I like the idea of the Death Battle combatants living together in one big area. I really do. But here's my issue with it: This story is WAY too meta. The characters are all well aware of their status as fictional characters, which honestly, I feel REALLY takes out of the experience. Deadpool, it makes sense, but everyone else? It just seems off. On top of that, certain characters hog the spotlight [Yang, Tifa, Cloud, Guts, etc.] while others appear in one chapter if they're lucky [Bucky, Bomberman, Dan, Ivy]. The whole 'Yang is depressed' arc has REALLY overstayed its welcome. We get it, you feel she's unfairly hated after the battle, just please stop cramming it down our throats. And that brings me to another point: The author basically uses every single character as a mouthpiece to state his opinions. He's done this to rant about how awful Death Battle's detractors are, even once flat-out having Mario state that he wants to physically hurt them. He's done this to call out fanmade Death Battles he feels were biased against Yang without consulting the writers to see if they were comfortable with their work being mentioned, let alone criticized for their results [Which in turn is highly hypocritical of him, considering how much he hates it when others accuse ScrewAttack of bias]. And most recently, he's done this to rant about ships he doesn't like and the people who do ship them. No matter what his intentions are, it just comes off as mean-spirited. Sure, he TRIES to keep them in character, but when practically every chapter has somebody make some kind of snarky remark about people being angry over the result of a battle or characters who would normally NEVER be known for breaking the fourth wall making some meta reference to their games or manga or whatever, I just can't help but roll my eyes. Deadpool is literally the only character there that should be making comments and references like that. Seeing Guts, Cloud or Tracer do it just feels incredibly off-putting. All in all, this guy had a good idea, but he squandered it with fourth wall jokes told by character who should not be self aware of their fictional status, characters that are even worse mouthpieces than Brian Griffin, arcs that drag on WAY too long [Just get Yang OVER her depression already!], and an unpleasant hostility against the more vocal and aggressive crowd of Death Battle haters [I get that they can take it a bit far, but still...]. I tried to get into this fic, but really, I just can't do it.
Fanfic Interesting idea...less than stellar execution
I like the idea of the Death Battle combatants living together in one big area. I really do. But here's my issue with it: This story is WAY too meta. The characters are all well aware of their status as fictional characters, which honestly, I feel REALLY takes out of the experience. Deadpool, it makes sense, but everyone else? It just seems off. On top of that, certain characters hog the spotlight [Yang, Tifa, Cloud, Guts, etc.] while others appear in one chapter if they're lucky [Bucky, Bomberman, Dan, Ivy]. The whole 'Yang is depressed' arc has REALLY overstayed its welcome. We get it, you feel she's unfairly hated after the battle, just please stop cramming it down our throats. And that brings me to another point: The author basically uses every single character as a mouthpiece to state his opinions. He's done this to rant about how awful Death Battle's detractors are, even once flat-out having Mario state that he wants to physically hurt them. He's done this to call out fanmade Death Battles he feels were biased against Yang without consulting the writers to see if they were comfortable with their work being mentioned, let alone criticized for their results [Which in turn is highly hypocritical of him, considering how much he hates it when others accuse ScrewAttack of bias]. And most recently, he's done this to rant about ships he doesn't like and the people who do ship them. No matter what his intentions are, it just comes off as mean-spirited. Sure, he TRIES to keep them in character, but when practically every chapter has somebody make some kind of snarky remark about people being angry over the result of a battle or characters who would normally NEVER be known for breaking the fourth wall making some meta reference to their games or manga or whatever, I just can't help but roll my eyes. Deadpool is literally the only character there that should be making comments and references like that. Seeing Guts, Cloud or Tracer do it just feels incredibly off-putting. All in all, this guy had a good idea, but he squandered it with fourth wall jokes told by character who should not be self aware of their fictional status, characters that are even worse mouthpieces than Brian Griffin, arcs that drag on WAY too long [Just get Yang OVER her depression already!], and an unpleasant hostility against the more vocal and aggressive crowd of Death Battle haters [I get that they can take it a bit far, but still...]. I tried to get into this fic, but really, I just can't do it.