âFate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.â
- Lemony Snicket
A man down on his luck and having probably the worst time of his life finds some solace in listening to a caroler every day when he passes by a lone street corner. However, one day she is nowhere to be found and he hears a scream from a dark alley. What he finds at the end is both the worst, and best things humanity has to offer.
A Christmas Collaboration by Chivalry and Flanagan. Hope you all enjoy cause this idea was in the works for a while but we ended up having to rush 'cause of finals.
Rated T for Language
Chapters (1)
I loved this story. The interaction between Donovan and Sonata was extremely sweet. It almost makes me wish for a sequel with those two.
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Depending on how it goes I did actually have plans to continue it
6773163 That's amazing. I really want to see Donovan interact with Aria and Adagio.
Super Awesome!!!
This is such a sweet story. I really like it!
Although, I must admit that I went the first maybe fifth of the story reading Donovan's accent as Australian! Then I thought he was Scottish... now I'm running on the assumption tha he's Irish...
Lovely story.
Many enjoyment. Such wow.
Ehhhhhh. It was aight. Too much stereotyping and too many cliches though, the story would've been better without them.
That was sweet!
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Yea, this was my first time doing an accent like this, so I'm sorry for all of the issues with getting across he is Irish and not Australian. We also wanted to keep the name a secret till the end, which would have also helped you orient the voice in your head for him closer to what was intended.
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You're talking about the bullies right? Well, it was a way to get through that part of the story and move more onto what I wanted to cover. Granted, I will probably go back and change that now that I know that some of those references are a bit too old for most people to get and making the bullies more realistic to the modern times would be beneficial to the story. If you're talking about the stereotype of Donovan, then there's not much I can do there. It's part of what we wanted him to be so I won't be touching that for the most part.
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I am really glad you guys enjoyed this despite all of its flaws. I plan to work on this when I need breaks from Becoming Whole.
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My life is misery cliche. There are other ways to set up a person's motivations that don't involve them having a totally ruined life. If there's something in it that is relevant to the story (say, if the story is about hunting down your brother's killer) then it can be forgiven, but here the guy was miserable for the sake of it.
This entire section does nothing for the story. You could remove it in its entirety and honestly not even notice since you didn't even bring up his now frozen leg again. The only point for it is to reinforce the previous cliche: just when you think it can't get any worse...
Hello there hand to hand combat master, why is it that you're so easy to upset and don't have a job? Nevermind his frozen leg either.
It's by this point that I'm struggling to understand why you gave him such a bad day at the beginning. He seems to have magically forgotten all about it in the span of a half hour. I'm not arguing against the calming influence of Sonata here, but why the story started off with him having such a bad day. It completely threw me because the beginning was so dark, but all of a sudden this turned into fluffy happy times.
Why isn't he pissed? He started this off having a bad day. By this point my immersion is gone and I'm just rolling my eyes.
I feel like the section in the beginning was supposed to build up Donovan's character, but honestly the fight and his subsequent treatment of Sonata is far more relevant than him having a bad day. If Donovan had just been going to get a coffee like normal and saved Sonata when he realized what was going on it would be basically the same, character wise, for the buildup of Donovan. Give us a little backstory as to why he's so rough and tumble instead, and add in why he's so strong and you have a much better beginning without using the cliches.
It's not that the story was ruined or anything, and I'm sure that plenty of readers have more suspension of disbelief than me, but it's that nothing was added to the story that irritates me. Sure, I'm over analyzing what in retrospect is obviously a fluffy first time romance fic, but at the time I didn't feel like it was one - I wouldn't have left a comment if I had.
Nothing seemed out of place about the homeless people to me. It wouldn't surprise me if a group of hobos took advantage of a foolish girl who decided an alley was a safe place to take a break. Considering the setting you have this in that money could easily be the difference between life and death for them, and people get pretty desperate when their lives are on the line.
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I'm honestly grateful for your analysis and the care you feel (at least enough to stick around, comment, and be mad about it not living up to what you had hoped it would have). Fans and readers like yourself is how writers progress and get better. I had planned to go back over it now that the time crunch to make Christmas is over and really give it the spit shine it deserves as well as just continue the story from there.
Once again, thank you for your time and care. Yes, this was meant to be more lighthearted, but I should know better than anyone that some stories just strike a cord in you and you cant explain it but it gets you so damn involved even when your brain is telling you otherwise. I might not have made sense right there but if you do understand, then I don't need to say anything more.
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You might be surprised by the variety of reactions I get when criticizing peoples work. Many are very grateful for the effort, like you. Some just brush it off and ignore what I say. A few are very hostile and defensive, and I've even had a couple that just straight up deleted my comment without any explanation. It's their loss I guess: I can't help people who don't want to listen.
Good luck with your edits. I don't really have anything else to add since there wasn't really anything else wrong. The grammar and syntax are good, the pacing is fine, and the characters and dialogue felt real. It's honestly one of those stories that I'm just on the edge of giving a thumb up, but it just has that one thing I can't overlook.
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Sorry to hear that people delete comments, but here in 'Merica, even if I dont like what you say I'm not gonna deny that you said it. Edits are pretty easy. Fixing the over done stereotypes and better characterizing the main character is a breeze since its mostly just changing around some of the words to better fit what is established later. No big deal.
The Bible verse before the fight was a reference to Alexander Anderson from Hellsing wasn't it
Excellent story! I was engaged the whole way through. Loved Donovan's characterisation.