Big Pimpin': Discussion.

[Luprand]

*delivers a cookie to RK*

--Sij

[McDuffies]

I just wanted to say that this is the first topic I've read where VD gets swearing-mad, and I wasn't provoking him. Do I want a cookie for that? Hell yeah - someone out there owes me a double-chocolate. I like 'em warm.

I've seen only one where you were the oposer. Still, most memorable were the ones with Alan Foreman. Those are collectibles.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I have a warm cookie for RK. I won't tell you why it's warm though.

[The Neko]

I have a warm cookie for RK. I won't tell you why it's warm though.

Radiator cookies?

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I already said I wouldn't say.
heh heh heh.

[Cope]

You're insinuating again! Don't do that!

[The Neko]

I already said I wouldn't say.
heh heh heh.

Well, if they're "chocolate" cookies, I don't think ANYBODY wants those.

[McDuffies]

I finally managed to get caught with this thread and answer to some things.
I'll be kicking a few dead horses but I won't settle down otherwise:

Um...do you really think most of us were being serious? I mean, come on...the nickname Spacers isn't because we're all on Keenspace. They just want you to believe that.

Hey, I was being serious.
I never mind a nice discussion about serious matter, even if it's completely useless brain evercise like that pinup thread was.
I always say, thise who don't, can just skip the whole thing.

Since when do people think there is no difference between something which is good and something they like?

People do that all the time. Even you, for instance, claimed that Spiderman 2 was who knows how much great film. You simply liked the film. You wanted everyone to think that it's a great film. You even made it a flamewar.

But in general, that habit to equalize personal taste with objective quality is very irritating. What does it bring to?
For instance, I'm reading a book where a so called film critic tries to explain how Die Hard is an ultimative work of art. Explanation is stretched out and unconvincing, but he seems so eager to proove it to us. This guy is simply pretty uptight about his personal taste being matter of high art, that he cannot accept the movie for what it is and say "Well, ok, I like that movie", he simply has to go and put it in a high art shelf by force.
Now it's not one example. I think we all do it a bit, we all let ourselves be led by our taste. And it's ok, our view is subjective by nature. But wherever ego works and personal taste is forced on with agressiveness and faked authority, I get irritated on personal level.
Not I have to draw a line and say that this is not adressing this forum, I'm just talking about general human behaviour with no pointing fingers.

But if you all are willing to do a brain exercise, I suggest this:

1. Name ten works of art that you like despite it being a bad art with no value whatsoever.
2. Name ten things that you dislike despite it being good, valuable and lasting art.

I'm sure everyone could make those lists. It's just a matter accepting that something you like has no value.

I'm less concerned about how people see me, Vort, than as I am about promoting White Hydra and my other ideas.

Vorticus pointed out that your trolly nature might cause you problems. It's definitelly not helping your reputation, it's not helping pimping VH either. Scott Kurtz might be a prick as you say, but PVP is definitely not popular due to him being a prick.
Now if you're saying that you don't what people think about you, you lie. Back a while you were complaining about how noone on board takes you seriously even though you're smart and well read more than half of this forum (by the way, you had to read a few books under detention and you call yourself well read? God save that you enjoyed those books or even understood them? and to think that some people on this forum even read books even though they don't have to) and we were explaining how it's nothing but your previous behaviour that caused it.
Also, you did an effort to please Striker into not permanently banning you. When this happened, WH was going ok, your job on pimping it on this forum was mostly over for the time, and you had no other reasons for wanting to stay on this forum but that you actually liked the forum.
In short, you DO care about how we see you.
VAN LUUUVESS USSS!!!!
*hugs Van despite Van's protests*

But seriously, I always thought one of your best qualities is, you don't have delusions about yourself, you accept yourself as you are. You won't act like a troll and then whyne "Why do you all keep attacking me?"

I'm all for drawing comics for the fun of it, sure. And cause it's art. But anyone who says they're only doing it because it's art is full of shit. If you didn't want people to read it you wouldn't take all the damn time to put it online.

If someone says that he is doing comics only for art, then perhaps you shouldn't take him too literally.
For instance me: my main reason is... well, I don't dare to say art, but creative process. Making something, telling a story, drawing. Readers, eventual popularity, whatever comes along, are on the second place and as such, of secondary importance. Which means I would still be drawing comics if noone read them. Heck, I've been drawing comics for fifteen years with as much as a few merciful souls reading them, before webcomics. Even then, my secondary reason was perspective that someone will read them one day, but my primary reason was creation.

So if someone says that he's doing comics only for art, it's usually implied that it's because other reasons are of secondary importance, not because other reasons don't exist at all. It's like when you make a joke, and considering that joke is very obvious, you don't put smiley at the end. Smiley implied.

Why in hell would I do that?
You can write all the pretty tutorials you want, but facta non verba, buddy. It's like if there was someone writing essays about racial equality in newspapers, but back home was beating up black people on the street.
You can write whatever you want somewhere else, but make for god damn sure your actions in another place, say... this forum, echo what you've written or you'll be branded a hypocrite or liar.

If Fagin is demonising advertising, that he's not doing anything to disaproove it, not on this forum. He advertised his own comic so little that most of people around don't even know that he has comic. He's one of rare people who don't have his comic's link in his signature. Of course, he knows as well that this is overboard lack of advertising but he has his reasons for that.

No! So shut the fuck up already with your stupid opinions - you were the one who I was talking about in my post earlier, except I was too polite to openly mention it. Fuck politeness, and fuck your know-nothing opinions.

Actually, I for one care to hear Yeahduff's opinion, he's a smart guy with a realistic outlook at the world, and without counterproductive angst. So if someone should shut the fuck up around here, it's people who start cursing when they're left out of arguements (which usually means when they realise they're not right). But seeing your rank, you probably did already. It might not be fair of me for saying this now, but I didn't get in time and I feel I just have to say this.

Say, It's barely reaching the subject, but did anyone else noticed hint of advertising in almost every post Van posts? I don't know if it's just me, but it seems to me that he'll usually pop only on threads that he can derail into talk about White Hydra, and even sometimes he'll try to derail it by force... which can be considered attention seeking as well, but attention seeking can get annoying too. Also, he starts those threads with big announcements about WH, I haven't seen others doing that... He posted several fanarts in Fanart Joy, but to my remembering, none was for anyone who posts in this forum.
Well, a few days ago, he simultanously posted that he was trying to contact Chris Crosby in two threads... it was almost shouting "ask me why I want to contact Chris Crosby" but noone bite the bullet. But this can be my imagination as well.
I mean, I may be wrong, maybe Van's general nature got the worst of me and I started receiving subliminal messages where there's none... After all, we all use these forums as our vents for personal problems and there's nothing wrong about that ('cept when you overdo it)....
So did anyone else get the same impression? I remember when VT was posting, I was getting signals that he was intentionally demeaning other parts in conversation even when he was posting normally, but noone except me got that feeling.

Indeed, but you do realise acting like this does make your job of promoting White Hydra much much much harder, do you?

In fact, that's why I rate his chances of being spotted to 0.001%
Do fab four wants another troublemaker in their rows? Specially since, because of the "once keenspoter, always keenspoter" policy, they couldn't get rid of him if he becomes big problem.

A fine example of this would be Winsor McCay. He was always promoting his work. He did vaudeville, made musicals, printed his strip in syndication around the country, made all sorts of en vogue merchandising of the day based upon Little Nemo. Did his reputation suffer from this at the time?

I guess the answer would be contained in the question: Was the quality of advertising means on par with comic? It's not that simple issue. Thing is, I think, that there is so much bad and tactless advertising around that people sometimes just choose no advertising at all. It's not that good advertising is hard to do. It's just that people often think that nothing will damage their comic, so "it can't hurt". "It can't hurt if I violently pimp my comic on forum where plugging isn't allowed", to take the extreme example. So, as we'd say, "who was once bitten by a snake, is now scared by a lizard".

I think that being an artform that is read and consumed in it's many forms by everyone at some time makes it a pretty powerful artform, too. To take full advantage of the power, however, we need to get past the stigma that so many 'artiste' types want to pin on popularly consumed arts. Just because it isn't cordoned off behind a velvet rope, and just because it is popularly accessible to the drooling masses does not make a thing less artistic. It just makes it more successful. I find it very tragic that artists often desperately want success, but are unwilling to persue that success to its fullest extent. I don't want that defeatist mentality to flow into my beloved cartoon artform. Comics already have over a century of issues to work through without additional baggage.
Not to mention the big 'art' sect of our industry certainly seem to be doing pretty well for themselves, despite all the sighing and shuffling they do over their popularity. I haven't heard Crumb complaining about the house in France that his sketchbooks bought him. I haven't seen Spiegelman quit waving his Pulitzer around at every chance he gets. I haven't seen McCloud refrain from riding the wave of UC by putting out hastily assembled crap. I haven't heard news that Moore, Clowes, or Pekar have refused any attention OR checks from the movies they had okayed. Oddly enough, any and all attention they've garnered for themselves by way of what could certainly be seen as shameless self-promotion is not going to diminish the level of quality within the work they've done, or the steps that they have taken to change the face of comics as an artform.

Hmmm, but didn't art turn into populistic in 20 century in general. The reason art was elitist in earlier centuries was because back then only a small amount of people could afford education that would teach them to respect the art, and also wealth that would grant them free time to enjoy it. 20 century was pretty much about art spanning to wider and wider audience, but also letting some of so called populistic art approach to so called higher art. Like pop art in painting, or jazz and blues (spiritual, ethno music of afro-americans) as well as american and irish folk in music.
The result is, I think terms of higher art and populistic art are grossly misused nowadays, both by people who are proud they're consuments of higher art (wanna-be elitists) and those who are proud of not being consuments of higher art (proud of not being elitists). Bot are wrong, but the second one has that subtle paradox in itself, that those people often don't realise.
But if we accept the widest meaning of the term art, there are still categories of good art, bad art, etc. Good as meaningfull, deep, of lasting value, bad as the one that aims purely to give you fun for a couple of hours and then let you forget about it, as well as the one that attempts to be the first but fails due to bad execution. But the difference between this terminology and the one with terms of high and populistic is huge. Fith first terminology, one can claim that comics are populistic art, that rock music is populistic, that, on the other hand, literature and painting are high art... and given that (usually in a very dogmatic way, too) comics are bad per se. No need to proove that particular comic is bad or good, since they are generally lower art. Terminology with good and bad gives us oportunity to look at every comic, music record, film, painting or novel individually.
Which brings me to another issue:

People in the entertainment industry don't view a lot of things as "art". Family Guy, for example, isn't considered by entertainment execs art at all. There is an art TO it, but for all intensive purposes, it's not. I've been told once (by a fairly reputable person) "You're not an artist. But with the right aspirations, that is a very good thing." However, there has to be a delicate balance. Heavily marketed material often alienates audiences, while things that are too artistic turns them off. Really, it's like two sides of extremes, "sellout" and "indie" and then you have the masses in the center.
Personally, all I care about is that I amuse people. However, in order to accomplish that, I have to promote somehow, so more people can enjoy it. Promoting and "selling out" aren't necessarily interchangeable terms, unless the promotion involves countering your own judgment and tastes for the sake of others.
It's amazing how many people will say "I liked it before it got famous", even though the new content is no different than the old.

Bona fide fact: art has to be entertaining. When asked why he write "the name of the rose", Umberto Ecco replied "I just wanted to entertain people". If that reason is good enough for one of greatest writers of last few decades and evenmoreso, one of most important literature critics and semiologists of the century, it's damn well good enough for me.
Old books that you often consider boring were still entertaining in the time they were written. You may be bored as hell through movies of Andrei Tarkovsky or Stanley Kubrick, I personally was entertained all through them. Well, maybe I was a bit bored through the end of the Oddisey: 2001, but just a bit. Noone, not even consumers of 'high art' want to be bored by it.
What Eco didn't have in mind is next: to an intelectual like him, process of learning is fun too. Psychical analize of characters is fun. Things that make you think, process of thinking and conclusions you draw from them are fun. Emotions that artist evokes from you, but also the method he used for that, is fun. However, for an average, half-arsed consumer, those things are boring. Thus, though fun is important factor in art, it is not decisive, it is not enough.
I thought it's important to say this because I've seen some opinions in this thread that somehow (and unintentionally, I think) distance fun from art. As if good art is not allowed to be fun, as if populistic art is not allowed to be good. As if, when you say "I'm looking for stuff that will entertain me", you instantly apologuise for not liking the art.
Of course, there is an issue of what divides good art from bad art, now if I started talking about that I think this would get tooooo long.

Now, just for your pleasure I will give a few examples of something that changed the context with getting popular. Not that I think that popularity per se means changing context and lack of quality, I just want to show that everything is possible:

Example 1. Through nineties, I was listening a lot to a relatively unknown croatian musician knows Darko Rundek. During the war he went a bit underground, he would rather his music not be on tv and top lists, such was the time. I enjoyed him all that time but I didn't know too many people who did too. In fact, in my home town, I knew two more people who listened to him.
Now, year of 2000, he was the first foreign musicial who did a concert in Serbia after the fall of Milosevic. Being that he was still more a cult musician than a popular musician, he did a concert in a small hall, not very much people and all, cozy atmosphere, in short, one of the best concerts I've attended, ever.
Meanwhile, and partly due to those concerts, he got more popular around here. More and more. Next time I listened him having a concert in big fortress in Novi Sad, in front of 100 times as much people. Needles to mention, cosy atmosphere was gone, all those people going wild, stage hardly visible far in the distance, all in all, very bad.
But I've attended his concerts in halls later too. I think they were not on par with first one. He and his band got sloppy. Thay didn't need to impress anyone anymore, they had popularity guaranteed, and popularity of people who wouldn't know the difference too.

Example 2. Batman 1 and 2. Great movies. Well, good at least. Getting popular. Big producers making two more shamefull sequels. Now you can pretend that those sequels never happened, but you would still be only pretending.

[Beyonder_alpha]

so... when is your book coming out? :grins:

[Cope]

It's just a matter accepting that something you like has no value.

But doesn't something you like make you feel good? If that's the case, it has value.

[Godoftarot]

You know, I can't believe I'm actually standing up for Van, here, but people who judge his comic based on his attitude are petty and stupid. I haven't read it yet (I'm slow to getting around to reading a lot of webcomics) but I wouldn't judge it based on his attitude, especially without reading it.
Your attitude isn't your work. And no one has any right to expect you to be nice just because you do artwork. I do a lot of writing and I piss people off sometimes because I have a temper, and if they irritate me, I let them know. But most people aren't dumb enough to stop reading my work just because I'm not Miss Sunshine all the time.
No, I don't like Van's attitude. But what I dislike even more is people who judge his work based on that. You're not any better than he is if you act like that. Whoever said you have to be a nice person to have good work? You don't. If you judged a work based on the attitude of the person who did it, you miss out. Your loss, not his.

[The Neko]

But in general, that habit to equalize personal taste with objective quality is very irritating. What does it bring to?
For instance, I'm reading a book where a so called film critic tries to explain how Die Hard is an ultimative work of art. Explanation is stretched out and unconvincing, but he seems so eager to proove it to us. This guy is simply pretty uptight about his personal taste being matter of high art, that he cannot accept the movie for what it is and say "Well, ok, I like that movie", he simply has to go and put it in a high art shelf by force.
Now it's not one example. I think we all do it a bit, we all let ourselves be led by our taste. And it's ok, our view is subjective by nature. But wherever ego works and personal taste is forced on with agressiveness and faked authority, I get irritated on personal level.
Not I have to draw a line and say that this is not adressing this forum, I'm just talking about general human behaviour with no pointing fingers.

It is true, we are all guilty of this practice at one point or another. Personally, I believe this stems from the fact that people don' want to admit fault or inconsistency at any point. In Western society, the need to be consistent can override all logic. Psychologically, this concept is partly responsible for the Jonestown Massacre, as people had to keep up their devotion to 'The Cause' to remain consistent with their professions of ideals made when 'The Cause' was easier to subscribe to.

[Bekka]

You know, I can't believe I'm actually standing up for Van, here, but people who judge his comic based on his attitude are petty and stupid.

VD comic is pretty fuckin' awesome. His attitude is (or quickly becomes) that of an annoying 18 year old weener, but we've all been annoying teenage scrubs and he'll eventually grow out of it. At least, when he does, he'll have heaps of talent to work on.

[Beyonder_alpha]

You know, I can't believe I'm actually standing up for Van, here, but people who judge his comic based on his attitude are petty and stupid.

VD comic is pretty fuckin' awesome. His attitude is (or quickly becomes) that of an annoying 18 year old weener, but we've all been annoying teenage scrubs and he'll eventually grow out of it. At least, when he does, he'll have heaps of talent to work on.

pvp => person drawing it is a prick to most and he's well beyond the age of 18, stil he's up there with the big guys.
So I hardly see someone's character influence their performances to be honest

[Van Douchebag]

VD comic is pretty fuckin' awesome. His attitude is (or quickly becomes) that of an annoying 18 year old weener, but we've all been annoying teenage scrubs and he'll eventually grow out of it. At least, when he does, he'll have heaps of talent to work on.

Well, I am eighteen years old, after all.
I'm this kind of walking dichotomy - on one hand I'm an intellectual who listens to classical and new age music and is capable of deep and meaningful discussion who wishes to make a philosophical impact on those around him, and on the other I'm a screaming punk ass kid who cusses left and right while listening to heavy metal and putting his personal safety in danger by wrestling, performing juvenile Jackass tricks and riding a BMX.

I hate to quote an old teacher twice in one day, but in a written letter I included with my college application he described me as "fire and ice; a blend of fiery passion and cold intellectualism".

... ain't I douchebag?

[Joel Fagin]

You know, I can't believe I'm actually standing up for Van, here, but people who judge his comic based on his attitude are petty and stupid.

Yep! They're called the Public.

Anyway, it's not so much the reading as the opportunities, whether for Spothood or just being linked. People are less inclined to do even minor and deserved favours for people they don't like.

- Joel Fagin

[Godoftarot]

You know, I can't believe I'm actually standing up for Van, here, but people who judge his comic based on his attitude are petty and stupid.

Yep! They're called the Public.

Anyway, it's not so much the reading as the opportunities, whether for Spothood or just being linked. People are less inclined to do even minor and deserved favours for people they don't like.

- Joel Fagin

My public doesn't act like that.
And really, I think Van is kinda at the point where people are asking him for favors. Obviously a lot of people don't judge his work based on his attitude. He's obviously doing something that works. So his public doesn't act like that, either.
In fact, you're the only one I've seen insist he won't get readers due to his attitude, and that's clearly not true. So maybe it's time to stop acting like an insufferable know-it-all.

[Van Douchebag]

Point made, Joel, but godoftarot is right when she mentions how petty it is of human nature to prejudge something based on personal feelings - it's like how Christian zealots bash movies like Dogma that they've never once gone to see.

I mean, have you ever watched Record of Lodoss War?
In one scene where the elf Deedlit is doing battle, the dwarf Ghim compliments her prowess. The party's thief mentions how he always thought dwarves and elves didn't get along and how he thought they hated each other. Ghim replies that only a human would be foolish enough to ignore an adversary's or rival's admirable qualities.

In practice, for example, I dislike Scott Kurtz personally for his arrogancy for going after Tauhid Bondia, but I respect his accomplishments that set precedents for other webcomics, so as his bashing into the newspapers. Or, for example, how I despise Dave aka Scribblekid for our conflicts over time and the works of his that brought about such conflicts, but I would never speak ill of Chugworth Academy regardless of how I feel about him personally.

It is in human nature to hate and prejudge that which we hate. Our animal nature doesn't allow us to do something like compliment someone we despise as we would instinctively feel that our pride would be compromised if we did (Which it wouldn't be, in such a case).

[Joel Fagin]

My public doesn't act like that.

Webcomics has an advantage over other mediums that the public doesn't get to hear about what the creators are like behind the scenes.* I mean, everyone here writes a comic, yes? The public doesn't really hang around us (and the tabloids certainly don't care )

In fact, you're the only one I've seen insist he won't get readers due to his attitude, and that's clearly not true.

That wasn't me. I know I picked up the argument but that was just because I felt I could explain the other side, and I didn't pick it up untill after you defended Van against it. My last post before that was about 1984.

So maybe it's time to stop acting like an insufferable know-it-all.

Oh, I don't know anything. It's my job not to know anything and impart it with certainty. I'm a college lecturer.

Point made, Joel, but godoftarot is right when she mentions how petty it is of human nature to prejudge something based on personal feelings

I agree completely. It's just that it is human nature. Generally human nature is all bad stuff. Civilisation is about resisting and supressing it.

"Evil is nothing more that the path of least resistance."

- Joel Fagin

* Except when an argument between creators turns into a newspost war. This seems to be Scott Kurtz's problem.

[Cope]

Oh, I don't know anything. It's my job not to know anything and impart it with certainty. I'm a college lecturer.

Indeed. Your job is to ramble on interminably and make your victims want kill themselves to end the insufferable boredom