T w e n t y S i d e d
I made some comments expressing my envy of Rich Burlew, and Wonderduck responded with this comment:
[…]
Okay, I have seen Fred do this and it does indeed annoy me. In fact, his self-loathing is one of the things that drove me away from MegaTokyo desipte my love for the artwork. I didn’t even realize I was doing this same sort of thing until Wonderduck pointed it out.
Part of the problem is that I really don’t laugh at my own jokes. (You can’t. By the time you re-word and re-arrange a joke a couple of dozen times the humor is gone. By the time I’m done with a joke I’m sick of it. I doubt most people laugh at their own material.) This leads to a lot of self-doubt and second-guessing. If I made one that was spectacularly un-funny, how would I know?
Okay, so here is my promise: No more of this navel-gazing crap. I’m grateful for my readers. It doesn’t matter if there are a thousand of you or just my mom, I’m glad you like the strip. So from now on I promise not to do any more of this Cloud Strife “Everyone believes in me but I still suck” self-loathing and angst.
Cool? Cool.
Also:
The Ferret has posted a generous and thoughtful review of DM of the Rings. I just want to tip my hat in return for the link and the praise.
The only thing I want to add is that The Ferret says that the strip is made from screencaps found on the web. Just to be clear, I own all three movies and rip the images myself. The over-compression and JPG damage is the result of my tightwad attempts to save precious bandwidth, not a result of being careless with the images. I have unspoiled higher-resolution originals that I plan to release someday.
And finally:
I’m going through the comments in old posts and making a FAQ for the strip. If you have any questions relating to DM of the Rings, ask away.
Thanks.
Good to be the King?
Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
Lost Laughs in Leisure Suit Larry
Why was this classic adventure game so funny in the 80's, and why did it stop being funny?
Revisiting a Dead Engine
I wanted to take the file format of a late 90s shooter and read it in modern-day Unity. This is the result.
Ludonarrative Dissonance
What is this silly word, why did some people get so irritated by it, and why did it fall out of use?
PC Gaming Golden Age
It's not a legend. It was real. There was a time before DLC. Before DRM. Before crappy ports. It was glorious.
There was a great MacHall strip mocking Piro’s self-loathing. But with their archive system, it’s impossible to find now.
Found it.
Oh good. I was hoping that would end soon. :) I abhore self-loathing. ;)
The secret to laughing at your own jokes is read them after you’ve written so many other jokes that you can’t remember them. I read stuff that I wrote two years ago and the leaps of logical faith that I took – leaps that only made sense to the me at the time because I was writing in a universe where puns could replace the actual reasons for things – were simply amazing.
Stuff that I hated at the time of writing turned out, in hindsight, to not be quite the trainwreck I had thought. Basically, come back to your work with eyes unclouded by hate (and memory overwritten by new memories) and you’ll appreciate it anew.
I’ll echo Alex’s wise words. It sounds frightfully egotistical to say it (which is another great fear I have), but I really like some of my stuff that I come back to after a long hiatus. (Of course, other bits of it I loathe, but whatcha gonna do?)
For the record, I think DMotR rocks. And I’m not your mother saying this. (Though if I were, I’d deny it, wouldn’t I?)
I found your stuff via the Ferret link. Love it, btw. Keep ’em coming.
Dave: the best thing is that Shamus’ mother does read and comment. He’s got an awesome techno family.
I wouldn’t call his mother “techno” though I agree she is awesome and his wife (me) and the rest of us are pretty techno awesome. :)
> No more of this navel-gazing crap…
Just a matter of personal opinion: small children, of the age when belly buttons are a source of fascination, should be taught to use the word “omphaloskepsis”.
Oh. My. God. I did not notice “sad girls in snow” when I’ve read it for the first time. Thank you, Shamus…
Don’t worry…the Internet being what it is, someone will probably feel no qualms about telling you when you’ve lain an egg.
For my money, you haven’t yet.
Alternatively, instead of laughing at your own jokes after you’ve forgotten them, you could always refrain from reworking them until they don’t seem funny to you anymore. Admittedly, that’s easier to do in prose than in a web comic. This is usually the road I take, with the quite real risk that my stuff does suck. ;-)
But it’s good to see that you’ve apparently decided to trust your audience when they say that DMotR is great. And JFTR, let me again add my own view about this: DMotR is great.
“…the Internet being what it is, someone will probably feel no qualms about telling you when you've lain an egg. For my money, you haven't yet.”
Ditto. I love DMotR, and I don’t want to suggest otherwise. I’ve gotten around Gallagher’s self-loathing by usually not reading his comments and just enjoying the art. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to do that all the time.
Same goes for here, but your comments are at least as important as the ‘cartoon.’ So… *shrug*
Sorry if I was rude.
Sorry if I was rude.
Bah. No harm done.
I went back and reread the whole thing from the beginning and laughed hysterically. You do good work. Thanks!