to
get out of coming up with a proper rhyme for a
poem, as in:
'There was a
young man from Ghent,
Blam bloo blee blorble bwent.'
It'd be a good
thing to accuse Lewis Carroll of. We've needed
some fresh dirt since everyone learned to
disregard the fact that he was a grimy little
nonce.
The
"Two Button Rule"
The rule which states that, for every
two buttons on a DVD player remote you know the
function of, there will be one whose purpose
remains totally unfathomable. I'm sure we've all
found ourselves staring at the controller while
bored and wondering what the button labelled
"R(triangle)X" could possibly be for.
Pressing it doesn't seem to do anything. For all
you know it could be the secret mythological
greatest button ever, and if you press it three
times while singing the words of 'Hi Ho Silver
Lining', then your DVD player will begin to
disgorge fellatio whores.
The
"Law of Video Label Frustration"
The rule which states that the amount of
time spent picking at the corners of a video
label is directly proportional to the chances of
the label tearing when you attempt to peel it
off.
The
"David Cronenberg Noodle Period"
The amount of time that must elapse
after watching a David Cronenberg film before you
can eat instant noodles again without feeling
sick. As in, "Want to come down the Chinese,
Yahtzee?" "No thank you, I saw The Fly
last week and I'm still in the David Cronenberg
Noodle Period."
In a few months'
time I will search for all of these on Google,
and if I find nothing but this page, then all my
readers are grounded for a week. I'm sorry but
there it is.
- Yahtzee
updates - features - essays - reviews - comics - games - novels - about - contact - forum - links
Last Week On
FullyRamblomatic...
29/12/04:
The Wurm That Turned
In the week
leading up to Christmas, the webmasters of two
irreverent websites and three associates of
theirs from the Underdogs forum went on a voyage
to the Brisbane museum and art gallery, and
found... THEMSELVES.
Yes, there's a
new entry in the Essays section, for the first
time in donkeys. It's a little exploration of
modern art I like to call Erwin Wurm: Greatest
Human Being Who Ever Lived. Guest starring Russ
from Colonpipe.com, which I have also added to
the Links page.
- Yahtzee
updates - features - essays - reviews - comics - games - novels - about - contact - forum - links
Last Week On
FullyRamblomatic...
25/12/04:
Ho Hum
Christmas Day in
the Yahtzee household was marked by me sitting
alone in my flat all day surfing the Internet, in
following with the tradition set by the Three
Wise Men as they roamed, lost, in the desert. I
also played Zelda for a few hours, which was
symbolic of Jesus' struggle to bring peace to the
world. Christmas dinner was a bowl of soggy pasta
and ketchup, which was the meal given to the
infant Christ by the lowly shepherds.
Okay, so my
Christmas day was no different at all to any
other day. The fact that I don't seem to mind I
know would have horrified my younger self, who
ten years ago would no doubt have cut his own
throat with a straight razor if he heard that,
for two years in a row, his Christmas would
involve neither presents nor overconsumption of
jelly.
Well, I did get
some presents in the form of money from various
friends and relatives, but this will no doubt be
spent on food and essentials, like it usually
does. I just wish my loving readers could in some
small way lift my soul on this lonely,
depressing, frugal Christmas day. (COUGH. COUGH.)
To be honest,
over the years in England I became increasingly
apathetic to Christmas. Towards the end, I found
it extremely difficult to think of anything I
really wanted from my parents come the
giftwrapping season. Oh sure, I wouldn't have
minded a Playstation 2 or a new computer or
Broadband connectivity, but I felt sure it would
have been impossible to squeeze such things out
of my parents, who would every year without fail
explain that they were too poverty stricken to
buy many Christmas presents. That's poverty
stricken in the 'owning a four-bedroom house and
going on long foreign holidays every fucking
year' sense of the word.
Oh well.
Sorry the site's
not been updating as regularly as I like, I've
been busy with a couple of other things. Most
notably, I've been contracted (FOR REAŁ ˘A$H
MONIE$) by the newly-founded German-based Bad Brain Entertainment to co-script an
adventure game. Dr. Wolfgang, CEO, is a
beautiful, beautiful person for giving me this
back door in to the professional games industry,
so be sure to buy at least two copies of every
game his company ever produces, just as a favour
to me.
Also, and closer
to home, I'm conducting a little open beta test
of my new 'life simulator' game, Poseidon 12,
before polish and official release. You can join
in if you want by heading to the appropriate forum thread. That's if you don't
mind playing a soundless and potentially buggy
version.
I think that's
it. I'd wish you a merry Christmas, but I don't
see what'd be in it for me.
- Yahtzee
updates - features - essays - reviews - comics - games - novels - about - contact - forum - links
Last Week On
FullyRamblomatic...
Hey,
kids! Sick of me not updating often enough for
your refined tastes? Read news posts by me, Chefelf and Heccubus pretty much every day on the Lockergnome.com Game Invasion Channel!
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