3/31/25 - Little_Dagger - Blue Skirt, 2429 words (LV)

[Little_Dagger she/her]

Hi all, 

It's a pleasure to be back! I have a short story this week (with tags for Violence and Language), and I mostly worry about the clarity of the plot because the narrator is often unreliable. Please let me know if you feel confused about the events, and as always, all comments and thoughts are welcome! Thank you!

Edited March 31, 2025 by Little_Dagger

[MyDude she/her]

It was an interesting start! A sense of body horror, there was something about it that reminded me of Amnesia and the monsters being malformed. 

Think you portrayed the mindset of something wounded and displaced. There were moments where the narrator left me confused about what was happening in the scene. Mostly what was physically happening in the scene but the plot was so far rather easy to follow. 

That was a common theme reading Blue Skirt, scene by scene I understood the events and felt engaged by the story. It was in the bigger picture that I struggled more with the first time reading it. It fell into place when I reread it. It was the skipp pre-torture and post-torture that left me displaced. Didn’t grasp what happened to him or who it was that helped him after it. 

Overall solid short story! One of the things that really intrigued me was prose in places. How Vi describes his body as something separate from himself is quite eerie.

Edited April 2, 2025 by strange24

[ginger_reckoning]

Okay, honestly I don't have a ton of notes on this one because I think its already in a pretty good place! Easy to read, short and concise, and with a good twist at the end that's well foreshadowed. I really only have two things: I feel like V might at least recognize that the drug could be bad for his plans the second time he's fed it, even if he's relieved to have the pain gone, maybe like a voice in the back of his head or something that warns him, which he ignores. The other thing that I noted is that there doesn't seem to be much concern for him being unable to walk when it comes to the escape attempt. I guess they might plan on carrying him, but it seems like there is only one person? Unsure. Either way, those are both pretty small concerns, and I think this is well put together and a good and interesting read!

 

Pg1 definitely very effective for establishing that this person is not mentally all there. 

 

Pg 4 “The out is a scr” not sure if the grammar is intentionally incorrect here or not. I mean, I know what it means so its probably alright haha

 

“Filthy glass” having glass in a prison cell strikes me as a pretty big security risk. Break it, and now you have a sharp shard you can use as a weapon. I guess the reasoning is that it’s out of reach

 

Pg6 “such a question” nice 

 

Pg 8 I was a little worried that the drug might make him lose concentration on the spell, but he doesn't seem worried

 

Pg 10 Oh damn, okay haha

 

[Little_Dagger she/her]

On 4/1/2025 at 1:11 PM, strange24 said:

How Vi describes his body as something separate from himself is quite eerie.

Honestly, that was surprisingly fun to write (yeah, apparently I'm a terrible person, haha). It was my first attempt at something so dark, so I'm glad to hear that part worked.

On 4/1/2025 at 11:50 PM, ginger_reckoning said:

I really only have two things

Both are very good points, thanks! I'll see what I can do to fix these.

On 4/1/2025 at 11:50 PM, ginger_reckoning said:

having glass in a prison cell strikes me as a pretty big security risk

Again, a very good point, but I needed to find some way for L and V to talk, so I guess that will have to stay unless I come up with a more reasonable arrangement. 

Thank you both for reading and taking time to comment! It's very helpful!

[Appol PhD they/he]

Excited to dig into this new story!

Overall: There are a lot of pieces here for a solid story, and I was generally engaged with the core conceit of a captured ritual mage who can potentially use their powers to escape, but the powers are also potentially dangerous or make them dangerous. There are a few things I’d suggest focusing on:

-Character writing. What do we know about V other than the fact that he’s a ritual mage who got captured? What do we know about L besides the fact that she wants to rescue him? (I’m also not sure how much of this is just in his mind, including L’s existence).

-We don’t really get the situation of the story until page 5. Obviously it doesn’t need to tell us all the info right away, but most successful stories make it clear what they’re about in the first paragraph.

-The magic and ties into the ending. I see the callbacks to the beginning and I like that there’s something unexpected that I don’t quite get right away, but right now I’m not sure what the specks and the gold mean other than being a part of his magic, which means I don’t have enough to go off of when reading the ending.

As I go:

Pg 1. The initial focus is on the specks, but we don’t have a hook right off the bat for why that matters to the character.

-So from the bottom of the page it seems like the protag is a prisoner being interrogated? If there’s something that stands out about the situation, that might be a better hook.

Pg 2. Not sure if the earthquakes are just the protag’s perception or a magical thing

Pg 3. The old craft is what I’m most interested by. Seems like the protag is a young imprisoned boy with some sort of ritual supernatural training, which has the potential for fun dynamics, and I think we need to see them right away. All of the info I mentioned so far could be conveyed in the first paragraph.

Pg 5. The magic is the first thing that really gives the story its own distinct angle. As a thought experiment, if we start the story right here then what are we missing?

Pg 6. Introducing another character here is a great opportunity for a dynamic, and I think we need more from L besides the fact that that she wants to rescue V.

Pg 8. Is one of the guards giving him a painkiller here? Right now this doesn’t quite feel like it fits into the plot of the story, since the guards have been more of a threat than characters for V to interact with.

Pg 9. All right, at this point I’m pretty lost.

[Little_Dagger she/her]

Thank you for reading and feedback, @Ace of Hearts!

9 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

Is one of the guards giving him a painkiller here?

Yes, there is the third quiet guard I mention before, the one that brings him water and feels guilty.

10 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

including L’s existence

Understandable, the narrator is intentionally unreliable. Though L being real is confirmed in the last scene, where V accidentally kills her... which leads me to...

10 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

All right, at this point I’m pretty lost.

Haha, yeah. That was my main concern. I ask the reader to do a lot of heavy lifting in this story. I'll explain the details here -- just so you don't feel lost anymore -- though the fact that the text doesn't do it for me is the best indicator that I should work on this more.

The black specks in the beginning of the story were conceived as the darkening of the vision of someone who is weak and close to fainting. You may interpret it otherwise, as a feared product of V's drugged imagination, for example, or even as some magical element, but it doesn't really matter. What's important (and why I names the story Blue Skirt) is that L's skirt had black dots on it, so when she comes to his rescue and V glimpses them in the last scene, he lashes out with a spell he had prepared for his escape and kills L instead. His mind is once again muddled, of course, so he perceives the murder of his friend as a victory. Does the clarification help?

 

[Appol PhD they/he]

4 minutes ago, Little_Dagger said:

he lashes out with a spell he had prepared for his escape and kills L instead. His mind is once again muddled, of course, so he perceives the murder of his friend as a victory. Does the clarification help?

That was what I considered the most likely explanation for what was happening on a literal level, and like I said I think it's good for the ending to be so striking I don't quite get it right away, so I definitely don't think we need more exposition about what's going on.

Instead, my suggestion is for the story to focus more on writing around the event. Being a mistreated prisoner alone doesn't just make someone kill their friend at the sight of a certain image. Is V's mental state being influenced by his magic? If so, why is L not watching out for this? Has V killed a lot of people before, or is he just in a state of mind where he barely even noticed that he killed someone? Fleshing the characters out more earlier will help give us tools to work through the ending without having to edit it directly.

[Little_Dagger she/her]

13 minutes ago, Ace of Hearts said:

he just in a state of mind where he barely even noticed that he killed someone?

That's exactly it. The first section of the story is designed to show how much his perception alters when he is drugged. He simply doesn't recognize L or registers what he does to her. 

[Appol PhD they/he]

4 minutes ago, Little_Dagger said:

That's exactly it. The first section of the story is designed to show how much his perception alters when he is drugged. He simply doesn't recognize L or registers what he does to her. 

In that case I think my biggest suggestion is for the drug to be fleshed out more, which I think is a bit tricky with how it's hard to make dynamic characterization around it. Basically, with everything that happens the actual factor determining the plot is V being given this drug, and everything else sets up the situation (I didn't recognize this at first, which is why I thought the first few pages weren't necessary). 

The question is, how to give the story more substance than a character takes a drug and turns violent? We don't know a lot about this drug (even compared to the magic, where we know it's persecuted), and it feels like it's overriding V's character rather than fleshing it out by forcing him to do something he would never do otherwise if that makes sense. Would the drug turn anyone violent in V's situation, or is it something about him that creates his warped perception? It's good that we have the specks to explore his internality, but that doesn't give me enough on how his characterization interacts with the drug.