A Dragon's Legend

Oh, this has to be from the dreaded WC Season. I never thought I'd actually find a story still kicking from that era, but here we are I guess. Makes me question if reviewing stories like this are even worth it. I mean, Wolfmist is never going to see this. Nonetheless, I'll treat it the same as any other story (even if the author is begging for positive comments. Sadly, I only have one of those and I'll save it for last.

The negative is a great majority of my review this time around. Let's start with a lot of grammatical errors, which normally wouldn't be a huge issue if the story itself held up at all. Here, with nothing keeping me invested, it was a slog just to make it through the first few choices. This is mainly because the story is super unoriginal (just a cliche chosen one plot but with dragons as the main character). Now, again, normally this would be a non-issue except there wasn't any real twist to the mold or surprises. Overall it was a bare-minimum representation of the fantasy genre without any of the pizazz. The characters felt more like plot devices than beings with thoughts and feelings, the prophecy was too direct and that didn't allow you to play with the idea at all, and nothing really happens. Even during the end fight, its like a sentence or two of any kind of tension before voila you win. That's boring. Fantasy is supposed to be larger than life even when its *slice* of life. ALSO, this reads like a poorly conceived fan fiction of a story that doesn't even exist. Maybe that's because WC was your thing but still, it felt like you just replaced cats with large lizards that have different abilities. Yet, there are still two things that bothered me more. You literally gave away the answer to the single puzzle that was involved in your story- if you can even call it a puzzle. "Which stone do I use first" is hardly compelling but even just leaving out the author's note of which to use first would've improved this story almost tenfold. That's still not saying much but it is something. I touched on this a bit earlier, but that ending is so anti-climactic. Literally the whole story, although short, is building up to this fight only for it to be over in .5 seconds. That makes me feel like you wasted both my time but also yours.

Now for the good! I liked one thing. You clearly thought out the descriptions for the dragons and each was very clear and concise. That shows that maybe you were just young and inexperienced so I hope that if you do ever come back to see this know none of this is to put you down but to help you become a better writer. You shouldn't request people to stay positive, as many have said, because that stifles your own growth. Take the criticism and use it to be better. Hell, I know I have to. Thanks for at least trying.

I have no idea how this is rated a four.

This being CYS, obviously I've seen worse, but this whole thing struck me as very uneven and low effort. Lots of little punctuation errors sprinkled throughout, and there's the boring old 'you are the chosen ones!' plot, featuring such an oddly specific prophecy and lazily delivered prophecy.

The siblings and the ice dragon that the story forces you to take along after giving you a false choice (Arguably, this isn't a CYOA at all, it's entirely linear except for a couple of 'choices' at the end that amount to nothing and require you to do things in a specific order in order to progress, else the author tells you 'No, go back and pick the other one!')

The laziness of it all is most apparent right at the end when the 'boss fight' is skimmed over and the author starts making lolrandom comments all over the place instead.

Also, can anyone who likes dragons actually get into this story where the dragons are such unbelievable pussies they pack up and migrate en masse just because some humans moved into the neighborhood? What is even the point of being a dragon in that case?

Let me start by explaining why its completely idiotic for you to try to extort only possative comments. Imagine if you will that you have a friend who wants to learn to cook. He tries out several different recipes and combinations of ingredients in an attempt to improve his culinary skills. One day he invites you over to try out to taste test his new "culinary masterpiece. You arrive at his house and see he's attempted to make a rice dish from scratch. He tells you to dig in and tell him what you think, but he requests that you only say possative things about his food. You give it a try and find out he didn't use near enough seasoning and the rice is extremely bland,if you've never had bland rice imagine oatmeal without any butter or sugar. Now you think the rice tastes like shit but he asked you to only say nice things, and you wouldn't want to hurt his feelings. You tell your friend that its the best rice you've ever eaten and that its one of your favorite meals he's made. Now you're reluctance to say anything negative about your friends cooking has got it into his head that you really like his rice. Thinking you like the dish he decides to make it every time you come over, and you get stuck eating bland, shitty tasting rice. Well I hate to break it to ya bud, but this story is bland rice. I don't know about you but I dispise the taste of bland rice, and I don't want to be stuck eating it. Now that my extremely long winded, and more than likely rather boring analagy is finished, let's get to my "positive" feed back on your bland rice story. Bro... It reads like a second rate children's story. There is little to no details to create a mental image of the characters, the setting, or the characters way of thinking. All of the characters have the same bland way of acting and speaking to the point where it looks like someone decided to put on a one man play when they have no knowlage of the art of acting. When developing your characters you gotta have a multiple personality disorder. What to know what that looks like? Take a look at anything written by @EndMaster. The detail used in describing what everyone and everything looked like remindes me of a picture made by a kindergargener just learning draw. If you want to capture someone's attention and draw them in, you've gotta act as if you're describing the sunset to a blind man who's never seen it before. We are all blind in the world you've crafted in your head. You have to use your words as paint and our minds as your canvas and paint us a damn Picasso or Da Vinci class picture. Now as I bring my rant to a close I only have one more thing to say. I can be a grade "A" asshole, so its really not a good idea to order me to pull my punches. All that's going to do is piss me of and cause me to lay you out flat on your pansy ass cryind out to momma.

P.S. @EndMaster pleas don't hurt me buddy cause I really do like your stories.

Thanks for sharing your fun story. You might want to check your verb tense because it isn't consistent throughout the story. This was our first choose your own adventure read and we really appreciated your work! :)

I love it!!!!!

The player didn't really have to do anything... try making more engaging, like an RPG

this was amazing it reminds me of the story Wings of Fire if you like dragons this might be the best book for you or if already read this book you are one my fav people thank you for a good game

Going to have to agree with every other negative comment here. I've been reading "bad" stories on her out of boredom...but omg this one surprised me by how irredeemable it is!

1. You can't just railroad the story on a non-linear story site

2. The story being bad has nothing to do with you using the advanced editor. Its just bad.

3. Unlike other bad stories on here...the prose was not something I was able to overlook. I tried to get invested in your serious story...but because it was so poorly done I wasn't even able to enjoy it ironically. It sits in that awful middle ground where you can't enjoy anything about it because its all poorly developed in the wrong direction...

Case in point. Write better or commit to your prose better. So much draging out explanations about the prophecy which are both obvious and self indulgent. Just...ugh...do it better next time...

Not that you'll read any of this but...whatever I guess! :/

Wow. This reminds me of my own garbage stories. But this one? Oh no... It's worse...

1. There are fake choices. I'd be fine with fake choices if they had end-game links. This one, no. Not only are other paths absent, but YOU CAN'T END THE GAME IN THESE FAKE ONES!!! Yeah, the author desperately wants you to just go back and choose the "right" option. This site ain't for linear stories.

2. The story tries to pre-empt criticism by saying "Only positive comments please!" This is not right. "Negative comments" are how you spot mistakes in your work that you would otherwise not notice. You're the kind of person to whine when you get told your story isn't a masterpiece (Like 99% of Scratchers, but I don't care about them)

3. "Its" is not incorrect, it's possessive (Its claws are sharp, as a terrible example)

I am sure that you're at least 60% aware of all I say because this is such an old story. So you don't need to listen to me if you already know all this.

soooo good