#rough chuckles

[haywire4]

[maximdorky]

This past week's news has been a pretty golden week for all kinds of rough chuckles. (Related, over the past 24 hours: Привет, я Евгений Викторович Пригожин, а это Джекэсс. )

[nicolettesue]

At what point do artists owe their audiences something?

I am probably going to sound like a dick when I say this, but I got really annoyed at how Chris Onstad handled his break (?) from Achewood.  I get it - artists owe their fans nothing, and that's not really what I'm upset about.  I'm perturbed that he dicked his fans around for over a year (here's another strip, I'm REALLY back this time...just kidding.  While you look at my months-old stale content, won't you please donate to keep the servers running?) and then erased the community that grew around and because of his comics.

When I started reading Achewood, the archives were managed by this system called Assetbar.  It sort of sucked because it wasn't really searchable, but in a way that was part of the magic.  You either had to guess based on month and year or use one of the arc bookmarks Onstad had made to get around the archives.  The BEST part about Assetbar, however, was the comment system.  Achewood is full of brilliance, sure, but Achewood fans are some of the funniest, most brilliant sons of bitches out there.

Sometime during Onstad's 14-month long hissy fit, the comment archives were obliterated from the website.  He never stopped begging for funds via PayPal, however.

I recently found a semi-active message board that survived with some members of the community.  One enterprising member had even taken it upon himself (herself?) to archive as many of the comments as he (she?) could.  He (she?) was only able to get through 2007, and some dick reported 2007 for some Mediafire violation, so the only comments that remain are from 2001-2006.  That's it.  The brilliant comments from the latter part of the decade are all gone.

That's actually sort of hard to stomach in a way.  I was really active in that community at the time (mostly as a lurker, but I occasionally posted).  Onstad was actively not posting new content as hard as he could (and doing a bang-up job of it), and his fans were building this incredibly tight-knit community around that very notion.  I would be willing to hazard that his website got a not insignificant amount of traffic in those months despite him not creating anything to drive traffic to it. 

Comment threads would grow longer as Onstad's breaks lengthened.  It was almost a game to us.  The 'Most Commented' highlight on Achewood's Assetbar used to be dominated by arcs such as the Great Outdoor Fight, but it grew to be dominated by the most recent posts (however few and far between).   Eventually, the conversation moved to a different site - rough chuckles - and some of us drifted away.

Rough chuckles ceased to exist some time ago, too.  And, without me even noticing, Assetbar was wiped clean from Achewood's website.  All of the comments, some more than a decade old, were obliterated.

Onstad owes his fans nothing, but that doesn't preclude me from calling him a dick.  He took money from fans for a cookbook he never printed.  He routinely failed to ship items people paid for from his store.  He panhandled the Internet for funds when he wasn't producing any new content, instead promising to use the funds to keep the servers running.  We all loved Achewood, perhaps not as much as he did at time and perhaps more than he did at times.  Still, his lack of commitment to the comic, the money woes, and the begging got to us.  Maybe he would have kept Assetbar if we gave a little more.  Maybe not.  Maybe Onstad wanted to burn us for every time we criticized him (not) posting a comic.

Who knows?  I just know that I'm unreasonably sad that this Internet community is no longer a thing.  An increasingly smaller part of my online and offline inner circle understands "Achewoodisms."  And, honestly, I'm having a difficult time getting back into the comic now that it's updating semi-regularly.

I just feel like it's all too good to be true.  The first time falling in love with Achewood (and then its family) was perfect.  Drifting apart was immeasurably difficult.  The community was bound to fade.  Still, it rips my heart out that those comments are gone forever.

This time, the Internet forgot.

[graveerrors]

The Force

Sometimes when Janet was alone, she would pretend that she had dormant telekinetic power that she didn't know about because she hadn't tried to exercise them.  She'd stare at a pen on her desk to see if she could get it to roll away from her using only her mind.  When nothing would happen, she'd chuckle at herself and go about her day.  Now, sitting in this cave, this habit only served to frustrate her when the boulder trapping her leg let out nary a shudder.  

[tonythebear]

Excerpt from the "Irish Army Camouflage Manual"

1.When the soldier is moving through woodland, he's supposed to break off branches and put them on his helmet. 2.When he is moving through cornfields, he's to break off some cornstalks and put them on his helmet. 3.When the soldier is moving through a cabbage field he's supposed to take off his helmet for the best camouflage.