Silk

That sounds like a good potential solution!

@Mandamon @Sarah B It looks likely to be another quiet week, so I think that's fine. Let's drop back to one each if anyone else lets us know today they want to submit though.

I think there is some room to tighten up this opening paragraph—a lot of little repetitions and “helper” verbs in here that could be trimmed. That will probably help make S’s sense of urgency even more clear. “...still attracted to him” I was wondering above if D actually had any interest in being in a romantic relationship with him, which seems to be assumed by S’s dialogue. I wonder if it might make more sense to get at that question here rather than just physical attraction? Or if D is attracted to him but NOT interested romantically, have him react to that. “...he could land both himself and D in prison or worse.” Good tension, but I wonder how they’re going to get around this? “...which meant that the planned attack on the palace was something she overheard” I’m confused. That who overheard? Is S lying to D here about the specifics? P2 “don’t think she was lying on me” should be “to me” bottom of p4 repetition of “ruminate” which was used only a page or so ago, it’s uncommon enough to be noticeable. P5 “This...could get awkward.” lol “D knew little about palace politics…” Really? She works there, and with the one of the wives of the emperor, and is apparently pretty sharp. I find this tough to believe. I guess D is doing most of the talking here because she’s the one who knows about C? Because I’d expect S to be doing most of the talking given his position. But I’m also wondering, if crystals can block psychics, why S didn’t do this on his own. I’m also surprised that W seems to hold so much sway in this conversation, since she’s presumably from outside of S’s family if she’s betrothed to him. Also, how imminent is this marriage? Edit: I see this is addressed below, and “a few days” is what I was expecting from this conversation. Carry on. “To be honest, I don’t like it… you should be enjoying your last days of freedom” This threw me. I was expecting raise objection about the actual arrangement, but she actually just things S… works too hard…? “Please believe me… When I tell you that” I’ve noticed this in several places, so this, but whenever you have a single sentence of dialogue split up by a dialogue tag, the piece of dialogue that comes after the tag is not capitalized. From the narration, S seems to suspect C of being a danger, but I think that you can lean into the emotions more here. How big a threat does S think C poses? Is this a surprise to him? “But that wasn’t possible…” Here’s another area where I think you can dial up the emotion (and having S struggle to conceal it from C, or even slipping up, could really increase the tension, I think). I’m confused by what parts of this are supposed to be sensitive information vs. not. They don’t know why J has the crystals, but shipping them is normal, but S doesn’t know what they do? P12 “Non-conventional purposes” I have no idea what constitutes a “non conventional” use for a magic crystal. If S has something in particular he’s thinking about it may be helpful to spell that out. Overall: I’m struggling with this chapter, and having trouble putting my finger on why, but I think it might be that I’m not feeling very grounded. Obviously there’s a ton of world-building going on, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the problem (though I do think it could be condensed or at the very least smoothed out in places). I think I want a better sense though of the emotional grounding. How much does S distrust C—does he think that she’s mostly out for her own gain and might stumble on the wrong truth, or does he think she’s actively dangerous? What about W, his betrothed? How does he feel about these relationships being so fraught? And is he only protecting his sister because of their relationship, or does he think she’s right? Etc. I do like that we see S being so proactive and I think there’s room for lots of great tension here. I just need something to anchor me a little more.

I suspect what the contest rules mean when they say “original” is “unpublished” and “you own the copyright” – no fanfiction or anything that uses someone else’s IP. I’m pretty sure I know what the song title is, and I see everyone else has come to a similar conclusion, but unless I’m missing something I think you’re fine here. Why are they leaving him on the gallows with a noose around his neck if the execution isn’t to happen for a while yet? “The rope’s a bit scratchy…” lol I have some trouble swallowing the idea that this kid is close enough to whisper to, and also some trouble swallowing that the authorities would just let him do this—especially considering that this goes on for quite a while, and that this sort of thing was apparently what got him in hot water in the first place. So is L talking about himself here…? Oh, whoa. I kind of missed that the kid was actually on the gallows with L, and scanning back, J isn’t described as anywhere other than on L’s left, which could mean almost anything. It’d be an easy piece of description to make this clear, but also, I would expect L to react to the fact that a child was on the gallows with him. “...they were just suspicious enough…” How so? Nothing about this seems particularly suspicious. Ending the story partway through a sentence is an interesting choice. I got the sense that maybe it was supposed to contribute to the ambiguity of the ending, but it doesn’t really work, because L explicitly states to the reader that he is lying. Making it clear without making it explicit that L is lying (or making it actually ambiguous, though I didn’t get the sense that this was what you were going for) might help clinch the ending. Overall: This could potentially be a punchy short piece, but there are a couple of things that didn’t work for me as-is. The first I mentioned above, which was my inability to suspend my disbelief that L has time to have this entire conversation when he’s literally standing on the gallows—with a punch-drunk hangman standing right there, no less. But this can easily be fixed with some blocking, i.e. having them marched up to the gallows from their cells or something similar. The second issue is that, short though it is, the story still needs an arc. There needs to be some sort of development or resolution, and his death doesn’t satisfy that without some larger emotional connection. Why am I joining this character in the last few moments of his life? Why is it significant that he spends that time telling the kid the story—does this represent him doubling down on the character trait that got him in trouble to begin with or is it some sort of growth or revelation for him? And I think we need a little more emotional grounding—he’s very blasé about his own death, we have very little information about the character or what he said (whether he’s downplaying his own actions or not) let alone how he feels about it. I think Mandamon may be onto something here!

First page, fungus POV: “This was compared…” I wasn’t sure what the antecedent for “this” was. Maybe say “this construction” or “these shelters” or something similar to clarify. Also stumbled on “chinks” right at the top of p2, though not sure why. P2 “as well as correcting several magnetic…” suggest “as well as the opportunity to correct” for parallelism “...the one instance of synergy…” Interesting that And’s not mentioned here. P7 “she ignored the hissing, clanking, horrible sounds that shouldn’t accompany…” hah. Perfect. P8 “the amazing uniqueness of the biomass…” I think I might have made similar comments before, but Ji has a surprisingly sunny view of the future considering everything that’s happened. I wonder if trying this back to Ji’s child more specifically, rather than the abstract hope for the future, might lock down the emotional resonance a little more for the end of this scene? P9 I had kind of forgotten who D was. Might be WRS, but given that we don’t see Ads other than J and her assistant that often, possibly worth a reminder. P10 “last member in the room” … member of the group? Person in the room? “The other Ads had their assistants with them…” Wait, I thought M was the last person in the room. I initially interpreted this as meaning all the Ads were there after all. P11 “We need our fire stations, our power substations, our educational support structures.” How big are these subsections? Putting all your critical infrastructure in one place seems like a bad idea. Also inconvenient for the people moving through them. “M looked up guiltily…” Guiltily because…? Edit: I guess we’re supposed to take from this conversation that A consulted M first, but I was confused by why M would be guilty for a hot second. “M raised both eyebrows, as if they…” Doesn’t M use female pronouns? Or, wait, “they” referring to the group at large. Also, given that A has apparently married and had children with a Gen, I’d be interested to see a reaction shot from them here. Edit: I see J sort of calls it out here, but then why raise this in front of A at all? Edit to the edit: Might be worth having J indicate to the reader up front that she’s already discussed this with A. I was kind of wondering how/whether the mods would get passed on ever since it was noted that A was married to a Gen, so glad to see this addressed here. P15 “...as if she had smelled a particularly fragrant fart.” Hah. Valid. “...the newest and least protected rs as their built” should be “they’re” p17 “How about the water supply.” Should be a question mark at the end I think. “J tapped a nail six times… were her tells so obvious?” This could be some great character-building, but I think we need to actually feel this emotion for it to work. Right now I don’t have any idea whether she’s upset, excited, etc. and can only vaguely guess that it has to do with the thing about not being able to pan minerals from the water. P18 “We have the resources to start on B…” Ah. This would be it then. Is this really a surprise to her though? Did she actually come into this meeting expecting to find a solution? If so, making that more clear, and then amping up the emotions from that angle, could be one way to make the scene work. Did the timestamps change from megaseconds to years and months and I just didn’t notice? I saw the one in the last scene but had assumed it was because it was from J’s point of view. P20 “I suspect it’s sucking the minerals out of the ground…” Then where did the one vein they found come from? “No. not there. That fungal tower” need to capitalize “Not” or make the period a comma p24 “If he couldn’t stop the biomass at its source, Could he…” lowercase c I am tickled by the thought of supersoldiers on bicycles. “calming” Gens. Uhhuh. 26 “At least the roads were all paved…” Given the oft-cited dearth of materials… what with? “He’s had to watch many of them.” Should be “he’d had” p29 “...they want me to have as many kids as possible.” Curious to know then whether the Gens are in fact being given free choice about how many kids they raise. I’m curious as to what’s driving And here. He hasn’t really struck me as the type to get fired up over inequalities, even if the printed “stuff” doesn’t look appetizing. P33 “in his mid-twenties” I had thought F was rather older… “Had she spoken with him before?” Not sure you need this line. I think just “he looked vaguely familiar” gets the job done. P35 “or amoebas decided having two to tango” LOL

So it looks like we have @Mandamon (with two slots, unless anyone else wants to submit), @jamesbondsmith, and @Ace of Hearts for Monday. Now that I think about it, we've actually talked about this a couple times before. I think the guidelines we came up with were: there has to be that many slots left no more than two slots if the submitter was working towards a submission/publication deadline Goal was to allow people to take advantage of lulls/quiet periods if they needed to while still allowing those quiet periods to happen so people can catch up/have lives/etc. Does this still resonate with folks?

P3 “And because she was a ruthless b…” We as readers know that, but the interaction between the Ads and the Gens has actually been pretty limited on-screen, so I have no idea how that’s been trickling down to the Gens for Ag to say this now. P5 mild blocking confusion here. I thought D was reaching out to take the child as they were decanted, but then Ag does instead. Getting a chance to finally see Ag’s mixed emotions here is fantastic. I think it’ll hit harder once you’ve had a chance to go back and flush this out in the beginning parts. Oh no, D! P6 “We’d like your opinion as well…” Oh boy. Hmm. Have they not been monitoring for this sort of fungal growth all along? They’ve already seen it in And, and presumably others. “He’s probably got a few days left…” The reluctance here doesn’t quite work for me; doctors have to do this all the time. You foreshadowed D’s accident really well, and I almost wonder if we need a bit more of that before the section where he dies. I think the only thing we got in D’s/Ag’s previous section was the dreams and I think more of a hint that all is not well would be helpful. P11 “whether he would promise his love forever to her, or if he was just pretending all this time” Wait. Was the fact he loved her ever in doubt? Because if so, I totally missed that. Ooof. That last line. This was sort of my assumption but I did stumble on this too. I didn't have a problem with it until we got to the delivery of the prognosis. Maybe he becomes a little more confident here because he's on more familiar ground, as awful as it is? Or, as @Sarah B suggests, seeing a little more of that "sizing up" happening. It was mostly fine for me, but I do think that we could get a little more of this from Ag in the earlier sections as well - so that we see her struggling in addition to seeing her helping D as he struggles. Alternatively, maybe she's surprised by her own emotion here, if she hasn't had a chance to/hasn't let herself acknowledge it until now. I actually thought that the decanting made sense from a "colonizing new worlds" perspective: less risky and less impact on the folks who would otherwise have to carry the child, and more potentially more equitable when thinking about infertility, the time needed to have and recover from a pregnancy, etc (at least in theory; almost certainly not in practice the way this world works!) But @kais raises some really good points here. And uh, babies with compromised immune systems 'cuz they're born from a tube is probably not great on a world with aggressively colonizing fungi. I'm just throwing that out there.

P1 “not within the regulations that had followed” that they had followed? “… for the year-end party” So are they using the years of the new planet? I could see the Ads wanting to stick to Earth years… p3 “It was at least twice as tall as the thirty-meter wall…” So did they not notice the giant tree until it was too late or did it just grow really quickly? Also, wait – if they have a thirty-foot wall but no roof, they have no way of avoiding spores and such, so wouldn’t that allow the biomass to propagate inside the R. anyway? They’d pretty much have to have something airtight. P4 “like an old piece of celery” ooh, great description here “Clouds of maybe deadly, maybe not spores” here it sounds like he’s saying they’re maybe not spores, but I don’t think that’s what you mean. “maybe deadly spores” probably gets the point across just as well. P5 “biomass-related complications” is exactly the kind of sterile nonsense the military would come up with, I love it p9 “EVA’s with me” should just be EVAs here, no apostrophe “The instant the tower came crashing over the wall, A. R. was doomed…” Yeah, I’m going to struggle with this, I think. I could see it exacerbating an existing problem, but I can’t imagine it wasn’t already a problem to some degree. P14 “Even if he had promised to have no hand…” awww. P15 “Plus, F found he liked Ji’s company…” I mean, they were already friends. Maybe tweak this so it’s clearer he’s enjoying her company without the presence of Ag and D. p16 “He’d have to contact Ad before anyone started experimenting…” I mean they’ve probably already been eating it… p17 “...when he’d up cured blemishes on their tomatoes.” delete “up”? Overall: So far, so good. I thought this was a great chapter overall, with good action in And’s section and some great emotional resonance from F. Not to beat a dead mushroom, but I am having some suspension of disbelief issues now, that things were apparently going so well in the colony before the tree thing happened, since they’ve apparently been open to the skies this whole time, so I don’t see how they aren’t getting some spores. Maybe they have some sort of filtration system and/or the smaller amounts they’re getting are easier to handle?

I'd be fine with that. Anyone mind that, assuming of course that we have the free slots?

Sorry I'm late to the party! P2 “I assumed you were going to start by…” I feel like D should have explained this up front, it seems weird that she’d just assume it. I think you could still get some good tension out of here if they decide to ask anyway, knowing that he might not answer or might react badly. “And whether or not M was a murder” should be “murderer” p3 “M was ahead of her time in terms of safety… she killed them.” I’m guessing this is poison, but it’s jarring without further explanation, since these two statements seem contradictory. P4 “floated like a feather and sunk…” Another stumble here. “floated” and “sunk” also seem contradictory. P8 “Could he have been a psychic like D…” This seems like an odd conclusion for E to come to based on the things that A can’t do. A hasn’t done anything that seems unusual for being a ghost. P10 “The memory... had revealed a couple of key details.” Again I feel like E is leaping ahead of us a bit here. It’s certainly a reasonable supposition, but doesn’t feel definitive considering we didn’t even see it happen, so E’s confidence here feels a bit off. P11 “It felt like putting my hand through slushy soda.” Good reaction from E here, but I’m surprised we don’t also get one from A. p12 “excitement literally lifting him” is it ghost A being lifted or doll A? “...just long enough for E to free our moms!” couldn’t D do it too? She can also see the cords. Overall: I’m glad to see the section between E and A adding some ghost/psychic training, it’s good worldbuiding for the conclusion that I recall being mostly absent from the last draft. I think my biggest comment is that between this submission and the last one, it feels like we’re spending a lot of time watching the characters go back and forth between different locations—and I think there is more of this to come in the rest of the book. I wonder if there’s a way to reduce the number of trips between places or, at the very least cut down on the description of them (none of the individual descriptions of going from point A to B is noticeable individually, but taken together it feels like a lot.)

@Mandamon and @shatteredsmooth for tomorrow. Any other takers?

Overall: This is definitely a stronger version than the last one! I think the pacing is mostly solid, but it does feel like there is a lot of transitional/moving-from-one-place-to-another in the later chapters – there are two chapters with E and D escaping different parts of the store, then they go to an office, then they go to the pizza parlor. I wonder if there is potential to maybe combine some of these moving around chapters, and then the pizza parlor becomes the “down” chapter after the escape? There is a tension between E and D here that I don’t think we had in the last draft that I quite like. D’s emotions were handled well until the very end, I thought, when her reveal and outburst seemed a little more sudden. I think the others are spot on with the comments that there are a lot of stomach/torso type emotions from E, but overall I thought the tension in the escape chapters especially was pretty good. As I read: Is Ju the same person as Mx. Rivers? If so, it just seems a bit odd that E would shift between two names for them. Edit: I have the same comment in the last chapter, where D seems to shift between addressing the adults as first name/prefix and last name without any logic to the difference, as far as I can tell. “I followed G to the end of the aisle.” Is he tracking Mom? Not sure I got this from the first mention of him. Maybe a bit more of a lantern on the dog behaving weird if that’s the plan. P2 “wood scraping across wood” is this the mannequin moving? I thought they were made of wax? Also, I’m guessing this is the red-eyed mannequin who I’m assuming is M (I don’t remember what she looked like from the last round, sorry!) but it’s not clear here which one is moving. “The mannequin stood on the other side of me” if its movement is so noisy/difficult, how did it get there that quickly? Oooh, I like that we actually get to see Mom in the process of changing. I wonder if we could get a tiny hint of this sooner? E thinking they hear Mom’s voice or something? P4 “G head butted calf, whimpering, pushing…” missing a “my.” But also, the image of a dog pushing someone seems pretty weird for me. It might make more sense to have him trying to drag E to the door, which could still be him trying to help E instead of just running away, I think. Or something else that suggests he’s trying to snap E out of their funk. For the end of the chapter: Take this with a grain of salt because I’m almost certainly biased here by the fact that I’ve read the rest of the book. But at the same time, E is obviously in a very bad situation here, with their mom even begging them to leave, that I tripped over E’s hesitation to leave this very scary situation. There’s already some good horror in here, so maybe amp it up a bit for the doll as well to justify E’s indecision here? p5/Ch5 “...felt like led.” Flagging because spellcheck won’t catch this one, should be “lead.” maybe a bit more description, either in the previous chapters or here, laying out the store a bit more. I can’t tell how far E is away from the door: when D jumps in it seems like they’re very close to the door already (which seemed weird because they were hesitating about the doll, and btw what happened to said doll? Shouldn’t D be pretty much tripping over it right now?) but then D starts pushing E forward and it feels like they’re quite a ways away. “Our mom, they’re…” moms “She is M… I want to.” You use A’s name here, but he hasn’t actually introduced himself yet. I like D being portrayed as calm as all this is happening, but it does mean E is spending a long time hanging around just watching while they could be going for the bike to save some time. Also, if the front door is locked, how are they getting out? Is there an exit from the basement? End of Ch 5: The close encounter with the end of Ch 4 was great, and I’m trying to decide if I want something similar here. Maybe not exactly the same – it could get a little repetitive – but it does feel like them leaving is a little bit too easy. Love the last line, though. Ch6 So if they were still at the antique shop, I’d assume M had ripped the pages out of the binder so she couldn’t be tracked down, but in this case I’m not sure why they’ve been removed, other to signify that This Is Important? Ch7 This is probably just a “haven’t read the new draft” question, but why was E already reading about the mill before M turned their mom into a mannequin? D was so vague about what happened to her friend before, I’m surprised she just comes out and says it here without any resistance. I think this is a good solution.

Well, if a book doesn't do a good job describing character's physical traits, or has cardboard villains, that can certainly be a failure of craft (though a lot of books seem to be tending away from lengthy physical descriptions in general), but that's true regardless of the gender identity of the characters being portrayed. I think one of the key things you'll need to tease out in your worldbuilding is that the ability to change physical characteristics doesn't itself have anything to do with gender identity. The latter is about how the character thinks of themselves within a social context, and is not necessarily likely to change based on the physical form that a character takes, especially since your characters seem to be straight-up shapeshifters rather than beings who change a limited set of physical characteristics. So the first step is to divorce the physical forms that the character is able to take from whatever gender identity they have, which is going to be informed by their social norms etc - in other words down to your worldbuilding. It sounds like you may be intending them to be completely gender-neutral or have no gender identities at all in addition to them having changeable physical forms, but I'm not entirely certain from your description, so that's probably the first thing to establish in your worldbuilding if you haven't already. As far as changing pronouns when characters change form: It sounds like your character/species have the ability to shift forms more broadly than just changing sexual characteristics, but I do want to caution that while it is certainly possible for a character to be both gender fluid and have the ability to change sex, it's harmful to conflate the two (suggest that one is the same as or dependent on the other), so if this is something you're thinking of, you will need to put a fair bit of thought and time into avoiding this. And just generally, shifting pronouns is one more thing for you and readers to keep track of. I'm all for trusting readers to be able to keep track of this type of thing, but you as the writer will need to be able to set them up for success. As for sticking with "he" - if you want truly gender-neutral characters then using a male pronoun might not be the best way to establish this. Ursula Leguin used "he" as a gender-neutral stand-in for aliens who changed sex in Left Hand of Darkness, and I for one definitely found that it made it way easier to think of the characters as male, whether or not that was true for any particular character at any given time. I think Leguin's actually talked about this - may be worth looking up. tl;dr: A ton of this depends on your worldbuilding and, to some extent, your current skill level, but it does sound like "they" may be a good solution for you. Good luck!

Overall: I thought this was pretty smooth, there wasn’t much that lagged for me. I would like a bit more setup/better understanding of how Ag actually feels about the kid thing before this chapter, as she’s seemed a bit ambivalent about it in previous chapters but not strongly so, so I better understand if she’s actually happy about this, happy only for D’s sake, etc. I like the note the chapter ends on, I think it works well emotionally, but I wouldn’t say I felt it was a “tipping point.” I think the reason I didn’t feel that way is because, okay, J gives a stirring speech, but she doesn’t actually attempt/accomplish anything concrete here, even less so I think than previous chapters: She doesn’t propose anything specific against the biomass itself (“make it ours” is not an actionable plan!). And, since the Ads are presented as already being pretty much under control, this speech isn’t about her bringing them into line. So this honestly feels very similar to me to the other scenes that we’ve already had with her and not like the start of anything new. As I read: P3 “We think the alpacas … seem much less resistant to the fungus.” Shouldn’t this be “more” resistant if they are doing better than the cows and sheep? …“someone will eventually need to venture out into the biomass.” Oh. Oh dear. P6 “rather than the usual Amin assistants” either this is a new named character or missing a D. p10 “Will we have enough to Be Ra?” missing word here, I think. “She needed them all to realize the scope of their situation.” I stumbled on ‘scope’ here; scope is a fairly neutral word and it doesn’t seem like what J is going for. The seriousness, the gravity, something similar? I would 100% read this This was also my assumption, yep.

I wonder if this potentially could be another culture clash between the Gens and the Admins? Just a thought.

Looks like we have @C_Vallion, @Mandamon, and @shatteredsmooth for Monday.

Okay, having just read this (I have got to start reading people's commentary before I leave my comments!) I feel even more like having a bit of an endcap on important incidents would be helpful, to get some sense of closing things off before leaping ahead in time. I'm thinking of something like Fonda Lee's Green Bone saga, which manages this really well for the most part.

“They’d been in touch since…” I think you could probably delete this sentence and jump right to the important bit, the message about D. BICYCLES! I firmly believe that sci-fi needs more bicycles. (Why aren’t there more of them in zombie apocalypse books?) Also, now I want to see a mushroom bicycle. I’d like to feel a little more of Ag’s alarm over this initial section – the first page mostly feels like her explaining how D ended up on the crews. Which is fine – I’m not bored – but I don’t get a real sense of her worry until she arrives at the scene. P3 “…and can’t be reprogrammed in time.” Is this “can’t” as in “we can’t pull them off the construction crews because the boss said so,” or “can’t” as in “it actually takes more time to reprogram them than that”? Ag doesn’t squawk at this line so I’m assuming the latter. P7 “I want… a complete wall around…” Wasn’t this already the plan? P9 “At least then they still had a full suite of… supplies” Getting this in the chapter after J was injured would have made her quick recovery easier to swallow. I really like this exchange between F and J, but I feel we’re missing an intermediate scene between the last we had of F/Ji and this one – one where we see J continuing to strikeout, or F starting to think about how he can support her, or something that serves as a bridge to F making what is a pretty big decision here. Heh, poor regular Al. P16 “..had finally responded to his five request” should be “requests” “…it was the first time Al thought he might actually live comfortably…” *wryly* so he's doomed as well, I take it? Overall: The biggest thing I noticed this time around was that I was stumbling on the time jumps – which has happened before, notably when Ji was hurt, but I put it down to not paying enough attention to the timestamps at the start of each chapter. Now that I’ve had it happen again, though, I wonder if what I’m actually stumbling on is what feels like a lack of immediate aftermath of big moments, Ji and D both getting seriously injured being one of them. I don’t exactly want to suggest slowing things down, but I wonder if the characters need a little more space to react to the stuff that is happening to them rather than skipping from crisis to crisis.

You're on! You bet, just be ready to remind me last week if this slips my goldfish-like attention span.

Overall: I thought this was a much stronger start. I feel like I have a better understanding of where the plot is going, S and Z both have clearer direction, and we’re getting a stronger foundation for their relationship too. The big thing that was missing for me was a sense of how/how much S feels tied back to the palace. He says he doesn’t have much familial connection to J (anymore?) and his arguments with Z on how to effect change feel more grounded in S’s sense of logic than emotion or his belief in what the right thing is. I guess what I want to know is – does S believe the things he’s saying to Z about working within the system to effect change, and does he feel challenged by Z’s approach to this, other than the fact that it potentially pits him against his sister? 1. I'm leaning more on exposition to set up the world since trying to show character and setting dynamics in scene resulted in both confusion and so much space taken up that there wasn't a clear central story. Is this a good direction? Yes, I think this is working! I did feel like the exposition was a little “as you know, Bob” at times, with S thinking about things because it was a convenient way for him to explain things to us, but that’s about setup, not that the information isn’t good. There was occasional repetition as well but I think both of these things can be cleaned up at the line level. 2. Is what Z shows S strong enough to feel like it's kicking off a central conflict? Would it be better if I contrive something where they catch violence happening in the moment instead? I think either could work – I feel this is strong enough to stand on its own once the emotional connections are shored up a bit. It depends partially on the kind of book it is – the current start suggests a somewhat slower burn than jumping right to the violence might, depending on how it’s done. The other thing to keep in mind with jumping into the violence is that we’ll still need enough setup on the refugee piece to understand why it matters. As I read: P1 “bladed gauntlets on her hips” as in, tucked into a belt or something? P4 “...pieced together that behind closed doors Z talked about ushering in change...” Just the fact that she talked about it doesn’t seem like it would require much piecing together. I wonder if this could be connected with some sort of action Z has taken in addition, or something else that S finds ominous, that gives us a better sense of how likely Z is to act on this talk? P7 “He couldn't’ give up on Z now… After all, S had…” stumbled on this – I wasn’t quite sure of the connection between the two sentences. They don’t seem like related ideas. “...going to do so in chains.” This could be a good solid scene or chapter ending, but it seems like a new idea – not one the narrative has been setting up so far. To this point, we’ve been focused on S’s fear of Z and what she might do, with a little splash of loneliness. But, this line is the first time we’ve seen S actually fear for her, so the line doesn’t have as much impact as it could. P8 “S knew that the outer parts of the city were sparsely populated because of…” Another stumble here. I figured out the meaning of the sentence eventually, but it took me a few reads. “This was where the succession ceremony took place.” Maybe too picky, but since the narrative is already written in past tense, consider shifting to past perfect for something like this where S is remembering something that happened in his past (i.e. “where the ceremony had taken place”). I’ve noticed it in a couple of places and it might help make the transition between S experiencing something and S remembering something a little smoother – right now it’s not always clear when this happens. P9 “Piles of torn-up cloth” more confusion here. Are these the refugees? Is this referring to their clothes? Or is it debris left around the city? P10 “away from the refugee camp” p14 “Any telepath who came across her could…” I like this complication, but in this case, how on earth is she keeping her identity a secret? Also, I think it might be helpful to lean on the emotions/surroundings of the refugees a little more here. Z and S feel like they’re having an academic argument, for the most part, and the people they’re having this argument about aren’t all that visible for most of this discussion, even though S and Z are standing in their camp. P15 She is revealing an awful lot to S just here, which seems like a pretty big deal given that they apparently don’t trust each other. Is she doing this on purpose as a ploy? Because she really believes that she and S need to work together? This might be an interesting moment to get more from S’s crystal. Also, S’s reaction to Z’s apparent belief that the palace could be under attack right now seems very understated, enough that I almost missed the fact that there was an attack on first read.

Weird, I got this one just fine. The only one I've had issue with is Mandamon's-from-Iceland, That said, I've whitelisted everything that comes from the all [at] readingexcuses [dot] com mailing list, maybe worth doing for those who are finding it a consistent problem? Anyway, congratulations on your first sub! And, as another member of the writes-about-superheroes-who-don't-live-in-the-US club: high five! I think you've got some nicely tense sections here that serve fairly well as an introduction to the novel.The first chapter and the various characters discovering weirdness in the second chapter both worked pretty well in this regard. My first thought on hitting Ch2 was that that's a lot of POVs.The first chapter felt like a prologue, because the POV character dies (??) and because his story seems extremely divergent from the rest of the characters we're presented with in the next chapter, so I was fine with the POV switch here. In the second chapter the multiple POV switches were a little tough to swallow. By the end of the chapter, I'd sort of understood the premise of Ch2 as a sort of panoramic introduction, as in, a whole bunch of people start experiencing weird-but-related stuff at once and the story is about exploring what happens to them. (If so, though, Em and Je seem to break the pattern, as they have had stuff happening over a period of time, as opposed to Z and Jo who have a very discrete moment of weirdness.) Depending on how the rest of the story is handled, I think this could work, if you keep it snappy (which you did), if you give us some strong emotional touchstones to hang onto with each character (more on that in a sec), and if you give us a strong followup to the weirdness (which I did not get from the first half of Ch3 but it sounds like is in the second half). But it's also worth considering whether you need this fast POV switching or whether it might work better gradually introducing POVs so readers can have time to get invested in the individual characters. Especially if the characters are brought together fairly quickly, the second one might be a more effective way to keep readers on board. The biggest thing that was missing for me was a sense of emotional stakes for each POV character; I got maybe a bit more sense of this from Je, who had her relationship with her girlfriend, but the rest seemed rather emotionally detached from the things that were happening to them. I've called out a few specific places in my line-by-lines where it felt like these were missing. As for the setting: Caveat that I only spent a few days in Perth specifically, and that was in 2017. There were definitely a few details that captured the setting - more in relation to the rural parts of the setting (the beach, the bushes, those types of thing) than the urban parts - but for the most part it felt like it could take place in any small town. So while I do think the chapters were a little description-heavy in many places, where you do describe things, don't be afraid to go for landmarks and things that make the city visually distinct! Also I'm guessing at least some of the POV characters are Australian? I hope we get to see that in their voicings a little. (Am I saying that because I would love to watch this group try to interpret, I don't know, "Gonna to to the servo and then grab a few stubbies"? You can't prove that.) As I read: Hm. If I were going to rob a bank, I’m not sure a pencil skirt is the attire I’d pick. “He always imagined it as a tentacle…” Not sure what “it” refers to here – his ability? P2 “…the trigger on her pistol” This seems pretty understated considering he’s just been shot. Having a physical sensation to ground us – the gun going off, the pain of the bullet, something – would be really helpful I think. I also really wanted to feel invested in the characters before the agent’s betrayal. Right now it doesn’t mean much, because I don’t know why it matters. Was M expecting this betrayal or is this a total surprise? Is there an emotional component to this betrayal or is it all business? Which of these characters should I be rooting for? P4: Partway into the chapter. I don’t draw a hard line around showing the characters in their usual routines as some do, but a page and a half into Z’s introductory chapter, I’m starting to get antsy. There doesn’t seem to be any change in routine for him, nor does he appear all that fussed about going through his normal routine, so I’m wondering what the emotional stakes are. “and the signs… promised that snakes would be around” heh, I like “promised” here. Nice little bit of character. How close is he to the beach? The beach seemed to be a fair distance away at the start (he notes seeing the ocean in the distance) but here he turns onto a path and is there right away, close enough that he can smell the seaweed. P5 Reference to J’s swollen lips is the first indication that the flashback we just got actually happened recently; I had thought it was a long time ago. When his scene first started I’d had no idea he was injured at all. P6 “He could investigate this later” struck me as an off-key reaction; that’s a really understated way to react to discovering you don’t have hands. “He had revenge to exact” works as an explanation, I suppose, if he were really focused on that, but his reaction being split between “hey this is weird” and “hey this is great” didn’t quite sit right for me. P7 I’m not sure what has actually happened to J other than the pain in her fingers. This is the only “event” where it’s not clear what’s actually happened. P9 the transition to Chapter 3 was a bit rough for me, I think because there’s no acknowledgement of the weirdness that was the focus of the last chapter. Uh did Perth have dancing clowns? I must have missed this when I was there? My mind is wandering a bit during this description of the mall. I think some description is helpful, but if it’s not describing something really distinctive (and I didn’t go to this mall while I was in Perth, so can’t comment if it feels accurate) and/or setting us up for the action of the chapter, too much description just bogs the narrative down. P11 “…all white walls and wooden frames.” This the first time we’ve encountered something that seems like a landmark (at least that I recognize) and, the distinctive setting of London Court might be worth a little more description because it’s so visually distinct. I would still caution against too much description, and I think the description you do provide should also ideally provide us a little bit more information about the POV character or his emotional touch stones (the signs “promising” snakes is a great example of this) but in this specific area, there is probably room for a little more.

P1 “More resistance to infection…” heh. “Supposedly it had been thousands of years in real time…” This reads like And just being ignorant about how much time has passed, but flagging in case that’s not the intent because I thought it was only about 400. Or is he talking about relative/absolute time? P2 “He’d continued his fungal extermination duties in the meantime…” Wait, they were sending him out to flamethrow mushrooms without a hand? P2/3 “It was like there was an unsaid stigma about discussing it” bit of repetition here with the “unspoken agreement” bit above “…not an enemy like any he’d fought…” Do the Vs have actual combat experience, generally? I thought they’d been upgraded and then shipped away right after. Bottom of p3 “in one radians” should be singular, I think “There might be mental issues with staying alone…” This is an interesting observation coming from And. It caught my attention because he seems so detached – in general, but also here specifically, despite this being the first time we’ve seen him since he lost his arm. Also, this scene is another one in which someone thinks about all the possibilities for fighting the fungus, but doesn’t actually do anything. Spaced farther apart from the scene with J, it’d probably be fine, but here it stands out. The description of the “apple” on p5/p6… remind me not to eat lunch while reading your stuff. “recognize any pattern to the hybridization” I stumbled on this, since my first thought was “isn’t it just hybridizing with everything?” I think “it seemed to be a crapshoot as to what resisted” is much clearer. Serves you right for planting all of the coffee, now, doesn’t it. P8 I’ve been wondering about F and J’s relationship. Never got a romantic-partner vibe from them and this scene makes that clear. Are they friends? Siblings? P11 “He took an open seat… about her age.” I think the first “he” should be “she,” as in Ji? Otherwise I’m very confused. Another one: “Only opening he could think of” near the bottom of the page For a moment I thought Ji was going to end up flirting with (someone who may or may not actually be) C… Overall: I enjoyed the scenes as individual scenes - as always! - but I’m definitely starting to feel antsy. I think part of the problem is that we’ve had a lot of scenes in the last chapter and change that seem to hit similar notes: J, at the end of the last chapter, trying to come up with ways to fight the fungus. And, in this chapter, thinking about his V implant but also thinking about ways to fight the fungus. F… thinking about ways to fight the fungus. And then we have Ji’s little strikeout, which I enjoyed because it was different, but she also didn’t have a chance to move forward. Which makes perfect sense as an introduction to the romance (?) plot, and I think I would have been okay with her not making progress if we’d made progress elsewhere, or vice versa.

I've spent a bit of time in Perth, yep, and I'm working on this crit next

I think it's the "proactive" where I'm tripping up - and I think the issue is that she's been put up against a problem that she can't actually solve. J isn't positioned to do much against the biomass, so it's not all that fun to watch her try. But if we can watch her do something she's good at in order to make more bad decisions, then I think you're onto something. And if she's scrounging resources by pulling the wool over her colleagues, I imagine that conflict will trickle down to the Gens in some way or other. As for C... Well, I'm pre-disposed to like C, as I have a somewhat more specialized version of their day job. They definitely seem competent. Proactive, sure, I imagine we'll continue to mostly see this indirectly but as long as we see J acting on the things C gives them I think that can work. Sympathetic, maybe not, since they work so closely for someone who very definitely isn't. That's definitely going to colour how sympathetic we find them, especially since they very much seem like the type who would play that close to the chest. You might be able to cast them in a more sympathetic light if we see them at least to some degree trying to save J from her own bad decisions. Given the way everyone reacted here, I'd say it is! Btw, you spelled A's name out in full here, may want to edit.

Sorry for my slow reply! But yes, this also went to my spam folder... I wonder if that contributed to this being a quieter week for replies. p1: the opening paragraph threw me for a real loop because I couldn’t figure out why fungus was talking about giving birth. It took me a couple reads to realize that this was the ships arriving. Tempted to chalk this one up to WRS as I know that the biomass has referred to the ships this way before – but it’s been a bit within the narrative too, I think, and it occurs to me there might be an easy solution: can you move the “ring of death” comment from the next paragraph up? This was what made it click for me. “It was hoped the offending trait…” I was all set to write a spiel about why should the biomass care if it’s just going to eat everything anyway, but realized it was a stupid question, so instead I’m just going to say I’m enjoying the way its analyzing these “alien” beings. P2 Are the stationary children plants…? “without detrimental effects to the observing apparatus” Hah! I adore this. “...every other subsumed entity” Ah, good. I’d assumed so, but this feels like a good time to make this explicit. P3 WELP, after that last fungus POV, this mold seems super ominous “...using the last of the nanotech from the ships” The dialogue is starting to feel a little as-you-know-Bob here. I think it’s because we’re seeing a level of detail from Ag that seems to be there to remind us of the bad things that have happened (and seems weird from somebody who is speaking heatedly). Maybe just cut this sentence at “injuries”? I think the rest is okay. P6 “I would never leave you…” Welp. P9 “but everything is a part and sustained by” should be “a part of” “Can we just nuke at hope for the best” I have been trying SO HARD to keep my “god these people are bad at their jobs” comments to a minimum this time. I just want you to know that. p10 right at the top of the page J uses male pronouns for C Does this wall have a floor? Otherwise wouldn’t the biomass just get in from below? Lol at the end of the chapter though Overall: Hmm. The section between J and C feels a little long, though I can’t point to anything in particular that’s dragging it down. But in general, it seems like a lot of the time when we see J, we see her in the context of someone explaining something to her that she should already know (at least in general terms, like “maybe killing the entire planet is a bad idea”). I also wouldn’t mind a bit more direction/movement for D and A’s scenes. I always enjoy them and this was no exception, but it does feel like they’re in a bit of a holding pattern waiting for bad things to happen. Last thought: I recall mentioning in a previous chapter that concerns about the animals/food supply – specifically the livestock getting sick – was in the wrong part of the narrative. I wonder, could that whole reveal be moved up to here? You’ve already got a natural place for it with all the discussion of the vegetables here, and potentially it could help frame the need for the colony to move from a short-term approach of killing the biomass and living happily ever after to a long term one where they need to learn to live with it. I think this is a totally fair comment, She doesn't seem to have run into any real resistance, and the possibility that someone else might have illicit nukes doesn't really seem to even register with her except insofar as she can't use them to nuke the fungus (on the planet. That she wants to live on). In fact, the only time we've really seen her be proactive is in that first chapter where she's maneuvering people around, and no obstacles from that plot line have come back around. So instead we just see her fighting the same thing the rest of the POV characters are now fighting, only much more ineffectually, which I think this most recent POV section isn't quite doing it for me.