Tried I, Greg and it's okay-ish. It's amusing at times but then, the Tattletale interaction where he tried to play mindgames with her was meh. The position he is in with Emma, Sophia and Taylor is pretty interesting, and I quite like how all three are written so far, but the whole Winged_One deal is just bizarre, no matter how it turns out.

So, yeah, okay story, but it was well placed in this thread. 3/5

 

Pretty good, but it's so short I have no idea where it's going. Interesting setting so far.

 

Huh, interesting start. Never seen Orphan Black and only roughly know what it's about but don't recognize anything from it so far and I think I have read quite a bit from A Grey World, if it does mean that one kinda sci fi web series but don't really recognize anything from there either.

But yeah, seems interesting so far.

 

I've been having an incredibly hard time reading Worm Fics, can anyone recommend some?

 

Have you checked the library? If so, do you have any preferences on what non-library fics you would like?

 

A good fic without any focus on the bullying campaign, that normally just turns into wanking.

 

I mean, there are the obvious ones. Like have you read Cenotaph / Wake?

 

I thought I, Greg was very good for what it's trying to be. It's crack and ridiculous, but it's also engaging and hilarious. I'd rate it around 4/5.

Completely unrelated:
In a Word by Lavanya Six was mentioned in this thread a while ago, and people seemed to like it. I genuinely didn't get it at all, can someone explain it to me? Commenters said it made them go "oh shit". Is there a reference I'm missing, or am I just retarded?

 

Yeah, a species of killer machines, whose catch phrase pretty much is "EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE".

I liked the fact that it alluded to them and the terror they could bring just by sheer meta knowledge but didn't proceed to write a lame curbstomp fic that would outstay its welcome after a few chapters. It's short but managed to convey what it wanted without any of the drawbacks of longer fics of this sort.

On another note, is anyone reading

Title: The Bug-Type Queen
Author: LordCirce
Rating: T
Genre: on spacebattles but so far, would say adventure
Status: WIP
Library Category: AU
Pairings: None so far
Summary: Taylor gets sucked up by a side-effect of multiple Bakuda bombs, and finds herself in a strange place, with large, sentient, super-powered bugs. She had a long journey ahead, until she arrives home.
Link: spacebattles

So, Taylor gets dumped into the Pokemon world. Despite what the first chapter may have you believe, and it had me nearly quit the story, the major part of the story is Taylor's journey in that world, and not her inevitable return to BB.

Quite interesting so far and I am in a Pokemon mood ever since the two Pokemon Quests that we have here.

 

Doing this quickly before I go to bed. I found a very interesting fic.

Title: El-Ahrairah.
Author: Anderein.
Rating: T.
Genre: Alt!power.
Status: In-Progress.
Pairings: None.
Summary: Taylor triggers with a Thinker power that focuses on powers and proceeds to be drafted into Cauldron. Five chapters.
Link: SB.

A decent Cauldron fic? I didn't know it was possible until I read this. Kind of super!Taylor-ish since her power is best at solving power-related problems, but entertaining, and the latest chapter makes it clear that Taylor will be fighting an uphill battle. Note that the link goes to a post rather than a thread. If I see a thread made for this in future, I'll come back and post it.

 

Yeah, that was enjoyable but I'm not sure if it's actually going anywhere

 

Read through A Grey World yesterday. Her power (whatever it is) is what's taken from there. Very low rated self-healing, moderate strength increase, and weak skeletal structure.

The general plot from the beginning is almost identical to Worm: Bullied girl that doesn't fight back against the bully (and teachers don't do anything because of lack of evidence) takes the fight to the streets where she lives. Things escalate. I was willing to give it the benefit of doubt as far a whether or not this plot was almost copied from worm, but too many things pop up, like the the "vulpine grin" and so forth. This plot doesn't seem to have any direction other than the hero/anti-hero beating up more people with the occasional overly mysterious interlude that barely explains anything.

So, there you go.

 

Recc'ing my own fic:

Title: Panopticon (not to be confused by a different fic of the same name by the same author; this is a complete overhaul of the last story due to structural problems with that fic)
Author: theslowblitz.
Rating: M
Genre: Rational AU
Status: In-Progress.
Pairings: None.
Summary: Coil controls half of Brockton Bay, but he has greater ambitions. To control the entire Bay, he has to take out Kaiser, leader of the Empire Eighty-Eight, and Mayor Christner. Fortunately for Coil, a certain blonde-haired, green-eyed Thinker has entered Brockton...
Link: SB.

Hope you enjoy it, and please feedback! This is one year's worth of blood and tears, and is my most complex story yet. I feel like I might be missing a lot of things. Any character inconsistencies, flat characters, stilted dialogue, where the theme could be pushed more, or where the story seems to contradict its own themes etc. would be great.

 

I'm going to start reading it, but I already feel like I'm going to have some issues.

One reason, one word. "!Rational!"

 

I'll give it a shot but if there's one thing I've learned from trying "rational" fics it's that the only one that didn't read like a shitty Ayn Rand wannabe had the rational lead as the villain

 

I'm looking over what I wrote and have figured out that I'm a horrible person. I hate everything about your story but I don't want to be an ass about it. It makes me feel bad. I mean you are doing better than I am since I haven't even written anything...

Here it is anyways...






It's pretentious.

While I'm amused that you had Coil get killed, everything besides that made me go insane.

The massive amounts of talking about history. History of the Bay, History of Crystal Blue, History of Coil, History of Sarah, History of Coil In School, History of Iran or Iraq or whatever, and The History of Coil. I'm going to state it more clearly as well. Like half of the time you switch to another scene to frame the history, it's about Coil. Coil and his trigger. Coil and shooting people. A new one with Coil and him stating in school how Powers are Bad. An event with him talking to his classmates. Just listing them all tires me. I'm not sure what you are trying to build up if you just throw most of it away with Coil being killed. It would have been fine as a twist of I cared about Coil or any scene he was in but I don't. Everyone is a robot in this story.

Then you have Sarah.

You increased the smart-ass but you amped the pretentiousness of her even more. She sounds like a robot. The worst kind as well. A !Rational! robot. Then you get to the poem her brother wrote.

More pretentiousness. So much it hurts. Hell it wouldn't be a problem if this was one character. Everyone knows at least one of those in real life. But this isn't one character. Just like MoR, you made everyone into a pretentious rational robot that comes across as sterile. I did enjoy the end of the third chapter since killing Coil is always fun, but it is because of Rational!Sarah, so that kills any momentum I have for wanting to read more of it.

My issues are rather plain. I don't care about the world building since all of it is telling and not showing. I don't care about the characters because they are 'rational' robots that beep boop their way through life. I might have cared about the plot after Coil, but due to how you presented Sarah, I don't. Hell I wouldn't even care enough about the story if you didn't recommend it and ask us to give a review.

I am sorry for being so critical. The most I can say is that I might be all wrong. People are going to like this style of story. It might be a lot of other people... but not me.

 

Thanks for the feedback! I don't mind the criticism, especially since you're the only one that has given detailed feedback so far. I really, really liked HPMOR, so I think there's significant difference in our preferences. I also liked to explore the idea of superpowers on a large scale, and I could only do that in 15K words was through exposition. I tried to insert some conflict into the exposition (e.g Sarah going for outcomes being inevitable, and Coil going for having choice), this is the first time I've done something like that so I can understand it failing.

I'm concerned that you felt like they were robots though. I feel I gave Coil more background and a greater range of emotions (arrogance, fear, lust, doubt, etc.) than in canon. Just to check: do you dislike Coil in canon? I also felt I gave the secondary and tertiary characters personality (Christner's is scheming, Johnson is sarcastic, Füller is stoic, Laura is polite but uncomfortable (around Thomas), Dani is straightforward, etc.) Sarah definitely had been given strong, if implied emotions (denial, bitterness, grief, anger, disdain, etc.) I feel like I missed some notes I intended to hit, but I don't think I missed so much that the characters became robotic. So I'm not sure how our experiences can be so different.

Regardless, thanks for your feedback.

 

The reasons I had issues with the characters is not their personalities. Everyone talks in some grand tone. Not one conversation feels like a real human would be involved in except the one where the other teens told Laura to tell Coil to pissoff.

I enjoy Coil in canon. He is a jerk through and through. My reason I dislike him in this story is the same reason I dislike Sarah.

It might just be Coil's PoV that makes him sound like a tosser. However Sarah is just as wordy and 'grand' that I doubt it will get better. This is followed up by my first post.

'Rationality' There is a reason people hate that term. Slash!Fics have a better percent of overall good stories that Rational!Fics do. Slash fics are just a subset of a story. Rational! stories is an overall style of suck.

If you really like MOR, I suggest you read our review thread. While it ended up having a comical amount of wanking after a point, the thread did state quite a few interesting things.

 

You're right, it is a major issue. I didn't notice it during writing, since I think that grand style is fun to write but hard to read. Hopefully, I can fix it he problem next chapter. I plan to have a Lily chapter, and she should be much more understated.

Edit: Speaking of Lily, I'd like to also red this fic about Lily in the Slaughterhouse 9. Also by me, though the genre is Black Comedy. I believe I can still do better than Panopticon, so I hope I didn't put you off my writings