Review Swap (Comics Only)

[Red_Dog]

I never got a BDSM vibe from them being connected either to be honest. It seemed pretty innocent to me, but its not like I was looking out for that stuff either.

[justincarbunkle]

I also didn't get any weird sexual/BDSM vibes from the fox boy or spider scenes. The situations/jokes all felt in line with material I'd see in a typical kids series. Unless you have a lot more scenes in the future involving tying people up, I don't think you need to worry.

[powerplantanimations]

NP!!!!

Nah, I'm a huge fan for slow-reveal

DGC believe it or not is a slow-reveal story.

It's just the universe for DGC is like 6-years worth of lore (that extends to TSFI and that indie animation project) so what we're giving at the beginning is moreso a slice of a larger cake. Next week's episode kinda goes into detail on something that I'm honestly shocked that no one put a pin-in which begins (one of the) slow burn mysteries.

It's just I prefer showing how the world operates and making it more complete at the beginning, that way when you reveal the crazier rabbit hole shit, the audience will be like "wait, hold on... how deep does this go?!? What?!?" and becomes a bit of a game. Sorta like That Stick Figure Isekai where everyone assumed that Naota was in a weird nihilistic Hell and I (playfully) fancied that idea with the commenters just to make things feel more complete for a moment, and then we pull the rug beneath them to reveal that the answer is much more trippier.

If you haven't, check out Dragon Quest 11. That gives you a small little area that feels massive and complete with a storyline that makes you go "Ohhh I know where this is going" but then 4 hours in you realize that the world is even bigger and then it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and after it finishes up with its magic concepts, it goes "okay, now lets get scientific" and boom you just poured 200 hours of your life into it.

Btw just to save face here this is what made me on lookout for BDSM stuff

Read Etherwood :: Force Shortened Cover | Tapas Community

Covers usually act as feng shui for me; so when I spot something my brain tries to figure out the possibilities of where everything could possibly go.

[GamerPrincessXI]

I was reading your story and I thought it was interesting. https://m.tapas.io/series/Struck-by-you. I actually revamped it with the help of two artists. I even promoted it on Reddit. Someone made a review for it on YouTube. My writing is trash....but the art is phenomenal.

[powerplantanimations]

Can you give me something a little more descriptive than that .

Sorry, but I have so much time rn, so I wanna do descriptive reviews for people who do descriptive reviews for mine lol.

[KevinReijnders]

Maybe the BDSM-kink was inside you all this time

[Zhengo]

I just finished reading all the chapters out in the comic so far. I like how the journal set up lets the reader guess about aspects of Coco's life with subtext based on her behaviors and ramblings without it being stated literally. One thing I was interested in pondering was if the dream world is actually a literal real place or it's all in Coco's head to deal with her current issues in life. One thing I noticed was that she didn't fully remember a promise she made to the ant queens, which was coincidentally also the one thing that was not recorded by the Lorekeepers. So I did wonder if the Lorekeeper records correlate to her actual memories. Other aspects of the dream world also open up for speculation of whether they correlate with something in Coco's life. The addition of the new character helping with the journal also helps keep things fresh and varies the voices.

You put a lot of attention to detail to make the journal pages feel like a real journal from a teenage girl, adding elements that would intrigue the reader and guess at her current mood. The drawings are charming, and Coco character writing is pretty strong, she has her own interests, hobbies, and flaws. There is some mystery in the worldbuilding of the dream world and it is fun to speculate on how certain elements connect with Coco's life.

Other people have mentioned the Yu'Chri sections lacking any visuals, so I'll focus on other things. I feel like the tuber incident only being just a short episode from Yu'Chri a little puzzling. The dream world is meant to have some kind of parallel with Coco's life, but this incident is just mentioned once, and we don't get Coco's perspective on this. I'm also not sure how I should connect this incident with Coco's life, as I rechecked the chapters before and after and I don't really see mentions of hot weather or potatoes.

Another thing is that the dream world moves 3 times faster than the real world, and currently there are a lot of parts for the Monday section but no Yu'chri section. By the time Auntie picks up Coco (which is end of school day), I would assume at least 1 day, maybe 2, have passed in that world. The ant conflict is being made out to be a big deal that would disrupt the economy and rumors are already spreading, so I would've assumed that we would get some kind of status update from Yu'chri.

I'm not sure if this is the case of that the dream world truly is all in Coco's head - so the world, even if time physically passes there, is basically in a state of stasis until she subconsciously decides something happens. But if your intention is that the dream world is real, then I would've assumed that we would be keeping track of the daily events within the dream world especially since it seems like the citizens there are currently in a tense situation.

To be honest, even if it is the former situation, where the dream world is just in Coco's head, there are incidents in the beginning that happened while Coco is not there, such as Yu'chri accidentally sending the invitations to the ant queens. So I think in general the faster passage of time in the dream world should be utilized more to raise the stakes a little more.

The last thing is just a super minor nitpick. But I noticed that the fonts you use for Coco's journalling have inconsistencies with how the capital G is written. In some cases, the G uses a full horizontal line, while sometimes it only has a half horizontal. The commonly used font in the journal (first image) also has full horizontal and a vertical line, which differs from the way the G is written in the other two pictures. Now speaking from personal experience and some vague memories of learning about forensic handwriting analysis I learned from class, people don't usually vary the formation of their letters by a lot unless they are deliberately trying to. I assume Coco is not doing that, so we should probably have her letters stay consistent. Like I said, you put a lot of attention to detail with adding blood stains, tear stains, and even a squished ant to her journal pages, so I think it's worth the extra effort to use fonts that have consistent letter formations.

Anyways I think this is a pretty good start to your story and it looks like you have a strong direction of where you want your story to go based on how we see hints set up in the beginning to pay off later.

Here is my comic for review~ I've been working on this for a while so it is a bit long I think.

Read Luma | Tapas Web Community

[powerplantanimations]

OHHH THANKS SO MUCH!!! Loved how you were looking at it from "This could be real" and "this could all be inside her head" because we did try to touch both bases of that.

Monday Part 14 does explain that it time is weird where it's always "3 days later". Like "If I sleep for thirty minutes or five months I'll always be in the dream world for 24 hours. I also always show up 3 days later".

Without giving too much away, in Tuesday, Coco has to be strategic about this; but yeah luckily all of this gets addressed in weird ways lmaoo.

Like the Tuber chapter. I WANNA SAY why it was there, but it'd kinda reveal something that the book has been building up to and it's like... yeah

Things will start to click together once Monday is over (we're already heading towards the Yu'Chri sections). Tuesday is when you start seeing how time works.

As for the G's, we'll keep that in mind moving forward. Hopefully we might edit all pages??? But we'll see if Burd has the time.

Thanks for looking this over and will look over your comic (hopefully after I'm done with my first exam). @justincarbunkle Btw still haven't forgotten about you. Hopefully will do a double feature finishing both comics lol.

[Zhengo]

Ahh I see, I somehow clocked the things you were intentionally keeping unclear lol. As for how the time works, does this mean if Coco takes a nap in the middle of the day, then she will wake up fast forwarded 3 days later in the dream world from the last time she slept during bedtime? I guess then that means Coco isn't a frequent napper since then it would probably be more than 21 years ago (in the dream world) that she would've appeared in the dream world since she started going there in her time around 7 years ago.

[powerplantanimations]

Yeeep you got it. For Monday we wanted to focus on just showing the pages to develop her school life, but Tuesday is that exact premise where she has to be careful with her naps since she's at risk of fast forwarding. It was alluded that she was a frequent napper before since situations like Tuber were simple. That page was moreso a window of what life was like before. The problems her aliens had were simple.

... But now she has to deal with political scandals and shit.

I REALLY need to share the timeline once it's finished because it is the most descriptive shit ever. Like we have to coordinate how these situations would take place in 3 days and tear every sentence apart and even then that's not counting the Quincy stuff (Coco's brother who's the star of TSFI and was killed by the Red Giantess).

Book 2 can't start unless we figure out what's been going on.

[justincarbunkle]

Thank you! You can skip the ones marked (Old). Those were made a year earlier and I'm not very proud of them..

Good luck with your exam.

[powerplantanimations]

Btw I don't know why, but my brain skimmed over the "probably be more than 21 years" bit. You're fucking right but at the same time, that's probably going to be one small detail where the readers shouldn't think too hard about (for now at least... but personally, if me and White would do that, then we'd really need to commit to that children's book series we had of Coco's earlier years and keep track of ALL her naps ). If we find a solution, we'll probably address it through the illustrated Yu'Chri pages, but if we can't think of anything we'll probably figure out another trippy time concept.

[Zhengo]

Well based on some quick calculations, assuming the length of a year in the dream world is also 365 days, and not accounting for if she has insomnia or has pulled all-nighters, she would had to have to napped 122 times for an extra year to pass in the dream world so that we would be hitting exactly 22 years ago (this is not accounting for the fact that napping in general will have thrown off the 3x time ratio the dream world has with the real world, that's thrown off in the first nap).

I feel like the mechanics of "dream world is always fast-forwarded 3 days when Coco sleeps" (the one you are going with) and "dream world is just 3 times faster" are very different mechanics and the former has more implications that would spawn from that than the latter. Would this mean she could freeze time indefinitely in the dream world if she refuses to sleep? What about when she's sick? I personally end up sleeping multiple times a day if I'm feeling very sick. Also, what about those moments when you wake up in the morning then fall back asleep for 5 more minutes? What if you wake up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and go back to sleep?

Maybe I think too deeply about this mechanic lol, but I also wouldn't really have these questions if it was just that time in the dream world moved proportionally faster. The trippy mechanic means that it spawns more questions to answer, and maybe you do have answers for some of them already.

[powerplantanimations]

@Zhengo I read halfway through your story!!! Okay so for the good: I love Piriken as a concept. Like he's weak in faith but desperately tries to kiss-up to the two main characters. The whole idea that Zessen and... her friend (I'll get to why I'm having a hard time remembering their names in the negatives ) are human just like him is great. It isn't so much faith rather fear. The Demigod situation sorta reminds me of Die Walkure, a German play; where Siegmund was supposedly created to do whatever he wants by Odin, who's been restrained by laws by his wife. Even the origin story with the sword gave me flashbacks to that with Nothung.

I REALLY loved the tree origin. I sorta wished you did something like that for Zessen's predecessor.

It seems like the spirits are mostly traumatized from the wrongdoings by the gods which is a neat concept? I dunno if religious trauma is the angle, but it seems like faith is a massive one. Also how erratic the artstyle looks when it shows the evil spirits. You seem to be getting the textbook Shonen elements down BUUUUTT

Okay now for the negatives since I've also been reading Naruto side-by-side. THE NAMES. I was looking them up, thinking that you could be referencing characters from different mythologies (specifically from South Asia). When I search Orgivna, I get the Spanish town "Orgiva". When I search "Zessen", I get the Guilty Gear weapon. When I searched "Pirikin", I get the Japanese doll which sorta makes sense y'know. Pirikin probably sees himself as a plaything.

Naming stuff in fantasy worlds is tricky because again, you make your own lore and all that, but (that's another negative but we'll get to that), you NEEEED that familiarity. This was the BIGGEST CHALLENGE in Dream Goddess. Like Planet Tuber. PANDA WHITE wanted "Tuberies", but I realized that with something as lore dense as that, we'll probably need to take the easy route and just call it "Tuber". Same with Shapeshift, Hello Jello, Colonia (which is colony in Spanish). Yu'Chri's the most alien name, but the joke is that Yu'Chri is basically PANDA WHITE and me. It's a combination of both our real names (hence the bit of a chicano and a pourtaguese Japanese woman speaking in unison). The Osanese is a play on words between Pourtaguese-Spanish-Japanese since Sao Paulo is the biggest Japanese community in Brazil. Yu'Chri's clan, the Roosevelts, is a reference to Teddy Roosevelt, a president one of the most powerful militaries in the world (a reference to their role). Nibiru was an interesting case since WHITE named her planet that years back when doing Alternative Happy Ending. She didn't know about Planet X and all that; she just named it that subconsciously.

Also I guess the theme of the world? Is it South Asian? You mention "The Tale of Two Brothers" which is Egpytian, implying that this is somewhere in the real world. I'm just trying to get a dot on it angle wise because this criticism could be fixed through a simple explanation (and I could be uncultured af
).

Also also... the main protagonist herself? She seems to be too basic as a shonen character? Naruto is probably the most shonen character to exist aside from Goku. She just seems like him but girl? With aspects of Gaara? Like everyone worships her and she does seem well adjusted (she is a troublemaker, but honestly... y'know how I handled Coco, who's basically a demigod also lmaooo WHENEVER I do anti-social characters whether good or bad, I make it a case to double down on the weird/disturbed aspects. Like without giving too much away, but Coco is bordering on deranged (it may seem all quirky, but WAIT UNTIL WEDSNDAY that shit is the bloody page but expanded for an entire arc). Her half-brother (also a demigod), Quincy (from TSFI), a smack-talking ADD superhero with a passion for God is a homophobic in TSFI and it does seem like a weird quirk, but in Dream Goddess he does some DEMENTED/abusive shit with Fufie meant to challenge the fans (who weirdly find that appealing to the point where I got fanart).

I think you're on the right track with Org eating bugs, but again, I think you should probably crank that up to a 101% (that's my preference though, I'm a big fan of excess).

Overall though, I think it's a good story!!! It seems to be going interesting places towards the middle of it. I'll read the other half when I have the time. Exams be taking up my fucking LIFE.

[davidbeta20]

Still doing review swaps? let me know.

Read A Land Where Knights Dwell :: The Spy | Tapas Community

[powerplantanimations]

Yeah, but since I'm pressed for time I'll only do people who go into detail with mine and not looking for sub 4 sub.

[Zhengo]

Thanks for the review for the first half! I do admit I'm bad at names and I feel a little embarrassed that you put a lot of research into the names and world theming actually, a bunch of the names I kind of just made up, but a few of them are very very abstracted forms of phrases in mandarin Chinese, one of them is derived from the scientific name of a flower, and the three demigod names (Leoli, Ogrivna, Sorcio) are abstracted and scrambled from horoscope names. The setting aesthetic is kind of a combination of different asian cultures. For Sarkorn, I used inspiration from some Mesopotamian architecture.Tthe clothing in general was based on Chinese and Japanese inspirations and I added my own elements to not make it 1:1 to real-world cultures since it is still in a fantasy world. So it's really a big melting pot of stuff. And um, I was not aware "the tale of two brothers" was an Egyptian story so I guess I'm the uncultured one lol. But coincidentally when I was first conceptualizing Zessen I actually had the Egyptian god Ra as part of the "mood board". Also yeah this is not the real world it's just a fantasy world

About your criticisms with Zessen, this story is actually a reboot and I feel like you would've probably liked her old version more she was meaner and kind of bullied others though I had toned it down because I had received criticism she was unlikeable (I still end up with the same criticisms in the new version so I'm doomed either way). I'm not sure if the later chapters will change your mind that she's too much like Naruto though there are some additional stuff in later (and unreleased) chapters that flesh her out more and show she is kind of naive about things and kind of has a rose-tinted generalization of families due to her not having one. I also have some future plans tackling that more in depth but currently not at that stage of story yet. Not sure what chapter you stopped at so I don't know if you encountered the moments I was thinking of.

Thanks again and good luck on your exams!

[powerplantanimations]

No problem and yeaaaah, the thing with making characters who're jerks is that it's difficult to make them likeable.

Check this out:

This was a test page for Dream Goddess. Coco was supposed to have the fucking Karen hair-style and it SHOOK ME TO MY FUCKING CORE. Because I'm like "Ohhhh people are going to hate her ass lmaooo do I have to rewrite all of this!??". We had to change her mannerisms in the artwork to make her look less stuck-up and that was pretty much it.

ESPECIALLY THE SHOOTING PRESIDENTS BIT. It's funnier with a dopey face like that, but with that previous style it's more like "FUCK ESTABLISHMENT" whereas with the dopey face you're just wondering "Why are you having those thoughts little girl? Where are your parents".

There's a bit where Coco talks about how it isn't her responsibility to put the criminals in her neighborhood (despite being implied to have insane martial art skills (the context is way more humorous, but then she goes into specifics on what crimes happen in her neighborhood shows cracks in her personality), but had we stuck into this hairstyle you'd just want to punch the fucking screen.

BUT THE TRUTH IS WE DO NEED MORE JERK CHARACTERS! People have a habit of being like "protagonists should be a beacon of hope!". Naruto was popular for that reason. It's easy to pin down his personality. It's like why Sonic is so popular; but showing that characters are flawed individuals goes against that narrative and makes people think about their actions even more if that makes sense.

I would LOVE to see your original comic after I read your second half.

Also thanks on the exams!!

[powerplantanimations]

@Zhengo @justincarbunkle
Hey so I have extra time now that I dropped out of Biology (because that class was moving too fast), so just letting you know that I haven't forgotten about y'all!!!

Just let me readjust my schedule and I'll get back to ya' aight?