20231219 - Robinski - The Hygeia Hijack (Part 2 or 2) - 6059 words (LVS)

[Robinski he/him]

Hey, everyone,

 

Really appreciate any eyes on this, and apologies again for the length. If it's any consolation, 200 words of that is title and section headers

 

Many thanks for any and all comments!

 

Robin CM Duncan (Robinski)

[Mandamon he/him]

So, I think overall this works, but needs some cleanup on this part and probably some condensing on the first part.

My main issues with this one was the lack of blocking on most of the action scenes, and the whole "mystery plan" in the middle. Especially with the two together, it was hard to keep track of what was going on. I think either the plan needs to be clarified and then we see something go wrong, or there needs to be a lot more description and blocking as to what's happening.

And can we also get closure on who unlocked the controls and whether M and T are actually a thing or not?

More observations below...

Notes while reading:

pg 2: Nicknames: yes, this definitely needs to be compressed into 1. I think there's three versions of T's name in the first couple pages. Plus one of the mirrors a certain main antagonist...

pg 3 :"Pull us— uh, as hard"
--took me a couple reads to understand "as" was a replacement for "us."

pg 5: "vacuum sucked the breath from her pores"
--I think we either need some indication of what they're doing here, or skip over some of this part to see the end result. We have a secret (from the reader) plan so none of the actions through here really make any sense.

pg 6: I am...not sure what's going on here. M was keeping T's rescue quiet, and now they're letting the kidnapper know, but I'm not sure what the consequences are?

pg 6: "whatever your name is...told me your name"
--Wouldn't it be more effective then to mention his name as proof M knows it?

pg 6: "This dumbbell plan of hers had to work"
--still very confused on what the kidnapper and M's plans are. I think we need some hint of what's going on.

pg 7: “Because of the recording I gave J?!” 
--I feel like I'm not in on the joke here because we don't know what's in the recording.

pg 8: “I almost died.” 
--uh, I guess T really needs a clean suit now...

pg 9: "did not own that name"
--I think this just confuses matters, unless it's going to be a plot point later on. Can he have a different name? Or at least not that nickname?

pg 10: "locker lid tumbled serenely out into space"
--still confused here. I really think we need to know all or part of this plan. Are they not in oxygen? Are they trying to seal J somewhere? I don't know why they're doing the actions they are.

pg 12: “Yeah, I need to change this suit if nothing else,”
--heh, called it.

pg 12: So I think the plan came together in the end, but there was a lot of things being thrown, and actions taken, and I still think some preface to it will help set us up while reading it. I don't know if "gang up on him" needs to be kept secret from the reader. I was also convinced they were going to use the sealant to actually *seal* J somewhere so he couldn't escape.

pg 13: “Had some kind of doodad on him that de-magged the magnaties,”
--wait, so he just...got free? Offscreen? After the whole cloak and dagger and victory of tying him down and everything? I thought he was got at this point. 

pg 14: Hm. Not a fan of this section. It seems like a reset so they can have another fight with the bad guy. I'd much rather hear the original plan, see something go wrong with it in execution, and not have the "oh he gets free again" section.

pg "*** YOU’RE ***
*** WELCOME ***"
--Should we know where this comes from? The android? Q?

pg 17: “Sure, I can do that.”
--a bit of whiplash from this section. M doesn't think they'll work out now? Except she's going along with T again? And does she know or not who the mystery benefactor was?

pg 18: Another nice crossover with TBB.

pg 19: "maybe things were going to be okay, for now."
--So I guess they are back on, then?

[Robinski he/him]

Great stuff. Many thanks!

I'll come back and respond in detail once I can review with the file in front of me

[Silk she/her]

Right into it, then!

“She needed quite a bit more line to reach T” – okay, wow. I had not realized he was that close.

P2 “in the traditional way.” Er, how else…?

“but being drenched in pee” – not what the original line says, of course, but Shard will yell at me if I write that, and also this is M forgetting her promise not to swear. (I know other people questioned in the last round why she was sticking to this promise in her head, but it worked for me, is pretty much one of two ways I would see that going for M; the other, of course, would have been if in the privacy of her own head she’d decided to swear more. )

So… does (antagonist) J have eyes on M, or does he at least have the potential to be able to see what she’s doing? Does that increase the risk of whatever she’s up to, for M or her buddies?

P3 “The tenuous silver capable” cable?

I’m confused on a couple of things. One is just the blocking of the various ships and what M is trying to do, how T was positioned before she came to get him and what he was trying to accomplish or if his ship was just drifting, etc. But I’m also confused as to the why of it: The antagonist has already stated his intent to go get T. Presumably so he can eliminate all the witnesses, sure, but what does M gain from trying to do the same thing stealthily?

P4 “he’s too professional to kill us himself” because… then there would be witnesses? I think I’m with you, but it took me a minute and a couple of reads to follow M’s line of reasoning here.

P5 “in that moment she stopped caring about the jinx…” 1. nothing specific seems to have preceded this, aside from them actioning the plan they’d already agreed on. 2. no swearing follows, at least not in this scene.

“the chill of vacuum” yeah, so, the chill of vacuum is going to be… significant, yes? Dangerously so?

P6 “...told me your name before he died.” Didn’t we establish in the first submission that his life was not in danger, I mean aside from the murderous smuggler planning to kill them all to leave no witnesses? But the original gunshot wound was not supposed to have killed him, as I recall, so this caught me by surprise. Unless this is a deception on M’s part?

Oh, here’s the swearing. Btw, I assume this ends with the team rescuing themselves and T changing his mind about who M is supposed to be kissing.

“M had run the numbers in her head, and they didn’t look good.” This is one of the areas where I’m not sure not knowing the plan serves the story well. Do they not look good in a way she was expecting, or do they not look good in a way that is going to make things worse than they already are?

P7 “which fit pretty snuggly” snugly, as in something that is snug, rather than something that snuggles

Oop, we’re back to not swearing in M’s head again.

“T tilted his head down…” well that happened sooner than I expected, but I guess it works.

Side note: with the exception of the last couple pages, the romance has been pretty subtle up to this point—not absent, but it escalates notably at the scene that starts on p6. Not sure it’s an issue, but it is noticeable.

P8: I, uh… I can’t say that it would have occurred to me that masturbation was a tool for dealing with nightmares.

How mobile are these suits, by the way? M complains about them, but they must be considerably less bulky/more flexible than your average space suit considering some of the details we’re getting here.

P10 “more expensive in energy” so… the idea is that everyone has suits that are battery-powered and they’re trying to wear the antagonist down first?

“C edged around the racking…” Where did she come from? She couldn’t have been on the plan, could she? (Same question about the other C, when he joins in a few paragraphs later.)

P11 “The MLB turned up their collective nose” should we know this acronym?

P12 “...through the helmet mic of someone called Brown.” Now I’m confused – when did they change suits/helmets/etc?

Hm, I’m not sure I was prepared for the sudden reversal of fortunes here – in the last scene the antagonist seemed thoroughly defeated, really only the relative length of the piece led me to expect that we were not at the end. Maybe the “doodad” can be set up prior to it being used off-screen?

P13 “A view of--” without having read beyond this line yet, this is a place where I feel like having information withheld is actually working.

Edit: maybe just a brief reference to M lying about the lieutenant being dead? The reference almost works as the brief reminder of his existence we need to set this up, but as-is is also confusing.

Is the “hands free” spaceship operation courtesy of B?

(Or wait: Oh dear. I just realized what this possibly really is. Which, well, that’s ominous, but hm, not sure how this will land for folks who haven’t read TCC? And perhaps, while M is angsting about having killed N, one reference to her not being sure he’s really, fully dead to set up the “ghost in the machine” here?)

Overall: I touched on this already, but—I know one of the major subsets of heist stories is not knowing the plan, but I’m not sure it serves us well here. It may be partially that there are two plans we as the audience know nothing about: the antagonist’s and the protagonist’s plans, so it’s hard not to feel like the narrative is withholding information from us just because it can. And, not knowing the plan means that some of the dramatic scene changes lose their impact, because I don’t know if the plan is going, well, to plan or not. “Yes” or “no” are both options that can increase tension, but not knowing isn’t having the same effect.

I know I’ve mentioned this above too, but it also feels like the story skips over a lot of kind of important scenes: whatever happened to T, the sudden reversal of fortunes in part 14. I suspect there is room to trim the beginning, maybe work some of the interpersonal dynamics we see there into scenes that focus a little more on the action at hand. What’s on the page is great but it feels like there are a few scenes that are getting short shrift!

On 12/20/2023 at 4:28 PM, Mandamon said:

And can we also get closure on who unlocked the controls and whether M and T are actually a thing or not?

So like I said, I think I got who unlocked the controls. As for whether or not M and T are a thing, I was fine with where things were left, but did not understand what prompted M to realize they wouldn't work out long-term.

On 12/20/2023 at 4:28 PM, Mandamon said:

pg 7: “Because of the recording I gave J?!” 
--I feel like I'm not in on the joke here because we don't know what's in the recording.

FWIW I did clock this one.

On 12/20/2023 at 4:28 PM, Mandamon said:

pg 14: Hm. Not a fan of this section. It seems like a reset so they can have another fight with the bad guy. I'd much rather hear the original plan, see something go wrong with it in execution, and not have the "oh he gets free again" section.

I think this might be a better solution than my suggestion.

[Ace of Hearts]

Excited to dig into the rest of this!

Overall: The general flow of the conflict into climax into resolution went about as expected and I think works pretty well. My main constructive comments are as follows:

-For the opening setting up G’s fun villain personality quite well, we don’t get to see too much of it in this second half. The focus on M’s connections with her friends teaming up to take him down didn’t hold my interest as much as G and M interacting directly.

-M’s romance with T is a key part of not only the buildup, but the resolution. I think the arc of it needs to be clearer from the start if it’s going to be this important—maybe it’s just because there were a lot of names at once that I couldn’t keep track of, but I didn’t get a feel at all for this being an important emotional arc of the story near the start.

-Related to this, for the setup of M’s emotional arc revolving around her guilt, I felt like we didn’t get a lot of motion there in this second half. I think there are connections that could be drawn with her being able to fight G nonlethally and relying on connections with T and friends to manage the guilt, but I think the story needs to do more work to tie all these pieces together.  

As I go:

Pg 1. I’m guessing this follows precedent from your other work but I’m surprised that M doesn’t use typical swears

Pg 3. I like the idea of M grappling with her guilt while in a life or death situation that’s further triggering it, but the end of the scene emotional turn doesn’t feel fully set up to me. I’d like to see more of this emotion throughout.

Pg 5. I like the sense of direction here though it’s a bit hard for me to track who everyone is and what they’re doing—though that may just be me not being familiar with them from your previous work and taking a week break halfway through.

Pg 7-8. Again I think party of my hangup here is not being familiar with Th, but the romance scene here feels like an interruption to the plot rather than something that aids it. The beginning of the story set up the external conflict with G being the worst and in the internal conflict with M’s guilt and the story doesn’t really tie this to either.

Pg 10-11. I’m having a hard time following the action sequence—which tends to happen when I read sci-fi so that itself isn’t necessarily an issue—which makes me aware of how we’re not getting a lot of movement in the emotional plot right now.

Pg 12. I think I’m missing how G got free after M and the others restrained him

Pg 15. Now that G is fully restrained I need a new plot thread to hold my attention, and I’m not quite finding one in this conversation

Pg 18. My first thought for Isle of Skye was the board game lol—comes from being an American who’s never visited Europe I guess haha

Pg 19. The scenes after G’s defeated don’t carry a ton of weight for me since that’s where my investment was. I think there’s room to make the resolution quicker and more pointed.  

[Robinski he/him]

Thanks for the comments @Silk and @Ace of Hearts, I really appreciate them, and to @Demiurgess for commenting offline by tracking and emailing the file. And, as ever, to @Mandamon.

These comments are all really good stuff, and I strongly suspect I'll take almost all of them into the update draft. There will be a delay in that draft though, as I have to set this aside in order to finished Draft 1 of Book 3 first, before coming back to this in a week or two.

Thanks to everyone who read. It's been super helpful to be back in the fold  

Edited December 30, 2023 by Robinski