Kennel Club Book Club - The Megathread for all furry comic book, graphic novel and literature lunacy.

[Celestial Peace]

A lot of the human hating indeed is part of this old school sci-fi thing of constantly imagining a brighter future and trying to measure up to it. H. G. Wells was a socialist and he was guilty of it, with all that wide eyed innocence about how technology would solve all human problems and we would just magically stop having issues.

It could get even more ridiculous, like with Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke where the aliens show up and they just fix shit to the point where in like 30 years religion, racism and bigotry are all gone. It's absolutely pie in the sky shit only possible by overdosing on optimism.

Most fictions depicting a dystopian and corrupt society have some nuance of socialist propaganda behind them such as 1984 (or was it Brave New World?) because the message is basically "Look! This is what happens when you vote for the right!" though the author also had to take inspiration from the Soviet regime to create the authoritarian government.

Which brings us to that typical debate whether USSR and the like were socialist or communist or whatever whenever people point out authoritarian aspects of said countries and these discussions often lead to nowhere because they're nothing more than diversion tactics.

The main difference between these types of human negativity and the furry type is that in one it is meant as a show of being primitive and unevolved, the other is just strawmaning.

Couldn't quite grasp what you meant with the last paragraph: Are you saying people-hating people are "primitive and unevolved" for hating the worst aspects of mankind?

 

[General Emílio Médici]

No, I meant that in books like the example I gave of Childhood's End the negative aspects of humanity are there to contrast with a more evolved and advanced alien intelligence. The idea being that once humanity progresses to a certain tech level they just stop being horrible and things which have existed since the dawn of time like prejudice, poverty, war and such will simply cease to be and we will all advance into luxury gay space communism.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

No, I meant that in books like the example I gave of Childhood's End the negative aspects of humanity are there to contrast with a more evolved and advanced alien intelligence. The idea being that once humanity progresses to a certain tech level they just stop being horrible and things which have existed since the dawn of time like prejudice, poverty, war and such will simply cease to be and we will all advance into luxury gay space communism.

Whig history is retarded and so are its proponents. In this case I don't think it applies to furries. Furry alines in these stories are hyper evolved because the authors are misanthropic, not optimistic.

 

[MirageKai]

(Short review)
Pretty good reads, always love the mimilist style jason brings to his comics. He really knows how to set the mood in every story with anthropomorphic charcters have alot depth to them. I connect with them Especially on the rereads. Most of his work is very melancholic and thought provoking.

Tldr: go read it and his other works lol

 

[California Newt]

A lot of the human hating indeed is part of this old school sci-fi thing of constantly imagining a brighter future and trying to measure up to it. H. G. Wells was a socialist and he was guilty of it, with all that wide eyed innocence about how technology would solve all human problems and we would just magically stop having issues.

It could get even more ridiculous, like with Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke where the aliens show up and they just fix shit to the point where in like 30 years religion, racism and bigotry are all gone. It's absolutely pie in the sky shit only possible by overdosing on optimism.

The main difference between these types of human negativity and the furry type is that in one it is meant as a show of being primitive and unevolved, the other is just strawmaning.

Furry ideological tendencies are just the worst aspects of the contemporary worldview when they coalesce into the basin of genetic despair at the bottom of society.

Their obsession with sex comes from the absence of any kind of transcendence in their worldview. Everything is 100% immanentized; this is what a fursona is—it's a symbolic expression of the qualities they'd like to identify with (or, more accurately, be identified with), but they confuse the sign for its referent.

Rather than integrate these qualities into themselves through discipline and then actualize them in the real world—growing "teeth" (courage), "wings" (mental freedom) etc. and using them in a real demonstration of creative potency—they want to superficially embody those qualities through animal analogies and then, in that form, have sex (thus exerting the only creative potency that their lizard-brain understands—even if this is only a subjective psychological feeling that, as in the case of homosexuality, is in materiality sterile: non-reproductive sexuality is only ever materially "potent" in a negative sense, as in the case of bug-chasing).

I don't mean that having a fursona is necessarily bad, by the way (it's just horoscopes/MTBI for autistic people, which can be fun); I'm just saying that the way the "furry community" has historically used the concept reflects tendencies in the broader society taken to their logical conclusion. Those who can't grow teeth LARP; those who can't bite LARP sexually. These are behaviors that used to be relatively restricted to social outcasts, but these days everyone's abject spiritual slavery puts them in the same boat. It makes sense that deviant sexuality has exploded (even beyond top-down recruitment efforts). Transgenderism is fundamentally the same concept.

The biggest problem, though, is that there's no concept of life-force that's identified with the power behind the virtues; I think that this is the single biggest evil of our world. Today, non-cope immortality-aroma is something that people think they can only get from sexual reproduction (the cope version being through non-reproductive sexuality which produces subjective lizard-brain life-generating immortality-force feelings). This severely limits the range of potential life-giving eros available to man, and makes everyone into desperate simps and homosexuals.

Basically what I'm saying is that furries have the religious impulse to "fix" humanity, but they're so neutered by the contemporary milieu that "sex chimera that hates humanity" is as far as they can take that concept.

 

[Creative Username]

-snip-

thats a ridiculous number of reddit philosophy words to say that furries hate themselves and cope by doing uncreative fantasy LARPing

 

[California Newt]

thats a ridiculous number of reddit philosophy words to say that furries hate themselves and cope by doing uncreative fantasy LARPing

That might be a failure of my vocabulary. I might not be smart enough to write short.

My point is that factors beyond their control have actively worked to restrict their imagination in ways that make it more difficult for them to improve their position in life.

There are many people who, whether through jealousy or legitimate grievance, have a bone to pick with mainstream "normal" (middle-class and broadly secular) society. These people often get into escapism. Along the way, though, they often find a legitimately different way to frame the world: they find a real non-cope alternative to the "normal" life which they—for whatever reason—resent.

That's the biggest strength of fantasy or sci-fi as a genre: when done right, it presents ways of thinking and living that are truly alien (at least to the reader). The worst fantasy and sci-fi is basically just contemporary society with a vaguely Star Trek or Tolkienesque coat of paint; maybe they'll toss in some video game magic mechanics on top. The good stuff confronts the reader with worldviews that they might not be familiar with, whether that be wholly original or drawn from real-world philosophy, religion, metaphysics, or politics.

An escapist sees this stuff and finds something that resonates with him: maybe it's a religion, or maybe it's something else. Whatever it is, though, they quickly find out that it's actually more difficult to follow than "oppressive" normal suburbia-as-depicted-by-Hollywood. It might be an escape from meaninglessness, but it's not an escape from effort. They have to actually improve themselves. In the process, they might even become capable of having that "normal" life they resented, which turns out not to be so bad after all.

My point is that, under the contemporary milieu (which ranges between classical liberalism and progressivism), there's no reason for furries (and similar types) to change—they're not "coping" any more-or-less than anyone else; it's all reducible to placating the lizard-brain. Having a family and passing your torch isn't "important", it's just something you do because it "feels good". If you can "feel good" in an animal mask you're not "LARPing", you're an innovator who's finding a shorter distance to the same location. You can't be accused of LARPing if there's no reality beyond pleasure.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

Having a family and passing your torch isn't "important", it's just something you do because it "feels good".

I'd argue humans are evolutionarily programmed to want to have a family and pass on the torch which is why when people deviate from that paradigm they are seen as (and usually also are) weirdos/deviants in multiple other ways too.

Dinks, antinatalists, the entire alphabet group, people who wasted their youth and are now single and alone, sex pests, general heidonists, etc.

The only difference with furries is that they have a big enough and insular enough community that they don't have to interact with normal people which makes it easier for them to cope, but heidonism almost always eventually catches up.

 

[California Newt]

I'd argue humans are evolutionarily programmed to want to have a family and pass on the torch which is why when people deviate from that paradigm they are seen as (and usually also are) weirdos/deviants in multiple other ways too.

Dinks, antinatalists, the entire alphabet group, people who wasted their youth and are now single and alone, sex pests, general heidonists, etc.

The only difference with furries is that they have a big enough and insular enough community that they don't have to interact with normal people which makes it easier for them to cope, but heidonism almost always eventually catches up.

Even without evolutionary theory, the fact that the default natural human instinct is to reproduce sexually has been uncontroversial throughout history. When I mentioned the relationship between sexuality and immortality-feelings in the lizard-brain, that's what I was referring to. We agree there.

Where I disagree is that I think they're just ahead of the curve when it comes to cynically exploiting that lizard-brain machinery in a nihilistic context. The ethos is already there in the mainstream. Also, I disagree that reproductive sexuality has always been the only acceptable way to grasp at immortality, but you're right in today's context.

Spoiler: A detailed explanation of where I disagree

I think it's important to remember that sexuality as the only vehicle for satisfying the human requirement for immortality is an almost exclusively early-modern phenomenon. It started in the West with the Protestant Reformation, when Luther got rid of monasticism—although you could argue that this was a reaction to the Roman Catholic devaluation and forgetfulness of the authentic Christian mystical tradition (which was already deteriorating in Western Europe before the Great Schism, but accelerated afterwards).

Prior to this (and inconsistently afterward, though not in a mainstream capacity in the West), every civilization has had its ascetics, celibates, and mystics. Many of these traditions—such as Jewish Kaballah, Hindu Kundalini yoga, and Taoist alchemy—tried to reach or realize their immortality through the manipulation and transmutation of sexual energies: examples of such energies are nefesh (in Kaballah), prana (in Hinduism), and Qi (in Taoist alchemy). In Christianity, rather than transmute created sexual energies, the Holy Spirit gives the life-force directly from outside of the created machinery of sexuality—that being said, the common thread through most of these societies has been the idea that sexual reproduction, while not necessarily evil, is a lower path than the mystical (and often a material analogy and reflection of it).

After Luther dethroned monasticism, and around the time that Deism began to degenerate into Atheism, Charles Darwin re-oriented all of life to center around the sexual drive. Less than half a century later, you got Freud (who reduced everything to infantile sexuality)—as well as the sexologists' invention of the category of the "Homosexual". Even French pedophiles like Foucault could tell you how sex-obsessed Europe and America became during the period from the Counter-Reformation up to the twentieth century, finding all kinds of excuses to "multiply discourses" on it and develop their own "science of sexuality".

Today's evolutionary psychologists continue in the ethos of Freud in reducing the human being to a sexual automaton, while today's "queer theorists" continue the work of the nineteenth-century "sexologists" who kickstarted the modern pantheon of "sexual identities".

All of this, I believe, is to collapse creative and mystical psychology into the sexual drive. I don't even mean in a reproductive sense: I mean purely in the sense of exploiting the lizard-brain to produce life-feelings in lieu of any real hope of enduring life. People don't look for immortality anymore: they look for "self actualization" and take anti-depressants. The goal isn't to live, but to cope with death.

It is evil beyond evil and you can't really blame furries—who are autistic and therefore more likely to take things to their abstract logical conclusions—for being presciently consistent about it.

I'm glad that they're still seen as weird, although it's less-so than a decade or two ago. Unfortunately they still seem to be prescient in relation to where things are headed. Maybe that slave-ideology has reached its maximum saturation, though, and the human spirit will win out. That'd be cool.

On an unrelated note, I really didn't like Better Days when I read it back in the day. Gave me the creeps.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Had to leave for a week because of reasons, came back to a philosophical discussion on furry psychology. Bit random, but not the weirdest thing I've seen.

 

[Night Terrorist]

I'd wager it's less 'being a dragon represents my deeply repressed desires' and more 'I think dragons are very cool', personally.
Turns out there were enough bonus chapters for one more post! The Wild West feddiebabble yarn is slowly dragging its shambling corpse toward the finishing line, but there's a few stories that came before it! Also, obligatory fuck Taylor that dumb nigger. At least there's one interesting story development happening. GRESS AND TAYLOR ARE GOING FULL GAY! Also I'm still mad about Venlil Foster Brother.

Spoiler: Nova's Children

This one was a big deal when it dropped! Not just because it's a look into Noah and Tarva's weird kids, but also the first look at an unmodified venlil's life, free from timidity programming and no sense of smell. Hmmm... makes me wonder why venlil mentioned the flavour of things when they had no sense of smell... anyway.
Interestingly, each chapter begins with a flashback to their early childhood, showing what they were like growing up, and how they gradually came to realise how different they were from each other. The bulk of the chapter features them as young adults, in the idyllic year of 2152 - well after the federation catastrophe, but before the consortium mongoloids came to say hello.
As children, the awkward topic of Elia being from a sperm donor, Ari being completely adopted, and Noah being a double cuckold (well, maybe not that last one) as they realise they aren't the same species, is bought up. About as delicately as they can (considering how can you shatter a kid's worldview delicately?), Noah and Tarva explain where their kiddos came from, and that they wuv them very much. Emphasising the differences between them becomes the formula for the flashback sections - how Elia is stronger than Ari as a child (she breaks his fucking ribs), how Ari is treated by his fellow students when they start school, telling the kids about how Noah and Tarva met, and so on. I kinda like these flashback sections more than the main story. They're sweet, the kids aren't written horribly, and it's just plain neat to see the gradual progression of society on Skalga, bit by bit. What's particularly cute is that the flashbacks tie into the main story, with the kids being taught some sort of lesson or moral which is directly relevant to the present-day stuff. It's pretty cool.
By comparison, the 'main' story is a linear tale of Elia wanting to be a sprinter at the first Venlil Olympics (yes, that's what it's called) and Ari having crippling depression because he doesn't know his real parents and he doesn't feel fully human and he's worried his sister will be fucking off because she's an adult at 15 and he isn't. In the midst of Elia's angst about her future, and her rebellious, fiery nature clashing with Tarva's more phlegmatic personality, she resolves to help Ari find his birth parents at any cost. However, as foreshadowed in the chapter 3 flashback, prejudices against humans are alive and well on Skalga... things take a turn for the worse, before the extent of Noah and Tarva's influence is made very dramatically clear. I enjoyed Ari's reaction to what happened - it's very human, not over- or underdone. Does Ari find his birth parents? Not his father, as he left on an ark ship, which (considering Ari is black) is probably the single funniest joke SP ever told.
You can tell SP really, really tried with this one, probably recognising how important a tale this one was going to be! I think he did pretty good, all things considered, even if it gets a bit weird here and there. I really like the running joke where Noah constantly eavesdrops on the kids blathering about retarded shit together. Also, STOP HAVING CHARACTERS REFER TO THEIR PARENTS BY NAME UNLESS THERE'S A GOOD REASON AAAAAAAGH FUCKING STOOOOOOP. Also, if you're playing the 'snot bubbling when crying' drinking game, have another drink. You earned it.

Spoiler: Gojid Refugee

Remember Talpin, the deaf gojid from wayyyyy back in NoP? Much like JoeysWorldTour, he's beeeeeeaaaaaaack. But it's not set in the present day - it's his perspective of the arxur invasion of the cradle, the humans fighting said arxur, and learning that he could actually be treated as a person and not a useless sack of meat.
Life is beyond shit for Talpin. Everyone talks about him like he's an imbecile or a liability or potentially predator diseased because he never went to school. But ya boi can lip read, and occasionally makes this known to people who talk shit about him. His sister is fond of him, and does what she can to protect him from harm, but his father (while outwardly supportive) is resentful that he can't continue the family tradition of music. Unable to take it anymore, Talpin plans to use himself as bait when these newfangled predators show up so his family can escape. SP's description of this verdant pre-arxur village is wonderful, making it easy to visualise its homey splendour, especially when most Federation worlds had such humble locations completely decimated.
The human domination of warfare is made clear once again, but this time from the gojid perspective. Unprepared for paratroopers, the gojid defences were immediately nullified, leaving the gojid forces to immediately fall into a herd panic and making them easy pickings. With no faith in the Great Protector (a Fed invention, remember), Talpin prepares for the worst and begins to psyche himself up to enact his diversion plan. He leaves the house in search of predators to lure away, hoping he can be remembered for bravery as opposed to being a drain on society... and he finds their camp. While I'm generally tired of feddiebabble, it doesn't bother me as much in this story. Dunno why. Maybe it's because it's set so early on. Either way, he's discovered almost immediately... along with his sister, who followed him. They try to run, but surprise! The arxur begin THEIR raid at that inopportune moment. The humans fight back, and Talpin gets his first view of the human-arxur conflict on the cradle.
The humans take Talpin and his sister into custody after saving them from the arxur, into the most luxurious cattle pen imaginable. Food, games, TV, everything. She opts to not tell them that her brother is deaf - they both think he'll be culled for weakness if they find out. It makes living among the humans a nightmare, though, since they don't know he's deaf! Eventually, the truth comes out - you saw this scene in the story proper (thanks, Sovlin!). Humans, of course, aren't barbarians, and have ways of dealing with disabilities that aren't predator disease facilities or execution. Being treated like a person gives Talpin a new lease on life. He comes out of fed-thinking rapidly, much like Mallin before him, as he realises his life is infinitely better with the humans than it ever was on the cradle. Opportunities, the likes of which he's never even dreamed of, are his for the taking.
I really, really like this story! The sheer quantity of gojid lore (a fairly undeveloped species for such a major one) is both great to read, and relieving, as it means we don't ever need to read Something About Blue again. The narrative choices work well and it's just long enough to breathe without getting rambly or meandering. Strong recommend.

Spoiler: Star-Crossed

After the disaster that was his previous love story (which I don't want to keep harping on about), SP said he wanted to write another romance, but better. I'd say he succeeded, even if it's still far from perfect. I can at least understand where some of the janky writing ideas are coming from, at least. However, despite that, it's still got an air of cringe that hangs over it like a dark cloud.
Chloe de Vries is our plucky girlfailure protagonist, a loser who has never succeeded in her life. She's tried her hand at many things and failed them all. The fact she even got this job assessing kolshian asylum seekers is some sort of miracle, but it's less due to her qualifications and more because nobody wants to interact with kolshians. Lucky her. Things start poorly, because everyone on the station is a dickhead, and she's got a failure complex and is completely out of her depth. It's fortunate, then, that her first assessment is a very friendly kolshian indeed - our second protagonist, Kelvanis. Or Kelvan to his friends.
I'd say Kelvan's chapters are more interesting than Chloe's. While the woes of a perennial girlfailure are kind of endearing, Kelvan's an alien and his perspective is typically more intriguing. We learn about the state of Aafa in more detail than we've heard about Grenelka or Nishtal. It's fucked. Things are bad on Aafa and it shouldn't come as a surprise that a lot of kolshians want to leave. With his education in xenobotany going to waste when he can't leave the planet and the population living in squalid semi-anarchy, he decides he needs to make an exit... even if it means leaving his sister behind, all by herself, on a planet where law and order has mostly fallen apart. Hmmm. Okay. His sister doesn't want him to go, but it comes from a place of fearing for his life, rather than fearing what might happen to her if she's left by herself, which is something that gets bizarrely glossed over outside of token references to burglars. This is one of many very odd writing choices in this story.
Kelvan looks over Aafa as he ascends to the human space station, giving us more tidbits on the state of the planet and reminiscing about the Federation-Terran war from a random civilian's perspective as he zooms up into the sky. He remembers seeing the faint explosions in the sky as arxur, kolshian, and human ships were entangled with each other... as well as the falling of debris that killed almost as many people as the riots. This is one of the strengths of the bonus chapters - we all unironically love a random civilian's perspective of a massive conflict and its aftermath, since it's more relatable than the heroes' perspective. He can't think for long, though, as he's got an interview with Chloe to get to. He's not confident, but he's gonna try, by gum, because humans need to see that most kolshians are goo' boys who dindu nuffin.
Chloe is in a complete state when Kelvan strolls in. No idea what to do, say, or write. The sight of him pushes her over the edge and she loses her head and starts to babble. SP takes the time to describe a kolshian in more detail, but I still, for the life of me, cannot visualise what the hell a kolshian is supposed to look like. As one of the few alien species that aren't 'Earth animal but a bit weird' in design, kolshians need to be described in a little more detail, but I'm just full of questions. Are their legs tentacles too? Are they hunched over, or upright? How big are their heads relative to their body? Was there a better description in the main story that I forgot about? I don't have a clue! I guess the image on the wiki is close enough, although it's explicitly stated that kolshians have vertical slit pupils... I'm rambling, sorry. Point is, Kelvan is a big sweetie and helps Chloe calm down by engaging in some friendly silliness. Rather taken by the big-hearted alien, Chloe relaxes and starts noticing stuff about him and their interview lasts way too long and you can see where this is going. Strange, isn't it, how in the few times SP has paired a human female with an alien male, it's always a white woman. Does he truly hate aliens that much? I can't imagine why he'd be so cruel.
Their romance is thankfully a slow burn. They don't fall head over heels immediately and it takes a handful of chapters for the pair of them work out they fancy each other, which I'm appreciative of, even if it results in SCL being one of the longest side stories. Kelvan and Chloe both mistake their growing interest in each other for other emotions, like anti-predator fear or new job nervousness, which is cute. The interview degenerates into casual chat as they talk about what a shithole Aafa has become, to how the mighty Dutch have conquered the galaxy with their knowledge of water's edge living. It's pretty cute. They're interrupted by Chloe's manager, but she tells him to piss off. It seems our intrepid lovebirds are about to be split up! But Kelvan offers to carry Chloe's bags to her room! And then she invites him in! And they have a nice meal, share some more chitchat, and generally get to know each other better, as the romantic tension begins to REALLY blossom. There's no getting around it - they're in true and honest looooove. And then they FUCK. The first official sex scene of the franchise, although it's mercifully kept very vague. Or perhaps unmercifully if you're into that sorta thing. I'm not judging. Really! Apparently she bit him a lot, which is funny to think about, seeing as she's a meat-eater.
Everything goes wrong the next morning, though. Kelvan wasn't in his bunk, and his application was rejected anyway. Chloe has to admit to her manager that he's in her room. He loses his mind, because he's been assaulted by a kolshian before, as have many people... but he's just barely nice enough to allow Chloe to get rid of Kelvan herself, rather than sending in the SWAT team. The security guard (who's much nicer than the manager, although he's still kind of a dick) plants an idea in her head to get Kelvan a second shot, although he ends up refusing to go along with it - he returns to Aafa, promising to name a new flower after her. But all is not lost, for there's ANOTHER way to get him asylum on Earth. All she has to do is go down to Aafa and find him. But that's a really bad idea! Aafa is borderline lawless, full of criminals and desperate people who fucking hate humans. Sending down a lone human by herself is tantamount to suicide. Mercifully, she realises this, and doesn't go through with it, ending the story right there and then - hey, wait, why's that shuttle going down to Aafa- oh, goddamnit, woman.
Ordinarily I'd say this was a retard writing decision, but let's face it - everyone's done something spectacularly fucking stupid in the name of love before. I myself have embarrassed myself in the name of romance in the past. This seems to be a step above that, though. Chloe's trip to Aafa is... a mixed bag, to say the least. She finds Kelvan, but at the cost of being brutally mugged. So that's nice. But now their love can finally blossom, if they can get past the final boss of romance blockading.
SCL is a bit of a hard one to read. It's cringe, for a start. There's also a lot of stuff that seems really fucking stupid and nonsensical on paper, that only start to make sense when you stop and think about it - people doing stupid shit for love, the office being barely functional because nobody's qualified and it's far away from Earth jurisdiction, the fact there seems to be so few avenues for rejected applicants is farcical because the manager hates kolshians, Chloe makes ridiculous decisions out of inexperience, etc etc. I still can't quite get over Kelvan abandoning his sister, though. His reasons for seeking asylum are altruistic, but you can't just leave a young woman alone in a society like that, my guy. SCL is also fucking long - I've only covered the first half of it in any detail, and I haven't talked about the last couple pages at all. However, it's still a good yarn, the sort of romance that'll resonate pretty well with men - it's not about the chase, but about perserverance and unconditional attraction. And in that regard, it works quite well, although I kinda question why they didn't just add each other on Discord and keep in touch that way.

But let's not allow all this distract us from the fact Noah is a double cuckold.

Spoiler: Gress's First Encounter

It's Gress seeing unmasked humans for the first time, from his perspective. And it sucks. Not because the concept is bad, but because the writing is terrible. Why? Because SP wrote it live for his paypigs on Discord, so it's a first draft. The pacing is sloppy and the structure is shit. It's an interesting experiment but I don't care for it.

Spoiler: Gress's Cases

Our first classic of the NoP2 era. I wasn't keen on the concept of this story, but it was actually very cool and well-written. SP deftly handles the writing of Gress struggling with balancing being a father and hostage negotiator, ensuring one is always in the back of his mind as he handles the other. Gress constantly has to abandon his daughter to take care of hostage crises, which (since she's a toddler) she doesn't understand and doesn't care to. He's wracked with guilt about not being able to keep his promises to his daughter, which he takes out on his rather unpleasant wife, causing an ungodly amount of friction. No wonder Gress ended up going full fucking gay with Taylor... even though Taylor is even worse in every conceivable way.
Ya boi has to take care of several different cases, showing his strengths as a character - patience, lateral thinking, and being able to empathise with the various criminals without sounding like he's outright supporting them. His crew include a particularly pissed off resket (who acts as the foil to Gress) and an especially devious and secretive trombil who's part of what seems to be a mixture of secret police and Illuminati. It's really enjoyable, seeing the way the characters bounce off one another. There's also a surprising amount of twists and turns! It makes following the story particularly fun. Each case lasts about two pages, and the stakes keep escalating with each one! The last case is especially thrilling, and yet SP doesn't fall into the trap of making characters do or act wildly differently (Tyler randomly knowing that vitamin B12 deficiency causes delusions, for example). Everyone sticks to their established characterisation and handle the cases in their own way, each with their own chance to shine.
It's hard to pick a favourite, but I was rather partial to the case of the murderous resket. It gave Gress's 'friend' a chance to do something other than bumble around trying to kill everything. It was cool! I'd like to see more of these guys... but we won't, because Gress's life as a hostage negotiator is long over. Perhaps the characters will return someday? It wouldn't surprise me. You can't have a mysterious superhacker who watches over Gress NOT return in some capacity.
Anyway, yeah, Gress's Cases is the first success of the NoP2 side story era. Wild West is, so far, something of a downgrade, since it's just Becoming a Predator with new window dressing... we'll see how it goes.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

and Noah being a double cuckold

I've been waiting for you to cover this so I could use it as an excuse to talk about Noah, because it really bothered me that he was made into a double cuckold. He may have been black but he deserved better damnit. I talked about it with Ricearoni in DMs as well as on this thread.

Taking inspiration from DS9 I'd rather Noah was a single father with a young son. Tarva seperated from her original husband when her daughter was (effectively) killed in an Arxur gas attack, so I figured this would have put her off having any other children due to trauma and bad memories of having to put down her own kid.

You could have had Noah's wife also die in a tragic way in the past leaving him with a young child and aversion to getting remarried.

That way Noah could learn to get over his wife's death and look for a new partner in (Tarva) and Tarva could slowly bond with Noah's son helping getting over the death of her own child, culminating in her enjoying her time with mininoah enough to push her into wanting to restart her life and have another kid.

This imo solves the triple problem of Noah not having Arc, Tarva getting over her kid's death and having a new one more or less out of the blue, and Noah being humiliated by literally having another man impregnate his wife and raising 2 kids from 2 seperate men.

As a bonus, it also gives Tarva and Noah's relationship a little bit more symmetry.

 

[Gog & Magog]

I've been waiting for you to cover this so I could use it as an excuse to talk about Noah, because it really bothered me that he was made into a double cuckold. He may have been black but he deserved better damnit. I talked about it with Ricearoni in DMs as well as on this thread.

Taking inspiration from DS9 I'd rather Noah was a single father with a young son. Tarva seperated from her original husband when her daughter was (effectively) killed in an Arxur gas attack, so I figured this would have put her off having any other children due to trauma and bad memories of having to put down her own kid.

You could have had Noah's wife also die in a tragic way in the past leaving him with a young child and aversion to getting remarried.

That way Noah could learn to get over his wife's death and look for a new partner in (Tarva) and Tarva could slowly bond with Noah's son helping getting over the death of her own child, culminating in her enjoying her time with mininoah enough to push her into wanting to restart her life and have another kid.

This imo solves the triple problem of Noah not having Arc, Tarva getting over her kid's death and having a new one more or less out of the blue, and Noah being humiliated by literally having another man impregnate his wife and raising 2 kids from 2 seperate men.

As a bonus, it also gives Tarva and Noah's relationship a little bit more symmetry.

Is this part of the author's fetish?

 

[Gog & Magog]

Nobody answered my question.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

We don't know. But SpacePaladin IS a redditor so might be.

 

[Gog & Magog]

An autistic Russian made a short WW2 comic starring his furry waifu. Don't ask me to explain why. I don't know understand it either.
https://x.com/paul_sir31010/status/1788903306934337600

"Victory Day...Well yeah. A solemn day. But I'm always reminded of this important thing. We can defeat evil...But no one can save us from our nightmares. Thank you, Lisa. We love you."

Spoiler: Fox Hole

"Story is dedicated to the 20 million Slavic victims of the German Generalplan OST on the territory of the Soviet Union."

He is a good cartoonist which makes his work all the more baffling.

 

[Baguette Child]

He is a good cartoonist which makes his work all the more baffling.

I hate ones like this because, honestly, his art style is actually really good. I would totally read a normal comic drawn in his style if the dude weren't a furry degenerate wasting his talent on political furry wank.

 

[California Newt]

I hate ones like this because, honestly, his art style is actually really good. I would totally read a normal comic drawn in his style if the dude weren't a furry degenerate wasting his talent on political furry wank.

That's an understandable thing to want, but there's a dilemma there.

A lot of the time, artists develop their unique styles specifically for the purpose of expressing their niche weirdo fixations; you can't really divorce the style from the muse, because if you do they won't want to draw anymore.

A number of porn artists run into this problem when they try to go clean with the same style: it just looks like the opening pages to a porn and they run out of steam quick.

To go clean, an artist has to alter his understanding of his muse first. There's no guarantee that the end product will look a whole lot like what grabbed your eyes initially.

Sometimes I wonder if artists who sort their problems out all wind up pouring concrete instead.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Been a while since @Dr. Ricearoni made a NoP review where they at I miss them.

In the meantime and speaking of NoP here are a few stories set in the universe. Gonna keep it down to just completed fanfics to not clog stuff.

Playing by Ear

Your average exchange program story, but it was well written and expanded very well. It mostly focuses on music, and the characters are well written.

Bloodhound Saga

By the same author as Playing by Ear, but a totally different story. Right after the Battle of Ear a fed ship crashes into a max security prison. In the chaos a inmate escapes, and one of the aliens (A Tulsek, aardvark looking with very sharp sense of smell) is conscripted into being a bloodhound to find the prisoner.

New York Carnival

Technically not finished, but the first arc is fully done so I am recompensing that one. Said 1st arc follows Sifal, a Arxur engineer sent as part of the help Isif offered to do search and rescue. She ends up finding a restaurant still standing and much talking ensues. Pretty good characters and discussions.

Occupation Hazard

This one starts just after the Battle of Earth and follows the adventures of Reno, a yotul who wants nothing more than TFD (total fed death) for the shit they have done to Lerin and his people and him. This leads him to join the UN and get sent to Sillis, where things get very silly indeed.

Also, this happened.


Poor SpacePaladin15.

 

[Baguette Child]

Been a while since @Dr. Ricearoni made a NoP review where they at I miss them.

Yeah, ricearoni's posts were a big draw to the thread for me. I miss them too.