Forum › Maiden Short Story discussion
another battan banger
Bad and hate are not remotely the same thing. Hate is a feeling, and bad is just an opinion/a qualifier. If anything, I'm pretty indifferent to that short story. I think it's pretty bad, but I have no hate feelings towards it. If anything, I finds it a bit pretty childish to accuse other people that don't like something of hating it...
You responded to me to tell me that people weren't hating on Battan, when to me it felt like some people were and I often see people hating on her and her works. Then you followed it up by telling me that you think the story is bad and it felt like you were being a hater as well, as you added more negativity to the pile. To me that's hate. Plus you're now insulting me by calling me childish, after I apologized in my previous response because I realized I was maybe being ruder than I intended. That's a low blow. Alas though, as I said I don't want to argue, all I can say is I wish you well. Love and Peace.
I don't get why people spit on Battan like this.
Her art is gorgeous, her stories are engaging, with complex, not cardboard cut characters, but somehow she gets some flak because it's not what the average yuri reader wants. Even "Run away with me girl", which ends in pure yuri, isn't immune to criticism because a character dared to get pregnant by a MAN (the horror).
I, for one, love Battan, her art and her stories. They usually speak of adults, with adult problems, sometimes making stupid decisions, sometimes being infuriating, but always being interesting.
Even this story wasn't bad. It's just 10 pages ffs. Don't expect it to be groundbreaking. It was cute and the punchline funny, and that's all it was trying to be.
I'll keep on loving and reading Battan whether some people hate on her or not.
And reading Fatale Game and her twitter, I think she's aware some people hate on her and it must be taking a toll. People are mean for no good reason.
It breaks my heart when the creator sees the hate and it demoralizes them.
Nobody spat on her in this thread or have been mean...
People are just stating their opinion.
I understand that her stories are pretty cleaving, but that does not equate being hated or spat on. She does have her own style, both in writing and art style and it's pretty unconventional compare to the average yuri artist. Both working for her and against her. But I see no hate so far in this thread...
Battan gets sure gets a lot of hate huh?
I'm not sure they are getting that much hate, but to be honest, I find this short story pretty bad.
It was 2 comments here and your "but" follow up statement makes 3 lmao
It's also that I see a fair amount of hate for her around the forums. I get that her work isn't for everyone but she has grown a lot on me over the years. Also I don't think this work was bad personally, it's a cute little short comic with a comedic scenario. I think calling it bad is overkill, but ah well everyone has their opinions lol
Calling someone not liking a story "hate" seems a bit extreme? Similarly, "bad" isn't a particularly intense descriptor for something you don't think is good.
Personally, I think the story is kind-of meh. The "Damn it" at the end is a bit funny, but Reina immediately falling for her once she makes eye contact through the book shelf, after not caring through all her stalking also feels a bit like an anticlimax. It also leaves the discomfort from the stalking undressed, which detracts from the ending.
I feel like the story could have been better if it was about half as long, making it punchier, putting less focus on the stalking, and making it easier for the joke at the end to carry it. Alternatively, it could have gone longer and actually explored each of the character's emotions a bit more, allowing the body of the story to carry more weight. As it stands, it's a bit of an awkward middle ground.
I think I didn't have as nearly as many problems as others did with this comedic little story. In my opinion it was cute and I love the art, that's about it. Also if someone thought the story was bad that strikes me as adjacent to hating it, but I suppose that depends on how one defines "bad" and "hate", maybe for you and the person I was responding to bad doesn't equate to hate. I don't think it's that extreme to hate something that you think is bad, but maybe that's just me.
Anyways, you have a lot of reasons you don't like the story, and that's fair. If people don't like it, think it's bad, hate it, or however you want to describe it that's fine. I enjoyed it more than some people like yourself, and you liked it less. Not the end of the world and no point in arguing. Also I want to apologize for any rudeness on my end.
I think your overall take is pretty reasonable, but I'd caution against equating thinking something is bad and hating on, or viewing them as adjacent to each other.
For starters it removes a lot of nuance from the conversation by collapsing the range of possible opinions down to a binary. Either you like it or you hate it; either its great or its awful. In reality, that's not true, there's an entire spectrum of opinions between those extremes and even within that spectrum, people can feels differently about different parts of the work. For example, I found the overall story kind-of meh, but Battan is an excellent artist with a distinctive style. If we were just talking about aesthetics, I'd say she did a great job.
In a similar vein, when just thinking something is bad is synonymous with hating it, you lose the ability to coherently talk about people who legitimately hate on on a work or artist. I'm sure you know the type of person I'm talking about; the type who's rude to other posters, generally vitriolic and not interested in the engaging with the discussion beyond loudly declaring how awful everything is. It helps to be able to distinguish that from more reasonable criticism. Because you do legitimately want to be able to call that out and put a stop to it.
Finally, calling any criticism hating is, itself, toxic to healthy discussion. When you do that you're effectively dismissing the other poster's opinion as excessive and unfounded. You're saying that they're not worth engaging with and then demonstrating that stance by responding to their presumed mental state rather than the content of their post.
To be fair, I don't think you intended to come off like that, based on your responses, but it's hard to not get that impression from your initial post. Like you said, people can have different opinions about how good a work is and it's not really worth arguing about it, but I do think it's worth discussion those opinions, both the positive and the negative, because that's how you discover new aspects of stories and learn more about art as a medium.
Nobody spat on her in this thread or have been mean...
People are just stating their opinion.I understand that her stories are pretty cleaving, but that does not equate being hated or spat on. She does have her own style, both in writing and art style and it's pretty unconventional compare to the average yuri artist. Both working for her and against her. But I see no hate so far in this thread...
Some people wrote here and in the Fatale Game thread that just because it's Battan it must be bad, or "see author, close page", without judging the stories on their own merit. There's clearly a bias against Battan because she doesn't always write yuri that ends well, or doesn't write only yuri. Or maybe her manga are trying to make people think and people don't like to think.
Nobody spat on her in this thread or have been mean...
People are just stating their opinion.I understand that her stories are pretty cleaving, but that does not equate being hated or spat on. She does have her own style, both in writing and art style and it's pretty unconventional compare to the average yuri artist. Both working for her and against her. But I see no hate so far in this thread...
Some people wrote here and in the Fatale Game thread that just because it's Battan it must be bad, or "see author, close page", without judging the stories on their own merit. There's clearly a bias against Battan because she doesn't always write yuri that ends well, or doesn't write only yuri. Or maybe her manga are trying to make people think and people don't like to think.
I haven't read Fatale Game yet, so I haven't read the comment section as well. But in here, I find the negative comments to be pretty mild...
Anyway, as of developing as why I don't like this one, I think the tone is pretty weird. The abrupt ending and plot twist makes me think of a comedy, but it's not the overall tone of that short story, it doesn't work for me. The art style though, is pretty good but it doesn't save the story as of for me.
I actually like short stories a lot. The abilities for an author to share a snippet of what could be an entire story is super appealing to me. It's just not working for me in this case.
Two of the first nine posts in this thread were:
Was hoping this would be the first manga by this author that I might actually enjoy lol
Read the tags - opened - Saw the art -checked the tags again "not feeling like reading sad stuff... and no depression tags... but this artist? And ofc i was disappointed
This isn't mild negativity. These posts are deliberately making a performance about disliking Battan.
I think it's more innovative that Hoshino is in love with Reina instead of the typical cliche “I was looking at you not your friend”
I loveee this
The cliche playing is that now the two friends have fallen for Hoshino's eyes. Instant triangle. Hey, even the art plays with it. Reina and Hoshino are now even labeled "02" and "03".
As one of the supposed “Battan haters” that seemed to kick off this big debate, figure I’ll clarify myself a little here.
I don’t “hate” Battan. While her works thus far haven’t really been for me, I can at least see why others might like them or find them interesting. I think her strengths are her unique art style and commitment to writing about weird, unorthodox, often messy relationships with flawed characters. Even if I personally don’t really like any of her characters and often find them acting stupid or being awful, I can see how someone else might see them as interesting. And her art style did grow on me a bit and now I do kinda like it.
For me, though, her biggest cons are her characters. Again, I can see why someone ELSE might find them interesting. But I always find them annoyingly stupid, selfish, toxic, etc. Someone else might praise that and say that makes them more human and engaging than most other yuri characters that are just a cookie cutter set of stock personalities and traits. But I just see them as that: awful characters with no redeemable qualities that make me want to root for them or keep reading.
I might be kind of a hypocrite tho lol. I’m still reading Fatale Game despite hating all the characters and not really enjoying any chapter so far. I really wanted to give it a chance since I just could not power through “Run Away with me Girl” and really wanted to see if things might end up developing to a point where the characters actually become more interesting than what I have now come to realize must be the stock standard “toxic Battan character”. But so far no luck.
Maybe I can be classified as a “hater”. Idk. But hey, even though this one shot wasn’t my favorite thing ever, I will say it is categorically my favorite Battan work yet! I think the comedy and shortness of it help prevent that usual toxicity from seeping in and souring things for me (even if it looks like that blonde girl would have been a classic toxic Battan character if this had stretched any longer than a one shot).
In short, I don’t hate Battan so much as I tend to hate her characters. Fans may interpret them as intriguing and flawed characters that feel very human, but I just find them dumb assholes who are toxic in some way for cheap drama. I like her art, but her stories tend to just be too bogged down for me with these stupid characters doing stupid things. It’s so much that it almost feels like Battan WANTS people to hate read her works, like those influencers who purposefully do controversial shit just to get more eyes on them.
I don't know what it says about me that the ending to this got a good chuckle out of me XD
I like to think the black haired girl isn't actually crushing on anyone. She's just an intense yuri shipper, and she's going to be distraught when she realizes she might be breaking up her OTP.
You know, very well you might be right...
I don't know what it says about me that the ending to this got a good chuckle out of me XD
I like to think the black haired girl isn't actually crushing on anyone. She's just an intense yuri shipper, and she's going to be distraught when she realizes she might be breaking up her OTP.
That was my working hypothesis too until the final page. I had her as some sort of wingwoman/stalker-hybrid masterminding her oshis into kissing.
Another losing heroine...
I thought it was cute
I think your overall take is pretty reasonable, but I'd caution against equating thinking something is bad and hating on, or viewing them as adjacent to each other.
For starters it removes a lot of nuance from the conversation by collapsing the range of possible opinions down to a binary. Either you like it or you hate it; either its great or its awful. In reality, that's not true, there's an entire spectrum of opinions between those extremes and even within that spectrum, people can feels differently about different parts of the work. For example, I found the overall story kind-of meh, but Battan is an excellent artist with a distinctive style. If we were just talking about aesthetics, I'd say she did a great job.
In a similar vein, when just thinking something is bad is synonymous with hating it, you lose the ability to coherently talk about people who legitimately hate on on a work or artist. I'm sure you know the type of person I'm talking about; the type who's rude to other posters, generally vitriolic and not interested in the engaging with the discussion beyond loudly declaring how awful everything is. It helps to be able to distinguish that from more reasonable criticism. Because you do legitimately want to be able to call that out and put a stop to it.
Finally, calling any criticism hating is, itself, toxic to healthy discussion. When you do that you're effectively dismissing the other poster's opinion as excessive and unfounded. You're saying that they're not worth engaging with and then demonstrating that stance by responding to their presumed mental state rather than the content of their post.
To be fair, I don't think you intended to come off like that, based on your responses, but it's hard to not get that impression from your initial post. Like you said, people can have different opinions about how good a work is and it's not really worth arguing about it, but I do think it's worth discussion those opinions, both the positive and the negative, because that's how you discover new aspects of stories and learn more about art as a medium.
I'll keep that in mind, thank you. I wasn't trying to dismiss people or say people can't have less than positive opinions about her and her work. There's various amounts of clashing on the wording being used and views on that, so I'll try to say this in the most hopefully neutrally worded way I can, my main point here was that while I understand Battan isn't for everyone and I'm waiting to see where she takes Fatale Game myself, I think there's often a lot of negative replies surrounding her and it can be hard to read. So I felt disheartened to see some of that here when I think this work is her most benign and simply cute, yes though everyone has their opinions and I guess no matter what she makes there will be negative comments on her work. I shouldn't have said anything about people hating her and her work though, I apologize again for my side of this and anything I said that brought the mood down. I don't wish anyone ill, take care.
As one of the supposed “Battan haters” that seemed to kick off this big debate, figure I’ll clarify myself a little here.
I don’t “hate” Battan. While her works thus far haven’t really been for me, I can at least see why others might like them or find them interesting. I think her strengths are her unique art style and commitment to writing about weird, unorthodox, often messy relationships with flawed characters. Even if I personally don’t really like any of her characters and often find them acting stupid or being awful, I can see how someone else might see them as interesting. And her art style did grow on me a bit and now I do kinda like it.
For me, though, her biggest cons are her characters. Again, I can see why someone ELSE might find them interesting. But I always find them annoyingly stupid, selfish, toxic, etc. Someone else might praise that and say that makes them more human and engaging than most other yuri characters that are just a cookie cutter set of stock personalities and traits. But I just see them as that: awful characters with no redeemable qualities that make me want to root for them or keep reading.
I might be kind of a hypocrite tho lol. I’m still reading Fatale Game despite hating all the characters and not really enjoying any chapter so far. I really wanted to give it a chance since I just could not power through “Run Away with me Girl” and really wanted to see if things might end up developing to a point where the characters actually become more interesting than what I have now come to realize must be the stock standard “toxic Battan character”. But so far no luck.
Maybe I can be classified as a “hater”. Idk. But hey, even though this one shot wasn’t my favorite thing ever, I will say it is categorically my favorite Battan work yet! I think the comedy and shortness of it help prevent that usual toxicity from seeping in and souring things for me (even if it looks like that blonde girl would have been a classic toxic Battan character if this had stretched any longer than a one shot).
In short, I don’t hate Battan so much as I tend to hate her characters. Fans may interpret them as intriguing and flawed characters that feel very human, but I just find them dumb assholes who are toxic in some way for cheap drama. I like her art, but her stories tend to just be too bogged down for me with these stupid characters doing stupid things. It’s so much that it almost feels like Battan WANTS people to hate read her works, like those influencers who purposefully do controversial shit just to get more eyes on them.
That's fair, thanks for further explaining your thoughts. Also I want to say directly to you I apologize for my side of this, be well.
But the future refused to change.