12/21/2020 c3 Guest
This is great. Will you continue

10/30/2020 c3 Guest
Is this dead?
Please you got potential in this story

4/25/2020 c1 Guest
This is stupid

4/23/2020 c1 Guest
Fucking lame. You suck!

6/30/2019 c3 12SKOOLATOON
Hello again!

Writer's block is basically this process of being self-critical and stressing really hard about current chapter worries. In essence, part of continuing production is to keep going despite vaguer grievances, but for some authors this can be a bad level of persistence (take note of the guy who wrote 7 million words of Smash Brothers fanfiction and never got much better). It didn't seem like he thought back or self-critiqued himself ever. In that regard, I can only say to use your best judgment if you wanna do the best justice to your concepts and eventually make some really great stuff.

Although, having a ton of ideas at your fingertips does also make in-the-moment writing hurt. You wanna get it all out! But, these things take time.

I suppose part of finding your ideal pace (esp. if you're trying to transition areas and scenes and think you're doing it too quickly) is to sit down and think of what you wanna see in each scene, and what kinda scene you can make. Now typically, I open by setting the vague look of the area (description of how it looks, time of day, etc.). Part of crafting these scenes is getting the instinct for constructing them consistently.

If you want to make transitions happen less abruptly or often, consider perhaps making one scene longer, cutting out certain short scenes / finding a different way to get their ideas and preferred images across, or simply adding more to currently existing scenes until they have a healthy size.

Interestingly, like a week after I reviewed this story, I got hate mail from some boy. I assume he was a reader; his account was empty with no stories to his name, with inbound PMs disabled. He immediately blocked me, which almost stopped me from reading them (interesting how FF blocking works...!) but I was able to see the contents in my emails, since they were short. I'd advise him to google what "contractions" are, and also maybe ask his teacher about both character voice in literature.

I'd also like to point out that my grammar inconsistencies in recent works and in my profile are decisions. There's technically no rules to writing or language, in that you can physically do anything, but it's the art of refinement that creates strong works, and it's what people look for. And, as they say, you have to know how the rules work to break them; and through breaking them meaningfully, you show you have advanced understanding of them. The most real-world example of this is making a character speak with contractions to produce realism and dialect; no one talks perfectly, and if they are, they're either a unique kind of character, or really trying hard to do so.

The difference between a decision that becomes a mistake, and a decision that stays a decision is how the audience is able to parse it and make a judgment on it. If you wrote it right, they make the correct judgment. Anyone who has read anything recent I've written will immediately realize I've chosen to be extremely informal and goofy in my profile to produce a casual feel. It shows I don't really care about proving anything, and it's unique from the many users with messy, copypasta-laden profiles, while also not just being the sweet silence of an empty profile.

People too, immediately realize the purpose of contractions. Part of this is also to produce content that is not only realistic, but pleasing to read. Y'know, some informal instances a' English just look and sound better ta say, yeah?

I apologize to the author for going on this tangent in their review, but I do so just this once with good reason. I kinda want to make an example of the audience here. Let it be known, their immaturity likely isn't an example of all of the people who read this kind of content, but I think there's something to be said about some of them as well.

It should be understood, the grammar errors here are obviously not choices. They're distracting. When the author misses periods, commas that are clearly needed for ideas, distinctly shows a lack of discipline in line-by-line spacing, paragraph pacing, inconsistent size of ellipses- all these little things go a long way in making a story feel unreadable in various respects. And, I hate to put it that way, but I don't say it lightly. I can say it about a lot of various works, but I don't say it because I want to.

Of course, it's not *literally* unreadable, it can be read, albeit with great difficulty, but that doesn't keep the attention of anyone who has better things to be doing.

I shake my head every time I have to pause at poorly spaced paragraphs, when I notice an inconsistent way of utilizing ellipses, when I notice inconsistent capitalization, and when I notice clumsy punctuation. I'd give concrete examples if I had an easier way to mark up the document and show the author, but FF's tools are severely lacking.

You know what, though? Let's do at least one, here. Chapter 2, the part where it goes [Locate the whereabouts of the spirit Mima], or however it goes.

The passage is as follows:

Oh.. That's definitely a quest I can get behind. While she isn't my all time favorite in Touhou but she's definitely one of the characters i'd like to meet.

First, the moment I see two dots instead of three in ellipses (or one, if it was just a period), I'm like, "this is gonna be a real winner innit" all sarcastic-like, 'cause I'm a jerk.

The third sentence there kinda just falls apart. It should be, "While she isn't my all-time favorite in Touhou, she's definitely one of the characters I'd like to meet". I can forgive the lack of the hyphen between "all" and "time", but it's super immersion breaking when, in the midst of the poorly spaced paragraphs, the author can't even capitalize "I" consistently.

Y'know what, I'm on a roll. Next passage is as follows:

"Oh sorry, you startled me that's all. My name is.. Shin. What's your's?." Why did i say Shin? My name was...Shin? Had the system messed with my brain?

Alright, here's some big recurring problems I'd like to get knocked outta the way right now... first, let me rewrite the passage the correct way.

"Oh, sorry. You startled me, that's all. My name is... Shin. What's yours?" Why did I say Shin? My name... was Shin? Had the system messed with my brain?

Now, when it comes to dialogue, grammar takes a back seat (outside of common sense punctuation) behind the actual feel of the words. At the same time, certain mannerisms must be consistent to feel good and read in a way that isn't distracting. When your logic for ellipses changes up, even if you had an internal reason for this, we as the readers don't intuit that. We can't tell if you typo'd, wanted to denotate the length between speaking, or what. This makes it feel like a mistake, if it wasn't just outright a typo.

What do I specifically refer to? I refer to the ellipses before Shin, followed by the ellipses in the proceeding narration. And, like... when I refer to mistakes like these, I don't just mean these isolated instances, either. I'm not just trying to rib ya. Mistakes like these riddle this work.

Also, note, it's not "your's", because the apostrophe is more often than not used as a contraction for "is", when it's not possessive. Cases of possessives, while mostly rooted in instinct for me (making them hard for me to say anything about) are quite specific.

Here, an example:

"This gun is yours." Reisen handed the rifle over.

"This gun is Eirin's." Reisen refused to hand the other rifle over.

With that, she got up from the crate of weapons. "Eirin's going to order more guns."

The first sentence is what it is. The second sentence basically reads as "this gun belongs to Eirin". The third reads as "Eirin is going to order more guns".

The only time I'll put a period after quotations is when I use quotations inside a current sentence. While I've heard it's correct grammar to always put the period outside, no one freakin' does that and it looks bad. Such is why in dialogue, I leave the period inside the quotations. It just looks better and is what everyone does.

Also, you have instances where you, like... add punctuation after punctuation. A period after a question mark, or a period after a exclamation mark. Like this!. Or this.?

No, y'don't do that. That's just not a thing that happens. Most people exempt only "!?" because it's the only valid way of expressing loudness and confusion at the same time. Same for "...?" and "...!". The ellipses and the following punctuation serve a purpose. When it's just "?" and "!", those symbols on their own both serve the purpose of finishing the sentence and expressing tone. Another period isn't needed.

...I think that's all I really have time for, and I think that proves my point. By contrast, if one were to critique the way I do contractions, or y'know, how I occasionally decide ta write a word the way I'd say it... like, fair enough I guess? It'd be technically correct, but not of any use to anyone, 'cause my my readers know what competent decision-making looks like, and when to break rules. We ain't makin' technical documentation here.

Were I to get more hate mail, I probably won't do anything other than make fun of it briefly in my Discord 'cause it'd be whatever. I just wanted to make sure both the author's readers and the author understood exactly what the difference is between decisive choices in literature and mistakes. I also wanted to make sure everyone understood why such mistakes shouldn't be illogically defended with blind faith. It's an embarrassment, and only hurts the author they were so driven to shield. Anyone can turn off and live in their own little world when it comes to these things, but such is not the point of literature, is it? You write to be heard. If one preached blindly and without reason, no one would listen, ultimately leaving the preacher irrelevant and forgotten.

Yet, there is also something to be said for the integrity of one's work. It takes knowledge and confidence to realize when you've created something insightful and vivid, and to ignore those who blindly turn away out of ignorance or coincidence. To hold confidence in the perhaps few true supporters one may have, and to see the validity in their reasoning too. These things can be qualified, and it is such qualities that mark the distinction between many shallow, perhaps young readers, and fewer, yet more experienced consumers. This understanding just cannot so simply be communicated.

Many things in this world have two confusing sides to them.

...Sorry if I was rude, though! Just felt like quickly poppin' off a doozie, 'cause that was like, one of the few times I ever got hate mail! That, and I got this feeling someone didn't like me being a tad condescending towards ya. I hope ya use the examples I provided to shape some things up. If you ever feel like you're takin' too much time and are having too many headaches over it though, just keep writing and don't worry so hard. You wanna have fun, too. It might kinda suck 'cause you feel like you aren't a good writer, but I don't think there's any shame in bein' a bad one, as long as you know where ya stand. If you know where ya stand, you can get better. The first step ta fixin' any personal problem is acknowledgement that there is one.

So, to tie stuff back into what I started this all with, if ya wanna beat dreaded "writer's block", just write. You might have to abandon works later if you dread revising later too much, but revising is a whole lot worse when ya don't even know what to fix yet, or up from down, or whatever. So, as you learn, just write. This is why many people advise starting wit' short stories, rather than big serial works. You can just let that old content go if you don't wanna revise it or mention it again, and when you wanna go back to it, it's short and sweet. Revising book-length works is a huge undertaking most people don't have the time or resources to go back and do, and for a lot of them, it ends up being a huge regret in that sense.

Apologies for talkin' yer ear off! I'm gonna... go eat snacks, or somethin'. And probably write, too.

6/27/2019 c3 Kuma098
Take your time ze

6/20/2019 c2 SKOOLATOON
You have a long way to go in terms of pacing and grammar. If English is your first language, I'd recommend trying harder to produce correct grammar. If you're in early High School, you'll probably get better eventually as long as you pay closer attention.

Levelgap and Ligoyas are both not native English speakers, and while I can't read their fics for ten seconds for the life of me, they have context behind their lack of understanding. Provided, I'd wish they'd improve, but...

There are multiple places where you need commas, and often you only arbitrarily separate paragraphs. This means, like, you separate paragraphs for no seeming reason. You forget to place periods inside quotations, and you forget to capitalize certain letters sometimes.

I'd recommend reading more books and/or other fics, to get at least a stronger grasp on how sentences and paragraphs are separated, and how others do dialogue.

I'd also recommend that, while you'll probably abandon this story one day if not soon, you should probably think about interesting story-related concepts to execute. I'm a fan of the variety of the self-insert subgenre of Touhou fiction, but this is largely because of the potential works like these have. These days, I find myself enjoying a very, very narrow scope of what Fanfiction dot net has to offer.

Gamer fics, while immensely popular for some reason, are a tried and trodden idea often looked down on by older generations for having little of substance. The interest they generate is directly relational to the serial nature of the concept. By "serial", I mean, the concept is iterated often in similar manners by different authors, across different series, and across different mediums. Because of this, the general concept is always unified and always gets people's attention.

Because of this, every myriad author who creates a gamer-type fic rides off of this serial nature, not their own talent. I have a fear that people like Levelgap and Ligoyas might not realize this, and thereby may not improve at a visible rate. Additionally, the people who read these in mass quantities are also children, who cease to read these when they get older. If your target demographic is children, this is fine, but I have a suspicion you might not want that.

To distance yourself from that demographic, I'd probably incorporate more effort towards theme in your works. I don't mean faux epic tropes for the sake of reveling in how epic they are, or even structure. I mean doing some research on Touhou's characters and setting and building a work perhaps not centered around a gaming power structure, at least not without better, non-meme-tier understanding of the setting and its characters.

If you want specifics, I could hardly bear to read most of this myself, but I saw the parts where Mima was evil for some reason I guess, and the stats which are louder visually than anything else on the page. Just a quick glance at the page reveals numerous distracting grammar errors that make the work very, very hard to take seriously. Pace aside, even.

Pace-wise, that's just something you learn by practicing, but if I had to say what it is, it's defined here by how little you consciously separate paragraphs and ideas here. There's no flow to it, you kind of just do it because "it's a thing you do when writing". You'll find a logic to it in time, but for now, I'd recommend reading other works and observing how they separate ideas to create a consistent flow. If you're doing it right, it won't be distracting to the reader. So, if you don't notice the pace normally without trying, that means it's good.

Not every work needs a hyper-consumer-friendly pace, considering the nature of literature, but... it'd do you favors, especially when writing entertainment.

As long as you're having fun, there's no need to stop, but if you'd like to improve, I'd advise you study the works of others and build on your prospective motivation, at least. As things currently stand, you have an elementary grasp on writing.

Have a good one, son!

6/17/2019 c2 2Ligoya
It's interesting, and congratulation for your first fic.

Although, I probably not gonna stick for very long because I'm not really a fan of your writing style. Everything's feel too pack, I need to reread a sentence every time I failed to noticed that there's a character speaking and not his inner thought.