ExodusSpinner

Good evening, folks! This thread is in place to discuss my currently uploading fiction, "Dark Marvels: X-Men". Dark Marvels is an AU story, obviously focusing on the X-Men, and taking place in a world where many of the Marvel Universe's greatest heroes are villains, and vice versa, and the United States are divided in an ongoing battle between the Professor and his mutant terrorists, against the agents of SHIELD and the Avengers. The story is located at the following location: http://xmen.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600090963 Any comments, thoughts, and suggestions are welcome, and I promise to fully discuss any critiques that you might have without getting angry. * * * And to kick off the thread without wasting a double-post, I figured I'd reply to AgentGV01's rather detailed critique. First, thanks for putting the thought into an intelligent review, even though you don't seem to have liked my introduction. As far as the meat of your review goes, there seem to be three points, so I'm going to answer them in turn. 1) Background information: I made a decision to introduce the story in the middle of the action, so that I wouldn't waste a lot of time with setup. The plan is to have the setting reveal itself in bits and pieces. Ideally, I actually want people asking a lot of the questions that you were - who are these people, why do they think they can get away with kidnapping mutants, and what sort of a world is this where this seems to work out? It actually is supposed to feel like you're jumping into the middle of a story, and hopefully would then hook you so that you want to find out more about it. Now, if that's not working, I can always whip up a short introductory background for the setting. I would be happy to know what people think on the subject. 2) Heroes and villains: Most of the traditional heroes and villains of the setting have had their positions reversed - the people in charge of the usual "good guys" are very much not good, and they have co-opted or wiped out much of their opposition. I hope that I can make many of them sympathetic despite their moral stances, however. If you can't cheer for people who do bad things, or hope for them to find a better path, I cannot lie - this is not likely to be the story for you. There aren't any pure heroes or moral innocents in play. 3) Individual plot points - Sorry you didn't like the invisible friend bit. Would you feel better or worse if I said it was going to become a bigger plot point over time?