By: seasonharperfox

seasonharperfox — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:43:06 +0000

Cool that the cast pages are still available. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’d wondered about some of the characters (though fully understand that sometimes creations will fall to the wayside for one reason or another), and agree it can be tough to see your favorites go.

As writers writing in a limelight – creating and posting as they go – I’ve got to say I admire those whose work appears online along the way. Seems it would take guts to put yourself so out there. Ah, the public scrutiny! (And I feel grateful to be able to draft my fiction in private, and tweak and rearrange well before anyone else would ever see it. Nice to be able to fix those plot holes or whatnot ahead of time!)

It’s great that you’ve been reading WS for so many years. I appreciate your comments, and your visit!

All the Best,

Season

By: Nimrod

Nimrod — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 22:14:32 +0000

I agree that Paul Taylor’s art is great. I was lucky in that I stumbled upon his little comic way back when he had posted his 13th strip – Yes, I have been reading continuously since nearly the start. I must say that in the early years, on a M-W-F schedule the story did drag and you could tell that his writing was not paced well to that rate. When plot points and events occurred, they were disrupting and did feel like they came out of almost nowhere. By year 4 he had started to streamline the story and things started to take off. Unfortunately this was about the time when the Jin/Bud/Brandy “life of their own” started to take over and dominate the mood of the strip.
At the time of this shift there were some comments on the now defunct WS forum. But a loyal core of long-term readers kept on. Now, with the benefit of hindsight and the privilege of bond strip compilations you can chart where Paul has adjusted and fixed some of his early writing “holes”. For some new readers, looking back over the archives these gaffs and departures and character abandonments do not stand out, but they are there. (He has admitted to going back and making some ‘minor’ revisions to fix plot errors that were created years later)
The one constant and the item that brings me back is the art. I find it ironic that my favorite characters are the ones that Paul has left on the cutting room floor and the ones mentioned here are near the bottom of my list…it is just that my perspective is one gained from reading along with Paul day to day over nearly a decade.
Score: Art = 9, Plot = 8, Writing = 7: Total 24/30

*Note he has removed the ‘Cast’ page from the site some time ago as it pointed to several characters that really just do not show up much any more. From July 1st, 2004 here is a link to that page -
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20040619035150/http://www.wapsisquare.com/cast.html

Comments on: An Interview with Paul Taylor: When Cute Gets Creepy

By: seasonharperfox

By: Nimrod