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2020-07-22, 09:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
Realize that the comic is not over. Howard's taking a short break for a few months, then there will be new strips about schlock and other things happening. Just won't be so overarching anymore.
The name is "tonberrian", even when it begins a sentence. It's magic, I ain't gotta 'splain why.
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2020-07-22, 10:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2008
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2020-07-23, 06:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2014
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- Tulips Cheese & Rock&Roll
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
Last edited by Lvl 2 Expert; 2020-07-23 at 06:16 AM.
The Hindsight Awards, results: See the best movies of 1999!
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2020-07-23, 06:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2017
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
I mean, the actual end-screen will probably be very similar to that. You don't set up the whole 'telling, not showing' metaphor with very specific examples like that without actually subverting it a little bit in the end.
Jasnah avatar by Zea Mays
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2020-07-23, 09:23 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2020-07-23, 09:53 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2004
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- Arlington, TX, USA
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
One final strip tomorrow, according to his Twitter. Some kind of splash panel, I'm sure, as Lvl 2 Expert and De Tess are suggesting.
-Christian
"You're thinking of the 'peace and love' monks across the valley. We're the 'law and order' monks."
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2020-07-23, 04:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2008
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- Greater London
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
He's been doing this strip daily for twenty years. It's amazing he's not exhausted himself earlier.
He can take as long as he wishes after creating a masterwork like that.Last edited by Silent Hunter; 2020-07-23 at 04:47 PM.
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2020-07-23, 04:20 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2014
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- Tulips Cheese & Rock&Roll
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
From the new blog post:
Then there was this thing, this sort of a watershed moment, just fifteen months after I started making comics, in September of 2001…
Lots of us in the webcartooning space sought to express our feelings—of grief, anger, patriotism, fear, it’s a long list— and I realized that my story-based comic strip just wouldn’t work well for that.
So I decided to keep telling the story I was telling.
The only change I made was to amp up the triumph and the funny a bit
Probably a bit of a "death of the author" moment, my standards for funny humor may be a tad low and punny.The Hindsight Awards, results: See the best movies of 1999!
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2020-07-23, 09:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
Oh man i was not expecting how much daddy Karl would hit me. Go Karl. You deserve this for all the stuff you been through.
The name is "tonberrian", even when it begins a sentence. It's magic, I ain't gotta 'splain why.
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2020-07-23, 09:11 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2019
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
Disclaimer: I’m not a particular big fan of this comic, I read most of it in a week and then have stayed daily for the past few month, but I don’t really like it, I like a decent amount of bits of it, especially the first couple books and that circus arc, but it’s far from my favorite thing, any criticism of this ending I’m going to give should not really be understood as coming from a fan.
Okay, with that long disclaimer over with, that was one of the most unsatisfying endings for a story I’ve ever seen. It skips over quite a few comics worth of material in a rush towards the end, and so the plot feels incredibly incomplete. In addition to this, the final book does not care about characters, they exist, but only to make the rush towards the end work. In the time I’ve been reading (since the creation of dark matter Schlock) Schlock is the only treated as mattering, the rest (especially poor Elf, downgraded to barely an extra) are barely more than reused drawings, and because of this none of them have any real completion to their story, they just stop appearing at whatever point they stop appearing, and that’s the end, making this incredible empty.
And for the record, none of those problems are things I’ve ever really found in the comic before, in the first 19 books characters were treated as characters, with stories usually being told about them, not using them, and plot wasn’t generally just jumped over at a madcap pace.Arrrgh, here be me extended sig!
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2020-07-23, 09:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
- Location
- Watching the world go by
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2020-07-23, 09:35 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2012
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
I've been reading Schlock Mercenary about half of my life (more than half of my life as an adult). It ending feels like a big landmark.
Congratulations to Howard (and Travis, and Sandra, and anyone and everyone else who helped him get here). He did a rare and special and wonderful thing, and I don't think anyone has really done anything exactly like it. I'm glad to have read the comics, glad to have been a Schlock Mercenary fan, glad to have a copy of Planet Mercenary, and glad to see Howard end the mega-arc/strip on his own terms. I look forward to checking out whatever work he chooses to do next, if and when he chooses to do it. I hope he enjoys his break. He certainly deserves it!
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2020-07-23, 09:45 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2012
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
Well, that's it then.
I think I picked up Schlock a decade or so ago, and it's been a regular part of my evening routine since then. I will miss it, but hopefully Howard circles back after a VERY well deserved vacation and writes shorter stories in the same universe. I'd like to see the Terraforming Wars, the rise of the UNS and its gradual climb to galactic powerhouse, the fall of several civilizations (i.e. the cataclysmic war that caused the All Star population to isolate itself), etc.
Until then, I'll leave the site bookmarked, and perhaps start a full archive binge.
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2020-07-23, 10:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
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2020-07-23, 11:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2006
- Location
- Maryland
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
Well, that's that then. I'm glad I read it, there were some good times, and the work ethic is beyond reproach. But I agree, this went out with a whimper rather than a bang.
Avatar by Glasswhistle
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2020-07-24, 05:22 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
I am glad I reached the end, and while I think the quality suffered in later parts I will check out his next work since I think with a fresh start (and a vacation) it will likely improve again.
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2020-07-24, 06:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2014
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- Tulips Cheese & Rock&Roll
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
I am mostly glad my comic sans-job has become an unnecessary addition.
The Hindsight Awards, results: See the best movies of 1999!
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2020-07-24, 08:31 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2020-07-24, 10:22 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2012
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
I find it remarkable just how fast Petey went from respected guardian of the Milky Way to "some famous loser we know".
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2020-07-24, 12:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
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- Watching the world go by
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
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2020-07-24, 01:14 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
- Location
- Manchester, UK
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
The sad thing is, you could put more or less anything in for X in the statement "I find it remarkable how fast X happened" in this strip recently. It's only just over a month ago that Ennesby rerouted the Pa'anuri long gun to fire at itself--everything has been wrapped up in that period of time. It's like the old pulp SF novels of the 50s, where the people writing them churned them out so fast that sometimes they'd realise they didn't have any way to end the plot with a page and a half to go, so would introduce the Ultimate Weapon of Evil-Slaying to wrap things up as quickly as possible.
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2020-07-24, 08:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2019
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- Magrathea
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
Schlock Mercenary is over, you can all go home now
He probably is rerouting what little power he has left over to keep his cities going - but then, the worldships mean there's now nothing he can really offer but more of the same (if he's even as good as their AI and tech in the first place). He's a king who led the war effort, but then found himself irrelevant in the aftermath.An explanation of why MitD being any larger than Huge is implausible.
See my extended signature here! May contain wit, candor, and somewhere from 52 to 8127 walruses.
Purple is humorous descriptions made up on the fly
Green is serious talk about hypothetical
Blue is irony and sarcasm
"I think, therefore I am,
I walk, therefore I stand,
I sleep, therefore I dream;
I joke, therefore I meme."
-Squire Doodad
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2020-07-25, 01:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
Arguably everyone from the current iteration of galactic civilization is irrelevant at this point. The Oafans outgun everyone else (doubly so with Petey's forces drastically depleted), and the returned worldship residents outnumber everyone else (possibly by several orders of magnitude). The worldship residents are also sufficiently technologically advanced that probably everyone in the galaxy from the current civ is broke, not just Petey.
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2020-07-25, 01:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2014
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- Tulips Cheese & Rock&Roll
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Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
I was going to make a joke here about how I kept refreshing the site and nothing happened, but then something did happen.
As Petey's ending goes, I suspect that there are a few layers to it that I simply don't see yet. And unfortunately this board may not be the place to discuss them, as Petey was always a way to explore themes such as agency/free will in relation to a god. (Where Howard categorizes himself as a religious person, so it has never been as simple as "where we're going we don't need gods".) Add to that the general forced rushedness of the ending, because there were simply too many things that could be addressed in detail, and I get the feeling there are a few more things about Petey that Howard came up with and might have wanted to spell out but decided to leave implied instead, and not knowing his characters as well as he does I"m not seeing those things yet. But who knows, there might be a blog post or something about it months or years down the line, and I'll be able to make up my mind as to whether this was deep or not then.Last edited by Lvl 2 Expert; 2020-07-25 at 01:37 AM.
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2020-07-25, 01:46 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2006
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2020-07-25, 01:56 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2006
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
So looking over the last book and a half, to try to recap what's been going on at high speed ...
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2019-06-29
Start of this book, and Schlock basically spells out what's going to happen over the book. Like perfect foreshadowing
I'm here to shoot someone. Or eat someone. Or both if I'm lucky.
You're here to arm me, aim me, and maybe tell me what not to shoot.
Shooting and/or eating dark matter beings.
What was he told not to shoot?Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2020-07-25, 02:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2014
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- East Coast USA
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2020-07-25, 08:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2006
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
Link http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0763.html
This one comic explains why I like Tarquin so much as a villain. Or the whole way Rich turns the storytelling tropes on their head.Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2020-07-25, 08:52 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2006
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2019-09-20
Schlock shows how much he's grown in the tactical awareness and planning.
"I don't want you deploying with us. If we can't get TAD up, THEN we'll have you port over. Keep you out of the way until you're useful."
Not necessarily in diplomatic speech, but certainly in tactical planning.Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2020-07-25, 10:12 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2015
Re: Schlock Mercenary X: The Mundivore, or, "Eat it"
Except stories actually do end. That's a thing that happens, even in ordinary history there are points in time when one conflict concludes and largely leaves the stage and then another conflict, probably with some different players, takes center stage. People really do retire and go home and not do anything nearly as interesting as what they did for the past 3-5 years for the rest of their lives.
The 'story' of Schlock Mercenary books 1-20 is the story of the end of the long period of peace introduced by the Ganni Project, and the subsequent build-up and outbreak of an incredibly ferocious war that resulted in the most significant realignment of demographics, economics, politics, and probably religions in-universe in literally billions of years.
It is extremely unlikely, on a statistical level, that any member of the core cast (which doesn't include ascended deities DM Schlock and Cephalopoid Ennesby) will ever do anything anywhere near as important as what they did during this conflict even with the prolonged longevity treatments they now have access to. The latter actually makes is less likely in many ways, since extreme longevity combined with dominance by millions of years old elder beings is likely to make society incredibly static. This point in the story, the defeat of the Pa'anuri, the return of the worldships, the adoption of immortality, and the emergence of the new gods, all represent a massive change in era. Sure, the graph doesn't actually stop but you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger discontinuity anywhere.
The universe of Schlock Mercenary, going forward, will not resemble the universe as it was (yes it may take some time to sort out, that's called the denouement) and in a very real sense that kind of stories that used to be possible to tell in that universe no longer will be.Last edited by Mechalich; 2020-07-25 at 10:13 PM.