Live Blogs The Great Nitpicky Live Blog of El Goonish Shive

MrAHR

AHR:

Yes. Susan gets two backstories. One happens in 2005 and is pretty much cut short to deal with Justin's unrequited love, and the other serves to explain why she has hammers.

Cakman:

But AHR, aren't you sad about Nip too? ;_;

Noxilicious:

Maybe he'll start something non-porn related? I kinda like his style, actually.

Also, Susan's hammer backstory would be better if it wasn't followed by the comic's worst instance of exposition yet. The entire last third of that story-arc is just exposition.

Oh, wait also involves introducing a new character and then outright announcing that he'll be killed off at the end of the story-arc AND YOU BETTER FEEL SORRY BECAUSE THIS IS A SAD THING, ARE YOU NOT SAD THAT THIS CHARACTER YOU DIDN'T GET ANY TIME TO GET ATTACHED TO WILL DIE?

See, one of my buddies used to say that EGS was his favorite webcomic. After that story-arc? Not anymore.

AHR:

To show you how much of an emotionless person I am, I didn't even realize we WERE supposed to feel sorry for Jerry. I just saw it as, well exposition, for those two other immortals. I remember that though, it was in July, and I remember this because I had no internet for the entire month because my computer broke. When I last checked, they were in the cave, and when I got back a month later, they were still in the cave. Truly marvelous pacing. Never read any of the strips, skipped right through.

AC Drawings:

wait, we're supposed to feel sad for Jerry? Why? He's reincarnating, I thought it was one of those new hope sorts of dealies.

AHR:

I do not know if we were supposed to feel sorry for him, but I do think we were supposed to like him in a short period of time. Also, his send off was obviously an attempted heartwarming moment by the cast, so one could interpret it as an overall attempted heartwarming moment.

I remember complaining about Susan's hugness feeling rather forced, and it could be applied to the scene as a whole, instead of to a character, like I did.

Gilphon:

The biggest consistent flaw with Dan's writing style * so, I'm not talking about plot or content or that stuff is the exposition. Exposition needs to be carefully integrated into the action to avoid boring the reader, yet far too often Shive simply has his characters sit down and listen to the infodump for a few pages. It's gotten so bad that recently he felt the need to lampshade it when actually managed to do exposition properly for once, which kind of ruined it.

Oh, about the cave: The emotional climax of that little was, for me anyway, not Susan's goodbye to Jerry. That was merely the stinger. The emotional climax was Jerry's uncharacteristic anger upon hearing Susan's history, and his pledge of loyalty to her afterwards. And I did like Jerry. He was an immortal Trickster Archetype who actually had morals, and he amused me.

e X:

Yeah, I liked Jerry too. Mostly because he was the first normal supernatural character who was introduced and all in all, I would call him one of the comics best characters in terms of characterization.

And I don't actually mind exposition, especially not if it is treated as such in the story. Sometimes, you just have to sit down and have somebody else explain some things to you.

AHR;

I did like the anger Jerry had, because it actually justified a complaint I had about the French. I am unsure if Dan retconned or had planned it all along, but it was a nice touch.

Noxilicious:

I wasn't actually sure whether we were supposed to feel sad about Jerry dying/mindwiping/whatever while the story was going on, it was just when the characters were portrayed as super-sad, and especially Susan hugging him, that it was firmly set in my mind.

It's just that I got the impression that the three characters suddenly has a deep emotional connection with the guy and that we were supposed to have one with him now as well. It felt like like a "FEEL THIS WAY ABOUT THIS CHARACTER" sign to me and being the contrarian that I am I naturally felt a growing antipathy instead. But hey, maybe I'm just grasping for straws here.

And while we're on the subject, another thing that rubbed me the wrong way about that arc is starting that trend of giving the characters power-boosts and presumably building up to some big, combat-heavy story-arc at the end of this "Bringing Silly Back" gig. Because, you know, we all read EGS for Dan's excellent combat choreography. Because when you ask why someone reads EGS, the first answer they give you is 'maaan, the fight scenes rock'.

Seriously, though, the comic's latest combat scene is the biggest reason to be worried about this trend of powering characters up.

Cakman:

Stop it, you guys. You're gonna ruin it for me, and I don't want to spoil any of the exciting twists.

Noxilicious:

Grace Dies.

AC Drawings:

And Elliot decides to go bisexual to have a poly-relationship with Justin and Sarah.

e X:

Everybody gets Aids and shit.

AHR:

I disagree about the power boosts, Noxi. Shive has ALWAYS had a habit of power boosting his characters that have varying, if any, effects on the plot. Now, it's just happening at a more rapid pace, due to the fact that Shive has FINALLY started to learn how to integrate plot and character development/arcs together.