Stuck in a rut
on August 13, 2013 at 12:01 amThis is the last Roomies! Redux strip. As soon as I left Keenspot to found Blank Label Comics, I stopped doing these things. Like, immediately. Shows how I felt about them at the time. Obligation over!
Drawing all this Roomies! stuff where nothing important can really be done because it’s all locked down in the middle of previously-established continuity was increasingly frustrating to me. I wanted to be free! Again, another lesson that brought me to Dumbing of Age. If I wanted to return to a college setting and have fun with it, I’d have to wipe the slate clean.
Man, this strip sure is super lampshadey.
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Yeah, I’ve had that feeling. The “you woke me up, you must die” feeling, not the “I’m stuck in a rut” feeling. Well, I actually have had that feeling, but it’s not the one that came to mind.
I have that ‘you must die’ feeling every single day. People need to stop fucking waking me up.
Heh, interesting end. Do you think you would have been less frustrated if the ratings system hadn’t been put in place?
I can’t speak for him, but he got to do lesbians in spite of…y’know, newspaper…even if it was just online. It seems to me that the frustration came from knowing the story couldn’t change or advance past shit he locked down half a dozen years beforehand.
Except it totally could, because let’s face it, Ruth/Billie being a thing was nowhere in the original text. But I can see where he’s coming from. That relationship can’t go anywhere, either. Billie ends up with Danny, Ruth ends up with twenty tons of steel rammed into her. There’s no potential.
The ever handy retcon is always fun. Ruth didn’t actually die, her family simply wanted to get their daughter/relation away from the environment that made her break. They lied to the school because they’re short sighted in planning.
But we saw Ruth’s ghost/psychic echo/whatever. You can’t say they’re not dead if you show them existing in the afterlife.
Just a projection of everyone’s thoughts on to the space. Everyone believed Ruth would be there, therefore Ruth was there. A Ruth. Thought would shape reality there. Retcons. They explain everything. Eventually.
Joe’s sorta channeling Future!Ruth, isn’t he? “My hands, they thirst for necks!”
I must say I love the absolutely gorgeous artwork here. How long did it take?
Whatever happened to Blank Label Comics?
We exhibit every year at SDCC.
I -was- going to post a “the logo’s right there on the sidebar, duh!” kind of reply, but…
…it isn’t, not on here, SP! or DoA. And now I’m really confused, trying to figure out where I saw it last, because I could swear it was on a webpage I looked at sometime in the last week, if not indeed today.
Could it be BLC quietly slipped off the internet and into a convention-only entity, or am I just losing the plot? Or both, seeing as I was happily imagining it on the DW triumvirate site sidebars when it plainly isn’t?
The logo is still up on Multiplex. It doesn’t link to anything, but it is technically there, in the lower corner of the right sidebar.
Oddly, that’s one comic I never got into. And I remember the logo being white on dark blue, not green. The mystery thus continues…
And tomorrow, The Change begins.
Literally tomorrow, I went back through the terrifying beast that was the old website and found the comic after the last before Roomies! Redux. Character traits start CHANGING!
Even if they were created out of obligation, the overall quality of the Redux strips is very good, although a batch of them is obviously less-inspired. The last Joyce strips? Golden. Right up there with DoA.
Aw, is that the end of updates for this particular site then? Or are we rolling through into the rest of the story?
Back into Roomies!, followed by It’s Walky! and possibly Joyce and Walky! with subscription strips.
Obligatory tasteless pun: at least they are not stuck in a Ruth.
This reminds me of parts of shortpacked! with the drama tag. The whole theme of whether being stuck in a happy comedy land is good cause no drama means no pain or bad cause no one can really develop…
Originally posted:
May 19, 2005
I have to say, i feel like Roomies Redux fits really well here. It provides a nice bit of breathing room in the pacing, making it feel like the characters have just been living their lives for a little while before the plot really starts to spiral.
…plus, it doesn’t hurt that they were written by a much better future version of the writer, haha