Mandamon

Thanks @kais and @Sarah B! Oops! That should be Elg, not Ari. Yep, I especially tried to cut down some of the explanation in the beginning, but not enough. I can cut more. Hmmm...I'll try to pull this together more. Nope. This is the same one. I try to make this as plausible as I can. I also hate it when shapeshifters change mass with no consequences. Here, the Elg are about the same size as a person, so that wouldn't be a restriction. When we becomes something large enough to catch S, I was envisioning that she had a lot of wing-like areas and long arms to catch him, but weighed the same. So the mass is spread out, which means E would also have a better chance at gliding. And fixing the typo above help a lot too! Thanks!

I didn't have much problem with the first half, save than M is pretty intrusive and violating about reading minds. I assume this will be a conflict later. The second half felt...uninteresting. I think because there is obvious chemistry between M and Mi, but not really anything between M and either of the girls. In fact, they seem to be pairing up with each other. If this is supposed to be a love triangle, then we need a lot more on this leg. I don't have the feeling that M is interested in either of them, while she has a lot of the "don't think about" asides with Mi, and he generates strong emotion in her because she doesn't approve of his research. Maybe if A or T had a hobby, or some shared like or hate with M, there would be more connection between them. Notes while reading: pg 1: "She recalled it perfectly, but the second she opened her eyes, the memory of the map faded" --that's weird. She can picture it perfectly, but can't actually use the information? pg 1: "claimed it would, one day, when her brain was more developed." --She's an adult, right? What other developing is she doing? pg 1: "Mi stopped in front of M" --wait, what? She's totally lost, off in some residential district outside of the college (which I'm still not certain how she would do, considering the difference in college buildings and houses) and not Mi just wanders up in front of her? pg 1: “You remember my name?” --My first question would be "where did you come from?" pg 1: "where he’d seen her before" --I mean, wouldn't he just think he'd seen her in class? pg 2: "However, it had been worth it if it meant he didn’t recognize her." --I'd question this. The rest of the picture would match, as well as her build, gait, hairstyle, etc. I'd think he more question why this person who looked the same didn't have the same injuries. pg 2: "No one else could see the Pixie that she was talking to." --this should probably come earlier. pg 3: "temporarily banished from Earth" --did we know this from Power Surge? it seems a strange addendum, unless she's going to make an appearance later. pg 3: "pressed her consciousness against his" --this is getting a bit intrusive. pg 4: "trying to make sense of a memory shrouded in shadow, one he was fervently pushing out of his conscious mind" --yeah, this is not alright. pg 6: "Without her telepathy, she had no clue what the contorted expression on his face meant." --so is M actually unable to recognize facial expressions, or is this just because the telepathy isn't helping her do it? pg 7: "She started walking, but grew light headed" --this seems sudden. Was it from standing up? pg 7: "Not as good as bacon pizza, but edible." --I worry about her diet. pg 9: "The boy found me" --the boy has a name... pg 10: "There was nothing too serious about their conversation" --this sort of sums up their whole interchange so far. pg 10: "I keep changing the above paragraph" --I think it's fine. pg 11: "wouldn’t make friends if she was always aimlessly drifting through random people’s minds" --she didn't have a problem with it before. pg 12: "A laughed at something Tasha had said. It was sweet music" --the other two girls flirting with each other is more interesting than her own interests? She doesn't seem to be a factor in their relationship. pg 12: "The laughter continued, but eventually, they conceded" --so I guess they just told her about the show?

My thoughts on this one: I pretty much agree with @Robinski. It's a good "sequel" after the "scene" of the last chapter, where we get the response to what happened, but we don't really get anything else. My biggest thing is that we need something to move us on from this chapter. Right now it just sort of ends and we're not pulled into what happens next. You could probably cut a lot of the explanation in the first two pages and bring it up in dialogue, to make the plight of everyone more pressing. This is also where I suddenly got very confused between "civilized" and non- animals and how they are differentiated. I know you had a big explanation last week on this, but I think it need to find a way into the book around this point to stop people from wondering if there is some sort of practiced cannibalism in this world. Agree. I also looked this up and it doesn't seem to be a word. You can have one species, or many species, but there's no singular. Yes, and I further think this should be appended onto this chapter, at least in part, to drive the reader on to the next chapter. This is opening of the real story, the call to action, so we need something to shout that it's coming.

Once again submitting two chapters this week. Thanks to everyone for putting up with me taking over the forum... Both chapters are around 6200 words as well, because of course. These two are the last remnants of what I submitted previously. From here on out it's all completely new! SUB 25 Chapter 14, where we find out what happened to I. Pick it apart! Previously: S/E/I arrive in the other facet with their news of the Elg. The Eff and court are there, E has problems with trust, and E/I learn about their folks. The Eff faints shortly thereafter. E battles the voices inside her as they travel to the Ari, and attacks S. In the Ari enclave, I struggles with his image, we learn of the Ari, and E and I use each other's houses for the first time. M arrives with the society to the Imp and is attacked by Elg. People die and M finds himself with more and more responsibility as they attempt to figure out what's going on. They learn the Eff is also killed, and M makes clever use of a portal to save his life. Ri and co arrive on HD's homeworld, gather themselves, then engage the Elg in the Imp. They barely escape, and find out where other refugees have gone. S/E/I learn more about the Ari and find there's only one hammock in the bedroom. They all attempt to pass through the wall, but are stopped by the Elg. S devises a new plan and they try again, with disastrous results. M leads his posse on a hunt, without success, and meets up with R and her posse. Many connections are made.

Once again submitting two chapters this week. Thanks to everyone for putting up with me taking over the forum... Both chapters are around 6200 words as well, because of course. These two are the last remnants of what I submitted previously. From here on out it's all completely new! SUB 24 Chapter 13, where we find out what happened to E. Let me know what you think! Previously: S/E/I arrive in the other facet with their news of the Elg. The Eff and court are there, E has problems with trust, and E/I learn about their folks. The Eff faints shortly thereafter. E battles the voices inside her as they travel to the Ari, and attacks S. In the Ari enclave, I struggles with his image, we learn of the Ari, and E and I use each other's houses for the first time. M arrives with the society to the Imp and is attacked by Elg. People die and M finds himself with more and more responsibility as they attempt to figure out what's going on. They learn the Eff is also killed, and M makes clever use of a portal to save his life. Ri and co arrive on HD's homeworld, gather themselves, then engage the Elg in the Imp. They barely escape, and find out where other refugees have gone. S/E/I learn more about the Ari and find there's only one hammock in the bedroom. They all attempt to pass through the wall, but are stopped by the Elg. S devises a new plan and they try again, with disastrous results. M leads his posse on a hunt, without success, and meets up with R and her posse. Many connections are made.

There's a minorly contradictory point to this at the end of the books, so let me know what you think (if you remember) when it comes up... Check on more emotion. That's going to be a large part of the next draft. There is some political stuff coming up soon! I may need to add more in on the next draft, though.

Tentatively looks like there are only four of us for tomorrow, so I'm going to assume I can sub two chapters unless someone jumps in at the last minute?

Thanks @Robinski! Good points, and fairly easy to adjust. I can work on cutting the first part down and adding some more details to the second. The Elg seem to be able to choose what they dissolve, so I was thinking this one was trying to pull her in closer. Hmm...I thought I said this at the start of that section. I'll check. I think this may be the crux of this matter. Yep, I can chop this down. A lot of these things have been set up since the end of the first book, and this is the first time the characters team up, so I wonder if part of it is WRS? Thanks for the LBLs!

Thanks @CherishLarain! Lol. I lived on the 6th floor of my dorm in college for 5 years. I understand hating stairs. Good catch! Yes, this was mentioned earlier, but M does have a lot of experience with these types of changes and has been teaching the others. I'll look back to make certain there are no contradictions.

Oh yeah...you may be right!

Thanks @Sarah B and thanks again to @Snakenaps! I'll try to incorporate more like this in later drafts so it doesn't stand out as much. Heh--could be! At least everything seemed to fit. I usually trim out the last bits of fluff on the last pass, so that may be what snagged you. Thanks! This was really fun to write! I think @Robinski made this point in one of the earlier chapters, that the Elg would have to actually enfold something to disappear it. in this case I was trying to show that a little better. I added this at the last minute, so I'll smooth it out. Regardless, some weird things going on with the portal. Hoping to keep this up through the whole book! One of the comments the first time around was they weren't scary enough. Haha. Yep! Awesome feedback. Just what I'm looking for from this ending.

Thanks @kais Are others okay with this? I'll wait until Sunday and see how many we have for next week.

I'd also like to submit on the 2nd. Oof. Just looked and the next two chapters are both 6k apiece. I guess that will need to be one a week for the next couple weeks then.

Thanks to @shatteredsmooth, @Snakenaps, and @kais! Seems like this one went pretty well. Hopefully just WRS? the last M chapter was pretty early on in the book. If you were engaged pretty quickly, then I think that's ok. They definitely have a history. It's not explored overly much in Seeds, but she does refer to him with respect. He's also in Tuning the Symphony, so he's been involved in R's development since she was an apprentice. Yay! Ah...this may happen with the second book of Journey. The epigraph is penned by the mother from that book! Lol Um. yes. I'm here to help! Glad to see how this is landing. That name is fine... I love putting in these little zingers. hahaha! I did change this around a little because I moved the chapter forward. I'll see if I can smooth it out. Mostly for color and to show things happening in the Imp. I can adjust this. Ah, good point. Yep, probably need to bump up the emotion with him as usual. Probably WRS. They haven't actually seen each other since before Ri and O went to the prison in Seeds! M's been off on his own little mission. Thanks all! This was a fun chapter to write and it I think it came across that way too...

First off, welcome to Reading Excuses and thanks for submitting this! It takes a lot to put a story out in front of strangers. I think @Robinski and @kais handled a lot of the formatting issues, so I won't go into those. I'll also second Robinski that I really don't think this is ready for publication. It's bit hard to understand and wanders a lot for a short story. However, I did read your responses above and I'm really glad you're taking the feedback seriously! Ah...this may be part of the problem. You can't just switch from SF to F. There are a lot of tropes, expectations, and so on, again, most of which Robinski has mentioned... As to the ending, I think looking there is where we see the real intent of the story. It's not a story about M, it's a story about L and her fight against injustice. If you wrote this as a female Robin Hood sort of piece, I think it would work much better. M can be bad, or good at heart, or whatever. I don't really care about his character after coming across L, who is an actual hero. You could even show off her taking out each of the corrupt officials, play it off as her being the bad guy and killing people (maybe working for aliens rather than her own kind?) and then slowly revealing who the "real" monsters are. I know that all was pretty prescriptive, so feel free to ignore as needed. At the moment, I don't think this format is working for the story you want to tell, though. Thanks for letting us read it! Notes while reading: pg 1: "M galloped into the cheers." --not sure what this means, especially as a first sentence. pg 1: --the whole first paragraph is a lot of "He did X" "He did Y." --tense change from paragraph 1 to 2 pg 1: Is this a children's story? I'm getting that sort of feeling from the sentences on the first page. pg 2: okay, I don't think this is a children's story. The phrasing on the first page seemed that way. pg 3: "to sit up straighter and improve his posture." --saying the same thing twice. pg 5: Wait, who is John? I'm not quite sure who all these people are and why they're on the Council. They also seem to just be congratulating themselves for 5 pages. Not sure where this is going yet. pg 5: "H stole a drink of M’s soup and locked young J’s head in his arms, jerking him around to make the others laugh. J struggled to get away." --this is...strange. pg 5: "But the monsters never got a trail" --trial? --also, I thought he was already killing trolls, but then elves -> witches -> trolls. Also also, are elves classified as "monsters?" I can sort of see the other two. pg 6: "The possessed men" --what possessed men? pg 6: "A lecherous laugh..." --ah, I guess that was a flashback? Needs a better indication. pg 7: “Sir M, we have a special mission for you.” --ah, I think this may be the start of the story, but especially for a short story, this needs to come a few paragraphs from the beginning. pg 8: "We are being killed.” --I mean, considering how they've been acting, I'm not surprised. pg 9: "political, social, and economical demands that benefit the monsters in the forests" --The monsters living in the forest have an established economy and politics? pg 11: They're still giving M his mission when this should be the first page or so of a short story... pg 12: “The monster is a woman?!” --a "big reveal" of someone being female isn't really a surprise. Also, how did M arrive at this conclusion? pg 12: “Women are known for being corrupted...Easily manipulated" --my eyes are literally rolling. pg 13: “I don’t kill humans.” --I thought he only killed monsters, not that he doesn't kill humans... pg 13: "protect women like my mother and sister." --His sister and mother are witches? pg 13: all this protestation about not going after women because of X and Y features is pretty cringey and chauvinistic. pg 13: “It’s bad business.” --huh? pg 13: The whole paragraph starting with “Many villagers support..." I...these may have indeed been sentiments at one time, but I don't see a need to write as if they were truth now. Equating beauty to goodness is pretty dated by our society. pg 14: "How could Miniver kill someone who didn’t look like a monster?" --yeah, this is my problem. Showing the baselessness of beauty = goodness is one thing, but M seems to believe it as well, and now you're giving voice to an outdated and incorrect belief. pg 14: wait, who's L? Is this is monster killer? How does M suddenly know who she is? pg 16: So somehow they're fighting now, and then L gives a two-page sermon on how bad the Council is, which we could easily tell from the first couple pages. And then she wins. hmm.

You've also got my comments on this one. I'm interested to see (but not really surprised) that @kais has some of the exact same comments as I do. I liked this one a lot better than the first chapter and I also think this (minus the first few pages) is the real starting place for the story. I notice we also made the same comments about telekinesis / hydrokinesis. On the other hand, you'll find I'm a lot more lenient on POV changes than @kais ;-) On this chapter and continuing, I still have questions on the worldbuilding. I'm pretty sure I is fully human, as if her family, but there seems to be human/animal hybrids, mythical creatures (which I guess would just be normal creatures here...) and standard animals who have intelligence. On things like chairs, I don't have too much trouble, since we see that a lot in SF with aliens, but I have more issues with the standard animals that have intelligence. Can they open doors? Do they live indoors? Also, since the setting is a restaurant, that brings to mind meat products and what/who is being eaten... How do you tell a horse is sentient? Are there sentient fish? Also, many questions on the system of government, and what it was like before vs. after the takeover. The tech level seems more like early 20th century, at the time when many monarchies were falling, but I'm interested in how the war has affected the city rather than "regulations." It's a chaotic time, and I'm thinking there would be far more signs of the chaos. Still intrigued by the story and interested as to where it's going!

Much better first chapter. We get some good tension between Me, Mi, and T. I like the intro with saving Mi as well. Gives us some good background about him. Definitely more interested in reading, now the mixer is moved to the next chapter. We also get a much better explanation of what Me is and how she works. On the fight scene, I though it was pretty good, but yes, a little sparse. There's a lot about limbs contacting places, but not much about where the two fighting are in relation to each other. I wouldn't add much more, because it's pretty good, but maybe a few things about how the demon moves in or away, and how Me reacts. It also gives better intent to the character feelings and direction to the scene. I didn't mark a lot of the grammar stuff, but this submission, specifically at the beginning, had a lot of very long sentences that could have been divided into two. Looking forward to the next one! Notes while reading: Pg 1: "Lose bits of sidewalk crunched" --This is not a well-kept sidewalk if it's crunching that much... pg 1: "and sprinted down the street" --did she move from sidewalk to street? pg 1: "The scabbard strapped to her thigh irritated her as the leather chafed her skin." --cool detail, but if she's used to carrying it, then would it still irritate her, or would it be comforting? Would she have built up a callous? pg 1: "so she could use her healing powers..." --this sentence gets a bit long and run-on. pg 1: coudl probably cut the line starting with "If she stumbled across one..." this is starting to go on a bit. pg 2: "igniting the drawings etched into" --missing a word. pg 2: "and had comic book panels instead" --that's awesome. pg 2: "An etching of Captain Marvel" --nice. pg 6: "The reason she was exhausted today." --redundant. pg 6: "but her hair was tangled around the pins on the girl’s messenger bag." --Ha! That's awkward... pg 6: The pronoun intro works a lot better now since it's after we see the pin. pg 8: "that way they’re still awake by the time I actually start teaching" --Something weird about this sentence. Is he's saying M will wake the students up for the professor? Usually people get more tired through a class, so the "boring" person would go first, while people are still awake, then the more entertaining person would go, to wake people back up.

Hahahaha! I think that's my first literal cliff-hanger (or fall-er...)!

Thanks @Snakenaps! not...precisely... This should get explained later on. Let me know if it isn't. Just the Eff. Yep! Doh. Thanks. These are good questions! I looked this up because @Robinski made the opposite remark on an earlier chapter. "Bass" is technically correct for only a music term. "Base" just means low, or a foundation. So it could sort of be either in this situation? Ha. Lizards with too many legs and teeth on their bellies... yep. Ha! Except I moved a chapter forward, so you'll have to wait another week anyway... Thanks again...great feedback!

Thanks @Snakenaps! Your critiques are a delight to read! You'll see pretty soon! Cool! I had fun writing xyr in this book. Gotta have my curmudgeonly characters. Ha! Well got a like from one person on the description! I will probably cut this down a bit, just to get to the next part. Interesting thought... Lol...I had fun with this. Well, xy's going to now... You have good thoughts! Thanks so much!

Hey! Not only is it only one chapter this week (though a long one), it's totally new content! I moved this chapter in front of the last E/I ones you've read on the last time through. I think this order works but let me know as we get through those chapters next time. Let me know what you think! Previously: S/E/I arrive in the other facet with their news of the Elg. The Eff and court are there, E has problems with trust, and E/I learn about their folks. The Eff faints shortly thereafter. E battles the voices inside her as they travel to the Ari, and attacks S. In the Ari enclave, I struggles with his image, we learn of the Ari, and E and I use each other's houses for the first time. M arrives with the society to the Imp and is attacked by Elg. People die and M finds himself with more and more responsibility as they attempt to figure out what's going on. They learn the Eff is also killed, and M makes clever use of a portal to save his life. Ri and co arrive on HD's homeworld, gather themselves, then engage the Elg in the Imp. They barely escape, and find out where other refugees have gone. S/E/I learn more about the Ari and find there's only one hammock in the bedroom. They all attempt to pass through the wall, but are stopped by the Elg. S devises a new plan and they try again, with disastrous results.

Thanks as always @Robinski! Ha! Yeah, I debated heavily putting this in because of the connotations, but eventually decided it fit. Cool. Sounds like I have some work to do with this description, since a few people have had problems with it. Will work on clearing it up! Will make this specific. Yep, another place where description is hard. I may go work with @shatteredsmooth's suggestion to make it more trippy...though that may make it worse. I'll fiddle with it. Awesome. Seems to be working better overall, in any case.

Thanks @Robinski! I'll be looking forward to the LBLs you haven't done and aren't emailing ;-) A lot of this got added in later drafts to Seeds. I need to add some more in Facets, too. Check on less background. This will get cut down to size. Yeah, I was iffy on this line. It might well get cut. Also probably on the chopping block. There is some of the bridge inside the wall, but I either need to explain better or cut it. Cool! Yep. This is an artifact of cutting too much stuff from different chapters and lumping it together. Glad the overall intent seems to be working, though.

Thanks @shatteredsmooth! Glad this is working better. Yeah, I was having the same feeling when I read through that section. Channeling the mirror dimension may be a good way to put some more description in there!

Thanks @shatteredsmooth! I looked back at it and the description does go on a bit. I think I combined things I had spread out over several chapters before. I can cut it down.