User blog:Great Artuin/Witness A Review Part 3

Why witness ultimately fails as a novel if not entertainment

The title of this section may seem confusing but I can’t really think what else to call it look I’m running under a tight schedule here I have school I’m doing this when I kinda have an opportunity which is usually at like midnight at the weekend anywho.

But back to business what I mean by the title of this section is going to provide a slightly more in depth analysis at certain parts of the book that fail as a work or alternatively make the reading experience worse but eventually come down on one side or another if it actually is terrible.

The MC and the bad writing that surrounds her

This MC is the actual worst MC to be in a choices book. The Freshman MC may be a nosy irritating girl who can’t keep her nose out of other people’s business, The Save the Date MC may be a Pain in the backside filled with a mixture of entitlement and rudeness, the Baby Bump MC may not be able to sit down and shut up and is also an entitled pain in the arse and the Ride or Die MC and MFTL MC may be a wet paper towels of a people who cannot stand up for themselves. But never has a choices MC been the archetype for a Karen she is the absolute worst she starts off an entitled rude arrogant selfish brat and ends pretty much the same. Or does she? cause technically she doesn’t.

So what was the intention for her character or rather what was supposed to be her character at all outside of girl who bullies you in high school?

I have a strong belief that her character arc was intended to be a somewhat cliched (though by no means bad) arc in which due to a dangerous situations she learns to appreciate her life, her job and her relationships how do I come to this conclusion well the last couple of chapters do show some character development limited though it may be, but by the end she doesn’t seem to have learned anything anyway, she just goes off with Cassian and that’s it really she never says anything close to:

MC “You know all that made me really appreciate”

C “Appreciate what”

MC “Everything that I have in my life”

More to the point I feel like even if that had been in the book. The arc would still be poor, because there doesn’t seem to be any gradual growth in most of the previous chapters. Lets be real she mostly whines and complains about everything and is dumb like really dumb how do you mistake a goat for a sheep Karen!

It is a great issue for any writer when a characters arc does not come through in their book or series, given the fact that witness is completed and I highly doubt that there’s any chance of it getting a sequel, I think we can conclude that her arc is very poorly handled. More to the point the end of an arc shouldn’t feel like it shoehorned in to justify the character being an awful person at the start.

Alternatively using the evidence we’ve been given, we may conclude that perhaps the real problem was they had no plan for any character arc at all. Once they realised that they couldn’t get away with presenting entitlement and rudeness as a sign of a take no nonsense attitude, they had to act like it was all part of her growth.

At a “Choices” zoom meeting

Head Writer on Witness- OK guys so we’ve looked at the audience reactions to Witness and

Writer on witness- Everyone hates the MC

HW- oh come on she’s no nonsense

W -nah she’s just entitled

HW- you all don’t appreciate my genius

W- how about if we just cut our losses with this book throw a half assed character arc and move on to better GOC adventure stuff they are much preferred by the fanbase after all

HW- GOC fantasy pah it doesn’t sell

Actually smart writer who wished they weren’t there - but its good stuff aren’t we supposed to be focussed on providing the best quality content for our fans

HW- you just don’t apreciate the genius that is witness

W-…

SW…

HW-… ok we’ll do the lame character arc ok

End scene

From this sketch like parody of a zoom meeting on choices you can gather the idea behind my introductory paragraph to this part of the whole the fact that the arc as I have addressed above feels shoehorned in in order to justify the awfulness of the mc in the previous chapters.

Moving on

The Diamond Issue

This will be far more in the vein of a technical criticism than a commentary on the writing or characters so thanks to @Shizzyboom23 here is a quick diamond breakdown.

Set Up: 0 to 40 diamonds

Chapter 1: 44 to 50 diamonds

Chapter 2: 69 to 75 diamonds

Chapter 3: 68 to 80 diamonds

Chapter 4: 50 diamonds

Chapter 5: 69 to 75 diamonds

Chapter 6: 80 to 86 diamonds

Chapter 7: 70 diamonds

Chapter 8: 77 diamonds

Chapter 9: 81 diamonds

Chapter 10: 54 to 60 diamonds

Chapter 11: 44 to 50 diamonds

Chapter 12: 70 diamonds

Chapter 13: 80 diamonds

Chapter 14: 70 diamonds

Chapter 15: 84 to 90 diamonds

Chapter 16: 73 diamonds

Chapter 17: 73 diamonds

Chapter 18: 97 to 103 diamonds

Chapter 19: 41 to 53 diamonds

Chapter 20: 79 diamonds

Chapter 21: 78 diamonds

Chapter 22: 84 to 90 diamonds

Chapter 23: 93 diamonds

Chapter 24: 68 to 74 diamonds

Chapter 25: 64 to 76 diamonds

Chapter 26: 85 diamonds

Chapter 27: 51 to 61 diamonds

Chapter 28: 73 diamonds

On average, each chapter (including the setup) costs 67.90 to 72.93 diamonds. The total of the entire book is 1969 to 2115 diamonds.

Here we see a massive problem, intense greed, on the part of choices. Now diamond choices have been a thing since the start of the app’s existence, but I feel that it is here in this book where things have gotten ridiculous. The fact that the average chapter diamond content is 67.9 which can be rounded to 68 diamonds part of this issue is the books length which is another issue but the fact that you can cut this in half and have it be 1057.5 diamonds it is still a big problem.

Another issue with this exuberant diamond cost age, is that it would be fine if the choices were worth anything, but they aren’t, they instead are pretty much worthless. 12 diamonds to be nice 15 diamonds to act like a regular human being etc. Other books such as DS and BOLAS may have had more diamond choices in certain chapters, but they were for extra scenes and other plot benefits not to literally be nice to a waiter and books like TE had fewer diamond choices and lower diamond costs per chapter yet for want of a better phrase you got more bang for your buck as in each diamond choice was packed full of content which leads on quite nicely to the next issue with the diamond choices.

If not taken they make the chapters too short. I touched this in my summary pointing out the shortness of chapters without taking diamond choices. This is a big problem you should be able to get a nice length of a chapter without needing to relentlessly rely on diamond choices to do it for you. Moreover, you should be able to enjoy the book without diamond choices and for a lot of people I can’t see them enjoying the books without the diamond choices plenty of other books can be enjoyable without them having to rely on diamond choices. If you have to rely on a game mechanic that makes people pay up for an actually good experience you are not being a good writer you are being greedy.

General Bad writing

Here is where I put all my other complaints that I can’t be bothered to section out into different areas I mean miscellaneous complaints.

Padding

I have pointed this out in my summing up of witness there is an appalling amount of padding in this book, which does absolutely nothing for the plot, but does infuriate me. There is so much in witness that can be cut out, in fact, the entire book could very easily be condensed into 15- 20 chapters rather than dragging out over 28 and would benefit from it or you know instead of padding they could have written a good book with no padding in the first place.

Continuity errors I’ll list the egregious ones–

Aislings age

The fact that apparently you can arrive at a trial after being tackled by someone after committing attempted murder, wearing a new outfit, and expecting to be let off for murder

The fact that Karen doesn’t question the fact that the woman who tried to murder her being in court not in restraints and in new outfit.

Potentially getting out on bail after 2 years after being convicted of murder is apparently a thing in the choice’s money like even with white and money privilege you ain’t getting out of that cell for a while

The choices writers no nothing about Ireland

I should like to close this section by saying this, I said it in my review, and I’ll repeat it.

It is a problem when I prefer your villains to your heroes.

It is Ok in my books to like a villain to enjoy watching them to enjoy watching them be evil. However, unless it is your intension or your villain is very fun to watch and your sorta like the audience being like “I know your awful but stick around and entertain me” (me with Donald Trump) it is a massive problem if people root for your “villains” to kill the “hero” or just root for them to win in general. Particularly when they are still pretty badly written bland and forgettable villains the O’Connell’s ultimately are just fill in the blank template avatars for mob bosses the only really interesting this about them is that they have a child

Either way.

I was rooting for the O’Connell’s the entire time I was playing, to kill this irritating whiny brat and her dumbass of a partner who still sticks with her despite everything she does to them and to the people around her.

It is especially bad when you finish a piece of media and realise you feel bad for the villains I wanted aisling to win because at the end of the day she’s a kid she just wanted her parents free and to get back at the person who put them in prison.

Can we blame her for that how would we react if put in that situation?

To finish does witness fail?

Subsection 4 of article 3 of the review of witness examines the question on whether witness is a bad book the answer is YES and NO…

Pray let me explain.

While witness may have terrible characters, a terribly put together plot, horrendously poorly written villains, and all in all is the very definition of a “cash grab” to quote Atomic Russian. It does do he most important job of any piece of media entertain.

While in theory other bad choices books have been written better MFTL comes to mind somewhat. But those other fairly badly received books also have one thing in common

Genderlocked?

Not now

Romance based?

I said Not now

All purely made for the purpose of drawing money from people who will pay anything for a scene with broody male LI model 34

I said…

All praised by the sycophants of choices who will never criticise them no matter how awful they get?

Ok allow me to rephrase the above comment into what do the less liked books of choices which are in truth better written than this.

They are boring very boring, at least, in my opinion. All of them are dull uninteresting and bland they drag and are unenjoyable. They may be well written in the technical sense in that they have proper arcs, or you don’t Hate the Mc etc. but they aren’t enjoyable or in other words they are dull.

The primary job of any piece of Media be it a TV show, movie, book, or game is to entertain or educate or engage or all three you and if it’s not doing any one those then it isn’t doing it’s job the three Es which is a concept I have just come up with or maybe I haven’t I dunno. Either way if a piece of media is doing one of those three things then it is doing its job and witness is very entertaining in the same way in which bad movies are entertaining I found myself laughing out loud at the stupidity of the Mc, giggling at her Karen moments, throwing my hands up in despair at her selfishness and enjoying interacting with the people who hated it as much as I did and in all honesty though writing this review was a long process I enjoyed writing it I liked getting to make jokes about this Mc and her Karenness.

So my dear friends of Fandom I’d like to you figure out this question Is the Mc like any true Karen an antivaxxer?

To conclude this review I’d Like to make a closing statement.

Witness is a terrible book there is no doubt about it there have so far been  words describing precisely why it is so bad. But It is entertaining I would consider revisiting it in the future for some more laughs. Does that mean I ever want to see another witness NO Never again it was so terrible. Would I be overly upset if we did get another book similar to this one? Ehh more content for me to make fun of and more diamonds for actual good books which are sadly getting few and far between. Either way I hope this book is a learning experience for choices in that they cannot make bad quality books and expect to not receive backlash though to be frank my faith in them ever taking their fan base’s advice or feedback (unless it is fawning praise) on board is waning as fast as my hope for 2021 to be a good year.

Hey Choices, is a bit like Donald Trump

This Review was censored by the board of keeping Donald Trump from aiming nukes at Fandom.Com also he wants to ask where’s great Artuin and Ephilion because they sound like terrible people.

I couldn’t resist America Good Luck in your election please chose well

Witness review statistics

Parts- 3

Word count- 10602 excluding this part. Including this part 10685

Page count-20

Joke count- uncountable

Donald Trump Jokes- 2

I Hope that you have enjoyed reading this review series and I will see you at some point with another review likely not in this format as this took way longer than expected to create with that being said:

So long farewell auf wiedersehen goodbye until Christmas if we survive that long hopefully we will

Great Artuin signing off