Reply down below the worst comment you’ve ever received from a reader

I got one where it said that my comic would better if it were drawn by someone else.
I had to agree.

Still hurt though.

I get a good amount of horrible comments, especially for one of my older series which has attracted a rather... entitled readership. (and is one of the many reasons contributing to it's hiatus, like I willingly want to deal with that fucking fanbase again)

But a recent one I got for a comic on a long hiatus could basically be summed up as "We've had a pandemic for months yet artist still hasn't found time to update, meanwhile I graduated starts listing life achievements they did while I was 'lazy and not updating."

As I apparently am not affected at all by the pandemic or everything else happening, and any problem I have in my life could not possibly equal enough to excuse putting a comic on hiatus, such as constant deaths in the family, losing jobs and contracts, health issue upon health issue and just living in constant debilitating physical pain.

It's too bad that people have to give such demeaning comments to creators and fellow humans. I haven't posted my comics yet, but I plan to. I can't say that the comment I received was hate necessarily, but blatant ignorance for the genre. I had a friend, who I don't think really watched anime, tell me that my stuff didn't look like anime because my main character's hair wasn't spiky enough. I think a lot of these comments from people can be chalked up to: "Do you understand what people go through to create their works?" I have a feeling they don't. It hurts to read what nasty things people have said to other creators. Granted, mine isn't really that harsh. But my point, again, is that sometimes I think a lot of people don't take into consideration what goes into creating something, and that those creators are real people.

I haven't received any hate comments on Tapas yet. But I did back on my old site. Most of them were pretty tame. "I don't like what you're doing with the material." "This sucks." "Why'd you do an OC? OC's are lame." Basically your generic "I don't like it because it's different and I don't like different." style of commentary.

There was this one guy who I ended up having to block. He kept spamming my review feed with complaints about the way I was taking the story. And these were seriously long-winded rants that would go on for entire paragraphs. Like, I was a little impressed he could keep it up for as long as he did.

Ultimately though, I got tired of his shenanigans and his spamming and blocked him from reviewing.

I actually haven't gotten any hate comments for my art/writing on Tapas or elsewhere! Well, all except one time on Reddit. I posted this painting I did on the DCEU (DC Comics Extended Universe) sub-reddit like... four years ago and everyone enjoyed it except this one guy who told me I was "dumb as ****". I ended up cracking up because the hatred was really random.

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Okay, legit though. That's actually really funny. I want to know what it was about this image that got that one dude so riled up he felt the need to comment.

Pretty sure it was hatred for the character but still omg!

Oh boy, I shall take this opportunity to rant for a little bit!

My readers for the most part are pretty nice, but the more hurtful comments come from a Q&A episode where I mentioned I had burnout from making my comic. It probably stems from not knowing the process behind making comics but those comments were basically, "Why does a B&W digital comic with a simple style take so long to update?" and, "I've seen other comics with similar styles that update on a weekly basis so why does yours take a month?" Like, please, that's what burnout is! At my worst, it takes me a whole day to just draw a single panel. Making comics is mentally taxing. My style may look 'simple' but a lot goes on in the background.

But the worst comment was one that started off as a fair criticism about how I handled my comic but it ended with "Why'd you keep pushing for something that didn't have your heart in and had a pretty ok conclusion?" Sir/madam, if I didn't have my heart in it then I wouldn't be putting so much effort into making the comic as best as I could in the first place! I love my characters and I wanted to see the comic through to its conclusion and not leave anything hanging. (While leaving room for a possible sequel!)

Well, that's it for my rant. Those comments happened many months back but they still hurt when I read them. I didn't reply to those comments 'cuz I don't want to deal with anything that comes after. Anyway, the comic is now finished and I'm slightly better at handling my burnout.

Okay, let's sum up some comments I got for my very first attempt in digital comic making, Sorcerer's Rise.

"Ugly" (Ep 2)
"So ugly" (Ep 3)
"Less uglybut still ugly" (Ep 4)
"Whats with their hands" (Ep 5)
"Make another ugly hair episode next time" (Ep 10)
"Not my problem" (after me asking why they found it ugly) (Ep 10)
"Don't do that shit... ever again" (Ep 11)

And the last one I received on RotH on webtoon
"Thank god you stopped sorcerer rise. My eye didn't stop bleeding during 2 months because of that comic" (Q&A on webtoon)

I didn't really get bad comments for RotH (well maybe silence)

No likes, no comments, no feedbacks, only views.
That's the worst thing I got from readers/subscribers.
It feels like they try to bury me.
I'm grateful I still have loyal readers, even if only a few, without them, I already gave up.

I have not had the privilege of anyone dissing my comic. I would like to see it happen so I know what it feels like. Maybe I should start posting on Webtoons I bet then I would piss readers off with my three separate art style changes, and non mobile friendly early pages.

Immortalized in this tweet:

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(Some readers REALLY don't like present tense fiction)

Wait, I forgot about my stupid Mario fan fiction which got incredibly positive reviews right up until it was already over and some pretty upset people suddenly marched in:

You really must hate trans people. The way you make bowser a depressed, self-hating loner who [spoilers] goes to show how little respect you actually have for the character. Its actually rather disgusting to see you repeatedly trash the character for seemingly no other reason than you feel like it.

What a bigot...

(Context: the reader didn't like what I did with the romance subplot)

!!! Oh and I made a trollfic many year ago which has some absolute GEMS of angry comments:

You're the personification of "Just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean you should."

Do the world a favor and throw out your keyboard.

and

Dude this is sad as fuck please stop and delete this. JUST SAD. I pity the fool(you author)

and lastly

You know...this is the first time I want to bash people so much..and that is you...congratulation...please don't taint MKNR...you've achieve in makings fun of it..once more I congratulate you..

Fan fictions get WAY more hate than original fictions lol

I mainly get really nice comments from my readers but, I do come across rude ones once in a while. Hmm, let's see... The worst would be:

"If you are truly busy with your personal life, I suggest you abandon the story and focus more on shorter stories instead"

And also, not bad comments but, I get this SO often:

"Why is it so short? At least update longer"
"Too short. Please update more"
"That's all? Are you kidding me?"
"What's the point in this story if you update so short?"

And this is DESPITE me clearly telling the readers at the end note of the first chapter that I can't update longer or more often because I have a full time job. Again, not a negative comment but, it's rather frustrating to know some of my readers do not even bother to read my author's note. Like, what else am I supposed to do to explain my situation? Give out personal apologies? Sigh...

I don't want to end up to a point where I dread reading comments in case I see more complaints but, you win some, you lose some, I guess? I'm certain I will get worst comments in the future so, I'm trying to practice having a thick skin to deal with it.

My worst comment was on an announcement episode. I announced I was pregnant and that I had a new schedule for updates and stuff. One reader asked me if (and I'll censor slightly)

Unfortunately it was on Webtoon and took over a yr to get that comment removed.

I'd have to dig through my old Drunkduck (which is now called "The Duck" apparently... wow, it's been a long time) to find it, because it must have been like 12 years ago, but I once had a comment that stuck with me forever due to being so astonishingly arsey. It was pretty much:

"This comic is poorly written and drawn, I don't understand why people like it."
To which I responded something like, "I understand, I'm still learning and trying to improve. You don't have to read it if you don't like it."
Then we get to the really cringey part which was the response of:
"Well I'm going to keep reading it because I think it's really interesting that your comic has more readers and likes than mine in spite of being so bad. I want to try to understand why."

I've had other people say similar things to this effect over the years, though this one was the least sly, just the most open and blatant expression of "I'm trying to comprehend what human weakness you must be exploiting, how you are hacking/cheating in order to make people like your work which is objectively worse than mine and shouldn't be enjoyed."
The sad thing is, the answer is really simple and I'm always happy to share it: I prioritise making my comics easy to read, so the sequence of events is usually very clear with by-the-book panelling choices (the book in question being Making Comics by Scott McCloud, obviously), and my characters are always introduced in scenes that establish their personality and role with zero subtlety so you know exactly what their deal is and why you should like them. It's really that basic and anyone could do it if they put their desire to be understood above their desire for people to think they're clever.

For one of my old stories on another platform, at least half of the readers stated that they hated the ending and wanted a HEA. So yeah, waking up to over 100 comments tearing my writing down wasn't fun. It definitely put me off writing for most of this year. I'd written a separate post earlier, asking for patience with my updates, as I wasn't up to writing too much due to everything that was going on with the pandemic, and family issues. Only a small number of readers were actually sympathetic, which is fair enough, but my view is that you should never hassle someone generally, especially for something you're consuming for free.

I was getting full-on paragraphs about why my writing was wrong and that I'd "tricked" them into thinking that the characters would remain as a couple. Only a handful of the readers actually mentioned that they could tell the way the story would end, based on cues I'd left.

This was one of the comments, which I can look back on now and laugh, but at the time it really upset me and made me realise how awful my writing was:

"You end the book like that? I get that you don't like this book anymore and want to end it (that's what I think I might be wrong) but seriously? It ends like that? That sucks! A least write an epilogue this book deserves that much... I really don't like criticizing authors when I don't write myself but this ending is too abrupt"

"You should've just left this story incomplete! "

(Going back to reread some of the comments is so funny now lol)

I haven't received any negative comments on Tapas yet, but I do remember receiving comments like "Gross", "Horrible", "Give up", "Hopeless", etc. in another site. I assume it was a troll, because, they left similar comments under other authors works, as well.
When it comes to having no comments under a new chapter, I assume that maybe the readers don't have any questions or can't come up with something, which is understandable. Them, giving my work a shot and taking time to read it is good enough.