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People take webcomics too seriously...? (Demon: Jason Shiga, may contain spoilers)
Toothy7564
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Yeah okay, I'm sure some of you aren't happy to see that webcomic mentioned in the title. But it, and it's... less-than-stellar reputation here is the reason I decided to create an account and share my two cents.
For some background, I didn't know about the existence of Jason Shiga until August 2016, when I decided to buy Meanwhile in a book store. I actually liked it. I later went to check out Fleep and Bookhunter on his website too and while Bookhunter was a little confusing sometimes (I'm most certainly not an expert on how books are made), I still liked them. The most intriguing thing about his website was, of course, Demon, but I could only see the first chapter, as he took the whole other 20 chapters of webcomic down in July. I decided against trying to see the rest of the comic for the time being.
When I came back to his work, I discovered that he didn't remove ALL of the traces of Demon, as I could scout out the .pdfs of all but Chapter 21, and also the "previous page"/"next page" thumbnails were not taken down, so I decided to go for it and binge the entire thing. It was really surreal, and I wasn't a fan of some of the sexual nonsense in it, but overall I was pretty impressed. I noticed that there was also Disqus comments for all of the pages so I decided to go through them.
It's... actually depressing.
Comments go from eager spectating (chapter 7) to starting to let the cracks bother them (chapter 12)... and then we get to Chapter 15. For those that don't know, Chapter 15 of this webcomic is about 60 pages long (most other chapters are only 30 pages long), and most of it is just a huge, nonstop action-packed fight between the... "protagonist" (Jimmy) and his arch nemesis (Hunter). For those that also don't know, back when it wasn't complete, Demon was updated one page per day. Which made this chapter about two months long. And surely enough, the people in the comments started to lose faith in the story and start not only criticizing it, but outright bashing it. Stuff like "I wish I could pull my subscription to get Jason Shiga's attention", "I fully believe that the remaining entirety of this will be these two fighting, endlessly, for countless pages.", "it's the Itchy and Scratchy Show, Matrix verison!"... it's like, I understand if it's one page per day, it can feel draggy, but calm down. You're not obligated to check the webcomic EVERY DAY. How people reacted to the chapters after it, going in the end, was pretty negative too (stuff like "I've been assuming Shiga was an adult, but clearly he's actually 12. Such remarkable work for someone his age!" and "You are literally the worst story teller outside of elementary school."-- what the fuck?!). And it's not like I can fully disregard their complaints. It legitimately makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me for liking it (and... I still do). When I searched the comic on Google, I came to this place, and discovered that this webcomic is bashed on a regular basis here. Give "demon jason shiga site:https://forums.penny-arcade.com/" a search on Google, go through any of the pages it brings you, and it's a guarantee the posts will be talking negative things about it.
My biggest question: Why?
What is so bad about this web comic?
I personally think it was a fine read, despite the very obvious cracks some of you saw, and I will stand by this. This comic is actually pretty good at accomplishing it's goal: It's about an anti-social man discovering he has the demon ability, then breaking all the rules in a book to stop a government agent who's both incompetent and an extremist, from what basically constitutes taking over the world. The biggest obstacle is that Jimmy and his daughter are slowly becoming more and more of a selfish sociopath (in the footsteps of Jimmy's dad and grandfather). If you think the book suffers from Jimmy being too OP, then rest assured everyone (from him and Sweetpea to Hunter) is given their just desserts in the end. It boils down to a downer ending, but Jason has proven that he's not a fan of happy endings in the first place (Fleep, Meanwhile, Empire State). And the book itself knows how ridiculous it is, with crazy chapter lengths (from 4 pages to 60), a chapter with TEXT ONLY (in a black void), some of the... NSFW... stuff, so on. This webcomic is certainly way more unique, memorable, and re-readable than 2/3rds of the cookie cutter animated movies I've seen in my life. This is not to say it's PERFECT: I don't agree with the sex scene in Chapter 15, it seems like it was purely there to shock the reader instead of adding to anything. Neither do I agree with the... birth scene in Chapter 18. Jimmy's process of creating the cum shank wasn't shown, why was THAT?
And there are valid ways to make it better. I found one of the commentators (that goes by "Pugz1024") to be kind of a dick with his excessive complaining, but he AT LEAST did post methods to make Demon better, such as Page 401:
This is actually pretty good. But, what ended up being pumped out instead isn't exactly disappointing either. I already said the two things past Chapter 11 I really don't like, I can live with everything else.
I suppose another reason why I'm so frustrated at this negativity is because I also want to make a crazy story of my own, but I've been battling writer's block for years: I found Jason Shiga's work to be far more superior than what I could do, and yet his "magnum opus" seems to have completely bombed. Not that what I have in mind will be NEARLY as NSFW, but if Demon and Jason Shiga are this degree of hated... how am I going to hold up? It's frustrating and discouraging, and doesn't seem to help me! What the hell do I trust?? My brain has a limit to how many things it can consider in a story, and how "logical" things should be. And if I know it's just going to lead to whatever I eventually make have this amount of bile and vitriol, if it's going to be one of the worst pieces of media in the world, I'd rather NOT do it. It seems like it would be better to go out with nothing than go out with something infamous... so I don't know how to overcome the writer's block and I suspect I never will.
Sigh. That's all. This is an issue that's been on my mind for about two years, I just didn't say anything about it until now.
For some background, I didn't know about the existence of Jason Shiga until August 2016, when I decided to buy Meanwhile in a book store. I actually liked it. I later went to check out Fleep and Bookhunter on his website too and while Bookhunter was a little confusing sometimes (I'm most certainly not an expert on how books are made), I still liked them. The most intriguing thing about his website was, of course, Demon, but I could only see the first chapter, as he took the whole other 20 chapters of webcomic down in July. I decided against trying to see the rest of the comic for the time being.
When I came back to his work, I discovered that he didn't remove ALL of the traces of Demon, as I could scout out the .pdfs of all but Chapter 21, and also the "previous page"/"next page" thumbnails were not taken down, so I decided to go for it and binge the entire thing. It was really surreal, and I wasn't a fan of some of the sexual nonsense in it, but overall I was pretty impressed. I noticed that there was also Disqus comments for all of the pages so I decided to go through them.
It's... actually depressing.
Comments go from eager spectating (chapter 7) to starting to let the cracks bother them (chapter 12)... and then we get to Chapter 15. For those that don't know, Chapter 15 of this webcomic is about 60 pages long (most other chapters are only 30 pages long), and most of it is just a huge, nonstop action-packed fight between the... "protagonist" (Jimmy) and his arch nemesis (Hunter). For those that also don't know, back when it wasn't complete, Demon was updated one page per day. Which made this chapter about two months long. And surely enough, the people in the comments started to lose faith in the story and start not only criticizing it, but outright bashing it. Stuff like "I wish I could pull my subscription to get Jason Shiga's attention", "I fully believe that the remaining entirety of this will be these two fighting, endlessly, for countless pages.", "it's the Itchy and Scratchy Show, Matrix verison!"... it's like, I understand if it's one page per day, it can feel draggy, but calm down. You're not obligated to check the webcomic EVERY DAY. How people reacted to the chapters after it, going in the end, was pretty negative too (stuff like "I've been assuming Shiga was an adult, but clearly he's actually 12. Such remarkable work for someone his age!" and "You are literally the worst story teller outside of elementary school."-- what the fuck?!). And it's not like I can fully disregard their complaints. It legitimately makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me for liking it (and... I still do). When I searched the comic on Google, I came to this place, and discovered that this webcomic is bashed on a regular basis here. Give "demon jason shiga site:https://forums.penny-arcade.com/" a search on Google, go through any of the pages it brings you, and it's a guarantee the posts will be talking negative things about it.
My biggest question: Why?
What is so bad about this web comic?
I personally think it was a fine read, despite the very obvious cracks some of you saw, and I will stand by this. This comic is actually pretty good at accomplishing it's goal: It's about an anti-social man discovering he has the demon ability, then breaking all the rules in a book to stop a government agent who's both incompetent and an extremist, from what basically constitutes taking over the world. The biggest obstacle is that Jimmy and his daughter are slowly becoming more and more of a selfish sociopath (in the footsteps of Jimmy's dad and grandfather). If you think the book suffers from Jimmy being too OP, then rest assured everyone (from him and Sweetpea to Hunter) is given their just desserts in the end. It boils down to a downer ending, but Jason has proven that he's not a fan of happy endings in the first place (Fleep, Meanwhile, Empire State). And the book itself knows how ridiculous it is, with crazy chapter lengths (from 4 pages to 60), a chapter with TEXT ONLY (in a black void), some of the... NSFW... stuff, so on. This webcomic is certainly way more unique, memorable, and re-readable than 2/3rds of the cookie cutter animated movies I've seen in my life. This is not to say it's PERFECT: I don't agree with the sex scene in Chapter 15, it seems like it was purely there to shock the reader instead of adding to anything. Neither do I agree with the... birth scene in Chapter 18. Jimmy's process of creating the cum shank wasn't shown, why was THAT?
And there are valid ways to make it better. I found one of the commentators (that goes by "Pugz1024") to be kind of a dick with his excessive complaining, but he AT LEAST did post methods to make Demon better, such as Page 401:
My beef is that Shiga could have gotten to this exact point in a much better way. Imagine if Jimmy had gone against Gellman as an agent of the OSS. They match wits for a few dozen pages, then Gellman destroys the OSS to get at Sweetpea. It fails, but leaves Jimmy and Sweetpea on the run for the next century. Jimmy finally reaches out to his old rival to get some answers and the rest follows this story line. It would have been infinitely better to read, would have shown Jimmy at least attempting to do some good with his powers and wouldn't be so effing boring. I'm with you on the treadmill thing. I keep reading because I expect there's a point to all this, but I haven't been enjoying the story since Jimmy broke out of prison. At the very least he could have used that opportunity to get some answers about himself, the OSS and demons. It could have been a great source of information for the readers, THEN Jimmy could have broken out. Shiga has missed SO many opportunities to have a little exposition, grow Jimmy as a character and provide some extra dimensions to the story that would have, in NO WAY changed this basic story line. He could have added depth and substance without effecting the general direction. Compared to some of his other work, I'm very disappointed.
This is actually pretty good. But, what ended up being pumped out instead isn't exactly disappointing either. I already said the two things past Chapter 11 I really don't like, I can live with everything else.
I suppose another reason why I'm so frustrated at this negativity is because I also want to make a crazy story of my own, but I've been battling writer's block for years: I found Jason Shiga's work to be far more superior than what I could do, and yet his "magnum opus" seems to have completely bombed. Not that what I have in mind will be NEARLY as NSFW, but if Demon and Jason Shiga are this degree of hated... how am I going to hold up? It's frustrating and discouraging, and doesn't seem to help me! What the hell do I trust?? My brain has a limit to how many things it can consider in a story, and how "logical" things should be. And if I know it's just going to lead to whatever I eventually make have this amount of bile and vitriol, if it's going to be one of the worst pieces of media in the world, I'd rather NOT do it. It seems like it would be better to go out with nothing than go out with something infamous... so I don't know how to overcome the writer's block and I suspect I never will.
Sigh. That's all. This is an issue that's been on my mind for about two years, I just didn't say anything about it until now.
+2
Posts
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
Is this real please do not lie to me about the existence of a cum knife
The protagonist (a body hopping demon) is trapped in a cell with no hope of escape. Solution: Cum a bunch and let the cum harden then fold in fresh cum again and again, hammering and folding, until a cum knife is achieved allowing the protagonist to fatally shank a guard and hop into their body
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
No, see, the demon guy had to shank himself to hop into a new body.
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
This is the pinnacle of human creativity and no one will ever convince me otherwise fuck off Davinci and your stupid Vitruvian Man we got Cum Knife™️
I'm fairly sure Jason Shiga himself never thought about Demon for more than two consecutive minutes.
And then kill himself in the new body again, and again, and again until the entire cell block was full of dead prisoners and he was in the closest guard's body.
Oh and then he meets his kindergarten daughter who is in the body of a different prisoner
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
I’m not going to read through the comic again to get the specifics but my problem with it was less the ridiculous cum knife nonsense but the shitty contrived writing. There was a point towards the last act where the government agent guy who had been shown to be incredibly competent and cautious up to that point is staggeringly dumb for no reason other than it was what the plot demanded to be able to move forward and that was when I stopped trying to excuse lazy writing shortcuts.
Yes this is a thing that happens
Demon is pretty bad. Also, horrible art.
Ok but
You're late to the cum knife party now it's all about the blinding cum fart
i mean I can't argue with that
Somebody go first
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
Let your characters drive the story, not the other way around. If you’re stuck, and need certain things to happen, put in the work to establish why the characters would do it, don’t take shortcuts.
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
KSBD or SSSS, those i can see. Or Unsounded or Lackadaisy or something, I dunno I'm not up on todays webcomics stars.
There are also plenty of unread totally serviceable webcomics you can read that I will speak of no more lest i break some self promotion rules
https://www.paypal.me/hobnailtaylor
somehow Im not sure this narrows it down
It's amazing that what most of you seem to remember the story for is the sexual stunts pulled in Chapter 5 and 15. Ideally, there should be more to remember a story for then ONE (or two) things only. I found it fun to think about many of the other scenes from a logical point, such as how exactly Demon-hopping works and how a flastical works. Did Shiga really screw up the story that badly to the point most people only zoom in on those scenes?
I'm not gonna hide it, I find the toilet-paper-shank scene kinda gross and squicky too. However, I give it a pass because I see a valid purpose to the scene: It establishes to the viewer that Jimmy is dead inside (and probably has been since before the story even started) and is at the point where he's willing to do anything and everything to accomplish his goals, from something as simple as breaking out of jail, to re-uniting with his daughter, to taking out the O.S.S. for good.
The sexual stunts in Chapter 15 are complete garbage though, that's one thing I agree with you guys on.
Demon was only mildly entertaining at best
We're terribly unpopular
Aromatic, tactile, and has a viscosity of 22 millipascal seconds.