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Coop - 10/31/16 - Clouds pt. 7 - 5193 words


Coop

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Hello all, I've always tried to keep the word count well below 5000, but I felt that the last chapter in this submission needed to be included, so this submission is a tad longer than usual. ALSO, I've been going back through the story and trying to de-brat Sira a little, and make her feelings toward Grandpa more about trauma, avoidance, and guilt rather than anger and disgust, but I didn't do that yet in a key scene here (you'll know the one). I sat down a couple times this week to write it but couldn't quite get what I wanted. So, warning, this contains the original, brattier version of that dialogue. 

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Synopsis to this point:

 

 

Sira is a 12-year-old girl who finds a golden-colored costume in an underground room in the woods. Eventually she figures out that this is a cloudsuit with the ability to solidify clouds. Grappling hook-like devices that she calls “triangulators” enable her to ascend into the clouds.

 

She has been pursued by a male figure dressed in a red cloudsuit. At times he appears harmful; at least once he saved her life.

 

All of this is happening while Sira is stuck on her grandfather’s farm for the summer while her mother is overseas. Grandpa’s seriously disfigured appearance was the source of significant trauma for her as a young child, and she has been unable to overcome these negative feelings for him.

 

In the two preceding submissions, Sira traps the young adult man in the red suit. He explains that he is her second cousin, home from college for the summer. He introduces her to a set of cloud-walking robots called sibinauts and tells her they will be having war games.

 

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- Having not read the previous submissions, I'm a little worried the whimsical nature of the story - with cloud-walking robots - clashes with the dark take on Sira's relationship with her disfigured grandfather.

- i like the imagination of the setting, but it definitely clashes with the real world we've been presented with so far.

- That said, I do like reading about Ray's defeat.

- Re: Sira's relationship with Grandfather - him being sarcastic and mean to her should be the first thing she mentions. The rest makes her feel shallow and unsympathetic.

- Not sure what I think about the last chapter from the grandfather's POV. Obviously, he's not as bad as Sira makes him out to be, but I'm not sure I want to see his thoughts at this point - I kinda like him being enigmatic, especially at this point. 

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Overall

Some stilted language and a few rough patches but overall this really hit me in the feels, especially the end. 

As I go

- page two makes me LOL

- page two: why couldn't she win a physical war with him?

- page four: she landed on a puffball? Like a mushroom puffball? Did she choke on the spores? Those things are vicious if you explode them

- page four: this 'dumb girl' thought line is... do girls really think of themselves in these terms?

- end of chapter 20 is reasonably tense

- third to last paragraph on page seven reads all kinds of awkward. That is a lot of self realization all at once.. reads very author voice.

- page eight: I'm not really engaged in this battle anymore. It doesn't really have stakes. At first it read as an interesting skirmish, but without stakes it just is dragging

- page ten: as I read this I realized what was bothering me-- boys stealing girls' clothes is... it makes me uncomfortable. It makes me not like Ray at all, and makes him come across as a bit of a creeper.

- page ten: with that said, I like the end of chapter 21. I think you could clean it a bit by having him leave her undergarments. That would skeeve me out less

- page fourteen: I don't know how I feel about grandpa being actually mean. I always found him endearing

- page fourteen: woah, random POV switch. Jarring

- page nineteen. damnation it. My heart just broke.

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19 hours ago, kaisa said:

- page ten: as I read this I realized what was bothering me-- boys stealing girls' clothes is... it makes me uncomfortable. It makes me not like Ray at all, and makes him come across as a bit of a creeper.

As an add on to this after some reflection-

Spoiler

Her grandfather stole her undergarments? Woah. Crosses a HUGE line. I would never talk to my grandfather again if he did this, no matter the reason. I've really been enjoying this story, but this would make me put the book down and run. 

 

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Overall thoughts:
I Still don't know why the wargames, even with the reveal at the end. The fight itself was good, though I got lost with the blocking a couple time

@kaisaon stealing undergarments...that's just creepy.
Not a big fan of suddenly going to Granpa's POV.  I understand why, but its still jarring.
I feel like I'm missing something with Grandpa benin so technologically adept. Did we ever know he worked for a tech company, much less was the head of one?  Might be WRS, but I remember him working in a warehouse or something and there being a fire. Maybe I linked to something manual because he's a farmer now. I'd like to see other hints so this is more  "surprising yet inevitable," rather than just "surprising." This does develop what's happening in the book, but I'm not convinced yet.


Pg 2: The boys vs. girls thing is a little overdone. The robots are genderless, right?

pg 5: got bored here. Some more infodump about the suit that I didn't really need.

pg 5: "drop fifty feet into Saturn"
--isn't it above her?

pg 7: “You break it, you buy it,” called Ray’s voice."
--hmmm...mixed reactions on letting a 12 year old damage 200 year old robots...

pg 8: animal sibis: Did you go over this before?  Sounds like different animals are coming out of nowhere.

pg 9: “Sorry, doll"
--Why is he calling her "doll?"

pg 10: don't completely follow the blocking on the pyramid section

pg 13: Grandpa needs some medical attention if he's making other people sick with his farts...

pg 14: is this Grandpa's POV?

pg 15: "She’d now tramped a path through perfectly good wheat, but he let it go. His only hope was that she’d know by the end of the summer that it   wasn’t overgrown grass
--not if he doesn't tell her. Has he told her anything about farming?

pg 19: OK--I thought he was piloting the sibis, not Ray.  That's...weird.

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Aaaah, the end of this submission was heartbreaking. :( So sad!

My first thought when they steal all of Sira's things was that something much more sinister is going on than I realized.  Basically until Sira and Ray are talking at the sunset, I was under the impression that Ray is actually kind of a bad creeper dude and that once Sira got her stuff back, she would stay away from him.  It wasn't just the creepiness/meanness of Ray taking all of her stuff, it was also the fight.  It sounds pretty violent, with robots smashing into Sira and Sira herself breaking a robot under her knees.  We find out later that they're not actually as old as we thought, I suppose, but in the moment it only feels justified if Sira feels genuinely threatened.

I wasn't really thrown out by being in Grandpa's POV.  I agree that I would have liked some hints that he's a tech super-genius earlier, but his chapter still works well, and leaves me super sad. :( I'm very ready to read some cathartic chapters in which Sira gets over herself.  As much as I don't like her for the way she treats her grandpa, I also think it's a believable way for her to feel.  I didn't like how she talks about her grandpa during the sunset scene, but I didn't have trouble believing it.

Hope that helps!

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