Criticisms of utilitarianism often end up in a couple of camps, the first being extremely far fetched thought experiments, like the Utility Monster (which by the way, can be reversed on Nozick as a "property monster", which I came up with in this comic about: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/259). These push utilitarianism to its end, showing that it actually causes us harm. Kind of a poor criticism, since the whole point is to make us happy, the fact that it doesn't make us happy doesn't really work. Of course we all agree with the utility monster anyway, which is why we don't value the happiness of ants as equal to ourselves, we are the utility monsters. If some greater being came along, they would probably just laser us all to use earth as a beach house anyway, so we wouldn't have to worry too much about the failure of our philosophies to account for them.
More to the point though, people like Nozick, who spend their career arguing why it's great and fine for the rich to exploit the poor, obviously don't have humanity's best interest in mind. Most utilitarians spend their time on earth trying to make life better for everyone, like arguing for women's rights, animal rights, and alleviating poverty. So yeah, take your pick I guess.
Yeah I could have worded that better, and I did read your original post. I wanted to emphasize that the real fanbase grew around the anime-style melodrama versus the earlier gag-a-day strips. Fred, by his own admission, didn't even realize the "does anyone speak l33t" comic that Rodney wrote was an Airplane! reference until years later.
Some sleeping dogs are better left lying. Perhaps had the comic died sooner, Scoot wouldn't had cursed the world with with his islamic, furaffinity tier shit.
Some sleeping dogs are better left lying. Perhaps had the comic died sooner, Scoot wouldn't had cursed the world with with his islamic, furaffinity tier shit.
It really could've gone out on a high note (well, about as high as furry "lol video games" 2000s webcomics can get) if it died out shortly BEFORE Scott started drawing official but horrific looking porn of the characters that nobody liked.
Back in high school I got really into this webcomic because I was pretty much trying to read as many webcomics as were out there. I got into it around the end of volume four when there was enough of a backlog of pages that a story was developing and you could get into the characters. The jokes about Fred taking months to put a page out were overexaggerated but sometimes it did feel like he was taking forever to get the next actual page out in between the Shirt Guy Dom strips or random art he did.
Then the double whammy of him having a kid and his wife getting leukemia caused the output to crawl to a halt and a lot of people lost interest, especially because he was no longer the only game in town, which is what helped him in the first place.
Having about sixteen panels an update, and sometimes two pages, really helps the goodwill.
Wish he'd put the books back in print, I'd like to do a reread and having them in print, along with the extra pages he does for the books, makes it easier. But I'm missing volumes five and six, plus the Paladin one he did.
He still has some lolcow tendencies like denouncing jokes from over twenty years ago or adopting a “non-binary” classification for V, completely undermining the joke of elves being androgynous, but he’s done a good job keeping it at a minimum in OotS. If he tries to work on another comic afterward it’s going to be an unreadable mess, though.
He still has some lolcow tendencies like denouncing jokes from over twenty years ago or adopting a “non-binary” classification for V, completely undermining the joke of elves being androgynous, but he’s done a good job keeping it at a minimum in OotS. If he tries to work on another comic afterward it’s going to be an unreadable mess, though.
All I remember about Illiad is he was very much a hobbist, didn't interact with fans much - hence not a lasting community. If I remember my lore right, UF was mostly a "UseNet Shit post" that it was suggested be shared outside of UseNet.
And I only saw UF comics posted by the most unwashed of the neckbeards, so I don't really think it had a wide reach.
Yo hold the fucking phone.
We've gone over this before in the thread, but Fred assumed jack shit from Rodney. Any sort of bad blood or friction between the two is fan headcanon, both have confirmed this. Rodney NEVER had any creative input on MT, except essentially bullying Fred into drawing the first comics and offering pointers on early Largo. Rodney's main contribution was giving Fred hosting space on his server for a portion of revenue, and doing backend work. He had creative credit as a way of asserting rights on the business.
Both tell the same version of events of their "break up": Rodney graduated & got a real career, and didn't have time to webmaster MT, so at his prompting, Fred bought out his share and rights. Rodney gave him a real bargain on the sale, basically giving a former friend charity.
There is no bad blood, they just don't talk or interact much because they were never close and really didn't before.
The comic was originally written by Gallagher's friend Rodney "Largo" Caston, but soon after it started becoming mega-successful, Gallagher did some sort of weird hostile takeover thing where he basically assumed all rights to the project and "fired" Caston. I can't remember the details of this and I'm sure any retelling of the story will have some bias to it depending on whose take you read, but I remember it looking very much like Caston was suddenly and without apparent warning screwed over by Gallagher right when the real money started rolling in.
He still has some lolcow tendencies like denouncing jokes from over twenty years ago or adopting a “non-binary” classification for V, completely undermining the joke of elves being androgynous, but he’s done a good job keeping it at a minimum in OotS. If he tries to work on another comic afterward it’s going to be an unreadable mess, though.
Maybe I haven't seen much from him outside the comic, but to me he feels more like the kind of guy to know he has to follow "the script" instead of actually caring about 20 year old webcomic jokes or actually intending V's gender to be Current Year Shit instead of a dude who looks like a girl or a girl who looks like a dude. (I always leaned more toward it being a chick due to it sharing a room with Hayley early on)
Maybe I haven't seen much from him outside the comic, but to me he feels more like the kind of guy to know he has to follow "the script" instead of actually caring about 20 year old webcomic jokes or actually intending V's gender
Yeah, but then we get panels like this:
Which drags down the best character in the series and in true lefty form undermines the entire concept of “asexuality” he’s trying to display by comparing a fake category of person to an organism that literally reproduces via dreams.
Burlew has always been a lefty, it’s explicitly why Roy is black, and is in a weird spot where he follows the doctrine to a “T,” but is also self-aware enough to know he’s more than a little beholden to the supposedly less-censorious mentality lefties held a quarter century ago simply because that’s when the series started and he can’t do otherwise without totally tanking his magnum opus.
The strip wherein the mother black dragon heads off to attack V’s family was initially titled “A Mother’s Worst Nightmare” but Burlew changed it to “A Parent’s Worst Nightmare” after a couple of days. V being a woman works with her rooming with Hayley whenever they’re at an inn or something and helps balance out the otherwise sausage party of the rest of the cast.
