Spiteful Murkrow
Busy Writing Stories I Want to Read
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
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Heya, swinging by to pick off the Review Tag from here onsite since things have been jammed for long enough. Your request asked for the Intro and Prologue, and since I didn’t quite read those in the v1 of this story, I figured it was as good a time as any to correct that:
Introduction
I’m still impressed that you wound up spinning a yarn out of such a niche spinoff in the franchise, since to this day, I don’t think that I’ve seen anyone attempt a PTCG game fic, much less one for the game that is stuck in Unlocalization Hell.
Wait, wait, wait. Only island from the original game “as it appears in the second game”? Meaning that PTCG2 pulled a G/S on the original game’s setting?
Huh, well. I see that G/S wasn’t the only Pokémon game to go the “new region builds off the old one” route, even if it’s a bit curious that the devs opted to also start in the old region for the story.
And no doofy bicephallic birds, I’m sure. Since that’s something that I definitely never heard about being a thing in the PTCG games.
Huh. I wonder what that does for the difficulty of the playthrough if you attempt that. Is it a common challenge among players of the PTCG games?
I’m a little surprised that you’re not just putting the link directly on the word where the music is intended to start up in the story, but duly noted. I still think that this is a clever tie-in for your story here.
Oh, so this is straight-up a novelized Let’s Play. It’ll be interesting to see how much you fleshed out the card battles this time around, since in your original version, they were heavily glossed over.
And looked over your changelog for the story. I don’t have much to comment on it other than that the format of this review might be a bit different from the one you got last time in order to try and accommodate your requested feedback parameters.
Prologue
Well that’s a big change there. I suppose that I should take that as a sign that this is going to be a significantly decompressed version of events relative to your v1. Which given that I was one of those souls that didn’t read the original prologue, will definitely be keeping this a novel experience for me.
Oh, that format’s definitely new. Though I can already tell that it’ll help considerably for gauging how much time is going on in between events in this story.
>Pokemon Card Elite University
Just how messed-up is this world’s society if they straight-up have universities devoted to teaching how to play card games?
Though I’m not really feeling the first paragraph. It’s hard to articulate the specifics, but it doesn’t quite feel natural for something that someone would say about themselves and things they experienced. Consider playing around with something like this:
Went heavily out on a limb there so some of the nuance may be quite different from what you intended, but something like that. Basically, think of how you would describe things happening from the protagonist’s perspective to a third party listening, and the rest will follow fairly naturally.
Wait, but didn’t the narrator already realize those aspirations by becoming a card champion? It might make sense to frame it as something more open-ended such as “I’ve always strived to make him proud, and I don’t plan on failing his expectations for my life!”
Also, I’ll just get it out of the way since I have the feeling that it’ll come up quite a bit in this chapter, but make a point of applying the same rules of “word things as if you were actually describing them to a third party in person” for your narrator’s dialogue. Like I get that you’re going for a “prim and posh” vibe (which would certainly explain a few things about his mannerisms in the v1 I read), but even people from such backgrounds are a bit less stiff than this.
I do think that this is a pretty clever way of showing off how your character looks in a diary context, though.
“Diary” should be lowercased in the spot you use it since it’s not a proper noun. Though wait, if this is a family heirloom, does that imply that this diary was used by others in the past? If so, are there entries from prior owners in it? It’d be a pretty clever way of incorporating blurbs about cards or mechanics if so.
Huh. What’s the story of the Pokémon Pinball music? Or is that one of those “just because” things that you threw in for this story?
Some of the wording here was a bit off and I felt it would sound more natural being shuffled around. Also, I don’t know if you’re already reading your text aloud to yourself prior to publishing, but I’d strongly suggest doing so since the way the opening paragraph sounded to me was what made me realize why it read so strangely to me.
I didn’t realize that our protag was tutoring someone else. That’s something that probably would’ve been worth stating a bit more clearly in the beginning where the protag is talking about tutoring.
Also, given how “posh” the narrator is, I’m surprised he didn’t have any commentary at all about Billy’s house and how he felt about it.
Protag:
“That’s a different franchise, kiddo.”
Surprised no judgement from the protag here in his diary about how he’s [gardexhausted]-ing in live-time, since I’m sure that he had all the regret right about now for taking on this job.
A couple typos here, and I feel like a lot of these disembodied dialogue back-and-forths would work better by getting the narrator a bit more opinionated. Since this is presented in a diary format, which is in general a recording of the writer’s thoughts and opinions about the events they’ve lived through.
Well, yeah. Not that you all really have a frame of reference otherwise.
I’m snerking at how Billy is basically a proxy for the reader here.
Wait, so how did those other islands get parsed anyways back in PTCG1 days? Were they always here in this setting, or did they basically just get discovered.
A couple suggestions for this section. Though the better question is why the protag is doing this while loaded with cash and a champion, unless this is basically something he does as a hobby.
I… feel that a less “clinical” explanation on the narrator’s part likely would’ve been a bit more interesting to read, and in-setting, it likely would dovetail better with the vibe of “trying to hold the attention of an unruly child”. e.x. Something like “Well, Billy. I actually got started not unlike you. I used to not know the first thing about card games, but I started out battling duelists on our island at my local card club. As I got better, I went on to others until I’d defeated all the members and got the right to battle their club masters. [...]” or something like that.
Some punctuation errors here, especially since the narrator’s sentence is a statement and not a question.
No commentary about the narrator’s thought process here? Though was the PTCG1 game’s difficulty genuinely easy and this is some sort of meta commentary about it? Since this detail kinda feels like it undercuts how big of a deal the narrator made out of becoming a champion earlier.
Okay, yeah, I’m taking it that this is a meta commentary on PTCG1’s difficulty. I’m not fully sure how much it feels like it makes “sense” for a world, but hey, this place apparently only has 3 islands and has card gaming be something you get a degree for, so I’ll just roll with it.
Though remember that you are framing this as a journal entry. It probably makes more sense for the narrator’s prose to be written with an “after the fact” verb tense and not one that’s “presently unfolding”.
“Mr.” is an abbreviation that’s used in conjunction with a name. As a standalone, you want “Mister” in full.
Someone’s insistent about living out the Yu-Gi-Oh anime experience there. Though I’m a little surprised that the narrator could remember all of this exchange to jot down in a diary entry. If you’re going to stick to your guns on the format, it probably makes sense to have a throwaway mention of the narrator being particularly good at remembering things in one of his earlier entries (which would be a handy skill to have while playing card games!)
I’ll admit, that feels like a very peculiar worldbuilding choice there. Was there any particular reason why you made it such that literally only Doduo exists outside of being a character on playing cards? Since you could’ve had some fun later on with some of those card players like that one Pikachu player.
I’m… not sure if I follow how “shiny cards” would inherently imply “they also have shiny Pokémon, too” there. I think you’re missing a step such as if you’re tying this to the TCG-centricness of the setting, making it such that they got the idea for shiny cards from the Shiny Doduo that occasionally pop up in their neighborhood.
Is there going to be a mid-story twist that this is all taking part in the Matrix or something? Since there’s a lot about the way that this works dynamics-wise that feels pretty artificial.
I noticed it in a couple places earlier this chapter, but it’s particularly noticeable here that you’re “telling” and not “showing” things. Given that you’re doing a journal format fic, if the narrator didn’t find Billy’s reaction super remarkable, it probably makes sense to focus on his reactions/thoughts about Billy getting annoyed in response.
I call hax. And I assume that you can’t do this in the actual games.
I think that you’re missing a step going from “No one knows” to the topic shift about Doduo being super common in-setting.
Though if they are super common, is there a reason why we haven’t seen any of them in the journal entry earlier? It’d have been a handy way of foreshadowing the Doduo that the protagonist winds up getting stuck with later.
Again, this feels like a detail that would’ve been more impactful actually seeing it in the world earlier as opposed to being just told that it exists here.
I’m reminded of the Brawl in the Family comic about the Team Rocket grunt right about now, just with Trading Cards.
Just like in mainline Pokémon, just with pieces of paper. /s
Though I kinda wonder if you missed an opportunity for some humor from Billy complaining about “and you wouldn’t just have a Doduo peck them why?
” here.
Okay, so given that the narrator himself mentions that this section is pretty skippable, I won’t really get into the nitty gritty of things. The music is a nice touch, but the section unfortunately suffers a bit of a combination of being “talking heads” and some of the narrator’s explanations being very long-winded.
I wonder if it might have made more sense to do something like a medium shift and have them be notes that the narrator was jotting down for the questions Billy was raising, and the points that he was making in reply / commentaries as a tutor. Since it then also leans into the whole angle of “Much to my embarrassment, I forgot to bring a notepad today, so I’m using my diary as a scratchpad while tutoring Billy, if you’re not new to playing cards, feel free to skip to wherever my next entry is”.
It might have also been worth considering dropping in some game screencaps if possible to help readers visualize the cards a bit more, since I know you did that with battlers’ sprites in the old version of this story (and presumably here too).
Huh. I’m surprised that the diary entry just abruptly cuts off there, since you’d think that unless the protag was super busy, he’d have more to say about what's going on in his life.
I… don’t think that this was foreshadowed very well in the past few entries, and might have been worth showing more of the
-ness of suddenly realizing there’s no more money coming in with some other entries in between.
Though given that the protag just paid off a mortgage and was flush with cash less than two weeks ago, why is he not just taking a HELOC and citing his historical earnings to qualify? Since he’s literally selling off his prime income-making tools to get by here.
I dunno, it might have felt a bit more believable if the protag got hammered with a sudden expense that needed to be urgently paid off, since that could even be used as an in-setting justification for the radio silence in his diary for the last 9 days from having to manage abrupt money stress and not having the time or mental spoons to write in his diary.
Shots fired at real life. Even if “bought a nice house, got surprised by the property tax bill” would’ve been a handy way of cooking up a “sudden expense that desperately needs to be paid off soon” route.
Did our protag just not get paid for tutoring Billy by his parents or something? Or did they drop his services? Since I’m not sure if I follow this “running out of money to the point of not being able to pay utilities and food”. Unless the idea was that the protag hoped he’d have other kids beyond Billy to tutor, but wasn’t able to find any, which if so, isn’t really communicated.
I kinda feel like this journal entry should be quite a bit longer, especially since you’d think that the protag is under quite a bit of money stress and it’d be worth getting a bit more insight into what’s going on in his mind. For instance, if he’s weighing between options for decks (e.x. did the thought of making a Haymaker deck cross his mind at all?). Feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to get in some meta here.
Huh, I wonder if all these cards are also in PTCG2. Though is this deck called “FlashFire” in-setting by others as well? Or is it a name our protag is coming up with himself? Either way, it likely makes sense to elaborate on his thought process since the term likely will not mean anything to a lot of readers otherwise.
I feel like it probably would’ve made sense to give a more in-depth explanation as to why this is such a good set with basic cards, whether in the narrator’s voice or through some sort of setup like the tutorial with Billy earlier.
This feels like another journal entry that is too short. Like I assume that the protag has quite a bit going on in his mind at the moment here, so it’s a bit of a shame that we don’t see it more.
Huh, I did not realize that. I still wonder what the meta was for making things exclusive to Doduo, though, since it does feel like you’re locking yourself out of some potentially funny gags involving Doduo bouncing off other Pokémon given that he was kind of a goof in the original version of this story.
This feels like something that would’ve been better worked into the May 2nd entry, as mentioned earlier. Whether directly into the entry, or else as an aside similar to the tutorial section.
Huh, that’s a neat tie-in to how the games worked. At first I thought you were saying that none of the following chapters would be written in journal format and I was going to say that that was a shame, but a quick peekahead indicates they’re still in some form of it?
If so, I think that it’s a handy differentiator from your v1, since one of the bigger issues from the first chapter onwards was the lack of ways to get a firm gauge of how much time is passing.
What you have here is a bit more put-together than what I read of your v1 to this story. The journal format is a pretty standout framing choice, and I was delightfully surprised to hear that it’s actually a reference to how saving worked in the PTCG Game Boy games. Once again, I like the unique premise, and the explanations you worked in about how things worked were handy. Like you had a very niche fanfic here, and for the most part, you did a decent job at providing enough details for readers not to get lost in it. You also seemed to have a lot of fun with the absurdist humor in this chapter, since I’ll admit that I snerked at a couple points of the sequence where Billy was getting tutored.
I won’t go too far into criticisms since I ultimately haven’t read all that much of your v2 of this story yet, and I feel that it’s probably best to reserve judgement until I see a fuller sample of it. But from what I did see, I noticed three primary areas for further improvement:
The first is that you had some typos scattered about in this chapter, which while that would be fair game in a journal, has the meta issue of being distracting and also not quite fitting for someone of a more “posh” background like your protagonist. The second issue that I saw was that there were a few parts where it didn’t quite feel like you were fully leveraging the diary format. Some of it is from entries that feel like they’re light on content, and others from the wording feeling a bit "stiff" for a diary entry, but a bigger issue is that there were multiple points where it didn’t feel like we got as firm of a glimpse into the protagonist’s head as we should’ve when diaries are inherently vehicles for people to record their experiences and feelings with. The disembodied dialogue between him and Billy and the abrupt reveal that the protag has money problems are both things that felt like they could’ve been much improved simply by getting into the protag’s head and letting him ramble with his thoughts a bit in his journal to both get more insight into how he's feeling and get glimpses of larger events happening in the world. Lastly, I kinda was taken things out a bit by how the worldbuilding for this story felt kinda arbitrary. Like I get that it’s ultimately a comedic story, but stories ultimately need to have some level of internal logic, while a number of things about how this story’s setting worked almost literally worked on a logic of “because it just does”. Perhaps it’s just an artifact of how I can sometimes get a bit nuts about worldbuilding when telling stories, but it felt a little jarring to read while going through the Prologue.
Fortunately, most of the above all seemed like issues that were ultimately resolvable with additive editing, and even if I felt that there was room for further improvement, what I saw from this opening was a pretty noticeable step up from the old version of your story. Thanks for your patience with Review Tag, @133TFR33k , and I hope that this review was helpful and a bit more enjoyable to read for you this time around.
Introduction
I’m still impressed that you wound up spinning a yarn out of such a niche spinoff in the franchise, since to this day, I don’t think that I’ve seen anyone attempt a PTCG game fic, much less one for the game that is stuck in Unlocalization Hell.
Wait, wait, wait. Only island from the original game “as it appears in the second game”? Meaning that PTCG2 pulled a G/S on the original game’s setting?
Huh, well. I see that G/S wasn’t the only Pokémon game to go the “new region builds off the old one” route, even if it’s a bit curious that the devs opted to also start in the old region for the story.
And no doofy bicephallic birds, I’m sure. Since that’s something that I definitely never heard about being a thing in the PTCG games.
Huh. I wonder what that does for the difficulty of the playthrough if you attempt that. Is it a common challenge among players of the PTCG games?
I’m a little surprised that you’re not just putting the link directly on the word where the music is intended to start up in the story, but duly noted. I still think that this is a clever tie-in for your story here.
Oh, so this is straight-up a novelized Let’s Play. It’ll be interesting to see how much you fleshed out the card battles this time around, since in your original version, they were heavily glossed over.
And looked over your changelog for the story. I don’t have much to comment on it other than that the format of this review might be a bit different from the one you got last time in order to try and accommodate your requested feedback parameters.
Prologue
Well that’s a big change there. I suppose that I should take that as a sign that this is going to be a significantly decompressed version of events relative to your v1. Which given that I was one of those souls that didn’t read the original prologue, will definitely be keeping this a novel experience for me.
Oh, that format’s definitely new. Though I can already tell that it’ll help considerably for gauging how much time is going on in between events in this story.
>Pokemon Card Elite University
Just how messed-up is this world’s society if they straight-up have universities devoted to teaching how to play card games?
Though I’m not really feeling the first paragraph. It’s hard to articulate the specifics, but it doesn’t quite feel natural for something that someone would say about themselves and things they experienced. Consider playing around with something like this:
Went heavily out on a limb there so some of the nuance may be quite different from what you intended, but something like that. Basically, think of how you would describe things happening from the protagonist’s perspective to a third party listening, and the rest will follow fairly naturally.
Wait, but didn’t the narrator already realize those aspirations by becoming a card champion? It might make sense to frame it as something more open-ended such as “I’ve always strived to make him proud, and I don’t plan on failing his expectations for my life!”
Also, I’ll just get it out of the way since I have the feeling that it’ll come up quite a bit in this chapter, but make a point of applying the same rules of “word things as if you were actually describing them to a third party in person” for your narrator’s dialogue. Like I get that you’re going for a “prim and posh” vibe (which would certainly explain a few things about his mannerisms in the v1 I read), but even people from such backgrounds are a bit less stiff than this.
I do think that this is a pretty clever way of showing off how your character looks in a diary context, though.
“Diary” should be lowercased in the spot you use it since it’s not a proper noun. Though wait, if this is a family heirloom, does that imply that this diary was used by others in the past? If so, are there entries from prior owners in it? It’d be a pretty clever way of incorporating blurbs about cards or mechanics if so.
Huh. What’s the story of the Pokémon Pinball music? Or is that one of those “just because” things that you threw in for this story?
Some of the wording here was a bit off and I felt it would sound more natural being shuffled around. Also, I don’t know if you’re already reading your text aloud to yourself prior to publishing, but I’d strongly suggest doing so since the way the opening paragraph sounded to me was what made me realize why it read so strangely to me.
I didn’t realize that our protag was tutoring someone else. That’s something that probably would’ve been worth stating a bit more clearly in the beginning where the protag is talking about tutoring.
Also, given how “posh” the narrator is, I’m surprised he didn’t have any commentary at all about Billy’s house and how he felt about it.
Protag:
“That’s a different franchise, kiddo.”
Surprised no judgement from the protag here in his diary about how he’s [gardexhausted]-ing in live-time, since I’m sure that he had all the regret right about now for taking on this job.
A couple typos here, and I feel like a lot of these disembodied dialogue back-and-forths would work better by getting the narrator a bit more opinionated. Since this is presented in a diary format, which is in general a recording of the writer’s thoughts and opinions about the events they’ve lived through.
Well, yeah. Not that you all really have a frame of reference otherwise.
I’m snerking at how Billy is basically a proxy for the reader here.
Wait, so how did those other islands get parsed anyways back in PTCG1 days? Were they always here in this setting, or did they basically just get discovered.
A couple suggestions for this section. Though the better question is why the protag is doing this while loaded with cash and a champion, unless this is basically something he does as a hobby.
I… feel that a less “clinical” explanation on the narrator’s part likely would’ve been a bit more interesting to read, and in-setting, it likely would dovetail better with the vibe of “trying to hold the attention of an unruly child”. e.x. Something like “Well, Billy. I actually got started not unlike you. I used to not know the first thing about card games, but I started out battling duelists on our island at my local card club. As I got better, I went on to others until I’d defeated all the members and got the right to battle their club masters. [...]” or something like that.
Some punctuation errors here, especially since the narrator’s sentence is a statement and not a question.
No commentary about the narrator’s thought process here? Though was the PTCG1 game’s difficulty genuinely easy and this is some sort of meta commentary about it? Since this detail kinda feels like it undercuts how big of a deal the narrator made out of becoming a champion earlier.
Okay, yeah, I’m taking it that this is a meta commentary on PTCG1’s difficulty. I’m not fully sure how much it feels like it makes “sense” for a world, but hey, this place apparently only has 3 islands and has card gaming be something you get a degree for, so I’ll just roll with it.
Though remember that you are framing this as a journal entry. It probably makes more sense for the narrator’s prose to be written with an “after the fact” verb tense and not one that’s “presently unfolding”.
“Mr.” is an abbreviation that’s used in conjunction with a name. As a standalone, you want “Mister” in full.
Someone’s insistent about living out the Yu-Gi-Oh anime experience there. Though I’m a little surprised that the narrator could remember all of this exchange to jot down in a diary entry. If you’re going to stick to your guns on the format, it probably makes sense to have a throwaway mention of the narrator being particularly good at remembering things in one of his earlier entries (which would be a handy skill to have while playing card games!)
I’ll admit, that feels like a very peculiar worldbuilding choice there. Was there any particular reason why you made it such that literally only Doduo exists outside of being a character on playing cards? Since you could’ve had some fun later on with some of those card players like that one Pikachu player.
I’m… not sure if I follow how “shiny cards” would inherently imply “they also have shiny Pokémon, too” there. I think you’re missing a step such as if you’re tying this to the TCG-centricness of the setting, making it such that they got the idea for shiny cards from the Shiny Doduo that occasionally pop up in their neighborhood.
Is there going to be a mid-story twist that this is all taking part in the Matrix or something? Since there’s a lot about the way that this works dynamics-wise that feels pretty artificial.
I noticed it in a couple places earlier this chapter, but it’s particularly noticeable here that you’re “telling” and not “showing” things. Given that you’re doing a journal format fic, if the narrator didn’t find Billy’s reaction super remarkable, it probably makes sense to focus on his reactions/thoughts about Billy getting annoyed in response.
I call hax. And I assume that you can’t do this in the actual games.
I think that you’re missing a step going from “No one knows” to the topic shift about Doduo being super common in-setting.
Though if they are super common, is there a reason why we haven’t seen any of them in the journal entry earlier? It’d have been a handy way of foreshadowing the Doduo that the protagonist winds up getting stuck with later.
Again, this feels like a detail that would’ve been more impactful actually seeing it in the world earlier as opposed to being just told that it exists here.
I’m reminded of the Brawl in the Family comic about the Team Rocket grunt right about now, just with Trading Cards.
Though I kinda wonder if you missed an opportunity for some humor from Billy complaining about “and you wouldn’t just have a Doduo peck them why?
Okay, so given that the narrator himself mentions that this section is pretty skippable, I won’t really get into the nitty gritty of things. The music is a nice touch, but the section unfortunately suffers a bit of a combination of being “talking heads” and some of the narrator’s explanations being very long-winded.
I wonder if it might have made more sense to do something like a medium shift and have them be notes that the narrator was jotting down for the questions Billy was raising, and the points that he was making in reply / commentaries as a tutor. Since it then also leans into the whole angle of “Much to my embarrassment, I forgot to bring a notepad today, so I’m using my diary as a scratchpad while tutoring Billy, if you’re not new to playing cards, feel free to skip to wherever my next entry is”.
It might have also been worth considering dropping in some game screencaps if possible to help readers visualize the cards a bit more, since I know you did that with battlers’ sprites in the old version of this story (and presumably here too).
Huh. I’m surprised that the diary entry just abruptly cuts off there, since you’d think that unless the protag was super busy, he’d have more to say about what's going on in his life.
I… don’t think that this was foreshadowed very well in the past few entries, and might have been worth showing more of the
Though given that the protag just paid off a mortgage and was flush with cash less than two weeks ago, why is he not just taking a HELOC and citing his historical earnings to qualify? Since he’s literally selling off his prime income-making tools to get by here.
I dunno, it might have felt a bit more believable if the protag got hammered with a sudden expense that needed to be urgently paid off, since that could even be used as an in-setting justification for the radio silence in his diary for the last 9 days from having to manage abrupt money stress and not having the time or mental spoons to write in his diary.
Shots fired at real life. Even if “bought a nice house, got surprised by the property tax bill” would’ve been a handy way of cooking up a “sudden expense that desperately needs to be paid off soon” route.
Did our protag just not get paid for tutoring Billy by his parents or something? Or did they drop his services? Since I’m not sure if I follow this “running out of money to the point of not being able to pay utilities and food”. Unless the idea was that the protag hoped he’d have other kids beyond Billy to tutor, but wasn’t able to find any, which if so, isn’t really communicated.
I kinda feel like this journal entry should be quite a bit longer, especially since you’d think that the protag is under quite a bit of money stress and it’d be worth getting a bit more insight into what’s going on in his mind. For instance, if he’s weighing between options for decks (e.x. did the thought of making a Haymaker deck cross his mind at all?). Feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to get in some meta here.
Huh, I wonder if all these cards are also in PTCG2. Though is this deck called “FlashFire” in-setting by others as well? Or is it a name our protag is coming up with himself? Either way, it likely makes sense to elaborate on his thought process since the term likely will not mean anything to a lot of readers otherwise.
I feel like it probably would’ve made sense to give a more in-depth explanation as to why this is such a good set with basic cards, whether in the narrator’s voice or through some sort of setup like the tutorial with Billy earlier.
This feels like another journal entry that is too short. Like I assume that the protag has quite a bit going on in his mind at the moment here, so it’s a bit of a shame that we don’t see it more.
Huh, I did not realize that. I still wonder what the meta was for making things exclusive to Doduo, though, since it does feel like you’re locking yourself out of some potentially funny gags involving Doduo bouncing off other Pokémon given that he was kind of a goof in the original version of this story.
This feels like something that would’ve been better worked into the May 2nd entry, as mentioned earlier. Whether directly into the entry, or else as an aside similar to the tutorial section.
Huh, that’s a neat tie-in to how the games worked. At first I thought you were saying that none of the following chapters would be written in journal format and I was going to say that that was a shame, but a quick peekahead indicates they’re still in some form of it?
If so, I think that it’s a handy differentiator from your v1, since one of the bigger issues from the first chapter onwards was the lack of ways to get a firm gauge of how much time is passing.
What you have here is a bit more put-together than what I read of your v1 to this story. The journal format is a pretty standout framing choice, and I was delightfully surprised to hear that it’s actually a reference to how saving worked in the PTCG Game Boy games. Once again, I like the unique premise, and the explanations you worked in about how things worked were handy. Like you had a very niche fanfic here, and for the most part, you did a decent job at providing enough details for readers not to get lost in it. You also seemed to have a lot of fun with the absurdist humor in this chapter, since I’ll admit that I snerked at a couple points of the sequence where Billy was getting tutored.
I won’t go too far into criticisms since I ultimately haven’t read all that much of your v2 of this story yet, and I feel that it’s probably best to reserve judgement until I see a fuller sample of it. But from what I did see, I noticed three primary areas for further improvement:
The first is that you had some typos scattered about in this chapter, which while that would be fair game in a journal, has the meta issue of being distracting and also not quite fitting for someone of a more “posh” background like your protagonist. The second issue that I saw was that there were a few parts where it didn’t quite feel like you were fully leveraging the diary format. Some of it is from entries that feel like they’re light on content, and others from the wording feeling a bit "stiff" for a diary entry, but a bigger issue is that there were multiple points where it didn’t feel like we got as firm of a glimpse into the protagonist’s head as we should’ve when diaries are inherently vehicles for people to record their experiences and feelings with. The disembodied dialogue between him and Billy and the abrupt reveal that the protag has money problems are both things that felt like they could’ve been much improved simply by getting into the protag’s head and letting him ramble with his thoughts a bit in his journal to both get more insight into how he's feeling and get glimpses of larger events happening in the world. Lastly, I kinda was taken things out a bit by how the worldbuilding for this story felt kinda arbitrary. Like I get that it’s ultimately a comedic story, but stories ultimately need to have some level of internal logic, while a number of things about how this story’s setting worked almost literally worked on a logic of “because it just does”. Perhaps it’s just an artifact of how I can sometimes get a bit nuts about worldbuilding when telling stories, but it felt a little jarring to read while going through the Prologue.
Fortunately, most of the above all seemed like issues that were ultimately resolvable with additive editing, and even if I felt that there was room for further improvement, what I saw from this opening was a pretty noticeable step up from the old version of your story. Thanks for your patience with Review Tag, @133TFR33k , and I hope that this review was helpful and a bit more enjoyable to read for you this time around.
