Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

WCDT Strips 3211 to 3215 (2nd to 6th May 2016)

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Kugai:
Might I suggest we all take a deep breath, calm down and wait to see where Jeph takes this Storyline before we all start reaching for the Tar and Feathers?

ankhtahr:

--- Quote from: APersonAmI on 03 May 2016, 14:39 ---Making it impossible to punish violent people is the opposite of making it backfire in their face. It is to say that violence should be done, rather than say that one should be punished for doing it. Rather the opposite of how these actions should be treated, really. And also in a way very similar to how one defends the horrors of violence in reality - make it seem like the act was a different one, or in a different context, than it was. To make the act seem less serious, less unambiguous.

--- End quote ---

Our opinions seem to differ a lot about this. I think the retcon was exactly the right thing to do. The intentions of Jeph weren't to display the indubitably severe consequences of pulling a gun on an innocent person. His intention was to make a simple joke based on hyperbole. Consider that nobody was supposed to see the original version of the comic. Jeph had already corrected this mistake before uploading the comic, he merely uploaded the wrong file. He doesn't want to show the consequences because the character isn't that bad. He just made the wrong choice in showing this, and wanted to correct that mistake before uploading, otherwise we wouldn't have gotten Dolphin Jack yesterday.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Jeph doesn't not show the consequences because that person should get away with that, but rather because in his (usually rather utopic, see e.g. Smif accepting trans* students in contrary to the real Smith University, at least until 2015) universe the character doesn't actually do it in the first place. If, in the canon version, the character actually did something that bad, he would show the consequences, I'm sure of it.

Tova:
The original crossed a line in my mind, I think that the humour in the reworked comic fell flat because my perspective had been coloured by the earlier comic. Maybe the final comic would have provoked an amused reaction on its own, but it's too late for that now.

I say this as someone who normally stoutly defends the slapstick violence in the comic.

ankhtahr:
Jeph has already admitted to making a mistake in creating the earlier version, even before accidentally uploading it, and he noticed that second mistake only two minutes after publishing. The caching he uses to steer clear of DDoS attacks makes changing such a thing quickly really difficult though. The update has to propagate through the various caches before it reaches the readers. Usually these caches react much slower to changes on a site compared to their reaction to the creation of a new one.

APersonAmI: I'd like to add that, I could completely understand your position, if this were a retcon of a comic which was actually supposed to be published. If the previous version had actually been canon for a while. This wasn't the case. Jeph uploaded the wrong comic, and noticed it a few minutes later. Two minutes later, according to his Twitter. And he had already drawn the alternate version because he knew that letting that person get away with that would have been bad.
I still feel that way about one particular retcon early in the comic. It's still visible that the text has been crudely changed. It was a retcon of a rape joke. A topic which certainly should never be joked about in any way. The offending version was online for a long time, only to be exchanged for a milder one after a few years. Of course it would have been difficult to deal with that after such a long period, but I still think it should have happened.

Tova:
I'd like to emphasise, in light of your response, that my post was not intended to criticise Jeph's original comic, which I understand was unintentionally uploaded, but instead was intended to explain my lukewarm reaction to the reworked version.

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