I just finished going through my archives and changing the userpics on some of the entries, not to mention removing the links from my Photobucket images. I may do this again with a different userpic. Anyway, this post is an entry to a contest for the comic Saiko and Lavender. And I can't believe I only just realized that the first name is pronounced like "psycho." While not a precise description of the bunny girl, this homophone fits the tone of the comic.

Anyway, here's my entry for the contest. It features a couple of characters that appeared briefly, on pages 18-22 of Issue 1. ( Wide-ish image )

If you're specifically looking for Nucleus, it's probably two entries below. It's annoying, but I'll have to keep redirecting (nonexistent) visitors until Ed edits his entry. (Since I don't want to edit this later, I'll allow that this might have happened.)

I don't generally play video games except for fighters (Super Smash Bros.), and it's not something I excel/exercise at. However, after playing Portal: The Flash Version and seeing my brother had borrowed The Orange Box, I decided to try it. Long story short, I beat it in about nine hours. (I'm sure that has a meaning, which is why I said it.) It was pretty fun, though I won't be investing more time into video games.

Anyway, I just finished reading the fan fiction Dire Peril. If you are a typical human who happens to use the Internet, then I'm sure you don't care. But if you are a typical Internet user (which I swear means something else), you might want more context. The fanfic takes place in the world of Exterminatus Now, a webcomic based in the setting of "Sonic the Hedgehog" with the caveat that none of the characters of the latter appear in the former, thus avoiding issues of copyright infringement between the latter two. (This is, I think, exactly the point where it would have become a run-on sentence.) Potential issues between the former two (EN and DP) are mitigated by the front-page endorsement of the fanfic by the webcartoonist(s). (It might be relevant to point out here that Scott Ransoomair linked to Zero Punctuation, so blame him.) So yes, I think the title is supposed to sound ironically dippy. Anyway, if you think that Mobius would be fun with all of the "Sonic" characters replaced by variously foul-mouthed and abusive Inquisitors and daemon-worshipers, have at 'em.

One more thing. I'm trying to write a furry story, not based in any particular universe, and I thought I was having a good time at it. However, it seems to be turning into a novella, and my... "pretty boy" brother logged me off of my account (on what's sort of a communal computer) before I could save the first half of the second chapter. I hope to be able to showcase it here, probably starting next entry, but this is a new kind of frustration. I'd like to think I can deal with it, although I have stayed up past midnight to get to this irritating point. This will be a problem, because we're entertaining family friends in a few hours.

I may be getting a periodic aversion to writing. See, I'm currently taking a writing class in college, and that means I have to "set aside" a lot of time for essays I don't really enjoy.

Anyway, here's another update to my webcomic crossover graph. I know, it's later than I said, but gimme a break. February and March were short this year. (Did you know that April used to be the next-shortest month after February? Stupid Bush, depriving us of a little bit of trivia.) Anyway, to make up for that, I've updated the graph through D. (That's like two letters, since D itself did not require alterations.) I've also moved the small unconnected parts of the graph out of the main section, so it looks nicer.

  HOSERS  Absurd Notions  Help Desk
   |  |         |          |
   | General Protection Fault--Kevin
   |          |                & Kell
   |    Joe   |  The Suburban
   |  Average |     Jungle
   |     |    |        |
Life at  |    |   The Class Menagerie
Bayside--+    |    |*        |
         |  Funny Farm---Newshounds
         |  |
Knights  CRfH!---Clan of---+---Alice
of the   ||     the Cats   |
Dinner--Fans!             Elf
Table    |                Life
         |
   It’s Walky!--Melonpool--Zortic

Magick  Beyond   Parallel  Sit &
   |    Reality  Dementia   Spin
Anarchy    |        |        |
         Emergency Exit   Avalon

The Wotch--The Accidental Centaurs

3rd Party--Charby the--Elijah
 Fantasy    Vampire    & Azuu

Adventurers--RPG World        

Guðrún--Alcydia    PvP--Dork Tower

A World like--The Devil’s
   My Own       Panties

 UC Rats   Bassetville  ConScrew
    |              ||   |
The Call           Fragile
of Whatever        Gravity

Goats--Bobbins--Waiting for Bob

Well, here I am.

About one month ago, I proposed and implemented the Reb Webcomic Crossover graph. Since then, I have been largely preoccupied with college and puzzles. However, with the help of this Webcomic Crossover & Cameo Archive, I managed to expand the graph to include all the crossovers through "A"... at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if a couple more occurred without my knowledge. Anyway, here's my revised graph, sans links:

  HOSERS  Absurd Notions  Help Desk
   |  |         |          |
   | General Protection Fault--Kevin
   |          |                & Kell
   |    Joe   |  The Suburban
   |  Average |     Jungle
   |     |    |        |
Life at  |    |   The Class Menagerie
Bayside--+    |    |*        |
         |  Funny Farm---Newshounds
A World  |  |
Like My  CRfH!---Clan of---+---Alice
  Own    ||     the Cats   |
   |    Fans!             Elf
  The   |  |              Life
Devil’s | Knights of the         Dork
Panties |  Dinner Table    PvP--Tower
        |
   It’s Walky!--Melonpool--Zortic

Magick  Beyond   Parallel  Sit &
   |    Reality  Dementia   Spin
Anarchy    |        |        |
         Emergency Exit   Avalon
 The                          
Wotch--The Accidental Centaurs

3rd Party--Charby the--Elijah
 Fantasy    Vampire    & Azuu
                              
Adventurers--RPG World        

Guðrún--Alcydia

I hope this will take much less than the obvious two-year estimate to "complete."

(Edit: Figures. Three days after I posted an essay, not only have the comics moved, invalidating thirteen of my links, but for more than a week after, I can't be bothered to change the links. Well, at least deleting one of those included parenthetically isn't too hard. Edit 2: The links should now direct correctly.)

Ah, politics. A subject I don't particularly like talking about. And yet it's practically unavoidable when talking about the work of one rhjunior.

Mr. Hayes, as you may know, has three webcomics: Nip & Tuck, Goblin Hollow (formerly "Under the Lemon Tree"), and Tales of the Questor. The first two are frequently conservative in their view; the third, not so much. I bring this up because the current story in "Nip & Tuck" has a somewhat different direction.

A bit of background: about a year ago, Nip (the brother without the hat) was hired to be the lead of a movie nearly sight unseen (on both ends-- the director didn't put much thought into the selection, and the actors don't see more than a few pages at a time). Some weeks into the filming, Nip gets his hands on a director's copy of the script and discovers the movie is an offensively, flamingly liberal piece of garbage.

(An aside here: this movie idea is obviously based off of "Syriana," the only movie I truly regret not walking out on. I have managed to walk out on "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "What the Bleep Do We Know!?" because I didn't care for the central concepts. As for "Syriana," the plot didn't make any sense. Hey Mr. Gaghan! You're supposed to connect everything before it's more than the audience can handle! I mean, "You're the Canadian"? What the #$*!!?)

Anyway, unable to escape the movie, he hatches a cunning scheme to completely hijack it. The result is a movie poised at the opposite political extreme that parallels George W.'s war in Iraq rather nicely. So, politics.

In fast-forwarding to today (mid-July 2006, actually), we see that Purloined Letter, the guys credited with that revamped film, has a new movie out-- sci-fi, hyperdrive, evil empire, and such. The premise is that a resistance against the oppressive Interstellar Federation has just lost a war thereagainst, and the rebels have been taken back into the IF in an uncomfortable manner (also click next). Among the space battles, we see that plenty of just-plain-folks have been unfairly affected by the war. It's clear, by the way, that we're supposed to sympathize with these characters, the lead and the kiddie sidekick.

"Rebel Cry" strikes me as considerably more liberal than "Man on the Border" for coming out against that war, but then, something similar has been said about "The Phantom Menace." So what's going on here? Is the story (an unabashed B-movie) generic enough that it slipped under Ralph's radar? Does he have some twists that will drive me away? Do I just not understand politics? What?

This is a little thing I've cobbled together from memory and the Comixpedia comics wiki (which, by the way, is in desperate need of editing (which is why I relied on memory)). I had not seen such a graph of crossovers before, and I found this to be a terrible omission. To remedy that, here is the Reb Webcomic Crossover graph!

Absurd Notions     HOSERS
        |            |
General Protection Fault--Help
         |    |           Desk
Clan of  | Kevin & Kell
the Cats |
   |     | The Class Menagerie
   |     |  |*        |      |
   | Funny Farm---Newshounds |
   | |                       |
  CRfH!--- --Life at Bayside |
  ||      |                  |
 Fans!   Joe      The Suburban
 |  |  Average       Jungle
 |  |
 | Knights of the Dinner Table
 |
It’s Walky!--Melonpool--Zortic

Dork Tower   Beyond   Parallel
     |       Reality  Dementia
    PvP         |        |
              Emergency Exit
 The
Wotch--The Accidental Centaurs

Of course, I ignored cameos, one-ways, spinoffs, and anything else I may have forgotten (which made ignoring them easier). Here are explanations for some of the symbols, plus a running commentary.

|
Starting slow. This is just a vertical connector.
I started the graph by going from A (Absurd Notions) to Z (Zortic).

-
A hyphen, though it's not used like that in the graph (yet). In groups of two or more, it's a horizontal connector.
I've included links to those webcomics I read on a regular basis. (Dropped GPF a while after Eric Burns did, right before the main cast jumped to the evil twin universe.)

|*
This is an unorthodox crossover; while characters from "Funny Farm" appeared in "The Class Menagerie" at about the same time, in about the same place, as characters from the latter appeared in the former, this is much more like two one-way crossovers. (So is that more like half-duplex or full-duplex?) Good thing it's not on the main line!
The GPF/Funny Farm crossover was one of the stranger attempts IMO, since the main characters of the latter look like furries. (Actually, R. Smith has said that's only to differentiate the main characters. I wonder how that works with the "Newshounds" crossover. Ah well, I guess it's flexible.) I was fully expecting another comparison between Mr. Westone (FF) and Sean Connery (GPF).


This is the only instance I have seen of more than two comics (three, obviously) in the same crossover. Form follows function.
This is where I toss up my hands and say, "What's the deal?" Comixpedia has bios for nearly all the "CRfH!" characters, but nothing about the crossovers. It's not as if it hasn't reached a threshold; the "GPF" article lists five crossovers with five webcomics, and "CRfH!" has had that many, in a configuration that should be considered much more interesting but is instead ignored! By the way, the current "This Week!" article on the front page is no less than six months old! There's just no excuse for that! (pant pant wheeze)

||
These two vertical connectors simply represent two crossovers between the same two comics. This counts for two crossovers and the fifth webcomic for "CRfH!"
In my opinion, the most underappreciated (read: I enjoy them, but Eric Burns doesn't read them) comics on this graph are "Absurd Notions" and "The Wotch."


Empty space (I know, I know. I'm running out of symbols.) means there is no crossover.
I have made a little effort to alphabetize the titles in small areas, subverted by my efforts to keep the lines straight and the graph compact. Final size: 25 lines x 30 characters, about 600 total characters. The top connected portion's only 18 lines.

EDIT, 12-23-07: Nuts. The helpful Snap Shots are interfering with the three-way and the Class Menagerie/Suburban Jungle connectors. Rather than edit the graph (since the icon is like 2 2/3 characters wide), here's a link to the latest version as of this date. Alternatively, click the "comics" tag above.

Let me discuss, for a moment, some comments I have come across during my Internet rounds. While I won't rule out the possibility of a sideways reference, I promise to not directly talk about my own LiveJournal's lack of comments.

First, while "Heroes" is taking a break, here's an excerpt from Wikipedia about Eden McCain:
"... Eden attempts to use her power of persuasion to have Sylar kill himself. Instead, he telekinetically pulls her through the glass window to his cell and attempts to take her power. Unable to use her gun to kill him, she turns it on herself to prevent him from taking her powers." --Wikipedia, "List of characters in Heroes," accessed Dec. 19, 2006

I must say, this is not how I interpreted that few seconds of the episode. I thought that the gunshot was Sylar trying an easier way of opening Eden's skull; she didn't strike me as the type to sacrifice herself. On the other hand, it's possible I missed a bit of dialogue that made this clear, and it also doesn't quite make sense for Sylar to scatter her brains across the walls. In any case, I'm keeping my interpretation in the back of my mind. (Also, I thought Eden was already in the cell and Sylar pushed her through the glass. (Also, I'm relieved that Sylar isn't the black guy ("the Haitian").))

Next, over at "The Order of the Stick"'s forum (where, by the way, the no-commenting-on-which-page-you-posted-on rule is not being enforced quite so strongly anymore), there have been comments about Elan's flashback and new prestige class level in Dashing Swordsman. This discussion is partly about whether Elan will return to his old self. To wit:
"Sabine has an energy drain attack. So Elan kicks Nale's butt, rescues Haley, but gets tagged by Sabine and loses a level. He has to make a Fort save 24 hours later, and fails miserably. Back to the lovable but useless Elan we all know." --Giant in the Playground Forums, "OOTS #390 - The Discussion Thread," robinmotion, December 16, 3:52 AM (EST)

Now, I'm of the (prevailing) opinion that Elan will, in fact, retain his new prestige class. The above possibility would, perhaps, be a good fake-out, but the Giant has a multi-year story-line planned out, and most of the characters have already evolved quite a bit, so chances are Elan is not turning back any time soon. As Nightmarenny says in the same thread, at 6:25 PM on the same day:
"[I] find it disturbing that a bunch of you want OotS to be a sitcom. Where's the fun in static char[a]cters?"

Finally, Eric Burns at Websnark has been getting on Aaron Sorkin's case for using "Studio 60" to air his dirty laundry. (I doubt you don't already know this, but still, I've got to set the stage.) He's interesting to read and brings up good points as always, but even though he's not focusing on this to the exclusion of all else, I want Eric to write about another TV show. Don't worry yourselves (ahem), though; I'm already composing an e-mail to that effect.

Hmm. If I were to say I had a point here, it would be that one should keep in mind these two nonexclusive, non-exhaustive possibilities: first, that one's ideas might be at odds with the general population, and second, that one's ideas might be wrong.

It was nice to see a skateboard chase scene on "Numb3rs" last Friday, though I don't quite see how Sinclair was able to outrun that kid. On an unrelated note, Sacha Baron Cohen's first name is apparently pronounced "Sasha."

All right, here's a new puzzle. Put the following words and phrases, currently alphabetized, into the proper order: condense, enthusiast, event horizons, height, thrown in, Turkish firs. Hint: I doubt this list can be "complete," for two reasons.

Oh, I almost forgot! Something was just revealed in "The Order of the Stick," but no one on the message boards noticed! Look at the eighth panel here; the audience was left in the dark about Miko's parentage. This inspired a couple of speculatory threads, but there wasn't enough data to draw any conclusion (preliminary or otherwise). Now check out today's comic, first panel. It's buried in the middle, but now we know Miko is the "daughter of Eyko!" That means... OK, not much, but I can reasonably say that "Eyko" hasn't appeared in the comic (barring a surprise twist) and may be female. On the other hand, we now know the previous speculation was to no avail! Eh? Eh? I feel so smart!

(Why does spell-check pick up "href" and "speculatory," but not "Sacha"?)

I technically failed the 24-Hour Comic challenge, completing only 7 1/2 pages from noon to noon. That's about 1/3, or exactly 5/16, of the quota given. Counting panels out of a hundred gives 38%, which is a bit better. My rate when awake was nearly a page an hour.

However, I think what I have done shows promise, so I will post and, if at all possible, finish my work here.

I guess it wasn't as much of an impetus as I expected. But come to think of it, I don't need to announce a muse to write, or to write well, because who's to say I don't have one already? Anyway, 24-Hour Comics Day is Saturday this year, so wish me luck! (he shouted into the abyss...)

OK, here's a puzzle. Think of a word that can serve as the letter bank for the name of one state. Remove some of the word's letters, and the remaining letters can be read left to right to name another state. WHAT'S THE WORD?