Paranatural

Hello my name is Doctor Zarei and I am good at people. I brought a lantern to lunch in case it gets dark.

More stealth allusions to the Maelstrom

The blind leading the autistic
pottery

I'd love it if there was an RPG based around this.

Just ask for for it and I'll post it.

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What the fuck is Maelstrom
Is that some ship between Isaac and someone?
Speaking of shipping, blindy clearly wants a piece of that autistic ass

That's cool, but I was talking more Pen and Paper.

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Can't stop me now

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what's this chapter even about anymore, what was the plot heading into a year ago

...She's cute.

I'm sure there are already systems that are designed for very similar settings. I'm pretty sure we've asked about this many a thread ago.

>what's this chapter even about anymore
HITBALL
>what was the plot heading into a year ago
HITBALL


GET

HYPE

Some unknown incident a few years back that made the papers. Speculated to be the incident where Isaac freaked out with his newfound powers. Or, an event of greater significance.

I always feel like the main point of settings like Paranatural, where people have individual and creative powers (except for Max and Isaac being magent and lightning lad respectively), is hard to achieve in Pen and Paper. The only thing that would really accommodate that is free from, which would probably just be shit anyway.

Not really. Pen and paper is all about imagination.

I mean the actual mechanics of it. It seems like it might be hard to balance the mechanics of the abilities or maintain any sort of cohesion between them.

Not really. It all depends on your group.

Please there be Clothing(TM).

>inb4 "THEY MUST BE GAY" in some other circle

Nah, I think it's more hero-worship. Last chapter made it clear that Agent Day is a huge fangirl

Dr Headscarves seems to be more like Sherlock Holmes (the BBC version, that's all I know of) - married to her job - anyway.

Is the muslim a tranny?

I'm half expecting that to be the case

I'd date a blind girl.

At least she'd only be disgusted by my voice...

>pottery

Excellent jab, good sir! You leave me much amused.

I completely forgot Agent Day was a character.

>blind woman isn't a lesbian, she just thinks she's dating a man

Blind, black, AND gay
Wow

>What the fuck is Maelstrom
Dictionary definition says it's basically a whirlpool.

Given Mayview looks pretty landlocked, I don't want to think too hard as to what could cause a whirlpool in it.

What is even the point of this comic being divided into chapters?

Also this page is a direct response to that person complaining that his sjw characters don't get enough screentime.

We got the set up to this awhile back. This is Zarei's lunch plans.

Zack just can't hack pacing for shit, and he's actually been getting worse about it over time.

She looks like a really weirdly cheerful Amanda Waller.

user.

No wonder I'm this hard right now.

Jesus Christ. Don't know if its Manga Studio or being in the company of his webcomic friends, but the comic doesn't look any different from the average tumblr comic now. Pink and purples, soft lineart, round and blob-ish looking character designs.

Compare this to any page from Chapter 3.

...

Were the Wack! sound effects giving off light against the trees in panel 4?

Shit. Nice catch. Reminds me of sound effects casting shadows in that OPM flipbook page.

Here is Chpater 4 Zarei for comparison.

>gay muslims
>with a fat blind black woman at that
all we need now is zarai revealing her hair is partially dyed under that cloth, and she has a sleeve tattoo of ironic pixel art.

>two women interact
>must be lesbians

You're getting it, user.

you don't make a character enter the page surrounded by pink without de facto telling the readers the other characters aren't romantically interested.

His artwork has lost all of its personality.

Pretty much yes.

Zack obviously set up this page for lesbian shipping bait.

>that full-body panel to show off her outfit
>speaking over one another then getting flustered over it

Why did he turn this baddass into an autist?

idk, Zach's been trying to push the whole 'Agent Day is adorable/love related' I think she's basically always going to appear like this

>Pink and purples
Oh man, you're right user. The comic is all pink and purple now.

Except this is literally the page right before this. This new scene is meant to be lighter and softer and the character of Day being super bubbly and pink. I won't disagree that he likes to use that weird purple for when people are in shadows. Or that the designs have become rounder over time.

But let's not just randomly shit on everything as if it was anything more than tiny nit picking. There's no reason to do so when there's other, more legitimate things to critique. "All pink and purple now," Jesus fucking Christ.

soffffttt

>The comic is all pink and purple now.

I didn't say this. I just said those colors are more abundant now than ever before.

>that Steven Universe cheek on Isaac.

Ugh.

This person seems suspicious. I think Zarei and Day are being spied on.

What are they even holding and sitting on?

This will end into gay pandering, right?
Not just innocent goofy antics?

Also the colo choices is pretty bad holy shit, that first pannel looks like a doll house.

People seemed to have already been talking about it on Tumblr

>Her dress is an upside-down flower
Cuuuuuute!

Whyyy, why couldn't we stay with Isaac.

>FFTA style

and this is why you'll never be a famous webcomic artist

Rather than switching scenes where each one naturally reaches a lull, it is of course much better to constantly cut from one scene to the other right as each one is approaching its meat. This the perfect way to maintain tension and totally isn't an annoying as fuck way to handle multiple subplots.

i havent read these comics in forever

The worst part is that I'm getting the feeling this scene will stick for long. This is the GIRLS ONLY part that Zack foretold.

Why is Zarei suddenly autistic when she was completely normal during the train scene?

because the characters are meeting in a less formal setting, people can often be awkward when socially interacting with someone they do not know well.

Have you ever read a book? This device has been around for ages.
The only difference is that we're dealing with a trickle of content for free instead of purchasing a wholly completed tome. I agree that it's annoying, but if it's your primary concern you should step away for a half-year at a time and just binge up to present to keep your frustration levels at a minimum.

This panel composition is fucking HORRENDOUS.

>The majority of the action takes place in an ˩ shape in the bottom right corner.
>The right side of the page looks like you're supposed to read it vertically, like a newspaper strip, but it wants you to cut over to the left halfway down with no visual cue.
>The least important panel is by far the biggest, taking precedence over establishing the setting and character action.

Holy fuck

It's a common device for hacks who suck ass at writing. Not every transition should be interrupting progress in the previous scene.

>that adorable outfit
>least important panel


shiggy diggy

It's way too dominant on the page. Even if he wanted a big shot like that, he could better structure it so as to not take away from the core of the page.

As boring and worthless as this page is, its not hard to read. The focus is on the cute dress. Thats where the priority lies. Theres nothing horrible about the composition.

The common device is to switch at lulls in an otherwise ongoing scene, once something actually happens. Not always when it stops, but when the action and narrative has reached a good point for breaking. Sometimes it cuts away right when something is about to happen, yes, and it can help hold the tension. But it can't be done continuously, and not across three subplots while continuing none of them and introducing another.

Take a look at what's going on in the current chapter of Unsounded. There are three subplots all happening at once: a fight in a clock tower, people trying to race to the clock tower, and people trying to race out of town as it all burns to the ground. Recent cuts have included

>when someone escaped from being trapped underwater and began to fly up the clock tower on a magical device
>the fleeing group heading for the exit
>a fighter is thrown out a window after his ally has been incapacitated and the ideological argument he was having with their opponent was concluded

Importantly, cuts tend to happen in the middle of a page, often with a wider shot showing the last subplot and focusing on the new one, making the flow more natural and events seem more contemporaneous. It helps that they're all in the same place, but then so is everyone at the school. It also helps that updates are more frequent.

Paranatural keeps cutting away before anything can happen. The only real advancement in the last several pages has been Spender and Isabel's conversation and Isaac's quick scene of angst. We're still waiting for Ed to be harassed, we're still waiting for Max to have his meeting at the diner/store/lounge thing, and now we're waiting for Isaac to figure something out about Garcia while we shift over to a subplot completely divorced from the main plot. A plot already delayed by a cancerous subplot known as hit ball.

I like Paranatural. I like the designs, I like the characters, I like the art, I like the dialog. But its pacing is bad.

I should also mention it helps hold the tension if you're switching to another scene with tension. The only thing tense about this new scene is the character's combined social awkwardness. Nor is it great when you cut away from a scene in progress to an entirely new scene that needs to establish itself. It's better to begin such cutaways once all the scenes have established themselves, so that even as you go from one to the other, there's a relatively similar level of shit happening in each and they can all progress together.

Paranatural is juggling too many scenes and also juggling them happening at different paces. I have little doubt we'll be cutting back to each scene eventually exactly where we left off. Except for perhaps Spender and Isabel. The benefit of cuts is to allow for each scene to continue in the background through its lull, out of sight, then return when it can pick up again some time later in the in universe timeline.

>Hard to read
Motherfucker, panel composition isn't about difficulty, it's about style, natural flow and structure.

This page is structured terribly. If the point was the outfit it'd be a splash or near-splash. He crams in eight other panels because the point is the "joke."

Learn about how comics are constructed before weighing in.

Theres no joke. The point is that they're cute lesbians. Are you retarded?

Just because the joke is bad doesn't change that it's a joke.

WHAT JOKE

The one in the comic, user.

>Another scene change before anything interesting happens.
It's going to be a long build up before anything actually happens again isn't it?

How long ago did this arc start?

>The it works better as a whole meme
This is bullshit, I've re-read it as a full story a few times and the pacing remains horrible, every time I try to introduce it to people they like it very much and become less interested with it when they get towards hitball etc. It's a goto excuse and it's simply not true.

Also the medium is a webcomic, work to your fucking medium zack.

The top two panels really would have worked better as one and it could have let the page breath a bit more.

You can alos add that...
>Paranatural is juggling too many subplots even in just one chapter alone

Hitball chapter started end of 2014, this arc where they're running round the school was the start of this year I think. Since then,

>Ed's being stalked by Johnny's gang CUTAWAY.
>Isabel and Spender spent a couple of months flirting in the corridor, finally got into the teachers room CUTAWAY.
>Isaac is alone in the woods following a teacher CUTAWAY.

My guess is these lesbians will go into a bedroom and then we cutaway to Max.

Was there a huge drop in the quality of this comic or am I just getting tired of it?

We already saw max in the tuck shop.

>blind, fat black woman dating a muslim doctor
Is there no end to the SJW delusion? They just want to live in a dream world where nobody is white, male or able-bodied?

The archival reading excuse is applied to almost every comic, but there's only a few it legitimately applies to. The speed at which pages are churned out has nothing to do with the pacing of individual pages.

I would actually recommend nixing panel two and pulling panel three up into its position, but for the same reason. Doc's already established in panel one, and having the big Agent Day panel on the right creates natural flow as she'd be coming from the same relative direction established in panel 1.

So we did I'd actually forgotten that, back to Suzie at the paper or Dimitri and his agenda then I guess.

I'm sure the blind girl dreams of Spender's magnificent ass.

Nothing has happened for nearly two years. It's not you. More webcomic authors need to pre-plan/do layouts for their stories and impose page limits on themselves.

>Fat blind girl running
That should have been a setup for comedy.
Also that's a horrible cane to be hit int he shins with.

>black woman tries to seduce muslim with haram job on the brink of doing haram things with her

OH BOY TIME TO FINALLY PASS THE BECHDEL TEST

ISN'T IT AWESOME WHEN AUTHORS LITERALLY CREATE CHARACTERS AND A SCENE FOR THIS PURPOSE

Kinda sad that it has nothing to do with the plot, isn't it?

This comic has been to damn slow in plot and senseless recently. i love paranatural but i swear its boring the hell out of me.

What are you guys talking about?

In her first appearance Zarei was basically a straight man to contrast with a cast full of idiots. Now she's just another bumbling autist.

I didn't mind it when she last appeared with her parents because the idea of a character who's always calm and collected going full retard around their parents is funny, but apparently that's just her general personality now. Thanks Zack.

We see her for, like, 4-5 pages on her first appearance. Perhaps you shouldnt draw conclusions so fast. That said she can be both, serious And socially inept.

Also..
>straight man

Zack really isn't our lad any more is he?

How did she picked an outfit if she's blind?