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for A Leader's Lament

8/14 c1 Seth
Wowzers, this is really good! Vanellope and Taffyta’s conversation was deep and depicted a great balance of character development without making them OOC. The other stories I’ve seen from you are great as well! Keep it up!
8/8 c1 car9723
A nice, heartwarming extra story for what could happen during the Ralph's Tapper visiting moment. Thanks to TheBlueJetPack's review, I decided to read your fanfiction works and worth my time to spend some. Keep going! ;)
8/8 c1 28TheBlueJetpack
An absolute banger of a read. Emotional and heartwarming, while at the same time, investing because of the context behind what’s going on. We all saw what happened on screen, now let’s see a deeper take of what the characters are feeling inside. This premise is so simple, but extremely effective. I crave these special moments where very little happens, and the conflict is resolved through pouring your heart out to another.

But what makes this story so interesting is that it’s not resolved, but not every conflict has to be. The tool of leaving a situation hanging in the unsettled air with unrest and only a glimmer of hope is so powerful when used correctly; I love it. Now of course, we know what happens next since this takes place within the already-established story in the movie, but regardless, I am able to enjoy it and can easily pass this off as its own thing entirely.

I love how you take very slow steps to paint the scenes for your readers. Doing this allows me to easily visualize the setting, the characters’ movements, what they feel and sense, and the atmosphere in the air. Taking the time to describe everything is such a welcome breath given that very few people do that anymore. Small details like implying past events and the candy corn citizen Vanellope was seen carrying are unnecessary to the plot, but holy heck add a lot of bulk to the story. The amount you placed in here was just perfect with no fat that should have been trimmed.
To me, the most important element about WiR (the first movie, not the sequel) is its characters. They’re so varied and mixed from each other visually, but most importantly, mentally. They all offer a distinct characterization that each bring a million different story opportunities to the table. Vanellope is of no exception. I see so many people in the past fail to really ‘get’ Vanellope’s character, and I think you hit the nail on the head with that Whack-A-Mole mallet beautifully. I love her humbleness and the guilt she was fighting, not to mention her unusual need for comfort. She’s a heck of a lot more sympathetic than how the second movie wrote her. Same goes for Taffyta. How you’ve handled her here was perfect. So many authors choose to forget all the racers, and just use Ralph as Vanellope’s only source of hope. The movie already did that, so let’s see how Vanellope flares with her other friends (which she clearly has, but the sequel would just like us to forget that). The little scene at the end was also a much-anticipated touch. You could have ended it right with Taffyta leaving Van to think, but you included the scene I was thinking of and hoping would happen. Both Van and Taff need some hope. And so do the rest of the racers. Let’s visit them.

This story really made me think. The canon sequel doesn’t show Van feeling the least bit guilty over technically messing up the game for everyone, instead just upset that she simply doesn’t have a game anymore. This vibe really hit me different the more times I watched the movie, since she could have lost it for literally any reason, say a circuit failure destroyed the game in the arcade, and that scene in the movie would not change whatsoever. It’s not a secret that the sequel screwed up both Van and Ralph horribly, so it’s really nice to finally see a fanfic that gets Vanellope’s character correct and making her much more sympathetic palatable. I can’t follow ‘sequel Vanellope’. I can follow the one you wrote without even trying.

Some tenses in the story are a bit inconsistent, switching from past to present unexpectedly, but other than that, I have nothing else to nitpick at. Length, grammar, sentence structure are almost all on point. A story like this is why I check this fanfic site regularly.

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