

My Obsession with Chess - gnosis
http://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/chess/chess-one/chess-one.html

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ethank
If anyone hasn't read Understanding Comics, it's a fantastic book.
[http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-
Scott-M...](http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott-
Mccloud/dp/006097625X)

And for the HN set, it is actually really good for UX inspiration.

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mambodog
If you're doing any sort of visual storytelling, especially animation or
games, you owe it to yourself to read this book.

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ethank
I'd argue that any UX is visual storytelling.

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mambodog
About this comic:

 _My Obsession with Chess

1998-1999

My fourth online comic seemed to strike a chord with many readers, despite
requiring side-scrolling as well as down-scrolling (which I'll admit, can be
pretty annoying).

This one's autobiographical; an account of a childhood obsession with "the
most violent game" and how that obsession returned in my late twenties. It's
all true, but pretty weird, 'cause I was, um... a weird kid.

I visited the legendary Xerox PARC shortly after completing the comic and they
offered to print it for me on their humungous format printer. In 2008, the
print-out was exhibited at New York's Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art and
Bowling Green University as an artifact of webcomics history.

Anything more than ten years old is like the dead sea scrolls in webcomics._

From <http://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/chess/index.html>

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hsmyers
<nit>All my copies of 'My System', say Aron Nimzowitsch</nit> Great obsession
though, pretty easy to relate to as well. Glad he found comics...

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softbuilder
Thank you, I was about to look for the book and this saved some confusion. Not
sure why you were DV'd.

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sethbannon
Wonderfully captures the obsession many of us chess players have shared with
the game.

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zacharycohn
Love the ending.

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MaxGabriel
I had a very similar experience as the author did in the ending when playing
World 4 of Braid. For several hours I felt like walking back in the direction
I came from would cause time to move back as well.

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jshort
[http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bobby_fischer_against_the_wo...](http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/bobby_fischer_against_the_world/trailers/)
Haven't seen it yet but plan too! Looks like a pretty good chess related film.

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dimatura
The first chess-related work of fiction that comes to mind is "The defense",
by Nabokov. The main character is similarly obsessed with chess and comes to
see everything in terms of chess. There's a movie adaptation called "The
Luzhin defense", with John Turturro and Emily Watson, which I thought was OK.

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rottencupcakes
What does this comic gain from the strange layout of otherwise regular
squares? I got frustrated of trying to figure out where the next square was as
I scrolled down.

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lambda
It's about chess; it moves horizontally, vertically, diagonally, like moves on
a chessboard. The individual panels have black and white backgrounds, like a
chessboard, which combined with the movement, gives him the chance to affect
the mood; if he sticks to diagonal moves on black, you get a sequence of dark,
moody frames.

He also wrote, in the introduction to the comic
(<http://www.scottmccloud.com/1-webcomics/chess/index.html>):

    
    
      My fourth online comic seemed to strike a chord 
      with many readers, despite requiring side-scrolling 
      as well as down-scrolling (which I'll admit, can be 
      pretty annoying).
    

It sounds like this was something experimental; remember, this was the early
days of webcomics. He was experimenting with what you could do in a new
medium. It turns out that this choice was kind of annoying; but it was a nice
experiment, and it's a good comic despite the somewhat annoying scrolling.

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fmota
Sleep paralysis is terrifying.

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eru
It's only terrifying if you let it terrify you.

I get it on a regular basis, and don't mind.

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johnnyjustice
Yeah, it takes some concerted effort to realize its happenning and to relax
back into sleep.

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erikb
How can u post that link again? Is HN not blocking old links?

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adnam
Boring teen angst.

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zheng
This probably won't matter to you, but the entire point is that it's _not
about_ the angst.

