The weekend brings a flamewar
Mar 6th
Hmm, what a weekend. I had stayed home sick Friday, so I decided to finish the review for Triquetra Cats, so I posted the news about the review on the comic genesis forums, as I usually do with the CG comics. I was surprised to see how fast the artist responded to it. Unlike other threads on bad reviews, I responded to the thread in a positive manner, attempting to respond to her criticism of the review. I never do this on a regular basis, because I found no point to responding it in the first place.
On Saturday, I left for Primo’s house, where I spent most of the day playing Resident Evil 4. I checked the forums once again, seeing the initial response of some of the other webcomic artists on comicgenesis.
It wasn’t until a popular forum member brought up the point that I review only bad webcomics, and that my reviews were biased towards ComicGenesis comics.
It was the second time such a topic had been raised, and this time, it was more of a personal attack on my reviewing, or as he put it, a critique. It was harsh, but made some honest assessments that I’d like to address.
He made a valid point that I am in favor of ComicGenesis webcomics, as I am closely tied with its community and I am friends with much of them. I admit, I am friends with these people. I go on the ComicGenesis IRC chat rather frequently, and they are the ones I turn to for support in my webcomic reviews. I feared that my attachment to the webcomic community may be attacked at one point or another, so I decided to play fair with the reviews they asked of me. For the Green Avenger review, I don’t really know Ryuko, the artist. We’ve spoken once or twice, and probably gone into a discussion once or twice on IRC. Those I do consider to be friends, I’ve already reviewed (like Pimpette or Legostar), but with other people I have yet to review (rkolter and his comic, Reasoned Cognition) I’ve taken my time to make the review a fair one. (The Reasoned Cognition review was written a good while ago, but I’ve held off on releasing it until I had ample time to re-read the archives a couple of times before I’m sure its fair.). And I try to be fair to the best of my extent. I’ve reviewed some of the more popular comics on ComicGenesis and given those poor reviews (Digital War, Star Bored, Burgandy Comics INC) even though the people on the forums are popular and contribute much to the community. I don’t care. I try to separate the person and the comic before I actually review.
I admit. I have no damn credentials. I don’t write for anything big like the New York Times. At the same time, there are no credentials to be a webcomic artist. I hoped I could gain credentials not with where I write my reviews, but instead, in the eyes of those who read my reviews and try to enjoy them. I am as objective as possible when it comes to my review. Each facet of the comic – characters, story, pacing, art, premise, and writing- are all examined. I try to categorize the comic at first so that readers of my reviews can see if the comic in such a category. I admit, I don’t take much into giving suggestions on the corrections, and I’m slowly trying to change that. I did mention in the review of Triquetra cats to switch off the screentones, and I really have to give more suggestions in the future if I want my reviews to appeal to both the audiences and the artists alike.
Roger Ebert doesn’t say what can be done better about the review. Hell, I read his reviews. The man doesn’t suggest different things to do with the reviews. Here’s his latest review on 16 Blocks. As you can read it, half of the review is a recap on the film and some of the major plot points and characters. It isn’t until the end of the review that he reflects on the film and its strong points. Nothing to it.
Thinking back on it all, I’m probably not going to review any ComicGenesis comics in the near future, to avoid any more of this bullshit. The junkRIOT review was going to go up this Monday, but I held it off in lieu of this recent flamewar.
Resident Evil 4 scared the shit out of me. I swear, I’m not going near chainsaws anytime soon.
Damn villagers.
and damn parasites.
Writing like a madman
Mar 2nd
There’s been four different things I’ve been writing as of late, which have been taking up my time.
For one, there’s my paper on a really badly written study on video game violence done on Dutch kids. It’s oddly amusing for them to attempt to find something out of all these kids when 70% percent of them don’t even play video games. (I’ll post the title of the paper later, if anyone is interested)
Second, is a paper on Stalin in his pre-WWII period. Saw an interesting documentry on it done by PBS, which at times was dry, but amazing at others. I wish I had the title to.
Desperate Keenwives is nearing the end, and I want to finish it so I don’t have to worry about it anymore and have it waste my time. It’s almost to around 50 pages. It’s my first real attempt at a novel format (I’ve had people comment that the dialouge is fresh while everything else is dry, so
Oh, and my review on junkRIOT, which will probably be delayed. DAMMIT.
So yeah, its been long and tedious here. I can’t wait till Friday, when I’ll turn in both papers.
And I REALLY need to fix this livejournal up. It’s too drab right now.
On the Anastasi music video…
Feb 20th
So as expected, I’ve been lagging behind in the work i need to do.
Mom suddenly forbid me to go anywhere (Yeah, I’m 18 and I still have to ask my mom to go places. What fucking fun, no?) and thus, the Anastasi videos are stuck at my house, sitting on the desk.
Shiit.
I’ll try reviewing the video later today, and see if I can pull out a decent idea of what I’m gonna do with the videos.
The basic idea I have is to cut them up into three small music videos and have little bits of other things that happened onstage (announcement of the winners, finalists, yadda yadda) and throw them up on google video for the myspace folks.
That brings up the idea of compression. Don’t wanna lose the music, but the picture quality as it is SUCKS.
I used a six year old video camera for crissakes.
I’ll have to look through the video tonight once Taylor’s video camera charges.
Lagging….
Feb 15th
Somehow, I’m lagging behind on all the work I have to do. Seriously, I am. Sick for one day off of school, and guess what, I’m down three homework assignments for my Precal class.
Shit on a stick. I’m not even halfway done with my review of Green Avenger. I’m gonna have to pull it back.
Well, I do have one small announcement, to say in the least. I’ll be joining a webcomics collective as… well, a writer (I don’t know if I can carry Blue Eyed Devil with me yet) in Cortland’s new collective.
HOOOOOO!
Oh, and I might be posting the Desperate Keenwives series here with some new stuff. Can’t wait.
When a CD goes the Hoffa way.
Feb 11th
Yeah, I was beginning to work on Purgatory. It was going to be interesting, really. I’ve gotten to build only Laurel and Death so far, and I needed the CD to prepare the houses that I want to build. So I look for the CD for The Sims 2 Nightlife, and whoopty doo, its gone the way of the dodo bird. I can’t find it anywhere. Friggin great.
So now, I’m installing Daemon tools to mount fake CD images to get it to run. Might let the game run faster, considering that it won’t have to load from a CD every time I go into build mode (the site GameBurnWorld.com helps tremendously. Recommended for any serious gamer.). So now,
Taylor finally saw the script. He was laughing over and over again as I acted out certain scenes for him while driving to burbank (to pick some stuff up for his band- Think Alike. I’m posting new songs of theirs on Teammayhem.net REALLY soon.) and instilled in me once again the joy of writing comedy.
Been moody as of late. Dunno why.
oh well.
time to get back to work. That’s probably where I’m happiest, really.
Oh look, I have a livejournal…
Feb 6th
and I’m such a whore.
Hello there, my name is Daniel. I’m 18 and I live in the city known as Lost Angeles (you’d be too with all the damn freeways you have to memorize. All I remember is the only one that goes through my town, the 210 freeway, and the 110 freeway, the freeway that’s all so curvy and gets you sick if you try to read a book on while riding) and
I’m known to most people as teammayhem, a webcomics reviewer (well, not most people. I’m joking myself there.), posting at Korsil Webcomic Reviews.
I have a livejournal for a couple of reasons:
- I’m a whore.
- I’ve wanted a place where I can bitch about all the different projects (Team Mayhem, Korsil, etc) in one place.
- At least it isn’t a deadjournal. (then again, I’m considering getting one to mock the nutjobs that are on there)
So I’m here for good. Tonight, I have to go fix a computer that my sister almost wrecked with a virus. And my family has the balls to blame me for it.
Great. Just great.