Hello all you mindless drones great and wonderful people out there. Zodiacspear here with another review with the PCaRG! Today I will be reviewing Big Tavi Lil Cardboard Box by All Art Is Quite Useless (or AAIQU) for short. As always, I will be focusing on four key points in my review. Those being: Plot, Atmosphere, Characters, and Grammar.

With that said, let me ask you all a question: Ever heard of Murphy’s Law? The ‘where anything that can go wrong, will?’ Well, have you ever heard of Cole’s Law?

It’s full of chopped up cabbage!

Unamused AJ is best AJ

Mandatory pun out of the way, let’s get to the review.
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First off, we have the tags: Comedy, Drama, Random, and Slice of Life. Of the four, I feel that the latter three tags are warranted. The Comedy tag, while there is some humor to be found in the story (especially the opening chapter), Comedy doesn’t really play a big role in the story. As such, I personally feel it should be dropped to better reflect what this story is about.

Character tags include: Twilight, Rainbow, Vinyl, and Octavia. Not much to say here except I would add Ditzy/Derpy as well as the story has included her more so than Rainbow and maybe Twilight.

Next, we have the description:

Octavia has recently had new bespoke shelves, drawers, and furnishings delivered, specifically designed to withstand the thumping bass of Vinyl's monstrous sound system.

If only she could get Vinyl to leave her speakers alone for long enough to assemble them.

This description would work excellently for a silly one shot story of Octavia trying to put together their home with the challenge of Vinyl’s music making things impossible. In fact, I could read and laugh at the shenanigans of such a story.

It, however, does not suit this story as of the time of this review. A description is supposed to give an overview of the plot of the story to bait the readers into reading—which this description does. However, it does need to be relevant to the story itself, and as I said, the story really doesn’t cover this at all. Moreso, it covers more on the in depth characterizations of the two titular characters and the putting the house together is mentioned only in passing. My advice would be to go back and redo the description to better reflect the main focus of the story.

Key Point - Plot As I stated above, the description doesn’t really touch on the main point of the plot. Maybe in the future as more chapters arrive, it will, but as of now, it doesn’t. The plot that is here, is character driven. Which I would expect of a Slice of Life fic. If you’re really wanting to get into the character’s heads, the author does that extensively.

Key Point - Characters The amount of depth the author has put into his main characters is easily seen and impressive. We get to know Vinyl and Octavia rather well and with some interesting development. These two really came alive in this story, and I found many of the author’s ideas as interesting. The booksmart Vinyl, hidden under her easy-going facade is something I thought was a different take than what I’m used to seeing.

Key Point - Atmosphere This is where the story gets rough. While the author does go into great depth with the characters, one can make the argument that it can be excessive at times. There were numerous times where my page was filled with solid text of inner monologue with very little show to them. While the author does set the scene of where the characters are, there is little interaction with the world around the characters and it feels something like a talking-heads situation. Anything, like tucking bags out of their eyes, their ears pinning back, nodding to a passerby, would have livened the world up around them and we wouldn’t be stuck in a set of monologue with no breaks to it.

Pacing is also an issue, if the description is covering the main plot, it hasn’t happened in over ten chapters. There is a little leeway an author can use to set the stage of the main plot before starting it, but the plot does have to move to keep the readers interested and hooked into the story.

Key Point - Grammar Mechanically, this story needs a proof-reader or editor. There are numerous mistakes throughout the story. Commas missing, run-on sentences, and other mechanical issues are present enough that I found myself pulled out of immersion often as I noticed them. (Sometimes it is very hard to turn off the editor inside.)

There are also many words that were used that are not commonly used in today’s society. While this is not a bad thing (at least by me, I love learning new words), one should consider the audience and keep things simple. If a reader has to stop and look up a word to see what you meant, you’ve effectively pulled them out of immersion in your story.

But I do want to note, there is nothing wrong with expanding vocabularies as it won’t hurt anyone to do so.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts While this story obviously suffers from grammatical and pacing issues, it is not a bad story by any definition. The character work is expansive and we really get to know them and learn of their fears, quirks, and inner workings. Also, I would suggest adding more show to your story, not only to break the long bits of dialogue up, but to make your characters part of their world instead of being stuck inside their own.

I am going to rate this story as Needs Work/Enjoyable because it is definitely both of those things. A good proof-reader or editor will clean it up nicely and make for a much more easier read.

I apologize for the delay in getting this review out, as other’s have passed me up in productivity by a mile… But hey, I got it done!

This is Zodiacspear signing out until next time!

Cheers!

5872414 Honestly, I wholeheartedly agree with a lot of this! Thank you!

First point, you're right, I have abused the tagging system somewhat. It's definitely something I plan on revising, now that you've pulled attention to it. I've had difficulty with the character tags, I was unsure whether to add them once they became more prominent later in the story, or whether to throw them in straight away as an indication of things to come. I'll definitely have a look at that, I have considered adding Ditzy Doo though!

Would you believe me if I told you that this story started out as a silly oneshot comedy, and that I kind of got really enthusiastic about it and ran away with the idea, then backtracked and tried to make it something formally cohesive? Cause that's the gods honest truth. I had a plan with the long description, and linking it to the story more effectively, but now, it seems like the story is going to run for too long to do that, and I might turn a few readers off the story if they feel like they're being missold by the description. (Sale of goods act, right?) I think that in the meantime I was hoping that it would be comical, that there was this pressing issue of the half ruined house that was alluded to maybe once in a blue moon, despite it supposedly being the focus of the story.

I'd like to think that I've got the slice of life element about right in my story, and I'm glad to see that you think so too!

Also very glad that you like the characters! Their personalities came to me all at once, and I was very glad with how they turned out on paper, thanks!

Maybe excessive, I've not really considered that. I've kind of worked to make the longer inner monologues something that is specific to Vinyl's character, it's just how I envision her thinking after all, but I can imagine it can be a bit jarring for the reader at times. I may revise this somewhat in future, I'm unsure whether I consider the length of her thoughts an integral part of her characterisation or not. You know, you make a great point with the lack of interaction at points, it's definitely something I need to work to implement more. I like the examples you made too!

Your point with pacing I covered earlier, a rewrite of the long description should help to change this! My plot is specifically focused upon Vinyl's journey, and Octavia's means of adjusting to it, the house took a backseat partway into the story.

I currently have someone beta reading for certain errors, and am hoping to put a good few changes into effect at a later date. The problem is that when I write I do so in a stream of consciousness style, most often at least, and don't think to plan ahead. Long running sentences are definitely an issue, although instances of missing commas worries me, I'm surprised I haven't been more thorough when giving my chapters the once over.

Honestly, I like my wording as it is. Sure, maybe a few things could serve to be reduced in complexity, but for the most part I'm happy with it, even if the occasional bit of verbiage might cost me a few readers. I think one of the main things is my fear of tautology, if I'm writing a long story, I don't want to find myself describing certain things the same way over and over, if I can help it at least. Maybe my means of avoiding that isn't perfect though!

Your final words on the story made me smile, there's a lot in the way of compliments here! Also, there's plenty for me to build upon which you've outlined clearly, and that's really great. Thank you very much for the suggestions, I'll take them all into account!

Hey, I'm really glad you found it enjoyable despite any issues, so thank you! Please don't apologise for the delay, I'm just happy that you wrote this out for me, and glad that I did as well as I did, considering this was my first story!

Thank you very much Zodiacspear, reading this put me in a great mood!

AAIQU

(p.s. The Cole's law joke actually made me laugh, I can't lie.)

Informative review, good show. Was lil put off by the story description honestly but now I am definitely marking this story to read it later.