El Goonish Shive

Sketchbooks don't count...

NP Gam24

Not so different or not so similar?

Edited by Daremo on Aug 9th 2018 at 12:49:24 PM

I guess that's fair, since sketchbook postings skip the story and frequently go right for the fetishes.

Aw Dan can't legally do the full team rocket motto

NP Gam25

Team Honesty.

Sketchbook: Getting Catty

meowy catsmas everynyan

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Dawww...

NP Gam27 Oh.

Sketchbook: Hot Topic? I just left there.

Sketchbook: That's where we met.

I will be sadly disappointed if we don't get any Mortal Kombat jokes involving Goro-Grace. (I realize it's actually Machamp-Grace, but the arms are positioned more like Goro than Machamp.)

She'll get turned into a catgirl, giving us Kintaro-Grace.

Edited by sgamer82 on Aug 17th 2018 at 6:37:26 AM

Comic Tlod001

Back in a flash.

NP Gam28

Subtle.

No, Shive, Grace's was the most separate storyline from Sister 3. As well as Justin's, Sarah's, and several others'. But hey, you do you. Give Diane more attention. Sure.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Aug 20th 2018 at 6:43:38 AM

Welp, I'll just be in this corner here trying to piece together the shards of my broken heart. I now wish that she and Elliot had gotten together.

Also, I approve of the new comic size - it lets readers see some of the details better.

Edited by ironballs16 on Aug 20th 2018 at 2:01:05 AM

Or Susan. Either was better than headcrab, really.

That’s because, unlike with Ashley, there was at least buildup for Elliot to be with Susan or Diane.

Okay, I used to be a bully and this bullying feels super forced to me. On this page, Shive depicted:

1. Male-on-male bullying tactics.
2. Implied to have been used by all of the boys in class rather than, say, a troublemaker or two.
3. Happening in full view of the entire class and teacher.
4. With zero effort by the teacher to stop it.

Not one part of that feels accurate to my bullying experience.

This feels very real to me because it's generalized bullying rather than specific bullying. The kids most likely find something to mock everyone for whenever they go up, and the teacher feels like she can't punish every single person in class for some "harmless taunting." Maybe she should (I've had a few teachers who would have flunked the entire class and then make them sit quietly for the entire period over something like this), but it's not uncommon for them to let it slide.

I don't think this page is suggesting that Diane was undergoing a specific campaign of harassment, or even that she believed she was. It's just demonstrating that she thought boys were immature jerks.

Or it only needs to be a few bullies a few times to give a bad impression. Children are not renowned for their perfectly logical, proportionate responses.

This scene is all about perspective. Also it's Dan cutting corners on exposition instead of showing several pages of specific examples of bullying.

The scene makes a lot of sense if one views it in the lens of being from Diane's perspective, even if the "camera" clearly is not. It probably was just one or two kids, the teacher probably was either doing something or about to do something to punish the bullies, and it might not necessarily have been just boys doing it (among other things, I knew girls who'd attempt to pitch down enough to be mistaken for a boy in such cases... and if this was pre-adolescence, it wouldn't have required much).

Also, I don't think this is specifically boy-on-boy bullying (which, in my experience, usually involved more physical and violent actions - in fact, this reminds me more of how girls would bully me back in the day). This seems more like "opportune moment" bullying that either gender would pull off.

I suspect the next page or two is going to reveal that this is actually a dream that present-day Diane is having (which might explain some of the awkwardness in the presentation), which also will clarify things a bit.

Also, I'm willing to cut Shive some slack here. The wounds from bullying are still very fresh to them (a quick look at their twitter is more than enough to tell me that), and sometimes when the subject comes up, the clarity of the message is more important than the clarity of the delivery. Given that Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped, I'm willing to be a bit generous on the point.

Believe you me, in the right (wrong) environment boys can be led to bully as a group. It's like Conservation of Ninjutsu, but for empathy, which is a quality kids are already short on.

Bullying is usually hard to depict well in fiction anyway, because it's often very contextual.

I'm not really impressed with this depiction, but meh.

Comic Tlod002

Present, in the meanwhile...

The hair looks a little better today - the angled cut looks nicer and more distinct.

This page really calls attention to how much Diane doesn't really feel like the character we originally met at all anymore.

Not unlike what happened to Pandora, really. Shive likes to flesh out his antagonists and humanize them, but in the process, often loses track of the original antagonistic personality they had and winds up with a completely different person wearing the former antagonist's face.

I think he has trouble grasping why a reasonable human being would act that way, and so during the transition from puppy-eating monster to three-dimensional character, completely loses track of why a three-dimensional character would have ever eaten puppies.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Aug 22nd 2018 at 12:05:03 PM