Live Blogs The Great Nitpicky Live Blog of El Goonish Shive

MrAHR

Cakman:

151

• My favorite part of El Goonish Shive is how realistically depicted the characters are.
• Note that I didn't pothole to "sarcasm mode", as it was already obvious I was being sarcastic. Learn how to communicate, tropers.
• But if Susan taught Sarah how to use hammers... Why can Elliot do it without training?

152

• I like that his female characters are well-written and fleshed out. They smack males when those perverted males make lude comments, and can be ultra cute to make sure things go their way.
• Whatever happened to the principle's german accent? Did that go away?

153

• "Means more to them then a salary" is the part that pisss me off here. My Mom has been a teacher for 20-something years, and to this day makes a whopping 40,000 a year. For the uneconomic, that is not a lot. Teachers DO take their jobs because they enjoy teaching the students. There really are no other benefits to it besides that. So fuck you, Shive. You have no idea how teachers think.
• The teacher looks in the final panel like he could just as easily be gasping "I'm having a heart attack."

154

• You don't need to keep reminding us who they are. We remember.
• Ellen looks like she has man-abs.
• I still can't get over the biology-ignoring plot device that is the god damn pheromones thing.

155

• I agree. I like the owl poster.
• LOL MEN ARE PERVERTS
• LOL BOOBS.
• TITS◊

156

• There is no joke here. Once again.
• Then again, knowing Shive's handling of women, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that Ellen was smelling chocolate. CAUSE YOU KNOW HOW THEM WOMENS LOVE CHOCOLATE!
• What would happen if Ellen was impregnated and then switched back?

157

• WHO THE FUCK IS THIS GUY!? I can almost guarantee you that he is modeled after someone Shive dislikes. Ugg. He just makes no sense. He doesn't seem to have any friends, yet the jokes he makes make him come across as the popular kid, despite being asinine and making no sense.
• I like Susan's model after the art shift. Here she just looks bland.
• AND NO ONE TEASES PEOPLE THAT BLUNTLY. You do it in a FUNNY way, or make hurtful jokes about them. But this kid just sounds like the 'bully' character in a John Hughes film.

158

• Ellen's breasts seemed to have been enhanced to D Ds in the first panel.
• Also, even if we were to take the whole pheromone thing as legitimate, there would be no way that Susan could pick them up from across the room. It would be a next-to-the-person type of thing. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to recognize where the smell waseven coming from.

159

• Shive is anime-influenced in one respect. His characters have singular, defining traits, and EVERYTHING about them revolve around that one word or phrase. This isn't a good thing. It sucks.
• SUSAN HATES MEN. HAVE YOU GOTTEN THAT YET GUYS?
• The joke isn't even well-delivered. Blurg. This bothers me.
• How can she not tell that it is Elliot?! IT'S ELLIOT WITH TITS. THERE'S NOT A HUGE DIFFERENCE.

160'

• I can't help but love this strip. Wanna know why? This is actually Dan Shive's message to people who complained. Susan is completely logical in her assessment of what Elliot did. Yet Sarah, for God knows what reason, simply says "Yeah, okay. I know you weren't thinking about my well-being at all, but I still want your dick OMNOMNOMNOM.

Good lord. How can ANYONE look at these characters and point out redeeming qualities?! I don't understand it in the slightest!

AHR:

Shive addresses the pregnancy thing later. Long story short, they are stuck in perma mode for those 9 months.

Gilphon:

Wow, Susan's been hit with a lot of Characterization Marches ON over the years, hasn't she? I mean, her issues with men are subject to character development, but compare her interactions with Elliot to her interaction with Catalina later on. It's inconsistent, even when you factor in the 'pheromone' nonsense. * Also she should not be that expressive, and she's far more of a psychotic bitch than she is… well, anywhere outside of this sequence.

I would like to say, however, that even at this point she's less 'Straw Feminist' and more 'parody of a Straw Feminist', if that's makes sense. I won't deny there's straw-stuffing going on, but it's more making Susan into a joke than making feminists in general into a joke.

AHR:

I see what you mean by being a parody. I don't think that makes it any better, but I see what you mean.

151: Cakman fails at Getting The Joke 101. In my opinion the hammers are pretty much ONLY capable of being funny if the story is intentionally and blatantly inconsistent about how and why they're there.

Also, it's not exactly a record setter or anything, but I think we can increase the Elliot's Horrid Faces counter by one in that last panel.

153: It's such common knowledge that teahcers work for peanuts that I would like to assume that Shive was trying to poke fun of any kid stupid enough to think that they aren't there for the students' sakes... but then the strip contains a teacher who apparently actually doesn't care about him.

154: Seriously Shive, you would be in a better position if we DID forget who those two are and pretended they were just two random classmates.

156: This is the laziest form of foreshadowing that I have ever heard of. I'm not sure it even counts. Also, I'm afraid there was something that was intended to be a joke... a joke that should be losing him points in its own right by virtue of the fact that he thinks it's funny.

157: AHR I think you may have been my opposite-sex clone as a child or something. Just saying.

158: AHR, even a competent artist would have a good challenge drawing a suitably freaked out Tedd to convey that joke without dialogue given how much of his face is covered by those glasses. Besides, I think by this point Shive had long since passed a Lack Of Subtlety Critical Mass which meant that while reading his strip I was not looking for anything subtle on the assumption that it wouldn't be there and it was better to read the story arc quickly for the broad strokes than focus on it. The only way I'm noticing pretty much any of the things which aren't made blatantly obvious is when you compliment him on them.

By the way, I'm going to posit here the theory that Susan's not actually wearing a jacket, she's just wearing an odd t-shirt that has a vertical stripe down the middle.

JOSSED by other strips. Would have made much more sense though.