Title: Brockton's Celestial Forge
Author: Lord Roustabout
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure
Status: WIP
Library Category: Other Fandoms [Worm]
Pairings: Undecided
Summary: The Celestial Forge is the greatest combination of crafting powers in Jumpchain, meaning it is the greatest combination of crafting abilities in all of fiction. In Brockton Bay a forgotten side character's trigger event ends with him linked to the Celestial Forge rather than his intended shard. His expanding collection of tinker abilities drag him into the city's cape conflicts.
Link: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/13574944/1/Brockton-s-Celestial-Forge

This story is an easy 4.5/5, with the final .25 being reserved for if it manages to stick the landing, which may not be coming anytime soon since it's still on the ABB arc after 700k words. That may be the thing that keeps the work from reaching 5/5 status too, well that and the crafting techno-babble that definitely isn't for everyone. Despite these technical failings however, I can't help but love how everyone is characterized in this Fic, from the main character to the smallest side character, they all seem to have an air of life in them that's hard to find in most Worm fanfiction. This is only helped by frequent addendums that allows for readers to see how Worm characters interact with the out-of-context problem that is the Celestial Forge.

 

I've been following this for a while. It's a decent fic - but it's not 4/5.

The best way I can describe it is that "It's (positive), but (negative)." When we see combat and when direct character interaction takes the stage, it's engaging, but these are not the centrepieces of the fic. The author pumps out 30k+ chapters at a decent pace, but for all the words, we don't always see a lot happen. If you enjoy internal dialogue and a focus on the struggles of a Tinker character you'll be interested, but if not you'll be scrolling a lot. The story is 700 000 words, but for all that has happened, it could have been done in 200 000.

I can pick out individual parts of this story that I really enjoyed, and now and then it shines when thing actually happen - but, but, but. It really suffers from word bloat, and when it comes to the tinker introspection I tend to scroll right past it. Some people might enjoy that aspect, but all I can think of is how much further the story would have been along if those words had been dedicated to plot or action or dialogue or anything more 'real'.

On the events of the fic itself, it does something I've not seen in wormfic before, so that's always a plus. The stations of canon are kind of vaguely there, but are overshadowed and influenced by the MC more and more as the fic progresses. The MC is a powerful Tinker in a way that I haven't seen much before, so that's good too. The whole 'Celestial Forge' thing is new to me, and has already inspired a few imitators. With luck we'll be through the ABB arc in the next chapter or three, and we can see what's going on in the larger world.

Calling it the ABB arc is kind of misleading tbh, as the way the story has gone has escalated it rather beyond what you expect when you hear 'ABB arc'. We're also seeing the appearance of lesser seen characters like Lightstar (that one New Wave dude who was married to Fleur) and an interesting take on Flashbang that I've not seen before which actually has him seeming like a bit of a badass, despite the surrounding situation there.

Brockton's Celestial Forge has its strengths, but it also has its weaknesses. Overall, I'll give it 3/5.

 

theres like 25k words of actual substance in this fic and 600k words of tinkerwank. no thanks.

 

This story is 700k words in, and he hasn't dealt with Bakuda. Too much time spent fan-wanking his tinker abilities and delaying any story progress because now he's added new abilities so he has to include them.

The story would be good, possibly even great if the author would learn to cut back on the useless filler words and actually advance the plot.

2/5 from me.

Edit: The pacing was actually semi-decent up until the bank robbery, but after that it just fell apart.

 

The author said the "tinker-wank" is the main motivation for writing it, so if he cut that out he'd probably just abandon it.

It's a good story though. Been a while since I read it, and I remembering skimming a lot of the tinker stuff later on, but I've stuck with it throughout because I want to see where it goes. Stuff is constantly happening, it's just a lot of time is spent introspecting/tinkering so it feels like things are static. It also has a really, really interesting main villain. And the tinker mechanics are cool if you're into that stuff.

3/5 for now. I'm hoping once the story is done, we get a version that massively cuts down the tinker bloat - that'll definitely make it a 4/5 for me.

 

Hey, sorry for going off topic, but what is the deal with this link? What does the m. instead of www. mean?

 

Mobile version of ff.net.

 

Well, it's better than the regular version. I can highlight stuff and my full favorites list is available.

 

First time I've ever see somebody say this instead of complaining!

 

Complaining about what? It even loads faster than the regular version.

 

It's a pretty common occurrence round these parts for people to post links to mobile FFnet in threads, somebody to comment but ching about it, then OP to edit their post for the desktop site.

 

Ok so I've read this and stopped. I think I have to give it a three out of five. It hits a lot of things that I despise, and I dislike the success that its enjoyed, and yet, I have to recognise that when it's not indulging itself in its worst aspects, when it actually tries to do its story it does it well and novelly.

It uses wider world-building well, it builds up a compelling backstory with a really shitty family that are fun to hate on the few occasions that we see or hear of them. It is able to take random elements like a living piece of clothing, which you know where unplanned and given them an arc and personality that seems 3D. We have context to how his life was supposed to go, and his struggles and his interactions with other characters seem valid and interesting. It's just its hidden behind 10 thousand words at a time of tinker babble.

The character's power is that they get the chance to 'buy' a new power for every 1000 words of the story that is written. He describes the new power they get so thoroughly at the moment of his getting them that they can then sometimes chain the powers together, going from tedious explanation to tedious explanation, power after power from the 'celestial forge'. Worst of all, it's exceedingly rare that he doesn't interrupt the narrative the moment the power appears. Furthermore once he's in his workshop, good bye to the story for a 100k at a time.

It leads to the worst bloat I've ever seen. This man is putting out 20k chapters where the character is building a computer the entire time.

If you can skim read, and ignore 3 and 3/4 chapters at a time to read the quite good and very interesting events that happen when he's outside his workshop, then you'll be fine. But I couldn't.

3/5 so it goes into the almosts.

 

Enh. I enjoyed, but I admit I skimmed a lot of the tinkering parts. He replaces his equipment often enough that I don't feel like that hurts the story at all anyway.

Still, I gave it a 4/5. Frankly, these days, a story has to have a minimum enjoyment level for me to even read it, and I read all of this, so I figure it's okay.

 

I can not give rate any story three or more stars if you could cut 70%+ and have a more or less instant improvement to. Yes, there are some nice scenes buried in it, at least there were in the first third which was as far as I got, but the bloat has been one of the worst I have ever seen and I really have better things to do with my time than to skim or go forbid actually read entire chapters for the few paragraphs of actual interesting content if that.

2/5