Drunkenly Reviewing Every Low-Rated & Unranked Fiction here

[TheAverageFan]

He self admitted in the thread that he spent no longer than 10 minutes on each chapter, which basically explains everything. The age of the fiction also makes it seem like this was likely his first crack at writing (mind you this was 4 whole years before your join date). So it's not surprising that the writer would improve massively over that time. Perhaps we'll see him again on this venture.

~TAF, who also had to start somewhere

[Tornado]

I was pretty much always awesome.
Fun stuff TAF.

[Knight of Scape]

Originally Posted by TheAverageFan

He self admitted in the thread that he spent no longer than 10 minutes on each chapter, which basically explains everything. The age of the fiction also makes it seem like this was likely his first crack at writing (mind you this was 4 whole years before your join date). So it's not surprising that the writer would improve massively over that time. Perhaps we'll see him again on this venture.

~TAF, who also had to start somewhere

dragonfire also had to be pretty young when writing this. He was still active in the hangout (for members 17 and under) when I joined 4 years later. Also, your compass memes made me laugh a bunch TAF, well done ^_^

~KoS, quite certain that his own writing has improved massively since 2006, when he was in elementary school.

[OEAO]

The memes were perfect. My personal favorite line (purely for its subtlety) might be "One battlalion of orcs rushed in and killed all the knights, but all the orcs died too." Well done TAF.

[TheAverageFan]

Originally Posted by OEAO

The memes were perfect. My personal favorite line (purely for its subtlety) might be "One battlalion of orcs rushed in and killed all the knights, but all the orcs died too."

I mean, upon reflection it is a pretty apt summary of most Heroscape games

~TAF, who will get to the next one soon

[TheAverageFan]

Welcome back to Drunkenly Reviewing Every Low-Rated & Unranked Fiction On Here. This one is brought to you by Mike's Hard Lemonade, which as those who are familiar with it will tell you means that this will essentially be a sober episode.


#7: Dragon Den Adventure by S1R_ART0R1US

Our first still-currently-active author gives us an unusual tale, as Dragon Den Adventure is actually a pdf document complete with pictures, not dissimilar from the Heroscape rulebooks. For a better understanding you may wanna click on the link and check the story out for yourself.

The plot itself is really simple: just a basic dungeon crawl of the Master Set 3 heroes plus Brandis Skyhunter and their short adventure through the underdark. It's not really worth summarizing past that, as the real draw here is the pictures and the charming simplicity of the concept. I said previously that I give a lot of leeway for Dumb in my reading, and the same holds true for Charm. It's a very simple story that doesn't overstay its welcome, and it has some creative use of the actual Heroscape set for the pictures, similar to the Tales Of Valhalla stop-motion shorts. I'll give some examples of highlights below:

Spoiler Alert!

Spoiler Alert!

Uh, other than that I don't have much else to say. It's about a five-minute read, and it's not terribly written so there's not much to comment on that front. And I've already complimented the best thing about it.

Not a lot of jokes to make here. Are we all still having fun?

Don't worry, we're covering two tales again.

I'm gonna give this one a 7. The story itself almost isn't even a factor, just a basic short adventure complete with some typos and some witty banter. The pictures give it the charm that turns it into a fun experience and seriously boosts the rating. Had The Compass of the Spring been formatted this way it would've been a much better read.

I guess the moral of the story is if your short fiction reads like a ten-page picture book you might as well include said pictures. Listen to Gaston's wisdom like S1R_ART0R1US did, kids

#8: First Encounters: A Heroscape Fanfic by RealistWriter

This is actually a series of three short stories, all detailing the moments leading up to one's summoning to Valhalla. The first concerns Sgt. Drake and the Airborne Elite, hiding out in an abandoned house planning their next move.

Drake had done some scouting previously and found a hundred-man strong German army nearby. He tells the Elite to wait for them to pass before continuing, and posts one as a scout for that night. But it's a moot point as the Nazis find them and attack. Trapped in the house and with German guns on all sides the situation is stickier than your dakimakura, but luckily Drake and presumably the Airborne Elite are summoned out of the firefight.

It's odd because there is a setup for an event to come, and the fact that there are five AE in this story instead of four made me think that one might turn out to be a Nazi spy. I figured there'd be an attempt to sneak by that'd go awry, or a big battle scene against the hundred-man army, but no. The AE are all given names and characters in this story as well, but it too doesn't lead to anything. There isn't enough time for five Airborne characters to get anything of substance in here.

It is written decently enough. Not many typos of note, save for one:

Alexander spoke again, but the time in German.

Nein o'clock? Thank you, I'll be here all night.

Moving on:



The next story involves Thorgrim and his two brothers. Finn and Eldgrim return from battle to help the Tarn vikings fend off the Dreadgul army led by Ulrick (oh no, not him again!). In this story Thorgrim is even married to Ulrick's daughter, Mjoll, so the Dreadgul invasion has an extra layer of mystery to it. They should be at peace.

For some reason Elgrim exclusively makes his displeasure of the marriage clear by speaking in words that have to be replaced with asterisks on this site:

The bearded man grunted. "We're away for eight [loving] years and all you can do is stare?"

Eldgrim shook his head. "I told you to get rid of that power-hungry [unkind woman]. Had you listened, her father would have his filthy [finger-licking] fingers all over our land."

Eldgrim grunted in impatience. "...Ulrick and his Dreadgulls should be coming from the north. Are you planning to meet the [ne'er do wells] head on, away from the castle?"

Perhaps he's being overaggressive to compensate for his tiny point cost. Anyway the two Master Set 1 brothers ride off to sneak attack the Dreadguls, but they are outmaneuvered due to some sort of treachery and their castle falls under attack.

[insert It's a Trap meme here]

They return to the Tarn castle and fight Ulrick and his men, but are ultimately defeated and also summoned to Valhalla. The end.

This one has some more character, action, and a climatic battle. Decent, but there's still some unresolved stuff. Who was the traitor among the Tarn? Why was Eldgrim swearing so much? What was the point of having Thorgrim married to a Dreadgul if that never came back up? Why hasn't Ulrick gotten a C3V release?

Part of me expected Valguard to show up while still having the lizard arm. Moving on:



The last story is about Syvarris. In line with the Official Bio, Syvarris is an arrogant archer who talks too much, but his skills are nonetheless unmatched. He is recruited by some Aubrien Archers to attack some wolves within the forest borders, and is given the Bow of Ullar for this task. How the elves of Feylund obtained this Valhallan weapon is anyone's guess. Maybe Compass Ulrick gave it to them so he could steal it back later.

Anyway Syvarris goes with them and manages to kill some Anubian Wolves. But his luck runs out as Khosumet arrives. The Darklord easily defeats Syvarris and is about to kill him when Ullar intervenes and summons him to Valhalla.

I'm just gonna get this out of the way here because it needs to be said across all Heroscape fiction:

And that's the last of the three chapters. This is probably the best one; it is the longest and has some decent action. Plus Syvarris' backstory is less rigid in the canon so there's more the author can do with it. Additionally because of Syvarris' abrasive personality he does stand out much more as a POV character compared to Drake and Thorgrim. Though he does quip a bit too much for my taste:

Syvarris realized that the Darklord was at the base of the tree. “You can’t climb with all that stuff!” He shouted. “Why don’t you. Put your shield down so I can get a clear shot at your head!”

Khosumet jumped in the air with such speed that Syvarris had no time to react. When he landed on Syvarris’ branch the entire tree shook from the impact. “Oh damn. Oh damn!” Syvarris looked from the Darklord to the ground. “You can’t physically do that! Do you realize how high up we are?” Khosumet snarled in reply. “You know, you should really put that sword down before someone gets hurt.”

Balancing on the branch, Khosumet took a small step towards him. “And you know, you should really consider sports. You seem fit, and that’s a good, safe career!”

“You know, you’re probably hungry. I don’t taste very good. On the other hand, my friend Aesar…”

(This is all from one scene. It's almost half as quippy as literally any scene from Buffy)

Overall I'm going to give this one a 5, maybe deserving of a 6. It started pretty promising and decently-written, but the stories themselves aren't worth writing home about. They're too short to be all that memorable. And the number of typos starts to compound the further one goes. It's... fine.

Maybe it'd be better if it hadn't focused on such already-well known characters in the lore, save for Syvarris. RealistWriter had planned to do an entry for Carr which would've been interesting, and someone in the thread even asked for an entry for Brave Arrow (who as far as I'm aware doesn't star in a single fiction on the site). Lots of units' bios don't detail their origins before Valhalla, and some don't even have bios at all, so there's a lot RealistWriter could've worked with. But for the three we got, they're... fine.

~TAF

[TGRF]

So first off, it looks like you reviewed First Encounters once already, and I merely neglected to update the index, although I recorded your vote. Not sure how that happened. But for what's it's worth, your rating hasn't changed, so I guess at least we're keeping things consistent.

I wasn't sure if I should include your rating for Dragon Den Adventure or not, because the index says N/A. However, after wracking my brain, I'm pretty sure I only put that there because I never collected ratings for it, and back then indicated that with 'N/A' instead of 'pending'.

So I've updated the ratings. Any fiction which currently says N/A in the rating field should NOT be rated. This is either due to the nature of the item, or by the author's request. Anything which says 'Pending' is free to be rated.

~TGRF.

[Tornado]

A rating ban?
That is just the sort of thing that gets me fired up to rate things.

[TheAverageFan]

Originally Posted by The Grim Reaper's Friend

So first off, it looks like you reviewed First Encounters once already, and I merely neglected to update the index, although I recorded your vote. Not sure how that happened. But for what's it's worth, your rating hasn't changed, so I guess at least we're keeping things consistent.

Y'know, I got the feeling that I'd read it already during the Sgt. Drake chapter: but I didn't recall the other chapters and I couldn't think of any circumstances that would've led me to reading it, so I figured I must've read something very similar to it before. You can't imagine my relief at learning that I'd given it the same rating. I have been known to wildly vary when rating the same thing twice.

Originally Posted by Tornado

A rating ban?
That is just the sort of thing that gets me fired up to rate things.

You'll hafta do that on your own thread Tornado raids the Forbidden Section; we're barely avoiding the ban hammer in here as it is.

~TAF

[TGRF]

Originally Posted by TheAverageFan

You'll hafta do that on your own thread Tornado raids the Forbidden Section; we're barely avoiding the ban hammer in here as it is.

~TAF

I feel like I'm way more excited about that title than I should be.

But what are we doing to 'barely avoid' the ban hammer? There's nothing sketchy going on here that I'm aware of...

~TGRF.

[TheAverageFan]

Originally Posted by TGRF

But what are we doing to 'barely avoid' the ban hammer? There's nothing sketchy going on here that I'm aware of...

~TGRF.

Well we're less than ten stories in and we've got ebriation and KKK wizards and Nazis and abortions and Pogo the clown gifs and dakimakura jokes and...


Anywya welcome back to Drunken reviews, this time we're really brought to you by alcohol but it;ll be okay. We might;ve had a bit too much to drink but it's fine y'kniow just one shot more

(this is not a bit I'm really typing this up after having the full bottle of the grampa's coguh medicine, all typos will or may be editwed out lateR)

Today we're gonna review The Gene Chronicles. We woulv'e also reviewed Having a Marvelous Time by the Pumpkin King but it's a sequel to his other fic The Rise and Fall of the Pumpkin King which we'll get to, plus also...

NOPE. LATER.

Anyway we can do the long ones next time coming up. We might've been a bit more off than we can chew with all of these. It'll take so long to read and review all the fics even OREO will have finished his power ranking Unit Descriptions before I'm through. Listen, if you wanna help out just go up counterclockwise from the bottom of the list and go back up from the reverse alphabetical. If one of you takes care of two of these I'll give ya a +rep, and if two or more of you all chip in then I'll even consider publically announcing my undying devotion to the friendship princess:

Moving on...


#9: The Gene Chronicles by Fi Skirata

Fi Skirata brings us a short and mysterious tale about a scientist creating dinosaurs in the modern day. The scientist, named Dr. Polus Y. Salet (which is actually an anagram of Fi Skirata), is working for a mysterious benefactor to create... life. Dr. Salet succeeds and informs his coworker Francis to inform the boss, but then he is taken into custody. If yoiu think I;m being vague it's only because the story isn't especially descriptive with the Who What When Where and Why. We are given a picture of the dinosaur the MC brings to life, but other than that not much else is given for our theatre of the mind to work with. We're very much in the void as far as concrete details of our syurroundings are concerned.

So our hero is taken and kept in a cell and told nothing for seven days. At the end of the week Dr. Salet is visited in his cell by a Middle Eastern man wearing khakis and a blue tee-shirt (your guess as to why these details are important are as good as mine). He tells the Dr. to check out his window at &:00 and when he does he sees the followuing!:

As the planes came nearer and nearer, I began to see that they were dropping a stream of tiny items, while others where lowering bigger things to the ground. As I stared at the silhouettes, I saw something familiar with their shape, then I realized. They were lowering dinosaurs, full grown dinosaurs!

Afterwardss the doctor is set free by his captives, apparently to be eaten by dinosaurs now that his knowledge is too late to help anyone. He wanders the city and gawks at the horror and destruction he has helped wrought. He only wanted to make dinosaurs but now it has destroyed everything, perhaops including hinmself

The main character tries to take shelter ina hotel, going up to the seventh floor before finding a penthouse suite he's satisfied with in a section that taskes way too long for no reason; if you'd like to experience it in its entirety here it is:

After I had wandered for several hours, I realized that it was growing dark, and that I would have to gain shelter soon, for night would be when the predators would be about. Seeing a seemingly intact hotel building, I went inside and started to search for a room. The first floor was mass chaos and destruction, but I didn’t want a room with a window that close to the ground anyway, so I walked up the stairs towards the second floor. When I got there, the door to that floor was hanging awkwardly on its hinges, and from glancing in I saw that it was not in good shape as well. At the third floor, something appeared to be moving around, and it wasn’t a person, so I left the door alone. I passed the fourth, fifth, and sixth floor, finally opting to enter the seventh floor, which appeared okay. I locked the door and proceeded to check the entire floor, which was entirely clean, the little bit of disturbance seemed to have been caused by people running away in panic. As I went back towards the stairwell door to blockade it, I saw it was ajar. Needless to say, I quickly left that floor, fearing what might have gotten in, and climbed up to the penthouse suite. The door was closed but unlocked, and I quickly stepped in closed it and locked it. This time, the check only took a couple minutes, and when I got back to the door it was still closed.
I quickly proceeded to block the entrance with chairs and the one small table in the room. I then walked into the bedroom and secured its lock and barricaded it with a small nightstand and some lamps, which, though not much, would be a warning at the very least.

Didja have fun reading that? If so feel free to read it again. Anyways the next day Dr. Salet awakes to a man being attacked outside his room by some ... *checks*... Herrerasuars (here is a picture of one for your convenience)

But how big are these din—

Our protagonist saves the man and fights off the dinosaurs but passes out. But it works out because I was starting to wonder if any hostile dinos were gonna show up in this dinosaur story.

Lastly Dr. ... *checks*.... Salet wakes up in the company of some other folks. There's a woman named Dr. Amanda W. York, and a hispanic man named Julio Martinez. Julio is the leader of the resistance fighters, and his compatriots Eric and Mason and Marcus are also members. We learn about the layout of the office they are stationed in (and even given a picture). We also learn in detail everyone else's role in the resistance group. But a voice on the radio says that more and more states are falling to the dinosaurs every day (again this is not a Heroscape story as far as I am aware)...

That's all there is. 3. +1 for being moderately well-written with only a few typos. +1 for dinosaurs. If you think that's too low then I'll have you know that Sean who I read this to gave it a 2. So I am generous here.

I am left with questions, like who the heck is Dr. Salet, our protagonist? We know so very little about him other than that he was tricked into helping produce the dinosaurs, but other than that zilch (even with the 1st person narration). What happened to Francis? Who waas the middle eastern man with the khakis? Why was Julio worth mentioning as hispanic when no one else's ethnicity was brought up? I could've guessed he was hispanic with the name Julio Martinez. But no one else in his resistance group is detailed in any way. Like, either one or the other. Why were fast-growing plants that I never mentioned mixed in with the dinosaurs? And most importantly, what does Son Of Arathorn's comment mean?

Great writing, but the Repulsors fight for Jandar.

There were no Repulsors, but there is talk of unofficial bios in the first few comments, and the orgiinal post is edited. Was this originaslly an entirely different fanfic althogether? I have to say, that is a much more interesting idea to me than any of the questions I have for the actual story here. What was this thread originally? Perhaps we;'ll never know

Well, maybe we'll know a little bit. It seems that this story statreed off as an unofficial bio, probably for the Omicron Repulsors. But there is already another thread with group-made unofficial official bios for the Heroscape units that don't already have one. So it seems that Fi Skirata scrapped his and started over with this dinosaur story. Now after chedcking out the other thread mentioned here , it doesn't seem that Fi Skirata has any comments on that thread and no evidence that his unofficial bio was adopted for the Repulsors or any other units. So whatever it was has been lost to time. . .

... Like the dinosaurs...

... like tears in rain...

~TAF, off to get a pot of coffee

[TheAverageFan]

Now that I am less...



...I feel like now is a good time to mention the reasoning behind why some unfinished stories get slashed for their abrupt unfinishedness while others get a pass around here. I believe the main reason is that stories like Grey and Ceasfire give the reader a looming event to latch their excitement and expectations onto (the assassination plot for the former and the peace meeting for the latter).

Because of this even though the story is unfinished your mind can kind of chart out where it would've probably gone and as such some ideas of how it could've possibly ended. And typically one's subconscious is pretty generous when it comes to these hypothetical second-halves of these stories. Stories that lack this have their abrupt halt feel more like an anticlimax, since I have no idea where the heck they were going and extensively what the point of it all was.

So I guess the moral is that if you ever plan on writing something just for fun with no preplanned narrative or any idea if it'll ever be finished, make sure to include some sort of promised event for the story to hurtle toward. That way even if you don't finish it your readers can do the rest of your work for you.

~TAF