Title: Nocte Yin
Author: Zhen Xue Qing
Rating: T
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Status: Completed
Fandom: Original Fiction
Words: 82,904
Summary: Meet Nocte: your average 12 year old girl. Now meet her family: your average evil, sadistic, villainous and yet, somehow, loving family. Problem: Said family’s making said girl go to Evil Academy. Even More of a Problem: She doesn’t want to be evil.
Link: https://www.fictionpress.com/s/2094105/1/Nocte-Yin

I'm putting this up for recommendation because it's honestly the best piece of original fiction that I've seen on fictionpress that kept me entertained throughout the entirety of it.

In a world where there are two factions labelled Good and Evil with several large families controlling each, Nocte is born to the worst of them all, the Yin family, and is an aberration in an otherwise incredibly talented and cruel family. Despite her wishes, she gets sent to the evil academy, where the story starts.

It has a slow beginning, and the writing improves dramatically (this is the first real story the author's worked on, and it shows) as the story continues on in the sequels the author's put up. Characterization and character progression are the story's key points. It really picks up past the first story, so I ask that you give it a chance. It's definitely worth it.

I'd rate the first story 3/5 and the rest of the series 5/5.

 

Great find; there's some minor early progression issues but the story does a good job of ramping up while staying true to its scope. The story sounds pretty cliche in the whole, born evil but isn't evil sort of way, but the author does a fairly good job of getting around that. Nocte is an interesting character and after a bit of waffling about it's fun to watch her character progression and the road she starts to take.

A great time killer too, lots of content to get through.

 

No. Just no.

I read it so you don’t have to.

Half way through I was starting to doubt that this story would ever begin to “pick up” and skimming the rest (including the play-format chapter), I can confirm this to be (at best) a poor attempt by a 12 year old girl to experiment with creative writing.

Saying the high points are characterization and character progression would be akin to saying you would prefer to eat a bag of nails over a bag of hammers.

The only positive aspect of this trash is a loose conception of the general idea – which is executed so horribly I find it almost impossible to imagine the following sequels improve in any real respect.

Some random shit I jotted down:

Stereotyped conception of rich/upper class behaviors!
Meaningless royalty! Vampire royalty!
Bad puns!
The author pointing out all the great puns - cause you wouldn't want to miss any of these amazing fucking puns!
Typical social mores! - except when they (randomly) aren't applicable!
Random perspective switches! (during a conversation!)
Internet Language! (for no reason!)
Tender family moments when face to face - and "go-suck-start-a-shotgun" attitudes over virtual and written correspondence!
Caste Systems! Interior family caste systems!
Evil People Hate being dressed like pink bunnies!
"Ominous warnings" and the pronoun game!
Everything is really in shades of grey! - except for certain things which are set unerringly in stone! Except again when it's convenient for some (or all) the characters to ignore!
High School/Teen Girl/Angst Drama!
Evil Teen High School!
Family "Black Sheep" Drama!
Excommunication from the Family Drama!
Orgy Sex Garden!
The character forgetting her own age! (Really the author forgetting the character's age after a thoroughly overdone birthday celebration in the previous chapter.)
Christmas Songs!
Braces!
Shyness!
Lots of yummy deserts and milkshakes!
Extra-Background Information, with the next sentence making even the mention of that information completely irrelevant!
Dances and Balls!
Dance Lessons!
Etiquette Lessons!
Masquerade Balls!
Pretty horses, and clothes, and tiara crowns!
Talking to animals in English, and the animals understand you! And you understand their animal sounds as speech!
Really fucking grating naming conventions!
Email/Letter Chain Conversations!
Unexplainable Actions in an Incomprehensible Universe! (Plus hand waved shit trying to correct for unexplainable actions!)
Stupid filler described in ridiculous levels of detail adding nothing to the plot!
Tripping people is really Evil!
Evil Family is so evil people are scared of their name!
Inconsistency with any sort of resemblance to a central idea or plot! - The same with tangentially related ideas that are irrelevant but nonetheless inconsistently applied!
Weird descriptions of being oxygen deprived!
Strategy class = CHESS!
Friendship is making up your roommate’s bed after they told you they think it’s pointless and they don't want you to do it!
Pointing out sarcasm in case the readers missed it!
The author mistakenly the author mistakenly writing the same thing twice.
Random BOLDING of Stores! And other random Words!
A lingerie store with the name: “Chastity Belt?"
"$400 dollar eye-shadowed eyes"
"lets not get poetic here, k?"