...Nice review Silver Peas, everyone who decided to moan and bitch about an honest review being given, please get the fuck out, some of you have 90% of your posts in this thread.

We get this a very popular story, just because someone rated it a mere 3.9 you all seem to feel like your honor has been challenged. Ripping a review apart and defending it when you're not even the author is stupid.

I'm not going to go into your frothing at the mouth fangirl defense, but I will comment on pointless remarks like this, considering you're answering to a review, that is pointless, and, seeing as how you know so much about how teenagers work, I'm going to assume you are one, and point out that you are analyzing Silver Peas now.

You just told someone they failed at reading a story, that has to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen, ever.

Thanks for thinking for yourself and not making useless "this" posts.

I haven't read the latest chapters yet, last 4 or something, but I will, and I will give an honest review, I hope you all find it as satisfactory as you found Silver Peas.

 

boghi8462, Vesvius, LegalAlien and Kincaid: You all fail (though boghi less so, because he at least actually said something. Though what he said still fails).

Harry isn't telling the story. Or do you tell your friends "You went to a party last night. You drank a lot." when talking about yourself?

Saying that leaving details out is supposed to be a challenge to the reader is just fucking stupid.
I cld jst tlk lyke dis n haf u figar ut wut ah mihn, m8
There's a challenge for your half-brain.

I have to agree with SilverPeas, the last chapter didn't really do it for me. I pretty much read over it and passively registered what happened.

 

The argument is weak. The HP books are entirely written in Harry's PoV (except the first two chapters of HBP, the first chapter of PS and a couple of paragraphs in the middle of PS during a Quidditch match). Do you get the impression that you're seeing things through a young boy's eyes? Yes. Yet the vocabulary is more elaborated than what you'd find in a teenager's diary.

The first argument was weak, this one is frankly ridiculous. Let me explain; if I wrote a story without any punctuation, and said in an AN, "Hey guys, here's an idea: I don't put any punctuation marks, and you have to add them in your mind. That's a challenge.", what reaction would I get? "Get your lazy ass to type punctuation marks yourself, or stop writing."

That's a caricature; but the basic principles are the same. The lack of description is a flaw of this story's, not a challenge for the readers. JBern uses a series of extremely different settings and colourful surroundings, that would give material for truly amazing descriptions, yet I hardly noticed I was going from one place to another. Now, some people pay more attention to the plot and creativity, both being very strong points in Bungle, and some others would like the story to be more artistic. Both categories of readers have a right to have preferences, don't they?

So yes. Silver Peas made a few good points, and pretending that he fails because he can't imagine Harry's surroundings is ridiculous. Imagining is the author's job, not the reader's.

That said, my post isn't about the latest chapters, that I have yet to read; but since Silver's review was about the whole story, of which I've read a great part, that's forgivable I guess.


EDIT: For the record... I started my post before Litha started hers. Yes, I'm that slow.

 

I thought this story was fun, and that is all that really matters to me. I thought that the review made by Silver Peas was well thought out and well intended, but deep, intricate prose and shit is obviously not the authors writing style. Also, when I am deep into a fic I force what I learned in English out of myself completely and focus in on getting into such a great story.

I think English Class ruins books and reading for most of us. We try to think to deeply into what I believe is entertainment and imagination at its base. I don't like to have to try to see fucking random little things in the words that English professors seem to think has to be there.

I liked the story a lot, and most of the time, besides the sometimes mildly confusing view point, I was far to involved in reading to ever look for how he could have improved his writing style to be more in depth. Still, Silver Peas should be awarded for trying to make the Author's writing style even better than it is. And he shouldn't be attacked for saying that it isn't perfect, as no writer's style is perfect.

 

I have to disagree with you here.
one of the biggest pluses in this story, at least for me, is that it is easy to read. In my opinion a writer's job is to give reader the basic idea about everything in the story and leave the details for readers imagination to fill. Anyone who studied literature should be able to tell you that a good writer is not someone who needs 100 words to describe 2 seconds of story but someone who can tell you a whole story with a few well placed words.

I have a few more things to point out but it's late and im dead tired so they'l have to wait till tomorrow.

p.s. - sorry if some of my points are not so clear (i didn't practice writing in english for a while .

 

That's because, obviously, you fail at english. Get a Quacky the Duckroll Duck book if you want something easy.

That enough everything for you?

 

World: You fail spectacularly.
(I just had to repeat that, since it sounds so wonderfully arrogant. )

Now, to get back at the topic at hand: Silver Peas mentioned an interesting point with his examples of possible text fragments about the cheering charms, but what many of you seemingly fail to realize is that this is a story, which is intended to entertain people, and not a literary effusion of the Shakespearian kind. Sometimes a few words in a fitting situation contain more worth than an assembly of a thousand words. Or do you think that after winning an epic battle against a demon, which included pain and severe blood loss, when you feel the exhaustion setting in and the Adrenalin rush is leaving you, you're going to think in literary proportions? Well, I surely do not.

 

Though I find the writing to be sloppy and, sometimes, fragmented, isn't this the case with most authors throughout fanfiction? If you can't get past a badly done sentence then you shouldn't be reading fanfiction. It's fucking everywhere. Besides the grammatical errors and the choppy sentences, the story was good enough that I could read it through without wondering what in the hell I'm doing getting so far into such a deplorable story. Good work, buddy, 4/5

 

Ok so basically there seem to be two groups of people here. Those who would like for there to be more disription of the scenes and those who can either over look that or don't need it.

I think it depends to a certain extent to the imagination of those reading the story.

I just speed read the battle scene as these were the only bits that gave any discription of the landscape.

Granted the temple was discribed in the last chapter a bit.

I can see how the almost complete lack of visual clues can hinder the enjoyment for a great many people.

Tinn you mentioned how Most of the HP series is written from Harrys perspective. While true and a good point the style in which this story is written doesn't flow in the same way. I personally think that excess discription ruins certain storys and would pull away some of the charm for this one.

Now when that happened in the story I could actually picture a giant clawed hand wrap around a fallen pillar and this massive demon start to free its self. The temple was previously discribed to me Myan or Aztec design. Now that is very little visual data I can now see but for me I just pictured one of the many ancient ruins I've seen on documentries and carried on reading.

I'd be very interested to know what you and others do in places like this. Maybe you can't form a strong visual idea of what a scene looks like with out a bunch of discription while others can. This isn't a insult as I can't write for shit but you and others can but I can apparently visualise things with only a minimal amount of data.

I think a little more discription could probably be added with no negative effect on the stories flow but to much more would take away from some of it's charm.

Lets be honest. This story isn't for everyone. While not paticullary dark or light or have a lot of character bashing that puts some off the writting style is something some people are just not gonna like.

I'm gonna take a guess and say 30% of this story is internal dialog. Thats either 30% or 29% more than most storys. Thats what makes it an interesting read and the addition of to much other stuff would take away from that point.

Now personally when I read the story I don't need lots of disription infact to much can put me off a story. What I enjoy in stories is dialog, character iteraction and interesting plot devises. Probably why I enjoy this story at the moment and am Finding Jberns other story TFtCD rather tiresome.

As for all you reviewers who just post:-

For the love of god give either constructive critisisum or at least a run down of the chapter.

Go back and read mine and The-catoffs reviews. We didn't have a lot of bad shit to say about the chapter but still gave decent opinions on bits of the chapter and ideas on what we thought.

Are you affraid that if people bad mouth this story Jberns gonna stop writting and throw a hissy fit... Most writters arn't little girls in need of constant positive reinforcement. Constructive critisisum in far more usefull that "ZOMG you ROCKS!!!" I gave a long review telling Jbern why I no longer enjoy his other story and he repped me for it because I gave a decent reason for it.

 

You know, I think I just realized why some people love it and others hate it.

I'm going out on a limb here but you've probably played a few games of D&D back in the day didn't you? That style of "you're walking through the ancient temple, the architecture looks vaguely <blah>, scenes of human sacrifice and torture line the walls..." Tell me that doesn't sound like every dungeon crawl you've been on.

I just realized it, but this whole story for me feels like a weekly game back at my buddies apartment in college. People who play D&D don't need to take the time to describe things every time they move camp in the jungle. It's a camp... in the jungle... Tell me what type of ruins I'm exploring and any of the really important feature. I'm already filling in the rest of the details as my character moves forward.

I may need a quick reminder now and again about some things (like that the Ministry building had a gothic look instead of a mayan feel) but for the most part I'm already in the groove, this is an enchanted city of the damned inside a cave, somewhere under south america. I know what a ruined city looks like, I know what a cave looks like, I'm passingly familiar with where south america is and what the buildings look like (btw, the mayans were in Belize and southern Mexico, the Inca empire was in south america), one bank is as good as another, and we've all seen some good zombie movies. Time to rock and roll!

I said that last chapter was great and the fight scene well done because in my mind I'm flashing back to all the times we used to sit around bull shitting about good fights and evil boss battles we'd been through. In that respect, this would have made for a really cool "so there we were, half the party dead, the other half injured, and this badass demon just broke free..." kinda story.

Perhaps this love/hate divide is gamer/non-gamer?

 

I was merely giving a counter-example, going against the argument according to which you can't use an elaborated vocabulary when writing in a teenager's point of view. Otherwise I agree, the HP series and Bungle are in no way comparable.

As for excess of description, it's not a good thing; it can kill the pace of the story like nothing else can. But there *has* to be some happy medium between excessive description and absence of it. Imagery, despite what most obviously think, would be a huge plus for this story, precisely because it has the potential for it. South America jungle and town, dead city, etc.: few stories have such a diversity in surroundings, and it could have been more thoroughly exploited.


To the-caitiff: Good points. I'm a non-gamer .

 

Let me be the first to propose that this thread be fucking locked.

Interesting thing to note: whenever somebody tries to give a bit of criticism, or suggests that they didn't like an aspect of this story, belladonna16 and LegalAlien jump out of the woodwork and prison rape the offender with a dissenting opinion.

Now, that said, some (likely quite feeble) counterpoints to Silver Peas's arguments. Specifically, his argument that more of what I like to call "flowery prose" is required. I wholly agree on this point... but I also think it should be noted that this story is alreay REALLY freaking long, and introducing more depth in the descriptions with make it bloody enormous. While I have nothing against really huge stories, I'd like to point out that it'd take good ol' Jim a LOT longer to post if he went too much more in-depth.

Silver Peas did make some good arguments, although I think his judgement may have been a bit too harsh - even I didn't think it THAT bad, even with the attention drawn to deficiencies such as the ones he noted.

And for the record, just to show my extreme (lack of) maturity...

belladonna16 = LegalAlien = lose = fail = suck

 

Just for the record, I never ever get personal about anything, nor do I bitch about someone or insult them! I know that many people here at DLP like to give free reign to their curse words and ghetto phrases, but I'd like to stay on a level of conversation that is above that. That being said, I do not appreciate my posts being depicted as "prison raping", because it simply is a disgusting example of ghetto language. If you do not agree with my opinion or posts, you're of course free to contradict or complain about them, but at least stay at a somewhat acceptable language level.

I'm always happy to read other people's opinions, especially when they disagree with mine, since it often opens up one's thinking to other possibilities. I admit, I should have written more than the small sentence of agreement, but I simply didn't have the time, since I was on my way to my cousin's birthday party.

I also think that you didn't really get what I was talking about in my last post. I still believe that the 2nd person perspective was a great choice for this story. It does manage to capture the reader and bring them closer to the mental and emotional state of the story's protagonist.

This story is a very fast paced one, where lots of things happen to the main characters and where we can see a definite progression from the canon Harry to a more independent, mature and wised up version. Sure, sometimes a little more description wouldn't hurt, but that other tends to get out of hand, so that the reader in the end is flooded with "flowerly prose" (as Masked Critic called it). A good example for that is Silver Peas second alternative to the cheering charms sentence: yes, literarily seen, this is really well formed, but at the same time it is awfully unrealistic. In the 2nd person perspective you have to be very conscious of the character's current condition to deliver a believable telling of his thoughts and emotions. As I said above, I doubt that in this post-epic-battle situation he will have thoughts in the form of "flowerly prosa".

I would like to write a bit more to that, but unfortunately my coffee break is about to be over...

PS: And I won't let myself sink down to another childish response to the "fail" comments. I'm actually disappointed in myself that I couldn't withstand this childish nonsense last time.

 

Oh, so you are one of those pathetic attention seeking nerds who surf the net all day long and flame people for making spelling mistakes and having different opinions from them.
Well feel free to add 2 inches to your enormous e-penis for your mad English skills and the most ingenious display of sarcasm know to mankind.

p.s. Is there an ignore user option on this board?

 

this definitely applies to me, as the insanely complicated novelty of Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn still hasn't worn off for me yet. The relatively concise descriptions jbern provides i think actually adds to the story, as i as a reader can visualise the scene for myself without being limited by the author's words. I think this is a case where less is more - the less jbern restricts the reader's imagination the better the story is received.

That said, you still haven't destroyed the scrying glass yet...

 

As I said before I think Harry may be able to channel a portion of it's power through his scar since it has some of Voldemorts soul in it. If thats the case then Harry should probably carry it around with him. If he gets caught who cares if he has the Horcrux on him since he is the only one who can Kill Voldemort anyway.

 

Why yes, I am. And by responding to and insulting me, you have played right into my hands. Bwahahahaha!

But seriously, only for spelling mistakes. The opinion part only happens if it's an opinion that deviates from the general consensus :banana:

 

Why?

Because everyone's presenting their opinions as moral absolutes on right and wrong? Because they all assume that they are the ideal target audience and the story if it were written 'correctly' would cater towards their whims?

Bah. Jim's smart enough to locate the useful criticisms and feedback that may be hidden underneath all your back and forth extreme opinions. Personally I think it's great that his story polarizes people this much and if your discussion actually helps the next person who is considering whether to read this fic or not, then it is the exact sort of thing we want in the library.

But a good rule of thumb is this: if a so-called review uses the idea of "full of fail/win" then they're usually not going to say anything profound or terribly useful.

 

Now you come to mention it, I like this story, I find it easy enough to read and funnily enough I am a gamer.

Now you've drawn attention to it, the descriptions do put me in mind of the way my DM would describe the dungeon we were in, or the surrounding castle.

Heh, weird...

 

I think you might have hit the nails head with this theory.

I also find myself creating detailed pictures of the surroundings and all the happenings (especially the fights) in my head. I'm have played and - when I find the time - still occasionally play roleplaying games like D&D and DSA, so it might very well be that my imagination has been tuned to visualize such old buildings, battle zones, demons and other action loaded situations.