Ancient's Smashing Reviews

In Our Reverie by @HNWrite

In Our Reverie (IOR) is currently a very short story. Currently it stands at a Prologue and 5 chapters. With that in mind this review is a tiny bit complicated for me. The first thing I always keep in mind when reading and reviewing is what potential the story has based on its central idea, its themes, and anything particularly unique and interesting to add flavor and uniqueness it might have. Then with its full potential in mind I consider what the story has going for it and what mistakes are holding it back. However, being 1+5 chapters in length, it is just finishing its beginning start. So I have to both consider the story as it CURRENTLY IS as well as WHAT IT CAN BE, and grapple both the problems and strengths in both scenarios.

I will be rating it on its current standing, but I will still discuss problems the story will need to resolve going forward that have not been accounted for as of yet.

TLDR; Someone suffering from heartache and depression finds a bullshit magic cafe where miracles happen

Plot - Semi-Smashing! - The plot is, at its core, a complicated one, but most of all the author recognizes that and takes care to acknowledge the complicated aspects without blowing them off. Within this acknowledgement and time given to story beats comes a strong maturity I quite liked.

The plot so far on a basic level is: A guy loves a girl. He is betrayed by girl. He tries to move on, but can't. He gets depressed. He tries dealing with the depression, but can't. Then some magical bullshit happens (for no reason) where he hears voices and sees things from the perspective of a random girl at random times. He takes the oppurtunity to track her down and see if he can heal himself. In the process he stumbles on a cafe where the only people that can find it are people in need of a miracle. (Despite the dark tones of the story, the cafe itself has a tone of healing, holiness, and refuge from the world.)

What we have is a lot of story and character arch types rolled up in one. A wounded character. A depressed character (which is an anti-story, normally.) A romance. A positive curved character arc. What combines all of this is something where I wouldn't go so far as to call it a hero journey in the typical sense, but an internal heroic journey all the same. He has an inner dragon he is facing.

In previous reviews I have touched on depression as a story mechanic and how easily it is mis-used. Depression is an anti-story because by its nature it forces nothing to happen, which is an antithemia to story. However, this story handles depression, perhaps, perfectly, as a story. Unlike most stories that start depressed and end depressed, ultimately moving nowhere, while claiming to be a tragedy and failing at this, this story is a real tragedy as you start from a good place and decline into a bad one. There isn't a reason explicity given as to what his mistake is in causing his own tragedy, but a closer look can determine a couple of lies the MC held: 1. Girls are perfect angels to be put on pedastals. 2. You can stick your head in the sand. 3. She is all he needs in life.

Reality hits hard as his lies bite him in the butt. Girls aren't angels, as she cheated on him. You can't just assume everything is good because from her brief portrayel it seems to have been a long time coming as she was bored of him. And you can't just turn this girl into your entire identity or else you cannot recover if it fails and become too clingy either way.

Its a brief tragedy, but then it is followed by a second tragedy as he gains a new set of lies: 1. Love is a lie. 2. He cannot recover.

The depression kicks in based on these lies, which is excellent, but he tries anyway to deal with life because just because he 'cannot' recover doesn't mean he 'shouldn't' recover, which while not explicity stated is his clear thought. This is an excellent portrayal of depression. He isn't dead, but he is falling. Depression is slow, silent, binding, like a slowly intensifying gravity on everything. Every bit of effort is made, but fails in its result and becomes more difficult to attempt each time. From this the anti-story and story have a conflict of raw energy that is exactly how to do it.