C_Vallion

In regard to the PoVs: It doesn't bother me much in this format (weekly submissions already break up the flow of reading as it is), but I think if I were to read this in book form, it would be distracting. I read a lot of multi-pov books, and like having a bunch of different viewpoint characters, but jumping back and forth in such short scenes makes it harder for me to get settled into one part of the story before we jump over to another place/time/character and have to reestablish our sense of place. Overall, I like this string of scenes, but it doesn't quite feel like a single chapter. I don't know if that's because the jumping from pov to pov makes it harder to feel the cohesive through-line of it or if my mind just gets too stuck on the "One pov per chapter. Or maybe two on rare occasions if you're desperate" idea that I tend toward more. My biggest issue is just that I don't buy that An forgot about the "bite". Especially because the events were so clearly detailed in the previous chapter. Maybe if there's a little confusion about what was going on at the time (He feels something, and sees the damage to his glove, but is too busy trying to keep people alive to pay close attention to a little pinch), this forgetfulness would be a little easier to accept. As it is, something about having it clearly observed in his pov makes it stick as something he actively remembered. Pg 1: “itching inside the skin.” *shudder*. Did he not get that checked out? Do they have the resources to do a thorough medical inspection? It’s odd to me that they’d overlook any potential contamination when several of their supersoldiers were liquified the day before and things are sort of falling apart. Pg 2: “carven” -> cavern “The big woman…” The clarity of who is talking to who and waving who away could be better in these sentences. Is either this Vagal or this Generational present enough through the chapter to be named? Even a reminder that “the big woman” is H. “Someone” A Generational, I assume? The same Generational mentioned in the previous paragraph? ‘thrower looks funny to me every time I see it. Pg 3: “Any soldier…” this seems like a pretty thorough viewpoint change from his lack of concern about the fungus the day before. It’s odd for it to come up now when we’ve seen A torching fungus in every scene he’s been in so far without too much concern. And I hadn’t gotten the impression that he’s skeptical of the admins until now. I feel like the former can be excused by the rather traumatic experience of the day before, but the latter seems like it should have come across more strongly early on. Pg 5: Did they have dogs onboard? Or lily pads? I don’t think wide-open needs the hyphen What happened to the water purification systems they were using on the ships? Can river contamination really be that much worse than purifying/recycling water from human/animal waste? Though I guess if they’re chemically purifying the water on the ships, they know what sort of contaminants are there to treat/filter out, whereas they wouldn’t know how to deal with the contaminants in the river water. Part of me says that should be called out here. The rest of me knows most people will probably take him at his word, and it’s probably fine to go into the rest of it on Pg 6 like you do. Pg 6: It’s hard not to see “binged” as the binge-watching sort of binged. Maybe italicize to signal the onomatopoeia? Or use a different word? “At first he’d thought the water was perfectly clear” Is this referring to his first glance at the test results? Or what he’d thought before testing it? Either way, if he’s only recognizing the contaminants now, then why was he concerned about how they would purify it on page 5—if he hadn’t yet known how fungus-filled it was? If the water on the ships was being treated for various bacteria/mold/etc., isn’t there a possibility that the same chemical treatments would work here? I don’t know enough about how universal fungicide chemicals might be. If it’s the sort of thing where you can just bleach everything or not. Most of what I know about fungi is that they are really strange and do all sorts of odd things. But even if it’s not something that would actually work, it seems like something Al might suggest. Pg 7: Well, I don’t know if it’s a common opinion, but I like watching poor Al try to figure out a water purification system. Pg 8: Again, I don’t know anything about fungi, but I do enjoy watching F do science. Also, ten points to @Ace of Hearts for the genetics 101 lesson. “…and he usually was” Snort. Not the most humble of scientists, are we? Pg 9: One of the frustrations I’m having with the PoV switches is the moments when one PoV character is referring to another section’s PoV character, who we know by name, but the current PoV character doesn’t. Usually it’s been in reference to something that just happened, and there’s enough context to put it together, but there have been a couple points when it hasn’t been entirely clear. Is this the Generational we were just hanging out with? Or some other one with a similar job? And same at the beginning of F’s PoV. I assume the “nervous little processor” is Al (because story), but it wouldn’t surprise me if every single processor involved with this whole disaster of a landing isn’t also rather nervous about the whole thing. Finding a way to slip the names in might make it easier for those struggling with the PoV jumps to make those transitions a little more smoothly. “At least the balcony…” this is a really long sentence. I get that it’s important to see what J is actually hearing and what she’s reacting to here, but F repeating what we just learned on the page above is a little repetitive. Especially when he has already explained it to her off-page. Pg 10: Things like this text from C are the sort of thing I think need to come right at the front if we’re seeing a known named character in a section where the PoV character doesn’t know their name. “I’m still waiting…” Yeah, everything up to here is a little repetitive after we saw F figure it out above. “air typed”? Pg 11: Well, if they can consume it, that fixes their river purification issue. “sounding”? “back calculation” should probably be hyphenated. Pg 12: Might be helpful to mention the thumper and soundings in the first paragraph on this page. Right now we get the “sent her …to find other caverns.” But what does that actually look like? What’s the “thumper”? “gestate children” this raises questions about their reproduction system. I’d figured they had to be managing that somehow on the ships to keep populations in order, but wasn’t sure what it meant beyond that. Is it possible for them to have kids via …traditional means? Or are there technological things preventing that? I recently read a fantasy book that had a sort of magic-bullet birth control thing that didn’t make any sense from a biological standpoint, but was a major plot point (and therefore irritated me to no end). I’m not sure if I would be wondering about the world-building here otherwise or not. Pg 13: The potential lack of communication about children between Ag and D still bothers me. I know you’d mentioned in one of the other chapters that it becomes clear eventually, and I don’t think we need to know the specifics answer to when/if she wants kids or why, but I do think we need to know if D is aware of her opinion on the matter. Almost every scene where the two of them are conversing, something about the question of kids comes up. And overall, they’re presented as having a close, trusting, supportive relationship. But either D is ignoring her concerns/hesitation by pushing the matter (which is rude, and Ag’s patience with it is saintly) or she has never told him about her concern/hesitation (which shows that they’re not as close and trusting as they would otherwise seem). And I think that is an important character detail we need to have early on. It’s an interesting conflict, and one that works well in the setting. Starting a new civilization. What’s the legacy? Will our people survive long enough to even pass a legacy on to anyone else? The conflict fits the overall conflict of the story well, but having a better idea of where the matter stands between them is going to be helpful in getting a stronger picture of who Ag is. Especially if she’s a primary character. Pg 14: “oozing…” Well that’s not good. He didn’t think that might be something to have checked out? “I can’t see anything wrong” … “but just about everyone else who came into contact with the mushroom that bit me is dead now.” There just seems to be an odd lack of concern about this. Pg 15: Yeah…I’m not quite believing that he would have forgotten that. Pg 16: Might want to be sparing in the use of “palpate” It’s a good word (especially for this sort of medical prodding), but is definitely unique enough to notice when it appears twice in a few pages. Gross. Though I do like this turn of events.

I feel like the first scene focuses on collateral damage and how the mission is in trouble for much longer than necessary, since the point is gotten across well pretty early. I don’t think it needs additional excitement added (especially if it’s directly following the action at the end of the previous submission), but trimming/condensing would go a long way. I liked the second scene as a whole, but mentioned a couple things in the LBLs that threw me off. Pg 1: The numbers in the second paragraph should be hyphenated. “two broken legs” My instinctive thought on reading this wording is “does she have more than two to break?” The collateral damage detailing on pages 1 and 2 seems to go on longer than necessary. Pg 4: I like the description of the perpetually grumpy four-legged animals. Though I imagine the animals would have adapted to zero-G as well (to some extent)? Especially the ones with shorter lifespans/reproductive generations (whatever the proper term for that would be), where genetic traits or mutations that make them better suited for zero-G would be passed along more often. Makes me curious about what level of microevolution has taken place over this time, and how those changes now make full weight-bearing and normal walking a challenge to their survival as well. Do their muscular/skeletal systems still follow the same gait mechanics (a question which also carries over to the humans) if they’re going from mostly “swimming” to walking? “Pigs were thriving” Well that’s a small mercy. At least there’s bacon. Pg 5-6: More collateral damage description that seems to go on longer than needed to get the sense of things. “running a marathon” Is this terminology they’d be familiar with? Or is there some zero-G physical challenge that would be a fitting substitute? Pg 7-8: I’d suggest tying this “creepy cave” to the previous scene a little sooner. Last time we saw A, he was on flamethrower duty out at the edges (which seemed to be a mostly-by-himself job). The opening line of this scene and lack of mention of anyone else around him makes me think he’s still on flamethrower duty, just in a different location, and I was confused why he was so excited about this assignment involving mushrooms until we got to the mention of the others who are present. “told them where the injured…” splitting up the physical description with this phrase makes the sentence flow here a lot more jagged. Especially since the “still had those…” is a fragment. Makes me want to attach it to the phrase immediately preceding it, instead of as contrast to the “nice smile”. I’d probably recommend keeping the physical description together. Pg 9: “mat” isn’t a helpful term for me to picture this. Also, wisps of what? “all be experts soon.” Unfortunately, not soon enough…so that’s too bad. Pg 10: “mushroom breeding ground” gross. Also, efficient fungus is efficient. So much for steak dinner. “puff of dust” that’s probably fine. Yep. Won’t go horribly wrong at all. Pg 12: The blocking here is a little confusing. Pg 13: Oh. And now everything’s fine. (well, not really. But A thinks so). The build-up over the previous couple pages led me to expect the “recognizing the fungus as the threat and flamethrowing them” stretch to be drawn out a little longer. Or to involve more than just flamethrowing them. “Nothing melted…” Yep. That’s probably also fine… Oh. We’re still flamethrowing. And here to the end is more what I was expecting from the build-up earlier on. But that couple of paragraphs receiving and following mission directions in a mostly-orderly way really pulled me out of the tension. I think there needs to be a clearer breakdown in order and communication here for the tension to carry through.

Pg 1: I like the opening, but there’s some clunkiness to the first full paragraph that could be smoothed over. The present-tense is also making it feel a little clunky, but I think that’s more me not being used to it than actual grammar issues. “still wants to feed the gulls” pov shift? Pg 2: Is all death sacrifice? I’d try to echo the phrasing of the opening line here. “In addition to death…” Why change tenses for the new scene? Especially to have a past-tense scene after a present-tense one? (checking back in after re-reading the questions, I like the past-tense.) Pg 5: So how many of these witches are nurses or doctors or hospice workers who might just happen to be nearby? Are they allowed to use magic from people who have just died of natural causes? Or unpreventable ones? Pg 6: “It was why she had moved here.” and “witch who’d killed” tense errors. The last thing mentioned as “F hated…” was her hating killing things. Using the same phrase here seems…excessive. Long and maxi say the same thing. The pronouns used for the dead person change through here. Pg 7: I’d be cautious about adding too many named characters here at once. Maybe have one or two additional named people in this scene, and assign a couple of the lines to unnamed people in the room. Seems like S and H are the key important ones. “Dead for a few days…” I’d look up some information on what level of decomposition it would be at by then. Or check with one of RE’s resident medical experts. I assume a body doesn’t stay all that neat if it’s been in the water for even a few days. Pg 8: Ooo. Lobster restaurant. Sneaky. Is the ratio of magic per creature related to size? Complexity? Overall: This was a fun one! As is often the case, I was hooked by the interesting magic system, and would definitely be interested in seeing it play out. I would say that you could trim down the ring-finding scene. It’s a nice chance to show what the magic can be used for, and to get us to the location where she finds the body, but it could probably be trimmed down to a few paragraphs. Especially if G is already aware that magic is capable of helping to find things. Maybe she even called F over to find it? There are some little typos and missing words throughout that you could probably catch with a grammar checker or just by waiting a bit and re-reading, but that’s fixable. Also, I can’t remember where it was mentioned, but when F mentions that she’s only been there a couple weeks, I think having a brief note of why she moved there could be helpful to tie us to her. Also, I’m not sure how many people are familiar with Mount Desert Island. If the coastal Maine setting/touristy-ness/etc. is important, that might be helpful to call out more clearly. Looking forward to seeing what you do with this one.

Mind if I submit a revised version of my Prologue/Chapter 1 from the fall? Curious to see if the changes I made since then fix some of the pacing issues through the middle.

I'd look into this a little more. You'll get a blast wind from an explosion, or from something like an asteroid hitting (where the impact forces are being taken on by the asteroid and causing the explosion), but I don't think you'd have a significant blast from a metal plate landing knife-edge first from that height. The volume of air displaced by the falling object over that cross-section isn't all that significant (though it would definitely sever almost anything underneath it), and while there will be some whooshing from turbulent airflow around it (I think), there's not enough friction the air and the plate to "pull" the air down with it. You'd get a decent shock-wave through the ground, though. Especially since the ground is going to be what's absorbing the impact forces. It might be enough to knock people off their feet (I'm not even going to start thinking of the calculations that would go into that...), and I'd accept that the shockwave was enough to give the rest of the ship a good shake (to help dislodge the top bit that needs to fall) without too much complaining. https://youtu.be/3g2Nf-6WfsU This is the closest thing I could find to a helpful visual reference. 1000 ft vs. 1/2 km is not insignificant, but if you look at the sandbag drop at 4:26, there is some dirt kicked up (though it's hard to say how much of that is just the sandbag exploding, which would make it a more traditional blast wind), but it's not significant. There's some dirt kicked up when the dummy is dropped as well, but it's not extensive either. And while the plate falling is a massive difference in mass and overall size, I can't think of any reason that the greater mass would have an impact on the air being displaced (except in its effect on the fall speed) when the cross section landing in the ground is as small as it is. Feel free to throw correcting resources at me. Airflow dynamics weren't something I did advanced study on (and it's been...several years since I've taken classes on these sorts of things), so there could be forces involved that I'm missing. Either way, you're probably fine for the more catastrophic building fall at the end (though I'd make sure the blocking of it is clear), and the plate falling is still going to be plenty terrifying enough to make people go running screaming out of the way, even if there isn't a wind blast. So there's plenty of room there for similar injuries/terror. And I bet the lingering ringing of the plate is going to be its own terrifying thing. So it's sort of crumpling around where the plate was? For lack of better phrasing. This helps a bit, though I'd have questions about how much of it has been disassembled at this point, to have enough flex that it would list that far (assuming that the forces would be taken on by some inner cage at that point, once the outer shell is removed?). Also, maybe stressing that for some reason, they were removing some lower plates before upper plates (maybe some teams are working faster than others). If the missing support is closer to the ground with more weight over top of it, that "hinge point" that it's listing toward is going to be having more forces on it. I think if the "metallurgist/engineer" is worried about removing the lower plates before the upper ones because there isn't enough support to hold the top (maybe with a less technical visual from our pov character about how it looks like some twigs holding up ...something heavy? A specific thought isn't coming to mind at the moment. And that it already looks precarious. Also, is she imagining things, or is it swaying slightly in the wind?), it might be easier to picture when it falls. Unless my description there is also contrasting with what you're picturing. In which case I'll see how the description of the damage clarifies things. As previously mentioned, I assume 95% of people probably won't be bothered by most of this. And if it hadn't been for the blast wind, I probably wouldn't have been pulled out of the story to think more about it. But at that point it turned into a puzzle. This one's not too far short of my husband and I trying to put together force diagrams and theoretical equations for. We're super fun to have at parties...

Just realized all my page numbers are off…apparently the document previewer in gmail divides documents into numbered pages but doesn’t bother to make them match the actual document? Or something? Hopefully it won’t be too hard to track down where things are, though. Overall: Apologies for random nit-picking about magic systems. I like magic systems, so I probably pay more attention to them than most would. I like getting more information about how the magic works through here, even if it does inspire some questions (which, again, most people might not care about). I think the biggest concern is just that there are a lot of things that could be streamlined. Especially in Chapter 2. And it would be helpful to get a better sense of the stakes. If A is discovered, what happens? Whatever happens with Chapter 2 based on the changes you decide to make in Chapter 1, I think getting some background on the magic and some information about J is important this early in the story. Especially to give the extra detail that A can’t really even afford to let their guard down at home (and probably wouldn’t anyway) due to J’s magic allergy. Whether that is presented as a “going home for a bit” chapter is a different question, and I think it depends on what you decide to do with Chapter 1. I don’t mind slower chapters if I’m learning interesting things about the world and characters, but I know that’s not always the case. Thanks for sharing! Still enjoying the story and curious to see where things are going. Pg 1: “when they got home” unnecessary phrase. “hide under a pile of blankets” I can sympathize. I’ve had a few of those days this week. “evening shift” is probably adequate unless the specific time is important. I assume the chaos is what they’re finding inside the help center? Might want to indicate that more clearly. “They opened the door to find chaos.” As it was, my brain was still trekking across campus. What’s the ethernet do? Pg 2: The lead-in up to where they’re thinking about SO66 could be trimmed back a good deal without losing too much. “The way a MUP accessed…” This would mean more if we knew something about how regular mages access their magic. What colleague? Pg 3-5 I feel like each step forward here lingers a little too long. It makes it drag a bit overall. I think it mostly needs streamlining. I think moving R’s “This is my first semester…” up to where A’s just seeing her would be helpful in placing the reasons she’s there. Otherwise, there’s a lot of “What’s she doing here asking about a paper if she was one of A’s friends?” going on. Do we need to know O and C’s names at this point? Were they classmates as well? “This was a pretty common thing…” Their comment? Or hers? Haven’t they done tutoring before? “barely known” typo. I know there were also a few typos that I noticed in passing, but didn’t write down. Probably worth running a grammar check to see if it catches them. Pg 6-9 This stretch needs streamlining as well. Less about the specific assignment, mostly. Also, it feels like A guesses what the paper is about before she really mentions much about it. She mentions she had an experience related to healing that she wants to write about. If she had been planning to become a healer, couldn’t it have been any number of things? There’s a random blank line in here after “I explain it in the paper” Pg 9-10 “curse in her head” I’m curious as to how much magical is a thing with a physical manifestation. Which then immediately makes me wonder how it interacts with standard physics. I apologize for any future rambling this results in. If the story is going to have a through-line related to magical-healthcare accessibility, going into detail on some of this is fine, but if it’s not a big focus, I’d try to trim this back to the very basics. Most readers will get the gist of health insurance being a miserable frustration. Though I suppose it’s probably a little less intuitive to non-Americans. Pg 11: “It looked so magical” what does this mean in a world where magic is a real, usable thing? Is magic known for being pretty? We haven’t really seen any examples of it being so yet, except maybe for A’s big bullets to flowers magic, which seemed like an exception. The description of what magic is makes me wonder what was meant above by removing fragments of a curse from R’s head. Also, are each of these examples sort of specialties of magic that require their own study? I see how some of them could lend themselves toward a dedicated study program at a school, but others are a little more vague. As someone who likes hard magic systems, I immediately wonder 1. How the magic interacts with physical sciences. 2. Whether the magic is looked at as more of a hard science or an art. 3. Where are the limits of each specialty if magic is the raw energy of creation. If it’s raw energy, are there clear limits on it? Pg 13: “Wow.” J’s response here feels like the response to a normal stressful day, not necessarily a “Several people are about to discover the past I’ve been hiding from for more than a decade” day. “Did you hear…?” The full description here feels a little repetitive when we’ve heard it already. Could probably just stick with “Did you hear what’s happening with SO66?” or something similar. There are a few places in their conversation that could be made a little smoother, or where you could emphasize their closeness/familiarity with one another. That works well where J is pulling them out of their spiral, and is aware of what caused it and how to respond, but there are other lines that feel a little maid/butlery, or at least more formal/specific than I’d expect from people who are familiar with one another. Pg 15: If they have healing magic that would prevent cardiac events, don’t they have healing magic that would ease physical aspects of psychological/mental health issues (this mostly jumps to mind because current plans for PoP’s magic system involve healing magic being used to slow heartrates and ease muscle tension at a few points when my Al’s anxiety is flaring up.) Pg 16: “Allergic to magic” This feels like something we should know earlier (though I’m not sure where it makes sense to do that). Is this a common thing in this world? How does it manifest itself? How can someone be allergic to raw energy? Wouldn’t that be similar to being allergic to electricity? Also, it feels odd that the illusion would be the better option to be near her, since it’s instinctive to think of an illusion being a magical thing. I guess it’s more of a warding shield thing? It’s just odd to think of that as tying into the illusion instead of actively working against it.

Overall, I like seeing the different angles of settling in. I also like the fact that something does go horribly wrong in the construction, but had a lot of trouble picturing the play-by-play of it, and what I was picturing wasn't quite matching the physics described. Specific nit-picking/thoughts/etc. in LBLs below. Pg 1: “people had been stored…” A funny, but fitting word choice. Pg 3: I like the contrast between Ag’s optimism about how the day’s going and And’s opinion. Pg 6: Ear-splitting, and thumping seem to be opposite sorts of noises in my head. Not sure if that’s just me, though. “week-schedule” What have the Gens been using all this time? Have they been following some sort of five day work week plus weekend? Seems odd that they wouldn’t have established something different based on the needs of the ships. Pg 9: “earth culture.” Gotcha. That would do it. Pg 10: “metallurgist” I feel like a metallurgist would know the properties of the metal itself well (and the methods of forming/strengthening/processing it), but wouldn’t be the one to know where the stress points are going to end up in a construction project. That sounds more like a civil/mechanical engineering specialty. “Doesn’t matter.” What could go wrong? I have a feeling the answer is a lot. A lot could go wrong. Pg 11: Odd to me that some of the profanity has stuck around. Saw someone swearing by the stars earlier, which makes sense. Feels odd to have sex-related terms used as profanity this far down the road, though. Though I guess if the V have been sleeping half the time, they’d have less perceived time/culture change. Relatedly, what does “a foul” mean to them, culturally? Since I assume we aren’t playing baseball on the ships. Pg 12-13 The blocking through here as she’s running away is a little confusing. Air blast from the piece falling? How big are these? How far away is she? Having trouble seeing this as credible physics, but I’m not sure if I’m just not visualizing it correctly. It’s not an explosion. Just whatever air was underneath the falling panel being displaced. Very quickly, sure (though even that depends on gravity and air density. Gravity is less here than on earth, right?), but it’s not getting additional propulsion from some explosive force. “gashes in her legs” Again, this seems excessive. But I could be misunderstanding the blocking/events. “Buried ten feet deep” So it landed on an edge? Then how did it displace enough air to create an air blast? Does it have any lingering ringing noise going on from residual vibration? (contrasting the stated silence) Pg 14: “A thousand times worse.” Yeah. This I believe will be throwing out some debris. “Ship hadn’t been designed for forces like these” This seems like an odd observation for her to have. Not belittling the sewage-maintenance team, but does she know what forces the ships had been built to withstand? And if the original builders had intended the ships to become buildings, wouldn’t they have taken that into consideration? Where they would have intentionally made them to withstand such forces? And probably overcompensating on the factor of safety in case they were in a higher-gravity environment than earth? I think this is why I don’t read a lot of sci-fi…it’s hard to turn off the engineer-brain. I’m having a lot of trouble picturing this last section. Both how the top is falling (is it not going to hit anything that’s going to slow it down? How has it gotten that far free of the rest of the building/ship? It’s not going to fall any faster than the single plate. If anything, if the other landed on-end, the ship piece is going to have more air resistance and reach terminal velocity sooner. Though it will also be displacing far more air as it lands. Depending on the shape of it. It could funnel a lot of the air upward depending on the structure/shape of the piece). Okay. I’m done poking at things no one else cares about...

Overall, very enjoyable. Most of my issues are in the first scene, but I’ll just point you to details in the LBLs, since I tend to go into more detail there, anyway. Pg 1: So, is C her assistant? The wording in the introduction is a little unclear. Is there a reason C has a “modern” name if he was there in the initial generation? Chuck -> chunk? Pg 2: “sari artfully clipped…” Hah. Yeah, that would be a problem there. Though I’m curious what you mean by pantsuit. I also wonder if this is meant to be a full traditional sari (which would require far more than clipping) or some altered version. A sari is basically a 6 yard long piece of fabric wrapped/tucked/draped into place. I’m not sure it would even be possible to wrap in a low/no-grav situation. Some sort of highlight embellished salwar kameez might be a good alternative, since she knew she’d be going into this gravity situation at the start (and it would still probably need some clipping). For reference, here’s an “easy sari draping tutorial”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6rX0cWf-_M Pg 3: Why would him being woken up early mean a risk of losing command to him? It was to deal with an issue on his ship, right? And even if it had been for a full fleet thing, wouldn’t her being kept in sus-ani just mean it wasn’t important enough to bother the higher-ups? “eyes took in everything.” This seems similar to the take-away feature of the person on page 1. This is a lot of people to be introducing in one conversation. Especially when each one has a paragraph of description added in. It doesn’t help that it feels like we are going to each person at the table in turn for their relevant, character-defining comment, which feels a little forced. Is there any way to have a smaller group of the characters who will be most central first, to nail down those characters, and bring the others in later? Especially if we’re supposed to be able to remember all of this as we go. I’m always up for a political discussion (clearly), but it’s really tricky to make them sound natural while introducing characters and plot-relevant details. Pg 4: I like the city name/title. Should it be capitalized if it’s the name? Or is it just a descriptive term for the type of city (“it’s not a city, it’s an arco…” vs. “The city’s name is..” ?) “three or four hundreds” How far along this are they? Missing the e from J’s name in the last paragraph. Pg 5: “even if they must share…” I’m sure this will go fine, without any unfortunate consequences that make anyone upset. Yep. Definitely. So J is the one formally in charge of the Admins. Was that stressed in her previous appearance? Because while it seems to be assumed (despite her mentioning concern that one of the others might make a play for that control), it’s not really clear what that means. Does she have a command-position-title that everyone decided on back on earth? Is she just the one who is more naturally stepping up to make decisions? Not knowing how concrete her power is makes it hard to tell if there’s any real risk to her losing it. But at this point, no one has even second-guessed anything she’s said. Pg 6: “Over the next hour…” it’s unclear how much of this we should be tucking away for reference later. There are a lot of names and a lot of details attached to those names. If the point is more to create a sense that J is in charge and knows how to keep order among the rest of them, it’s getting bogged down in specifics. If we’re supposed to latch onto specifics, I think we need a bigger lantern hung on the ones we need to keep track of. At the moment, they’re all coming across as equally important, and while the names are helpfully distinct, there are a lot to keep track of without any more in-depth interaction with anyone specific. “No offence,…” I assume this is the same Ales-? I thought she’d been referring to someone else at the table at first. Also, is offence considered a more standard spelling? I’ve always spelled it offense. Silly English language… “face registered confusion” This isn’t the reaction I would have expected. He’d clearly put a lot of value on being the centerpiece of the city (makes sense. It’s the legacy of all their work that will stand as the focal point of the civilization). To pull that away, call his ship ugly, and cover it up with a meaningless platitude? I can’t see him having any response but to get bitter about it (at the very least). Insults hold more weight for people. They get held more closely. And they’re going to affect the way people receive information following them. Might make more sense to have her play into his pride first. Have him pleased with all he’s accomplished and assuming that those accomplishments will also be part of the legacy of their new civilization, then tug what he wants out from under him and end the meeting before he can process. The strategy with W pans out quite well, though. Nobody likes sitting in meetings when their part of it is over. Pg 7: I don’t buy that this goes this smoothly. There’s not enough push-back, and emotions aren’t all that high. There has to be a good deal of impatience and anxiety going into their back and forth here. This is what everything has been building up to, and setting the stage for the rest of their new civilization going forward. I’d expect tensions to be much higher. Pg 8: I continue to like the planet perspective scenes. Pg 9-10. Aw. Poor Al. I just want to pat him on the head and let him sit in a spaceship just outside of the atmosphere for the rest of his life. I like his desperate attempts to get someone to be worried about something. Anything. To slow or stop their approach. Pg 11: “…was going to be chaos.” I feel for ya, bud. Pg 12: “We’ll just have to carve out our own little place…” I’ m sure that will go fine. Pg 13: Not sure if Ag- is pushing back because she doesn’t want kids at all, or because she’s anxious having them at this point in time. While it might seem like a thing, it’s pretty character-defining in how she deals with conflict with people she loves. Is it an anxiety that he’s aware of, and just finds it hard to contain his excitement, because he figures it will work itself out? Or does she not want kids at all, but is unable to confront him with the fact? Getting some implication of one or the other would be helpful in understanding the character better. Pg 15: “…there was fire. There was death…” So…not the best first impression from the humans, then.

Sorry for the delay in critiquing! Pg 1: General note (because it’s something I am working on catching myself at): Phrases like “the soldiers used” and “he was reading” as they’re used here are repetitive or unneeded. We don’t need to know who usually uses the practice rooms, and we can assume N was reading the novel if he's holding it. “an idea from one of those books…” I feel like this usually implies some ridiculous idea that the person wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. Is inviting their brother along so strange? How old are they here? The jealousy from Z seems a little petty. “Both he and Z had been slow…” Several tense issues in this paragraph. Pg 2: How normal is vegetarianism in the culture? I wonder how odd it would seem to restaurant staff to deal with that sort of special dietary request, when many make a big fuss about it even in the modern era, when we all know the meat processing industry is a horrible mess and most people whine about making adjustments for food allergies. Pg 4: “…don’t trust your organization.” I’m with S on this. I’m still not clear on how Z got involved with the organization, what she hopes to achieve by being part of it, or what they expect her to be doing for them. Pg 5: There are a few pronoun shifts regarding the leader of the organization. “He wouldn’t.” “She’s going to give…” Pg 6-8 A lot of talking in these pages, some of which could probably be trimmed back. Also, aren’t they concerned about being overheard, when Z is clearly quite upset? Do the people there know who they are? I feel like several parts of the conversation would give their identities away. And wasn’t their brother trying to capture Z in one of the previous chapters? How has he missed that she and S meet up once a week? Pg 9: Probably don’t need the last part of this page discussing what to order. Pg 10: Also, using the term “aromantic” above, but going into roundabout explanation here in regards to her father seems odd. Especially since I’d expect more comparable cultures to have terms for homosexuality, while they probably wouldn’t have a term for aromantic The talking to herself seems odd enough at the end of the page (we haven’t seen any tendency to do that before now), but that being a slip-up that gives away information she’d guarded for several years makes it just seem plot-convenient. It also feels a little strange after having this big argument (which seems to have really affected her) with S for her to sit down and ponder about her family’s sexuality. Pg 13: I still have no idea what J has given as the reason for keeping refugees out of the city. It’s clear that Z disagrees with those reasons, but we don’t really have a why for that either. I think I’d need to know more about the details at the center of the current conflicts (The refugees. The insurgents. Why Z is living off by herself. Etc.) to see how the conflict between them plays into it. I didn’t really get the impression that the end of their conversation was a “That’s it, we’re through” until Z talked about S probably not coming back next week. Z wants S to be more active, but it doesn’t seem like he has any real responsibilities in the palace. What does she actually expect him to do without J shutting him down. Ultimately, I don’t know a ton at this point about what their individual goals are. We get that they both want to find the RA, but if that’s their main goal, how are they so at odds here, if they share a common top priority? Beyond that, I don’t think we know enough about where they stand in the political/social setting of the story (what power/influence do they have, and what do they plan to do with it?) at this point to fully understand the tension of their argument here. Z wants S to step up and act, but is that something he’s actually capable of doing? Z also wants to help the refugees, but we don’t know anything about why they’re even there or why J is so opposed to their very existence. I also don’t get super excited about supposedly pure-evil antagonists (shocking, I’m sure, considering PoP). So there’s still part of me that wonders why we hate J so much, and if I trust Z’s opinion about him. All of that being said, the basic idea of the conflict between a level-headed person trying to accomplish political change within the bounds of the laws while clashing with people who would rather overthrow the system and start from scratch is always intriguing to me (again: shocking, I’m sure, considering PoP). I just don’t think we have all of the details in place to make it work like it needs to. Which I fully sympathize with, having run into similar issues in all those early chapters of PoP that got cut. Because when the subtleties of the political situation are extremely important to the plot, they need to come across early, but we also need to be really engaged with the characters to care at all about the politics. I think your early chapters are trying to do too many things at once at the moment, and that while doing that, the important things are getting bogged down in things that could be introduced later.

I keep seeing it as Delia. Which may be how it's pronounced, but the h at the end makes me want to give the iah the same pronunciation as Jeremiah.

Pg 1: I wouldn’t necessarily consider rainbow-swirled to be in the pastel category, so the “equally pastel” comes across funny. The paragraph introducing G’s situation feels a little maid/butler. Especially the “…gift from G’s grandma” sentence. I think the “How could I forget…?” sentence might get the point of the previous sentence across on its own. “sugar film” ugh. Six-month ? I feel like that’s supposed to be hyphenated. “it’s not unusual to have lingering symptoms” This line plus the following sentence seems a little repetitive. “knocked over D’s cup…” Gah. Why does no one react to this happening? Pg 2: “…they have people for that.” Ways to make me dislike a person in five words, number 1. Though it also bothers me that D isn’t all that concerned either. “From her…backpack, Y pulled D’s laptop” Is there a specific reason this is in this order and not swapped? The wording feels awkward. Pg 3: There are a lot of “did”s in the second paragraph. The “had in fact” and the “did indeed” in the same sentence feels repetitive. “hooked her arm into D’s” I think Y would stress me out to no end if I interacted with her in real life. Give me my personal space bubble! “counter-culture”? another thing my brain wants to add a hyphen to. “act of god” God should be capitalized here. Unless you're shifting the phrasing to refer to some non-specific god, in which case it should be adjusted to fit. “she fumbled” I know I overuse em-dashes, but it seems like that or an ellipses would fit better after “it’s” The line is definitely a broken-off thought, and “she fumbled for the right word” isn’t really a saidism Pg 4: “went uncharacteristically silent.” For some reason, I read this as the car just turning itself off (no engine noise). Maybe consider rewording? A good portion of a page full of a whole bunch of street names seems like a lot. In general 6-7 street/development names on one page seems like a lot. And I like odd street names. Pg 5: “were C, and G’s grandmother” shouldn’t need the comment after C. C’s pronouns seem to shift back and forth from she to they throughout. Pg 7: “Right-side page” “three-sentence description” missing hyphens Pg 9: “No one was permanently injured” …but they did have to go through surgery and extensive medical care and related trauma. That’s not a concern? “Wow there” -> ”Woah, there”? Pg 12: “She led Y to a three-story…” typo and missing hyphen Pg 16: “Ignoring the fact that D was no longer responsible…” the phrasing of this makes it seem like D isn’t the one doing the ignoring. Maybe switch her name with the “she” in the next phrase? Overall: Dialogue, general text flow, etc. are all excellent as usual. The characters are also excellent for what they are, but Y just grates on me. I'm in the minority on that, and she does her job well. I just can't help being a bit overwhelmed by her. But, again. It's hard to say how much of that is due to reading at the end of a long, too-social week. I'm not entirely clear about the purpose of the meeting with G and C except to hand over the information about the warehouse. I'm not clear on what it would involve for her to be checking in on under "normal" circumstances.

I figured that might be the case, but having it pointed out could be helpful. Okay. I wondered if that might be the case. I think the biggest helpful thing would be to have people A- seems to trust/agree with push against their ideas a little bit. Maybe have them mention something off-handed about wealthy politicians or the military and have D or J either visibly bothered by it or make a comment that "x thing has its problems. I see them and have lived them, but there's more to it than that" if the relationship between student and teacher here allows for it. Just something to give an idea that not all of the characters are staunchly of exactly the same opinion, and that A's history gives them some stronger biases on some topics. I don't think so. The explanation makes sense, and I appreciate it. Mostly it stuck out to me because it called out the fact that my understanding of people's experiences with deadnames isn't very thorough, and I figured I'd ask about it since the forum gives me the opportunity to do that. If I came across it in a published book, I would probably just shrug and go with it. Thanks for the thoughts!

Pg 1: “They were expensive.” Hah. Yeah. They don’t address student loans in Harry Potter. “students could learn…where they taught writing.” I’m assuming the “they” here is referring to A-, but my thought on first reading was that it was referring to the students (and that it should be “where they were taught writing”). Which then made me have to read through the next sentence to make sure that “They” was referring to the students this time. You’ll probably want to be careful in places where it isn’t 100% clear whether they/them is referring to A-‘s personal pronouns or has some other antecedent. Most occurrences should be clear enough to readers, but it seems like something that may create points of confusion here and there if the sentence structure isn’t making the references clear. Pg 2: “Messenger bag” typo Why aren’t they looking at the mural? If what’s on it is important, I’d like a hint of that here. Even if it’s just why they aren’t looking at it. Is it too off-putting? Too beautiful? Likely to distract him from the class they’re about to teach? Personally offensive? Ether-tab? Like some sort of futuristic tablet? It hadn’t occurred to me until here to ask what the time period is. Apparently don’t start copying my bad habit of adding unnecessary filler words “spun out of the circle he’s been sitting in” You mentioned that we have a half-dozen people sitting at desks talking. That, to me, creates a different image than “circle”. The “spun” also seems tricky if D is sitting at a desk. It gets the enthusiasm right, but I feel like he would have to stand up first to “spin” Maybe have the enthusiastic motion in him jumping to his feet instead? “nervous” how long have they been teaching? Are they always nervous while teaching? Might be helpful to give some indication of whether their tripping over chairs and being nervous are normal things or if they’re extra stressed today. “A- had put their bag down” typo “…question now?” typo Pg 3: Is the existence of magic well-known, then? Is it generally considered a part of normal education? I’m curious about what sort of magic we are talking about. If it’s a specialized skill or something most people have some experience with. “if they were even allowed…” oh, good old liability issues… “All A- had thought…”typo I like the idea of ambient magic being fueled by emotion. Especially with a protagonist with social anxiety. Makes me wonder how much of that anxiety comes from the people aspect and how much comes from the magic aspect. It definitely makes me excited to learn more about the world and the characters’ interaction with it. As a side note, I think out of all of the things I’ve read of yours so far, A- has been the protagonist I’ve related to most. Social anxiety and frustrations with public education systems? Yup. It might not be flashy, but sign me up. I am further convinced that I’d like a little more clarification about the public perception of magic. Is this a class where all of the students happen to be on the same page, where D isn’t worried about mentioning something that might have other students giving him funny looks? The idea that a student march about magic might be looked at as insurrection seems odd to me without having any idea of where magic stands in society. You mentioned there are fancy private schools for it, so it can’t be all frowned upon by the powers that be. What makes it likely to garner police violence here? Pg 4: Magic not 100% controllable? I continue to be intrigued. Definitely need more information about what raising safety standards of the campus wards is supposed to mean in a practical sense. The stakes of slashing funding to magic programs is clear enough for A-. But I’m not sure what the latter part of it means to them. And not having a clear idea of where magic stands socially/what it’s capable of/ etc. makes it hard to get the significance of the back and forth at the end of the page here. Pg 5: More information on what the Republic means, please. I’d started out picturing modern American community college, especially with the bland basement hallway description at the start. Might need to hang some lanterns to suggest otherwise early on. Also, it might be worth going through and marking all of the references to their powerful secret identity who no one can know about. It’s pushing over into “Yeah, we know already” territory. Pg 7: I think getting the more detailed summary of the mural here instead of above is good, but I still think we could use a little more information at its first mention above. Even if it’s just a clearer reaction than avoiding looking at it. Mentioning that it always makes them antsy, or that it’s one of the newest murals, and they wished the artists had put it somewhere other than their classroom. Just something to give us a hint of *why* they aren’t looking at it. Also, come on, A-… you could have gone a little more subtle on the name change. “I was there that day.” *cringe* I bet that’s not going to be in any way concerning to A- “…hadn’t been there” typo Pg 9: “wondered how much paperwork…” ugh. I know this feeling well. Are potions and medications roughly equivalent? Okay. So these details here are the ones I feel like we needed earlier. This explanation of why no one is worried about the fancy schools teaching magic would have been really helpful to get more of the social/political circumstances around magic earlier on. Though I will say that the “wealthy wanting to hoard power” feels very blunt. I always get a little antsy when complicated concepts are painted with too broad a brush. Especially when A- has already mentioned that he’s at risk of losing control in a crowd and getting a bunch of people killed…that to me says there are some cautions to be considered, even if it’s not a common risk. “Monologue” typo? Google has weirdly decided in the past week to autocorrect all of my uses of dialogue to dialog, which has been endlessly irritating. I’m not sure how much of this is personal preference vs. actually correct. I’m not sure I’ve seen it spelled monolog before, but it’s technically a correct spelling… *shrug* Now that I’ve overthought this, I’m going to leave it with you. Pg 10: I like the retired Chosen One concept a lot. Pg 11: “supper” oh no. Not the dreaded lunch vs. supper vs. dinner debate. I will just mention that my general image of “supper” is a big family meal, or the big meal of the day, whether it’s near noon or evening. Dinner feels more fitting to me here, but I’m also aware that this is one of those things that varies wildly depending on region and culture and any number of other things. Also, I had to go back and check, because I hadn’t been thinking of this as an evening class. Maybe calling that out a little more clearly if it wasn’t (it’s possible I just missed it). Pg 12: “wives” plural is another thing I’d suggest some setting clarification for, since it’s another clear “not modern America” detail. Are P and D here B’s wives? I think that’s what it’s getting across, but am not 100% sure. And they all work here and have pretty influential positions at the college? Something about that seems odd to me, though I’m not entirely sure why. Pg 13: I don’t have a really good understanding of the range of thoughts and feelings associated with deadnames, so I found it interesting that A- specifically doesn’t consider Ai- a deadname. They clearly mentioned not wanting to hear it spoken, and don’t want to associate themselves with it anymore. It’s clearly an intentional distinction, and I don’t think it necessarily needs further explanation in-book, but I feel like it’s poking at a thing I don’t understand and would like to understand better. If you or anyone else on here would be up for providing any thoughts on some of the subtleties of the topic (without derailing the topic here entirely, since I’m sure there’s a ton that goes into it) Overall: 1. I really enjoyed the chapter, and would be excited to read more. I found the MC and the magic setup especially interesting, though I think some of the details of how magic is viewed could come in a little earlier. 2. I think the main things that were confusing were just the spots that pulled it out of the modern American community college setting that I’d expected from the opening. As long as there’s a lantern hung on that early on, though, I don’t think it would be an issue. The only other thing I saw as a potential concern is the very clear lines painted around the Big Bad. That fits a younger audience a little better, but if this is adult, I think there should be a little more acknowledgment of grayer areas of viewpoints. Right now we have the split of the fancy private magic schools that cost an arm and a leg to attend and the community college about to be shut down to preserve magic for the wealthy. Where’s D fit into that, coming from a wealthy family but attending the community college? Was there not a single person from that more wealthy social circle that he could sympathize with or be friendly with, even if they stood on opposite sides of some issues? And how’s J feel about military ties, or old war buddies who are now part of a police force that A- seems to see as a pure evil? How’s C feel about some random relative who was really influential in her development as an artist, and is a great person as long as you never mention x-political issue? Obviously this is just one chapter and can’t dig too much into the nuances of all of the characters’ opinions, but I’d make sure you’re leaving room for nuance in the characters’ views of the world. Not all of the “good guys” (the characters we like) need to be morally upstanding people. And antagonists can be people who love their families and are fun to hang out with, even if they’re pretty clearly jerks to everyone else. Granted, this is definitely a personal preference for me (probably not shocking, when considering that PoP’s antagonist is more a concept than a person, and isn’t clearly aligned with a “side”), so I’d see what other people’s opinions are on it. And I could very well be overthinking the couple of lines that made me jump in that direction. 3. I didn’t notice any points where it caused things to drag, but let’s be real, I’m not the best person to call this out. I’ll gladly listen to a character I like ramble. 4. In response to “Also, my non-binary main character uses they/them pronouns, and I haven't found any natural seeming place to explain their gender, and honestly, I'm not sure I want to explain it.” : Makes complete sense to me. I don’t know what publishing as a whole thinks, but I didn’t feel like there was anything missing on that front. I don’t see any need to take a detour from the story to spell it out for people, but, that’s also something that some other people on here probably have more valuable opinions on. There are far too many things I don’t know about trends and recommendations related to how non-binary people are presented in fiction. Thanks for sharing! I hope to read more!

I'd second this question. I can offer more thorough feedback if you think it will be helpful, but I wasn't sure it would be all that valuable since my recommendations are not likely to line up with your ideal audience's preferences.

For some reason it wasn't letting me copy/paste my LBLs in the previous message. So they're here: Pg 1: “cross-stitched” embroidered? “he heard D knock” how does he know it’s D? “he didn’t have much going for him…” Are you familiar with the three-pronged character development idea? That a character should be 2 out of 3 of competent, proactive, and sympathetic? If he’s going to declare himself incompetent, you’re going to want to make sure you’re really pushing those other two. https://writingexcuses.com/2014/03/30/writing-excuses-9-13-three-prong-character-development/ What exactly is D’s position? I don’t have a clear sense of it, but it seems odd for her to be striding in like she owns the place. “poured over” -> pored over Pg 3: “act fair…” Something about this seems off. Especially comparing it to treating the captive like a teenager. Teenagers will generally listen to the adult they’ve been assigned to as long as they aren’t out to cause trouble (thank goodness). An adult revolutionary has already proved that they are out to cause trouble and that they don’t recognize the authority structures that are set in place. Pg 4 I think a lot of the conversation through here could be trimmed down to the key details. Pg 5: I see the “letting go of the world” part (“letting images and words slide”), but where’s the “connecting himself to the Creator”? Are there scriptures or mantras or rituals that specifically connect him to the deity? Pg 6: D’s rebuttal at the end of the page doesn’t seem like an argument for S’s comment that “the creator would just know”. If anything, it seems to support his thought. If it’s a physical trait, it should fade. But if it’s supernatural, the actual passing on of physical traits shouldn’t matter. Her comments support the supernatural cause over the physical one. Besides, having a physical explanation doesn’t disqualify a supernatural one. Pg 7: The term powerwalking keeps throwing me off, because in my head it implies ladies in 70s workout clothes with little hand weights. Pg 8: I note this because it’s something I’ve been working on eliminating a lot in the past year (so I find myself noticing it elsewhere a lot more), but things like D’s “do you know where she is?” and S not really knowing, but not doing anything important before finding her anyway end up dragging out page time unnecessarily. There are a few detours like this that could be trimmed out to streamline things. Pg 10: Who is actually doing the interrogating here? Pg 11: I’m struggling to follow what we’re supposed to be learning/hoping for from this information. I keep grabbing on to random details, but there are too many to know what’s relevant and what’s not when we don’t have a good sense of what S’s driving goals are, how the interrogation is going to make progress in meeting them, or what information he’s hoping to get from her.

I'd agree that this is likely causing a lot of trouble. I am recognizing a lot of the troubles I was having at the beginning of PoP submissions, where the important things were all mentioned in passing, and vague side-stories were taking center stage. So you have my full sympathy for the amount of work in can take to get things in order. Feel free to message me to bounce ideas off of if you think it will be helpful while you're getting things in order. I know some of the messages we sent back and forth a while back were helpful for me in many ways, and I'm glad to return the favor if I can!

I'll pass on this week, but would like to claim a spot for the 14th if possible.

I like a lot of things in this chapter. It's nice to get everyone's thoughts about landing, and the various perspectives they have on the situation. Definitely makes me excited to see how the landing and what follows plays out. Pg 1-3 I’m torn about the names. I like that they’re similar to modern-earth names. It definitely creates the impression of having come from a world/culture the reader is familiar with, and I don’t have to struggle to figure out how to pronounce them in my head. However, being one letter different feels too close to the versions we’d see now to reflect intentional changes, and there wouldn’t be the blending of languages/cultures/etc. or hand-written census records to misread that would argue for it being accidental. Am I overthinking it? Yeah. Probably. But I’m weirdly fascinated by how naming conventions change over time (and why some names stick around spelled the same way forever), so it jumped out at me. Pg 3: “Though with D…” The clause split across paragraphs tripped me up a bit. “No sense reducing the structural strength” Good job, engineers. Space Sheep! Pg 4-5 I like the home-life scene a lot Pg 8: They aren’t just using some form of composting toilets to automate this? “…hit the fan.” *facepalm* Pg 9: I have questions about what they expect a “priest” to be if there aren’t any official religions left. Pg 11: Feast/Settlers. Nice. Now I’m curious as to how these are played. Pg 13 “Looks like that list was deprecated…” I’m not familiar with this use of deprecated. But I do appreciate the cringe-worthy continued existence of out-of-date e-mail lists. Pg 15 H seems to get physically forceful pretty quickly. The others were mostly just trying to figure out what was going on. J was getting a little flippant (which is the absolutely mildest appropriate response when someone’s about to ruin game night), but then, is fine? I feel like I’m missing something there.

Mostly I wanted to check in and mention that I really like the concept of this application of ...uh...toxic wood science? Unfortunately, beyond that, I don't really enjoy the style of humor. Too much time spent coaching high schoolers and having to deal with their giggling over random phrases they've decided to take as weird innuendo (makes reading this upon getting home almost exhausting). So I'm going to leave the more thorough reading/critiquing of this and future chapters to those more inclined to it.

Wow. Busy around here all of a sudden. Reading this while overtired was probably not helpful, but I had a lot of trouble finding a specific focus of it. It seemed to go in a few different directions, but it wasn’t clear to me how most of those directions tied into the overall story, except for the specific details related to the circumstances under her brother’s rule and what they’re trying to do about it. The introduction of the cloaked figure adds in the detail that the RA exists, and gives opportunities to show her history with the RA and her other brother, but the events around stumbling across him/her and the fight itself came a little out of nowhere, and didn’t have a clear purpose. I’d probably agree with the thought that jumping in a little later with her pov might be more valuable unless there’s a clearer goal she’s trying to achieve here. Pg 1. While I know next to nothing about punching bags, my random nit-picky thought on the first sentence is that a carpet big enough to be rolled up punching-bag sized seems like it would be pretty heavy. Why not just roll up some rocks in the middle or something? “didn’t sound like something she wanted to explain” -> “wasn’t something she wanted to explain.” ? This one jumped out because it seems like the extra wordiness/indirectness I often tend toward, and which shouldn’t be imitated. There are a few others of those as well, but another editing pass would probably help with that. Pg 2. “thinking back to the promise…” was that right before she left on this mission? Or is this a more general mission? The phrasing of it makes it seem like it was a longer time ago, (and therefore that they’ve been together for a while) but it’s a little ambiguous. Pg 2-5: A lot of the conversation here could probably be trimmed down. There are several points when it seems like a line that one person is saying is just there to prompt the other along to their next line. I know I’ve done this at times when I’ve been afraid of having one person talk too long at once, but it can end up feeling a little clunky/forced if it’s too evenly back-and-forth. Pg 3: There’s also some funny tense stuff going on here and there. Places where it should be past-perfect instead of just simple past tense. An extra thought transitioning from D’s question to Z’s memory would be helpful. Do we know anything about the Hul-? Shouldn’t S be able to feel Z’s emotions about that, though? Her conviction? What array of emotions/feelings are covered by the empathy magic? Pg 4: “Freedom Fighters” feels a little bland for the setting. This seems like a good opportunity to add some sort of myth reference or something similar as a world-building addition. Pg 5: “regular person” as opposed to…? For the urgency of needing to get out of their hideout in the previous scene, wandering around with a sketchpad seems odd. “got her glares for indecency” if she’s part of some sort of rebel group, shouldn’t she be trying to stay under the radar? Seems like she’s going out of her way to attract attention here. Pg 6: What’s J’s explanation for kicking them out of the pilgrimage houses? Also, where are they coming from if none of them are able to cross the desert to leave? Pg 8-10 The appearance of the supposed-RA and the fight seem to come out of nowhere, and the taunting/banter seemed a little odd. Isn’t she surrounded by a bunch of refugees? What’s their response when two people start attacking each other in the middle of the space where they live? Isn’t she concerned that he’s one of the people who lives there, just wearing a red cape and maybe trying to defend the people there from some armed woman who doesn’t even speak their language? Pg 11 “looked deep” I’d say so, if it “lodged itself in her right thigh” “…are young women.” Oh? Pg 12: I have questions about how Z got involved with this group if she hasn’t done anything to impress them. How far did they walk to get here? And how much blood has she lost in the meantime? They’re all pretty casual about the wound, which seems like it would have been quite significant. Did they remove the knife? Wrap it in any way? Or is it just bleeding all over? Pg 13: “You have to be, if you want to hang on to who you are.” I’m not entirely sure what this is supposed to mean. Going to echo the other thoughts that the dialogue feels a little out of place for the setting. Still more questions about Z’s involvement with the group, and what they’re expecting her to actually do. She seems a little naïve here as she’s asking D to spy on the conversation with S. I sort of expected D to refuse and accuse Z’s royal upbringing of making her assume she can just hand out orders to people.

This is interesting to me because I liked the opening and Al a lot, but don't always enjoy hard sci-fi (I usually blame engineer-brain for overanalyzing the world's tech, but I think I just need to try more of it). Though I may have overlooked pacing concerns because I latched onto Al pretty quickly. I really like characters who can appreciate structure and protocol, and whose first thought upon running into a problem isn't to burn it all down. In case anyone who's read anything I've written hasn't noticed that already... (I blame my family tree for being full of engineers and military members). Not sure if that's helpful to mention or if it just complicates things more since I seem to be the odd one out on that front.

Hah. Got me.

Overall: The opening was a little rough for me to get into, but I’m not sure how much of that was just not being used to some of the sci-fi tropes/concepts. I really like Al-, and can sympathize with his desire for routine (though his second scene had some things that seemed slightly inconsistent, which I called out below). The “observing beings” pov was also really intriguing, and makes me really interested to figure out what’s going on there. J’s pov was not quite as engaging for me, but it also wasn’t kicking me out of the chapter either. I very rarely just pick up a book without having someone recommend it these days (seems like the 24 hours in a day gets shorter and shorter every year), but if I was back at a stage of life when I had the time for such things, I would keep reading. At least for a few more chapters, to see what’s up with our planet beings. But I’d probably want something in those chapters to really grab me, since I don’t latch on to sci-fi as quickly as I do fantasy. Pg 4: The opening sentence feels a little wordy to me, and the “one of many” is non-specific enough to keep me from feeling grounded. “from the same source” : made by the same manufacturers? From the same planet? From the same star system? “this star”: the one of many, I assume? If it’s the star they’re aiming for, I think it might be worth naming it in line one. “ten times before” : meaning they’ve come to this star ten times before? I’d like a better sense of whether this is unusual or a routine thing. Ten times over what stretch of time? *also, side note, I have no idea how many of these things are more a result of me not reading much space-based sci-fi. Readers who are more used to it might not have the same grounding issues. I’m fine by the end of the first page.* Pg 5: This is all it takes for me to like Ag- I’m not quite sure why the thought of keeping the name has this reaction. I could see it coming after the realization that the planet might be inhabitable, but it seems like an odd jump here. Is “sus-ani” something most sci-fi readers would get right away? My immediate thought was to read it as a place, and it took a few extra seconds to figure out why it wasn’t capitalized. But again, might just be my lack of familiarity with the genre. Pg 6: almost-mythical* ? my brain wants to put a hyphen there, but that could just be me. I definitely sympathize with Al’s desire for routine. Pg 7: “just as uninhabitable as…” this being mentioned in paragraphs 2 and 4 on this page with really similar phrasing feels a bit repetitive. Especially since we know enough about what Al- wants to be paying attention to relevant details, and to not be hugely surprised when S. No- says it is habitable. Because story. I like the note of them having a bet on it. A small but very relatable detail. I don’t always like when there are pov-shifts mid-chapter, because I usually prefer clearer breaks, but I didn’t mind this one. I almost think the passive-voice in the first sentence helps with that for me? It makes it far clearer that we’re somewhere else than if we had some sort of “the observing bodies observed the encroaching lifeform…” opening. Pg 8: “more efficient…than direct research” as someone who has spent a lot of time contrasting the pros and cons of calculating the exact way to do something vs. “I don’t know. Try it and hope it doesn’t explode” I really appreciate this line. Yeah. I think the passive voice and sense of distance/non-specificity through here does a really good job of conveying that we’re in the head of some consciousness that doesn’t process things the same way most people do without being incomprehensible. 10 points to you. I’d say the one risk with that is that if there are details we are meant to hang on to, you’ll want to make sure those are called out a little more clearly, because the language definitely encourages an “I don’t entirely get what that’s saying, but that’s probably fine” feeling for me while reading. I also really like the description of trying to process the letters. Pg 9: “Let go of“ I guess “dropped” doesn’t quite make sense, but “nearly let go” feels funny to me. Dropping something feels like it has stakes because it could fall and break, but “nearly let go” conveys that he’s startled, but not really in a way that makes me concerned the way “dropped” would. I’m not sure if there would be a good equivalent to use. Also, something about Al’s determination to follow protocols made me think he wasn’t the jumpy sort, so this doesn’t quite mesh with my idea of him from before. Irritation that someone would break their routine to be right behind him when they should be somewhere else, sure. But needless rattling of things? “m—x” ? I assume this is some sort of term of respect, but don’t have a good indication of what it is indicating. Pg 10: I’d been about to mention that he seems a little less put together through here than I would have expected from the character introduced at the beginning. Then I got to where he mentions his nerves are fraying. I don’t know if it would help for that to come in a little earlier to get an idea of the reason for the shift in character? It hits me as a pretty big shift from competent and rational and set in routine and protocol to being jumpy and hesitant and uncertain (“I…I’m not sure…” doesn’t fit the protocol-obsessed Al- from the start in my head) I’m pretty sure the end of the second to last paragraph in this scene is word for word what we had back in the second or third page of the chapter. Can cut “her eyes” in the opening line of the next scene. The second half of the second sentence feels a little clunky to me. Also, “vision” gets a little repetitive in this paragraph. Pg 11: “Admin B grumbled.” This is one of the things I probably overthink in my own writing, which made it jump out, but if we’re in her pov, is she likely to call herself this instead of just using her name? Having the handler call her Admin B above would work if it’s just to introduce the full name/title. My first thought was that Admin B was another person standing here. Nice contrast between J and Al-‘s thoughts on floatiness Pg 13: Her comments on not knowing much about astronomy make me wonder what qualifications she has to be making these decisions… wouldn’t that be important? I also don’t have any sense of her apparent age either. Especially since swapping between “J-“ and “Admin B-“ give pretty different perceptions of the character. It was fun to finally read some of your writing after all this time, and I really enjoyed it . Thanks for sharing!

@Silk I'll claim a spot on the 31st, but I'm going to sit out this week.

Welcome, @Mwindaji and @Mythranor! Good to have you here. Also, Mwindaji, I'll see your Zuko and Azula and raise you an Appa (he's my profile pic). Still working on teaching him to fly. Loved this series! And I'm way overdue for a reread on it. Thanks for the reminder, both of you.