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Honen needs a new avatar.

sethrashnoo wrote:

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Crawl thought the reason I did that Thawhidol joke is because I've been harboring some strong grudge for the past 10 years. Well, no, not really. The reason it was done was because I thought it was funny that his avatar was amongst the pictures stored in the old Acer's Netscape Cache, especially since I don't think he posted all that often. So I just made a joke out of it. It's also relevant to the story's overall theme, but that won't be more apparent until the next few sketches.

Well, that and he's also not the only one. Troy, Dev, and ErniePants all got thoroughly lampooned, too.

Yeah, but the issue is that I don't have the same opinion of those people that I do of Thawhidol. (NOTE: I don't really have an opinion on Thawhidol at all. I don't really know him outside of the way he acted on the boards years ago, which is what I was specifically parodying, and I don't even know his real name or what he looks like IRL. If he matured into a fine upstanding intelligent person over the past few years, so what? That's irrelevant.) But it's one of those issues like with the reader submissions that there's some self-evident reason that's gone over my head that I shouldn't have ever done anything like that ever.***

I don't usually like explaining my jokes, but since the scene has been removed, there's no harm in it:

The issue was brought up that what Nucleo did made him seem like an "annoying" character. I was asked, "What would Nucleo do to religious people if he didn't agree with them? Would he kick them?"

Well, no. Nucleo's shown amazing restraint in previous episodes. In "Clash of the Cliches", his wife is attacked and yet he's still willing to give the attacker the benefit of the doubt of having just made a mistake. He restrains his wife from going postal on her assailant. He almost lost his expedition funding out of his protectiveness of Honen Calzoun - someone he was once enemies with.

The POINT of the scene with Thawhidol is that Thawhidol was SO annoying and uncooperative that even someone who's usually patient to a fault like Nucleo couldn't stand him. But also remember this is taking place inside an ancient harddrive I was using years ago. And whether or not Thawhidol is a good person/bad person now or ever is not important, IMO, because that's just what he was like back when I was using said harddrive, back when he had that avatar I found in its Netscape Cache.

I think part of the problem is that I overestimate my own writing skills. I'll again point to the fact that I'm severely under-educated and my job is too demanding to allow me to change that in any way. I write the series with subtlety in the hopes that the readers can figure things out for themselves. Unfortunately, it's a tough issue to tackle. One the one hand, I see people say that about other things all the time, ("If you don't like Achewood, it's because you're not understanding it", or that Arrested Development wasn't very successful because people just didn't understand it.) But on the other hand, if I really am failing at conveying a point then I don't want to blame that on the readers. I don't want to make it sound like I'm saying, "You're just too dumb to get it". (Not that I ever believed that "not getting something" is always equivalent to "being dumb". That's just a common internet knee-jerk.)

Nucleo doesn't like talking about his past. Notice in "For the Love of an Oni", when he's trying to calm down a confused and distraught Honen, he skirts the issue twice before spilling the beans. I think that what was said in that scene was more than enough for the reader to understand why he cares about Honen. I'm probably wrong, though, but that's why I removed that deleted scene. I didn't feel it necessary to have him explain it again to his wife. I'm sure it's a conversation they've had, but we don't really need to see it.

Unfortunately, though, without the Thawhidol scene, I need to have something there, and I don't have anything else written. Maybe, if I can think of a better way to write that scene, I can change it again.

*** - I'd be lying if I said this doesn't bother me, though. Even if my opinion of him was more negative than the others, why should Thawhidol be protected and everyone else is fair game? Comedy relies on taking risks. Where would Conan O'Brien, Saturday Night Live, and everyone else be if they could only make fun of people they have "good" opinions of?

Crawl and 1OOO wrote:

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I was asked, "What would Nucleo do to religious people if he didn't agree with them? Would he kick them?"

Come on, now you're deliberately misrepresenting what I said. I was specificially referring to the type of religious people who hang out in busy places and heckle passers by, with things like, "You're going to hell, sinner," etc.

What difference does it make? Nucleo actually HAS dealt with people like that in the past. There was an episode where some humans wouldn't let him cross a bridge. Guess what? He's a mountaindevil. He has other ways of getting around things.

And I still probably wouldn't have said anything if not for you always going on and on about how Nucleo is gentle, and how he's a pacifist.

Most of the times, he is... "pacifist" is too strong of a word, but I don't know what the right word is. Diminutive? Demure? Benevolent? Passive? Not real sure which one is the best (again, lack of education), but that's the entire point of that scene! Thawhidol was so annoying it made him act out-of-character. You once said that people, IRL, do unpredictable things. I realize Nuc is a somewhat-idealized character. That's one of the reasons I have Chance get into arguments with him.

And this is a contradiction: If I let you have exactly what you wanted me to do with the series, the characters would always be nice to each other, never say a word of disagreement or negativity to each other, and would learn the values of sharing and caring and just go on about how cute they are.

And that still doesn't mean the scene wasn't funny.

Your reaction to it was "It's time to stop making fun of Thawhidol", which seems to have less to do with Nucleo's character and more do with your strange ideal of being nice to everyone.

I have an idea... What if I changed Thawhidol to GARDENHO? The ezboard Gardenho was a joke account and the one from N-Sider never posted on our forums at all and thus I feel we'd be under no real obligation to be "nice" to him. Would that make everyone happy?