Thread "How to deal with tips/Critique that badly miss the point." in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 7:12PM, Dec. 30, 2019

My question is, how do you deal with a tip/idea/critique that you ether cannot use, completely ignores your premise or seems like a thinly veiled demand?

I ask because when I was on another webcomic forum asking for advice about handling this idea; a throw back to Mighty Max and Jonny Quest with this teenage girl who has to use her wits and a whole lot of luck to deal with a supernatural monster of the week, a Kim Possible meets Kolchak The Nightstalker if you will. She has no powers, unnatural abilities or special gadgets to help her, just pragmatism, athletics and a lot of luck.

I made it very clear this is going to be a throw back to those shows where the hero had to figure out what the monster is, learn their weakness and confront them and it was going to feature things like vampires, ghosts and other nasty things.

I got a few helpful tips like using the environment, have friends that can help her out, start out with a weak monster and work up the food chain but soon the tips turn to about giving her a gun. I try to point out in my setting a gun is kind of useless against monsters, it will work against vampires (any damage to the heart, they are done) but there would be ghosts and eldritch things which things like explosives mean nothing, guns are just noise makers to them.

They came back with to make the monsters invisible, and make her mentally unstable, and to kill all the adults in the world. The tip became a flat out demand from a few posters saying I "MUST" make monsters vulnerable to guns or else it is not realistic and that would run their immersion.

I repeat, they demanded me to have a teenage girl to go full commando and murder ghosts that somehow wiped out the adults, as in law enforcement, military, with regular bullets from normal guns.

They outright told me to do this, not as a tip but a full on demand.

I lost interest in working on the project, I had the first issue thumb nailed after scripting it with some character designs but interest was kind of lost.

Posted at 5:12AM, Dec. 31, 2019

If it doesn't fit in your vision of your work, thank them kindly and file away the idea because you never know down the road… she just could meet a gun happy supernatural warrior.

But in the meantime it's your story. This person demands something? He can create his own story, not hijack yours.

I've even told a few of the more demanding commenters to write it up and I'll see if I can work it in. See above about his vision of the character showing up and maybe realizing guns are worthless against certain aspects of the supernatural.

But in the meantime it's your story. Write it your way.

Posted at 6:12AM, Dec. 31, 2019

Ignore them, I guess the critic was someone who isn't an artist at all or ,ever used the same medium
Lots of "critics" feel like molding whatever they criticize into what they wanted to be rather than how the author wants it
I had a similar situation where I presented my friend with an early draft of a comic I used to sketch in college and he was like "But did you establish a decent magic system" as if if I was writing a shonen manga and not an adventure time inspired comic

Posted at 2:01AM, Jan. 2, 2020

The two commenters above me have hit the nail on the head, but some advice that helped me when I started posting my work online this year: don't take criticism from people you wouldn't take advice from.

Every punter has something to say, but it doesn't mean it's worthwhile. For what it's worth your idea sounds like a lot of fun!

My advice (because I'm opinionated) is to remember that magical girl/monster of the week comics are very much in vogue right now and that a monster of the week formula can get stale, fast, and that it sounds strongly like Buffy. But, if you're building on the idea and treating it as a homage then that sounds like a really neat idea.

Posted at 1:01AM, Jan. 4, 2020

You should totally listen to those people, ask them what to name the comic too, oh and supply the scripts and art while they are at it, that way you'll know you got it right. So yeah, I'm being facetious.
In truth I think you summed it up in that they missed the point, they want something more walking dead than a Saturday morning cartoon. That said it wouldn't hurt to mull over what they've said but if it isn't relevant it isn't relevant.

Posted at 5:02AM, Feb. 9, 2020

Try to get critique from a few different people you trust. Getting crit from a bunch of random internet people is a real mixed bag. Unless you're directly working with this person, you're not obligated to implement their ideas.

Posted at 1:03AM, Mar. 3, 2020

Anyone can give their opinion about something, but keep in mind that you can never please everyone all the time, and trying leads inevitably to failure. Irrelevant attempts at critique, or critique you simply can't use, is just a useless opinion. If you feel there's any part you want to hold onto, hold onto that part and discard the rest. You're never under any obligation to implement anyone's suggestions unless you're working with them…in which case, compromise is more likely than just complete creative surrender by one of the parties involved.

You are the person who knows you and your work the best. You are, therefore, the best potential critic of your work. Critique yourself, be honest with yourself, and just try to develop at the pace it is possible. Most of the time, most critics miss the point. But you have to decide, in looking at any critic, if they are providing a voice to your thoughts (or close enough to be applicable to you) or, alternatively, expressing things you didn't think of and, accordingly, if you think they're worth listening to.

Most "critics" are just people who can't or won't do the work, but really want to see something in someone else's.