welcome to the first train stop
Derrick Thomson (PV3P)
So, reading Derrick was actually a pretty fun experience in that before this, I had not read a single bit of PV3P before, so I went in not really knowing what to expect. I'm told that there were lots of bodies due to the existence of NPCs and stuff, but you don't really see that in Derrick's story. His story is very self-contained. The summary that I'll throw up here is that he has a rocky start, but then he has one of the better island romances I've read with Nanna-Fiora Kroos (props to pip), and that latter point, really, will be the focus of my review.
But before we get to the meat, let's start with the profile.
It outlines him as this kid who likes watching sports [watching because he wasn't accepted on the team :(], and reading about international history. The crux of his story is that his father, who he was very close to, died a few years prior, leaving his mother basically non-functional and forcing him to step in as the father figure of the family, including his two younger siblings. So, he's reliable, hardworking, and a bit rules-oriented because, well, he has to be the adult in his household.
No sandbox here so we're brought straight to the island.
His Beginning post and intro post in his first thread give off a hint of resigned apathy, 'Get it over with' kind of vibes. It's a nice vibe to start off with.
Throughout this review, by the way, I'll be dropping a few quotes that I like, or a few quotes illustrative of issues I have.
He looked upwards at the pane of glass and studied it. There was once care built into this place, probably as much history as well. Good or bad? Didn't matter anymore, it would all be covered in blood, bullets and fire by the end of it.
From the first post of his first thread proper. It's a good bit of environment building, description, good at hinting at a sense of dread.
And then he encounters someone else.
So, Derrick's first thread proper, Element of One, is a fight scene with
Ulrich Stanley Astley. And, like, the choreography in and of itself is perfectly cromulent, perfectly acceptable, 5/10, but I do take a few issues with this thread, and this is actually where the bulk of my constructive criticism will be.
I'll start with a slight PSA. This is something
a lot of handlers do, so it's not special to this character, and in fact both handlers in this thread make this mistake at least once, but I figure I should get it out the way now. So, to be clear, this is a GENERAL PSA. PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS, ANYONE READING.
He felt his face hurt from earlier. A brief look at his hand showed blood, another showcase of why he's not going to underestimate this guy. He wasn't taller than Stan, far from it and dude was chunkier than him. He had some power behind it if he tried, but right now he knew who was in charge.
The normal mode of writing in SOTF is past tense, so I'm gonna proceed assuming this is the case. It's really, really important to keep your tenses consistent throughout the prose. If you use past tense once, you use past tense throughout the entire paragraph at the very least. Same for if you're using present tense for whatever reason, and even future tense if you're feeling spicy. So, like, for example, the error in this paragraph above could be edited like below.
He felt his face hurt from earlier. A brief look at his hand showed blood, another showcase of why he wasn't going to underestimate this guy. He wasn't taller than Stan, far from it and dude was chunkier than him. He had some power behind it if he tried, but right now he knew who was in charge.
Other important things to point out (in general, I don't recall any further mistakes like this in Ohm's prose) are that the past tense of 'will' is 'would', and 'can' is 'could.' Yes, those words have past tenses, and failing to use them when inappropriate causes your sentences to read janky.
Like, this:
Sample Text wrote:He wanted to escape the island so he could achieve his goals and dreams.
reads better than
Sample Text wrote:He wanted to escape the island so he can achieve his goals and dreams.
So, just a thing for
anyone reading to keep in mind.
OK, PSA over.
Now, another issue I have with the thread is, like. There's a nice vibe set up here in that it feels like two kids walking into a thunderdome, so there's this sense of expectation. Like, the intro post sets up the sense of expecting trouble, and posts 3 and 5 give off the sense of seeing an approaching storm cloud in the form of a blonde fascist narcissist with boxing gloves. So, the vibe is nice in isolation, and it's a cool fight thread in isolation, but that's the key phrase here. In isolation.
I haven't read Stan's previous threads so I can't tell how justified the vibe is on his end, but for Derrick, like, this is his first thread. His profile gives no indication of him seeing violence on the regular, so there's no reason to expect him to be accustomed to it. Yet, the vibe set up in the beginning is that he's expecting trouble, but not dreading it. I don't see any sense of fear about possibly dying, despite the fact Stan walks in bloodied. Like, they enter, the tension ramps up, and then the violence happens, and this proceeds in a manner very similar to a day 6 fight in SOTF main, where both kids are expecting violence. And it's reasonable to expect violence given the nature of Program, but there's not even the slightest hesitation or fear or whatever, so it just reads a bit jarring to me. The thread
Final quibble with this thread is that, like, the sword is not taken into account nearly enough. Derrick enters the fight with a
massive advantage over Stan in that it's sword vs boxing gloves, yet the thread ends with Stan taking Derrick's bag and running off. And, like, this turn isn't really justified too much because, yes, Derrick hesitates several times in the fight, but also, like, the beginning of the fight is Derrick getting punched by Stan
while he has the sword in his hand. I'd expect if you're getting punched out already, you, like, skewer your opponent for self-defense right??? It doesn't even need to be deliberate, it just needs to be waving the sword in panic.
Like, I like writing out a good bout of fisticuffs as much as the next guy, and it was fun to read and all, but I feel more should've been done to keep the sword out of the equation if you want to insist on a fistfight, because the lack of use the sword gets is a bit glaring.
NEXT THREAD. Seek A Way Out!
So, tl;dr, this is where we start to see 👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀 good shit go౦ԁ sHit👌 thats ✔ some good👌👌shit right👌👌there👌👌👌 right✔there ✔✔if i do ƽaү so my self 💯 i say so 💯 thats what im talking about right there right there (chorus: ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ💯 👌👌 👌НO0ОଠOOOOOОଠଠOoooᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒ👌 👌👌 👌 💯 👌 👀 👀 👀 👌👌Good shit in Derrick's storyline.
We have this line in his entry post here.
His madman sprint had taken him to a rather industrial looking place. A lot junk and broken things lying around. Containers submerged in water alongside furniture and kitchen appliances. Derrick hoped most of that was broken when it was thrown away, lord knows he would have loved to have some new stuff like that back home.
and I really really like this line. It's a nice subtle way to point to his poor living situation. Like, dude's looking for furniture in a
junkyard.
So, the dynamic in the beginning of this thread is Derrick meets up with Nanna-Fiora, and the two have this tenuous peace because, well, murder island. But it's a friendly peace.
And then Cybil enters.
Now, Derrick starts to feel fear and stuff in post 12, and it's good stuff in isolation, and it makes sense because it's night and spooky noises at night are spooky, but why only now? It's incongruous with the fatalistic acceptance he showed when facing off with Stan. Like, he feels a Lot of fear too in this thread, when he was so ready to fight Stan in the first thread. And, like, I feel like the best solution to this would've been to let Derrick feel some fear in the beginning fight, but, like, have him fight anyways, since Stan was the person who started the fight anyways, so he wouldn't have a choice. So the fight would still be there and I feel you could hit the same beats re: Derrick wanting to find justice against Stan, but the progression of emotions would make more sense, and you'd have more justification as to why Derrick is so scared.
That context aside, though, I really really like the dynamic of this thread after Cybil enters. You now have these two people, Nanna and Derrick, who barely know each other and are barely friendly, being set upon by someone they don't know who is definitely not friendly, and the two are wondering, 'Could this other guy be allied with them against me?' Like, all three vaguely against each other, very fluid stuff, incredibly solid reading.
I'm gonna complain first about the sword again and then say nice stuff about the fight scene. Like, it feels like the prose loses track of the sword. There's a bit where Derrick charges Cybil right after he stabs Nanna-Fiora, and, like, this would be the perfect opportunity to skewer Cybil, but this simply doesn't happen. Like, Derrick's cheek gets cut, and I'm not even sure whose sword wounds him, up to now.
I'm being very particular about this because I'm of the opinion that in fight scenes, every detail really need to be taken account of. I need to know where the people are positioned, I need to know who's moving where, and I need to know why they're choosing this option instead of that option. Derrick has a sword and is fighting someone with a sword. So, I need a good reason as to why we're opting for charging and punching as opposed to slashing and parrying, since the latter would appear to make more sense in my opinion.
That aside! I love how messy and chaotic this fight is. This thread has good work put in by every handler (so good job Pip and MS!). Like, this is taking place in a junkyard in the middle of night. And, like, none of these kids are good at fighting. None of them really have any idea what they're doing. They have plans, but they're all half-baked and the only reason none of them die is because they're such bad aims. And also the blocking in this scene is solid. It's a really good fight scene. I also like the shifting dynamics, as Derrick and Nanna realize, whether they trust each other or not, they need to ally against Cybil, their mystery attacker, to have a chance of living. They find safety in each other. And this is a very important foundation for future scenes.
So, the scene ends with Nanna dealing with her rather serious stab wound and Derrick setting aside his also rather serious cheek wound to take care of Nanna. This is the dynamic for the end of Seek A Way Out! and the
NEXT THREAD. You Found It!
Now, for this part of the review, I'm gonna talk about the One True Pairing of PV3P (as far as I've read I know there's other OTPs in PV3P but I haven't encountered them yet so). There's some really good characterization squeezed in the latter end of Seek A Way Out and throughout You Found It. Like, Derrick is an earnest kid. He says he's gonna help Nanna, and he helps Nanna. He says he intends on finding Stan, and he tries, but places Nanna's life above revenge. Ohm has a strength for writing these stoic gentle relatable kids with a good head on their shoulders.
One particularly nice touch I liked is how Derrick thinks about how, like, he never had the time to buy into the USA's fascist ideology here. He was simply too busy taking care of his family to worry about whether or not he should hate people of color like the government said. But, like, he realizes his complicity in the suffering that Nanna-Fiora, a multiracial girl, has been through. He is complicit in that he didn't do enough to defend her at school, even if he never actively participated in it himself. And he feels guilty about that. That's something that needed acknowledging, and I'm glad it was.
This part of Derrick's story provides a foundation and a nice building-up of the interdependence the two characters have on one another. You see warmth between the two. Happiness, in the middle of this bloodbath. And you see subtle hints of something more, like when Nanna-Fiora traces the back of Derrick's hand with her thumb. It's really subtle stuff, but it's not hammering us in the head with declarations of love. It provides just the right amount of gradualness. It also helps how isolated their story is. The bulk of these two kids' stories is with each other. It's just a boy and a girl leaning on each other, finding happiness in a junkyard, beneath a blanket of stars. It's simple, beautiful stuff.
After this thread, the two walk out of the junkyard, Nanna leaning on Derrick for support, step by slow, aching step. Talking of stars, about their lives back home, their interests. And then they encounter a British helicopter and get to escape the island. There's a bittersweet feeling in Derrick's escape post because he's achieved rebellion, happiness,
escape, but he does this knowing he'll never get to see his family again, his beloved family he's been thinking of so much. He does this knowing there's a significant possibility his family might suffer reprisals at the hand of the government, and it scares him. It's a good, uncertain note to end things on.
AFTER.
The one-shot, Blue Angels, expounds on Derrick's worry about his family, his acceptance that they'll never see each other again. But also that he has someone to care for here, someone to feel safe with. Nanna. He traces her thumb.
Finally, we have Vive Hodie. I'll just copy my notes for this thread verbatim to sum up my feelings here
me wrote:oh my god i love this thread. im not one for romance, usually, but oh my god this is well written. the physical love language between the two of them. how they trace each other's thumbs. the concern for one another. the tenderness of their touches. the giddy nervousness derrick especially displays here. imnbvhdnsnfmasdfhsk
It's just the two of them, again, so it really sells the feeling of these two leaning on each other, depending on each other, growing fond of each other. And, as I've said, there was a really gradual slow-burn kind of build-up of feelings starting from when they first met, so it helps to sell the kiss a
lot. And, the foundation of this relationship is safety. They kept each other company on the island. Derrick saved Nanna's life. They found physical, and then emotional safety with each other. And so they grew closer.
And, and, both writers in Vive Hodie, Pip and Ohm, do such a great job of dealing with this love story in their own respective ways. Nanna is a girl who likes taking risks, so when Derrick shows signs of liking her, she takes the opportunity and allows him to come closer. And Derrick takes initiative first, yes, but he's nervous, he's scared, and Ohm sells the tension, his giddy nervousness perfectly. And then they kiss, and there's this feeling of catharsis. It's cute, but it's not oversexualized or overromanticized or anything. It's two nervous teenagers who don't really know what they're doing, falling in love.
And also the physical gestures!!!! Their thighs touching!!! Thumbs tracing each other's cheeks!!!! Lips brushing against each other!!!H!DFJVL:hefiytdakhbfkasd
This thread is incomplete as of the writing of this review, but it doesn't feel like it. I'm sure you guys could continue, and it would still be great, and I trust you two to pull out great stuff, but the last line as of now is
This is where he wanted to be.
which is a beautiful line to end on as is.
So, yeah. My feeling on Derrick overall is, despite a somewhat rocky start, he's a good kid who's easy to root for, and his love story is one I found myself surprisingly invested in. It's a good short read. Solid B.
