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Tenebrais posted:I suspect there's still some setup before getting to how chapter 1 started. We still don't know what the deal is with Juliet's power, and Klaus didn't recognise Paul either, which is a sharp contrast with the friendly terms in the latest page. Completely agree!
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Jun 19, 2020 16:46
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Jesus christ, webtoons is such an idiotic loving format. At least this one's good enough to put up with. As to the current discussion, it seems pretty obvious that there's some more memory fuckery yet to happen. I don't think it's really a plot hole that Paul's coworkers wouldn't be acquainted with his sister but the fact that Paul's own boss didn't recognize him is kind of a big clue. I'm guessing that Paul winds up making some kind of contract with Dantalian which rewrites reality to erase everyone's memories of Paul working at the cafe, similar to the way her contract with Elena let Dantalian assume Elena's position in everyone's memories (except Paul?) Dantalian didn't just randomly claim Paul because he died in front of her, she was collecting on his contract because it expired. My guess is that Paul will soon make some kind of contract in an attempt to find/save Real Elena, with the side effect that he forgets what's going on and so does everyone else. He goes home without the summoning tome, but his new memories somehow prompt him to go back to the bookstore the next day to buy the book (by himself, without Dantalian there) and summon Astaroth, which is why he still had a day left on his contract with Astaroth when Dantalian collected. I also suspect part of Astaroth's embarrassment over the contract was not just all the human awkwardness he endured but the realization that the soul he contracted for was already pledged to another demon, which is why he so thoroughly gave up on the idea of punishing Paul for his impudence.
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Jun 19, 2020 17:25
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Just a little shameless self-promotion but Chapter One of A Distant Sky has officially wrapped up today! Gonna have a very short interlude sequence next week, followed by some guest art while I prep for chapter two.
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Jun 19, 2020 17:44
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All this plot dissection and speculation is absolutely fascinating! In retrospect, I agree that the author seems to have written themselves into a corner with the volume 1 setup, and is kiiind of retconning some of the character relationships right now. But I'll hold off on my final judgment until volume 2 has unfolded a little more - Maybe an elegant solution will be found? Or we'll end up with some really arbitrary memory fuckery, who knows! I'm still very much enjoying what's being served up right now, either way. Since we're on the topic of webtoons, how about Lore Olympus? It's a deconstruction of the story of Persephone and Hades, taking place in a unique modern day Olympus/ancient Mediterranean mortal world setting. The narrative moves much slower than the one in Love Advice, and it's definitely NOT in the comedy genre (I really cannot stress this enough), but there is a lot of material to read out there already if you're starting fresh, and I looove the work's use of color to express emotions and personalities. Just be warned that despite officially having an editor, Lore Olympus is FULL of typos and malapropisms that will never be corrected. I tend to get really put off by such things, and the story still hooked me enough for an all-night binge. Oh, and don't just take my word for it: It's apparently the most successful comic in the history of webtoons, huh!
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Jun 19, 2020 19:36
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Gimmick Account posted:Since we're on the topic of webtoons, how about Lore Olympus? It's a deconstruction of the story of Persephone and Hades, taking place in a unique modern day Olympus/ancient Mediterranean mortal world setting. The narrative moves much slower than the one in Love Advice, and it's definitely NOT in the comedy genre (I really cannot stress this enough), but there is a lot of material to read out there already if you're starting fresh, and I looove the work's use of color to express emotions and personalities. Just be warned that despite officially having an editor, Lore Olympus is FULL of typos and malapropisms that will never be corrected. I tend to get really put off by such things, and the story still hooked me enough for an all-night binge. Oh, and don't just take my word for it: It's apparently the most successful comic in the history of webtoons, huh! I've been following Lore Olympus for a while, and it is really good - beautiful art and enjoyable characters, if confined by basing the main stories on actual mythology. Hecate is best girl.
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Jun 19, 2020 20:02
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Fun to see different opinions considering how much the other thread hates it.
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Jun 19, 2020 20:48
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Kennel posted:Fun to see different opinions considering how much the other thread hates it. Are you talking about Lore Olympus? Which other thread would that be? I'm curious as to what others think about the story.
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Jun 19, 2020 20:53
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Gimmick Account posted:Are you talking about Lore Olympus? Which other thread would that be? I'm curious as to what others think about the story. Yeah, I think these were the posts that started the discussion and it's now getting posted (and roasted) on daily basis from the beginning. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3822798&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1041#post505601218 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3822798&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1041#post505612726 Kennel fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Jun 19, 2020 |
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Jun 19, 2020 21:35
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Kennel posted:Yeah, I think these were the posts that started the discussion and it's now getting posted (and roasted) on daily basis from the beginning. I definitely get some of the criticism. The comic does really try to have it both ways on a lot of things. Let's reinterpret Persephone as a character with agency and ambition but also ohmigod she is so tiny and helpless and fragile squeeeeee
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Jun 19, 2020 22:36
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Having so much white space is pretty annoying! Where the hell does this convention come from? It's not the only comic I've seen that has such massive gutters. Korean webcomics also seem to do this? Why do you have more gutters than art! D:
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Jun 20, 2020 01:20
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Kennel posted:Yeah, I think these were the posts that started the discussion and it's now getting posted (and roasted) on daily basis from the beginning. Ok, I read through that thread now, from the point you linked to the end. Some of the criticisms I can understand. The art in the first chapters is indeed very inconsistent in quality, with a number of facial expressions being outright silly. Although, considering what else the people over there are reposting regularly, I'm surprised by the specific focus on Lore Olympus in that regard. The glacial pace of the storytelling is also something that would have driven me nuts if I had discovered the comic much earlier and couldn't just do a massive archive binge. But a lot of the bile directed against the story itself seems to be due to the very uneven power dynamic between the two main characters, with Hades being one of the few 2000+ year old 'original' gods (in the comic, they are called the 'Six Traitors Dynasty'), and Persephone being the sheltered 19-year-old daughter of the goddess Demeter. And by that I mean the very concept of this constellation seems to rile people up, not how it actually plays out in the course of the story. Very few people over there seem to have actually read it themselves and instead are following the daily posts by 100YrsofAttitude, which have not gone beyond the first few pages yet. Spoilers from here on out, be careful: From my vantage point, Persephone's and Hades' attraction to each other is pretty relatable and not at all toxic? She has basically been held in a gilded cage on the mortal plane for as long as she can remember by her domineering mother, who is now also grooming her to enter into this Eternal Maidenhood club for the rest of her life. When she is finally allowed to live among the other gods on Olympus to study, Persephone experiences first-hand all the unbelievable shittiness wrought by the male ego. With this pressure on her from all sides, she mostly retreats into herself, but notices how simple and good every interaction with Hades feels in contrast to basically every other facet of her out-of-control life. Hades, for his part, starts out in an utterly awful, abusive relationship with the nymph Minthe (as the story progressed, she has really grown on me as the very rare 'interesting character who is still not sympathetic'), for which he is mocked behind his back but also openly all over Olympus. Aside from this romantic unhappiness, he is also socially ostracized due to the stigma of his assigned domain, and thus leads a solitary lifestyle by default, something which he does not question for the longest time. When Persephone ends up sleeping off her black-out drunkenness at this home due to a vengeful prank by another goddess, they have a pleasant conversation the next morning that sets the tone for most of their future interactions. Their uneven status is something they are aware of and worry about, as is Hades' relationship status and Persephone's Eternal Maidenhood candidacy, but eventually they both realize that none of this should matter as much as the simple fact that spending time with the other improves the quality of their lives much more than anything else they could do, public sentiment be damned. And that's something that really speaks to me because of my own experiences. Note that by that I am not claiming to be a 2000-year-old god or a 19-year-old goddess. P.S.: Thanks to Kennel for posting that anarchist Mario comic in the other thread! That was a true gem.  Straight White Shark posted:I definitely get some of the criticism. The comic does really try to have it both ways on a lot of things. Let's reinterpret Persephone as a character with agency and ambition but also ohmigod she is so tiny and helpless and fragile squeeeeee I understand that it's a difficult balancing act in a fictitious character that can never have the same depth of personality as a real person, but even in real life people can be both of those things at different times, depending on the situation they are facing. We are not equipped to deal with everything life throws at us, even if we tend to have our poo poo together.
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Jun 20, 2020 01:22
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Synthbuttrange posted:Where the hell does this convention come from? It's not the only comic I've seen that has such massive gutters. Korean webcomics also seem to do this? Why do you have more gutters than art! D: As best I can tell it comes from being optimised for phones, along with the general narrow-but-tall structure (although that dates to before smartphones as far as I know). scrolling through a lot of white space is a lot smoother on a phone than with a mouse, and I guess it works to keep the pacing better when you're already scrolling up and down so much. In fact, with a little experimenting, I've decided webtoons are best viewed when zoomed out as far as your browser will go. Of course, it's then basically impossible to navigate the site itself. Wish they'd put a zoom option in the interface. Tenebrais fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Jun 20, 2020 |
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Jun 20, 2020 01:25
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Tenebrais posted:As best I can tell it comes from being optimised for phones, along with the general narrow-but-tall structure (although that dates to before smartphones as far as I know). scrolling through a lot of white space is a lot smoother on a phone than with a mouse, and I guess it works to keep the pacing better when you're already scrolling up and down so much. Honestly I think they're even worse on phones. At least mice have scrollwheels. Some do a better job with the format than others (this is one thing that Lore Olympus is not too shabby about, compared to a lot of webtoons.) Every time I've seen a Korean toon linked they seem to have a reasonable amount of gutter space but English webtoon authors generally seem to have decided that NO PANEL MUST EVER BE VISIBLE FROM ANY OTHER PANEL and dump most of a screen of whitespace between them, which is just plain obnoxious on any device. Gimmick Account posted:I understand that it's a difficult balancing act in a fictitious character that can never have the same depth of personality as a real person, but even in real life people can be both of those things at different times, depending on the situation they are facing. We are not equipped to deal with everything life throws at us, even if we tend to have our poo poo together. Sure, but it's an original story with essentially original characters. They could write them however they wanted and they very deliberately chose to play up Persephone's helplessness. It's transparent and contrived. Also, yes, people often get riled up about incestuous relationships between literal teenagers and men thousands of years older than them who are also kings and also also are their bosses. This is probably just because we are prudes who get our knickers in a twist about cool and healthy relationships and not because it's a fuckin gross power dynamic. There's a lot to be said and done in rewriting the Persephone myth to make it less skeevy but despite their many liberties the author does not seem to have any interest in actually making it less skeevy, just wallowing in the ~*~tragic romance~*~ of a man wanting to rail his naive and inexperienced niece. Whatever. It's not the worst thing in the world and it doesn't really deserve the performative tearing down it's getting in the other thread, but it doesn't not deserve it either.
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Jun 20, 2020 02:07
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It seems kinda like wasted moral effort to rail against fictional problematic relationships?
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Jun 20, 2020 02:19
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I feel like the webtoons format is the bastard child of infinite canvas and phone interfaces.
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Jun 20, 2020 03:20
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The white space can be an effective pacing thing for sure but a lot of webtoons I've read do seem to overuse it at times. I'm assuming part of it is also padding so you can get an entire update (chapter? episode? what do you call an individual page of a webtoon anyway? A tall boy?) with minimal art investment and keep a fast and consistent schedule. I read some of that Tower of God one a while back and it was filled with the exact same use of flashbacks and story recap narration that you'd expect from a shonen Anime desperately dragging it's heels to so as to not overtake the Manga. It's just kinda a thing that the webtoon format encourages I guess. They're meant to be consumed quickly, whenever I read one of these things I tend to burn through them and lose interest once I run out of backlog because each new page has so little content it's not worth reading them as they come out. I think the main problem with Lore Olympus as it's posted in the other thread is that only one page is posted at a time but it still takes up a lot of room. Other comics being posted have like ten pages per post. It's just not well suited. I haven't really formed an opinion on it yet because nothing has happened. All I've seen is colourful people arriving at a party so far. the edits that have been posted are pretty amusing but like just making the character bosseyed is just a really cheap gag (even if the expressions in the original images work really well for said cheap gag) that could probably be applied to any comic.
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Jun 20, 2020 03:20
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Mr Phillby posted:what do you call an individual page of a webtoon anyway? A tall boy? lol
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Jun 20, 2020 03:23
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Jun 20, 2020 03:36
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mycot posted:It seems kinda like wasted moral effort to rail against fictional problematic relationships? As opposed to defending fictional problematic relationships, which is basically a Nelson Mandela-esque moral struggle
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Jun 20, 2020 03:44
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Straight White Shark posted:As opposed to defending fictional problematic relationships, which is basically a Nelson Mandela-esque moral struggle I'm just tired of the general school of internet criticism of going by how much hosed up stuff it has in it, as opposed to Good Things, which do not have anything complicated or troubling in any way. hosed up poo poo is bad in real life because it's, like, real.
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Jun 20, 2020 03:49
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Wait, ALL webtoons hosted poo poo does that downward scrolling thing? Man, I'd thought that was just a stylistic choice in Sword Interval!
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Jun 20, 2020 03:53
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habeasdorkus posted:Wait, ALL webtoons hosted poo poo does that downward scrolling thing? Man, I'd thought that was just a stylistic choice in Sword Interval! I haven't looked for a bit but I think the print version is in a normal format.
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Jun 20, 2020 03:55
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 the artwork has really nice textures but those expressions are kinda what the gently caress is even going on here.
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Jun 20, 2020 04:02
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mycot posted:I'm just tired of the general school of internet criticism of going by how much hosed up stuff it has in it, as opposed to Good Things, which do not have anything complicated or troubling in any way. hosed up poo poo is bad in real life because it's, like, real. we get it already, your hard drive is the lolicon Necronomicon (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Jun 20, 2020 |
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Jun 20, 2020 04:17
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:we get it already, your hard drive is the lolicon Necronomicon Horny is lost on me personally as an asexual person, I just think it's a lost cause pursuing it in others. Problematic stuff is always popular for a lot of reasons.
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Jun 20, 2020 04:39
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it's ok, I only read horny comix for the articles
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Jun 20, 2020 04:45
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Straight White Shark posted:it's ok, I only read horny comix for the articles If you apply this same logic to the hate thread it's only fair  . (I've never read a webcomic on webtoon)
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Jun 20, 2020 05:22
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This fight is the epitome of "this is what happens when people can't go outside and look at a leaf", butA Wizard of Goatse posted:we get it already, your hard drive is the lolicon Necronomicon
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Jun 20, 2020 05:27
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I know we're looping back around to "Twilight was fine, actually, and mostly blew up because society hates teenage girls" but you can be uncomfortable with how something is portrayed in fiction, and how that might impress or convey distorted or incorrect things onto people in the real world, and also understand it's not real and the book ghosts can't hurt you.
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Jun 20, 2020 05:32
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I think criticism of a work based on its morally dubious content is always a difficult towline to untangle. Like, there's definitely a lot of media out there that features messed up moral values, and endorses those values, in a way that winds up being genuinely repugnant. There's also media that just neutrally presents bad things to the viewer and asks them to make their own judgements - but often, it maybe does so in a gratuitous or exploitative way where you can tell there's a part of the creative team that's thrilled by juicy elaboration of the bad things their characters are doing. That takes you to the question of like, endorsement vs. failure to condemn, vs. exploitation-style content, vs. work that clearly earmarks evil deeds as contemptible but still features them, and what the appropriate response should be to each of those things. And usually, the answer is that it varies by work, and by critic, based on a bunch of tonal and presentational subtleties.
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Jun 20, 2020 05:36
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I still think it's sort of weird that Game of Thrones, this huge TV blockbuster, had multiple incestuous relationships (one between direct siblings!) that it tacitly endorsed, and treated as sweet and a redeeming factor for otherwise dubious characters, and the world at large just sort of shrugged and accepted it. Like, yeah, that's fine, this hit TV show can quietly glorify incest. We've all seen way more hubbub over comparatively less objectionable stuff, it's strange to think that no-one really cared in that case. The fact that they didn't is probably the result of some aspect of the presentation, or maybe the show's popularity. But I think it's a good example of how people's intuitive reaction to morally objectionable content is massively variable on a work-to-work basis.
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Jun 20, 2020 06:02
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Android Blues posted:I still think it's sort of weird that Game of Thrones, this huge TV blockbuster, had multiple incestuous relationships (one between direct siblings!) that it tacitly endorsed, and treated as sweet and a redeeming factor for otherwise dubious characters, and the world at large just sort of shrugged and accepted it. Like, yeah, that's fine, this hit TV show can quietly glorify incest. Harry Potter causing more public uproar than any other fantasy book series (including ones deliberately trying to be offensive like ASOIAF) will always be a funny note in history, even if it kinda got vindicated years later.
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Jun 20, 2020 06:16
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mycot posted:Harry Potter causing more public uproar than any other fantasy book series (including ones deliberately trying to be offensive like ASOIAF) will always be a funny note in history, even if it kinda got vindicated years later. It's not funny or surprising though? Harry Potter is a children's book series that started coming out in a period of the 90s where it was still possible to get caught up in the wake of the prior decade's Satanic Panic. It was framed as a series of books glorifying witchcraft and tempting children with the allure of the devil's power. A Song of Ice and Fire started coming out in the 90s too but adult fantasy was always more niche, and the mainstream success of the tv series is entirely from Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings finding broad mainstream appeal and normalizing fantasy genre adaptions first. The comparatively nonplussed reaction to the incest comes from the audience seeing it's an adult HBO product and also GoT generally riding on being "realistic" fantasy so "it was just more normal back then, etc."
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Jun 20, 2020 06:37
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Even outside of mainstream reactions, fandom communities, who would normally be sceptical of media that glorified incest and sexual violence, more or less gave GoT a pass. I think that (completely silly) "well, that's just how things were back then" intuition was doing a lot of legwork.
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Jun 20, 2020 07:09
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Nuns with Guns posted:It's not funny or surprising though? Harry Potter is a children's book series that started coming out in a period of the 90s where it was still possible to get caught up in the wake of the prior decade's Satanic Panic. It was framed as a series of books glorifying witchcraft and tempting children with the allure of the devil's power. I agree that Harry Potter being actually aimed at kids is what made it a logical subject of such widespread moral panic (it's always about corrupting the kids!) but I always link it to that quote from the His Dark Materials author lamenting how his series about killing God got overshadowed. mycot fucked around with this message at 07:31 on Jun 20, 2020 |
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Jun 20, 2020 07:10
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:we get it already, your hard drive is the lolicon Necronomicon You'll notice that everybody else ITT has navigated a potentially touchy subject thoughtfully without using the phrase "lolicon Necronomicon," I think there's a lesson in that somewhere.
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Jun 20, 2020 07:44
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Android Blues posted:Even outside of mainstream reactions, fandom communities, who would normally be sceptical of media that glorified incest and sexual violence, more or less gave GoT a pass. I think that (completely silly) "well, that's just how things were back then" intuition was doing a lot of legwork. I really don't think people completely gave GoT a pass, the ones who cared just internalized 'this is trashy and bad in some key ways' or complained about it for years but didn't really convince the general public to abandon it. Really, what this illuminates is how relatively powerless calling out problematic stuff is; it doesn't actually have the power to bring things down the way people often claim it can, so acting like we shouldn't criticize mass media is often predicated on a vast overstatement of the effect of that criticism.
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Jun 20, 2020 07:45
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How Wonderful! posted:You'll notice that everybody else ITT has navigated a potentially touchy subject thoughtfully without using the phrase "lolicon Necronomicon," I think there's a lesson in that somewhere. In fairness, it was funny, but definitely shouldn't have been directed at a goon who'd done nothing to deserve it
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Jun 20, 2020 15:26
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Joe Slowboat posted:I really don't think people completely gave GoT a pass, the ones who cared just internalized 'this is trashy and bad in some key ways' or complained about it for years but didn't really convince the general public to abandon it. Saying something is "problematic" isn't a sign to most people that you should avoid it like the plague, it just means it has problems, like literally everything does. Obviously media can have an effect of people's internal lives, but only in aggregate. One TV show or novel series might raise an issue and get people talking, but it's not going to singly change peoples minds. I don't even agree that ASOIAF glorifies incest, it doesn't really glorify anything except maybe Davos Seaworth. The fact is that it trusts the reader enough to recognize that it's wrong and thus is free to explore the psychological state of the people involved in it. Stop reinventing the dang Hays Code! We don't need every single piece of media to didactically point out when a wrong has been committed and then swiftly dispense proper punishment.
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Jun 20, 2020 15:39
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I was literally saying that pointing out how GoT the TV series, for example, makes Jaime’s actions towards Cersei much more coercive while still presenting him as the more admirable and relatable of the two is kinda hosed up, isn’t going to stop anyone watching it. Certain changes in presentation made him an aggressor rather than the two of them on a more even footing, which - given that she’s a major antagonist and he’s a fan favorite sadboy by the end - produces some weird dynamics. It’s an unnecessary and unpleasant change from the original. It’s not the Hays Code to point out this kinda thing. and that’s precisely the bizarre conflation I was commenting on: people act like saying Thing Is Problematic is an attempt to have it taken off the air and the writer burned at the stake, when all that’s being said is Thing Has Problems. Saying that Thing Has Problems clearly isn’t sufficient to seriously hurt the thing being criticized, so why does that elicit comparisons to literal censorship codes?
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Jun 20, 2020 16:27
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