Together we can make something truly smashing!

I read 20 chapters out of 40. I think the rest could be interesting and have a lot going for it, but the initial half still needs work, but I will get into that.

TLDR; Author takes a stab at a super-hero vigilante origin story

Plot - Semi-Smashing - The author tries to write a super-hero vigilante. First of all, there needs to be made clear that a super-hero and a vigilante are two separate things. A vigilante brings justice by any means necessary. A super-hero brings justice but limits himself in the means used. The former is willing to kill, guilty or innocent, and the latter is not. The former is willing to break all kinds of laws, the latter is not. They are both considered hero types because the ultimate pursuit is justice but the difference comes down to a philosophical argument of efficiency vs morality.

The reason super-heros are considered super heroes, in that they are capable of saving the day despite sacrificing efficiency in doing it the correct way, is specifically because they exist to represent "The Third Option." Normally a vigilante is given the option between two evils and has to choose the lesser evil. You can even see this in something modern like abortion, domestic abuse, and more where exists no 'moral' or 'good' choice in clear sight. When two options are given and both suck, then super-heroes step in and show they can ignore both options and make a new one. Superman and Naruto are prized because they stubbornly refuse to take the options provided if they don't like them and will only choose the option that is good for everyone, and have the power to make that path possible.

Something people typically think is that means vigilante is illegal. Its not, necessarily. If you look up what is called "Good Samaritan laws" then you find there are laws meant to show a difference between 'taking the law into your own hands' and 'people who give reasonable assistance to those who are, or whom they believe to be injured, ill, in peril, or otherwise incapacitated.' Such law exists to protect modern day people from helping each other over fear of being taken to court.

My point is that the author seems really unclear what kind of hero she is writing, and that shows over time in the way the characters talk and think. Naturally I wouldn't expect teenagers (which most of the characters are) to know these differences, but the lack of knowledge and guidance shows. (It would be really interesting for a person, like Uncle Mac, to step up and give that understanding.)

Now with that long explanation out of the way lets get down to the actual story.

The first half that I read is pretty good as an outline. Chapter 1-5 is the first arc and really just introduces us to several members of the cast. It is complete slice of life, which I absolutely loved. I love slice of life when executed well and tastefully, and this does just that. We learn a bunch of things about the characters through a reasonably healthy combination of telling and showing. What is told is placed tastefully to be prudent, mostly. (Some information has no relevance and is never utilized in the next 20ish chapters) and what is shown is just hilarious. Probably my favorite moment is that the Main Character takes a bet with her best friend that she can get to a party without groaning once, and the way he watches her like a hawk waiting for one groan to win the bet against her. I absolutely loved it. Great characterization in that. Told us she hated parties and crowds and was an introvert, while showing that yes she has a tendency to groan about things, and these two are competitive. The party itself was a bit messy but I am unsure if that comes down to the author style or just that teenager parties are naturally messy. I am mostly learning towards the latter because outside of something about some basement, everything was clear to follow.

Chapter 6-9, but mostly ch6, acts as a sudden segway from her normal life into a new direction. Chapter 6 was powerful and sudden while 7-8 gave us room to breath in the shit that went down and come to terms in the short-term. This needed fast pacing then slow, and this part nailed that perfectly. The shit that went down was terrible, viciously dark, emotionally raw, visceral, and mouth-wateringly juicy. However... there is a problem as we get introduced to diety-bullshit-device in these chapters. I will get more into her later and why she is a problem.

Ch10-11, while a bit short in his sequence, have a strong purpose alongside 6-9. If 6-9 give us a new direction for her life, then 10-11 is her attempting to return to the old one and immediately failing because there is something new that needs to be come to terms with. These chapters work very well together.

Ch12 we get the diety-bullshit-device upfront and center explaining that life has changed.

ch13 we get the diety-bullshit-device just basically repeating everything.

ch14 we get the diety-bullshit-device again going on and on.

ch15-16.5 the main character takes another stab at normalcy, but now having some understanding that life has changed allows her to develop a 'new normal'. It is not set in stone, which is very important, as she stumbles but tries to come to terms.

ch16.5-20 the main character becomes more comfortable with the idea of a 'new normal' and uses it to create a 'new reality' around her and this climax comes in a fight that comes down to accepting that reality in order to prevent a worse one. This is only in part as the 'cause' all the way back in ch6 will still need to be resolved later, but its solid progress. Oh, and we still got the diety-bullshit-device droning on and on. This chapter sequence was a bit of a missed oppurtunty as there is clearly a bad parent and the fight doesnt utilize her own trauma, whether to her detriment by fear or strength through rage. The pacing also was weird. Fights are meant to be fast paced. This really needed to spend less time thinking and feeling unless it was a specific thing that slowed the fight down at that moment via hesitation or a break from immediate combat.

I didn't read ch21-40 but I imagine it comes down to spreading that 'new reality' and her power to have influence on the lives around her as well as to go after the person to do the dark shit in ch6.

Overall good. I thought, at first, there would be a problem due to an obvious lacking of super-villains, but the very strong emotional trauma she has endured works well enough to make it an introspective of overcoming trauma instead of 'punch harder'. Kind of like how batman, despite being batman, will never overcome the death of his parents, (because the day he does, he will be cured) nor will this fledgling hero overcome something either.

Now for the problem with dieties and how the story could have gone from good to really good. (this will take a while to explain fully.)

Deities, when used poorly, is a cheaters way of making a kind of mary sue while also saying "no its not a mary sue". It is. Just of a different kind. There can be a good way of using them, but most of the time on wattpad people have no idea how to use this narrative device and this story is not an exception to that.

The reason for this is because a mary sue can be best defined as "when the universe bends the rules to accommodate the character". And guess what 'being' best represents a universe? Gods. So reword it as "when god bends the rules to accommodate the character". No different.

God(s) can be used well when they have own agency and purpose. God inherently has an omnipotent perspective of the universe on a scale of size and detail no human can ever comprehend. God always has a plan, always has a purpose, even if the human may not understand it. Examples of using it well: Dishonored has a god that gives power for the lulz just to see things change and because you making choices for good or bad is entertaining to him. Deathnote did much the same thing. "In Our Reverie" (another story I reviewed) pulled off a miracle/fate/god combination perfectly by never presenting god but showing a clear purpose of healing people for a reason. Various Lovecraft novels also do it perfectly by never showing the god but giving clear actions and purpose towards a mysterious goal.

But notice "when the universe bends the rules to accommodate the character" specifically says "TO ACCOMMODATE THE CHARACTER".

In this case the god has no purpose, no agency, no plan, and when directly asked why she does anything she goes "i dont know im a dumbass" and shows no moral giving-of-a-shit to... well anything at any point. She has the intellectual and moral capacity of a plant, which is funny, as she is one. Yet this isn't utilized either in making her alien in nature. It could be interesting if her motiviation all the way back in ch6 is "i wanna understand mortals". I did this with a villain-god in my own stories. but every word she says is telling, contrived, and made me want to beat my head into the wall. Becuse ultimately everything she does is not as a character, but as a dues ex machina magical mary-sue-creating bullshit device.

When you can replace a character with an animal, its not a character. its a device. Which she is.

Then there is just the whole fact that I am personally triggered when authors try and take an all powerful being and define it, make it lesser, stick it in a defined and easily controlled box, and then still think "yeah its a god". No its not. You cant have both an omnipotent being beyond comprehension but also force comprehension of it. This can only work when you preserve its godliness and mystery. The moment any story makes some vision thing where you talk right to god instead of some angel/servant than I lose interest because its all dumb and its all the same.

Now, I do understand the intended purpose of the diety. The diety is an attempt at fulfilling the power-up role as well as the tutor role. This is necessary to any fledgling hero. However, utilizing the diety is cheap both because of what I said above, but because you already have the very roles within the starting cast.

For the power-up role. Personally, I would have had the character trauma occur in such a way that a non-person or lesser being gives the power. Do it in an ancient witch/indian ritual site or something not sentient. Have it occur at the roots of a dryad. (A dryad is much easier to make work than a full damn goddess and could be interesting/funny as an equal-peer/friend.) or even have a wandering ghost or have the woods be haunted or an indian animal spirit or let her have DNA from a greek goddess because they liked to bang animals/people or SOMETHING that isn't a GOD. And then the purpose doesn't need to be "yeah i know all but i have no purpose because im a retard" and instead can be "im just a lesser being trying to do what good i can". The latter is great. Former is not.

For the tutor role. Uh. We have Uncle Mac just begging to teach her boxing or some kind of martial arts. He already gives some information of it, he already had taken boxing himself already shown before all this, and we have flashbacks to fighting advice he has given her, and, I can tell you from personal experience as a son, a young man, and a brother, there is nothing that helps with trauma and self-respect and self-worth, when that trauma occurs of a physical nature like this, both for boys and ESSPECIALLY girls, as training. My sister took martial arts and that gave her self-respect and maturity for the first time in her life. (She was a brat.) All the way in ch12 I would have had Uncle Mac, and possibly one other strong male-friend, insist on her picking up boxing/martial arts with them as the tutor, both for her mental well being but just incase something happens again. And Jeff is absolute perfect for the super-hero aspect as he knows, he is imaginative and excited, and experimenting is the name of the game when you are a gamer. Gamer's spend most of the time trying to find the limit to their games an analyze the details, this is perfectly this thing.

I have spent a long time on this overall point but that is because the story is really good, but I am stunned that, instead of using the pieces already at your disposal, that would give so much meaning and purpose, the choice is a contrived short-cut. I swear it must be because Wattpad encourages such things.

Main Characters - Smashing! - The MC is Sassy, and to some extent Jeff. Cool people. I quite liked her. I won't say too much about her as most things would enter spoiler territory, more than I already have, or would touch on things already mentioned, but she has a well developed problem that leads to seeking validation by helping as many people as possible, even to her detriment, and has a difficult time saying 'no'. It was good. Almost everything she is and deals with is extremely relatable and her emotions are proper for the occasion.

Now, despite what I said before about the goddess-device creating a mary sue, it should. It really should have, but it didn't in the end because the main character isn't about power or doing anything for herself. Everything she does has a healthy struggle to it and its more about the relationships than anything. The only "mary sue" thing that happens is returning from the dead or figuring out her powers to a small degree in quick order, neither of which is enough to land her as a mary sue. Its not something I talk about typically when I bring up mary sues, but there are two extremes in story. You either have a confirmed, full mary sue or you have none. (as far as extremes.) the former is boring as shit and the latter is basically just a documentary. Every story needs a touch of fantasy, of contrivance, of something to make it fantastical. To go so far as to try and remove a mary sue 100% from your story is to actually go into making an anti-mary sue, which is boring as it removes anything and everything that makes fantasy.

Side Characters - Semi-smashing - It took a little while to warm up to some of the characters, esspecially as something like 9 are introduced in the first several paragraphs, but they have clear roles and purpose. The biggest problem to me is that the goddess side character actually deprives several of them of the very roles I think they should have based on the authors choices to position them within that role. Its like why would you put someone in such a role, why would you go out of your way to do it, and then not do it? I'm... baffled by this choice. I understand that doing the unexpected and subverting expectations can be cool, but it is only proper to do it when the new thing being done is better than the expectation being subverted. And this isn't.

World Building - Smashing! - The world is basically the side characters, their immediate families, and the school. Not a far reach, but its right where it should be for a teenager trying to struggle between an 'old life' and a 'new life'.

Grammar and Word Usage - Semi-Smashing - Overall the story is well written. I'm guessing second draft? Very easy to read. However the pacing needs work as the story doesn't seem to know when to speed up or slow down and conversations can be beating a dead horse at times, just repeating the same information over and over, which is obnoxious.

Its fine to repeat information from one chapter to another when there is a gap between them. It is not okay to repeat information in the same sentence, the same paragraph, or within a few paragraphs, which it does, a lot. Information being repeated even in short sequence is fine when it is explored and analyzed from a different angle. This doesn't do that either.