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The-SelfMade-Man's avatar
:star::star::star-half::star-empty::star-empty: Overall
:star::star::star::star-empty::star-empty: Vision
:star::star::star-empty::star-empty::star-empty: Originality
:star::star::star-half::star-empty::star-empty: Technique
:star::star::star-half::star-empty::star-empty: Impact

Having first read your work on Fanfiction, I'm more familiar with Selene's storyline than most new readers here, which may produce a significant amount of hindsight bias as far as the plot goes. The fact that I also read your exquisite ESO stories may add further bias influencing my overall evaluation. I actually think you are a better writer than most, with a lot of potential to grow even better if your most recent fiction is anything to go by; I apologize in advance should my bias falsely imply otherwise.

Throughout this particular installment of Selene's story, you make liberal use of the original in-game plotline of the Thieves Guild. For instance, the story starts with Selene meeting Brynjolf and shilling Brand-Shei into prison on his behalf, thereby leading into her finding the Guild's hideout and collecting debts and . . . well, you get the idea. While I understand why you did this -- the romance side-plot, which is your biggest original contribution to the story, depends heavily on the vanilla Guild questline -- it does detract from originality.

Though you rarely deviate from the questline, you do alter some details of in-game milestones to better fit your idea of what makes sense. In fact, the reason I chose to post my critique on this chapter is because it features one the biggest examples of such alterations, the fact that the whole nightingale trio returns the Skeleton Key rather than just the Dragonborn. An earlier example is Selene flirting with Bersi and blackmailing Haelga to collect their debts. Both of these, along with the romance side-plot, provide an incomplete but still significant compensation for the lack of originality plot wise.

Your characterization, however, is far richer than anything found in-game. Their in-game personalities are reinforced such that they seem more like characters instead of actors governed by pseudo-Python scripts. You could have evaluated and integrated the characters even deeper into fundamentals, but that veers off into advanced writing which you begin to do in your ESO stories.

Overall, this story, and the Selene Stormblade series as a whole, serves as a testament to your growth as a skilled writer. I would say to improve on making your plot-lines more original, but again your ESO fiction proves that you are doing just that.