Into The Fray: Season Two Post-Fic Discussion

Yeah, I liked your What comes After fic but it didn't keep going soo...

Finally finished Season 2. I'll give my thoughts tomorrow.

Also... Why is Wyatt "presumed dead"? Isn't it confirmed that he died? And weren't Emily and Sully basically in the same position as Becca, Hector, or Tyler? Why are they also presumed dead?

Overall, I liked it... but I do have a lot of criticism.

I'm probably going to do a whole post, but for the things that you brought up:

People keep posting, but I'll tell you this right now, I largely enjoyed the story, and have few complaints there, but my enjoyement of the story was largely hindered by some fairly poor writing.

I'd say go back to Season 1 and revise it a bit before moving on to Season 3, if you ever do.

All right, I'm going to try to not be mean, and before I start, I really, really did enjoy the story, and most of the characters... overall.

However, I didn't think that it was particularly written very well, for several reasons. everything seemed too general and broad, at times, less like a story, and more like listing a series of events, with no emotion or voice to the narration. This is pretty clear whenever a new episode starts, listing everything that happened in the previous episode in a very awkward and forced way, that could otherwise have been worked into the story better, or, dropped. It's not necessary, most actual stories don't recap everything that happened at arbitrary marks.

There's little voice in the story, and this reflects in the characters. Very little is different in the way they talk or act, for the most part, and when it is done, it doesn't come across very well. Bonnie has a southern accent, Kiff is shown to have a Scottish accent, and Wyatt says "man" or "dude" a lot, but in places that sometimes don't even make sense. Hector is really the only character that I thought had a voice of his own, aside form that, all the characters may as well be the same person, in the way they act or speak, as a whole. When an effort it made to make them act differently, I felt that most of the time, too much attention is drawn to that. For example, when Annie decides she wants to be the groups, "medic". It felt unnatural in how it was phrased within the story.

Dialogue is also a big problem. It never really flows naturally, and this is partly tied into what I aid before. Actually, it entirely is, but I want to draw attention to it. At times, it brings the whole tone of the scene down. While I thought that Wyatt's death was done incredibly well, the line hat most people praised completely brought me out of it. It fells like Wyatt's response of thought of first, and then what Annie says was thought of later, for the sole purpose of making Wyatt's emotional response work. It didn't feel normal, and most of the time, characters talking to each has the same problem throughout Season 1 and 2. There should have been more effort put into this.

This is especially a big problem because you aren't working with original characters a lot, and you have to be conscious of making everything fit with those characters. I'm going to be very blunt here: It doesn't. They say things that I'd never imagine them saying. These characters have pre-determined personalities, to an extent, but the more important thing in how you handled them, the way they speak and act is pretty much set in stone, and the story breaks that.

However, I think that Becca, Vince, and Wyatt were handled very well in terms of personality, their character arcs, etc. Bonnie, Shel, and Russel were not, and even for Becca, Vince, and Wyatt, there were many problems in how you wrote those characters, all of it relating to what I've said above pretty much. Thankfully, none of them fell into my next complaint.

Some of the characters are bland. In Season One, this fell to Daniel, Lucia, and Ralph. I did not care about those characters, and I was given no reason to care about those characters. In Season 2, this problem is better, but I still couldn't bring myself to care about Kiff, and the most I could say about Emily and Sully is that they were "nice". Their interactions with the rest of the group were done well, but I couldn't say much about them.

And as a side note: Why does Daniel decide to give his hat to Annie? They hardly interacted at all. This was still believe able though/ Mitchell giving the binoculars to Annie was not. They didn't interact at all. If he was going to give them to someone, why not Sully, his brother? Or Emily, or even Becca. Do all the characters know that Annie is the one you won't kill off?

Okay, stop, Zyphon, stop, you're being mean. Bad Zyphon, Bad!

I really did like the story, but the dialogue was so horribly off at times, it killed certain scenes, most of the characters interactions were unnatural as well, and etc. etc. I could keep going on about that, but soon enough, it would devolve into me insulting you, and I don't want to do that. I feel pretty bad about what I've written, and I think I was harsh in some places, but I honestly think it would be worse if I just said I liked it, and then didn't tell you what I didn't like.

All right, continuing:

Villains like Marshall and Ivan in Season One were poorly done. Period. Marshall seemed like a nice guy, and I know that was the point, but there seemed to be nothing off about him. I found it more odd that Miles thought there was something going on, because there were no hints left that he was a villain, but they needed to find out. I also think you kind of overdid it. Marshall is brought up over and over again in the story because he was the worst of the worst. Compared to him, Ivan isn't that bad, Sanctum isn't that bad(though I feel like a hypocrite now, considering I did the same thing in What Comes After). Once you've tortured a kid, turned them, and made a shrine around them, nothing else is all that bad. I already gave a lot of my complaints about Marshal and Shel's death in a different review, back when I read that chapter, so I'll move on.

Ivan comes out of nowhere, he just appears from the Ether, it seems, because that season needed a villain. It kind of seems like the Russians in Amid the Ruins, they show up, and then they're gone. Really, episode 5 just felt like a whole lot of nothing, aside from Daniel death and Lucia disappearing for.... reasons? The final battle was the focus, and it was poorly done.

Remember what I said about the narration at times feeling like it was listing events? That is most evident in both of the battles, listing the exact position of every character, how many shots they fired, exactly were the bullets hit or did not hit, breaking the POV to describe every little thing so that it seems almost pointless to have separate POVs at that point, since you aren't focusing on the POV character at that time.....

The problem is not that there are too many things going on, it's that you feel as if you need to describe all of the things that are going on. you can have a shootout with a lot of people and a lot of things happening and make it work. But when you handle it by describing every little thing that happens, it ceases to feel like anything important or dangerous is going on. It becomes tedious to read, and at the point when you feel the need to broaden the POV and list everything that's happening, I feel like skipping ahead until the story is describing what's actually going on.

You can even go very indepth into an action scene like that, but you need to have more of a voice present in the narration. At this point, I'd draw a comparison to something that did it better, but that comparison would be to Jay Bonansinga's and Robert Kirkman's Fall of The Governor. And that was a best seller, I feel like it would be unfair. Still, the part i'm talking about is a fight between two characters. It goes incredibly indepth, describing what happens on a second by second basis. But this works. And this works because there's a prominent voice present in the narration. The Narration takes on the voice of the POV character at that moment, as it should, and there's a certain style to it. As opposed to just listing what happens, with no voice present in narration, just an outside observer listing events.

I take this moment to remind you, I really, really, really, really enjoyed this story. I liked a lot of the characters, I liked Sanctum in Season Two! Sanctum was very well done, it was focused, there were two sides to the story, it was really good. Hector was an awesome character, probably my favorite. He had a very well defined personality, there was a lot going on with Hector. I liked the prisoners, too. Tessa's death was well done, as was Lowell's. Tyler was pretty interesting as well.


Overall, I'd say I liked the story, but you could improve. A lot. That's why I'd say that if you're going to do anything with Into the Fray, you should go back to Season One, try and improve it. Practicing writing, as with all things, will mean you'll get better at it, and I'd say oyu should do that before moving on the Season 3. Not only that, but I'd enjoy reading a revised Season One of ITF.

Also, I feel like a horrible person now. I hate giving criticisms to friends.....

boo hoo its one of the best fanfics ive ever read so fuck off m8

Not sure if Zyphon here has incredibly high standards and I don't live up to them or everyone else has incredibly low standards and I marginally exceed them.

From either standpoint I'm shit.