for Heaven's Fall into Black Chaos11/12/2018 c10 Tempest-Rage
dont tell me caster is Solomon? with ring as catalyst, a king, and summoned as caster...
f-ing op servant...
dont tell me caster is Solomon? with ring as catalyst, a king, and summoned as caster...
f-ing op servant...
1/14/2018 c20 
11Mugen no Tenma
Are you dead?
Or are you just lost your motivation?
*sigh* I guess that doesn't matter.
Another good fic, unfinished and abandoned in dust...
11Mugen no TenmaAre you dead?
Or are you just lost your motivation?
*sigh* I guess that doesn't matter.
Another good fic, unfinished and abandoned in dust...
2/10/2017 c20 3Lexik
Chapter three's immense confusion aside, I've been having a ton of fun with this story. :3
Rin is... Hmm. I do like how utterly unimpressed she is by Enkidu at all at first. (Too pretty, not motivated, lol. Rin's such a tough customer.) But he's certainly proven himself. Her very strange relationship with her father is the real highlight of this Rin, though. He's so proud of her, and they clearly love each other. :) But at the same time, it's... Dysfunctional. Sad. Broken... :(
Sane Hercules? And no one's chipping off his lives yet... That might be a problem later on XD I enjoyed his clash with Solomon. How he felt unworthy and thought his opponent was more deserving of the grail than he. But then he remembers that someone's counting on him, and that's all it takes. It's sweet :3
I'm noticing that you frequently refer to Assassin as a man in black in this story. But then there's a man in black in Constantin's parts as well. I'm wondering about possibility of them being the same... This particular detail is one I find interesting. ;O
But along a similar thought, I do still believe that hiding too many identities is to your disadvantage. This particular chapter, an unknown spoke with Shinji, Shinji didn't approve of him, but the unknown man seemed to have some immunity? Honestly, all I want to know is whether or not he's a servant. My theory is strongly favoring yes, but this gap in information has me vaguely tired instead of curious.
On the other hand, the plot related mysteries have me extremely curious :3 The rest of this review is pretty much excited babbling of theories and observations, lol.
Two and Noel's interactions have been some of my favorite parts :) I get the distinct impression that they are very similar creatures, although Two does not understand this because he is still "incomplete."
Kirei and Noel's discussion on worthiness to take the grail is fascinating. I find myself inclined to agree with his assessment of Solomon, that despite his good intentions, he is still but a man, and the scope of his power would bring great ruin.
But then I look at this here Assyrian king, and I think perhaps Kirei is being naive because this man's potential for worldwide devastation is through the roof.
Then, there's Terumi. After having a discussion with a canon savvy friend about this story (I am completely ignorant of Blazblue), I have been doubly reassured that Terumi plus the grail is the most evil thing that could possibly happen. He also mentioned a possibility of Blazblue being conceptualized through Terumi's will working in the grail. Which is interesting. And is feeding my curiosity about the series, lol. Although, the only known on that front is Ouroboros's programming, and it's entirely possible that Terumi isn't a factor beyond that.
Which brings us to the situation with the grail. Canon grail was messed up. The grail from your previous story made canon grail look like cotton candy and rainbows. And Kirei's priest abilities were absolutely vital to dealing with it. As is, you've just left us on a cliffhanger and introduced the possibility of Kirei not being alive to help deal with an exceedingly malevolent grail.
That's a bit scary. :D
This has me wondering if Solomon's God given power would serve as an adequate defense. And if this holy power is exactly the reason Waver pulled strings to have Solomon specifically summoned.
Really having fun imagining scenarios and reactions for Noel and Waver running into one another. I'm noticing a lot of unknowns for what exactly happened with the grail, and Waver's totally on the case. And it looks like they both have some key information that the other doesn't have.
It's been a very enjoyable story so far :3
3LexikChapter three's immense confusion aside, I've been having a ton of fun with this story. :3
Rin is... Hmm. I do like how utterly unimpressed she is by Enkidu at all at first. (Too pretty, not motivated, lol. Rin's such a tough customer.) But he's certainly proven himself. Her very strange relationship with her father is the real highlight of this Rin, though. He's so proud of her, and they clearly love each other. :) But at the same time, it's... Dysfunctional. Sad. Broken... :(
Sane Hercules? And no one's chipping off his lives yet... That might be a problem later on XD I enjoyed his clash with Solomon. How he felt unworthy and thought his opponent was more deserving of the grail than he. But then he remembers that someone's counting on him, and that's all it takes. It's sweet :3
I'm noticing that you frequently refer to Assassin as a man in black in this story. But then there's a man in black in Constantin's parts as well. I'm wondering about possibility of them being the same... This particular detail is one I find interesting. ;O
But along a similar thought, I do still believe that hiding too many identities is to your disadvantage. This particular chapter, an unknown spoke with Shinji, Shinji didn't approve of him, but the unknown man seemed to have some immunity? Honestly, all I want to know is whether or not he's a servant. My theory is strongly favoring yes, but this gap in information has me vaguely tired instead of curious.
On the other hand, the plot related mysteries have me extremely curious :3 The rest of this review is pretty much excited babbling of theories and observations, lol.
Two and Noel's interactions have been some of my favorite parts :) I get the distinct impression that they are very similar creatures, although Two does not understand this because he is still "incomplete."
Kirei and Noel's discussion on worthiness to take the grail is fascinating. I find myself inclined to agree with his assessment of Solomon, that despite his good intentions, he is still but a man, and the scope of his power would bring great ruin.
But then I look at this here Assyrian king, and I think perhaps Kirei is being naive because this man's potential for worldwide devastation is through the roof.
Then, there's Terumi. After having a discussion with a canon savvy friend about this story (I am completely ignorant of Blazblue), I have been doubly reassured that Terumi plus the grail is the most evil thing that could possibly happen. He also mentioned a possibility of Blazblue being conceptualized through Terumi's will working in the grail. Which is interesting. And is feeding my curiosity about the series, lol. Although, the only known on that front is Ouroboros's programming, and it's entirely possible that Terumi isn't a factor beyond that.
Which brings us to the situation with the grail. Canon grail was messed up. The grail from your previous story made canon grail look like cotton candy and rainbows. And Kirei's priest abilities were absolutely vital to dealing with it. As is, you've just left us on a cliffhanger and introduced the possibility of Kirei not being alive to help deal with an exceedingly malevolent grail.
That's a bit scary. :D
This has me wondering if Solomon's God given power would serve as an adequate defense. And if this holy power is exactly the reason Waver pulled strings to have Solomon specifically summoned.
Really having fun imagining scenarios and reactions for Noel and Waver running into one another. I'm noticing a lot of unknowns for what exactly happened with the grail, and Waver's totally on the case. And it looks like they both have some key information that the other doesn't have.
It's been a very enjoyable story so far :3
2/10/2017 c3 Lexik
Okay, so I haven't been leaving signed reviews lately because my introverted self sometimes finds the social courtesies that come with that somewhat bothersome. But this here is something that I absolutely want you to understand. If anything at all in this review is unclear, sounds unjustified, grossly misinterpreted, or what have you, PLEASE message me. I would be happy to clarify, and if I am wrong, I would be content to be corrected. :)
That said, I understand that this story is 2 years old, this chapter is probably a year older than that, and you have grown since, but on the off chance that no one else has made this clear, here it is.
This chapter is completely inaccessible.
I reread this chapter exactly three times in its entirity and did a lot of backtracking within each session before I could understand which characters were speaking. The reason I was willing to do so was because I enjoyed your previous story greatly, the sequel set up was perfect, and I'm very invested in where this world might go.
I'll start by laying groundwork so that hopefully you can understand what I'm seeing, what inferences I'm making, how I'm getting there, and learn from all this.
Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this. :)
There are two parts of the chapter that I'm seeing.
First is Assassin's somewhat one-sided debate about the nature of the common man vs the elites. He is speaking with the knight's Master. The knight himself is eavesdropping. The knight's Master eventually gives orders to Assassin. Assassin leaves to carry out these orders.
Second, the knight shows himself. The knight and the knight's Master speak with one another. The knight agrees with much of Assassin's opinion, but the knight and Assassin do not like each other at all.
Inferences made are as follows. The knight's Master is a magus, male, and not one of the canon knight Masters. (If Shirou exists in this world, he would not be Emiya. Therefore, he would be fundamentally different. The other two were women.)
Assassin does not appear to be canon Assassin.
The knight is not one of the canon knights.
Assassin and the knight's Master appear to have a somewhat friendly partnership, disagree in some matters, but share mutual respect and a common goal.
Now, onto the problems.
[Identifying the characters.]
Now, I'm currently caught up to the most recent chapter as I write this, and looking back, I'm seeing that you were deliberately not identifying Saber, only referring to him as the knight. I see no advantage to this.
There are a lot of characters on the field, the story itself has barely started, and hiding things like basic identifiers does not make them more mysterious. It makes them forgettable.
I do understand the want to not identify him because shortly after this chapter, another party's first move is to challenge Saber by pretending to be Saber. Except, immediately after doing this, you tip your hand. I felt no surprise because this bit was plainly explained by the perpetrators, and also, another onlooker recognized the ruse.
I believe it would have been more effective to know the real Saber upfront so that the readership can appropriately react to Archer's boldfaced lie.
Along a similar line, Saber's Master is -never- specifically identified as such. This is weird because the knight's Master has been in the scene the entire time. Except, he is never identified as a Master at all until you infer it when you suddenly jump into Saber's head. And even then, it's not clear. He is only referred to as "his Master."
The conclusions I came to on the first read are thus: all previous evidence indicated at the magus was Assassin's Master. So when Assassin leaves and "he" refers to someone as "his master" I thought that maybe Assassin didn't actually finish leaving.
On the second read, I wondered if one of the servants was a master to the other. And I still couldn't understand who was speaking in the last section.
That said, switching perspectives is absolutely fine when writing in third person as long as you always make sure to identify whose thoughts we're seeing.
The simplest solutions for this are (1) to identify Saber's Master as Saber's Master immediately at the beginning of the chapter. And (2) to start Saber's paragraphs with "the knight" or "Saber" instead of "he" because there are three men in this scene.
An alternative is to ditch the chapter entirely. Depends on how important you deem it for the readership to know that Saber's Master has intentions to read his opponents minds.
Another possibility is to reveal all three of their identities. I would actually suggest doing so if any of these characters are known elements from either series playing different roles than expected, and I would -strongly— recommend it if any of them are from Blazblue. You're writing a crossover, here, and a fair number of people like to know upfront whether they're reading about their favorite characters. This would feed more interest than unknowns.
But really, there's a lot you could do. It's your story :)
Next problem.
[Dialogue tagging.]
Let's pull a mysterious line straight from the chapter. This is the entire paragraph.
"The pretender has finally crawled back to his sewer."
Who is speaking? And to whom? And about whom? I am now rather certain that it is Saber speaking to Saber's Master about Assassin. But getting to that point was not intuitive.
The last name mentioned was Assassin. Did Assassin suddenly poke back in to lob an insult?
What about the magus? Does the magus actually think poorly of Assassin and is happy to sneer behind his back? Or is the magus addressing the knight, and they actually have an extremely hostile relationship despite their apparent alliance?
I'm not making up scenarios to illustrate a point. I seriously considered all of that.
For maximum clarity, the speaker should be identified before the quoted text or within two sentences. And ideally within the same paragraph. This ideal should not be broken unless it is an exceptional situation, a clearly established rhythm, something very obvious, or something easy to understand. This is none of the above.
This is three brand new characters getting introduced. They arespeaking with one another for the first time within this story. Tagging their speech properly is imperative to reader comprehension.
If there are only two speakers and a discussion flows in an established back and forth rhythm with each new paragraph, it is okay to stop mentioning which words were spoken by whom. This is not the case in this chapter because Assassin is determined to dominate the conversation.
As for patterns, I do see that you tend to tag the speaker in the paragraph before his speech. However, this pattern is not immediately identifiable because you set the scene with the opposite. Assassin's opening line is placed in a separate paragraph -before- they are credited to him. This is very easily remedied by merging the two paragraphs.
Anyways, I could speak further on more lines, but I believe I have demonstrated the point specifically enough by now. If you're fine with having more lines dismantled and explained, I would be willing. If not, I do hope you've learned something from all this. :)
Okay, so I haven't been leaving signed reviews lately because my introverted self sometimes finds the social courtesies that come with that somewhat bothersome. But this here is something that I absolutely want you to understand. If anything at all in this review is unclear, sounds unjustified, grossly misinterpreted, or what have you, PLEASE message me. I would be happy to clarify, and if I am wrong, I would be content to be corrected. :)
That said, I understand that this story is 2 years old, this chapter is probably a year older than that, and you have grown since, but on the off chance that no one else has made this clear, here it is.
This chapter is completely inaccessible.
I reread this chapter exactly three times in its entirity and did a lot of backtracking within each session before I could understand which characters were speaking. The reason I was willing to do so was because I enjoyed your previous story greatly, the sequel set up was perfect, and I'm very invested in where this world might go.
I'll start by laying groundwork so that hopefully you can understand what I'm seeing, what inferences I'm making, how I'm getting there, and learn from all this.
Correct me if I'm wrong on any of this. :)
There are two parts of the chapter that I'm seeing.
First is Assassin's somewhat one-sided debate about the nature of the common man vs the elites. He is speaking with the knight's Master. The knight himself is eavesdropping. The knight's Master eventually gives orders to Assassin. Assassin leaves to carry out these orders.
Second, the knight shows himself. The knight and the knight's Master speak with one another. The knight agrees with much of Assassin's opinion, but the knight and Assassin do not like each other at all.
Inferences made are as follows. The knight's Master is a magus, male, and not one of the canon knight Masters. (If Shirou exists in this world, he would not be Emiya. Therefore, he would be fundamentally different. The other two were women.)
Assassin does not appear to be canon Assassin.
The knight is not one of the canon knights.
Assassin and the knight's Master appear to have a somewhat friendly partnership, disagree in some matters, but share mutual respect and a common goal.
Now, onto the problems.
[Identifying the characters.]
Now, I'm currently caught up to the most recent chapter as I write this, and looking back, I'm seeing that you were deliberately not identifying Saber, only referring to him as the knight. I see no advantage to this.
There are a lot of characters on the field, the story itself has barely started, and hiding things like basic identifiers does not make them more mysterious. It makes them forgettable.
I do understand the want to not identify him because shortly after this chapter, another party's first move is to challenge Saber by pretending to be Saber. Except, immediately after doing this, you tip your hand. I felt no surprise because this bit was plainly explained by the perpetrators, and also, another onlooker recognized the ruse.
I believe it would have been more effective to know the real Saber upfront so that the readership can appropriately react to Archer's boldfaced lie.
Along a similar line, Saber's Master is -never- specifically identified as such. This is weird because the knight's Master has been in the scene the entire time. Except, he is never identified as a Master at all until you infer it when you suddenly jump into Saber's head. And even then, it's not clear. He is only referred to as "his Master."
The conclusions I came to on the first read are thus: all previous evidence indicated at the magus was Assassin's Master. So when Assassin leaves and "he" refers to someone as "his master" I thought that maybe Assassin didn't actually finish leaving.
On the second read, I wondered if one of the servants was a master to the other. And I still couldn't understand who was speaking in the last section.
That said, switching perspectives is absolutely fine when writing in third person as long as you always make sure to identify whose thoughts we're seeing.
The simplest solutions for this are (1) to identify Saber's Master as Saber's Master immediately at the beginning of the chapter. And (2) to start Saber's paragraphs with "the knight" or "Saber" instead of "he" because there are three men in this scene.
An alternative is to ditch the chapter entirely. Depends on how important you deem it for the readership to know that Saber's Master has intentions to read his opponents minds.
Another possibility is to reveal all three of their identities. I would actually suggest doing so if any of these characters are known elements from either series playing different roles than expected, and I would -strongly— recommend it if any of them are from Blazblue. You're writing a crossover, here, and a fair number of people like to know upfront whether they're reading about their favorite characters. This would feed more interest than unknowns.
But really, there's a lot you could do. It's your story :)
Next problem.
[Dialogue tagging.]
Let's pull a mysterious line straight from the chapter. This is the entire paragraph.
"The pretender has finally crawled back to his sewer."
Who is speaking? And to whom? And about whom? I am now rather certain that it is Saber speaking to Saber's Master about Assassin. But getting to that point was not intuitive.
The last name mentioned was Assassin. Did Assassin suddenly poke back in to lob an insult?
What about the magus? Does the magus actually think poorly of Assassin and is happy to sneer behind his back? Or is the magus addressing the knight, and they actually have an extremely hostile relationship despite their apparent alliance?
I'm not making up scenarios to illustrate a point. I seriously considered all of that.
For maximum clarity, the speaker should be identified before the quoted text or within two sentences. And ideally within the same paragraph. This ideal should not be broken unless it is an exceptional situation, a clearly established rhythm, something very obvious, or something easy to understand. This is none of the above.
This is three brand new characters getting introduced. They arespeaking with one another for the first time within this story. Tagging their speech properly is imperative to reader comprehension.
If there are only two speakers and a discussion flows in an established back and forth rhythm with each new paragraph, it is okay to stop mentioning which words were spoken by whom. This is not the case in this chapter because Assassin is determined to dominate the conversation.
As for patterns, I do see that you tend to tag the speaker in the paragraph before his speech. However, this pattern is not immediately identifiable because you set the scene with the opposite. Assassin's opening line is placed in a separate paragraph -before- they are credited to him. This is very easily remedied by merging the two paragraphs.
Anyways, I could speak further on more lines, but I believe I have demonstrated the point specifically enough by now. If you're fine with having more lines dismantled and explained, I would be willing. If not, I do hope you've learned something from all this. :)
9/10/2016 c1 Guest
I hardly ever review, but I love that I found a sequel to you're story azure zero, it made my day! Keep writing please!
I hardly ever review, but I love that I found a sequel to you're story azure zero, it made my day! Keep writing please!
9/10/2016 c20 12MangamanZX
I honestly can't see any of the Blazblue characters in this so far; but I hope that I can read more.
12MangamanZXI honestly can't see any of the Blazblue characters in this so far; but I hope that I can read more.
9/15/2015 c1 Dead Pann
So Kirei has a sense of humor now? Has Noel's presence rubbed off on him? Speaking of Noel, has she met Kirei's daughter? Noel knows he has a daughter, she 'observed' him after all.
So Kirei has a sense of humor now? Has Noel's presence rubbed off on him? Speaking of Noel, has she met Kirei's daughter? Noel knows he has a daughter, she 'observed' him after all.