Murder in Dragonborn Manor

[Gilhelmi]

That's not punishment! That's just mean! Esp. for just a bad report card.

Depends on how bad the report card is, really. I mean if it was strait C's and D's, This might be reasonable.

No way. Not unless you backed up the saves somewhere and just went with the initial shock, but then restored them later. Besides that there's a whole issue of the violation of trust and personal space. I mean confiscating an item of value and having them earn it back is one thing, but permanently deleting something they've worked so hard on without their prior knowledge won't teach them anything other than that you can't be trusted around their stuff.

You make a good point, And most consoles still have a memory card slot of some kind.

Yes, then it is settled we should combine the ideas and send it into the parenting magazines.

 

[Gilhelmi]

Remember the whole debacle about the dad who shot up the laptop that his daughter was using?

These responses are the same, a whole lot of people who think they know better with all the preposterous claims of them being able to predict how the person will act/become.

If you're that precogniscient, why don't you predict the lotterynumbers?

You don't know the context, what have gone before this happened or the relationship between these people so shut up! I grow tired of listening to you selfrightegous pricks.

As long as no physical or mental abuse is taking place let people raise their children as they damn well please.

I know of people that would say "if you tell the child No, or set any limits, that is mental abuse".

I call these people idiots (if I ever meet one, I would call them an idiot to their face). But they do exist and they are actively trying to change laws, and file complaints with school boards. I worry about the next generation believing they can do anything they want because the "Rules" do not apply to them, they are special.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

You're welcome. Thanks for the page views.

About what I expect from someone who doesn't care what they do as long as they get noticed for it.

 

[mlow44]

while i find this to be absolutely hilarious, i also think that in reality it's far too harsh unless the kid does something drastic like commits a crime. or unless you backup their saves so you can give them back once they've learned their lesson. you can say "it's just a game," but it's also the time, thought, and effort you put into that game, and so deleting game saves is like spitting on all the emotion and attachment you've experienced playing it. call me overdramatic, but in my opinion it sends a dark message along the lines of "anything you love can be taken from you. anything you work towards can be destroyed," and that's not something you want a child learning unless you're trying to raise some sort of emotionless killing machine, or less drastically and more realistically, simply a severely depressed adult devoid of all hope.

bless my technology-impaired parents for their lack of interest in my video game habit, because if they ever gained the knowledge of how to mess with my saves i think i'd have grown up to be a very, very angry and violent person... think Corvo Attano in a high chaos playthrough of Dishonored, but darker

 

[Quaade]

while i find this to be absolutely hilarious, i also think that in reality it's far too harsh unless the kid does something drastic like commits a crime. or unless you backup their saves so you can give them back once they've learned their lesson. you can say "it's just a game," but it's also the time, thought, and effort you put into that game, and so deleting game saves is like spitting on all the emotion and attachment you've experienced playing it. call me overdramatic, but in my opinion it sends a dark message along the lines of "anything you love can be taken from you. anything you work towards can be destroyed,"] and that's not something you want a child learning unless you're trying to raise some sort of emotionless killing machine, or less drastically and more realistically, simply a severely depressed adult devoid of all hope.

That is EXACTLY what you want your child to learn, what ANYONE should learn really because that is what will happen once you get really involved with the realities of the world:

- Loves of your life can leave you.
- People you love WILL die.
- Life altering accidents don't just happen to the next guy over, sometimes they happen to you too.
- Some people WILL screw you over to get what they want or just to plain hurt you.

If you aren't prepared for this to happen, or learn of it, while in the comfortzone of people who care for you, then the chances of becoming the kind of person you describe, severely depressed adult devoid of all hope, are amazingly high.

The young brain is a wonderfull thing who can bounce back from misshaps far easier than an adult one. Yes, it's going to hurt FAR more than in an adult because we're tempered by experience, it's just that while it lingers in adults, kids get over it far quicker and builds a defense against it.

bless my technology-impaired parents for their lack of interest in my video game habit, because if they ever gained the knowledge of how to mess with my saves i think i'd have grown up to be a very, very angry and violent person... think Corvo Attano in a high chaos playthrough of Dishonored, but darker

And this part of your post pretty much illustrates why someone should had taught you those realities when you were young, because it's obvious you're struggling with something right now. Else you wouldn't have made a comparison to a protagonist who can do anything he wants to anyone he wants because he's the best and noone messes with him.

Dreaming of things to do to the people/circumstances who hurt you doesn't solve anything, it's the easy way and it will make it fester and boil inside you untill you become that sort of individual you were talking about.
The best way is to confront the issues, find out where you went wrong, see if it can be solved, if yes, do it, if not, learn from it and let it go.
It's a simple and really tough thing to do and it will be a lot better for you in the end.

 

[Not Matt]

my parents and i did something similar to my sister a few years ago. she had done something stupid and she loved sims 2. so they let me go and kill her three favorite family members in a four person family (so she could see the graves). probably not a surprise that she didn't think it was as clever and funny as i did

 

[Sergey Sund]

That is actually pretty fucked up.
This is something that leads directly into tantrums and a deep-seated hate for any authority, especially the perpetrator of such heinous a crime as "messing with my computer stuff".
I'd be blowing a fuse every time I was reminded of that shit.
This is unusually cruel punishment to me - then again, my sad existence is mainly centred around the PC, so everything that happens to my hard- or software proportionaly "happens" to me.
Makes for a funny strip, though

 

[Nimzar]

Th... th... that.... that's just.... EVIL!

 

[zidine100]

remove erin and we have copy pasta material

 

[Feylynn]

My respect for save games as personal experience, cherished memories, and spent time leads me to equate this sort of 'punishment' with something like burning a family photo album.

Not very classy nor amusing.

 

[Akisa]

Why doesn't the kid just switch back to the keyboard, open the console and resurrect Ysolda?

 

[felixader]

First off: this is a comic and as thus i can appreciate the dark humor (in some way X-p ). But then there is of course the implication of this happening in the real world and the disscusion about this.

To the people that have been brought up in such a way and use that as an argument for it:

Just cause something has happened to you does not make it right.

There have to be consequences when someone makes shit but something like this is just a malevolent attack, especially when you consider the context, a game where the player expresses himself trough the world and items and puts a whole lot of himself into it.

Then there is this: Trying to bring someone to learn more and better his grades trough punishing him this way is the stupidest shit you ever could do. X-(

It doesn`t make the slightest sense, then instead somehow using the fact that you know the person, to motivate him/her to learn (and i don't mean trough constant "presents") you just connected learning with a really bad experience.
This most likely will add to all the other already negative consequences in regards to learning, not to forget that it crushes the aforementioned trust in you as a parent, that one can feel save and perhaps "home" in your company. And then it will exchange that with "have i secured everything that belongs to me and that i own and cherish before this ass?".
Get used to a paranoid look one the other ones face, as often as you near anything that belongs to the person.

It just pains me thinking of this, cause i daily have to work with the themes of all the consequences that such a thing brings with it, on a daily basis.

 

[DanielChico]

I hope it's not too late to post a comment. I just made an account only to say: You are a monster!
How could you do something so cruel to someone? I couldn't understand why even after you explain. What did you stepson to deserve such a cruel fate?

To clarify: I loved this comic! Well done.

 

[Scow2]

Amazing how much some people care for time spent on a virtual world, completely removable in an instant, while ignoring the fact that they are making decisions that can have SERIOUS consequences further down the road. Is it a breach of Parent/child trust? Yes, but the child started it by breaching the trust with the parent (In this case, probably lying about school performance).

I'm guessing a lot of the users here are still teens themselves. Do you have any idea how much time, money, and effort your parents invest in you, to ensure that you're equipped to succeed in life when you graduate high school? A couple hundred hours in a videogame doesn't come anywhere close to amounting to that. So, before getting pissy about what they've done to you by destroying your game, first realize what you've done to them to warrant such action. Also, if you're valuing the time you spend on a single-player game more highly than their investment in you, and your own investment in your education and the "real life", you probably need to have your saves deleted to get a perspective on just how screwed up your priorities are.


And then go watch the Star Trek: The Original Series first pilot episode: The Cage. Do you really want to suffer the same fate as the Talosians?

 

[CoL0sS]

You sir, are a cruel but just man. Lucky for me, my parents never knew how to access my memory card.

 

[razer17]

Yeeeah, um ......while i find it funny as a comic i rather hope you actually didn't do something likes this.

There is really a LOT of reasons why this is a very bad idea, not just a few of them have to do with psychology and damaging any trust that could have developed.

You think messing up someones save files is going to psychologically damage them? I mean, really?

Some of the comments on this are hilarious, as if this is somehow going to screw up someones life. He messed about with a savefile and killed someone. Big whoop. If you actually think this is a real problem, you need to sort your priorities. This is a novel and interesting method of punishment, and on a scale of Reasonable to abusive punishment, it's definitely on the reasonable side.

 

[Apollo45]

That is actually pretty fucked up.
This is something that leads directly into tantrums and a deep-seated hate for any authority, especially the perpetrator of such heinous a crime as "messing with my computer stuff".
I'd be blowing a fuse every time I was reminded of that shit.
This is unusually cruel punishment to me - then again, my sad existence is mainly centred around the PC, so everything that happens to my hard- or software proportionaly "happens" to me.

So what're your thoughts on kids looking up porn? When I did it my dad came down and literally wiped the entire hard drive of the computer. All of my savegames, all of my time spent customizing things, all of that, down the drain. But I did something that was not allowed and was punished for it. This isn't half as devastating as that was, which I believe fits the crime. The message being sent to the kid is pretty clear; if you're going to spend your time on video games, you need to get good grades. School comes first, which is always true as a kid. Once they get that done then they can focus on games. Until then, this is to show you how easily I can not only take those games away but make the time you put in to them worthless. Makes complete sense to me, and seems entirely reasonable

Yeeeah, um ......while i find it funny as a comic i rather hope you actually didn't do something likes this.

There is really a LOT of reasons why this is a very bad idea, not just a few of them have to do with psychology and damaging any trust that could have developed.

You think messing up someones save files is going to psychologically damage them? I mean, really?

Some of the comments on this are hilarious, as if this is somehow going to screw up someones life. He messed about with a savefile and killed someone. Big whoop. If you actually think this is a real problem, you need to sort your priorities. This is a novel and interesting method of punishment, and on a scale of Reasonable to abusive punishment, it's definitely on the reasonable side.

Agreed. Hell, my Xbox has done the same thing to me multiple times. Corrupted my Morrowind savegames repeatedly, wiped itself at one point, died at another. I don't have any deep seated hatred towards Microsoft for ruining my games for no reason, and I wouldn't have any hatred towards my parents for taking away what they gave me when I didn't do what I needed to. If a kid decides to hold a grudge like that then they have some mental issues that need addressing.

 

[Raine_sage]

Geeze all the people who think losing a save game is the end of the world. If my kid ever has a meltdown because they lost a save (either through meddling or through an accident) that tells me they're probably waaay more invested in the game than is probably good for them.

I have nothing against spending hours on a game. I have hundreds of hours logged on skyrim. I've sunk more of my life into that game than I have most other games combined. I'm in the process of doing the same with dragon's dogma. Would I be pissed if my parents wiped or otherwise messed with a save in order to punish me? Yeah, but not any more so than if they just took the whole damn machine. I can always start a game over. Hell starting over is easier in some cases because now I know all the tricks to catapult me back to where I was in no time. Whereas I might not get the machine back for several months depending on future report cards (I have always been a more or less straight C student. Not for lack of trying on my part, I study my ass off, I get high grades on all class assignments I'm just shit at test taking).

I think this is really clever because not only does it communicate a specific message to the child, but it prevents them from just diving right back into the game once they get that privilege back. I know whenever I have to start a game over for whatever reason it takes me awhile to build up steam again. I'm more likely to actually get stuff done in that period, chores, homework, actual face to face people time etc. So yeah not really seeing a problem here.

 

[imperfect number]

Remember the whole debacle about the dad who shot up the laptop that his daughter was using?

These responses are the same, a whole lot of people who think they know better with all the preposterous claims of them being able to predict how the person will act/become.

If you're that precogniscient, why don't you predict the lotterynumbers?

You don't know the context, what have gone before this happened or the relationship between these people so shut up! I grow tired of listening to you selfrightegous pricks.

As long as no physical or mental abuse is taking place let people raise their children as they damn well please.

In the case of the father shooting the laptop, HE DISCHARGED A FIREARM. I might not know the context, but I do know about guns and gun safety.
So yeah, the father was almost certainly acting in an irresponsible and foolish manner, because there was a problem that did not involve his or a loved ones personal safety and he responded by shooting a gun.