2/6/23-ginger_reckoning-changeling sub 8 (interlude) (L) (4828 words)

[ginger_reckoning]

Hey all! Busy week this week, which is awesome. I got really excited about the thought of writing an interlude, so that's what I ended up writing this week. It probably won't go exactly here, but near here. (Probably in two chapters or so) 

 

Anyways, the usual questions. What logically doesn't make sense? I'm worried there's a little too much exposition in this chapter. What do you think? Do you think having this POV is warranted? 

 

Who knew the chapter with the villain would be the one with the least tags? Tagging language just because I've grown blind to swears, so it's just to be safe. 

 

Thank you!

[FlowerGirl]

Pg 6-“He was supposed to be gone for only a couple of hours,” Interesting, I was under the impression that the imposter had forcibly replaced H, but apparently not.

Pg 6-"will likely suffer from an unfortunate accident." It's unclear whether the real H will be suffering from an accident or if it'll be staged so it appears H has had an accident.

Pg 10-"baubles powered by mutated fish." This is a really interesting origin for electricity, though I am confused about how a fish mutation would create electricity.

Pg 11-I'm noticing there're a lot of long descriptions in this chapter and I'm starting to get a little tired of them.

Pg 11-"holy duty to care after the animals that they practiced their craft on." This is interesting, I like it.

Pg 11-"his hunch here was correct." This seems like quite the conclusion to draw from a single flinch.

Pg 16-"He smiled, shaking hands," I'm not sure, but it almost seems like you changed tenses here. It's hard to tell because you focus in on the moment for a paragraph, then go back to being further away(I hope that makes sense, I wasn't really sure how to explain it.) Anyway, something about smiled and shaking being next to each other felt off as I read.

Overall I really enjoyed this. As for exposition, I thought there was a good amount maybe a little more than average, but not enough to bother me. As for whether or not the POV is warranted, I think it is. I enjoyed seeing G's perspective on things. I did notice that he didn't do anything too villainous, right now I view him as another character and not necessarily a major antagonist. I quite like the villain not being overly villainous it's a nice change of pace from villains who just want to watch the world burn. I really enjoyed the pacing, it almost felt cozy (I realize this is a somewhat odd way to describe it.) the pacing wasn't too fast or slow which I enjoyed.

[Ace of Hearts]

All right time to jump in! 

Overall: There were lots of interesting tidbits in here, and I appreciated getting a better feel for the magic and political context of the setting, but I’m not sure what happens here outside of G finding out about the protag. I like the tension of when he confronts the M who’s impersonating his student, but I think it has to lead somewhere in the future for me to feel like it’s justified. I will say that I like G’s characterization as someone who furthers oppression for pragmatic reasons rather than raging vitriol. I think the first few pages and pages 8-14 can be cut down by quite a bit, and I also feel like we’re missing a sense of direction at the end of the chapter. If the story wants G to feel like a threat we need to feel like he has a plan and is actively backing the protag in a corner rather than just knowing about him.

As I go:

Pg 1-2. Not sure what dynamics to be focusing on especially in a new PoV, so feels a bit scattered

Pg 5-6. This is where the stakes start to get real for me and I’m more engaged

Pg 8-9. I’m interested by some of the stuff here like the prophecy, but with the initial conflict resolved I’m not quite as engaged. I think my issue might be that while what’s here is interesting enough on its own, I’m not sure how it connects to the larger story

Pg 11. He’s not here for H; do we know why he is here? I’m not sure if I missed it or if it isn’t there

Pg 13. I think I need a bit more on why G cares so much about the issue. Are there pieces I should be putting together?

Pg 15. I’m assuming this biomage is our protag and if the main point of the chapter is that G finds out about him I’m not sure it needs to take this long to reach that point

[Mandamon]

Similar thoughts to the others on this one. I think the chapter by itself is decent, but there's too much in the way of description and new faces. What is this achieving here? I'm not really sure of the arc in relation to A and the rest of the story. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it was much shorter with a very strong ending that tied directly into what A is doing.

I do like that we see another god in action and how trained magic-users work, but I wonder if we need some more preparation in the world before this chapter?

 

Notes while reading:

pg 2: "His other apprentice, the teenaged V. girl"
--lots of new names through here. Is she different than the serving girl in the previous paragraph?

pg 2, end: getting a little lost on names/powers/deities.

pg 5: I think if we new a bit more about the world before this interlude, this would be clearer.

pg 7, end: I'm not really following the history through here.

pg 8: "So that was where H had been last night."
--Ah. H was that pyromancer.

pg 10: I feel like there might be too much description through here. I'm getting lost on details that I don't think matter to the plot, at least yet.

pg 12: "his true purpose was to sleuth out..."
--I thought his true purpose was to find H?

pg 14: "The beast shall smite the tiger on the head..."
--I though he didn't know what the prophecy meant? 

pg 15: "It was said to work even on the Supreme C"
--side eyes in foreshadowing...

[Silk]

P2 “there was his two personal…” should be were.

Halfway down p2 and I’m pretty engaged so far, though I spent mental energy at the start trying to place where and whether I should know this character before ultimately deciding that I shouldn’t. But also, at this point in the narrative I am becoming curious as to what G thinks happened to his missing apprentice, whether or not it’s an actual cause for concern (for the apprentice or G himself), etc.

P3 “A single mango was not nearly enough to eat.” Stumbled over this. At first I was just confused since I didn’t think breakfast was the actual aim here, and then the continuing paragraph made what is obviously supposed to be a villain sound like a nagging father, before landing on the last line that seems to bring G back to type. Though I’m not sure how disordered eating could be useful (or improve anyone’s magic skills).

“Do I have something in my teeth or something?” While funny and good piece of characterization, I was quite surprised to see that G apparently allows his apprentices to back-talk him, which seems to be belied by the comment a bit later about him cultivating an intimidating air.

“…who knew what horrible, depraved mutilations the mysterious sorcerers were capable of?” This is the first time we’ve seen b-mages presented in a negative light, but the wording makes it sound like common knowledge/perception.

So… the apprentice is the one who arranged for an imposter? Again, I think it would be useful to have a hint of what the actual situation is up front.

P6 “I am so sorry.” Why is he apologizing? Is it a legitimate apology? I have no idea what the answer to either of these questions is.

“It would delegitimize the position he held…” Unsure if “he” here refers to G himself or the apprentice.

P7 Getting a sense of some of the other gangs and such is good, but I think I’d like to see them for the first time before an interlude.

P8 Why is “investigation” capitalized?

So… the villain is against the gang that raided the home our protagonist? Having multiple threads is not a bad thing, of course. But although the scene is building a sense of menace, which is good, it seems to be directed at the people opposing our protagonist rather than the protagonist himself, which is not what I would have expected. And I’m not super invested in the apprentice being in danger, since I never met him and he seems to be set against both of the POV characters we’ve met so far.

As a general note, I usually expect interludes to be short and punchy, not a three-scenes-over-three-days affair. I’m enjoying the individual scenes just fine, but it feels more like a full chapter than an interlude. For whatever that’s worth.

P8/9 “It shall eat the White God…” I immediately thought “why didn’t we get this first?!” I’m surprised more engaged with a prophecy that he thought for a while was about him. Plus it provides an immediate link back to our protagonist that we don’t otherwise get at a remove (since A is presumably the actual object of the prophecy).

The description of G walking through the streets’ and people’s reaction to him has reminded me how little we actually know about where G and/or his role actually fit in the overall world.

P10 “An unfortunate misuse of his powers…” So what’s the plan for the actual, non-imposter apprentice? I assume G doesn’t expect him to just obligingly disappear. Unless he does, in which case that’s worth making clear. Is he making any attempt to find out what his apprentice was up to, even if only to make sure that H’s actions don’t cause him problems down the line? (I’m sort of assuming that the missing apprentice is the one A killed a few chapters ago, but as far as I can tell G has no reason to know this.)

P11  “…that wasn’t the purpose of his visit.” So… what is?

P14/15 attention starting to drift here. I don’t understand what G’s purpose is or why, and now we no longer have the immediate goal of him ferreting out an imposter that we did in the first scene.

“Who would have the biggest reason to kill…” Confused now; G seems to have done his homework, so wouldn’t he know that the RTs launched an attack? Dead gang members seems like a pretty predictable consequence thereof.

“…and decades of declining public opinion” again, I feel like we’ve buried the lede on this. But also, this plan doesn’t seem particularly convincing. So far, he’s seemed ambitious, but possibly within his own competencies. This seems… less reasonable.

 Who is the general? Should we know who she is?

Overall: The first half of this chapter especially was the most engaged I've been with the story so far. Something—and I can’t quite articulate what—pulled me along in a way that the earlier chapters hadn’t. That said, I often felt like I didn’t understand very much what our narrator was thinking and feeling about things. It’s fine for him to be emotionally distant, but I didn’t always understand what he was trying to do or why he was trying to do it. This became more of a stumbling block for me in the latter half of the chapter, once we lost the immediate aim of ferreting out the imposter apprentice.

I’m still struggling with the information that we are and aren’t getting over the course of the book. Right now it feels like we’re getting both too much and not enough. The problem of the declining public opinion, the general, whatever presumably villainous things G’s done, are all thrown at us without developing any of this information further. Meanwhile we are maybe seeing some of the gang stuff for the second time from a new perspective, but not really getting anything new about them.

There are a lot of threads here, I suspect that the chapter can be distilled down to one or two key threads but I think it's a solid addition to the story.

[ginger_reckoning]

Thanks everyone for the replies! It seems like the consensus is that this chapter is worth keeping, but in a shorter form, and with fewer unnecessary details. I think that cutting down the scene with L in the temple especially will help. 

19 hours ago, FlowerGirl said:

Pg 6-"will likely suffer from an unfortunate accident." It's unclear whether the real H will be suffering from an accident or if it'll be staged so it appears H has had an accident.

The latter. I will make sure to make this more clear!

 

19 hours ago, FlowerGirl said:

g 11-I'm noticing there're a lot of long descriptions in this chapter and I'm starting to get a little tired of them

That's fair!

19 hours ago, FlowerGirl said:

right now I view him as another character and not necessarily a major antagonist

That's good to know!

 

7 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

but I think it has to lead somewhere in the future for me to feel like it’s justified

It (hopefully) will, and the mi here will play a part later on, but yeah that's hard to show here lol

7 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

I think the first few pages and pages 8-14 can be cut down by quite a bit, and I also feel like we’re missing a sense of direction at the end of the chapter. If the story wants G to feel like a threat we need to feel like he has a plan and is actively backing the protag in a corner rather than just knowing about him.

Noted!

 

2 hours ago, Mandamon said:

pg 5: I think if we new a bit more about the world before this interlude, this would be clearer.

Yeah, this chapter has a heavy exposition burden. Still looking for ways to sprinkle in some more of this organically throughout, but yeah. Noted. 

 

2 hours ago, Mandamon said:

pg 14: "The beast shall smite the tiger on the head..."
--I though he didn't know what the prophecy meant? 

The point was that he was reconsidering what he thought the prophecy meant. I will make this clearer. 

 

1 hour ago, Silk said:

Though I’m not sure how disordered eating could be useful (or improve anyone’s magic skills).

Calories are what power the magic system, which I could definitely be more clear on before this point. 

1 hour ago, Silk said:

While funny and good piece of characterization, I was quite surprised to see that G apparently allows his apprentices to back-talk him, which seems to be belied by the comment a bit later about him cultivating an intimidating air.

That is a good point! Thanks for pointing that out. 

1 hour ago, Silk said:

P8 Why is “investigation” capitalized?

Formatting error! Whoops!

1 hour ago, Silk said:

As a general note, I usually expect interludes to be short and punchy, not a three-scenes-over-three-days affair. I’m enjoying the individual scenes just fine, but it feels more like a full chapter than an interlude. For whatever that’s worth.

I'm mainly calling this an interlude because I don't plan on having another POV chapter from G (well, maybe one near the end of the story. We'll see) But I see what you mean. 

1 hour ago, Silk said:

“It shall eat the White God…” I immediately thought “why didn’t we get this first?!” I’m surprised more engaged with a prophecy that he thought for a while was about him. Plus it provides an immediate link back to our protagonist that we don’t otherwise get at a remove (since A is presumably the actual object of the prophecy).

I hadn't considered this! I guess I could move this up, but at the beginning G had other things on his mind, so maybe I could put it in the second scene? Hmm

1 hour ago, Silk said:

I assume G doesn’t expect him to just obligingly disappear. Unless he does, in which case that’s worth making clear. Is he making any attempt to find out what his apprentice was up to, even if only to make sure that H’s actions don’t cause him problems down the line? (I’m sort of assuming that the missing apprentice is the one A killed a few chapters ago, but as far as I can tell G has no reason to know this.)

This is a fair point, and a decent sized plot-hole. Thanks for pointing this out. I will find some way for him to address this idea without it taking up too much space. (Something like, if H showed up now, people would think HE was the impostor...or something)

2 hours ago, Silk said:

G seems to have done his homework, so wouldn’t he know that the RTs launched an attack? Dead gang members seems like a pretty predictable consequence thereof

Possibly WRS. This murder is the attack from the last sub, not the larger arson attack. I will make sure that the two are more distinct on the page on the next draft. 

 

Thank you everyone!

[Little_Dagger]

All right, I have finally caught up with all your submissions, and here are my two cents on this one:

First of all, I liked the POV change because the world immediately became bigger and more rounded. A is mostly concerned with the fate of the m and so we learn very little about the city beyond his neighborhood in the earlier chapters. It was nice to have the plot expansion here.  

I enjoyed being in G’s head. He strikes me as an interesting foil and I like that he has exactly the same motivation as A – saving his people from unfair racial discrimination. I actually liked him quite a bit and if you didn’t mention in the email that G is a villain, I would not call him that.

That being said, I felt slight dissonance between his public appearance and his banter with the apprentices. It seemed rather informal. He also seemed completely reasonable all until the last line about becoming the God. That felt a little abrupt.

It may be the WRS, but I wondered whether Galv is a religious title or something else entirely. Are all vessels of S called that or is it just him?

I was also slightly lost in all the names (they are rather similar), but it did get better as I progressed.

I am intrigued by the mention of the NoC. Why did G lose his memory there? What happened to him? Why was the last time he spoke to S over a month ago?

Overall, I liked this addition to the story and the chapter flowed easily and quickly. I did not feel that there was too much exposition but maybe that is because I like learning about world and the supreme conji.

Thanks for sharing! Looking forward to more!