http://solarpillar.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] solarpillar.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] lilcrickee 2011-09-03 10:36 pm (UTC)

First, I have to say that the writing is pretty good. However, something about this fic bothers me. A good story has to have at least one of the following two: quest and exploration. This fic has no real quest and bare enough exploration. I mean, Green doesn't remember he's searching for his friends until he found them. That's no quest. Ok, he remembers that he's searching for something, but he didn't really search for it and it's just bam he found it and he remembers he's searching. It's kind of true for his personality, but it's no quest. And, being a fic that's centred on character portrait, it does explore the characters, but instead of giving us an exploration that leads us out and around the house, it walks around the same spot. They meet again, sure, they talk, yes, but it doesn't go anywhere by that. The exploration only confirms that they are them, but does not bring out more. And, college is way more than parties, drugs and sex. And most of all, why are they taking drugs? Sure they know they are coming back in another life and could make someone try drugs for fun, but if I knew I had lives to spend, I'd try something more risky and rewarding like doing bungee jump off a flying charizard. And why is Green so calm and remembering his past lives when he's dying from a fire? When someone is facing death, especially from fire, it's going to be "omg there's a fire there's fire am I going to die omg I'm going to die", maybe calmly, but one person can only think of one thing (death by fire here) per 'facing the death'. No thinking of walking down trails with friends there. Ok, they are stoned and drunk, so maybe they didn't feel the fire from that, but if they are stoned Green shouldn't be able to think or remembering of anything. If you want a character to think of a lot of things before dying, there must be an isolation from outside stimulus classified as "urgent!" and an ability to generate and receive inner stimulus. Speaking from personal experience here, when I got my foot stuck in a bus and was dragged across the street and watched my body got closer and closer to the wheel where I would be crushed, I did not have the time or energy to think anything other than "omg I'm going to die crushed by giant wheels" (fortunately people around yelled and pointed so the bus stopped just before I got crushed). When I got stuck in the snow in the middle of the night in the middle of a snow field, however, I got the time to think if I would die freezing first or I could sacrifice my fingers to dig myself out (I did a third option, too long to describe here). So yeah, in a fire they would be too busy coughing from the smoke (it's an automatic reaction from the body) and thinking about death by fire. If they were freezing in snow, however, the whole remembering the past thing would be more realistic.

Phew, long rant. No, it's not because it's bad, the writing is good and the whole "to have fate without destiny (有緣無份)", self-induced decay, the doomed feel of being in samsara, the even more agonizing fear of fading into nothing and no more life, and the perpetual feel of should be searching for something but don't remember what are very well conveyed. It's just that I got picky when some parts felt glaringly unrealistic or incomplete when the rest is so good and that the seed concept is so good. To sum it up, I wish there was more exploration than that and the quest could feel more real. I know that the Buddhist concept of reincarnation is being stuck in a muddy illusion and not knowing the why of life or its truth and you were probably exploring that, but to a non-Asian or non-Buddhist the reincarnation part of the fic is going to feel being forced on. Green's realisation was a mere relative waking-up, not an illumination; it would be good to have lucid-er points.

I'll stop here. I hope I didn't offend you. I ranted a lot, but I was actually very happy to see reincarnation as a muddy illusion where we are not sure what to do mostly of the times, as some kind of exploration that comes with a quest, rather than the more popular quest that comes with exploration version and the overdone type of save-load spamming. And your writing is good. Just more work on execution.

Ok, I'm ending this comment for real now.

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting