SnowPenguin

I am never going to continue this story, and I am unlikely to operate in this genre again, so feel free to criticise all you want. Also, you are never going to offend me. I have heard so much worse, and used to, on a regular basis, if covid could be given any credit for keeping us all indoors. You don't have to apologise for your good faith criticism.

I'll be honest. I like the fact that you were so willing to go in and point out what I did wrong, and it honestly kind of hurt a bit too, because I did draw on my own personal background. I was operating in Eastern Fantasy, but did, on purpose, deviate from standard tropes to lean more into historical and modern tropes of Eastern stories, including my own personal Eastern background, even if it's not Chinese. There was an Eastern Setting with this from the ghosts, references to the underworld, the resentful energy monster, the one Huli Jing that turned up in one scene, the Gods, the Jade Emperor, and the main character was intended to be a quarter God himself, through his father who was going to be revealed to be a half God. As for the backstories, I mostly relied on tropes and was banking that any potential readers would already be familiar with the archetypical characters of the genre, as I was planning to just bend those stereotypes and then reframe them, by removing them from familiar contexts of some wealthy, highly stratified household into one where normal harsh social boundaries cannot exist if everyone is poor and it makes no sense to keep them if survival is being risked. Take the mother, in any other context, she would be the scorned wife, a power player who got what she wanted, at first, with a son, but was then stuck as her son turned out useless, in her opinion. Her actions make sense and are rooted in her own tragic backstory, which implies some dark shit, because she's essentially rendered a pawn for the Gods to use and only there to sire a son, and then be discarded. The entire point of her was to pass down an early example of the cycle of war and abuse, for the MC to later on decide to deny ever passing that down and choose to suffer to do the right thing, after running away at every opportunity to stand up and do better without anything to gain. His mother was going to be fridge horror personified, as she was forced to marry a man, for knowing too much and then give birth to a son, and then an additional unnecessary daughter. She does get some sort of redemption and an acknowledgement of the verbal and physical abuse that she forced her children through, with a small reconciliation, but ultimately, she was there to show that judgements made without full information can be unfair, humanity is flawed, and that even those first seemingly evil have their own reasons. She was also the one who was going to be the weapon levelled against the Gods for their own sins, as the comparison to be drawn, with her being the only character to do so as the most traditionally socially useless character. Women don't matter outside of their reproductive capabilities, and once a woman has had a son, she's essentially rendered useless in terms of providing a purpose. Sure she has favour, but there's no one to give her favour if there is no husband, so she's accomplished nothing then, forced, in high society, to retreat to being alone and taking up unobtrusive hobbies, but she's poor here, so she's got even less social value. To make her better in terms of character, as she recognises where she has gone wrong, while the Gods do not, was always meant to be an insult towards them, and a deliberate upsetting of the social hierarchy. Her husband was actually alive the entire time and was simply following mindlessly orders from the Heavens to do what needed to be done, which was supposed to be explain our MC's weird behaviour towards his father's death, as he was supposed to sense what was actually going on. The God of Deception, in the restaurant, was the MC's father, and the MC was eventually going to become the God of Knowledge and Husband of Death itself. A lot of early issues were planned out to resolve themselves by the end of the story as more of the plot gradually unfolded and make sense by the end, with a lot of the subtext only possible to read if there was a pre established background in the genre.

I decided not to update anymore, and then take a break from this site because schoolwork, and other things. I am not continuing my old stories, as I sat down and took a long, hard look at what I had written and just wasn't satisfied with my output. This particular work was made up as I went along, and it's not very structured, and I only had basic outlines back then of where I was going and what was going to happen. I decided to stop, and if I do return back to writing on this site, I'll likely never tackle this genre again, and go for something else that I'm more comfortable with. I currently have one story planned out that I intend to post on this site later, but right now, I'm still in the initial stages of planning and I intend to make baby steps.

I regret to inform you that this work is being abandoned.

I hate to tell you that this work is now abandoned.

I'm sorry to dash your hopes, but I have no intention to continue the work. I took a break from the site, after deciding that, and I don't know if I will ever return.

I'm not writing this anymore, so I can reveal that he's in a coma. I have no intention to continue the story.

Aside from the speech thing, the story is well written and flows well too. There's a large cast of characters who are all portrayed well

The story is extremely well written and conveys a really powerful atmosphere and tone, making me feel uncomfortable. It really manages to set up characters really well, giving us the motivations and thoughts of the characters, and provide strange, contrasting disconnects that just makes me feel uncomfortable. I think that's intentional.

The story is well written and well paced with some really amazing character writing. The author definitely gets better as the story goes on with this.