ARGH.
Dear Author:
Your story, while it is generally well-written, is way too wordy for my taste. I like detail and description as much as anyone else, but just about every THREE PARAGRAPHS can be summed up with one or two sentences, and that makes it tedious to read. Also, aside from Demyx and Kairi, they're depressingly average. It sounds like any other story about the everyday lives of the KH crew.
See, RENT is about a group of broke, starving, artistic friends, SOME of whom are gay or have HIV/AIDS. Your story is about broke, gay, artistic, HIV-positive, starving friends. Is there anything that you could POSSIBLY have forgotten while you were pairing everyone up with each other?
The only thing you've done to even IMPLY their lack of money is with Marluxia giving them food, which doesn't require being dirt broke--just someone who likes giving his friends free stuff. On top of that, you've shifted things around pretty weirdly.
Zexion is inexplicably beat up and just FORGETS about visiting Sora and Roxas, then gets bumped into and falls into the gutter, at which Demyx appears out of nowhere? Watering it down like that takes the motivation out of it. Bumping into someone, no matter how beat up you are already, is NOT a good reason for anyone to come up and ask you what's wrong. It would have made far more sense if Zexion was barely able to move, like in the movie version of RENT.
On the subject of characters: I get the feeling that you only made Kairi Maureen because you don't like her. Maureen may be self-absorbed and pushy, but she is also genuinely free-spirited and cares a lot about Joanne and all her friends--including Mark. You just made Kairi a manipulative attention-getter, which poor heartbroken Sora CAN'T see until Roxas snaps him out of it. This screams of personal dislike for Kairi.
Now, I'm not telling you to start piling on the issues, but for me to consider this as a Kingdom Hearts version of RENT, you have to have SOME of the actual problems the story had--not just relationships. Give some of them AIDS. Make them struggle to pay rent because they got fired or laid off, or they don't even have a job in the first place. Tell us how Roxas and Sora went hungry for a couple of weeks because they DID pay rent instead of getting food.
This is not a Kingdom Hearts adaptation of RENT. The characters of RENT don't accept normal jobs because they want to do what they love, surrounded by the people they love. They've given up NECESSITIES, like heat in the dead of winter. They have to choose between eating or paying the rent, and usually they don't have enough money for either. On top of that several of them have AIDS, which means that their time ALIVE is limited. The only thing they literally have left is each other--and they don't know how long that's going to last, so they live it up as much as possible. That, more than anything else, is the core of RENT. Your story doesn't have any of that.
On a WTF note:
AXEL. MARQUEZ.
I really wish I was kidding.
Your story, while it is generally well-written, is way too wordy for my taste. I like detail and description as much as anyone else, but just about every THREE PARAGRAPHS can be summed up with one or two sentences, and that makes it tedious to read. Also, aside from Demyx and Kairi, they're depressingly average. It sounds like any other story about the everyday lives of the KH crew.
See, RENT is about a group of broke, starving, artistic friends, SOME of whom are gay or have HIV/AIDS. Your story is about broke, gay, artistic, HIV-positive, starving friends. Is there anything that you could POSSIBLY have forgotten while you were pairing everyone up with each other?
The only thing you've done to even IMPLY their lack of money is with Marluxia giving them food, which doesn't require being dirt broke--just someone who likes giving his friends free stuff. On top of that, you've shifted things around pretty weirdly.
Zexion is inexplicably beat up and just FORGETS about visiting Sora and Roxas, then gets bumped into and falls into the gutter, at which Demyx appears out of nowhere? Watering it down like that takes the motivation out of it. Bumping into someone, no matter how beat up you are already, is NOT a good reason for anyone to come up and ask you what's wrong. It would have made far more sense if Zexion was barely able to move, like in the movie version of RENT.
On the subject of characters: I get the feeling that you only made Kairi Maureen because you don't like her. Maureen may be self-absorbed and pushy, but she is also genuinely free-spirited and cares a lot about Joanne and all her friends--including Mark. You just made Kairi a manipulative attention-getter, which poor heartbroken Sora CAN'T see until Roxas snaps him out of it. This screams of personal dislike for Kairi.
Now, I'm not telling you to start piling on the issues, but for me to consider this as a Kingdom Hearts version of RENT, you have to have SOME of the actual problems the story had--not just relationships. Give some of them AIDS. Make them struggle to pay rent because they got fired or laid off, or they don't even have a job in the first place. Tell us how Roxas and Sora went hungry for a couple of weeks because they DID pay rent instead of getting food.
This is not a Kingdom Hearts adaptation of RENT. The characters of RENT don't accept normal jobs because they want to do what they love, surrounded by the people they love. They've given up NECESSITIES, like heat in the dead of winter. They have to choose between eating or paying the rent, and usually they don't have enough money for either. On top of that several of them have AIDS, which means that their time ALIVE is limited. The only thing they literally have left is each other--and they don't know how long that's going to last, so they live it up as much as possible. That, more than anything else, is the core of RENT. Your story doesn't have any of that.
On a WTF note:
AXEL. MARQUEZ.
I really wish I was kidding.