The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

[Eliza Lacrimosa]

Welcome to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, where reviews come from a marteness who's all three.

My original thought for this review thread was to have my favorite app be The Good, my second-favorite be The Bad, and my least favorite be The Ugly, but it occurs to me that this could be seen as trashing people or being negative, and that's not the intention.

So, instead, the categories will be The Good, The Nearly Almost As Good But Not Quite, and The Has A Really Great Personality.

Reviews will commence shortly.

[Eliza Lacrimosa]

For our first category, random.org says let's start off with The Cook.

I'd like to preface this by saying that my reviews are primarily based around a few things - what I think it shows about the author's potential going forward, how I think the character is likely to function within their ship (at least early on), and just general first impressions and nitpicks and questions the app raises for me. I often find that I tend to change my mind on an app after re-reading it, but in a lot of cases the audience will be voting based on their first read-through of the chapters we submit, and won't necessarily be going back over them, so it's easy for subtleties to get missed.

How I'm basically going to do this is, "Here's why my favorite app is my favorite," "Here's what I liked about my second-favorite app, and the factors that ultimately made me choose the other one," and "Here's what I'd like to have seen improved in the third-favorite app."

The Good: Vera Silvertooth

I'm usually not a big fan of applications like this, if only because I think I've seen a fair share of them (and for all I know, written them as well). Something happens, (Character) denies and denies and denies, and then OH WAIT they did the thing all along. In this case, though, I think there are enough tweaks to the formula to make it interesting.

Author Potential: I think the actual dynamic with the bread was well done, although for some reason I immediately guessed the amulet was in the bread the first time that the loaves were mentioned. It hints to me that this author has some tricks up their sleeve, and could be a good source of creative plot twists going forward. That being said, there are a few things about Vera's actions here that are a tad implausible, and I'll get to those in the nitpicks. (I honestly think that that's one of the hardest things to get right - I often find myself thinking an idea makes perfect sense in my own head, and then when I try to put it into an application someone goes, "Wait, wouldn't that immediately fail for these twenty-nine reasons?" and then I have to go retool the whole thing. It's really hard to plan for those contingencies, and flawlessly-executed brilliant plans are usually boring to read, so I don't count little implausibilities against Vera too much here.) I think the biggest problem that Vera could run into would be perfectionism - I could easily see her plans always succeeding even when they realistically probably wouldn't/shouldn't, and that's a dangerous habit to get into. Clever characters are great, but infallibly clever characters can wear out their welcome pretty quickly.

Character Potential: I'm interested to see how Vera would interact with any assortment of characters that we've seen so far. We know from the application that she's not someone who's content to be pushed around, which would probably get her into conflict with anybody who's overbearing, or the likes of Morra. Vera's overall level of sanity to deduce from the application alone. If she's psychotic (and she might be) she'd have a hard time interacting with some of the more level-headed characters, but if she's got enough subtlety I could see her worming her way into a few crew members' hearts and getting herself into the thick of things.

Initial Impression: I feel like Vera's a thief who isn't as subtle as she thinks she is, and that's interesting if it's intentional, and a potential red flag if it's not.

Nitpicks/Questions: Why burn down the entire fort? I'm assuming Vera drugged everyone there, so why not just take the bread and leave? Slaughtering an entire fort full of soldiers just for one amulet seems a bit over the top, and sitting down to play with her new toy and gloat while the entire place burns is something that doesn't make much sense; she's even putting the thing in to soak, which means she intends on sitting there for quite some time. Part of me wonders if Vera is just seriously efficient. What's the surest way to make sure nobody in this fort comes after me for stealing the shiny? Well, just burn the whole place down with everyone inside. Another part of me thinks that she probably secretly enjoys it on some level. You have to be unbelievably comfortable with the smell of your victims' scorched flesh to be willing to sit there mocking them while you wait for the bread to soak off the amulet - because it's not like that couldn't have waited until later. It seems like anybody who's that psychotic wouldn't be able to mask it very well, and I almost wonder if that's being subtly hinted at, since Rigal sees through her lies pretty easily, and her stealth obviously leaves something to be desired. 

Another thing that's been mentioned is that we're not quite sure why Vera even wanted the amulet in the first place. It's worth pointing out that she was already in the midst of cooking the sleepy-time meal when Rigal showed up, which indicates that burning the place down and murdering everyone was Plan A all along, and I really can't stress that enough. If the amulet is valuable enough that your first (and presumably only) course of action is to firebomb the entire garrison out of existence to ensure you get away with stealing it, I feel like that's got to be one seriously great amulet. If it's not, then her actions are almost cartoonishly over the top, and, like I said earlier, that's fantastic if it's on purpose. If it's not, then I think Vera would benefit from having other authors to bounce ideas off of. Plausibility is very hard to do solo, and that's what makes these contests such a valuable experience!


The Nearly Almost As Good But Not Quite: Wilson Willow

Our resident otter out of water has a lot of potential, but I think that it's kind of marred by my lack of empathy for the character.

Author Potential: I think that Wilson's author is very good at hinting at things that are to come. There's a lot about him that goes unexplained, but we get enough foreshadowing that it seems pretty safe to say that it's a case of deliberate withholding as opposed to sloppiness. However, while this is one of Wilson's biggest strengths, for me it's one of his biggest weaknesses as well. I'll explain that further in the initial impression section.

Character Potential: I think this is where Wilson probably outshines Vera. Wilson would have a hard time sustaining his current character dynamic with either of the frontrunners for captain, which could lead to juicy tension and drama. I can't see a Lord Vetinari-esque pragmatist like Ciera putting up with his nonsense for any significant length of time, and a selfish stereotypical pirate like Skiz would start lopping bits off the second you tried to feed him salty stew twice in a row. I could see him getting on well with the likes of Vasily or possibly even Chak, and there's a lot potential for humorous interaction between him and Mari if they make it in.

Initial Impression: Wilson's chubby and incompetent, and his survival thus far seems mostly due to dumb luck. In my opinion, it's very hard to feel sorry for Wilson, precisely because we have no idea why he's in this situation in the first place. Without a good explanation for the circumstances, Wilson comes across as someone who purposely got themselves into a situation so hazardous that it's borderline suicidal, yet expects us to feel sorry for them. It might just be me, but if I see someone deliberately walk out into a thunderstorm while carrying a forty-foot-high metal pole, I'm probably not going to feel much sympathy when the lightning bolt hits.

Nitpicks/Questions: Beyond the slew of general "Why is he afraid of water?" "Why are his teeth filed?" questions that the app is intended to raise, why does nobody flip their lid at the appearance of the shark? Canonically, that's a fish the size of the ship itself, with a mouth you could build an unnecessarily comfortable house in, and it's completely capable of smashing the boat to splinters if it feels like it. It seems like the punchline of "Shark eats fish, everyone stands around awkwardly" superseded more realistic reactions to the appearance of a monster that large.

Overall, I wouldn't mind seeing Wilson in the contest, but I feel like I'd be more interested in his interactions with other characters than I would in his own personal storyline, and that's ultimately where Vera gets the edge for my vote.


The Has A Great Personality: Orwin

I don't really have much to say about Orwin. Initially I misread the application on my phone, and thought he was the barkeep from the Iron Curtain, and had to go back and re-check it to make sure that I was understanding things correctly.

I think that in a sense Orwin would fit incredibly well into the story proper, but the issue here is that we have a lot of action and setting the stage, but that comes at the cost of telling us much about Orwin himself. If he gets in I'd like to see him fleshed out a bit more so that we a get a really good sense of who this character is, as opposed to where they come from and why they're here, if that makes sense.