The Monster Girl Academy - Reviews by Anon and archivebro

[NOTE FROM REVIEWBIN OP: I have had to censor a couple of words in archivebro's review so Pastebin doesn't flag and take down this bin. Sorry lads.]


Anon:

Alright, so I'll start with what I liked: I like the attention to detail, the authentic feeling, and the premise, as well as you commitment to honouring and incorporating votes such as when backup MC picks became squadmates, or how everyone's operational questions got addressed.

What stopped it from grabbing me, though, it probably just how exposition-heavy this made at least the first few updates, as well as the sheer number of character and details added versus the number of them really developed and explored. I personally tend to either go for short, punchy updates (civquests and such, drawquests, shitposty quests) or more emotion and character-driven works that really focus on establishing a core cast and their dynamics.

I also think the 'soldier' vote was the least interesting route for me, because it encouraged more logistical and tactical thinking and voting and less personal reflection or gonzo mad science than I suspect 'subject' or 'scientist' would have focused on. Just personal preference.

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archivebro:

On the face of it, I was hesitant to hop into The Monster Girl Facility. No meta-joke here about being eaten alive, given the title and initial char-gen I was wondering if it was going to be a disguised f*tish-quest for either violence (soldier) or softcore p*rn (scientist/subject). I am happy that those feelings were misplaced! Anons may have initially wanted it that way with the soldier vote, but the general truism that /qst/ can’t make themselves be evil (or even act so in this case) for an extended period of time without backlash remains true. Moreso when their first real kill target is a cute (monster)girl.

That said, I have bounced off the quest for mostly different reasons than the previous anon. I don’t mind narration-heavy quests. I read fantasy books, I’ve built up quite the immunity to authors making literary love with their settings and lore. There are some writing tics that I can’t unsee though, and some pacing issues that still need to be worked out.

The most easily addressed one is the gradual death by ellipses. I mentally sub in the pause every time I see those since there is a part of me that mentally says words as I read them. It’s more a suggestion than a conversation most of the time as I read faster than people can talk, but it still happens. In dialogue that makes a lot of characters sound very wishy-washy. It’s even worse in narration largely because it’s usually paired with extraneous hemming and hawing about a situation that wear me down as a reader. I can live with it every couple paragraphs, but I counted them in a random section and got 7 instances of it in one paragraph.

The one-sentence summary for me is that I can motor through a story pretty quick without missing anything, but ellipses are a long pause where I’m stuck in neutral for a moment. Anytime I hit one I lose speed, and I don’t like that feeling.

The harder-to-address issue is the character dialogue and how’s it’s often integrated during the exploration. Often when in exploration mode and interrogations every character chips in with something. It’s realistic in a way, but one line of dialogue (and a second line with a character action) in a scene with 4-8 characters means those single-line responses are a paragraph unto themselves. It feels… wasteful? Like at times they’re speaking to be heard than to contribute something valuable to a conversation.

It’s hard for me to figure out a way around since you’re also trying to flesh out a squad of characters. They can’t be easily fleshed out if they’re not doing or saying things, but too many voices at once means no one has space to stand out for a time. Perhaps you can rotate between 1-3 characters with real expertise/strong feelings for situations at hand and have others attach to them silently? Stuff like “Artyom spat on the ground and suggested burning the other death squads out. Suffocation would get to them if the flames didn’t. Zaria and Anon voiced agreement, the first glibly and the other reluctantly.” It lets you reserve dialogue for more important or impactful information while still letting the “silent” characters show their general personalities and relations to each other.

I will echo what the other anon said about incorporating feedback being a good thing you’re already doing! I saw you made a big change regarding exploration to cut down on both unnecessary votes and save your own time in writing several updates that you could collapse into one. You’re also doing fine on the worldbuilding front, with the only things holding it back for me being the above points I’ve mentioned that indirectly impact it.

Since you mentioned being a first-time QM, I’ll recommend some things for you and others in a vein you might enjoy, but also some very unrelated things that have specific things I find good to learn from.

RE:Monster EX Quest is a cuter look at the monstergirl concept, with anons isekaied into a spidergirl, making friends, and being a badass warrior. Sadly unfinished, but an awesome read regardless.

HELP WANTED! Yet Another Facility Management Quest is a look at the insanity anons are capable of when given relatively open-ended prompts. More relevant, it also had a large cast of characters interacting. You may be able to skim some stylistic info from it in spite of the different quest styles.

DC: Henchman Quest is something I suggest any QM should read if they’re doing multi-part fight scenes, especially if it’s a session or requires die rolling throughout. The last thread gives an example of it, where anons get a short blurb on the fight, dice are rolled, they get a new blurb with some options, and eventually the QM calls it and goes to turn those results into an actual narrative.

Shadow Quest is an old classic, an excellent narrative quest whose details I have largely repressed due to the events of thread 72 and how, when the dice f*cked anons over, the QM offered anons the “choice” of killing a quest that had been running for 72 threads, or letting it continue in exchange for crit-failing a roll automatically in the future. Not a real choice, is it?

The ongoing b*tchfest that came from that for dozens of threads meant that when I was finally “live” and couldn’t skip past it I couldn’t deal with it anymore. Its relatively high rating was in spite of that, yet to this day I have not finished it nor will I ever. I’d have to go through those sections and deal with all that BS in the background again. Moral of the story, don’t take something anons like hostage as an excuse to railroad a story.