10/20/25 - Appol PhD - Tooth and Claw sub 9, 4517 words (L)

[Appol PhD they/he]

Hi everyone,

 

This is the part of the romance story where the couple fights and hits their low point in the relationship. I'm curious to see reactions, and I'm hoping the grievances on both sides are understandable without painting either one as truly acting in the wrong. 

 

Thanks!

[Paul SB]

I think you managed to show how the two protagonists have different beliefs based on their different backgrounds, making both of them fully understandable. It's one of those thought-stopping clichés that says all people have to do is talk to each other to solve their problems. Talking won't go anywhere if they don't first start to critically examine the assumptions that  lead to their conclusions.

 

What worked:

Chapter 19

 

“A mundane life with mundane classes, where each second takes twice as long as it should to tick.” — Only twice as long?

 

“It’s the sort of nonthreatening male beauty of a flower ready to be plucked, of a sunset turning the sky into something soft and quiet.” — Very interesting analogies.

 

“I want what we have to be real, but when he speaks it into existence like that I realize how fragile we are.” — Quite perspicacious for her age. Is she a bookworm? Depending on her reading habits, that could explain a little about how she thinks. It might be worth bringing up or having another character draw attention to it.

 

Chapter 20

“… to witness the aesthetic of danger …” Interesting turn of phrase.

 

“When I speak of life and death, she gets confused why I can’t get along with our overlords so long as they look like me.” — I’m not sure about this, but it kind of sounds like a metaphor for trans people, which would make this timely and relevant, which to my mind is much more interesting than simple escapist fantasy.

 

“… making sure that she knows her place …” — Comparing the thoughts of these two protagonists really brings out the differences in mentality between people who have known oppression for generations and people who have been more or less normalized into society. A thinking reader will enjoy this stuff.

 

Great rhetorical question at the end.

 

What didn’t:

Chapter 19

It just occurred to me that if you capitalize the X in D’s name, non-Mandarin speakers would probably pronounce it better.

 

“I want to be that anchor to stabilize him when he doesn’t have the energy to do it himself,…” — This is so clearly a statement of the obsessive/compulsion called love that anyone will recognize it, but it can really benefit from a little more show, a little less tell. Describe her breathing, her pulse, how the temperature and color of her skin changes. Have you checked out “The Emotion Thesaurus”? That could help a lot. It’s worth every penny.

 

“You’re pretty in a way that could pass for natural, but…” — I’m not certain if this is meant to imply the N is trans. If so, it might need clarification. Or is it about passing for human?

 

“He’s including me not because I’m needed, but because we’re a team.” — The matchmaking seems pretty predictable, and given that K is gay but J is male, some people might find this offensive, like a throwback to some old morality play. Is this your intention?

 

 

 

Chapter 20

“… the ashes would have scattered in the wind at this point.” — Unless this is an especially windy location (unlikely with the trees to break up the wind), it doesn’t seem like enough time has passed to to completely scatter the ashes of a full-sized corpse.

 

J’s argument about Aegis is pretty weak. All he really said is that they are so afraid that they did horrible things to avoid being found by Aegis, not that Aegis itself did anything horrible. I can see why J wouldn’t see the weakness of his argument, since he grew up in their shadow and only hearing one side. Still, it should be fairly obvious.

[ginger_reckoning]

The argument feels pretty realistic and nontrivial, and I can really appreciate both sides here, but I think J is pretty much in the right here, but has (like Paul mentioned) a pretty weak argument that could be fixed pretty easily by just telling K about the violence he has seen A commit, and heard of other organizations committing. Overall I just think K constantly threatening to report them all to ICE  the A is kind of a sh*tty move so I am a little biased against her.

I also think the fact that he suddenly thinks about mauling her is pretty out of left field, even with the foreshadowing of him giving her violent-looking glares before. It kind of just makes him seem unreasonable, like the whole "marvel villain socialist blows up an orphanage so we know socialism is bad" meme, if that makes sense. I don't necessarily think that's your intention and I think your representation of him has been pretty good up to this point. That along with the fact he thinks of himself as a radical (not saying people don't think of themselves that way; I think people just tend to frame themselves in slightly more positively connotated language in their own heads) makes him feel like a bit of a strawman here.

I don't think its necessarily a bad move for his character to be having these violent thoughts, but I think could be either tempered a little to make him less insane here, which has mostly been his characterization, or to double down on the darker moments he's had in the past to make them more prominent so this seems less out of the blue. Overall though, I really liked these submissions, thought the argument and N's inclusion were good. This submission had some of my favorite moments in the story so far, actually. Excited to see how the bounce back from this!

 

 

 

Sub 9

Pg1 - “after kidnapping B and trying to turn me” I don’t think the reminder of what happened is necessary here, I think this sentence can end with “influence” 

 

I like this section in pages 1 and 2 with her thinking about J, it’s very sweet

 

“That his mind wanders to” this is implied and makes the sentence long imo, can be cut

“J agree to walk B” Agrees

 

“Flower ready to be plucked” I like the other parts of the description, but this simile in particular has odd connotations imo

 

“Demisexual”possible WRS, but I didn’t remember him saying this before

 

I am liking the conversation with N

 

Pg 5 Again, I know I harp on this a lot, but I want more reaction from her on learning that her dad is in a coma, more than just being annoyed that the others keep blaming the A. I feel like it’s a pretty worrying situation even if the A isn’t involved. It also seemed like N handled the subject pretty callously

 

So what do they plan to do exactly by going into the woods? Are they planning to kill D, or just get his mom back?

 

I like the scene with J coming to terms with L possibly being dead. For the record, I doubt she did since it wasn’t shown

 

“Weigh like boulders” I like this paragraph

 

Pg 10 “specific conditions can met” are met?

 

“Miracle cure” I think this deserves a little bit more explanation, imo

 

“Before I can pick through why” Well, I know why. It’s because her mom is an agent. That’s an easy one

 

“Token white guy” lol

 

Pg 12 “of K keeps escalating” if K keeps

 

In this argument, I think it would be useful for J to point out that the reason they did all those things in fear of the A is because the A would do things that are even worse. I think she is missing that implication

“Maul her to death” Whoah, that kind of came out of nowhere

 

“It’s okay that you want to hurt me” oh honey