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Where can we donate to the fund to buy this person a full-time artist to copy their artstyle and follow their sketches. Or the fund to buy them new wrists. edited, my bad. Ra Ra Rasputin fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Oct 3, 2021 |
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Oct 1, 2021 22:19
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| # ? May 21, 2024 17:48 |
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Zack is nb and uses they/them.
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Oct 1, 2021 22:24
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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > BSS: Batman's Scrappy Sidekick > Paranatural: It's spelled Zack and they are nonbinary
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Oct 2, 2021 06:38
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hitball was maybe a bit long but it was coherent, and followed the main characters what really killed my interest was the incoherent and irrelevant dog and bigfoot show chapter and then following it up with a flashback chapter- wouldn't have been so bad except for the preceding one it's been 3 years since Max and Isaac were last in the comic pretty sure
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Oct 3, 2021 21:25
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Mazerunner posted:hitball was maybe a bit long but it was coherent, and followed the main characters January 2020, the entire gang was there for the end with the Sphinxes and the ticking time bomb of summer's end.
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Oct 3, 2021 21:49
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Even then, the side stuff would have been fine if the comic had updated at anything near a sane pace. It's hard to stay engaged with a drip feed that comes twice a month.
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Oct 3, 2021 22:00
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We’re never getting Johnny / Forge shenanigans and that sucks.
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Oct 3, 2021 22:05
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rannum posted:January 2020, the entire gang was there for the end with the Sphinxes and the ticking time bomb of summer's end. Cameos don't count
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Oct 4, 2021 23:13
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when i clicked next page and hit text instead of comic an "oh noooo" came out of my mouth aloud. welp, so long to the last webcomic i still keep up with. i'll ride this out to the end but...yeah. looks like everyone else in the thread has already pointed out that zack's strengths are visual so doing this is playing against their strong suits. it's a shame too bc i'd love to see where this goes but i sorta doubt we're even close to the finish line. there's no possible way to continue this story properly without bringing in another artist with a non-hosed wrist which doesn't seem like something they want to do. i'd love to suggest like, cutting the update schedule to once per month but at their current pace that would render the comic uncompleteable in the human lifetime i think.
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Oct 5, 2021 06:51
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The most baffling part is honestly that the transcript at the bottom is actually in smaller text than not just the comic page, but also the rest of the announcement. Zack, do... do you not realize what transcripts are for? "With a gravitas that honestly should have clued our heroes in on the whole vampire thing" is a line that feels like it perfectly encapsulates how Zack's style of comedy just does not translate cleanrly to prose as-is. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Oct 5, 2021 |
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Oct 5, 2021 14:54
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Xinder posted:when i clicked next page and hit text instead of comic an "oh noooo" came out of my mouth aloud. welp, so long to the last webcomic i still keep up with. Yeah between this and my patience with Gunnerkrigg finally being up Im down to uh K6BD and Sleepless Domain. And K6BD is on approach for ending by the end of next year by all indications.
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Oct 6, 2021 22:12
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Highly recommend https://www.aghoststorycomic.com/comic/in-the-black-1 to people looking for a sort of similar story. Goon made!
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Oct 7, 2021 01:16
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Ok, so, I think Zack might be loving with us. Right after deciding to do an illustrated light novel they've also chosen to flesh out the backstory of side characters that appeared in a flashback that was technically congruent with the previous storyline which was technically itself a small side story that ultimately did not tie into the main plot. Basically what I'm saying is that they will be dead and in the ground long before whatever malevolent AI they choose to continue their life's work ever actually decides to return to Max's story
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Oct 7, 2021 01:25
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Who What Now posted:Ok, so, I think Zack might be loving with us. Right after deciding to do an illustrated light novel they've also chosen to flesh out the backstory of side characters that appeared in a flashback that was technically congruent with the previous storyline which was technically itself a small side story that ultimately did not tie into the main plot. How is this different from how the comic was going even when it was illustrated lmao
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Oct 7, 2021 02:38
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A Sometimes Food posted:Yeah between this and my patience with Gunnerkrigg finally being up Im down to uh
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Oct 7, 2021 03:36
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i will never understand people's fascination with trying to figure out the "correct" way that webcomics should be paced, and claiming that authors are deviating from The Original True Plan by 'wasting time on side stuff" or "skipping plot" the pacing is whatever ends up being released! its that simple!
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Oct 7, 2021 04:14
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Um... pacing is a real concept in literature...
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Oct 7, 2021 06:03
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Pants Donkey posted:K6BD ending feels like a more recent decision. I definitely get the reason for it, because having the story play out the way you’d imagine would be, well, like Paranatural or Cucumber Quest where it’s entering year 15 with no end in sight. But it doesn’t feel paced that way, which is why I’m assuming they only relatively recently decided, “Yeah, let’s cut the cord early and move on.” no, pretty sure the author's been very upfront about having a plan since the very beginning. in fact, the comic's gone longer than planned
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Oct 7, 2021 06:22
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Cup Runneth Over posted:Um... pacing is a real concept in literature... its way different to criticize the pacing of a complete work, than to deduce what the pacing SHOULD be for something thats releasing a single page at a time
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Oct 7, 2021 08:17
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Varinn posted:its way different to criticize the pacing of a complete work, than to deduce what the pacing SHOULD be for something thats releasing a single page at a time
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Oct 7, 2021 08:38
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yeah but a single page update for a webcomic isn't even close to an entire tv episode. reading a webcomic as it updates page by page is more like seeing the sausage get made than consuming a serialized story. considering that the only (barely) sustainable model for webcomics is to produce books, its not at all feasible to expect them to be paced for the page to page reader. people never stopped complaining about hitball, but go back and read that chapter in a single sitting. its incredibly well paced
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Oct 7, 2021 08:45
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The only webcomics that are paced according to their release schedule are ones that are also constantly and widely derided. The idea that a continuing work should somehow magically adhere to vague standards arbitrarily invented by someone based on how often it updates is asinine.
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Oct 7, 2021 09:29
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Even if you wanted to argue webcomics should cater to the current audience and not the archive reader and therefore should pace themselves accordingly, the comic where the artist obliterates their wrist every other week seems like an unfair place to apply that.
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Oct 7, 2021 09:50
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Varinn posted:yeah but a single page update for a webcomic isn't even close to an entire tv episode. reading a webcomic as it updates page by page is more like seeing the sausage get made than consuming a serialized story. considering that the only (barely) sustainable model for webcomics is to produce books, its not at all feasible to expect them to be paced for the page to page reader. the entire school store scene did nothing but provide meandering conversation that went nowhere and add yet another wacky side character who did nothing paranatural is a bad comic. it has plenty of good pages, but as a continuous work it fails (I’m tempted to say “failed”) because the author approached this sprawling story with the mentality of an over-excited kid showing you their Pokémon cards. every new page is an exercise in “I wanna do this now!” while the comic’s central thread drifts further and further away
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Oct 7, 2021 11:14
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I wouldn't go so far as to call it a bad comic, and it is free entertainment, but even on an archive binge it is... shall we say... meandering.
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Oct 7, 2021 17:05
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Varinn posted:i will never understand people's fascination with trying to figure out the "correct" way that webcomics should be paced, and claiming that authors are deviating from The Original True Plan by 'wasting time on side stuff" or "skipping plot" Yes, it's a complete mystery why people would like for things to be better than they are. An utterly unsolvable riddle;
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Oct 7, 2021 17:09
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Unless this is the first webcomic someone reads regularly, the pattern of endless digressions, the addition of new characters, and continually slowing progression of the actual main plot arc in Paranatural were all well-established glaring red flags that actually telling a complete, coherent story with the comic was beyond the scope and skills of the author. This happens all the time with serialized media. Paranatural got away with it because Zack is a good artist with a good sense of panel layout and excellent comedic instincts so even when the plot is going nowhere you still could load up the site when a new page came out and have an enjoyable experience. The problem, for Zack, is that this makes the most valuable part of the comic visual composition and gags and the least valuable part of the comic the actual plot, so moving to this experimental hybrid setup removes pretty much all the reasons I follow the comic. So I'll stop! I get that they're doing this because physical realities make what they were doing before unfeasible going forward but that doesn't change the fact that I'm not interested in the content that they choose to retain when making changes to strategy. I hope they get what they want as an artist out of this, but I won't be around for it. E: gently caress, fixed the pronouns, as if this hasn't been discussed multiple times 
Meiteron fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Oct 7, 2021 |
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Oct 7, 2021 20:17
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Cup Runneth Over posted:The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > BSS: Batman's Scrappy Sidekick > Paranatural: It's spelled Zack and they are nonbinary
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Oct 7, 2021 20:28
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Varinn posted:people never stopped complaining about hitball, but go back and read that chapter in a single sitting. its incredibly well paced I’ve been mostly following this discussion with a cursory interest because far be it from me to poo poo on people wanting to continue reading a story they’ve grown fond of, but this is just patently untrue. I read this comic for the first time last summer and the 1-2 punch of hitball and that school store sequence nearly made me stop right there. they’re so meandering and feel completely removed from anything that’s mattered up to that point. and the problem just gets worse from there!
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Oct 7, 2021 22:18
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Whats kind of wierd is like, the menadering pace and hitball aside would be fine if this was just "Wierd stories in a wierd town" and we weren't all ready clamorning for the actual plot to continue. It's like a double own goal.
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Oct 7, 2021 23:22
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the vampires were the real killshot imo. paige and davy had some great panels but the vampire conspiracy forced the entire comic to revolve around them (much like davy's powers come to think of it) and the distractions kept piling up from there e: also they're just sort of incongruous in general? paranatural's main appeal in the start were these crazy mix-and-match spirits that had turned mayview into a thriving ecosystem apart from the corporeal world, and they all got shoved aside for a bunch of smug assholes with bright blue eyes Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Oct 7, 2021 |
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Oct 7, 2021 23:40
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Vampires ruin any story they are placed in, fact
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Oct 8, 2021 00:08
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Stormgale posted:Whats kind of wierd is like, the menadering pace and hitball aside would be fine if this was just "Wierd stories in a wierd town" and we weren't all ready clamorning for the actual plot to continue. It's like a double own goal. I think this is the problem. none of the stuff people describe as "meandering" or extraneous or whatever is bad to me, because the comic IS "weird stories in a weird town" to me. what is the "actual plot"? How can we know what scenes aren't necessary without knowing what'll become important later in the story? Is there a core mystery pushing things forward? Sure, but we have no idea who'll end up becoming crucial to that. It just feels incredibly silly when people go "what does this scene add??" for a story that isn't resolved. hitball chapter fleshing out a bunch of clearly important side characters doesn't at all feel like a 'distraction' or whatever. i just feel language like "getting distracted" and "meandering" is weirdly trying to get inside zacks head and guess motivations, when you could just deal with the content as presented. studio mujahideen fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 00:08
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Varinn posted:I think this is the problem. none of the stuff people describe as "meandering" or extraneous or whatever is bad to me, because the comic IS "weird stories in a weird town" to me. what is the "actual plot"? How can we know what scenes aren't necessary without knowing what'll become important later in the story? and we never will!
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Oct 8, 2021 00:16
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I don't think the vampires have really taken over the story? Davy's faction seems to be the antagonists but it's not necessarily vampires, it seems to also include people like the Witch and whatever the doublespirit is that's possessing Max. The opposing faction is the Doorman/Forge folks I'm pretty sure, and I'm also fairly sure they have the missing half of Spender's shadowbomb spirit. We know Davy's looking for Max's baseball bat, so I figure all that's connected, and also probably Max's mom is connected in some way. I don't think it's a coincidence that his mom was a scrap artist, that Max's spirit is a scrapdragon, that the Doorman faction specifically brought in a spirit that could reshape metal (Forge), and that Spender's shadowbomb thing looks distinctly like some type of scrap sculpture. Hitball felt like empty calories. A lot of the pages at the time were fun to read but in whole really forgettable. Stuff like the school store was unnecessarily drawn out and even on a reread it's like "Alright enough already let's get through this". If Zack'd approached the hitball chapter as tightly as the next couple chapters were approached it'd have gone over a lot better, but I suppose that's what happens when you have a learning experience. I'm curious how tomorrow's update will turn out but yeah, as a goon said earlier upthread, this comic lives and dies on Zack's mastery of the visual medium. Prose isn't really doing it for me.
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Oct 8, 2021 00:20
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Oxxidation posted:and we never will! As a direct consequence of the flow of events, one might add. You could even call it...bad pacing...
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Oct 8, 2021 00:25
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i think its actually as a direct consequence of pretty severe health issues
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Oct 8, 2021 00:34
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Vampires have taken over the narrative because they are the major driving force of the back half of chapter 5, all of chapter 6, and have skulked their way now into chapter 7. Chapter 5 got consistently derailed for us to get character beats for a kid we had very little reason to give a poo poo about pre-that chapter in Cody, who's pretty clearly tied to that whole mess too. Vampires have becomes a pretty central part of the last few years of the comic, regardless of how much or little an impact they'be e having on the overall narritive, which... Well... The problem isn't the scope of the story, it's the ability to produce content to match it. The story just never stopped getting bigger as it moved forward. Zack barely resolved anything and just kept piling on new complications and details. They haven't been capable of keeping up with the size of the story they want to tell for a long time- arguably even before chapter 5- which is probably why the format change, although I'm still of the opinion that Zack would be best serve to find someone to share the burden with so they can better produce something remotely close to what they want, but I can understanding wanting to keep true to your vision and letting someone else in almost invariably means some of their vision leaks into yours.
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Oct 8, 2021 00:38
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Varinn posted:i think its actually as a direct consequence of pretty severe health issues health issues exacerbated by bad pacing since they drew 200 more full-color comic pages than they needed to
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Oct 8, 2021 00:51
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| # ? May 21, 2024 17:48 |
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I have a funny feeling that this argument repeated ad nauseum is all that's left for this thread. Ah, well. It was fun while it lasted.
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Oct 8, 2021 00:53
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