Reasons

So, Ctrl+Alt+Del.

I've read this for a few years now, and I completely enjoy it. It makes me feel okay that I play games and lead a normal life, as people usually tend to freak out that I'm a girl and play video games consistently. To be honest, there's nothing to be said that a girl plays video games. I'm not special. A lot of girls play video games. There's actually two girls working at Gamestop at once. I know. I almost pissed myself, too.

I guess the fact of the matter is his post disturbed me a little. Not that he wasn't 100% correct in his thoughts. But the fact of the matter is, he's the writer. Not the millions of readers. A webcomic or novel or anything else isn't necessarily the product of something that is our choice (except for Tim's time of that awesome Adventure Novel for comics idea). I understand the frustration of buying a book and reading it to find out you wasted twenty bucks on shit. But a webcomic is free, and it's amazing to watch these people achieve their dreams and really take the readers into account. I mean, even as against how some people deal with their readers I am, at least he's recognizing. If there weren't such interest in a story being told, then writers wouldn't even exist.

And, believe me. We love a story. Some will take whatever they can get (which brings us to the shit television of American Idol, Big Brother and The Office.... ha ha, just kidding, American Idol is awesome... Ha ha, again, it's The Office! The Office is the real winner.) If you really pay attention to conversation (which I'm guessing only about 10% of us do about once a week), you'll see that 25% of it is jokes, 25% is story and the other 49% is both. The other 1% is miscellaneous things I'm sure you can slightly imagine don't make any sense in much other conversation (but it does make up some sort of story... bad, true, but they still manage to make films).

So, really, everything we say and do is a story. Small part of myself you may not know: I like to listen to my MP3 player while walking to school because it makes it seem as if I have a theme song, and it's cool to see what part of life syncs up with the rest.

I've gotten off topic. The fact of the matter is, as great of readers as we are, we can be little bitches. We whine and moan about characters and plots and anything else to see if we'll get our way, just like trying to get a chocolate bar when we're five years old by falling to the ground and pounding our fists in some Incredible Hulk-like motion, thinking this would somehow get what we want, rather than just some embarrassment for ourselves, family and the people watching (with a little added bonus of getting nothing else for the rest of the night, if we were lucky). And now, the writers are explaining themselves for their decisions. And, to be honest, an idea for a plot sometimes comes with the characters; if you put them in a situation, the characters write what happens, you just tell what it was.

In a sense, I can understand why Tim decided to say something on the matter of the latest story arc. It's tough situation, what happened to Lilah, yes, but it amazing me how many people were concerned about what Ctrl+Alt+Del was. It's amazing how many people band together to try to get someone to change something the way they feel it should be.

I like that Tim doesn't have the mundane gaming comic. If it were just another gaming comic, do you really think it would have gotten this far? There are plenty of other comics that only do jokes about gaming. And they're funny, sure. And many you have to have a taste for things like this, such as finding the right wine (don't tell me to buy wine unless you know the brand, year and have a Polaroid of every angle so I don't screw it up... My family knows that if I couldn't find it, I'd probably just come home with some grapes and say we could make our own).

Anywho, I get the idea of needing to please the reader. Obviously, as they're the ones who are enabling you to do what you love for a living (well, some of you webcomic-teers, anyway... You'll get your debut yet, if not). But we're writers. Artists. And, as cliche as it seems, I hope that at least 89% of it is their own free will to write what needs to get out. 10% of that is fooling around with different ideas and styles. The other 1% is miscellaneous.

I can see that the money invested can be like the time invested. But nothing has really changed, here. You think that Lilah and Ethan were never going to have a kid? Get married and that was it? Lilah may be a gamer, but we gamer girls, though not all the same, still have normal thoughts of kids and shit (the shit was stuff, not literal). I get frustrated with certain comics all the time, when drama gets involved. I don't need another OC in my life--my old roommate being obsessed was enough. When someone else starts getting so worried about a fictional character's life that it changes their own, there are two things at play: 1) The writer must be pretty good (or the person watching/reading is pretty dumb) and 2) The person being affected to such a degree is sad. There are certain things to be "touched" by. An angel, perhaps, or the way a puppy wags it's tail when you say it's name. But I'll be damned if it's by a soap opera for people who can't think for themselves. I mean, people were so worried about Harry Potter dying, there were therapists standing by because parents couldn't teach their children that, while the books were good, it wasn't real.

That was harsh. But I stand by it.

All in all, I suppose that it's what every writer decides to do. I'm a reader that reads to find out what will happen next and doesn't question any of it (unless it never explains anything... then it can go to hell). I'll get ideas of what may happen next, and hope I am pleasantly surprised (which I can be). But, when you buy a book or start to read something, understand that it won't do what you want. It shouldn't, in a lot of ways. A really good book never gives you want you want in a character. How many times have you opened a book and just been so distraught over what the author has written out? And then you can't put the book down for the rest of the night? You don't like what's going on, but the character just keeps enduring and you want to know what happens next. The reason why we love characters is for what they can endure and overcome. It makes them.

So, my advice? Get over it. Suck it up. And get a life. It's cool to dodge some of life with video games and books. But you still have your own to live. And if you remember that, you didn't have an issue with what I was talking about in the first place.

On a side note, lentils are the new rice. I could eat them for ages. But I sometimes wish it didn't look like I was eating baby food. It cramps my style.

Random Fact: The most used letters in the English language are E, T, A, O, I and N