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 Post Posted: Thu Dec 25, 2014 12:48 am 
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Joined: Sat Nov 20, 2004 12:00 am
Posts: 6
The family is asleep, Santa's dropped the presents off under the tree, and as I settle in with my laptop for the night, my gut instinct is to put on the Tristram music from Diablo and head to sluggy.com. I'm not here to check the newest comic. No, it's been a good many years since I've kept up with that, though I sometimes tell myself I'm going to read up on everything I've missed and make Sluggy Freelance a daily part of my life again. I came here because the last thought to occur to me before drifting off to sleep is "I wonder if Torg and Riff exchanged a beer for the holidays, or if Bun-bun had a showdown with the newest incarnation of Kris Kringle?" I suppose a lot of adults fondly reflect on fictional, anthropomorphic animals from their childhood this time of year, but a switchblade-wielding rabbit is not typically one of them.

I started reading Sluggy Freelance in 1998, a year before I'd even made it to high school. The comic tended to go forgotten over the timeless summer months, but when I was in school I always looked forward to Pete's newest strip waiting for me as soon as I got home. It had an innocence about it that allowed me to forget teenage drama without feeling downright childish. I fell in love with the characters in spite of their silly antics (if we ever have a girl I'm still pushing for Zoe--no way in hell I'm letting my wife know where I got the idea for that name though :P). It made me laugh, but it also made me feel warm inside, and in the early years it was always the strips that ran from October through December that felt the most personal. Whether Torg was fighting demons or Bun-bun was duking it out with the man in red, holidays on Sluggy Freelance meant a lot of laughs and an excuse for this teenager to think about childhood fantasies without feeling stupid.

So here I am, a few weeks from hitting 30, and on Christmas Eve the most nostalgic thing on my mind is Sluggy Freelance. It's not just that this comic was one consistent factor during those teenage years where the world turns on its head and reality replaces fantasy. I think it's equally important to me that Sluggy Freelance still exists. That boundless frontier that was the internet of my childhood and early adult years has long succumbed to corporate monopolization and Facebook "selfie" culture. My irc channels have fallen silent. The forums on which I forged identities far more true to myself than preconditioned "real life" settings could hope to offer all 404. But Sluggy Freelance is one of the few stalwarts that have managed to carry on through it all. This strip isn't just a blast of nostalgia for the comic itself. It's one of the few remaining fragments of that old internet that made me who I am. Every time I come here and see that Pete is still doing his thing, it makes me want to cheer. Happy Holidays.

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 Post Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2014 5:40 pm 
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Joined: Mon Sep 23, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 2699
Website: http://kitoba.com
Location: Televising the revolution
*sigh*

People who were in middle school when Sluggy started are 30 now...

Man, I'm getting old.

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 Post Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2014 8:52 am 
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Joined: Sat Feb 09, 2008 12:16 am
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Location: Praise be to the sticky elastic bands of the Healing Gauze
I started reading Sluggy when I was sixteen. I joined the forums here when I was eighteen. I'm twenty-five now.

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2015 6:47 am 
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Joined: Tue May 21, 2002 12:00 am
Posts: 12406
Location: The things, they hurt
A looong while back, you said that you watched Teen Titans when you were a kid. Teen Titans aired when I was in college!
*shakes fist*

And that is when I realized I was officially old.

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 Post Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 4:54 am 
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Joined: Fri Jan 09, 2015 9:22 am
Posts: 9
I just turned 30 a few weeks ago, myself, and I've returned to the comic for all the reasons you mentioned. Wonderfully put.

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