Obbl wrote:I'm not at all asking for unrelenting praise (though I do love to hear it
). I suppose nitpicks was the wrong word, mea culpa. Rather the complaints do not feel well founded even if they were bothering you as you were reading. So many complaints have been leveled at this comic in the moment that most later readers seem to have absolutely no issue with, and I agree this is because we color our own experience. I have a high tolerance for these long form arcs, but others seem anxious to get to the end. I get tired of endless complaints about pacing when it's not something that Rick can help other than to never ever tell a story that runs as long as this one (or at least, no one has ever been able to suggest a viable alternative to my knowledge). I suppose the length would be one form of valid complaint, but it also feels a little entitled. Rick is telling stories that he wants to tell, and whether or not you are a fan of the length is kinda inconsequential. So, I struggle when people want to make a big deal of "pacing issues" in this comic. Rick actually usually writes stories that read at a pretty breakneck pace. His comics make good use of visual storytelling to slow that pace down a bit.
Maybe this is what I want to say: I get that everyone is excited to see the resolution, and I love when people talk about how excited they are. But even if the story's pacing is narratively fine, the desire to see the resolution can become a frustration about the lack of closure. It's fine to feel frustrated, but if it's really a patience issue and not a narrative one, complaining is just dragging everyone else into your personal problem. It's valid to feel like the story is moving slowly, but it's not valid to call it a structural issue if it actually isn't.
Well, yes, you can argue they don't feel well-founded. That's the point of discussion, to get a wide range of perspectives on the question. And again, it is very well constructed. Still, Even with stories that I very much enjoy, I often take time to consider, "Could it have been improved?" And that's what I'm aiming at here. A lot of us think the pacing was off, but let's sit down and look at that. I outlined the moments that I think might be responsible for that, so the question is, how could those moments be handled differently? Would handling those moments differently actually improve it?
I think a large part of it might have been that people were reading it as a mystery. Because they were looking at it as a mystery, they were looking for clues. If you approach the story looking for clues, then yes, there were incredibly long stretches of time between clues. But me, I wasn't looking for clues. The moment I saw Steward's evil silhouette, I marked him as the one behind it. There were no clues, because there was no mystery. As I said way back in . . . I don't actually remember when, early chapter 4 I think, this played out more like a character study. In that case, what we should really have been looking for were the pieces of information that told us who Marion was as a character.
But even I felt a bit of a drag. The only thing I can lay my finger on are the filler strips between chapters, but as I said, those seem to be a necessary evil, given Rick was writing this as he went and probably needed time to work out the specifics. In that case, yes, that's just something we gotta be patient about, because it's a small price to pay for making sure the actual story is well done.
And then there's the other thing I don't know: would I have felt a drag if I wasn't on the forums discussing it with other people? The discussion was a part of how I was absorbing the story, and the input of opinions influences perception. Despite pointing out that the story seemed to be playing out like a character study, everybody's questions still put my mind constantly on the reveal of why Steward was doing everything (I still consider the how unimportant and "Trinket helped him do it" is enough for me). Was that all it was? It's a distinct possibility. If, even at a level bellow the conscious reading, the focus is on that reveal as the one most important thing, then yes, it took forever to get to that point.
Additionally, I'm a stickler for pacing. It's possible I can get myself into a perspective of giving it more weight and emphasis than the situation demands. A perceived pacing issue, real or imagined, is going to absorb an inordinate amount of my attention, and could very easily create a feedback loop that amplifies the effect of perceived issues. That particular problem won't go away until there's some distance in time away from the story - enough to allow a fresh perspective on it. And as I said, I'm fairly new to webcomics that try to tell long stories, so I don't feel like I fully understand how to best pace it. This only increases the amount of attention I'm paying to it. The potential to blow it all completely out of proportion is very high.
If that's the case, then again, a discussion has value because analyzing the structure and eliminating pacing as the problem leaves us with a need to consider that. And it reinforces why understanding story structure and genre conventions matters. It's very easy to trick yourself into reading a story in a way that it's not meant to be read.
So, you say there's nothing wrong with the pace and it was all in our heads? Okay, you've established your argument. So, support your case. Take a few points out of my original post and say why you don't think those moments were important. Tell me why you think cutting them to speed up the pacing would be detrimental. Maybe your perspective will be proven self-evident. Then again, maybe you'll find that it could have improved the story. It's purely academic, because the story is already great and improving on it isn't really necessary, but trying does help you better understand how stories work. I mean, what's to be learned from dissecting the structure of Birdemic? Or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen? The problems are apparent. Anyone with even the most basic understanding of story structure can pick out what's wrong with those kinds of stories. Suggesting improvements to them isn't academically stimulating, because it basically just comes down to rewriting the entire story. But taking a story that's this good and trying to improve it? To do that, you have to REALLY know what you're doing. And you also have to know how to be self-aware of your own perspective, because it requires you to work out when there's an actual point to be improved and when you're just seeing a problem because you're looking for a problem.
I guess, in that sense, calling it a problem might be putting people in the wrong mind. But to call it a "moment that works well, but maybe possibly could be improved" is a mouthful to say, so calling it a "flaw" is just a shortcut. But I don't know what else to call it. Every word that accurately reflects my intent implies that there's something wrong with the moment. That's not really the case, but our language doesn't have any single term to express the concept of something that's not a problem, but nevertheless is something to be examined to search for improvements. This is largely because our language is heavily built around opposition: it's great for discussing in terms of extremes like right or wrong, but it's hard to discuss the difference between right and more right without implying that there's something wrong.
I try to do my best to convey that I don't mean to say that it's bad, or that we should be expecting better, but it's hard not to imply that when you're asking the question of whether or not it could be improved. Our language is just kinda built that way.
Legotron123 wrote:So, anyone wanna start guessing what Steward’s REAL plan is? Because “make Keene go bankrupt by turning a bunch of humans into animals that he’ll be compelled to help” has holes in it large enough to drive a train through. It’s more likely that plan is just a cover story to distract Keene, which would explain why Marion didn’t mention any more humans being turned into animals in the six month time skip. Plus, I doubt he’d be able to convince Trinket (and likely Corey by extension) to work for him if this was just a simple revenge plot. Those two are very self centered, so it’s unlikely they’d be willing to help him if there wasn’t something in it for them.
Okay, gonna have to stop you there, because the holes in Steward's plan really are irrelevant. Logically it doesn't make sense, but people aren't logical. Stew has been stewing on his bitterness for . . . how long has it been since TC2? At least a year in comic. Maybe more. He has the coin as his only tool of revenge. When you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and when you've got a magic coin that turns people into animals, every person looks like a transformation waiting to happen. Or maybe that's just me. >.>
Steward is acting irrationally because he's thinking irrationally, so his plan having holes in it doesn't mean he must have a better one in the works. It could just mean that he's not thinking clearly because his emotions are coloring his ability to accurately judge the best course of action.
Ash Greytree wrote:Now, I did manage to catch one theme that was really interesting to me: Kitsune seemed to be hammering home the idea that being born human isn’t anything truly special in the Housepets universe. It “just sorta happened”. Dwelling on your humanity (or former humanity) as special and essential to your being isn’t healthy. I get the feeling that this is a pet peeve of Kitsune’s when dealing with humans over the years. Kitsune tells Marion that “It’s not gonna help with what you really need~” when he asks the Celestial to just tell him who cursed them. I took that to mean that just telling them would be no fun as well as that what they really need isn’t catching a villain to conveniently get back their humanity, but rather to find a new path ahead in life and learn lessons from it.
The theme of "what does it mean to be a person?" That opens up all kinds of interesting places for a story to go.