neongrey

Meanwhile, my alphasmart neo just showed up today... I've got some longish car and/or bus rides coming up soon, figured thirty bucks was reasonable for maybe getting some work done. Plus this way even at home I can write next to the air conditioner, lol

I feel like "chain burned" would work better hyphenated, but yeah, as far as fantasy swears go, I think this one's a reach. But I'm generally not a fan of them in the first place. I did have to go back to the end of the previous to find the chain of logic that leads to the conclusion that Orsini is behind this; I think the logic could be painted a little more thoroughly. It's almost but not quite there, I think. "do not turn our blades on the heads of the twenty" twenty should be capitalized, I think, at least every other occurence seems to be. Around p 2, the Risorto came off somewhat more astute than this to me in the previous installment. I'm liking this around 4, you're getting that everything all going to hell in a handbasket sense pretty well. p.5 I think you might want 'oracular' trance rather than oracle the handmaid is good, yeah, she has a good feel to her The letter with the accusation, ehhhh. It's tying things up in too neat of a package, I think. Other than that though, I think this is pretty solid; you've got a lot going on in this but I don't think it's too much, and you've got a solid feel for the general Stuff that keeps the world moving.

By and large this is something where I'm generally opting to deliver information via the POV rather than direct exposition-- Lasila's reactions to people around her, I think, are a good gauge for what's normative, and the structure of marriage contracts is intended to be a fairly major subplot. We'll see though-- there may be some details I do want to work in that aren't covered this way. This is something I'd like to look at more when the whole of the piece is laid out, rather than piecemeal like this. Yeah, it is one of those things, thanks for calling out when I do that, lol. Yeesh, I do that too, thanks, ahah. Yeah, I can spruce that line up; he's checking out her butt as he does it; it's 'wouldn't want her to put you in pants'. I almost hate to tell you that there's nothing more than some kissing and some feeling-up going on on camera... (I suspect you will enjoy the feeling-up lol) on camera, anyway, lol. The party's a somewhat lengthy sequence. Lasila's POV will always gloss this over (though she does step into the dress for this reason) because it's taken as such a given but no aelin clothing goes on over the head-- the wings get in the way. So, the face just gets done first to avoid having to deal with any powder fallout. The problem of course is that rayon has a certain of-our-world sound to the name (a little too close to nylon, if I had to guess). Viscose might do, of course, but here I like the vague suggestion that Lasila really doesn't know much at all about the material. Well, if you call people who like butts the wrong sort. :v

I've got a strong personal preference for they in fiction, myself, (and I think we are in a similar boat genderwise (though I usually just plop into the 'female' box on account of it not being inaccurate, and not wanting to lay claims to a whole social knot that hasn't really been part of my experience)). I have a few different reasons for it; among other things usage of the singular they is far, far more entrenched in the English language than modern hypercorrection on the subject suggests-- and while I don't believe in calcifying the language, I think it's foolish to dismiss that option as existing at all. The 'they is plural only' crowd is demonstrably grammatically wrong, and has been since they started doing that. Singular 'you' used to be railed against, too, so whatever. I feel like standardization is important for grammatical forms-- I don't really care how that standardization shakes out, but grammar quite literally is a set of rules so some generally agreed-upon form is important, I think. But honestly, my preference for it in fiction comes from my general feeling that grammatical constructs generally ought to be more or less invisible, and my general problem with neopronouns in fiction is that there are so many different ones (and the specific set chosen is often fairly arbitrary) that this is basically impossible. For me it is less about familiarity so much as that sheer variety makes them inherently stick out. (well, maybe the variety prevents people from growing familiar with any individual pronoun set, thus they stick out, but I'm not sure about that-- I feel like spivak is basically invisible, and if I was gonna use a neopronoun set that's where I'd go) Of course, this visibility too is sometimes desirable, both IRL and in fiction. So yeah, 'they' is what I go for when left to my own devices; you can see it with Savae in mine, who is ungendered, which I am mostly specifically distinguishing from agender in that it is an n/a response to the question of gender, rather than 'none', though it's a fine enough distinction that I wouldn't object to the agender appelation by someone else. (and this too is why grammatical invisibility is what I'm seeking here; the question of gender is one they are not interested in answering). (The society I am writing too has somewhat of an odd relationship to the nonbinary too-- they have and use a full ungendered pronoun set, which is mostly apparent in the text in the form of ungendered honorifics, and people do not generally bat an eyelash at people who are nonbinary, but in the time between when the society started tightening up on women and the present, it has become somewhat awkward... they almost entirely treat gender as a set of social roles, and since they've solidified the binary, where the nonbinary 'fits' in society is a lot harder to find. And it is a society that is very big on conformity, so, yeah, it can be somewhat awkward in practice. But a lot of things are changing. And I could go on a lot more about its gender relations as a whole, but i kind of am already, heh) But yeah, the conversation becomes a lot more interesting and a lot more helpful when it is about 'why this particular choice' and not 'why do this at all'.

Could we, like, maybe not question the mere usage of non he/she pronouns for off-binary characters? Out of three stories we've been going through lately that have had non-binary characters every last one of them have had people questioning that fact alone on first occurence thereof. I don't think this is a beneficial line of critique in any capacity, and I know for my own part I feel less comfortable here seeing this sort of reaction. If there's actual grammatical confusion that needs correction there's one thing, but in no case I've seen has this come up. Now then: Okay, the first page is almost entirely a single paragraph. It's offputting from the getgo, not giving the eye anything to catch on to. And you've got a fair few scentence fragments. The 'a single boot' sentence actually is one such, despite its length-- the description in here doesn't actually go anywhere, grammatically speaking. The immediate follow-up is, too, fragmentary. I actually stopped reading this paragraph entirely at 'as if in challenge'. If you want to be writing using a terse voice, I think you need to actually be terse, not going on forever while having shorter sentences. As it is, the syntax has an almost childish feel to it; very dick-and-jane in the sentence structure. The second paragraph is not much better; this language is reaching for being evocative and, I think, failing to do so. You're basically just explaining what a jungle is, and again, you're still way into sentence fragments here. That sentence starting with 'and yet' should be a part of the previous sentence, eg. 'And so it begins' is cliche enough that I would avoid it; I just see it and am immediately whisked off to thinking of how I should rewatch babylon 5 again. The poem does not scan; it holds to no particular meter and there's basically no flow to the words. It feels very, very rough. Your descriptive paragraphs are way, way too long. I saw this next one overfilled the page again and straight-up did not read it. 'to plea' - should be plead oh, please don't compress an entire fight scene into one single paragraph, please do not. "so this is the end for..." this is some beyond cheesy phrasing, which doesn't do much for any weight this dialogue is supposed to have. I can't much offer a lot of opinion on this as a whole, because just structurally there's very little for me to get a grip on. The sentence structure is too choppy, the paragraphs are massive, and i suspect the majority of the contents of them are superfluous description, but I can't say for sure.

Yeah, in this, it's not that I'm brushing you off, but that certain aspects of the culture mean the language usage is intentional and mandatory, so attacking these particular problems requires a different approach rather than just making it more transparent. More Savae might be the answer here too, because they have far less patience for this sort of thing. I will keep an eye on it though, thanks.

I did a bit of it last year but kind of fell off, I dunno, my best way to set a pace for myself is in weekly units so...

This, I think, will always be at least a little tricky; it's a culture where a direct yes or no answer is considered rude(which is itself one of very few things about this that I can directly map to a real world source), and generally being very oblique is the ideal in polite society. Lasila's somewhat gifted at following circumlocution quickly. What's going on here is Eshrin's insulting where she lives, insulting her brother, trying to back her into conversational corners where she would need to admit ignorance, etc, and doing so very, very politely. The only directly rude thing he's done is address her by given name alone. She's opting not to take offense to any of this, aside from getting a bit huffy when he suggests her home is in a bad part of town. This I think is tricky, because it is one of those things where if you're familiar what's being done it is more or less clear-- this is how you contour a heart-shaped face, narrowing the forehead, widening the chin, etc. And I like doing that sort of thing. I'll see if there's a way to smoothe it out. Oh... that one should stand out; she is saying roundabout that she wouldn't break hearts, not because it's wrong or because it doesn't occur to her that this is a done thing, but because if she holds someone's heart such that she could break it, she owns it, and she wouldn't want to break her own property. But again, she's being very oblique. Yeah, it jumps right from doing her makeup to changing; I can probably smoothe that out. Thanks!

Can I get in too if it's not too hoggy (I don't mind waiting if I am, lol)? I'm gonna be away the week after.

Previously: The city of Ilidria's living goddess is dead, and seventeen-year-old Lasila Vahendra's brother has been called away to help defend a senator who might end the war that has been draining the city for nearly eighty years. When attending upon the fallen goddess, a mysterious priestess named Maranthe invites Lasila to attend the rebirth of the goddess. With opportunities for her future disintegrating around her, Lasila seizes upon this as a chance to make connections that have been otherwise lost to her. She avails herself of Maranthe's offer of a dress, and has one made that she hopes will ensure people remember her, despite the odd requirement of masks at the celebration. Last time: Varinen departs, under awkward, miserable circumstances, leaving Lasila alone with the cat he obtained for her. We are introduced* to the human Savae Alevrin, who checks their mail and works on a paid commission. *Is actually going to appear sooner, in revisions This time: The escort that Lasila requested Varinen arrange for her arrives, and he is both charming and thoroughly unpleasant beneath that charm. Lasila does her best to conceal her nerves. Next time: Savae returns, and works some glass. Lasila listens to senatorial politics. Specific stuff this time: Lasila's starting to get nervous here in the back half of the chapter but she's actively attempting to hide it in POV narration. If you can tell that easily, that's fine; it's also fine if it's not very overt. Eshrin-- just general impressions right now. I'll withold my intent with him for now because I just want to see how he comes off. Here's where I actually have a place for English-language honorifics, so I use them.

p.1 I think your info is fine but I have some concerns about sentence flow; it feels pretty choppy. The sentence starting with 'Such as the prefecture, obviously,' strikes me as a really awkward start in feel. It think it's easier to shove info down people's throats with more fluid diction; this has a lot of stop-and-go and hard pauses. Also, the first page consists solely of two paragraphs; I sort of did a double take just looking. I think if I were looking to rework here I'd break up the paragraphs more and fiddle with sentence structure overall. p.2 Is this the first time the sister's been mentioned? Nothing wrong if it is but shunting it into an aside feels odd. "She left the stairwell and began..." the back half of this sentence feels clumsy, kind of overloaded, which doesn't help the passive voice here. One signs a lease for a place, not with, and the 'through correspondence' just makes the sentence feel bloated. "She noted" redundant; her noting things is given if it's in her head. Ending two sentences in a row with a word like environment looks kind of, ehh. The second such sentence, 'the lack of trash...', this sentence feels really passive-voice, again, sort of has a clumsy feel here. Like, overall this section, I don't think there's a problem with the information you're trying to convey here, but your sentence-level work, the phrasing feels off, it doesn't flow comfortably to me. I'm just pulling out the passive voice that's leaping out but there's probably more here. Not noticing comma splices yet, but going passive voice when conveying information unless you absolutely have to kind of drags things down. P.3 'The impossibly red hair' while on the one hand the sentence right before that is good, I'm gonna point out that visible cracking in makeup (especially foundation) is not necessarily an indicator of there being too much at all; it's generally more complicated than that, owing to the formula of the makeup, the wearer's type of skin, how long they've had it on, etc. The actual sentence that I called out above-- you're running on, you've repeatedly got passive voice in here, and the beehive hairstyle dates to the 1960s. Which is itself not an issue using the hairstyle but the name thereof stands out with all the Roman-esque language. Passive voice in the following sentence too. And tbh using 'hag' here says a lot more about Laurea than it does about the landlady, and it's not flattering. Also, if that's what she's getting out of it, I'm not feeling her detective skills so much, either. 'she' after describing another woman is obfuscatory, even with the bit about Laurea being the new tenant (and tentatively is/should be implied by the phrasing, but I am very much not big on adverbs). 'protested' ehh, redundant, said-bookism You're giving the landlady two consecutive instances of raw dialogue with no attribution or action right after some description; I feel like you could be shifting the weight from the really passively-written description to surround the dialogue some and convey what you wanted there instead. Either way it's a waste to just throw dialogue out there link a lump. You're thick with description right up until people start talking, then it drops entirely-- I'd look at balancing it out some. 'missy', is 'miss' used elsewhere? I don't recall, but without 'miss' 'missy' doesn't work. 'rude hag' is a weirdly unnatural construction. 'Laurea realized' in that same sentence can straight-up go; you're writing this from her POV, it's in her voice, by default all of this is things Laurea notes and realizes etc, and then two sentences in a row with offset asides looks very odd. Is 'witch' an appropriate pejorative in this setting? 'A landlady can' -- you're shifting to present tense out of the past for this sentence. p. 4 okay, three consecutive bits of dialogue from the landlady with absolutely no narration. 'harried her' again, said-bookism, conveyed by the dialogue. "don't you have any sense" is a new sentence, should be treated as such. Carrying onto this page, nearly all your description in this one is using passive voice. I'm gonna stop calling it out here for my own health but I'd say more than anything else this needs a thorough line edit. I think making your sentences flow more smoothly will make the description go down a lot more easily. "Based on her short experience" this sentence doesn't scan at all; the first section is again, redundant by the fact that you're inside Laurea's head and the second two parts are just repeating herself. "We don't have a bath" period, you're splicing. Is it normal or expected to have one? If no, just go right to saying where the bathouse is. p.5 'replied wryly' ehhhhhh, and the follow-up sort of contradicts. I think this is definitely a job for 'said'. 'Whatever' as a single-word response does feel out of place with the vernacular here. 'she eventually produced' you've got run-ons and splicing here. 'larger key' period, new sentence. 'By then Laurea' we've pretty much established that she's doing this by now, and the aside feels off. 'assured' again redundant I feel like you're unconsciously falling into misognystic stereotyping on the landlady, and most of it's in the way Laurea's painting her; I'd clean that up along with the sentence structure. 'After a quick struggle' -- a long time ago i read something somewhere about fiction that anything contained within a parenthetical should just be deleted because by the very nature of being parenthetical it's not relevant. This doesn't hold for some styles of writing, but not this one, and your asides are basically parenthetical. I'm not sure the aside about putting the box down is adding much. The back half of the sentence 'slid open... dusty rails' is grammatically muddy; the bit about the rails is poised such that it's no longer naturally a modifier to the door. Two rooms colon, not comma. End the sentence after 'another', start a new one. This is only page six? I'm gonna stop commenting on sentence structure as of here too, sorry, it's ten to four in the morning, I'll be here all night, hahaha. I didn't call this out last time but I do suspect the average reader is not going to know what a fibula pin is; you might want to slide in a general explanation somewhere. p.7 'in laurea's opinion' - I'm not gonna go over why this is redundant again but here I'm gonna point out that framing this way actually weakens the appearance of her opinion. If it's that definitive, she should be phrasing it definitively. 'greeted her warmly as the dhe placed its front limbs' I don't know what's going on with this part of this sentence. The description here and going onto page 8 flows better than some of the previous stuff. p.8 yeah please mark your pov shifts with some sort of isolated character like an asterisk or something Starting off the pov with passive voice, ehh. And 'he didn't like what etc' is a very very telly intro to the character's head. There's still sentence structural issues here, but you feel more confident in Probitus' POV; you write much more fluidly using it. That is, we're mostly back to comma splicing rather than overloading passive voice. Unfortunately, I'm not sure at all what this section is adding-- what do we as the reader gain by learning that he's intentionally trying to get rid of her? What do we gain by not being in her head as she gets this from him? I feel like this whole section is devoted to tell over show on the subject of what exactly he's doing here. For myself, I'd say that pretty much all of your problems are things that would be solved by a really thorough line edit; the actual story underlying is good enough that I'd still be with it, if I weren't ramming constantly into the sentence construction.

If singular they was good enough for Chaucer through Austen, it's good enough for me!

Ilea Sirie's name is probably negotiable; she's background, mostly. Envari using aelin names says something very important about entrenched aelin imperialism, and their entire pov is focused on the fact that they are foreign in a place that does not welcome them, so I don't feel a need to lose that aspect. Do you have a concern with Savae being ungendered? I notice you offset the pronoun.

Cool cool, looking forward to seeing the revisions, the base story framework is good, but yeah, haha.

Human, actually, and that might be a bit better of a substitution; most people in the story would use them interchangeably but the one's a nationality and the other is a species, and that will make it clearer right off what the operative differences are. Yeah, they are both being a bit melodramatic (I think she actually uses the word there), so yeah, I don't mind if it seems that way. Yeaaaah, she's been kind of a shut-in since their mom died and she's sort of hamming it up there but there's probably a better way of expressing she thinks she needs to get out more. Possibly even saying just that. hahaha yeah is there ever anything that wouldn't be hurt by cuts? Another one of those things I want to wait until I have the whole thing done before I really get into, though. Still, 15% isn't a bad projected loss, hehe. Mostly it's Lasila projecting, which I should work in more. There's reasons why Varinen's not terribly concerned about the danger, or someone else close to the situation that she'll talk to isn't either. It's a tricky line, because she (mostly) thinks she's being reasonable and is narrating to appear as if she is but it should be at least somewhat discernible that she is not, in fact, being reasonable. Themself is correct. I am honestly not going to sweat the name; narration uses given name (Ilea, where I do have some concerns of similarity with the feminine-priestly honorific Ilia, but nobody's said anything about that one so I'm going to assume we're fine there) and Savae's going to come in before, when I get to revisions, which should clean it up the rest of the way. Thanks!

I feel bad for being down on small press, because they've really got it rough, but man, they really don't offer a whole lot that self-pub doesn't. Like if you've got no means of doing your own cover (or covering the costs of one), I guess, but yeesh. Like when people talk about publishing dying, those are the guys getting killed. The big ones will be fine, on the whole, and selfpub will be fine, on the whole.

Hooooo boy do I still not like Prot, right from the first page, and I'm going to elaborate a little-- it's the "just the change in temperature" line. Like, this character is supposed to be endearing, loveable rogue smuggler type, whatever, but the sheer casual pointlessness of the lie to someone who ostensibly is important to him-- I can't believe he cares about her in the slightest, I can't believe she's even important to him between this and his earlier actions. I definitely don't believe the way he slings 'love' about her. He talks down to her, he undercuts her efforts, he lies to get out of looking at places because he knows she'll sublimate her own desires to his, and now this-- there's no reason for it besides to make himself look 'stronger'. She knows something shady's going on even if she doesn't know everything, if he doesn't want to admit to how unsettled he actually is, he doesn't need to completely dismiss her like this. He can't even admit he's nervous because something's fishy here? He pretty much displays absolutely zero respect for her as a person in any of their scenes together. It's not the sort of person I can cheer for. Page 2, I'm not sure what's going on here. Kamuli's calling Prot down and... Kamuli's asking why they're running? No, it has to be Prot, but the paragraph's describing Kamuli's action. Either way, 'I think you'd better come see this' rather than someone just saying what's going on is, ehhh. Even 'we found something that we don't know what it is' is better Further down the page, not sure I'm following the 'eyed the line' bit. Are there windows or something? If they're running, how is he having time to eye the line? P.4 "look boss" comma between the words You're repeating some information really soon after the last time you gave it, like the bit about the system beasts. You took the time at the end of the last section to give a run-down on the maji, I am not sure about going into it again already. There's new stuff that needs to be conveyed but it's close enough I don't know the repetition is necessary? To me it feels like you're dropping everything in a moment of tension to exposit, and, ehh. Through to p. 8 we're looking good, but the crew are feeling really indistinct to me. Toward the bottom of p.8 though onto 9-- if most people don't know about how the maji organize themselves, it feels odd to go into a conversation very shortly thereafter that hinges on these divisions. The majus might initiate but the other conversation participants are engaging as if familiar with the subject and there's nothing odd considered about this. It doesn't jive with this being such a rare thing to know. p.11 'stuck out her tongue', really? Even if she's being playful, having her do this is infantilizing. 12 to end works well, no notes in particular there.

Like, if something is seeming a bit off about this argument, then that's what's intended here-- she's very much focusing everything on him, and how what he's doing is affecting her and painting it as her being civil, and her narration is drawing him as being unreasonable. She's got abandoment issues driving this in spades, to be sure, and she's framing it in terms that are supposed to draw sympathy, but she's about 90% in the wrong here-- she's a manipulative narrator is what she is. Not deceptive, per se, but she's probably got some awareness that she's being a jerk here (and working that in some more might help, too, I think) Authorially what's being gone for here is to keep the reader mostly sympathetic, right up until you hit whatever point you hit when you look back at her actions and go 'wow, she's a horrible person'. So it's kind of a tricky line to walk with these early convos before he goes, and I'm missing my mark a little bit, I think, haha.

If I could get in too that'd be great-- I'm gonna be away for a week in july if anyone thinks I'm being too hoggy, haha

Oh geez this isn't epic in the slightest-- we're working on much more personal scales here, which would be why the motion has primarily been very personal, Lasila's mixed feelings about her brother, etc. If this were epic, we'd be following Varinen, actually... More of a metallic fluid lipstick, but it's definitely applied like paint. It doesn't last that long, as we'll... see later. hehe. Part of the issue is this is very much a slow burn building up to the fight on both their parts (it's effectively just repeating stuff from the first chapter on a number of counts)-- I'm definitely looking to emphasize more what's going on there in the earlier bits but the very fact that he's been politely tolerating her guilt trips-- and, frankly, attempts to undermine his own confidence-- for two weeks solid until right now is modestly important about him. Well, she's definitely got abandonment issues, but she's certainly collapsed them down, in this case, to thinking he's going to die where he, with a better awareness of his own capabilities than her, is quite convinced that he's going to live through this. She doesn't have faith that he's good enough to succeed-- even if he is the single greatest living swordsman of his generation (which he is), and certainly that rankles on him. It's kind of a case where 'okay you don't want me to go because everyone we've ever known who did died' doesn't do anything for anyone because that's a given. So, misunderstanding, no, but they do have different understandings of the situation and different goals in this conversation. His kid sister has been not terribly subtly, for two weeks solid, suggesting that she thinks he's marching to his death. Savae is a fun character, but they're a tricky one, because they're very much just one cog in a lot of moving parts; i could have gone with a few different POVs for their plotline but I needed the foreign one. And they're very bitter about a lot of the things Lasila delights in, which should in turn help clarify just how biased her POV is. And Savae brings us far down out of the upper-class machinations that Lasila goes for. They cross paths occasionally, but they're neither friends, nor working for the same goals, nor allies at all.

yeah, I think bringing savae in earlier will help clarify certain critical aspects of lasila's character; savae is enough of an outsider to make clear just how much lasila is a product of her society. and that rearrangement on the early order of operations should help kick lasila right from the get-go, along with some adjustments to go with the tweaking; five years to a seventeen-year-old is a really long time especially when it's her personal ambitions for her future on the line. lasila is definitely up to quite a lot of things right now, she just engages from within her own society and place therein, and if that's not coming through, there's stuff i can do about that. thanks.

I'm not sure about the first section with the watchmen, to be honest; it feels like it's being mysterious for the sake of being mysterious. I get the sensation of witheld information, and I mean of course you don't want to give away the farm from the get-go but I'm not so sure about how obviously you're holding back. It's ominous, but without the sensation of why that's the case, so it falls a little short. That said right after that we go right into my jam. I'd look at the tense in the one-two-three bit in the first paragraph; I see why you used the present there but I think the past would technically be more correct. I like Davio continuing to work in the face of this kind of news, anchoring on the mundane, and I like the paperwork jamming things up. Fantasy government really rarely feels properly governmental but I'm feeling it here. p.4 "after a quarter of so" - should be 'or so'? p.6 "Davio tried to breath for a minute" - should be breathe, and probably a paragraph break before this sentence, otherwise it's obfuscating who's talking/acting here. "... but he looked town and turned" looked down p.11 "call back the dead, sir, they' should be sir semicolon they I'm not super comfortable with 'girlish' being your primary descriptor for your only speaking female character. Once, i'm not thrilled, but whatever, nbd, but the second time, it starts to feel unpleasant. Otherwise I think you're good so far, you're getting the urgency getting mired in red tape feeling across pretty well.

Sorry I didn't get as much reading/commenting done as I would have liked last week, I got kind of tied up. Hoping to still do some catching up, I've got some more free time this week. Anyway, previously: The city of Ilidria has been drained by a decades-long war. The last daughter of the a faded merchant family, seventeen-year-old Lasila Vahendra hears that the living goddess Alia has died on the same day that her brother announces he's been called away to the war zone. Faced with the prospect of needing to take care of herself years before she expected, she looks into the family affairs only to find herself effectively paralyzed: none of her plans can be enacted for years. A different sort of opportunity arises when she attends to the fallen goddess' form: a priestess invites her to celebrate the goddess' rebirth in a month. Last time: Lasila gets fitted for a dress, and after fully considering the nature of the celebration, commits to her focus on mining every opportunity she can from it. This time: Varinen's patience finally wears thin, and he and Lasila argue one last time before he leaves. Savae Alevrin, jeweler, archmage and priest of the Envari moon-goddess, works on a commissioned piece. Next time: Well, the escort Varinen arranged sure doesn't talk about swords... Notes: -Writing this summary made me consider that it might work better if the initial bank scene from a couple weeks ago might do better before Lasila gets the offer from Maranthe-- have her be denied on her own plans and then get that particular opportunity. Thoughts? -While this is the first of Savae we're seeing this go-round, I'm looking on inserting a scene with them (and another character, who I'll call out on his first appearance & also some related stuff when it comes up) earlier on. That said, aside from rejiggering this scene to maybe be a little less introductory, it won't affect this scene too much. -So Savae is a lot more immediately hooked into these initial goings-on than Lasila is, and they don't circumlocute in narration the way she does so I'm thinking this should present a useful angle in a lot of ways. -Since I am committed to the singular they rather than a neopronoun of some sort, I am watching sentence structure like a hawk here; if something looks funky with my theys please let me know. Thanks!

Yeah, I getcha, I'm just not all that great at sounding like I'm taking things seriously when I actually am, lol.

Yeah definitely, and the draft's got issues, no lie. And theoretically I would like to exchange this for some manner of dollars when it's done-done so cleaning out the stuff that doesn't work, well... haha, might be a good idea