I’ve been thinking about doing some reviews for stuffs for a while. So this is me, announcing my intent to review stuffs.
Yes.
Well, I may not actually review much, if anything, depending on how lazy I am much I procrastinate much time I have, but I at least intend to do something.
Hmm.
Well anyway, this is me signing off for now. Fair thee well!
Today I’m going to talk about something that’s been on my mind lately. Bear with me, because this might be long, and it might be a little rambly.
Every now and then, I hear the term “fetish comic” thrown around, usually against comics which engage in male-to-female (or vice-versa) transformations. The first time was while reading Your Webcomic Is Bad and You Should Feel Bad by John Solomon (now removed from the interwebs), on a review of The Wotch. Recently, I’ve also heard it used to describe El Goonish Shive – the implication being that people get off on that kind of stuff, or that the author themself does.
Before I start, yes I am going to defend these two comics against the label of “fetish comics”, and it’s not because “I secretly associate with those kinds of people” or something. It’s because I enjoy reading those comics, and I don’t like seeing something I enjoy being attacked. It’s a perfectly reasonable human emotion, so there.
(And no, I don’t enjoy them in that way. Get your head out of the gutter.)
First, let’s define the term fetish comic. I think we can all agree that a fetish comic is one where the primary purpose is obviously to cater to someone’s fetishes.
So, what might make a fetish comic a fetish comic?
The comic attracts perverts: Well, to be honest, that’s a ridiculous measure. I’m sure VG Cats (which is awesoem, BTW)attracts people into anthropomorphic cats as well – despite it being nothing more than anthro cats playing video games. The fact is, everything attracts some kind of fetish-ers – one would only need to search for Rule 34 stuff to see what I mean.
Even if (and that’s a big if) the fan base is primarily made up of fetish people, that doesn’t make the comic inherently a fetish comic. Unless there is clearly fetish-appealing material in the comic does it make it one. (And TF or TG elements are not merely sufficient – more on that later.)
The comic’s author is a pervert: It is my belief that you can’t judge what a person is attracted to from the elements in a webcomic unless the elements are framed in the manner of which he is attracted to them. That is, unless the TG scenes in either comic are framed in a sexual manner, then there is no basis for believing that the author is sexually attracted to TG situations.
But, whatever, say the author is attracted to the content in that way. If the content is devoid of such sexual framing, it doesn’t matter if they are or not, it’s not a fetish comic. Otherwise, it’s an ad hominem (attacking the content based on the merits of the person), and thus has no basis for criticising the comic.
The comic has transformation/transgender themes: Woah, there, hold your horses! Transformation themes are merely a medium or plot device for telling a story. It’s no more inherently feterish then having two cats talk about video games. There has even been transgender themes on shows aimed at kids, tweens and teens – two examples that come to mind are The Zack Files and Johnny Test.
It’s rather annoying when people have pre-conceived notions about a particular subject, and even more annoying is when they let that colour their judgement on content like webcomics. Please, don’t let that person be you.
Conclusion
I hope that I have presented my case, that comics are only fetish comics not only if they appeal to a certain fetish, but are explicitly framed in the context of being a fetish comic, well enough. If not, feel free to sound off in the comments.
I realise that I probably won’t convince anyone who already has their mind set against such things. I’m not writing this for them, though. I’m writing this partially to vent, and maybe to convince some people to rethink the way they approach things. If I’ve convinced even one to approach their values from a different angle, I will have considered this a success.
Thank you for your time, and good night!
I’ve just updated quite a few things on <Ctrl><Alt><Bkspc>’s little slice of my website. Here’s what’s new:
accidental clicks to sketch-land. ^^You can visit the <Ctrl><Alt><Bkspc> website at http://markk-b.sitesled.com/stuff/cab/.
Did I hear that you desired MOAR LINKS? What, no? Oh well, I’ve now updated the Links page with four moar links.
(I’ve also fixed that annoying layout bug that left gaps all over the place, and I’ve even updated some of the images so they ish look moar betterer.)
Anyway, you can check out my links page at http://www.markk-b.sitesled.com/links/ http://www.markkb.com/links/. The new links are:
Check ‘em out, won’t you?
Updated 14/07/2013 to fix broken links.
O hai. I has an animation over at YouTube. It's rough, but I hope it gets the idea across.
[Edit: I should probably point out that the video has nothing to do with Mario beyond the title, which is more of an analogy than anything else.]
(The address at the end reads http://markk-b.sitesled.com/stuff/fanfic/ http://www.markkb.com/stuff/fanfic/, for those who find it too small to read.)
Basically, this is a draft for a trailer for a fanfic I’m rewriting right now. Those who have read my fanfics over at FF.Net will know what scene this video portrays. Otherwise, I hope I can surprise you guys!
Updated 14/07/2013 to fix broken links.
I’ve also updated the Software Updater and Flash Card pages with more infos, and updated the Frequently Asked Questions page, since it was getting a bit stale.
There’s still a bit more stuff I’m planning to do with the site over the coming few weeks, so stay tuned.
--MarkKB
Updated 14/07/2013 to fix broken links.
President of the United States, Barack Obama, has filed his planned federal budget for the United States in 2011. In it, he has boosted NASA’s budget; however, in doing so he has made no allotment for the Constellation mission.
This was met with both joy and disappointment – on the one hand, more money is always good, but on the other, some feel that Obama is essentially throwing away their chance to forge a name in space. And, to state my bias early on, I’m inclined to agree with them.
In this article, I’ll be examining Constellation, the controversy around it, and why I believe Obama’s decision is the wrong one for spaceflight in the United States.
Constellation is NASA’s plan for human-based space exploration for the near future. It consists of two kinds of rocket boosters – the Ares I, for human missions, and the Ares V, for cargo and heavy lifting – and three craft – Orion, for crew, Altair, for lunar landing and transport, and the Earth Departure Stage, which acts as both part of the rocket and as the lunar module.
Right now, Constellation’s primary focus is landing a man on the moon again, but future missions include landing on an asteroid and landing on Mars.
Yes, but it is important we go again, if only for three reasons:
That’s right, I said it’s harder to go to the moon than ever before. But why?
It’s harder to go to the Moon than when Apollo 11 or Gemini or Explorer launched from Cape Canaveral. It’s harder than Jules Verne wrote his inspiring book, From the Earth to the Moon. It’s harder than when Kepler looked to the skies and found that the planets moved in ellipses; harder than when Galileo first spied mountains on the moon. It’s harder than when Copernicus and Aristotle wrote of the heavens; it’s harder than man told tales of vengeful gods and great heroes and strung their images in the heavens, or first looked up at the shimmering orb and decided, I want to be there.
Again, why is it harder? Because we’ve already been.
Because we can always argue, what’s the point? We’ve seen it, we have the data and the photographs. Big whoop-de-doo. We can always send robots there anyway. It’s not like we have to go.
We don’t have to climb Mt. Everest or K2. We don’t have to travel in rickety bulbs of metal and glass to the bottom of the ocean to explore sunken wrecks and unknown, alien species. We don’t have to travel to Africa, or America, or the Amazon; people have already been there, and besides, we can just send robots. I mean, it’s easier, right? And certainly a lot cheaper.
It’s always cheaper and easier to sit back and do nothing. It’s always easier to not have to worry about keeping humans alive; but such research helps us in other areas as well.
But that’s not the point.
It’s the human element. It’s saying, “we’ve overcome all these obstacles, and look at us now.” It’s holding the flag, and planting it in the soil of Plymouth, or the snow of Mt. Everest, or the dust of the Moon; even if you’re not the first, it doesn’t make the moment any less real. It’s about achieving things harder, faster, better; achieving things hardly anyone has achieved before.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.
Because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills.
Because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept,
one we are unwilling to postpone,
and one which we intend to win,
and the others too.
--President John F. Kennedy, 1962
%5B4%5D.png "Comic for 7th October 2009 - CtrlAltBkspc - Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 (3)")
You can now directly comment on my comic, <Ctrl><Alt><Bkspc>! Right now, only the finished comics have comments – I’m still deciding whether or not to add them to sketches.
(Much thanks to Intense Debate for their awesome comment system! ^^)
I’ve been planning this for a while, but I’ve been holding out for a good comment system to use. So it’s nice to see it up and running at last.
Three months ago, I updated <Ctrl><Alt><Bkspc>’s homepage. I just never got ‘round to blogging about it! ^^;
The idea was so that readers can easily find where the latest comics are, and newcomers can easily jump to the beginning of either the comic or the current arc, depending on what takes their fancy. It also shows news about the comic, which you can also subscribe to via RSS.
I felt the previous homepage, which just showed the current comic, was a little too awkward for my tastes. Oh well!
You can check the homepage, and my comic, out at http://markk-b.sitesled.com/stuff/cab/ http://www.markkb.com/stuff/cab/.
--MarkKB
Updated 14/07/2013 to fix broken links.
This is part of a series of posts I’ll be writing about Internet criticism.
When reading or writing critique, it is important to distinguish between negative criticism and neutral facts.
Neutral facts are facts that don’t weigh for or against an object being criticised. Misguided Internet critics often pad their critiques with neutral facts in order to try and persuade people to their point of view, by way of the sheer number of these “facts”.
That’s not to say that the person might have a point, it’s just shifting through the silt for a gem may be time-consuming.
The ad hominem is the most basic kind of neutral fact and one that is most often employed, usually in the form of association fallacy. Basically, an ad hominem is when one attacks the person or entity as an argument of why his views, opinion or something he makes, produces, or is responsible for, is bad or wrong.
Association fallacy says: X is made by Y. Y is bad/wrong because of Z. Ergo, X is bad/wrong, or alternately, X is made by Y, for reason Z. Reason Z is bad/wrong, ergo X is bad/wrong.
Both of these arguments fail to explain how X is wrong or bad. They explain how Y is wrong, misguided or bad, but that has no bearing on the quality of the object itself.
If you establish that the price of tea in China is too high, you don’t back it up by listing social injustices committed by the tea company. Sure, it’s bad a bunch of workers were wrongly treated, but what has that got to do with the price of tea in China?
Wrong: Selling drugs is wrong because the Mafia does it.
Wrong: Selling drugs is wrong because the Mafia uses it to control the underground.
Right: Selling drugs is wrong because there are laws against it.
While the Mafia does wrong things, that says nothing about the wrongness of selling drugs.
Wrong: This webcomic is bad because only perverts read it.
Wrong: This webcomic is bad because it’s obviously aimed at perverts.
Wrong: This webcomic is bad because the author obviously has some sort of weird fetish for this kind of thing.
Right: This webcomic is bad because of weak plot and bad art.
The audience of a webcomic, or the intentions or interests of the author, says nothing about the quality of the webcomic. For all you know, it could be a good webcomic despite its’ target audience, similar to well-done children’s television shows.
The non sequitur is a fact that’s only superficially related to the current topic, but is used to back up an opinion anyway.
X and Y are related categories. Y has a product Z. Z performs poorly in category X, and therefore wouldn’t appeal to category Y.
Wrong: WIndows Mobile only has 4% of the consumer smartphone market, and therefore is a poor business phone.
The fact that Windows Mobile is doing poorly in the consumer market says nothing about its’ competency as a business phone.
Often, percentages will be brought in to back up why something is doing poorly. The problem is that percentages mean nothing without proper context, which is often lacking.
Right: These percentages show that people are ignoring Windows Mobile.
Wrong: These percentages show that Windows Mobile is haemorrhaging users.
What the example above is ignoring is that the market continues to grow – that is, the total number of users has increased and, in fact, so has the number of Windows Mobile phones.
This fact can’t be inferred from percentages alone – raw data and absolute trends are needed to get the full picture.
The examples given for the preceding sections also suffer from another fallacy: inferring popularity = quality. This is another kind of association fallacy – that is, everyone likes/hates X, therefore X must be good/bad.
Part two will be posted soon.
--MarkKB
.png)
I'm not sure if this is new to Microsoft Word 2010, but I've just noticed that one of the document templates is labelled "Blog Post".
"Heh," I thought as I clicked on it. I mean, isn't that getting a little too silly?
Of course, I hadn't counted on Word actually having the ability to post the things. Now that I've had a look around, I can say it's quite a well done job; certainly at least as good as Windows Live Writer.
The Insert Screenshot tool is especially nice, although it doesn't seem to preform that well when up against programs that utilise Vista's Aero glass effects (see screenshots.) Maybe if it gets as good as Window Clippings, I can use it in day-to-day use.
Of course, it doesn't list any image hosting providers, and thus I'd have to upload all the pictures manually. But otherwise it's a nice tool to have if you have Microsoft Word.
Here are some screenshots taken by Word's Insert Screenshot tool:
