Reading Excuses - 1/16/23-ginger_reckoning-changeling sub 5, 3016 words (L)

[ginger_reckoning]

Hey all, and Happy Martin Luther King Jr. day for those in the US! This sub is actually skipping a chapter, because I still wanted to revise the next chapter. The one I am skipping is just a meeting and I just can't get it to work how I like, so I'm skipping it for now in the sake of actually getting this written. I will come back to it. 

Anyway, here's the recap so far

 

1-A is a shapeshifter who is a member of a community of shapeshifters and a member of a gang that protects said community. When he learns about a new law that negatively impacts them, he correctly predicts that an attack is imminent.

2-Racist arsonists attack, and A saves his sick parent and some other sick people before running off to save someone else

3-A fights a pyromancer and is injured, along with his friend C and his boss, who dies. Later, whilst bemoaning their fate, he is greeted by an old god who agrees to give him powers if he will be its champion

4-using his new powers, he heals a bunch of people

 

5+6 (skipped this time) in a meeting of the commmunity and gang leaders, they decide to relocate the entire community, even though that will take a lot of planning. A doubts that will work, as he thinks that with a new focus on finding them, the army will find them very quickly. The group decides to set a guard to watch him at all times to monitor him, as he displays some worrying behaviour. A talks to his parent, R, and explains that he's been living with C ever since they got sick, and that someone else lives in their house now. 

 

Thanks again!

[ginger_reckoning]

Oh, forgot important part of recap, C and A were planning on scouting out a place to steal 100 chickens before A got put under watch

[kais]

Whew, it's been a while! Coming into this cold, so take all comments with a grain of salt

Overall

The dialogue is smooth. I'm coming in cold, but also unclear what the chapter arc is. Is it to get our MC to accept his gifts and he wants to use them only for good/is naive? If so I feel like that's a multi-chapter arc. If that isn't the arc I'm not sure this chapter is entirely complete. If getting the MC's acceptance/buy-in is needed to move the plot forward, we might need a stronger B plot to go along. If the woman showing up in disguise is  the B plot then excellent, because she was very engaging. 

Nice installment, and I'm looking forward to reading more.

As I go

- unsure about the implications of pink light, but to get pink to show on wood, the emitting light would need to be very red

- pg 1 reads like a recap. Wondering if it could be cut to get right into plot movement?

- pg 3 seems to be where the chapter really starts

- pg 3: disembodied voice lives under Santa's workshop. Check

- pg 5: I'm lost in this back and forth, but that's likely because this is my first chapter. I'm not sure what they're trying to sort though. It sounds like a morality argument but what does the disembodied voice have to gain? Is it a mentor?

- pg 7: Somewhere out in the night, a chicken loudly met its demise.<-- LOL excellent atmosphere here

- pg 10: things get more dynamic when the woman comes in

 

[Mandamon]

I had a similar reaction to @kais on this one. There's not a whole lot of movement, even with missing chapter 4. The conversation with Me. gives a little more clarify, but most of the concepts happened in the first conversation already. I wonder if this one could be edited down to the places with movement--talking to H, getting chickens, talking with Me. about being a champion--and combined with the meeting in the last chapter?

Notes while reading:

pg 2: "He looked to his right"
--Lots of looking around and thinking so far in the chapter. Not a lot happening yet.

pg 2: "had let C leave as they pleased"
--Were they under guard? I'm not sure why since A basically just saved everyone.
--oh wait...I went back and read the summary.

pg 2: "It was a well-known phenomenon that con. often changed after they received their powers."
--and some more good explanation.

pg 3: "what is Evil, my child? Is it to disobey the laws set by the Keepers here in their pathetic little city?"
--hmmm...a bit worrying.

pg 5: Good conversation, but I feel like we've gone over this before.

pg 8: "You can’t impersonate another m! They’ll banish you!"
--Can't remember if we knew this before.

pg 11: Hmm...Even missing a chapter in between, I feel this didn't move a lot. It's mostly dealing with A's decision to act, but he already started to when he healed his parent.

[ginger_reckoning]

11 hours ago, kais said:

Whew, it's been a while! Coming into this cold, so take all comments with a grain of salt

It sure has! Good to see (?) you again!

11 hours ago, kais said:

The dialogue is smooth. I'm coming in cold, but also unclear what the chapter arc is. Is it to get our MC to accept his gifts and he wants to use them only for good/is naive? If so I feel like that's a multi-chapter arc. If that isn't the arc I'm not sure this chapter is entirely complete. If getting the MC's acceptance/buy-in is needed to move the plot forward, we might need a stronger B plot to go along. If the woman showing up in disguise is  the B plot then excellent, because she was very engaging.

That is a very good point. The arc here is definitely muddy and a bit redundant. I think maybe I could play up the danger of a potential traitor?

11 hours ago, kais said:

unsure about the implications of pink light, but to get pink to show on wood, the emitting light would need to be very red

The more you know! Pink is just kind of the color of M, there's not really any significance other than that. I guess I'll just plead "magic" on this one, though I will keep that in mind

11 hours ago, kais said:

pg 3 seems to be where the chapter really starts

Noted!

Thanks kais!

1 hour ago, Mandamon said:

I wonder if this one could be edited down to the places with movement--talking to H, getting chickens, talking with Me. about being a champion--and combined with the meeting in the last chapter?

Thanks, I agree that this does end up being redundant. I hadn't considered combining the chapters, but I think I could get that to work

1 hour ago, Mandamon said:

pg 5: Good conversation, but I feel like we've gone over this before.

Yeah, most of it I think

 

1 hour ago, Mandamon said:

pg 8: "You can’t impersonate another m! They’ll banish you!"
--Can't remember if we knew this before

It was mentioned that it was a huge no-no, but consequences were not mentioned

Thanks Mandamon!

[Silk]

As I read:

P2: Why is A under guard? Maybe not unreasonable but it seems strange that A hasn’t remarked on it before now, nor does he seem to feel particularly strongly about it.

“…lift him up and off the balcony” – This seems like a good way for A to get himself hurt or killed if he goes for it.

P4 “your gang spreads addiction throughout the city.” Maybe WRS, but did we know this?

P5 “So what alternative would you suggest?” M is being surprisingly understanding considering that this was essentially the terms of its deal.

P9 “we have a week at most before someone finds out” maybe just because of the skipped content, but this seems arbitrary. I wonder if there might be a more effective way of getting at the urgency, like emphasizing that this is a really unusual raid, or of greater scale, or other markers of escalation rather than throwing a time limit at it.

“And you and C will go out and help…” this feels like stuff I should have known, but didn’t. Was it in the skipped chapter?

P10 “he could have saved that child from being arrested…” by being a healer? Not sure I understand this.

Overall: I had to delete some comments because I spent most of the second half of the chapter wondering if we should have skipped that meeting that was mentioned.  I was actually starting to wonder if we should have seen that chapter instead of this one… and now, knowing that the other chapter was there, I’m still wondering if that’s the case. This chapter had a bit of a lull that felt at odds with the urgency of the situation… it felt like a rehash even though I hadn’t read the meeting chapter itself. Maybe a condensed version of the conversation A has with H before going off to get into trouble?

Edited January 18, 2023 by Silk

[Ace of Hearts]

I haven't read the previous chapters but since we're skipping one maybe I won't be too far behind everyone else.

As I go:

pg 1. It feels like the chapter only really starts in the last paragraph. Maybe the earlier stuff could be cut?

pg 2. So I'm inferring that M is like a spirit thingy that's a part of A's magic?

pg 3-4. I like the dynamic of A grappling with his own powers/healing/morality but I'm not getting a ton from this back and forth

pg 5-6. I appreciate that racial reconciliation is presented as being a difficult task but ultimately one that is worth pursuing

pg. 7-11. I like the looming threat that's established here but it sounds like that was also established in that previous chapter that hasn't been submitted yet (assuming that's when the meeting takes place), so I'm not quite sure what this tells us

Overall: Echoing everyone else, I like a lot of the setup here. As I mentioned, the questions of morality, the race relations, and the looming threat are well-done here. What I think is missing is plot motion. These interesting ideas are all presented but the characters and the story don't really make anything of them. It feels like the story is having conversations for the sake of having conversations rather than to create motion in the story (something my writing is very guilty of so I'm trying to pick it out more and more). We don't need answers to all the issues brought up but we do need progress.

[ginger_reckoning]

11 hours ago, Silk said:

“…lift him up and off the balcony” – This seems like a good way for A to get himself hurt or killed if he goes for it

Yeah, in retrospect it's a pretty dumb plan, especially since there's really no reason for the guard to just grab onto him and stop him from being lifted. Gonna need to rethink this one. 

 

11 hours ago, Silk said:

P4 “your gang spreads addiction throughout the city.” Maybe WRS, but did we know this?

Mentioned in skipped chapter, alluded to before

11 hours ago, Silk said:

P5 “So what alternative would you suggest?” M is being surprisingly understanding considering that this was essentially the terms of its deal

That is true. Mainly going for a "humoring you" vibe from M here. I guess it didn't come through?

11 hours ago, Silk said:

P9 “we have a week at most before someone finds out” maybe just because of the skipped content, but this seems arbitrary. I wonder if there might be a more effective way of getting at the urgency, like emphasizing that this is a really unusual raid, or of greater scale, or other markers of escalation rather than throwing a time limit at it.

fair enough

11 hours ago, Silk said:

P10 “he could have saved that child from being arrested…” by being a healer? Not sure I understand this.

From chapter 1, when he witnessed someone getting arrested

1 hour ago, Ace of Hearts said:

haven't read the previous chapters but since we're skipping one maybe I won't be too far behind everyone else

Good to see you again! I think you should be good to jump in here

1 hour ago, Ace of Hearts said:

pg 3-4. I like the dynamic of A grappling with his own powers/healing/morality but I'm not getting a ton from this back and forth

That seems to be the consensus here

1 hour ago, Ace of Hearts said:

It feels like the story is having conversations for the sake of having conversations rather than to create motion in the story (something my writing is very guilty of so I'm trying to pick it out more and more). We don't need answers to all the issues brought up but we do need progress.

That is a good point, thanks!

I think that next week, instead of submitting the next chapters, I am going to focus on revising this chapter and the previous skipped ones, and try to combine them into a single chapter while also taking care of some of the contrivances in this chapter. Hopefully I can have that ready to submit by next week. 

Thank you Silk and Ace of Hearts!

[Silk]

2 hours ago, ginger_reckoning said:

That is true. Mainly going for a "humoring you" vibe from M here. I guess it didn't come through?

No, I didn't get that this time. Probably a fairly easy fix, though! 

5 hours ago, ginger_reckoning said:

From chapter 1, when he witnessed someone getting arrested

I remember someone getting arrested, I just wasn't certain how healing powers would have helped A change the outcome.