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Ask Evil Princess Sara |
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 Apparently a large chunk of the 8-Bit reader population is slavishly obsessed with Brian: why else would I have gotten so many letters devoted to questions about him and not my own ravishingly beautiful and diabolically intelligent self? Brian, Brian, Brian: it's like the 8-Bit Brady Bunch here, only without that little punk Cousin Oliver. (Oooh, I hated Cousin Oliver.) Since there's only room for one megalomaniacal tower of unabashed arrogance in this show, I've decided to dedicate this week's column to getting these Briancentric issues over and done with before his ego swells to nigh-Black Magian proportions.
Remember the Evil Princess Sara's Advice Column rules:
- Although it would be impossible to find a more wickedly cunning advisor than myself, I must confess to having no real training in the science of Shepherding the Hopelessly Helpless onto the Path of Victory other than having been born a natural ruler of men and judge of the souls of the clueless. Therefore you would be well served to take any counsel given with a Roman soldier's paycheck of salt. Which is, yknow. Quite a lot.
- I refuse to accept any responsibility, good or bad, for what you do with the advice you're given. If you give yourself a horrible skull-like rictus with a stapler gun because a fortune cookie told you that a smile is a greater treasure than gold, you have only yourself to blame, not the Lucky Golden Crescent Cookie Co. of Yazoo, Mississippi. So it goes with my advice.
- Your atrociously written letters from the depths of the Hell of the Misguided may be edited for length, clarity, and eye-hemorrhaging grammatical errors. So there.
- Write to your saintly grandmother if you want gentle, kindly advice. If you weren't expecting abuse and mockery, why did you write to someone who dismembered a forest giant for being in her way?
With all this firmly established, let's dive into the pool of excruciating epistolary evil that is this week's column.
"Dear Princess Sara,
I have recently been employed by the Evil Nemesis Society. For my first masterfully evil plot, I wish to seize Brian Clevinger and make him do my bidding, not to mention take over his very popular website. Only I don't know where he lives, what he looks like, or how to go about it.
What should I do?
Wannabe, Gonnabe, Chocobo-suckin' Potion-eatin' Pranksta"
I don't have any advice for you, WGCPP, but I suggest that the Evil Nemesis Society terminate its contract with you posthaste. Why throw away good GP on an incompetent like you when they could just hire a deaf-mute monkey with no hands to dance for them? It'd be just as effective and more entertaining.
Mr. Clevinger didn't get where he is today by helping little old ladies across the street and selling Boy Scout candy bars, you know. Don't try to take on Lord Chaos when you're a Level 1 Peon, kiddo.
...Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.
"Dear Sara,
I just can't get over this argument I've been having with my husband. See, all I want to know is: if Thief is such an incredible thief, and the witch is blind, why don't the Light Warriors just steal the antidote? [Sara's note: see Episode 176 for details.] Or heck, why don't they just beat up the witch until she gives it up?
He says that I shouldn't worry about it, because stories just aren't supposed to make sense anymore, but I'm just not sure!
- Confused in Corneria"
First of all, if this is the biggest thing you and your husband ever argue over, sacrifice a black goat at dawn to the hellgods in gratitude, lady. I'd congratulate you on your married bliss if it didn't make my stomach feel funny.
Secondly, sing along with the megalomaniacal future tyrant: "if you're wondering why Thief doesn't steal, and things of that kind, remind yourself 'it's just a webcomic, I should really just unwind' -- for Brian Clevinger's 8-Bit Theater, copyright year two thousaaaaaand...and two". Okay, so it's not exactly Wagner, but I'm an evil princess, not some girly-mon spoony bard: you get the idea. If everything in a comedy had to make sense, the Three Stooges would've been locked up for manslaughter, Ricky would've had Lucy institutionalized, and Abbot would've bludgeoned Costello to death with his bat before we ever found out Who's on First. Although come to think of it, all of that sounds downright hilarious to me. Still, to paraphrase a great philosopher of the 20th century, it's a fool who looks for logic in the panels of a sprite-based webcomic.
"Dear Evil Princess Sara,
I've had this problem for the last, oh, half hour or so, and I didn't have the foggiest idea on who to turn to for advice until I thought, 'oh yes, why don't I just e-mail Sara of the beloved 8-Bit Theater!'. Except that the previous quote was actually a question, and I neglected to include a question mark.
Anyhow, my problem stems from the following: it seems that Brian Clevinger has created an advice column on his website using one of the characters from his comic
book. Isn't this just a rip-off of Penny Arcade's 'Love and Hate'? Is he going to introduce Garland as the 'Love' part while you start signing pieces of advice 'love, luck,and lollipops'?
Oh yes, also: is Brian Clevinger his real name, or can we trace his habit of ripping people off back even further, to taking the last name for his online alter ego from Catch-22 by Joseph Heller?
Thank you in advance unless you eat my soul,
Decrepit and Inane"
Why would I devour the soul of a repulsively inferior lackey, who is to my imperial status as a mealworm is to an actual human being? I'm betting it would probably taste like one of Garland's gods-awful cookies, or even worse, Taco Bell food-like byproducts: greasy, sordid, and full of nasty little bits of things one shouldn't think about too deeply if one wishes to avoid the embarrassing spectacle of involuntary projectile vomiting.
To the rancid meat of your question: I'm afraid I don't follow Penny Arcade or its advice column, as my schedule is too full of plotting and nefariousness to keep up with any webcomic other than 8-Bit Theater, but while I'm certain that it's as high-quality a thing as anything produced by a person other than myself could possibly be, I'm equally as certain that they don't exactly hold the copyright on online advice columns, fine as theirs certainly must be. As to allowing Garland to come within a 5000-mile radius of this project, what makes you think that walking tin can of concentrated stupid is qualified to advise people about something as complex as love, of all things? Garland is barely qualified to give advice on putting on underpants the right way. And honestly, do I strike you (and believe me, it's a tempting thought) as someone who would say "love, luck, and lollipops"? "Hate, horror, and hellfire" is what you're getting here, and in heaping bucketfuls. It's better than any of you deserve.
Finally, your libelous suggestions to the contrary, "Clevinger" is indeed Mr. Brian's true and given name. His enjoyment of Mr. Heller's fine novel and relation to two notable and decorated Army pilots are both certainly suspicious at first glance, but are equally as coincidental. Or so he says. Hmm...
"Dear Sara,
There's this webcomic that I really like. Its characters, though largely two-dimensional, are very funny, and the author does great work pretty
consistently. However, in the latest edition of this webcomic, the author spelled 'teeming' as 'teaming'. My question is, should I email him and tell him, or should I take a more subtle approach? Thanks a lot!
-- Pit Nicker"
Hypothetically, P.N., I wouldn't, theoretically speaking, pester the metaphorical author of this fictional comic about figurative typos at all. For example, let's pretend that I'm a webcartoonist. Call me "Ryan Bellinger". Now let's pretend that in Issue 671 of my comic Retaeht Tib-8, I spelled the word "gleaming" as "gleeming", missed it, and posted the erroneous comic for about 25,000 people a day to see. Now let's pretend that a large number of those 25,000 people notice the typo, and since each of them thinks they're the only person in the world capable of spotting this life-threatening error that could potentially bring about World War III, the return of the Black Death, and a Lilith Fair reunion tour, each of them feels obligated to mail me about it immediately, confident that only they can save mankind before It Is Too Late.
Now imagine what kind of inbox I wake up to the next morning.
Should our hypothetical cartoonist spellcheck his comics a little more carefully? Probably. But should every pinhead who superfluously mails him about it be strung up by their toenails over a pit of irradiated, Ebola-carrying fire ants? Guess. It's very thoughtful of you to offer your editorial services, P.N., but there are about 25,000 other people in line for the job too.
Correctively yours,
Evil Princess Sara
Do you have a question for Evil Princess Sara? Drop her a line at
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