Reviews for Love vs Power - FictionPress.com

FoxyGrampa
2007-03-26
ch 2,

And I ask myself; where did this GO?

What was even the point of having him be previously a girl? If there was any point, PLEASE, you have to show it. You can't just save it for later.

He starts off completely calm. He's shocked at first, but then he suddenly goes into priority mode and the whole story goes wacky-deli. I'm wondering first off how he could possibly plan so much after only 4 months, and second off HOW he gets the idea of martial arts into his head.

If there really is any reason--he was originally a female assassin, SOMETHING--you have to give off that impression throughout the whole story.

And you can't just have someone transported to a new world and have them suddenly come into step with everything, and even go against it. You needed to show scenes where he struggled with the culture, even if it was so similar. He still had to start his whole life over. Even for the most orginized person, that's a HUGE undertaking that most tend to avoid.

Not only that, but where is the conflict?

There's not conflict for 1/4 of the story. He was a girl... but now he's a guy! And he's perfectly a-okay! He was from our world... and now he's in a new world! Hunky doory, somehow.

He's suddenly a MARTIAL ARTS expert?! Within 4 months?? It's more than a bit ridiculous, I'm sorry. It takes years to master martial arts and train with katana. They couldn't be a squad of knights in their prime condition.

Even if they could, you gave us no good reason to have us believe this. The kid is skinny as hell and hasn't had use of his body in *twenty years*.

And on that--Twenty. Years. The kid would be brain retarded, and most of his muscles would be dissolved, as would his bones. He would be dead. Unless, that is, the world you speak of has advanced technology where he could be fed sustanence, but even so, *we* don't even have anything to help with the brain retardation most go through when they're a freakin' vegetable.

I'm very sorry I have to be harsh, but I feel it's necessary. You need to find something to go with in this story. Is there really, really a point to him previously being a girl? Because you provide us with no conflict for it. And is there any real reason why he has to act so high and might with his kung-fu-ness, and have everyone suddenly accept it?? I should think everyone would throw him in the loony bin with his talks of katana.

Just find a direction to go in. Find that major conflict I myself and fishing for in this story. The story's a complete blurr without any conflict involved, you know. I might as well not be reading a story at all.

Besides all that--formatting and writing wise:

Overally, the story has a few good analogies, and the dialogue is semi-believable (excluding your main character who seems to pretain no real personality at all). But overall, it lacks something to be desired, and that's mainly consistant narration.

You switch between limited third person a lot. It goes from being in Yuri's bias to his mom's bias to his dad's bias--that's almost okay with me, since I do it myself (though *far* more subtly), but you need at least contrast it between scenes.

As well, a lot of what you describe involves a lot of time skipping, which gets very tiresome for a reader.

In fact, it would be best if you cut all this first chapter into at least 3 or 4; it's so much words. Even I don't do this and I hit 5k with each of my chapters. How much is this?? Like, 10k?! Too, too much.

Your descriptions are often very vague, too. And the reader is being filled with information they don't need--like what Yuri did while the servants had gone to go get his mother. It really, really doesn't matter what hair driers look like in this world, since you don't even explain why it's there later...

I will as well note one more thing--the Harry Potter comment. That's a no. You might as well cut the whole thing out since I can't even take the motto comment within the story seriously, now that you told me you took it from Harry Potter. But overall, it's not good to interupt your story like that. At all. And it makes you lookk bad if you refrence things so off-handedly like you did.

Anyway... this story might be good if you just skipped this whole first chapter and went into the real story, and even just got rid of the whole "another world" schmeal--or at least him being female. I'm sorry, but no matter how much I hated my life, or how curious I am to be a man, I would be a very, very feminine man, and I would feel myself very off in a man's body.

That's all I can say. Just remember conflict, consistant narrative... and yeah.

FoxyGrampa
2007-03-26
ch 1,

"the miko her baby said."

What?

Besides that, I had no other problems with the prologue, other than its shortness. Also I was a bit confused about what tense it was being told in. It was as well very vague and without much description, but I expect there to be more when the story really begins.

Your concept is... odd. I don't commonly preffer shonen ai such as this--I like MEN, with MEN... putting a girl into it just musses up my whole world about it. But maybe you can pull it off. Gender benders commonly though are just plain awkward, in my opinion, in any situation with supposed "shonen ai" content.

But I'll read on and see how you carry it out.

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