Talk:Blue Moon/@comment-26054278-20150417005525

I've already reviewed My Grandfather Suffered from Dementia from this month's nominations, so I decided to go ahead and begin reviewing every other nomination. I've decided that I'm probably going to do this every month, although next month it will probably be more gathered and done earlier.

Anyway, Blue Moon is a pasta that I don't exactly understand why it was nominated. I have nothing against the author, and I'd actually love to see more work from him, as I still think this pasta is above-average. I just think this story needed another edit or draft in order to truly be a great pasta.

I'll start with all the good things before I delve into why I didn't think this pasta worked too well. Firstly, I give credit for this spirit possession and how the sacrifice section plays out. It was chilling and helped build up the eventual ending even more. The actual ending, while not exactly terrifying or anything, was disturbing and quite good.

The characters in this story are actually pretty alright. Although I don't really sympathize with the main character until that campfire section, he certainly seemed to act like a normal teen would.

At first I thought Kyle was essentially a one-dimensional bully, but some intrigue was added when he appeared as one of the people sacrificing the main character in the end. The main character's brother was pretty forgettable though. The old man and the mayor, while not very subtly foreshadowed, were alright as they were.

Lastly, I would like to address that this story isn't boring and will manage to keep a person's interest. There is enough mystery here to sustain throughout the majority of the plot, which I liked.

However, I do have to say that despite all of this, I'm not really a fan of the story. The biggest and most obvious problem here is the multitude of grammar and spelling mistakes. Lack of periods at the end of sentences/paragraphs, capitalization errors, lack of proper punctuation inside quotes (if a quote continues into an actual sentence, there should be a comma at the very end of the sentence in quotes rather than nothing), sentences that just flat-out don't make sense ("Regardless me..."), missing commas when commas should be there, and a first sentence that makes me cringe.

Due to these mistakes, it hinders pacing and overall enjoyment of the story. Hopefully this helps narrow down some of the editing problems of this pasta for the author to zone in on and fix.

However, I have other problems. Firstly, and I kind of touched upon this briefly, but the foreshadowing here is pretty obvious. I knew that the major, Kyle, and the old man were going to be at the campfire right when our main character arrived there just due to the length of the foreshadowing and the amount of attention drawn to those elements.

Secondly is those entire opening paragraphs. I'm sorry, but after the error in the first sentence, it delves into how sarcastic the character is. Granted, I'd be fine with it if he was either funny or justified, but it is neither. As much as I dislike the sarcasm used in some of the Slimebeast stories, at least some of it was reflected by our main character, his thoughts, and his actions. This character appears to show no sign of this intense sarcasm except in these opening paragraphs before never appearing in his personality again.

I don't understand why it was done like this, and it disrupts consistency with the main character. However, I also have to touch upon the usual plot holes provided by first person stories. For example, the fact that this spirit is apparently very sarcastic, as well as very keen to share his inner secrets of how he lives and how the sacrifices work by putting them online in a story for some reason. Granted, this is more of a nitpick, but it still doesn't fully make sense.

Lastly, I would have to address that I don't think this story is very original or has much flavor to keep it very different from other stories similar to it. The sacrifice, ritual, and spirit possession ideas have been done before, and I don't think this added much to them that those other stories didn't already have. The ritual section is well done, it just isn't very clever or original, more so just written pretty good.

Despite that, this story is still above-average. Although originality is a point that I had to bring up, it don't believe it factored too much into my judging of this story. However, it still desperately needs a revision to bring it up in quality. Without the errors, it would probably get about 7.5/10, but with them currently in, I have to give it 6.5/10.

Check out more of my critiques on the following page: My Critiques