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White people is a racist term tbh.

There's so many different kinds of white, and a jew has about as much similarity to a slav as a black has to a mexican. So why is one grouped together and the other isn't?

It kinda reminds me of something a black friend of mine once said, about how they were uncomfortable with the widespread use of the term PoC because it lumps all non-white people together, implying that they're all one big happy family when clearly they're not. Specifically, they cited a friend whose Chinese grandparents, upon hearing she was moving to Toronto, warned her to "watch out for all the n***ers."

White people do benefit from the social structures in most places in ways other people don't, but the entire designation of "white" vs. "non-white" is still kinda nonsensical, as you said, when you cut it away from its context. I think historically, "whiteness" has simply been an imperialist way of designating who counts as a member of the dominant in-group; I recall someone on this very site describing the way the Irish were considered "non-white" when they were still widely discriminated against, in spite of the pastiness of their usual complexion. Hell, I've read of 19th-century racialist theories that tried to claim the Irish were descended from Africans, based on phrenology. Similarly, I wouldn't be surprised if Cold-War-era anti-Soviet propaganda played up the Asian component of Russia's racial makeup, though I haven't looked into it much.

As someone primarily of German and Irish ancestry, I find "white" to be the most convenient way of describing my racial background, since I benefit from all the privileges the category of "whiteness" entails and find experiences of "whiteness" to be relatable and consistent with my own; I know I'd be laughed at at best if I described myself as "mixed-race." I take no issue with this in an immediate sense, since I have no business pretending to face the challenges mixed-race people of non-white descent do, but I have to agree that the circumstances leading to all these designations are pretty fucked up to begin with.

So, I've just been given a green light to bully my co-workers.

Cain! What is best in life?

[pulp]

You profile picture has too much mustard, Nigel.

It had even more when Alty got done with it.

I like mayonnaise on my hotdogs

Just because we have social lifes doesn't mean they're functional.

If having a social life gives me a hangover the next morning this much, I'm about ready to quit.

Just a hang over?
heh, and you call that a social life.

what am I supposed to have? scabies?

Scabies are easy mode. If you're not shitting blood and pulp it's not a party.

Pulp, you say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW0AhWoHP0w

:^)

Now, I will warn you: The art starts out kinda shit. Early JoJo art is honestly hard to look at at times. But then, part of the fun of JoJo is watching Hirohiko Araki grow as an artist and a writer. Like Western comics, JoJo eventually has an attempt at a mature, gritty reboot... But unlike in the West, this one succeeds, because Araki doesn't do it to prove to anyone that his work isn't for kids. He does it because he himself is tired of the continuity pileup that's started to occur, despite his best efforts to the contrary, and because he feels like tackling challenging subject matter. JoJo doesn't deny its immaturity, it grows up. One thing I'll always respect about Hirohiko Araki is that he doesn't reject his own initial silliness; instead, he retains the elements he likes and takes them in a different direction.

If the early art's too ugly, there is an anime adaptation of the first 3 parts, and it's actually pretty good-looking. It's very faithful to the source material, and while I know Roger doesn't like anime as a medium, this clip should be a pretty good indication of whether you'll like it or not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0miyPXfTszo

Interesting.  I will have to give it a try, once the trauma of SW3 wears off.

Mind you, it is goofy as fuck. Don't go in expecting high literature. I mean, if you want an idea of the general vibe, just watch the Part 2 intro from the anime adaptation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-HWQ4hQPo8

Basically, it's Big Gay Cowboys: the manga.

I've found solutions to many of these problems in the structure of a long-running shonen manga, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Western superhero comics have their problems(continuity, the shackles of canon, constant writer changes, death never sticking, popularity power, inconsistency, fantasy kitchen sink settings, etc.) and Japanese shonen manga tend to have problems of their own(power creep, gimmick pileup, cyclical in-story powerups, serial escalation, interminable training sequences, tournament arcs, boring invincible heroes, popularity power, inconsistency, fantasy kitchen sink settings, etc.)
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has a format that solves both sets of problems simultaneously. Mind you, it is still a big dumb adventure series, but I really admire its structure, and it seems to have come together accidentally, oddly enough.

JJBA is broken up into discrete Parts, each with its own major story arc and self-contained plot. Between each Part, there's a timeskip, and they're all set in differing locations, with a different protagonist. All JJBA protagonists have only three things in common: a star-shaped birthmark, a bloodline, and a name that can somehow be abbreviated as "JoJo." Everything's name is a music reference, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, each Part has its own tone and takes a foray into a different setting and genre from the rest. All of them have some aspect of shonen fighting manga, in the vein of older works like Fist of the North Star, but they spice it up with a combination of mystery, horror, and copious helpings of ham and high camp. The fights can also get really clever, and they run on the author's own insane brand of logic. Villains rarely come back. Death is final, and targets protagonists and antagonists indiscriminately(though protagonists do tend to be better at surviving). The result of this structure is that it's really, really, really hard for things to get stale.

The series starts out with vampires and a special breathing technique called the Ripple as its main gimmicks, but it exhausts their potential by the end of Part 2 and moves on to another kind of power: Something called a Stand. Now, I'm not gonna bore you with the specifics of how Stands work, but they define the rest of the series and they all adhere to a few basic assumptions and exist within a set of parameters on which they're graded from E to A, similarly to RPG stats: Power, Speed, Range, Durability, Precision and Learning. I think this system was originally in place to emphasize how strong the third JoJo's Stand was, since Stands generally had some kind of ability and his Stand, Star Platinum, had none beyond crazy good stats, but it ended up being a really good system for keeping power creep in check, since every parameter was finite and had already been shown at its limit in the third part. Also, due to the nature of Stands, nobody in JoJo is actually invincible, keeping a tactical element in fights.

In general, JJBA is basically about fabulous musclemen violently posing at each other for the fate of the world, as written by the Timecube guy. The parts are as follows:

Part 1: Phantom Blood(set in 1880s/1890s England, Gothic Horror)
Part 2: Battle Tendency(set in 1938, Pulp Adventure)
Part 3: Stardust Crusaders(set in 1987, Pulp Adventure, Travelogue)
Part 4: Diamond Is Unbreakable(set in 1999 small-town Japan, Murder Mystery)
Part 5: Vento Aureo(set in 2001 Italy, Mafia)
Part 6: Stone Ocean(set in 2011 Florida, because of course, Prison Break)
Part 7: Steel Ball Run(set in parallel-universe 1890s America, Western)
Part 8: Jojolion(set in 2011 parallel-universe small-town Japan, Ontological Mystery)

Of course, at the end of the day, it is still dumb entertainment. It is, as you said, "people in tights punching each other while bellowing their inner feelings."  But at least it's competently-executed dumb entertainment. It's refreshing to see it actually function as a mode of storytelling.

Cover art for Hell to Pay (Life During Wartime, book 2).  Artist:  Patience Gonzales.

"You're pretty good."

Free reading material and license to be a dick about it? I'm down for that. I'll PM you my email address.

I got made admin of a huge philosophy group despite the fact that I specifically said that I don't want to be admin and have low tolerance for philosophiical wankery. 

Defrock all other admins, start reign of terror.

Seconded.

Thirded.

Fourthed. Be the villain this world needs.

I think the most idiotic thing about the sjw which hunts going on right now is that the propoganda to fuel their hate is based off straw men created by their side.
Too many times have I seen someone post a picture about a sjw then to discover that it's actually someone from /pol/ strawmanning it up.

Yeah, it's an interesting pattern when people are willing to distort the truth in order to support their side. You get people taking a side based on their opinions, who exaggerate and turn people to their side based on their bullshit, and those people in turn exaggerate the generation before, and several generations in the entire movement is unrecognizable in its extremism, full of people running on sheer delusion and knowingly making up further bullshit in the name of their cause, all the while too devoid of self-awareness to realize that their own methods, used by others, fed into their own erroneous beliefs. Then somebody else, influenced by their bullshit, independently produces their own bullshit, which, in turn, influences the earlier influencers. I wonder how many repetitions of the cycle it takes for a single founding individual to become totally disconnected from reality.

Takes about 2 weeks.  Give or take.

That actually does sound about right.

Good job, Meunster. You made a useful contribution.

I think the most idiotic thing about the sjw which hunts going on right now is that the propoganda to fuel their hate is based off straw men created by their side.
Too many times have I seen someone post a picture about a sjw then to discover that it's actually someone from /pol/ strawmanning it up.

Yeah, it's an interesting pattern when people are willing to distort the truth in order to support their side. You get people taking a side based on their opinions, who exaggerate and turn people to their side based on their bullshit, and those people in turn exaggerate the generation before, and several generations in the entire movement is unrecognizable in its extremism, full of people running on sheer delusion and knowingly making up further bullshit in the name of their cause, all the while too devoid of self-awareness to realize that their own methods, used by others, fed into their own erroneous beliefs. Then somebody else, influenced by their bullshit, independently produces their own bullshit, which, in turn, influences the earlier influencers. I wonder how many repetitions of the cycle it takes for a single founding individual to become totally disconnected from reality.

Here's an update. I have to say, I had a lot of trouble with that face, but I really like the way it turned out. Constructing these things in three dimensions really helps.

So I ended up going with Photoshop CS2. I'd gotten used to Photoshop, and no other program was really doing it for me. Besides, there's a loophole that lets you legally acquire it for free.

Someone requested some character art from me, and I saw it as an opportunity to practice my anatomy. This is far from complete, I should probably mention.

You may notice the rather fabulous bent of my posing. It'll only get more fabulous from here.