Talk:Half and Half/@comment-4295416-20141108205428

Here we go....

First of, I can see the effort and care put into this. Setting wise, it was mainly the hospital/laboratory most of the time. Nothing too special, but the "Punk" island or towns or whatever were kinda nice. there was also a bit of a war-zone... Now I was a bit confushed in this part because there was no description of the surroundings at all, so when they got attacked I couldn't imagine exactly where they re (firstly thought it was a marine base, the attack sounded like the middle of a war-zone) Another nit-pick is the use of grenades, which I don't remember seeing some before in the One Piece world.

The writing was pretty good. I can see you must have proof read this thoroughly as there is few typos and grammatical errors in comparison to the side of the whole thing. I liked the structure you went with, and the fact that it was all first person worked greatly for this story, as we couldn't tell much about the protagonist himself and were able to get the shock and surprise he got. I thought, as I briefly mentioned, some background descriptions could have helped, though. On another hand, I liked how you described the character's thoughts and how they were feeling. Description stuck the right notes for the most part, though were a bit rushed at times.

There weren't many characters, but what was there was really good. Even Kokua, who only appeared in the very last part of the story, still managed to get emotions out of the reader. Even the Captain in the army you sort of felt for and his wisdom. As for the focus of the story, the two main characters, they worked great. The interactions between them were good and I felt for them and liked them together. Elisa's attitude and personality, coupled with how things turned out to be int he end, proved to be a very good character, and she brought the life in the story and interactions. Joe was great as well, as you went deep into his thoughts a LOT and managed to make the reader clearly see the theme of the story and connect with the character in a way, as many of his thoughts were naturally human. It was also great because the reader did NOT know Joe's origin as well, all was left ambigious in the begining including his looks and name, making it even more effective when he got the memory loss, as the reader was basically in the same state.

The dialogue was good. I thought it skipped steps and changed moods too quickly  at some points, though, but maybe that's because of the word count limit and time restrictions. There was this point where the dialogue kind of dragged for me between Elisa and Joe. One of the better aspects is the twisted humor, jeez. As a fan of dark humor, I enjoyed what was in there. Many jokes were written well on that part. Side thing, liked the Doskoi Panda reference among other things XD. All in all, dialogue and humor were good, aside from some weaknesses.

Flow and pacing changed throughout the story a bit and were ot the most stable, starting really slow then realy accelerating all of a sudden. But I didnot mind that at all. So yea it was a bit unstable, but it didn't take away from the enjoyment. On thing I wanna comment on is when he first woke up and thought he was in heaven... That was a bit weird XD One of the things I was worried about was that the story was gonna be all over the place because you chose to use ALL THE THEMES, that however was not the case for the most part and it didn't obstruct the flow badly. I will come back to this in a minute.

OPish feel... Naaah, didn't quite get that from the characters or from even the expressions and personalities used at all. However, as I mentioned before, this is not a must at all, just something worth noting as this is still in the OP world.

The themes... Oh boy. I was worried the most about this, and I can happily say that they worked nicely *thumbs up* Unlike many stories, the themes felt like the focal point in this one where everything was based around it, which is very nice. I felt that some themes were kind of stuffed in, but even that was not very visible. I really liked how you made the themes kind of MOVE with the story and how they were placed in different parts of Joe's life. They were kind of sprinkled all over the story with strong messages deep questions. This goes back to how, as I mentioned, the reader was in a similar confused state to Joe thus being able to connect with him and feeling the themes, making them much more powerful. I was surprised by how much of the themes were covered, and they managed to feel natural and not too forced. The only thing I kind of disliked about the themes were how they were sometimes said straight up, which I thoguht would have been better if they were a bit more subliminal. It was rather as if you got scared people won't notice them and decided to make them more ovious, or maybe it was for a more striking effect. Either way, themes were my favorite part in this story and they were handeled pretty well.

Speaking of major themes, that last plot twit was really powerful. I felt the emotion in it! I knew betrayal had to come at one point, and I was like (Please don't be Elisa!) but it delivered. I had that suspicion about the test subject, and it came out pretty well. And how the revelation was a plan... Things worked out really well on that last part. Another thing, I really liked how coffee was a major object/representation in all of this, from start to finish. It was nice seeing the usage and drawing the parralels and what it meant for the character throughtout the whole thing. So nice job on that.

Finally... This was a very powerful work. The themes and the plot came together really nicely. The story had its good and bad, but I enjoyed it and it was definetly worthy a competition entry. Trying to summarize this story is a bit hard, so I will skip this and say that you did a good job.