Terrorist

While I doubt there’s anything particularly insightful in this comment that either Mystic or Darius has not already said, I have made an attempt to review this story nevertheless.

There is a great deal of negativity in this review, which should be pinpointed towards my own tendency to complain excessively rather than any fault of the story itself. There are also spoilers aplenty, so I would suggest any potential readers read the story before continuing.

I think the best way I could describe this story is as such: after reading a few of the comments I was wondering what could about this storygame could possibly be so horrifying that I would want to bleach my eyeballs after reading it. Now, after reading it, I still have no answer to that question.

It felt like you made a checklist of every edgelord prompt you could think of and shoved them all into a single storygame rather than explore any specific one of them in detail, which diminished the impact of all of them. I did find the storygame amusing, but that may be my own preferences rather than objective quality.

The main character’s motivations were established fairly well. He detests his father and wants to commit a terrorist attack to bring public outrage at him, and there’s dramatic irony in that the way his father raised him is the very reason he now wants to bring his father down.

It was very difficult to root for him in any meaningful way. Most protagonists either have some moral qualities that resonate with the reader, are the underdogs or struggle in some way, or go through character development.

The protagonist does not have any traits that make him redeemable, he’s so rich as to never really struggle in accessing weapons/resources, and he has no character development with the slight exception of the homeless route. Most of the time when he commits an error, he ends up dead rather than able to use his wrongdoing to improve as a person. Even character growth as to make him more evil would have been compelling, though I guess he was already so depraved at the beginning that any further spiral into degeneracy wouldn’t have been that impactful.

There are a lot of ways you could have solved this. Make him marginally less evil in the beginning so that his change in perspective when he decides to commit terrorism is impactful to the reader. Make him struggle in getting weapons or finding people to recruit, and when he makes errors force him to fix his mistakes rather than just kill him off. Make him encounter challenges that allow him to grow and improve as a person. You did the last one in the homeless route, which is proof enough that you’re capable of it.

The writing itself is very engaging. The main character has a strong voice and the infodumps were made less dry by his narration. I liked it. Good work on that.

The descriptions aren’t particularly graphic or distressing, which could be a stylistic choice as the protagonist is too twisted to realize the horrific nature of his actions, but I thought there should have been a lot more emphasis on them. You don’t necessarily need to acknowledge that the protagonist thinks the events themselves are horrific, but should at least linger on the moment, eg. his vision narrowing to a needle’s point in rage, the adrenaline burning in his veins as he brings down the knife, the warmth of the blood on his hands, and so on.

On the other hand, the sister wasn’t explored at all. After reading so much about her, I can’t tell you anything about her personality other than that she’s vaguely manipulative of people sometimes. She wasn’t a particularly interesting character or fleshed out in a notable way.

There was definitively the base for characterization in her manipulation of her brother, but most of that was infodumped either during their argument or ended up part of the summary of what he accomplished in any given ending. It would have been so much more compelling if it actually shone through in their relationship and would have added darker undertones to the incest.

I thought there were the bones of good characterization hidden somewhere in the incest as well, but they weren’t expanded upon all that well. He never refers to her by her name, mentally categorizing her as Sister, which implies his view of her as functionally an object and wholly under his control. He even says this outright a few times.

But the incest itself has none of those elements. The reason it’s a social taboo is usually in the power dynamics. Looking at their interactions, it all appears to be fairly consensual on the sister’s part. If anything, she’s the one taking advantage of him. There’s nothing to make their relationship taboo or sickening to the reader beyond their inherent existence as siblings. You tell the reader about his possessiveness, but you never really show this in text. I guess there’s the one route where he kills her, but there was no real portrayal of their relationship dynamics beforehand to contrast it with, which made it seem jarring and out of place.

A good deal of the story’s issues could be fixed by clearly showing their relationship dynamics. Actively show him restricting his sister’s agency, or her using that to her advantage during their argument, instead of just infodumping about his possessiveness. Emphasizing the toxic underbelly of the incest would double as a reason for the reader to be disturbed as well as improve characterization.

Take Love SICK for an example of this being done. The incest in that is consensual as well, but still works to characterize by contrasting the murders with the protagonist’s obsessive desire to please his sister. I looked through your point history and it appears you’ve read it, so you have no excuses.

The plot reminded me of Tales of the Basement 2, following quite a few of the similar beats. Greg in this story and Norman from Tales played the same role in helping the protagonist after he ends up homeless, both of the corresponding endings involving relations with the protagonist’s father. The first encounter with and meeting locations of Nazis is quite similar as well.

On the topic of Tales I did want to mention what I consider to be a large fault of the story. It doesn’t focus on any one issue and instead pinwheels between critiquing a great number of social justice problems. Tales has the word count and different protagonists to pull this off successfully, but considering this has about a sixth of Tales’ word count and one singular protagonist it just ended up just not giving the proper attention to any issue.

It would have been a lot more compelling had it fleshed out and explored in depth just a few of the concepts instead of trying to be a story about a privileged, rich, racist, bestiality and incest committing, raping, migrant hating, white supremacist. There’s probably a few I missed in there, but I ran out of adjectives. I mean for example there was one paragraph about raping a dog, but the corresponding bestiality in Tales got an entire page to flesh it out. Nothing had any impact due to trying to focus on so many things at once.

Overall, I gave it a 6/8. I did legitimately view the story favorably and thought it was quite compelling, I just complain a lot.

Disclaimer: to the author, take everything in this review with a grain of salt. I’m not a professional writer and only somewhat of a seasoned reviewer. To the readers, this review will contain some spoilers, so I implore you to read the storygame first.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I can already tell from the description that this story will either be edgy and grimdark, or yet another one of the many failed attempts at emulating EndMaster that the site has seen. Though I can guess which it is, based on your short story you tortured the poor forums with, I hope for your sake it’s not the latter. I’ll also add that this type of humor is not my cup of tea, but I’ll try to read this story with an open mind.

Let’s talk about the first page. There’s a grammatical error in the title. And the first scene is certainly one way to begin a storygame, catching the reader by surprise. However, it quickly becomes a long infodump about the protagonist’s life. To be honest, it isn’t the most entertaining, as it’s usually better to weave characterization into the plot. Rather than tell the reader about the protagonist’s backstory off the bat, I would suggest showing his personality through dialogue, actions, and internal conflict. Then if you want to add a flashback, choose a pivotal scene—preferably one where the protagonist forms a significant misbelief—and place it at an important point in the story.

Moving on. The protagonist is characterized as a messed up person, but hey, at least he has a goal to carry the story forward. This is ruining his father by mass terrorism. There’s a reason behind this—wanting to live in a world where he no longer has to hide his love for his sister—and he’s already so psychotic that there’s no questioning any of his beliefs.

EVERYTHING ELSE

This was…disturbing. From capslock screaming with exclamation marks spamming, to violent acts of brutality, I would not have continued reading this story if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve already written a significant portion of this review. It’s probably the most depraved thing I’ve read. And no, that’s not a compliment. You could put that as a quote on your profile if you’d like, though.

From violent mood swings to a way of thinking that’s so beyond the minds of sane individuals, there’s no other word to describe the protagonist than ‘lunatic’. It’s said that to write a villain protagonist, they must have one of the following traits: being relatable, being ‘less bad’ than their antagonist (the first two ensures the reader would root for them), or being interesting to read about. I wanted the story to fulfill the latter. Yet, it was just act after act of pure insanity, without an engaging plot or any theme whatsoever. My eyes have been ruined. My sanity is ruined. I regret the decision to read this story.

But because I’m already here, I might as well provide some writing advice. First: creating impact. Do you ever notice that in movies where many characters die, one after the next, it starts to become repetitive and boring. Their deaths no longer have an impact after a while. The same applies here. If you want to go the full edgelord route, you must start by making the events of your story matter. The ending is as important as the beginning. There’s no point in detailing one ‘edgy’ act after the next if the readers do not care about what happens to the characters and would become desensitized to it partway through. Instead, choose your moments, or else the ‘shock value’ parts of the story would not be enough to retain readers to the end.

Next, characters. Most of them appear like stereotypes; archetypal and one dimensional. Their dialogue was mildly entertaining at best and downright cringey at worst. This is especially considering the racist slurs and the way almost everyone acted a lunatic to some degree. There’s not a single person worth rooting for. Even the protagonist seems to be the same. He doesn’t have any redeeming features or any other aspect to his personality rather than trying to do the most deranged things that don’t even come close to working towards the goal that he has set out for himself.

Thirdly, showing vs telling and pacing. I’m actually glad that parts of the story leaned more to the ‘telling’ side of things, as I don’t know how much more I could stomach. But in your future stories, try to avoid long paragraphs of just telling the reader what happens, as this comes across as more of a summary than an actual part of the story. This happens mostly at the endings, though occasionally disrupts the narrative too. More than that, it breaks immersion and slows down the pacing. Rather than ground the reader in a scene, these tend to either lose the reader’s interest or make them skip past it. Still, there are exceptions to this rule. When you have to provide information about something and it occurs over a long period of time/ it would be a waste of words to draw out the pacing (e.g. the specific moments are not as important as the overall message), then you could use telling. However, do this sparingly, and if possible, weave it into your story seamlessly by breaking the information up with dialogue, action, or other things that move the plot forward.

That should be more than enough for now. At least you succeeded in creating a storygame that End viewed somewhat favorably.

May this comment be plastered there for eternity:

Okay here you go and stop whining. It isn't often that people read through your work and get very thorough

Fine, I finished reading through it. Maybe I'm not the target demographic, but I get why it isn't working. It's because it isn't that funny.

funny

I get what you were going for; edgy humor, Nazis, being politically incorrect and such. However, you make your humor feel so dated that I would legit think it is written in 2016 by an actual Alt right neonazi. If that was what you were going for, you got their "humor" exactly correct.

I felt that this story threads a weird uncanny valley of edgyness. It really flip flops between the subtext literally agreeing with the weird racist/other bad views of the main character and at times normally disavowing his stances. For example, killing your sister earns scorn from your neonazi buddies. However, at the same time you get scenes where black people are exactly acting like the racist stereotypes the protagonist thinks they are.

"Fuck da police! Black Powah!!!!" Was one of such lines and then black men raping you and stuff.

I was thinking while reading it: "wasn't it the point that the protagonist is delusional and thinks everyone is going to get them?"

And at the end of most endings you always relate it back to some thing that happened in the news (immigrants, BLM, the MeToo movement). Frankly that is one of the big reasons why it feels so dated.

More ABout the edginess

It is without a purpose. Sigh.... Okay, lemme explain it more clearly. For a story that ends their endings with all kinds of "messages", it surprisingly doesn't have a clear vision.

Like, edginess is like a spice. You sprinkle it in, but don't do it too much or otherwise it will become nasty.

And you, my guy, added so many unnecessary edgyness into your story that you muddle your vision. Your story should clearly be about a loser incel with a rich politician dad who thinks that being a terrorist is cool. So ehh, why the incest?

I get the rape parts a little bit, but why the incest? I felt it didn't add much to anything. frankly, the part what makes incest fun to write about, is the taboo associated with it and that it is often not very consensual or the participants are not very mentally sound. Well, you wrote their relationship kinda just like a regular relationship. If you changed the sister character into another rich friend, not much of the story and their relationship would really change that much. So, it felt as if it was only for shock value.

Sometimes I think you didn't go far enough. That is kinda the problem I have when I read such "edgy" stories. They never make it horrifying enough that the stuff lingers. When Ford was talking about action scenes, with making sure not to linger to much, I also have another piece of advice. LINGER ON STUFF YOU WANT TO EMPHASIZE. For example, when you killed and raped the maid, you only wrote it as one short paragraph. I think you could have made it so much more graphic and really amped up the maid's reaction. Then when your sister is horrified by it, her feelings feel even more justified.

Treat edginess the same as dark moments in stories.

To add to that, the reason why lots of dark stories have some cute nicer scenes, is to give readers a contrast and established normal. If the "normal" is the protagonist being raised in a sweet happy family in the countryside, then this family being horrifyingly murdered and raped would feel much more like a kick in the guts than when the protag is in an already shitty situation from the very beginning.

This is the same with edginess and why you often have a "straight man" in these stories. That is a character to balance out the silly nonsense in your over the top world. Even in the wacky stories of lovesick, tales of the basement and Suzy, you can find these types of characters. They set the normal in the stories and the other characters will often transgress that which makes their edginess even more apparent.

what I did like

the protagonist is a prick and has such a strong voice, that I can see him speaking in real life. Entitled, prickly prick, sexist, racist and all kinds of vices in one package. Wouldn't want to meet him in real life, but his voice makes reading through the duller section a lot more enjoyable.

THe duller sections

I also do it a lot when I am very much hastily writing everything down, but like many, you also just infodumped everything in the first page. The infodump about your father being rich and a politician and such is a lot more entertaining due to the strong voice, but you could've made the infodump a lot less egregious.

Frankly, I found it a missed opportunity to never see the protag interacting with his dad. Why not have him and his dad fight when doing a phone call in the beginning of the story? You can just sprinkle every detail you want in their dialogue. Plus, you don't have to spell out his motivations that much anymore like you did now, because we then see an example why the protag hates his dad so much.

Oh yeah, none of the characters are very memorable. None of them have as much personality as the protagonist. I know little to nothing about his sister, Greg, the maid, his dad and the neonazis. It makes his interactions with them a little less fun. There is not a lot to riff on each other. The closest is maybe his sister who commented on his over controlling nature. However, the closest insult the protag comes up for her is "bitch" :/. If she had a little more of a defined personality the insults would probably be more funny.

in short

your edgy writing frankly feels dull, lacks punch and yet, it also feels unnecessary at times. Please think before you add anything.

Eh. Pretty much the only way I can think of to describe this story. I laughed a few times, but mostly felt like I was just shifting through an unfunny edgefest. The excessive swearing got grating after a few pages (so basically at the end), but I do appreciate the effort in coming up with several different endings. Complete waste of time? Nah. Something I'd read again? Nope.

I found this story to be really compelling and I disagree with some of the other commenters claiming that this story is simply "edgy for the sake of being edgy". It was a fun, subversive, and engaging story that reminded me of Chuck Palhanuik's writing at times. I really enjoyed this and I'm no unhinged edge lord, so I disagree with the other commenters on that front as well, that not only was this story written by an unrepentant edge lord, it was also written for edge lords.

I believe that that sort of critique is shallow and misses the depth of the message you were trying to convey with this story. Or at least the message that I received from this story.

This story game is essentially a look inside the psyche of a deeply troubled individual and a character study showing the downfall a modern-day Byronic hero archetype plagued with numerous psychological neuroses. I enjoyed the It was deeply fascinating and I think you not only captured this particular individual character's mental state well, but you also contextualized it within the framework of the overall racial/socio-economic zeitgeist of the United States of America in the year 2020.

In a weird way, he reminded me of Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. He is a controlling narcissist who starts on this downward spiral solely because of his love for a woman, but it's not real love. Real genuine love is about respecting the other person, this is more of a twisted form of control that simultaneously presents itself as love to the protagonist's mind so he can justify a myriad of his twisted fantasies.

Like Heathcliff he often redirects and takes his anger out on other people. Both Heathcliff and Mr.Terrorist blame outside circumstances and fate for the situations they placed themselves in, even though to some extent, it can be argued outside circumstances did place them on that trajectory(the bullying Heathcliff suffered as a kid, and his unrequited love, similar to Mr.Terrorist's unrequited love in the path where he becomes a Nazi and his father neglecting him and being emotionally distant)

I really loved your use of point-of-view, it adds so much depth to the story. We're seeing this story through the lens of a deeply troubled individual, he's racist to black people, poor people, minorities, and he characterizes important social movements like BLM that fight for racial justice as criminals looking for excuses to riot. An important note to point out is that apart from the interjections made from the author, the adjectives and turns of phrase used to describe various groups of people and the setting come from the mind of this terrorist, this horrible individual on the alt-right. That's why I believe some of the critiques offered by other reviewers: repetitive deaths, longer periods of introspection, characters appearing as stereotypes are not evidences of flaws in the work, but instead they enhance the overall piece of literature because it shows you truly get the character.

To prove my point about stereotypes, these characters don't stay in stereotypes. Ben does a good job of developing these characters as much as he can within the limited framework of this warped character's perspective. Basically, this man is so messed up in the head that his empathy and ability to relate to other people is permanently stunted. He can grow a little bit, and understand people to some degree but not fully. That's why Ben wrote the characters like this, that's why we get to know a little more about the sister but she's not a fully fleshed out 3 dimensional character, because we're seeing this through Mr.Terrorist's mind.

I like how you didn't give the main character's names because by doing so, you impersonalized and generalized the characters to fit broad social archetypes. The incel, the spoiled brat, the sociopath, we see the main character through these labels, but we don't see him as "Sam" or "Matthew". Somehow, by adding a name you humanize the character when one of the merits of the story is seeing the main character as an impersonalized group of archetypes, because that adds more legitimacy to the insanity that happens. It makes it somewhat believable when you don't give this guy a name or anything we, the sane and normal audience of readers, could relate to in this man's psyche.

I loved how you made the deaths seem impersonal and almost sort of routine. That really fits this character, for him it's not really that big of a deal. I'm glad you took care to ensure that most of the deaths, besides his death, have little to no impact; Ultimately, this man is a narcissist, he views the world in extension to himself so his death, and the consequences of his death(the little epilogue) would matter the most to him.

Your writing style was engaging and I thought that the story flowed really well. At no point was I bored at all. Part of the entertainment value in playing this remorseless sociopath is waiting to see what he'll do next, what social more he might trample over and spit on, what boundary he'll cross. I really enjoyed the sheer boldness you took while writing this, there were so many points where I might have held back if I were writing this, and that would have cheapened the impact and the punch of the story.

I also enjoyed how surprise he was at seeing his sister's capability in executing murders and acting independently of him. Clearly, he has a very flawed and skewed worldview, and this point is further hammered home in his interactions with the homeless guys and the guys at the Aryan Bar. Which leads me more confused why people describe this as an edge lord fantasy devoid of substance, because throughout the novel, it's clear we're not meant to root for this guy or sympathize him. If anything, the work as a whole hates him, he suffers some of the most pathetic and horrible fates ever to befall man, and in many of those cases, his legacy is tarnished forever; the people he respects or the point he tries to make not really coming across like he would have wanted, and people who he looks down upon embracing him or calling him a hero. That's another thing, I liked how each of the endings reflected his overall impact and legacy on the sociocultural zeitgeist as a whole because ultimately he's a narcissist, and narcissists care about their legacy, so it's really fitting that at the end of each path, we find out what people think of him. That was remarkably insightful of you.

This was a really fun story to read and I enjoyed it. No I'm not an edge lord or a sociopath, I'm just someone who appreciates a well-written piece of fiction. I'm going to give this a 7, I truly thought this was well written and quite good.

What the actual fuck is this? My choices are neo Nazi or incest? I choose leave a bad review. I fucking hate shit involving incest or Nazis. Delete this and get mental help

Good story more please like this

WOW I loved it

Rating: 2/8
First impression: The most family friendly game I've read since Darius's gay furry mpreg horror story.

***Don't. I'm warning you. Just take my rating and go. Please I beg you.***

You need therapy. You need SO MUCH fucking therapy. I refuse to believe someone could ever write something like this just for the lulz. I need therapy to unpack the sheer disgust I have suddenly developed for humanity as a species. How could we fail one of our own so bad that this was written? I can barely stomach the thought I had to give it a 2/8 since it's so damn well written. Why would anyone waste their talent to write this?

The story starts straight up with the character filling his sister's donut. Great first sentence. Really sets the tone for the horror to come. Who looks at a blank textbox, writes the words I read, and thinks to themselves "Yeah... I deserve the space, food, water, and oxygen I take up on this planet."??? Seriously. This is borderline porn. Borderline might be a very generous understatement on my part.

Gotta throw in daddy issues in the next paragraph too. Might as well. The reason the sister and character do the devil's tango gone so wrong Satan himself would rather kill himself than watch is all because their dad, a congressman in the united states, spoiled them too much and didn't want them to make him look bad in front of the voters. This is the whole motivation for everything to come.

The sister and character really want to fuck up their father's reputation, so they plan to do some fucked up shit to all the little normal people. They want to go out with a bang. So now we come to the first two options of the game. Do the fucked up stuff alone with the sister, or join the neo-Nazis. Great choices. I chose the Nazis. It seemed like the least likely option that would lead to incest. I was right.

The next page describes that your sister is out on the plan because she doesn't want to work with neo-Nazis. Not because it would be fucked up, BUT BECAUSE THEY ARE POOR AND INFERIOR TO THEM. Then your options are to let her live, try killing her, or kill yourself. I of course chose to kill myself.

I'm not done though. My curiosity ran too fucking deep. I needed to know how bad it got. I'm about done reliving this so I'll give a brief rundown of disgusting things the character ends up doing.

Kill and desecrate a corpse, kill and desecrate his sister, kill and play with the neighbor's dog through a new hole he created. That's one path. The other I went down had the character hoping man milk from the one eyed snake has a lot of protein while homeless since apparently even neo-Nazis have standards. He then shoots up a hair salon.

The only thing worthwhile about any of this is that the writing is good. So much wasted potential on this garbage.

I am going to go see a therapist now. thanks for that.

This one was a bit odd, I like the creativity in the different endings but it doesn't come across as very realistic or believable, I think dialling back on some stuff might make it more impactful, when you're hit with a wall of edginess it makes less impact. Still, kudos for going somewhere a bit different with this story.