1048: "Emotion"

[spacedman]

These categories aren't mutually exclusive! You can be emotional about people being wrong on the internet about cancer, for example the Burzynski Center, Gerson Therapy, and assorted other quack therapists. Politics and Cancer mashup too, especially when your politicians are busy dismantling your state healthcare system to sell off to their rich business chums (the NHS in the UK).

I think my chart would be mostly Romance, Code Not Working, and Drumming.

[cstep]

Randall, while I am sad that they were necessary, I want to thank you for your cancer series of comics.

I am both a cancer survivor and work in a Radiation Oncology clinic, and these comics really rang true for me. No one really knows what a complete shock to the psyche a cancer diagnosis is unless it has happened to themselves or a close loved one. I am amazed by how well you capture the thoughts, anxiety, anger, defiance, and sheer hugeness of this disease. I've never seen a clearer explanation of what it's like to live as a "survivor" than the "Lanes" comic. We have several copies of the "Tattoo" comic hanging in our department. It is brilliant; it gives people a way to laugh a little at their situation while also screaming a defiant "Fuck you!" Which you find yourself wanting to scream a lot, even if it's directed at no one in particular.

So thanks Randall. I send my deepest wishes of happiness and good health to you and your wife. Even if it doesn't get easier to deal with, it gets...less frequently intense.

Oh, and while I am all for freedom of expression and the right of everyone to their opinions, SirMustapha can fuck right the fuck off. Gah, I know, I know: don't feed the trolls. But dear God, who trolls cancer victims and their families?

[perakojot]

FTFY

or maybe that's just me, why with the re-watching of the complete Buffy series with the girlfriend, and the Cabin in the Woods getting rave reviews, and the Avengers coming..

[SirMustapha]

So he should quit his job and stop earning money out of respect. Right.

But judging by his "emotion" graph, "earning money to pay my bills" was never a problem for him either, so I guess, I don't know, he has alternate sources of income. Besides, with the kinds of fans he has, he could simply stop making new comics, put up a permanent "comic on hold because my wife has cancer" image on the front page, and still keep selling his stuff. Heck, he would probably sell even more.

But, yes, if he did reach a state in which "Cancer" was the reason for 95% of his emotions for several months, then he definitely would have quit doing whatever he was doing back then; otherwise, he is purposefully exaggerating his suffering just to earn cheap sympathy. Now that does sound ethical!

Also, he shouldn't sell the comic, you know, out of respect.

Oh, it's true! Silly me! He NEVER sold his comic! Not even when he, you know, sold his comic: http://store.xkcd.com/xkcd/#xkcdvolume0

You know, it has been a while since I have seen such a poorly thought-out, unsympathetic, vitriolic attempt at demagoguery. I came into ICT hoping to enjoy the Friday update and instead was presented with this odious piece of polemic! I can only assume that this is some half-assed attempt to win more people over to his side but I'm pretty sure it's going to drive people in the opposite direction and certainly reduce any sympathy he might have had before now. I mean, does he hope to profit from this kind of (what I can only call ) grandstanding or trolling? Does he think that this is going to earn him money!? A very poor effort all round. Here's hoping that SirMustapha can do better on Monday.

Wow, that hurt. It only didn't hurt more because you didn't call me by a hilarious, punny name such as "SirTrollapha". THAT would have made me cry.

Let me tell you a little secret. Everyone writes from what they know. Asimov once had a fellow sci-fi author comment on a short story of his, where one of the characters secretly represented Isaac himself, that he was "making money off of his own neuroses". To which he responded, "Well, whose neuroses should I make money off of?"

Now that is odd! All this time I've been reading books by authors who were somehow able to create characters who were NOT carbon copies of themselves, and flesh out "neuroses" that they actually didn't have. Maybe I've been reading bad authors all this time. Yes! How dare that awful Saramago write about people going blind if he could always see? Surely Asimov deserved that Nobel Prize better!

[rileyrulesu]

That is so sad...



I feel myself welling up because of joss whedon's line disappearing.

[eran_rathan]

his y-axis is not labelled.

[kayghar]

Best of luck in her and your ordeal mate. May symmetry give you strength.

[Desiato]

Sympathy++

TrollFeeding--

[of the way]

Well, if we don't feed the troll, then who will? Honestly, SirMustapha, when I first started reading these forums I assumed you were a random jerkface troll. As I continued to read more of your posts, I realized that, while you certainly are a troll, you are a most uncommon breed. You actually believe at least some of the things that you say. Thought and reason can be seen behind even your most acidic of posts. On some rare occasions, I could be found to actually respect some things that you said, even if I didn't agree with what you said or how you said them. But it seems you have played me for a fool. Unless you woke up with a javelin in your chest today, I appear to have pegged you correctly with my first assumption. I will make the suggestion that you have refused many times before, and shall probably refuse many times in the future: please leave, and never come back.

[mochafairy]

I'm glad to hear she's doing well. She sounds like a fighter!

Wishing you all the best!

[123man]

It's been several years, but I survived a Wilm's tumor myself. It is rough and so hard on families. That's fantastic that she is cancer-free now, congratulations! That is fantastic.

Please be sure to continue to always support cancer victims and their support, and if you are able now or in the future, please support cancer based charities as much as you can. You don't have to donate money, my business donates its time and services every year to the local fundraisers. Even if its volunteering at events, you can make a big impact that way.

Thanks! We've come across a few other Wilms survivors and it's pretty awesome to realize they went through this X years ago and are still up and livin' life. We have been involved in Relay for Life and a few other organizations on a small scale. Sometimes I really want to help and sometimes I want to distance myself because hearing about all these other cases really, really breaks my heart. I realize that's selfish. I'll probably come around.

Oh hey and also, when it comes time, american cancer society offers scholarships to cancer survivors who go to college. Eventually when your daughter goes to college (if that's the route she takes) be sure to check it out. I got one that was 5,000. They had a volunteer requirement, which i had no problem fulfilling, and even though I've long since surpassed the requirement, I volunteer every year at their big things. It's just something that has touched me, in a positive way, as a result of having cancer. I guess what I"m trying to say is, it's not ALL bad.

Thanks, I'll remember that!
And I know it's not all bad. I grew a lot over that period of time that she was going through treatment. I was stretched and forced to do things that were uncomfortable for me but needed getting done. I knew, no matter what the outcome, that I would come out for the better at the end. I try to make sure she wears her battle as a badge of honor and I know I'm proud of her and me and the rest of my family for how we coped. Thanks again.

[SirMustapha]

Well, if we don't feed the troll, then who will? Honestly, SirMustapha, when I first started reading these forums I assumed you were a random jerkface troll. As I continued to read more of your posts, I realized that, while you certainly are a troll, you are a most uncommon breed. You actually believe at least some of the things that you say. Thought and reason can be seen behind even your most acidic of posts. On some rare occasions, I could be found to actually respect some things that you said, even if I didn't agree with what you said or how you said them. But it seems you have played me for a fool. Unless you woke up with a javelin in your chest today, I appear to have pegged you correctly with my first assumption. I will make the suggestion that you have refused many times before, and shall probably refuse many times in the future: please leave, and never come back.

So your second post is telling someone to leave the forum. To say the least, I'm not looking forward to your next ones.

But I'll put it in a blunt way: what Randall did today in his comic is what those phony "emo/goth" idiots do on LiveJournal. It's the exact same thing: exaggerated attention-whoring, except that Randall is putting his "suffering" on the spotlight at the expense of someone (his own wife)'s actual suffering. I feel insulted. Really. If the fans here have the right to feel "offended" by my posts, then hell, I have the same rights to feel offended by Randalls comics, and I do. So, Randall, you're spilling all your self-pity on the Internet, and you want people to feel sorry for you because someone else has cancer. And yes, I say "feel sorry for you", because these are YOUR "emotions". You're using someone else's suffering to cry crocodile tears and earn some cheap sympathy (and some extra cash as an added bonus). Have people here really succeeded in creating some bizarro upside-down world in which Randall is actually deserving of genuine, heartfelt sympathy? I could only fathom this possibility in Mary Sue fanfiction.

[Роберт]

I really think, SirMustapha, that you should have removed your self-promotion links when protesting Randall's self promotion. You know, out of respect.

[kizolk]

And, heck, why didn't xkcd itself ever take up any of his emotions?

I don't agree with that. Today's comic is about the *causes* of his emotions. xkcd talks about emotions, or about things that provoke emotions, or what have you, but it's not necessarily a cause of emotions to Munroe -- it is to his readers because we're on the receiving end, but from his POV, I think xkcd is more a way to let out his emotions, if anything. Not a cause.

BUUUUT even if it was a cause of emotions to him, I'd like to remind you one of the color thingies reads "Other". Technically, xkcd could take up 99.9% of it, which is quite a lot.

So the cancer case took up virtually all of Randall's emotions during half a year, and he still kept on making comics?

There's a French actor whose daughter was killed; the day it happened (or at least, the day he learned about her death), he went on stage as usual and performed in a comedic play. I'm not saying Munroe does it for the same reasons, but what I do know is that there are people who need to keep working when bad things happen to them -- especially when bad things happen to them.

He frankly seems to be cashing in on his wife's illness, making profit out of it -- otherwise he should have removed the link to the store on this comic, you know, out of respect.

There is such a thing as overthinking little details. By default, all comics link to the store. Oh big deal, he forgot to remove it. Then again, I don't see why he should remove it; he chose to make it a comic, in other words, it's a comic just like the other ones. Also, let's say Munroe is a despicable man, OK. Still, what kind of monster would "cash in" on that kind of things? I'm using the verb "cash in" in the same way you did, ie. obviously loaded with bad connotations. You know, like he doesn't really care about his wife, he just wants money, etc.. If you think that, I'm pretty sure you're wrong.

Now, is he doing for the money? Maybe he is. I mean, I know nothing about them. Maybe she doesn't work, or had to stop working because of her illness? Maybe their only source of income is xkcd? In this case, they most probably need money for the cancer treatment. So they need to sell more merchandise. It doesn't strike me as wrong.

Again, I know nothing about them, I'm not speaking in his name. I'm just saying: if you want to find something to criticise, it's really easy. But you can find a counter-argument for each of these criticisms.

All that said, it's not like I completely disagree with you. I can't help but cringe a little when I see this kind of comics because yeah, it does seem like an "I'm using something very serious and sad to gain sympathy and to have something to talk about now that I'm kind of out of ideas after more than 1000 comics" thing. A lot of them are really the same, just, presented differently. This one is composed of the usual suspects: "I love her + cancer + programmers are cute when they fight with PCs + Serenity was the best + data visualisation". Also, self-insert can be good, but here's it's too personal. I think Munroe should really make a distinction between his comic and his blog. In the comic, there should be some distance between him and his characters/things he talk about. Otherwise, he's just imposing his personal issues on us. Or he should be straightforward, and say "xkcd is an autobiographical comic".

As for the comic itself: not bad. It's not awesome, but I did find it sad and touching. But you gotta admit, it doesn't require a lot of talent: basically, it just tells the reader "imagine the person you love gets cancer".

[Princess Marzipan]

I notice a rather large number of posters who seem to have joined to post about how much they appreciate this comic. Not to mention the people who were already here that are posting their appreciation for it.

I don't know what festering cesspool of negativity makes you incapable of seeing this as anything other than an intentional marketing ploy, but I hope one day you can make peace with it.

[poxic]

Y'know, SirM, your undying obsession with nitpicking xkcd comics (and using pop psychology on its author) is starting to get kind of creepy. Do you have hobbies? Or are you just here to keep promoting your own website, leeching off of Randall's popularity?

[bmonk]

I honestly had no idea that, when I got home tonight, I was going to be seeing a comic that hit so close to home. I've been reading xkcd for about 3 years and I never knew that any of this was happening with your wife or you, Randall. I sincerely hope she does well and that this concern regarding cancer subsides. I was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer two months ago so I can feel where you're coming from. At 21 with no family history, it sure as hell was a shock for me and my family. I created a profile on here just so I could say I understand and support you and that I shall read your comic until I cannot any longer.

We feel for you too, all of us who have had cancer, or seen loved ones struggle with it.

[BlitzGirl]

My own map would probably be a wall of yellow.

A growing, towering tsunami of yellow...

You know, this is really my fault that the first thing that comes to my mind is that South Park episode:

Spoiler:

But I can't help but blame your phrasing a little.

[gmalivuk]

Spoiler for response to SirMustapha:

Spoiler:

Have people here really succeeded in creating some bizarro upside-down world in which Randall is actually deserving of genuine, heartfelt sympathy?

No, the bizarro world here is yours, where people apparently never suffer (and therefore deserve sympathy) themselves when a loved one is dealing with something life-threatening. I hope you never get married or have children, because it will be pretty shitty for them when they come down with something serious, and you don't feel even a little bit bad as a result.

[Plautdietsch]

That comic looks awfully familiar.

My older brother was diagnosed with cancer (non-Hodgkins lymphoma) when he was 12. I can't imagine what that must have been like for my parents. I was eight, and I don't think I quite grasped that he was near death. Looking back at pictures when he was bald and scrawny, draped in a too-big hospital gown, it's just haunting. (He is also fine. Married, two kids, races cars on the weekends...)

Last October, my grandmother died from complications from the treatment for cancer. She was an amazing woman, and I miss her.

In my experience, life gets better, but "normal"? It's never quite the same.

[gmalivuk]

In my experience, life gets better, but "normal"? It's never quite the same.

Yeah, as a friend of mine (who was in the 8th grade when she lost her mom to cancer) said, you can eventually get used to it, but you never get over it.

[fernie]

1,000 thanks to whoever suggested a way to "mute" troll mustapha or whatever the purple puppet's name is. This alone will likely increase my enjoyment of the forum.
For those of you who might be interested in starving the troll into disappearance (one can hope right?). Click on his profile name (you have to be logged in yourself to do this) and there will be an option to add as "friend" or "foe". Apparently adding to "foe" will automatically block posts and let you know "this post was written by xx do you want to see it" along with a clicky link, which I will ensure to never click.


Sorry to derail, I simply found the response to this comic to be the last straw that I will not even waste my time reading what he has to say.

Back to happy thoughts.
I am glad to hear the good news. Having two of my closest friends being diagnosed with cancer I clearly felt the "cancer" bump take over most other emotions while researching everything the interwebs has to offer. I know as a non-family member and obviously "unqualified" individual (apparently civil engineering doesn't qualify me to give medical advice) I was/am not taken into account as far as treatment options go, but it doesn't hurt to know once they open back up to the rest of us.

Shameless blurb: apparently a lot of types of cancer (not all, sadly) can be avoided/prevented with a healthy diet consisting of unprocessed grains, mixed vegetables, and minimal red meat (or any meat, depending how extreme you get); but hey, I'm just an applied-science major focusing on dead buildings, eat all the McDonalds and monster drinks you want.

[of the way]

So your second post is telling someone to leave the forum. To say the least, I'm not looking forward to your next ones.

But I'll put it in a blunt way: what Randall did today in his comic is what those phony "emo/goth" idiots do on LiveJournal. It's the exact same thing: exaggerated attention-whoring, except that Randall is putting his "suffering" on the spotlight at the expense of someone (his own wife)'s actual suffering. I feel insulted. Really. If the fans here have the right to feel "offended" by my posts, then hell, I have the same rights to feel offended by Randalls comics, and I do. So, Randall, you're spilling all your self-pity on the Internet, and you want people to feel sorry for you because someone else has cancer. And yes, I say "feel sorry for you", because these are YOUR "emotions". You're using someone else's suffering to cry crocodile tears and earn some cheap sympathy (and some extra cash as an added bonus). Have people here really succeeded in creating some bizarro upside-down world in which Randall is actually deserving of genuine, heartfelt sympathy? I could only fathom this possibility in Mary Sue fanfiction.

This response can be respected much more than your first one. You indeed have a right to feel insulted and offended. I don't think you have a reason to, but it's not like I could stop you. It seems to me that xkcd is an outlet for him. Either for what's sitting in a quirky corner of his brain, something he comes across in the media, or something that weighs on him. We are left with no guarantees to what we will find here. I could understand if he added a bunch of extra links to his store or highlighted it in some way. But all we got is a small insight into who he is (or, if you want to be cynical, what he wants us to think that he is). And why wouldn't he deserve sympathy? What person doesn't deserve sympathy? Has he murdered some family that I'm not aware of?

And I didn't tell you to leave. I made a suggestion. I even said please. Come on, you've taken much worse.

[Yosarian2]

We're glad to hear the good news about your fiance.

As for SirMustapha: I'm glad you decided to try to help things get back to normal by being so very, very wrong on the internet, that was thoughtful of you.

[Steax]

you want people to feel sorry for you because someone else has cancer.

Way to insult everyone who went through the deep pains of having a close family member have cancer.

It doesn't matter what people say - learning that a person intimate and sharing their life with us has cancer is a difficult emotion. I can honestly say that it's something you don't fully understand until experienced (though I certainly don't wish this for anyone, anywhere). I, too, can totally relate with how it dominates one's fears and emotions for years. Every time something else comes along, it gets overshadowed by it.

I know xkcd isn't some super-safespace, but given that he's posted less than ten comics about the subject, out of hundreds of comics, I find it very hard to call him "monetizing" it. In fact, it only even started in mid-2011, long after it entered his mind (according to this comic), and he did ask for support - in the form of flash games to keep him busy.

You have the right to be offended by the comic, but people also have the right to be offended by you downplaying fucking cancer.

[hthall]

I don't know why, but I find the ??? section especially moving.

…I wonder about the question marked section on the right hand side.

I interpret the question marks as the random-seeming emotions that occasionally hit you out of the blue with no discernible cause after you've been through (or are still going through) something like that.

[poxic]

My interpretation was "wait, cancer is receding and now I have free emotional space? The hell do I do with myself now?"

[Netreker0]

It's funny that Mustapha compares Randall to the emo-kids on Livejournal solely to troll for sympathy, considering that he spends his time logging into a forum dedicated to a comic he hates so much full of people who really don't think much him in order to complain, much like the hipsters who go drink at the popular bars every night in order to feel superior to all the people who are there because they like it. But with self-promoting links.

[J Thomas]

1,000 thanks to whoever suggested a way to "mute" troll mustapha or whatever the purple puppet's name is.

Yes, thank you.

Shameless blurb: apparently a lot of types of cancer (not all, sadly) can be avoided/prevented with a healthy diet consisting of unprocessed grains, mixed vegetables, and minimal red meat (or any meat, depending how extreme you get); but hey, I'm just an applied-science major focusing on dead buildings, eat all the McDonalds and monster drinks you want.

I'd tend to put it the other way around. Whatever you do that causes wear-and-tear on your body, that requires excessive regrowth etc, increases the chance of cancer. An unhealthy diet causes various forms of wear-and-tear.

[JohnTheWysard]

Randall, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988.

She's now 91, crabby, irascible, witty and healthy.

Best wishes for just as good (or better) an outcome for your love.

[MKBGeorgi]

I know that most have said he doesn't read the forums - but just in case I wanted to say thank you. My graph looks just. like. his. and it struck me hard. It's nice to know I'm not alone. I have no other way to say thank you.

[Coldfront]

Randall, I send my regards, and offer some services, if I may.
I'm currently an undergraduate at UC Davis, and am close with our resident Breast Cancer researcher Dr. Russ Hovey (granted, he works on the mammary glands of anything but humans, they're still mammary glands), as well as several other soon-to-be oncologists attending the local Med school and other programs...
If, in your research, you come across some grey area that isn't adequately answered by any experts in your network, I'd be happy to forward your questions to those in mine.

[Wilhelm]

Every once in a while I realize that there are cancer cells present in everyone, all the time, and think that they might be some kind of organic monitoring device used by some unimaginable and vast consciousness. Every once in a while though, it stops functioning right, and attempts to destroy the "host". In this sense, you could say that cancer is code malfunctioning when it should be working properly.

With the right twist of thought and a tiny bit of paranoid insanity, you could put the "cancer" category in with one about code not working.

[fishamaphone]

This is a timely comic for me. If it was a chart for my life, the goddamn thing would have to expand right around the end. I wish I could focus all my energy on cancer, but there are so many things going on in my life right now, and when I tried to focus on all of them, it just drove me insane.

Thank you for this comic, Randall, and I hope all the best for anyone else dealing with cancer, or any severe medical condition for that matter.

[addams]

My own map would probably be a wall of yellow.

A growing, towering tsunami of yellow...

You know, this is really my fault that the first thing that comes to my mind is that South Park episode:

Spoiler:

But I can't help but blame your phrasing a little.

So, funny. A big towering tsunami of yellow.
Better. It is better to know people are wrong on the internet than to not have the internet. (I have seen some correct on the internet.)

[CuBr]

...while "??" indicates, quite rightly, that none of us knows what's going to freak us out in the future.

The graph doesn't extend into the future.

This is likely me over-reading things, but two things I noticed:
1) During some periods the sum of two emotions seem oddly constant (e.g., debugging+arguing 2009--2010) like he was replacing some of one emotion by the other.
2) The cancer spike started slowly, suggesting a period of over 2 months before the diagnosis.

[Ehsanit]

I understood the ?? to represent some sort of emotional emptyness; not knowing quite what to feel as the overwhelming terror/rage/sorrow about the cancer starts to subside.

[ryusen]

Hi Randall, not sure if you actually read all of this, but thank you for doing this comic. Just last year, my best friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. I flew to LA to take care of her right after her surgery. Seeing this kind of gave me a nice connection i never had before. I've been reading your comic for years, but finally registered on the forum, just so i could thank you. I'm glad your wife is feeling better.

[illinoiscentral]

I don't know... I've got mixed feelings about this comic. Magical words "She's doing well" and people piss themselves happy in the forums or go "yeah, totally, this comic is such an elaborate truth that only us burdened few with relatives struck by cancer know". Whoa! Big family illness suddenly takes up most of your world when you gotta live with it? Shocking.
Although I do get why he made it and what he probably felt. Just... you know, when she's doing well after two years, that's like.. expected. It's all good for a while and it just seems it's one of those cases when the cancer's just gone. And then suddenly BAM and ... well... then people go "I'm so sorry for your huge loss".

As I'm saying, I'm probably around neutral position on the comic itself - it's just forum replies that baffle me so much. I don't mean to come off as the grumpy person who just puts negativism everywhere until the darkness consumes him, but guess what - most people with cancer die. Just like that. No justification or anything. Sure it makes you feel nice and warm to expect the best out of anything, but guess what: it just shock you that much more when it happens as it usually does - instead of all the happyends this very case deserves or whatever.

[Princess Marzipan]

Have you considered joining the medical profession? I bet those doctors could really use someone who actually knows anything about cancer, such as yourself, because clearly they're not doing a very good job of realistically explaining it to their patients.