A year ago I read a story for a smash, but poked so many holes into it via comments along the way that the author threw in the towel and told me to stop and not keep reading. I brought her to drinking. I made her cry. I started to have a bit of a reputation on our mutual discord as I drank in the delicious tears. I left destruction and mourning in my path and people knew to fear me as they formed support groups for my victims.

Now, after rewriting the whole thing, the author has thrown herself on the altar to be sacrificed and to test me. To challenge. ME!

TLDR; An original fantasy following a girl trying to save her people, make friends along the way, and find out who she is beyond being a girl with a fetish for being high. Also dragons. And its the first part of a trilogy.

Main Characters - Smashing! - The main characters are cool, badass in healthy ways, with clear emotion and values. There is plenty of mystery behind them and their actions that is revealed over time. Pre-rewrite one was a mary sue and the other was an enabler to the sue-ness, and this has been, thank god, smashed. One is Wren and the other is Lorca. They both do their jobs well, bringing drive and purpose. They have their flaws and weaknesses, and there is some drama (albeit weakly), and some humor.

I love the improvements to Lorca, he seems to finally have some competence and personality instead of a 'OMG YOU SO AWESOME I MUST BOW BEFORE YOU' mouthpiece to Wren's awesomeness. Even as he fails, he at least tries to fight, and is capable of dealing with heavy blows. He teaches from experience, he finally has solid motivation that really brings out his pain and dreams to light, and he grows from being a side character to a proper primary. Yet even while saying that, it is just short of a fully well-rounded character. There is yet a little further he can go. Could use small improvements to really bring out things already shown. Like he has said he has never been out far, so bring out the mystery to him where he explores. Even something as simple as giving him a honeybun and he is like "what is this? it looks weird" and then he takes one bite and is instantly addicted because its the best shit he's ever eaten. The growth in him is fine and the growth as a character works fine, but there are some moments that the story is just begging to have that aren't there to keep it light in act 2. Like I loved the whole thing about them pondering the idea of setting fire to shit in act 3, that was hilarious and perfect and showed him as having that side of himself. Just take the elements and plotpoints presented and explore them, give them room to breath, instead of leaving them behind as quickly as they appear.

The way various mysterious aspects to Wren are drawn out is very interesting. She is no longer being conveyed as a damn Mary Sue who needs to be elevated and praised every few seconds. She seems out of her element and trying to keep up with the help of others and she does get through situations by the skin of her teeth a few times, and the fact that she asked to learn a few things was a big deal. Like Lorca, though, she could use a bit of improvement in act 2. She is well rounded in act 1, but in act 2 there is an expectation of being out of one's element that isn't handled... at all. For someone who has never touched money, never been in a big city, and has never experienced the culture and ways of the lower areas or big cities, she has little to no need to learn anything or figure out how to fit in. It might just me being picky, but when there is an entire element of world building of someone being relocated from one place to another, I would expect a sense of proper transition as they are out of their element. Someone who has never handled money will mess up with it. Someone who has lived in icy mountains will wear heavier clothes and be seen as weird, a foreigner, and get REALLY hot while also herself finding the clothes of the plains odd. Hell she could even be like "WOMAN EXPOSE THEIR ARMS?! THATS PRACTICALLY NAKED!!!" And there is never given room for anything like this, no sense of awe or learning of new places to really bring them to life, not the same kind of awe allowed that brought act 1 to being so great. The reason people loved the world building of harry potter or LOTR so much is that the authors pulled Harry/Hobbits out of their original place and put them in a world foreign to them where the characters had to learn and be filled with a sense of wonder, and brought us along for the ride.

When you get to act 3 the two of them are vastly improved. There is some romance (lets be real, authors always go for the most predictable route ever of sticking the first male/female they get into a romance), some identity crises that isn't actually dealt as a crises, and generally just a period that felt extremely human and allowed them to be involved. (more on this later.)

Side Characters - mixed bag - Some of the side characters are very well done and cool and serve different tones and purposes that fit the act they are in. Act 1 SCs are chill, think of small problems and dynamics, and have a homey feel. Act 2 SCs are more involved in the wide world and its problems but still keep to themselves. Act 3 is full blown politics, orchestration and power moved on a large scale, and nobody able to mind their own business. This escalation is smooth and fits with everything. The SCs also largely offer a variety of pawns to play with the MCs in different ways. I liked pretty much everyone from Act 1 and 3. They made the world rich and colorful and powerful and have weight, but the SCs from act 2 were just... well... let me explain.

The caravan and its motives have had small changes but a large impact. They feel more involved, more alive, and less random/retarded in doing something to aid Wren. The fact that they are already going to do something and want to bring her along for the ride as thanks for doing them a favor already versus them changing all of their plans to go cross country and wage war over her picking up a random-ass scrolls from a tower is not just a huge difference, its polar opposite. This was a small change but its about as polar opposite as Luke Skywalker and Rey Sue. Yet even as much as I love the improvement on them, on a basic level I am not a fan. Both of the old and new versions. The reason is that the caravan, as a narrative entity, takes control of the narrative and pacing away from the MCs. I like the caravan and the characters in it, they are colorful and nice and offer things to the world, but if I had to choose between the MCs going their own way and deciding their own pace and struggles to reach the destination versus joining another group and letting that group decide how fast they move or how slowly, I would generally choose the former because MCs who are truly in control and taking the steering wheel are incredibly powerful and loved, while MCs who hand the reins over to side characters for extended periods of time are seen as weaker. Like Frodo/Sam did in Fellowship of the Ring until Gollum led the way. Keyphrase: Extended-period-of-time. It is fine to have allies and work together and coordinate, but most of Act 2 in terms of how many chapters it takes is decided by the pacing of the side characters. And this loss of control for the MCs weakens them. The MCs lose involvement. And this shoots the pace in the foot. (more on this later. its a multi-facet problem.)

Now for the big problems with the SCs.

Bad guys are stupid and non-threatening so there isn't much, if any, tension. At any point. The protagonists have access to some powers and armies, but outside of one action, are a combination of incompetent, inactive, and so truly and incredibly imbecilic. There is no active threat, and what actions they do take seems mindbogglingly stupid. I get the fact that the hero is moving stealthily, so I wouldn't expect assassins all over the place, and I can get the lesser guards being ignorant, thats normal. But the decisions the higher-up enemy makes most of the time its a wonder she was promoted out being a janitor at McDonalds. She, literally, could have done nothing. She, could have done, anything, except the one thing she did do, and everything would have worked out for her. But no. She did the one plan, out of millions, that was so unironically, so stunningly, and against all rational and reason, stupid. The enemy in this story fits the quote by Napoleon Bonaparte, "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." I laughed when I realized what she had done until I almost cried in laughter in the sheer mockery of stupidity I witnessed and wondered if she was a joke and there was a real villain yet to be revealed whose entire agenda was to have a laugh. Every word she says. Every action she takes, whether by her own PoV or someone elses. xD Doesnt matter if its act 1, 2, or 3, its consistently redundant and imbecilic. It has to be on purpose! Author, come on, did you actually make her to be a joke?? XDDDD

We still aint done, oh no. There are so many SCs involved that this keeps going. (this is also what happens when the SCs take control of the story!)

The dark-fae-forest-dude still feels random as hell. Not as much as before because a lot of his fluff and bullshit was cut away and left with the dry bones, but he still just feels like filler. I seriously cannot tell what he is supposed to offer. Even if he offers nothing to the characters or their journeys, then why not let him be an element of world building? I dont mind filler when it offers something to the world, and if anything, I prefer them. I prefer moments where things are slowed down enough to really breath in the world. However there are still two problems. 1) His entire existance is a cut-off pace from what happened just before. Imagine Avengers EndGame. You have Thanos and his forces about to collide with the Avengars army. The two go running at each other. Fists are raised and people leap and punches collide- and now we are in Dora the Explorer looking for the damn rodent. For 30 minutes. Then as soon as we find the rodent we return to Avengers end-game to find Tony Stark dead and Thanos dead and a lot of people just dead. 2) He is so easily replaceable and disposable. When I reflect on the side character, who isn't even named as he is so unimportant, and wonder why he is there or what purpose he has both in the immediate arc but in the entire world, never mind the fact a nameless side character caused an entire important fight we were getting pumped up for to be reduced to a charge with no followup, then I am left with nothing. Characters who are replaceable are a waste of time. He could be an agent of the Empress, which could then bring more threat to her and possibly a sense of her being in league with the demons they fought or a rogue element. He could be the last remnants of a fae people in the forest struggling to survive and trusting no one, and that would bring so much life and pain to the world that is just so juicy while linking it to elements already introduced on the villains side. He could be a dragon/dragonair that fled and hid himself away in self-exile. He could be a demon worshipper or witch that lives alongside the demons to keep them being summoned and so sends out a message via spiders that some prisoners have ben captured for the demons to come eat, and this would pose him as a threat relevant to what just happened, bring a strong sense of urgency, and push them hard. No, joke, I just came up with all of this in seconds. It would be so damn easy to make him something really good, something relevant, and something powerful to both the characters and world building. He doesn't even need to say a single word about it, but the environment he lives in could speak for him, showing what he has kept and keeps to mind. But the house is empty. the environment is an empty hut partially underground. He could be so so many things, but nothing is used, nothing is gained, and instead an opportunity is deprived. He could be replaced entirely with, literally, nothing. Just delete the scene entirely and we wouldn't be any better or worse off than we were before. And when you have a character or element that is easy to replace like this with practically anything, then what value does it truly have? Even his second appearance felt so random I had to double-check the entire chapter to be sure I read it correctly. He entered the scene and left again so quickly I could have blinked and missed it, and amazingly, wouldn't have noticed a difference in the story if I had, which still brings to question why in the hell is he there. then he is presented a third time, merely as a name mostly, and I am again thinking "why???" Why waste our time with not just 1 appearance, but 3, as well as constantly referencing him having done something to the MC for the next 5-10 chapters when what he had technically done was... well... uh... nothing.

AND WE STILL AINT DONE! One more round! (this one pissed me off)

One thing that annoys the ever living hell out of me that a lot of people do, and I hated to see this story do as well, is political pandering. One of the biggest things I always emphasis is relevance. A plot point, element, object, person, trait, or even word, if it has no place in the grand scheme of the plot, arc, and scene, and if it is never utilized to push a plot or bring to light the world, then what relevance does it have? This ultimately includes anything political such as abortion, homosexuality, or anything that is modern and exists in our own culture as a hot button topic. Do people do these kinds of things in stories or history or just life as a whole, sure! But what does it have to do with the plot? Using my own story as an example there are plenty of characters who have relationships, with men and women, or have done things that would be interesting, but I never write it, because what would be the point except to jump on bandwagons and get cheap points thinking "If I include a black bi transexual muslim princess woman of native-american/jewish/australian descent born dirt poor, surely I will punch all of the political identity boxes and that automatically makes my story better!" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA-no. I promise if you sat with all your characters that exist in the background that remain unmentioned and ask them about their lives, they would have traits like these that can punch every identity-box under the sun, but you already, as an author, know not to include them, because these random-ass people aren't relevant and offer nothing to the story you have in mind. Hence their unmentioned status. If you want to include homosexuality or abortion or feminisms or scream 'hong kong belongs to china' or 'screw the jews' or whatever you want, go ahead. I will happily, HAPPILY, read a story of two horny as shit homosexuals where that trait is a primary point in an actual plot than a fantasy story where the two characters happen to have homosexual trait and that has no relevance to anything at any point and the author inserted it because lulz. Its about being true to the story. To know if it is or isn't, think this thought: "If this subject isn't such a fad these days, would I have normally put it in into the story or presented it in this manner?" If you can say 'yes', which I swear to god 99% of stories do, then kill it and beg your characters for forgiveness. Mary Sues make reading difficult, but this instantly pisses me off. I respect people who truly believe a political subject and keep to the purpose of the story, regardless of whether I agree with the subject or not, than people who just pretend and jump on bandwagons to be popular. Its that white-girl fake sjw woke bullshit.

If the two lesbians had been used actively, it wouldnt be so shallow to have them. Hell, I'd actually like them more than the random fae forest dude and they might be a nice pair to have going into act 3, but their entire existance is confined to a single paragraph seemingly. That is so freakin shallow. Hell, if you had even just made it subtle with the hand holding alone and not made a big deal about shoving the rest of it down our throats, it would have been good and just part of world building for the caravan. But its like you were trying to shove your politics. Which is just insulting and guaranteed to piss me off INSTANTLY.

All of this was act 2.

Act 3 has so many pieces and characters moving, though, that it has become difficult to keep track of them. As someone who juggles a large number of characters, I respect the attempt. However a few of the characters become a bit flat and are difficult to track. The former because they aren't being given character-defining things in contrast to other characters while the latter because there is not much in the way of reminders. Things like titles or defining traits to bring up on occassion as reminders go a long way. Like it is one thing to have [name][name][name][name][name] being used in a paragraph, but it is another to go [Alucard][The nightwalker][named dracula backwards][pet to the hellsing organization]["a real f******** vampire" he said after killing Edward][killed a lot of people to get this [vampire] title].

Grammar & Word Usage - Smashing! - The punctuation and grammar is 99.9% good. There were a few moments where a word confused me, but I brought them up in comments and the tiny things were fixed. Nothing else held me back. The story flowed quite well, at least in terms of grammar. It was easy to read.