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Flipside Discussion / Re: Maytag's (Completely Inconsistant) Personality

« on: August 19, 2015, 04:35:19 am »

So although this seems like a similar problem to midichlorians, I personally don't think it is.

For most of it, I guess I'll just have to say that my feelings very strongly align with Crest's and leave it at that. For this though... Well, for me it's not like midichlorians, and that's actually the problem. Some people might not have liked them, but they were consistent to the setting. It was sci-fi, and they were an at least a pseudo-scientific explanation, rather than it just being "space magic".

Personally, I liken the nanotech here more to Planet Zeist. All through the first part of the Highlander story, the fantastical elements seemed fully fantasy, and followed fantasy conventions, like the rules about holy ground. Then they introduce Planet Zeist, and it's inclusion forces a complete genre shift, as well as making little to no sense within the context of the existing story, and requiring illogical retcons (e.g. "Why can Immortals sense when they're on holy ground if there's nothing special about it, and the rule is completely informal?"). The inclusion was generally considered poorly conceived, and it was later retconned out.

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Chapter 44: Discussion

« on: August 19, 2015, 04:23:11 am »

Psychopathy should never be assumed to be at the top of the list, unless you see stuff like tormenting animals.

Remember the time she cut herself up while calmly explaining how fucking ice-cold and dangerous she was? Or the other time she did basically the same thing?

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Flipside Discussion / Maytag's (Completely Inconsistant) Personality

« on: August 12, 2015, 06:34:18 pm »

So, after reading the latest comic, I'm only reminded once more how I'm only here for Crest, Bern, and the supporting cast anymore. Any time that May gets brought back, my reaction is pretty much...this.

Don't get me wrong, though. It's not that I don't like Maytag. She's actually the main reason I started reading Flipside. She was an interesting, likeable, and pretty much just overall "cool" character. The recent plotline has destroyed absolutely everything I liked about the character.

More than that, though, it feels like it was done for no good reason, and it doesn't even mesh with the comic's own canon. For instance, Moss. He's cursed to see people's biggest flaws, but he called Maytag out on something she not only doesn't care about, but is doing on purpose and considers a positive trait to have...apparently. We know his curse isn't fake, which means that this unemotional Maytag can't work. Her biggest flaw was that nobody likes the real her, not that she's a slut. Then there's Bern. If she and Maytag are so close, then she should have known about it...and with her personality, there's no way she would have accepted May any more than Crest did...even less so, since she would then know that Maytag's infidelities were a matter of choice. It just does not work from a story standpoint.

It's more than that, though. Early depictions of the "new May" made her look like the medical textbook definition of a psychopath. She came off as manipulative, selfish, and uncaring about others. Since then, it feels like there's been a lot of back-pedalling going on, and it honestly just makes it worse. It rings hollow, and rather than making me feel like there's more to May than I realized, makes me feel like Brion is desperately trying to justify his favourite Mary Sue, when it's already reached the point where, quite frankly, the comic feels for me like it would be infinitely better without her*. First of all, personalities don't friggin' work like that. You don't just decide to be chipper and likeable one day, and suddenly everyone wants to be around you. As someone who had trouble making friends growing up, and tried to "re-invent myself" multiple times, and who took acting lessons for years hoping to do just that, I have to say I don't just find it unrealistic, but insulting on a deeply personal level. It also just reads like a bunch of baloney.

"Oh hey, I know that I said that I was actually a coldly calculating emotionally dead freak who only fakes being happy so people will like me and satisfy my needs, but that isn't true at all! What I meant to say was I used to be like that! But then I realized I really liked how that felt, and so now that's the real me! Or...wait...that didn't come out right either. Can I get a do-over? Can I get infinity do-overs until I say it a way that makes you like me again?" <--- That. That is the feeling I get whenever I read a Maytag chapter anymore...





*On a side note, the entire Dark Cell ark, with its nanotech and all that, is already at Bad Fanfic levels of narrative dissonance to everything else going on. Aside from the fact that I (for one) just literally don't care, because it's trying to explain an aspect of the setting, magic, which did not need an explanation, it makes everything else feel cheesy through the lens of its explanation. Like with May's personality, it's a long con bait-and-switch twist in the story that changes something that originally got me invested into something completely different.

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Intermission 30: Special Voting Thread!

« on: February 24, 2015, 07:13:12 am »

Not surprising at all, but still it's interesting to see who everyone is voting for and their reasons.

Hey, I just want to say, that I feel I owe you a bit of an apology. It was my intention to be "brutally honest", not outright cruel. I think I failed in that regard. Both of the times I tried to put down how I've been feeling about the comic, now, I've gotten overly worked up about it, and ended up being a lot more harsh than was warranted. I'm not going to say that I didn't mean those things I said, because that would be dishonest, when they were a raw and unfiltered example of my emotions. However, I will say that I don't think you deserved to have those feelings expressed to you in quite that way. While I disagree with some of your storytelling, you've created an engaging setting and striking visuals that have kept me interested over any other faults I may perceive. I certainly wouldn't feel so strongly about these characters and what's going on with them if you didn't manage to build them in a way that I could connect to on some level. So, now that I've had time to cool down and approach this more level-headedly, I just wanted to say that, whatever else I may say, you do have my respect, and thank you for Flipside.

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Intermission 30: Special Voting Thread!

« on: February 23, 2015, 05:52:43 am »

2. Bernadette (Colosseum Storyarc)

I realized that my last post may not have been in the correct format, so allow me to make an actual vote, to be sure it will be counted.

In my opinion, Bernadette's is the only story that still resembles its original form. Brion, you put on a hell of a comic, but stop trying to be M. Night Shyamalan. Some really unnecessary plot twists have put me off from a lot of the comic, and (as might have come across in my original "vote") made me hate Maytag as a character, if not as a person, altogether.

You thought May was a spunky nympho jester with an adorably shy streak out of costume?
Nope! She's an emotionally stunted (possibly aspergers-suffering) master manipulator with such great acting ability that even the guy who's whole thing is seeing people's faults couldn't tell. Or maybe not, because those don't sound like positive traits, so she totally does have feelings even though even she just said she didn't and there was a flashback to show it and everything!

You thought that this was a fantasy story, with swords and sorcery...maybe even monsters?
Too bad! Have some nanobots!

You thought that Suspiria had a tragic backstory and was getting just revenge?
Nope! She's a delusional lunatic, and she didn't even actually manage to kill the person she was out to get revenge on!

Meanwhile, Bernadette has accomplished her goal of finding her father. Her actions were in accordance with her nature to help her father. She's shown that she continues to be an ethical and moral person in the face of adversity...flawed, human, but principled. All the people around her that ought to care still show every sign of caring, and the people we aren't supposed to like are being horrible. No sudden genre shifts (or rather, unaffected by the sudden genre shift), and no one has suddenly had the entire nature, personality, and motivations of their character turned on its head.

In other words...it's the one story arc still untainted. As long as Brion doesn't decide to needlessly complicate things for the sake of fake added "drama", I still hold out for the Bern arc ending as strong as it started. Past shifts in tone have made me leery of Crest's arc, but it's mostly because of what's happened to Suspiria. I wouldn't mind seeing where Crest's story goes, I just don't have as much trust in how it will turn out, when it already seems to be setting up for another shitty plot twist roller coaster. Then there's Maytag... She used to be my favourite character, and now I hate her. One of my closest friends who started reading the same time as I did stopped because of her sudden transformation into, as he put it, "the textbook definition of a psychopath"...and honestly, he wasn't wrong. If Maytag were a real person, everything we know about her would make a strong case Cleckleyan psychopathy. I mean no disrespect for the author, but I would just as soon if the story never returned to her. If she and the nanobots were just written out and made noncanon, like Zeist from the lore of Highlander.

Actually, I take back what I said about no more Shyamalan plot twists. The best thing that could happen to this comic is a Shyamalan plot twist. Let's put them all back in the castle, and just say the last few chapters have been more illusions and drug-induced dreams. Maytag isn't really a psychopath. Suspiria isn't really a delusional, murderous hell-beast. The comic isn't really a super-post-apocalyptic sci-fi story. It was all just a trick. Can we do that?

Yes, I could say all this in the ^{Brion Makes Excuses For Why Your} Criticism ^{Is Invalid} thread, but I feel like the reasoning behind my vote needs to be understood, beyond just "They must like action", or "They like Bern more". The fact is, Bern's not even my favourite character. Crest is. However, at this point, the whole comic seems to have devolved to where it becomes not a choice of what I'd like most, but what I'd dislike the least.

tl;dr: Don't go back to the other characters until your ready to fix the problems with their arcs.

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Flipside Discussion / Re: Intermission 30: Special Voting Thread!

« on: February 20, 2015, 01:54:06 pm »

Crest, Bernadette, hell, I'd take a chapter devoted to Melter-cat. Anyone but Maytag!