Paul SB - Incompatible, sub12 - 4176 words

[Paul SB]

And the Martian drama continues. In Entry 20 A returns from a night on the town with R to find that the engineer from the EU is there with the first batch of escapees. Unfortunately that means R now knows what the club is a front for. Entry 21 is mostly about dealing with the refugees, including a scene of a 10-year old visiting A in the middle of the night after a bad dream. It's something of a "save the cat" scene that should a little more of what A is made of, and I hope no one thinks it belongs on the cutting floor.

 

 

[Appol PhD they/he]

Overall: I think the first chapter here reads fairly well since A and R’s dynamic has a nice blend of being supportive but not quite on the same page, which opens up a lot of nice complexity and opportunities for conflict further down the line. Unfortunately, I don’t think the second chapter justifies its inclusion in the story. It’s cool that A is leveraging her relationship with the AR, but she doesn’t have to overcome any actual barriers to get there and the text is focused on this kid who seemingly doesn’t matter for the larger narrative. I think if we’re going to have this kid there the story needs to rethink how to integrate him into the narrative so this feels like a more pivotal point for A.

As I go:

Pg 1. I like the note about A wondering what she means to R as labor vs. citizen, and we could use more info on this from R’s end.

Pg 4-5. It’s good to get more conflict between A and R but I’m not sure what the other characters here are adding.

Pg 5-6. I like R’s reaction here. It’s not exactly what A wants but it is supportive enough that A can’t really complain so it makes the situation more complicated.

Pg 10. I like the complexity of A grappling with being a business owner (capitalism) that is dedicated to fighting anarcho-capitalism (though I still think we need more on how she’s actually able to get into this position as a teenage refugee). We could use more of this.

Pg 11-12. On the one hand, I think it’s good that A’s connection with the AR is coming up again, since it’s a unique relationship only she can leverage right now. On the other, I think this needs to be more integrated with the larger narrative. How does this matter for A’s larger story?

[Silk she/her]

This is going to look really long, but is brief comments on all the submissions up until now, with sub 13 coming in a separate post. 

Sub 1 -  I spent the first several pages wondering why this person didn’t seem very concerned about getting caught, took until the new person arrived to realize they thought they were totally alone (in which case why does the ship have a kitchen? Or, you know, breathable air?)

Narrator also doesn’t seem terribly alarmed that the ship is not going where she thought. I’m guessing the dwarf planet is known to be habitable or nobody would bother sending a spy there?

Sub 2 – no comments here as I missed the attachment somehow. 

Sub 3 

What does “a gun out of sci-fi” look like to someone for whom trips to Mars and Ceres and meeting aliens are a part of regular life? 
Could be just natural variation in the way people talk, but I feel like the aliens started out sounding alien and became more human sounding as the entry went on. 

“p9 “you think I’m male?” I wondered how she assigned this too. Glad to see you hang a lantern on it! 

I also love the “pollen” analogy.  

Sub 4 - Also missed the attachment here somehow,  so skipping comments.

Sub 5 

Lol at D volunteering other Earth languages she speaks. Very believable reaction.  
In general, D seems to be taking her new situation—with an entirely new species, in a location she wasn’t planning to go to, may or may not see the people she loves again—very well. She has occasional thoughts about her mom or R, but these seem to be fleeting and not affect her emotionally too much. 

Sub 6 
It would be nice to see the aliens as a little more alien. Some of this might be the translating device, of course, but watching the protagonist having a discussion with the aliens about cars, in particular, makes them feel very human. 

P4 – the bioluminescent eyes – see, now we’re talking!

It’s not that the stuff happening isn’t interesting, but it does feel like the protagonist is a bit aimless—at this point I’m not sure what her goals are or what the shape of the story will be going forward. Her getting sick at the end of the chapter is a fun wrinkle, but I’m not sure how it really affects her, aside from the fact that it’s no fun to get sick. 

Sub 7

p3 “deletrious” – this comment about the translation device is a fun comment.

p10 the idea of “cures” for autism as a “good” thing is actually pretty controversial, FYI. Might be worth hanging a lantern on or picking a different example. 

P13 “to get to one of those places from Earth would take years…” wait, where was she originally coming from that she thought a journey to Mars was only supposed to take 10 days?

Sub 8

Some fun info about the bubble ships here!  

I was sort of expecting “get to Mars” to be a problem A had to solve, but it happens fairly easily. I’m curious about many aspects of her plan from here: is she looking at hunting down her old GF, and how? Ditto her family? Does she need to hide from the company she ran away from? Etc. 

P6 “…similar to the underground railroad…” Oh, whoa. I like the idea but somehow totally missed that this was A’s plan. But, I’m glad the story has a bit more direction now, this feels like the piece I have been missing.

Sub 9
How is she hiding the gun in her clothing if she had to remove her clothes to don the space suit?
Huh, wasn’t expecting that end to the entry!

Sub 10

p2 “that was about it for conversation…” lol.

So… what are they doing with the discovery from the last sub, aside from locking it up? Are they tracking down the mystery? Scouting an alternate location? Aside from the narrator referencing finding it scary, we seem to have pretty much moved on from that.

The AI on p3 is a fun personality, but I’m struggling to know whether to take its comments at face value.

I’m surprised A didn’t take exception to the “smile” remark, as it seems in line with a lot of the other commentary in the book so far.

Now that we have some explanation about the lab we found a few entries ago, it feels like the characters have a lot more context for this kind of find than we do. Might be worth seeding some of this stuff earlier on, then it’s less of a surprise and we have more understanding of why it’s important.

Sub 11

I like the nightclub-as-a-front idea, but it feels like the story places a lot more focus on that than the actual mission. Which might be fine if that’s what you’re gong far.
P8 A has made so little attempt to find her family or girlfriend so far that the girlfriend just showing up feels like a big suprise. 
R (lobster R, not girlfriend R) is coming across as kind of a creep.

P9 I’m interested in the brewing trouble between A and R, which feels like it gets cut off prematurely here, but it does pick up again in the next entry, so maybe that’s fine.
Reading through the next entry, the emotional bits between A and R are really quite interesting but I’d still love to spend more time here.

Sub 12 

P3 “Are you really calling yourself A now?” I was wondering about this, why A hadn’t already shared the name change.  

I’m surprised we’re all standing around trading innuendos and talking about pastries when it seems like this would be a bad thing for R to discover, and that A is self-aware enough to realize that this would be a bad thing for R to discover. 
Edit: I see this comes up explicitly a couple pages later, but I’m not getting any emotional sense that she’s panicking before you name it. 

In general I’m also surprised they don’t have protocols in place for sneaking people in, since they’d be dealing with all sorts of “outsiders” to the mission in this scenario.

On 3/4/2026 at 12:33 PM, Appol PhD said:

but she doesn’t have to overcome any actual barriers to get there and the text is focused on this kid who seemingly doesn’t matter for the larger narrative. I think if we’re going to have this kid there the story needs to rethink how to integrate him into the narrative so this feels like a more pivotal point for A.

I had a similar experience. At first I was really interested to see them show up because it felt like you were indeed setting this up as an obstacle to be overcome, but then there was no challenge in dealing with it, so the scene felt more like an example about how the railroad operation is supposed to work--which we already know. I think Appol's right that you have a real opportunity to integrate these opposing threads of A's life more closely, and potentially make some really powerful commentary which would be right in line with some of the commentary earlier subs have already made via A's narration.