 Aerith Gast 2007-08-31 . chapter 1Instead of taking room on the fourm I decided to reveiw here. Hope this does well enough.
I'm not much for techincal errors and for my eye I didn't catch any.
On to the piece.
Without getting too gushy, i love it. Reading aloud I ahve to comment on the stress in the words and vowels, it comes out very poetic.
"gazing down at her twitching form with distaste and disappointment and sadness and frustration."
I love all the "and" in the sentence as I think it adds to Hojo's character. For him to look on with such mixed emotion that sort of piles into the same catagory with the wordyness of the sentence srains the reader outloud and mentally as it continues on and on. Almost demonstraits how stretched and strange he is. I don't know, the correct word is espcaping me to capture it but definatly a strong point on the piece.
The dialogue was set nicely, not over done and the simple "he said" she said". I especially like Hojo, such an undeveloped person we have only on real veiw of him from the game and we get to see that here but we also get the kinder, softer side almost. But with a twist and dip of his twisted self which is apparent in him padding Lucretia's head and moving her. He's just very well developed through out the piece.
The contrast between Vincent as a monster and Hojo metaphorically a monster has been done before but it never tires, and in your beautiful language is refreashing. And not namming the characters I felt gave to the piece, kept us in the context of Lucretia's mind frame.
As for anything to improve on? I felt the whole Chaos/Lucretia thing mentioned by Hojo was a little empty and didn't really go in the piece. Almost like the focus should have stayed more on the fact that Vincent was now this monster that Hojo really was. But I can understand the purpose of putting it in to help develop Hojo more through dialogue.
Great work as far as I see. |
 Pied Flycatcher 2007-08-04 . chapter 1This is really good, very creepy. :) It reminds me of Frankenstein, especially the description of Vincent's body with all the stitches. And yes, what a horrible gift, and yet I can definitely see Hojo acting in this way - the guy really is twisted. It makes me wonder if part of his motivation comes from his jealousy of Vincent - perhaps he enjoyed mutilating his body, ruining Vincent's looks. I think that would give Hojo a kind of vindictive satisfaction. It would be interesting if you had explored it.
As for Lucrecia, I think you captured her well too. And you convey her horror very well. But maybe you could give a bit more of her motivations. At the end, when she decides to bring Vincent back to life, there's no particular reason for it - you even say she doesn't know why herself, and this sounds a little contrived. Having realised what a monster Hojo really is, I think she feels regret for her own part in this project. But I don't see any of that here... her perspective of Hojo has changed, but it isn't followed through.
This is just a suggestion, but I think it might work better if Lucrecia thinks that bringing Vincent back to life is a kind of repayment, to make up for what has been done to him, and what she has done. A little more insight into her character would really give this piece more depth, imo. :)
Nevertheless, it's very good as it is. The writing is great. There are only a couple of parts that could be streamlined - a lot of the sentences are very long, so shortening them could help make it a little easier to read. E.g. 'And such the body had once been – but that was months ago, before he had died, his abdomen and several arteries ruined by a red-hot bullet that tore painfully through unprotected flesh.' I would get rid of the first part ('And such the body had once been'), since we know the line is referring to the body from the previous sentence. I think that last part could possibly be cut as well ('that tore painfully through unprotected flesh'), again simply because we already get the idea. :)
But otherwise this piece is very polished, and I liked how you didn't need to name the characters. The reader can easily tell who they are, so you didn't spoonfeed the information. I enjoyed this, even though I'm not a fan of horror. :) |