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Joe Chouinard @joechoui.bsky.social ⋅ 8m
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mccloud
Self-Demonstrating Article
You’re a cruel woman, Ana Chronistic.
**clicks link**
… must… resist… clicking… further… links….
I know myself too well to even think of clicking a TVTropes link.
I do it anyway sometimes, but at least I know I shouldn’t.
nooo… I have… exams… And I already read that article like seventeen times…
dooooooooooom
While appreciating the joke, I still feel we should thank Willis for the pro-tip.
I mean, the joke is all in the lampshading, so I’m not sure it’s meant to be taken as literal advice
Yeah that TVTropes link is gonna stay unclicked.
I am not confident that either Joyce or Walky actually know how to craft a joke
Probably not but at least Joyce has some world building on her side.
The comic strip doesn’t necessarily have to be funny. I’d argue most newspaper comics aren’t. You ever read Doonesbury?
Doonesbury is political commentary, and that only used to be funny until actual politics turned into a farcical version of itself and the commentary couldn’t keep up anymore. My paper used to run it on the Opinion page opposite
Incredulous Anthropomorphic Conservative DuckMallard Fillmore.I only read a few newspaper strips out of habit, but very few are what I’d call unironically “good”. In my experience Boomers hate anything that isn’t the same blandly drawn, milquetoast blah they’ve been reading for decades. (And guess who buys newspapers?) The boring stuff keeps the industry afloat, because it makes money for the syndicates, but that also discourages risk-taking on picking up something new and innovative. (Thankfully, webcomics more than make up for it!)
The older I get, the more ai understand and appreciate Bill Watterson’s decision to go out on top.
Doonesbury’s not just political commentary. It’s also character driven. Blatantly political strips are a serious minority. It’s never really been a gag a day strip, though it does try to have some kind of a punchline most times.
It’s nothing at all like Mallard Fillmore – even beyond me liking Trudeau’s politics a lot more.
It also started out as a campus paper comic about a couple of mismatched roommates and ballooned.
So, what you’re saying is Gary Trudeau and Willis are the same person.
Also, John Kerry made appearances in Doonesbury when it was just a campus comic, so we now know that Dorothy will eventually run for President
Maybe not separately.
But together? … The jury’s still out on that one.
Oooh. A joint venture, that might be where this is leading!
Yeah I’m keeping my fingers crossed for this team-up to happen.
Wow. I’ve touched on this same phenomenon in one of my own comics.
When, exactly did this narrative event even become a ‘thing’?!
Probably Garfield. When in doubt, blame Garfield.
They haven’t stopped making frozen pudding pops, have they?
A fellow connoisseur of the Irregulars, I take it.
I’m actually starting to get that impression from the Internet Peanut Gallery and have often wondered when THAT particular phenom became a ‘thing’! Made a comic about that, as well.
The beat panel goes back to the earliest days of comics, though, apparently it goes more popular in the 70s. TV Tropes credits Doonsbury with making it a more than occasional thing. (The first Doonsbury strip to do it is from October 31, 1970…well before Garfield. The next one with a wordless penultimate panel is less than a week later, but that one’s not just a reaction-beat, it’s functional.)
Garfield peaked in the early 90s. Change my mind.
James Garfield died in ’81. Yer thinking of Arthur
James Arthur hasn’t even peaked yet, he’s got so much more to show us musically AND lyrically.
President Doris being Dorothy would make the make out scenes with Julia Grey really awkward. Good thing neither of those characters are real. Just totally made up non self inserts. That’s why it’s called fiction.
Was that… was that a particular problem that early Willis had that I just never noticed during my Roomies! binge?
Eh, maybe it’s a Sly Sirs thing.
Ooh, DEEP CUT.
NOT WRONG.
Okay, that was clever, well done
Hehe, I love this.
Now, this is what game development is supposed to be like…
doing the laziest things, and people never knowing or even caring.
The fourth wall tapped out! You don’t have to keep up the attack!
The Fourth Wall has a nap!!
Hold out!! Fourth Wall!!
Is there a history of the beat panel, when it was first used, it’s rise to popularity, and did it ever fall out of fashion and/or come back to fashion retro style?
Tweet at Scott McCloud?
Rather Benoit Peeters
I can’t find any reference to its first use, but according to TV Tropes, Doonsbury is the strip that moved it from ‘an occasionally useful part of the cartoonist’s toolbox’ to ‘a standard load-bearing device’.
I wonder if its decline was started by the XKCD parody of Achewood, featuring 10 panels of awkward silence….
Oh, right, art skills. Oops?
Now, see, Walky might make a stick figure comic work – his ideas sound pretty gag-a-day. Joyce wants a plot and significant character work. This might be fun to see how it shakes out.
Well played, gravitar roulette, well played.
It’s always fun to reroll and see what you get in a BBCC comment thread let’s go!
Yeah…uh…no.
I love Malaya. Maybe next time!
Next time for sure.
Whoop.
Sometimes, the Grav Roulette sees an opportunity.
So how many weird capitalizations have you tried, at this point?
To be fair, we did see a little while ago that Walky fears Joyce’s art skills, even providing Lucy with an example.
Didn’t I get you yesterday?
And same goes for you…last roll of the day (unless it’s a big ol’ NOPE)
ehm…I don’t hate Booster, but I don’t think I want them as a grav.
YES VICTORY IS MINE AT LAST ASHER PARTAYYY TIME
(Carla, you’ll still be my posting-from-phone grav, that way I can keep you and Asher both)
Oh yeaaaaahhhh, she draws Roomies style. Godspeed, Joyce, godspeed.
I worry though, because Julia Gray is very clearly Joyce’s fantasy about herself, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to a well rounded character with realistic flaws.
If i learned one this that the mary sue label is thrown around way to much if jocye wants to write a self insert character let her.
Doesn’t everyone start that way, really?
1) “Write what you know.”
2) “Mary Sue” is far too often an anti-woman weapon. Consider: If David Weber had been a woman, Honor Harrington would have been excoriated as a Mary Sue.
Real Olivia Jaimes Nancy energy with that joke
SluggoWalky is lit.*looks in vain for some Mark Russell parodies of “Hail To The Chief” to play*
There should be a “Jail to the chief,” left over from when Dick Nixon was prez.
See my go-to was to just have six or seven wordless panels to really ruin my own jokes.
I will say this. Joyce clearly has more of a passion for this than Walky appears to. I’m not gonna make a snap decision on it yet, but Joyce is clearly having more fun.
So Joyce is Willis. Does this count as a self insert? Isn’t that frowned upon in books?
Joyce is Willis was the joke of the entire first book. This is an example of the call-back.
Joyce is autobiographical (specifically the ‘grew up in an autocratic fundamentalist household, faith broke HARD in college upon meeting people they were taught to hate and realizing all these people were actually awesome, had mental crisis, also, got glasses’. We’re pretty sure Willis has never been kidnapped by a murderous mob stooge in an attempt to get back at his vigilante daughter, not that he would tell us anyway.) This is merely bringing her ever-closer to her natural endpoint, Internet Pornleige.
That we know of.
Sometimes I wonder how much of the murder and kidnapping stuff is taken from real life events.
See also mother and father divorcing with the mother staying hardcore ultra-Christian ’til the end (and beyond, with her will leaving Willis’ childhood home to her church).
Pretty sure the childhood home was sold during the divorce, actually.
But uh, yeah, difficult family aspects for sure.
Honestly, the idea of “Self Insert Is Bad” has its roots more in fanfiction (where, admittedly, plenty of authors get their start) than it does writing per se. This is because a frustratingly large number of first-time writers first idea is “Hey, what if I was part of (popular franchise), and it was great!” – a fantasy that’s probably very entertaining to the one writing, but less so for anyone without a pre-existing connection to the main character. A character with autobiographical characteristics doesn’t really fall under the guideline (even if the concept has drifted somewhat since then) since it’s exploring a part of the character or their past, rather than acting as a vehicle for the author’s personal fantasies.
I could elaborate on this a bit, but… Eh, doing it unprompted (like the three paragraphs I deleted) feels a bit unnecessary.
Even then, people tend to put some aspect of themselves into characters with some regularity, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fanfic, the autistic person writing a lengthy musing on Dina’s interactions with the world that contains a lot of projection could be a great read. In original characters, giving characters certain traits of yours can help them ring truer to life. (Say, Joyce’s struggle with her loss of faith, or Ethan and Amber’s nerdy interests having very specific facets like Transformers knowledge rather than a Big Bang Theory-style Generic Nerddom.) You really just need to learn how to use it properly – don’t cheat a situation you set up to avoid giving that character consequences, and don’t be afraid to let those characters be brutally wrong at times. You can literally dump yourself in an existing work and still make it worth reading by showing what your character brings to the table, how you change things, but also how you make new, different problems that need adapting to. If you’re willing to make your character complex enough to be interesting before they do anything too big, people are willing to care. (It’s tricky to pull off well, but at the same time there’s definitely a market – just look at all the isekai anime where some nerd gets dumped into their favorite fictional video game.)
Just to clarify, that was the two-second explanation of “Why Self-Insert Has A Bad Rep” (to reiterate, because it’s generally shorthand for a character that doesn’t get enough development living out the author’s fantasies). If a work doesn’t do that, it’s not a problem.
There’s more that can be said, certainly, but I felt that would just unnecessarily muddy the waters. If a person wants to know why something is frowned upon, adding a bunch of caveats is unlikely to help them – even if I would enjoy examining the boundaries of a problem.
(Besides, self-insert originally referred only to works in which the author was explicitly a character in the story, which is why it was more of a fanfiction issue than a general writing issue. It’s only later that people started using it to refer to any character the author seemed to value more than the others, and attempting to use the “new” definition with the old rule doesn’t have much value.)
That is more frowned upon by grouchy people upset that the content is written for the author more than for them when it comes to books and fanfics. With RPs, if everyone is doing it, it is fine. It basically falls into the same line of Mary Sues and Gary Stus being perfectly useful and viable for processing stuff in your own writing but it won’t be super entertaining for anyone else until they are made more complex and compelling to an audience.
Joyce has been stated since day one to be autobiographical in a lot of ways but she is also a well-rounded fleshed out character with experiences that diverge as I doubt Willis was at a party and someone dressed as a superhero turned up. But there are then things he has talked about for real like how he used to be super Christian and his parents getting divorced and how his mother’s views were very extreme.
“Self inserting is bad” is such a weird piece of advice, especially since the golden rule writers keep throwing is “write what you know.”
If I ever write a novel, which I’d certainly like to, dang right the protagonist is going to be bi as fuck. That shit’s real to me, that’s what I want to see in stuff.
like “joyce is autobiographical” in bold text has been on the About/Read Before Posting page for over a decade
so
uh
Forgive me if I’m projecting, but a *lot* of fictionalized characters are oberamplifying parts of oneself into distinct characters. I seem to remember Willis identifying with pieces of Joyce, Walky and Dina among others. Personally I see the same things in my writing. It *shouldn’t* be surprising given that they all came from the same brain.
I really hope this isn’t news to anyone. Seriously. Think about it for .002 milliseconds.
Frowned upon by whom?
METAGEDDON HAS BEEN ACHIEVED!
Nice and meta.
Is it wrong I want to see Walky’s journey to cartoon stardom more?
Sure. Why not?
I’m there for him if and only if he hires Dina as scientific advisor
I’d accuse Joyce of leaning on the fourth wall, but that giant chair doesn’t HAVE a fourth wall.
Clearly, Dorothy is trying to show her that the true path is to get atop the fourth wall.
They have chicken tenders up there.
Her comic better be good though. I hear they burn the bad ones.
That’s not a lesson she’s gonna learn.
Joyce: You know, I have all of these backed up on my laptop.
Daisy: Eh, the fire’s mostly for psychological purposes, anyway.
J: But, I have other copies. I won’t be psychologically affected by this at all.
D: You? The fire’s for me!! Heheh, burn, terrible comics! BURN!!!
Joyce: how are you suddenly wearing that pretty hat? And where did you buy a magic gun?
You know that’s the point of the fourth wall, right? That it’s the one that’s not actually there?
I am pretty sure President Doris isn’t based on Dorothy, just as Julia Gray isn’t AT ALL Joyce. Why, Julia wear cool shades, and Joyce wears your old regular glasses.
What I love about this particular strip is that it works no matter when you stop reading. First panel? Funny. First two panels? Funny. First three panels? Funny. All but the last panel? Funny. Whole thing? Still funny. This is good stuff. Very meta.
How about if you read the panels in reverse?
I can’t believe I ever thought president Doris is based on Dorothy. My bad.
I don’t know why people keep silently implying that president Doris is Dorothy. Like Dorothy very obviously did in panel 1, which is why this clarification was needed. Yet again!
How could you even consider that? She has dark hair.
It’s very odd how people keep getting confused about this!
I’m so meta, even this art
We’re reaching levels of meta that shouldn’t be possible
increase the meta!
Unleash the Meta.
The meta side of the comics is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.
I’m not proud that this strip took me a minute to get. But I can’t stop smiling now that I know.
Oh man, that’s how at least 90% of humor webcomics were back in the 00s. It was always something like this:
PANEL 1: “Weird, our bank account’s almost empty.”
“This new video game is great!”
PANEL 2: “I don’t recall making any large purchases…”
“The other new one I bought is even better!”
PANEL 3: *wordless*
PANEL 4: “Did you spend all our money on games!?”
“Yay! Video games!”
I’m so glad webcomics evolved past their “gamers on a couch” phase.
Calving & Hobbes used this, sparingly. Here’s an instance (did I jump at the chance to spend an hour reading Calvin & Hobbes this morning? sure. Is this a productive use of my time? Ehn. But does this greatly contribute to this conversation?…………. ok, no, not at all.)
PANEL 1: Calvin and Hobbes are jumping across a creek.
Calvin: Hobbes, do you think our morality is defined by our actions, or by what’s in our hearts?
PANEL 2: Calvin and Hobbes are climbing over a rock.
Hobbes: I think our actions SHOW what’s in our hearts.
PANEL 3: Calvin stops, stares at 4th wall, taken aback.
PANEL 4: Calvin shouts at Hobbes, off-panel to the right: I RESENT THAT!
lol I see what you did there
…how autobiographical is Joyce here?
i dunno, does Willis live in a linear succession of panels?
Are you familiar with the concept of a Planck time?
Is that when you live out your life on an elongated wooden slab?
Actually it’s to do with the fact that in the early days of comics they used to be printed using woodcuts, aka Plancks (which is the old english spelling, capitalization and all, retained only in this specialized sense). A “Planck time” is the time it took a printer to gouge out one panel for printing. They used to be so fast at this that a Planck time came to be known in the profession as a minimal unit of time against which to measure any other duration.
By the by, I finally looked up Indiana U. on Google. Holy SHIT, that school is huge.
This is very meta
This entire arc is meta almost to excess!
Not yet breaking the fourth wall, but they’re getting damn close.
I think that Willis basically saying here: “Look, I’m sorry. In my defence, I really only half knew what I was doing back then!” All I can say in reply is that we all have to start from somewhere and then improve with time!
(Yes, Roomies is rubbish compared to late-era Walkyverse and DoA and I don’t think it’s unfair to say that).
It is… very, very rough. On many, many levels.
I mean, when Willis shits all over their past work, I think it’s fair to shit all over it. Though honestly there are some bits so awful that they aren’t even fun to shit on— the “joke” about Sal needing an Adam’s apple check comes to mind. Or the early It’s Walky! strip where Mike says Sal has “huge monkey ears.” Or the now retconned-out joke about Bill Clinton trying to get Joyce under his desk, which thankfully got reworked into Bill hiding under his desk from possessed Squad 48 agents in the redraw.
This is exactly why I’m sure both joyce and Walky’s comics will be garbage – willis is all too aware of how bad novice works are. First time instrument players are bad, first time writers are bad, and first time comicers are bad, as sure as the sunrise. Why *would* they be good??
Love how alt-text!Willis, who is usually all sarcastic and cool, couldn’t resist patting himself on the shoulder this one time ^^
The meta intensifies.
*slow clap*
Glasses Joyce is slowly becoming my favorite joyce
Is it me or is panel 2 Joyce revealing much by pre-emptive denial?
It just hit me…
…what if part of the reason why Joyce is so in denial is that with her parents split up, she’s scared shitless of what Carol might do to her now that she’s entirely free of Hank’s voice of reason? Considering she condoned Toedad’s actions several times and got him released from prison, I honestly wouldn’t put doing the same thing past her and I’m betting Joyce wouldn’t either. I don’t even wanna think of what she’d do if she found out the truth about Jocelyne.
but that’s not how denial works? Her subconscious can’t have such specific and sensible reasons for keeping herself from acknowledging her homoerotic desires. A general sense of danger will do that well enough though
To be fair, I don’t mean to say that that’s the only reason by any stretch. I think her general denial of having any sexual feelings at all is pretty well-documented at this point. I just think that it may be one factor among many.
So President Doris is Amber?
This whole chair routine reminds me so much of the Charlie Brown/Linus discussions leaning on the wall somehow. Nice job Mr. Willis
Joyce already knows all the important things. Her strip will be a blast!
A good laugh, probably: https://www.dumbingofage.com/2021/comic/book-11/03-see-you-in-the-funny-page/return-2/
This is like a reward for hanging in there during the stressful parts…
*slowclap*
I’m enjoying how meta this all is becoming lately
damn it willis
That third panel should actually be the fifth panel. It’s so obvious!
(But really, it was kinda fun moving it around to each possible position. ^.^
Pity it can’t fit in the first panel position, but it basically works for any of the rest.)
https://imgur.com/a/ShqoWTn
That made me smile.
Ryan North knows
…does the January 6th insurrection happen in DoA’s verse? And was Carol involved?
It probably happened but it probably won’t be addressed in depth because of the sliding time scale. By next year, this strip will take place in January 2022 and the insurrection will have been last year, before they got to school. Then it’ll take place in 2023 and then 2024 and so on and so on.
Hee hee, nice subversion.
For folks at home, the wordless panel was moved to the middle this time! Peak humor. (Sincerely, I snickered.)
that’s… very meta
Lucy: Costume? But this is just pajamas.
Walky: Because NightGirl rules the night!
Huh, she’s already learning the tricks
Should you really be giving away all your tricks, Dave?