Silk

Honestly now I'm tempted too

Oh dear. So, seeing no objections and that we don't have a full roster: it looks like @shatteredsmooth, @TheDwarfyOne, and @kais for two slots, with one slot left.

So then we have @shatteredsmooth, @kais with two slots, and @PiedPeterPiperfor tomorrow.

Man, saaaame.

Thanks for catching that! Please consider the roster full unless @kais confirms otherwise, folks.

Crap and I'm only like 4 chapters in So we have @Mandamon for two slots (well, slightly more than two slots, I guess), @shatteredsmooth and @TheDwarfyOne for tomorrow. Anyone want the last one?

I am notoriously bad at making time to watch videos and TV shows. TV is just not and has never really been a thing for me for whatever reason. To @shatteredsmooth's point, I only watched the Pilot episode when I lived with my friend in Tasmania for a month. He had the series on DVD, and unlike me, his default is very much "have the TV on all the time while doing stuff." So the first episode got watched. The pilot episode was double-length, if that helps! Also, Prime? Pfft. I have managed to go my entire life without buying anything from Amazon and I don't intend to start now. Happy new lawnmower @shatteredsmooth!

Is... is now a bad time to confess that I have only seen the pilot episode?

And the Giants causeway!

We seem to be pretty evenly split on this issue. And that, my friends, is the REAL reason this group has lasted ten years.

Can I have some feta if @Robinski and @aeromancer get my pickles? Yes! Both of those! Ooh. Cake. Now I'm hungry.

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed. Yes. Yes they do.

Thank you! Just gotta write some new music for the next one...

I wonder where you might have heard that before!

BUNNIES! Well, I can't top that, but this post is actually all @Robinski's fault anyway. By which I mean I'm continuing a conversation we started elsewhere because it seemed more appropriate than continuing to appropriate one of @Mandamon's crit threads, so Robinski, if you want to watch me play trombone and sing at the same time,* you can catch me attempting to just do that on the playback from my last livestream concert on my Facebook page (that particular number starts at about 33:25, music in general starts at about 9:30 - I started the video earlier than the concert to check the connection). * Admittedly I was using some technology to help the process along, but that was all live. As the various errors will probably attest. Turns out that's really friggin' hard to do.

Okay then, looks like we have @shatteredsmooth, @Snakenaps , @aeromancer, and @Mandamon rounding out the roster with two slots (yay deadlines) with @kais up for the next week.

You only say that because you didn't catch my last livestream...

You're all so accommodating that I'm having trouble keeping track of who's volunteering to bow out in favour of whom! Thanks, everyone. Let's go with: @Sarah B, @TheDwarfyOne, @Mandamon (for two slots, in consideration of the deadline) and @kais. @shatteredsmooth and @Snakenaps, I saw you two speak up first about potentially bowing out this week so I'll take you up on that and put you on for next week (if you still want it). That good?

It was 10 years in December, actually.

So it looks to me like we have five slots, with @shatteredsmooth, @kais, @Mandamon (x2) and @Snakenaps submitting, and @Sarah B up for next week, is that right? I haven't been listening to the writing excuses podcast in ages - I forget when I stopped exactly but it's been several years. I should really start again.

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

DM me your email again and I'll add you back on the list! I do a semi-regular cleanup and that probably did happen about December last year.

This makes much more sense all around. Gotcha. I mean, she COULD be overly invasive with it, but it would certainly colour our opinions of the character. And, probably much less so with the edits with you've described, but the way it's been set up so far had me expecting that the telepathy thing would become a conflict.

I see this chapter brings the much-vaunted bacon pizza that was discussed in the last submission! And… now I’m hungry. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the way M’s telepathy manifested in this chapter. It felt like it was being used to its full narrative potential here, which wasn’t always the case in chapter one. As I read: P2 “He wasn’t sure she had knocked him out or” should be “if she had knocked him out” p4 “Not a single snippet of memory…” That seems unlikely, since he’s actively thinking about it. Could just be something innocuous. I’m halfway getting the impression he knows she’s eavesdropping on his thoughts, which would be interesting. Ooh, I like the conversation about wanting to be like everybody else. I’m having a little bit of trouble with the verisimilitude of the dialogue between the two of them. There are points where works really well, and points where it feels somewhat stilted for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. Halfway down page 6 was one of those moments. “You had a very strong reaction.” The other spots I had a bit of trouble with were right near the beginning of the conversation: “I memorized everyone’s name…” for example jumped out at me as being an odd thing to say. “Does tomato sauce count as a vegetable?” Hah. Bottom p8 “to comfortable manager her shields” should be “comfortably.” “...to float in salt and moonlight.” Nice sentence here. The description of the mixer worked okay for me (keep in mind, I didn’t read the very first version that was submitted) but I think the description could be a bit tighter. Really the significant bits are M revealing to the reader that she’s questioning, and the reminders that she is different from everyone else. How big is this town and campus? Mi’s just popping up everywhere. It was not just you. They're also very popular in every D&D campaign I've ever played in. Concur. It was mentioned at the beginning of the scene, but did conveniently go away for quite a while while the two of them were having that conversation. Even the obnoxious ones? Yeah, I found the "spy thriller" a bit much here, especially I think because it was also used in the last chapter. Plus M, who is herself mixed up in something weird, can probably find a better, more fitting analogy than "spy thriller," which incidentally sounds like someone who doesn't actually read spy thrillers. I think I mentioned this in the first chapter as well, but at risk of sounding like a broken record, yeah, she's doing a LOT of that here. Actually, I was almost more okay with it here than in the previous chapters because she's potentially protecting herself (trying to make sure she doesn't get discovered). Doesn't make it less wrong, of course, but gives her a more powerful motivation than sheer curiosity. Although, in fairness, I think I may have been projecting more of that onto the page than is actually there, since definitely what's explicit is the bit where she wants to solve this man like a puzzle. If you were reluctant to take all of this out, maybe making the self-interest a little more apparent is part of the solution? I mean, WAS it a date though? I didn't have that impression from the first chapter, which, maybe that's a "me" thing, but I think it's at least partially because M didn't seem interested in T romantically in the first chapter either. T was definitely interested in her, and M was willing to be friends, but I didn't get "date" vibes. Or at least, they were one-sided date vibes. In which case, yeah, T should probably be more miffed that M didn't pay attention to her (and possibly miffed that she brought A along to begin with?) It's okay! This is actually one of the really valuable things about a group like this - seeing what lands differently for different people.

Looks like we have a full roster with @JWerner, @shatteredsmooth, @Snakenaps, @Mandamon and @kais all submitting.