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Full Version: "Livin' It Up"(mega lemon, drug use) *review*
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Whoo boy... you want this reviewed, right? After trying to sit down and read a couple of your fics, I gotta be frank!

It is VERY hard to concentrate while reading this, because for one thing, I could not care less for drugs. I'm not accusing anyone of using them, and I have a pretty open mind, but when I keep reading about something that I don't care for, it ends up boring me. All the use of drug names, how its administered, its like reading something out of an instruction manual or something, and its a very boring one at that. I had to force myself to keep on reading every time I read "heroin" or "cocaine" or "china white", and I don't even know what that is, and I don't care enough to research. I want to know what the point of the lemon is, is it the sex? Is it Lucemon's relationship with the humans? Is it the drugs? Is it the general era? Who are your target audience (who do you want reading this)? Are you writing this for yourself, or for other people to read? I can't say anymore about the drug use without knowing those, because this is only my opinion, and I think the drug use is boring and tiresome.

The italicized song lyrics are distracting. XD They shouldn't be in the same paragraph as the narrative! It keeps throwing me off when I'm reading, and I end up doing something else! XD Maybe you shouldn't use music in your stories at all, because the things we think about when we hear the same music differs from person to person. You see a whacked out digimon who can destroy worlds somehow ending up as a hippie and fitting right in with humans despite the wings, having sex and doing drugs. Someone else sees an elephant rolling down a hill. See? Totally different. I'm not saying you shouldn't get inspiration from music, just try not to reference the music in your work too much, because that makes people try to focus on the song and the story, and it usually ends up rather conflicting.

Its not a super or mega lemon. There was only one sex scene, and there were only four people. And I couldn't even concentrate on the sex scene thanks to all those lyrics! XD It muddles me up!

And then they take cocaine while doing it.

And there was more description in taking cocaine than having sex! D:

I'm not going to comment on grammar, punctuation or some spelling, because its all decent enough to understand.

After skipping some lines, I find myself totally lost, and I ended up having to back-track to read it all again. Normally, I skim lemons for length and content first before reading them, but it was nearly impossible to comprehend what was going on by merely skimming.

After finishing the story, I actually took a big sigh and asked out loud; "What the bajeezus just happened!?" XD One moment, they were- somewhere- doing drugs and talking about being high. The next, they're walking somewhere where underage girls randomly have sex and offer drugs to underage boys, and then a bed comes out of nowhere and they're fondling each other- and then a table- then more drugs- then some actual sex- all plagued with song lyrics that I keep forgetting have nothing to do with the narrative-

I think you just wrote something that makes people think they're high! XD That's an amazing feat!

Keep on writing, I know you can make something awesome, but try not to pick me as your reviewer as I know nothing about American culture, hippies, drugs and old American songs, so I'll just get confused and frustrated. X3 I'm sure someone else will read it and think its' amazing. I have stupid Asian genes, so... I can't really relate. XD
@ Psycho Backlasher. Thanks, for the opinion. The lemon, in general, was a commentary viewpoint of the era, in which it occurred. Lucemon was OOC(out-of-character), which I've stated.

My target audience is between the ages of 17-30(I hope it is). Also, I read your comment about the music being a difficulty for you to understand my story. My appologizies, for the difficulty. I've been trying to use certain songs as a "backdrop" to certain scenes. For example, on the lemon scene the song "Get Off My Cloud" segues to "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"--which I hope would provide a good "backdrop" to the activity in the text.

A person should, before reading the story should go to youtube and listen to the song. Did you at least, make an attempt to do so?
I have a lot of criticism I could place on this story, but from what I can see you probably don't want that. I'll only criticize it if you want to hear my opinion.
This isn't a place to pussyfoot, Asesino. Critique if you want, or don't post in this forum.

The same goes to you, GP. If you post something, expect the worst, and NEVER ask people to not bash you or give you negative comments.

Ray hits all the high points pretty accurately. Yes, jumping back and forth between the story and lyrics to whatever song it is (Which I made a quicklist of on Youtube as I read the story; I didn't care for any of them.) falls down very flat, and it just gets annoying and distracting to read. The Lemon does seem to place more emphasis on the drugs than it does anything else.

Found a few punctuation and spelling errors in here, especially where people are no longer talking, yet the quotation marks don't show this. I'm beyond trying to explain that there is no longer an excuse for this.

The buildup to the sex scene also falls on its ass. It's very sudden and random with almost no buildup apart from the line "Hay, let's go get some tail!" The sex scene also feels very bland and rushed, especially the whipping part. There is no emphasis on feel, taste, touch, emotion, or anything, and I'm tired of looking at lyrics and songs. Leave them out.

I didn't care for this one. 3/10.
Relax. I was being polite.
That's why I didn't review it. I would have to be "mean". But you are right.
Yes, actually, I did listen to the songs. But like I said, I got totally different visions that clashed with the story. I think Lucemon, OOC or not, needs a more developed character, if he is the main protagonist of this series.

I can't tell what kind of person he is, for one thing. Its like him being a digimon doesn't amount for anything, and the story wouldn't be any different if he were just a regular human. All I've found out so far about him is that he's quite used to being in the human world like he's been there all his life, is addicted to drugs and can get sexually excited, but I don't know if he's a cheery person, if he's generally serious, lighthearted, kind, chauvinistic... I also know that he's at the very least, friends with your character, Ari.

My advice is to try and give Lucemon a little more depth, a little more personality, and try not to make music or Lucemon the main focus and backbone of the story. Lucemon is part of the story, not the story, so the plot will need to be a little more obvious. Currently, the plot you wrote is a muddled version of getting from Point A to Point B, in a straight line... but it felt lacking somehow, unless it's part of a series. I'm not sure what to say about that as I'm not much of a writer, and I don't really know so much about fine-tuning plots or characters, but I'm sure there's someone here or anywhere else on fanfiction.net who can give you tips.
(04-09-2010, 02:33 PM)Psycho Backlasher Wrote: [ -> ]Yes, actually, I did listen to the songs. But like I said, I got totally different visions that clashed with the story. I think Lucemon, OOC or not, needs a more developed character, if he is the main protagonist of this series.

I can't tell what kind of person he is, for one thing. Its like him being a digimon doesn't amount for anything, and the story wouldn't be any different if he were just a regular human. All I've found out so far about him is that he's quite used to being in the human world like he's been there all his life, is addicted to drugs and can get sexually excited, but I don't know if he's a cheery person, if he's generally serious, lighthearted, kind, chauvinistic... I also know that he's at the very least, friends with your character, Ari.

My advice is to try and give Lucemon a little more depth, a little more personality, and try not to make music or Lucemon the main focus and backbone of the story. Lucemon is part of the story, not the story, so the plot will need to be a little more obvious. Currently, the plot you wrote is a muddled version of getting from Point A to Point B, in a straight line... but it felt lacking somehow, unless it's part of a series. I'm not sure what to say about that as I'm not much of a writer, and I don't really know so much about fine-tuning plots or characters, but I'm sure there's someone here or anywhere else on fanfiction.net who can give you tips.

Thanks for the tip, dude. I might just rework the entire story. Let me add something to this; the song choices I picked were set as a backdrop to the activity within the story, which I thought was a great idea. I should have shorten the paragraph lengths or included the lyrics on another line than the paragraphs.
The biggest problems I have with this story are as follows: the random name dropping, the dialogue, and the characters. The lyrics in between and the drugs didn't bother me as much, so I'll just touch on them quickly.

The drugs. I am not a big fan of drug use or anything like that, so right off the bat I'm cynical about the whole plot. But, much like my hatred of peas, I can accept that other people DO like that sort of thing, so I'll let drug use slide. Now as for the music and lyrics throughout the story, it just doesn't work. I can see what you're getting at, and I understand you want to set a certain mood for the reader, but this kind of thing is more tailored to film. Film and writing are two very different mediums, and music just doesn't mix well with writing.

By far, my biggest gripe with this story is the dialogue. The characters talk like they're robots, which is probably why I didn't like them AS characters.

"I am ENJOYING this MUSIC . Let us do some CHINA_WHITE my friend."
"Yes, friend, I too am enjoying this MUSIC, and I would ENJOY some CHINA WHITE."
"BZZZT. WARNING, SENSORS INDICATING LACK OF 'TAIL'."
"SCANNING FOR 'TAIL'. ... ... ... NEGATIVE. INITIATING 'TAIL RETRIEVAL' PROGRAM. ... ... 'TAIL RETRIEVAL' PROGRAM INITIATED."
"BEEP BOOP."

The conversations just don't seem like they take place between two living beings, hence my drawn-out robot analogy. I like to offer ideas on how to improve on mistakes, so I've found that there's an easy trick to writing dialogue. I find it works pretty well, and it goes like this:

After writing extended dialogue between characters, stop and read it aloud to yourself like you were actually having this conversation in real life. You might have people asking who the hell you're talking to, so I would suggest doing it when nobody is around. Once you've read it aloud, you have to ask yourself a couple of questions: Does this make sense? Does this sound like a real conversation? If you answered "No" to either of those questions, go back and tinker with your dialogue until you can answer "Yes" to both. That way the readers don't get hung up on awkward wording or strange word placement. Speaking of strange word placement, the names of the drugs, the bands, the venues, the songs.. they all seem.. well, out of place. It's very jarring to have very specific names dropped into the story without any explanation.

While I'm on the subject of strange wording, there are a couple of other problems I have. The first is a minor problem, and that is the changing of story perspective. It might not have been intentional, and instead a simple error, but on a couple occasions I noticed first-person words like "I" being used outside of dialogue while the majority of the story is told from a third-person perspective. The second thing is a problem with tautology. If you don't know what tautology is, it's like saying the same thing twice. Here's an example from the text:

"Two boys gathered around a red-orange psychedelic lava-lamp in the small, dark room, while under the influence of LSD tabs. The room they were was barely lit, save for the lava lamp;"

The last sentence is saying what was already said in the first sentence. A second example near the end:

"Cassie was sucking on the nipples of Lucemon, he began to be arroused by the rapid sucking of Cassie."

This sentence could have been simplified by saying "Cassie was sucking on the nipples of Lucemon, which aroused him".

Now that I look back, a lot of the problems I had with this story were caused by that overly complicated repetition of words. If you can cut down on that repetition, I think the quality of your writing would improve significantly.

I hope I've helped, if only a little. I tried to give as much constructive criticism as possible. There are other criticisms with realism I could make, but I don't think I would have anything constructive to say about those problems and it would probably end up sounding like whining, and I've already whined enough.
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