GAMER COMICS

Transcript / Description: "GAMER COMICS"

Remi says, "Wow I finally got around to Celeste from the Itch.io black lives matter bundle and it's really difficult."

"What? The platformer?" Mika replies. She looks lovely in her new brown hat.

"I already know what you're going to say," Remi begins, angry and annoyed with her. "But you're wrong. Just because it's 2d pixel art doesn't mean it's for CASUALS and--"

Mika cuts Remi off by saying their name, "Remi." followed by, "This is... BY FAR the most annoying thing you do."

Mika points her thumb at her nose and says, "First and foremost: The "Casuals" thing has been mocked so hard that nobody has unironically said it since before GamerGate."

"Second: I NEVER said it."

Remi wears a weary expression like they wish they never spoke in the first place, while Mika continues to berate them.

"What I was GOING to say was there's no such thing as a difficult single player game!" Mika shouts.

"You can just cheat!"

Four panel comic with loose 2 by 2 layout. A header at the top reads "Gamer Comics"

Remi, sitting at their computer, holding a controller with a comically long cable that rolls out onto the floor, is streaming to their unseen friend on Discord. The controller cable, despite being much longer than necessary, is even connected to an extension cable, making it even longer.

Remi smiles and comments to their friend, "I love this shitty goblin's voice. I don't know why!"

"What does she sound like?" asks Remi's discord friend, through their headphones.

Sounds come from the screen, reading "Horary" "Zodiac" "Significator" indicating that Remi is playing Puyo Tetris as Feli.

"You can't hear???" Remi asks, shocked.

"No, I just hear you." their friend replies.

"YESTERDAY... when I was playing Celeste... Did you not hear then???" Remi demands, angrily.

"Uhh... I thought you had it that way on purpose."

Remi sinks into their seat, dejected and exhausted, staring at the viewer for emotional appeal.

GAMER COMICS brands the top of the page, like a scar on the forehead of a young trans egg wizard.

Remi talks to their friend over Discord. They say, "Oh! You play League of Legends? I used to play that! I think I might still have it installed!"

"Oh! Cool!" their friend, an anthropomorphic Bat Girl named Jane replies.

"Yeah! Do you wanna play together?" Remi asks.

"Sure!"

Remi looks at his favorite glowing rectangle, their computer monitor, and brings their mouse to the patch updator, and clicks the button to commence patching.

"OK!" Remi cheers. "I just gotta patch. this might take a while."

"That's okay. I'll wait." Jane replies, patiently.

"Okay!"

A non-diegetic rectangle informs us that it is "An Hour Later..." since the last scene.

"Okay I'm ready! Sorry for how long that took!" Remi apologizes, still enthusiastic, but worried and embarrassed.

"That's okay!" Jane replies, patient and kind. "I was doing other things unrelated to you." This statement would catch Remi by surprise. Remi is not used to thinking about the fact that a world out there exists beyond what they can see. In many ways, life is like a video game: filled with hidden variables and flags that go on without your conscious awareness. RNG values seeded invisibly, creating chaos that were we able to step outside of our bodies and see the full picture, would not be so chaotic, so much as they would be a beautiful dance of interrelated ideas. "Let's goooooo" Jane sings.

"Huh..." Remi regards their computer monitor, looking at a menu not shown to the viewer. "There's only one new champion since the last time I played a year ago?" Remi asks. When last Remi played, Riot Games had a policy of putting out new characters into the game at a steady rate. They have since slowed down, focusing on reworking old characters and fine tuning the current project instead of focusing solely on expanding upward and outward.

"Oh yeah, ban him." Jane replies, tersely.

"Okay." Remi agrees, not sure quite why but deferring to their friend's expert knowledge.

"They haven't nerfed him yet." Jane explains, succinct and to the point.

Remi takes an instant to process this, and silently comes to the understanding that Riot Games as a company must employ a model of releasing overtuned characters at first to encourage people to purchase them before later changing the characters to be less powerful, driving up sales and still keeping the game mostly competitive and fair for all players. "Ah." Remi acknowledges.

"Okay! Game is loading!" Remi cheers, excited to be finished patching, and ready to finally play with their friend. "I like how they added clickable elements to the screen so it's easier to tell if the game crashed and I have to alt-F4 and try to reload, hehe~" Remi giggles, musing about back when they played the game. There did not used to be any moving signs that the game was loading or not before, and now that objects are clickable on the screen, Remi believes they know better if the game has crashed, or if it is simply taking a long time to load.

"Oh..." Jane begins, her voice less enthusiastic and more resentful. "Okay I guess I'm going top lane Nautilus..."

"Huh?" Remi questions, not yet realizing what has happened.

In a snap, Remi jumps to the conclusion that Jane's game finished loading, as did everyone else but Remi in the match. "Are you IN GAME?!" they cry.

"...yeah??" Jane asks, bewildered as to why Remi would even ask that. She has played so many games of League of Legends that this doesn't even phase her. She didn't even realize the detail that one of her teammates wasn't in the match, or even that that teammate was the very one who invited her to play in the first place. Such matters do not worry her after a number of hours spent on this game crossing the fourth digit.

"I'm still at the load screen!" Remi cries in a frenzied panic.

Jane tries to calm Remi down by interrupting their hurried ramble with their name, "Remi" but it doesn't slow Remi down at all as they continue. "I don't understand!" "Remi." "The icon is spinning!" "Remi." "Does that not mean I'm connected???" "Remi." "I make you wait an HOUR and then put you into a 4v5! I'm sorry!"

"Remi, it's okay." Jane states, firmly.

Remi becomes increasingly agitated. They shout, "I'm uninstalling this HORRIBLE program that some supposedly claim to be a VIDEOGAME!"

"Ok." Jane replies, calmly.

"It doesn't even run!" Remi shouts, appealing for agreement that things are not their fault, and that blame falls elsewhere.

"Ok." Jane states, exactly as before.

"How is it POSSIBLE the game started and my load screen just stays interactable," Remi rants, using a backup word for when you forget the word 'interactive', "CLICKABLE and it doesn't have some CHECK for if the game started??? What if I'd been in solo queue?"

"I'm sorry, Remi." Jane soothes, calmly.

"YOU didn't do anything!" Remi shouts, too enraged to understand that Jane was expressing sympathy and not expressing guilt.

"Okay." Jane acknowledges, returning to the safer backchanneling as she focuses on her game. In another context she would be more equipped to handle this extended outburst, but as she is beginning her disadvantaged match, her focus is needed elsewhere. It is a testament to Jane's patience and kindness that she responds as sympathetically as she does in these situations, instead of becoming angry herself, or dismissive.

Finally, one more "An Hour Later:" box reveals the passage of time. Remi seems less upset, and is now laughing about the whole thing. "The uninstaller doesn't even work! I had to use Revo!" Remi states, talking about their experience uninstalling League of Legends, referencing a program called 'Revo Uninstaller' that aids in removing leftover files after uninstalling programs.

"We won, by the way." Jane says, both in an attempt to lift Remi's spirits, and also hoping to get Remi to pay attention to her experiences playing the 4v5 alone, coming out victorious. The comic ends ambiguously. We don't know if Remi finally notices that their friend achieved something wonderful, or if they are too fixated on themself to even listen. Hopefully they will focus on Jane's experiences, but with how negative they are feeling about League of Legends right now, this seems unlikely.

"GAMER COMICS" hangs over the top of the page like a stormy cloud, an omen, a harbinger. Beneath them, Remi and Mika stand with expressions out of alignment, and color schemes like someone with an imprecise hand trying to paint acrylics over computer printed paper.

"Oh my God!" Remi shouts in frustration. "Some Gamer Comic! There's been hardly any gaming! And no gamers either!" Remi wears a pink shirt and their typical hat. Here we can see that Remi's hat, a cap with cat ears and a cute emoticon of an apostrophe, lowercase omega, apostrophe, meant to mimic the look of a cat's face, is actually a black cap with blue ears.

"Three comics!" Mika observes, reveling in the absurdity. "You made it three Gamer Comics without referencing the comic itself." Mika's hair is red, her hat is brown, and her smile is bright and cheerful but with these colors, looks a little dead inside.

"Ugh... you're right, sorry..." Remi says, hanging their head, an exhausted and sorry expression, eyes closed, eyebrows stressed.

Mika, determined and roused into action, shouts, "Sorry? Remi, CAD referenced the comic itself in its FIRST PAGE! The first PANEL! The first BUBBLE!" Her tone augments and lilts as she shouts, trying to yell some sense into Remi. CAD is an abbreviation of the keystroke pattern "CTRL+ALT+DEL" and the title of a successful gaming webcomic. Remi and Mika both dislike the webcomic, but are envious of its success.

On the next page, the coloring is just as messy, but now the line art is in front of the messy lines, less resembling acrylics, and more resembling flat dyes.

"We're not going to replicate CAD's success by copying CAD in a post CAD world." Remi scolds, glaring at Mika. Pursuing success directly is a trap many artists fall into, as it doesn't help one's ego to try and fail at a pursuit that is truly random in nature, but one does not achieve success by trying to avoid it either. Remi is lost and frustrated.

"Replicate CAD's SUCCESS???" Mika scoffs, becoming even more frustrated. "This isn't about success, Remi!" she states. Mika would not be stating what it is about, though. What it is about would remain a mystery.

"Color!" Mika ejects.

"What?" asks Remi, lost.

Mika lifts her finger, pointing to the heavens, to the idea of ascension itself. "ALL the successful comics are in color." she proclaims, overlooking dozens of counter examples of successful black and white comics. "Color this comic."

"But I exported the first page and didn't save a project file!" Remi excuses, trying to defend their future self from work by appealing to their past self's lack of forward thinking.

"Doesn't matter!" Mika dismisses.

At this point it becomes clear why the coloring in the first page was so crude, overlapping the line art.

One final panel shows Remi hanging their head in shame and worry. Their face expresses frustration and guilt, subverted by their constantly cheerful hat. The coloring in this final panel looks a little cleaner, but not enough to look at all professional.

"I really don't know about this one." they mutter. "That first page looked really bad..."

Mika looks at Remi with awkward eyes and a wobbling mouth, like she realizes her advice was taken improperly, and that she may have made things worse in her effort to improve them. "Remi, do you know what a multiply layer is?" she asks. The comic ends there. Remi almost certainly does know what one is, and this question will only make them feel guiltier. Had they drawn the colors on a multiply layer, the first page could have looked like the other two. Alas, we must move on, as clearly, given the final state of the comic as it is, Remi didn't save the project file that time either.

"Gamer Comics" hovers playfully, like a human observing a pet lizard in a terrarium, waiting to see if they move.

Remi half sits, half lies on their dark gray loveseat. In their hands they hold a game controller up on their stomach. "I miss the Wii." they reminisce.

A large thought bubble forms a quasi second panel. In this panel the scene is almost exactly the same, but instead of holding the game controller on their stomach, their arms lie at their sides, the cord connecting the two halves of the Wii's unique 'Nunchuck' design drapes over Remi's waist, and Remi's face looks, at least in this moment, truly happy. In reality, they probably had a much more bored or somber expression the majority of the time they were playing the Wii. This posture does not imply someone as excited as their face shows. And here's a question Remi wouldn't think to ask themself. If the form factor is all that matters, and being able to lie with their hands at their sides like this, then why haven't they purchased a Switch and JoyCons? Wouldn't those do the same thing, perhaps even better?

"Gamer Comics" floats politely above Remi's head as Remi sits, still, in their computer chair, holding their controller loosely in their hands over their right knee. Their posture is alert but relaxed. They have no mouth, nor any need for one right now.

A simple drawing of Madeline from Celeste staring down at the sunset over lower mountain peaks from atop the summit of Mt. Celeste fills the rest of the page. It's simple, and quick, but expressive and calm. Remi hashed this drawing out very quickly to try to express how they were feeling.

"I feel really happy right now." rests at the bottom of the page, warm and at peace.

A drawing of a facsimile of a reddit post. Reddit's logo sits in the upper left corner next to the words "Game Subreddit" to generalize an event across the platform.

"It would be nice for new players if there were a warning when purchasing a cosmetic for a character that you must own said character to use it." reads the first comment. This comment has been downvoted by the reddit community to a score of negative nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine.

Below it reads a comment by user "Video Game Fan". This comment reads, "What kind of [expletive] doesn't know that?" and has been upvoted to positive nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine.

This comic is in reference to the way complaints against dark patterns are often defended by the community that doesn't fall for these, and the victims are blamed for falling prey to a negative effect that benefits the company that produces the intellectual property that the community is founded around.

Shiné sits up straight at her desk in her comfortable ergonomic chair. She has a fight stick with four buttons, in a NeoGeo arrangement. She holds the joystick underhanded, grasping the ball at the top of the lever like she's a wealthy person swirling a wine glass. Her index and ring fingers flip upwards, while her pinkie and index fingers tap the buttons A and C, indicating that she is playing a game with chord inputs.

"My name is Shiné." she thinks to herself. "I'm a gamer." Shiné's internal monologue shows signs of a personality in need of frequent affirmations to maintain its self esteem levels. "My game of choice?" she mentally asks no one. This can't be the first time she's run this script in her mind, and it won't be the last.

"Only the most mechanically interesting and hardcore games for me." she thinks. "Immaterial and Missing Power" a Japanese indie fighting game based on the Touhou Project known for its complicated meter management and highly defensive gameplay and lack of Timer leading to extremely long matches, often reaching 6 minutes, and frequently going much longer, for a single match.

"Cultris II" a free multiplayer Tetris experience that is extremely fast, with a tight knit community of players, and a chatroom tied to the gameplay.

"Phantasmagoria of Flower View" a 'bullet hell' version of Twinkle Star Spirits. Another Touhou Project game.

"Stepmania" an independently made clone of Dance Dance Revolution for the PC. A community led game with lots of custom songs with arrow pattern charts far more difficult than anything in the mainline DDR series.

"Super Sidekicks 3" A strange inclusion on this list. This is a Football/Soccer game for the Neo Geo. It's not particularly noteworthy.

"Dota All Stars" an old mod of Warcraft 3 made into its own game. The Precursor to the 'MOBA' genre of games. Known for punishing gameplay and obscure mechanics.

At the top of the page reads "GAMER COMICS" as is expected.

"Give me one copy of Blops 4." demands Heather, confidently. Heather has expressed herself today with a v-necked shirt with gray sleeves and a white chest. On her neck clings a choker collar, and on her shoulder hangs a tote bag. She stands with her arms folded, displaying the confidence of a woman who has bested countless opponents in the gaming world, and in the real world as well. Beneath her waist hangs a plaid skirt with a seatbelt buckled belt. The outfit was coordinated to be reminiscent of Kosaka Riyu's style in the Guitar Freaks / Drummania video for the song "Break Down", but she changed her mind and went with long sleeves because it was cold today.

Behind the counter stands a man with a smug expression, side swept bangs, and a Baseball Cap. On the hat is a picture of a Pokéball and a thong with a W on it. This is a reference to a joke about the way the Masterball from Pokemon resembles a normal Pokéball, but with Wario's thong stretched over it.

The man behind the counter denies Heather, stating, "No way! Not selling you anything without a Y-Chromosome. Store policy."

Unmoved by this denial, Heather confidently pulls from her tote bag a jar filled with some sort of liquid, and holds it up for the man behind the counter to see.

He asks, "What's that?" His face never deviates from his smug expression.

Heather replies, "It's a jar filled with each and every Y-Chromosome of the last guy who tried to get between me and gaming." She too is confident. Her expression does not waver. In this battle of wills, she will not falter.

"Oh! Right away!" says the man behind the counter, off screen. Heather is victorious.

"Little do they know," Heather thinks to herself, confidently folding her arms as she watches her vanquished foe leave to fetch her hard won copy of Blops 4 to purchase, "Those were actually my Y-Chromosomes I had surgically removed and am saving in case any of my trans masc friends want them."

"You play DOTA?" asks Shædo. She looks up at Remi with an uncharacteristic innocent friendliness. Her wide brimmed witch hat has holes cut out for her cat ears. Shædo's long hair dances down her back, curling and flowing, with bangs covering most of her forehead and framing her face along the sides, with one lock of hair falling between her eyes over her nose. The rest of her outfit is that of a cute witch. Poofy shoulders, a high necked collar, a string tied at the neck in a thin bow around a bib, and then a tight corset around her waist that supports her breasts, just over a wide poofy skirt. None of the panels show an angle that reveals what sort of socks or shoes she has, but one has to imagine striped socks and Mary Janes would complete this look.

"No... I played League of Legends but I never tried DOTA 2," Remi replies, blankly.

"Nah, not DOTA 2. I mean the ORIGINAL DOTA." she replies. Her friendly and cute face returns to the sinister squinting smirk Remi is more used to seeing on her face.

A rectangle reading "Moments Later..." heralds the passage of time. Remi and Shædo rest in front of Remi's computer. Remi says, "I thought the original DOTA was a Warcraft 3 mod." with an expression that shows they're looking at something very different from what they expected.

"I said the ORIGINAL." Shædo reminds, knowing full well that she is flaunting one of Grice's Maxims, as Remi could not have known what she was going to show them, and that they would expect to see something else.

On the next screen we see the game Shædo has actually shown Remi. "This is Death of the Author!" she announces. "You can choose from hundreds of creators like JK Rowling," author of Harry Potter and reactionary anti-Trans bigot, "Jack London," award winning American author best known for The Call of the Wild, was revealed to be a bit of a racist when asked to commentate a boxing match between a white boxer and a black boxer, "Orson Scott Card," highly acclaimed science fiction writer and author of the Ender's Game series who is well known for being very opposed to same sex marriage, "Lovecraft" creator of the Cthulhu mythos, and extreme racist, "and more!"

On the screen shows all of the creators that Shædo listed, as well as Charles Dickens, author best known for "A Christmas Carol" who happened to be quite the intolerant bigot in quite a few directions, and Louis CK, an American Comedian who was embroiled in sexual assault scandal yet remains successful and continues to get work.

"New heroes added every month!" Shædo boasts, as if this were a selling point.

"I don't want to play a game that supports all these people." Remi grumbles, turning to leave.

Shædo grabs hold of Remi's arm, pulling them back, pleading with them, "Hold on, you haven't seen the cosmetics yet."

"See?" Shædo asks the extremely unimpressed Remi as she shows them the computer screen, revealing JK Rowling has been replaced with Hatsune Miku doing all of the same things, with the same pose.

Heather, sitting down at her computer, announces "Alright boys!" referring to the other Gamers in her voice chat. "Let's Blacken these Operations 4!" She wears a basic short sleeved shirt with some comfortable sweat pants with pockets. She's not dressed up today, just enjoying a comfortable time alone.

"Is that a girl's voice?" asks one of the people in her voice chat.

"Yes it is," Heather answers. "Thank you for acknowledging the effort I put into my vocal training!"

The voice responds, amicably, "You're welcome but this is actually a problem."

"What?" Heather asks.

The person over voice chat explains, "You see I live with a condition where whenever I Game alongside a Girl and/or Woman I am incapable of keeping my fucking mouth shut about it for the entire match."

Heather stares at her screen, achieving a moment of profound mental blankness.

"I've never heard of a condition that causes uncontrollable talking about Gaming with a Girl and/or Woman whenever Gaming with a Girl and/or Woman." Heather finally answers, after carefully taking the time to choose her words. "Do you take Fluoxetine or Sertraline or something for that?" Heather assumes that the condition this fellow Gamer is describing must be in the same family as Tourette Syndrome, and that typical medications for the same would be helpful here.

"Sadly no." they reply, regrettably. "I don't have health insurance at my job and can't afford to see a therapist so I never got a formal diagnosis."

Heather takes a moment to reflect on the state of the world and her place in it. She thinks to herself, "Wow. Living in a time and place where life improving medication is gated behind paywalls is unfair not only to the poor, but to all Gamers."

"It was the most annoying five to seven minutes on average of action packed first person shooter gameplay I've ever played," Heather concludes, relaying the events of her time with the Gamer from before who had a condition that made them incapable of keeping their fucking mouth shut for the match with regard to Heather's being a girl and/or woman. Heather stands with her arms folded, reliving the irritation.

"You did the right thing respecting his condition, and I don't want you to think you didn't..." Alex begins, pointing his finger casually up at Heather's eyes. "...But I think you were griefed."

"What?" Heather asks, stunned. She got dressed up all nice to come see her friend, Alex. Knowing his distaste for authority, she wore her white tank top with the letters "ACAB" written over the breasts. She also wore a cute black kitten collar, and a hair pin of a bloody knife. Beneath her bare midriff she wears a pair of quite baggy pants with a thick belt with a black and white checkerboard print. She wasn't expecting to be shaken by a realization and did not dress for it.

"Yeah back in my BROODING PAST I used to frequent a message board that was devoted to being upset about things." Alex recalls, setting the image of a darkened room, lit only by a dim laptop monitor. A skinny armed child wearing a pair of hair ties around their wrist and a tight T-Shirt hides under a blanket, looking truly miserable, typing on the keyboard. "And one of the things we were always upset about," Alex continues, "Was girls and/or women."

"Such a place existed?" Heather asks, astonished.

"I'm afraid so," Alex admits under his breath. "They'd post strats for how to grief without getting banned and I've seen the one you faced. It's a netdeck designed to punish compassion." Alex holds up his thumb, then turns it to point downward, driving it toward the dirt with a sudden hit, like a railroad spike into an innocent one's skull. "Meta-breaker."

Heather can't believe her ears, but she knows Alex is telling the truth. Her friend would never lie to her. She stares, mouth agape, her arms folded with tension. She shakes with frustration and confusion. How could she have fallen for such a dirty trick?

"Well if they're gonna punish me for being compassionate, I'll just be more cautious when people tell me they have conditions I've never heard of." Heather folds her arms in resolute confidence. She's certain that with a slight update to her strategy, she can return to her normal routine. Heather took some time to change her clothes. She now wears a striped spaghetti strapped top, earrings, a pearl necklace, and a beautiful tartan skirt. This is an outfit that makes her feel more comfortable working on serious intellectual pursuits.

Alex smirks and shakes his head. He's pleased to find that he was correct in his diagnosis of the situation. While he's sympathetic to the problems his friend is facing, he is confident in his ability to solve them. "Serious misplay," Alex states, folding his arms. "That's the exact wrong thing to do."

"What." Heather shouts, shortly. She doesn't mean to raise her voice, but in her heightened emotional state, she can't help herself.

"They WANT you to become more cautious so you'll end up being unkind to some Gamer who actually HAS a real life condition you've never heard of because you're trying to play around an Off-Meta griefing deck."

As Alex explains this, Heather imagines a scene like might happen. Heather announces to the griefer, "I won't fall for this again!" and the Griefer smugly responds, "Heehee you sure showed me." Then a moment later, a poor innocent Gamer says, "I suffer from a disease," and Heather shouts "Liar!" with righteous conviction, leaving the poor gamer to wonder, "Why was she so mean to me?"

"It's a strategy of griefing designed to make the target more cruel, and spread the griefer's worldview of being upset about everything." Alex might have at one point felt shame or guilt while giving such an explanation, as he, in the past, has been guilty of doing such shameful things himself, but not anymore. Alex no longer requires guilt or shame, and without any need for guilt or shame, he is immune to it.

"But if I can't play around the strategy, what am I supposed to do then?" Heather demands, reaching the end of her patience. "Just get griefed for being a girl and/or woman forever?"

"Well..." Alex smirks, lifting one eyebrow and lowering the other. "The only way to counter a strat designed to affect you outside the game..."

Alex lifts a heavily modified weapon, normally only available to administrators and licensed balancers. A NERF bat adorned with nails, and tightly wrapped with tape to keep it from breaking.

"...Is with a strat that goes outside the game."

A young man sits in a dank basement. Dank from the musk of mildew, and from the memes. Cracks and holes bedazzle the moldy walls. The only sounds heard are dripping from a pipe that would easily be wrapped to stop the leak, but the occupant doesn't notice these sounds, as he's busy Gaming.

He sits in front of an old LCD computer monitor, Black Ops 4 in windowed mode in the upper left corner. The reason the game is occupying such a small corner of the screen is because the rest of the monitor is broken, permanently displaying the UI of Stepmania after the owner smashed his keyboard into the screen in a fit of rage from repeatedly failing a difficult song. His printed shirt reads "MLP isn't gay and that is extremely important to me!" and his computer speakers go unused in favor of the large headphones he wears over his ears.

"You fucking suck at this game, griefer!" he shouts, breaking the silence. We see that this young man is the same man who worked at the Video Game Store who Heather had the run in with in which she showed him her jar of Y-Chromosomes as if they were an ID needed to purchase alcohol from a convenience store.

"Griefer?" the person on the in game voice chat replies in disbelief. "I think you're the griefer around here. You comparing yourself to me? Ha!" He inhales. "You're not even good enough--"

There's a Knock at the door. KNOCK KNOCK.

"I'll make you eat those words!" the the young man shouts, cutting him off, completely oblivious to tho knocking.

CRASH! The door is knocked clean off of its hinges by the force of a powerful hit. While he could not hear the dripping nor the knocking, he heard this. The young man turns around, revealing that his T-Shirt was actually an expensive luxury lenticular print shirt that displays a different message when viewed from a different angle. The second message reads "MLP also isn't furry and my sense of self is dependent on that"

"What the fuck are you doing in my house?" he demands, taking a stand on the floor of his basement apartment.

Alex holds up his bat in both hands, displaying it for him. "I'm here to hit you in the head with this bat."

"What the? That bat has nails sticking out of it." the griefer observes.

"I'm a member of the modding community." Alex explains.

"How did you find me?!" the griefer demands, the weight of his situation starting to set in.

"Remember an hour and twelve minutes ago when somebody yelled at you that he was gonna kick your ass, and you shouted your address at them?"

"That was you?" the griefer asks. He's told his name and address to so many people as a challenge and never before now has this ever caused him problems.

"I'm afraid so." Alex smirks.

"What the fuck? That's doxxing!"

"I'm not above doxxing. It's something used by your lot all the time and honestly people on my side should do it way more often because it humiliates you and the real danger is that people on your side have been known to harm people who get doxxed, while the same has not been shown for mine."

CRACK! With a crazed look in Alex's eye, and a huge toothy smile on his mouth, Alex hits the griefer in the head with his heavily modified NERF bat, knocking him, and his ideology, to the floor.

"Alright!" Alex concludes, triumphantly. He squats down, relaxing his elbows on his knees, letting his bat hang limply off the ends of his relaxed fingers. "Now that you have been hit in the head with a baseball bat, are you going to stop griefing girls and/or women in gaming?"

"Yes. I now realize that my fantasies would never be quenched, and that my actions have consequences." The griefer admits, lying on his side on the floor. His lenticular print shirt doesn't display anything anymore except for a loose jumble of characters, as if having his griefing defeated by a blow to the head also defeated his message.

The griefer considers his situation, and shares, "I'm just glad that the person who showed up to put me in my place and teach me a lesson was a guy who had XY Chromosomes like myself, otherwise I would not have learned anything due to a mental schema of minimizing the importances of the opinions of girls and/or women."

Alex regards the griefer on the floor. He stares, and as he does, his expression sours. This moment feels unsatisfying, and as he stares longer, his expression grows more and more intense. Alex's eyes sink, his brow furrows. He begins to shake.

End of Chapter 1
"Heather Gets Griefed"

GAMER COMICS

A Graphic Novel
by Remi Autor.