The DYOS Consul

[Captain2]

Firstly, there is sprites in Awakening, on the map.

But she did appear in Project X-zone 2 as Nintendo's guest character (along with Chrom), and that's where I've been pulling the Lucina sprites from. I wish I could claim I was dedicated enough to make them myself but... lol

Yeah good luck using the awakening sprites. You'll be the smallest character in dyos hehe

Still cool to know

 

[GenMarshall]

Is there any way for my comics to contain more humor and/or interesting? I'm at a compleate lost on how to make my comics less sucky. Since I don't feel like my latest two comics did anything. Even though I am trying my hardest to move away from the usual "Take That!" snipes of the past and tried to do a bit of self-depreciation humor in my latest one.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Well what you did is a step in the right direction; the next step is learning to tighten everything up: I thought the lead-in was too long, the shoe gags didn't really go anywhere, and the end was a confusing anticlimax. (Same problem with the follow-up: it doesn't actually have a punchline.) Unless you're deliberately aiming for a nonstandard gag (e.g. brick joke), there should be a clear-cut endpoint, or you risk the humour wandering off aimlessly (Monty Python's absurdism actually arose because six Cambridge grads couldn't think of a punchline, so they'd steer the joke into something else).

You took the letter of my advice, but again you missed the spirit: sure, I said "ratchet it up into full-blown Shoe War", but there should've been a logical progression to it, and I'd hoped you'd give me the script to flesh it out. My idea was, you build on the Conference Scene to create the free-for-all, instead of what ended up as everything from Khrushchev on essentially being a separate sequence disconnected from the original premise (CG hates Thor's comics). I've mentioned before, you have a tendency to isolate yourself from a) the joke, and b) the aftershocks of the joke, and even when you pretend to be self-deprecating it's always played soft-ball, whereas the rest of us deliberately put ourselves in the thick of it. Like, would this video be nearly as amusing if the character was just spectating?

The other problem is, you always seem to settle for the low-hanging fruit. If you'll recall the Bike Sequence from that Simpsons video, really good jokes are the ones you don't expect. Like, in the first few panels in the second comic, it looks like you're angry that I'm praising your comic—already funny on its own, but amplified by the irony that this is coming from your own comic! So OK, that's not what happens, you're upset that I didn't Like it—not as funny a payoff. But then what you could do, as per Escalate the Absurdity, is then go on and hack in Likes by other people with other comics: you're parodying your reputation for insecurity with a parody of your reputation for megalomania—which would be perfectly capped off with you cackling like a madman as everyone on CFC has been hacked to Like all your comics.

It's funny, it's unexpected, and done by you it would be self-deprecation at its best: you're mocking your own failings, but not in a way that turns it into victim porn.

Step 1 is, "How do I make this funny?" Step 2 is, "How do I make it better?"

 

[Buster's Uncle]

...The first thing you have to do, of course, is try. Make the comic, take the risk of sucking and put it out there, get the practice under your belt. You'll get better and better with practice. Thor's trying to say that comedy generally works on surprise - the shock of recognition, I call it. It's nigh-impossible to get a real belly laugh when everyone sees the punchline coming. So one tried-and-true technique, as Thorvald describes, is to set up an obvious gag and have it abruptly veer off somewhere else entirely...

Your comic was the first place I ever saw the "calm your tits" line - and dropped into a scene with no warning that comedy was coming and said to Morrigan of all people --- I was rendered helpless with out-loud laughter. Shock. Of. Recognition. Go for surprise, and remember that some of the funniest stuff happens when the audience isn't braced for comedy...

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Anyone ever tried drawing a comic with a heavy cold?

"Let's just get this panel done...aaaand I'm snottering all over the page. Never mind, let's just wipe my nose, give a good blow into the hanky, start over aaaaaaand there I go again."

 

[JohannaK]

Yeah, kinda, I think I can remember at least once. Probably not a comic, but still. You gotta know when to stop and when to pluck your nostrils with paper wipes.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

It's scary 'cuz I'm riding the coat-tails of a two-week-old bug.

 

[gay_Aleks]

wheres mah roll2rule update

 

[GenMarshall]

wheres mah roll2rule update

When I reach grandmaster in Overwatch.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

72 hours, then?

 

[GenMarshall]

Has anything major changed while I was away? Am I better off just starting afresh or continue where I left off?

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

You're entirely free to do your own thing, but I will be continuing your plot.

 

[GenMarshall]

You're entirely free to do your own thing, but I will be continuing your plot.

If you don't mind, I'd rather take the helm on continuing my plot.

Given that I've seen filler comics these days, I was simply asking if it was worth continuing. I already have my answer given there's at least one interest in it (unless there are some that haven't voiced )

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

So I suppose it was sort of inevitable that a Hitler Review about serious business would itself become a near-20-minute pageant of trying to cloak my own frustrations in jokes. Good news is, we're almost there!

@Kan' Sharuminar Mind if I use this for the freeze-frame?

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Blimey, you're using stuff from 15 years ago.

Of course you're welcome.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

The fact I can still recall old pages is both a blessing and a curse.

"Captain, I think I see Kan!"
"That's instrument failure."
"But... I see him with my eyes."
"Then turn the ship around and the problem is solved!"

 

[Buster's Uncle]

This -the spirit, at least, where details have changed- bears repeating:

I'd like to let you folks know that I discovered DYOS a few months ago, and I've enjoyed it hugely and want to encourage you to keep up the good work.

I've done some reading on what previous efforts still exist, and perhaps a few observations would be helpful. I perceive that there are billions and billions of references to games I'm not familiar with sailing right over my head, which is not to say not to make those jokes - they're easter eggs, or something, for those who do, and that's fine.

DYOS tends to suck a little taken as straight adventure by the nature of the collaborative format that produced it, alas; the beauty of it is in the humor -Stylesjr has gotten quite good with the witty titles asides and captions- and the art at its best -CivGeneral does genuinely good-looking stuff, even leaving aside any in-need-of-calming and quite decorative succubus bosoms- is a delight.

I was involved in a roundtable forum-written story six years ago that faced similar problems w/ regard to making sense, and our solution in that case was -well, we fought ferociously over whether Melinda was a toaster, for one thing- but the user who ended up the primary contributor was an ESL German who tended to post a little drunk and I fell into editing his stuff for English fluency as we went, and that helped consistency, too. -Also that participation dwindled to the two of us, leading to more focus and less throwing the others wacky/weird cliffhanger hurdles to have to write past - and we increasingly liked our story and tried harder for good. It ended up a credibly fun, funny, novella-length space adventure -w/ constant twists and some hot PG13 romance, to boot- that I'm not ashamed at all to be associated with, and even ends up mostly making sense despite the abrupt Hitler cameo and suicide. -I desperately need to finish whipping it into shape, actually, so I can post in in the fanfic subforum at AC2; it would be worthwhile content.

-But with the DYOS format that approach isn't really workable the way it is with pure text, and I suggest you not beat yourselves up over it - it's an inherent problem that comes with a collaborative free-for-all like roundtable story writing, and doesn't really harm the charming inherent high-energy twist-a-minute laugh-a-minute quality that the current story surely has.

(HowEVER - do consider a project to take a completed DYOS and put your heads together with intent to tart the ol' girl up into something polished and beautiful and that makes sense. I'd suggest setting arguments by giving Thorvald, who seems to pass for the token adult in this circle, the final decisions where consensus is a problem. Whether or not anything was done about art consistency would be up to y'all, but once the plot arch is completed, mistakes, explanations and missed opportunities could be fixed while preserving the zany energy of the chaotic creative process, provided the patience and the willingness to do the [very long and hard extended and difficult, I know] work.)

-Not least, encouraging someone to do polished second drafts of completed stories.

I'm a big fan, and been missing DYOS.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

I was joking before, but if I could actually make a living off DYOS, I would totally devote myself. (Well, 60/40 this and game modding.) I've even been doing serious research into whether I could build a viable Paytreon without having to paywall anything—literally the only thing that's holding me up is lack of time, and as Ben Franklin said, time is money.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

I REALLY AM a big fan, but I'm also a practicing miser. I'd love to see you take a run at it, anyway, and any coaching I could give you on free online promotion to make that work, I'd give, and I fancy that's a lot if you want to put in the work and time promoting on top of the rest.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

Hey Thor -

BTW? The thread title - a "Consul" is a Roman co-president, or a modern sub-ambassadorial diplomat post. You meant "Council", I think...