I see someone got their first mask-maiden article out.
I'm gonna no-vote downvote1. There weren't any SPaG errors that I noticed in my quick read. However, your story starts in a place with no context and ends with a line that confuses me as a reader. I literally have no context. I can gather the protagonist is searching for a mask to equip using some sort of special blade that seems to be alive. But I don't know anything else. I don't see why this story is important in any overall narrative in the Mask Maiden's canon, since I don't have anything to connect it to. Users who read this without any context of the M.M. Canon are probably going to be as confused as I am.
As a certain English teacher of mine said, with narratives, don't assume your audience automatically knows everything about the world you are crafting (or in this case, adding on to).
It's apparent you put a lot of effort into this and it is a long way from the email article you had as your first idea as the contribution to the canon. But taking into consideration what I've pointed out above, I can't upvote or downvote because I do not know enough.
My sincerest apologies, as I imagine you were very excited to get this posted.
I hope you have a nice day,
~ Pen.
(I really need to start looking over my posts for SPaG errors. Good grief, I'm such a fast typer I make mistakes without noticing them.)
Apparently it’s supposed to be a maiden’s and Pantheon crossover or smth. I only know that bc this guy tried relentlessly to scale the protag here to Val in pantheoncord and kept failing miserably.
Nuuuuuuuu, I promise I wasnt
May your truth be unmasked.
Alright
This is critical
In the best possible way
Thank you. This explanation lays out to me exactly what I need to fix and improve. Ill absolutely take this into consideration as I work towards the next chapter. Thank you so much!
May your truth be unmasked.
This is what I sent Kit in discord btw:
On paper it has its positives, but there are two really major weaknesses that I really only think can be solved by writing another article that is meant to lead into this.
1. It tosses you right in with absolutely no context and most readers have no clue what the fuck is going on or what this is tied to
2. And it makes Drav seem very one dimensional, edgy, and murdery in a way that takes away from a lot
What you need is a separate POI article to give context to what is going on here and to add some kinda dimension to Drav so it doesn’t feel like you are in ur edgy powerscaling phase. You can’t really fix this article in the traditional sense. Just make something else to establish the character better, and if this character is established better elsewhere as something that you are meant to read before the tale, then it’s a lot better. It can be a good story on paper but fails as an intro for a character. The struggle between Drav and Aklavos could be interesting in theory but the way it’s executed feels needlessly edgy. If you genuinely want a compelling villainous character or if you even want to take on the role of my rival… you need something genuinely complex and not just “oh my character is this edgy all powerful murderer and he totally better than ur guy bc he more powerful.” 3rd grade playground stuff… since that’s how it feels like you have been trying to out compete me and I’m not impressed. Both because of how Dav is portrayed in the article to a certain degree and due to your actions offsite with how you have been actively scaling and trying to increase power for the sake of power. A character isn’t good by being more powerful Kit. And for the record… I genuinely want to see this guy succeed. (Insert lore about an offsite character arc Niki helped write that I think is the only interesting think about Dav so far.) But I still want to see this stuff play out and I’ve been interested in seeing some creation v destruction stuff that could be legit cool. But I want to fight against someone more interesting and that represents legit complex themes. I want this to work out and I believe you can grow up and get better as a writer. But there is a lot you need to learn about how to write a good character. Hope you can get better some day Kit.
I promise I wasn't trying to power scale. That was a one-off thing. He would still absolutely lose to Val, in all forms. As I have said, I will work on this. Thank you for the wonderful critique!
May your truth be unmasked.
There's a few SPaG errors. Some are Backrooms related, like M.E.G. needing an extra dot or the level in a name needing capitalised, but there's some others that aren't.
This story doesn't have great flow tbh. It's a lot of action without much depth. We're dropped in the middle of a story and told Devriel is morally ambiguous but that's about it depth-wise. Everything else is essentially "x happens. Then y happens. Then z happens." Action isn't bad at all, the audience just knows too little to justify so much action. It makes it hard to get really into this tale.
If you're gonna do more with this story, it's gonna need a lot more depth. I haven't seen much of this article offsite but tbh this tale fails to get me interested in this character. You've given yourself a lot of room to work with, you just need to fill it out so you've got a well-rounded character.
Thank you! This is good advice, and I have gotten the general idea that its pretty one dimensional from a few sources. I appreciate the critique! I'll work on it.
May your truth be unmasked.