Sh4dE wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 7:10 pm
Arj, please! Also thanks for doing a critique thread, that's super cool of you
Let’s go wiiiiiiiiiiiiiith...Arjen! Because I feel like I’m now forced to work from the middle and also by leaving the Dodd brothers for last I get to passive aggressively start an international blood feud over WiFi.
Arjen Kramer aka Kramer vs Kramer
First Thots: Engage!
Arjen is an interesting one for me to review because the way I’ve consumed him is largely how I’ve consumed v7: nebulous and moment by moment as opposed to a cohesive whole. It’s impossible to talk about Arjen without talking about Marco and their dynamic--my first impressions of him are obviously along those lines. You and Toxie have done a great job and you can tell by how adored that combo of Arjen/Marco is in the chat zeitgeist. You’ve committed hard in leaning on the joke, making Arjen the butt of quite a few and handling his sniveling sneakiness with equal parts satire and skill. There’s a reason why that pairing is easy to talk about: Arjen is very easy and entertaining to read. If a writer’s goal is to communicate effectively, I think you do a great job of communicating and illustrating a good picture of Arjen: that’s a sign of great voice. Which I guess I say all the time and to everybody but it really is a writer’s first tool in separating themselves from a crowd.
Arjen’s vulnerability and quirkiness remains at the forefront of his biography and you can tell in his interests (particularly the anime section and the parts detailing his family and where those two intersect) sort of the vibe you’re going with. Arjen is very grounded to me with a sorta ho-hum biography with a lot of nuance and niche interests. You play the weirdo very honestly and very straight and I think Arjen is able to rise because of how grounded he really is. He’s a weird kid, but the normal type of weird--the homebody weeb ventriloquist who wanders graveyards in his free time.
That’s a high level, top percentage Tinder bio right there.
Island Thots: LET'S GO! LET'S GO! LET'S GO!
So, I thought Arjen’s first thread was the one on the yacht where he meets Marco, I wasn’t aware of the one shot that really kicked off the game. I read the one shot a few times and I didn’t know how I felt at first. I thought it was a little theatrical and it felt kinda corny? I kinda don’t like the whole narrator addressing me personally (go run and find all the times I’ve done that now), especially because while addressing me in a literal sense (the constant use of you) you’re also talking narratively to a viewer of SOTF, which I am not, SOTF ain’t real. I think if you’re breaking the 4th wall, especially with a prose style piece like this, you should’ve fully committed and really addressed the real reader as opposed to the fictional viewer.
Now, this was largely my first impression of the one shot, it really is made powerful by the ending and the switch back to Arjen’s perspective. I enjoy the dichotomy and the awareness of Arjen. The final reveal of first person at the end in turn strengthens the third person used throughout and it became clearer to me in a second reading that there was no disconnect between Arjen and the narrator. They’re one in the same. I like that stuff even if it threw me for a loop at first. So while normally I think the
first line in an intro post is the most important, it’s a great flip to have Arjen’s
last line matter the most. It’s very cool!
One of the things that I like about the intro post is that it lays out a tone and a goal for you as a writer right off the bat. It clues the reader into the story and your hopes for it and it also contributes to the thought that you even have a plan and endpoint in the first place. I didn’t know how I felt about the one shot and the narrative decision at first but the more I thought about it the more I enjoyed it.
“While there will be some scenes containing (dark) humour upcoming, the majority of the journey will be full of fights, betrayal, extreme violence and death.”
I appreciate this line, I see it as you setting out your mission statement. It’s a risk to introduce a character without actually explicitly utilizing the character until the end. I don’t know if this paid off and we probably won’t until Arjen’s story is done--but it’s very creative, smart and brave. I appreciate what you’re doing and it did a good job of setting the story you wished to tell.
Moving onto the thread on the yacht, I felt like this was a pretty funny thread and while Marco is the comedian, you for sure are the one setting him up and allowing it to work. I guess the translation to that is that Arjen is the butt of the joke but the practicality in an RP sense is that it makes him sort of the catalyst for the action. It’s centrally Arjen’s paranoia and Juliette’s duplicity which are the motivating factors here towards the ultimate goal of getting us a full mainline of Marco heroin. You’re a great teammate here, building up your threadmate without sacrificing your own characterization. I really enjoyed it.
What follows is a good bit of measured characterization between the two and you stay committed to Arjen’s paranoia and patheticness--while revealing an underlying resoluteness when he finally separated from Marco. The robbery was particularly high drama and your ending punch to the dick (metaphorically) was very satisfying! Arjen is kinda in a panicky limbo right now, alone and given way to his paranoia--but I wonder how long that will last? I don't know what I want more, him to become stronger or to continue getting beat down. I think that's how you want me to feel so good on you!
Also, like, did links beat you as a child? Link your threads kid, it sucks trying to read a piece cohesively and having to jump back and forth to the Wiki. Keep the Enter/Exit gimmick--just give me a goddamn link! The whole product will be better for it and it's already pretty good!
Final Thots: The Last of the Thots
I feel I kinda rambled here a bit! I overall really enjoy Arjen, I think he’s funny and interesting and a great display of fragility and weakness with a perspective coming from a low place as opposed to a high one. I’m curious as to what your plans are moving forward and I fully expect that it will be both zany, emotional, head scratching and thought provoking in very fun and good ways. Keep it up! Good stuff overall!
LINK YOUR THREADS B!