i am nostra f**kingdamus

[aod]

i predict that in the next several weeks worth comics

-mona will be crazy and misanthropic
-donna will say something ditzy
-pierre will come up with more silly ideas about how to get tina
-monsieur smoky will say more chauvinistic things, i dunno it's hilarious cause he's a rabbit

i'm honestly not trying to troll here, but jen, dahling.

you can do better

you have done better

ditch the therapist, ditch the predictability, and focus more on your great "intelligent gag-a-day" formula in which, even when there was story, it advanced less like a soap opera and more like charlie brown trying to kick the football. like, we all saw the chad thing coming from seventeen miles away, and seventeen miles is longer than most people stick with a webcomic. i don't know if you're making the strip worse to try to land a deal with a syndicate or something but they're a bunch of f**ksticks anyway, and i'm sure egyptology opens up a lot of lucrative career options.

i guess what i am trying to say here is that you're killing me, you're breaking my heart, you're hurting your strip, and clv deserves better than what it's getting right now. it's not even that it's a bad comic; clv is still better than the vast majority of stuff out there both in terms of art and writing. it's that you're changing to comic to try to please the people who don't like it, and in the process hurting the people who already do.

the bad thing about setting such a high standard is that when you f**k up, people expect more from you.

huggles,

aod

[Jennifer Babcock]

I can assure you I'm not trying to kiss a syndicate's ass.

While you and many may have seen the Chad thing coming a long way away, I still have to follow a narrative flow, and part of the narrative flow was for Donna to sit there and decide what she needed to do. The most surprising aspect I think of Donna's actions, actually, is that she did not run to Brad at all.

As for the Tina/Pierre storyline- there are some surprises to be had there, and I cannot ditch it.

Mona has always been misanthropic and Monsieur Smokey has always been chauvinistic, so I don't see any complaints here.

Anyway I'm writing this strip according to a flow, not according to what people necessarily want or to loop in new readers. I'm just not that kind of artist.

Also understand that I'm under a lot of pressure right now- what with the whole graduating and finding a job thing- oh yes, and the horrible crushing depression.

[aod]

admin said:

I can assure you I'm not trying to kiss a syndicate's ass.

While you and many may have seen the Chad thing coming a long way away, I still have to follow a narrative flow, and part of the narrative flow was for Donna to sit there and decide what she needed to do. The most surprising aspect I think of Donna's actions, actually, is that she did not run to Brad at all.

As for the Tina/Pierre storyline- there are some surprises to be had there, and I cannot ditch it.

Mona has always been misanthropic and Monsieur Smokey has always been chauvinistic, so I don't see any complaints here.

Anyway I'm writing this strip according to a flow, not according to what people necessarily want or to loop in new readers. I'm just not that kind of artist.

Also understand that I'm under a lot of pressure right now- what with the whole graduating and finding a job thing- oh yes, and the horrible crushing depression.

i have found ice cream, good books and beaches to all be superb anti-depression medications. if you were somehow able to combine them...

i dare not imagine the happy consequences

i think where i differ from your take on the comic (your take is still the only one that matters, though) is that no, i do not think the story has to follow a narrative flow. before mona started interacting more with lucas, you had a good thing going. there might be patches of story, and the characters might occasionally develop, but by and large you adhered to a gag-a-day formula where the characters and punchlines made the strip funny. and the nature of the unresolved romance between mona and lucas gave the strip a nice, reliable tension, something the reader could always count on. charlie brown wasn't supposed to kick the football, calvin always got his ass beat by moe, and i think it would have been better if mona had never tried seeing lucas.

mona has always been misanthropic to the point of absurdity, yes...but she also kept herself in check. if you check some of the very early strips, she had a wonderful mix of scathing, over-the-top bitterness and recognition of her own silly faults. she was calvin and hobbes at the same time. now it seems that, more and more, she doesn't keep herself in check, and the only character who does (the thoroughly unlikeable therapist) does so through the same tired threats week after week. mona was more fun when she was sillier.

as far as monsieur smokey, well, i guess you just need him in more strips

the fact that you can maintain a strip-a-day webcomic while going to grad school and holding down a job is pretty braggable, but if your quality of life/quality of the strip suffers to keep all three going (and you did use your hectic life as a possible excuse for clv going downhill a bit), maybe you should reevaluate your priorities. nobody will yell at you if you start posting c'est la vie 5 times a week instead of seven, and if the extra time is enough that you can relax and kick back more, that's wonderful! i can't say that i'm a licensed therapist, and i don't know how ones goes about dealing with crushing depression, but i can say common knowledge is common for a reason: getting some fun exercise, shaking up my routine, and doing things i don't normally do have helped me out of a funk in the past.

or maybe you just need a man in your life </smokey>

[Jennifer Babcock]

Unfortunately, ice cream, good books, and the beach don't seem to cut it anymore. A good book can be helpful if I'm not so down that I can't do anything. Not that it matters, but beaches are yucky here. My week to week activities are rather varied and spontaneous but they haven't shaken me from my funk. Right now I'm in the mindset that life will suck forever and I'm doomed for unhappiness.

I do happen to disagree with you on the narrative flow, so I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Mona's going through a rough spot right now, for whatever reasons, making it hard for her to keep herself in check for the most part. But I promise that she will in the future.

Anyway, one of the things I refuse to do at this point is to cut down on comic production. It's one of my more helpful outlets.

[aod]

admin said:

Unfortunately, ice cream, good books, and the beach don't seem to cut it anymore. A good book can be helpful if I'm not so down that I can't do anything. Not that it matters, but beaches are yucky here. My week to week activities are rather varied and spontaneous but they haven't shaken me from my funk. Right now I'm in the mindset that life will suck forever and I'm doomed for unhappiness.

because your soul is a black void full of existential angst

I do happen to disagree with you on the narrative flow, so I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

well then i agree to agree to disagree that we shouldn't agree to disagree

Mona's going through a rough spot right now, for whatever reasons, making it hard for her to keep herself in check for the most part. But I promise that she will in the future.

Anyway, one of the things I refuse to do at this point is to cut down on comic production. It's one of my more helpful outlets.

i maintain that you need a man in your life

with long, floppy ears

and a beret