Wow, speak of the devil – look at today’s (rerun of #1948).
I hope Jeph’s okay.
Holy shit.
Ouchie. 
Hope he gets better
Jeph support thread on the QC message board if anyone wants to join in and send positive energy his way. Jeph does read this stuff, though I doubt he’ll be up for it immediately. But what the hell, give him a shout out if you think it’s appropriate.
I follow him on Twitter (because I check my feed in the morning, and that’s the easiest way for me to check for the newest strip). Dude’s a mess - at least as far as he lets on there. I certainly hope he gets the help he needs.
Can someone translate today’s guest strip back into English for an old codger who doesn’t get the references? (I’m aware of the existence of My Little Pony, but that’s it.)
The My Little Pony thing is a reference to a mystic zebra style pony who lives out in the forest, talks in bad rhyming couplets, and has what I can best describe as a “deep, soulful, pseudo-African, and above all cliched accent.”
The “homophobes” is a reference to Adventure Time; the grey lady is Marceline (a vampire) and the pink lady is Princess Bubblegum who rules the land. A bunch of people ship them together, but I haven’t caught up nearly enough on Adventure Time to know just how much a crackship it may be.
I don’t know which game is the “wait there’s a game?” though.
Team Fortress II.
And it’s less about the shows and game than the fandoms.
The MLP one isn’t calling Zecora a racist character, it’s presenting the fandom as claiming that Equestria is full of racists. I don’t know if MLP fandom has specifically flanderized the Ponies’ original reaction to Zecora (‘Eeek, she’s different, thus must be evil’ - the episode’s aesop was, duh, ‘no, she’s not, and it’s wrong to think like that’) to this extent (it’s a Martin/Zimmerman reference - note the skittles-equivalent Zecora’s got), but it fits with how they treat ‘Pinkamina’, or ‘Trollestia’. (Then there’s Princess Molestia, which is made up from whole cloth.)
And there are no female characters in TFII, so all the 'shipping is, by definition, m/m. This is an exaggeration (I think), but not a huge one (at least based on other fandoms, I’m not into the 'shipping side of TFII, so I don’t see a lot of it, but I could certainly see the Heavy being the team bike, I’m just not seeing a lot of team orgies). (That’s the Heavy, the Scout (clinging to his arm), the Demoman (getting rogered), and the Soldier.)
The reasoning of the Adventure Time one should be obvious.
There’s a really unsettling racist undertone to a certain loud minority of the MLP fanbase. (Not the show itself! Just some of the fans.) There are people that will insist, straightfaced, that all of the ponies are obviously caucasian; it’s impossible for, say, the purple pony to be colored. This goes all the way up to unashamed nazi/pony crossovers. There’s a My Nationalist Pony page out there.
The Adventure Time one is specifically referencing a particular episode, where those two characters have a song that doesn’t go into details, but suggests they have a history together. Nothing in the episode hints that that history was romantic or anything, but it was intentionally left open. One of the staff at the time had an official blog with tidbits about each episode, and he made a joke about the characters getting all kissyfaced in the past. The floodgates were opened.
Just wanted to say, if you thought that strip was interesting, try reading the guest artist’s comic at templaraz.com. It’s one of my favorites. Her characterization and made-up subcultures are pretty great. As a warning, she’s been doing a hiatus-y thing for a bit while she published a couple of books, so I don’t know exactly when she’s going to get back to Templar steadily, and of course there was a cliffhanger scene not too long before she put it on the shelf, but she’s active on Twitter and hasn’t completely dropped off the map. She’s done the last three strips or so in the last month.
Also, be warned that the strip is NSFW. Language, mostly, but occasionally she’ll be in the middle of a scene, with drama and yelling, and suddenly, boom big hairy fat nude guy walks across the room.
Biffy said “translate back into English”
So judging by today’s strip, I guess we now know that Jeph is left-handed.
We actually did a couple days ago. When he first revealed the ‘fell off the wagon, and maimed himself’ story behind the repeat and guest strips, he mentioned that he didn’t stab his drawing hand, then in the news for the first guest strip, his wife mentioned that it was his right hand he’d sliced up.
Ah, I missed her post. I remembered the “not my drawing hand” bit, and then saw the photo of his bandaged right hand.
Makes sense. Most people use the same hand for both drawing and stabbing.
Too soon?
I won’t lie, that was actually my first thought when Jeph mentioned he didn’t stab his drawing hand. (Rapidly followed by ‘…Jeez, I’m a horrible person’ and then ‘Good thing, it wasn’t, though, or he’d have to change careers…or at least his style.’ Which made me wonder if I should have gone back to ‘horrible person’…)
Between this, and Rich Burlew’s accident, it’s been a bad month for my favorite webcartoonists hands.
I think I might mail Phil Foglio some chainmail mittens, just in case.
Do you really think Phil doesn’t ALREADY have chainmail mittens?