quick review from someone who binged what there is so far just today. If its not welcome i can delete.
Thank you for the review. I don't mind people criticizing my work. I can be my own harshest critic at times.
thing for me when I was growing up.
My big confusion with it is why everything escalated so damn quickly. If i had to peg a tipping point i think id say after we woke up from our mind magic lesson. Before that it was just highschool drama and some fun school puzzles. Then all of a sudden within the span of like two chapters we have got demons, dying daddies, and we are apparently a homonculi, tho apparently all elves are? Boole spilled his life story to us insanely fast. Like we havent even known him for a full week and he wants us to help him hide his abused little sisters and solve his soul slave problem. I mean i guess he is desperate but it all just feels rushed as hell. Then miss andriod spills her lifestory super fast and put herself as our workhorse incredibly fast and easily. If she can be pushed around that easily how is she a teacher in any way? For "our first fight" i think it honestly would have been best to rewrite it so that she left a baddie for us our something as a combat lesson (since you admitted in the post that you felt you had wrote urself into a corner) it would have been a believable situation.
But overall its just feels like the story suddenly kicked into hyper gear insanely fast and characters divulged to us and are supporting us as though we were charisma 6 or something. Im going to stick around if thats ok, but i just wanted to voicd my concern over how we just went from having to worry about being able to write good to having to deal with the fallout of a demonic pact with city and possibly kingdom wide implications in the span of a day. If its going to be a fast paced crazy thrill ride awesome, but i dont feel our character is equiped for that and our power progression seems to be a bit slow (we have to start with spending weeks learning how to write better for godsake) for that. Regardless im hooked for now and despite its quirks im enjoying it.
Well, there are several reasons for that. I will admit that pacing, like structure, is one of the things I find most difficult to get right. I very rarely have people criticize the quality of my writing, even when maybe they should (there are parts of some of my older quests which I think are poorly or lazily written), but the pacing and structure of my quests is something that people complain about. And rightfully so. The thing is, I put a lot of work into planning out epic backstories and plotlines way in advance, but I have no patience, so I end up spilling the beans as soon as possible. So, for example, in only a few updates, my Hedge Maze Quest went from being a silly story about a very minor god futzing around in a large hedge maze to an epic saga about a universe-spanning war between gods, demons, and evil wizards. I just can't control myself, I guess.
Another thing to bear in mind is that this quest went on hiatus for seven months shortly after its inception. When I came back and decided to continue it, I was keen to get things moving again, which may have exacerbated my usual tendency to rush things. Also, I think I was feeling like, "The story is more than forty thousand words long and the plot hasn't even shown up yet. Better hurry up with that!"
Thirdly, I will say that there are in-universe justifications for all the things you've pointed out as "escalat[ing] so damn quickly." Dorian's dying father was always going to be an important part of the story and this was hinted at in one of the previous chapters. Philander would have kept silent about his problems for longer if he hadn't very nearly accidentally got his sisters killed, but because Dorian was a witness to that he doesn't see the point in keeping secrets from him anymore. And Green Flame hasn't told you anything about her backstory which couldn't be deduced just by looking at her, if Dorian knew anything about folklore or the history of elves in this setting.
I think part of the problem is that my intentions don't match up with people's expectations for this quest. If you expect Dorian to immediately become a mighty wizard and kerbstomp all of his enemies quickly and easily, you're going to be disappointed. This isn't a shounen anime where the kid hero gets a major power-up to deal with the first bad guy, and then another power-up when a bigger bad shows up, and so on. In my mind, this quest is about being a tiny fish in a very large pond, at least to begin with. There are terrible threats and problems out there which you just won't be able to deal with until you're a lot older. For a long time, guile, subterfuge, and making yourself unnoticeable will serve you a lot better than any of the basic spells you learn. First and foremost, this quest is about surviving in a cruel, unequal, and rapacious society which will quite happily chop you up and render you down for spell components if you put a foot wrong. At least, that's the way it is in my mind. Whether that's what it will turn out to be when I get around to writing everything down is another thing entirely.
Y'know, when I came back to this quest after the seven-month hiatus, I asked if people wanted to start again or continue from where we left off. Most of the people who replied said they were happy to continue, but I'm wondering if it would have been better to start again. I could have paced it better, organized it better (yeah, I'm regretting the super-detailed xp and update system which is set to detail every aspect of Dorian's life for the next five years) and in general everything would have been better. Or, at least, that's how I imagine it might have gone. In reality, I'd probably have made a big mess of it again.
For "our first fight" i think it honestly would have been best to rewrite it so that she left a baddie for us our something as a combat lesson (since you admitted in the post that you felt you had wrote urself into a corner) it would have been a believable situation.
I abandoned the idea of any kind of 'combat tutorial' at that point in the story because Dorian doesn't have any combat skills and I felt that it would be irresponsible of Green Flame to put him in a position where he would have to fight.
As i said i think its interesting and pretty good so far. Just wanted to voice some concerns i had
Well, thank you. I'm glad you're enjoying it, in spite of everything.
Found this thread since someone advertised it on Threads of Destiny. They said it was a similar kind of magic school thing, and I guess it is, but... I guess the difference is that it doesn't feel that deadly?
I've never read 'Forge of Destiny' or 'Threads of Destiny' and I'm not entirely sure why you felt the need to compare this quest to them. (Hey, everyone, why are you bothering to read this?
Here's a much better quest about a magical school which you could be reading instead!)
To be honest, I wasn't even aware that there was a magical school in Forge/Threads of Destiny. I think I glanced over the first few paragraphs of Forge of Destiny several months ago, but xianxia isn't something which appeals very much to me, there was something about the writing style which I just didn't like, and it didn't immediately grip me, so I stopped reading. You might think that was unfair of me, but I'm sure that there are many people who've looked over my works and done exactly the same thing. I write the sort of thing that I like to read, and I'm well aware that my personal tastes don't exactly correlate with what's popular. I don't like Battle Action Harem Highschool Overcomplicated Title either. (I was quite vocal about that, a while back. Someone called me a "pretentious asshole" because of it. Or something like that. To be honest, I've forgotten what they actually said.)
So yeah, don't expect this quest to be like Forge/Threads of Destiny. It's not Forge/Threads of Destiny, it's not trying to be like them, and I don't know enough about them that I could imitate them even if I wanted to.
I feel like it was suspiciously kind of the headmaster to insist on everyone being shoved into 4-person groups, and made it very clear these 4-people groups had to sink or swim together regardless of the personalities or abilities of the different members. When I think about our first year in Forge of Destiny and how everyone had a choice to join a group or try to strike out on their own, how even if you wanted to join a group, you still had to show you were useful and keep an eye on group dynamics...
The reason for the four-person teams is… well, the Doylist reason is that I was riffing on Harry Potter's golden trio, or the four-person teams in Naruto or RWBY. However, the Watsonian reason is that it's because the academy is supposed to provide the Sambian Empire with a regular supply of battle mages, weather mages, and various other types of mages who at various times will be required to work together in teams. Your personal desires and preferences don't matter: whether you'd rather work alone or choose your own partners, you've got no choice but to stick with the team you're given, like a good little cog in the Imperial war machine.
This version of magic school felt much less exciting, and honestly less darwinist than I was expecting from the headmaster.
I know I've said several times that Opernus Prentigold is an asshole, but that's not all he is. I envisage him as the sort of person who can seem pleasant, wise and caring when he wants to be; you'll only see the 'ruthless asshole' side of him when you find out about his backstory, or when you ask him to solve one of your problems for you. After all, he is a public figure and has to convince members of the public that he is doing a good job as headmaster. He is quite capable of putting on different guises.
I think I made a mistake in putting that speech by Opernus Prentigold right at the beginning of this quest; it seems to have given readers the wrong impression, or set up expectations which run counter to my intentions. You see, in this setting, magic is dangerous. With fire magic, you could easily reduce yourself to a burnt-out corpse; with mind magic, you could be left in a drooling vegetative state; with illusions you could turn every waking moment into a nightmare which you can't turn off; and so on. But it's not like (for example) Warhammer 40K where every time you draw upon the power of the Warp, you run the risk of unleashing demons into reality. There isn't an element of randomness which makes using magic inherently risky. In this setting, if you're careful and know what you're doing, you'll never be in danger of doing yourself any real harm with magic. On the other hand, a lot of young mages are killed because of their own recklessness, stupidity, and incompetence. First and foremost, the purpose of Prentigold's speech was to scare his young students into being cautious. Because, from his point of view, every student who gets him or herself killed stupidly is a waste of time and money.
In itself, the school has the potential to be a dangerous place, but it's not really any more dangerous than any other part of the city of Tyrepheum. What makes it potentially dangerous is the actions and decisions of the people residing within it. You may even be lulled into thinking that the school is actually a rather cosy and safe place, especially by comparison to the horrors outside (i.e. anything to do with Philander's dad), but it won't always be.
Still, I did binge through this, and I found it interesting enough.
Well, I'm glad you thought this quest was interesting, at least.
Honestly, the character I feel closest to at the moment is Green Fire. She's been helping us, seems to genuinely want to look out for us, and I like her slightly off view of the world. I hope we get to see more of her.
I think it would be insulting of me to compare what is going on in Green Flame's head to any real-life mental, medical or neurological condition, but I think it's fairly obvious that she doesn't think the same way as everybody else. In her own way, she is intelligent and competent – and she seems to care about the people whom she has a duty and responsibility to care about – but she's not exactly "normal".
Anyway, I've spent most of the afternoon and evening writing this. I'm gonna play some
Warhammer 2: Total War, mmkay?
