Thoreau is a fart-huffing faggot who only pretended like he was living deep in the woods communing with nature; in reality he was living on a pond near his rich friends (who owned the land), which is why that nigga never starved to death like he would have if he had gone into the woods and done more than camping in someone else's back yard. And also who was bankrolling his gay thing.
The modern equivalent of someone who sucks at doing anything productive getting an upper middle class friend to let them crash in their pool house.
Internet user from 2004 is frozen and revived in 2021:
People were still depressed in 2004. Instead of COVID and social media we had the loss of personal freedoms post-9/11 and war fatigue as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were dragging on. The "lol" one is pretty good, though.
2005 according to wiki, but didn't make it big till 2007. I seem recall seeing the song used for memes that weren't what it got famous for in 2003/2004 time frame but I might be mixing that up with other Eurotrash meme songs.
It has been TOO DAMN LONG since i've ranted about a shitty Pokémon fancomic here. I must remedy this!
But the usual punching bag, What the Waters Gave Me, has been somewhat stagnant as of late, just angsting about the two main characters (poonified main-character-turned-OC and thuggish zoomer x112) breaking up... I'll have to find something new.
To that end, I'd like to introduce you all to On Borrowed Time, currently the most popular fan comic on comicfury by a long shot, only second in overall popularity to a relatively inoffensive story about a pair of deer. Massive spoilers for the comic ahead. I would recommend reading it for yourself, but only if you want to experience the same amount of sheer frustration this stupid thing imparted upon me. There are some worthwhile bits in here, but- on the whole- this comic sucks donkey dick.
Believe it or not, this is actually the second incarnation of OBT. Being a Pokémon fancomic- and a Nuzlocke, at that- it has of course fallen prey to the curse of being rebooted. If you want to read the original, more charming version of this comic then you can do so here. If you want closure on that comic, as well, i've archived the intended plot and ending here. Despite my description of the first version being "more charming", I have to admit that i'm very glad it never got finished. Teenage pregnancy in your PMD fancomic wtf lol.
The entire OBT rabbithole is so enormous that I could probably get multiple posts out of it. The author is a lesbian PMD fanatic (even though she goes by "any pronouns") who's married to an equally-crazy PMD fanatic who also makes her own comic, she runs a Patreon for this comic that, as of writing this, makes over 800 dollars a month, there's a tumblr ask blog for the characters alongside an official twitter account alongside side-story spin-offs and physical print runs...
...but all of this would constitute so many paragraphs of mostly fluff that I won't bother with it here. That kind of comprehensive breakdown would be better-suited to a full-on lolcow thread, anyways, and there isn't much lolcowish about the author besides the usual tumblr brand of genderspecial craziness. Just in case you want to dive deeper, though, I'll link some resources to other OBT stuff near the bottom of this post.
For now, I'll just talk about the actual comic itself.
In a sentence... On Borrowed Time is shallow gay fanfiction that wastes all of its good ideas in favor of lesbian romance.
Let's start with the characters.
The Main Four characters, half of which are depicted on the cover, are as follows:
Right away, you'll probably notice the fact that there is no gender: just pronouns. And that a Nidorina is listed as male.
Yes, it's trans. No, it is not a cool variant based on what a Nidorina would look like if it were male, nor a case of lifting in-game species/gender restrictions to make room for cooler character design. It's just a Nidorina mixed with a Kangaskhan and made trans. The only bonus points this comic gets for that is the fact that said trans identity is never mentioned in-story: only confirmed in side art and easily-inferred. It's one of many cool ideas made shallow in favor of representation.
From there, your eye might be caught by the various parentheses scattered about. "Thunderclap variation"? "Pouched variation"?
Yep, half the species in this comic are fusions.
Actually, this is a rather common theme throughout the comic: a plethora of "variations" that are obvious combinations of two Pokémon species. They're much more common near the beginning of the comic, with almost every single new character somehow being special or not "standard" for the species (in order of introduction: formerly-human amnesiac bisexual alolan vulpix, half-evolved shinx with a legendary macguffin, part-pidgeot gay chatot, part-zeraora lesbian meowth, part-kangaskhan trans nidorina).
Seeing as the overarching plot centers solely on discrimination, I originally thought that these were supposed to be part of some overall theme about race-mixing, but apparently not. As time went on and fusions' presences in the comic diminished, it sort of just ended up as a marker to identify who in the plot will be relevant. There are only 4 out of about 12 central characters that aren't fusions, at this point, and almost every background character seems to be normal. Any discrimination angle the fusions could've taken on has instead been replaced by a "feral vs townie" plot where the comic makes extremely heavy-handed references towards ferals being [insert "outsider" group here] and townies being normal people.
It's a real shame, too. I found the concept of having so many fusions really interesting- and the comic even touches on how that'd differentiate them from their kin briefly, giving lip service to being "proficient" with types your species usually wouldn't be and how having a different species' DNA might affect how you're raised or your behavior- but the idea is barely touched on and soon discarded almost entirely outside of being the aforementioned "relevant character" signifier.
The characters are also a major problem with the comic. Why? Everyone is awful to everyone else.
Take what you've heard about millennial dialogue, apply it all here, and turn it up to 11. Every single person is flat as a board and there exist only 3 archetypes total that the comic draws from:
stoic strong badass who speaks mostly in quips and insults who "don't need no man"/"is super-duper manly you guys look at how much 'he' wants to punch things all the time"
naïve innocent cinnamon roll who can do no wrong except that which is not their fault (she can't control her super-awesome legendary powers!!/he misunderstood the situation because he's dumb and happy and only means well!!)
S U P E R G A Y A I R H E A D
The two exceptions to this are Lucius (generic "discrimination good" bad guy, takes the place of Skuntank in the official game so he still has an accent but that's about as interesting as he gets) and Malachi, the latter of which is RELENTLESSLY bullied for very very little reason. I doubt there's a single piece of dialogue directed at him in the entire comic past the first chapter that doesn't involve some backhanded compliment or rude jab. The only reason the first chapter doesn't include these, I'm betting, is because Rune cannot talk throughout it.
Even outside of the bullying, he is constantly upstaged and shoved to the side to make room for almost anyone else... despite being part of the main duo.
Why?
...well, he doesn't even have a stereotype to go off of. He's basically got 0 personality entirely outside of "knowing things" (often incorrectly as well) or maybe being a pushover. He's most like the manchild in that one Quirk Chungus and Manchild image someone linked earlier in the thread, but even then that's sort of giving his characterization too much credit. The most notable thing about him as a person is that his parents seemed to be the most straight relationship in the entire story (until it was confirmed that he was actually a product of polyamory and had 2 moms + a dad).
The most Malachi is good for is exposition of some admittedly cool concepts.
Mystery Dungeons being living environments with "ley lines" related to the same energy Pokémon are made of? Cool, I love that idea!
A three-way split between soul, aura, and body, with potential to "lose" either part of you? Kind of pretentious, but I like it!
Differences in in-game berry structure, explanation of "feral" lifestyles, the making of Orbs, badges, the Pokémon creation myth- it's all genuinely cool worldbuilding that is actually integrated into the story somewhat well... until around halfway through chapter 7.
And now I elaborate on the gay.
I'm not going to sit here and echo the words of every conservative pundit out there bemoaning that this comic is full of queers. What I will bemoan is that these queers actively ruin the story by being queer.
This is supposed to be an adventure/drama about saving the world and finding out who Rune/Maelstrom are, right? Why the fuck is half the plot now centered around Rune's stupid girlfriend (whom she made into a girlfriend not even a month after having met her)? These two characters, who had 0 chemistry outside of being friends by circumstance, are now suddenly dating? Oh, and apparently they can Battle Bond (super special and rare technique that is extremely hard to train) from the second timethey fight alongside each other, okay. Sure.
Alongside this, the story often goes out of its way to ONLY show gay relationships. Sure, the gay stereotype duck is gay, but why do we need to point out that the trans Nidorina has two moms? Why must you confirm that Malachi's parents are polyamorous by mentioning a dad and then two moms? It gets to be outright distracting. I was joking to myself that this was the type of story to make Skuntank and Wigglytuff gay lovers, only for OBT to actually make Chatot and Skuntank the gay couple. And end a chapter on the two of them fucking catfighting over their shitty relationship.
This is just part of the story's serious pacing issues (a lot of awkward handling in regards to relationships especially: characters seem to become close friends within the span of a day, characters overreact to small things or barely react to major things, lack of chemistry makes the amount of personal details they reveal to each other unbelievable, Steven Universe Crying Syndrome is abundant), but I bring it up because it's by far the most relevant.
Dielle (the zeraora/meowth hybrid) became such an overwhelming presence that at one point in early 2023 she not only had an abundance of screentime in the normal comic, but also had an entire side-comic dedicated to her running simultaneously alongside a bunch of spotlight on the ask blog, in side art, and on Patreon. Almost everything was fixated on the lesbian romance that had almost no build-up to it, and that romance proceeded to dominate most interactions within the main group for the next several chapters.
Significant life events/big moments tend to have this issue with being rushed or contradicting something, as well: Rune's first tail-split was treated as a monumental feat, but by chapter 5 having one occur was given little more than a "sweet, new tail" comment from a side character; both Rune and The Guildmaster's real names were revealed very soon after their introduction despite both events being exposited as huge and rare reveals; Maelstrom's reveal to Dielle and Inigo happened on the day that they met despite Maelstrom's existence being mostly unknown to any other temporary companion.
Similarly, outright "given" aspects either of characters themselves or of PMD stories are stretched out for ages for no real reason: Malachi's reveal as being half-evolved was held off until the protagonist/partner pair reached the guild in Chapter 2, Grovyle's "reveal" as the thief wasn't done until around Chapter 7 (actually, I'm not even certain if it's been confirmed in-story yet) despite being in the prologue of the real game, Rune's """reveal""" as a former human took until chapter 6 to be introduced despite the fucking genre of the comic (for comparison: imagine if a murder mystery only revealed that it was a murder mystery about 1/3 of the way into the book and spent the first third gossiping about characters you haven't seen yet in terms like "I haven't seen that guy in a while" or "I wonder where he went?")...
It's all just frustrating.
It's a shame, because- as I said- the comic has a bunch of cool concepts. Almost everything surrounding its worldbuilding interests me. Its plot is above-average for the genre (even if it's still quite bad). The art is very pleasing to the eye (if not really good), too, despite changing constantly throughout the comic...
I'm going to leave my thoughts here lest I write an entire novel on OBT's comic alone.
I haven't even touched on the author's wife's own troubles with her comic (if you thought that having a chapter hijacked by gay romance in this comic was bad, just wait until you see her wife's comic where, for three real-world years, the main characters were sidelined for her gay mixed-race couple and super-special OC species), anything to do with OBT's ask blog or extra art, the sheer amount of money this woman makes from this comic...
It's a lot. It's a relatively extensive rabbit hole and I only have enough time to rant about the comic today. Feel free to look further into the rest of it yourselves if you'd like.
For my closing remark, I think I'll just say that, for a story about how discrimination is bad... it's quite the funny twist to have your all-white protagonist with anger issues turn out to be a black thief.
What is it with the Shinx line? I've sperged about InfinityDoom's PMD fic in this thread before (don't bother; it's basically "what if we took your average PMD fic, turned the edginess way past the end of the dial and replaced all the dialog with rape?"). That has a Shinx in it, too. Why do people want to see Shinx suffer so badly?
What is it with the Shinx line? I've sperged about InfinityDoom's PMD fic in this thread before (don't bother; it's basically "what if we took your average PMD fic, turned the edginess way past the end of the dial and replaced all the dialog with rape?"). That has a Shinx in it, too. Why do people want to see Shinx suffer so badly?
I've read it before and am glad there's someone else who's sperged about it, the story is essentially just mindless rape and edge, in between hyping up iron weapons that should basically be useless to a species that's extremely superhuman 99% of the time.
My main problem with it is that Infinitydoom has the worst case of same body syndrome I've seen in a Pokemon artist, because they're clearly only capable of drawing rats, so they have make even the bigger and more animal-like Pokemon look like skinny bipedal rats.
My main problem with it is that Infinitydoom has the worst case of same body syndrome I've seen in a Pokemon artist, because they're clearly only capable of drawing rats, so they have make even the bigger and more animal-like Pokemon look like skinny bipedal rats.
What? You mean this isn't an official promotional still from the games?
Something that annoyed me today: I hate when an artist/writer deliberately puts foreshadowing in a strip, but pointlessly diffuses the tension in the next strip with some Whedon-esque quip or other joke. Like they refuse to commit. Not exactly a hot take, I know, but to give an example...
Context: Hello from Halo Head (I know, I know, but bear with me) is set in the headspace of two human women who are probably different aspects of the same IRL person (Chloe and Clair). Other aspects/characters are present, so it's kind of like a cross between Inside Out and Calvin and Hobbes. Anyway, at one point one of the other characters discovers that Halo Head isn't the first world created by Chloe/Clair. The previous world is almost empty and desolate, with only a single survivor (Ares).
The other animals are so concerned with this discovery they go to a lot of effort to keep Clair in the dark over a full day in-universe. Just when they think they're home free - and after like 30 strips of buildup - Clair *gasp!* calls one of the animals (Mars) by her counterpart's name:
The implications of this, Clair's Stepford smile, the way she's standing over Mars and the darkening sky seems foreboding, no? Luckily for our characters it's just ignored in the next strip and the 30 pages of buildup were for nothing: Sigh. I know it seems like I'm making a mountain out of a molehill but the artist always does this. While all this was going on the yellow dog there was supposed to be hanging out with Chloe. He forgot about her and left her alone in his house all day. She's mentally unstable and he rushed back, terrified she would wreck the place and be furious with him. When he gets back the place is spotless and she carries on the next day like nothing happened:
Neither of these examples are bad on their own, but the whole comic is like this. The last time I brought up Hello from Halo Head people pointed out that there are plenty of things objectively wrong with this strip. I personally like it deep down because I'm a sucker for cute art but every strip is either building up to something that never happens or sitting around navel-gazing (the six strips starting from here).
What is it with the Shinx line? I've sperged about InfinityDoom's PMD fic in this thread before (don't bother; it's basically "what if we took your average PMD fic, turned the edginess way past the end of the dial and replaced all the dialog with rape?"). That has a Shinx in it, too. Why do people want to see Shinx suffer so badly?
