Part 4: Greater good, my ass!

"In terms of plot, Gambino is very good but when it comes to character..." said Susan.

"Its tempting to say he's bad at characterisation but that's not actually true" said Lindsey, "he's actually very good at characterisation but terrible at making it match his intentions. Show, don't tell. I know Gambino hates that advice but if you don't do it, people are gonna have a very different image in their head from what you intend. Its not fair but first impressions are everything"

"So, we've taken a look at the writers information and... it is complete bullshit"

"To put it more articulately, it is contradicted by the actual story. For example Gina has been shown to be completely rotten to the core, her mom is not even remotely psychotic..."

"When it comes to me, it gets very confusing. According to the writer's information, written by Gambino himself, I am generally good natured yet in the story, he tries to make me out of be some kinda hate sink"

"It does make the whole cutting Marcie storyline all the more harder to believe and I think we've established at this point that you are too sympathetic to be a hate sink"

"Also it says that Marel is 'bit nicer than Gina'. It sounds like she'd make a better protagonist than Marcie"

"Oh and get this, Marcie a 'is generally a nice, shy girl'" said Lindsey, "that is the same crap we were told early in the story. It also says that she's 'smart' and has a 'moral compass'"

"That is literally the exact opposite of Marcie" said Susan.

"It also says that Rina is 'easygoing and nice to hang around with'"

"That is not what Rina is like at all and apparently, Cutie is secretly a masochistic. Too bad, we haven't been shown this and Marcie didn't seem to actually know that when she abused him"

"No one is that submissive unless they've been abused"

"I think Gambino should have wrote a scene where we see Marcie find out about Frank's masochism, it might have made her look a little less abusive than she came across. I can't believe it took Vic this long to realise that Marcie is a scumbag. Gambino might as well have had her swirling her moustache in every scene"

"I actually consider her to be a satanic archetype" said Lindsey, "given how hard to believe her official backstory is, I kinda wonder if she might have created Gina and that Gina might have actually had justifiable reasons to cut her. Marcie is actually a very accurate portrayal of a sociopath but I don't think this is what Gambino was going for"

"We don't have anyone tied up do we?" asked Susan, "I don't wanna spend this entire part talking about some unrelated thing and barely say anything about the story we're reviewing like Sam and Vic did. I mean they barely mentioned anything about Hard Candy"

"No, we're gonna actually focus on our part 4"

READING IN PROGRESS

(1 chapter in)

"Anyway, the gang go to some hot springs. I gotta ask a question, is Frank gay?" asked Susan.

"Er... I don't think so" said Lindsey.

"Okay, because he seems **** to go the hot springs with 20 something girls"

"Well, he has a small penis. Its more likely, he was afraid they'd all laugh at him for it. Well, we've hit a crossroads. We can choose between following Marcie, Gina or 'Cutie'"

"Well, Frank is the only one who has not been shown to be completely evil with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, so I say we follow him. I'm sick of Marcie and Gina's headspace"

READING IN PROGRESS AGAIN

"Okay, the fact that Frank needs a goddamn chastity cage to prevent the girls from **** him says a lot about Team Marcie"

"Honestly, I think Marcie might have just been using it as an excuse to torment him" said Lindsey.

"Why is Frank sticking his neck out for Gina and not other me or the Leaders?" asked Susan.

"Well, he did intend for the Leaders to come to the hot springs and it might have been Frank that asked Marcie to free you"

"It could also have been other you that suggested it"

"Our Frank was a doormat before we got him to overcome it. Unfortunately, Marcie just wants him to remain a doormat for her. Other me is kinda a bitch but is nowhere as evil as Marcie, Gina, Rina or Marel. We'll come to why Marel is an irredeemable monster that deserves to have her tits ripped off and to burn in hell for all eternity later"

"Honestly, Frank would have been a better fit for generic body control" said Susan, "it was good to see Emma do something for once. She's mostly been doing offscreen stuff"

"I honestly don't know what to make of Emma" said Lindsey, "on one hand, she is one of the few likeable characters in this story but on the other hand, having Marcie develop the tactics herself would actually make her seem smart, or at least smarter than she's been shown to be. As it is, Marcie looks like a fucking moron who everything just magically works out for"

"Maybe Emma should have been the protagonist"

"Marcie, being a dumbass, decides to hold an election when everyone already accepted her as queen. No way that can go wrong"

"To be fair, Marcie did pick opponents she deemed unlikely to win against her" said Susan, "I mean Rina is one of the few people that are as bad as her. Frank was probably supposed to be a weak opponent that would get Marcie more votes"

"Unfortunately, it turned out that Marcie and Rina were such complete scumbags that the majority decided they'd rather take their chances with Frank"

"Marcie did not take that well and decides that because she lost, democracy doesn't work anymore. In other words, Marcie is a fascist. She even goes as far to punish Frank for something that was her own fault. I don't even believe her crap about 'foreign inference'. Meanwhile, I join Crazy Blue"

"And who can blame you after what Marcie did to you?" said Lindsey, "I know that Gambino said that you weren't abused by Gina but he has written this story in such a way that it feels as though you were"

"And he tries to make Gina out to be a victim"

"Its actually quiet disturbing, like a lifetime movie that expects you to side with the abuser" said Lindsey.

"Apparently, there's a deleted scene that would have shown Gina's mom **** her but Gambino decided to focus on my own actions"

"That backfired spectacularly as it just ended up being a moral event horizon for both Marcie and Gina"

"If Marcie had just removed my ability to give Gina commands, that would have been fine but there was nothing restrained about **** me. Gina might not have been allowed to use physical **** but she was still sexually violent"

"Yes, that would have been horribly traumatic and Marcie's reasons basically amount to Susan not being a mindless drone. Gambino pretty much guaranteed that we would hate both Marcie and Gina after that and end up being Team Susan. I mean if anything, Marcie herself was the liability for all her dumb decisions that would have realistically have led to defeat"

"Unfortunately, Marel rapes Vanessa so we she is a scumbag as well" said Susan, "Gambino claims that she was 'gentle' despite the obviously traumatised state that Vanessa is in. This contradicts the writer's information. She is completely evil with no redeeming qualities whatsoever"

"And just when I was starting to like Marel" said Lindsey, "**** Marcie is justifiable on account of the fact that she is evil and deserves it but now she has **** someone who didn't deserve it"

"I take back what I said about Marel making a better protagonist. This is the first opponent that we actually have a reason to root against"

"Unfortunately, despite this, Crazy Blue still looks like the lesser evil in comparison. Both sides of the conflict are evil so there's no reason for us to even care who wins anymore. At this point, we knew the outcome was going to be awful either way and somehow it still ended up being even worse than we thought"

"And don't fucking lie, Rina, you do hate the boys" said Susan, "if you didn't, you wouldn't have pulled all of that crap, you fucking nazi piece of shit"

"Yes, Marcie does try to free the boys but its only because she sees no other choice and she still has Ben enslaved to Rina. Why did Marcie recruit Rina again?"

"She didn't like some uniforms"

"Greater good, my ass" said Lindsey, "there was zero reason to sacrifice the Leaders to Rina or for anything Marcie's done for that matter"

"If Marcie was an actual victim, she would want nothing to do with Rina"

"So we come to the end of this conflict and Marcie wins entirely thanks to Emma's smarts rather than by any merit of her own. In fact the only reason Marcie went along with it was because Gina happened to have hurt her feelings at the right time"

"The amount of plot armour Marcie has is ridiculous" said Susan, "she's obviously a Mary Sue. The entire universe just bends over for her despite her making the worst decision possible every single time. Its like watching Joffrey win the Game of Thrones"

"It gets worse" said Lindsey, "Marcie gives Marel and Lauren a free pass and turns them against poor Susan. After everything, we don't even get any payoff for this plot line, just more Susan ****. Like I said before, its clear that Gambino wants us to hate Susan and enjoy her suffering but he's instead ended up making us feel the exact opposite way about it. Susan has been through so much, its actually heartbreaking to see her like this"

"Jesus Christ, I think we might have found the Last Jedi or Last of Us Part II of CHYOA. I mean my expectations were already really low at this point and somehow I still feel ripped off. I don't think Gambino could have come up with a worse way to end this conflict if he tried"

"Yeah, at least if Marel was enslaved, we'd get some catharsis but Gambino denies us even that. This was literally the ONE antagonist we actually wanted to see get punished and Marcie makes her another Karma Houdini"

"There is no way anybody would have believed Marcie's story about 'Cutie the Cruel'" said Susan.

"You remember what Gambino said about how its safer for a ruler to be feared than loved but you should still never be hated. Well, lets look at Marcie's decisions. Betraying Susan? I bet that's the real reason people left the Royal Magnificence. Allying with Rina? That would have alienated the entire school. And not just the boys. Believe it or not, the average girl is not a Nazi piece of shit like Rina so even they would hated her"

"Somehow this story manages to be both misogynistic and misandristic at the same time"

"Sparing Marel after she **** Vanessa? Vanessa and so many others in the Royal Magnificence would hate Marcie for that. Overturning a democratically elected leader who has obviously done nothing wrong? Everyone would have seen through her bullshit. Basically every decision that Marcie has made should have been her undoing"

"You know out of every story we've read so far, this has got to be the worst one" said Susan, "its amazing that Marcie and Gina can complain so much about thirty different stories when they're own is worse than all of them"

"Yep" said Lindsey, "Lois Lane's Night Out, Dustbin Stories, King Edward, Kingdom of Elenna, Tower of Voices, generic body control, Clumsy Ninja Kanami, Naive the Erotic Roommates and Sarckle's Spectular: Monsters in the Park. All of them are better than Hard Candy"

"To avoid any confusion, we've been doing another read of generic body control while going through this. The amazing thing is that Elly is a fucking pedophile and comes across as less evil than Marcie, Gina, Rina or Marel. Wait, isn't Rina and the main character of generic body control?"

"Yeah, but its shorter and she does get her comeuppance in at least one of the endings" said Lindsey, "as for Gina, you cannot make her sympathetic. No matter how many times you blame her mom or say 'Susan deserved it for not being a mindless drone' or have Lindsey do something to her. At this point, I don't even care what her mom did anymore. She could have ripped her fucking tits off and she'd have deserved it for what she did to Susan, Tom and Frank"

"I think we were supposed to just forget all about Tom" said Susan, "I mean Gina's **** of him is a moral event horizon that goes against the whole 'poor Gina' thing"

"Honestly, if you swap several characters around, the story would make 80% more sense. Rina would have made a better token evil teammate than other me. Other you deserves sympathy far more than Gina. Gina was actually a better character before Gambino tried to make us sympathise with her. And Marcie would have been a better as an antagonist than protagonist"

"Yeah, I don't want to follow Marcie or Gina, they've both crossed too many red lines"

"Its hard to believe the same author created Clumsy Ninja" said Lindsey.

"The difference is that Kanami's antics only serve to hurt herself" said Susan, "Marcie is a sociopath who just gets everything she wants"

"Gambino's clearly missed the point of Cursed Punishment. Its supposed to be about bad things happening to a bad person. We don't wanna see good things happen to them. Its depressing and lame, I don't want to see Marcie win, I wanna see her get fucking disemboweled"

"Yeah, I can see the potential for something really good. Gambino had some good ideas but the execution is the worst I've ever seen. There's this **** bleakness that makes the story very difficult to read"

"So did you masturbate to it?"

"That's like asking me to masturbate to a puppy or a kitten getting run over and slowly bleeding to **** in the middle of the road"

"The bleakness is very off-putting which is why its taken so long for us to read through this. The main characters are completely loathsome. Everyone that we can root for are either not meant to be sympathetic, are needlessly screwed over by Marcie or just simply out of focus"

"Until next time, readers" said Susan.