Monday, May 29, 2017

1843

Wow. Hard to know where to start with this one.

Let's begin by taking it at face value, and say that the answer is probably "less than one", because Star Wars opening crawls are written like summaries, and the first page of any Star Wars novel is going to be pretty easy to distinguish from that style. Did Randall just discover BrOrlandi's intro generator?

But the more you think about this, the worse it gets. What's the payoff here for the prankster? "Hey guys, remember that time I tricked 50 people into reading the first paragraph of Darksaber? That was pretty epic, right?" This is reminiscent of that godawful chin-up bar strip, where the narrator of the comic is the only human being with agency, while everyone else is doomed to react to his genius. It's especially peculiar because Randall himself has made fun of this tendency before.

Finally, I wonder if this actually counts as copyright infringement. That is the first page of The Last Command by Timothy Zahn: Randall cites Zahn by name in the alt text, but doesn't give the name of the book, and since this work is manifestly not criticism, reporting, teaching, research, or parody, it isn't fair use. A lawsuit against Randall Munroe would be the most amusing thing to come out of this strip.

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  2652 Self-deprecation can't last forever; at some point you have to actually be good at your job