Silk

Yes, I think this is exactly the kind of emotional signalling that would add a ton to your story!

Yeah, time-wise I expect to be treading water for the foreseeable future unfortunately. That one might have more to do with my general pop culture immunity than your age...

Yes, absolutely part of the picture. I think, if I were to go this route, it would about picking one or two choice moments to experience those sensory details--I'm thinking of the scene in the restaurant, because it's hard not to feel in your body when you're puking, but also not a pleasant experience (plus early enough in the story that it will hopefully help bring people in if they're struggling) and, hopefully, the contrast between those moments and the overall disconnected would drive the point home. Gonna come down to whether I can do it without losing anything important, I think; what's on the page seems to be working well enough for most that I don't want to sacrifice anything. I am not! I'll have to check it out.

Yeah I tried to keep my comments on the others pretty brief because I figured you might've done work on them, but I wanted to at least read them to get to Ch13. That just means that some of it's coming together! I look forward to finding out more.

Yup, exactly, so I do want the lines between the wellness industry nonsense and the character to be blurred to an extent - but hopefully without being too much of an actual stumbling block. It's fine if it's a hard story to read, because honestly it should be... but not so hard that too many people stop reading! Tough line to walk. It was pointed out that there isn't a ton of sensory grounding in the first half of the story, so I'm wondering if a bit more of that would help with Airsick's point of feeling like there's an individual all the way through... I'm thinking the restaurant scene might be a spot for that. And/or hanging even more of a lantern on the disconnect the narrator feels from her body. And find a way to do it in just a few lines here or there, because I definitely don't want to go making the thing longer at this point. No biggie, right?

Oh hey, I forgot about lobster guy. All these references to expense accounts have me wondering about the practicalities: Does A get paid a salary? What happens when the money runs out, will her benefactors just provide more? Etc. LOL at “them cooties” P2 we’re already thinking about making the club bigger? Now I’m really curious about the practicalities. Right now it reads like A just has endless money through her benefactors. Or – wait, has there been a time skip? I’ll admit I read right over the dates in the entry line for this one. Ahh okay. P3 and we are starting to get into the brass tacks. This is good, but again, might help to seed a bit of this earlier—I don’t really have any sense for example that A doubts she can do any of this, or has bit off more than she can chew, is struggling with the business side of things, etc. Glad to see a reminder of the lab here as well, but there doesn’t seem to have been any motion on it. P5 this is also the first time I have started to like R. (I find the exaggerated flirting and such as weird as R does, for the record, but then I don’t exactly have much experience with gay bars so maybe that's a me thing.) P8 A wonders how to “get this” to R without offending him, but I’m not certain why she thinks she needs to pass it on to him? P11 “some kind of weirdo” she seems pretty well-educated on gender and sexuality, I was surprised she doesn’t seem to register “asexual” as a possibility. P13 I wondered whether R was going to show up again, or attempt to make any sort of contact with A. A has referenced being sad about her a couple of times, but really has spent very little thought on her. P14 “Don’t worry, we’re still together” – this is fantastic characterization. Overall: I was glad to see some sort of confrontation between A and R here while I realize she’s using work as a distraction from her relationship woes, it feels a bit like she really mostly just forgot about R until R showed up again. This actually feels like it’s kind of broadly true of my experience with many of the other chapters. Sometimes it’s that stuff just seems to come fairly easily to A, other times she encounters conflicts or obstacles but we don’t really spend time digging into those obstacles or what they mean and the narrative just moves on. Which isn’t to say the stuff that’s happening isn’t interesting! I think there’s lots of interesting threads here—it just feels like the story is more focused on moving between them than exploring those threads in more depth, so it makes the story feel very “slice of life” which may or may not be what you want. Probably related to the above, I think what I'm most longing for is a little more emotion from A. Sometimes she stops to tell us how she's feeling, but she's mostly going from one thing to the next in a way that doesn't leave a whole lot of time for interiority. I don't think you necessarily have to slow down a lot for this (though that's not always a bad thing either!) - you do a good job of keeping up the social commentary while keeping things moving, for example, and I'd love to get a little more interiority from our protagonist the same way.

This is going to look really long, but is brief comments on all the submissions up until now, with sub 13 coming in a separate post. Sub 1 - I spent the first several pages wondering why this person didn’t seem very concerned about getting caught, took until the new person arrived to realize they thought they were totally alone (in which case why does the ship have a kitchen? Or, you know, breathable air?) Narrator also doesn’t seem terribly alarmed that the ship is not going where she thought. I’m guessing the dwarf planet is known to be habitable or nobody would bother sending a spy there? Sub 2 – no comments here as I missed the attachment somehow. Sub 3 What does “a gun out of sci-fi” look like to someone for whom trips to Mars and Ceres and meeting aliens are a part of regular life? Could be just natural variation in the way people talk, but I feel like the aliens started out sounding alien and became more human sounding as the entry went on. “p9 “you think I’m male?” I wondered how she assigned this too. Glad to see you hang a lantern on it! I also love the “pollen” analogy. Sub 4 - Also missed the attachment here somehow, so skipping comments. Sub 5 Lol at D volunteering other Earth languages she speaks. Very believable reaction. In general, D seems to be taking her new situation—with an entirely new species, in a location she wasn’t planning to go to, may or may not see the people she loves again—very well. She has occasional thoughts about her mom or R, but these seem to be fleeting and not affect her emotionally too much. Sub 6 It would be nice to see the aliens as a little more alien. Some of this might be the translating device, of course, but watching the protagonist having a discussion with the aliens about cars, in particular, makes them feel very human. P4 – the bioluminescent eyes – see, now we’re talking! It’s not that the stuff happening isn’t interesting, but it does feel like the protagonist is a bit aimless—at this point I’m not sure what her goals are or what the shape of the story will be going forward. Her getting sick at the end of the chapter is a fun wrinkle, but I’m not sure how it really affects her, aside from the fact that it’s no fun to get sick. Sub 7 p3 “deletrious” – this comment about the translation device is a fun comment. p10 the idea of “cures” for autism as a “good” thing is actually pretty controversial, FYI. Might be worth hanging a lantern on or picking a different example. P13 “to get to one of those places from Earth would take years…” wait, where was she originally coming from that she thought a journey to Mars was only supposed to take 10 days? Sub 8 Some fun info about the bubble ships here! I was sort of expecting “get to Mars” to be a problem A had to solve, but it happens fairly easily. I’m curious about many aspects of her plan from here: is she looking at hunting down her old GF, and how? Ditto her family? Does she need to hide from the company she ran away from? Etc. P6 “…similar to the underground railroad…” Oh, whoa. I like the idea but somehow totally missed that this was A’s plan. But, I’m glad the story has a bit more direction now, this feels like the piece I have been missing. Sub 9 How is she hiding the gun in her clothing if she had to remove her clothes to don the space suit? Huh, wasn’t expecting that end to the entry! Sub 10 p2 “that was about it for conversation…” lol. So… what are they doing with the discovery from the last sub, aside from locking it up? Are they tracking down the mystery? Scouting an alternate location? Aside from the narrator referencing finding it scary, we seem to have pretty much moved on from that. The AI on p3 is a fun personality, but I’m struggling to know whether to take its comments at face value. I’m surprised A didn’t take exception to the “smile” remark, as it seems in line with a lot of the other commentary in the book so far. Now that we have some explanation about the lab we found a few entries ago, it feels like the characters have a lot more context for this kind of find than we do. Might be worth seeding some of this stuff earlier on, then it’s less of a surprise and we have more understanding of why it’s important. Sub 11 I like the nightclub-as-a-front idea, but it feels like the story places a lot more focus on that than the actual mission. Which might be fine if that’s what you’re gong far. P8 A has made so little attempt to find her family or girlfriend so far that the girlfriend just showing up feels like a big suprise. R (lobster R, not girlfriend R) is coming across as kind of a creep. P9 I’m interested in the brewing trouble between A and R, which feels like it gets cut off prematurely here, but it does pick up again in the next entry, so maybe that’s fine. Reading through the next entry, the emotional bits between A and R are really quite interesting but I’d still love to spend more time here. Sub 12 P3 “Are you really calling yourself A now?” I was wondering about this, why A hadn’t already shared the name change. I’m surprised we’re all standing around trading innuendos and talking about pastries when it seems like this would be a bad thing for R to discover, and that A is self-aware enough to realize that this would be a bad thing for R to discover. Edit: I see this comes up explicitly a couple pages later, but I’m not getting any emotional sense that she’s panicking before you name it. In general I’m also surprised they don’t have protocols in place for sneaking people in, since they’d be dealing with all sorts of “outsiders” to the mission in this scenario. I had a similar experience. At first I was really interested to see them show up because it felt like you were indeed setting this up as an obstacle to be overcome, but then there was no challenge in dealing with it, so the scene felt more like an example about how the railroad operation is supposed to work--which we already know. I think Appol's right that you have a real opportunity to integrate these opposing threads of A's life more closely, and potentially make some really powerful commentary which would be right in line with some of the commentary earlier subs have already made via A's narration.

p1 “...of someone discussing war criminals.” Heh. P2 the ace/aro discussion here seems to come a little abruptly, both for D and for the narrator. Both of them discovering this about themselves at the same time seems a little.. much somehow? I think it’s partly because it happens mostly in exposition over a page and a half, partly because this seemed like something the narrator already knew about himself based on earlier bits of the story, and partly because we’re also disentangling it from arguably abusive behaviour in D’s case. I do like the comparison with the femme fatale and almost wonder if some of this comparison could be set up earlier. P6 The coursework/real life dichotomy you’re setting up here is interesting too… p8 That cop’s an awfully good shot. p9 The academic in me (not gender studies, but hey) thanks you for so promptly getting to “total lie.” p10 “My knuckles sting…” well yeah, especially if you don’t know how to throw a punch, punching someone in the face is a good way to break your hand! (citation: former boxer) p11 “...requires me to be a man threatening…” Nice. P12 “knee deep in water” - ocean or the lake? By the end of the story I’m still confused about when the narrator actually went to the ocean, since M and K being there seems to suggest he’s still at the lake. Overall: There were a few places where I stumbled over sentence structure, but this seemed to smooth out later in the piece. There were a lot of poignant lines, and I liked the repeating image of the smear (though I’d consider trimming back the extended metaphors with the ink bottle a little bit, the first occurrence at least felt a little over-extended). I made the joke in my early comments about waiting for the horrible abusive bombshell K was subjecting the narrator to, but I actually thought you did a good job describing the mundane ways people can fall into being miserable with each other. I alluded to this already, but my biggest stumbling block was the way the exploration of sexuality, and to a lesser extent the gender dynamics, seemed to come up all at once midway through. Again, this seemed to smooth out later in the piece, but I think some of it could be seeded earlier. It might also help to really hang a lantern on the fact that the narrator has never thought about his own sexuality in this way before. But ultimately, I enjoyed the piece—there was a lot of quiet tragedy and some incisive commentary and I thought you provided a narrator who was really well-positioned to tell the story he did.

Splitting my responses up just so the post isn't a mile long. “I have enough experience watching my father fail…” Like the sentiment—good characterization here—but stumbled on the sentence structure. P2 “things have gotten better for us…” I was willing to go along for the ride on the first page, now I’m bought in. It does feel like there should be a bit more of a build to this reveal, perhaps, since we took some time to get here. All this description of the social stuff is very believably horrific. P3 “...and I knew better than to argue with her.” Hmm, now that’s interesting. P4 “Rather than a supernatural pull to the ocean…” I was just thinking that I wasn’t sure yet what shape the story was going to take, but now I think I know. P5 “It was the happiest I’ve ever seen her.” That hurts. Well done on that one. P6 “The first time I saw that blood smear…” was briefly confused here, until I realized we were talking about a different person. Ah, I was curious about this before, but thought perhaps it was more metaphorical. Here the reference to newborns looking like teenagers makes me wonder why the narrator would mourn a childhood he hasn’t actually lost, since this seems to be the normal course of things. P9 “boys prefer pragmatic gifts over romantic ones” lol “...a big enough kitchen to not worry…” p11 “she hits it off with M right away.” Thought we’d already established this at their first meeting. So the narrator and D shack up and run off to the ocean together, right? … Right? (Presumably after the shoe drops and we finally learn the horrible abusive thing K’s doing that the narrator has been keeping from us the whole time…) No overall comments as I’m going right to part 2

Thanks! I actually backed off italics in a few places because felt like I was over-using them; I think "lifestyle" might have been one of them, so I'll take another look. There is kind of a lot going on in this piece formatting-wise already, but maybe I should lean in rather than lean out. This was somewhat deliberate as I was looking for ways to mirror the narrator losing their sense of self in the format of the piece, but I've gotten mixed reactions on how well it's working. I did get a suggestion from another reader that I think might help smooth this out in the early parts. Thanks for commenting!

Yeah, I don't think of it as a humour-first piece but there is definitely an element of satire here, so it sounds like the balance is about right. As for the gender of the narrator, I'm fine with it being identifiably female, since it's largely a gendered dynamic I'm writing about (not that men don't deal with body image issues, but tends to show up for men/masc folks differently). That's a trade-off I'm willing to make. Was there anywhere in particular that struck you as being repetitive? I'll read it again with an eye out for that, but I've clearly read the thing too many times at this point... Ooh, I'll have to check that out. Thanks for commenting!

That does sound fun! I'm always down for bizarre stories. Speaking of which, I've gone ahead and submitted mine. I'll get to some critiquing later in the week.

Hi all, I've threatened this a couple times, so here I am, submitting it. Welcome to a new revision of the weirdest thing I have yet written. Our usual content tags don't apply, but please note trigger warnings for: weight loss, disordered eating, related medical trauma and general body dysmorphia and body horror. (I've had another reader ask about needles, so: there are references to drugs administered by needle and an IV line, but no on-screen depictions of either being inserted.)

Please do! I suppose I might as well throw mine in the ring, though it'll probably be later in the week before I get to critiquing. Have fun with Juno! I think of my story in there as my favourite story that I didn't expect to write, lol. I haven't read the Resnick title, I'll have to check it out.

I'd go for a rueda circle instead of a conga line, but that's just me as a lapsed academic and current university administrator, I am shocked, absolutely shocked, that something like this could happen at an institution of higher learning.

Both good to go! I could claim a slot for myself, I suppose, but between a union event and a band event (on a Thursday, of all days) it's unlikely I'll be able to do any critiquing before the weekend...

All good. Discord works well as an app--though they've made a few dumb decisions lately that are likely to see a mass exodus if they follow them through. I actually use it all the time, just mostly for small groups. Servers with hundreds or thousands of people in them become noise to me pretty quickly. Hopefully next week. I didn't post it this week just because I'm still catching up on some other things and unlikely to be able to jump back into critiquing quite yet.

Agreed. We have a lot fewer people coming through here than we used to, unfortunately. Suspect people are moving to more real-time formats like Discord--I've even heard that's happening for the 17s forum overall, that there's more activity on Discord than the forum now. (I don't do massive Discord servers, so can't confirm myself!) Also I FINALLY FINISHED THE DANG DRAFT

Yeah, I had a similar experience after working in an office that does pandemic planning in 2020. Definitely trying to get way more reading/writing/music done now, though it's a challenge being so wrapped up in collective bargaining... Haha, this story will be quite different than anything I have in print so far. It is easily the most bizarre thing I've yet written. But hopefully still fun. Revising, revising, revising...

Please post! I continue inching along on my own piece--back half of the story now--and can always throw it into the mix when I'm done. Once it's done I'm letting myself get back into critiquing action too.

So noted! Yes, please do.

I didn't know this! Makes a lot of sense, though, when you think about it.

Please do!

I've been to Minneapolis (for a Writing Excuses retreat, no less) and I'm not convinced polar bears would appreciate the humidity You're good to submit, but don't think I didn't notice your popsicle pun

Potentially! It really started with an offhand remark and then snowballed from there originally I was thinking I was just going to stick my feet in, the next thing I know there are like seven of us doing a full polar-bear plunge. Sounds good! Any other takers for tomorrow?