Day 11 Carapace Reviews (20 reviews, 10 stories)

The end is in sight!

[Aradia is going to be more like how
she is when she’s alive, since all the other stabdad fics has her as
her dead, depressing personality ]
While that’s my preferred Aradia
version, there’s the problem of squaring that with the fact she and
Droog otherwise have nothing in common.
[Spades Slick (Commonly known under the
alias, Jack Noir)]
As Jack Noir is what he’s called first,
Slick would be the alias.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,”
he said or “Hello!” he said, never “Hello.” He
said or “Hello.” he said or “Hello,” He said or
“Hello” he said. The only exception to this is if the next
sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as
“Hello.” He grinned, never “Hello,” he grinned or
“Hello,” He grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech
verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally
stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore,
if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” he
said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” he said, “this
is it.” or “Hi,” he said “this is it.” And
if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,”
he said, “is it.” If there’s no speech verb in the break,
you use a dash, like “Hi. This – ” He looked around. “-
is it.”
Oh dear god don’t write out Sollux’s
lisp it’s incredibly annoying.
[“The club’s in Felt territory
isn’t it?” Aradia stated more than questioned. ]
ASKED. ASKED is the word you use for
your question-mark sentences. Questioned is the thing police do to
suspects.
Write out numbers with letters.
Semicolons do not indicate
sophisticated or intelligent writing, even when grammatically
correct. Use sentence-connecting semicolons sparingly, judiciously,
and only when the ideas in the clauses are inseparable. If you have a
semicolon sitting between a pair of sentences because the sentences
are kind of, sort of related, it just makes you look pretentious.
Spellcheck, spellcheck, spellcheck.
It’s getting ridiculous.
[Karkat’s shoulders slumped; dread
kicking in as the entire situation sunk into his head. He’s trapped,
completely helpless; his father, Droog, Deuce, Boxcars, nor any of
his friends had the slightest clue where he is. ]
He disappeared in the territory of
their greatest enemy and is now captured by their greatest enemy.
Slick doesn’t even need to bother asking where he was last seen
because go murder green torsos is his first plan anyway. The issue is
just how long it’ll take.
It’s Snowman, no zero.
The two of them dragging him into their
game when he’s not getting intentionally tortured is funny.
[“Finally! KK, where the hell ar-“

“Heloooooooo, I’m terribly sorry but Mr Vantas can’t come to
the phone right now.” Came an unfamiliar but very smug feminine
voice.

Sollux frowned at the statement. “Who ith thith, and where’th
KK?”

The other three looked at Sollux, each wearing a worried
expression.

“Mr Vantas is quite busy at the Felt Mansion, but I can
always pass on a message.”]

Really not seeing why they’d do this,
since the only purpose would be if they wanted to trade Karkat and
they seem more interested in getting info from him. It’s not like
it’s needed for the plot, since like I said, it’s the first place
anyone would look when they realized he was missing.
[#2. She’s childish
There’s the role playing thing, and
there’s also the ridiculous amount of dragon plush dolls she keeps
littering Karkat’s room with. She also has a tendency to lick and
bite him for god only knows why, and she makes up her own words to
replace already existing ones (Gog, Jegus, Load Gapper ect.)]
That makes less than no sense to be
throwing at Terezi’s feet when Karkat’s the primary source of those
as well as the main source of weird terms in general.
Really, if you’re going to have the
rest of the trolls be young adults, you can’t regress Terezi down to
even younger than they are. And she continues to sound like a little
kid throughout this, which is a problem.
[While the hammer in the psycho girl’s
hand was held in the most threatening way a person can actually hold
a hammer (which isn’t really all that intimidating, even though
getting hit by one hurts like a bitch), her vicious grin didn’t seem
to phase Karkat that much. Compared to Terezi, the blind girl wins by
a land slide; Vriska’s evil grin seemed forced and too much like the
homicidal killers you see all the time on T.V and movies, while
Terezi’s is constant, whether she’s being completely innocent, or
when she’s up to something, which makes her unpredictable and a lot
more frightening.]
Considering Vriska’s the one with the
big kill count and tendency to go overboard, Karkat just comes off as
delusional here.
[While in his trance, he didn’t realize
that he had been untied until he was pushed off the chair and slammed
onto the cold stone floor, which snapped him back to reality. With
whatever little strength he had left, Karkat pushed himself up,
stumbling a bit before trudging up the stairs. Even though he’s only
been in the felt Mansion for a few days, he was trusted enough to
show himself back to his room; it was the only place he really knew
where to go, and he was always too weak to look for or even attempt
an escape.]
While this makes them all seem like
idiots. He’s currently getting tortured, it’s not like he even has
anything to lose if he tries to escape.
[Terezi giggled as she continued to
feed Karkat, though she had a lot of difficulties with the peas,
which didn’t help that she was trying to stab them instead of
scooping them with the fork. Karkat was happy to finally having a
full stomach once all the food was eaten, now all he was looking
forward to was dropping onto the surprisingly soft mattress and curl
up into the doona; which is exactly what he did, not bothering to
take off his dragon cape, just because the material was surprisingly
soft and warm.

Terezi jumped on top, placing the plush, err PailSpit or
something? whatever, into his arms, and them climbed on the other
side of the bed and began spooning Karkat.

“Err…Terezi…wh-what the hell are you doing?”

“Shhh, Mama dragon’s taking care of both her boys, now
sleep!” Terezi whispered loudly, pulling Karkat closer into her.

You know, it really seems like you’d
rather be writing Nepeta. She’s the one who’s more into the cuddly
side of roleplay, likes to act childish and her whole mighty huntress
thing would sort of work with her being a part of the fighting side
of the family business but having no part in the torture side. She’s
also the one into roleplaying having babies and taking care of
people, while Terezi’s contribution to those is generally to fuck
with Nepeta.
[“I umm, I had to Call Feferi.”
]
Don’t capitalize random words.
[your grounded ]
“Your” is the possessive.
“You’re” is short for “you are”.
All the characters seem incredibly flat
in this. Their total failure to deal with Karkat’s disappearance is a
part of that – as criminals with another criminal gang enemy, it’s
not like him getting kidnapped is unlikely. Their behavior is just
too close to generic OCs – they’re oblivious to the problem, then
shocked and not sure what they can do, like they’re normal people and
not a pack of psychos.
And now Terezi’s
just an unstable nutcase.
[“Jeeze,
and today we were gonna give the dork a day off…Oh well, you wanna
help me dye my hair?”
“Oh? Sick
of the blond already?”
“Yeah,
kinda miss my black mop. I’m gonna dye it back to black, and add some
blue.”]
That’s a nice
detail, I’m really sick of how human Vriska seems to always come with
blonde hair when it’s not like black is an impossible color for
people.
[‘Fucking
women, they’re all crazy!

Seriously, the only sane ones he knows are Ms Paint, and Kanaya
and that’s putting the bar pretty damn low. Ms Paint is a saint, but
she must be missing a few brain cells for dating someone as
dysfunctional as his Slick. And then there’s Kanaya, who almost cut
Eridan in half with a chainsaw because he was just
being-…well…Eridan]

What the hell.
Okay, first off,
what on earth made it seem like a good idea to say that Kanaya is a
triggerhappy nutjob when the only person she murdered was the one
murdered her friend, the chance of continuing their entire species,
and you know, her personally?
Next, even if
changing things to make it Kanaya attacking poor Eridan wasn’t
disgusting, he knows Aradia, who’s pretty sane when she’s not dead or
an undead robot. Feferi also appears to be in their social circle,
and she’s fine. And how the fuck is Ms Paint dating Slick a sign
women are insane when Slick’s very existence doesn’t seem to be taken
to mean men are insane? It’s not exactly like Karkat’s life is
overflowing with reasonable men. Sollux? Gamzee? Him, for that matter
– it’s not like he’s exactly overflowing with self-esteem.
It only gets
worse when the reason he’s gone off on this tangent here is that for
some reason you’re deliberately writing Terezi as an unstable child,
so the fact you’re writing women badly (and retconning stuff to be
all their fault, see again Kanaya) is actually the problem here.
[With
a sudden rush of vitality, Karkat twisted his body and gripped onto
the girls leg, ignoring the sharp pain in his hand, tugging the leg
until she lost balance and fell on her butt. Taking advantage of the
situation, Karkat lunged onto Vriska, slashing the blade in his hand
along her arms that were covering her face, leaving several deep cuts
along her skin.

Vriska was squealing and thrashing around beneath him. In a panic,
Karkat stabbed the knife deep into Vriska’s inner thigh, quickly
jumping off the girl and bolted for the stairs as the girl released a
shrill scream.]

So you just got
done explaining how Karkat is more beat up than ever and his hands
barely even work. But now, suddenly he’s fine enough to assault
Vriska and escape. You’ve completely lost track of your plot, haven’t
you?
I think I’m
calling it quits here. It’s getting worse by the chapter and the
Midnight Crew are the same flat nothings every time they appear, so
it’s not like I have anything there to look forward to.
It’s
disappointing. There was that moment of it being mildly interesting
when Vriska drags Karkat back after getting tortured to be a prop in
their FLARP game. I hope that’ll reappear in some less incompetent
story.
Dialogue
is written as “Hello,” he said or “Hello!” he
said, never “Hello.” He said or “Hello.” he said
or “Hello,” He said or “Hello” he said. The only
exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech
verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” He grinned,
never “Hello,” he grinned or “Hello,” He grinned.
Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you
make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is
in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two
complete sentences it’s “Hi,” he said. “This is it.”
not “Hi,” he said, “this is it.” or “Hi,”
he said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence
in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” he said, “is it.”
If there’s no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like “Hi.
This – ” He looked around. “- is it.”
And
speaking of dialogue, don’t write it in their quirk.
[He
took out his dehydration gun and zapped the sandwich into a tiny
cube. “of course I can knoww it all! im an ampora the smartest
fuckin ampora thats evver livved” He took a cup and filled it
with water, then quickly downed the cube like it was a pill, chasing
it with the drink. “see look i dont evven havve to put in the
wwork of wwastin time chewwin so wwe can just continue talkin ]
That’s
just a recipe for choking. Also, if he was going to swallow his food
without tasting it, why did he care about getting decent food in the
first place.
(Also
dehydration isn’t actually a synonym for shrinkray.)
[Evan
read the boxes, they had really big sciencey words on them. (which he
could totally understand easily but I dont so yeah) ]
Try
harder.
This
is a roleplay, which is to say, it’s a story about OCs who have
particularly unstable characterization. So I’m just going to stop
here too.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8955528/1/The-Kingdoms-Of-Derse-and-Prospite
(Karkat (Jack, Terezi, Gamzee, Seme!Dave, Nepeta))
The
word you want is “rogue”. “Rouge” is the makeup.
None
of the characters sound like themselves here – the closest is
Terezi who’s being a ridiculous caricature of herself, which is still
a step up from the blandness the defines the rest.
Not
sure what you’re going for here. You seem to be repeating Jake’s
funeral, only instead he and Jane are the rulers of Prospit rather
than prince and princess, but the Prospitians are still white chess
people as if nothing’s actually changed.
[I
looked around in confusion “Im already me so how am i supposed
to do that?”. I didnt get a answer but then again I didnt really
expect an answer. ]
This
is abysmal. Punctuation is not optional. Grammar matters.
[I’m
still in my pjs for gogs sake ]
The
only possible reason for your character to be using a word made up
during the events of Homestuck like this is if you’re intending them
to come off as one of the really dumb fans.
[I
grumbled at the voices and got dressed into my usual day outfit; a
white shirt with a meteor design on it coupled with an unzipped
purple hoodie and black pants. ]
Just
don’t use semicolons. Figure out apostrophes first.
Also
no, unless she literally wears the same thing every day she cannot
have a “usual outfit” of particular pieces of clothing.
She’s not an anime character. There is no budget being saved here by
having her wear only one thing.
[(
A.N. hi people, just thought you should know the italicized wording
is megaras exile) ]
Never
put author notes in the text. If this matters, you should write well
enough that it’s possible for the reader to figure out. If you’re
still concerned someone might not get it, at least have the decency
to put it in your opening author’s note instead of in the middle of
the story.
[“Great!
now if i run into sis i can just pelt with soft fluffy pillows!”
I mutter under my breath.
=time
skip=

I successfully managed to get back to my room without an incident.
I
quickly lock my door and breath a sigh of relief. ]

There
is no time skip. You just told us what happened between her talking
about pillows and locking her door: she returned to her room.
Ugh,
another horrible quirk.
Look,
I get that the comic has used up all of the not terrible ones and
even some of the terrible ones. So just accept you can’t keep the
unique quirk thing going and don’t inflict it on everyone. She’s not
a troll, she shouldn’t have an even more obtrusive quirk.
This
is typoridden. Proofread, or at least spellcheck.
Semicolons
do not indicate sophisticated or intelligent writing, even when
grammatically correct. Use sentence-connecting semicolons sparingly,
judiciously, and only when the ideas in the clauses are inseparable.
If you have a semicolon sitting between a pair of sentences because
the sentences are kind of, sort of related, it just makes you look
pretentious.
[After
that, you began to hop on the rest of the planets that wasn’t
destroyed by the destructive beam caused by HIM.
In one case, you “stole” the riffleKind from some random
kid. ]
How
is she unaware of the other players of her session/able to bounce
around the planets of kids not in her session?
[Aim…steady…
FIRE! One round of Dersites full of bullets, coming up!]
Speaking
of being unaware…it’s pretty unsettling that this fic just says the
solution is to start massacring the opposite army and then that’s
what they do, as if it’s no bigger deal than mowing down opponents in
a regular videogame.
[The
line “Another one bites the dust” keeps repeating in your
head each time you shoot a Dersite. ]
So
basically your character is delusional or just a straight up
sociopath. Which does, I guess, fit the mention earlier of not caring
about the other kid she entered the game apparently died shortly
after entering.
Dialogue
is written as “Hello,” he said or “Hello!” he
said, never “Hello.” He said or “Hello.” he said
or “Hello,” He said or “Hello” he said. The only
exception to this is if the next sentence doesn’t contain a speech
verb, in which case it’s written as “Hello.” He grinned,
never “Hello,” he grinned or “Hello,” He grinned.
Note that something isn’t a speech verb just because it’s a sound you
make with your mouth, so generally stuff like laughed or giggled is
in the second category. Furthermore, if you’re breaking up two
complete sentences it’s “Hi,” he said. “This is it.”
not “Hi,” he said, “this is it.” or “Hi,”
he said “this is it.” And if you’re breaking up a sentence
in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,” he said, “is it.”
If there’s no speech verb in the break, you use a dash, like “Hi.
This – ” He looked around. “- is it.”
Well,
having the character continue after the reset could be interesting,
but given the last two chapters have pretty firmly established them
as someone who doesn’t much care about others, it’s hard to care
about them.
[You
want to bite him, though you have no mouth. ]
[If
you had a mouth, you would be smiling.
Also, if you had a mouth,
you wouldn’t be stuck in this situation in the first place because
the humans and gray beings cannot understand your race’s way of
communicating. ]
Okay.
Look. I know it’s been a while since the start of the comic and his
introduction. But yes, he has a mouth. He used it to eat food and
also a lump of uranium, which was the reason Bec Noir tore him open,
causing PM to drop his unconscious body on the ship which is why he’s
currently with the kids.
While
we’re at it, yes, they can make sounds with the mouths they have.
They use radio. If he personally isn’t talking, it’s because he
doesn’t want to.
(He
also very obviously knows how to write, what with him being an exile
that’s supposed to communicate with the players, so he certainly
could communicate somehow.)
I
will grant that the idea of him seething with rage and murder plans
while Dave shooshes and cuddles him is amusing.
[The Handmaid smiled sadly. Oh, poor
guy seemed to be infatuated with her. Pity really, she was already
taken.
If you could call her current
relationship an actual relationship. It was more like she was a
prisoner, held captive by a perverted man-child.]
I’m pretty sure it’s that she actually
is a prisoner.
The way you write her with the rest of
the Felt is done well.
It was “like” she was a
prisoner. Oh, fandom, fandom, fandom. Why.
Semicolons
do not indicate sophisticated or intelligent writing, even when
grammatically correct. Use sentence-connecting semicolons sparingly,
judiciously, and only when the ideas in the clauses are inseparable.
If you have a semicolon sitting between a pair of sentences because
the sentences are kind of, sort of related, it just makes you look
pretentious.
Dialogue is written as “Hello,”
he said or “Hello!” he said, never “Hello.” He
said or “Hello.” he said or “Hello,” He said or
“Hello” he said. The only exception to this is if the next
sentence doesn’t contain a speech verb, in which case it’s written as
“Hello.” He grinned, never “Hello,” he grinned or
“Hello,” He grinned. Note that something isn’t a speech
verb just because it’s a sound you make with your mouth, so generally
stuff like laughed or giggled is in the second category. Furthermore,
if you’re breaking up two complete sentences it’s “Hi,” he
said. “This is it.” not “Hi,” he said, “this
is it.” or “Hi,” he said “this is it.” And
if you’re breaking up a sentence in the middle, it’s “Hi. This,”
he said, “is it.” If there’s no speech verb in the break,
you use a dash, like “Hi. This – ” He looked around. “-
is it.”
[I’m (y/n) ]
I’m assuming you mean this to be an
abbreviation of “your name” and were just oblivious to the
fact it’s already one for yes/no. Regardless, writing around actually
giving the character’s name is easy and that’s what you should’ve
done.
[“Oh! I thought you looked a
little young to be a teacher. I’m (y/n).] could easily have been
[“Oh! I thought you looked a little young to be a teacher.”
You gave your name.]
[You are a political annalist then… ]
I believe you mean “analyst”.
[“Hey, Kankri.” You said,
smiling at them, and hating the looks of amazement they gave you. You
were used to being the only girl, but it still sucked actually having
to convince the men that you were just as good as them. ]
So is the fact Kankri doesn’t believe
sexism is real actually going to end up being an issue?
…well, not in the next two
chapters, at least. I really hate when people try to use Kankri as a
supporter of actual, valid causes.
Not sure if trollfic or stupid
in-joke.
Sollux, Karkat, DD, Vriska (Stabdads
general)
DD, Eridan, Gamzee
Karkat (Jack, Terezi, Gamzee,
Seme!Dave, Nepeta)
FOC (FOC, Karkat)
FOC (MOCs)
WV (Dave)
Aradiacester (Felt)
FOC (Kankri, Karkat, Dave, Sollux,
Jack)
Original characters are getting our
numbers up! Five of eight.
Also, reached October!
Wordcount: 3774

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