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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

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The Old Hack

NP September 10, 2018

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10 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Next time you want definitions, may I suggest onelook.com?  Then you'll be able to find a more complete range of definitions, such as (bolding is mine):

Oxford's "The underlying intentions or motives of a particular person or group.  ‘Yet one suspects that there is another agenda behind his attempt to subvert the global uniformity.’"  

Or Merriam-Webster's: 

1: a list or outline of things to be considered or done  agendas of faculty meetings

2: an underlying often ideological plan or program  a political agenda

Or from American Heritage:

n. a·gen·da

1. A list of things to be discussed in a meeting.
2. 
a. A program of things to be done or considered: "King's broadening of the civil rights agenda to include issues of class, income, and employment" (James Carroll).
b. Informal A usually unstated underlying motive: "Everyone has an agenda, whether he or she is honest about it or not" (Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger).
3. A datebook: bought a leather-bound agenda.

 

Thank you for the link, I will make use of it.

As for the definitions you quoted, while they do not rule out the possibility of someone being not consciously aware of their own "agenda", if I wasn't trying to see how the way people use "social agenda" could fit with the definitions, the only one that would even lead me to suspect that possibility would be American Heritage (which mentions "motives" without pairing it with "intentions").

Actually, the next dictionary down at OneLook, Collins English Dictionary, comes even closer to how "Social Agenda" is used, with the first definition not even implying that intention is a necessary part of it (though even it doesn't quite match):

Quote

 

1. countable noun
You can refer to the political issues which are important at a particular time as an agenda.
2.  See also hidden agenda
3. countable noun
An agenda is a list of the items that have to be discussed at a meeting.

 

 
 

...I'm beginning to suspect that this is a word whose meaning has changed without the majority of dictionaries catching on.

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35 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

...I'm beginning to suspect that this is a word whose meaning has changed without the majority of dictionaries catching on.

Dictionaries are overrated. Also, even a dictionary can have an agenda and usually does.

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@The Old Hack I think you missed a couple of points, for example.

“In 2013, I published Big Brother, a novel that grew out of my loss of my own older brother, who in 2009 died from the complications of morbid obesity. I was moved to write the book not only from grief, but also sympathy: in the years before his death, as my brother grew heavier, I saw how dreadfully other people treated him – how he would be seated off in a corner of a restaurant, how the staff would roll their eyes at each other after he’d ordered, though he hadn’t requested more food than anyone else. 

I was wildly impatient with the way we assess people’s characters these days in accordance with their weight, and tried to get on the page my dismay at how much energy people waste on this matter, sometimes anguishing for years over a few excess pounds. Both author and book were on the side of the angels, or so you would think.

But in my events to promote Big Brother, I started to notice a pattern. Most of the people buying the book in the signing queue were thin. Especially in the US, fat is now one of those issues where you either have to be one of us, or you’re the enemy. I verified this when I had a long email correspondence with a “Healthy at Any Size” activist, who was incensed by the novel, which she hadn’t even read. Which she refused to read. No amount of explaining that the novel was on her side, that it was a book that was terribly pained by the way heavy people are treated and how unfairly they are judged, could overcome the scrawny author’s photo on the flap.

She and her colleagues in the fat rights movement did not want my advocacy. I could not weigh in on this material because I did not belong to the club. I found this an artistic, political, and even commercial disappointment – because in the US and the UK, if only skinny-minnies will buy your book, you’ve evaporated the pool of prospective consumers to a puddle.

I worry that the clamorous world of identity politics is also undermining the very causes its activists claim to back. As a fiction writer, yeah, I do sometimes deem my narrator an Armenian. But that’s only by way of a start. Merely being Armenian is not to have a character as I understand the word. ... 

Efforts to persuasively enter the lives of others very different from us may fail: that’s a given. But maybe rather than having our heads taken off, we should get a few points for trying. After all, most fiction sucks. Most writing sucks. Most things that people make of any sort suck. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make anything. 

The answer is that modern cliché: to keep trying to fail better. Anything but be obliged to designate my every character an ageing five-foot-two smartass, and having to set every novel in North Carolina. 

We fiction writers have to preserve the right to wear many hats – including sombreros.”

Basically she did all that stuff you said she should do and she constantly tries to better. People get outraged DESPITE that.

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1 minute ago, animalia said:

Basically she did all that stuff you said she should do and she constantly tries to better. People get outraged DESPITE that.

'Tries to do better' is a very vague term. But for me it does NOT stretch far enough to cover 'using dubious propaganda methods to discredit something I do not understand because I am pissy at people who do not understand it either and abuse it to get attention.'

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Huh? Propoganda? I don’t think she was ever seriously considering saying murders was a culture so much as exaggerating to make a point, about how fiction writing works.

 

Sorry I got angry.

 

Let me try to find a meeting place for us. THEN we can start over this conversation on a personal level.

 

 I am thinking of a line I read from the Stormlight Archive that helped me understand some people I had trouble understanding before. It was “Sometimes no amount of logic or reasoning can overcome that overpowering desire to get what you think that you deserve.”

That helped me understand, because I have the opposite problem. Sometimes no amount of Empathy for a person’s situation can overcome my frustration with their inability to see logic.

 

For me the logic is that the best way to breakdown cultural barriers and to try to understand other people is to invite them to try and experience other cultures. The only alternative is to completely close the doors of all cultures and have them remain completely static forever. The thing is when you open the door like this you WILL find a lot of people who discover something they genuinely love and want to share it with the rest of the world, but you’ll also encounter assholes who don’t understand or try to understand. It’s impossible to get the good without the bad.

Am I making sense so far?

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Dictionaries are overrated. Also, even a dictionary can have an agenda and usually does.

And yet, if we are to communicate we must somehow figure out what each-other's words mean - and I know osmosis isn't always enough for me (heck, it took this conversation for me to realize that my own definition for the word "agenda" was out of date).

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Just now, ChronosCat said:

And yet, if we are to communicate we must somehow figure out what each-other's words mean - and I know osmosis isn't always enough for me (heck, it took this conversation for me to realize that my own definition for the word "agenda" was out of date).

Yes, and I was not saying dictionaries are useless. They are not. They are in fact very useful tools. But tools is all they are and too many people treat them as books of law.

1 hour ago, animalia said:

Huh? Propoganda? I don’t think she was ever seriously considering saying murders was a culture so much as exaggerating to make a point, about how fiction writing works.

She used an entirely irrelevant and deliberately absurd point to ridicule the very idea of the concept of what she was attacking. This is a common method used to discredit the opposition.

Let me give you an example. A noted TERF used a similar method in an attempt to discredit trans people. She said, "A man cannot just decide he is a woman. It would be like if I said I was Australia. If I did, would I be Australia?"

Does this strike you as a fair and reasonable equivalent? And yet, Shriver did the same thing when she equated being a murderer to being of a foreign culture. For that alone I could despise her, and I do.

1 hour ago, animalia said:

For me the logic is that the best way to breakdown cultural barriers and to try to understand other people is to invite them to try and experience other cultures. The only alternative is to completely close the doors of all cultures and have them remain completely static forever. The thing is when you open the door like this you WILL find a lot of people who discover something they genuinely love and want to share it with the rest of the world, but you’ll also encounter assholes who don’t understand or try to understand. It’s impossible to get the good without the bad.

Am I making sense so far?

You are. But that is not what Shriver did. She was all but yelling at us of 'lesser' cultures that we have NO right to get mad when someone takes our cultures and treats them with utter contempt just because they think they have a funny idea. Here's what I think of that. When someone takes my nation's myths and legends and decides to take a dump on them, I will damn well protest and Shriver can take her thin skinned whining and insert it rectally, hard. There are actual Nazis trying to use the Norse gods and their symbolism because they think it looks cool. They tried that during WW2, too. BUGGER THAT.

There are other and less extreme cases. Many I might not even be bothered to object to. For example, Jack Kirby took Thor and made him into a superhero. But he did it as a modern retelling of a legend and made a lasting cultural contribution of it, and yes, I consider comics to be part of our culture. While that was technically cultural appropriation, it was a different time and age and he did it with a good deal of respect for the material, so he gets a pass.

Then there is the Japanese anime Ah! my Goddess. There they took Verdandi, one of the three Norns -- or Morrigu, or the Kindly Ones, or whatever flavour of Indo-European you like -- and turned her into Belldandy. A freaking housewife. They also took Ash Yggdrasil and made it into a supercomputer. And so one of the three Fates, She who Is, got turned into a waifu in a harem anime. Do I find that offensive? Hell yeah. But whatever. If anyone is dumb enough to ask me for my opinion, I will give it to them. And I refuse to invest as much as a penny in their garbage. But will Shriver let me do that? No. She says I should get over myself.

Then back to Thor. The recent movie Thor: Ragnarok, to be exact. They grabbed the most sombre and serious part of Norse mythology, the Twilight of the Gods, the End of all Things, and turned it into a sodding PRATFALL COMEDY. Again, do I find that offensive? YOU BET YOUR ARSE. This one I really had to fight hard to not go on the 'net and complain about. Shriver is saying that is not an option I should be allowed to have. I didn't take it, admittedly, but there is a difference between choosing not to complain and being told you can't do it.

And that's just Denmark. Denmark actually has a huge advantage a lot of other cultures don't. We retain our sovereignty, we are part of the wealthiest nations on Earth and we can hit back when someone pisses on us culturally. A lot of people from poorer countries or just plain without a home nation to call their own don't have even that. They might for good reason feel offended. For example, let's go back to the swastika. For thousands of years it was an important symbol for many cultures; a variant of it even exists in Norse mythology where it is known as the Sun Cross. Then the Nazis grabbed it, shat on it and now it is one of the most hated symbols on Earth. A Hindu family went to the West and sent their innocent daughter to school wearing her swastika. They came from a part of the world where WW2 as it played out in Europe is not very well understood and they were aghast when their daughter was sent home and told she could not wear it anymore. This, according to Shriver, is JUST FINE.

There are people still fighting similar appropriation in many places. And some of them are being seriously hurt. They have every right to object as far as I am concerned. And yes, of COURSE there are idiots abusing this for fun and profit. There are idiots abusing everything they can for fun and profit. That does not mean that the cause they are abusing is invalidated. And I will not shut up because idiots like Shriver feel butthurt by that. Period.

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First off I feel like I am often bad at explaining my own arguments so I often quote others. This was clearly a mistake. I am trying to start over.

Second I want to preface this by saying something that while I feel should be obvious, but too often isn’t. No I don’t know how you feel. And this is only natural because I’m not you. The best I can try to do is try to imagine how I would feel in your place, or draw from the closest experience I have but even then no two people are exactly the same and no one will ever be able to know exactly how another feels. The best we can do is try to empathize.

Second what do you suggest as an alternative? I am not saying that we cannot try to be respectful to the cultures we borrow from. People should ALWAYS try to be respectful to the cultures they borrow from, But what happens when people become to afraid of mesing things up that they don’t even bother to interact with other cultures? 

Speaking off drawing from our own experiences let me talk about a VERY personal experience. Because I can relate to that fear metaphorically through my fear of romantic interactions and the various rules involved with them.

 

There is nothing I desire more in the world then to have a satisfing and emotionally fulfilling romantic relationship with someone. But at the same time my idea of dating someone who isn’t a friend is word for word the same as what Eliot and Susan have said. Now add to this the rule that you don’t want to pester someone who doesn’t have an interest in you, which is something that I can respect. I wouldn’t want to be hounded merciless by someone else either. Well with all of these complex rules I have all but resigned myself to the fact that I am likely to remain single. Why? Because of all the obstacles to a relationship. I’d have to make a friend who happens to be a girl. And yes I do mean happens. It won’t work if I go looking for it too deliberately. I don’t even make REGULAR friends easily enough. I feel like people toss around that word to casually. I would then have to fall in love. And here’s the real kicker for me. BECAUSE I can appreciate the desire of people not to be pestered I can only ask her out once. After that, (assuming we could remain friends) I would say that if she changes her mind to let me know about it but don’t expect me to ask again, no matter how much time has past because I don’t want to be a pest. All of this time I would be dealing with the fact that it is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE SHE FORGOT that I said she would have to be the one to tell me if her feelings change, as I am ill equiped to notice what she is feelings unless she comes out and tells me. And I know this firgering it thing is something that can happen because I will often preface a conversation with “tell me if x” only for my folks to forget it mid conversation. Combine it with the fact that I’d be so concerned about  pestering het that I’d never bring it up again because I have now been told this is something not to do. And I only have one chance.  This is because my deafult and really only way of dealing with conversations is tell me if something I do or say bugs you and I will stop it.  I will treat you the same way. At the same time no topic is off of conversation for ever. Because some topics that bug people on one day may not bug them when their in another mood. But that means that a topic like this that I am not allowed to approach multiple times is impossible for me to deal with besides the one shot approach.

 

 If it isn’t clear what this has to do with being so afraid of messing things up they stop bother to interact interact with other cultures, I will make things clear.

 

Here I go. Trying to navigate the complex rules of what we are and we are not allowed to borrow from other cultures and why the frustration of dealing with such a thing might lead people to give up reminds me of my own frustrations with the various romantic rules have disusded me from even trying. And here is what happens when people are discouraged from even trying to reach out across other cultures. When people discouraged from trying to reach out across cultures, people will end up not understanding other cultures. Which leads to even more ignorance and isolation. 

 

 

 

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TOH, may I ask what you think of Neil Gaimen's novel American Gods?  He borrows a large number of gods from other cultures, and tries to reflect how they have been altered in American culture.  Did you find such use offensive?

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3 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

TOH, may I ask what you think of Neil Gaimen's novel American Gods?  He borrows a large number of gods from other cultures, and tries to reflect how they have been altered in American culture.  Did you find such use offensive?

My opinion of that is entirely irrelevant in most cases. It depends on the people of the cultures he is borrowing from and their identity. Gaiman could be perfectly respectful of Norse mythology but might unintentionally have insulted or misused myths of, say, the Cherokee. What matters is if you have a cultural identity and the writer dresses it up in clownface and makes it do inappropriate acts in the name of entertainment. Let's say someone makes a story in which George Washington is a transvestite stripper and prostitute with artificial oversize buckteeth as well as a complete coward. This is just a vague feeling of mine, but I bet that at least some Americans might feel a bit uncomfortable as the rest of the (non-American) audience howls with laughter and agree what utter prats these revolutionaries were.

4 hours ago, animalia said:

First off I feel like I am often bad at explaining my own arguments so I often quote others. This was clearly a mistake. I am trying to start over.

Understood and accepted. You couldn't have known what a massive trigger Shriver's arguments were for me.

4 hours ago, animalia said:

Here I go. Trying to navigate the complex rules of what we are and we are not allowed to borrow from other cultures and why the frustration of dealing with such a thing might lead people to give up reminds me of my own frustrations with the various romantic rules have disusded me from even trying. And here is what happens when people are discouraged from even trying to reach out across other cultures. When people discouraged from trying to reach out across cultures, people will end up not understanding other cultures. Which leads to even more ignorance and isolation. 

Now that I can understand and empathise with and I apologise for completely missing your point. And there are many valid parallels. Unfortunately this is a signal to noise ratio problem, one which the Internet unfortunately tends to amplify due to the presence of trolls and attention seekers. The argument "they are just looking for reasons to be offended" is not wholly untrue, because every legitimate cause with people who are genuinely trying to deal with a problem will attract parasites who do just that.

If your argument is "please try to understand that I am doing my best and that I can stumble," I can only say that I respect that and will do my best. I am truly sorry that communication failed in this instance even if it did prove an inadvertent example of exactly what you meant. :(

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13 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Then back to Thor. The recent movie Thor: Ragnarok, to be exact. They grabbed the most sombre and serious part of Norse mythology, the Twilight of the Gods, the End of all Things, and turned it into a sodding PRATFALL COMEDY.
 

To get pratfalls, first you need a bunch of prats . . .

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7 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

My opinion of that is entirely irrelevant in most cases. It depends on the people of the cultures he is borrowing from and their identity. Gaiman could be perfectly respectful of Norse mythology but might unintentionally have insulted or misused myths of, say, the Cherokee. What matters is if you have a cultural identity and the writer dresses it up in clownface and makes it do inappropriate acts in the name of entertainment. Let's say someone makes a story in which George Washington is a transvestite stripper and prostitute with artificial oversize buckteeth as well as a complete coward. This is just a vague feeling of mine, but I bet that at least some Americans might feel a bit uncomfortable as the rest of the (non-American) audience howls with laughter and agree what utter prats these revolutionaries were.

Understood and accepted. You couldn't have known what a massive trigger Shriver's arguments were for me.

Now that I can understand and empathise with and I apologise for completely missing your point. And there are many valid parallels. Unfortunately this is a signal to noise ratio problem, one which the Internet unfortunately tends to amplify due to the presence of trolls and attention seekers. The argument "they are just looking for reasons to be offended" is not wholly untrue, because every legitimate cause with people who are genuinely trying to deal with a problem will attract parasites who do just that.

If your argument is "please try to understand that I am doing my best and that I can stumble," I can only say that I respect that and will do my best. I am truly sorry that communication failed in this instance even if it did prove an inadvertent example of exactly what you meant. :(

Fair enough. Thank you for meeting me half way.

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Also if we are talking about Berserk Buttons one of my Berserk Buttons is trying to argue from emotion intead of logic. To me this feals like one of the most manipulative things a person can do because they aren’t trying to persuade you with the logic of their argument or how the ethics, but because of how they make you feel. (The extant that I engage the emotional side ofvthe argument temds to be “how did you think they were going to react”) This doesn’t mean I don’t care about the other person emotions but that I don’t want to manipulate them simply to “win” an argument/debate/discussion with them/make my point in a dialogue. Thst being said one of the reasons I am able to be as open about my personal experiences here, is because I had so many chats on the forums with you all, that I feel familiar enough with you that you all don’t seem like strangers. As a result I feel comfortable enough to tell you about these kinds of personal stories without feeling like I have to worry about unintentionally manipulating you. Because you know me well enough that these kinds of Frank discussions are possible. But when it comes to strangers or places like youtube comments.. 

Yeah that’s a place where I would be less likely to bare my soul. And as previously mentioned I don’t like the emotional argument for the reasons previously mentioned, but I have come to the frustrated realization that it works. *

This leaves me feeling like I am banging my head against the wall as it often seems like the only way for people to hear you is to scream as loud as you can.

*For the record I lean left in most issues, (some examples include immigration, health care, economic policy) but Swerve enough in some areas, to consider myself a moderate, in case it matters.

 

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On 9/11/2018 at 5:12 AM, ChronosCat said:

while it's impossible to tell a story without some political messages to it (intended or not)

Also, "the opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude." (Orwell)

On 9/11/2018 at 11:22 AM, The Old Hack said:

It is possible that it is a reference to the upcoming new comic from 'Diversity & Comics', which putatively is supposed to champion a return to the 'good old days' before the 'social agenda' ruined comics. Gail Simone happened to retweet an example of it posted by the creator. I am providing a link to the sample here but I warn in advance that it may be offensive to some. Click at your own risk.

Doesn't look like superhero comics. Oh, wait, he didn't specified "super" ...

On 9/11/2018 at 3:59 PM, The Old Hack said:

He wants to tell tales of genderqueer and/or LGBTQ teens struggling with their identities and to demonstrate that even if you are not vanilla cishet, you are still a person like anyone else.

... damn. And I'm here for the magic and aliens.

On 9/12/2018 at 10:35 AM, The Old Hack said:

1) Being a murderer is not a culture. In fact, I would almost call it the antithesis of culture since most cultures I know of are based on living together in a certain way. Not on killing. (And yes, I would not call Nazism a culture; it is barbarism of the crudest sort, its icons and symbolism... appropriated... from cultures that had nothing to do with it.)

There are plenty of cultures based on uniting against common enemy, real or perceived. Of course, cultured person will NOT be killing people from his own culture - but people outside it? Fair game.

On 9/12/2018 at 10:35 AM, The Old Hack said:

fake 'Asian' accent (most likely not sounding remotely Asian, let alone Japanese)

I tie your shoe, you tie my shoe is supposed to sound Japanese ...

On 9/12/2018 at 2:00 AM, weirdee said:

so, yes, it specifically markets itself to the gamer dudebros as a continuation of this shit going down

There may be some point in that talk about being from minority replacing qualification ... however, alternative point is being white cis male replacing qualification. Recognizing qualification is hard ; recognizing gender or color is easy (not sure about sexual orientation ; but seems some people are able to recognize sexual orientation quite fast).

Internet might help. It's harder to recognize gender and color online :)

I would agree that the main reason comic sale goes down is that the "you can't please everyone" is manifesting more now ; people have more alternatives (including webcomics) meaning less motivation reading something which they don't like so much. Buying, even less so.

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

There are plenty of cultures based on uniting against common enemy, real or perceived. Of course, cultured person will NOT be killing people from his own culture - but people outside it? Fair game.

If it is culture against culture in an organised manner, this is usually referred to as warfare, not murder. Of course the point is still moot because war is not really a culture, either.

If it is a single person of a culture on a lone crusade against another culture, some might consider it to be murder and others a vendetta. At that point we are getting into semantics. But again it is a moot point for the same reason as above. A vendetta isn't a culture, either.

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2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... damn. And I'm here for the magic and aliens.

I started reading because I heard there were "transgender transformations" in it (this was long before any characters were revealed to be trans, of course); Sister and Grace's Birthday Party did not disappoint on that account. (If I had known that it would eventually deal with real-life trans issues that would have been even more of a selling point.) The furry transformations were also a highlight of my archive binge (I'm pretty sure I was unaware of that aspect of the comic when I started reading, so it came as a pleasant surprise).

However, what kept me coming back after I'd finished the archive (and long after abandoning all the other webcomics I started reading back then) was and is my attachment to the characters.

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18 hours ago, The Old Hack said:
20 hours ago, hkmaly said:

There are plenty of cultures based on uniting against common enemy, real or perceived. Of course, cultured person will NOT be killing people from his own culture - but people outside it? Fair game.

If it is culture against culture in an organised manner, this is usually referred to as warfare, not murder. Of course the point is still moot because war is not really a culture, either.

If it is a single person of a culture on a lone crusade against another culture, some might consider it to be murder and others a vendetta. At that point we are getting into semantics. But again it is a moot point for the same reason as above. A vendetta isn't a culture, either.

Note that I didn't read the linked article, so I'm reacting just to your reaction.

And I know about at least one current culture which seem to be quite ok with murder of people from other cultures. Including some people in offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper ...

However, if your point is that murder is not culture by itself, then ok, I agree with that. Less sure about war.

17 hours ago, ChronosCat said:
20 hours ago, hkmaly said:

... damn. And I'm here for the magic and aliens.

I started reading because I heard there were "transgender transformations" in it (this was long before any characters were revealed to be trans, of course); Sister and Grace's Birthday Party did not disappoint on that account. (If I had known that it would eventually deal with real-life trans issues that would have been even more of a selling point.) The furry transformations were also a highlight of my archive binge (I'm pretty sure I was unaware of that aspect of the comic when I started reading, so it came as a pleasant surprise).

Also started reading Grace's Birthday Party ... and didn't bothered to read whole archive until year later. I don't remember my exact motivation back then, but I guess it took both Grace the part space alien and Nanase getting spells like character from videogame to get me hooked.

17 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

However, what kept me coming back after I'd finished the archive (and long after abandoning all the other webcomics I started reading back then) was and is my attachment to the characters.

Obviously NOW it's mainly attachment to the characters. (And, frankly, if I would read for the space alien aspect I would probably be disappointed for long time - say, until the page with Uryuoms having magic ; Grace being part space alien was not really used for long time ... on the other hand, the amount of magic went seriously up).

BTW I would likely still read all or most webcomics I read back then ... of course, many of them ended meanwhile. But EGS became one of only two webcomics worth searching for discussion - I mean, I comment many webcomics, but most of them have comments just under page and if they wouldn't I would not bother searching for it.

 

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1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Also started reading Grace's Birthday Party ... and didn't bothered to read whole archive until year later. I don't remember my exact motivation back then, but I guess it took both Grace the part space alien and Nanase getting spells like character from videogame to get me hooked.

I can imagine what it must be like to jump into the middle of a webcomic, having jumped into the middle of plenty of dead-tree comics in my teens... But I really can't imagine choosing to not start at the beginning of a series when one has the option to do so. (Well, unless I learn ahead of time the series is not in chronological order; I have a tendency to value in-story chronology more than publishing order.) I mean if it worked for you, great, it's just not something I can picture myself ever doing.

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

BTW I would likely still read all or most webcomics I read back then ... of course, many of them ended meanwhile. But EGS became one of only two webcomics worth searching for discussion - I mean, I comment many webcomics, but most of them have comments just under page and if they wouldn't I would not bother searching for it.

Well, part of the problem was that shortly after my big exploration of what webcomics that interested me were out there my computer broke. It took me a couple months to get my computer repaired, during which time I was only occasionally able to borrow someone else's computer. EGS was the only comic I bothered to keep up on during that time.

When I finally did get my computer repaired, I had to restore the hard drive from a back up, and as it turned out that backup did not include a list of the comics I'd been reading. By that point I only remembered a handful of the comics I'd taken an interest in, and not all of the ones I did remember seemed worth the effort to track down. There were a couple besides EGS I did track down and followed for years, but in every case except EGS I slowly lost interest and wound up checking back on them less and less often until I eventually stopped entirely. (I have however picked up one other comic since then that I've stuck with.)

Incidentally, EGS is the only webcomic I ever cared enough about to "search for discussion" about. (Though it wasn't a very hard search, as the forums were linked to from the main EGS site when I first decided I wanted to talk with other people about EGS. Of course those were the Keenspot forums, but luckily I stuck around long enough for the switch to 910CMX, so I knew where to look when I decided I wanted to discuss EGS again last year.)

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4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

And I know about at least one current culture which seem to be quite ok with murder of people from other cultures. Including some people in offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper ...

False. That is propaganda. Religious extremists do not for a culture make anymore than murderers do. If you do a minimal bit of research you will find many Muslims who CONDEMNED this attack. DAESH, like the Nazis, are not a culture. They are a manifestation of barbarism.

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3 hours ago, ChronosCat said:
5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Also started reading Grace's Birthday Party ... and didn't bothered to read whole archive until year later. I don't remember my exact motivation back then, but I guess it took both Grace the part space alien and Nanase getting spells like character from videogame to get me hooked.

I can imagine what it must be like to jump into the middle of a webcomic, having jumped into the middle of plenty of dead-tree comics in my teens... But I really can't imagine choosing to not start at the beginning of a series when one has the option to do so. (Well, unless I learn ahead of time the series is not in chronological order; I have a tendency to value in-story chronology more than publishing order.) I mean if it worked for you, great, it's just not something I can picture myself ever doing.

When it's possible to get context for scene just by looking few pages back and forth ... but, obviously, reading the start is next thing I do when I start caring. It's not like I have enough time to read all webcomics I land on ... and when the start has considerably lower quality ...

3 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

Well, part of the problem was that shortly after my big exploration of what webcomics that interested me were out there my computer broke. It took me a couple months to get my computer repaired, during which time I was only occasionally able to borrow someone else's computer. EGS was the only comic I bothered to keep up on during that time.

I'm lucky I never got such experience. Actually, I always had the option to use school computers, until I finished school, at which point I already had two computers at home, so ...

3 hours ago, ChronosCat said:

When I finally did get my computer repaired, I had to restore the hard drive from a back up, and as it turned out that backup did not include a list of the comics I'd been reading. By that point I only remembered a handful of the comics I'd taken an interest in, and not all of the ones I did remember seemed worth the effort to track down.

What did you use the backup for if not list of webcomics?

(I have list of webcomics I read in database. Synced between three computers every day. Not that I'm adding new comics so often, the database also includes last page I read. RSS is great help in following comics with irregular schedule.)

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:
5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

And I know about at least one current culture which seem to be quite ok with murder of people from other cultures. Including some people in offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper ...

False. That is propaganda. Religious extremists do not for a culture make anymore than murderers do. If you do a minimal bit of research you will find many Muslims who CONDEMNED this attack. DAESH, like the Nazis, are not a culture. They are a manifestation of barbarism.

I'm pretty sure saying all Muslims are single culture is not only false, but very insensitive. Also, it's something DAESH is claiming in attempt to turn the situation into fight between all Muslims and all Christians (who, by the way, are not homogeneous either).

On the other hand, there is no exact single definition of culture ... I just think you are incorrect in taking "can't be manifestation of barbarism as well" as axiom. Even barbars can have culture.

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5 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

On the other hand, there is no exact single definition of culture ... I just think you are incorrect in taking "can't be manifestation of barbarism as well" as axiom. Even barbars can have culture.

Actually they can't. Pretty much by definition. Culture requires civilisation.

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9 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:
15 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

On the other hand, there is no exact single definition of culture ... I just think you are incorrect in taking "can't be manifestation of barbarism as well" as axiom. Even barbars can have culture.

Actually they can't. Pretty much by definition. Culture requires civilisation.

So does technology. But both Nazi and Daesh demonstratively did used technology.

Then we have Aztec culture, which includes barbaric stuff like human sacrifice ...

Barbarians are not people without civilization. They are people who have more primitive civilization than those who called them barbarians.

 

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Just now, hkmaly said:

So does technology. But both Nazi and Daesh demonstratively did used technology.

Please do not be ridiculous. It requires neither culture nor any particular kind of brains to use technology. Any murderer can pick up and use a gun. This does not make him a culture.

1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

Then we have Aztec culture, which includes barbaric stuff like human sacrifice ...

Certainly. It is merely a ritualised form of the same sort of genocide most European countries have committed all over the planet. Unfortunately for the Aztecs they failed when confronted with the Spanish, who turned out to be much better at genocide than they were.

3 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Barbars are not people without civilization. They are people who have more primitive civilization that those who called them barbars.

That depends entirely on your use of the word. And there is indeed such a thing as peoples without a civilisation. 'Civilised' means 'citified', and again, that is the basis of culture. Once you have a sufficiently large and stable civilisation, culture -- a way of living -- can begin to develop on a large basis.

A parasitic group that stages a hostile takeover of a number of cities and use their power to promote an agenda, however -- they are not a culture. Both the Nazis and DAESH merely appropriated the trappings of culture from elsewhere and used them to masquerade as a nation or state.

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