Hi Sluggy Folks!

[habitually_dubious]

Salutations!

So, I've occasionally considered getting in on the conversation here in the Sluggite Zone. I've only been reading Sluggy about two years now, I believe the comic was in '4U City Green' when I first started. My brother introduced me to it initially, showing me stories like 'Displacement,' 'Ocean's Unmoving,' and 'Holiday Wars.' It was enough to get me to read the whole archive--getting to know the characters and watching them evolve in terms of personality and artwork has been a fascinating experience all around. In a culture where comedy seems to thrive on characters who are stubbornly and stupidly resistant to character development, I find it genuinely refreshing to find a cast that actually seems to learn from their mistakes (albeit slowly in some cases) and try to improve themselves.

I tend to think of Sluggy Freelance as being kind of like Calvin and Hobbes, but where the characters are grownups, the talking animals aren't imaginary, and they actually build real devices to travel to different worlds, instead of just pretending to. The comparison, I feel, is a testament to both Bill Watterson and Pete Abrams in their abilities to not only find working formulas to keep readers interested and engaged with the characters, but also to inspire other comic artists to find their own grooves.

At any rate, thanks for providing the opportunity to communicate and hang out with other Sluggy fans. I hope to get to add my two cents to the discussion soon. Stay awesome, folks,

Jack

[Zillatain]

Welcome to the forum habitually_dubious, you can talk with other people who have some very odd comic likes. I mean, come on, "Sluggy Freelance"?!? What the hell kind of name is that? There has to be something not right with those kinds of fans...

Oh look, here some some right now. They're called Pesterers, and they are somewhat unstable. They will smell newcomer scent on you and come running/limping/drooling to "pester" you. They do so hoping that you will post some (original) poetry to soothe their pitiful whines. Haiku is the regular format, but any type is perfectly acceptable.

If you do fall for their "demands" and post a poem, the will usually give you a gift in return. It may be less than fatal if opened (or not), but it should be surprising.

Lastly, the tradition is the pestering, not the poetry. You need not do anything more to be subsumed by the Cult of Sluggy.

You already have been...

[Steave]

Pester pester pester.
I made it out of words.
Pester pester pester.
Flocks around you just like birds.

Pester pester pester.
I can't keep this up for long.
Pester pester pester.
This pester song is done.

[Jorodryn]

Excuse me while I whip this out *pester*

Steave it only works if he/she posts the poetry. (what? Jack could be a girl's name)

[habitually_dubious]

@Jorodyn: So I take it Steave is always like this?

And I take no offense to your caution with the pronouns. While I've met various women named 'Jackie' or 'Jaquelin' (with various spellings on both), I did once meet a woman who goes by 'Jack.' So it wasn't an unreasonable caution.

And, if it helps, I have no issue with using 'they' as a gender-undefined singular pronoun. 'They' has been used as gender-neutral singular for hundreds of years--it's only by early twentieth-century convention that this has changed. At some point around the turn of the century, the uptight, sexist, and often ethnocentric grammar-Nazis who make these decisions decided that since 'they' and 'their' can refer to a group, we should quit using them as a singular pronoun and start using 'he' and 'his' instead whenever the gender of the subject is unknown. Toward the middle of the century, however, the feminist movement took offense to the use of 'he' and 'his', since the subject could very well be a woman. Rather than going back to using 'they' and 'their', however, the feminists muddied the waters further by insisting on clumsy constructions like 'he/she', 's/he', and 'his/her.'

Isn't grammar history nifty?

[Steave]

I can see that you are going to find a place here nicely.


Also: PESTER!

[Zillatain]

See! I told you they were unstable... Steave you all ready pestered him. Are you off your meds again? Um...or, are you back on your meds? Humanoids are funny.

As for "they", I use it all the time. Otherwise I would be using she/he/it all the time instead. Abbreviated of course to s/h/it...

[Steave]

Well gosh. If I say Pester once and then just keep quiet, that's not very pestery is it. My pesters are legion!

[habitually_dubious]

@Zillatain: Heh. Thanks, I'll have to remember that line about she/he/it being s/h/it. I think some of my colleagues will appreciate that.

[Jorodryn]

Alright we now have multi pesters... I think I like that. Pessssterrrr

[Steave]

See. habi_dub comes along and posts something which is clearly not poetry which means its time to drop another pester, yo!

[habitually_dubious]

@Steave: Never been much of a poet, I'm afraid. But I did drop a bit of fan art in the 'Fan art for Pete' forum. Will you accept that as a substitute?

[Steave]

Hmm. Well I suppose I could stop pestering you. But you don't get a gift.

... No that's mean. Here have some Yoshi'taka Amano on a stick. It's delicious.

[Edguy]

As for "they", I use it all the time. Otherwise I would be using she/he/it all the time instead. Abbreviated of course to s/h/it...

I got an angry message for camouflaging a dirty word once, bad mod!


PS; Hi habi.. Let's call you Hab-Dub!

PPS; Pessssterr!

[Goatlord42]

Welcome. Nice to hear folks still taking the archive dive for the first time. :)