This stories review has been a long time coming. I did a review, or at least a minor one, a while back where I think I went through what amounted to 3 chapters. I have also sat with her multiple times and helped her get her story started. Then she waited to have it more fully reviewed, upon its full completion (though still to be edited), patiently on our discord server while I have reviewed other stories. You haven't seen me publish a review in a while because several stories I decided the author's would be better off with me taking the time to sit and explain to them my thoughts, and I generally couldn't get past the first 1-3 chapters. And now here we are.
I have read about half of it making up 11 chapters out of 33. Okay so that's actually a third. But I found enough to speak about, and judging from some consistent patterns, I think I will just end up beating a dead horse if I keep going as I predict it will keep going.
Also I am on heavy drugs. So lets see if I can make this half-way coherant! :D
Lets smash!
TLDR; Modern day girl-Aladdin turns out to be a disney genie-princess herself.
Main Characters: Cute and Painful - The main character is Girl-Aladdin and Drooling-Moron. We know this because those two get the first-person POVs. Girl-Aladdin is cute, relatable, high energy, extremely shy though not coy when she lets her opinion out and banters with the best of them, and loves people in general. Overall she was a great character to support, makes you want to see good things come her way, and is wounded enough to explain everything from the overcompensation to the shyness. The explanation of her wound is a bit redundant as it gets repeated almost per-chapter, creating artificial tension, and is triggered by everything imaginable, but it is still a decent wound. And I found her somewhat dumb, but this is well within suspension of disbelief being a teenager, so its acceptable. Overall I quite liked her.
The problem is her mother, aka the Drooling-Moron. I'm just sitting here trying to figure out where to even begin with her. I could say she is one of the most stupid, obnoxious, incompotent, and irritating characters I have ever read, and that wouldn't do her justice. She goes so far as to singlehandedly destroy the world building and sabatage the plot, just by existing and being this mind-numbingly dumb. I am not exaggerating when I say that I had a massive headcold while reading it, with 5 kids in the background screaming, and it wasn't the headcold nor the kids giving me a migraine, it was her. This level of raw stupid is not covered by any amount of suspension of disbelief. This bucket of advanced retardation is about as funny or effective as a dead-baby joke at an abortion clinic pulled off by a drugged up homeless guy, its that painful to JUST witness, much less process as something that is supposed to be a key piece in a large puzzle that needs to be fit together. Which is made all the worse by the fact that is given a first-person POV. She isn't a side character I can HAPPILY pretend doesn't exist, she is actually a main character alongside Girl-Aladdin. And, to really hit home on how stunning it was, the author tells me this on purpose. The character is supposed to be highly emotional and stuff. Well, she succeeded, and then went off the cliff and instead of hitting the ground went through a portal to hell.
But trust me, ill get more into that later.
I know you are using names to signify who the 1st person perspective is with each change, but I disagree with the decision on a fundamental level to have multiple 1st person perspectives. This takes away from the strength of the actual main character and is extremely confusing. No number of 'signals' will help even when you take the time to specify who it is. I have found in principle it is best to have only one 1st-person perspective and to keep the rest 3rd person. This will not take away from the review score because it is more of a style preference, but still advise I think you should take into serious consideration because the pros-cons will have a heavy impact on your readers.
Side characters: Smashing! - The strength of Girl-Aladdin is magnified by a good cast of side-characters. They push and pull her into her comfort zone and out of her shell as needed, force her to use different sides of herself to reveal a well-rounded living, breathing person beneath the surface level description offered above. This is made even more impressive as each of the side characters have their own subplots, developed character, and have thoughts and opinions independent of, and sometimes contrary to, the main character. They bicker and fight, they support each other, and at the end of it the greatest strength of the story is literally and narratively by this family.
The genie has a tendency to behave in a way as if this is his first master-servant time. More specifically he doesn't consider very basic things. Example: whether or not he might be seen by other people. You'd think something like this might have been brought up or been a dilemna in a previous time. I can understand certain things have never been addressed before by previous masters, esspecially where technology might be involved, but this is basic. It makes him look incompotent, or at the very least, inexperienced, when the impression I think we are supposed to have is someone who has a lot of years under his belt but is a bit immature. That combination is difficult to pull off because its two traits that are polar opposite, but while it can be suspended by disbelief for the most part, the one thing you don't do is make him inexperienced in basic things. It is fair enough for her to ask it, but then I'd imagine his response to be "yeah see, already covered that. I've been invisible this whole time. But we can discuss your preference. Not sure about cameras tho, thats new. And dont even get me started on the invention of 'dog', that took forever to figure out a work around."
I haven't read up to the point that the moron joins in on the family so I can only imagine the damage she does to it by sheer proximity. Not even drama. Just in quality.
Grammar and Word Usage: Average - Doesn't keep the verb tense straight. Pretty much ever. And since the 1st person POV is from that of an emotional teenager or a drooling-moron, the way the story is actually written portrays their intelligence and emotional process as you are inside their thought pattern. This is on purpose. This is good to do when doing a 1st-person story. This is also just plain bad when one of them is treating slobbering incompetence as an Olympic sport and is doing everything she can to reach the shiny gold medal, probably just to nibble on it like a 1-year old. The level of stupid written within Girl-Aladdin's thought, and her semi-random thought patterns is fine enough to really hit home she is a teenager, and while it took a bit of effort to understand and process (like any teenager I guess) it wasn't in any way painful. So I will say it is a decent idea executed well. I'm not going to take off for that just because teenagers irritate me.
You really like to use passive voice. this brings down the impact of... well everything. Lots of things are happening but with almost all of them in passive voice, it feels like nothing happens. This is mostly seen in the first few chapters, but something that needs to be watched out for. It's a common problem.
Energy of conversation is mismatched sometimes. Someone's words will be excited but their non-dialogue will be mellow. Or the opposite that someone will act excited but their words are mellow. This is confusing and breaks the immersion of the moment because people who speak with excitement would also act with excitement. Like someone who acts excited wouldn't "sit up" they would "spring up" or "bounce up" or something more than the most basic verb. So try using synonyms and thesaurus' to keep the way scenes are portrayed consistent, and when you have someone acting excited don't be afraid to use a '!'.
World Building: Holy Mother of God No - Any world is presented in one of two ways. You can reveal it like a history book bringing you from the past to present day. Or, you can show it as it currently is by its sights, traditions, culture, people and most of all by characters who portray those cultures and traditions and people. I'm sure there are other ways to do it, but lets keep it simple with these two. The side character, Husan, teaches a bit from a history book perspective. Thats fine.
Then you have the characters who stand as an example of their respective cultures and people. It is modern america in girl-Aladdin's POV so its easy. But then we need to learn about the Djinn. And the biggest example we have of a Djinn, with their culture and people, is Drooling-Moron. I didn't say first, as Husan was first, but he is not queen. Drooling-Moron is. That makes her a bigger example. She is supposed to personify everything that is Djinn, she is supposed to be the diplomat who represents the highest of what her people can achieve when engaging with foreign cultures. She is as important as a flag, which no nation with an ounce of self-respect allows to touch the ground without feeling sullied. She can allow no weakness or emotion without being a direct weakness to her power where someone will die somewhere if she so much as blinks at the wrong time, the stability of her rule is on her intelligence and ruthlessness, and her people's admiration and love is on her holiness and wisdom. In short, the respect we have for the world she represents is tied directly to our respect for her.
And what we are given is a person who, in front of other kings, is a complete bitch, drooling retard, and bigger emotional mess than my five-year old nephew who dissolves into a fake-crying and slobbering mess over which Nintendo controller he gets when all of them are the same. I have more respect for him than her. So try and imagine what kind of world building she offers.
Plot: Average – Every story is a project in which is a goal and an objective. What is a goal vs. objective? A goal is an achievable outcome that is generally broad and longer term while an objective is shorter term and defines measurable actions to achieve an overall goal. While different, the two terms are often used in unison when working on a project.
Measurable actions to achieve an overall goal is a milestone, otherwise called "pushing the story forward".
Every chapter has to have its objective that acts as a milestone towards reaching that goal, and the goals need to be definable for the milestones to be understood. In other words: every chapter has to take a step forward, actively, in getting us closer to that goal. In a chapter can be multiple scenes, and in order for a scene to qualify as useful it has to achieve one of three things, at a minimum. If it can achieve 2 things, then it is quality. 1. Push the story forward. 2. Give us character development. 3. Give us world development.
So every chapter needs at least 1 scene that pushes the larger story forward to the next milestone on the road to reaching the goal to qualify as progress. You can have multiple scenes in a chapter, but you need, at minimum, one that pushes it forward.
Instead, I cant tell if the story is meant to be slow as molasses or going at break-neck speeds because the chapters keep doing #2 and #3 but never #1.
On one hand in the human world you have a new story started and ended with every chapter, but I can't tell if a single one of them pushes the story forward because they are entirely disconnected from what that larger narrative is. On the Djinn world you have one long story that has yet to even start but with a timeline of starting the next morning all the way from the beginning but after 9 chapters still hasn't come about yet. Which just reminds me of Freeza from DragonballZ going "yes I shall blow this planet up in 5 minutes" and then nothing happens for 9 episodes. (for those who haven't seen the show, this isn't an exaggeration.)
What is the story we are trying to tell? Because right now we are, quite literally, in limbo, for 11-12 chapters. Stuff is happening but there is no narrative for them to happen to, because the larger narrative is decided by the Djinn dimension so its just stuff, clutter, random nonsense. Not only does this rob the human-dimension characters of any agency, it removes the structure at its foundation. Even episodic comedies had an overarching structure and narrative to have episodes inside for episode-long mini-stories. This doesnt. Granted, having us in limbo for 9 chapters while getting to know the people in the main characters life, does give more and more weight to the ultimate actions that will take place when something finally happens, but this doesnt need to take the entire first third of the story just to decide "okay time to begin the story. now its time for something to happen! :D"
Here are my notes!
ch1 - I like how the first thing we have is setting the scene, a conversation that was cute and about motivating to take action, and then action. Fast paced start that should grab most people. It quickly gives us relationship and connection between the characters, as well as using opposites to emphasis their differences. Main character has a nice flaw that is very relatable.
General - The use of nicknames for everyone is cute and adds flavor. (Will need to make sure that when you do reveal their actual names that there can be no doubt as to who is who. The nickname and real name need to be connected to the same person in that reveal.)
ch1 - What possible reason for her to get an unusual feeling? There is nothing leading up to it and nothing results because of it, so it accomplishes absolutely nothing.
ch1 - What is the trigger that sets the story off? Is it her saying hi to whats-his-face? Is it Mickey getting a text from Tony? Is it her getting an unusual feeling? The chapter doesn't seem clear on what is actually setting the story in motion. Too many things happening too quickly to give necessary emphasis to the important parts.
Ch2 - Things seem different from before, and you seem to have taken some of my advice with Leo. He acknowledges their behaviors as negative, the reasons for why they might do it, and follows through like a decent guy with enough clarity to see both sides and make his own decision with strength, kindness, gentleness, positivity, and openminded (while still rational) diplomacy. Instantly likable. The thing that is the most telling is when surprises hit him off guard, his immediate reaction is consistent with what I mentioned. That solidifies him as a generally good man and I can see why girly likes him. Also the main characters are less being straight assholes, partially because it seems toned down and partially because Leo acknowledges it and they properly seem half-way sorry. Overall love these interactions.
ch3 - all around cute. Accomplished a lot in a little time without coming across contrived as hell.
ch4 - a bit confusing to know who is talking, not just because of the method of expressing who is talking from quote to quote but because there are just so damn many talking. It is fine to aim for chaos, but not confusion.
Ch4 - The moment he did a racial insult doesnt really seem to hit home as remotely significant in their reaction because of the use of passive voice.
Ch6 - The dialogue here is painfully unnatural. So much so the entire chapter is one giant 1/5. I commented the hell out of it for the dialogue but even in a fundamental manner it fails. in its goal of pushing the story forward fail because nothing actually happens. Expanding on characters or adding characters fail because they are imcompotent and dense, at best. expanding the world doesnt work because the figures you need to visualize as representative of their world are, again, utter retards, and so cannot be respected. Then while a few details of lore are given, they only succeed in making the characters look increasingly failures. How can an all powerful queen of infinite power lose to a child throwing a tantrum, even to the point of her child being a hostage? WHO KNOWS! Dont think about it. Why is she getting her child back now? What has changed from then and now to alleviate the threat? WHO KNOWS! Why sidnt she try and get her oh so precious daughter back at any point in the last 16 years? Because... she stupid? Because... infinite god mother is weak to what would have a 14 year old? Every detail given only succeeds in breaking the character into something i cannot describe as a character. Now, to be fair, the pieces can work, but they are all in the wrong order. The first impression of anyone, much less a leader whose presence demands respect, and whose existance reflects the world building she encapulates, HAS to be positive. In the case of a leader: power, respect, intelligence, and emotional strength. If you want the leader to lose to someone, you first have to cement both of them in power then show one triumphing over the other. This chapter did the opposite. It started off the entire perspective of the character with weakness, incompotence, stupidity, emotional instability, and most of all failure. The queen's first impression is: Infinite god loses to a 14 year old stomping his feet in a tantrum. The time for failure has to come later, MUCH LATER, right now is the time for respect to ever take this character, and the world it respresents, seriously. Seriously, why is this chapter even here?
Ch7-8 - While the conversation was cute, and it is a decent way of creating world building and learning of characters, it comes off random because there is no point to it. If she doesnt trust, then tell him to buzz off and do things by her own power. Instead she wants to artifically build up trust by conversing, which by default is odd. If you dont trust someone why would you expect them to tell you the truth about who they are? If you don't trust someone, then no matter how you word a wish an infinite being will find a way to mess with you. I love how she is trying to come off as knowledgeable and wise under the circumstances, esspecially as she has seem to have done her homework on actual Djinn mythology, but as great as that is it will still miss the mark because what the story is attemptign to create is empty and artifical. Trust is NOT "talk and give me a reason to trust you", because even the most basic cinical girl won't be satisfied (like how she is portrayed). Trust is FAITH. It is making a leap. Trust is an action. Trust is making a bet, seeing how it goes, and choosing to establish a pattern for the future in engaging with the person. The execution isn't bad but the idea just doesnt fit to start with.
This is made even worse by the fact the story seems to be having a difficult time finding a new plot. The plot given was that she is shy and wants to say hi to the point. Then its done quickly all the way in ch2-3 and story is over. Then we have a follow up story added, where we still seem to be in the prologue phase setting it up, and stuff like this is just wasting time because, while it is cute on its own, it doesn't fit into any larger narrative as we have no idea what that narrative is.
I think the story is trying to make a second plot in her parental issues, but this cannot work because she has no agency to act on it. She isn't going on a search for them, she isn't asking questions, she is taking no action but is being angsty about it while her family is, so far as the story is hinting from other POVs, in another dimension. Its just empty angst. This isnt story. There is no journey, internal or external. I would think it at least be something if she was searching within the story timeframe but came up with dead ends and had to deal with the emotional consequences of the discovery, but we dont even have that. We have the payoff without the weight and journey of it.
Oh and that plot ends here too. So why is this here? What story is next? Lets find out :D
Ch 9 - And the new plot and new story we have is a triangle of retards all assuming everyone is cheating on everyone. And taking it out on everyone. If a single one of them actually showed a reason anyone could make an assumption like this, then the line could be drawn in that direction, but no one is. And its all happening at the same time. At random. Sure, okay, Leo can have the instinct on constantly because it has happened multiple times and his journey could be to learn what real signals are to wach out for, but Micky just goes full retard bitch and wants to cheat while taking it out on everyone because her boyfriend on the other side of the country has friends outside of her. And then this plot drops in the span of two paragraphs. I dont know which is worse, starting this plot so randomly or ending it so suddenly. Honestly, I just found it more human and natural for her to go after Husan because she is attracted and wants to drop Toby just as quickly because she got what she wanted out of Toby as if he wasn an achivement, and actually have a good couple chapters of being an honest bitch. Instead we rush it in two paragraphs and to try and excuse it with the intellectual capacity of a two year old not wanting to share choo-choo train with others. The idea of refusing to share can be an easy character flaw, and to be an honest bitch is really juicy drama, but to actually have the mental capacity in thinking it is an excuse is mindnumbing and artifically backpedalling the drama without any resolution or payoff. This is rushed to hell and makes her overwhelmingly incompotent ontop of being an asshole. An asshole can be fun and start juicy shit, an incompotent one is obnoxious.
I get that she is ultimately proven correct, but this is the intellectual equivalent to executing someone at birth because they might be the next hitler. She is still dumb. then the story makes a story-sin in goes out of its way to make her attitude the correct, justified response with no reprocussions because of course she has to be right. And all the juicy drama she was starting is gone as quickly as it came.
So... a new story started and ended just as quickly that has no impact on the overall narrative as I can figure.
Why is this even here?
ch10 - About the only thing I gained and learned is that the queen's mindnumbing retardation is on purpose. Which is just bad. i cant even call her decision a bad one. just dumb. Why is this here?
ch11 - An achievement here. The queen actually had a single intelligent thought. She actually thought, and stay with me on this, to not say something stupid because people already know it. Granted, the rest of the chapter was of just enduring her mind-numbing stupidity, but its something worth acknowledging as a positive among her shit. Beyond that, the chapter offered nothing. Not a single detail of relevant importance. Sure, it offered a dose of stuff happening before the story, but why are we having prologue in the middle of the story when the story hasn't even started yet? It didnt push the story. Nothing happened. Again, why is this here?
Overall I'd rate it 2 smashing out of 5! The weaknesses outweigh the strengths. The biggest problems is 1. The mother character and her affect on the world building and plot. 2. The lack of agency in the plot to push it forward for everyone else in the human dimension. Everything else is reasonably small.