[0648] - "please Stop", i wonder...

You must be in Detroit, looking down on Windsor.

Anyway, Loblaws sells 'em in the middle of the cookie aisle with all the other European treats (Jaffa cakes, palmiers, Petit Beurre, etc). They have a President's Choice version, and also a couple of imported brands from Holland. I can't recall the name of the brand I buy but it comes in a gold-coloured foil packet, and it's pretty good.

Voortman's also makes a larger sweeter version, with almonds, sold under the name 'Windmill Cookies' at the Bulk Barn.

But heck, if you are where I think you are, you're right at the edge of Canadian Dutch farming country. There ought to be a Dutch deli or store nearby that sells the real thing.

Uh, should I have PM'd this? It's not exactly on-topic.

That's fundamentally the problem with most fan-fics... they take characters into alternate universes where Kirk and Spock are more than best friends or Ping meets Neo in the Matrix, ad blaseum. WK's liittle short was more interesting to me in the presentation of Miho, the description of her movements and "if she is the secret ninja", her tactics and style. It worked well for Miho (though inside I suspect she's still a lonely little girl ) - his descriptions of how she moved were

I'm mixed on the Grey Series, some good and some "doesn't feel right". Javer's little short story version of Piro and Kimiko meeting after the beer garden incident was an excellent translation of events... fanfic that fills in the gaps but doesn't hurt continuity are my favorite (aka, Grey Series or least parts).

I guess we'll just gab, chat, and ad hoc here for the weekend... faster than a derailed Thread, louder than a Flame war, its its... <whats my line?>.

This post has been edited by Vexx on Dec 17 2004, 03:11 PM

I've noticed. The best way to tell is to find one good author, then go through their favorite authors(assuming fanfiction.net), then find ones you like and go through THEIR favorite authors, and so on and so forth.

I for one, particularly enjoyed that.

foo2u2

Well yes I am disappointed. But I also don't demand Fred keep working. I'm just especially tired of Fred's empty promises. Frankly his word regarding the comic schedule is worthless and he should just keep his mouth shut. He just raises false hope in his fans and lets us down repeatedly.

I had put a great deal of thought into the "universe" of "She Comes". Puberty is the reason for her fainting spells and also her earlier hospital stay. The onset of puberty killed some of the others but not Miho and her brother. You're right Vexx, she's a very lonely little girl. Imagine not just feeling different but being truly different. Imagine that you could rend your tormentors in school like a leopard in a nursery but you just have to take it. Imagine being not only more intelligent than the smartest kid in your class but intelligent in ways that they can't comprehend. Imagine seeing infra-red and ultraviolet, being able to literally smell the lust of your classmates. Imagine that rather than mood swings and angst that the changes in your body as a teen just might kill you. That's a part of what I set my mind to when I wrote "She Comes". I also tried hard to keep Miho in character as much as possible and not blatantly straying from canon.

Hmmmm, I suppose he could take notes from Joe England (Zebra Girl) who regularly skewers and shouts at his readers and dares them to whimper when he has to delay a comic (granted, its a nice farce - private correspondence he's a very nice guy who can't believe the attention his strip gets - I didn't say that, these are not the droids you are looking for). Its just a Fred=rin thing... one of those Greek tragedy things.

"I must set ridiculous goals and not compromise the art, but I'll think my work sucks and get it out late anyway..." Therapy and self-medication for the marginally deranged and part of the real-time entertainment process

You bring up some interesting points, but I think Erika would be reluctant to manhandle Miho especially after the incident with Yuki. Now if Miho finds out, she lacks the physical strength to confront Erika directly (though Miho is very effective at verbal sparring and innuendo). That being said, she is still just an adolescent while Erika is an adult. But if Miho discovers Erika's fatal flaw...

Well, I'll leave speculation on that until it happens.

(btw welcome to the forums)

No! We find a method that brings it back on topic!

I don't think MegaGamers is the sort of place to find non-Japanese food-stuff, is it? It's amazing to me how far the US has overcome its xenophobia. I bought in Illinois a bag of japanese cooked green peas without even romanji on the thing.

I know the use of English in ubiquitous in Japan, but does that include importing American candy? Or Belgian Chocolate? (I can get my Leonidas, thanks.) What's the counter example of Pocky? And might it be on a shelf behind Piro?

There, topic redrift.
Dang Fool
PS: And Duvel. I suppose Largo will show the depth of his interest in Erika by asking where to get the imported b33r.

Bizarrely enough, I appear to be the idiot (*baka*) that won that autographed poster of "Captur3 teh b3@r" on ebay. I mostly wanted it because I missed purchasing the original release of the poster.
ah well... it appears my "wall of MT" is going to be complete for now... assuming I'm not about to be "ebayed".

All I know is that without the local assistance of the food/retail outlets of Anzen and Uwajimaya, we'd have had to move elsewhere eons ago.... Portland massively sucked vacuum in terms of Pacific Rim food 13 years ago... it has massively improved.

So... anyone care to wager on whether Monday's strip cuts back to Erika and Largo? Or does Piro continue to angst until someone (M/P/Y?) enters the shop to play wit his widdle haid?

edit: eek, double post fixy...


This post has been edited by Vexx on Dec 17 2004, 04:06 PM

And that is where the interesting part comes in. What do you think will happen when the unexploded ordnance goes Boom? while with the inputs from the Super Powers such as Sega secretly? Begining of the end of MT story?

(That is assume Erika decide to give her everything to protect her second love relationship, which is all base on if the Largo X Erika relationship got much more needed developements and Miho's provoke goes too far.)

Am I thinking too far ahead?

Great strip!
I certainly don't care that it's late. Especially with all the work going into the book lately.

Anyone want to think that the stuffed critter on the panel is a reference to Liddo-kun and the hole in the floor from Love Hina?
(Searched the post, don't think it was mentioned...LH was, but not this)

GOOD SIR, I CAN SEE THE TOP PORTION OF THE NIPPLE OF THE GIRL IN YOUR AVATAR.

it may not be a nipple, but I see SOMETHING IN YOUR AVATAR THAT LOOKS LIKE A GODDAMN NIPPLE.

I beg to differ. Strip 390 indicates to many Piro was entertaining a menage with Ping and Miho. His anger at his roomie for dispelling that reverie in 392 is obvious.

Piro needs another wack on the head for ignoring Ping-chan. Maybe she should live with Miho for good.

- Sparky

PS That helmet thing was in one of Dom's rants - right?

Hmmm... interesting comic.

1. Can't decide if Piro is being incredibly Piro-centric with his view of Erika's reaction... or is it just more natural human behaviour to start with "Is it something I did wrong?" Certainly Piro has had a big wake-up call... no wonder he's going into shock in the last panel. He is having his world view shaken up.

2. Have to give Sabyr a point about evil conscious twins, because on first read, I took Seraphim to be her more manipulative counterpart. This lead to me interpreting what she was saying differently - that she was deliberately arranging the evidence to discourage Piro, not that she really thought anything was happening between Largo and Erika. Actually I read the comic as a negative indicator for the ExL outcome. Sometimes Fred will point out the obvious just before he totally avoids doing it (like the whole "going to the baths" incident).

3. I do believe there is a quiet poke there at the SD forum speculations - the way Seraphim just roles out the clues one after the other, just stopping short of numbering her points. You could almost read Piro in the last panel on a couple of levels;

Piro MT version - The concept of Largo even considering that there is an opposite sex shakes my view of the world to its very core. Please don't do that.

Piro RL version - The amount of ExL speculation is beginning to frighten me. Please stop or I will be forced to run away.

4. Forcing Piro to think about Largo's new interests makes me wonder about another possible focus' for this chapter. One relationship I've taken for granted throughout the comic has been the Largo/Piro friendship/dependancy. I've never really expected it to change too much as both Largo and Piro spend so much time apart fighting their own battles in their own constructed worlds. Occasionally their world views would cross and clash, but it never seemed to be one of the major plotlines. But maybe it is THE major plot-line. What happens when they start moving into each other's world - is that what Largo's doing now?

Anyway, I better get back to work. All up a fun comic.

You know, seeing Piro's expression, I can't help but remember this.

Yeah, this is kinda what I was talking about earlier when I wondered if Piro was jealous of Erika. Not, as a subsequent poster thought, in any romantic or sexual sense, but simply for disrupting his stable friendship with Largo. Your referring to it as a dependancy is very much on point.

No matter how it plays out, the Piro/Largo friendship is in for big changes. I have to admit I've never thought about this before, and I feel pretty damn foolish for not seeing it coming.

As we all keep saying, most of Sera's speech just recaps what we've been saying here in the forums. Putting a crack in the Piro/Largo friendship, whether it's due to Largo getting Piro's Idoru or Erika getting Piro's friend, is the point of this strip.

breathe, fred! it's all good! i'm interested in how this goes, but in order for that to happen, YOU NEED REST!!! so go crash into your bed and SLEEP!

meh you are too uptight about it then...

Also fix your Misa-chan, she seems to be poking out.

Surely a lot of people have experienced the dissonance when a stable relationship is disturbed by a new "node". Its like when you have four people on a project and you add one .... you haven't add one node - you've added at least FOUR new connections and the original connections are all disturbed or modified.

Kimiko and Piro? Impact. Erika and Largo? Impact. Any other popular XxX? Impact.
Change is inevitable but humans are comforted by the self-deception that things can be held static. Now does this mean that Piro and Largo are doomed as buddies? No... its just going to be different (it could break, but thats up to the nodes).

Much as we loathe necromancy... I'm actually happy someone reincarnated Mutant-For-Hire's analysis --- its going to be very useful this chapter.

Mutant_for_hire's:Largo and Erika relationship analysis was unintentionally resurrected by a new poster which means someone will lock it down soon.

But I agree it was helpful.

I wonder if Largo's behavior will have Piro react as a friend or a rival. I hope it was a cluebat for him to bring into resolution his feelings for Kimiko.

I mean most "Holiday Romances" are doomed - right?

I await to experience how Erika will react to Largo...

- Sparky

Well now, hold on there. As a fellow procrastinator (actually, I'm worse, for were it in my hands, the comic would simply derail and die altogether as I got distracted by my new "pet project of the moment"), I can totally relate to his honest effort to try to force himself to commit to a real deadline and his failure to meet that deadline after all.

And I'd hardly characterize this as "letting us down" when, frankly ... we get this for free, man! It's really easy to forget what it means that there's a real person out there laboring away on something that we don't have to pay a single dime to enjoy. I'm not saying we should go out of our collective way to kiss the guy's a** or whatever, but beating up on him for missing deadlines here and there when we're not even paying for this seems ... excessive, to say the least.

I always find its even harder to get something done once the deadline has passed

As for Sparky's holiday romances it depends on regularity of contact...its worked in the past But from an overall perspective the majority do seem to fail.

maybe not the place for this rant, but what the hell. Glad people like todays comic, but it seems no one picked up on a subtle little detail i put in it. (chuckle) You over-analizers are falling down on the job.

anyways, as i sit here zoning out and admittidly doing nothing but sitting here with a cat on my lap (i spent the last 4 hours cutting down cardboard boxes down and mending my bleeding hands) so maybe i have no right to say anything about not doing 2 comics for friday like i had promised. I wonder where i said that i promised? oh well.

I'm not a machine. i can sit here today, look ahead three days, and say "i will do two comics." When the flow is right, this can be done. I am not a professional writer. i dont know of any tricks that can help me solidify this bullshit in my head that leads to MT comics. It is like literally pulling down stuff from thin air. You have an idea of what you want to do, there is no formula to make it come out. Often, it comes out when i need it to. Sometimes when the momentum is there, things happen like a well rehersed performance - everything goes right, happens well, and there are no struggles.

More often than not, i struggle. I STRUGGLE. i dont think you people understand how hard i work to try to pull all of this together. Considering how hard it is, you'd think they'd be better. Thats why these comics SUCK. get it? Do i have huge well organized storylines and cross referenced notes with everything laid out and set to go? All i need to do is draw? Hell fucking no. I know where i'm going, i have no fucking idea how to get there. I'm just the guide who knows where he wants to go, and you poor saps are following me.

I envy people who can look down on a story like god and see everything, and feel everything, and know how to put it all together and make it wonderful and interesting. I'm not like that. I'm in the goddamn scrub hacking a path in what i hope is the right direction. I can look at my map and use my compass to keep me going in the right directions, but i dont know the terrain i have to cross till i get there.

I am never daunted by the act of drawing. If i have a clear script or two, i can barrel on and draw even sick as a dog. Scripts are more than just words on a page, you have to feel where they are going, you have to be in character with them. The way i feel the characters is when i draw them. Often an entire comic will change or write itself as i draw it. I dont follow set scripts, really. When i try to tighten things down, i have nothing. i HAVE to keep it loose. this means that there is a certian unpredictability to how long it takes me do comics. You gonna tell me that you've never sat down to do something (write a paper, work on a project) and no matter how hard you tried, you coudn't get it finished by the time you wanted to? Sure, some people never experience that, but not me.

as for shutting the hell up... fuck you (and i mean that in the nicest way possible). this is my website, and i can make any promise i want. Life is often a lot about all the things you want to do and the few things you actually manage to do. MT is a reflection of my life. People put me on a frickiin pedastal and expect me to be perfect. You think piro is flawed? he's an idealized version of me. you are relying on an unreliable person for your entertainment. If i wasnt like this i'd probably be working for others on bigger projects, pumping stuff out on a professional level. Chunks of me, showing up hear in the imperfect medium of a webcomic, cannot by nature be reliable.

'scuse me. I like my imperfect little world. I have always wanted to do more than i can do, which i why i will never be happy with my work, or myself. I am wired to dissapoint people. I just try hard to not dissapoint them too much.

Maybe that's ok, in the end.

p'ro

um, we love you, fred.

just thought you should know.




eta: "Glad people like todays comic, but it seems no one picked up on a subtle little detail i put in it. (chuckle) You over-analizers are falling down on the job."

cruel tease...

This post has been edited by The Electric Triangle on Dec 18 2004, 12:46 AM