Travis Salliv, a Rogue, by MeedrowH

“I kick him in the balls!”

“Gina please!”

“I did warn them!”

“Well yes, but technically this submission come before our last review went live, soo...”

“Uggghhhh.”

“You can kick the next one in the testicles.”

“Fiiiine.”

“So, this time we are covering a branch in the story Mind Control: The RPG”

“Wow, that sounds so creative, Marcie. I can barely contain my excitement for yet another fantasy story. I wonder if it features devices and goblin racism.”

“Probably.”

“I was sarcastic.”

“But on the bright side, Gina Travis Salliv, a Rogue, by MeedrowH lasts only for 29 chapters. We should knock them out fairly quickly.”

READING IN PROGRESS (BGM)

“These where the longest 29 chapters ever!”

“They where fairly lengthy, true. Easily enough to be split into two or even more parts.”

“Which means I read more then I needed to! I HATE reading more then I needed to!”

“Yes, yes.”

“So, this is about a goon named Travis(nice fantasy name, bucko) who trains to become a Rogue. He kinda sucks at it though, so his teacher sends him on a mission to steal some earrings, probably to get rid of the nerd.”

“Indeed.”

"See that rock?" She pointed forward, into the forest. About 15 metres ahead of them two was a large stone half embedded in the ground, large enough for a single person to freely sit on it. "Counting from tomorrow, I'm going to place a single rock on it. And in the evening of the day I place the 33rd, I'm going to smash them. If you're not back by then with the other earring, I'll consider it a quest failed. Do you understand?"

“Umm, ok, weirdo. If Travis doesn’t know how time works, he has some bigger issues.”

“Bigger issues he will soon have regardless as the god of tricks and manipulation decides to choose Travis as his champion.”

“This is where the device comes in.”

“It’s actually a bit more complicated then that. You see, the gods are having a competition and Travis was chosen as Redion’s apostle. In this position he must take part in a tournament and beat all of his rival apostles in a free for all. If after five years a winner has still not emerged all the fighters are getting teleported to an arena for a sudden .”

“This is the most anime bullshit ever.”

“It reminds me of Dragonball Super. In particular the Tournament of Power arc. Which I haven’t watched, because lets face it Dragonball peaked with the original series and should have ended after Namek. Speaking of, there is a wonderful series on Youtube called Dragonball dissection which...”

“Marcie! Focus!”

“Ah yes, All that I’m saying is that the inspiration is very evident. But I can appreciate that this new power Travis has received is really more of a hindrance at first. Especially since his Level drops from 35 to 1. He does have the ability to get more powerful fast, but this comes at quite the risk as we soon see.”

Deep in the night, Travis was moving uncomfortably in his sleep. There was something around him shifting. Was it just a shadow? Or was it reality itself that bent around him?

“Why is everybody in this story so fucking dramatic? If you see something moving in the dark it’s probably not the fabric of time and space collapsing!”

“For reasons that would take far too long to explain, Travis is arrested but just in the middle of his interrogation he gets send to a penalty zone together with the interrogation officer for not completing a daily quest. Ah I suppose we didn’t explain daily quests and punishments either. So, you see...”

“It’s just the usual nerd game bullshit! Fill in the gaps yourself, you lazy shits!”

“...I am sure our listeners are capable of that.”

They are so light, why is she acting like they’re not… Oh shit.’ He noticed how the end of the vine was dripping some purple fluid. It was most definitely not the same breed as the vine he had. “Aria… get away from there.” He whispered.

“W-Why?” She felt hair in the back of her head stand up. This man was suddenly urging her to get away? Why? Well, he did save her twice, so she had no reason not to listen to him, but… what was the reason?

“Everything in this fucking story takes an eternity. Just fuck already!”

“There is a bit of...verbosity to this story that makes it somewhat exhausting to read. Don’t get me wrong, we had worse but still it could do with a bit a fat trimming.”

“A LOT of fat trimming!

“Travis and Aria end up in some sort of jungle hellscape and have to survive for a couple of hours fighting of various monster. Again, you can definitely see the anime influence.”

“Get to the sex!”

“Gina?”

“What?”

“Are you in heath?”

“FUCK YOU!”

“It’s just that your sudden wanton desire for straight sex is queer. Or well...poor choice of words. But anyways, if you need a little cunny tickler to become less cranky we can take a break.”

“Please, just get on with it.”

“Where was I? Ah yes, the danger of making your story too anime.”

“Riveting subject.”

”Let me explain. On the surface level dropping your protagonist into a dangerous hostile environment is not bad per se. As for now Travis’s Mind Control powers are very weak and he has to work around their limitations. It’s actually fairly refreshing. The problem is that there are no stakes attached to this penalty zone.”

“Uhu.”

“We are at chapter five. The official competition hasn’t even started and -spoiler alert-, won’t for the remainder of the available chapters. We can make an educated guess that Travis will not die in this jungle, but simply make it trough and return to the real world. Why oh why then do we have to spend numerous chapters dedicated to this fake tension?”

“The same reason I have to endure your long ass ramblings, Marcie. These chapters are pointless! Moving on!”

“I wouldn’t quite go so far, there is some world and character building in here. But it gets suffocated by the pages upon pages of fighting giant gorillas.”

“One of the chapters is literally called “Surviving the Penalty Quest” like holy fuck author, at least try to have some tension!”

“To MeedrowH’s credit, there is some nudity in here.”

“Don’t even get me started. Aria gets captured by a plant thing and gets stripped naked. This was your chance for sexy tentacle , author! Use it. Or maybe, have Aria be and only be able to wake up with the power of sex!”

“...I still think you are in heath, Gina.”

“I’M NOT A CAT!”

“One last thing I want to point out is that Travis does in fact not tell Aria that they only have to survive for a couple hours in this penalty zone because he is still worried what she might do in the real world.“

“That’s kinda fucked up when you think about it. In fact, a lot of shit Travis does is fucked up when you think about it.”

“But we get to that later. So! As expected our heroes survive the penalty zone get transported back to their fantasy world and everybody is surprisingly casual about the fact that these two just vanished for a couple of hours.”

“You would think that’s a bigger thing. There was a big earthquake and all that.”

“It is not just the police station either. Aria herself barely asks any questions about this harrowing experience.”

“You know, the inspector, who has a fucking magic lie detector doesn’t ask any questions!”

“Since Travis saved her life, Aria gets him of the hook with the power of corruption.”

“And then she invites him home for sex!”

“That was...weirdly abrupt. Travis used some suggestions on her but nothing sexual. This honestly feels like the author knew he needed to have a sex scene so he just crammed in it.”

“Not that it was a particularly good one either. Shit’s over before it begins. Should have gone with the tentacle option.”

“And with that Travis says goodbye to Aria and resumes his quest of stealing that earring.”

“So we are back to where we start and Travis doesn’t even get the girl! Amazing!”

“But he did earn a few levels from the experience and we see some stats go up. Isn’t that fun?”

“Are you serious? Because I can’t tell if you are serious, Marcie.”

‘…shit. I’m out of options. Even if I could run, my stamina hit the rock bottom.’ He thought. ‘Fuck.’

“You little fucker. I hate running after criminals.”

“I don’t give a shit. For all I care, he can disown me. I’m sure he’s been looking for a pretext, so I’m giving him one. Now go and fuck off!”

‘Don’t get swayed by that fucking trickster.

“Travis. What. The. Fuck.” She whispered angrily.

“Everyone in this fucking story curses. Doesn’t matter if it’s s a government inspector, an elf, a dwarf, guards, a princess or fucking god himself. Stop fucking cursing, you fucks!”

Redion put two fingers on bridge of his nose and closed his eyes

“MeedrowH also has the obnoxious habit of forgetting articles. A lot.”

“On the flipside, Marcie, this results in great lines like this

You underestimate power of dumb people.

“But back to the story. After a bunch of nonsense, Travis gains another companion. An elf named pfft... Leaf.”

“Hilarious.”

“Their relationship started out somewhat rocky with Leaf trying to kill Travis and it never quite recovered from that.”

“Right? Travis uses hypnosis on her to make Leaf more amicable. But he is also still very paranoid and only lets her sleep with hand and feet tied. Then he tries to get her into the tournament, knowing full well the dangers of it. He’s just this sort of slimy manipulative bastard and I get that this is kinda his stick, but the story portrays him as generally well meaning and as someone who cares about Leaf so it’s just kinda fucked up.”

“Huh, My, Gina. That was a surprisingly long critique coming from you.”

“Geez, Marcie. I guess having someone like Travis in my own life makes me sympathize with Leaf.”

“Huh.”

“So back to the story. If you can even call this meandering nonsense that. From this point onward Travis and Leif are just traveling the world trying to get to earring city so they can finally complete that stupid quest. Lots of pointless shit happens along the way so let’s just skip it.”

“I don’t mind that. As this will allow me to critique the technical aspects of the story instead. Starting with a sort of pet peeve of mine when it comes to storytelling.”

“...fuck.”

“You see, the longterm objective of Travis is of course winning the tournament but there is also a midterm goal right now which is to steal this earring. This was established in the first chapter and it is the prime motivator behind Travis’s short term actions.”

“Yes?”

“So, by establishing that goal, you prime the reader to focus on that. But by doing so you also relegate everything that isn’t directly related to this goal to filler content.”

“I mean there is one entire fucking chapter dedicated to Travis plowing a field!”

“Let me be clear here: There is no issue with having a goal in your story that’s far off. But if you do so, the actions the character take should be in the interest of achieving that goal. And that is unfortunately not the case here or it is the case only in a very roundabout manner.”

“It pisses me off how Travis goes visiting his sister or goes into dungeons, when it’s very clear there’s a harsh timelimit on this earring shit!”

“This too. The story constantly reminds us that they are on a timecrunch but the storytelling doesn’t reflect this sense of urgency with all these meandering diversions. This creates a disconnect. It is a shame too because the “Around the World in Eighty Days” esque concept isn’t bad at all. It is simply the execution that leaves a lot to be desired.”

“Ok, very cool, Marcie. Now, lets go back and talk about how fucked up Travis is.”

“Do you have anything particular in mind?”

But Travis didn’t kill them all. Despite the monsters sending out cries for help over and over again when left be for a moment, he didn’t finish them off, always leaving at least a few alive and not letting them escape with his superior speed. Leaf was watching the spectacle, and kept on wondering. ‘What is he trying to achieve? Their level is too low to bother, no? Why is he letting them summon more?’

“That’s kinda fucked up. No seriously, am I the only one who thinks that’s fucked up?”

“Well, they are monsters, Gina. Farming them for experience is an RPG stable.”

“I’m pretty sure he didn’t get any experience for doing the shitty farming thing, Marcie.”

“Well...ah...never mind.”

“Ugh, I’m so done with this. Are we done with this?”

“I suppose so? This was more or less a prologue. It wasn’t all bad. There was some promise in these chapters. I particularly liked the POV chapters that were dedicated to the other apostles or gods. That one fight between the two goddesses was pretty nifty.”

“You mean that one nerd fight between two bitches in which the author constantly links to cringy memes?”

“Ah, but you see, Gina, the links makes perfect sense.”

“…”

“Because it was...pfft...Beatrice Hylia!”

“…”

“So of course she would use many Links!”

“I don’t get it but I still hate it.”

“But honestly, we, and with that I mean Gina, might have been a bit too harsh on this story. There is really a lot to like in it. The author does a decent amount of setup and he manages to make Travis not feel overpowered at all. A feat very few gift from god stories are able to accomplish. In essence the core of this story is very solid.”

“Too bad said core story is a fucking slog.”

“Yes, pacing is this story’s biggest weakpoint. The second would be the aforementioned missing articles and general sentence structure. On the other hand, there are surprisingly little typos in this.”

“There are also surprisingly little sex. Aside from Aria at the start and occasionally molesting Leaf’s tits there is no erotic content in this. Despite the fact that this shit basically writes itself! Like have the pope some heretics. Or that Dog and Cat could have fucked. Or you know what? Hot lesbian hate sex between Beatrice and Sia! Fuck you, Medrow! More like Me drown in no pussy!”

“Are you finished, Gina?”

“Yes, let’s fuck.”

“I suppose I can oblige.”