A Perfectly Good Opportunity to Yell. · 7:00pm May 5th, 2013
Hey there! To you few readers that are keeping up with Gaius, I have a request:
Tell me what I could work on.
This is for both new and old readers, but I'm really hoping to get some responses from older readers. As many of you know, the new stuff is a revamp of the old story, which I felt was old and dry and going no where. So I want to know what you guys didn't like about it. Be it story issues or general feel or pacing or something else or repeating or over and over. Did you not like Gaius or the villians? Tell me!
I already have a new plot line laid out, but it's definitely malleable at this point and I want to make it the best reading experience for you guys as possible. So please give me some feed back.
With Spiteful Love,
Zong the Nefarious
When it got to the main plot, with the glowing spirits and shit, pride and ambition. I got confused.
It seemed to jump a lot and when shit went down, i was like 'What the fuck, how did it come to this?'
So the main point is the pacing i think, and more details on the major plot points, but i could be talking out my ass.
I don't know shit, but that's the problems i had with it.
How Gaius was defeated by the rock golems was understandable, however when it got to Ambition and all that, things got a little silly and unrealistic. It would make more sense to have ONE bad guy and several smaller bad guys (maybe a stupid recurring villain that is easily defeated, but keeps coming back in a hilarious manner)
For example, have Pride, Ambition, Gluttony, Lust and the others be personality traits that were broken off of the main personality and used to undergo deeds deemed unworthy of "The Master" full attention.
Also, the bad guys are a little overpowered (being able to take on an entire army single handed is nigh impossible without god-like powers. but because they are only an entity in a hosts body, there are limitations to the extent of their power. For example; these guys are still vulnerable to physical attacks and they can still BLEED. [one thing I keep seeing is that people forget that a character can still die of blood loss, not a severed limb].)
My advice; tone down the bad guy. Keep Gaius as is. Don't have too much going on at once. Slow down the events if possible, don't speed up the production of a giant wall if it is massive and time consuming, otherwise it becomes unbelievable and a little convenient for the bad guy (building the giant wall is a too big a project for it to be completed in a few days, it would be more realistic if it took a couple of months. By the time the final battle is happening, the wall could still be incomplete in certain areas meaning for a rather realistic [albeit slightly convenient] entrance route.)
1057328 Aggro has lots of good points.
If you're still going to have all of these personalities turned gods in the story, besides toning them down try introducing a few of them a bit earlier. A prime example would be Valor... I guessed in the previous iteration of the story that he would end up helping Gaius, but I think the story would've been better served if he had been around earlier, acting as the voice in Gaius's head telling him to help the ponies because he could sense the goodness and, well... VALOR... that even "Ninefinger" didn't think he still possessed. Mayhaps Valor was trapped by his brother Ambition in a blade (pendent, half shield, whatever) because he discovered his brother's plot to rule over their kind and take over the world. Now bound to that item (which Gaius could find in a hilarious misadventure), he tries to guide Gaius as best as he can, getting stronger (and more telepathically coherent) with the good deeds that Gaius does (intentional or accidental). Also, it opens up some hilarious moments, what with ponies and other races thinking the human, who is already strange, thinking his is stark raving mad when he starts having arguments with himself (from their point of view... from his POV it's perfectly rational to yell at the annoying twat in his head telling him to do things).
Anyways, I am still wanting to be your pre-reader to fix up glaring/blaring grammar errors for you (before you send it to your main editor), so let me know how we can work things out. Till later, hope to see more great adventures of Gaius the Bloody, and hope you in reality have a good year.
I'm horrible with constructive criticism but I will say I loved the villains, How they were avatars of evil sins like greed and ambition and such was really neat. I loved Giaus Nine-Fingers personality and was ok (but not a huge fan) with his messed up background but didn't like the whole chasing a magician who turns out to be a girl that becomes a main character thing. In fact, I didn't like the enchantress at all. She was just annoying or boring every time she popped up. She just wasn't that interesting. I also think you could have expanded on the whole approach and handling with human and unicorn magic. As the story progressed the vibe of things escalating didn't really connect. You didn't make me CARE about what all the evil plans were for because they didn't have any real emotional impact. I was just caring for the character interactions. I also kinda wished nine fingers could have hung out more with Twilight but that's nothing major. Anyway I'm probably not helping much so I'll end this message right here. Over all it was good but lost traction as it went forward.