7/21/25 - PaulSB - Twilight's Rift, sub05 - 4608 words (L,V)

[Paul SB]

Hello again,

It looks like a lot of people are reading, but not so many responding. That and I seem to be the only one posting right now. I was looking forward to seeing more stiff from other people...

Anyway, I sent out my latest batch. Things start to really hit the fan here, and I guess at this point a major question has to be how much of the ACT 1 material so far might be unnecessary. Does it take too long to get to this point, or should I be trading realism for brevity here?

 

Happy reading! (and happy writing, too)

[Appol PhD they/he]

All right time to dig in!

Overall: In the interest of not rehashing my same comment about tightening up the large-scale narrative, I’ll say that I think this section gives me a better idea of what the story is about. Right now it seems to be about friends who are together by necessity and how they have to work together, which I think has a lot of potential. I like that A takes a clear stance of leaving nobody behind as a key character trait, though I’d like a bit more characterization on why this is important for her.

For ME, I guess I’d say too opaque at the start and it gets obvious later on (unless I’m missing something beyond her selling out her friends to the slavers out of religious guilt), though I don’t think it being obvious is a bad thing. To me the bigger problem for the story to solve is that ME’s motivations don’t feel super fleshed out.

As for the rescue, it feels a little easy, though on a logical level I think the issue comes down to how the consequences of this aren’t really highlighted. I’m willing to believe it’s possible for a couple people to bust someone out of a local corporate holding cell by surprise, but doing so marks them as far more dangerous than they were before and is likely to attract a lot of attention. To me the interesting part is exploring why A still makes the decision knowing that, which the story doesn’t do right now.

As for whether the secret is too cliché or outdated… I think yes and no. Right now it doesn’t fully land with me but I think it could if the story has something more specific to say about sexuality under the systems of power in this particular society.

As I go:

Pg 1-2. The characterization here comes across a bit stronger than previous sections, which is good. I don’t want R to mope forever, but it’s good for her to make choices that feel specific to her as a character.

Pg 3. I didn’t realize that ME is also labor. Could be interesting to explore how what a priest while still being a lower caste means since the religion has been shown so far as an institution of power

Pg 4. This feels a bit out of nowhere. Why is this violence breaking out? If this is ME’s doing I think her narration needs to do a bit more work leading us into this.

Pg 6. It’s good to have this conflict, and I like the attempt to give ME complexity by stretching her between her friends and her duty. Still, this doesn’t quite land for me, since I don’t think the story’s put in the work to establish what it means for them to believe her vs. not.

Pg 7-8. I think it’s good for the story that A tries to hash out a plan, but it feels like that momentum is dropped quickly.

Pg 9-10. It feels like the story wants to be about the conflict of friends trying to stick together as escapees, which could be a good focus. Right now it’s not totally landing, but I think if the characterization got fleshed out then it could. I think one thing that could help is establishing what the story’s angle is on why these friends sticking together is so important.

Pg 13. I like the detail that weapons are designed for anyone to use, since it lets the story handwave a bit of why these two laborers with no military training are storming this place so quickly

Pg 15. I like the attempt, though I’m not convinced this is the most interesting way for R’s conflict around sexuality to come out. I think we need either a tighter plot that forces this to be more of an issue or tighter characterization that really sells this.

[Paul SB]

Thanks again for taking a look, and taking the time to comment. There's a lot going on here, and it isn't all stated directly. The most basic theme of this series is diversity. Most people think of diversity as being a matter of courtesy, or a reason to hate and fear others. In biology, diversity is a matter of survival. Throughout this series we run into different sapient species who have entirely different reproductive systems, pointing to how natural diversity is across species. But within our species there is a lot of diversity most people are unaware of and/or misunderstand in very bad ways. Thus the thematic importance of the gay character. But that is also intended to parallel the dead-end nature of cut-throat capitalism, how it so fundamentally short-circuits actual human nature, and ultimately leads to the collapse of societies. That's some of the big picture stuff that these stories are getting at. You're not wrong about the story also being about found family and the ties of friendship, too. Any good story can be read on multiple levels.

P. 3 I added this to show a little more of the chaos in ME’s mind, and make the coming violence feel less out of the blue:

"The dance floor wasn’t exactly packed at that hour, but between the loud music, flashing lights, and the state I was in, the place scared me. It scared me more, though, that the local priest might send labor resellers after my friends. It didn’t make sense. I went to the temple in the hope that they would be able to put my friends back on the path of righteousness, but at that moment all I could think was that we’d be captured and made examples of."

 

I also went back to the first entry to drop some hints about ME’s status. You’ve heard of Social Darwinism, I assume. The upper crust of society, and that’s true in any area, including the church hierarchy, not just the business world, consider the lowest class of people to barely qualify as human. Anthropologists use the term “ritual pollution” to describe things that are considered so unclean that nothing can ever purify them, and contact will pollute you. That’s how Jews and Muslims feel about pepperoni and bacon. It’s also how Hindu’s feel about their lowest caste, the Dalits, and Shinto about their lowest caste, the Eta Hijemin. Ecclesiastic labor are there so the Church can say they are tending to all the flock, but without having to interact with the unwashed masses directly.

 

Regarding P.6, I’m not exactly sure what work would be necessary here that isn’t just them talking about their relationships. Can you think of any way to show the ambivalence? They have been bunkmates and essentially family for many years, but ME’s status means she hasn’t suffered the kinds of abuses the rest of them have, so there is a bit of a gap between them.

 

P.7-8, since none of them have any sort of combat experience, they wouldn’t have a whole lot of ideas to go on for planning the rescue. At least they didn’t try the old prisoner trick, like George Lucas resorted to. Would it help if someone stated this directly?

 

P.9-10, there are multiple reasons for them to stick together, survival being a main one. As old Ben Franklin once said, we must all hang together or we shall all be hanged separately. Or as A said, they’ll pick us off one at a time. That and sharing bunk space means they have been one another’s confidants for a long time. Maybe I can find a place in an earlier chapter to paraphrase the Franklin quote.

 

P.13, presumably future technology will make biological imprinting on weapons possible, but that’s likely to be expensive, so ordinary people would only be able to afford guns that work like they do today. Guns were made so that anybody can kill anyone, which is why many women see them as a great equalizer versus men’s average 20% greater body mass. Did you ever see the Simpson's episode when Baby Maggie shot Mr. Burns?

 

P.15, the fact that R has kept this secret for years and only spilled it after undergoing a brutal interrogation does tell the reader some important things about her. In an upcoming chapter P speculates that R might be demi, meaning not sexually attracted to anyone she doesn’t already know and care about. Nowhere is this ever elaborated on, though. I figured the readers can reach their own conclusions rather than spoon-feeding it. A couple hints were dropped in previous chapters. Do you think those hints need to be expanded on?

 

[Appol PhD they/he]

9 hours ago, Paul SB said:

The most basic theme of this series is diversity. Most people think of diversity as being a matter of courtesy, or a reason to hate and fear others. In biology, diversity is a matter of survival. Throughout this series we run into different sapient species who have entirely different reproductive systems, pointing to how natural diversity is across species. But within our species there is a lot of diversity most people are unaware of and/or misunderstand in very bad ways. Thus the thematic importance of the gay character. But that is also intended to parallel the dead-end nature of cut-throat capitalism, how it so fundamentally short-circuits actual human nature, and ultimately leads to the collapse of societies. That's some of the big picture stuff that these stories are getting at.

That's a good thing to know about the story! In that case, I think the story needs to show us more of why this diversity is important. Right now it doesn't feel like the differences between the characters are all that important or all that helpful to them.

9 hours ago, Paul SB said:

I’m not exactly sure what work would be necessary here that isn’t just them talking about their relationships. Can you think of any way to show the ambivalence? They have been bunkmates and essentially family for many years, but ME’s status means she hasn’t suffered the kinds of abuses the rest of them have, so there is a bit of a gap between them.

For me it's less a problem of this scene and more that it feels like we need more specific characterization from her on a broad level. I think my initial suggestion would be to think about specific experiences that made her this way, which will feel more personal than her acting this way because she's a priest.

9 hours ago, Paul SB said:

P.9-10, there are multiple reasons for them to stick together, survival being a main one.

If this is the goal, then I think the issue is that we haven't really seen this. It's good for the characters to have disagreements and conflict when they're stuck together by necessity, but we also need to see why them sticking together gives them a better shot at survival. A does say this, and I believe that she means it, but the story needs to convince us that P and R and ME are actually important for their survival which it hasn't done for me so far.

9 hours ago, Paul SB said:

P.15, the fact that R has kept this secret for years and only spilled it after undergoing a brutal interrogation does tell the reader some important things about her. In an upcoming chapter P speculates that R might be demi, meaning not sexually attracted to anyone she doesn’t already know and care about. Nowhere is this ever elaborated on, though. I figured the readers can reach their own conclusions rather than spoon-feeding it. A couple hints were dropped in previous chapters. Do you think those hints need to be expanded on?

People have a variety of opinions on this, but I think it's fine and even helpful sometimes for a character's sexuality to be speculated on but not totally spelled out. Sexuality is complicated and the characters have bigger issues to worry about.

In terms of the storytelling, I can see why from R's perspective this comes out now but it feels a bit nonspecific. Right now it doesn't feel like she grapples with this in a way that's personal to her. Maybe this is another case where focusing more on individual experiences unique to her could help flesh her out.