Selfsurprise

Thanks for the video Meelis! That Arizona lawsuit form filled with JOHN/JANE DOE's was magnificent.. I guess to Digital Homicides credit they are whipping up more attention than their hideous sub-Newgrounds fare deserves off it's own merit. Part of me suspects that this is some distressingly inept attempt at garnering a reputation as provocateurs of a gaming culture prone to intermittent and often aimless anger. They likely see themselves as the enfants terribles of indie gaming, their work provoking baseless hostility from the unwashed plebiscite masses because we are incapable of perceiving their sublimely ordained greatness. I'm sure they removed their entire catalogue of games from Steam because they were finally resigned to the crushing inevitability that we Janus-faced abhumans aren't yet ready for the transcendental gaming experience the Romine Bros have daringly set the course of humanity towards. It's definitely not because they are a pair of humourless self-aggrandizing bollocks merchants.

Is a fellow avatar swapper.

This might be of only niche interest to many of you, but back in June Tom Leppard (better known by his moniker the "Leopard Man of Skye") died of natural causes at the age of 80. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-36537234

almost worse than post-avant jazzcore Where have you been man? Speculative Post-Kantian Maximalist Improvisationcore is what you should be listening to. Disclaimer: I might of made this genre up.

I might as well mention two more of my favourites whilst I'm here. The first is Wondermark, which like Married To The Sea employs vintage illustration in it's webcomics. The humour tends towards the cerebral but more often than not cleverly undermines its learned leanings with a delightful amount of silliness and sacred cow bashing. The second is a series that been going on-and-off since 2002 and is (rather aptly) titled Irregular Webcomic. It predominantly features a recurring cast of Lego figurines across different franchises, as well as various fantasy/sci fi miniatures and numerous appearances of the comics author. It's archive it pretty enormous at this point and also filled with some of the most embarrassingly geeky humour you'll ever come across, but I cherish it like a loved one so please be kind. I'm planning on making a few Top 10 style lists for these series on the thread at some point. Let me know which particular webcomics you would like to see more of and I'll curate what I consider to be the funniest examples of a particular comic. I love how that sheep things cheerful expression doesn't change at all.

Gutz by An-i

I've loved the entire Stirling VS. DH saga ever since I heard that painfully one-sided interview with Robert Romine, and his excruciating attempts at backing Jim into a non-existent controversy, or trying to sound him out with infantile circular arguments that weren't much more nuanced than "I know you are but what am I? ad infinitum" strategy that most of us grew out of by the time puberty arrived. Have you got any sources for this information Meelis? I imagine Stirling will upload something about it soon enough but in the meantime I'd like to read up any articles pertaining to this latest installment in the Romine Brothers moonlit berry-picking lunacy.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE GIVE THIS ONE TO OBSIDIAN I actually prefer the Bethesda games, sorry to be contentious but I'm a console pleb...

I just thought that was my neighbor getting home from a long night at the bar... Drunken Trenchcoat Bandits could be South Dakota's equivalent of the Legion... :3

...what kind of television program would it be? Forgive this blatant exercise in forum boredom but it occurred it to me whilst watching the Gaming Dungeon episode about Deus Ex: Invisible War, namely the Kidneythieves "Taxicab Messiah" track in the end credits. I had to look up the music video and was invariably enthused (and if I'm honest, mildly amused) by the pseudo-gothic radness that everybody in the 90's was apparently legally obliged to propagate. Do you ever hear a specific song and then, either by sheer absent-minded inspiration or purposeful daydreaming, mentally conjure-up a fictive series that exists solely in the decrepit warrens of your imagination? I listened to the aforementioned track several times and couldn't shake the image of a jarring angsty anime intro featuring big-eyed undead girls who were probably painfully edgy good-guys facing hordes of alien angels or something. I'd watch it if it was real! Anyway for the sake of giving this outburst some forlorn stab at purpose, I had this idea for a thread game that involves us taking in turns to post a song to which the next poster had to describe what type of show he or she reckoned would have such a theme song. You could go into as much or as little detail as you please, a simple selection of genre will suffice but feel free to make up titles, characters, plot arcs, etc if you are so inclined and can be bothered to. All genres of music are welcome here. Can the next poster please pontificate and imagine what sort of TV program would likely have the following catchy jam as it's theme song? gwb-KkJsPbE Disclaimer: This might or might not be a slightly elaborate variation of the "Now Playing/What R U Listening 2" type threads done-to-death here and elsewhere all over the internet. Don't tell anyone though.

I've not played any of the Blackwell games, but if Wadjet Eye have had anything to do with it they are probably pretty decent. They are a rather underrated developing team.

Les Murray, The Vol Sprung From Heraldry

I think you'd be much better off calling yourself a critic in the sense that visual/conceptual art critics define it. Criticism in artistic parlance isn't divisive in the way other creative fields are. Historical progress and evolution in contemporary art aren't as clearly demarcated as they are in music, fashion, etc. and often the borrowing/repurposing of old tropes is conflated and circular, because arguing about medium and movement in our current multimedia climate is perceived as being rather besides-the-point and trite. The way I see it is that reviewing a title or even subjecting gaming industry practices and culture (ala Jim Stirling-esque style) is rather different to taking a broad and analytical look at gaming (either as individual titles or as a cultural field) in the way an author like Brendan Simms does to the subject of European history, or the way Dylan Trigg subjects horror films to philosophical and phenomenological scrutiny. There's a huge amount of unknown territory to mine within a given medium if you have the will and inclination to read it through different branches of thinking. On the one hand you might think there is little to broach two seemingly disparate individual subjects as HP Lovecraft's goofily misanthropic mythos and the so-called speculative realism of the 90's/00's, but it has been achieved by the writer Graham Harman in his marvellous book Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy. If he can develop a peculiarly positive ideology on the back of something so innately nihilistic as Lovecraft's worldview, is it really so unimaginable to cast a particular element of gaming through a Hobbesian or Žižekian lens? I'm well aware I'm dropping pretentious names in what amount to literary willy-waving because that's how I roll, but having read your stuff on the forums on numerous occasions, I think you might be capable of penning much more original and accessibly conceived criticisms of gaming.

It's a worthwhile genre to dive into Helio, especially if you find that your recent gaming has been lacking a little narrative depth. I probably don't need to tell you to ignore the bargain basement PC shelves in stores groaning under the weight of so-called "hidden object" games - those things are dung from the devil's own arse. I'll be the first to admit that I keep banging on about this particular franchise but if you are serious about getting into point n' click fare you really could do much much worse things with your time than play the first two Broken Sword games, or maybe start with the slicker recent title in the series Broken Sword 5 - The Serpent's Curse. All of the games in the series are pretty self-contained despite the recurring cast of characters, given that each story revolves around some nefarious world-ending/epoch-shattering conspiracy. It isn't vital to play the earlier titles to enjoy latter installments. I'd avoid the third and fourth titles unless you fall in hopelessly head-over-heels in love with the setting like I did, because although I'm pretty much incapable of hating anything starring George Stobbart and Nico Collard at this point, the three-dimensional gameplay and graphics of those two was unwarranted and appallingly shoddy. More importantly and pertinently to your original post, the puzzles are largely conceptually sound and a far cry from the "attach a kipper to a cannon ball and drop it into a candyfloss machine in order to get a sugar-coated kipper-ball to feed to the river troll at the docks so he lays an egg filled with magic ruby monkeys" of other zanier point n' click games.

Thanks for the posts so far ladies and gents! Ever since making this thread it's rekindled some of my old love for webcomics and I'm slowly getting in touch with my old favourites and discovering some new stuff along the way. I just want to say thanks again for the contributions. By the way, you don't have to put your images in spoiler tags if you don't want to. I suppose it's the right thing to do if you are posting an enormous or potentially contentious image (though in the latter case, linking might be more prudent) but just be clear you don't to hide your images here. "What did you see?!". It's easy to overlook xkcd because of parred down the aesthetics are, it's almost overt in its stick-figure celluar obviousness. That belies a snappy, snarky and unfailingly clever sense of humour. Nice find Aphotic! I have a slight preference for the gags featuring historical images over the B&W clipart ones, mostly the humour tends towards the amusingly stupid in the former over the latter. I like the way they often take advantage of the illustrations relative realism (or lack thereof) to make bizarre jokes at its expense. That and the characters gestures and expressions somehow seem to uncannily suit the unsuitably modern dialogue. Here's one recent one that made me chuckle as well as one of my alltime favourites from 2006, which still makes me laugh like a moron every time I see it.

When I finally get around to starting that francophile coldwave band I've been dreaming of, this will be our first EP's cover art.

I'm worried that this might come across as condescending (I'm not trying to be, I swear!) but have you considered finding a nice quiet spot and reading for a few hours? You needn't stick the same book the whole time either, in fact I personally enjoy splitting a session between several books. I might start off with something a little more arduously non-fictional - literary/art criticism, some obscure academic field, a Blackwell history of a nation, etc - and then after a chapter or two (depending on the length of individual segments or the difficulty of the language therein) I'll effectively "take a break" with a Warhammer novel or some equally fast-paced fiction. Then I might return to the previous or another similar non-fiction title, and maybe lastly ease myself out of reading by browsing a heavily illustrated art or photography book - big Phaidon art surveys do it for me. You can switch those categories around if you want to tackle a more substantial novel or even a short-story compendium, perhaps periodically dipping into a non-fiction history or politics title.

Taxicab Messiah by Kidneythieves Thanks for reminding me of this one, Ross! :3

I tend to waffle on so don't sweat it man, I really hope this pans out well for you! I wasn't sure if you would appreciate me wading in on your post like I did but I'm best friends with somebody who realised he was gay by the time he left high school. I'm faiorly familiar with all the self-doubt and uncertainty that plagued him and his family when he came out of the closet.

"Why no mister, I don't know nothin' about that orphanage that got burnt down. You wouldn't suspect a Gnome-Penguin like me, would you mister?".

Your chat-up lines are as subtle as the contents of my pants, Alyxx... :3

Why don't we go somewhere more comfortable and find your Woah G!-spot?

In mother Russia, line chats up you! ♥♥♥♥♥ Sorry, I should've explained that better. It doesn't have to be unfailingly relevant to the user above, that's just a way of scoring bonus internet points. Any random cringeworthy and all sex-crimey comment will suffice. You're doing it right!

Trying to come up with interesting thread topics.

Earlier today, something that ReverendUshankaCat posted in the funny pictures thread clued me into the fact that one of my alltime favourite webcomics called Perry Bible Fellowship was still very much alive and kicking despite my lack of attention. I'd stopped visiting the site due to a rather lengthy dry spell of updates, the last one I recall being titled Toad Race. If you aren't familiar with them (where have you been? ;p) PBF is a series of comical one-liners of the three/four panel tradition by a fellow named Nicholas Gurewitch, known absurdly high-quality and diverse art style reminiscent of children's book illustrations and jarringly morbid, cruel and cynical humour; it's well worth checking out if you've not already done so. So on that convenient segway from some random regulars post to this topic, what are some of favourite webcomic series and serials? Both popular and obscure titles are welcome here, or maybe you even have your own webcomic that you could flagrantly post here in an act of utterly barefaced self-plugging, everything webcomic related belongs and is welcome here. Discuss the merits of particular cartoonists and series to your hearts content, praise or lambast other users for their discerning/deplorable tastes, and otherwise chat about good internet based comics. Please don't go off topic by bringing up actual paper and pulp comics and graphic novels. I like them as much as anyone else! But if you want to discuss those please make another thread for it. With further ado, here's some of my other favourite webcomics... Married to the Sea - By far the best usage of random archived etch prints and B&W clipart ever devised. The humour is rather hit n' miss but because there are a staggeringly enormous number of these you are bound to come across a few that make you laugh your lungs up, or at least raise a chuckle. The first time I happened upon the following instance of MTTS, it immediately became one of my most beloved images on the internet. ---- Toothpaste For Dinner/Natalie Dee - Before I forget, MTTS is created by a duo by the name of Drew and Natalie who both respectively have their own marvelously funny outlets. ---- Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - I guess I just have a thing for one-panel "caption" comics with very quirky humour. SMBC is created by a gentleman named Zach Weinersmith (a name I feel was preordained to a comedic destiny) who shuffles between single image gags in the vein of Gary Larson's Far Side cartoons, and multiple panel "comicbook" stories for longer more dialogue heavy jokes. Simultaneously amusing and thought provoking, some of his comics put a smile on my stupid face no matter how many times I read them. I love the following example so much that I had it printed on a t-shirt a few years back.