Originally posted on my Goodreads author blog.
My science fiction (and cosmic horror) flash fiction piece “Perspective” was just published on Metastellar. See it here for free: https://www.metastellar.com/fiction/f…
And, once more, one of my stories is appearing in new formats by After Dinner Conversation. See: After Dinner Conversation – Crimes And Punishments: Philosophy Ethics Short Story Fiction and After Dinner Conversation – Examining the Past: Philosophy Ethics Short Story Fiction.
These are the slides for a presentation I made in the (Un)Common Worlds III: Navigating and Inhabiting Biodiverse Anthropocenes conference at the University of Oulu on October 5 2023.
Originally posted on the blog for my fan webcomic Less Bittersweet.
Happy 2024 to everyone now that we’re here. I managed to end chapter 5 just before Christmas, and I should start the next chapter soon. This one will be something of a short breather before the finale of the story. Chapter 7 will be much longer and end the main story, though I plan to continue with some “leftover” ideas in one more chapter.
Chapter titles aren’t terribly visible in the comic unless you’re looking at the archive, but so far, every chapter has just been named “Day 1”, “Day 2” etc. Chapter 6 finally breaks the pattern slightly, being called “Weekend”… which seems to imply they’ll finally make it to the festival this time where, in Sayori’s words, “Who knows what might happen.”
The situation is oddly similar to when I was preparing chapter 4. I have a lot I should prepare in advance, I’ll be working in the elections at the same time again (this time presidential), and I’m really excited about another twist in the plot like in chapter 4. Of course, I still need to do chapter 6 first, but it really isn’t all that long. I’ll probably start it next week and then work on it while working, but we’ll see.
Huge thanks to everyone who has followed Less Bittersweet so far… and though you can look forward to the final plot revelations “soon”, as these things go (ie. slowly), I can still promise several more months of content at this point.
This was originally posted on the blog for my fan webcomic Less Bittersweet, and yes, it’s obviously an outdated thing to post anywhere now, but at least I’ll have it here for the record.
I once thought I might finish this comic by the end of this year, but I’m way behind that goal, if it ever was one. Still, I want to finish something by the end of the year. Counting this one, I have seven weeks left of the year, and according to my current plans, I have ten more comics in this chapter. So if I get even almost two done per week, I could finish the chapter before Christmas, too.
I really want to finish it. We’re not too far from the finale of the story, and I’m looking forward to it the same way as I was for the beginning of chapter 4 where everything changed. And this one will be just as much of a twist. After the current chapter, there’s only a short one before the last proper chapter.
Not that it will be easy. Last week, I took a break from everything, so I only posted the chapter done on the previous weekend, and I didn’t make a new one to post today. So this week will probably just be one update. And before Christmas, I will be working. But I do really want to tell this current part of the story and also what comes after it. I want to share all this that’s boiling inside my head with all of you.
So… see you soon with more actual updates.
Muistiinpanoni esitykselle, jotka pidin etänä Tutkija tavattavissa -palvelun kautta Pasilan peruskoulun elämänatsomustiedon tunnilla 25.9.2023. Jatkoa edelliselle kerralle. Tällä kertaa sain kysymykset etukäteen ja voin siis pitää valmistellun esityksen… ja sitten kaikki suunnilleen nukkuivat. Opinpahan siitä, miten erilaisia yleisöjä ei voi lähestyä samalla tavalla.
Nyt kun sain kysymykset etukäteen, kirjoitin jonkinlaisen yhtenäisen esitelmän, jossa vastaan niihin (tai ainakin osaan niistä) ja tuon samalla esille muutamia muita asioita, joita pidän olennaisina.
Haluaisitteko ensin kuulla, mitä olin sanomassa viimeksi, kun mikrofonini lakkasi toimimasta? Siis siitä, miksi transsukupuolisten asiat kiinnostavat niin paljon ihmisiä, joita ne eivät näytä koskettavan. Tai ehkä sanoisin sen lopussa, jos on aikaa?
Siihen näyttää liittyvän tunne siitä, että ei voi vain itse tehdä niin kuin haluaa, jos maailmassa ei vallitse tietynlainen järjestys. Niin kuin samaa sukupuolta olevien avioliitoissa. Niiden koetaan jotenkin uhkaavan niin sanottua perinteistä perhemallia. Ei siinä ole mitään kovin hyvää logiikkaa, miksi näin olisi. Ihmiset tuntuvat enemmänkin kokevan, että jos kaikki eivät seuraa samaa mallia, niin sitten se jotenkin kumoaa sen. Ei voi vain itse elää perinteisessä perheessä, vaan sitä pitää tukea sillä, että kaikki ajattelevat sen olevan ainoa oikea tapa eivätkä tee mitään sen vastaista.
Vastaavasti transsukupuolisia koskevassa keskustelussa. Ainakin jonkin yhden tutkimuksen mukaan transfobian todennäköisyyttä lisäsi se, että ihmiselle oli itselle erityisen tärkeää identiteetin kannalta se, mihin sukupuoleen itse kuului. Sitten, jos se ei olekaan niin selvä ja vahva asia kaikille, se uhkaa itseäkin.
Tähän liittyy myös se, että moraali nähdään eri tavoilla. Modernimmassa tavassa se nähdään lähinnä niin, että ei pidä vahingoittaa ketään, ja heikommassa asemassa olevista on erityisesti pidettävä huolta. Sitten on helppo kysyä, että miksi joku vastustaa jotain, mistä ei ole haittaa kenellekään. Mutta vanhoillisemmassa tavassa se nähdään niin, että on joukko sääntöjä, jotka ikään kuin pitävät maailman kasassa. Ja jos rupeaa rikkomaan joitain näistä säännöistä, voi yhtä hyvin rikkoa kaikkia niitä. Jos saa rikkoa jotain sellaista sääntöä, joka ei näytä vahingoittavan ketään, niin yhtä hyvin voisi rikkoa mitä tahansa muutakin sääntöä.
Eli nyt itse aiheeseen. Lähdetään totuudenjälkeisyydestä ja vaihtoehtoisista faktoista, koska sehän tulee nykyään mieleen tiedon luotettavuudesta ja totuudesta puhuttaessa, ja on syytäkin.
”Vaihtoehtoiset faktat” tai englanniksi ”alternative facts” oli ilmaus, jota Donald Trumpin neuvonantaja Kellyanne Conway käytti puolustaakseen Trumpin edustajan Sean Spicerin valheellisia väitteitä siitä, että Trumpin presidentin virkaanastujaisseremoniassa olisi ollut ennätysmäärä yleisöä. Todellisuudessa siellä oli ollut vähemmän kuin esimerkiksi Barack Obaman seremoniassa, ja todisteet siitä olivat aika selkeitä. Se näkyi esimerkiksi ilmakuvasta ihan paljain silmin, mutta myös tarkemmin tutkittuna. Conway sanoi väitteen perustuneen vaihtoehtoisin faktoihin. Tämä kiinnitti huomiota ja kuulosti todella huonolta. Se antoi vaikutelman, että Trumpin väki oli valmis vain keksimään niin sanottuja tosiasioita omasta päästään ja asettamaan ne oikeiden tosiasioiden edelle.
Tässä kohtaa pitää olla vähän kriittinen. Varmaankaan Conway ei tarkoittanut sanoa sitä, että on olemassa joitain ihan toisenlaisia faktoja kuin oikeat faktat. Luulen, että hänen tarkoituksensa oli väittää, että oli olemassa ihan oikeita todisteita väitteen puolesta, joita sen kriitikot eivät olleet ottaneet huomioon.
Continue readingJaoin muutama päivä sitten Facebookissa Elisa Aaltolan metsästämisen suhteen kriittisen kirjoituksen (tämä tutki asiaan liittyvää kielenkäyttöä, mutta Aaltola on kyllä puhunut paljon myös paljon konkreettisemmista asioista metsästykseen liittyen), ja eräs FB-kaverini kysyi, olenko puhunut asiasta metsästäjien kanssa.
Kärjistäen näyttää, että metsästyksen/-metsästäjien puolustajien mielestä kukaan muu ei tiedä asiasta mitään, ja aina pitäisi kysyä metsästäjiltä itseltään, riippumatta siitä, miten hyvin asia on perusteltu alunperin. Äärimmäisenä esimerkkinä Aaltola itse jakoi jonkin aikaa sitten tyyliin metsästysliiton vastikkeen, jonka mukaan jos joku väittää metsästyksessä olevan kyse eläinten tappamisesta, hän ei tiedä asiasta mitään. (Pahoittelen epämääräisyyttä; en ehdi vahvistaa lähteitä kunnolla tässä yhteydessä. Kirjoitan usein keskeneräisistä ajatuksista tässä blogissa.)
No, siellä Facebookissa tuli ihan hyvä tyngäksi jäänyt pätkä keskustelua, mutta tässä haluan jakaa oman yhden vastaukseni, kun tuli spontaanisti ajateltua tiettyä asiaa aika paljon. Eli tässä:
Kirjoitan nyt saman tien ylös, kun tulee kumminkin ajatuksia aiheesta.
Ehkä metsästäjille puhuminen auttaisi ymmärtämään heidän subjektiivista näkökulmaansa, mutta johtaisiko se siihen, että joutuisin korjaamaan uskomuksiani siitä, mitä metsästämisessä objektiivisesti tapahtuu?
Ymmärtäminen voi tarkoittaa useampia erilaisia asioita. Yksi tärkeä erottelu on ihmisen näkökulman ymmärtämisen ja asioiden objektiivisen ymmärtämisen välillä.
Ihmisten ajatteluun vaikuttavat suuresti erilaiset psykologiset näkökulmat, joiden kautta nähtyinä asiat näyttävät tietynlaisilta. Tässä ei välttämättä ole mitään vikaa, ja se on tarpeellistakin. Eri näkökulmat näyttävät meille eri puolia maailmasta ja auttavat selviytymään erilaisissa oloissa. Näyttäessään vain osan maailmasta ne kuitenkin myös piilottavat asioita, jotka todella ovat maailmassa, ja tämä voi olla huono asia, koska mikään näkökulma ei muuta sitä, millainen maailma on.
Esitän useita esimerkkejä siitä, mistä puhun. Joudun menemään muistin varassa, joten vaikka nämä ovat alun perin luotettavista lähteistä, yksityiskohdat eivät välttämättä ole ihan tarkkoja.
Continue readingThis is a reply to something that I don’t know about properly and heard about some years ago, so take it with that grain of salt. I have most certainly not made the necessary homework about the position(s) I am opposing. This is just a draft of an idea – that’s why it’s just in my blog. Now, you might be able to employ this counterargument if you’re faced with the kind of view that it argues against, but it’s on you to check first whether it actually applies against the particular view you’re arguing against.
So: This is a counterargument against the following idea: It has turned out that you can’t understand the mind without considering it in the context of its environment and its interaction with it. (Well, this is certainly true at leas in some sense.) Because of this, it need not and cannot be asked what about the brain or whatever allows it to have phenomenal consciousness, ie. the traditional hard problem of consciousness. That’s not the right question to ask because it asks about the properties of consciousness in isolation of its information, and you can’t do that.
I want to illustrate why this is wrong with yet another mirror analogy that’s not really related to the other one.
Suppose that instead of consciousness , we were investigating mirrors and mirror images. In this example, they work just as they do now — mirrors display reflections because light is reflected from their surface, however exactly that works physically.
Well, in this scenario, people were examining mirrors and reflections at first very reductively. They were examining the surfaces of the mirrors and made some progress in figuring out the properties of these surfaces, but they hadn’t yet figured out how light is actually reflected from the surface.
However, the reductionist “surface” paradigm was the only dominant one, so people were also trying to explain the behaviour of mirror images by looking at the surface — missing the point that the behaviour of the reflections is really a reflection of what’s happening in physical space in front of the mirror. Eventually, some researchers grew wise to this and created a new, unsurprisingly successful paradigm: to understand why reflections behave the way they do, you have to look at the influences the outside world has on them.
(Of course, I’m not saying minds merely reflect their surroundings directly. The analogy only needs to go as far as saying both mental contents and mirror reflections are affected by the environment enough that the environment needs to be accounted for in understanding them.)
Well, people got enthusiastic about this highly successful paradigm. But some researchers still wanted to answer some of the old questions as well. Okay, they said, I get that, but how is it that the surface is able to reflect light in the first place? None of this stuff could be happening if it didn’t have that capacity as part of its own physical properties.
But the environment paradigm people told them that was the wrong kind of question to ask. You couldn’t ask anything about mirror images without asking about the environment.
Well, that’s not right. The prerequisite for that whole thing where reflections are created from interaction with the outside world is that there be a reflective surface in the first place. Thus, asking about how it can be reflective is not only possible but necessary for understanding all aspects of the phenomenon.
Similarly, in our actual topic, just because the contents of the mind may not be understandable without considering its interaction with the environment doesn’t mean that interaction with the environment can explain how the mind is capable of having subjective sensations. Indeed, it wouldn’t even explain the blind causal powers of the mind that it needs to have to be a part of the web of causality intertwined with the external world that gives it its contents.
The hard problem of consciousness is certainly pretty mysterious, and though it seems it needs to be answered by appealing to the properties of something that’s part of the conscious thing itself, like its brain — maybe the mysterious answer could be found in its interactions with the outside world somehow. But that’s not an excuse to dismiss the problem or eliminate the internal experience that’s at the centre of it because it’s not part of some paradigm to talk about internal things.
I’m all for consciousness being explained, but the explanation needs to be an actual explanation. An eliminative explanation is possible, but that, too, would need to be an explanation and not dismissal. Okay, now the other mirror analogy seems relevant.
This could and probably should be part of a longer text, but I came up with this bit now, and it may be useful by itself too. Basically, it’s a corollary to an argument that can be summarised like this:
Scientific methods are needed because it’s so easy for human beings to get things wrong in the areas studied by science, and that’s exactly the problem modern science focuses on counteracting.
To demonstrate that it’s so easy for human beings to be wrong about things, consider all the beliefs we know from all around the world, past and present, that are religious and magical in nature. A lot of these involve different beliefs about things like how the world was created and how natural phenomena work. Even if we don’t already accept that science proves these beliefs wrong, just the fact that they contradict each other a lot shows that most of them must be wrong, since it’s impossible for contradictory beliefs to be right at the same time.
What I do here is take one possible counterargument to this argument and answer that.
Here’s a possible counterargument: All these ancient religious and magical beliefs haven’t really been wrong, and they haven’t really been contradictory. They have all been showing parts of the same reality. It’s not ruled out that some synchretistic combination of them is true, and that shows it’s not necessary that people have always been wrong about things.
Now, it may well be true that in some sense, one that’s for the sake of simplicity best called metaphorical or symbolic, many beliefs of the past that are not literally true really have been right. Maybe, let’s say, the common theme of an ordered cosmos being created from primordial chaos tells something about the world as it is now. That there is a kind of order we need to survive, say, and a kind of chaos that’s dangerous. (This is just a really quickly made up example.) This could even contain a distant version of insights from modern complexity science of the role of information in the existence of biological life.
However, if it’s that kind of a metaphorical truth that these beliefs have, then a lot of the details of them have been wrong. There wasn’t really a dragon Tiamat that was slain by Marduk.
Did people really believe these things were literally true? It seems so at least to some extent. Of course, it’s not incontestable. Karen Armstrong in her The Battle for God speaks of how religious thinking used to make a clearer distinction between logos, literally true statements about the outside world, and mythos, religious language that served a spiritual purpose. In this account, modern fundamentalism among other things is the result of a confusion where we have lost the concept of mythos and think that there is only logos, so we think a creation myth can only be meaningful if it’s a literally true “scientific” account — whereas the ancients apparently wouldn’t have felt that the idea of evolution threatened their creationist myths, because what literally happened is not the point.
Well, even if that were entirely true — even more so than Armstrong suggests, so true that nobody ever confused mythos for a literal description of what happened in the outside world — even if that were true, that would just mean the ancients knew they had no knowledge of deep history, astronomy and so forth. If they didn’t take their myths about the creation of the world (for example) as literal, then they still didn’t know anything about the creation of the world, because it’s not like they had some other accounts that we know of. They’d just have known the limits of their knowledge better than modern-day “superstitious” people, but they would have had no way to pass those limits.
So: almost certainly, the ancients thought they knew all kinds of things about how the cosmos works, and since they disagreed about the details, that alone proves most of them must have been wrong. And if they thought of their myths and religious and magical beliefs as somehow metaphorical instead (which is likely true in part but nowhere near entirely), then they would still have known nothing about how those things were literally.
Well, what I was saying above was basically assuming that the scientific worldview with no supernatural elements is what’s really right. You might believe instead that there’s a synchretistic supernaturalistic view that takes up elements of the ancient beliefs and that is correct. It might seem like that would mean that I’d have to appeal to the authority of science to prove it wrong, but that I couldn’t say that most people must have been wrong about most things even without assuming science is right, since they were right in their own views about these things that science doesn’t even know about.
But if the beliefs of the ancients were literal and supernatural, then they did contradict each other. (If they were metaphorical instead, why are you reinterpreting them as supernatural?) So there were a lot of people and traditions who thought different things, and they didn’t agree with each other, and they wouldn’t agree with your combined version. So really you’re saying all of those traditions were mostly wrong, only glimpsing parts of the truth, and your view, which contradicts all of them, is right while they were all wrong. But that’s really just saying that all these supernaturalistic, non-scientific view were wrong, but your view, which is similar in nature and has been arrived at by similar methods, is right. Why would you think that?
I tried to find information on this online and couldn’t. I figured I might as well put it up here myself — partly for my own use, because this may be easier for me to find in some cases. Mind you, this post seems to be completely impossible to get as a Google search result.
Transmutation
Level: Clr 5, Pal 4, Strength 5
Components: V, S, M, DF
Casting Time: 1 full round
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Duration: 1 round/level (D)
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
Any targets affected by Camaraderie may donate a number of hit points per round equal to the caster’s level to other targets of the spell that are in the donator’s line of sight. The donator takes those hit points as damage, while the recipient receives the hit points first as healing and then as additional temporary hit points, up to a maximum of the caster’s level. One point of Strength may be similarly donated, with the donator taking a temporary loss of strength and the recipient gaining a +1 Strength enhancement. Strength enhancements are cumulative, up to a maximum bonus of half the caster’s level. Hit points are not returned to the donor when the spell ends, but Strength returns to the donor. Temporary hit poitns are lost when the spell ends.
Material Component: A drop of blood of a hero of the caster’s faith that died honorably. The hero must be dead, so using the blood of a hero who has been resurrected doesn’t work.
Muistiinpanoni esitykselle, jotka pidin etänä Tutkija tavattavissa -palvelun kautta Pasilan peruskoulun elämänatsomustiedon tunnilla 18.9.2023. Käytännössä valmisteltuani tämän esityksen sainkin sitten vielä tunnin aikana kysymyksiä, joihin vastailin, ja toin osan näistä teemoista mukaan siihen esitykseen sen sijaan, että olisin suoraan pitänyt tämän esityksen. Otsikko on aihe, josta minua pyydettiin puhumaan.
Minä teen siis Turun yliopiston filosofian oppiaineessa väitöskirjaa tahdonvapaudesta ja vastuusta.
Minun on tarkoitus puhua ensin oikeuksista ja velvollisuuksista, ja sitten vastuusta, jos ehdin. Te olette jo kuulemma puhuneet jo osittain samoista asioista kuin minä aion puhua, mutta varmaan nekin tulevat tässä vähän eri näkökulmasta.
Tähän voisi olla erilaisia vastauksia eri näkökulmista, niin kuin se, että ihmiset ovat itsessään arvokkaita, ja siksi heillä on oikeuksia. Kaikki voivat olla yhtä totta ja puhua vain hiukan eri asioista. Minä lähden tässä kuitenkin siitä, että ihmisten yhteisöissä täytyy olla tiettyjä pelisääntöjä.
Continue readingOriginally presented at the 51st European Group for the Study of Deviance & Social Control Conference – The Violence of Law on August 31 2023.
See slides enclosed below:
Originally from the blog for my fan webcomic Less Bittersweet.
And now we’ve reached the end of the fourth chapter, and the biggest plot change so far of Monika coming back and the player being given an active role and some bits of personality. The middle of the story was around the beginning of this chapter, so we’re well past it now, though there is still more to come.
This chapter was the the longest one so far by more than a little. (If you’re wondering: chapter 1: 22 strips, chapter 2: 18, chapter 3: 15, chapter 4: 27.) I’m still not sure whether the finale will top that, though I suspect it will. Before getting there, there will be two much shorter chapters. I’m already looking forward to the last chapter and what happens there much the same way I was waiting to bring Monika back, but there are still some things to happen before that. And with this last chapter, you could see more of and more clearly the things that need an explanation in the end. And by now you may have noticed, at least from the author comments, that I’ve got it all figured out in advance.
Next comes the traditional break before the next chapter. I don’t know how long this will be; I would rather continue soon, but this is a very busy time. I really need to find funding for my research, a relevant kind of job, or both soon, and working on it has already seemed to make it harder to keep up with Less Bittersweet. At least I do have options, but just looking all those places is going to take time. I also don’t know how I’m going to update the colouring for the next chapter. I might experiment on something with a kind of plot-unrelated interlude strip I’ve been thinking about that would appear before actual chapter 5.
Well, we aren’t done yet. And thanks so much to everyone for reading and commenting.
This article contains spoilers, mostly for the end of the first season of the Tower of God webcomic and anime both.
Tower of God starts with the protagonist Bam chasing after his only friend Rachel, whom he would do anything for. Among the fans, on the other hand, Rachel has become the most hated character. One need not ask why, but I think this opinion is misguided. While hardly likeable after the climax of Season 1, Rachel is easily one of the most interesting characters in the huge cast of ToG.
Fans are eagerly waiting for the second season of the Tower of God anime — you can tell by the number of articles you can find on Google that claim to talk about its release date, even though nobody has a clue about it. The original comic has existed since 2010, though, and it has a huge archive, with the latest comic of this writing being numbered 572, which is about seven times as much as the just under 80 comics that comprise the first season of the comic that corresponds to the first season of the anime.
This archive comes with comments under the comics, and if there’s one thing I’ve picked up from unsystematically glancing at these, it’s that the least favourite thing of the fans of the comic seems to be Rachel. Whenever she appears, the top comments are wishing she didn’t, or that she was dead, or even poems expressing those same sentiments.
Continue reading(Note: This was originally written for a themed issue on “recovery”, hence that focus.)
When Disney made the final trilogy of numbered Star Wars episodes – all the episodes are now collectively named the Skywalker Saga – they chose to make the theme of this trilogy to be the recovery of the galactic Republic and the rebellion after being devastated by the successors of the evil Galactic Empire. The overall story arc of this trilogy goes from plunging deep into the depths of despair to an eventual rise in the final episode.
However, the really interesting tale of recovery in these three movies happens on the level of how the stories are being written, apparently rather ad hoc one after the other – because the story of recovery they set out to tell in the first movie is actually a really bad idea. While even the first movie seems to be an attempt to recover from past bad decisions, namely those in the prequel trilogy, it does this in such an incredibly short-sighted way that the next two movies are stuck trying to find their footing to recover from that bad decision. And it takes two movies; only the last episode really manages to stand on its own, and in the broader context, as a good movie.
Let’s go back to the beginning, or a beginning anyway. The first Star Wars trilogy mysteriously began at Episode IV instead of I. When the implied prequel trilogy was finally made, it aroused much disappointment as well as admiration. A part of this was presumably just because it was different, but that was hardly the only likely reason. My take on this is that the prequel trilogy has a good story idea behind it but is executed clumsily – from Jar Jar Binks being annoying the first movie to the second one being centred around a romance that comes across as a celibate teenager uncomfortably drooling after an adult woman. Still, each movie kept getting better about it, and I actually loved the third one in spite of many occasions of clumsiness. Anyway, the idea behind the prequel trilogy was very solid: showing much more of the Star Wars universe and the background of the original trilogy’s events while following a long series of events that was all revealed to be part of Palpatine’s master plan to take over the galaxy.
Then Disney created the sequel trilogy. As a reminder, that’s episodes VII-IX: The Force Awakens (TFA), The Last Jedi (TLJ) and The Rise of Skywalker (TRoS). They brought in some serious quality in writing (sort of) and directing, so they were not going to fall for that clumsy execution seen in the prequel trilogy. Unfortunately, the new trilogy ended up being the mirror image of the previous one: great execution, but terrible premise.
Continue readingI was just foiled from reading yet another webcomic that I wanted to try — simply by the fact that I couldn’t be bothered to contend with the interface. I did spend a while trying.
This one seemed okay. It had its own website name and everything. Of course, going to the front page, I ended up seeing some random comic without context — I assume the latest one. Okay, fine, I just need to navigate to the first one and continue from there.
And if that’s not easy and clear to do, we can just imagine how many people you’re going to lose already, who might have read your entire archive and become fans instead.
So, since there’s nothing else, I look up some drop-down menu called archive, and try to do the only thing that is available, to find the earliest date available.
Which takes me to a strip that looks just as random and out of context as the first one I saw. Is it the first one? Doesn’t look like it. The site doesn’t tell me, anyway. Meanwhile, the site is recommending me another post I might like, which is I guess that latest strip I saw when coming to the website. What if I want to go to the next strip, if this present does turn out to be the one I should start from? Well, back to the menu, I guess, and better remember your place there.
And there’s some unremovable pop-up that tells me to get started using tumblr. Wait, is this hosted on tumblr even though the website has its own name?
Well, what I can tell you is that it’s just like my experience every time previously when I’ve tried to read a webcomic that’s just posted on some social media platform. They are just not designed for that. And in spite of my already being frustrated from before, it’s not like I bail immediately — but it won’t take me long to get too frustrated.
I’m obviously not talking to you from the point of view of someone who knows all the ins and outs of all the different social media sites. That’s kind of the point; you can’t expect that from your potential readers. And I do know about reading webcomics. I have followed a number of webcomics for quite a long time, such as Sluggy Freelance, Bruno the Bandit, xkcd, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, The Order of the Stick, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Axe Cop, Darths and Droids, Kill Six Billion Demons, Tower of God…
Guess what the one thing is that all of these have (or had) in common? “Previous comic” and “next comic” buttons. Often, there is also an archive that really works. These can be a bit unwieldy even in real webcomic interfaces, like with Sluggy Freelance’s archive of over twenty years being divided into books that are divided into chapters that are not divided into stories in the modern archive even though they used to be and, well, I’m just glad there’s a fan-made dialogue search. Even then, they are still miles above the nonsense where you can’t tell how to find the first comic and whether you have found it. Indeed, it’s common to also have “first comic” and “last comic” buttons.
Just please have those, okay? I mean, you want people to be able and willing to read your comic, right? The little things can have a big effect when people might do something but aren’t terribly committed to it.
When I started publishing a fan webcomic of my own, I knew I wanted it to have a real website and not a social media site. I’m going to jump straight to the spoilers: I use and recommend ComicFury.com. It’s free and gives you all the functionality about buttons and archives automatically, as well as a number of other things you might want like individual comic titles, mouseover texts, author comments, visitor statistics, and a search function. (I think I discovered new useful functions on my own comic page that I wasn’t aware of while I was writing this.) The only “catch”, compared perhaps to other sites that might not be free, is that you’re not getting any promotion from them, other than being minimally showcased on the site along with every other comic.
I’m sure you can Google up other similar options, which is how I found and chose this one. I’m going to stick to talking about what I know here, the main message being obviously that social media sites are terrible for hosting webcomics (and there’s at least one much better option right at your fingertips).
This is not to say you might not also want to post your comics on social media for exposure. For somebody following a comic in real time, it may even be convenient to follow it that way. My own comic is based on the parody–psychological/surreal/existential horror–deconstruction–metafiction visual novel Doki Doki Literature Club!, and the platform for that fandom is on Reddit. I advertised my comic there from the start, but I could tell in more than one way (statistics, comments) that I got more readers when I started posting every comic strip directly there as well.
If you go to my Reddit user page, and have the knowledge to choose to view posts instead of overview, then if you scroll down and around for a couple of minutes, you can (probably) find the first comic in my series, which is clearly labelled as such because I chose to title it like that (just guess if everybody does). And then, particularly if you open it in a new tab, you can find the next one on the list too. Of course, you have to look past the clutter of other posts I have made all through this.
But to heck with all that. I always make a comment under the post linking to my archive (the version showing individual posts instead of chapters) on its own website, and I also habitually answer people’s questions about where to find the rest when they haven’t spotted that.
And I’ve got several comments to the effect “I just binged through your entire comic!”
(You could consider my story of visiting that webcomic a semi-fictional one based on multiple experiences, because while all that happened, it subsequently turned out that the comic that inspired this this time actually has a proper interface, though not so much when viewed on mobile like I first did, and I missed some things that were actually there — because on mobile, I had to scroll down while waiting for them to load, while later strips were displayed first. Still, that was my experience as a reader coming there for the first time, and it did make me give up until I looked into it again to write this. Whether this actually had to do with tumblr or social media hosting I don’t even know (I have no idea what was going on there), but it was similar to earlier experiences that definitely had to do with comics being hosted on social media. And there’s another lesson here: make sure whatever you use works on different devices.)
Originally appeared in the blog for my fan webcomic Less Bittersweet.
I got the idea for this comic some time after first playing Doki Doki Literature Club! in the summer of 2021. Later that same year, I drew the first comic sketch for a part of it because that part just wanted to come out so badly.
That scene was what we are about to see next: the beginning of chapter 4. That’s how forward I’ve been looking to it. And like I said in the comments for the last strip of chapter 3, now I’m finally there.
It’s been most of a year now, and we’re only just past halfway in the story. Well, it would be foolishly impatient for me to wish this to go faster, since I’m enjoying doing it all the way through.
Unfortunately, we’re all going to have to wait for some time for the beginning of chapter 4. (Spoilers: It will be called “Day 4”.) First off, I’ll be pretty tied for most of two weeks with work in the Finnish Parliamentary elections and their advance voting – though I’ll try to get a little bit of work done on the comic even during that time.
Secondly, there is just so much work that needs to be done before I can even start drawing the chapter normally. There are a bunch of things I have to have ready, that I can’t make in a hurry, because we’re going to be seeing all kinds of things this time that we haven’t seen before in the comic. Besides, I’m only now getting ready filling out the blanks in the script, not to mention the thumbnails for the comic – and this is going to be the longest chapter so far, and perhaps overall unless the finale beats it in that respect.
So… this could take several weeks. I’ll try to keep the break as short as possible. Either way, though, it’s going to be totally worth the wait.
Minulta julkaistiin alio tästä aiheesta Turun Sanomissa 15.3.2023. Verkkolehdessä (maksullinen): https://www.ts.fi/puheenvuorot/5936174
This is for use in a submission form that asks for writing samples in the plural, but the field will accept only a single url.
https://neondoorlit.com/blog/immersive-technology-makes-modern-art-more-accessible/
https://blog.nanowrimo.org/post/675023249585946624/writing-fanfiction-tips-for-avoiding-common
https://therattyblog.com/2022/12/13/dr-manhattan-time-causality-and-freedom/
Originally posted on the blog for my fan webcomic Less Bittersweet.
This is taken from a post on Reddit that I made when planning this comic.
I don’t need to tell you that DDLC creates sympathetic characters just to give them terrible, tragic fates. It doesn’t take a lot of looking around to notice that I’m not the only one feeling this way.
And I may know that they’re not real, but I still care so much that I wish I could do something for them. Reaching the good ending was an obvious thing to do, but that still leaves Monika. And besides, what does happen to the others? It’s open to multiple interpretations, especially without the Plus lore, which I don’t like anyway, and which isn’t obviously “true” because it contradicts so much else.
So, if the characters are all fictional, and you want to help them, what’s there to do? We don’t have the power to change canon, so to speak (and it’s too good a story to be changed, anyway). Still, we can create alternative or supplementary stories. Mods seem like an appropriate place to do this, since they’re in the same medium, even the same software. I didn’t feel like doing that myself, though.
Whatever the medium, the way I personally see it is that the most “real” way of saving fictional people would be to add fan content on top of canon without contradicting it (at least under some possible interpretation), write the characters and the world as well as possible, take the problems to be solved seriously (because it will hardly help to just write, “Actually, Monika lived happily ever after, the end”), and offer a solution that makes sense, to the extent that can be done while taking the problems seriously.
I was not going to do anything like that – sometimes, it’s better for a story to have a tragic ending – but the idea just kept growing in my head until I realised I had better make use of such a huge amount of inspiration. The way my mind works, it happened to form in my head in the form of a webcomic, so I decided to really make one.
Originally posted on the blog for my fan webcomic Less Bittersweet.
Finally, the next chapter is starting. As usually, all the waiting didn’t mean I’d be properly prepared. In my time zone, this is already the evening of the day when I wanted to post the strip. And the next one is also relatively long, and I haven’t started it yet. Still, I’ll try to keep up the pace of every Monday and Thursday. That way, I can be done just before I’ll be working in the Finnish parliamentary elections. And then I can start working on chapter 4… I’m already excited about that. But it will also take more preparation than chapter 2 or 3 did. I’ll need new backgrounds and such.
Not to reveal anything, but the beginning of chapter 4 was the first thing for Less Bittersweet I sketched out as a comic back in 2021. That’s how forward I’m looking to it.
I’m going to keep posting the old comics on Reddit at the rate of one per day, and then continue that with chapter 3 until I run out and have to drop the rate to only posting them when I have new ones. That should happen in… hmm…
d = 15+2/7d
2/7d = d-15
-5/7d = -15
5/7d = 15
5d = 7*15 = 105
d = 105/5 = 21
Well, I checked it from just counting on the calendar because I’m not sure about the logic behind that equation, and it does seem to be correct that 21 days from now is when the comics posted on Reddit catch up to the comics posted on the site at the rate of two per week.
In this break between chapters, I’ve been correcting old comics (I’m not done with it, but maybe I’ll be able to continue doing it as I post them), tweaked the site layout just a bit (though I didn’t figure out how the code behind it works), prepared the thumbnails for this chapter because I was running out of my initial supply, played through DDLC again (both normal and special ending in a row), played many of the side stories though I didn’t get around to doing all of them, and hastily came up with this new upgrade to the art. So now, you’ll have to bear with me trying to learn about shading in a rush – unless I find it takes too much time at some point, but I’ll try.
I wanted to do this in colour from the start, but gave that up as impossible. I’m creeping back that way with each chapter, though goodness knows what I’ll do for chapter 3 then. Maybe I’ll use those weird colour schemes real artists apparently use where you choose a suitable set of colours to do everything with instead of colouring each thing its own real colour. If I can pick just a couple of colours, that might help me actually do it. Who knows.
Chapter 3, as I see it, is more on the comedic and even heartwarming side, at least until it returns to the main plot in the final sections. It should be fun.
Thoughts on X 