One thing that bothered me both here and in Worm: Do bullies like this actually exist? At my school we had almost daily fights and drug busts and the people seemed to be pretty shitty all around, but the bullying was never anywhere nearly as bad as a lot of stories make it. For me, the most bullies ever were were usually just mild annoyances. Sometimes I'd find myself in a situation where I had to put up with them for more than a few minutes, but it never escalated into violence and certainly not the level of abuse I read about in webnovels.

 

Bullying on that level absolutely exists. It's not quite as prevalent as all the various media and horror stories try to make it out to be, but it does happen, and on a depressingly large scale.

 

I've been reading this for the past few weeks, since the Author posted a link on imgur.

It's definitely not as good as Worm, but it's a hell of a lot better than most other stuff I've found. A few errors here and there, and rather blunt foreshadowing, but I do enjoy it.

4/5

 

Depends on the country too.

 

The story is quite interesting and I'm hooked for now.

I have to agree on the bullying though. It's a bit too extreme to be entirely believable. I'm sure bullying that bad happens sometimes, but it's very unusual. Wouldn't a 'normal' amount of bullying have been enough?
On that note: wouldn't 'normal' poverty and bad parenting have been enough? Did it really have to be soul-crushing poverty where you don't even have enough to eat?
It just seems needlessly exaggerated.

I also don't really understand the setting. It seems to be a 1970s/80s crime-filled inner city in decline, with some 2013 tech and also space-travel.
It suggests that there's an overpopulation problem and that's the reason for the still existing poverty, but it doesn't seem very well thought through.
Even if the future was poorer than we are now, it should still be more different at least.

I'd still rate it a 4/5 for now. It's a bit of a slow start though, even with the short chapters. You should resolve the first arc relatively quickly in order to get readers hooked. After that you can slow down a bit more.

 

Read it all. Now there's a void in my life.

 

Sadly most of the bullying scenes are based of personal experience - they are exaggerated. But yeah, bullies like that do exist sadly... As do some of the specific situations that happen in the story :|

---------- Post automerged at 06:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:35 PM ----------

The bullying was an important thing for me to have, even if it is probably a little cliché and probably extreme...

Yeah, I think I went over the top with the poverty thing lol. I also wish I'd started with a more solid idea for the world in my head - I agree that the setting is a bit mixed.

Same with the first few chapters, I really wish I'd included a cliffhanger or a bit of action or something in the first few chapters/arc to get things moving quicker. One of the reasons I started the project was so I could kind of learn stuff. Other than the basics, like my grammar which his improved a lot since I started, I would certainly do things differently if I was going to start again today.

Thanks for the comments, as with everyone else. It makes me really happy people are taking the time to read it and seem to be enjoying it

 

Enjoying it so far. I think the main issue with bullying is that it can often feel off-putting for a story, since it's a common vehicle of conflict for younger characters in modern settings. I always resist it at first, because it feels like emotional manipulation.

Bullying is real, I've seen some bad shit, but even so, it often feels contrived. It's a tough balance. I would say, you can mitigate some criticism by making the bullies seem very human, maybe even "nice" on ocassion (as I've seen this in a lot of bullies - they are actually quite nice for brief periods of time, behavior which often baffles the people that are being bullied), it makes the conflict seem that much less contrived.

 

it got me hooked the moment I realised its starring Montreal and environ. Even if its a futur; calgary cloned version of montreal its still the place i was born in.

 

I read this today and I really enjoyed it. Alexis reminds me a lot of Mikasa Ackermann from Attack of Titan, in that I can imagine her being exactly like this if she had the same backstory. (give her steady nourishment and training and I bet she would get the same sixpack) I liked how broken you have portrayed her as and how she practically latched on to Beth as the one person who has shown to be kind to her. (well, one of the two, now).

But what really interested and impressed me is that you took this sci fi setting and started it off with a more high school spin, giving the main character more time to develop and evolve before we are thrust into the space and future stuff. It's really ambitious and I hope you see this through because I really want to know where this leads to. We are already 100 000 words or so in and the plot hasn't really started yet, outside of Alexis making a few tentative steps towards the military right now and her war against drug dealers.

Like the relationship that buds between Alexis and Beth, it seems well handled so far.

So yeah, loving it, hope to see more. Thank you for sharing this.

 

I've enjoyed this. Alexis reminds me of Lisbeth Salander - the social disfunction, the utter ruthlessness when required. 4/5.

 

Man, I love the way this author writes fight scenes.

 

Like em too, but quite honestly, I'm reading this almost purely for the romance subplot and the character development.

 

In the interest of making you super happy, where do you think it's going?

I always get a viewer spike when someone posts here, glad you guys are enjoying it anyway.

---------- Post automerged at 09:40 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:28 AM ----------

Yeah, I was bemused when a bully at my school got an award for doing some charity work or something once. They had him in front of everyone to collect it and I was just thinking: "Really? Really!? This thug, are you all blind?"

If I ever do a re-write I'd certainly try make the bully more human, I had some ideas for a bit of sub-plot explaining it but I never really manage to get it in and things have moved on a bit now...

 

Things having moved on is a bit of an understatement. Ahaha.