Comment on Constant Repeat

  1. snake64 (Guest) on Chapter 19 Mon 15 Dec 2025 12:54PM UTC

    Sorry for the long comment. I hope I don’t come off as confrontational. I hope you read it and I’d love to see your reply.

    Hey! I don’t usually comment on works, but I just had to get this off my chest, both the good stuff and the bad.

    I finished reading this a day ago and wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did. I came across it while going through some tags at work and decided to give it a shot because I’d just started listening to Arctic Monkeys and was bored out of my mind waiting for reports from the Finance Manager (I swear to God that guy doesn’t work at all, and I can’t fire him because he’s not in my department).

    This is my first time reading a fanfic where a real person appears, so I was a bit skeptical. Color me surprised.

    I absolutely loved the characters. I don’t know anything about these people (besides the band members, I don’t even know if the other characters are real or not), so I can’t judge how accurate the portrayals are, but I honestly didn’t care. This is one of the rare fics I read outside of work. I’d be drinking coffee with friends and wondering what was going to happen next instead of paying attention to the conversation. I just wanted to go home and read. It was crazy.

    It took so long for them to get together that I was genuinely happy when it finally happened. The characters felt incredibly real, so I was deeply invested.

    I didn’t agree with a lot of the choices the characters made (there were definitely some stupid ones), but that’s also what made it feel real. People make mistakes, and these people made plenty.

    One of the things that really frustrated me was Alex’s reaction to George and Ella. I remember feeling genuinely sick while reading those parts. I don’t like Alex’s character much, so that might be part of it, but he’s written as so meek most of the time. I was actually scared he’d do something during the game a few chapters back, and when he didn’t, it was a relief. But later, when he and Ella are together and George openly comments about sleeping with Ella right in front of him, Alex does pretty much nothing. He doesn’t even say anything.

    It didn’t come off as restraint or maturity, it came off as a character with no boundaries at all. On top of that, Ella openly thirsting after Alice and George while Alex is right there was just ew to me. Then Ella gets annoyed at Alex for listening while she’s doing the exact same thing. It felt like a clear double standard.

    Overall, I really didn’t like how meek Alex is. His reactions are unnaturally passive, and that passivity undermines both realism and tension. It makes George look dominant at Alex’s expense, and I genuinely can’t tell if that was intentional or accidental. The contrast is especially noticeable in the steamy scenes, George’s was intense, while Alex’s felt restrained and underwritten by comparison. Even near the end, Ella comments on George and Alice being hot and Alex is basically fine with it.

    If this was meant to make Ella come across as empowered, then why?I want to clarify that I realize I’m shifting from how I felt as a reader to why I think you may have written it this way. I’m not trying to be rude, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Ella is already fucking amazing, she doesn’t need that to be empowering. If this is a self-insert, I get it, it would make most people feel good. But Alex’s lack of reaction still didn’t feel real to me, and that broke the immersion, which was otherwise the strongest part of this fic. I was close to dropping it, but your writing is genuinely amazing and I couldn’t stop reading.

    The second thing I struggled with was the pacing. I know this is a slow burn (I found it through that tag), and the issue wasn’t the speed itself. Sometimes the story lingered on scenes that didn’t feel particularly important for longer than necessary. The balance between action, dialogue, and description felt uneven in some chapters, which made them harder to get through.

    Alex and Ella getting together should have been the climax of the fic, but it felt anticlimactic and rushed. Ella not being able to resist and going to Alex was more exciting to read than the actual payoff. The dialogue was good, but it wasn’t enough. And the sex scene was honestly pretty boring. After George’s scene, I was expecting something god-tier, but it was just… meh. That’s why it felt like Alex was constantly being downplayed while George was glorified.

    Dragging out the drama between Alex and Ella forever (which was a fucking joy to read), then rushing the climax and following it up with subpar smut, was a big hit. That said, their happiness afterward did make up for it somewhat, there were some genuinely wholesome moments.

    Thirdly, the side characters felt weak, though I understand that this was likely by design. The fic revolves around Ella, and there isn’t much time spent developing others. Still, your portrayal of Ella and Alex was so strong that it made me wish you’d focus on another character at some point. I’d love to get to know someone else more deeply, and I really hope you write another fic where you do.

    I realize I focused a lot on the negatives. I think I have a love–hate relationship with this fic, honestly.

    I know it hasn’t ended yet, so rating it doesn’t really make sense, but I don’t care. 8.5/10. Amazing. I can’t wait for the next chapter.

    Lastly, that concert scene where Alex gets on his knee while singing Arabella was fucking incredible. It actually felt like I was there.

    Comment Actions