Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-26417457-20190922000524/@comment-43749004-20190922224202

Hyper Anon wrote: Also I gotta ask, how are the characters OOC? I wouldn't say I nailed their potrayals but I don't think I fucked them up. Okay, let's break down the whole fanfiction piece by piece. I'll get to the OOC characters last, since that's the biggest problem here. Be warned though, this will be long!

1. Formatting -- is this meant to be a script, or a story? (Because honestly, it looks more like a script.) If it is meant to be a script, it is not correctly formatted for one. Scripts typically follow a very specific format. Here is a great reference for script formatting.

If it is meant to be a story, then your main issues lies in content.

2. Content -- This story does not have enough content. There is no description, no thought -- mainly just pieces of dialogue with a bit of transitional filler. For example, let's take this:

"Blake and Yang approached the Faunus Labor Force. To their horror, they saw hundreds of faunus with ripped clothes, lacerations on their skin, and they were in chains."

In this paragraph, they appear at the faunus labor force and are horrified to see the state of the faunus there. There is so much missing here: how did they get into the "faunus labor force"? What does it look like there? What are they thinking as they approach? What types of faunus are there? Are there guards? How do the faunus initially react to their appearance? Plus much, much more. You need to expand on this -- and everything else in the story, because it is too plain and simple. There should be at least a few paragraphs here describing just these two sentences, and that applies to basically every situation where mostly action takes place, or a location changes. In more dialogue-heavy scenes, long paragraphs are not as necessary, but something is needed to break up the contstant one-line long sentences.

It would also be a good idea to describe character's thoughts once in a while. This allows the reader to connect with the character better, and also gives insight to the characters' perspective on what's going on around them. Thought is one of the most valuable pieces in writing, because it is not something that can typically be expressed in a show or movie.

There is no meat on the bones, and it essentially turns the entire thing into "she said this, then he said this, then she did this, then he did this" for the entire thing, which makes for a very bad, very fast story, which brings me to my next point:

3. Pacing -- this is very poorly paced. The entire thing runs way too fast (I'd expect the final fight of the volume to take up a few chapters, at least), and jumps between locations way too frequently, which makes it disorienting to the reader. The reader needs time to adjust to a location change, because that usually changes all of the characters, the atmosphere, and, of course, how they interact with the world around them. Additionally, I would expect many of these set-up scenes (such as Emerald deciding to side with Salem, or Watts and Tyrian meeting with Jacques) to occur in earlier chapters that lead up to this one.

4. Quality -- this is piggybacking off of content, but frankly, your writing quality is not good, and your style is non-existant. There is no atmosphere, energy, or personality in your words. You need style to create suspense, to portray emotion -- to essentially make your characters and your story human. Saying "Emerald was vengeful" does not have the same impact as, for example, "But now... now, she embraced it, that heavy tide of retribution that had seethed within her for so long, dormant, locked behind her own fear of it, her hesitance to let it rise within her and take control." The ability to describe is the gift of writing, and you must take advantage of it. So many people love to read because they enjoy imagining what they are reading in their heads, so you must give them something to imagine with. Barebones sentences will not do.

Honestly, the best way to improve your quality of writing is to read a lot of books and practice.

5. Actual Plot -- the plot is not very good. Many parts of it seem to be ripped directly from previous events in RWBY (for example, Jacques pulling the "I have bombs!" card, similar to Adam in V5) or other pieces of media. There are also a lot of improperly described pieces of lore, such as how Weiss broke Emerald's illusion, or the effects of Hazel injecting Dust.

6. OOC -- I think the main reason why you have so many OOC characters is because you have not been able to grasp/emulate the atmosphere and style of RWBY itself. Additionally, you're looking at the characters much too one-dimensionally: "Hazel is pacifistic, Emerald loves Cinder, Mercury is a douche, Tyrian speaks in a Shakespearean manner, Jacques is an ass, Yang is level headed." These entire characters don't revolve around simple archetypes or descriptors. Yes, Jacques is an ass, but there are many types of ass. Yes, Hazel is pacifistic, but that does not mean he simply has all of the characteristics of a stereotypical pacifist, and nothing else.

Let's go over a few characters specifically:

- Ruby: Ruby doesn't kill, no matter what. (The same goes for Weiss.) She either attempts to talk her way out of conflict, or find some more pacifistic alternative. In Volume 6, when Cordovin didn't listen to her, Ruby didn't kill her -- she trapped her. The only time she has ever intentionally seriously harmed someone was when she cut off Tyrian's tail, and that was only after he poisoned Qrow. She would not kill Tyrian, unless, maybe, he killed one of team RWBY. She wouldn't even kill Cinder, probably, and if she did, the act of killing someone would seriously haunt her.

- Emerald: I get that she decides to side with Cinder/Salem, but she is not the same as Tyrian in her devotion. She is not a psychopath either.

- Mercury: Why is he also such a bloodthirsty psychopath, all of a sudden? Why does he smoke, vape, etc.? Why is he also perverted? None of these are at all accurate to his character.

So many characters die, or get maimed, by people who wouldn't kill or maim them. Many, many characters say or reference things that really have no place in Remnant: vaping, "yeet," incels, etc. There are a lot of sexual references (Yang saying "Harder daddy" as a way of 'distraction,' Ruby joking about room 69/a porn stash, etc.) that are completely out of place... I can't even imagine how you think those would actually fit in the show so far.

NVDelta's list is pretty accurate. Honestly, pretty much everything in this entire story is out of character -- I don't really want to waste another hour listing them all.

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In short, this story is poorly formatted, badly paced, lacks content, has no personality, has a bad plot, and all of the characters are incredibly OOC, along with most of the RWBY lore also being described incorrectly. Like, do you really think you could open a published book and find anything like this inside? Honestly, this looks more like something you'd find in an adult comedy cartoon, like a RWBY-turned-South Park kind of deal. It is definitely a step up from your last piece, but if this is one step up, then you've got about 500 more steps to go.

If this was some sort of giant joke, well, I hope you got something useful out of my lengthy review anyway! :)