Not sociopathic enough - : Heroic Sociopath

However, 'killing people that everyone else wants him to kill' is pretty much as 'heroic' as the Heroic Sociopath gets, given that they're pretty much defined as the Ax-Crazy Psycho for Hire who happens to be on the heroes' side.

So who is 'everyone else' then, without exposition in those panels? I thought we weren't meant to be relying on the article to understand its image.

Without context, I would take 'everyone' to mean everyone - i.e., the general population. That's what morality is generally derived from, after all - the mores of society in general. In-context, I'm pretty sure that that's what he means as well.

It's a pretty good lampshading of why Heroic Sociopaths are so popular with fans - they (usually) only kill people who nobody likes.

edited 20th Sep '10 6:09:11 AM by Iaculus

I agree that it's the perfect picture, but it might be somewhat hard to crop since the speech bubbles go outside the panels. Just something to consider.

Edit: The fact that he's getting presents, not payment, implies that he's not just a mercenary but is actively helping people. It also helps to have a certain gaming background of quest rewards though.

edited 20th Sep '10 6:19:04 AM by Clarste

Maybe we could do just the first panel as the picture, and the text of the second as the caption?

Can I suggest a panel from one of the strips where he's eating chips out of a kobold's head?

Doesn't emphasise the 'heroic' in the same way - without context, we have no ide whether or not the kobold was a bad guy, or (given the lack of anything but a head) even a sentient being.

Still think that the two panels from the strip suggested previously provide the best description of what, exactly, a Heroic Sociopath is.

edited 20th Sep '10 4:01:20 PM by Iaculus

Literally, yes. The problem is the more you discuss it the less convincing it is as a page picture, because almost all of the Heroic Sociopath related material is in the dialogue that takes up a majority of the panels. That makes it a good page quote, not a good page image.

Indeed, as I noted on Page 1.

How about a clip from Hulk vs Wolverine of Deadpool interrogating Wolverine? Or Deadpool period?

I again nominate the last four panels of this strip.

Preferably stacked in a square.

We might as well just replace the image with a block of text if people keep submitting stuff like that, TBH.

...what?

Just because it's got a lot of text doesn't mean it's text based. You couldn't turn that into a page quote because you'd miss the shots of Yokyok's head and tail and it wouldn't make any sense.

Same reason the image on All Men Are Perverts works as a page image. Sure, the main point of the image is the text, but if you don't have it as an image you lose the context.

I agree with Black Humour. That's the one that's worked the best so far at combining text and images.

So what do nachos and salsa have to do with heroic sociopathy again.

The salsa is made from the flesh of his enemy, and he's eating it out of a severed head.

Perhaps the second panel or first two of this? http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0013.html

...unless it's already been suggested.

^ Good quote, bad image.

Fair enough... this is hard to do. A lot of the tells seem to be in what they say about things...

Which may just mean that the page remains pictureless, I guess.

I cropped Discar's pic and edited in the rest of the background. I think it looks okay, but some of the edge of Belkar's speech bubble looks weird.

edited 17th Nov '10 12:57:05 AM by AngryScientist

That is some excellent text, but the meaning is all text.

I have to agree with you there. Without the speech bubbles, it really means nothing. But if we do end up using it, it shouldn't include the borders from the original comic. See page 1.

If the Order of the Stick one isn't acceptable (and there are other pics I've seen that is mostly dependent on text - see RetGone for an example), then I vote no pic at all, because I don't see how you're going to get in both halves of the trope in one picture with minimal to no text.

Well, relying on text isn't an automatic disqualification, but it is a dire criticism. And Stick Figure Comics can rely almost entirely on text. Is a text-heavy image better than no image at all?

edited 17th Nov '10 1:34:56 AM by rodneyAnonymous