kais

I crit out of love! I swear! Also I fear the academic peer-review system has stripped any social veneer I may have once had in regards to writing.

Oooh, do I get to be first?? Overall A slow start but it built steam around page twelve and I was hooked from there on. I think I'm still having a hard time buying into our main protag. I feel like I don't know much about him at all, or his motivations other than OMG THE LIST! I'm also still fuzzy on the stakes surrounding the list (other than being killed?). But visiting all the people was fun! Loved them! This was a bit of world discovery and I greatly enjoyed it. Nice work here! As I go - the first line, and then the first paragraph, aren't particularly strong hooks - page two: you have some passive voice that could be changed to simple past - page four: why is the pixie having problems talking? Aren't they in the N? The pixie in your other three had pretty standard language, right? - page five: WRS probably, but I forgot what the stakes are. Why is getting this list so important? - page seven: I'm having a hard time staying interested, but I think this might be more to do with the style of Sherlock mystery than anything else. I never was a mystery reader - page eleven: eeeeew molting things leaving smears - page thirteen: this is minor, but since you have established numerous genders within your world, the 'Scamper's daughter or son' rings off. 'Scamper's offspring' would be more fitting for the world you've created - page 16: the visiting houses and people is much more engaging and I'm really enjoying this story now. I still don't care much for our protagonist but I really enjoy all the people that are being visited! - nice ending!

Overall Slow start, and I don't remember having buy-in for the plot yet, so it took me some time to get invested. Things really picked up around page five and I was hooked for the rest! Good arc through the chapter, and good end! We got somewhere, we had character growth, and the plot moved forward. Most of my quibbles were in the first quarter or so. Nice work! I agree with @Mandamon. This is exactly my issue I'm wondering, too, if the chapter with the women couldn't be pushed to after this one? There'd be more tension, I think, since we lose some already knowing what creature did the damage. I think if we didn't know, then launched into that chapter right after this one, it would build tension a lot better. Just a thought. As I go - Buble is still popular at this time? Wow. - page three: I demand to know how Q feels about these bulging muscles. I DEMAND IT! - page five: I feel like you missed a lot of potential for tension, especially sexual tension, between these two during the interview. Also, I feel like I missed something. I don't remember the plot, and I don't think it's just WRS. I remember we were headed to the airport, and something exploded, but I don't think I was ever invested enough in the plot for it to stick with me. We might need to be beat over the head with it a bit more - page six: I love M and I will never stop loving M. That is all - page ten: Q thinking M is cute when she fumes, after just having a scene with her using her sexual prowess, is uncomfortable. If she is budding well into sexuality, I'm going to lose empathy for Q fast if he's having any sort of thoughts about his pseudo-daughter - well, that escalated quickly!

This is now the very beginning of the book, so it's 100% cold open. For new readers, I would really love for you to point out everything that is weird or you don't get or where you want more description. Rip it to shreds. For the more familiar readers, I'd love feedback on whether A) Y's motivations are clear and B.) whether the through line to the books is clear. Thank you all! Tear apart at will

TBF, it was a busy week!

As @Mandamon mentioned, entirely up to you! Some people hash through the first few chapters a few times before moving on, others just push through. We're here and happy to read, so you do you, and we'll be here to give feedback and help, regardless.

I'd like to sub on Monday. Hope you're feeling better, @Robinski!

Hey @toomsta, I really appreciate you taking the time to give this a look over, especially since you're coming in cold! This is book four in a series. The first two are published, the third comes out in June. This group has been really helpful in my early-stage drafting, and I like to send chapters through here a few times before I subject my editor to them. Argh. Okay. I'm still walking the line in terms of how much backstory to give in a book of shorts about an established universe. I just don't know how likely someone is to read this book cold before reading the others, and don't want to bog down the narrative with repeat worldbuilding. I'll end up resubbing this section once I edit it, so if you have time to read it again, I'd love to know if the explanatory sentences I just put in help at all, or just make it worse. Emotional hooks are important! I think I fixed this in the first half. Will see upon resub! Yup. It's only 2030. He was born in 1985 so I'd hope so! I have rectified this error. May the Lego gods never be called upon to smite me again. Is it any better that you can read the next part? By the time this is published, the entire trilogy will be out! Thank you so much for your time and comments! This is entirely my fault, and something I am trying to rectify in this short. I've added quite a bit to it, and hope to resub it soon. I look forward to you comments, especially in this area! I mean, Yorden is a large, bearded, white bloke, so that makes total sense!

Welcome to your first sub on RE! Overall The writing is mostly pretty solid, barring the occasional over-use of adjectives and some purple prose. My biggest issue is why do I care about Thad? I don't know enough about him from this, and there is a clear lack of stakes and through-line, to get me invested. Also note that it is increasingly difficult to get an agent with the 'boy-goes-on-journey' / 'chosen one' trope, especially if your protag is cis, het, white, and abled. It's been done. It's been done so much. If you're looking to eventually publish you'll want to ask yourself, what makes Thad different? Why is this boy different from any other boy in any other fantasy book who has lost his family and is going on an adventure? How is this magic different? I'd also urge you to ask 'why did I chose not to put any females or gender minorities within my first ten characters?' It's a good start, but will need some editing, like most everything. Keep at it! I agree with @Mandamon. This pretty much sums up all my comments below. I don't much care where it goes, but if you ever sub this to an agent or publisher, the title will go in the footer, per formatting guidelines. But it isn't. A reader gives a book maybe a chapter to make a decision on whether or not to read/buy. An agent gives it maybe five pages. Because this type of narrative is so overdone, agents and readers are already on the defensive when opening this sort of book, and the lack of any gender other than male just reinforces the narrative we already have in our heads. Seriously, the level of frustration with the young male on a journey with other men stories has reached a point where I've actually started seeing, on agent sub guidelines, to flat out not sub anything with 'white male goes on quest'. This goes back to my thoughts below. If we're going to read about Thad's coming of age as some great hero, what makes him different from all the other young male heroes that came before him? This is a friend fallacy (not to mention really concerning. Feminism is literally just the desire for all genders to be treated equally. If ALL your friends aren't feminists, you might want to check on why that is). Agents are picky about this sort of thing. Publishers are picky about this sort of thing. Readers that aren't men (and even a lot of men!) are picky about this sort of thing. I can only think of one instance in which I would be willing to invest more than one chapter in this type of story with an all male cast, and that would be if the protag was trans (AFAB) and was really trying to make the whole thing work, really fit in with the boys, but had to keep dealing with the legacy of his birth. That would super interesting in terms of deconstructing masculinity and masculine journey tropes. If you want to keep readers until then, just change around some of your NPCs to another gender. Does every old advisor have to be a guy? Can't Thad have a sister or two? ... okay but, this is a critique group so critiquing is kind of what we do. Actually, this podcast might help (but substitute prose for scenes/characters)! The problem here is that without emotions, we (the reader) don't care about the character, so therefore have no buy-in, and don't want to read more. Thad needs to emote. As I go - page one: the adjectives are getting pretty heavy as I progress through this page. Be careful your prose doesn't turn purple - page two: wait, so his family is only other men? But women are clearly in this world so I have questions about what happened to the guy's mother, at the very least - page three and I still don't know what any of these characters look like - oh wait, Atl isn't a human female, she's a beast of some kind. Huh - page seven: too many names now, and not enough buy-in for any of them. I know what Wash looks like, vaguely, but no one else. I know they're all men (does this world not have women? If not, how exactly is reproduction accomplished?), and apparently are all trying to kill this dragon-with-hands because she... eats them. I think. I haven't connected with anyone yet, unfortunately. - page eight: so warriors fell but didn't die? This is falling into the territory of 'no stakes because no one is ever actually injured'. I don't buy how vicious this dragon-with-hands is because I have only been told she is a problem. I haven't seen her do anything problematic enough to warrant being slowly poisoned to death - page eight: the generic magic swords in a world filled only with men who want to fight dragon-things needs to have something to make it stand apart from every other world filled only with men who want to fight dragon-things. You have to establish that difference early, way before page eight even, in order to hook a reader, an agent, a publisher. Why do we care about Thad? What are his struggles? Why is him helping kill the dragon-with-hands important? - page nine: people died from the dragon-with-hands. Excellent. I can now see that she is, in fact, somewhat of a threat - page nine: townspeople were used as bait!? I've lost any empathy I might have had for whomever orchestrated this battle - page twelve: so I'm marginally interested in the apple trees and barren land, but this dark lord, shuddering mountain stuff means nothing to me because I'm not invested in the characters or the world yet. Thus far Thad seems young and mostly without skill, which makes this seem like a young-man-goes-on-journey-and-is-probably-the-chosen-one story. These are a dime a dozen. Again, why is Thad different? Why should readers (and agents!) get invested in him? - page 12: kings, but not queens? Awaiting the mono gender discussion that is sure to be coming... - page 13: AH! There are women in this world! So... why is Matilda the first we hear about, when we've met, what almost ten people? Women make up approximately half of the human population, and therefore should be approximately half the characters in any given book, baring clear exceptions like boys' boarding schools, a gay camping trip, etc. And even then, they'd still exist and be around, just not necessarily in a 1:1 ratio. - page 16: Thad crying, or feeling shame, doesn't really affect me since I don't yet care for this character. He lost his family that I didn't get to know, and couldn't even describe what they look like, he is scared of a dragon that is already quelled (and with very little work), and he already has mentors willing to show him how to do things and to take care of him. There are no stakes for him, and he seems more self-pitying than anything. - page 17: I don't know if you're writing for yourself, or for eventual publication. If for yourself, disregard the rest of this. If for publication, note that, for new writers, change of POV mid-chapter is really frowned on and can get you kicked from the slush, regardless of how strong everything else is. It is not recommended - page 18: ah, and this was a prologue. Re: above - agents also now pretty much uniformly dislike prologues, too. Most won't even let you sub them as part of your sample chapters. If the information is important, make it chapter one. If we don't need it to understand the rest of the story, cut it

ETA: Just read the hidden comments (how did I miss them?)! Noting the changes that are coming I think that takes care of most of my concerns below. Using magic to steal the thing is neat! I'm on board! Aaaaand we're back! Overall Long. Long and seemingly without much of a point, aside from grave robbing and a lot of handwavium. I don't buy the magic knowledge at all, and I still don't have a good grip on these characters, or why their prof is so useless. Like, he deserves students like this if he is going to sleep in the lab. This also bothered me. I expect a lot more awe and excitement Err...Lucy is very much legit. YES! I also have this issue. They aren't the only one. There's a point at which we just shake our heads, try not to scream, and go get drunk. I think the professor in this piece is at that point. I think this would work really well! I really appreciate how open you have been to these critiques. Looking forward to reading the edited version someday! As I go - 37 pages? Holy wah! I haven't read other poster's comments yet but I assume someone mentioned the 5K (or there about) word limit? - page two: I realize we've covered this but... exposing bodies with flesh on them to open air... they're decaying right before our eyes and why is there no oversight on these kids? I can't leave a freshman alone with a machete for five minutes without having to fill out an OSHA report. I filled out four OSHA reports this week alone for juniors and seniors who managed to cut themselves in lab. That none of of your characters are bleeding yet makes this book high fantasy. - they should be photographing as they go, not after they get everything dug - how did they get the plates and boxes out without moving the bodies? Blocking fail? cause moving mostly- decayed corpses gives you a pile of bones and goo and not much else - page four: they're grave robbing and destroying some culture's ancient art. This is why we don't let students be unsupervised in the field. This part is actually pretty plausible - what is this box made of again? Clay? Metal? Wood wouldn't have lasted this long unless it's Magical Wood. - page six: why are they bothering to put PPE on now? They've already done a ton of damage. Also, wouldn't they be wearing nitrile gloves? Why cotton? - It's a cloth book? No way it's still intact, especially not enough to be picked up and carried around - page seven: how do they know how old the book is? How is the paper still intact? I don't buy any of this - so is it leather or is it cloth? - page nine: the prof sleeps in the mobile lab? That seriously violates OSHA - page 11: that German isn't correct. Also wouldn't it be easier to just say he was overwhelmed? Although really he has no reason to be overwhelmed, since he is apparently sleeping and having his students do all the work to the complete detriment of the artifacts - page 12: isn't it 'jagwagon'? - not a fan of the telling. You already showed through dialogue, so no need to be redundant - page 16: I find the pencil thing to be impossible. I cannot suspend disbelief enough for this with the current information I have. I need a lot more info on this book and it needs to have some pretty serious magical powers before I'll believe a student learned overnight to kill a rabbit blind, with a pencil, in one go - page 19: this description of how the book is made and its pages belongs with the first book being opened, not down on page 19 - page 22: it's hard not to skim. I still don't know what the plot of this book is, or the stakes, or the through line. The 'human brain is magic' part was too much handwavium. I'm lost and not invested. - page 22: not a race, a species, and if it's a species of 'big human guys,' then it didn't last more than one generation, cause 'guys' can't reproduce alone. Not hominid guys, anyway - page 24: 'ethnic differences' could be expressed a lot better - nouns in German are capitalized - page 29: I think he passed the line between scientist and looter a long time ago - page 30: the only thing he really needs to be able to see are the molars to check age. Are even the teeth covered? - page 36: so wait, does the skull just get dumped? - page 36: literally no one wants to read a thesis turned into a book. These companies only exist to make money off of grad students

Good to see you again! Overall It's still missing a hook and a through line. We're getting a ton of day-to-day, but not really anything to help us want to root for Arw. Wanting to leave home and go on an adventure is a very, very common plot for books, so what makes Arw different? Why do we care about her finding herself and going on adventures, specifically? What are the stakes? Right now, there appear to be no stakes, and without stakes, it is hard to care about characters and the world. Keep at it! I also had this issue Yes, this. It'd be nice to know what she wants. As I go - not a very catching first sentence. Waking up as the sun rises doesn't really help me invest in the chapter - I'm having a really hard time separating The Vale from a GoT reference - I think you could start this chapter with the "it's been six months" line, and get much better reader buy-in. Naval-gazing at the start of a chapter tends to lose readers - if farm boys aren't worth anything to the army, would they bother to bring the bodies back? - page four: WRS, or did we get skin tones on Arw and the rest in the first chapter? If not, you've got your default set to white and you'll want to remedy that - page four: still looking for that through line. What is the plot to this book? What is the direction? Why do I care about Arw? - page five: using the word 'exotic' in relation to someone just because they have brown skin is really frowned upon. It also further demonstrates the default white status of your characters. Check out this website for help in writing non-white characters. - page eight: you've mentioned that the twins are fraternal twice now - page eight: yup, no skin tone on these twins. Make sure to note the skin tone of all your characters, not just the ones that aren't white. Avoid the default-white narrative - page 12: so am I correct in that the plot appears to be 'Arw leaves the farm and becomes independent without a man'? I'm all for this as a plot, but I don't think we need two solid chapters of farm life to get there - I'm interested in the strangers, and the end of the chapter is a mild hook, but I never would have gotten this far if not critiquing

As an aside, I'm about halfway through your most recent book, so this is dovetailing in nicely! Overall I think this chapter did a good job of tying in previous books and giving us the motivations and backstory for the rest of the book. I'm reasonably invested at this point in list of mensa-members and their peril. Bonus: nonbinary species always make me happy. Loved the use of the various nonbinary pronouns in your latest book, too! Made me smile and remember when I first started using them here on RE! Overall - enjoyed it! As I go - the start with 'the dusty musk' is hard for me to parse. I had to read that intro sentence a few times to get my brain to sort the words properly - WRS: I remember someone is dead, but not the importance of this list - page six: so they're talking about the system animals here not being proven--is this a much earlier time than your other books? - page seven: oh! You have an epigraph in your newest book that talks about magi war and stuff! Connection! - page ten: resin-flesh? I am intrigued. Is it because they are living wood?

This timeline might help. Societies definitely rise and fall, but what tools they have vary by the age. What we consider human today first emerged in the Paleolithic era. 30K years ago is quite modern, so I would expect most of the same things we have now.

@Chuck Hossenlopp new research just came out that pertains to your story! Check out all the embedded links in it, too, for more reading.

To me, it's part of his backstory. I spend a lot of time in developing countries, and countries in some stage of armed political strife. A common theme (though there are plenty of exceptions!) is that people who grow up trying to get food on the table, a safe place to live, cultural stability, religious stability--their concern over the use of natural resources is different than those who grew up in more industrialized settings, where everything was plentiful. So in this particular instance the tree thing was, for me, more a testament to Y's background than a knock on his moral character. Of course, I failed the first time around to bring out that backstory sufficiently, so I need to rectify that!

Wait, how did you get a shirt??? ETA: Also, those are some fine looking books!

The perpetual amusement for me in the Ard series is that Y is a universally beloved favorite, despite not being a POV character, being a giant, obvious trope, and having no real arc. Something about an aged Han Solo just does it for people. Argh, okay. This was a common complaint. Editing. I've heavily edited part one and hopefully dealt with this. For Y specifically, I think the last draft relied too much on reader familiarity with the countries mentioned and the time period. Hopefully New Draft explains a bit better. But yeah, not everyone is angry. Nick clearly isn't. I did want N's and Y's anger to be a bonding point between them though. I think I fixed this? Maybe? There's a timeline in the front of book one that sort of deals with this. I wasn't sure whether to revisit it in this book. Will think about this. Have edited They're tiebacks to the first part of the chapter. Hoping this is just WRS. Thank you! Have edited. I... have no excuse. This is the last set I put together. It's so amazing. I knew their correct names (although we call them 'minifigs' here, too). I'm willing to bet >90% of queer space opera readers are also Lego nerds. I don't want to be crucified by my own people so... have edited. Suggestions for how to better deal with time units on an intergalactic space station? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? LOL! I don't know how long English will remain the dominant language, noting how populations are changing. I grabbed another two common ones. It doesn't matter much, since we know from the books that Common replaces everything in just a few years. Love this! Stealing. Fair. My whole plan for the MP crew was to have them all, even Nick (although less so than the others) be morally grey. Absolutely not! They're consenting, and that includes coming along to the planet. Agreed. I had issues with the end part here. Am cleaning. Problematic. Editing. I think I need to lay more groundwork in part one, but maybe a bit of sweating here would help, too. This whole section has been deleted due to sucking. Hey! There's another euphemism for your chapter this week, @Robinski! I think I fixed this? If not, hoping you'll comment on it again in the next version! I take 90% of suggestions from this board forward, especially on draft zeros! You are all very helpful, and, having recently decided to delve into the world that is lesbian SFF (not the YA stuff though), I've come to realize how truly wonderful a solid critique group is. A lot of people don't have that. A lot of them are writing in the f/f SFF genres. I am grumpy about this. Thank you for the thorough comments!

That is usually how my writing goes. I'll revisit the opening. This is the second half of the chapter. The ship was very well described in the first half. So check on this one! This may or may not get changed. Right now this is the fourth chapter of the book, so most of the aliens have already been well described. Y has already had a description as well. I am, however, thinking of making this the first chapter of the book, so if that happens, all the descriptions will be changed around to be here. Yes, more or less. This is book four in a series, the first three of which dealt specifically with these psychic ninjas. Sorry for all the confusion. Coming in midway through the fourth book has to be jarring. Thank you very much for the review, and welcome to RE! Ahh, we meet on the other side! Had to double check but no, this alien is a her. The ones that use the xe/hir are the Ris (my agender species) Starting at book four would be disorienting for anyone. You're taking it like a champ. Darn it, I always forget this part. Going back in to edit now. Sort of? There's a pivotal point in book three that hinges on Y's body hair, so I thought in the prequels I'd make it a point, in Y's chapters, to note other beings who also have hair on various biped appendages. GAH! *grumbles and goes to look at book one* Okay so they're only ever described as 'long claws,' so guess this is a chance to fill in! Purposefully vague at this juncture, though a dead giveaway for any previous reader Looks like I didn't bring out the lifting of the 'rage lid', as you put it, very well. Will edit. It was! This is book four. No part three to this particular short, I'm afraid. I'm thinking of renumbering, so this will be chapter one, then the three N chapters, then Nick's chapter. But if it's the full adventure you're looking for, I'd like to suggest starting with book one (which I got critted back on RE a year and a half ago or so, and got traditionally published!). Thank you for the feedback! See you back in the trenches next week!

I am not a woman, but I'm willing to bet I'm the closest anyone on this board is to a lesbian. Likely that's because this is pretty far outside most people's lanes. We're conditioned by media as to what 'normal' female interactions are, and what 'normal' male reactions are. Trick is, people are a lot more varied than media would have us believe, and queer people don't tend to fit as well into those arbitrary bubbles. In fact, lesbians may often seem to skew more 'male' socialized, and gay men more 'female' socialized (although in fact both groups are just as diverse as hetero people). That can cause discord for people. And like, you're not alone in this. @Robinski surely remembers my Magda character, acting in a way that if Q did, I'd call Robinski out for. There's a different set of 'rules,' and a different culture, for how people interact outside of the heteronormative model. The first few times you're exposed to it, it can seem really strange, but it's just like, say, going to a new country. Take some time, look around, try the food. It'll grow on you.

A subset of biodegradation. I spend every summer in the Peruvian Amazon mucking about in... muck. With graduate and undergraduate students. Hence my massive feels. I'm going to make an odd suggestion for research on your part. PhD Comics, while amusing, is also a really accurate view of how graduate school works. It doesn't have much of a timeline, so just dig in. Particularly of interest for your early chapters will be the professor/grad student interactions, and the grad student frustration (no such thing as a happy grad student. Sleep? Yes. Angry? Periodically. Stressed? Definitely. Happy? Ehhh, maybe a few pints in.)

Yup! When agents specify font, 99% of the time it is TNR!

LOL! It's not just you, really! It's a pervasive issue. You're not the first person it's been pointed out to on this forum, and you won't be the last! And you're still ahead because not having any women in your story means you haven't fridged any, either, which at this point is basically a running joke. Newbie submits, and in my head I'm taking bets on if the female character dies in the first chapter.

LOL! I actually found this part one of the most realistic. This kind of situation has happened to me, where perceived female culture butts against consent rules. Lesbians can generally get away with a lot more that would generally be considered douchey behavior if a man were to do it, but there's a ton of emotional conflict that goes along with most actions like this, too.

In terms of resources, you have a university professor who does field work right here, and I'm happy to help fellow RE subbers! However I'll add a caveat that if some non-male characters don't appear soon, I won't have much interest in reading. I can't suspend my disbelief that much unless you want to introduce the backstory of how all the other genders died off in a plague or something. This isn't a big leap. We know that dragons were based on dinosaur skeletons, and unicorns were based on an extinct version of the rhino. There's also been a few discoveries of very small Homo sapien and I think also Homo erectus on some isolated islands, and scientists suspect much of our mythological gnome-type characters stem from those groups. There's a lot of science to back this sort of story up, so you have a strong lead already. I'd like to suggest an alternative. Professor is on the last year of grant money and can't afford to hire laborers. Sam volunteers his friends, who all sign the relevant paperwork and Sam forgets to tell Professor about the creationist among them. This sets up a lot of potential, too, with antagonistic character interactions between the prof and the student / friends, and gives a much better explanation for why these kids are hanging around.

ETA: Forgot to mention that I'm really interested in the story, as I love anthropology stories! Also, revision is the joy of all writers. Keep at it! Overall I clearly had a lot of thoughts about this. Most of the text made me pretty angry, if I'm being honest, because it shows a deep misunderstanding of how science works. Also, issues that were pointed out last week have not been edited for this week (such as the genus species thing and bringing friends along on a research project). The gender imbalance continues to grow, and for no discernible reason. Women and gender minorities do science. We're professors and grad students and skeletons and all sorts of fun things. Please fix this. Note that the perpetual confusion of race with species was probably just misunderstanding at first, but now having shown up again is bordering on some racism issues. Human genetics are pretty complicated but, again, race is not a thing. Species is. It might be worth taking the time to look up the definitions of genus, species, race, and see how all of those interplay. If I were the professor I'd have punched the kid. Flat out. As I go - page two: we know the skeleton is male? When did we learn that? - Gah! Species is not capitalized, and Latin is always in italics! It should be Homo floresiensis, not Homo Floresiensis. Please fix throughout because A) it makes your science look not legit and B.) my brain is going to explode - page three: info dumpy start, and I'd argue that wolves have never been an actual threat to human safety. - page three: I'm confused. Is there some question in the minds of these boys that neanderthals are not real? Cause we have tons of science on their existence - page three: the fold between his eyebrows spoke? - this dialogue does not feel natural at all - page four: very confused. Body parts are talking. What is going on? - You haven't proven definitively that the race that this corpse represents is the basis for mythological dwarves. <-- They haven't proven anything yet. We don't even know the sex of this thing, despite all the male pronouns to the contrary. And again, race is not the right word to use here. You have species, probably genus and species to content with. Race is a social construct mostly used for racism, which is what this narrative is threatening to veer into. - page five is mostly infodump - page six: Professor W must not take on graduate students very often, and not oversee them at all. This is how I would react to this situation: Me: Oh, great. The grad students are here. *sigh* Grad students: OMG I AM SO EXCITED TO BE PART OF THIS FIELD WORK Me: Go change your clothes into something field appropriate and eat something. And who are these people with you? Grad student: I brought my friends! Me: No. They go back on the plane. Now. Grad student: But they're free labor! They want to help! Me: They're a lawsuit. They're not allowed on this site. Leave. Now. Grad student: BUT! Me: Not negotiable. Research sites aren't for screwing around. Get your act together or find a new advisor. I paid way too much to bring you here and have invested four years in the NSF grant funding this. They're not authorized to be here, they can't legally work on university research without at least a volunteer form filled out and signed, and you didn't even ask. That doesn't bode well for our future mentor/mentee relationship. #realacademiclife - page six: advisor greets them and I am shaking my head in disbelief. This is a parallel dimension, right? The darkest timeline? - top of page seven: I LOLed. No advisor has ever spoken to a graduate student like this. Your writing styles were so compelling, yet accessible. Your notes are empirical, accurate, and concise! Nope. Not how graduate students operate. This is how this convo would go IRL: Me: Did you ever send me your notes from last year? Graduate student: Well I was going to, but then I had this thing come up and... Me: Did you at least bring them? Student: Yeah! *hands over field notebook with handwritten notes* Me: *sighs* They're just numbers. Do you have any analysis to go with this? Grad student: I can work on it tonight maybe? Me: It's been a year but sure, why not? *dies a little inside* - page ten: no part of 'I found this site with a divining rod' is even remotely publishable. - page eleven: carbon dating. Please tell me that's going to be in here somewhere cause.... - oh look, there it is, and nonsense arguments are being attached to it. These arguments make J unpopular because it shows he has no idea how to read scientific literature - page four: It's a skeleton. How does it have a face? - .... this thing is open to the air but still has a chin? Is it a bog body? Even then, decay would be rapid once removed. This isn't how decay works - all the new skeletons are male, too? Are there any females in this book? - page 21: establishing a new species takes years. It doesn't happen just because a grad student or grad student friend thinks something looks weird.