I’ll have to simply face facts: There’s no better word for describing the act of extrapolating on a single comic spontaneously. So I’ve resigned to it, even if it isn’t my word. It’s officially entered the webcomics collective lexicon. So I’m going to embrace it; what follows here are, indeed, Snarks.
(From Two Lumps, by J. Grant & Mel Hynes)
Ok, this is just boggling to me as it stands. Because of all comics on this great big internet of ours, Two Lumps is probably one of the last strips I’d ever expect to do a video game parody story arch, much less one on Silent Hill. I mean seriously, that’d be like Count Your Sheep doing a Grand Theft Auto San Andreas story. It’s way out of place, but comically so.
So from where I’m sitting, I can’t wait to see how this one goes. And if it goes well, you’ll definitely hear from me about it again. Sorry, I’m probably the biggest Silent Hill fan that’s never actually played the game (I’m a backseat Silent Hill player).
(From Theater Hopper, by Tom Brazelton)
I like Theater Hopper. And every once in a while, a strip of Tom’s just nails it. And usually without him ever having seen the movie. Or me neither for that matter. So, I guess I don’t know whether or not the accurate nailing has taken place, but for damned sure it feels like nailage occurred.
I don’t know if I mentioned on this thing, but at the AFI Silver Theatre I just now previously worked at, we’ve been doing a Jim Jarmusch retrospective. I’ve seen about 4 movies of his so far (about, because I left midway through one of them and came back). Coffee and Cigarettes, Permanent Vacation, Stranger than Paradise, and Mystery Train. Still, it’s my resolve that I don’t craft a formal opinion and evaluation of a director until I’ve seen at least 5 works of his (where applicable). But so far, I’m really unimpressed. Really, really unimpressed.
At any rate, even though he’s citing Bill Murray specifically, Tom’s strip nails the Jarmusch narrative style 100%. Without even having to see the movie. I’m sure it’s a fine movie, but not a lot actually happens in his movies. And then people tout him as an arthouse genius. Needless to say, Jarmusch’s been a strong topic of debate in my former workplace, and that strip made my day pretty good.
On a personal note, the worst part is that if I want to impress my film professor in any way, I’ll have to make that sort of arthouse bullshit. Dammit.
Um. Yes. That comic catches Bill Murrey perfect.
*Gasp*
A snark! Actually on a webcomic! What *madness* is this?
Seriously, though, about the snark.
I’m not too sure I like what Two Lumps is doing. First of all, when you said that this is like Count Your Sheep doing a GTA parody you were right. It doesn’t really seem to fit, not in the humor style, but in the world that Two Lumps has set up. Because, quite frankly, Two Lumps is a cat strip. It’s about the way that these cats act. And sure, they talk, but the unrealism is not really what the story’s about. It’s about their personalities, and how they interact with each other and with Mom. It’s about gooshyfood and Teh Pettins. It’s about the way cats act and what could possibly make them act that way. (Eben and Snooch both have believeable cat personalities, even though their thought processes are so hilariously different.)
So that’s why I was kind of skeptical when the magical portal opened up in the bathroom: because Two Lumps isn’t the *kind* of strip which has magical portals open in the bathroom.
Now, does this mean I didn’t grin pretty big to their reactions to the blood covered pink bunnies? Heck no. It was hysterical. And so is the line “Some magical realm this is. I can’t see a blasted thing in this fog.”
But I’m just concerned that it might come off cheesy, which I don’t want to happen. We’ll have to wait and see…
You’re absolutely right, Kneefers. It’s 100% out of place. So I’m waiting to see if it works or it doesn’t. In the end, this can and likely will be played off as a dream sequence, but hey. I’m enjoying it so far.
The dream sequence theory was the best solution that I could think of, too. We’ll just have to wait and see how they handle it in the context of the strip.
Dream sequence? Oh goodness no! That’s the lamest way to end storylines.
I wouldn’t say it’s the lamest, but has been one of the most poorly recieved. People have weird dreams. It’s a fact of life. Ergo, a dream sequence is a completely appropriate way to do your story. However, doing it where it works well without dissapointing or disorienting the reader is the challenge.
Here, in Two Lumps, in this instance, it will work. Because there’s almost no way it COULD be real.
It would be a little difficult to pull off, sure, but it’s better than completely changing around the entire world of the strip suddenly. Besides, it might be possible to explain it away some other way that’s not entirely the same as a dream sequence. I offer, as an example, CRfH, where there is a storyline or three where the gang has extended “dream-sequence” adventures all together because they accidently ate some mushrooms of questionable origin.
This could be something like the same thing. Not exactly the mushroom thing, but some sort of suggestion that this is not really happening, and there are several ways to pull this off. The dream sequence device is often reviled because it’s so often badly done, but there are ways to do it much more slickly and smoothly than what most of us have come into contact.
For Two Lumps, it doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy (it’s probably better if it’s not complicated and fancy), but something moderately silly has to happen. Maybe they ate some bad gooshyfood?
Y’know, posts to one’s weblog always struck me as the correct nomenclature for posts to one’s weblog. It’s a distressing approach, to apply fresh terminology to such things simply on the basis of subject matter — we don’t refer to weblog posts on x86 architecture as “technicas” or posts advocating the abolition of DRM as “boingboings.” “Snarks,” as the term is applied to the original, aren’t confined to subject matter so much as destination repository.
In fact, I worry about appropriating a word which has a prior established meaning in other fan-ac circles, then giving it a meaning which doesn’t correspond to the intent of the original deviation (which, ultimately, bore a closer relationship to the original meaning than the fork you’re proposing as canonical). I don’t think that we can yet afford to be imposing such potential breakdowns in communications.
But that’s me.
Also, this is what happens when I post before finishing the morning caffeine: I get all circumlocutish.