Review Detail of TheSeagull in The Chosen Messenger of the Gods
Review detail
If I'm going to be really honest, this story smells like personal regrets. Either that, or a lot of assuming and not enough research, because I can't remember the last time anyone was considered underage for at 20, especially in ancient or rural Asia. This is set in China, right? Because Wei Lee sounds an awful lot like Chinese, and if I'm assuming correctly, his sister's name is quite possibly Wei Mei, or he just never calls her by name. Anyway, there are a lot of stray commas that don't really belong in the middle of sentences, and more than a few instances of incorrect verbiage from what I could tell after reading the first 5 chapters. Also, not to shame anyone or anything, but Lee comes across as more than a bit ******uous and entitled. While I usually look forward to watching characters of his ilk develop, this story seems more like it was written for the writer than any potential readers, which is not to my taste. It could be for other people though. Just my personal opinion, which is entirely objective. Anyway, you might want to add an 's' to 'uniform' in the second sentence of the first chapter, and get rid of some of the 'every day' mentions because it gets a little redundant. Good luck in your endeavors, and I hope you do well moving forward. :)
The Chosen Messenger of the Gods
SnowPenguin
Liked by 1 people
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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.
TheSeagull:15(2.2). I did not mean any offense by that comment either, I was simply trying to point out what I read, however I apologize for coming off as insensitively as I did, and that was wrong of me. Once again, I sincerely apologize for any inconveniences my review may have caused you, it was wrong of me to act that way. Hopefully you do not hold any grudges from this, and we can get along in the future. I won't add a happy face to the end of the comment as I was going to, because in my experience a happy face implies sincerity and goodwill but to others it may come off as sarcastic. Instead, I hope that you have a good day, and I will try to reread your story with my newfound understanding of how it works so that I can leave a more appropriate(and respectful) review.
1. MC is not underage. There's no mention of him being underage. There are only references to him being a young *****, and then him, believing about himself, that he's not ready for a few things, which implies... Also, read the text. 2. This is fantasy, a whole new world. It's in the fantasy category for a reason. If it was going to be accurate, there wouldn't be Gods flying around on swords, towns with buildings that can walk via the power of magic, the gate to the underworld at the bottom of a lake, and a protagonist who got chased through the woods by a creature made out of shadows. I mentioned opium later on in the story when that certainly wasn't prolific back then. 3. There's an implied reason he never calls her by her name, and if you can pick up on my own background, I think you'll pick up on the reason. 4. I apologise for the grammatical mistakes. 5. I went back and edited a few things for you. 6. *subjective, not objective. Nobody's opinion is objective. 7. The repetition of the word 'everyday' implies... 8. I know that you're smart. It's why I wrote out this list. It's also not past regrets, it's my current life. Having every single thing about you criticised, from the way you smile to the colours that you prefer, does take a giant toll on your mental state, and you do give up after a while, which only makes things worse, forcing you to retreat into a world of fantasy where everything has a chance to be better, and becoming gradually more and more paranoid that the world around you hates you, and is judging you, and is throwing more and more expectations on you. It messes you up. I tried to portray that in a more palatable way rather than just unleashing the existentialism from the beginning, so I apologise that it comes off this way. Somebody else has mentioned this before, so I've been addressing it further on in the story, when I first got the criticism. 9. Paragraph comments exist. 10. Describing my story as smelling like personal regrets is a complement. 11. If you're going to roast me for a paragraph, don't add a smiley face at the end. You'd look more polite, and more professional than your trying to pretend to be if you didn't. 12. I know that this isn't a good idea, but I had to sit for a while to process what you wrote. 13. For someone who claims to not like that the story is written for the author, you sure read a lot of it, and keeps bringing it up, which implies of yourself that there's some sort of insecurity. 14. Please don't do to me what you did to the literal only other person that you've reviewed so far. It stops looking helpful after the first few comments, and you can't add italics in your writing. He also specifically put his work as light hearted, so... 15. Considering that you only bring up negatives all the time and virtually nothing else says a lot. 15. Have you ever read 'The Scum Villain's Self Serving System'? You might enjoy it. There's a donghua of it coming out.
Alright, since you replied in a numerical format, I've decided to do my best to reply in the same manner: 1. Maybe I misinterpreted, but somewhere in the second chapter you noted that the mother had two "underage" children to feed. I'm not really sure what you mean by read the text(story?), and I wasn't sure what the rest of the first comment meant, so I've decided not to address it for fear of another misinterpretation. 2. My apologies for the assumption. Since it was tagged under Eastern fantasy I assumed it took place in the east, and made the comment. Again, I apologize for offending you, it was my mistake. 3. By this do you mean your personal background or the character's background? Because I don't really think I read far enough to get to the extended backstory part. Maybe I'll go back and give your story another go. 4/5. :) Glad I could help, but I dunno what you mean about me specifically. 6. Right, another mistake on my part. 7. Yes, I understand the point you are trying to make, however I just felt like it was a little redundant, because the other words you used already seemed to imply the monotony of his everyday life. 8. Thank you for acknowledging my comment. It means a lot that you think of me as intelligent. Also, I don't think that you should feel the need to apologize for a state of mind. It was my mistake for coming off that way, and as someone who understands how that feels I should have tried to be more considerate. Again, I apologize for my harsh criticism, and I appreciate how gracious your response was despite my obvious discourtesy. 9. Yes, this was something I recently discovered, as I haven't really touched this account in a long time, and back when I did use it, I was mainly a mobile user. 10. Now that I've read your explanation for the way the story is written, I guess it is? 11. My apologies for the insensitivity. I was trying to be polite, but I often come across as rude rather than blunt. There were definitely better ways I could have written out my review and I regret that I was not more conscientious when typing it out. 12. It was probably not a good idea for me to write a review without seriously taking note of the possible repercussions of my actions either, but here we are. 13. I do have my fair share of insecurities, and perhaps I didn't enjoy your story as much as I could have because I was projecting too much, or the writing felt too personal. I apologize again for lashing out at you when it was entirely my fault. I'm not sure what you meant by the first half though; was it that I read a lot of your story, or stories that cater mainly to the author? If it was the former, then I read a lot of the story in order to make a fair judgement, though it wasn't exactly fair in the end. If it was the latter, then yes, I do, especially when the author's view coincides with my own. 14. Yes, I understand now that you can't italicize titles. It was wrong of me to assume that. I don't know what you mean by the light hearted part. As for the remark regarding the paragraph comments, I did not take into the account the fact that others may not appreciate the same type of feedback that I do. I will try to be more considerate of this fact going forward, so thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will apologize to the other author for the italicization comments and the amount of paragraph comments, but I don't feel like much of what I said on the other review was wrong. In one of their replies to my comment, they used hyperbole to describe my comments, which is a noun, and used incorrectly. Therefore I will not apologize for pointing out their incorrect word choice. 15. I'm sure it does. I was not in the best frame of mind when I wrote said reviews, however that does not excuse my actions. Once again, I apologize for being so rude. 15(2). Yes, I have, but I'm not sure what bringing this up has to do with anything. Is it the comment about the character's relationship with his sister?
15(2.2). I did not mean any offense by that comment either, I was simply trying to point out what I read, however I apologize for coming off as insensitively as I did, and that was wrong of me. Once again, I sincerely apologize for any inconveniences my review may have caused you, it was wrong of me to act that way. Hopefully you do not hold any grudges from this, and we can get along in the future. I won't add a happy face to the end of the comment as I was going to, because in my experience a happy face implies sincerity and goodwill but to others it may come off as sarcastic. Instead, I hope that you have a good day, and I will try to reread your story with my newfound understanding of how it works so that I can leave a more appropriate(and respectful) review.
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.
SnowPenguin: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.