emar2
Summary of story: guy puts on girl's underwear. The end.

That also happens to be basically my critique on the story, but I'll take the time to go into a little more detail since Ash would expect that and there's a 100 word minimum here.

In the way of writing, the story wasn't too bad. There were a few spots where I was actually very impressed with the writing style and flow. However, there were many parts of emar2 where I just wanted to say "yeah, okay, shut up now."

Several sentences were just very long. They could have easily been broken down into two, or sometimes even three sentences. It's not necessary to drone on and on, and it's actually confusing to squash many different occurrences in one go. For example, the very first sentence would have been easier to read, and generally would have been easier to follow, had it been "When Emar woke, he was vaguely aware of someone tugging at his pants. He yawned as fingers slipped his shirt over his head."

There were also points where I became lost as to what was going on at all. After the break near the beginning of the story, that paragraph should have been a little bit more specific as to who was opening the door. Or, maybe it would have been better to more clearly specify that Mia had left the room earlier. Also, that paragraph could have been broken into more than one paragraph as I also found to be the case with several of the larger paragraphs in the story. It's intimidating when a reader hits a huge chunk of text like that, and it adds to the run-on feel that some of sentences have.

Since I know Ash isn't very much concerned with her writing abilities, I'll move onto that subject from here and go into the story. I'm a fair bit certain that her story telling abilities do matter in some form, as they're equally as important in a comic as they are in writing.

First of all, and this is really my biggest problem with the story, was it had no point. There was no beginning, no middle, no end, just something happened to a character. And really, it wasn't even that interesting of a something. When it comes to the kind of humour that is a man wearing woman's panties, there's one extremely important aspect: shock factor. If you cannot shock your audience, than you have failed, because the only way to make someone laugh when you crossdress a character is that shock factor. At first, yeah, I did find it fairly amusing, but then it was just never let go. It went on and on and on about these panties which, I'm sorry, killed the joke.

To make matters worse, the narrator continuously hinted that wearing women's underwear was not unusual because everyone there always did that kind of thing. And yet, the fact that he was in women's underwear was pressed over and over and over and over as though it was a very big deal. That contradicted itself and threw me off a little, as well as stabbed at the already dead joke.

Personal opinion alert// I don't like it when characters belonging to a certain organization of any sort do whatever they want without fear of punishment. It's obnoxious, it's unrealistic, and it's not as fun because you don't get a sense of embarrassment or, in the case of Emar's personality, you don't get a sense of naughtiness. Instead, you either get no feeling at all or you get a feeling of indifference, of not caring, and not recognizing any sort of social standing or rules. This happens to be one of the main reasons I don't like Harry Potter, and why there are very strong leadership figures who strictly enforce their rules in all of my stories. \\Personal opinion end.

On a related note: there was a mix of two things that really need to be looked out for that could have been altered to make the story all the more interesting. One being the repeatedly mentioned prancing around in panties without any real fear of punishment, another being the open talk of sex and partners having it. To regard both of those subjects as a thing of normality eliminates a detail that, if played on, could make the story more appealing to the readers. That applies only to this story, but future stories, and of the comic if it's ever made into one. That detail being: the forbidden fruit.

As it is, there is no sense that what the characters are doing is wrong when they do it, no secrecy, no acknowledgement of anything bad becoming of their behaviour, everyone seems open, everyone seems [fairly] accepting, which is incredibly boring. I know that this story as a whole is quite a bit more in depth than is shown in just this little short story, but just generally what I gathered from this is that it's okay for partners to be sexually involved, it's okay for people to crossdress, it's okay to walk down the hall naked, etc. Yes, some of the characters responded in a negative manner, but it didn't go beyond that even a little.

However, though this short little story itself needed work, I have to say it opened a lot of doors in my mind. I became very interested in the overall setting and this mysterious organization of assassins. I like the idea of them having partners, almost like police. It's a very nice touch and definitely sparks the creator in me to wonder at what kind of partners my own characters would have if I inserted them into the story. Also I found Emar to be very very intriguing. He has a fun personality that could easily acquire a massive fan following if this story keeps going.

It has a pornographic quality to it almost. Which isn't at all a bad thing in my own mind. I feel it would be more appealing, as already stated, if there was more of a forbidden fruit thing going on, but I like what was introduced nevertheless. It's different from a lot of what I've read in that I think it has a pretty good balance between the sexuality and the story. They worked fairly nice together and it was easy for my mind to process without thinking "Jeez, just have sex already" or "Enough with the sex I want to know what happens next."

I could go on, but I need to work on other things right about now.

All in all:
The characters, setting, and bigger-picture plot are very good. Very appealing, I would definitely like to see more of it.

This story in and of itself... could have been better. Generally, there just could have been a whole lot more than there was.