Username Deasperation, is that perhaps a misspelled desperation? Your name keeps making me sing the Scott Weiland song “desperation #9”, great song on a great album. If you like Scott at all, I advise getting his solo album 12 bar blues, sounds nothing like STP. Seeing as how you listed your AIM name, and I now have some strange obsession with contacting people I’m reviewing, I got the answer right from the source… YOU! The story is explained in your 2nd entry apparently (which I’m obviously not gonna dig for) but you say it’s taken from de (lack of) and aspiration (hope). Interesting… I guess… I dunno, doesn’t excite me much, but seeing as how you started your diary a couple years ago, one could be forgiving of angsty teen names. Thankfully it’s not xdexasperat10nx2002gglzlol

First Impression Orange… I feel like I’m in a desert.

Errors Alright, here we go. First of all, you don’t necessarily need 2 sets of front and back entry links at the top and bottom of your entry. It’s rather pointless. I know it can be helpful when skimming for a certain entry without scrolling to the bottom of the page, but it bugs me kid. At least they’re named differently, but that just threw me off, and brother I don’t like being duped like that. You know how to capitalize but your spelling sometimes escapes you, and you leave typos in the final mix. I’m only grading you on that because I have to. Normally I could give half a rats ass on if you can spell, but being a diary-nazi I’m gonna have to gas you for that. Your links work alright, but the abbreviated spelling of them on the bottom is a little bit of a pain to associate at first. Having an “Old” link instead of “Arc.” would work nicer. The lack of a profile link also bugs the piss outta me, since I really like diaryland profiles. 8/10

Layout Your layout is nothing more than orange, a text box and text. The title of your entry is below the actual entry, it took me a while to figure that out, and for that I will slap your wrist. I also don’t get why the date is at the top, but the time is down with the title, you should probably put it all together at either the top or the bottom of the page. Your layout, however barren and desolate like the afore mentioned desert does kinda stick with your sparse writing style. However, the text seems to kinda be washed aside and doesn’t take center stage at all. You might wanna make it bold or something, or change to a more noticeable font, because as it stands now, if my eyes glaze over it just becomes a big orange blur. I kinda want an orange creamsicle now. This is self designed I guess, but it’s not really an A for effort type deal, and why oh why do you need a text box? 9/20

Content Before I start on your actual content, I just wanna point out how I think it’s a little funny that you’re a straight edge, yet chose me as a reviewer and also say you don’t like opinion-forcers. My experience with straight edges has normally leaned towards them being uber-militant towards anyone who’s not living poison free.

After reading through about 20 of your most recent entries spanning the last 4 or 5 months I guess, I still barely know what the hell is going on with your life. You write extremely vague, and a lot of times your words seem almost tossed together for the sake of them being together. It’s almost like trying to sew a pigeon to the back of a rat to make a super pigeon hybrid rat.

My best guess is you’re just starting college, there’s some guy in your life that’s somewhat… something, and you’re holding back waaaaaaay too much in your diary.

I can understand the fear of someone you know finding your diary to read it, but this is painfully difficult to read at times because you tend to leave me lost a lot. Maybe if I read the entire years events up until now (which I’m probably not gonna do) I could maybe have a grasp of what you’re getting at, but your diary’s not very accessible. I know diaries are meant to be personal things, but it can’t seem like a truly freeing task to write in your diary with something like this, it’s like you’re still bottling up all the important parts and skimming over the somewhat greatest hits.

Even when you start going on with a great idea like here, you cut it short, or you don’t develop your thoughts, it’s almost a little frustrating. I WANT to hear more about your thoughts of existence, and the mind, and your philosophy on things. I WANT to be interested and not feel short changed on an entry. To be perfectly honest it pisses me off.

Here’s some ways to improve your diary :
1. lock it if you’re so worried about people you know reading it and judging you and not being your friend anymore. If they’ll be like that, maybe you can help them re-evaluate your friendship with them by ramming a fork in their throat for being that fickle.
2. Now that you have a locked diary it doesn’t matter that your layout has nothing going on for it, it’s your diary now, and no one else can see it except those with passwords, so GO CRAZY GO NUTS! (Yay Strongbad!) You wanna be a writer? Start gutting yourself like a fish, and putting your all into your entries, because right now you’re not putting out much of anything. You seem genuinely intelligent, like you have a good head on your shoulders and I’m not getting some whiney leftover teen angst vibe reading you, so this is why I’m so fucking upset I’m gonna have to give you a shitty content score for pure lack of content.
And 3rdly and lastly: Stop cross referencing your live journal, in fact, don’t have an LJ anyway, live journal = teh suxorz.

And that’s all she wrote.

16/65

Would I come Back If you follow my 3 step program to having a better diary, yes, yes I would. 2/5

Bonus I almost didn’t give you bonus points for being straight edge, but since you don’t really need drugs to be more interesting (unlike most people) I let it slide and let you have a point for that. Also you get a +1 in cool for being a fellow band geek. +2/5

Total35/100

Final Thought I think I’m gonna end up convincing more and more people to have locked diaries or to write in paper ones the more I review here.

Reviewed By: Tofu