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Reviews for Tears I Refuse to Shed

By : madammalia
  • From TaiKaiten on November 11, 2008
    AWW!!
    Both the original and this one were GREAT! (though i liked this one better... ^.^)
    you should continue it!! XO that would be amazing!!
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  • From yakaji on August 05, 2008
    Wow.

    I need to go reread Pull Down the Moon, but I'm pretty sure this is my clear favorite among the things you've written. No, it's not PERFECT - there are a couple spelling mistakes, and there were a couple times I felt like Allen was maybe a bit more eloquent than I would have expected (though you did a good job justifying the latter when Kanda thought back to his first mission with Allen, which was one moment where the characterization matched well). But I have a whole lot of positives to say about this one. I dunno if I'm even gonna remember them all.

    First of all, referring back to a previous critique I gave of some of your writing (possibly even the other AFF piece, come to think of it), I noticed you used names as your referands for the characters more this time. I only noticed once or twice, but it was VERY clear when I was noticing that the readability was very much improved by this. Not that it was bad before, but it just flowed very smoothly here. I never had any trouble keeping track of who was who, I never had to really think about it, it was all nice and clear.

    Next, I loved your setting work. This is primarily in the second section, when Allen is looking out the window and thinking about the village. This was certainly not something the story NEEDED, it had nothing to do with the plot, but it added so much richness by clearly locating the story within the confines of the DGM world. As soon as you started talking about the larger context of the war, about the village and the villagers, that combined with the little physical details you gave of the room made it very, very easy for me to visualize everything about the story. I really don't think I can praise this enough. It's not something I've seen in many other fanfics (maybe not ANY other fanfics, INCLUDING my own), and when I was reading it, it just felt... professional. It felt like what I'd expect if I were reading something I'd bought off the shelf. Kid you not. Mind you, I'm not saying it was like that all the way through. It was certainly GOOD all the way through, but I didn't get the overwhelming sensation of PROFESSIONALISM all the way through. I do think, though - and I'm serious when I say this - that having seen that, honestly, you'd probably have it in you to do this professionally if that was what you wanted to be doing. (unfortunately, our positions are reversed on that one)

    Third, characterization. For me, anyway, I felt like Lavi and Kanda were just excellent. I'd say Kanda was spot-on perfect, according to how I think of him. Just the right balance of anger and short-temperedness mixed with fear, shame, and failure to understand how to react in the face of all this. Given that he was raped, I thought Kanda acted exactly like I would have expected him to under the circumstances. If he'd just been shying away from people, yes, he'd have been much too passive for a good IC Kanda. But no, he was angry and bitter and violent, reacting the only way he really knew how to feelings he probably had a very hard time understanding. Lavi was great, too - though very much MY Lavi: less the joker and the trickster, more the true successor to the Bookman.

    All in all, the mood was much grittier than the manga, but I had no problem with that. The only worry in changing tone like that is making sure you draw your characterizations to match the tone, and I thought you did that perfectly. The characters still felt fully IC, and their characterizations matched the tone you set throughout the piece. All in all, I thought this was a really excellent piece of work. Great job, K!
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