Bay Smith is a main character. Once a guy, she was turned into a girl several years ago. She keeps this fact a secret, and only a handful of people know.
She's now a struggling actress whose roommate is actually her daughter from an alternate future timeline.
Bay was already starting to think of herself as a girl – i remember her “Bad Conscience” responding to her “Good Conscience” saying “We’re not really a girl” with “Oh, yeah? What are these – shock absorbers?”
Looks as if it might be happening to Brad, too – but faster because, behind the amnesia, he’s still Bay with Bay’s life experiences…
Bay is Brad. Brad has slowly been turning into Bay since the comic started. He only recently admitted it to him self. Heck he even got pregnant and had a kid.
Actually, the “having a kid” part, Bay apparently hadn’t figured out what morning sickness was before getting too close to the time vortex Honey was being grabbed from the future through, which ended the pregnancy, as i recall the storyline.
You know, guys, just for the record, I DO also find some of this stuff incredibly distracting. “A far way”? Really? There for their? This stuff is distracting. Which is actually somewhat gut-wrenching to see, because the actual story isn’t bad and the characters are appealing.
I know you want to call people who get bugged by this bitchy, because you like the story and characters – and that is understandable, sure, because the actual story and characters are good – but there have been several times when I’ve had to remind myself that what I was reading was free, or I might have stopped long before any of the best parts of the story. Why?
Because I write as well, and most of all, I READ. Voraciously. Like, easily as bad as Honey when it comes to book addiction. (I also love comics, including many online comics, such as Misfile and Wonderella and Subnormality and really more than I could count on both hands and possibly both feet, so this isn’t me ragging on comics as a book snob, either).
And as someone who writes with both the love of writing and the desire to write WELL, and who reads out of sheer love of story and character and the joy of discovering writers who Give a Damn, I learned years ago that no matter how good your plot or characters are, nor matter how neat your concept is, repeated, glaringly simple grammar and spelling errors drive a lot of people nuts.
And for good reason; these things are STANDARD in the language, often for good reason, such as to avoid confusion, or simply because so many people have done it that way for so long that to most people it feels “natural” and to break that pattern is unnatural; it draws the reader’s attention away from story and character and whatever else the writer is trying to convey. And that’s bad!
This is not to say that language isn’t “alive”, that it can’t change or mutate or evolve. This also isn’t to say you can’t break the rules. But if the rules you’re breaking aren’t being broken for good reason – if it’s just because you are careless, or, even worse, do not CARE, then, well I’m sorry, but that is bad writing.
A good writer CARES about stupid, little things like there/their or writing “natural” sounding sentences (except when the whole point is unnaturalness, obviously), because the more they care, the better their work can convey what it is they want it to convey. The less it pulls attention AWAY, the more it will pull attention IN.
The fewer grammar oopsies and idiomatic mishaps you have without intending to, the less likely you are to distract the reader from the good stuff. This is most especially the case when you’re attempting to write dialogue for a character like Honey, who is supposed to be super-smart and BOOK SMART to boot. I wince more often than not when I hear her talk, because she just doesn’t actually sound like she reads as much as she does… and even when she does, the way it’s rendered on the page sometimes ruins the effect by including simple and glaring errors. And this really sucks, because I like her!
As it is, I’m sorry. I like the story, I like the concept, and I REALLY like the characters – hell, I even kind of like the art, it’s cute and expressive and a hell of a lot better than I could ever draw consistently, and I admire that – but I can’t call it “well-written”. It is a good story, with good characters, and good art… that is written quite badly.
And that is almost physically painful for me to see.
If it weren’t for the characters and the fact this is free to read, I’d have stopped reading long ago – long before the best, most emotional parts of the story, long before the parts I enjoyed most. And that makes me sad. Most of all, because the author himself… it’s not just that he’s inexperienced with it, he just doesn’t realize that it’s good to care about these things, given that he argued “tomato, tomahto” with a “there/their” distinction… and then left the error in, even though it would have been easy to fix.
And you know what? You folks don’t help. You make it WORSE. A fan is a nice thing to have, yes, but not when they start to hurt you precisely by holding you back. Which is exactly what people are doing when they jump on somebody just for correcting the grammar or suggesting less-awkward phrasing.
I would absolutely adore this author’s work, if it weren’t for distractions like those, and I’m not the only one. To see someone with such potential held back by misguided fans who don’t realize how many other fans the artist could have just by giving a damn and fixing those issues – easily fixed issues! – is just absolutely painful.
I love the characters, I like the story, I like the art, I like the concept. But the lack of Give a Damn in the writing is so bad, that I refuse to let myself read his other work. Not because he’s bad, but precisely because he SO CLOSE to being SO GOOD, and yet so far away from it, because people keep lying to him and telling him it doesn’t matter, and he seems to have believed them. When people decide that criticism is automatically bad and reject it, they’re also rejecting the one thing that can help a writer grow. Yes, it is painful to get critiques that include some negative components; most especially when it’s something “simple” that you should ostensibly already know (confession: I STILL struggle myself with dialogue tags in prose, because I’m American, and the American system is incredibly confusing and non-intuitive on dialogue formatting. I also consistently have trouble spelling certain words, such as “necessary” or “embarrassing”, without double-checking them. I’m lucky to have a beta reader who knows all that stuff like the back of her hand).
It can hurt, it can be embarrassing… but it’s not half as embarrassing, trust me, as refusing to improve. The more you can accept criticism and actually look through it to see if there’s something you could do better, the better and more powerful your writing will be. The more you Give a Damn, the better and powerful your writing will be.
I’m attached enough to these characters that I can get through this one – the characters, at least, are likable enough that it’s worth the irritation (especially since, you know… free), but I am not going through that pain again with another series. It’s too aggravating, to see something with so much potential being done lazily or not having simple fixes made when they’re pointed out – especially when it’s a damn typo. We all make mistakes; mistakes only become truly bad when the author decides he doesn’t care enough to fix them.
And that fact, again, makes me quite sad.
Assuming the author decides he does care – or assuming any other random person with similar struggles sees this and decides he or she also wants to care – I suggest reading the book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by Lynn Truss – and I suggest this pretty much because I cannot describe how much better and smoother my own writing became after I got a copy. No, I’m still not perfect; there are things I still struggle with, like anybody. But having the reference handy is a fantastic thing, and there are other things I’ve trained myself to remember because of that book, which is not only useful, but itself well-written and funny as heck.
Bay was already starting to think of herself as a girl – i remember her “Bad Conscience” responding to her “Good Conscience” saying “We’re not really a girl” with “Oh, yeah? What are these – shock absorbers?”
Looks as if it might be happening to Brad, too – but faster because, behind the amnesia, he’s still Bay with Bay’s life experiences…
Bay is Brad. Brad has slowly been turning into Bay since the comic started. He only recently admitted it to him self. Heck he even got pregnant and had a kid.
Yeah, i know. That’s what i meant.
Actually, the “having a kid” part, Bay apparently hadn’t figured out what morning sickness was before getting too close to the time vortex Honey was being grabbed from the future through, which ended the pregnancy, as i recall the storyline.
It should read “…what’s going on” instead of the nonsensical “…what’s going in.”
Also, the title of this strip doesn’t make sense. “…a far way” is gibberish. It should read “…a LONG way”
Hey, Anonymous? Why don’t you go practise deep knee bends over a fire hydrant.
Don’t sweat it. He’s just not competent enough to fill CD’s “grammar nazi” job.
If he was, we wouldn’t see any errors or his whining.
You know, guys, just for the record, I DO also find some of this stuff incredibly distracting. “A far way”? Really? There for their? This stuff is distracting. Which is actually somewhat gut-wrenching to see, because the actual story isn’t bad and the characters are appealing.
I know you want to call people who get bugged by this bitchy, because you like the story and characters – and that is understandable, sure, because the actual story and characters are good – but there have been several times when I’ve had to remind myself that what I was reading was free, or I might have stopped long before any of the best parts of the story. Why?
Because I write as well, and most of all, I READ. Voraciously. Like, easily as bad as Honey when it comes to book addiction. (I also love comics, including many online comics, such as Misfile and Wonderella and Subnormality and really more than I could count on both hands and possibly both feet, so this isn’t me ragging on comics as a book snob, either).
And as someone who writes with both the love of writing and the desire to write WELL, and who reads out of sheer love of story and character and the joy of discovering writers who Give a Damn, I learned years ago that no matter how good your plot or characters are, nor matter how neat your concept is, repeated, glaringly simple grammar and spelling errors drive a lot of people nuts.
And for good reason; these things are STANDARD in the language, often for good reason, such as to avoid confusion, or simply because so many people have done it that way for so long that to most people it feels “natural” and to break that pattern is unnatural; it draws the reader’s attention away from story and character and whatever else the writer is trying to convey. And that’s bad!
This is not to say that language isn’t “alive”, that it can’t change or mutate or evolve. This also isn’t to say you can’t break the rules. But if the rules you’re breaking aren’t being broken for good reason – if it’s just because you are careless, or, even worse, do not CARE, then, well I’m sorry, but that is bad writing.
A good writer CARES about stupid, little things like there/their or writing “natural” sounding sentences (except when the whole point is unnaturalness, obviously), because the more they care, the better their work can convey what it is they want it to convey. The less it pulls attention AWAY, the more it will pull attention IN.
The fewer grammar oopsies and idiomatic mishaps you have without intending to, the less likely you are to distract the reader from the good stuff. This is most especially the case when you’re attempting to write dialogue for a character like Honey, who is supposed to be super-smart and BOOK SMART to boot. I wince more often than not when I hear her talk, because she just doesn’t actually sound like she reads as much as she does… and even when she does, the way it’s rendered on the page sometimes ruins the effect by including simple and glaring errors. And this really sucks, because I like her!
As it is, I’m sorry. I like the story, I like the concept, and I REALLY like the characters – hell, I even kind of like the art, it’s cute and expressive and a hell of a lot better than I could ever draw consistently, and I admire that – but I can’t call it “well-written”. It is a good story, with good characters, and good art… that is written quite badly.
And that is almost physically painful for me to see.
If it weren’t for the characters and the fact this is free to read, I’d have stopped reading long ago – long before the best, most emotional parts of the story, long before the parts I enjoyed most. And that makes me sad. Most of all, because the author himself… it’s not just that he’s inexperienced with it, he just doesn’t realize that it’s good to care about these things, given that he argued “tomato, tomahto” with a “there/their” distinction… and then left the error in, even though it would have been easy to fix.
And you know what? You folks don’t help. You make it WORSE. A fan is a nice thing to have, yes, but not when they start to hurt you precisely by holding you back. Which is exactly what people are doing when they jump on somebody just for correcting the grammar or suggesting less-awkward phrasing.
I would absolutely adore this author’s work, if it weren’t for distractions like those, and I’m not the only one. To see someone with such potential held back by misguided fans who don’t realize how many other fans the artist could have just by giving a damn and fixing those issues – easily fixed issues! – is just absolutely painful.
I love the characters, I like the story, I like the art, I like the concept. But the lack of Give a Damn in the writing is so bad, that I refuse to let myself read his other work. Not because he’s bad, but precisely because he SO CLOSE to being SO GOOD, and yet so far away from it, because people keep lying to him and telling him it doesn’t matter, and he seems to have believed them. When people decide that criticism is automatically bad and reject it, they’re also rejecting the one thing that can help a writer grow. Yes, it is painful to get critiques that include some negative components; most especially when it’s something “simple” that you should ostensibly already know (confession: I STILL struggle myself with dialogue tags in prose, because I’m American, and the American system is incredibly confusing and non-intuitive on dialogue formatting. I also consistently have trouble spelling certain words, such as “necessary” or “embarrassing”, without double-checking them. I’m lucky to have a beta reader who knows all that stuff like the back of her hand).
It can hurt, it can be embarrassing… but it’s not half as embarrassing, trust me, as refusing to improve. The more you can accept criticism and actually look through it to see if there’s something you could do better, the better and more powerful your writing will be. The more you Give a Damn, the better and powerful your writing will be.
I’m attached enough to these characters that I can get through this one – the characters, at least, are likable enough that it’s worth the irritation (especially since, you know… free), but I am not going through that pain again with another series. It’s too aggravating, to see something with so much potential being done lazily or not having simple fixes made when they’re pointed out – especially when it’s a damn typo. We all make mistakes; mistakes only become truly bad when the author decides he doesn’t care enough to fix them.
And that fact, again, makes me quite sad.
Assuming the author decides he does care – or assuming any other random person with similar struggles sees this and decides he or she also wants to care – I suggest reading the book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by Lynn Truss – and I suggest this pretty much because I cannot describe how much better and smoother my own writing became after I got a copy. No, I’m still not perfect; there are things I still struggle with, like anybody. But having the reference handy is a fantastic thing, and there are other things I’ve trained myself to remember because of that book, which is not only useful, but itself well-written and funny as heck.
Insert slow clap here.