Talk:Zen Pencils

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Artist-Troll War comments

  • Early-on in comic #3 I was thinking of a joke about how their robot was a derivative work. Then I saw that Than apparently thinks science and engineering are arts, and I nearly blacked out. Science is the fucking antithesis of art, you self-important asshole, and engineering is applied science. Stop trying to elevate the importance of personal expression through invalid associations. Fuck. --SmashLampjaw (talk) 07:58, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Is this a comic review or an argument about morality?

Honestly, this review reads a lot more like "inspirational quotes are bullshit because ...", and a lot less like "this comic is crap because ..."

Now since this is an "inspirational quotes comic", I understand the premise, but still, it feels a lot like the reviewer is just having a private argument with the cartoonist, on a topic that's tangential to the quality of the comic itself.

I think it would do well with having all the moral panic part cut, and the rest actually, specifically focusing on the comic and what's wrong with it. Sigmoid (talk) 11:32, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

  • I understand what you're saying, but the biggest problem with this comic is that it's a populistic and pandering collection of quotes that give a false impression of depth and are misrepresented by a person who hardly understands them. I can't really extrapolate on why the comic is bad without going into detail about all the ways in which faux-insperational quotes and Gav's false representation of them is bad. This comic is stupid because in its essence it is a part of a bigger phenomenon that is stupid. To draw a parallel, if I was reviewing a racist comic I might spend the lion's share of the review explaining why the comic's various arguments are wrong. Or, like in the Jack Chick Tracts review, a major part of it is spent mocking Chick's dogmatic excuse for logic while in the review of God Hates Bambi the same is done to atheistic preaching. And just as those two comics are criticized for contrasting points of view, if I were to find a deeply pessimistic comic I would be just as quick to spend a big part of the review explaining why the author's opinions are wrong. If I didn't it would take away a lot from the review and its ability to illustrate why the comic is bad.
In short, the comic is bad because "inspirational" quotes and people's attitude towards them is bad. But the review might have worked better if I cut out a lot of the text and just explained that position with pictures, like taking one of his Ghandi comics and replacing the words with one of his quotes about rape. That would have packed more impact instead of writing so much about it. But I'm not good at photoshop. Busey.png oddguy Busey.png 12:50, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
  • I think it's valid to complain about how insipid the content is especially if the author isn't even displaying what the words actually mean. Regarding putting negative quotes to the images, shoot me a PM on the forum and I'll see what I can do. I am fairly good at editing images. Let me know which comics you want which quotes with, but make sure you include citing for me to put with the quote in the image, so people know we're not just making up horrible things for them to say. --SmashLampjaw (talk) 15:53, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
  • You think it's worth the effort? Busey.png oddguy Busey.png 17:01, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
  • How many images are we talking about? Changing out the text in a voice bubble isn't time consuming. --SmashLampjaw (talk) 23:20, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Hayao Miyazaki

"However, one thing that Gavin apparently doesn't know about Hayao Miyazaki is that he said the reason he's quitting the anime industry is because he's sick of all the fucking weeaboos."

Reference please. I haven't found a single piece of information on-line that would even distantly support this claim. Sigmoid (talk) 11:34, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

  • He is talking about the anime industry; ie. Japanese Otaku in the Japanese cartoon industry, whom he calls inferior artists. However, a "weeaboo" is a Westerner who is ridiculously obsessed with Japanese stuff[1]... Also, the article does not make any link between this statement and his retirement, so the causation is merely implied. Sigmoid (talk) 12:40, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
  • It is heavily implied. I don't think I shouldn't come to this conclusion simply because he didn't specifically say "I am quitting because I hate Otakus. To reiterate: Obsessive anime fans are the reason for my retirement". Even if you are right, my original point in mentioning this still stands, which is that Miyazaki is what Gav would consider a "critic/troll" by his own definition. As far as the Weeaboo comment, would you feel better is I replaces "Weeaboos" with "Otakus"? Busey.png oddguy Busey.png 12:56, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
  • Even if the sentence gets reworded to "Miyazaki hates weeaboos" or anything else, it would make more sense to change weeaboos to otaku for clarification, considering Miyazaki's criticisms are targeted towards Japanese otaku rather than Westerners.--Eldeon (talk) 04:02, 9 January 2015 (UTC)


  • Done. Busey.png oddguy Busey.png 09:58, 9 January 2015 (UTC)