Live Blogs The Great Nitpicky Live Blog of El Goonish Shive

MrAHR

Fusionman: Horray for foreshadowing!

Cakman:

41

• Okay, first of all, I am confused. Is the little half-circle beneath Tedd's glasses suppossed to be his mouth or his nose? If it's his mouth, why does it never open, and if it's his nose, then how does he speak?
• I disagree with AHR in that I like the coloring more than the B&W. At the same time though, SOLID COLORS DO NOT COUNT AS BACKGROUNDS.
• Also let it be known that the second to last panel went out of its way to explain the joke. For Christ's sake, Shive. Even Not Another Teen Movie didn't explain their glasses joke.
• Enough. Peter Molyneux made a game that you enjoyed. Move on.

42

• When did Grace become interested in video games? It seemed as though Black And White was the first one she played.
• When did Grace make the character switch from being seriously worried about her safety to an anime girl?

43

• You know, this is actually really cool, because I had just been thinking to myself as I clicked on this strip that El Goonish Shive was an awesome webcomic, but I felt like it could use more jokes that revolve around Tedd being interested in sexual activity, and WHAM! Just like that, Shive reads my mind!
• I was curious to understand what book Grace was reading. According to Amazon, this◊ is the strategy guide to Black and White. And it is clearly not the book Grace is reading. Grace appears to be reading either an old hardcover book with no cover picture, or a text book with a book sock.

44

• AHR, might I suggest that you take out the word "yet" from your foreshadowing line above.
• Once again those friggin smug title cards are back. You can only pretend that you knowing something we don't is important if we give a damn about it in the first place.
• Man, that last sentence I just typed was long-winded.
• Speaking of Long winded, when the fuck are we going to find out who Grace is, besides the sister of a Gargoyle silhouette?
• A_H_R, I will rape you if you bring up anything relating to Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged series again. Let's deal with one bad series at a time. bringitupgain bringitupagain bringitupagain bringitupagain bringitupagain bringitupagain
• I agree with you, AHR. Only fatsos weigh anything more than 160 pounds.

45

• I spent five minutes laughing at Grace's eyes in the last panel. Seriously- use your fingers to cover the screen above and below her eyes. It makes her look like Garfield in those old 4chan comics◊
• It's not Dude Where's my Car references you need to worry about, Dan. I actually don't even recall the first one. It's Clerks that you need to stay away from. In fact, let go of Clerks, and you can reference Dude Where's My Car all you want. Let us keep the good comedies.
• Grace's line in the second panel strikes me as... Conceited. Oh well. At least this arc seems so far to be only boring, and not ass-pullingly contrived and convoluted!

Brb. I'll add my comments on the rest when I get back.

Cakman:

I suppose I will actually lump this strip and the next together content-wise, so art first:

• What the eff is up with Grace's profile in the last panel? She looks like Droopy Dog.

45 and a half and 46

• Okay, allow me, for a minute, to pause, so that I might explain why I made the earlier joke about this arc not being convoluted. I feel that a paragraph form better expresses my disdain for this particular sequence.

Let us assume, for the moment, that the Mall would not let the girls back in just to exit in the proper area. Let us also assume that the Mall has a bizarre gap in the middle of it, I suppose separating its halves. We may also assume that, somehow, that it gets dark at 5:00 wherever this webcomic takes place, as that is the time that Sarah said the mall closed. Assuming all that, at what point do you think the man in the alleyway here decided that a profitable place to mug people would be outside of a mall? Just... Waiting in between buildings. What is his shtick? He waits there after closing and hopes that a maximum of two people take the shortcut? What if there's a group of people? What if no one shows up? And if it is dark out (dark to the point that they could not see the man coming), why is he wearing a ski mask? And if the first panel is to be believed, since he is hiding behind the garbage can, what if someone came from the other side? Would he just sit there, crouching, pretending to be innocent? What if a security officer took a stroll around the Mall grounds, you know, like they always do? Wouldn't they see the guy in the ski mask needlessly brandishing a knife? And why would the mugger even be OUTSIDE the mall when there is obviously going to be a Mall Security team nearby? And moving onto 47, we get even more nonsense. This man, whose head is apparently four inches tall, jumps out of a dark alleyway on what he thinks is two defenseless teenage girls, only to see one of them start crying, and then morph before his eyes into a giant, mutated crossbreed between a squirrel and a human. He SAW this happen. He knows that it isn't a costume or anything. She sprouted fur and teeth in front of his very eyes. And yet, for whatever reason, this doesn't seem to bother him. HE'S STILL GOING TO TRY AND ROB THEM. It is only after the squirrel uses its telekinetic powers to take his knife away that his brain decides that something odd has happened. The animorph routine didn't disturb him at all? And why the hell did Grace even NEED to turn into an animal if she was only going to use telekinesis? Can she not use it when in human form? He could have put SOME kind of action scene in here, but no. We get a needless transformation, only to have her just take away his knife magically. Which, of course, makes him run away, and, being the frail and fragile female that she is, Grace immediately has too much strain on her body, passing out. AC, get your black avatar'ed ass over here and explain what the hell is going on.

48

• You know, South Park did a simaler gag to this when they reenacted Great Expectations, by having Malcom Mcdowell play the narrator, introducing himself as "Hello. I am a British Man." Notice he didn't say "stereotypical British man," because the joke IS that he is stereotypical, and it leaves the audience to figure that out on their own.
• And it's a good thing that we have this segment. We certainly wouldn't want anything interesting to happen, right?
• LOL WHAT DOES ROLLERBLADING HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING THAT'S SO RANDUM xD
• The world is dead to me.

49

• Dan Shive has the comedic abilities of Leukemia.
• This woman is the feminist equivalent of Amos and Andy.
• "You told me it was soda" adds nothing to the strip. Why add it? It's not a punch line. It's not a joke. It's just an afterthought following the actual punchline delivered by the doctor.
• Smug title cards return, and I grit my teeth down another millimeter.

50

• All of my life is blackness. Sometimes, I hold a knife to my wrists, pushing harder and harder, just watching to see how much I can take. I can't feel anything anymore. Even the pain, which used to be the only emotion that seemed to seperate me from a robot, no longer exists for me. A dull, emotionless throb of gray permeates my very existance.

51

• Actually, the joke is delivered well here.
• And the title card calls attention to the joke. You know. In case you didn't fucking read it.

52

• HEY GUYS. TEDD HAS A PENIS. WERE YOU AWARE?
• From now on, whenever a joke involving Ted being a pervert is made, I will post a link to El Goonish Shive porn,◊ as I find it to be quite hilarious. Oh God, Grace's face in that picture. If I run out of picture, God damn it, I'll make my own.
• LOLOLOL Shive, that's silly, you shouldn't make bad words when playing scrabble.
• Ted makes a great point here. What if him and Elliot were masturbating together while looking at porn like John and I did that one time?

53

• Way to spoil an awesome plot twist, A_H_R. I would pothole to sarcasm mode, but my sarcasm is so heavy in that sentence that I do not believe the internet could sustain it.
• Also, what kind of asshole is Tedd's father that he let Sarah leave with Grace knowing full well what might happen?

54

• ...

...

...

...ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME?

• THIS IS, WITHOUT A DOUBT, HANDS-DOWN, THE WORST FUCKING WAY YOU COULD POSSIBLY DEAL WITH A BACKSTORY. Rather than letting us learn the information over time, Shive decides to fucking textwall us in a single strip. And you know what? Fuck him. I'm not reading this. Grace has magic powers and spookables are out to get her. That's all I need to know, and I figured that out just by guessing, as it's the same god damn storyline used to make it deaden any female's strength as an independent character. Jesus. Moving on.

55

• The character in the first panel looks like he'd be interesting. Let's have a webcomic about HIM.

Man, this is invigorating. I feel so alive. Then again, I suppose I'm being a giant hypocrite criticizing Shive for textwalling.

AHR:

Oh, Cakman, I was not referring to Little Kuriboh's Abridged Series. I am referring to the abridged series made of the separate Yu Gi Oh series, called 'Season Zero' by most fans.

AHR:

Well, I'm glad you feel so keen to be raped, A_H_R. Eager Beavers, no pun intended, are always appreciated

Gilphon:

Good lord, some of those are terrible. That is an absolutely awful Wall Of Text on the exposition page. I'm really glad that the Painted Black arc, which is where I've always thought things started getting good, ends up going over it in proper detail, actually coming close to Ret Conning parts of it, and IIRC, it's not particularly important until then.

How the hell did I suffer through that page the first time? I mean, Shive still isn't great at working in exposition organically, but geez.

Pretty darn late here, but in strip 53, 'Alright' is a perfectly legitimate way to spell that word.

Hey Cakman, where'd you find that picture? Got any more like it?

41

• Wait...Elliot knows Sarah is interested in him?

42

• Cakman: I'm pretty sure she always was an anime girl.

43

• I guess there really is someone for everyone.
• Wait...Shive can mention the game "Black and White" by name, but he had to use an expy for Roger Ebert?

45

• Lampshading overused jokes makes me think of a line from a Nostalgia Critic video: "If you say you're doing something painful and stupid, it's immediately no longer painful and stupid."

48

• I'm with the mugger. Pretty sure John mentioned this in the Book of Revelation.

"And the eighth seal was opened, and lo I saw a teenage girl transform into a hairy squirrel woman with telekinetic powers. And I did vow from that day forth never to eat that kind of mushroom again. Amen."

49 - 50

• I got nothin'.

51

• I guess threatening a woman with a knife isn't offensive?

52

• I thought it was funny.

54

• Hey Shive, I don't suppose you'd be kind enough to tell us what the hell Sarah is talking about...alright fine, stop crying. I wasn't that interested anyway.
• Sorry, but I don't remember the last time I saw it spelled "all right".
• A cat? Not exactly the most tragic fate in a transformation comic. At least she got better.

55

• To quote Jake from Adventure Time, "Drama bomb!"
• Normally I don't comment on the art, but this color scheme and font size literally hurts my eyes. Thank goodness for the zoom function.
• I know when I think "deadly assassin", I think guinea pig.

56

• Oh my god the webcomic is turning into Jack! *gasps* Oh, just a dream.