Talk:Better Days

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Link to original discussion page

http://badwebcomics.wikidot.com/forum/t-148100/better-days

Agree

Strange comic :/

Someone should re-write this review from scratch

This crappy webcomic deserves to get roasted for real, I just wish it wasn't written/contributed by some female incel who gets mad over fictional good looking women.

well good sir, that is your opinion

Greetings Timerbench. I would suggest you give us a little wait, because we've had a problem with our forum (shit got hacked), but once its back I do encourage you to take this topic up with us there. It's not uncommon that we get people who think that a review is outdated, and we would love to hear from you, so you can propose your improved review. Alternately, join the Discord which is linked on the front page of the wiki. --Webkilla (talk) 13:58, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I've always thought of writing a Better Days review myself, but since I don't remember much of its content other than the incest themes and other controversial crap, I will have to spend my time revisiting this piece of "art" which isn't too exciting knowing Jay Naylor and his webcomics. Once I have any ideas for the review, I will contact you again.
No problem - and if nothing else, thank you for not simply starting to edit/vandalize the existing review. Most people new to this place would just have started to shit the place up without asking first. And you're absolutely right: Naylor's work is a shitshow of extremes, which IMO the review touches on quite well.
If anything, an updated review could go deeper into depth with the plot of the various story arcs, and pick those things apart - because that would not be difficult. Except that its all clearly and quite blatantly all just a vehicle for naylor to push his objectivist lunacy, to which end the plot becomes almost secondary to simply putting his characters into situations where they can spout walls of text - and IMO the review tackles that bit just fine. But yes, a larger and more in-depth analysis of the story and plot could be added to the review. Just keep in mind that reviewing the story and reviewing the writing are two seperate things, and there is plenty of reviewing done on the writing already.
Oh and please done think I'm saying this to be harsh: My point is simply that IMO the review covers most of the interesting bits about the comic already. A more detailed listing of the story arcs would surely allow for much more riffing on Naylor's insane and non-sensical stories, but the writing section already rips his storytelling to pieces and points out how its chiefly just a soapbox for him to lure people with in with T&A to listen to his politics and buy his porn comics.
but tell you what you can do: You have a user account here already, you can go to your userpage and simply start writing up the new review. Then when done we can compare your work to the existing review and see how they fit together. We've replaced old reviews with new ones before. Go ham!--Webkilla (talk) 06:41, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
All the negative aspects of this webcomic come mostly from a single factor: Jay Naylor belongs to the furry fandom. Naylor hasn't been doing anything special while making Better Days and his objectivist lunacy is not any different from what a regular furry artist/writer makes today in practice. Furry fandom is largely into sexualised and feminine male characters, and I personally don't see how it's any better than the Better Days' representation of women, especially knowing how the comic also shits on men in some of its pages as far as I remember. As for his politics, furry webcomics have always been a bad way of representing someone's political agenda. The authors of this review complain about the right-wing propaganda, but I always thought this comic has represented its political message very marginally and huskily. Again, thank you for suggesting me writing a review on this website, just keep in mind that I don't side with obvious left leaning views neither of this review nor the website itself. I will focus primarily on the story, writing and art departments, but I'm also going to give an objective, not biased assessment of Naylor's political agenda, even though I personally don't take such a topic seriously as it comes from a comic about funny humanoid animals which is fucked up on its own (and we can both agree on that one, I suppose).
Will have to disagree with you there. And the gripes in the review about the comic itself being furry are mainly just in the first half of the review (pro-tip: not everyone here on BWW are furries nor actually like furry comics, and we've reviewed plenty of bad furry comics). In the second half, especially the writing section, the focus is much more on Naylor's objectivist fuckery. And no, his objectivist BS is very much the odd one out in the furry fandom. Furries are generally center-left to far left, as most creative communities tend to be. And webcomics in general are usually a bad way to push poltiics - we have tons of reviews of overtly political comics. If you think that the comic only represented Naylor's politics "very marginally and huskily" then I think you need to reread the comic, and be sure to be actually looking for political messages. Trust me, the review talks about this a lot: naylor has quite a number of pages where his characters are basically just mouthing off political speeches where they state naylor's viewpoints and why they're right and why you're wrong. He's not very subtle about it. even less so in his sequel comic Original Life, which is also reviewed here.
Part of the review is pointing out that naylor is using his comic as a gate-way drug into randian objectivism. And you can't not give a biased assessment of naylor's politics in the comic, because such an analysis will invariably be biased to whatever politics you believe in. Besides, any political comic is by its nature biased in favor of its own politics, so the best one can do is look at messages that are ultimately being pushed and how, and if they make sense on a practical level. political propaganda has a funny habbit of not making sense when you pick it apart. and while you might not take the comic and its politics serious, then naylor sure did, so you'd be doing the review a disfavor by failing to at least take it serious for the review.
Compare to this review that I wrote, or this one - these comics are overtly lefty in their political outlooks and messaging, and suffer for it just the same. We didn't riff on Better Days because it had far right political messaging. we riffed on it because it had political messaging and was done really fucking poorly.--Webkilla (talk) 10:26, 22 June 2021 (UTC)


I understand your point of view and I am okay with it. I believe that everything I wrote above is an objective view of the situation towards both the furry community and Jay Naylor himself. The objectivism of female characters is morally as wrong as if someone did the same to male comic characters. If you follow the egalitarian views to the end, then you easily will understand what I meant by "Naylor hasn't been doing anything special while making Better Days and his objectivist lunacy is not any different from what a regular furry artist/writer makes today in practice". And I'm still standing with the opinion that the right-wing agenda, represented in this comic, is showcased marginally and huskily, because I don't see how endorcing women's sexual freedom, which has been a feminist agenda for decades, and contempt in relation to most of the male characters in Better Days has anything to do with expressing a "far-right message". Having good looking women in your comic and romanticizing the cold war doesn't automatically make your work fascist, you know, unless of course you are far-left yourself. Two negative articles that both critisize the comics for their left-wing views don't say too much to me, as I was browsing this website attentively and can already say it's enough for a comic artist to draw a good looking female character just to piss off a regular reviewer from BWW. Let me know when this site is less biased and ignorant towards some things, then we'll talk. Peace.
Cute, getting upset that I don't agree with you. What are you, five? And naylor's politics in the comic has little to nothing to do with women's sexual freedom. I'm talking about the parts of the comic where naylor promotes vigilante justice, incest, his stereo-typing of what's supposed to pass for black people in his comic, or how Fisk basically becomes a corporate assassin as if that's a good thing, how Fisk sleeps with a married woman and that's totally ok. As already noted in the review, then naylors politics can be summed up as "What I wanna do is right, fuck you if you don't agree with me" - you know, objectivist bullshit - and the comic is full of it! hell, at one point Fisk goes on a vigilante murder spree to rescue a sex-trafficked cousin of his, and there appears to be no consequences for that what so ever in the comic, because glorious objectivist superman gary-stu fisk can't do anything wrong, whether its fucking his sister or or killing random goons left and right in a drug den. That's naylor's politics. its all that "enlightened selfishness" BS. Same reason he has that mouse woman character who has to be educated by Fisk's sister on the virtue of not letting her mother run her life for her. The entire running theme of the comic reeks of naylor's politics and ideology.
...and I find it hilarious that you describe the two other reviews I linked to you as "negative articles". Hi, welcome to the fucking "BAD webcomics wiki" - we don't really review good comics here buddy. We find bad ones, and write about why they're bad. Are you the least bit surprised that such reviews might sound negative? I seriously have to wonder what you were expecting here. Were you planning on writing a nice review about Better Days?--Webkilla (talk) 10:08, 23 June 2021 (UTC)