Apr 18, 2024
didn't finish this in Christmas lol
to be fair the first half was endless misery and I'm not looking for that at the moment
overall, quite solid, and it's obvious you have a lot of experience c: it's not only the prose that's easy to read and eloquent but also the spot-on structure from beginning to end, how well you were able to deliver emotions (because I was MALDING at the reindeers' treatment of justin holy shit), and bring the story back full circle without many plot holes that I can think off c: genuinely impressive if this was a first draft
I'll say the gripes I have are moreso with the themes in the sense that they're there and were presented well, but for how promising the setup was I supposed I expected... more? Like, you have this kid that's close to giving up on life, gets turned into a punching bag on a metaphysical level, and still refuses to give up even, though any self-respecting citizen would turn the north pole into a reindeer stew HQ. You also have this force of nature, almost, that's the counterpart to the supposed 'light' the north pole brings. It becomes more apparent as the story goes on that said place isn't all sunshine and rainbows but a borderline cult run by people (?) so obsessed with purging darkness that they not only cannot see their own, but actively foster it among the youngsters (Tornado comes to mind).
I was expecting you to expand on that, and maybe even to take the whole 'darkness isn't all bad' angle which, sure, you kiinda did, but in a way that seemed more like villain monologue 101 than actual commentary on the subject. And like, sure, you can just say 'lol this was just meant to be a christmas tale it ain't that deep', but then why show these ideas in the first place? Plenty of comedies explore hard topics in satisfactory ways, and I was so, so sure this would be one of them. If, again, this is a first draft, then it's a nitpick at best when the skeleton of the story is way better than most other examples on this site (not sorry).
I guess I'm also bitching about it because, again, you seem like an experienced writer who's past 'show don't tell' regarding advice, and mayhaps been trying to go the extra mile with this fic, so I'm putting that out there.
The second-to-last chapter was my favorite and a big part of it was the villain, but I also wished there had been a bit more insight into him. There was a chapter earlier on where the bully kid got akumatized, so I though we'd more of him at some point, but yeah. Nothing. It's like it almost was a good thematic parallel to Justin's uncanny determination, but in the end it felt more like cartoon villain no.40689568. Still, I like that the ending had an element of uncertainty to it without being too cheeky about the light and darkness thing. Justin bringing back actual light into the realm was great, too, as well as him finding strength in the few Justin truthers.
Ironically, I feel like out of all the characters, Tornado and Vixen might've been the most developed. This is wack because, more often than not, these types of characters are more devices to torture the main character and help him get anime protagonist determination or whatever, but you actually went full circle with them, and it was, again, Justin that enlightened them despite their constant torture. Other characters were nice overall and could've perhaps been fleshed out more, but they were serviceable and they did their job right so to say. Krampus would've probably been my favorite one if he hadn't ended up like a 90s jrpg last boss, but for now, Tornado takes that spot.
thank you for sharing this story c: I'll definitely check out more of your stuff
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