TWENTY-THIRD UPDATE! (Replies 283-300)
Well, here I am, back at it again...starting with some year-old submissions this time around; it's getting dire. ^^; Ah well, I just suddenly got motivated to come back to this, and as this is one of the few surviving topics that's old enough not to auto-close, I kinda feel like it would be a waste not to drag it out as long as possible. :T
Son of Fire @gh0st_V
-I LOVE the chapter titles. 
I love them! Theyâre all so cool~
-âBut we were young enough not to know the difference between love and familial bondsââ this line feels misleading...itâs saying that love and familial bonds are not equivalent, and implies that the characters were too young and naive to know that. Further implying that someone they have a familial bond with, i.e. Aunt Silva, will turn out not to love them...but Iâm not getting that vibe from the other descriptions of her. Idk, either Iâm seeing the foreshadowing you want me to see, or somethingâs up...
-âAs a child I was baptized, submerged in water to give myself to God. How could something so merciless be a symbol of salvation?ââ You have...seen a baptism before, right? Like, in the modern dayâŚ?? ^^; You donât waterboard the baby or anything; itâs no more âmercilessâ than giving them a normal bath. Unless youâve had an experience I havenât hadâŚ
Iâd like to think that âmercilessâ simply refers to water itself, reflecting the MCâs fears by generalizing them over the whole element. But the âever sinceâ line right after this makes this unlikely...it really reads like theyâre living with trauma from something that should not have been traumatic, without explaining why.
-An âelegantâ extremely clunky first line of dialogue...MC is being tortured and yet youâre having him talk like a robot. âFuck you. I already told you I have no idea what the hell youâre talking about.â â âFuck you. I already told you, I donât know what youâre talking about!!â People under duress usually speak in shorter, more emotional phrases.
=Youâre in an odd position that I donât see a lot of writers in...your descriptive writing is incredible. The images you paint of the âemotional sceneryâ, so to speak, are powerful and striking. Unfortunately, the dialogue is nowhere near the same level, and it just kills the story...Iâm immersed, and then a character opens their mouth and Iâm pulled right out of the action, again and again. Either the things they say donât fully make sense or donât sound fitting for the situation, or both.
I realize this novel began 2 years ago though, so I hope youâve grown into your writing style a little more by now, and learned to improve your charactersâ speech. I think thatâs all you need to take your work from âokay-ishâ to âamazingâ.
The weight of the universe @SirCoockie
-Interesting style you have going on with the title art there...I dig it~
-I think the âhow to read a mangaâ diagram is a little unnecessary...if youâve seen those in localized print manga, itâs likely because some publisher back in the day realized that whatever 12-year-old picked it up could easily have no idea what manga is or how it works.
In this day and age, most manga do not have those anymore. ^^; Especially not web manga...itâs fair to assume that the viewer already knows whatâs going on, and if not, a simple âthis comic reads from right to leftâ somewhere in the description should suffice.
-The lack of punctuation really hurts the impact of this dialogue. =/ Itâs hard to discern the tone of the lines that are being said when the whole comic reads like one long text convo...
=Feels like 10% story, 90% air. All the characters are constantly chattering about data and results and mysteries, and yet the reader is given only the tiniest, slightest hints about what itâs all for. And then, every time it looks like some concrete story element is about to be revealed, we jump to a new cast of characters that we can watch chatter about vague ideas. Thereâs a fine line between building suspense and just stringing the reader along, refusing to actually tell them anything worthwhile, and I think you crossed it. :T
The problem is that thereâs nothing to hold onto in the meantime. The art is rough, the dialogue is wooden, and thereâs not a lot of character on display. If youâre not gonna give the reader information, fine; but you still need to entertain them in some other way.
Light Rising @morganicfoods
-I like the background/setting artwork...I just wish the drawings of the characters were of similar qualityâŚ
=...Itâs OK, I guess. A very...average comic; not good, not bad. Itâs hard to know what to say about itâŚ
If I had to say something, I think the character convos could stand to be a little more informative...yâknow, actually give us a chance to learn who these people are and care about them, before weâre stuck watching them trade empty banter.
Itâs not that your dialogue is awful; far from it, but as someone who just started reading Iâm really not interested in watching Girl B tell Girl A sheâs not gonna make it in the auditions in 7 different ways across two whole episodes...it just feels dull and repetitive, and like you could be using this time for better things.
Gamers Guff @WhoDrew
=Very...unfunny, unfortunatelyâŚ
...Well, mostly unfunny. Episode 5 felt like an actual joke and made me smile, at least. Then the next 2 episodes did not, and I figured it was time to quit.
It feels weird, because the comic seems pretty popular, but to be 100% honest I donât know what all these people see in it. ÂŻ_(=/)_/ÂŻ Thereâs no real humor; itâs just a bunch of over-the-top reactions without any setup. Fortunately I know enough about video games to âgetâ whatâs supposed to be funny about most of these situations, but that also means I know enough to realize that youâre just barely communicating it.
Also, I feel like the synopsis is misleading...the two brothers are âas polar opposite as you can imagineâ, despite the fact that the comics are not long enough or complex enough to characterize either of them in any meaningful way. =/
They âliterally go inside the gamesâ...despite the fact that half the time theyâre just doing meta-commentary on the games like any normal fan would. =/ Itâs weird that the premise is already being betrayed in just the first few episodes; like if you knew that early on that you wanted to do something different, you couldâve just changed the descriptionâŚ
...In a word: underwhelming.
Chasing Grief @rainwang
=In a word: messy.
Poetry is an exercise of style; there needs to be something intentional about how you choose and arrange your words, something that helps make the reader feel what you want them to feel. And I would encourage you to ask yourself what that stylistic quality is supposed to be, because Iâm not seeing it. Simply making some of the words rhyme occasionally isnât enough (especially when you keep randomly changing the rhythm and placement); I CAN feel the emotion youâre trying to convey, but the âpoetryâ is so devoid of style that I canât help asking myself âwhy isnât this just prose?â It feels more like pretty prose arranged into stanzas than an actual poemâŚ.either you need to implement a stronger rhyme/syllabic structure or you need to let it go completely; dabbling in the middle like this is just disorienting to read, it makes it look like you donât really know what you want to do.
Youâre definitely the best poet Iâve seen yet in this thread, and your work seems to get better as it goes. But from what Iâve read in the first handful of episodes, thereâs a lot of room to improve.
