Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language.
Steven took a deep breath. Looked to the traffic rushing across the streets. There was a strange feeling in the air. A feeling that things were about to get much worse than they already were. Regardless, he straightened his sleek silver suit jacket, stepping brazenly off the polished porch of his large and affluent house.
His personal driver, Xavier, was already waiting for him in the front seat of his red Porsche. The tall and lanky man lowered the front window, wriggling his bushy eyebrows. “Are you ready, sir?” he asked, trying as always to hide the rough accent his grizzly upbringing had given him. “Your appointment started ten minutes ago.”
Steven licked his lips. He was late for the meeting, and he knew it, but he loved it. He relished in the fact that others waited for him. He was important. “Tell them they can all wait another thirty minutes,” he laughed. “I want to pay a visit to my aunt.”
His aunt, Melissa, was dying of complications from kidney failure. She needed a donor – Steven was a perfect match, but to the dismay of his family he refused to give up his own.
“Is today the day?” Xavier asked gleefully. “Are you going to donate?”
Steven scoffed. “Are you retarded?” he asked the driver. “I’ve been telling Melissa for years to give me one good reason she deserves my kidney. She’s an idiot. And she deserves nothing.”
“So you’re—”
“I’m going to rub it in her face,” Steven said, a malicious glow in her eyes. “I’m going to rub it in her face that she deserves to die. I want her to rot for all she’s put me through.”
***
At the hospital, Melissa laid on her bed, agonizing in pain. There wasn’t a single part of her shriveled body that didn’t ache, that didn’t hurt, but she didn’t care. She had more important things on her mind at the moment.
“He’s here,” a nurse said.
The nurse brought in a small boy named Christopher. This boy was a student at the elementary school Melissa taught at for over twenty years, until her health failed her just a month prior. “Christopher!” Melissa greeted with a smile, her voice weak. “How are you?”
“Hi, Mrs. Gray.” The eight-year-old smiled, but in his stomach he already felt sad knowing his teacher wasn’t well. His parents warned him against hugging her, that her bones were weak but he couldn’t resist. He ran to her bed and she accepted his embrace.
Letting go, Mrs. Gray reached for a piece of paper off the bedside table. “Did you come here with your mom and dad?” she asked.
“They’re in the car.”
Melissa sniffled. “They made you come in here all by yourself?” she asked, unnerved by the idea. “I was looking at the short story you wrote for the substitute teacher, and I just wanted to call you in here to say that I found it incredible. These characters…you really have a special talent, you know that?”
“Move, move, move. Move.”
Steven shoved Christopher out of the way, stomping over to his aunt’s bed. “How are you feeling, bitch?”
Melissa rolled her eyes. “Not in front of my student,” she said in a weary voice. “Please, calm down and—”
Steven laughed, kneeling down in front of the small child. “Your teacher is a bitch,” he bragged, jumping back to his feet and facing her. “Now, he knows. Now then, my kidney is the only thing that can save your life. The doctors say that you need it by the end of this week if you want a chance to not die, right?”
“Steven!” Melissa sneered, pointing towards Christopher, who was cowering in fear of the towering man’s words.
Steven put his hands on his hips. “You little brat. Go,” he said, shoving the small child out the door. “Can’t believe anyone would want to actually teach the little brats. Jesus.”
“I’ve decided,” Melissa said. “I’ve thought a lot about you, and I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re insufferable, arrogant, dislikeable, prude, stuffy, obnoxious and vain.”
“Thank you,” Steven smiled. Her cruel words didn’t blemish his spirit in the least bit – it was impossible to do so. He thrived on all those things.
“I’ve decided I don’t want your kidney. I’d rather die first.”
Steven winced. “What? What do you mean you don’t my kidney?”
“You heard me.”
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139,841 Literary Works • 672,776 Reviews
Most of the punctuation in this story was correct, and I enjoyed reading it. More detail could be added for a better visualization (showing, not telling). The plot was easy to follow, and the character you created, Steven, was well developed for the amount you had written. Something to fix: I would switch some of the simple words out for ones on a higher level. Also, I feel like while the character is well developed, the plot is a bit dramatic for the amount written. Maybe add some event between the car and the hospital. I overall did like this story, good job!
Hi there tigeraye, it's Gymnst2801 here with a review for The Black Cat Sauad!
Just to let you know, I will be reviewing as I read so my overall thoughts will be at the end of thos review. So...let's get reviewing!
First off, I feel like your first paragraph isn't entirely intriguing. I think a reader wants more for the first paragraph, you know? I like however, how you put added in that something in the air didn't feel right. That was a nice way to catch someone's attention.
In this first 'part' I suppose you could say, I think we learn quite a bit about this character. He's very famous/important. He has a personal driver so I'm guessing he's maybe rich too? And we also see that he isn't being very nice to his Aunt Melissa. I still don't know why this is, so I'll keep reading
- ...agonizing in pain. -
Okay, so I feel like this doesn't sound quite right? Maybe it's just me because I am not perfect with my word use (is anyone?) but I feel like it just doesn't fit. Maybe try: Melissa layed in her bed, the pain seeming agonizing on her face. I dunno, something to think about.
Woah, woah, woah! Such an abrupt ending at such a curious time! I love this! Your main character is just as horrible as I thought, I love Melissa and that poor child...I feel very bad for him because I can tell he and Melissa have a special bond. Love your chsrcaters! Your plot so far seems to be a good one, although I have no idea which way you are going with this. I think your ending is too abrupt and in an odd place but I see your using this as kind of a teaser to get subscribers so I guess the ending spot doesn't mater too much.
Overall, fabulous job and please keep on writing this! If you ever publish more of this, please let me know!
-Gymnast2801 for The Black Cat Squad!
Okay. Okay. That was pretty damn funny.
If you don't recognize me, I've been a bit of a fan in the past--I think I once said that you might not write the best pieces, but you definitely write the most interesting ones to review, and this one is no different. With that being said, satire is something that I'm not familiar with; but I think I'm smart enough (emphasis on the enough) to recognize when I'm being told a joke. Because, otherwise, this was shoddy writing on your part.
But, I mean, not actual shoddy writing. But I'll get to that later.
Before I start my review, I'd first like to start with a mention of one of my favorite satirists/jokers all around on this site: Mr. Strange, who I had the great pleasure of advertising a joke of his back when I was a fun person. I think the great thing about his work was that you could tell he was joking, the drama is too strange, the language too weird, the title too bizzare to be taken seriously. And while you could say he was being shoddy on purpose, and that "being purposely shoddy" isn't the best way to write a comedic take on something, it worked for the most part. On the other hand, yours took the exact opposite route--this is actually, genuinely good.
Except it's also actually, genuinely bad. Because you can tell that it's written by someone who can write, but you can also tell that the author is, as the title shows, selling out . He's not making an effort to characterize his main characters well. He drops 'bitch' into random lines of dialogue, without buildup. He utilizes a child to entice emotion into the reader, the sort of cliche only an amateur would use. And I feel like that was the entire joke, that the author can do better but decides not to, but it's a joke done on the readers' expense. It's the sort of joke that doesn't laugh with the readers, it laughs at the readers, and while there are some benefits to that, mostly I can't see it as being beneficial. And I'm still not sure if there was an actual point. I get it, mind you--I get that the greed involved in writing causes bad writing or cheap cliffhangers. But I don't know if the work gets it. There's a difference between clever satire and eerie mimickry, and this falls more along eerie mimickry, the sort of thing that's satisfied with talking about a certain topic but not saying anything intelligent about a certain topic, or twisting it on its head.
And basically, that's the core of why this might be one of your works that I like the least (even though, who am I kidding, I still liked it a hell of a lot more than anything else on my plate right now). It still has your serious, formidable air, but forgets what it's supposed to be about is clearly less than that. And if you'd like a less elaborate version of that, then this entire introduction is your review--after this, everything only stretches out from that.
The Beginning
The moment I read this first paragraph, I immediately knew something was wrong. And I don't think I can properly convey where it went wrong without referencing another one of your works, my favorite in all the ones that I've reviewed:
And another:
Notice how all three talk about the same things; environments. Nearly all of the works I've reviewed from you start with a setting, and describes it well enough so that the reader immediately knows what they're walking into. What differentiates the first one from the other two is that, ultimately, it's choppy. The sentence structure is too fragmented to flow as well as the other two, who at least have the courtesy to flow the way the narrative is. Empty's beginning is fragmented, as well, but that's because it's supposed to be a slow story, a desperate story, a story about death and destruction and how it doesn't feel like it matters anymore. Here's is a little more fast-paced, because it's similarly about a tragedy, but a more face-to-face tragedy than an I'm-tired-of-watching-CNN-talk-about-shit-that-makes-me-want-to-kill-myself sort of tragedy. The beginning sets the scene, the voice for the entire story.
In Selling Out, however, the voice is an utter wreck. It has the pauses of Empty, but the urgency of Here. Its' sentences are fragmented, but not in the way to provide a pause or a question. It's uselessly fragmented, pretentiously fragmented. There's no real meaning behind them, and inevitably that's what the work becomes; useless, but with effort to be useless. And it's not exactly a good look on the work overall.
The End
I usually don't have this part in my reviews, but I feel like this work deserves to be the exception. Because let me just say--the ending is abrupt and funny when you get the joke, but not nearly as powerful as it would like to be. And I think that's because, ultimately, it relies on the reader wanting to know what happens at the end. It depends on the reader actually liking the work and wanting to read further, thus making them feel ripped off when they discover that they have to pay to know more. And that's all well and good, if it actually worked. But here's the thing; I don't want to know what happens to these characters.
This feels like one of those Facebook sob stories you can only supposedly read once you've followed the account, or an Instagram comment with explicit and pornographic content you can only read once you like a certain number of pictures--except, at least in the beginning, you actually want to know what happens next in those stories. Not because they were good, mind you. But because they were either a) mind-bogglingly weird, or b) profiting from the average readers' weakness, like wish fulfillment. But in this work, neither of those cheap shortcuts occurred. Instead, you featured the average, two-dimensional archtypes of an internet clickbait, but put them in an actually "good" story premise. It's like watching a movie featuring soap opera actors, with a good script, but read out in their melodramatic ways. The audience doesn't care about what happens to these characters because the plot set them up for something better, and the characters failed them.
If you were to, instead, steep lower and make the most conventional, drab, but eye-catching plot ever (ie boy loves girl, girl turns out to be cheating on boy, boy pulls out knife) or most weird, obviously-not-going-to-be-treated-well plot ever (ie boy loves girl, girl turns out to be in love with her sister, boy and sister and girl get into a threesome), its more deserved because now the audience a) has low expectations, and b) has more reason to keep reading other than a good story (in the first case the satisfaction of revenge, in the second case the selling factor of sex).
Since you did neither of these and instead opted for the normal route of storytelling but with no good character development, it falls short. The joke, while there, isn't as funny as it would be because the audience was led to believe that it was being serious the whole time.
Main Criticisms
I've summed up most of my main criticisms in the beginning and ending part, but I think there are some things worth talking about here.
-I kept saying that your characters were (most probably intentionally) shallow here, and I stand on that. Not only is the main character very clearly the evil one in the situation, Melissa is also very clearly the good person in this situation as well (if the loving child hasn't already made that obvious). However, you can still see the hint of humanity in the main characters' beginning dialogue:
And it leaves you asking, "Is the author making a joke? Or is he actually trying to make a good story, but failing?" I think this is a remnant from you actually being a decent writer, so it really is hard for you to write something funnily bad. So really, by looking like you're trying to be good, you end up looking worse than you did before. Funny, isn't it?
-While the characters are a big part of why the reader might not want to know what happens next, the ending isn't exactly a jaw-dropper, either. We've never seen the buildup before Melissa says that she'd rather die than beg for Steven's help, and we're never exposed to her struggles in any effective detail. The ending depends entirely on a) the fact that Melissa would rather die being surprising, which it isn't because she's probably going to die from how Steven talks about her, and b) there being a good amount of tension between Steven and Melissa for the reader to actually cringe when that tension finally breaks. While it is mentioned, the relationship between those two isn't nearly detailed enough for us to actually give a shit, and so the ending falls flat.
Main Praises
-But for real though. The idea (for the purpose of this story, not the story itself) is actually pretty phenomenal, and I'd like to see you try it again with a bit more of that intention in mind. While it is my least favorite of your works, it definitely is the one with the most intriguing intention, which is a shame it didn't live up to them. I do know you can do better--I just don't think you did well enough in this case.
I think that's all I have for now. I wanted to have a highlights section, but I think I've outlined my problems clearly enough, so having a highlight section would only be repeating myself.
I will, however, note that this would be extremely funny if you were actually being serious and I just mistook this for a joke this whole time.
Ha ha ha.
Spoiler
--Elliot.
I underlined my main problem with the work, if it doesn't bother you, because I don't want you thinking, "Well, that's the point, isn't it?" Because I get that that's the point, but here's my point in return.
I'm not trying to offend you, of course. I'm just stating where I stand so you understand a bit clearer and we don't get into the inevitable "But you don't get the joke" argument. (Unless I actually didn't get the joke).
It's okay, I'm not offended. This was rushed on my end due to real life circumstances and I'll leave it at that. I definitely see where you're coming from, thank you for reviewing.