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Silk

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Silk last won the day on September 20 2012

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    Inciter of mobs and resident trombonist
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  1. “This is the person who killed S.” Have we established that? Did anyone actually see who killed him? Or are they just guessing and letting themselves be driven by emotion? I think the latter is actually a really fun and effective way to explore the emotional impact of what happened last chapter, just need a bit more clarity here on how much that's actually happening. P3 “Xan said out loud” as opposed to over A’s earpiece, I sppose? It took me a moment to track why we needed to specify “out loud.” I am losing track of the talk about the numbered bases. Could be WRS but I don’t remember there being much discussion about specifically numbered bases. P4 “B had taken credit… only after A mentioned it” Arguably, the same thing has just happened here with M, since M was being vague enough that she could have just been fishing for info. “I needed you to see the truth beneath J’s veil of peace…” the truth being that the soldiers are treated poorly—information we had already? It feels like this scene is a reveal, but I’m not fully sure what the reveal is. P6 “She’s taking control of the conversation.” I mean yes, but she’s basically been controlling the conversation this whole time. p7 “…to see C monsters advancing, humanoid ones.” Are they advancing through the structure—isn’t it fortified? Are we looking out into the ocean? B’s reaction seems to indicate the threat is fairly immediate, A’s reaction less so. Edit: Ah, we get some more details on page 8. I wonder if we could get this sooner, and a bit more of the physical scene, I’m still feeling a bit lost. So… what purpose did the monster attack serve? Overall: As always, I remain interested to see where this is going. I’m still having trouble tracking the intrigue, and the chapter felt a little long and unfocused to me – we watched A work through a bunch of different scenarios and doubts in her head, but I felt like I didn’t really have enough information about any of the possibilities to get invested in one over another. Plus, the cycles of doubt before and after the monster attack felt fairly similar. The biggest question I have is about what characters like M and B want. I don’t have to know exactly what they want or why either of them is doing what they’re doing, but aside from the partial reveal about who’s actually on whose side here, I don’t feel like I understand that much better now than I did when the characters were introduced.
  2. Go ahead! Sorry for the late reply.
  3. “…for letting him die in my place.” Curious as to whether the soldiers feel this way. P2 “…and she summoned her exoskeleton.” Not sure why she does this? The last chapter indicates she was hiding that she could do this, and then she doesn’t do anything with it after she summons it. P4, on L going back to J – It’s apparently easier to move between these two places than I would have expected given how infrequently it normally happens. P5 I was expecting there to be a scene between A and Xan here, not for A to just walk away. “…and that he had lived for a decade less.” Wait, are soldiers cloned into being at a certain age? Did we know this already? I do like the endcap for the scene though. P7 “Assessing S’s wounds” sounds more like a medical examination than a coroner’s report. That being said, I’m not convinced we learn much from this assessment? There’s the comment about it being a “distinct weapon,” but since the Ixes can have any weapon I don’t see how this proves anything? P8 “Why did you do any of that?” Unsure who L is directing this remark to, or who is responding. Since it’s apparently fairly easy to travel back and forth between the cities (see: L getting picked up because she wants to leave), why not just transport S’s body home for whatever appropriate funerary rites there? Or, if the point is that J doesn’t have these rites for soldiers, maybe worth calling out explicitly. P10: these guards actively attacked people and can only be placed under house arrest? Regardless of whether or not they were conspirators, if they participated in the attack, this seems odd. There are submarines?! “M is at the hideout Z was using…” Aren’t these completely different nations? We had to go through tunnels to get here. The narrative seems to have jumped very quickly to the conclusion that M is the one we’re looking for. That A is also unsure helps me suspend my disbelief a bit, but A’s also just going along with it. Overall: Pretty much echoing @Mandamon's thoughts here—I agree that this (and actually, the last chapter to some extent, I thought) were some of the strongest/most natural character moments so far. I’m also not totally following the intrigue with M and the deserters. It seems like we’re spending a lot of time chasing them without fully understanding what the shape of the intrigue is or why it’s happening. I do however like the forward motion we’re getting. I’m looking forward to reading more!
  4. You're all good! We just had a quieter week without any requests for submissions this time. Keeping an eye on this thread will tell you whether there are submissions you should be expecting to receive. We've been in a quieter period recently but hopefully things will kick back up
  5. P2 “And who do you think he’ll target? Someone important to J…” I mean, yes, but is L here openly as herself? Not clear on this point, but it seems like a random princess just showing up in a place with tense relations like this could cause an international incident. Also, L has been offscreen enough during this section (not the submission, just overall) that I keep forgetting she came along. P3 “That’s what she was hiding from you.” Didn’t she already know how to summon pglass? Thought we’d seen this somewhere else in the book for some reason. P4 “...sending a child into a life-threatening situation.” I do like A’s musings here on how L is actually older than the soldiers. I think this kind of juxtaposition is actually more effective at calling into question how soldiers are treated in J than just having everyone talk about it all the time. P5 “So no, J isn’t justified…” this feels almost like A’s getting ready for wholesale revolution, which I’m not quite sure the text has earned yet. A’s been doing a lot of “working within the system to fix the system” kind of work, and I’m not sure we’ve hit anything—at least that’s been given enough weight in the narrative—to fully support the “burn the system down” dialogue that we’re reading here. “It means that you made me feel better.” This is a nice moment, though. I actually find it one of the most effective A/soldier interaction so far. P6 “X had saved Am not only from death…” Maybe WRS, but I don’t remember this at all. Have these two characters, who’ve been supporting characters up until now, ever discussed this at length? This might be a symptom of there being so many characters overall. P8 “It could get ugly tomorrow.” As I read all this foreboding about the referendum, I find myself going back and forth on whether this is meant to be reflective of actual coming violence, or the trauma that gets foisted on these soldiers because of their circumstances. Either is potentially interesting and I think both could be viable, but I don’t quite have enough information about Ix and its circumstances to understand which is which. P11 “...and they motioned for her to come closer.” Small thing but at first I thought the sniper was actually just calling her closer to talk or something, it wasn’t clear that he was egging her on. P12 “...stopping them and the C monsters…” are there monsters too? Edit: Ah, I see they’re mentioned a bit later as having been snuck in, but even then they don’t seem to be hugely significant to the scene, even in a background sort of way. But I’m also wondering what A’s soldiers are doing. Why can’t she have one of them handle H while she chases after the sniper or vice versa? P14 is this the first time we’ve heard of reality bubbles? I am immediately intrigued and would like to know more about these. P15 “...and after checking the status of everyone” I really like the way this last scene is structured overall, but having A specify this right off the top makes me wonder why on earth nobody said anything before she came across the actual body. Everyone is just standing around quietly and nobody mentions off the top someone is dead? I can’t quite suspend my disbelief that far. Maybe just reframe so the initial conversation and such is more chaotic? Like I said, I think the bones of the scene work well! Also: Xan seems to be missing from the scene. Maybe intentionally? Overall: I think there is some good movement in this chapter and it it made concrete connections (and a tangible threat of) the dspeaker thread in a more effective way than anything else so far this section. I know I mentioned it in my LBLs, but worth reiterating that the interaction between A and Sp was I think one of the most effective we’ve seen so far, it’s starting to feel more like the story is hitting its stride with this kind of characterization moment. I’m waffling on whether there is not enough buildup to this kind of violence—we’ve seen very little of Ix and everything so far is meant to suggest that it’s less violent and more culturally sophisticated than J, and H in previous chapters feels like he could be just as easily “posturing” as “credible threat” much of the time—or maybe there is too much. The more I think about it, the more I wonder what this scene would look like if it caught everybody off guard (except maybe A’s soldiers in their paranoia). But right now it definitely feels like the scene is sitting on an uneasy middle ground. One thing I’m not too clear on, and it’s partially a worldbuilding piece but also partially trying to tease out how this chapter fits within the theme of the story, is whether H and his crew are all men? (And I know there are female Ix soldiers like C, but WRS sorry, I can’t remember if C and other women Ix soldiers are to be read as trans.) Because in a way it feels like the story is confirming a gendered binary (males are soldiers and violent) that it’s otherwise trying to take apart. Obviously I don’t have the full picture yet, and there’s enough discussion of it in the text to make me suspect that the story is going somewhere deliberate with this, but it’s something that piqued my notice here. Good to have you back!
  6. Welcome back! Please go ahead.
  7. Yeah, I found I felt pretty similarly about these scenes as previous ones. I think it's a mix of there just being so many of them, these scenes often adhering to the same formula of 'everybody has a trinket,' and the fact that we often get several of them at once. In this chapter, the thing I missed most was the sense of forward motion. Last chapter was talking about finding the dspeaker--down to having a culprit even!--and I was looking forward to some sort of confrontation, but that didn't happen. You do bring the referendum back at the end, but we don't seem to have made any progress on it aside from it being closer in time. As I read: P1 I had completely forgotten that L was here. Where has she been this whole time? P3 “I know you see [trees] all the time as a minister.” Not sure why this is different for ministers vs soldiers? Even if the soldiers are confined to the beach (not sure on that one?) the beach in J did not seem to be so far from town that they wouldn’t see trees. P4 “I did mean to hurt him” this seems like a fairly sudden change of heart. P6 “How could she get through to X” if she’s having trouble getting through to X, why was he helping her with g? “She needed someone to don the mantle of leadership… and X didn’t seem interested” then why X? Also not sure whether the focus of this scene was supposed to be D or X. P7 “Not alone alone…” Harassing them into volunteering seems kind of counter to the point? P9 “A normal life” so I think the overall sentiment here works well, is this something the soldiers think of as “normal”? I forgot all about the deal she had made with D. I suspect this needs to either be made more of or less of, depending on the changes you make elsewhere. But, keeping it might be one way to mix up one of the “A connects with her people” scenes if need be, and maybe draw in some of the larger threats?
  8. Overall: I'll pretty much echo Mandamon’s comments here – it felt like it took a while for the chapter to get where it was going, partially I think because it felt like the “find the dspeaker” thread was mentioned at the beginning and then closed at the end, but without really being apparent in the middle. Also like Mandamon, I don’t really understand the politics at play here or why A came to the conclusion she did, so without that understanding it doesn’t have the same impact that it otherwise could. (I do remember M, but didn't realize she was going to be important, or clock her absence from the narrative as particularly suspicious.) As for the dynamic between A and Am, I like the conversation and what A ended up revealing (even though its starting to feel like the worst-kept secret in the world), but again like Mandamon, I’m not sure where it’s going. Am seems to be really sanguine about all of these big revelations. What does this knowledge mean for him, for A, how might it help or hinder their other objectives in the story? Pacing-wise, though, aside from some possible trimming in the middle bits of the chapter, it does seem like a good spot in the narrative to end where it ended. As I read: P2 “He was making the situation sounds so hopeless.” I’m struggling a bit with what the stakes are here, beyond “C has to resign if she loses.” A guy we don’t like very much and disagree with ends up in charge and then… what happens next? Are we talking “people are going to get mad about taxes” or “fundamental threat to democracy” (actually I’m not totally clear on what form of government this is)? “It’s never fun seeing someone’s idealism getting shattered to pieces.” I do love the juxtaposition that’s been set up here. I won’t belabour the stakes point as I think that’s what’s needed to really make this hit home. P3 “It’s harder to give people a voice…” great line. P4 “…and H’s point about needing more protection…” True as far as it goes, maybe, but… would people actually vote that way? Or is this more about A’s ignorance as to how this system of government works? P5 “The Ix believed that the D was a J minister…” haven’t these two islands been almost totally cut off from each other? Or is it more that J has been cut off from Ix than the other way around? P6 I’m not quite sure what to make of the encounter with the two booksellers—what the booksellers were after or what the narrative purpose is aside from letting us know that Am can write (and that this is unusual). P11 “Am’s eyes widened…” Some confusion on the dialogue tag here, I thought Am was speaking and then the dialogue tag made me question it (though on re-read, I think it’s his own harshness he’s surprised at?) P12 “You said I could drop this conversation?” I’m really curious to get more of a sense of the emotions that come with this remark—tone of voice, body language, etc. P13 “‘Makes you sound bad…’ No, it really didn’t.” I’m glad A said it, because I was thinking it… A’s question to B here caught me completely off-guard. But also, if this is a secret, it’s starting to feel like a very badly kept secret. The conversation between A and C at the end here also seems to come a little bit out of nowhere—I don’t really understand the politics at play, and A takes this gamble with a confidence that seems at odds with her protestations that she’s not a politician or diplomat.
  9. “Nice little houses and their nice little gardens” – I’d actually love to get a few descriptions like this for J itself, too. I already feel like I have a better sense of layout here than I did for J. P2 “Often in one that fits their gender better than…” so A is a dspeaker? P6 “After I learned a bit more about you…” how did C learn this information, and why? Or is this in the conversation between A and C that we skipped over? P9 “H isn’t supposed to do this.” Uh, did he do something to C? Because this seems ominous. So… why didn’t C do anything to stop him? Especially if he’s not supposed to me making announcements but claiming some “official” authority. Overall: I’m struggling a bit with this chapter, and having a hard time figuring out why, which admittedly isn’t super-helpful from a critique perspective (sorry!) I like the “A experiences a totally different culture which might cause problems in the future” aspect, but the political stuff feels like it’s going mostly over my head. I think I don’t have a clear enough idea yet of what specifically A is trying to accomplish, so all of the politics stuff is just going over my head rather than feeling like an obstacle. I’d also echo Mandamon’s comment that this chapter felt like a lot of setup, where we’ve already had a fair bit at the start of Part 2. This is definitely something you can do, and I think my experience of the text has been a little different than Mandamon's so far insofar as I was sort of getting some of it, but I definitely agree that it needs more setup; as is, it feels fairly nebulous (I was speculating, but not sure, that that was what you were going for) and also took me quite a while to come to that realization, which meant it was jarring when I first started encountering things like "Oh, A doesn't know what a woman is even though she's been using she/her pronouns." So yes, more setup would definitely help. Food for thought, what would happen if A and the other people from J didn't use she/her or he/him pronouns? What if they used gender neutral or neopronouns instead? Would it help disrupt that idea of, for lack of a better word, more traditional gender norms earlier on, which most readers are probably going to assume from the start and then the text has to do the work of correcting them? ooooh I love this. And seeing this happen, even if A didn't recognize it, could be a neat way to tie some of these different threads together. I wondered this too!
  10. This is very funny, especially since I initially misread it as saying the implication was TMM is nothing but one massive run-on sentence. It was actually "in angle" that got me more than "schlumping," which was clear enough, though onomatopoeic. And yes, you can totally slouch when sitting.
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