Is There Something You're Torn About In Your Comic But You Can't Change?

@darthmongoose Kate Holden
Mon, 15 May 2023 06:01:04 +0000

@darthmongoose wrote:

Errant being a reboot of a comic I never finished after several attempts back in my teens and early twenties, it has a bunch of legacy features that are there because I really care about them, but which aren't necessarily good for building a readership.

Obviously the names are kind of terrible. They're names I came up with when I was a teenager! I've been torn on whether I should have left Sarin's name as Sarin from the start, because yeah, it is the name of a nerve gas...though it is also a south asian name as well, so... there are people in the world called Sarin. It's hard to say... To me, Sarin is just her name, but some people find it distracting.

The whole setup of the plot with this big time-skip and two friends reuniting as adults and trying to rebuild trust perhaps adds a layer of complexity that pushes things too far. I feel like maybe the story of Errant is too complicated, it's not a breezy popcorn webtoon where the protagonist hits you over the head with what's happening repeatedly via internal monologue. Part of me likes that you can read the comic a couple of times, and on the second time, you'll pick up all these clues and foreshadowing... but part of me is like "this isn't an easy read for most people, it'd be more popular if the story was simpler and there was narration to spell it out to people".

I regret having so many characters. I think I could have done with fewer. I'm using the ones I have as best I can and won't be introducing any more, but still.... it's surprising just how small a cast a webcomic can really support before it starts getting unmanageable!