Silk - The Big Bounce (V,L) - 4600 words

[Silk she/her]

Hi all,

 

Thread for the new version of the extremely silly space opera that some of you have seen before. Tagged for violence and language, though it's all pretty mild.

 

Thanks as always for any comments!

[ginger_reckoning]

This was a fun story! I liked the tone and thought it was funny and sweet. The stakes of the story were absolutely bonkers though, I was imagining they were going to save the station, but the entire universe at stake was just way farther than I imagined. It doesn't seem like someone would want to restart the entire universe for just a paper, even if they are unhinged. It was kind of ridiculous, but I think that was what made it fun. I also liked the ending a lot. Other than that, just my LBL stuff. Fun story!

 

Pg 3” for her employment” haha nice

 

“Hundreds of them” this seems like maybe an understatement?

 

“Sagittarius A*” is the asterisk part of the name? Sorry, I don’t know astronomy well enough to know. On that note, I just happened to remember that S is the supermassive balckhole at the center of the milky way, but I don’t think that’s ever explicitly said. Might be useful for folks who don’t quite remember, but then again I do appreciate that fact would be obvious to these characters

 

“Thought I was lesbian” we’ve all been there brother

 

Pg 6 “weird meteroid” haha

 

Pg 7 so right now my theory is that they just discovered they are in a simulation? Maybe?

 

Pg 9 “if you’re relying on warm fuzzies” I’m not sure what he is trying to say here

 

Pg 10 “willing to bed she’d defended” willing to bet, I assume

 

Pg 16 “She swallows” missing a paragraph indent 

 

[Silk she/her]

4 hours ago, ginger_reckoning said:

The stakes of the story were absolutely bonkers though

lol yeah, it was meant to be a little ridiculous, I'll see if I can find an opportunity to telegraph that a little more without sacrificing the pacing.

4 hours ago, ginger_reckoning said:

“Sagittarius A*” is the asterisk part of the name?

Yes, it is! Although you have just prompted me to google why. (And it's not just a black hole thing; it seems some have asterisks and some don't.) Apparently one of the people who co-discovered it assigned the asterisk after coming to the determination that there was a compact radio source at the galactic centre and that this radio source was "exciting" (in a scientific sense, not an emotional sense). He added the asterisk to the name because apparently scientists note the excited state of atoms with an asterisk... so "excited" iron for example, whatever that entails, is Fe*. Note, I am not an astronomer, and probably mangled that explanation.

Anyway, I thought there was a line in there that actually states that Sgr A* is the centre of the Milky Way. I'll double-check it didn't get inadvertently cut in revisions.

I've made some changes. Thanks for the comments!

4 hours ago, ginger_reckoning said:

“Thought I was lesbian” we’ve all been there brother

Also this made me laugh out loud

Edited December 4, 2024 by Silk

[Mandamon he/him]

Still a fun read! I think a little more on the description and setting the "universal" tone for the results of the explosion will help. Like it needs news reports of people on other planets seeing the blip or something. 

Overall fun, but I think it can still be zanier! 

 

Notes while reading:

pg 1: "wormhole happenstance "
--lol

pg 2: "wormhole inside a laboratory had wreaked havoc '
--now I want to read that story...

pg 3: "The door yawns open onto main causeway, and the universe."
-- I think we need some more setting before this point. I'm not sure where she was walking before.

pg 3: "other space stations that make up..."
--great name, but I'm still confused where this is. Is it a bunch of space stations all strung together?

pg 4: "back when I thought I was cis, back when I thought I was a lesbian."
--Interesting!

pg 4: "You’ll make them a theory they can’t refute."
--lol

pg 5: “Galaxy Gloss polish? Man after my own heart.”
--It's universal!

pg 6: “Facilities, power engineer. Requesting access for urgent maintenance.”
--I'm still hazy on what they're actually doing. Maybe a few more sentences on what they detected and why it's worth checking out instead of just "lots of energy?"
--edit: the next couple paragraphs help, with the blip, but having a little more direction before now will help too.

pg 7: "fix the station"
--fix what about the station? And is this all one station?

pg 9: "Honestly, the numbers in the systems report are starting to freak me out."
--maybe some measure here would help? Like "That's enough to power a sun" or something.

pg 9: “Are you thinking your ex is behind this?"
--why?

pg 9: "I can see the accretion disc through the walls,"
--cool. I think you can have even more description in here. Really play it up.

pg 14: "“A big bounce,” she corrects"
--lol. 

pg 15/16: S is shouting a lot, but doesn't actually seem to be doing anything...

pg 18: "You almost blew up the entire universe."
--I think this could be expanded too. We're very localized here, but amping up the action to show it's on a universal scale somehow would be cool

[Silk she/her]

On 12/5/2024 at 2:49 PM, Mandamon said:

Still a fun read! I think a little more on the description and setting the "universal" tone for the results of the explosion will help. Like it needs news reports of people on other planets seeing the blip or something. 

Sigh. This is gonna have me adding more words to this thing again, isn't it.

"Even xanier" on the way. Thanks for the comments! 

[Appol PhD they/he]

Glad to read your writing again after all of your great feedback for me!

 

Overall: I think my bad memory of what the previous draft was like is a blessing and a curse here. My overall reaction is that the story is fun with a good dynamic between C and M, but that I didn’t really get invested until the last scene with the present-day confrontation between C and M. I think that was about my opinion last time too, though I think I like the last third better. Though like I said my memory is bad so maybe it hasn’t changed much and it just reads better when I already know where the story’s heading, which could be a sign about the setup in the first part of the story to prepare readers. I’ll let you work that out haha.  

 

I think a lot of my hangups stem from not getting a lot from S. I see at the end how he represents M moving onto a healthier relationship, and for that I understand why there’s not a lot of interpersonal conflict between M and S. But at the same time because there’s no conflict in the relationship, I’m not invested in it the way I am with M and C. I don’t want M and C to get back together necessarily, but I do want to put them in a room together and see what happens. Less so with M and S. Hopefully that makes sense.  

 

As I go:

Pg 2. The mention of the ex is the first sign of a real character conflict we get. Everything before this feels like background without a real emotional hook, so I’d like to get this in the first paragraph if possible.

Pg 3. The space imagery does a good job of grounding me in the scene, which I often have a hard time with in sci-fi so good job.

Pg 4. I think I was able to parse through flashback vs present here, but it caused enough confusion that I wonder if the flashback should be narration instead of dialogue.

-Based on what I remember from the story, I’m not sure this first scene sets up the goofy tone enough. There’s some wittiness but so far it feels like everything is played straight.

Pg 5-7. I’m not sure what S is providing for the story other than someone for M to bounce ideas off of. If his characterization is important for the story, we need to see more of it early on, and if it’s not important then I think these convos could be trimmed and summarized. I don’t recall him being super important for the story’s climax and resolution so I’d lean towards the latter.

Pg 8. Since this is the first time where the story really starts to put pressure on M, I’d like to get here a bit sooner. We got the character hook with the ex on page 2 and the threat of M being isolated here and the rest of the early scenes feel like background.

Pg 10. C clashing with research culture is fun for me specifically to read

Pg 12. C and M’s personal dynamic here grabs my interest more than the technical story setup of the first scenes.  

-The rest of the scene here works quite well. Just enough big personality and silliness to make me roll with a trope I normally hate (someone trying to blow the universe up out of curiosity).

[Silk she/her]

@Ace of Hearts Excellent, thank you for this!