The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board

Achewood => Achewood => Topic started by: toddster on June 21, 2005, 06:46:05 am

Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: toddster on June 21, 2005, 06:46:05 am
I guess he's going to hand the letter to the judge and sta--

Damn. Beaten.

This is promising. The strip's never veered into the territory of courtroom hijinks before.

And I guess now all we can hope for re: the Téodor Soft Boy saga is a resolution in the blogs.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: Doc on June 21, 2005, 12:02:21 pm
This is a good strip, though all I have to say is that it re-inforces my belief that Beef was brought up to pretend his circumstances are worse than they are. Or maybe he just does it to authority figures.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: andalucia on June 21, 2005, 12:20:41 pm
Department of Car Police!


awesome.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: arkabee on June 21, 2005, 01:04:13 pm
this is an excellent comic.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: CortJstr on June 21, 2005, 01:27:11 pm
At least they were sorry.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: MSC on June 21, 2005, 01:46:13 pm
Yes!  At the very least, the Achewood Department of Car Police is extremely polite.

Also, this strip has more different sound effects than we have seen in awhile.  Onstad has a nice ear for sound effects, going back to the "tic tic" of Beef's cooling engine.  Nice.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: jough on June 21, 2005, 03:08:50 pm
Why are there two panels of Beef closing a door?

Did Onstad just have two panels left and not know what to do with them?  Or is this the comic equivalent of a Henry James novel?
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: cellardoor on June 21, 2005, 03:21:51 pm
For some reason the panel with the tie is animated in my eyes.
The sound effect makes the motion.
Nice!
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: V-Adore on June 21, 2005, 03:34:41 pm
Quote from: "jough"
Why are there two panels of Beef closing a door?

Did Onstad just have two panels left and not know what to do with them?  Or is this the comic equivalent of a Henry James novel?

I think the intent is that it's a comic timing thing. It's sort of funny, but in that "heh, okay" sort of way. I am hoping that tone doesn't predominate this arc.

Also, why does Beef write like he spent his entire childhood watchin' Mom-Mom's weepin' eye? It doesn't even sound like his tone, and we know he can write better. Is he going to pretend to be a hick to explain why he apparently doesn't have 65 bucks?

And yes, I really like the Achewood Car Police.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: CortJstr on June 21, 2005, 04:33:05 pm
Quote from: "V-Adore"
And yes, I really like the Achewood Car Police.

The Achewood Squirrel Police are still cooler, in my view. They have a ticket just to express their appreciation of your ride.  This, as far as I am concerned, is the Platonic ideal of the police.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: JorgeFabregas on June 21, 2005, 06:05:24 pm
Quote from: "V-Adore"
Is he going to pretend to be a hick to explain why he apparently doesn't have 65 bucks?

I think that's the jist of it.
Title: About time
Post by: SullivanHopper on June 21, 2005, 07:02:38 pm
With the Circus c*ck story line opening with so much promise and dying in such a flaming plane crash (flaming being the operative word) it's nice to see Beef come along and save the day. I actually got a parking ticket myself today, and it was good to have a clinically-depressed cartoon cat to co-miserate with.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: MattFish on June 22, 2005, 05:18:52 am
considering the understated, politely blunt way Beef talks and how similarly the ticket was worded I think we might be in for a whole lot of funny dialogue in the next couple strips.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: AugustWest on June 22, 2005, 05:30:08 am
I have nothing relevant to the thread to say.  

However.

When I got here the Google Ads are all pushing Umberto Eco's books.  That is a very very good thing.  I have no idea how today's Achewood relates to Eco or how this thread may have tangentialized toward the Ecoverse.  

I'm just glad it did.

Query: Are Google Ads a new art form?  What the hell is art anyhow?  Art is the dang ol' intarweb of the consciousness.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: MSC on June 22, 2005, 04:17:41 pm
I actually hate to bring up the human world/Underground interface, but I feel compelled here.

We know that the Galaxie is human-scale car.  (See the "Ray+Beef Road Trip" story arc).  So presumably the ticket is from the human Achewood car police.  

So, to what judge is Beef going to protest?  

It just occurred to me that the Underground has courts that deal with this sort of thing, and arrange payoffs to connected humans who can assure that human cars belonging to animals don't get towed/impounded.  But maybe not.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: CortJstr on June 22, 2005, 04:30:22 pm
Quote from: "Xena Lucy Lawless"
Whenever you notice something like that a wizard did it.

Whenever interaction with non-Onstad humans is implied then Ray's deal with the devil handles it magically. Actually more likely is either:
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: pmcd9 on June 22, 2005, 04:47:32 pm
Quote from: "CortJstr"
  • Onstad isn't really that big on continuity
  • Onstad actively screws with continuity just to mess with overzealous fans such as ourselves.

I'd say that's the understatement of the season.

~Paul
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: V-Adore on June 22, 2005, 05:00:25 pm
I like playing the Achewood continuity game as much as anyone, but at this point it's just sort of pointless, kind of like attempting to reconcile the Star Wars movies with each other (except I have more confidence that Onstad is deliberately fuck*ng with us). Alternately, one can use a "quantum states" hypothesis in which most story arcs of the comic occur in slightly different parallel universes (thus why some arcs appear to be continuity and some don't, why Pat was fairly mellow initially, why Philippe gradually changes from apparently being a retarded adult to being explicitly a child, why Mr. Bear and Teodor originally found booze totally novel)... but that said, that's stretching it. The comic's premise has fundamentally changed from "what if alive stuffed animals lived in some guy's house and were stymied often by the human world?" to "what if alive stuffed animals inhabited an Underground world that only occasionally interacted with the human world?" And, y'know, that's cool and all.

or maybe a wizard did it
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: AlohaDawg on June 22, 2005, 05:27:57 pm
So if Geordi can see in all wavelengths, how come the holodeck works for him?

If the Holodeck can create sentient, independently thinking characters, what the hell is the big deal about Data? Especially considering one of those characters actually escapes the Holodeck.

I like the cartoon where the cats talk.
It's hard to suspend my disbelief but I manage.

Real life is fairly entertaining, and continuity is guaranteed -so I can pretty easily forgive gaps in continuity in the entertainment I seek away from real life.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: pmcd9 on June 22, 2005, 05:33:10 pm
I think Onstad isn't concerned with continuity, but he's not "deliberately fuck*ng with us."  Stuffed Animals in a guys house, stuffed animals in their own world, real car, cat sized car, it's all a matter of what fits the strip on that particular day.  Onstad has great difficulty maintaining his schedule as it is.  It is a five times a week strip right?  It's rare [when was the last time it happened?] that he actually puts up five strips in a single week.  If he were to bother with whatever constraints of continuity that have developed it would surely slow him down even further.

~Paul
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: wombat on June 22, 2005, 06:06:11 pm
Quote from: "AlohaDawg"


Real life is fairly entertaining, and continuity is guaranteed -so I can pretty easily forgive gaps in continuity in the entertainment I seek away from real life.


You know now that you mention it, I can't help thinking that real life would probably be better with less continuity too.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: Ben-San on June 22, 2005, 06:35:47 pm
The DC Universe has this worldsetting conceit they call "hypertime". There's all kinds of bullshit about quantum parallel universes involved, but it boils down to an official diagetic excuse such that any writer can freely use or disregard any past chunk of continuity as he desires and as benefits the story he wishes to tell, and the fans are not allowed to bitch about it because the past is in a state of constant quantum whatever.

Achewood takes place in hypertime.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: AlohaDawg on June 22, 2005, 07:44:46 pm
That's interesting - a concept (is that a conceit?) that allows the writers to be somewhat lazy (if as creative as they want) and really makes nothing actually canonical unless there is a list of things that can't be touched.

That would make the comics difficult to read over long periods of time, unless they are never referential to the same past from one story arc to another...which would still be difficult if that is what you were expecting.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: CortJstr on June 22, 2005, 08:44:39 pm
Quote from: "AlohaDawg"
That's interesting - a concept (is that a conceit?) that allows the writers to be somewhat lazy (if as creative as they want) and really makes nothing actually canonical unless there is a list of things that can't be touched.

That would make the comics difficult to read over long periods of time, unless they are never referential to the same past from one story arc to another...which would still be difficult if that is what you were expecting.

Isn't this what caused Crisis on Infinite Earths or somesuch?

And then there were the comics like Lois Lane which were practically all "what if" stories where one issue would have 3 stories that all contradict each other.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: V-Adore on June 22, 2005, 08:57:31 pm
Quote from: "Ben-San"
The DC Universe has this worldsetting conceit they call "hypertime". There's all kinds of bullshit about quantum parallel universes involved, but it boils down to an official diagetic excuse such that any writer can freely use or disregard any past chunk of continuity as he desires and as benefits the story he wishes to tell, and the fans are not allowed to bitch about it because the past is in a state of constant quantum whatever.

Achewood takes place in hypertime.

Somehow I knew I was actually ripping something off. Thank you, Ben.

Is it sad that I just thought about the Holodeck problem? I think I need to go, I don't know, drink beer and boywatch or something.
Title: 6/21/05 - Love letter from a snake
Post by: Ben-San on June 23, 2005, 01:39:11 pm
Quote from: "AlohaDawg"
That would make the comics difficult to read over long periods of time, unless they are never referential to the same past from one story arc to another...which would still be difficult if that is what you were expecting.


When it works well, it's generally because (a) writers tend to agree on a certain "core" for a given character so that relationships and characters stay recognizable or mutate slowly and (b) there is a general obligation for any writer to be internally consistent, and to at least acknowledge whatever the author immediately before him did.

The main reason Hypertime was implemented is that the accretion of minutiae over the decades rendered comics nearly inaccessible to anyone who wasn't a long-term and dedicated reader, generally of several titles. Comics fans love to nitpick, and eventually DC found that to shed things they had done twenty or thirty years before and now no longer wished to deal with, they had to put in another knot to the continuity to work around it, so that eventually the whole thing became a tangled mess.

With Hypertime, it's no longer necessary to field questions like "How can Neron be the ruler of Hell when Captain Marvel met Satan in 1954?" Instead of having to come up with a complicated and (on a gut level) unsatisfying hierarchy of Hells and rulers thereof, it's Satan when the Captain Marvel writers want to use Satan and it's Neron when whoever thought Underworld Unleashed was a good idea does his thing.