Taking a traumatic, devastating, and most of all very personal health event like a miscarriage that your girlfriend went through and hand drawing it in a cartoon style to post on your public “Funny haha” gamer douche web comic is generally considered a dick move.
Some further context is that the author Tim Buckley was generally pretty despised at the time and considered a huge dick. The comic itself IIRC was full of that turn of the century gamer douche “haha women bad” type comedy. So the posting of that comic was not only like a comically huge tonal shift but almost felt like him trying to somehow appear more sensitive and likeable.
this is probably the case but it doesn’t matter because everyone looks at your life from the outside and puts together the story based on what type of ball pictures you post on the internet
Yeah I think it became such a meme partially because the comic itself was out of place in CAD, but mostly for Buckley’s reputation. Plenty of other serial webcomics had similar range of tone and style.
A genuine expression of how he felt about an event that had happened years prior? I guess that’s possible, although an odd choice. And out of character for him to boot.
As for his tools, his tools were his ability to draw. He probably could have drawn something to express his feelings that didn’t involve his funny haha web comic characters and it would have been far less weird.
I never saw it as a dick move. It always seemed to me like any other creative person putting their life experiences into their work. That didn’t make it good, but his best work in a comedy comic isn’t likely to come out while he’s grieving. It was sort of a shark jump moment for that site, but it always seemed way more distasteful to me to make it into a meme.
Well, it was more like putting his college girlfriend’s life experience into his work, and then making the work about him. You’ll notice he’s in 3 of the four panels and she’s in one. Where he appears as the empathetic and caring boyfriend, while she is the one grieving.
Making the comic into a meme is disrespectful to him, but not the girl, since she’s such a small part of it, and we don’t even know who she is since it’s a fictional character taking her place in the comic.
I believe that in the life experience that he’s drawing from, that he based his self-insert character on, he’s in every panel, yes. I certainly took it to mean that he too was grieving the child that he expected to be born into the world. I found it distasteful to make it into a meme because the subject matter it’s mocking is fucked up, plus bullying is kind of disconcerting in general.
You are giving the author a whole lot of benefit of the doubt that he hasn’t earned. You’re looking at this through the lens of a guy using his art to express his feelings of grief. Thats certain what he wants you to think, and if that’s what it was, it wouldn’t be so bad. But that’s not what it is. I mean for gods sake a couple comics later the female character crying on the hospital bed in the fourth panel apologizes to his self-insert for having the miscarriage. If that’s the type of guy you empathize with I don’t know what to tell you other than YIKES pal.
This is just a comic made by a notorious and blatant narcissist who dug up the traumatic experience of someone else from his past in an effort to be taken more seriously because his comics were regularly mocked as a poorly made ripoff of another popular comic at the time. If bullying a bad person is immoral then hey maybe you’re right. I’m not really prepared to have that philosophical debate at this time lol.
You are free to make your own interpretations as far as how he portrays/portrayed women in his comics. It’s been almost 20 years since that comic went up, and standards in social mores and comedy have changed a ton in that time, but when I read those comics back then, only being familiar with Buckley through CAD comics and nothing else, he never struck me as a narcissist or a misogynist. His self-insert character was a Homer Simpson type (“which was the style at the time”), which is hardly the caricature of a narcissist in my opinion. I find it’s very easy to invent a narrative about who someone is from how they portray themselves publicly, and also…it’s been 17 years. Whoever he was 17 years ago is very likely not who he is today. I don’t know that he’s a bad person, I don’t know that he ever was a bad person, and I don’t think it’s admirable to hound someone with a joke about something that they put out into the world so long ago. Surely whatever he learned from that experience has been learned, and we can move on. I didn’t feel good when I saw that comic the first time, nor was I intended to, but I definitely don’t feel great whenever it’s brought back up either.
Whoever he was 17 years ago is very likely not who he is today.
Surely whatever he learned from that experience has been learned, and we can move on.
Ok well you keep all that learning and growing in mind while you take a look at this comic that the artist uploaded to his site a few short years ago on one of the anniversaries of the original comic.
Which could just as easily be interpreted as steering into the skid, like a strategy someone might use when they’re relentlessly bullied. But you’re clearly more interested in Tim Buckley’s life than I am.
Lmao “relentlessly bullied”. Well you are free to hold your candle for the guy if you want to. Good luck in your pursuit of getting people to stop posting loss memes I guess.
Thanks for the context. I only looked at it from within the frame of the comic. From that perspective, it only seems strange to have such a tonal shift - a usually comedic comic presenting a more serious issue. So the problem was the context, got it.
Taking a traumatic, devastating, and most of all very personal health event like a miscarriage that your girlfriend went through and hand drawing it in a cartoon style to post on your public “Funny haha” gamer douche web comic is generally considered a dick move.
Some further context is that the author Tim Buckley was generally pretty despised at the time and considered a huge dick. The comic itself IIRC was full of that turn of the century gamer douche “haha women bad” type comedy. So the posting of that comic was not only like a comically huge tonal shift but almost felt like him trying to somehow appear more sensitive and likeable.
Or perhaps it was a genuine expression of how he felt and he used the tools he had to express it.
this is probably the case but it doesn’t matter because everyone looks at your life from the outside and puts together the story based on what type of ball pictures you post on the internet
Yeah I think it became such a meme partially because the comic itself was out of place in CAD, but mostly for Buckley’s reputation. Plenty of other serial webcomics had similar range of tone and style.
A genuine expression of how he felt about an event that had happened years prior? I guess that’s possible, although an odd choice. And out of character for him to boot.
As for his tools, his tools were his ability to draw. He probably could have drawn something to express his feelings that didn’t involve his funny haha web comic characters and it would have been far less weird.
I never saw it as a dick move. It always seemed to me like any other creative person putting their life experiences into their work. That didn’t make it good, but his best work in a comedy comic isn’t likely to come out while he’s grieving. It was sort of a shark jump moment for that site, but it always seemed way more distasteful to me to make it into a meme.
Well, it was more like putting his college girlfriend’s life experience into his work, and then making the work about him. You’ll notice he’s in 3 of the four panels and she’s in one. Where he appears as the empathetic and caring boyfriend, while she is the one grieving.
Making the comic into a meme is disrespectful to him, but not the girl, since she’s such a small part of it, and we don’t even know who she is since it’s a fictional character taking her place in the comic.
I believe that in the life experience that he’s drawing from, that he based his self-insert character on, he’s in every panel, yes. I certainly took it to mean that he too was grieving the child that he expected to be born into the world. I found it distasteful to make it into a meme because the subject matter it’s mocking is fucked up, plus bullying is kind of disconcerting in general.
You are giving the author a whole lot of benefit of the doubt that he hasn’t earned. You’re looking at this through the lens of a guy using his art to express his feelings of grief. Thats certain what he wants you to think, and if that’s what it was, it wouldn’t be so bad. But that’s not what it is. I mean for gods sake a couple comics later the female character crying on the hospital bed in the fourth panel apologizes to his self-insert for having the miscarriage. If that’s the type of guy you empathize with I don’t know what to tell you other than YIKES pal.
This is just a comic made by a notorious and blatant narcissist who dug up the traumatic experience of someone else from his past in an effort to be taken more seriously because his comics were regularly mocked as a poorly made ripoff of another popular comic at the time. If bullying a bad person is immoral then hey maybe you’re right. I’m not really prepared to have that philosophical debate at this time lol.
You are free to make your own interpretations as far as how he portrays/portrayed women in his comics. It’s been almost 20 years since that comic went up, and standards in social mores and comedy have changed a ton in that time, but when I read those comics back then, only being familiar with Buckley through CAD comics and nothing else, he never struck me as a narcissist or a misogynist. His self-insert character was a Homer Simpson type (“which was the style at the time”), which is hardly the caricature of a narcissist in my opinion. I find it’s very easy to invent a narrative about who someone is from how they portray themselves publicly, and also…it’s been 17 years. Whoever he was 17 years ago is very likely not who he is today. I don’t know that he’s a bad person, I don’t know that he ever was a bad person, and I don’t think it’s admirable to hound someone with a joke about something that they put out into the world so long ago. Surely whatever he learned from that experience has been learned, and we can move on. I didn’t feel good when I saw that comic the first time, nor was I intended to, but I definitely don’t feel great whenever it’s brought back up either.
Ok well you keep all that learning and growing in mind while you take a look at this comic that the artist uploaded to his site a few short years ago on one of the anniversaries of the original comic.
Which could just as easily be interpreted as steering into the skid, like a strategy someone might use when they’re relentlessly bullied. But you’re clearly more interested in Tim Buckley’s life than I am.
Lmao “relentlessly bullied”. Well you are free to hold your candle for the guy if you want to. Good luck in your pursuit of getting people to stop posting loss memes I guess.
Thanks for the context. I only looked at it from within the frame of the comic. From that perspective, it only seems strange to have such a tonal shift - a usually comedic comic presenting a more serious issue. So the problem was the context, got it.