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Date Posted: 23:39:11 03/25/03 Tue
Author: Kelso
Author Host/IP: c66.190.39.48.fdl.wi.charter.com / 66.190.39.48
Subject: Re: Review of the B/A selection: The College Years
In reply to: morgain 's message, "Review of the B/A selection: The College Years" on 10:46:52 03/24/03 Mon

Two things about this story initially turned me off: the length (122 printed pages), and the title. "The College Years" just didn't do it for me. Then I read the story, and I really enjoyed it. It didn't feel like it was 122 pages.

First, the main plot was very original. Reading it, I felt like it could have been used as basis for an actual "Buffy" episode. It had that tone. The Huntsman idea made sense and I've never come anything very similar to it in any other story. I really liked how the plot fit in with canon (mentioning events from "I Will Remember You," "Hush," etc.) yet combined these elements with fresh ideas. I was never quite sure what would happen next, but when it did, it made sense.

Characterization was solid. I especially enjoyed the Riley portrayal, since he tends to get bashed in many B/A or B/S stories, and he was treated respectfully in this one. As for the others, they were in character and a line of dialogue only occasionally rang false. (For example, the bit where Xander said, "What would you have us do, Buffy?" It sounded more like wording Giles would use.) Overall, though, quite nicely done.

Problem areas:
-The consistent misspelling of "Mohra demon" as "Mhora."
-I wanted to deduct for Wesley's last name being spelled "Windham-Pryce" (the current canon version is "Wyndam-Pryce") but I found that the official site kept coming up with different spellings. Since they can't get it straight, what are fanfic authors supposed to do?
-The story was too choppy in a few places. For instance, all of a sudden Angel was human and the author recapped the events of "I Will Remember You" as explanation. Too much telling; not enough showing.
-The story really could have benefitted from more careful proofreading and editing. I noted an average of more than one error per page, which IMO is way too high, not to mention distracting.
A few examples from the roughly 200 mistakes I found:
She was right, he did need to heal. (Comma splice; story contained a fair number of these.)
Quentin Travers presence (punctuation error of missing apostrophe)
He resisted the urge to fiddle with hands. (missing word; "his" hands)
a big pot if ice cream (typo; "if" should be "of")

Rating: 92. I liked it a lot and would love to read more if the author goes on. Or has he already? I couldn't find a sequel. Anyway, this one was a very entertaining piece of fanfic.

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Replies:

[> Re: Review of the B/A selection: The College Years -- Gwynevere1, 21:36:49 03/26/03 Wed (dhcp0228.hrn.resnet.group.upenn.edu/165.123.185.122)

*shrug* Once again, that was my basic reaction to this story. Not good. Not bad. Just there.

I do agree a lot with what has been said before, so I'll try to keep this brief. I never cared for the Initiative storyline the first time around, so I did not care for this much more unbelievable version here. The only aspect of its appearance in this story which I liked was that the author fleshed out the objectives of the Initiative a lot more than was ever done on the show. Like the previous posters, I was also turned off by the length of this story. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I know that I would not have chosen to continue to read this story if it were not for this group. The author could have written the events much more succinctly. The lack of any mature style to the author's writing really bored as well.

I apologize for what must seem my constant negativity, but I did not enjoy this work.

Overall score: 75


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