industrialistDragon

Rise, rise my undead thread! Mwa-hahaha! So, the library where I work has a largeish collection of old sff paperbacks. I wouldn't call them classics by any stretch of the imagination: they tend to be from the '70s through the early '90s and lean towards the sorts of midlisters that don't really exist nowadays anymore and make great thesis topics, but there are some pillars of the genres mixed in with everything else. (It's where I picked up Golden Witchbreed, after all). In the summer doldrums like we are now, I'll pick up a couple to read over breaks and such. Using my super complicated high tech choosing strategy (walking down the shelves until my finger/eye catches on something and picking the one with the prettiest cover in that area), I've landed on Michael Moorcock's "Weird of the White Wolf." It appears this is an omnibus of a couple different novelettes (? novellas? what do you call 4-chapter-long stories?) and holds up pretty well in terms of plot and tech and sentence structure (honestly for a '60-s era novel, it's downright terse), it's just... so... I mean, of COURSE he's an albino warrior prince-mage from a far-flung empire, of COURSE his One True Love can never be, of COURSE all the ladies want him, all the men respect and fear him, of COURSE his sword is the dark of deathly death eating souls and howling deathly howls! It's definitely a case of The Tropes Have to Come From Somewhere. But despite rolling my eyes hard enough to give myself a headache every 3 pages or so, I'm still enjoying it. There's a punchiness to older pulp writing like this that is pithy without being snarky. The dialogue tags do double and triple duty describing emotion and action, and an entire scene is sketched out in vivid detail with just a couple sentences. I'm really, REALLY enjoying the omnipresent POV, as well. In modern sff, the limited third person POV is pretty much universal, even when it ends up being a detriment to the story. For epic sweep and concise page count, the ability to drop into anyone's head and see what they're doing is a hands-down winner, imo. Elric is clearly the protagonist and we stay with him the most, but Moorcock will slide into a supporting character or an antagonist for a little while here and there when it benefits the story. And it does benefit the story. There's no need to interweave multiple POV characters and spend chapters flipping between them when this POV is used as well as it is here. Moorcock makes it look easy, but the seamless switches and knowing just how many and how often to use them are difficult to master and I think that's why omnipresent 3rd POV has fallen out of favor more recently.

I mean, we could just start small with a Discord channel/regular Skype call/Google Hangout or whatever. It took 3 years for my guildies to put together an in-person meetup, and we chatted, like, daily for years beforehand and we still only had about a third of our regular members show up. Another option would be to fold it into another convention, like Worldcon or something. That would at least make it easier to get hotel room discounts and such.

Are you reading the Merriam Webster twitter feed? Because you should be! My latest plug is this great article on ellipses with maybe a little ping towards @Robinski because we talked about these in one of his crit thread. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/ellipses-definition-uses

The purpose of my chemistry class was apparently to eat donuts and gripe about early mornings because my teacher hated having to have classes that early. XD

What's French for "too broke to travel overseas?"

I'm always down for a chance to dress in costume. I mean, that's the point of conventions, right? costumes?

No, what you are talking about is not First Amendment protection. First Amendment, "free speech," protection covers not being arrested for merely saying things. If you say stupid things that make people what to punch you, that's battery. Free speech doesn't make people have to listen to you, or force people to take you seriously, or even (for non-governmental entities) provide you a venue for your words. If you get punched for talking, you have not been censored. Your First AMendment rights have not been infringed. You now have a battery charge you can bring against the guy who hit you. Whether the common defenses to battery-caused-by-words will apply is why there are lawyers. The Nazi in question did not get arrested for saying atrocious things, he got punched. The derision the nazi has received and the support the hitter has received are also not illegal, not censorship, and not a violation of free speech. Free speech protects you from being arrested for just saying stuff, it does not protect you from the consequences of your words. This discussion has veered very far from any sort of on-topic intent, and for the sanity of all involved I think it should just be tabled. Take it to reddit. I'll meet you there.

Add my vote to the "this is confusing" pile... Callahan continues to underwhelm. Here we have him doing M & Q's investigation work, and being exceedingly dull about it. Why is this info better served through C than it would be for Q&M to discover it? If it's available from public websurfing (also, an entire chapter of websurfing and infodumping is not particularly interesting. Q&M would at least have some banter around all of this), then literally ANYONE could serve these plot points to the reader. Callahan is not compelling, his journey is uninteresting, and I feel nothing for him but growing disgust. I once again question his inclusion as a POV character, since he is actively hurting your primary plot. Why do I care what Q&M are doing to chase him down? I-as-a-reader already know where C is and what he's doing, why he's doing it, and how he's going to get it done. Every C chapter since the reveal makes Q&M more superfluous. Since I assume C is not your recurring series regular (it's not C's Big Body Count under the main title after all), what is the purpose of putting us so far in his head and letting him sabotage the momentum of your main characters? "said S-0778 softly " first sentence is a run-on "which left no fingerprints" the bag or the android? "full complement of war paint" ... "with a little light gilding" these phrases do not agree with each other. "war paint" when referring to makeup tends to imply heavy application (my dictionary says "elaborate or excessively applied makeup." for war-paint), but "little light" seems to belie that (the gilding the lily reference is referring to her natural beauty and not the makeup). So is she in full-on cake or just a 5-minute face? Okay.. that's random. That's super random and weird. Did I somehow miss ANY kind of come-on with lady lawyer in the previous chapter? 'cause that's super strip-the-gears-and-grind-the-plot-to-a-screeching-halt random. I mean, I wasn't very clear on the investigations to begin with (and as a high-volume consumer of police procedurals, it's not often I get derailed by even shaky investigations) and then random sex and then... left turn to random town? I feel like pointless travel is the only through-line these chapters have at the moment. Also, where's M? She's got to have gotten in to something with all this time spent alone... Why is Q arrested now? This is a bit of WRS, but what the heck is going on around the investigation that he's getting the cops from Gravity Falls on his case? From what I can tell, he's done very little investigating at all, having left most of it to the villainous McGuffin. And then the cops're flip-flopping like summer thong shoe? I am really confused. Overall, these chapters feel very uneven. In pacing, I don't know what i'm supposed to be interested in or where the plot is going (or even if it's going anywhere) and I'm confused as to what's being played for laughs and just isn't funny, and what's supposed to be tense and serious and just comes off as silly. I don't have a clear sense of how much time has passed or where all the players are on the field, even when time and location are mentioned. The only thing steady about Q at the moment is how much he's vacillating in characterization and tone. It's like you're aiming for one thing, but subconsciously you're really writing towards another.

Hey, I have some kinda sorta comments this time around! Never thought i'd ping you for a slow opener but ... it's not great. Slightly unsure what Ori's ego has to do with him taking his seat in the areas reserved for him... unless i'm WRS-ing on his affiliation and he's poaching territory That has got to be the most high-stakes game of "telephone" ever.... "Not that martial arts" Active meditation would probably do politicians a world of good! But I feel like I'm missing a part of this sentence, something to tie it back to the paragraph. the skeptic in me is veerry suspicious of that "eye witness..." "Gills gaped underneath" is he under a mushroom or some kind of bioengineered fish-canopy? 'cause it's a magical fantasyland, and fish-shade could totes be a thing.... >_>; Ahh. there it is. okay, fungus is less biopunk and more in keeping with the millieu, but I'm still having a bit of trouble picturing it. That ending is rather abrupt. is that the chapter end or just a scene switch? I found the politics to be easy to understand and very brief and to the point (which is why fictional politics are better than the real stuff ). I expected more of it given the lead-up, tbh. I agree with @Ernei and cousin re: the kids' interactions -- not bad, but I lack enough data to really get a good impression.

I don't know, Ernei. According to the video that started this discussion, If they aren't being polite you should just laugh and walk away, since no one can change anyone else's opinions. If they are being polite, the video says you should listen to them, because all opinions are valid. According to your earlier posts, you should see if they have any evidence to back them up, and study it if it's there. They might be right, after all. My idea is that just because you can find an opinion on the internet doesn't mean that a statistically significant portion of any population believes it. Using edge cases to describe a multivarious whole and "bad things happen to my affinity groups too" arguments are both fallacious and gauche. But you do you.

Ernei, just because your nationality didn't own slaves in the past doesn't mean that you as a person in contemporary culture don't reap the benefits of the privileged society slavery has produced, without having to do a thing on your part. That's why it's important to try not to make this worse for the people who don't reap this passive benefit. You-as-a-Pole (or you-as-a-female-looking-person) can have issues and difficulties completely separate from the benefits you-as-a-white-person receive. That's called intersectionality, and it is definitely a thing. And really, we're talking basic, floor-level stuff -- Not getting shot simply for going to the store for candy. Being allowed to exist. Having people think you are a fully-human human being. As for punching Nazis, I agree with Scalzi here (but the fact that I can make such a distinction is one of those passive benefits I was talking about). Claiming "all evidence should be examined" when talking about opinions that deny other humans the basic right of being thought of as human, belies the fact that these opinions are not equal. By giving time and credence to the theories that claim "one group of humans is inherently more X than another because of Y" does not disprove them. All it does is create a false equivalency where believing subsets of humanity are inferior is somehow the same as believing humans in a majority should listen to subsets of humanity that have been historically silenced. From the majority, it seems like those in the minorities are being "too loud" or "too mean" or asking "too much," but that's because from the POV of the majority ANY incremental change is seen as dangerous. There have been studies to prove this. I've probably linked them in other posts. It's a gut-level reaction, but the job of the people in the majority in a situation is to stop, check that reaction, and then *listen* to what is being said, even if it's being said in a way that seems "bad" or "rude." Maybe that's the only way they can get people to hear them.

This is mostly a RAEBNC. I just don't feel like I have the background in this story necessary to get into it as deeply as I should to give you substantial feedback. R seems like she's being a little hard on O this chapter. Last time had me thinking they either parted amicably or were in a long distance relationship that just atrophied with time. this chapter is making me reconsider. ""around his watch tight enough" decently sure it's "tightly" though adverbial phrases throw me off sometimes "bleeding away like dew in the sun" Dew doesn't really bleed... "twice his high, " height "their house color and their personal color" the dyer's guild must weild so. Much. Power. here. How often do prankster apprentices magic tunics to rivals' colors? I am envisioning so much and many shenanigans... "Sam caught that que " cue.

Lol, no, Ernei (though that would be cool for one of the fanfic sites to run!). Unbound World's Scifi fantasy Cage Match is a voting contest where characters from various popular science fiction and fantasy series are matched up against each other in a pretend "cage fight." Each pair has a short "what would happen if" story written about it, usually by one of the authors whose characters are in the match. Fans then vote on who they think would win. It's good marketing for the authors and good fun for the fans, though, as aero pointed out, it does often come down to which author can rally more fans to come click buttons on the site.

I usually sell "Feed" as a political thriller that just happens to have incredibly well-researched zombies in it. Requiring signup just leads to a database full of dummy accounts, and more work policing it. Why does it matter so much whether or not the people voting in this fun weird little fanfic contest are "dedicated" or not? Ideally, yeah, it'd be great to only have the "real" fans have a say, but it's not really broken as it is. Who's to say those "groups of friends" just clicking for their buds don't turn into fans later? Trying to police voting in a contest of this nature is self-defeating at best and needless gatekeeping at worst.

As a Georgia Mason fan, I was stoked! I was really hoping for Seanan to get to write the snarkiest of snark-offs, Harry Dresden vs Georgia, but alas! 'twas not to be. Not using the gun is kind of Georgia's thing. Yes, she can shoot; one has to when one is living in the zombie apocalypse, but she's a journalist first and foremost. You'd've gotten your shootout if it had been her brother Shaun -- and that's probably why Georgia was in the match. I've followed the Cage-fight off an on for a while and most of the good ones don't end up with much actual fighting. That's what makes them fun. As for a popularity contest -- how would you change it? I don't see the problem for something like this to be essentially a size-of-the-fandom contest. It's fun, it exposes people to new fiction and authors they might've missed otherwise, and it's generally-enjoyable short fanfiction. Don't like how it ended? Write your own 'fic to fix it.

I ... well, I can't say i enjoyed it, because it's a terrible movie. But I enjoyed watching the movie it COULD HAVE BEEN, since I am interested in how editing choices and story decisions affect the stories that end up on screen. And boy-howdy, there's enough poor choices on both those fronts on display to have me dissecting it for years! So, if you're a fan of badtastic action movies and watching big budget trainwrecks, or if you want to see a textbook case of "if you can't be a good example, then be a terrible warning" (or if you're a Will Smith completionist. His Deadshot is very well done!) do check out Suicide Squad.

This is an instance of the problematic side of the Truth in Television trope -- Yes, at some point in real life some scientists somewhere probably have overstated the application of their experiments in this way, but that doesn't make every instance of every fictional scientist doing it in any way either believable or realistic. Put another way, it's the air duct problem: air ducts exist in real life. small flexible people exist in real life. the probability exists that a small flexible person has crawled through an air duct at some point in real life. These facts in no way make all of the gigantic air-duct escapes peppered throughout television and popular media in any way believable or realistic or even probable. Why leave that in your writing when small changes can fix things? Sciguy: Our invention has shown great promise in restoring mobility and expediting a return to independent function in a host of accident victims and amputees who would otherwise require assistive devices or in-home care for the rest of their lives Q: *considering, imagining* Heck, Doc -- you could cure blindness -- even kittening depression -- with that thing! and there, you have let the scientist be believably sciencey (especially if he hems and haws at Q's broadening of the applications), and kept the wide-ranging claims. Non-science people make those claims ALL THE TIME -- that's where the popular idea of overgeneralizing scientists comes from. Check out the news articles on any kind of cancer research. It's the journalists going "this discovery could cure cancer!" and the scientists going "Well... no... kinda... but see, this thing is showing promise on this one specific type of cancer under these set laboratory conditions and humans are really different from mice and--" "IT CURES CANCER RIGHT? HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT CURING CANCER?!"

I know @kais, @neongrey and I write often about the pervasiveness of harmful stereotypes and the erasure of marginalized voices, and how important it is to listen and believe when those voices do speak up. It can seem like we're nitpicking or harping on the same things ad nauseum, but it matters. Even the little things that "don't seem like much" or "aren't a big deal" because "it's just the way things are" are so important. It matters because the little things we talk about add up, and then you get clusterbombs like this thing with OdysseyCon, and the staff that still seems clueless about it. In case you don't follow writer!twitter or author blogs, a quick summary: a known serial harasser was a liaison (part of the convention committee, or concom) for a guest of honor, who in turn did not feel safe interacting with the man. The guest requested a different liaison, which she received. When the guest of honor learned that she would still have to interact with the harasser at the convention itself, she withdrew as a guest rather than put herself in an unsafe situation. Instead of behaving professionally, the convention dismissed her concerns, and otherwise acted in generally awful manner. They are still behaving in a generally awful manner, even after being roundly criticized for their atrocious behavior. It's the little things that allow for big things like this, just like it's the little details that make a made-up world seem real. Here are some links to essays about, summaries of, and commentaries on the incident (for accounts of the individual's history as a serial harasser, see Natalie Luhrs', K Tempest Bradford's, and Jim Hines' posts): The GoH, Monica Valentinelli's statement announcing her withdrawal from Odysseycon Natalie Luhrs' summary and timeline of events with screencaps of posts the convention has since deleted File 770's summary with quotes from various sources Authors weighing in Mary Robinette Kowal Jim C Hines K Tempest Bradford Seanan McGuire (twitter thread) Jessica Price (twitter thread) Catherine Lundoff (start at the bottom for chronological order) Chuck Wendig (twitter thread) Melissa F Olson

So... the "offness" of recent sections continues here for me. I agree with much of what's already been said, and here's my bit... ". I don’t think you appreciate what’s at stake here" And this would be a great chance for you to tell us, madam lawyer, 'cause goodness knows we haven't gotten it anywhere else yet Her precipitous departure without giving them any kind of directions is definitely odd. I am pretty darn confused as to what's gotten M so down. They spent a ton of time in previous chapters speculating on the big thing, and this seems right in line with their speculations. She's lived with a mobster uncle (that she knew was a mobster uncle) for years (?) how is the thought (not details or photos) of one fairly pedestrian death (of someone she has literally no connection with) affecting her so much? "felt right at home in the office" -- Why? Also, what does the front half of this sentence have to do with the back? "through positive reinforcement" -- I'm... not sure that's how positive reinforcement works. At all. >_>;; "resigned to the inconvenience" What? Why? Where did this come from? Why is he getting naked in an office and totally not caring about it? Because dude, random requests like that are reasons independent contractors like Q exercise their rights as non-employees and nope the heck out of there. They want to give him the run-around and then spring full cavity searches out of nowhere for no apparent reason whatsoever and a high-expertise pro like Q wouldn't stick around for it. His time's too expensive for that kind of folderol. He'll take his commission minus whatever breach penalties there are and go hire himself to someone who acts like a professional "but a paraplegic, a blind person, a deaf one" Okay this is... this is not right. This scientist is making sweeping generalizations on a host of issues that don't jive with what he's purporting to do. First of all, there's the implied notion that all the disabilities he's listing off make someone somehow less of a person than a fully abled individual, so that he can sweep in and "relieve" them all from the squalor of their existences -- what if they're just fine as-is and don't want to be "cured?" -- and that's just straight up bad. Secondly, it's assuming that all of those disabilities are of uniform severity, and caused by the same issues (meaning they can all be cured in the same way -- with his VR), which is flatly untrue (additionally, i'm pretty sure comas don't work that way, either >_>;;;). Thirdly, the lack of focus is blatantly unscientific. It's arrogantly overbroad, and edging into ableism. Plus, it's close enough to existing technology that the dissonance is even more pronounced (seriously, brain-controlled prosthetics already exist IRL). Go somewhere like Ars Technica and look up some recent medical advances -- they're all really cool and they would be easy to upgrade into a scifi breakthrough. and how in nine fresh h*lls did C manage to get through all of the screenings necessary to even be *in* this position in the first place?! They can upload your consciousness to the cloud, but can't screen for obvious psychosis? In fact, at this point, I question the inclusion of Callahan as a POV character at all. His beginning chapters have nothing to do with the main plot, and now that the cards are on the table, he is actively sucking any tension or mystery out of Q and M's investigations. Sorry to be so negative, but I feel like there are some serious issues with the basic premises underlying this section.

As I go... Slow start to ch3, and some of the sentence structure is confusing. I had to reread the first part a few times just to parse out some of the sentences. is Remissus a young woman? or are there two people? it is very unclear. dialogue is pretty stilted through the early parts here. I know i missed the first part of this story, but with all the focus on the Tony-esque guy in the previous chapter, I really thought he would be a more prominent character. He seems to have just vanished.... (But at least we now know where he got his steamroller approach from -- that police captain or whatever just rolled right over P) Overuse of semicolons alert! Some of the semicolons in this section (I counted 10) need to be upgraded to colons or em-dashes, or broken out into separate sentences entirely. I really feel... nothing for this P character. Granted, I missed his entrance chapter, but from what's here, he feels like a basically unchanged cardboard version of a Gruff Older Detective L's introspection in this first part feels less like the self-recrimination I think you're aiming for and more like foisting the blame for her hubris off on her old classmates, and I still have no clue what this "grand plan" of hers is that's she's always on about. I agree with @kais, the landlady is a caricature and a stereotype, and not a good one at that. The landlady worries me. Using her appearance to indicate her seemingly random bad temper ... it's not a great thing to do to anyone, much less a female elderly character. Playing the "Old people are ugly, let's laugh at their frightening appearance" card is common for a cheap laugh, but it's not a particularly good writing decision, and it never sits well with me. (Yes, I have a very hard time watching sitcoms). Other than some more appearance-related name-calling, L doesn't react to the abuse, either, which also sounds an off note, And it occurs to me just now that this is yet a third (fourth?) character who rolls right over L, with little or no attention paid to her reactions or opinions. People can ignore each other, yes, but there also needs to be interaction and reaction to others' behaviors to make them believable as people... I really liked the sea-lamps! It's little details like these that make a world feel grounded and lived-in. You did a good job of incorporating their workings into an actual plot-based description and monologue, too. L's thoughts about her family's fall from grace are more like what an internal monologue should be -- they kept my interest and laid out a bunch of information in a way that is consistent with her character. I'd've really liked something more like this in her first chapter, though -- or at least a smidge of it! just -- something! -- to give a bit of context to all her "plan" talk. This line about A seems to imply that L is over 80 years old... Overall, these chapters feel disjointed from the one I read before. We spent an entire chapter following L to get to the police office, but when we arrive, we switch POVs to someone who doesn't care what it looks like, how important it is, or anything else about this thing we've spent pages and pages anticipating. and then, it's a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am quickie and we're out of the office so fast I feel like I had a bit of whiplash. Do we really need to see this meeting from P's POV? Does it somehow add to the story in some way that staying with L, watching her dreams crumble like wet plaster around her, wouldn't? Don't I even get time for a cigarette? I'm a bit worried about your secondary characters as well. So far, other than L (and we could debate L's level of tropishness), almost all of your characters have been pretty textbook cutout tropes and stereotypes. Tropes and stereotypes aren't bad per se, but if you use nothing but tropes and insert them whole cloth into your setting without putting your own spin on them, it makes your protagonists appear flat, and your world feel shallow. I know they're not (they're really not!) but when all they have to bounce off of are cardboard people, well... I mean, not even Will Smith and Margot Robie could save Suicide Squad, y'know? Don't be Suicide Squad. K? (but even with the issues, I still want to see what happens next, so keep at it! )

Hah! Having had to read and interpret for others statutory language for a job, I endorse the three-time read-through. First time is to go "wt-actual-f," second time is to parse punctuation, third (and subsequent) time is to maybe understand and then go compare with the doggone annotations.

Hello! Sorry for the late reply I caught an awful plague and was sick with the death for most of the week! Here's what I have... Mostly, I agree with what everyone else has said, especially @kais and @Mandamon I agree, it really does seem like he should read over the contract a bit more, even if it is all boilerplate (it won't be if they're decent attorneys. boilerplate is such because it has to be in a contract, but it comes at the end, after the meat of the thing -- and you should STILL skim it, just in case. ) Moth has never quite clicked for me, but recent chapters have her more and more being a bad teen stereotype, randomly and gratuitously profane, and occasionally being a vehicle for As-you-know-Bob exposition. There's just not much to her right now. And this is yet more travel. Once again, I agree with Mandamon and kais -- either all these chapters need serious culling and condensing , -OR- the travel needs to be an end in itself, and thus be full of things that make the reader not mind the plot going nowhere for so long. As it stands now, this is just travel for ... verisimilitude? a fear of jump cuts? padding word count to avoid the dreaded "novella" label? and they serve neither character nor plot. Honestly, i feel a little bit cheated here. We're finally on the moon (finally!) and it seems really neat and interesting, and like it would be full of fun things for quirk to describe and differences from earth, and yet, the story lingers on the same old transportation minutiae we've seen in something like going on 6 chapters now and a standard chain coffeehouse that could be straight out of IRL-reality. It sounds cozy, but if i wanted that experience I could go to the Starbucks down the street. :/ Sorry. What we do get of the moon is good, though! there's some grammar stuff that an editing pass will fix, but on the whole, these are more of what I want. More moon, more clothes, more quirky Quirk.

Hello! sorry about the late response. It's great that you edited and re-submitted! Here are my takes: 1. This is much improved over the first one! The intro sentence and some of the first few sentences after that do not really grab the reader, however. I agree with the others, that this seems to lack a real plot, moreso now than it did previously since you've removed a lot of the repetition. There's a beginning (intro to the characters) and a middle (fight-to-tie), but there's no resolution. Are you aiming for a sort of lady-or-the-tiger ambiguous end? That's a tricky thing to do, and for it to work, we really need a lot more setup so we can clearly see what choices are available and why they would make sense for the protagonist to choose them. 2. This one... had more of a lateral shift. Moving away from the repetition in dialogue and description hurts it, since repetition is what it is built on, and cutting the end off removes the twist that finished the story. It hangs now, at the end, and lacks resolution. The bits about what each boy does with the money don't resonate with each other like they did, and thus they seem superfluous to the story. It has benefited from an editing pass and the dialogue seems more natural and the other writing has been tightened up a bit. But, with flash fiction, and extra-especially with repetition, every single little word matters -- the choice, the spelling, even its placement on the page: it all matters so much. 3. Again, this story could use some trimming. There's a lot of excess verbiage and run-on sentences, especially in the beginning, where it's especially important to be succinct and catch a reader's interest. From these three stories it looks like you have a tendency to try to get the entire backstory and scenario out as fast and completely as possible. This is not necessarily a good thing, especially in flash. We really only need enough information to get the reader through the story at hand in flash fiction. Do we need to know he's filling in for his brother, or just that he doesn't want to be there? It can be hard to be brutal to info like this, because it is important background... HOWEVER, I don't know that it matters to this story, right here, right now. Secondly, pouring the entire shape out in the first couple sentences leads to unneeded info-dumping, the core parts of which could be better incorporated into the body of the story. Offhand remarks and dialogue tags can and should do double duty, both forwarding the plot and expanding our knowledge of the character. I'm going to suggest to you a free worksheet and instruction from another author (sorry mods, I hope that's all right; I don't think the Sanderson offerings have a similar flash-centric free version?) that's designed specifically for making the sort of flash fiction you seem to be wanting: it's Holly Lisle's How to Write Flash Fiction That Doesn't SUCK! course. It's free, and even if you don't use her methods or do her exercises, it's good info and food for thought regarding flash. Keep at it!

Sorry for the late response, I was sick as a dog all week. Here are my comments... I love a good round of fantasy politics, but I did have a hard time keeping names and species straight here. This was the first introduction to a lot of these characters for me though, and I started in the middle more-or-less, so some of that is to be expected. I still get a little mixed up when Origon is referred to by his species, even. Speaking of O, while I like him and enjoy his chapters, I can't say I really "connect" with him. He's not the kind of guy, it seems to me, who really "connects" with people easily, and that's reflected in his POV. Is it necessary for the reader to have a connection with him? "Her place was on the Council, not gallivanting across the ten homeworlds." I dunno, seems like with the amount of rumors and unrest right now, a press junket wouldn't be a horrible idea.... I feel for Rilan much more, since it's easy to connect with getting railroaded by bureaucrats and being grumpy at being woken up early. She also seems a little more everyman than Origon. I'm getting the idea like some of the issues and lack of connections I'm feeling here are due to this being a ....third? fourth? book in an ongoing series I haven't read. There's a weight of continuity there the lack of which is affecting my understanding of some of the tension and subtleties of interactions, especially in this chapter. This makes me wonder how much you're looking for new reader buy-in at this stage: if most of the tension and interactions have roots in previous books that series-readers will already understand, is it necessary to make sure the politics-heavy section is intelligible and captivating to someone starting in the middle, or would that just alienate your series-reads who will find the retread repetitive? Of course, the flip side to that is if your plot-heavy arguing-politicians section can't stand on its own enough to grab a new reader, is it in good enough shape to keep series-readers who already know how far they can skip ahead to get to the interesting bits without losing the thread of the story? Which is a long-winded way of saying I got nothing. sorry. :/

Yeah, the shenanigans quotient on this year's ballot is quite pleasingly low. Tor.com is cleaning up in the short fiction categories and that's great because their stuff is amazing. Also “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” is a seriously good short story. ETA: In case anyone is curious, File 770 is on the scene with a shenanigans breakdown: http://file770.com/?p=34186&cpage=1