Title: Gadget
Author: Rhydeble
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Humor
Status: WIP
Fandom: Worm
Pairings: N/A
Summary: What if a 19 year old Armsmaster has a small indiscretion What if, almost fifteen year later, he finds out that he has a teenage daughter? This is the story of Sely Wallis, a fourteen year old kleptomaniac tinker, and her adventures in the town of Westlake, Wyoming, eventually moving to the city of Brockton Bay. Starts a year before canon.

Link: SB AO3

I've been reading and enjoying this story since it began, and now as its second major arc seems to be finishing up I thought I'd put it up for inclusion in the library. As the summary states this is the story of Sely, an OC daughter of Armsmaster. She triggers entirely in ignorance of her father's secret identity, and her misadventures in tinkering start her down an interesting and entertaining path.

Beyond the capes the author really shines in making his characters act like children, rather than the adult emulating seriousness of Taylor and the Undersiders.

Gadget is well worth the effort to read it, and based on the author's current update rate it will continue to be fun for some time to come.

5/5

 

This is a really good story. Sely, is one of the better OCs I've read, and the author manages to nail their depiction of Armsmaster as someone with the best intentions but who doesn't read social cues at all.
5/5

 

The first word in the story is a misspelling of Armsmaster's civilian name. Collin instead of Colin isn't a deal-breaker, but it's not encouraging. Collin is used throughout the first chapter, but it's fixed in the second.

The third paragraph of the story.

The dialogue is stilted and a bit strange.

The author has a tendency to leave out pronouns. Not the worst thing in the world, but it brings you out of the story a bit.

Lots of misspelled words/typos.
The ones I noticed when glancing through Chapter 2:

The entire story is written in third person except when about "Sely", and then it changes to first person. Which makes me think this is a self-insert disguised as an OC.

There are too many commas and run on sentences. Some randomly capitalized words.

I'm assuming the author is speaking English as a second language. Or isn't very interested in proofreading.

Either way, I don't think I'm going to be able to read very much of this story.

 

I've seen this fic recommended elsewhere as the best, or one of the best of OC stories and tinker stories, and I honestly couldn't see it.

As a character, the protagonist of this story, Sely measures up to the hype. She has her flaws. She acts in a realistic way for a teenage girl with the kind of issues that end up giving people trigger events, and her thought processes show that. Doesn't mean it's still not frustrating to read about, and that ended making this story less enjoyable for me.

Another thing that stood out to me was the prose. I consider a story good if I can read it without my attention being pulled out by grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes, and this story had a lot of them. It isn't the worst out there, by a far margin, but it's enough that I can't consider this story as "one of the best in the fandom" level.

Armsmaster, known as Colin in his civilian identity, has his named misspelled as "Collin" in the first word of the first chapter. Not re-assuring at all when the author is misspelling character names that can be easily checked with a quick peek at the wiki. I read this story after the author had announced and completed a re-write of the first couple of chapters, and the fact that this obvious mistake was still there didn't bode well for my impression of the story.

If that kind of stuff bothers you, I'm sorry to say that it happens a lot. Misplaced or missing punctuation, which lowered the quality of the dialogue. The dialogue in general I thought didn't read very smoothly, especially in the earlier chapters, and in some points didn't ring true for the characters' personalities as they appeared in Worm canon.

I also disliked the author's tendency to drop plot threads as they were starting to pan out, plot that didn't end up going anywhere, and ridiculous contrivances that just didn't uphold my suspension of disbelief. It was just plain frustrating to read. Overall, this story felt like a rough draft, very rough. It had some interesting points to it, but other parts of the story detracted from it to it, so I was left confused and frustrated.

I wouldn't recommend this fic.

2/5

 

yak this has 2 stars, and so shouldn't be in the library.

 

Moved to Almost Recommended. It has the potential to move to the trash depending on future ratings.

 

The writing is the only major issue with this. If the author had posted it here rather than SB than it probably would be getting higher praise due to our more critical reviewing. The plot and ideas are orginal and interesting. It stays away from canon and does not even mention Taylor last I read

Overall I give it a 4/5. Interesting and original idea just needs work with the writing.