RedBlue

Hello everyone, Here’s chapter five. No content warnings this time, but the chapter does make reference to the animal deaths from the last chapter. Questions: 1) Points of engagement? Any boring/annoying bits? 2) Any bits that were confusing or didn’t make sense? 3) Reactions to GM? Does she need to be toned down? Dialled up? Recap: After C and her friends play on the cursed land, C notices that the contents of an essay and some old films have seemingly disappeared. V, a boy who can turn into a raven, appears and claims that he has come from outside town to fight the curse. GM feeds her hair into the Wood Stove, where C later finds a pair of diamond earrings. C and V investigate, and find a plane that shouldn’t be there in T’s barn. C experiments with the Wood Stove, feeding it a mop and the feathers of her chickens, which died along with the neighbour’s dog. A mop-like dog-like creature emerges from the Wood Stove.

Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik) has some pretty great scenes in the vein of normal-but-awesome humans taking on hugely powerful magical beings. Its vibe leans more towards gritty fairytale retelling, with the heroes leaning more on their cleverness than physical fighting, but I think it works as epic fantasy.

That is a delightfully clever idea, and as far as I can remember the deals involved, I think it might technically work. I don’t think it will actually happen. For starters, it would be a bit anticlimactic. And Dalinar would need to know the details of the Kharbranth deal, which I don’t think he does. Also, using the tricky solution isn’t his style. But it is a clever idea, though

I'm listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. He covers lots of different topics, and I've enjoyed what I've heard so far.

Thanks for the tips - I'll see what I can do to bring the narration closer to C. Thanks for pointing this out - I've tried to weed out the filter phrases like 'she hears', I always seem to miss some Thank you for your feedback!

Sorry for not being more specific - I didn't realise that the kind of animal involved would be an issue. In future chapters, I'll try to make sure content warnings are clear going forward. Yes, C's mom is a bad person. Thank you for your feedback!

Looks like that's five of us. If someone else wants a slot, I'll skip a week. It seems only fair, given that I've been subbing several weeks in a row

I would like a slot too, please

I have only played the original 3 Ace Attorney games, but this seems very Ace Attorney.

I found the quote! I like the theory that these are Pattern and Testament. The only issue I have is that it isn’t mentioned that one has a scribbled out ‘face’ area. It’s true that Shallan wouldn’t know to look for this or what it signifies, but the description in RoW made it sound like a striking feature. But yeah, I think it’s probable that one of them is Pattern.

I don’t know about Taravangian as champion, but I feel like he has to reveal himself to Dalinar at some point before the contest is over. There’s very little sense in setting up a philosophical foil to Dalinar and having scenes where they debate their differences, only to not have a proper talk at the big showdown, whatever form that takes.

I think it’s possible that Szeth’s current spren happens to be the same one from way back when. It could have been following him around the whole time, or it could have specifically sought him out after he joined the Skybreakers. But it could also be a completely different spren. There’s certainly something weird going on with the current spren, and I don’t think we have enough info to say either way.

I'm glad it's working! Yeah, C is feeling guilty for something that isn't really her fault. Hm, I've got this comment a few times. I don't want to take V's POV out, because it's laying some groundwork for later. I'll see what I can do to make it not feel like a tangent. Got it. Thank you very much! The chickens were mentioned in passing, but they haven't been important before this point. Do you think they need to be pointed out earlier? I will neither confirm or deny your working theories, but it's great to see them I'll get into what's going on with V and the other kids more in later chapters. Thanks for the feedback, kais and ginger_reckoning!

Sounds like the moment-to-moment pacing is mostly okay. I'll trim the chicken processing bit. Yeah, V's internal workings are going to become important later, so I needed to lay some groundwork. I know it's not necessary to this chapter, but V's situation right now doesn't really warrant its own dedicated chapter, so it's in here. Hmm, I'll have to find a way to make this bit clearer without giving the game away. Thanks for flagging up the confusion. C is definitely being harsh with herself, and the fault lies with the adults. The point C makes about the chicken coop not being secure enough is valid - it's standard to run chicken wire under the ground beneath the coop to stop animals getting in exactly like J does - but C blaming herself is an emotional reaction, not a rational one. These chickens aren't being kept for food or profit, which is why the adults aren't treating it as a huge problem. I know that there are questions to be asked about how the town supplies itself, and we're going to get to that soon World's #1 Dad he isn't Thanks for all the feedback!

Sounds cool! As I go: p1. 'Of course, it he technically had a possibility' - even apart from the 'it', this is too many unnecessary words bogging down the first paragraph. p1 is a looooot of info and complicated shenanigans that went a bit over my head honestly p2. I like the description of Z. She sounds interesting. p3. This is beginning to feel a bit meandering - I hadn't figured out what was going on with the colosseum and the RA yet, and now Z is taking them to go do something else? p4. Hold on, I just realised they were going to the colosseum all along and the RA is still relevant. p4. The description of S feels like a lore dump. I get that you have to get this info in somewhere, but I'm not sure we need to know all this about S up front, or if it's the first impression we should have of his character. p5. I'm starting to put together what I think is going on here - they're having a fight in the colosseum to determine who gets to be the ruler? And J is the favourite to win? And N is thinking of challenging him anyway because reasons? Still no clue who/what the RA is. And I gather that J, S, Z, and N share a father but have different mothers? p6. 'N almost got lost in the aesthetic beauty of the orange flecks on pink irises' - this reads uncomfortably close to romantic if these two are half-siblings p6. I'm not 100% sure what's going on, but I think the RA just arrived? And it's a bad thing? p7. Did the appearance of the RA make N decide to fight J after all? I'm not sure why. p8. Well. I'm guessing that's the last we'll be seeing of N, then! Overall, I think you've got something interesting going on here, but it's buried under a lot of confusing vagueness. Your prose is wordier than it needs to be in a lot of places. I didn't know if it would help to point them out, seeing as this is an early draft. If that's a product of being in the POV of a character who overthinks things, you might want to change that aspect, because it does bog down the flow. Also, there are a lot of proper nouns introduced here. I can keep track of the four characters, but my eyes started to skim over all the place names I didn't recognise. That's going to be off-putting to a lot of readers. I can't really speak about the cultural thing as I'm not very familiar with Asian/Middle-Eastern cultures. (If that's what you're drawing from ). But the setting was the most interesting part of this to me. The magic crystals in the hands sound interesting, and the political dynamics of the royal kids fighting to determine who gets to be ruler and the remaining siblings being married off is interesting. I definitely think the first four pages can be cut. Maybe just keep the description of Z. As for the rest of it, I'd need to read further to say. I didn't get a good feel for any of these characters' personalities, I'm afraid. S and Z get physical descriptions, so I have a good idea of what they look like, but I don't know who they are as people (except that they're not as brave/reckless as N). N makes a choice that seems like a big deal, but I have very little idea of why he's making it, from both a logical and emotional standpoint. I also don't have much of a feel for what the repercussions of that choice might be, beyond N possibly dying and possibly replacing J as ruler, which doesn't hold a lot of weight as I don't know N or J very well. J is pretty much an enigma. Definitely too little. I don't know what is supposed to be a mystery and what is just underexplained. From this prologue, I'm expecting epic fantasy political intrigue with magic and probably a decent bit of fighting. I don't have anything specific that I'm hoping the story doesn't do at this point.

Hello everyone, Chapter four this week. If anyone wants to see revised versions of chapters 2 and 3, let me know and I’ll send them, but the important plot points in those are pretty much unchanged from the original versions. The only big-ish plot change is that C sees ash on the floor around the plane, and draws a connection back to the Wood Stove. Just a heads up: this chapter contains animal death and a matter-of-fact discussion of how chickens are turned into dinner. For obvious reasons I’m not leaning far enough into the icky stuff for it to need a tag, just letting you know. Questions: 1) Do the characters and their actions make sense? 2) Do you feel that the plot is moving at an OK pace? 3) At the end of the chapter, do you feel like you’re starting to have an idea of what’s going on with the Wood Stove? Recap: After C and her friends play on the cursed land, C notices that the contents of an essay and some old films have seemingly disappeared. V, a boy who can turn into a raven, appears and claims that he has come from outside town to fight the curse. GM feeds her hair into the Wood Stove, where C later finds a pair of diamond earrings. C and V investigate, and find a plane that shouldn’t be there in T’s barn.

@Szeth_Pancakes you might want to add Szeth and Moash to the options. I don’t think it will be either of them, but I’ve heard people suggest them before.

Yes, Odium’s champion could be somebody with whom Dalinar has an established but non-adversarial relationship. But doesn’t that run into the same issue of set up? It would be a bit of a left turn if (for example) Gavilar turned up and now Dalinar has to deal with the fact that his brother is secretly evil. It would also be a bit out of left field if a character on Dalinar’s side (like Szeth or Adolin) were somehow manipulated into being Odium’s champion. I’m not saying those things can’t happen, but it seems to me that those are not fights that Dalinar has spent the whole series building towards.

This is why I’m not sold on the child champion theory. It would put Dalinar in a painful position, sure, but that doesn’t guarantee a win for Odium. Also - suppose Odium does go with a child champion, and the plan works. Suppose Odium manipulates Dalinar to refuse to fight the other champion. What then? Will Dalinar and Gavinor (or some other kid) camp out on the roof of Urithiru for the foreseeable future? Maybe Dalinar dies, and Odium wins the contest? Odium would still be stuck in the Rosharan system, per the contract.

Unless I’m missing something obvious (which is entirely possible), there is only one still living character with whom Dalinar has had an adversarial relationship spanning multiple books, and that’s Taravangian. Even if it took Dalinar until book 4 to realise that Taravangian was a bad guy.

I agree that Dalinar’s big climax needs to have high emotional involvement. But I don’t think this rules out El. Stormlight books are long, and there would be plenty of room to set up an interesting dynamic between El and Dalinar. It worked for Raboniel and Navani.

I'll have a spot too, please!

A few people brought up this point - I'll have to add a paragraph or two to explain her motivation more clearly in a future edit. I get what you mean. The Wood Stove and the curse are both things that need to be set up, but the connection between them won't become apparent until later in the plot. Thank you for your feedback!

Thanks kais! It’s good to know that I’ve got a handle on the bigger problems, so I can focus on the little ones!

Hooray! I’m glad this is coming across! Thanks for pointing this out. Thank you for your feedback!