kais

Rilan and Magda will either kill each other or be BFFs forever. ONLY MANDAMON CAN TELL US WHICH!

I challenge @Mandamon to write one, too, with one of his characters in it. OOOOOOHHH put Rilan in it!! You could put Sam in, but I think he'd just huddle in a corner and cry.

So @industrialistDragon, you're doing the next one, right??? Please?

Just my take on @Robinski's piece, and our challenge to fanfic Quirk x Magda. Not to be taken too seriously, and meant only for amusement. Many apologies to robinski for the butchering of his character.

I don't think her time period has to be taken literally. With hundreds of planets, it's easy to see a preindustrial world getting landed on and things getting caught up quick, I think. And now we have democracy, and a royal figurehead trying to find a place in the world. Solid story material. She has unlikely skills for space age society. I find the whole idea so interesting !

I love this thing so much, @Robinski. I keep rereading it. I'd like to save it, and post it on my website after TWD comes out in print (years from now...I can dream). Would that be alright with you?

In for the 26th, to sub my rendition of Quirk and Magda in a bar. It's not going to be as graceful as @Robinski's, cause its Magda's POV and, well, boobs.

Always glad to see you around, @Vreeah! Overall I'm...confused? I don't know if it's WRS or something else, but I was missing context for this piece. The whisper collection is a neat idea, but I needed more character grounding. The conversation worked very well for a few pages, but then started to wander. This tripped me up, too. Would love to read more, especially if we got a bit more background and conflict. Keep going! As I go - Sofia has a sister? Did we know that? I feel like I didn't know that - "...when you remember goodbyes" is a great exchange! - page two: who is 'they' and 'them'? - page four: by the end of page four, the dialogue is starting to wander. I'm missing the whys of the conversation

Oh good! At least it worked somewhat! This is actually a really good plot point that I'd neglected. I need to get Sam more involved. Thank you so much for the feedback, and the postulating! It was very helpful!

I always understood them to be just sort of everywhere, not in the ground. Ah well, I had planned on more about the religion in book two, so I can elaborate there!

Maybe their spirits live in the ground? Good point. Editing. I think in this current draft I have managed to pull it out much more. It's on the radar, anyway. KK. Will try to clean up the blocking Good call! I'll see if I can get the queen stuff moved around. Thank you for the comments!!

@Mandamon and I have a little too much fun being CPs, I think. He put an Ard in the Dryad crowd for funsies. I plan on sticking some purple haired aliens into ATD.

Welcome back @Wisps of Aether! Overall A lot of potentially interesting things happened, but it felt like we were in the middle of a story, not the start. The events felt rushed and I didn't get a feeling for time, place, or the characters (most importantly). I'd suggest breaking the events apart into individual chapters and spending more time on the characters, their motivations, and the world. You start off with a very interesting premise in the crystal birth, but that never really gets explained, and no one really emotes over it, making it basically a non-event. You also have my spidey senses tingling on the girlfriend hostage motivation thing, which can slide reeeeeally easily into fridging. Please don't make us reset our counter. I agree with this completely Also this. This gets to the heart of my confusion as well. I need more background, more relationship, more buy in, before I can care about what is happening. Anyway, you have a solid foundation here, you just need to do some smoothing and fleshing out. Keep at it, and sub more! As I go - page two: so the crystals are...gall stones? - page four: I'm not settling into the 'Hentaro gets agitated and everyone can sense his power' thing. It seems really plot convenient. - page five: We don't get an explanation for the gall stone crystal things and the bondage necklace? I'm left very confused by the first chapter, including why Hentaro so willingly goes with what appears to be an antagonist. I think we need more setup here. Perhaps focusing on just one event - the passing of the crystals, to better lay the foundation of this world - page seven: 'wisps' is an overused word, currently. I've caught it three times already - page eight: Annabelle seems to be kind of disassociated from...everything. She's being threatened and she's completely fine with it - page 9: it's hard to care about Annabelle being a hostage since I don't yet care about Annabelle, or Hentaro. We need some emotional investment before stakes, otherwise the stakes don't mean anything - page nine: what is 'uneven' wood? - page 11: not really certain what 'power' is, in this world, so again, hard to connect here

I am so in love with this!!! @Robinski - I'm glad you subbed first, because I am borrowing some of your clothing lingo. You know, I would so read a book with these two characters. Maybe we should co-write something. Also, Magda would be a highly amusing role model for Moth.

I get that. I feel the same way about the rock climbing in Wolfwalker. That sort of glimpse into an author's life is really neat! I'm not sure I've ever been distracted by it. I only remember books fondly for it, like the aforementioned Stardoc series.

I honestly don't know how writers write characters without at least a little bit of themselves in them. Some experience, some emotion, so faucet of self, to me, is in every character I write (that has dialogue and character development). I can write outside my experience, but I have to be able to connect to that experience, or I just can't connect with the character.

So uh, is everyone just late in submitting today, or am I out of whack? I just e-mailed my crit stuff for the week, but it's almost evening and no one else has... Please tell me I'm not hallucinating the day.

NC = issues with consent. Not at all sexual, but graphic and disturbing. This chapter now incorporates @Mandamon's edits from his full read through, so if you spot some inconsistencies from previous chapters, it's because we're in version three, baby, and things are getting moved around! Specific question for this chapter is: does S's monologue at the start help you contextualize the issue from last chapter? Does it help put things in perspective? Does it just muddle everything? Also, if you could (and have the time), could you hypothesize on where the end is going from here? I'm trying to make sure I'm on the right track. Thanks everyone!

Urp! I need the week, I think, as I'm neck deep in ATD edits. Post yours when its ready, and I'll catch up!

YES. I will start brainstorming. Something short, eh? Under 1000 words perhaps? Just one bar scene?

You're good, @Robinski! I know the subject matter is new and a little weird. To it, then! Yes, this. I've cleaned up the wall section to be much more upfront about it just being an old city wall remnant Check. Edited. Have cleared up. It's the capital city of the country I was thinking of a loft type set up. Will edit I was pretty pleased with that section, since I thought it offered a nice metaphor for S's gender (in not wanting clothes with male or female buttons, and also not wanting something with no buttons (agender), but wanting something inbetween (non binary). I thought I was being clever. I've put more into the story since you read the early chapters, dealing with M's preferences I don't generally think of textiles being stereotypically in the realm of transgender people. Gay men, maybe, but not transgender people. I'll try to make the distinction more clear. I'm actually dealing almost entirely with transgender issues in this book. Here, M is laying out the queer spectrum for the reader (maybe needs to be done more blatantly??) in that gay men, lesbians, and MTF and FTM are common place and not an issue. However, nonbinary is confusing and not the norm. I need some direction on what it would take to get this better across to the average reader, because to me it seems really obvious, but clearly it isn't. I'm open to suggestions. I was trying to draw a distinction between how S is attracted to people, versus how M is attracted to women, and how that could lead to misunderstandings (like the one that occurs later on this chapter). edited And that's what I need--to know what the general population needs to know. Thank you! I've changed the intro a fair amount to (hopefully) make it clear that S was gendered definitively female at birth. I wasn't meaning for this chapter to be an anatomy reveal, so hopefully the new intro chapters will change the focus of this one to just sexy time. Hmmm. Some of the issue is S, certainly, but I'll defer to @industrialistDragon's response, as it is pretty near perfect. It wasn't meant to prolong the tension, rather, this was meant to be a defining relationship moment that these two had been driving to for the whole book. It was also meant to shake the reader up as M is shaken up, in that 'you thought you understood what nonbinary was, but here, you didn't, just like M." I'll hold off changing anything until the next chapter gets read on RE, because I tried really hard in the first few paragraphs there to explain what happened in S's mind in this chapter. I look forward to your thoughts on it! Yes, this! It was the emotional reaction of M that was the issue, not the desire to enjoy S's breasts. And once they clear the air about it, it wouldn't be an ongoing issue, in theory. But it's meant to be the sort of final slam of 'this is what it means to be nonbinary' in the book before we move into the final sequence. I've been thinking about this all day. We need to do this, @Robinski! Thank you so much for the very detailed comments!

More on the above later, but I would SO love to write a crossover fic between Quirk and Magda!

In for the 19th. I know, I know, I'll have to beat all the other subs away with a stick....

@Robinski I'd be happy to do a full read for yours, too, when you're ready.

Traveling this week, just sent editor second round edits on ASD, and she just sent me first round edits on ATD. Trying to tidy TWD for pitch contests next week. UUUGGGGHHHHHH.