Some general information regarding Millenial Knights

This role-play was started on

Saturday, November 25, 2006

This role-play was finished on

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Corey

    Corey was the first person to join this RP, seeing how he created it, after all. He made a total of sixty-nine posts, and wrote 76.58% of the story. Please refer to the interview above for his comments on this RP/fiction.

    In Thalzon I trust. If only the rest of us all did the same...

    Runedot was the fourth person to join this RP. He made a total of twelve posts, and wrote 7.25% of the story.

    Millenial Knights... Man, what can I say? When Corey first announced it, I got slightly interested. When he mistakenly (or not so mistakenly?) revealed the fact that there were aliens in it on IRC, I got rather excited. Unfortunately, that excitement waned, until I more or less dropped out discretely (I do this far too often, I think). And apparently, others did this as well. It went so far that Corey decided to turn the RP into a fiction, a choice which apparently was a double-edged sword. On one hand, it saved the story from death, and probably resulted in a better end product than it would have as an RP, while on the other, it resulted in Corey obviously scrambling to finish it.
    All in all, MK is one of those stories that could've been much, much more, but wasn't.
    ...Still, I suppose I should congratulate Corey on actually pulling through, however rushed.

    MG was the second person to join the RP. He made a total of seven posts, and wrote 4.79% of the story.

    As an RP, I thought Millenial Knights had potential. I ended up coming up with a character that I really liked, but when participation lessened I was disappointed to realize I wasn't going to get the chance to develop him, so I was glad to see Corey take it up as a fiction.
    The cast of Millenial Knights was tremendous. I felt there were definitely too many to manage, and it seemed like each character had little more than "their own moment in the sun," so to speak. The entire cera system was abandoned, which I can certainly understand, as I wouldn't want to think up skills and upgrades for a dozen people at once. The plot, however, was fine. Although the conspiracy at first seems a little hard to believe, it comes together pretty well, and suceeds in making the reader think a bit.
    My biggest complaint, however, was the clear last-minute dialogue that gave away just how rushed the writing was. Every character's lines were completely interchangable, with Lapis often using the largest words and making the deepest insights despite the fact that she was only about seven. And there was never a clear reason why the group was doing any of the things they did or going to any of the places they went.
    In the end, it kind of seemed like it had the solitude of a fiction with the random cast of an RP. It was fun, but it felt rather empty.

    Trauma Advocate was the sixth person to join this RP. He made a total of eight posts, and wrote 3.49% of the story.

    Catfriedrice was the fifth person to join the RP. He made a total of five posts, and wrote 3.17% of the story. He was unavailable for comments..

    Trilroy was the eighth person to join the RP. He made a total of five posts, and wrote 2.59% of the story. He was unavailable for comments.

    Armadox was the third person to join the RP. He made a total of three posts, and wrote 1.47% of the story. He was unavailable for comments.

    Matthias was the seventh person to join the RP. He made a total of two posts, and wrote 0.62% of the story.

    Okay, let's see. Millenial Knights was an interesting and enjoyable read for the most part, that being about the first 3/4ths of the story. The rest was dramatically rushed (or pushed, you choose) to completion, and suffers because of it. The cast is, for the most part, very interesting, save for the occasional unfitting character, namely, Basil. The role he took in the story felt forced and implausible to me. Seriously, who in his sane judgement would hang out with a shady-looking guy who carries animal corpses around with the same naturality you would carry a cellphone? Forced and implausible, yeah.
    Speaking of implausible things, there's more that bothered me. For example, the fact that this RP/fiction is full of child prodigies, especially among the highest-ranked knights (I'm talking about Adrian, of course). It's simply ridiculous from the point of view of common sense. But the epithome of this trend is princess Lapis, hands down. She is supposedly seven years old, and for about the first half of the story she does play her age, but then... for some reason, she seems to mature ridiculously fast, so much that you have to wonder if Corey secretly retconned her age to, say, 26, when you weren't looking. I suppose we have to guess that "a wizard did it"... It's too bad there's yet more oddities in this story that can only be explained by that humorous Simpsons quote.
    Which brings me to discussing plot holes, yes. There's plenty of them in Millenial Knights. Well, to be fair, there are no plot holes of the OMG HUGE GAPING kind. Existing plot holes are minor, and many will probably go unnoticed unless you pay attention to some details. There's no point in explaining every and each plot or logic hole I encountered while reading this story, so I'll just name one or two. At some point in the story, Wyrd and René break up. The logic behind Wyrd's reasoning for breaking up has holes that, at least for me, were the size of a house. As for plot holes, well... Unfortunately, this fiction is overloaded with unanswered questions and loose ends, especially in the ridiculously rushed ending, and the even blander epilogues. Too many unanswered questions. Too many lose ends. *tsk, tsk* For example, you might as well forget about ever learning what the true nature of Skrii's mysterious shape-shifting dreams was. Oh, and that reminds me... Corey: Black is a wyvern, not a dragon! I couldn't believe Corey forgot about such a detail that even had a complete post dedicated to explaining it. Bad, Corey, bad. Of course, that's only his personal dislike of Skrii's character shining through. Um, did I already say that the ending was ridiculously rushed and the epilogues were even blander? It's just that they failed to soundly explain many plot-relevant things, such as "What happened to all the cyborgs?" or "Why does Garret do what he does at the very end?".
    There's also plenty of unresolved plot lines, such as Beatriz' apparent crush with Yancy. Or Ramses' 2nd form (well, that plot device was resolved... in the lamest possible way. It made me question the necessity of such device. It was basically pointless). On top of this, some characters were dead weight for long periods of time. Such was the case of Judge, who was forgotten about many, many times throughout the story. Also, his little "crisis of faith" plot line dragged on horribly and sorely lacked the depth you'd expect from such a crisis. Ah, the narrative rhythm... it had that issue. Some parts dragged on much longer than necessary, while others went way too fast. Well, I got tired of explaining in great detail everything that's bad about Millenial Knight. What's good about it is, like I said, the cast, and the main plot line. It's a pity that something that started out as a truly engrossing read, gradually turned into certain disappointment toward the final stages of the story, finishing with the laziest epilogues ever known to man. In fact, I have to say I felt a bit cheated because of this.
    Thus, I'm not sure if I can recommend Millenial Knights. The beginning and most of the middle part is great, but know that the writing quality degrades from there. Slowly, but steadily, it all goes downhill from that point. It is no coincidence that 90% of the flaws I explained in the above paragraphs all happen past the middle point of the story.
    Well, that has to be enough. Here's hoping next time Corey writes a fiction, he keeps his interest on it up and steady all the way to the end.