MISC #7 Voting Thread: Fanfic

Which entry do you think should win?

  • The Bandit Queen of Darkover (Darkover fanfic)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • If I Had My Time Again (Groundhog Day Musical fanfic)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Entry #11 (Killzone fanfic)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    25
  • Poll closed .
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I'm doing quick reviews again because I am a horrible slacker. I think they're also more blunt and less forgiving than my past reviews, so enjoy the bountiful criticism. 8D

This entry felt rather odd to me. I'll lead off with the good bits and then roll around to explaining that statement. The overall plot was solid, Mal got fleshed out well enough that I had a good idea of who he is despite not having watched Firefly, and it hooked my interest early on and that didn't fade. I did not hate the entry, but I had plenty of issues with it.

First off, I was left confused by a lot of things. I think you failed to some extent at making this accessible to those unfamiliar with the source material, like myself. The most obvious examples I can point to are the various non-English phrases scattered about; I assume they are used in the show and make sense in context there, but it didn't work for me here. The initial mentions of Miranda and Shadow were also very confusing; I was totally unsure of whether Miranda was a person or place for a while, and I wasn't sure if Shadow was a ship or a planet until later on. Most of the characters felt one-dimensional. The beginning felt very rushed, like you were trying to name all the main cast quickly rather than to serve a significant plot purpose, and Kaylee served no plot purpose and thus felt like she was included only because she's in the show. There were also some tense issues (using <verb>-ing where it should be <verb>-ed) and repetitiveness problems (particularly Mal's seemingly endless smirks) throughout the entry.

So overall I'm torn on trying to decide how to rate this entry. It was engaging and fun and had a satisfying ending, but there were a lot of problems that distracted from those aspects. I think if I'd been familiar with Firefly going in I would have ended up with a more favorable view of this entry, but as it stands I'm settling somewhere in the neighborhood of "it's alright."

That was a very long read. I'm not opposed to lengthy entries, but I'm afraid this one felt quite tedious to me. I'm not sure if it was just my inherent disinterest in historical romance type stories, or if it was a matter of the pacing being far too slow to hold my interest, or maybe both or something else entirely, but I was ready to be done by the time it wound around to the first dinner at the Stanhope's manor. I can't quite place my finger on what caused this sense of tedium for me, so unfortunately I can offer no advice on how to fix it.

That said, it was not a bad story. You had a clear plot from start to finish, most of the characters felt pretty well fleshed out, and there was some nice descriptive writing in there. I've never read Pride and Prejudice, but I didn't feel like I was really missing out on anything important, so kudos for that. The writing was also pretty solid, just a few mistakes here and there but never enough to become overly distracting. Overall it's a fine story, quite good on various objective measures, just not quite my cup of tea.

I'll just get right to the point: I can't find much in the way of positive things to say about this entry. The accessibility for people unfamiliar with the source material seemed decent, though they would have to know at least the basic premise of The Hunger Games to understand some of it and the references to Katniss would likely confuse someone who only had that surface level knowledge.

Rather than rambling on about all the things I wasn't fond of, I'll just note a few major ones. The characters were rather inconsistent, flitting from one mood and tone to another quite sharply and for little obvious reason. The plot was confusing and the middle part felt totally disjointed and disconnected from the ending (with the bonus of the Commissar dude not really caring about the kid's failure making it seem like the whole trip underground was both unrelated to the ending and entirely pointless since failure had no consequences). The writing made this entry a bit of a struggle to read due to sentence fragments, strange sentence syntax, and very odd choices for pronouns (like calling Grekos a "birdie" way too often) and adjectives throughout. The rest of the things I could complain about are more stylistic choice matters than major problems, so I'll just refrain from adding those.

The writing of this entry was very good on a mechanical level. I didn't spot a single error and there was a solid narrative voice through the whole thing. It's a little hard to judge because I'm familiar with the source material, but I think you did a good job of making the basic premise clear to readers to avoid confusion at the start.

However, the entry did feel very disjointed. While the basic premise was explained well (doll battle royale to be the last doll standing and win father's affection or whatever), a lot of the stuff besides that premise probably confused people. A lot of the mentions of characters felt like pointless asides that were nods to the canon rather than actually serving a narrative purpose here. You sort of go through the story of the canon in an alternate telling, so I was able to follow along for the most part, but I suspect it would have been very confusing if I had no familiarity with Rozen Maiden and tried to follow along with the large shifts of topic from paragraph to paragraph. The ending of the entry felt more like it should have been the start of the rising action: the game has started and there's obviously more to this story, but the entry ends right there. Knowing the canon I know this is exactly the case, and this ending point doesn't play out very well for such a short story that could have easily been expanded to encompass the entire thing in the same retrospective summary manner without hitting the word count limit.

Overall I thought it was a decently written entry and I didn't dislike it, but for the sake of this contest it stumbled on a key point (being understandable to everyone rather than just fans) so I would not be surprised if I'm part of a tiny minority that did not have a strong negative reaction toward it.

I liked the start of this entry. Being trapped in an awkward and unpleasant social situation is damn near universal, so it's a good way to get people to relate to a character. Damon was a likeable enough character to make it work. I'd never even heard of Darkover before seeing this entry, but I didn't feel confused about much at all so I suppose that means you did a good job of explaining the bits unique to this setting.

On the negative side of things, you used a lot of exclamation marks! They ought to be used sparingly for emphasis, and overusing them ends up making the narrative voice come off as immaturely enthusiastic, which does not work well for a serious story. Pretty much everything after Damon left his friend's house felt very rushed. The first mention of the Bandit Queen felt a little sudden, though that was okay by itself, but then Damon is also revealed to have some kind of feels for her and he rushes super quickly into the psychic connection thing. The speed with which they go from basically strangers to apparently dating or whatever can be excused by the magic of the psychic mind probing shooting their relationship from 0 to 100 instantly, though I was no a fan of it regardless of the psychic stuff making it plausible. You had the beginnings of interesting character development going on, but that also fell victim to the rushed feeling of the story.

Overall it was an enjoyable read, but I would have much preferred to see it fleshed out more and take its time rather than quickly sprinting to the finish line.

This entry was fine. I didn't love it or hate it. It was just alright. The writing was good enough that I did not spot any mistakes. There wasn't much in the way of explanation of the setting for the sake of anyone unfamiliar with the Harry Potter books or movies, but then it's probably not an issue with the vast majority of people who read this due to the way Harry Potter still inundates pop culture to this day. Handling a lot of backstory by way of three short letters was neat, good way to explain things without tons of exposition.

However, the flip side of throwing the whole beginning, middle, and end of a story into those letters at the start is that they gave your entry the feel of an epilogue rather than a story unto itself. We don't really see much in the way of the actual struggles and whatnot that Lucius went through to get here, and you'd have to know the source material to get that information, which is kind of unfortunate since there's a lot you could have done with a somewhat broader retelling of events from his perspective in those letters at the start. Oh, and Lucius comes off as a total crybaby in this, 100% angst and whining, and I dislike those sorts of characters so that counted as a mark against this entry for me.

So, as stated at the start, I ended up feeling pretty neutral about this one.

I had a hard time reading this entry. That's not to say that it's bad, and in fact I'd say it's overall pretty good as far as the basic mechanics of writing go, but I'll explain myself in the next paragraph. The writing is solid, only a few errors here and there that didn't distract much. Despite all the time spent reminiscing about the past, there's a clear present time plot going on with the struggle of Bond trying to decide what the hell to do with his last years. This also serves to do a fine job of fleshing out the character by way of explaining basically his whole personality and philosophy. There are a couple points that might confuse people totally unfamiliar with James Bond stuff, but the majority of it is fine and needs no further explanation to be understood.

So, for the negative stuff, there's really only one big thing, but it's pretty crippling. I just could not manage to give a shit about James Bond in this story. I found no reason to care about him, nothing to really relate to. In a more plot-driven story (such as the action-packed James Bond films) that wouldn't be a huge issue, but this was 90+% just in the dude's head going through his thoughts and regrets and such. Without caring about the character here it's hard to in turn care about the story being told. I ended up having to force myself to keep reading because it just kept going on and on with the musings of this character I did not care about, and that weighed down what was otherwise a well-written entry. Although I did not have a problem with the fact that this story was told almost entirely through exposition and introspection, I know that's something a lot of people rather dislike because it feels extremely passive.

Overall I'm left feeling rather neutral on this entry. I can see the merits, but the lack of anything to make me care about the character just made it kind of drag on until it finally got to the point.

The very first thing I noticed about this entry was the lack of proper punctuation for dialogue. This is a major pet peeve for me, so that set a negative tone right out of the gate. Unfortunately, things did not improve from there. There were plenty of grammatical errors ranging from sentence fragments to run-on sentences. There was basically nothing in the way of background information given as to who these characters are, so someone who has not played a recent Smash Bros game or the original games the characters come from would have no idea who they are; they were also rather one-dimensional throughout, which is another problem. All of the plot moving information is delivered by characters who just so happen to conveniently know things, without much in the way of actual struggle to move forward until the last part of the story, and that left me feeling like I was just reading a bunch of people chatting and wandering around for most of it.

The couple positive notes I can give for this entry are that it's got a very clear plot that is easy to follow and came to a succinct and satisfactory end. Classic story of big bad evil villain threatens the world and the prophecied heroes save it. The reveal of the big bad villain and their motivation was interesting, and I've always enjoyed the sort of antagonists who are misguided rather than purely evil, so that's another mark in your favor. Overall the entry was weighed down heavily by the negatives, but you had the framework of a solid story and some interesting concepts in there to give some level of payoff to getting through the long story.

While there is precious little in the way of explanation for the background of the story, that's probably fine since Groundhog Day is one of those classics that are referenced to this day in pop culture so damn near everyone knows at least the premise. However, there are some references, such as Phil regretting not getting Ned's phone number, that mean nothing to someone like myself who has not watched the Groundhog Day musical (or has not seen the film, assuming Ned is in that and matters to the same degree, because I have no idea). Not huge problems really, since the plot was about Phil's life after getting out of the single day loop rather than what happened in it, so no big deal there.

There was, however, one major negative point in this story. The dialogue felt extremely stilted and unnatural, like they were robots constructing sentences rather than people speaking normally. It's hard to explain without example, so I'll do the example thing. This sentence is a solid example of what I'm talking about: “So, now that we have seen the sun rise, where do you want to go Rita? We got the day off still, do you want to go to the weather museum?” To make it not so robotic I would tweak it to give it more of a normal speaking flow by cutting out some of the extraneous words and rearranging a bit: "So, now that we've seen the sunrise, where do you want to go? We still have the day off, want to go to the weather museum?" Minor tweaks, as you can see, but it makes a world of difference in how smoothly it reads.

That aside, this was a decent entry. The writing outside of the dialogue was alright, the plot made sense (though the time jumps made it feel rushed), and Phil and Rita got reasonable levels of character development given the length of the piece. It's a neat premise too, showing life after the crazy events of the canon shenanigans. Overall I'd say it's alright, not spectacular but not awful either.

This was an amusing entry. The block of info and author's note copying the style of Archive Of Our Own made me laugh when I first saw the entry in my inbox. Upon actually reading the thing, it followed through on the tone set there with some clever wordplay and snarky narrative voice. The interactions between Harley and Mina were cute, made for a nice believable romance.

However, I have to note that there wasn't really a story being told here. It was just some grumbling and silliness, no real conflict, not much in the way of plot progression. It felt more like a scene pulled out of the middle of an existing story than a story unto itself. On that note, it also failed spectacularly at being accessible to non-fans. While there is an argument to be made that Harry Potter is so damned popular that this isn't a huge problem, I do have to mark it as a negative anyway. Basically the entire serious bit with Harley complaining about the recent events would make no real sense to someone who hadn't read the first four books (or watched the first four movies), and that's basically the entirety of the background given for what's going on in the world outside the pumpkin patch.

Overall it was a fun read, but those two problems overshadowed the amusement for me in the end.

This is not even a proper story, frankly. The one bit of praise I can give you is that the writing itself is mechanically sound, not many typos and such. However, it lacks a plot, it has only the barest shells of characters, it mentions conflict but displays none of it, and it does little to nothing to explain the setting. That last bit means it also fails to be accessible to those who are not familiar with the source material: I have no familiarity with Killzone and I ended this story having learned basically nothing of it other than a couple names, no idea who those people are or why the Helghast and ISA people are fighting (or who they actually are as groups), nothing at all. This is a little vignette that might be of passing interest to someone familiar with Killzone, but as a story it just falls flat on nearly every level.

I'm having a hard time coming up with much to say about this entry. It was pretty average overall. The writing quality was not great, with more than a few typos and mistakes, but not to the level of being distracting for me. The story was okay, solid plot arc that made sense, but it also was not a particularly exciting version of the "hero saves damsel" classic story. The wolves and dragons made for a bit of conflict, but the descriptions of the fights were rather bland and lacking in description. The characters had some bits of development, but not a ton and nothing worth getting excited about.

It was just an alright entry without either damning negatives or thrilling positives. That leaves me with little of interest to say in this review, so I'll leave it at that.
 
Also, thanks @Jorick for the specific example. When I give it a comb throw, I will look for stuff like that to edit. ( I might post an edited version on my blog here when I get to it) But yeah, I was super worried. If I had a different avatar, that is also one of my biggest criticisms. I wanted to expand on a lot of the scenes, but felt I didn't have enough time.... but thanks for the advice. :)
 
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Congrats to the winners!!! I didn't have time to read any of them this time. Didn't even have time to properly write mine haha.

Mine sucked a lot but thanks for reading and reviewing anyways :) fanfic is not my thing and I didn't have as much time as I normally do to put into it.
 
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Congrats to all the participants. You braved the world of fanfic!

If you would like a review from me, please PM me, as I am Simon, yadda yadda.
 
I will be playing the piper's tune here, but I want to say congratulations on everybody that entered! I am the author of Creeping Fire, my actual first attempt at real fanfic (I am excluding anything roleplay related, I actually never done a standalone fanfiction before). I went into this contest knowing fully that I would probably not win, but I am glad I got the support I got. I must urge anybody that is thinking about joining these to really consider them. Lately I have become disillusioned with my former style of writing, of overly grand prose and yet little actual dialogue. Stuff like this really helps me.

I will try to get my constructive criticisms out to the others, but I won't make any promises. College does not lend itself well to free time. But, once again, thank you and I look forward to seeing all of you (along with hopefully more!) next time around. : )
 
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Dear Father was my entry! I'll get to responding to reviews in a but, but thanks to everyone who voted for me (seriously, more than I expected!) and those who reviewed my piece.

Congrats to the winners!
 
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Dear Father was my entry! I'll get to responding to reviews in a but, but thanks to everyone who voted for me (seriously, more than I expected!) and those who reviewed my piece.

Congrats to the winners!
Dear Father was one of my favourites, I absolutely loved it!
 
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Congrats to the winners!!! I didn't have time to read any of them this time. Didn't even have time to properly write mine haha.

Mine sucked a lot but thanks for reading and reviewing anyways :) fanfic is not my thing and I didn't have as much time as I normally do to put into it.
Which one did you write, if you don't mind me asking? o.o
 
Congrats to all the winners! I know mine sucked but thanks for your honest opinion. I wrote #Entry 11.
 
Which one did you write, if you don't mind me asking? o.o
"Linked by Fate" T.T allow me to go hide in my corner of shame haha. I know how terrible it was.
 
Also, @Kiilgore , thank you for the vote!
 
At the same time, it lacks proper engagement. I'm carried forward through the story well enough but never invested enough to really care about what's coming up next; part of the reason is that character's aren't given many chances to be fleshed out. Due to the highly formal dialogue, every character talks roughly the same. If I remember correctly, the original Pride and Prejudice made up for this with highly personalized narration, spending paragraphs at a time describing characters and their effects on their surroundings, plus taking advantage of character's actions to specialize it towards that character and add more depth.

The whole time I was writing this I knew I needed about twice the amount of words to do credit to the original. I wanted to expand on the end sooo much more. Thanks for reading it and for the compliments and the constructive critique!


Thanks @Greenie (HUGS)

Congratulations @Elle Joyner (I voted for you!!) LOVED it even though i know NOTHING about the source material.

I am soo humbled to be chosen by our judges. Thank you so much. This was truly a labor of love (Hence why Lady Catherine died in the first paragraph...grins). @Kitti @Astaroth @Jorick THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
 
At the same time, it lacks proper engagement. I'm carried forward through the story well enough but never invested enough to really care about what's coming up next; part of the reason is that character's aren't given many chances to be fleshed out. Due to the highly formal dialogue, every character talks roughly the same. If I remember correctly, the original Pride and Prejudice made up for this with highly personalized narration, spending paragraphs at a time describing characters and their effects on their surroundings, plus taking advantage of character's actions to specialize it towards that character and add more depth.

The whole time I was writing this I knew I needed about twice the amount of words to do credit to the original. I wanted to expand on the end sooo much more. Thanks for reading it and for the compliments and the constructive critique!


Thanks @Greenie (HUGS)

Congratulations @Elle Joyner (I voted for you!!) LOVED it even though i know NOTHING about the source material.

I am soo humbled to be chosen by our judges. Thank you so much. This was truly a labor of love (Hence why Lady Catherine died in the first paragraph...grins). @Kitti @Astaroth @Jorick THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
 
Basically a perpetual disclaimer, it's hard to point out all the things that go right and much easier to spot and thus point out when something is off. Added into the fact that I was unfamiliar with roughly half the source material, these reviews are a little on the short side but hopefully these points can still be used to help next time!

I haven't seen anything Firefly in a long time but most of the characters were presented again in a way that made them feel distinct and alive, indicating their individual personalities which is a plus. Other than that, making the work accessible for those unfamiliar with the source was a weak point in several areas. Not giving some hint about what Miranda and Shadow are when mentioned isn't too bad since they are clarified later but would make matters somewhat more confusing for someone unfamiliar reading through. The foreign language without explanation is another tripping point.

The setup gives the impression at the beginning that this will be an emotional payoff and, likely due to time constraints, I don't feel as though the rest of the story delivers. The initial meeting with the brother is fairly curt. The mission itself, wherein from the rest of the story one might think lessons about "this crew is a family, trust, etc." would come into play but instead the issue is resolved pretty quickly and in a way that I feel would be very unclear for anyone unfamiliar with the series. What is River Tam doing to all those men???

The writing is more or less technically correct and errors in grammar and spelling didn't cause any real hitches in reading, though dialogue was sometimes confusing.
This passed fairly well for being accessible to those who are unfamiliar with the original novel and, while I am very familiar with the work and might have missed minor instances, I would say overall that I doubt there were any gaps left by not having read the source. The grammar and spelling were also good overall and nothing stood out to me while reading.

While the characters and dialogue were interested and formed a fairly ambitious story, a decent amount of it felt somewhat dispassionate as it was passively going through different scenes without the characters speaking or really doing much to distinguish their individual personalities. This caused some of the characters to feel a little indistinct in my opinion.
This entry has some points where it clarifies potential confusion for those unfamiliar with the source and in others does not, which caused some confusion for myself as I fall into this category. There were also a fairly sizeable number of errors and ones which caught my attention and would change the meaning of their sentence ("humble adobe" and "respectful poles" being two such instances). The frequent use of "birdie" to refer to the main character made me feel like I was excluded from some kind of inside joke - so much so that I asked someone familiar with the source material if I was missing a reference.

The beginning of the story is easy enough to follow but the middle becomes unclear quickly. The main character has certain qualities at the beginning (desperate, somewhat credulous, maybe even irreverent?) and his personality seems to shift with the scene as we progress. The events become a bit hard to follow as he goes underground. The purpose of his mission seems somewhat unclear, especially as it is later said that his success or failure don't matter.
The grammar and spelling for this piece seemed to be well-executed. It's hard for me to give any further constructive criticism to this piece because, frankly, I was deeply confused. I had no idea what was going on for most of it and only vague ideas about the plot and characters.
This is another piece that, for the most part, explained the potentially confusing aspects of the world decently well. There were some minor errors but nothing that disrupted reading. I personally liked the introductory scene with the main character and felt that it gave a fairly amusing idea of his personality.

The placement of his flashbacks is a little confusing in placement. I liked the story pretty well until he decides to go to the psychic plane bit, wherein I personally had a little bit of "Disney Princess Flashbacks", that is to say that them having an instant spiritual connection and more or less falling in love the first time they (kind of) talk to each other felt a little kitschy. The world was presented in such a way that I was pretty interested in the story throughout, though.
This story had good grammar and spelling, no errors that I noticed. Aside from a few minor points of confusion that the story doesn't focus on (what is going on that the son goes to take care of? feels important but is unclear).

Giving some background information in the form of letters gave a particular insight into events from the point of view of the main character and I enjoyed but leaves little to happen in terms of action in the story and this feels more like the beginning of a larger story about finding inter-generational bonds and reconnecting with their fathers. As it stands, there's some reconciliation at the end but not much explanation around the circumstances.
Overall, the spelling and grammar in this had no noticeable errors. The story explains a lot of the source material, which helps for those unfamiliar, but the method can feel a bit like a lot of information just poured into one place.

While the internal monologue can tell a lot about a particular character's opinion and feelings about various events and develop who the characters are, it doesn't create much action and can feel like not a lot actually ends up happening action-wise. It can be difficult to not have a lot of introspection when trying to wrap old events into current but something I try to do with my writing is "how would this scene look to someone else standing nearby?". That is to say, this one would be a lot of an old man smiling to himself and looking at flowers for some time before randomly getting up and asking to be driven to Moneypenny's. The lack of a real catalyst for this change makes the sudden change of heart a little surprising, in my opinion.
There were various errors in grammar and some in spelling, which slowed reading of the piece. The scenes seem to jump around a lot. There are lots of places where someone unfamiliar with the franchises within the story would likely just have to accept things as many aren't explained. The story and plot are fairly easy to understand and has a recognizable arc. The characters have different personalities and the ideas that make the framework of the idea are solid and identifiable.
Spelling seemed fine overall though there were some grammar errors. The dialogue as a whole felt stilted and unnatural frequently. It might help to try saying the lines aloud to yourself if possible and seeing how they feel to you to say and if you could see yourself talking to someone else in that way. While it could be a stylistic choice (I am unfamiliar with the source work), the repetitiveness of the work in some places (sticky buns and doughnuts being an example that stood out to me) weighted some scenes down.

The story felt pretty complete from beginning to end and I didn't feel as though I missed out on anything major from not having seen the original work. The characters were decently developed and seemed to have their own distinct personalities. The plot and events were easy enough to follow.
There were no noticeable spelling or grammar errors. For the most part, the piece would be accessible to those unfamiliar, in my opinion. There were a few small notes (Dumbledore rigging something, what are dementors) but I think that most other things made sense (trolls and dragons are universal enough and understanding their specific circumstances isn't, in my opinion, crucial to the piece in their presentation).

The voice and style of the work was engaging and the characters felt like individuals, both strong points. The biggest detractor here was that it didn't tell much of a story and had little in the way of an arc. As a character study, though, it was quite cute.
This piece is too short to have much to say about it one way or another. The writing was good without any noticeable errors and the descriptions are interesting but there is little explanation or detail behind it, making it difficult for someone not familiar with the series to make much of and didn't have a story, though the potential beginnings of one.
This piece had some minor spelling/grammar issues, though nothing that hindered reading.

I felt like the character was a little blasé about the whole "parents being eaten by vampires" thing but maybe that's just the shock talking. Aside from some kindness on the man's part and a glimpse at the end of the girl having determination/courage, there is little about either character that would really help me pick them out of a character lineup.

If expanded upon and the characters fleshed out, I could see this as an enjoyable work about the original story of a young warrior but as it stands, the pair are a little indistinct as individuals.
 
Thanks for the feedback @Kitti. I sometimes do that, thanks for pointing out.

Also, by the way, though not necessary to listen, the title is actually a reference to the musical.

 
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