That's Our Gabe: The quirky passive-aggressive gamer who makes any gaming situation Quirky and Fun

Not true. I'm just a shitty memester.

The guy's main character traits in the comic is being stupid and being a shithead (as opposed to Tycho, whose character traits are being arrogant and being a shithead). Why is it surprising that he's acting like a stupid shithead?

To be devil's advocate, that kid's going to read all his cards more thoroughly now.

>didn't read the effects of his cards

He deserved everything he got

Eh, it's more that he's aiming his shitiness towards his own son for the sake of a casual game. Basically teaching him in the ways of That Guy.

Isn't that like half the point of playing board games with your kids? My dad used monopoly to teach me about loans, compounding interest, and how profitable owning lots of lower end properties rather than a few big ones. Hell, I ended up teach my younger brothers some basic algebra and statistics when we all learned how to play MtG

To be honest, I've done shitty things like that in serious competition, but I would never do that in a more casual setting.

You're overthinking this OP, this is Penny Arcade and thus has two defining characteristics:

1. It's not funny. It used to be howlingly funny but it hasn't been in years.

2. They're both dicks and you're not supposed to want to be like them. As says, this one is a stupid dick and the other is an arrogant dick.

I think that the punchline is more like "don't complain about balance unless you actually at least read the rules"

It seems like you guys misunderstand this comic in a way I can't perceive. It as though there's a particular color you can't see, and, under those circumstances, your objections make sense. Except for the fact that the joke just makes sense.

He's a dad, and a gamer, and is doing something that is both a dad thing and a gamer thing. It's happened to me from my friends, my dad has actually done this to me, it's just a funny illustration of gamer dad and gamer son scenario.

Y'all are pretty autistic loners, /tg.

There's a big difference between not understanding how the rules work and not reading them in the first place.

>nerds are shitty people

Fixed.

>everyone is shitty people

Fixed

Hey, if someone wants to exploit their own son's ignorance of the rules to win a card game, it's their decision as a parent.

Uh huh.

>It used to be howlingly funny
No it didn't. You just used to be younger.

I wish DFC players would do this.

Agreed, and I wish some of my players were raised like this so they'd actually learn the fucking game we've been playing for 2 years now.

it's 5e for fucks sake

Oh come on guys, are you really telling me none of you have ever gotten this lesson? You've never gotten the "If we're competing its not my job to help you beat me," speech? This is clearly not the kid's first game, he knows the rules, he just didn't pay attention to all of them and opted to complain that the game was broken when the problem was him.

If you really never had an uncle/sibling/friend who did this to you, I don't know what to tell you.

The real dick thing would have been not to tell him so he could keep winning in the future while allowing the kid to ignorantly believe that he was good and it was the game that is bad. That's the mark of an asshole. This comic depicts a lesson every young gamer needs to learn, and its better to learn it from somebody who's going to be gentle about it.

>niggers
>people

This is how I teach my friends to play MTG.

Wait for them to make a mitake, play against it and then when the turn is done correct them.

If my friends correct them during the turn with "OH hang on, don't do that because you can do this" etc. then they never learn to think for themselves before committing.

Same with teaching my friend 40k.

Where is the sexy niece?

Honestly, it sounds like 1968 was a mistake. Not like there were any civil wars or political angling prior to that to protect the rights of animals.

RTFC is the cardinal rule in every single card game. You aren't going to point out something obvious to your opponent when they should be aware of it anyway

>he dosent teach his child self-sufficiency

Rtfc, nerds

Obviously it's set up for a joke where it shows that Gabe is immature and doing it to beat a child.

Reality is if you're teaching someone you immediately play again and remind them to read all the cards thus ensuring that you're not just teaching them how to play the game but also teaching them how to think, learn and understand using their own faculties instead of being hand holded.

What happened to BALD?

The whole point of parenting is to teach them to not need your guidance

A lot of autists can't understand humor. It's just something in how their brain is wired; tell them a joke and they look at you like a dog you just asked to do a trick you never taught them. The closest they can get is understanding what other people think is funny, which leads to them screaming jokes that other people made and waiting for the laugh.

I haven't read them too much in recent years, but PA is the only webcomic I can recall featuring author self-inserts that are irredeemable assholes instead of super-speshul snowflakes (at times with actual superpowers).

Sir Buzzkillington here to explain the joke for the plebeians such as OP.

The joke here is obviously one making fun of people who complain about the balance of their opponent, rather than actually learning to play the game well.

The author draws a parallel between such a person and a child who is still learning, offering the conclusion that such behavior is childlike and engaging in its is an error a child might make.

Wasn't that almost every single episode of yugioh but with card effects.

For the last few years Gabe has become retarded. May have been funny once, now all his jokes are not so subtle "I Win!" or "I'm better!" comments.
And those are the jokes we are to laugh at now.

... You act like it's not a joke that an adult would deliberately take advantage of a child's innocence for something as petty as winning a board game.

Overreactions are basic humour, user.

All this shitty armchair psychology to justify a pathetic excuse for a joke. Are you sure you're not an autist yourself?

>teaching my friend 40k

You monster!

Mm, pretty sure. I understood what was supposed to be funny and why even though I didn't think it was funny. I didn't need someone to explain the punchline to me. I also didn't start raging when someone questioned my ability to understand it.

This.

Guys? Gabe's been an asshole character since the first panel of this comic. It's his schtick. Do not take it seriously as a reflection of what the writers think actual child-rearing should look like.

>Where is the sexy niece?
Ann-archy? She's getting reamed by Tycho in the back room.

Its that thing where people talk about how cute their kids are and how awesome a parent they are. Motherfuckers will inflict the anecdotes about their children on anyone who will listen. Its probably cute and funny if you have kids and/or can imagine being in some sort of casually dumb relationship with your smug dad, stuff like that.

It could be used as a set up for a future joke where the son beats his dad through similar circumstances, becomes the master/monster.

Its more sad when you consider most of the comics about his kid were about how fantastical his son's imagination was, and how into having fun he was, but how he's being sculpted into being that guy like his dad.

That pic reminds me of Borborygmos

It's kind of undermined a bit by the fact that this is father and son. Gabe's kid could very well take his gaming lessons into real life and brow-beating his friends and potential romantic interests for not knowing the rules of The Game.

I have a feeling OP is much more of a fag passive-aggressive than Gabe or the comic.

Nah it was actually pretty funny before they both went on their happy pills. The early comics still hold up.

>mfw no one cares there was slavery of africans by africans
>there was slavery done by the greeks
>slavery done by the babylonians

Definitely this. Staging and drawing the right kind of character it's actually critical in cartoons and comics. Ploping people you know and like into any situation is Deviant Art level. Instead of conveying the message he probably want to convey as
points out. He's just drawn himself as an asshole father simply because he wanted to draw his kid in the comic.

Very amateurish.

You need to give them guidance first, then they won't need you guidance cause they already know it.

So, slavery is a big catch all term we use to discuss things, but not all slavery is equal, man.

There's a big difference between how a majority of the greeks dealt with their slaves and how slavery existed in the south, for example.

WOW
DAT
TUMBLR
NOSE
BOY
HOPE
PIG
KILLS
HIMSELF

IT'S
A
C O M I C
O
M
I
C

Yes, the Gabe character is a fuckface and more than a bit of a That Guy. That is kind of his thing. This is not really new.

The shittiest people I met are nerds.

I fucking hate this comic. Is all cringe-y, unfun, tryhard.

To be devil's advocate, there's really very little repercussions to me taking your things.

there is nothing that isn't cringy unfun bullshit. fucking faggot, go back to tumblr.

I'm sure they'll shed tears over your brutal takedown, all the way to the bank.

Get off the internet, Jerry.

The problem is that it's not funny because it makes sense. He's doing the dad and gamer things completely logically. Humor needs the absurd and it's sorely lacking.

I'm pretty lenient when it comes to casual games, but if there's one thing I will not forgive it's people not reading their own damn cards.

The joke is that he's acting opposite to what you'd expect a parent to act like.

>not beating your children at card games and board games by cheating and withholding information to teach them that life isn't fair

>cheating
>withholding information

Yeah, and "if somebody knows you're not reading the fine print, it's easy for them to screw you over"

>laughing_bankers.jpg

What is that image even trying to say?

link one strip that is actually fun :)

But then why would we need 5e generals?

Newfag containment.

People's inability to understand the differences between the two are a literal unsolved problem in anthropology/history

this is the last one i remember

t-thanks user

>Does a parent need to give Real Life Survival Lessons when playing a game with their 7-year old son? Yes, apparently.
Yes, you put your kids in a safe situation where notthing but their feelings may get hurt, let them fail to their own hubris and then teach them how it's done.
If you teach them first, they won't listen because they think they know better, it's like you've never taugth anything to anyone.

Yes, there's different kinds of slavery. The irish for example, were way more abused than the blacks but that doesn't matter because they're harder to herd and catholic (ironically) which gives them an actual cultural identity and makes them less likely to join the jew's "muh opression" bandwagon than blacks.

In the end they're still slaves, just now instead of picking cotton they're sacrificed to maintain a narrative.

Interestingly enough the worst slavers of africans were Arabs who castrated their slaves.

Nobody seems too upset about how modern day slavery exists in africa, the middle east, and south and east asia.

I don't know, seems pretty similar to a lot of gamers I know.

What? I still don't get it. Where do I laugh, exactly?

>Because it was way easier for me to win this way.

Dad: Ahahahahah, so funny, this parent is nuts for doing this to his child hahahahah, so cruel.
Mom: Timmy stole Jimmy's GameBoy again.
Dad: What?! Where is he, I'm gonna kick his ass, when will this boy learn. Fucking little punk.

If you ask me, I don't find it very funny. Just a bit cruel. But I can see how parents do this, just for shits and giggles, so I don't see it as that uncommon. So for being the punchline of a joke, it's kinda weak.

It's a fucking comic. The newspost makes it clear this didn't happen.

THANK you.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake

Garry Larson explained that one of the elements of humor is the mind being presented with an unacceptable or inconsistent situation, and being forced to accept it. The sheer absurdity and contradiction of the scenario sends the brain through a sort of mental "fire alarm", and we laugh and experience pleasure from our recognition of the flaws of the scenario presented.

The joke here is that the dad is a shitty parent. He's doing something totally unacceptable, essentially cheating, because he's in such a state of arrested development that he can't enjoy a friendly game with his son without trying to win at all costs. We're supposed to laugh at *him*, not the boy, and see *him* as a cruel, pathetic jerk.

It's... uh, I realize it's a bit funnier if you actually have a pretty good relationship with your parents, as it seems more out there.

Now, truth be told some people really dislike cruelty humor, and I dig that, but honestly user this joke seems fairly clear even if isn't that funny.

I have read every single Penny Arcade comic from its beginning to 2012 and I have not laughed once.

It has to do with the age of the kid.
If it's a little kid, it's a cruel manchild father not letting the little fuck win.
If it's an older kid already capable of understanding strategy, it's a life lesson and a common one at that: Let the pupil fail before correcting them. Because people are more inclined to correct than prevent.

Maybe the joke is that Gabe is a stupid shit and we expect the worst for him but here he's being a perfectly normal and fine father.

Not that other guy, but I dunno, user. I was playing D&D version 2 when I was 6 with my Dad. He did the same shit to me so I'd learn to read the damn book on my own and actually know what my characters did instead of just grabbing things I thought looked cool and had points enough to spend. Suffice to say, my Father and my Older Brother both taught me to understand what my character was and what it could actually do.
But hey, whatever.

Good for you?

Oooh ooh. Let's talk about the Irish slaves. Or how about 90% of chattel slaves weren't captured by white foreigners but by their fellow Africans and sold for guns and gold so they could go capture MORE of their neighboring tribes for MORE guns and gold.

Or let's talk about how, despite the fact that the First Nations like to bitch and moan about how oh, woe is us, the big bad Americans invaded our country and stole our land, a good chunk of those tribes still existing in fact helped the US Government, and the British and French before them, do the SAME GODDAMN THING to other tribes. It's a fun little fact that none of you SJW bitches like to bring up that NATIVE AMERICANS committed horrendous atrocities against other Native Americans, and that Africans sold other Africans into slavery. But no, it's the white mans fault. Fuck you, you people are responsible for the resurgence of white power movements like the KKK and the Neo-Nazis. I hope you are fucking proud of yourselfs.

>you people are responsible for the resurgence of white power movements like the KKK and the Neo-Nazis.
What makes you think that wasn't the goal in the first place?

I was doing some research recently on slavery among the pacific northwest indians.

Turns out the Haida still kept slaves into the 1880s at least. One account I read involved the ritual murder of a dozen slaves so that when the chieftain of a nearby tribe came to visit, they could lay the bodies down on the shoreline as a jetty for him to walk on as he left his canoe.

Humans are universally shitty. It's just that westerners wrote down the fucked up shit they did for people to read later.

Because I had hope in humanity up until about 2 and a half years.

The bottom line is the biggest goddamn issue about this whole thing is how the whole racial issue is framed right now in education and the media. Ideally the goal is color-blindness in the eyes of society and the law. But when you base your framing of the issue on highlighting peoples differences instead of their similarities, people are going to be resentful and they are going to lash out at their perceived betters. But yet, somehow, the idea of being racially color-blind has itself been spun as being racist. There is literally no winning move here apart from to stick the damn crazies on an iceberg and send them floating off to Crazyland where they are clearly from.