A Grim Deal

[Negrek]

This is a cute idea! I enjoy writing challenges with an element of randomness to them, since they often force you to work with ideas or characters you never would have thought about much otherwise. Anyway, it's obvious how much fun you've been having writing Grimsley, with the degree that you've gotten into his POV for this story. It's been said plenty of times before, but the best part of this story is easily Grimsley's personality and how strongly it comes across in the story. He's a showboaty, sarcastic guy with an outsized ego that on the flip side nurses some real insecurities and perhaps isn't quite so fantastic as he tries to talk himelf up. Some of my favorite parts are Grimsley's early description of the casino and its gamblers and where Grimsley can't even deal with anything related to Shauntal.

With that said, I wasn't as big a fan of the latest chapter, in part because I don't think it has as much of that Grimsley flair as the earlier ones. First, though, a couple brief notes:

There are six names per box, and sixty of you. [...] On each table, three people will be eliminated, and three people will go on to round two.

There would probably be sixty-four players, because that way you always have an even number of people to start each round; the way you have it set up in the text, there would be fifteen players in round three, which would make it super difficult to set up games! For the same reason, there would also probably be eight people to a table, rather than six, because each round (64, 32, 16, 8) is divisible by eight people.

"Flush." My face contorts in a malicious grin.

A litle confused here. Since Grimsley is the only person mentioned in this paragraph, it makes it look like he's the one saying this. I think the person who's actually supposed to be saying it was Clay, but that's weird, since he just cursed, which usually indicates frustration. But I don't know why he'd be frustrated if he has the highest hand yet seen at the table.

I think you made a good call by omitting most of the actual poker playing--it really wouldn't be difficult to research if you wanted to figure out how to portray it accurately, but if there wouldn't be any point to including it, it would be best to leave it out. It's not something you should include just because you feel like you should, basically.

That's kind of how I feel about this chapter overall. It feels more like something that you included because you felt like, "Well, Grimsley needs to win rounds in this tournament to advance, so now I need to talk about him winning this round." But the tournament as such isn't really what makes this 'fic interesting: it's what's going on with Grimsley and Shauntal. And this chapter doesn't really do anything to shed light on that relationship. It also didn't reveal anything new about Grimsley himself, and like I said, I thought it was missing some of Grimsley style you used to such great effect previously. You don't have those over-the-top similes or much of his sarcastic wit.

Ultimately, the question is what purpose the chapter serves. If it's not going to advance the Grimsley and Shauntal stuff, then probably it wants to reveal something about Grimsley or about another one of his relationships (with Nate, for example). Or it might be essential exposition or introduce a character who's going to prove important, etc. Or it can just be fun! A lot of writing advice is to cut everything unnecessary, but I think sometimes the unnecessary bits can be the most delightful parts of a story, as long as they don't overwhelm the essential core of the story. Right now I think this chapter falls closest to the "necessary exposition" category, although I don't know that it's really so necessary! It's already quite short. You could probably have timeskipped a la "It turned out I was right, and Angry Man didn't know the first thing about cards. He came dead last at my table, which I won, of course, but that's not the point. Afterwards, when I was looking for Nate...", but if you want to show the poker game a bit, the question is how to spice it up a bit. There's a lot you could do with bringing Grimsley's character out through his interactions with the other card players; my favorite part of this chapter was his descriptions of the various players' foibles and Will yammering on constantly about nothing, trying to distract everybody. If you did want to show a bit more of the game, that would be a great opportunity for banter, as well as to show Grimsley in what he considers to be his element. As it was, I felt like the chapter was a fairly straight-up description of an event that happened rather than one that said very much about Grimsley or at least featured a lot of his signature style, which I didn't think was an issue in previous chapters.

Also, the first paragraph where you try to address reader comments is a little clumsy. It's great that you're taking feedback onboard and trying to adjust the story in response, but what you did here was kind of have a paragraph that says, "Actually, scratch that, I've decided everything I thought last chapter was incorrect for no apparent reason." It doesn't feel like a realization Grimsley would genuinely have without prompting, and it didn't really connect to anything else that happened in the chapter... it just kind of got brought up, and then the story moved on its way. For there to be a sincere change in how Grimsley views the bouncer woman, I think the two of them would probably need to interact again, or at least something would need to arise that would bring Grimsley's thoughts back to her.

All that said, though, it's not like this chapter was terrible or anything! I just didn't think that it was up to the par of the others. The ending definitely indicates that things are about to get interesting, too. For the future, I think it might help to think about what each chapter contributes to the story and what it's important to show or not. What's the story about, and how can you get that across, even in contexts where that (like a game of poker)? In any case, good luck with your RNG project, and I hope the next chapter goes well!

 

[TikTok13]

Man, that's a bulky review. Thanks for that.

I did think this chapter was a little bland, but I felt like it was important just to set up some of the appearing characters and the final scene, where he follows Shauntal. I understand that it isn't fantastic, and I'm gonna try and make the other chapters a bit more engaging.

Sorry about the confusion with Clay. It is him who says "Flush", and he's swearing because that hand is lower than Full House, so he's pushed into third and he knows he could lose.

All in all, I understand what you're saying, and I'm going to try my utmost best to make the other chapters engaging and exciting, and rectify any past mistakes.

 

[Cutlerine]

This is … an odd chapter, I think. Not just because it doesn't seem to do as much as many of the earlier chapters – the plot doesn't really advance, and we don't learn any more about Grimsley – but because you introduce so many new characters only for none of them to mean anything. It's kinda weird that every single competitor here is either a League member, a kahuna or a stat trainer, given that the only one of them who's ever been established as a gambler is Grimsley; this is meant to be a world-class tournament, after all, and it seems sorta implausible that all these people would be that kind of person. I think it's a little distracting, too – because they're all canon characters, and mostly big canon characters at that, the reader kinda assumes that you brought them in for a reason, that they're here to do something, and then nothing really comes of it. Grimsley made a big deal of Shauntal and Nate turning up in what he clearly sees as specifically his world, and that seems a strange attitude given that we now see the battling and gambling worlds overlapping so totally.

So yeah, I feel like this chapter maybe doesn't hold together quite as well as previous chapters; the focus is less on Grimsley's acid observations of the world, which have been the main strength of the fic so far, and more on kinda making time pass, getting Grimsley from before the game to after it. It's not a bad chapter, but it's definitely a little slower and weaker. That's certainly not to say that the story is bad or anything, just that this instalment is maybe not the best part of a fic that has been so far been pretty darn strong. I do like the ending, though: things are clearly building to a head, and that's probably gonna be both pretty entertaining and interesting to see laid out at last.

 

[Bay]

So Cuterline and Negrek already talked about how this chapter is underwhelming compared to the earlier ones. I do agree with Cuterline over how you introduced several canon characters but they don't seem to serve a purpose except them in the tournament. Some of the banter there was fun, but you can do more. For instance, Nanu and Grimsley can banter about the both of them training dark types this doesn't have to do with me lowkey ship them. But yeah, Negrek already mentioned some suggestions on what you can do with Grimsley during the poker game. I also agree with them that you could have Grimsley interacted with the lady bouncer for a genuine apology.

 

[Negrek]

Sorry about the confusion with Clay. It is him who says "Flush", and he's swearing because that hand is lower than Full House, so he's pushed into third and he knows he could lose.

Oops. Dangit, I even looked up poker hand scoring before writing that, and I still managed to screw it up. >>; In that case it makes sense that Flint's angry, but I would still suggest that you put something about him in the same line as the dialogue instead of something about Grimsley, just to prevent confusion.

 

[DreamSayer]

I had some free time, so i sat down to read the rest of the story. The third chapter gave me quite a handful of laughs and the dynamic between Nate and Grimsley continues to be charming. I did notice a few mistakes here and there, but nothing too major or distracting. The scene with that first bouncer was really hilarious and i couldn't help but picture the look on Grimsley's face when Nate was allowed into the VIP area with ease. Also, something tells me that Grim has a lowkey crush on Shauntal, or it could be something else he's simply too embarrassed to talk about.

I can't say too much about Shauntal's characterization since we haven't seen much of her, but i can say that the games depicted her as the sort of book nerd who's too absorbed in what she does. Volkner on the other hand seems fine. I don't really know much about him anyway since i never really played the fourth gen games.

The fourth chapter was a bit on the short side. I'm not really against short chapters—i used to make a lot of those—but i would've preferred something longer. Don't worry too much about it though. A chapter only needs to be as long as it needs to be. There's no need to stretch it out any longer than necessary. Overall, i liked the gambling scene, my only gripe with it is that we didn't actually see the gamble that was taking place and it ended almost as quickly as it began.

 

[TikTok13]

Hey everyone! Now I know that I haven't really updated this in a while, and I have to deliver some important news.

Due to an ongoing issue in my current life, I have had to decide to cancel this project. The problem is taking a toll on me, and I am finding it excessively hard to find the time to write.

I hope you all understand why I'm doing this, and I was reluctant to come to this decision. I may start writing again, but not for a long time.

So, this project is now cancelled. Again, apologies, but I have to do this.