1/8/24 - Ace of Hearts - Everlasting Sunset sub 15, 3050 words (L)

[Appol PhD they/he]

Happy New Year, everyone!

 

Thanks a lot for the comments last time. I think I'm going to do pretty heavy revisions for the start of part 2, focusing on 1. A's struggle to understand own relationship with gender and 2. Her connection with Am and how she projects her own rigid understanding of gender onto him in an attempt to save him from the dysphoria she suffered from, similar to how she was trying to save P in part 1.

 

So how does that tie into this submission? With the initial setup for part 2 needing a lot of work, I think it's inevitable that the rest of the part isn't going to feel as cohesive as it could be. Which means at this point I'm more interested in hearing what people think about the broad plot threads and what can potentially be done to tie everything together. 

 

Thanks!

[Mandamon he/him]

I think if this is going to focus on A's gender, there needs to be a whole lot more setup on that side in the first part. I didn't get that as a big theme in the story. We get some response to that here, but it would make more sense with revisions in part 1.

This chapter is a bit slower as well. It sets up some things, but mostly it's a chat between C and A, with some things relevant to the plot. Again, more setup before this will lend more meaning to what's happening here. 

Notes while reading:

pg 2: "Ash blinked. She… was a doomspeaker? "
--Has she commended the monsters?

pg 3: "The boy blinked." 
--there hasn't been any mention of him being onscreen so I was thrown out by this.

pg 5: "having a fluffy cat for company"
--Has she even seen a cat before? Do they have animals on the other island?

pg 7: It's pretty slow through these middle pages...

pg 9: So if the head guard isn't supposed to do this, how did he get everyone to come here?

pg 11: This chapter gives some good setup for what's coming next, but there's a lot of downtime through the middle as well. We haven't really seen home life on the other island. A tells us what she expects, but we haven't really seen it enough for the reader to come to a conclusion.

[Appol PhD they/he]

Thanks for your comments @Mandamon! Since I've gotten multiple comments about this, I think for context I'll lay out my thoughts behind A's relation to gender (maybe this is worthwhile context for @Silk's future critiques as well).

My grand idea (which even while writing draft 1 I was worried about being too hard to tackle) is for A in part 1 to not really understand her relation to gender, and see the minister/soldier divide as one of societal roles and power. Then starting in part 2, she comes to grapple with more of what that identity means. The idea is that the text mimics this--that the role of gender as identity groups that we recognize isn't apparent at the start but becomes clearer as the characters break from the system and gain a clearer understanding of self. The reason I'm interested in doing it this way is to shift the focus away from just being "X group that we immediately recognize from the real world is oppressed in this fantasy world" and more towards the process of self-discovery and straining against expectations.

Of course, this isn't to deny that all of this needs more setup, and I'll try to find ways for A's introspection in part 1 to lead her here even if she doesn't understand gender as a concept at the start.

[Mandamon he/him]

5 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

My grand idea (which even while writing draft 1 I was worried about being too hard to tackle) is for A in part 1 to not really understand her relation to gender, and see the minister/soldier divide as one of societal roles and power. Then starting in part 2, she comes to grapple with more of what that identity means. The idea is that the text mimics this--that the role of gender as identity groups that we recognize isn't apparent at the start but becomes clearer as the characters break from the system and gain a clearer understanding of self. The reason I'm interested in doing it this way is to shift the focus away from just being "X group that we immediately recognize from the real world is oppressed in this fantasy world" and more towards the process of self-discovery and straining against expectations.

I think you could certainly do this, but right now the roles in part 1 are I think too subtle for the reader to pick up. Even having someone mention the division will help, even if they don't yet know what it means.

[Silk she/her]

“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.

On 1/12/2024 at 7:34 AM, Ace of Hearts said:

My grand idea (which even while writing draft 1 I was worried about being too hard to tackle) is for A in part 1 to not really understand her relation to gender, and see the minister/soldier divide as one of societal roles and power. Then starting in part 2, she comes to grapple with more of what that identity means.

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? 

On 1/10/2024 at 8:43 AM, Mandamon said:

pg 2: "Ash blinked. She… was a doomspeaker? "
--Has she commended the monsters?

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. 

On 1/10/2024 at 8:43 AM, Mandamon said:

pg 5: "having a fluffy cat for company"
--Has she even seen a cat before? Do they have animals on the other island?

I wondered this too!