1-6-25-ginger_reckoning-"A song for silence" sub 11-4129 words-L, S

[ginger_reckoning]

Hey all, and Happy New Year! Thanks again for reading. So this submission, in line with the notes I've gotten about the plotline with the floating city, will probably be changed drastically in the next draft, because I realized it would be better to have the messenger just say why they wanted people to come to the city at the beginning. Still, this chapter introduces some important characters so I thought it would still be helpful for me to have your reactions on them. Also, this is not the entire chapter, but it felt like the best place to break it without going over the word limit. 

 

Thanks again!

[Silk she/her]

Lol at the chapter title

P2 “I can only grow up when I’m away from the city”  - first reaction: “Ooh, I like this!” Second reaction: “Um, how do they deal with babies?”

P3 I assumed from J’s first line of dialogue that he was from the city and probably even who A was here to see, but his questions about curses suggest that’s not the case after all…

P5 “…have experience hunting S.” Speaking of which, where did it get to during this conversation?

“I’m sure they’ll be willing to tell us at length” lol

P6 “…but to save on time” Not sure why F has changed their mind on this? They made the remark about this being time-sensitive, which to be fair I don’t think we the audience knew, but presumably F did?

P8 “It’s nauseating” lol

S’s immunity to spells being a potential giveaway is interesting, but that thread seems to have been dropped.

P10 “…and barely doing anything to help” having trouble suspending my disbelief on this one, since S has basically been a remorseless monster through this whole narrative

P12 “if you were S, where would you go?” Okay, this is a fun conversation.

I also enjoy the last line of the sub.

Overall: I was most engaged in the second scene of this submission, after getting into the room where the chorus makes its appearance. I especially enjoyed the conversation between S and WB, although S isn’t feeling very monstrous in this section.

This comes back to my previous comments about not fully understanding who is being threatened by whom over the course of the story, but I do feel like I’m getting mixed messages about S—I get the impression that it feels helpless, but not necessarily that it feels threatened.

Edited January 6, 2025 by Silk

[Appol PhD they/he]

Overall: I like S’s narration here but my instinct is to say that a lot of this could either be cut or reorganized around a more streamlined plot. I assume the floating city is doing something sinister but W’s vague hints about it aren’t enough to keep me engaged when I feel like I don’t have enough of the pieces to start digging into what they’re saying. As a result, it kind of feels like A just frolics for ten pages with not enough threads to follow to foreshadow what I’m guessing is all of this coming crashing down on her.  

As I go:

Pg 1-3. It’s cool to see A have this big moment, but so far we haven’t seen the actual plot or conflict.

Pg 4-5. We’re getting a lot of time on character introductions without much else happening, which slows the pacing here

Pg 7. I think we need to know more about these tactics of W’s for this to have an impact

Pg 10. I don’t mind A having the hots for J but I’m not sure what purpose this serves for the story. I don’t find that I understand their characters better and it feels disconnected from the plot.

-Getting S’s pov does help entertain me given that I enjoy its salty commentary in general and it does seem to have the most conflict here so far

Pg 11. Wait this setting has elves? I’m assuming pretty much everyone so far has been human

Pg 12. I feel like I need to understand the floating city and what it wants for these hints about it to be engaging