junfriday

38 reviews all glowing positives? Then excuse me to be the first. I swear this is constructive so don't throw stones at me. First of all, to be fair, compared to most Hollywood stories on this site this one can proudly proclaim itself to be one of the best in terms of writing quality. The dialogues are engaging without being cringy, and it spared us from the unrealistic romance that you can usually only found in Japanese WNs. The lack of system shenanigans is a plus in my opinion. What I find disappointing in this work (and actually all Hollywood stories available in this site) is that none of the authors even bother to research how the industry actually works. Take WGA membership and script registration fee for example. This author wrote the former $500 and the latter $100, but just a single google search would fetch you the actual fee for membership is $2,500 and script registration is only $25 per script for general public (I have confirmed in person that it was still $20 back in 2017), or $10 if you're a member. You may argue it's in alternative world so the price may differ, but whatever. I personally can magnanimously forgive this mistake, though, because it wasn't as significant a mistake as the author's next one. The protagonist decided to make a feature film with $1 million budget. His target for the film release was two months later. The film he decided was 'that' Home Alone. Home Alone. 2 months from pre-production to release. $1 million budget. This is so wrong that I struggled on where to begin explaining this. Courtesy of, again, Google; Home Alone (1990) budget was big. It was initially slated for $10 million but production ended up costing $18 million, and that was filming cost only (cinema print and advertising is a separate budget). $18 million in 1990 is worth $40 million in today's dollar, or $33,7 million in 2017. This is not a "cheap" movie per se, $35 million is today's standard filming budget. Trying to film Home Alone for $1 million in 2017's dollar? Even if the entire actors and crews miraculously refused to receive any up-front salary, just preparing the set alone wouldn't be enough with that miniscule budget. In fact, forget filming set or salary, $1 million for the cinema print/film reel copies to distribute to theaters alone wouldn't make sense in the first place. Then let's discuss the time. Home Alone in actuality was filmed for almost 12 weeks (courtesy of a certain search engine) and that's only the filming part. Post-production always takes more time. 6 months for completing post-production work is considered fast here. The original Home Alone started filming February 14th and ended in May 8th. The post-production team rushed to make it ready for winter schedule. So the way the author made his MC prepared Home Alone from pre-production (gathering crew, casting) to be available in theaters in 2 months is simply doesn't make sense at all no matter how superhuman he is, except if one day in the alternative world takes 100 hours. This novel will make you think that if you finish the filming, the movie is ready. Oh my god. What about selecting which reel you would integrate into the movie and which is not, restructuring the pictures, editing the sound, making background music or securing the right of available ones, color corrections/grading, preparing distribution materials, etc. It takes months sometimes years doing the post-production, far far far longer than it takes to filming. Yet the novel only spared two weeks between finished filming to release. Plus the fixation on "8-year old actor" for Kevin's role doesn't make any sense either, considering Macaulay Culkin was 9.5 years old when he filmed the movie. Anyway, I give up this novel. I understand too much how the industry works that I couldn't turn off my brain to appreciate its other qualities. I hope this helps for author or anyone wanting to write Hollywood movies. My number one advice: use Google, it's easy. Don't know how to use Google? Type in Google "how to use Google". Bye.

I actually like the premise that the MC is not genius and his advancement is gained thanks to his system, and also the fact that the MC isn't an egomaniac who constantly pursue praises from nameless spectators like in a lot of Xianxia. However, it is quite hard to get absorbed into this story because the author's clear lack of writing experience. The story is being told like an explanation book. It's the "all tell and lack of show" kind. The enemies so far were basically the same, and the outcomes to his enemies are likewise the same. It was always these random guys wanting to kill MC because his low cultivation, and MC trying to lure the enemies to make their approach first so he can kill him quickly and discreetly, then MC shows strenght - the enemies pull the misunderstanding card - MC gives fist of bull strength! - the enemies died. The story lacks suspense, it has monotone vibe, and although there has been supposedly foreshadows being planted here and there, the direction of the story as of chapter 123 still isn't clear. I don't recommend this.

I enjoyed the novel until it stops providing anything it already provided, since after a certain length the story just keeps repeating the same plots without anything new to add. I knew it happens in most CN novels, I'm just stating it for the sake of stating it. That's why I decided to drop this novel after chapter 213, but I still like the journey of reading it until I stop. As you've seen from other reviews, the MC is cowardly. But that doesn't necessarily a bad thing, not to me. I don't dislike the idea of a story centered around its MC's cowardliness and how he dealt with his situation as a coward person. If you only want to read novels where the MCs take risks for greater rewards, this is not for you. But if you can tolerate an MC being overtly cautious because he prefers being safe than taking risk, I will recommend you to give this novel a shot. Sadly though, as I said, after a certain length the novel just stops producing fresh arcs and MC already established a routine that he keeps doing for what seemingly going to be eternity until nobody in the universe he can't insta-kill. The story seems to implying that MC will forever live in his mountain, and the routine will keep repeating itself.

P.S. the one censored word is a-d-u-l-t.

First of all, allow me to apologize for the low rating (61 reviews before mine and not a single bad reviews? You have to forgive me to be the first). The normal me would usually go full force on rant and rage in rewiew and comment section with this quality of writing but because I've been so hopeful of having more contemporary, non-Eastern Asian MCs and settings like this so much and the fact that the author has so far been maintaining a healthy stability of updates, I thus decided to give a rare constructive criticism where not only would I specify what's so bad about the story, but also to give reasons why and to offer some suggestion (to my best knowledge). Before we begin, I'd mention general mistakes that you might also found in this story: 1) bland dialogues; where the conversation just doesn't sound real except in Anime 2) lots of 'telling' and severe lacks of 'showing'; "show don't tell" is a rule of thumb that must be taught to every emerging writers where instead of just informing what is happening, a writer must 'show' it because outright telling it is simply called info-dumping, not storytelling. 3) cringy characterizations; from the characters shown so far they are all made of cutout carbon whose personalities is just so unbelievable and too convenient to exist in real life All of these made up the story into something extremely unrealistic--so much for a story set in real life, modern day settings. For these mistakes, however, I can't give much input because I'm an inexperienced writer myself and believe these kinds of mistakes are something that can only be mend with more experiences and self-learnings, so good luck for author with this. Now, I'll start discussing aspects in the story that I found to be simply too much incorrect and shows nothing but author's clear lack of research in a lot of things. FIRST MISTAKE: Hope Institute Orphanage. This is the name of the orphanage where MC grew up. I'm aware that this is a fictionalized orphanage. What is wrong with it is the fact that U.S doesn't actually run traditional orphanage system, they've abolished it since late 19th century and by mid 20th century any orphanage in the US shoud have gone extinct. What they run instead is called foster care system. In traditional orphanage system, any orphans with no relatives or family friends willing to adopt them would be placed in the orphanages and lived there until potential adoptive parents make a visit and decide to adopt any of them. Meanwhile in foster care system they believe that children is better placed directly into a new family in a private house. So for orphans who just lost their parents and aren't directly adopted by their relatives or family friends, they'll temporary live in with foster parents in their foster families' houses until (1) a legible ***** decided to permanently adopt them, or (2) they turned 18 by which the foster parents fulfilled their fostering obligation and the young adults would then be asked to live independently. Actually there are foster cares that operate quite like an institution, like treatment facilities for children with mental problems or clinically disabled, or Children's Houses--where a foster parents take in quite a number of mostly "unwanted, problematic children" (I mean zero offense and I blame the imperfect system for letting those children's life sadly spiraling down out of control), one of the worst type of foster homes where any children in the system would hope not to be placed in. For your information, the vast majority of children being taken care in the foster care system actually aren't orphans; they're either children protected by CPS from parental abuses, parental neglect, children kicked out of their families, etc. Many orphans in U.S. would usually ended up being adopted by their relatives or family friends, those aren't adopted by them would spend just little time in the foster care before the agency found parents that are willing to adopt them on permanent basis because orphaned children are generally seen to be "non-problematic". Infants, especially, are of the most popular to be adopted by parents wanting to adopt children because the adopting parents can rise them from so little and innocent. Actually, some of those institutionish-run houses are even using the name "Orphan" or "Orphanage" but most of the children living there are those abused, abandoned, or drugs addicted and needing help instead of orphans. So yeah, if MC exists in real life, he would have been living with his adopted parents since a baby instead of in institution like orphanage. Also yeah, Hunting Hollywood's MC who was written to have lived in orphanage before going to Stanford (iirc) is a result of author's ignorance too. On a side note, Hope Institute really exists in U.S., it's actually an academy for children with disabilities (like autism or clinical disabilities). (I feel it is quite injustice that I don't write more about the foster care, especially the bad aspects of it but since it is already past my intended point, those who are interested can just google it). SECOND MISTAKE: Serializing stories in L.A. Times. I know in some countries almost every major newspaper actually has a special column to publish fictional works, but in U.S. that is not the case. In U.S., paper media that do publish fictions are only literature/cultural newspapers or magazines (with The New Yorker magazine being arguably the number one dream choice of many writers). L.A. Times never publishes fictional stories. Also, serializing the stories in paper media is such a roundabout way if your aim is just to secure the copyright of your writing. You could simply write them in standard screenplay format and register them for protection in Writers Guild of America (the process is instant, but the validity is just for 5 years however you could always renew them easily) or you can directly mail them (even just the draft version of your story) to U.S. Copyright Office (the process takes time--usually 6 to 12 months--but the duration is lifetime [70 years in general, easily extended if you're still alive when it expires, or depending on its significance your family members can extend it even long after your death]). THIRD MISTAKE: Works in publishing industry and people's reactions make zero sense. He became an instant, debuting, best-selling children's book author by the tender age of 10, yet no mention of press interview request at all, and he could remain so "low-key" to the point that he could succesfully hide his identity despite no confidential agreement mentioned with the publising house or the people from L.A. Times who know of him. Dude this is supposed to be international bombastic news and the media people acted such incompetently that I had to pull my hair repeatedly to remain sane at how off-handedly author deal with this situation. Then... Jurrassic Park book happened. Jurrassic Park novel, if you've ever read it, is so heavily immersed in its biotechnology discussion concerning genetics and DNA that no mentally healthy person who have read the book would ever believe it is written by a ten year old kid, yet it just happened... just like that... and people directly involved with him and knew of his identity never casted any kind of doubt and this one character even went as far as laughing at someone who was amazed by the book because this someone didn't know it was written by a kid like nothing's wrong if a kid even capable of writing that... I... I... am trying to contain my rant so I decide to stop here. I haven't read much into this novel nor I plan to continue from where I left off (10 chapters are already too much for my mind), but the short amount of chapters I read already allowed me to know that this story is just like your regural original stories/fanfics from this site where the new emerging author is actually channelling himself as MC living the author's wet dream as supremely gifted capable of doing absolutely anything and everything in the most perfect and unrealistic way possible with all the girls of all ages attracted to him in the most convenient and unrealistic way possible, while the storytelling itself has lots and lots of works needed to be done to make it worthy to be called an actual story instead of journal-like infodump like it is now. It is disparaging but I hope author can improve his writing quality in his next works. Given his work ethic shown by his stability of updates so far I'm willing to believe he'll always improve himself in the future.