Andy's fanfic reviews

What Next?

 

 This fanfic is based on the movie The Truman Show and explores the life of Truman after he leaves the ‘fake world’. The movie The Truman Show is about about a man who lives in a made up world for a tv show. The fanfic starts off Truman being in panic and paranoid about cameras, but his partner, Sylvia, becomes his anchor to adapting to a reality. The timeline jumps to 5 years later where Sylvia had been supporting for both of them and Truman just staying at home unemployed. The timeline jumps again to 15 years later where Truman and Sylvia had broken up and Truman contemplating to commit suicide due to inability to adapt to the real world.

  

 Now, this did not work for me because the author does not stay true to characters that were depicted in the original movie. The fanfic suggests that Truman was unable to function as a normal human being, which is why he was unemployed for 15 years and just stayed at home. The world Truman left behind may have been created to fit him and spared certain hardships; he did not get everything just handed to him. He had a job to support himself and he had no problem communicating with others. Also if he indeed suffered severe mental disorder, wouldn’t he seek help for his psychological needs?

  

Of course the fanfic covers the story after the movie so it can only be based on theory and speculation. However, the events happened in this fanfic seemed rather very unlikely from my point of view. Interesting to read but it was flawed.

  I Will Come Back For You

 

The movie The Butterfly Effect is one of my favourite movies all time. It explores the concept of time travel and the idea of what if I did this, how would my life be different than now?  The main character, Evan Trabourn, time travels by reading his journal or watching a film. The fanfic captures the moment when he and Lenny drive to a junkyard to burn all of his journal and films. The reason was he decided to stop time travel because whenever he tried to make everything or everyone better than how it was, it just caused other things to get worse.

  

The fanfic describes in detail what Evan was thinking and feeling before he burns all of his journals and films.  He conflicts with himself with the temptation to travel back and try to make one thing better, or accepting his current life. The story is loosely based around the paper with a phrase ‘I will come back for you’, hence the title. This is a plot hole because the paper should not exist in the life Evan settles with. He wrote the paper for Kayleigh when he was forced to move away. However, in order to ensure her and her brother’s happiness, Evan could not be in her life so he scared Kayleigh away from him first time they met each other. So the life Evan ends up with does not have Kayleigh in it hence the paper should not exist.

 All in all, the fanfic is written very well to describe Evan’s feelings and thoughts, and stays true to the characters. 

 Cigarette 

 

Shutter Island is a very interesting movie for someone who is interested in psychology like myself. The basic plot of the movie is that the main character, Andrew Laeddis, suffers from delusion and hallucination in order to handle the post traumatic stress. It is so severe that he lives in a made-up world. So to treat this condition, Dr. Sheehan role plays in Andrew’s made-up world to make him realise that the world he believes to be real is not, in fact, real.

 The fanfic is a plot twist and introduces an unexpected element to the relationship between Dr. Sheehan and Andrew. Not only Dr. Sheehan is Andrew’s psychiatrist, he’s a working partner in Andrew’s world. So they spend awful a lot of time together. In this fanfic, Dr. Sheehan begins to develop a certain appreciation for Andrew’s physical form. Also he grows much fond of sharing the cigarette together, even feeling euphoric from tasting Andrew on the cigarette.

 I can’t say I particularly liked this fanfic nor disliked it. Main reason is that the extra element to the doctor-and-patient relationship was so unexpected, I did not think it was even plausible. Having said that, the fanfic works because of the lack of background information about Dr. Sheehan in the movie and amount of time they spend together.  It is definitely a outside-of-box angle so I guess I like it when I think about it in that way.

Portrait of pain

F.E.A.R (First Encounter Assault Recon) is a thriller game about a twisted project called Origin. The project involved a girl called Alma who possessed psychic ability and the purpose of project was to create super soldiers commanded by her psychic ability. However, the project was forced to shut down due to abnormal, freaky incidents and stopped Alma’s life support. The abnormal incidents did not stop and Alma did not die, and she wanted to kill everyone who was involved in the project in the name of vengeance.

 The fanfic is written from Alma’s point of view about the Origin project and how it completely ruined her life. The author does a very good job on drawing a complete picture of Alma’s point of view in terms of her feelings, thoughts, and her twisted life. She was used as an experiment since she was 7 and forced to have two children who became part of the project as well. She was mortified and enraged everything was being taken away from her, even her life. I like that the author includes quotes from the game appropriately because it makes the whole piece more gripping and relatable to my experience with the game. 

 Johnny's a virgin 

  Fantastic 4 is about a group of scientists who were exposed to an extreme level of radiation and gained supernatural abilities. Johnny can light himself with a fire, Reed can stretch any part of his body, Ben is a solid rock, and Sue can turn into invisible. With their super powers, they decide to help people and save the world.

 The fanfic adds extra shades to characters with a casual conversation in a living room. Johnny is very outgoing, adventurous, and known to be surrounded by women. However, in the fanfic it confesses to Reed that he has never slept with a woman before. The author does great job in keeping the essences of characters like father-like personality of Reed and Johnny behaving like a young adult. The dialogues in the fanfic are done fluently so it was easy to visualize the interaction between Johnny and Reed. In terms of whether it could be true or not, I can't really decide because Johnny is such unpredictable character, anything is possible.