Line #56 YMMV/Endtown


1	* AngstAversion: Previously it was a common occurrence on 4chan to see people enter an Endtown thread announcing that they'd just recently discovered the comic and were in the process of binge reading it, after which they would usually come back to give their opinion upon finishing. Over the 2017 period (beginning immediately after the end of the "Ship Arc" and [[spoiler:Holly Hollister's removal from the comic]]) the pattern changed quickly to people announcing binges but not returning to give opinions, followed by newcomer interest in the comic seeming to vanish completely. The subscription rate on the [=GoComics=] site itself also looks to have slowed massively. It would seem that word about [[spoiler:what happens to Holly]] has gotten around...
2	* ArcFatigue: Ever since the author had to switch from updating five days a week to three, the arcs have been far slower to complete. "Holly's Flashback" Arc has been the most egregious example.
3	* ArchivePanic: Well over a thousand strips and still going (albeit more slowly).
4	* AssPull:
5	** Due to Marx's reality-warping nature, he tends to pull an [[DeusExMachina instant solution]] from his butt. His sudden entry to the strip, [[spoiler:Flask's redemption and eating an explosion in a scene obviously inspired by ''Film/MarsAttacks'']] are some examples.
6	** Fans had long considered [[ApathyKilledTheCat the lack of curiosity of the characters]] as to the hows and whys of their existential state, along with the lack of narrative attention paid to the origin and nature of things like the Oracle despite the characters recognizing their existence, to be a notable flaw in the comic's writing. Come the "Eden" arc Aaron Neathery appears to have taken note of this and, rather than simply tweaking the writing, has had the characters discover that [[spoiler:they appear to be under some kind of [[PerceptionFilter perception filter]] that has made them unable to recognize or question certain things... including seemingly no adult anthro besides Ravenscroft ever having realized they have [[FourFingeredHands four-fingered hands]], even though ten years have gone past and you'd expect someone would have noticed by now by trying and failing to count things off on their fingers, or one of the children, who apparently can recognize it by default, to have long ago drawn it to their parents' attention. It's not even as if the filter is hard to disrupt - Wally breaks through his simply by virtue of being asked to count his fingers by Ravenscroft - or mostly visible in the domain of professionals, like the mental block surrounding mutant healing factor (which has presumably been rolled into the "Eden" arc mental block).]] This is also after previous sequences where the characters have openly noted that they look like cartoons and a sequence in which Holly is seen to be examining her altered hand with obvious recognition of its state, but a wistful attitude rather than shock or confusion.
7	* BaseBreakingCharacter:
8	** Aaron Marx. On one hand, he's provided SugarWiki/FunnyMoments, at least one SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome, and some interesting new premises. On the other hand, he exhibits several Mary Sue traits, including his [[DeusExMachina sudden appearance]] from AnotherDimension, and softens the sci-fi considerably. Some readers think he made the comic better than ever; others got ready to leave after too much of him.
9	** Kirbee and Holly Hollister, split between fans of either due to the love triangle with Wally. Holly fans tend to find Kirbee bland and forced, Kirbee fans see Holly as a bad person due to [[spoiler:her increasing insanity]]. Aaron Neathery himself seems to love Kirbee and view her as being a ray of hope in the darkness of the strip's setting, while expressing in the latter day a supposed long-term disbelief that anyone could find Holly inspiring or see her as an "empowerment figure" (his words), even before her turn for the worse, despite Holly expressing some of the strip's most positive messages, being a shut-in who forced herself to rejoin humanity via sheer willpower and being featured in a (suspiciously deleted) line of merchandise labeled "The Power of Miceness".
10	* TheChrisCarterEffect: Complaints of this nature suggest this may be part of the reason behind the continuing Patreon exodus. It doesn't help that Aaron Neathery has become somewhat infamous for answering said complaints with "Trust me" or "It'll all make sense later", or that the Holly's Flashback arc was capped with a ShaggyDogStory ending that was so informationally empty that many have assumed it was just a way for Neathery to rid himself of a character he'd come to dislike.
11	%%* ContinuityLockout: Inevitably happened.
12	* CreatorWorship: Aaron Neathery is to some degree a victim of being put on a pedestal; criticism of the comic or its creator has a difficult time being heard in some parts of the internet, and has been known to be viciously or zealously rejected in the comment section of the [=GoComics=] site itself, often by the creator's close friends.
13	* DesignatedLoveInterest: Holly and [[spoiler:Lyn]]. According to WordOfGod, they were supposed to be deeply and passionately in love, which figured into Holly's decision to [[spoiler:stay behind on the ship to live out a fantasy life with a fake Lyn]]. Meanwhile what we saw in the actual comic arguably looked like a strained, argumentative and somewhat distant relationship between two characters with absolutely zero chemistry.
14	* DracoInLeatherPants:
15	** Jim the ex-Topsider raccoon has quite a few fans who overlook him being not a very nice person in favour of him being ridiculously cute.
16	** Similarly, his partner Sarah, though to a lesser extent.
17	** Flask, for the people who liked her even before her [[spoiler:posthumous redemption]].
18	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Allie Alvarez the alligator and Jim the ex-Topsider raccoon. Their popularity transcends their [[spoiler:mortal status]].
19	* EsotericHappyEnding: [[spoiler:Fan-favourite Holly Hollister is out of the comic by way of electing to stay in a Matrix-esque illusion. It's implied she's going to have a loooong life... living in a literal bubble of denial with a faulty computer pretending (badly) to be her dead husband along with an imaginary child, all this after being the character defined by such things as detesting the way some people live in their own make believe worlds and forcing herself out of her clock tower home and back into reality prior the start of the story for the sake of finding happiness. Yay? More than anything it comes across as the author's half-hearted attempt to be rid of her while also leaving her "happy" enough not to completely disappoint the fans who were hoping for a happy ending for her. Said fans will probably still wait forever for her to return...]]
20	* FanDislikedExplanation: Maybe it would have been better if the mystery behind [[spoiler:the suborning of the Council]] had never been explained - the given explanation hinged on the strip's least popular character and a HandWaved and almost literal case of AWizardDidIt, rather disappointing many who sat through that arc's buildup hoping for something more interesting.
21	* FanPreferredCouple: Holly and Wally for a lot of people, an unusual example in that they were originally an official pairing [[https://www.furaffinity.net/view/9995311/ popular even with the author himself]] before he suddenly changed his mind and decided their pairing was [[spoiler:a false "crisis relationship", Holly's entire personality for five years' worth of comics was a front worn for the sake of "self therapy", and that Holly had secretly always been pining for her long-dead and never-mentioned husband, all of which adds to the resentment over their breakup within the fandom. It doesn't help that they were literally made for each other, [[https://imgur.com/a/tYdxh springing from the same page]]]].
22	* JerkassWoobie:
23	** Flask is one cold, violent soul, but the more we learn of her [[DespairEventHorizon history]], the more we relate to her determination to kill Topsiders.
24	** Linda. [[spoiler:Initially a Topsider as bad as any, she mutated involuntarily and then lamented her probably permanent separation from her baby. She's been making a HeelFaceTurn since, and [[NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished her acts of goodness tend to yield unpleasant results]].]]
25	** In a pinch, Mr. Allgood. [[spoiler:He was quite a cruel KnightTemplar with regard to Endtowners who use mutant milk and eggs, but he finally had a heart and stopped short of spilling Linda's dark secret. When he learned of Jacob's dark secret, he wanted to deliver justice but couldn't. In the end, a random citizen shot him in the back and hung his corpse from a lamppost.]]
26	** [[spoiler:Holly Hollister tends to become this when she's out of her mind. The things she says are hurtful, and she's even threatened others... but she's obviously in pain. When lucid she claims not to mean any of the things she says and the one time she was given the chance to follow through on a threat, she fainted.]]
27	* JustHereForGodzilla: Variously the fans seem to have previously found Endtown engaging for the sincere uplifting messages within the darkness (as embodied by Holly), the adventure plots, the well-written character interactions and dialogue, or for the sci-fi curiosities and more classical and spectacular post-apocalyptic elements; the comic has seen a distinct downturn as it has moved away from those aspects and their embodiments or seen them replaced with less-satisfactory substitutes.
28	* MemeticMutation:
29	** "Narrative Red Pills": More or less the 4chan-local fandom's equivalent of DarkerAndEdgier, used to point out occasions on which author has obviously taken something that was originally meant to be light-hearted and tried to make it serious, often just resulting in {{Narm}} or worsening the TooBleakStoppedCaring. Derived from the author himself using the term to promise some manner of dark revelations regarding the true nature of certain things once the story returned to Endtown, not too far in time from the similarly dark and very sudden alterations to Holly Hollister's character arc, which were treated with no small amount of skepticism and derision in certain corners of the fanbase.
30	** "Tuesday/Thursday Details": Used to refer to the increasing number of story details that some people feel are being left out of the narrative, with some among them putting it down to the pacing combined with the comic having gone to a three-a-week schedule instead of the old five-a-week schedule, the joke being that missing details are implied to have appeared on a nonexistent comic page that would have been released on a Tuesday or Thursday.
31	* MisaimedFandom: For Holly, if you believe Aaron Neathery. Many people don't, instead being of the opinion (and citing evidence) that Holly was originally intended to be an appealing, strong and "true" character who was better at dealing with shock, trauma and loss than her partner Wally (or as Neathery himself put it long ago, Wally was intended to have [[http://endtown.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ "much more]] of an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/[=K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model=] acceptance curve]] than Holly") and that Neathery [[https://i.imgur.com/CayRtgr.jpg simply changed his mind about her]] towards the end of her presence in the story, rapidly downgrading her from the heroine of the comic to [[spoiler:being Wally's troubled sidekick, then to being a mere stepping stone and way of teaching him some ambiguous "lesson", and then to finally being depicted as a millstone around his neck]]. The reason for the change has been widely speculated about elsewhere, including the 4chan discussion threads, with some people aligning steps in [[spoiler:Holly's degradation]] with certain contemporaneous events in Aaron's life.
32	* MoralEventHorizon:
33	** Wanting innocent Endtowners dead for Topsiders' safety is bad enough, but where's the [[ForTheEvulz justification]] in killing them one at a time just so they suffer more?
34	** [[spoiler:Holly threatening Chic. Since the threat was born of insanity and she'd previously failed to follow through on a similar threat against characters from one of the comic's nastiest factions, it's debatable whether she would have actually carried it out, but she still threatened a child.]]
35	* {{Narm}}:
36	** Pretty much any time the author tries to make Wally cooler than he started out being. This includes attempts at "slick" lines like "I'm an engineer, baby!" ([[MemeticMutation leading to a fandom tendency to refer to Wally as "the engineer baby"]]) as well as the recent attempt to give him an ExpansionPackPast that not only conflicted with his original introduction and characterization, but also came off as hilariously whiny on his part by way of his manner of recounting it.
37	** Any romantic moments between Wally and Kirbee tend to be compromised by their vast disparity in size (Wally looks like a child compared to her, leading to "manlet" and "hotdog vs hallway" jokes), intellect (Kirbee ''acts'' like a child compared to Wally, which can also lead to somewhat disturbing implications when one stops to think about her level of mental maturity) and by Kirbee's bizarre appearance (like all the author's lizards, she resembles a golf club with eyes and nonsensically-placed nostrils). As an example of the latter, [[https://www.gocomics.com/endtown/2018/11/16 one attempt to show a kiss un-obscured looks less like a lip-lock and more like two oddly-shaped balloons trying to inflate each other]].
38	* NightmareFuel:
39	** Really it's all over the place in this comic, there's a great deal of BodyHorror, for one. The mutation that occurs when you're conscious into a Monster being a prime example.
40	** The Topsiders in general, just by the casual attitude they take to killing and their tortuous practices. Even their existence is hell as they're trapped inside their suits and heavily implied to eat their own reprocessed waste.
41	** Schism Syndrome. It eventually turns most sufferers into "yowling maniacs" and opened up [[spoiler:Jim]] to demonic possession, transforming him into a crazed psychopath who claimed to be God, and [[spoiler:lead him to burning most of the lizard settlement alive]].
42	** Holly's backstory, with her [[spoiler:giving birth to a fish mutant that dies, and her husband transforming into a Monster, all while society crumbles around them]].
43	* PlatonicWritingRomanticReading:
44	** Despite the author positioning it as a purer affection than [[spoiler:Wally and Holly's relationship, it's not hard to see Kirbee's affection for Wally as basically a case of naive hero worship for saving her life, and Wally's for Kirbee as nothing but a major case of comfort-seeking with a "safe" and non-threatening woman due to his current partner having become difficult for him to handle.]]
45	** Walt's and Portia's relationship can be arguably this, as there's very little buildup to it, and on several occasions it comes off as if Portia merely uses Walt as a hired muscle. She even guilt-trips him to take her to attend [[spoiler:Foxworthy's execution, as she thinks (at the time) that he is responsible for her brother's murder.]] At times it seemed like she cared ''far'' more about her dead brother than she did about Walt, causing some readers to jokingly comment how [[SiblingIncest there was probably more than just sibling love between them.]]
46	* PopularWithFurries: To the point where most off the off-site fandom seems to be composed of furries and even some of the comment section members on the host site sport furry avatars. Given that the comic is all about cute anthros in a sci-fi setting and arguably fits into the "fursecution" genre even if the author didn't intend it to be so, it's not surprising. Aaron Neathery himself does not appear to identify as a furry, though he does have a Furaffinity account and is friends with multiple furries.
47	* ReplacementScrappy: [[spoiler:Kirbee for Holly, for a segment of the fanbase.]]
48	* TheScrappy:
49	** Aaron Marx, due to his personality, behavior, and Mary Sue traits.
50	** To a lesser extent, Kirbee, due to her over-peppy demeanour combined with her glaring lack of intellect, a common sentiment that she doesn't measure up to the character she blatantly replaced, and perhaps some resentment due to being seen as the "enabler" whose accidental creation made it possible for her predecessor to be removed from the comic.
51	* ShippingBedDeath: Despite the Wally/Kirbee pairing having a very... vocal backing in parts of the fanbase, it's become hard to find anyone who likes the result come Eden.
52	* SpecialEffectFailure: A nightmare for Wally is shown in a strip where blood oozes from the phone... but it's obviously drawn in a basic paint tool, causing a bit of {{Narm}}.
53	* StrangledByTheRedString: [[spoiler:Wally hooks up with Kirbee inside of a few days, before during and after his current fiance, Holly, hits her lowest point, blatantly cheating on her yet without it being treated by the writing as a lack of faithfulness on his part. Before he starts locking lips with Kirbee, Holly actually seemed to be improving, having made a connection with and found something to live for in the small child they'd rescued, as well as re-affirming the strength of her relationship with Wally and proving her own capability in the Wasteland to herself. Come the next chapter of the story, however, and it becomes obvious the author has quite suddenly changed his mind, forcing a romance between Wally and Kirbee, having Holly go quite mad apropos of nothing particularly worse than what she's been through before, and even having her threaten a child, an act so far out of character that it feels like a blatant attempt to get the audience to hate her. This segues directly into a sequence where Holly's memories are examined and judged harshly by the narrative and characters as fault after fault and misdeed after misdeed are tacked onto her character retroactively, all while Wally and Kirbee continue to get some rather {{Narm}}-y moments of "romance" and the narrative takes every opportunity it can to make Kirbee look like the perfect partner, contrary to her introduction as a brainless dope. Finally, Holly simultaneously absolves Wally of any guilt in this situation and frees him of any need to make a hard decision by seeming to trick him into leaving the virtual environment in which they are trapped, after which she sends him a "Dear John" letter via a convenient plot device explaining that she'd rather stay with a convenient virtual copy of the husband that she never once mentioned in the five years of plot leading up to this moment, after which the other characters pretty much shrug and (despite Wally having spent the previous arc despairing that Holly was dead) Wally and Kirbee semi-metaphorically walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand, leaving Holly in what is at the very least a radar-reflective Topsider-attractant and at worst a life-draining deathtrap.]]
54	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter:
55	** Allie and Jim by popular opinion.
56	** Holly for many, by virtue of [[spoiler:feeling like her plot is only half complete at the point of her removal.]]
57	** As of the Pig Arc, [[spoiler:Heather Hoss, Cooper Hooper, Philo Foxworthy, and Walter Trimble. It's getting to the point where some of the fans are wondering if the author is attempting to sabotage his own comic for some reason, as he appears to be progressively killing off or rendering unrecognizable all the characters people previously liked and read the comic for.]]
58	* TooBleakStoppedCaring:
59	** The "bleak setting" variation. It's gotten so bad by the author's own admission (he wasn't intending to create a "black-comedy version of ''Film/{{Threads}}''", as he refers to it) that he introduced a character partially intended to counteract it, which arguably just made things worse as said character, a gullible, air-headed optimist, emphasized the bleakness by making things seem so bad that only a fool would stay positive.
60	** The "Holly's Flashback" arc. By the midpoint Holly had already been exposed to [[TraumaCongaLine so much trauma]] (not to mention twin incidents that felt like they should have been the climax of the flashback) that fans had become numb to the follow-on traumas and many of them later expressed opinions that the flashback had outstayed its welcome. Then the apocalypse happened again.
61	** The "Pig Arc". Characters like Jacob and Dottie get derailed into completely different personalities while other characters get killed off one by one. All while Endtown seems to become more cynically bleak and incompetent over solving the pig butcherings. The result mostly drew sighs of exasperated frustration and comments of "Remember when this comic was enjoyable?"
62	* UnintentionallySympathetic: Where a lot of the love for Jim comes from, many people being able to sympathize with him on the subject of [[spoiler:his fiance cheating on him]] despite WordOfGod saying he wasn't a very nice person at all.
63	* WinBackTheCrowd: Partially. While the "Endtown tensions" arc seems to have been received better by some than the "flashback" arc that preceded it, the once large 4chan fanbase has dwindled to a few fans who are openly critical of said arc's writing and plot, there are complaints of boredom and frustration in the [=GoComics=] comment section and as of this writing (September 2, 2017) the Endtown Patreon is down roughly $200 since December and shows no signs of reversing its downward trend.
64	** As of December 2017, it's looking like a definite "No", with the Endtown Patreon now down $400 and 31 patrons since the start of the year (and seemingly accelerating) and the current arc having come to be regarded as awful by a large segment of the fanbase (though not quite as bad as the Flashback Arc).
65	* TheWoobie: Maude and especially Holly during their unjust imprisonment, torture, and embarrassing trial. [[spoiler:Even after acquittal, Holly got downright suicidal, telling Wally she's "lost the baby".]]

Context YMMV / Endtown