Post Bad Reviews of Your Work

[kyupol]

lol you clicked on the links, dude? they are 2 different sites that have given my work bad review.

[Zaboem]

You got me. I did not follow those links.

[joe_galindez]

@kyupol Hmmmm . . .

MAG-ISA is a comic largely about spirituality and morality in the modern world. Unfortunately, it pushes this too far, and occasionally it borders on looking like a Jack Chick tract. At times it's unintenttionally comical, like the demon whispering to atheists and firing hypno rays, and at others it feels like getting lectured by Michael Moore or Glenn Beck.

I couldn't agree more. What makes it worse is how it's conveyed - the dialogue gets to be incredibly wooden and contrived, and when the characters get particularly passionate, which they often do, this is expressed with an abundance of profanity rather than genuine emotion. Also the story, which is somewhat hard to place, as there is much meandering, dives right in to the heavy atmosphere right from the getgo; there's no finesse to the storytelling.

. . .

Mag-Isa stars a young, troubled self-insert by the name of Emmanuel Cruz. He is an Filipino immigrant to Canada, who often laments his lack of friends and family. A normal person might consider that there might be some way to improve himself so that he would better fit in and make friends. But no, apparently it's just a cultural difference and there is nothing that can be done to bridge that gap. His family is not much better, allegedly. Both parents are portrayed as incredibly abusive, when they inconsistently beat Eman, complaining about his violent tendencies after he writes a troubling journal entry about raping drugged-out prostitutes with AK-47s. Eman sees no issue with his writing of course, and doesn't comprehend why anyone else would. After all, it's just a creative writing class, so it's not like the words are anything more than an expression of his inner desires.

This is not the only troubling behavior exhibited by Eman. There is also an event where he spends all his time helping his female friend work on a book report. After it's finished, Eman decides to ask her out, but she rejects him. Could it be the fact that she values his friendship more than his value as a potential mate? Or perhaps it's just the really creepy way he asked her out? No, she's just an ungrateful, selfish cocktease who wishes to torment Eman for no other reason than he's fun to torment. Then she shoots him.

. . . When his favorite priest is accused of pedophilia, Eman just cries for a bit and then moves on. When his friend and roommate gets shot in front of him, Eman just yells for a bit, launches an effortless revenge attempt, and gets shot up a lot, then moves on.

Ultimately, Eman joins an anti-government terrorist cell because some girl has sex with him. He then spends the next period of time training to fight against some generic, faceless enemy. His colleagues are other degenerates who have lashed out violently against their peers, and feel that there is nothing wrong with their behavior. . . .

What say you in defense of your content and techniques?

[kyupol]

Well...

1) Re: Its like a Jack Chick Tract / propaganda
- Lets be honest... how many movies push leftist, feminist, LGBT agenda out there? Others push their propaganda all the time. Make it fair. I have a Christian, conservative agenda overall... and I'm unashamed to say it boldly.

2) Re: Eman Cruz and his flaws
- Yes he's a flawed character. I dont write characters to be perfect or role models of society. Its raw and its as real as possible. But if you progress on reading the story, Eman grows and develops in his character.

Review was written when MAG-ISA was on its 10th or 11th chapter... before Eman turns against the evil terrorist organization in Chapter 12...

Yes I was accused of glorifying the ideology of this fictional terrorist organization... which is a combination of New Age spirituality and Leftist ideology mixed together and put on steroids. Reason why I put up a disclaimer on the comicfury website my comic was originally hosted on is to keep me out of trouble if ever someone does a mass shooting and my comic gets linked to it.

When I started the comic, I was a secular conservative I believed and idolized the likes of Alex Jones, David Icke, Jordan Maxwell, Alan Watt, etc....

I only converted to Christianity around early 2011 (lukewarm) and 2013 (Fundamentalist) and those have significantly impacted the direction of my comic.

Lost readers in the process. But hey... they hated me before they hated you (John 15:18)... and store up treasure in heaven (Matthew 16:19-21)..

My comic might not be as popular as the fantasy and LGBT comics out there but thats ok. For I am happy for the people I know it has helped "save".

[ratique]

This thread isn't to review others or to review the reviews posted.
Keep it clean and stop going off topic.

Cheers!
Rat

[kyupol]

Oh well... I tried my best but if you still think my art and dialogue sux, there's nothing I can do about it.

Only way I can seriously improve in art is if I dedicate more time to skill improvement. But nowadays, I'm more focused on making money for me and the wife doing non art-related job cuz it pays better. lol Id rather invest the money in learning how to weld or fix stuff.

Appreciate feedback tho. No hard feelings.

[dots]

i used to run a webcomic from 2012-13 and i asked for it to get reviewed on the smackjeeves forums. keep in mind, i wrote this comic back when i was an edgy teenager in high school!

the review was very informative even tho it did sting a lot at the time, but i was incredibly thankful for it and i still am. it definitely made me aware of how important framing, setting, and composition is. ive written a bunch of stories since chimie, so i would like to think my writing has improved since then. i would hope so!

i also like how im still not consistent with updates and i still write text heavy dialogue...some things just never change lol

[joe_galindez]

i used to run a webcomic from 2012-13 and i asked for it to get reviewed on the smackjeeves forums.

[dots]

[joe_galindez]

Aw yeh thats sum good cookie

[kyupol]

Dont have that much comic making time. Updates been dropped to once a week until further notice. Its just the holidays why Im sorta have time to be on line right now. After holidays, its back to my 6 day a week workweek doing a job that pays way more than making comics. Making comics isnt a good moneymaking venue unless you are in the top 5% of skill level of artists here.

Aside from that, I'm happy with my art as long as it looks somewhat decent. Regardless of you or anyone else's opinion about how my art sux, I can confidently say I'm better than about 50% of comics here as far as drawing is concerned. There's always gonna be haters its part of life. And no matter how hard I try to improve on drawing, it always looks "bad" to some. I cant please everybody and Ive accepted that lol.

And yeah I personally know people who did missionary work by literally standing at a street corner yelling at people about the Bible and being waaaayyy less politically correct than me. As in "You're a fag you gonna split hell wide open" and "You deserve rape you filthy whore put some clothes on"... and "Mohammad is in Hell and Allah is Satan" etc... And I tell you as crass as they are, they surely effective. More effective than the "nice guy" preacher believe it or not...

I got led to the faith through people like that. I prefer people like that over people who smile and pretend to be your friend while asking you to toss money constantly in the collection box. lol

[joe_galindez]

So the missionary as abusive parent?

[spadesart]

its deleted but someone responded to my nonwhite vampires with something along the lines of 'wtf...n--ga elves'

[joe_galindez]

Clearly they've never heard of the svartalfar.

[UrMom]

Pff you'd be surprised. I've given similar content warnings to others, getting a less positive response. Lurking around the webcomic community, I've noticed most want PG-13 max, or straight up porn... at least the part of the community I hang out in. They're usually pretty vocal about not liking unsanitized, darker subjects, especially if marginalized groups are involved. Horror stories are sort of an exception since it's a given that they'll most likely be NC-17 for gore, graphic violence and such.

Maybe I should start over, and just advertise in the horror community. Lmao!

[Zaboem]

Has anyone received some shockingly bad reviews recently?

[fuyudust]

that's not how boobs work lol

can we ever be realistic with the anatomy of females? like lets just enlarge the breasts and the butt because that's just how humans work in general. like no.

Her boobs' bigger than my head

That... that’s not how boobs work

Why does it seem her boobs get bigger every time this story updates

And hundreds more of similar comments, I'm now spending all my free time day and night to study boobs shapes and physics...

[cocoasninja]

I didn't even write poetry and I got this one:
"You're trying too hard, this isn't an amateur poetry slam."
Like... you're right... that's why I'm not at an amateur poetry slam..?

[Im_moron]

I've never gotten a "bad review", I've at least considered most of the ones I get, never got a review so bad that it was simply unhelpful or just idiotic...

(maybe one, the person didn't like my art style, that was kinda it)

the worse I got was some advice on something I adressed later on in the comic? I don't have anything against it, if anything, I should remake the pages so they are up to date...

I'd honestly wish I did get one though, just to pick it apart for comedic reasons, like, a reaLLY BAD REview...

[Testaccount]

This wasn't recent, but I did receive one bad review on a story. The funny thing is the reviewer didn't even post it in the story. Sometimes, I'll Google my pen name and my stories to make sure there isn't any plagiarism occurring. Well, I found the review, and it read like someone who had a personal grudge (which by the way, this person didn't like me). I did agree with some points of the review that were more constructive than negative.

Looking back, I can only laugh about it now. The story they reviewed was more of a practice story, so I could learn third-person limited. I've grown a lot since then, and now since I'm working as a professional writer and network with other professionals, I know the correct way to review others.

If you're doing peer review with one of your colleagues, you're not going to (or I would hope not) tell them their writing is horrible. A good reviewer points out what the person did well and how they can improve. For my reviews, online and professionally, I also find resources to help the person I'm reviewing. Of course, if the reviewer isn't trying to help the said writer grow, then they'll say whatever. I've found it's better to be constructive than mean. You treat people how you want to be treated, so I try to do the same. My writing is important to me, so if someone reviews my work, I want actual feedback, not angry ramblings.