Ah! He caught me! I'm totally his cousin three times removed on his mother's uncle side five times removed. Worry not, young man. I shall show you the ways of smashing!

I took some time to read the story "Composer" by _KelWhite. I read half of it (20 chapters), as it is a reasonable length and I think it is good enough to warrant finishing at a later date. My reflections may change based on the events of the second-half of the story, but the first-half is important for its ability to keep people interested enough to get that far, and I feel I have a reasonable grasp of the story.

This story is published on multiple platforms for money so I will be holding it to a higher standard than I typically do.

TLDR; A bit of a slow, rough start but is an absolute blast when its characters are together. It is an original fantasy story that promises more.

Characters: Smashing! - The characters vary between richly done, hilarious, coolly-stoic, and (unfortunately) bland. The story seems to be, at its core, as a normal growing-up archtype you see from the 'Hero's Journey', as the primary MC starts off with well developed flaws derived from inexperience and goes through trials to become a better, more complete person that along the way ultimately bring benefit to the world through the plot. However the journey feels flawed because the MC falls into the 'reluctant hero' stereotype. Every step of the journey is forced upon her, every growth is with her reluctantly accepting it against her will, every chapter is another day of the MC doing things she doesn't want to do when she would much rather just be off at the farm lazying about. The inner reason for this constant reluctance is not explained so well that I can tell if it is stubborness, laziness, or basic teenage angst of "My blessed life sucks, woe is me!"

This is tied directly to one of her main flaws she has to learn to get over, but unfortunately it is also a flaw, that by its nature, makes her bland. It takes a very long time for her to have any dreams, desires, wishes, or positive-things to seek after for us to cheer her on for, and even when she finds a small thing to chase after, she immediately rejects every possible oppurtunity to grasp at it, until the story forces it upon her. She is reactive in the extreme. This saps away any desire I had to cheer her on and rather started cheering on other characters as they actually had things they wanted and were willing to be proactive about. They had agency in their narrative and made choices, while the MC makes... none. She makes no choice about anything at any time, depriving us of rich character development, understanding, and ability to relate.

The primary main character can be a bit bland at times, but it is made up by the surrounding characters. They balance her out beautifully. One guy is humble and awkward but tends to do things without thinking and stumbles his way through life. One guy is basically what would happen if you combined Loki's mischief and Tony Stark's wit. (So much so that comedy is LITERALLY his religion.) One guy is an extremely stoic soldier that shows by action-over-word to have a heart of gold. (This makes the captain by far my favorite, so well done.) and then the MC is as normal as a teenager can get with all the angst and self-pity and lack of discipline one could expect from a teen. Individually they are good but when you put them together they are an absolute blast as everything about each character conflicts in some way with the others in unique and understandable ways. It is a well balanced cast on a level I would expect from a "cartoon team" show where even the loss of one can ruin the dynamic as they would miss something as a collective. Like Justice League, Teen Titans, Avatar, and on.

The parents could use some work, in so far as the prologue, as their behavior never made sense. Serious shit goes down and they watch it with all the personality of "meh". It was so incredible the overwhelming lack of giving-a-shit that I thought I was watching a flat comedy or was being punked.

Grammar and Word Usage: Above average - I can tell a lot of care has gone into the story for it to have proper grammar and to be easy to read. The words are basic, and when not basic are either explained because the MC needs words explained to her, or are based on the world building. The word usage would benefit from being edited to be engaging and not formal, but it is at the very least good as it is. The constant use of single quotations left me stumped at times if it was thoughts or out-loud words being used. Some paragraphs and sentences were redundant. Overall small things.

World Building: Smashing! - The world feels like there is stuff going in the background. There are countries out there, nations, cultures, and etc. So the world feels thriving. Yet there is never a point where there is one gigantic information dump. If anything, the story gives us practically nothing, and what build building there is would be given so casually that I had to think about it to put the puzzle pieces together. I found this fun. The story focused on the characters and their hygincs and didnt waste time with giving us information we did not need. In fact, what world building there was, was only information we directly needed, was learned by us just as much as the characters, and was smoothly done. The only setbacks was that a lot of the names of races and nations are easy to lose track of, and there wasn't much importance or emotional resonance given to world building information to give us an impression of how much of a big deal the information is. Its like someone mentioning the name "Klingon Empire" with all the emotional capacity of the MC's parents or Captain Marvel.

Plot: Mixed at best - Despite how great the SCs were and the world building, ultimately the plot was lackluster. The prologue made it sound like something happening was a big deal, but the characters involved in the 'big deal' were overwhelmed and overburdened by their own "meh", taking away any and all tension. In addition, even after 20 chapters, I fail to see how 90% of the prologue was relevant. Then the following Arc, while it was smooth and paced alright and set the stage for the rest of the story by bringing together all the characters together masterfully... still left me wondering when we were going to get to the story as the MC fails to get me to care. And the following Arcs after are just... weird and seemingly have no purpose. I found myself rooting for Soran and laughing at Papa, but utterly bored with the MC for the single reason that she has no goals. and therefore it is up to the SCs to carry the weight of the story by pushing it forward. She has nothing she wants out of life but to NOT be in the situation she finds herself in... and this single trait from her came mindboggingly close to destroying my engagement with the plot. The MC simply cannot carry her own stories weight and the reason I stayed so long as it is was for the SCs. If you were to take out the MC entirely, in fact, the story would be probably more engaging and fit more into what is happening.

Ultimately the second biggest issue I had with the plot was relevance. How is 90% of the prologue relevant to anything? Why are her birth-tattoo relevant to ANYTHING going on around her? And while we are at it, why is the sexuality of some LGBT character relevant? Why make an entire chapter on that and emphasis it when it has no impact at any point but to make a political statement and jump on a bandwagon and earn brownie points in a website that favors lgbt writing? Why is the story named "Composer" and why are the chapter names after music themes when music is not once mentioned, hinted at, used, or relevant to the first entire half of the story? How is the hinted arrival of some king/prince/royal guy relevant to any of the characters? How does the events of the prologue tie into the next Arc? And how does the First Arc tie into the second? And how does the second Arc tie into the third? Where is the cause and effect?

Overall: 2 smashing out of 5! - The story was fun, even amazing, when the SCs were interacting, but I couldn't take it seriously when the MC was involved. I was confused by many events and bits of information as, while it was nice to know the world was alive, it had no relevance with the main plot... as there basically seemed to be nothing connecting everyone and everything but coincidence of proximity. The first Arc was well done (despite the MC's efforts to do otherwise) but the following Arcs fall apart as events have no future relevance and the future events have no connection to what has already happened.

Ultimately the story feels like a cool D&D campaign where the dungeon master has some interesting idea and puts a lot of work into the background, but all the players go and do their own thing, as tends to happen in D&D.

I'm out with a smashing!

If you are interested in learning to write, mastering the craft, want some really good reads, or just to chat and hang out with a mature group of adults, feel free to hit me up for a smashing discord book club that has lasted years.