Ammunition

[Skatologist]

I dont quite get it. Why is square head tearing up the art? Isn't he the one that wants to defend/preserve it from Triangle head?

Thats the point. Square-head not truly defending the art, they're using it as ammunition to fight with some people who personally offend his sensibilities. Nobody is truly interested in the art, or at least, no more interest than enough to use it to take swipes at each other.

Edit: Take for example the Pillars of Eternity thing. They changed the joke. Then some of the people who were seemingly defending Obsidian's right to keep it in were suddenly calling for boycotts of the game. They don't care about Obsidian as far as the studio is a tool to them.

Edit 2: This isn't even the top comment giving this impression in the same thread, its just the one that cuts to the heart of the matter the fastest.

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/30rk3d/you_realize_obsidian_is_going_to_cave_right_all/cpv4xb9

Oh, you totally nailed it. There was no "defense of the artist" in that whole thing or similar matters, just instrumentalisation of such a "controversy" for certain ends, namely to add fuel to a perpetual outrage machine that coincidentally thinks the outrage they have is somehow less than the outrage they respond to (note: it's not).

Any person who calls an artist a coward and threatens not backing them financially because they happen to edit their work or apologize for their actions is not a defender of that artist at all, they're assholes, plain and simple.

Guess I'll also share what Grey thinks of the initial response too:

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/GreyTheTick/status/586548371239739393]

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/GreyTheTick/status/586548420636123136]

 

[Silent Protagonist]

Wow...that was a really good comic. Very simple, poignant, accurate, and political without being inflammatory. Pretty atypical for Critical Miss but these occasional gems are why I keep coming back. It feels good to see something like that even if the message is a little painful. Very well executed.

I might have to tuck this one away somewhere to be a personal reminder from time to time

 

[Evil Smurf]

The MRA rebranded themselves
<spoiler=look>http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/20/24E0017D00000578-2918591-image-a-8_1421773272301.jpg

They really should've chosen something that wasn't already a religion. And didn't sound completely stupid.

It's charming how dumb it is.

 

[Lightknight]

Also feminazi is a term coined by Rush Limbaugh, you should probably avoid it, and say radical feminists if that's what you mean. A social movement for equality should not be compared to the third reich.

Fully aware of the term. Used it as a joke.

In any event, thanks to linguistic drift Limbaugh's term has become synonymous with radical feminism. So it actually isn't intended for a social movement for equality so much as it is intended for a social movement for superiority by contrast of regular feminism which is a social movement for equality.

But whatever. Semantics are fun.

 

[Baresark]

Man, that's a deep one. It borders on absolute truth. When people get mad, they mostly just want to be mad and they find reasons to be that way.

 

[Erttheking]

Just waiting until Steam gets made at you for using their mascots from last year's summer sale. Then your strip gets to be used as ammunition for fighting over copyright laws!

I dont quite get it. Why is square head tearing up the art? Isn't he the one that wants to defend/preserve it from Triangle head?

Thats the point. Square-head not truly defending the art, they're using it as ammunition to fight with some people who personally offend his sensibilities. Nobody is truly interested in the art, or at least, no more interest than enough to use it to take swipes at each other.

Edit: Take for example the Pillars of Eternity thing. They changed the joke. Then some of the people who were seemingly defending Obsidian's right to keep it in were suddenly calling for boycotts of the game. They don't care about Obsidian as far as the studio is a tool to them.

Edit 2: This isn't even the top comment giving this impression in the same thread, its just the one that cuts to the heart of the matter the fastest.

http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/30rk3d/you_realize_obsidian_is_going_to_cave_right_all/cpv4xb9

It's what I liked to call the "Rough Draft" mindset. See, people who complain about changes don't seem to understand how the creative process works. Artists put something into their work blink and go "Wow, that sounded a lot better in my head" all the damn time. Heck, I once had something planned for months, but the moment I started typing it up I realized that it just wouldn't work. That's why rough drafts exist, so that people can get all the crap out of their system and move onto the good stuff. Sadly some people don't seem to understand this and think that every little thing was part of the "artistic vision" and that changing it is betraying that.

 

[Fappy]

This is fucking brilliant. Thank you for this, Grey.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Also feminazi is a term coined by Rush Limbaugh, you should probably avoid it, and say radical feminists if that's what you mean. A social movement for equality should not be compared to the third reich.

Fully aware of the term. Used it as a joke.

In any event, thanks to linguistic drift Limbaugh's term has become synonymous with radical feminism. So it actually isn't intended for a social movement for equality so much as it is intended for a social movement for superiority by contrast of regular feminism which is a social movement for equality.

But whatever. Semantics are fun.

Cool, I had just assumed you had no idea, poe's law and that.

 

[Gorrath]

The MRA rebranded themselves
<spoiler=look>http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/01/20/24E0017D00000578-2918591-image-a-8_1421773272301.jpg

They really should've chosen something that wasn't already a religion. And didn't sound completely stupid.

I agree on both points. Choosing a word that already refers to another group is a stupid oversight and in this context, it does sound completely stupid. The term, "Men's Rights Activist" was pretty spot on anyway. I imagine the only reason to change is MRAs are sick of being treated like lepers because people have decided that "MRA" is synonymous with "Woman-hating idiot." Still, they would have been much better off picking something less, well, dumb.

OT: Nice comic. Unfortunate reality really. I tend to care a lot about freedom of expression but I can't help but agree that a lot of those that say that about them sevles just care about the freedom of people to express points that agree with them.

 

[Lightknight]

Also feminazi is a term coined by Rush Limbaugh, you should probably avoid it, and say radical feminists if that's what you mean. A social movement for equality should not be compared to the third reich.

Fully aware of the term. Used it as a joke.

In any event, thanks to linguistic drift Limbaugh's term has become synonymous with radical feminism. So it actually isn't intended for a social movement for equality so much as it is intended for a social movement for superiority by contrast of regular feminism which is a social movement for equality.

But whatever. Semantics are fun.

Cool, I had just assumed you had no idea, poe's law and that.

Sure, but as I stated the term has evolved to refer to radical feminism. So even if I hadn't been saying it as a joke it should be aptly used.

Just because a term comes from something doesn't mean it's current usage has to be whatever it started as. Take agnosticism for example. John Huxley coined the term in direct conflict with stating belief in existence or non-existence in the absence of evidence. Nowadays, people are throwing around "agnostic atheism" without any irony because of how the term has changed.

The reason it made sense to use that as a joke is because a lot of social groups get and equivalent of this term when they piss off certain people. It's generally a sign of the movement's legitimacy due to it being large enough to warrant response though occasionally it could just be due to the group actually being dickish or whatever. But those sorts of groups usually don't warrant attention. We could reasonably accept that in the era of WAW (Women are wonderful) that men might begin to feel disenfranchised and may even begin to have legitimate claims of institutions rising up that now impact them negatively based on their sex. Those people have every right to form a group for equality if that's what they're pressing for. It has been kind of strange to see so many proponents of equality dismiss it when someone born in a majority group expresses issues of inequality they've faced.

Not sure what the future holds, but maybe we're facing a generation of the pendulum swinging the other way and maybe we really do have a need for advocacy for men's rights. Why not? It's plausible. And in such a case I'm sure there would be radical "meninists" too.

 

[Callate]

I'm tempted to just go, "...Yep." And move on, but, y'know, low content post and all that.

But to say I've been thinking about this kind of thing a lot lately would be an understatement.

Even assuming creative people didn't have others seek out their work and the opportunity to comment upon it, the Internet is hard for a creator with aspirations to make some sort of living from his or her work to ignore. Hey, an unending source of people willing to give you feedback! How can one resist?

But there's no particular proof that the people willing to comment on your work are the same people who would actually buy it... Or are especially insightful about it... Or have a good handle on what other people would think about it... Or even, in some cases, honestly state why they would or wouldn't be interested in it, themselves.

I also have this frustrated sense that, not so long ago, one would hesitate to tell another adult that they were doing something wrong if what they were doing wasn't outwardly harmful; that there was a minimal sense of a kind of intrinsic worth or desert of respect, an assumption that maybe the person one might be tempted to criticize had done their own mental lifting before choosing to do what they do.

One might say unkind things about one's neighbors behind their back, but not to their faces. And if one did, one might reasonably expect to be told to mind their own business, or something about glass houses.

Now all the gossip happens in the face of the person its about, or perhaps the standard for "outwardly harmful" has become dizzyingly low, or both. Everyone's in a glass house, but we're such accurate stone-throwers that we never give it a second thought.

It seems that, often, the wise thing for a creator to do in the face of controversy is stay out of it, knowing that the short attention spans of the incensed will inevitably move on to other targets.

But there's a tremendous irony that the artists we turn to for insight and ideas would be well considered to refuse to render opinions when it comes to their own work.

 

[RJ 17]

"We make bullets for idiots."

God I love when Critical Miss takes a break from the straight-up funny to lay a universal truth on us.

Right, that anyone who ever argues or debates about something is an idiot.

On the internet? Yes, they most specifically are.

For your visual reference...

 

[Lightknight]

"We make bullets for idiots."

God I love when Critical Miss takes a break from the straight-up funny to lay a universal truth on us.

Right, that anyone who ever argues or debates about something is an idiot.

On the internet? Yes, they most specifically are.

For your visual reference...

Actually, I've learned a great deal through my debates. Not only do I research my responses which generally firms up the points I try to make that are right, but my research sometimes catches my mistakes and allows me to adjust and occasionally I'll have the well versed debate partner that widens my perspective and illuminates my understanding.

People who are too busy yelling to listen to the other side never change because they just don't hear and look for inconsistencies on both sides.

It is a funny illustration though. I just disagree.

 

[RJ 17]

Actually, I've learned a great deal through my debates. Not only do I research my responses which generally firms up the points I try to make that are right, but my research sometimes catches my mistakes and allows me to adjust and occasionally I'll have the well versed debate partner that widens my perspective and illuminates my understanding.

Well congratulations, my friend! You are the exception, not the rule. Case in point: GamerGate is apparently still a thing.

Though I do believe the argument can be made of "one shouldn't be going to the internet if they're seeking reasonable and intelligent debate/discourse over a given topic" but hey, more power to you if you manage to find a unicorn every time you have a disagreement with someone on the internet...because that's pretty much what it is when/if you manage to find an "agreeable" person on the internet even if they disagree with you.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

A poignant point for all eternity that is for sure.

 

[kenu12345]

Correct me if I am wrong, and this isn't towards the comic or anything, but I am pretty sure meninist is used as a satirical term ....

 

[The Bucket]

... I have to say this kind of feels weird coming from the guys who have made a conscious decision to create high yield ammunition in the past for no purpose beyond it being used as such.

While I generally let comments like this slide, I'll bite. Every CM comic was designed to make people laugh. Some of them succeed, others don't, and sometimes some people get their feelings hurt in the process, but I've never written a comic designed purely to annoy people.

Oddly enough, the "you're just trolling comments" always come from people who feel they're the butt of a particular joke.

Certainly you try to make people laugh, and succeed fairly often for myself at least, but that doesn't really change the fact that you definitely target people or groups now and then. For instance, even though a lot of people had a good laugh at it, I don't know if you can claim that some of the Evelagon comics were anything but aimed directly one fandom.

I'm not saying "you're just trolling", I'm saying it seems weird that you don't like your art to be used as bullets by idiots, when you have totally intentionally armed idiots in the past - giving a dude a bullet that makes him giggle is pretty much the same as giving him a normal non-funny bullet when he fires it.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding, and you don't care one way or the other what idiot uses what stuff as ammo and this is just a commentary on the reality that it happens. Can't really read minds long distance since the device was confiscated, so I can only interpret what I see.

I like Eva, but a lot of fans of it really need to take themselves less seriously.

 

[Tono Makt]

That is why content creators (ones who actually make stuff) need to ignore outragists using words like "problematic" and "uncomfortable".

And of course all of the modern words accusing the creator of having certain unapproved thoughts.

The trolls are like the bogeyman, they only have power if you give it to them.

They shouldn't IGNORE them until they have looked to see why it is making people say they are uncomfortable or the artwork is problematic. Sometimes art crosses lines that the creator didn't intend it to cross.

That being said, artists need to be able to stand by their work if they feel the artwork is defensible. That... seems to be in shorter supply as of late.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

I really like this comic. Different direction than usual, but well done nonetheless.

As mentioned on twitter, that fact that some people don't get the joke makes it all the more sweeter

Certainly you try to make people laugh, and succeed fairly often for myself at least, but that doesn't really change the fact that you definitely target people or groups now and then. For instance, even though a lot of people had a good laugh at it, I don't know if you can claim that some of the Evelagon comics were anything but aimed directly one fandom.

I remember Grey saying that he makes fun of Evangelion because he's a fan of it at some point in the past. So technically he's part of the fandom he's mocking

 

[Lightknight]

Well congratulations, my friend! You are the exception, not the rule.

Nope, I'm not special. I think we just tend to take greater notice of the all out debacles that get extra heated to the point of boiling over. Why would we take notice of all the arguments that end abruptly and early due to someone admitting fault? There's literally nothing to see there after that point.

Case in point: GamerGate is apparently still a thing.

They seem to have achieved a decent amount of anti-corruption in journalism. Several major sites published new guidelines and it looks like there have been some changes in tone and staffing in many of these places. Perhaps they feel like there's more to accomplish or like their group wasn't given the justice components of it deserved due to being overshadowed to some other rather large components such as the springboard. But I'm not sure I follow your logic here. GamerGate was/is a million different points and arguments from tons of different people. It was "THIS" or "THAT". Some people learned from it, some people didn't, and I see no reason why its still going on would be any sort of claim. Do you really feel like it was AN argument and not many?

Though I do believe the argument can be made of "one shouldn't be going to the internet if they're seeking reasonable and intelligent debate/discourse over a given topic" but hey, more power to you if you manage to find a unicorn every time you have a disagreement with someone on the internet...because that's pretty much what it is when/if you manage to find an "agreeable" person on the internet even if they disagree with you.

You don't need reasonable people to learn from. I learn from assholes all the time. All I need is for them to be right and to have the smallest of abilities to convey their reasoning. I'm willing to do the footwork there and actually research their points.

But yes, I do find myself engaging with well meaning and well intentioned individuals on a somewhat regular basis. I find that exhibiting those qualities myself seems to result in similar treatment in return. I'll admit that I do have quite a few debates that start off heated on one side that get a lot better after a while of me responding earnestly to their taunts rather than responding in kind. If (and this is 80% joke) you find that every argument you've ever been in has been heated and fruitless then you may want to consider that the single unifying commonality in all those debates is you. I hope that makes you chuckle and pause.