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And you thought picking a president was hard?

http://www.comicmix.com/news/2012/0...h-madness-2012-webcomics-tournament-vote-now/

Who do YOU vote for?

Not hard at all. Goblins.

Damn! Looking at the full bracket....how the fuck does VGCats beat out Axe Cop?!?

people who like gaming webcomics are stupid and numerous

Dave said:

Damn! Looking at the full bracket....how the fuck does VGCats beat out Axe Cop?!?

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I find VGCats more amusing than Axe Cop. Much like I said in the PVP thread, I don't find a near-toddler's idea of randomness humorous or entertaining.

Shegokigo said:

I find VGCats more amusing than Axe Cop. Much like I said in the PVP thread, I don't find a near-toddler's idea of randomness humorous or entertaining.

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VGCats should lose to anyone! They should be judged on current content only, of which VGCats has none.

He's actually had 3 updates last month.... of course ,that's after, what, almost an entire year without updates?

However, if you're going solely by content, VG cats is far superior to Axecop.

I don't know, man. I love the quirky randomness of Axe Cop over the obvious [insert video game here] jokes of VGCats.

It's Goblins vs Gunnerkrigg Court in the finals now. Everybody go vote for Gunnerkrigg.

Nope. Voting for Goblins. It's the best webcomic I've ever read.

Out of curiosity, by what criteria do you judge that?

I honestly have to say I love them both equally. Great story, amazingly well written characters, unique artwork to each story.

I can't vote as I don't like one more than the other.

I adore Goblins. Tried Gunnerkrigg Court once, didn't really like it that much, though I only read the first ten or twenty strips or so. Been meaning to give it another try one of these days.

You really should bhamv3, it's an amazing story with a very unique world mixed with Magic + Technology.

bhamv3 said:

I adore Goblins. Tried Gunnerkrigg Court once, didn't really like it that much, though I only read the first ten or twenty strips or so.

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it gets better

Allen who is Quiet said:

it gets better

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By a lot.

I haven't read GKC, so if I hadn't seen it talked about on this forum, I'd assume it's a horrible comic with horrible fans. She can't even bring herself to apologize for being wrong. Apparently it's fine in her eyes to make false accusations against Thunt.

I love all the people who say "I haven't read either comic but the one strip I saw made my decision".

Why are you voting?

Order of the Stick lost to Goblins, this contest is dead to me.

*Note: this is not meant to be an insult to Goblins. I enjoy it as well, but basically any other comic beating OoTS would provoke the same reaction.

Wahad said:

Out of curiosity, by what criteria do you judge that?

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I love the art style far more the KC, and I love the characters and universe created in goblins. Also, even mainstream superhero comics don't portray action as well as Goblins does. It's not like I'm saying that KC is terrible, far from it, I just think goblins is a superior comic. It goes far above "webcomic" standards and could easily have been direct published.

This one was a tough choice for me, but in the end the writing nerd in me won out. Siddel's writing is subtle and nuanced, whereas Thunt tends to be in-your-face about everything.

Thunt's blog post about a reader who mistook the latest Goblins comic to be about rape is titled "Wow. Just... Wow."

After reading the post, that's the only reaction I can muster too. Just... wow.

The dumber you are and the more you are wrong, the louder you must yell. Sincerely, the Internet.

Without any context, I could see where she might be coming from on the page in question. I could even see her point, about rape being used as a kind of throwaway threat, had she not been so stupid about it.

Thunt has only used rape once in the entire run of the comic and it was anything but played for laughs.

Dave said:

Thunt has only used rape once in the entire run of the comic and it was anything but played for laughs.

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Tell that to her blog.

All I'm saying is that if it were about rape, she'd have a valid point. However because she rode in on her high horse and accused everyone else of being monsters without any thought as to what was going on. When presented with evidence to the contrary, she looked for it elsewhere (now apparently when minmax fought goblinslayer THAT was when rape was handled as a throw away and she knows this because did she mention that she's a rape survivor?) but not before continuing to accuse everyone else of being wrong and horrible.

It's shit like this, that leads to people dismissing entire causes and valid points because the person making said valid point is an asshole.

If we introduced her to charlie, they might spend their time at home talking about how evil everyone else is instead of bothering us.

phil said:

Tell that to her blog.

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Ugh, her blog is full of some of the worst misandrist dreck I've read in a while (and that's a direct insult to her for writing it. I"m not going to pretend to hide behind the "I'm insulting what she wrote and not her" bullshit she tried to pull on Thunt). She openly says her blog is about hating men, and her commenters agree that's the reason they follow her. I don't find it at all surprising that she wonders what she'd do if she found out her followers would ever threaten someone like Thunt's followers, allegedly, threatened her, but then went on to threaten to kill all men in another post. Hatred very often breeds hypocrisy. She's lost in her own world.

I can kind of see the Goblin Slayer rape thing being seen as making light of rape (since Minimax's reaction to the revelation was simultaneously awesome and hilarious), but when you read the entire comic and get to know Kin and see how profoundly Goblin Slayer's treatment has affected her, you know this is anything but case.

phil said:

It's shit like this, that leads to people dismissing entire causes and valid points because the person making said valid point is an asshole.

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On a vaguely related note, I think the entire reason that webcomics have had such a hard time gaining mainstream recognition is because Kurtz is a dick.

You know, the more I think about this, the less I feel like people should be hard on the rape-joke-accusing commenter.

She's wrong, yes. Very wrong. And she refuses to admit it. But from my experience knowing a survivor of severe childhood trauma, her behavior fits the bill for someone who's gone through a lot more in her life than anyone should ever have to -- and that behavior is a subconscious attempt to keep from becoming a victim ever again.

There's two parts to this, actually.

1) The initial freak-out.

Sometimes, when something reminds a trauma survivor about their own experiences, they begin to relive what happened to them. And I don't mean "Think about what happened and feel bad about it," I mean "Their mind literally goes to a place where the event is happening again and they have a hard time distinguishing it from reality." It's possible that the specifics of what was said on the most recent page (The language used by the demon, the reference to "dog pile") triggered that kind of memory, and in the confines of her mind she was raped all over again.

This isn't Thunt's fault. No one who hasn't been through exactly what that specific commenter has been through would even think about interpreting the page as a rape joke. But it isn't worth being hard on her for interpreting it that way.

2) The refusal to admit she's wrong.

One of the main things that traumatizes rape victims is the sense of loss of control. Having something forced on you that is usually reserved for the most intimate and joyful occasions can completely redefine a person's sense of self, a person's view of the general trustworthiness of the world.

I'm going somewhere with this, I promise.

To keep the trauma from happening again, it's often instinctual for victims to try to remain in control. If the they can keep in control of everything around them, then they can keep herself from being victimized again. This attitude becomes a fundamental part of the way victims deal with and react to the world.

Here's the key to all this: Victims don't trust that things will be okay if things don't go they way they planned. They didn't turn out okay before, and they don't want things to turn out the same way again.

In her mind, the safest thing to do is to assume that the people gaining up on her and calling her wrong is an attack on her as an individual, rather than an attack on her ideas. And even if people try to make it clear that that's not the case, she won't trust them. She can't trust them. That kind of basic trust in humanity led to her rape in the first place. She will do everything it takes to defend herself from an attack and control the situation she's in, no matter how much it she has to reach to find a way to come up with a defense.

And she will never admit that she is wrong. To admit that she's wrong requires trust that she cannot give.

So, in short: it's best to just leave her be. We're not going to change her mind, or even put her in a place where she is capable of seeing that her mind needs to be changed. Getting her to that place would take years of therapy and would be a major breakthrough for her.

It's best to just let her be.

It's also best to leave her be because this is a silly competition between webcomics that doesn't matter.

Allen who is Quiet said:

It's also best to leave her be because this is a silly competition between webcomics that doesn't matter.

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Well, it's gotten to the point where Thunt posted a blog post on his homepage about it, so it's a bit past that now.

Welp.

Soliloquy said:

Well, it's gotten to the point where Thunt posted a blog post on his homepage about it, so it's a bit past that now.

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Except even Thunt just updated his blog and says that things have gotten out of hand.

Honestly I would have a hard time choosing between those two. I would probably go for GKC simply because his world is more unique, and his art is a bit better, but at the end of the day they are both amazing webcomics.

Edit: I must admit though that all of these guys are simply lucky that Erfworld is still on hiatus or they would all be screwed.

The problem is that Erfworld doesn't appeal to mass public by being a bit "too intelligent" or "complicated" for the average reader. Yet it's what makes it amazing for those who can follow it.

Is Erfworld even a comic anymore? Last I checked all they had was stories with an illustration.

The illustrators mother is (I believe) dying so they are taking a hiatus so she can deal with that. For now he's just doing to written stuff.

I believe the site says Erfworld book 2 updates will start again in June.