Subject: Re: New Mission!
Author:
Posted on: 2016-11-05 04:56:00 UTC
Honestly, this mission suffers from some of the same things I've noticed recurring in Skarmory's other missions: an excess of characters, a lot of backstory-dumping, and a lot of inter-character bickering. In this case, things between Lapis and Aiko are less justified than between Lapis and Backslash, which doesn't really help things. And Violet, Ami, and Seung-Li don't contribute all that much to the mission, at least in the first half, though they do gain more personality once they split up. In all honesty, the smaller groups give the characters a lot more chance to shine. On the other hand, I'm not sure that it makes sense in mission terms; you can't really have one group handle every other chapter, because they'll miss a lot of details, and charges of poor in-fic continuity will be harder to catch.
It is nice to see Lapis get called out for her behavior; I have to agree with Sarah that she spends way too much time angsting about her background. However, I think having her overcome her personal problems via magical regeneration seems a bit... cheap. Aside from the Heroic Sacrifice, which is a bit on the cliche side, she's said she's going to change, but the progress gets made without us actually seeing the character development. It's also confusing because I can't tell if this occurs before or after "Witches Get Stitches." In terms of characterization, it seems more like the latter one came first, as this one continues the trend of Lapis learning to get past her issues and disagreements, but it'd make more sense for her speech and swearing patterns to change after regeneration. (Swearing is something people usually do instinctively, so it doesn't really make sense for someone to begin swearing in a language they've just learned, unless there's some other factor at play.) Also, I'm not really sure about Lapis regaining her waterbending powers. I mean, I know they're not necessarily overpowered, they just don't really seem like a necessary power-up. It kind of feels like she's being rewarded just for making a token effort to get better. I know the Heroic Sacrifice was supposed to be the major point, but given that she recovered fairly effortlessly, it takes away some of the impact.
I did like the other characters a lot, especially Seung-Li and Violet. I'm sorry I didn't have more positive comments. It's not a bad mission or anything, and I found the action pretty easy to follow. You also did a good job explaining the Steven Universe stuff, at least.