Nasuverse Unlimited Gabriel Blessing Works

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
I dunno.

The way Shirou sneered at the whole "talk through the magecraft as you do it" thing that magus do and then went and did exactly that kinda destroyed the fight scene for me.


Selling the "revelation of love" as the context where he started up his Marble was... well, compared to how quickly he achieved it during the game, only for Gabe to confiscate it just so he could sell it back, that comparison destroyed the love-love for me.

Also yeah I muttered "Brainwashing: Complete" when he switched up his Aria.


But worst of all...

1) Karasuba was too much. It's like... she kills people by the boat load, and she unabashedly continues to plan to kill people by the boat load. Why spare her? And then turn around and have her straight-up execute the two that are less of a threat?

2) Also I dunno why he thinks Takami isn't completely complicit. Why is she different than all the other nameless faceless researchers?

Basically,
Gabe is writing a Shirou that goes on and on about the "Mind of the Asura", but then when he closes his mouth, his actions don't match his words. That really bugs me.
 

Deathwings

Well-Known Member
daniel_gudman said:
2) Also I dunno why he thinks Takami isn't completely complicit. Why is she different than all the other nameless faceless researchers?
That would be because Minaka hypnotized her in front of Shirou during the previous chapter and confirmed himself that she totally was just a muggle.
 
I'm not the biggest fan of the way the final fights are being handled, but I'm still holding out hope that the ending won't suck as much as Hill of Swords's. It's not that I have a problem with winging Karasuba as much as I think it should have happened earlier if it was going to happen. It feels like an interesting way to explore her character, but there's only one more chapter. Opening up a plot thread at this stage of the game feels...off.

And the "wait, there's more!" moment after UBW came out felt forced and bad.

Still, the writing's solid, I enjoyed most of it, and I'm generally okay with how the story has turned out.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
Hardcore Heathen said:
And the "wait, there's more!" moment after UBW came out felt forced and bad.
Personally, I just felt it awkward. Like most, I'm just glad that this ride is coming to an end.

You know, if you take out GB's writing style, and the exposition - I like what remains of the plot. Shirou runs away from the clock tower, meets the Sekirei, they do some spiritual healing for him, he pushes away Rin/Saber and finally fights his own father.

By itself, that's a pretty nice plot. And it was taken up by a good author too. Sure, there was too much exposition at times, but he still writes a LOT better than most. In fact, I shudder to think what would have happened if some newbie took that plot and butchered it. We would have all been lamenting (if we ever read that far).

Finally as far as cliche's go, ... what's her name? That sister ? Eh, whatever, my point is that she SPOILED the whole "I am your father" speech. I'm sure the sillies about "worried about our children" could have still been done, but its just too weird or strange that she knew about the father and didn't bother to tell Shirou after all this time.

Sure Takami (the mother) could have told her not to ... but for being such a manga-freak, I find it really odd.

-chronodekar
 
One of the main issue I feel is the manner in which the alteration of Shirou's mentality is presented. Gabriel Blessing did it alright, but there was no addressing possible unfortunate consequences. If someone else did it, it'd have to be really delicately done. Even if you're not intending it to it looks a lot like "the aliens are subconsciously brainwashing him to their ends" rather than "Alien love-love heals his broken mind/soul".
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
Emerald Oracle said:
One of the main issue I feel is the manner in which the alteration of Shirou's mentality is presented. Gabriel Blessing did it alright, but there was no addressing possible unfortunate consequences. If someone else did it, it'd have to be really delicately done. Even if you're not intending it to it looks a lot like "the aliens are subconsciously brainwashing him to their ends" rather than "Alien love-love heals his broken mind/soul".
I'm not sure if it's fair to call it "brain-washing". Simple example - I'm a VERY different person today than I was 10 years ago. What do I call it? Growth. Though, ... well, its a very tricky thing with fanfiction.

-chronodekar
 

Megaolix

Well-Known Member
Said it before and I'll said it again.

GB's problem is all the exposition whoring, and also trying to recreate big moments from the VN and showing off Shirou's mindset during fights from it. But he fails hard at it.
 
well the reason I call it brain-washing, which I will admit may be harsh, is because it's an external alteration to his mental process. It's not the result of natural growth, but the influence of psychic alien mating bonds. Now, while this may have only accelerated processes that were already happening we don't know that. Hence why I said it was delicate.
 

Jimbobob5536

Well-Known Member
It's really all up to how benign you interpret the bond.

Some see it as external influences changing his thought processes directly.

Others see it as Shirou being surrounded by 7 people that put his well being at the very top of every consideration. He is what matters most to them, and they constantly, blatantly, let him know it.
 

shiki

Well-Known Member
So... Brainwashing then. Just because it is a nice way doesn't make it something else. A spade is a spade and all that rot.
 

Benstar

Well-Known Member
A very appropriate way to end everything.

Also, it's certainly very amusing that Shirou was all like "minaka is not the only issue and he'll totally have backups" to Homura every time he suggested murder, and it turned out he was and he didn't.

If he'd just agreed to it, this would have been over twenty chapters ago.
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
In the end it was certainly

a thing




That's all, really. In conclusion, Gabe's technical skills might be fine, but his ability as a story teller is pretty bad. I mean, in retrospect, I think he just focused on the wrong things all along.




EDIT:
In the 1,107 days (like three years and two weeks or so) since the first chapter was posted, Gabe wrote 762,492 words. That's an average of 688.8 words per day, including author's notes.
...
In the 278 days since I first posted the "FSN + SAO" thread, I've posted 182,774 words on ffnet. That's an average of 657.5 w/d, not including author's notes (since I don't add those on the ffnet).


...Hmm. I thought it was impossible, but apparently, I'm already in the same league as Gabe when it comes to raw production rate....

I'm not sure how I should feel about that, since that's something I've been slamming him on?
 

Avider

Well-Known Member
That's how I felt when I saw just how many words/chapters you had on FF.net too.

I was going to read through everything in one sitting when I found some time to see if it's a problem, but've been way too busy this time of year.
 

shiki

Well-Known Member
I only really scan the snippets for the lulzy Ilya and I do have to say that the pace is a bit slow because of all the changes and zombie player-monster things that he was hinting at. Not to mention all the screen time that secondary and tertiary characters get in addition to the magecraft additions.

All that stuff adds up. Now I am just assuming because I haven't really looked at the FF.net stuff so I don't know how much I missed out on since I only look in the thread every once in a while.
 

Benstar

Well-Known Member
The pace is honestly a bit slow, and I would certainly suggest speeding it up a bit past floor five, but most of that comes from the changes made of the initial premise; the SAO players learning magecraft, Ilya and Shirous personality clashes and motivations, the example of how "people don't die if they are killed"...

Ultimately, there's nothing in particular I can point to and say "this is unnecessary padding and should be removed from the story".
 

Karnath

Well-Known Member
If you look at word count In Flight is longer than the first five harry potter books put together the number of words that he wrote in the 3 years and 1 week that In Flight was in production for comes out to 1,369,835 which is 1243 word a day, I find that rather impressive when you consider JK Rowling wrote at a rate of 295 words a day for the HP books.
 

Jomasten

Well-Known Member
Woot, good(enough) epilogue for this story. GG everybody. It's been a fun ride.

Now, we'll return to my regularly-scheduled semi-lurking.
 

T.L

Well-Known Member
So disappointed with the ending.
After all the world padding and explaining everything to the nth degree, we basically get a summary of ten years later.

After reading all that,
Disappointing ending is Disappointing.:no:
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
T.L said:
So disappointed with the ending.
After all the world padding and explaining everything to the nth degree, we basically get a summary of ten years later.

After reading all that,
Disappointing ending is Disappointing.:no:
After the ending we got with HoS, I'm not sure if I expected anything more than this. And with that in mind, I can't bring myself to complain. Other than the usual complaint of exposition.

-chronodekar
 

zeebee1

Well-Known Member
Blessing will never be a professional author. Even if you ignore the numerous things that would stop him from being a pro the second to last chapter clinched his biggest failing. Shirou talked and talked before a big battle and everyone stopped to listen. That's not how it works. It's just his bad habit of writing too much without making it realistic or interesting.
 

PCHeintz72

The Sentient Fanfic Search Engine mk II
zeebee1 said:
Blessing will never be a professional author. Even if you ignore the numerous things that would stop him from being a pro the second to last chapter clinched his biggest failing. Shirou talked and talked before a big battle and everyone stopped to listen. That's not how it works. It's just his bad habit of writing too much without making it realistic or interesting.
That depends on the genre and target audience. Take Sailor Moon or other magical girl or sentai shows for example... the enemy almost *always* stops to listen to the good guys speeches and stops to wait for transformation sequences to complete... or the good guys allow for the bad guy to monologue before attacking.

I've liked almost everything I've read that GB has made over the years except the Endgame Protagonist (I gave up on several pages in as being not to my liking at all). I have not read In Flight though.

Having said that Hill Of Swords certainly could have had a more definitive ending. But by it being vague at least one other author has stepped in with a continuation (of course, the continuation is now at a standstill). I doubt it would have been as easy had it a definitive ending.

He gets a big bonus as well for the fact that even if we do not all agree to like them, he does tend to actually complete his stories.

Shrugs. I do not know if he could make it professionally or not, but his writing quality itself is well above the norm, at least in my honest opinion.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
zeebee1 said:
Blessing will never be a professional author. Even if you ignore the numerous things that would stop him from being a pro the second to last chapter clinched his biggest failing.
That overly pessimistic, if you ask me. If anything, he has a better chance than most fanfic authors to go professional. Further considering the fact that he really wants to, I think we might see something come out.

PCHeintz72 said:
I have not read In Flight though.
I'm actually surprised to see you here in this discussion thread, then (considering that we do talk about spoilers in here). Any special reason why you haven't picked it up?

Having said that Hill Of Swords certainly could have had a more definitive ending. But by it being vague at least one other author has stepped in with a continuation (of course, the continuation is now at a standstill). I doubt it would have been as easy had it a definitive ending.

He gets a big bonus as well for the fact that even if we do not all agree to like them, he does tend to actually complete his stories.
These are the dubious 'benefits' of having an unambiguous ending. When done by a good author, while I don't like them, the crime is more forgivable. And I consider GB to be among the better ones out there.

-chronodekar
 

Jomasten

Well-Known Member
So because people have been saying that gabriel's protags are similar to each other, I've started re-reading 'Destiny', and trying to see elements of a 'gabriel blessing protagonist' in either Haruka or Ranma.

What should I be looking for again?
 
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