Thorns

Homestuck is one of those canons where I often veer dramatically from "This is so awesome!" to "ARGH SO ANGRY WHY CAN'T I QUIT YOU??" and back again. Right now I just feel like venting about the latter.
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I always feel weird going out on a limb about American racism in case I'm missing some cultural cue.

But equating the segregation of African Americans with "intolerance" towards devils and evil feels ever so slightly off to me. I mean that sort of metaphor is always a bit problematic, but usually it's not quite such an explicit equating-ness(*).

I am reminded of why I try not to read Sinfest. It sucks me in with the adorable drawing style and cute humour, and then bats me around with it's creepy attitudes towards gender etc.

(*)"Equality" has too much of a double meaning for this sentence :)

Like a lot of people I am rather sick of hearing about the american election: it's not that I don't care, but I can't vote in it, and would rather just igore the whole thing until it blows over and I can go "yay" or "Boo".

But I have quite enjoyed this xkcd storyline, possibly because the most major candidate they mention by name is Ron Paul :)

I'm on a webcomics discussion community snarkoleptics. Every now and then you get someone posting about how much the latest storyline of PvP totally pissed them off, and they just can't stand it any more, and there'll be a chorus of people going "God, me too" and "I gave it up years ago"... but also "I know, I don't know why I keep reading it but I Just Can't Stop!" (plus of course people who think PvP is awesome and everyone else should shut up about it). I was in the "Why can't I stop reading this?" camp myself for ages, I only managed to stop reading it a few days ago.

So I was wondering: what are the continuing series (whether books/comics/shows etc) that you just can't let go? Not the ones you know are bad but enjoy anyway, or mostly enjoy but are occasionally pissed off at. I mean the ones that you don't enjoy, that pretty much always make you wish you hadn't read/watched it, but somehow make you come back for more. (I realise the line between "Mostly good but sometimes really annoying" and "Mostly annoying but sometimes really good" is pretty blurry)

And: what is it that draws you back? With PvP I think it's the fact that while I find the characters and plots really annoying, and am not generally that amused by the humour, Scott Kurtz has honed his craft to such a degree that everything else (the flow, the expressions etc) is just really well done and draws you in. Also webcomics are so convenient and free it's easy to stick to them out of inertia.

Would people agree that people often get disproportionately angry at the authors of these sorts of irresistibly-crap works, since they cause more extended pain than repulsively-crap stuff? In my experience you get a lot of fannish entitlement: "You are a bad person for not writing the sort of story I would enjoy more".

One of my achilles heels is hating not knowing how something ends. I've gotten pretty ruthless about just skipping to the ends of annoying books, and am refusing to even look at the new Obernewtyn book, but it still pains me.

And then of course there's movie adaptations of beloved books/comics. I tend to refuse to watch them unless I've heard they're good, but I know a lot of people are drawn like a moth to a flame and then are inevitably, painfully burned.

Important note: I realise that by it's nature this sort of question calls for a lot of negativity, but please try to avoid any "This sucks and so does the author and everyone who likes it" "No, it's awesome, and YOU suck!" "No, YOU SUCK" etc. Enjoyability is not an objective measure that makes any sense to argue about.

EDIT: Also, this is what you hate to love, try to avoid assigning motives to other people you've seen criticising something you like, since from the outside it's hard to tell the difference between genuine hate and "I criticise because I love". That said, I am reminded of Star Wars Fans Hate Star Wars :)

(n.b. This is the only post I wrote while sick which I think is up to being posted without serious revision, so I'm posting it to make myself feel better about not posting the others)

Using only the power of my brain I have made not only one new page but four new pages for A Circle of Stars. Plus annotations for all of Chapter Two so far, which, you may note, is eight pages long. Got some catching up to do haven't we nico_wolfwood? :)

I have discovered the best way ever to do speech bubbles, via skeletor_hordak and some trial and error. Basically, you make a new layer with white speech-bubbles and then choose layer->Blending options-> stroke, setting the colour to black. This is also good for making text stand out, see the spiky bubble on this page for an example of both.

The way I make the speech bubbles is using the filled-shape-with-path option on the shape tool (the little square with points on the corners but no pen in the middle) using either ellipses or the custom shape (which comes with speech bubbles!) and fiddling with the anchor points using the add-anchor-point tool. A similar technique is discussed here. I also came across the guy from applegeeks discussing a variation plus other stuff. The advantage of my technique over both of these is that it's very easy to fiddle with the shape using the pen tool or Edit->Transform, which is important given the way I keep changing my mind :) It does require competency with the treacherous pen-tool though.

Doing "The High Voltage Show" for the first time at work day after tommorrow. Scary.

I have a cold. This is very annoying but not in the least surprising, I always get sick when I stop worrying about something/am about to start a new job, and unless I stay sick *mutter* my Scitech interview is on Friday. Sometimes being me is very annoying.

For anyone who saw my swancon costume and didn't know who I was, I was dressed as Claire from "Bite Me".

During some panel at Swancon (I forget the context) strangedave disagreed with my assertion that libertarians are right wing, saying "What about socialist libertarians". I decided to look it up when I got home since it sounded like a contradiction in terms to me. So, I just remembered to google "socialist libertarian", and what is the very first link? The Libertarian National Socialist (Nazi) Green Party. Whose page starts with a little thing about how they're against racism. No, there's no contradiction there at all :) (Currently I'm half reading the wikipedia page but I'm too sleepy for politics)

Also this reminds me of a comic I came accross while going through the tailsteak.com archives today (still going). Nothing like interent archives when you're sick and bored.

An irrational fear I had as I wrote up my Phd is that Mike Slackernerny would beat me. Well not only did that not happen, but he named his daughter after me! (kinda)

Speaking of adorable little redheaded babies, I saw Shayolaura(*) today (plus her mum and grandma) She is HUGE. As in turning into a child rather than a toddler, not obese or 6ft tall or anything :)

Also, I spent all of yesterday writing a story! Which I finished!! And then I showed it to Cam and he was all "I'm not sure a hardbitten starship captain would describe walking corpses as "trundling around"(**)". Bah to that, he just doesn't understand my genius. Though he did help me come up with a better ending. Anyway, I'm going to leave it a bit then maybe go back to it, then maybe show it to other people. My first couple of drafts tend to really suck. I didn't learn to redraft until doing my Phd, maybe that's why I never fulfilled my childhood dream of being a writer...

Somehow, I am coping with the loss of my blog. Though every now and then I feel a twinge of guilt for enjoying lj's convenience.

(*)That doesn't look right...
(**)A constant in all my science fiction is a cheery tone and a high death count.