neongrey

It's one of those things, yeah, I feel like the effects of a long heatwave I think really help a lot of the feeling of societal exhaustion that I want for these bits. Objectively speaking, it's probably not all that hot (temps averaging in the low 30s, probably)-- the city's built on a (formerly) heavily-forested mountain, but for things like this it's how it relates to the norm, yeah. Of course the city has some measure of climate control but that's more pursuant to winter weather effects, taking the edge off of snowfall, eg. They don't hurt anything, and as we've been over I certainly phrase wonkily a fair bit, but yeah, best if they're not the primary focus. Among other things a lot of this is still at a stage where rewrite is the move rather than spot correction, so. I mean. It's a simile, not a singular adjective. The red is the shade of flames, the wings aren't reddish and on fire. I think in this case plucking has the correct connotation of being severed from something alive. Simply an error of phrasing here, yeah. So I'm actually pulling from a lot of things here insofar as the war goes-- there's definitely that aspect, and also the interwar and the postwar periods; my experience is north american so I'm more directly drawing on that but yeah. The other thing, which I've had other readers pick up on but nobody here is that this is also drawing heavily on the fact that since the Iraq war in the early 90s, there's never not been a time when we've been involved in a foreign war. It's distant, doesn't directly affect the day-to-day but everybody knows people who either didn't come back or came back irreparably harmed, physically or otherwise. That sense of perpetuity, of inevitability, the ways in which the culture's been influenced both there's that there too. (consequently in this aspect it's a lot more about the harm the war has caused than the war itself, and the pertinent details of the war are frequently muzzy to pov characters like lasila in particular) Otherwise yeah this chapter is not quite where I want it; it definitely lost certain of the 'feel' the original version of this scene had. Maranthe is one of the characters who's affected by being too stringent on opsec; I definitely saw a bit of this when I was redoing the scene but the way in which this was accomplished was not quite right.

An interesting assumption, and not one Savae agrees with. Hmmm. No, definitely there. It's a timing thing (this is actually all happening a few hours earlier than ch. 1), though yeah this part of the scene has issues and a lot of the early Savae stuff needs significant rework. I'm not very happy with any of it. There's a number of reasons, most of which are not super pertinent to the story, why someone with gender issues would go to Alia's priests in specific, but in general she also has a religious preference for Alia (mentioned earlier on). As for not going to Savae, well, a sheltered teenage noble who's spent the past two years in (effectively) a convent for wayward girls is unlikely to be able to correctly evaluate much of anything as being connected to a foreign, not locally worshipped, until-recently heavily-suppressed religion or know the identify or location of the sole priest in a city of, uh, probably several hundred thousand people who's operating as a jeweler. So, I mean, that's the sort of consideration that isn't reasonable for any person in the scene to be making because there's no particular reason at all for anyone within to think Kathalania would know Savae exists and if she did what that would actually mean. They don't have a particular cause to insult her. But all that said, yeah, there's a lot of issues around here. Thanks~

This bit is pretty much entirely to steer people away from the thought of the Law and Order type TV lawyers; that sort of courtroom drama image is pretty ingrained into the consciousness so this is about expectation setting. Lasila's not stepping into a court for the legal drama; that happens in offices. That said, there's probably a more elegant way to put this, yeah. compare: 'what, are you finally getting married? but two weeks isn't long enough to plan & have a wedding'. Probably a bit clunkily-phrased as-is though. (There's also the notation that there's no legal bar to him marrying a man were such a thing actually occurring.) Thanks for revisiting, once I finish these next two chapters I'm coming back for generalized cleanup so extra notes are always good to have,.

one joke I had during the initial drafting was annoyance that i can't end it with ilnathoa ollying off into the sunset, throwing the horns with a cry of 'no ethical consumption under capitalism', but alas. I've got one more redraft I want to do on this, once I finish the chapter I'm on, so we'll probably see this one again before too long.

Yay!

I might also consider-- given what I recall about how much water everywhere you've got going on, straight-up ditching the olive thing and going for straight-up whale oil and products. I know you're using a lot of that rome-esque window dressing but it's quite a bit more organic to that sort of coastal/seafaring society.

If done in the way you are describing, that is definitely something I would take as a marker of reduced author competence in a published work, yeah. It bespeaks a certain lack of mastery of English orthography (and this is absolutely a question of orthography, rather than phonics) rules to what appears to be not much purpose. (the letter y does not actually quite work that way in terms of spelling, and so it looks unnatural, not because this a variant of a real word but because it's being used in a way that is inherently trickier to parse; 'incorrect' is a needlessly perscriptive way of phrasing it, but it does feel wrong to the eye) This is also something I would call an authorial word, not a word etymologically rooted in its fictive source. You're creating this word to present information to the reader and in this case the word exists solely to tell the reader this object is something they are unfamiliar with. This isn't inherently wrong (and can on occasion be necessary) but it's also a less natural way for a word to come about so it sticks out. Considering the nature of the thing in question it would be a pretty key cultural item, so the society in question would have a distinct word to it. Doesn't mean it is mandatory for you to do so but it is worth keeping in mind. The question to be asking oneself when doing these things is asking what advantage doing this would bring over alternatives. What information is conveyed to the reader by doing this? Going with something like "olyve" pretty much just says that it is probably like an olive but not the same thing and doesn’t really make any meaningful distinction or give any real information. As it is given the needs here appear to primarily be to make clear to the reader that this is similar to, but not precisely, an olive, I would stick with a descriptive term such as "sea olive" or "oilberry" (which has been used for olives real world in a variety of languages but is not really in common usage in modern English). I like "sea olive"; it gives pretty much all pertinent information right there.

It's simultaneously too real and not real enough in all the wrong ways and wow there is nothing quite like getting hit with a wave of 'wow do i really need to be writing this' every time I look at the page ha ha ha ha.

I'm not critting this week (sorry) -- I can barely cadge a sentence out of myself to catch up with the writing right now (this is a bad time to be writing about a religiously-motivated neoliberal coup from the pov of the bad guys), so squeezing in crit around that isn't likely to happen, but I saw this and thought it was worth commenting on, because I have Thoughts on the subject and as to what makes for good crit when critting as a writer. See, like, I think the frequent caution against prescriptive advice is decent when it's people who are, like, reading as readers. You can be able to say what you like or not about a sausage without knowing how the sausage is made, so to speak. But I feel like especially in an environment where it's taken as given that crit exists wholly as a thing which already must be sifted through in order to make it useful for you, it really feels like a waste to me, as a writer, to not provide some thoughts as to how I might tackle a problem I perceive in a given text. Pretty much anyone can, I think, go through a text and point out some things they thought they thought worked or not, and say how it made them feel, etc. But we all theoretically know what we're doing with writing and have skills as writers, and I personally think it's a disservice to not offer crit that asseses these sorts of issues and offer guidance on what I would do to fix it. I do like to go in with the thought of 'what can I do to help this work that no one else can'. I dunno, I usually find that sort of advice, if not usable in its entirety as-is (and it usually isn't), can at least provide a signpost for solving issues in the text. The type of crit that frustrates me most is purely observational, for my own part. I also don't, as one may have gathered from works that I've expressed fondness for, don't read for crit the slightest bit similarly to how I read for pleasure. part of it's due to engagement (obviously stuff one seeks out because one wants to read it, as opposed to stuff sent for crit is going to have an inherent bump from the get-go in how engaged one is) in that I am generally a lot more forgiving of stuff that's already grabbed me, but also it's that, y'know, at that point it's already out, it's not requesting help. (not that I haven't read published stuff that felt like a cry for help, lol)

The request is definitely odd, and definitely over the line, and should be taken that way (and I think the characters' reactions convey that?)-- but he does pretty explicitly say that he expects nothing other than Eshrin being her ride (non-euphemistic), both to Lasila and privately to Eshrin after, in large part because there would be an expectation to the contrary otherwise. And that lingering expectation is about, oh, 90% of why both Lasila and Eshrin are not super thrilled at being set up like that. Even if they, as they agree, don't really want to bang each other. (yet) Yeah, this is probably about where it needs to be then, even if it's not quite as clueful that way; could use a bit more here maybe, or throughout. The gist is Savae's annoyed that they're not getting any, but they also don't want any of what's on offer (though, and this is a bit more implied than outright, they'd be fine with doing an aelin; this is I think a situation where pansexual is a bit more of a useful descriptor; the functional distinctions between that and bisexuality are pretty fine in humans).

hmmm, yeah. nah, makes sense. That's some usable direction. Hmmmm. Yeah, I can look at this; there's two things here, one that she's basically pre-empting him acting based on her nervousness since she's assuming it's going to be obvious, and part of it is that while he's well above her socially, he also literally just has the same job her brother does, so other than the fact that Eshrin hangs out with senators like it's nothing, what he does isn't too far outside of her comfort zone, if that makes sense. I can slide this around some. The latter, definitely; she references not going to anything like this event before and the conversation is literally, not subtextually, about having sex, is that not helping? Hmmm. There's reasons why, which are foreshadowed here and will become clear shortly, the earrings don't actually matter, but if there's no apparent connection between them at all, that's something to address. It is, per the discussion earlier in the chapter and when the invitation is extended, fairly emphasized that it's the sort of party where that's expected, and while she's not actively looking for a relationship because she has no time she's been fairly frank in narration about sex both with herself and as regards to others (including a fairly direct dismissal of a previous girlfriend's sexual prowess). Kind of hard to tell from here if this is an issue of delays between reading chapters, actual pacing, or something else, so I'll just keep it in mind for now. Hmmmm. By and large it's a lot more about public restraint, so yeah, they have the birth control and reproductive health infrastructure (discussed previously) in place that the act of sex is not particularly disdained, though carrying on in public is. If Savae is coming off that way there's definitely an issue with that, because they definitely could not get the time of day from anyone who isn't a creeper (and thus, they are pretty annoyed by this), in large part because cross-species attraction is neither a given nor particularly common here. (note Savae and Ka/thalan/ia's stuff hammering on the mutual uncanny valley effect with things like facial structure). With Lasila, yeah, she's fairly confident that she could pick up someone just in general, though less generally confident she'd find someone she'd want to have anything to do with after that, if she had the time and inclination, though she's also attending a formal celebration unto a goddess who really, as stated earlier on, really likes people to celebrate her by boning and discarding that inhibition against public awareness. They're just getting comfortable, though if they seem formal as a rule that's probably an error. As a rule, Savae should be fairly inscrutable, even inside their own head. They mirror a lot of the people they're dealing with, as a matter of course, but they are also quite literally moved by the moons. Thanks!

If current events have taught me anything at all lately, it's that I probably don't need to worry quite so much about characters minding opsec or sounding like reasonable people, and still get away without straining credulity too much.

Yeah, I may need to pass on those (though I suggest that if the problem has been as severely life-affecting as it evidently has been in Sam's life thus far, it's something that's likely gonna to be baked into nearly his every action). Reading's one thing but digging deep for crit about this sort of thing is really taxing. (and skimming over it is of course not an option for crit because any crit that actively skips interstitial slices of text is a fundamentally failed critique; it's discarding context for the following text) FWIW, if you want to see how I do it, not as a this-is-the-only-way-to-do-it sort of thing, ofc, it's from an external perspective for now but look closely at how I do the character of Iluya. There's a valid reading that would suggest there's a lot of bad things wouldn't happen if she could work herself up to meeting more people...

P.1 I think some of this prose is trying too hard; I`m not feeling a lot of these descriptors here. I think it's nothing ordinary second-pass editing wouldn't catch. P.2 Drinking porridge? Is that a regional thing? I am actually not feeling a lot of this; your description is very... you want to be describing very nebulous things, but you're using very concrete language; the result is really dissonant in a very unpleasant-to-read way. Lines like 'though it followed no predictable rules' are like nails on a chalkboard in a context like this. The stuff about the violin is... it's awkward and redundant especially since you go out of your way first to describe how it's held, and I, dunno, this really sticks out. I'm not sure what you're intending to make this feel like but it's not working, I don't think. I think the big thing for me about this piece and the way you're describing things and it's a trouble I've had repeatedly in your work before is that there's just very little respect shown for the reader. There's a palpable fear of actually doing the sort of surrealistic dreamy stuff and you're holding yourself back by not trusting the reader to run with it. There's potential here, but you hamstring yourself at every turn. P.3 As above. This is really disappointing. You've got this very procedural, concrete detail of action and very nebulous descriptive phrasing; this is really dissonant and it makes for really mushy prose. At this point I really feel like the only thing that ties the magic you're working in this setting to dreams is the fact that the text keeps claiming it as such. It doesn't feel like any such thing at all. You're describing sensation in very weak terms like 'a liquid and warm sensation [passing] between his fingers' that's, i mean, really? I am so frustrated reading this, honestly, all of this description is so far removed from everything that's happening. What does an intoxicating comfort feel like? And while you don't describe it at all, you sort of connect it to sort of boisterous childhood play and I'm not sure that's an association I would make. There's so little emotionality in this, and some of these lines 'Father laid his... spoke to his wife' is so bland, it's such a... And the dialogue here is very-- you're consistently fairly weak on your dialogue and it's the same issue here as usual, in that it's a very childish diction. This doesn't feel like adults talking at all. P.4 As above. P.5 Unlike the earlier bits you're actually holding to POV a bit more here, which makes something like 'redness prevailed on their face', all of that sentence, that's really not the sort of phrasing that suits a child of Ellis' age; you've got similar issues with some other stuff but that's the most standout. P.6 This whole page here is really, really awkward; previous commentary on this holds but also the way the writing is skimming here doesn't help either, I think. P.7 I do have some trouble parsing Ellis as an actual child here throughout too; I think part of it is because you're using an extremely standardized narrative voice here. It doesn't suit this character at all. I linked a series of posts in the Lounge a few weeks ago that described 'novelization style'; I think they'd be helpful for you to see what you're doing here. I could dig them up again if you can't find it. P.8 As above. P.9 And again. There's potential here, there really is, I don't want to seem like I'm ragging on this too hard, but over and over again, I keep seeing things that could be good if you ran with them and trusted the reader to run with them but you pull yourself up short every single time, and it's so frustrating to read.

I enjoyed several of the movies (and felt moved to produce a single, short fanfic last year after watching the new one) but I've honestly never understood what it was about Star Wars that grabbed people so... But, then, I grew up in a Star Trek house.

Yes. It's interesting that it's this line that's catching you up, because it's very much a stock couple lines, 'i'm not a girl (anymore)'/(eyeball) 'no you're not', though he's leaving the last bit unsaid. This is not all that subtle a conversation at all, really. They're attracted, but they don't much like each other. It seems like this is actually coming through fairly well; I suspect cleanup on the dialogue should take care of the rest of these issues. Aserahin is the brother-in-law, with the legit name to be exploited. This has been established, but not recently, and is one of the things i've got in mind when I pause for rework before going forward when the section's done. This, though, we spent a full chapter on, about three thousand words ago; I'm not too concerned about this one at this point. (they're the vector by which Savae is planning to kill Senator Riruna) Of all of the things going on here, Iluya taking Lasila off is probably the least important relative to the emphasizing the civil unrest that is largely not being taken seriously, the crumbling infrastructure that is not being paid for, Eshrin's disdain for his brother, etc, so yeah, and all of this is pretty surface-level. I don't think there's much hidden here, but you're also walking straight past a large part of the rest of the plot being laid out in favour of beelining for the promise of pretty girls kissing each other. Which, I mean, I'm open to rework on the conversation, but I wonder if some of this is more lack of premise clarity... Hmmmm. This is very early Savae stuff (too early, not reinforced enough); House Ashana wants to control a Senate seat; Aserahin is the only one in the organization who can legally hold one (Varael Ashana married Aserahin's twin sister; Ealis is a listed house). Senator Riruna needs to die for this to happen. Thanks!

I'm really not.

Yeah, I'm not really inclined to take any aspect of writing in Star Wars in good faith because I'm not inclined to call even the good ones well-written. I feel like most attempts to claim that they are involve some serious contortions and make presumptions that I don't think are reasonable. I think Rogue One had some really unfortunate effects to it, in that while in a vaccuum it tries pretty hard with representation along racial lines, in the broader context it places the rest of the series as hanging on a lot of PoC corpses, which is very unfortunate. I think I shared an article about the subject around when it came out?

I'm not big into spoon theory (for frankly silly reasons, so) but please realize that what you're needing on this is something I really don't have the spoons to go particularly in-depth with. I note this stuff when I see it because in some cases there's pretty much no one else, but I especially don't take being blindsided by this sort of thing well. I might, with no promises, be able to look at this again later on; if nothing else I am pretty much laser-focused for the issue here (to wit, social anxiety that has not responded well to treatment, which is a pretty close cousin of what you're after here) but it's pretty draining for me. There's readers out there who want to see people with similar issues to themselves but for me on this particular issue, it's not a pleasant experience. There's a very valid reading of Lasila as authorial power fantasy in a lot of ways... My critical lens here is heavily based on style because that's really how I prefer to interrogate works and it's where I personally feel a lot of problems are sourced (and it's a form of crit that I'm frankly desperate to receive); I'm less comfortable using my marginalizations as my primary vector of critique. I can do it, but I'm really not cut out for it.

I don't really have a diplomatic response here so in lieu of that I'm going to be really brief. If I bow out on a submission early, it's usually going to be prose or dialogue issues compunded with something else; it's never going to be one or the other. In this case, initially, it was the critical dialogue problems I was discussing followed by the really, grossly uncalled-for usage of 'schizophrenic' as a descriptor for a fabric print (not that 'blind and mad' was much better). That said, I'd like you to take a look at the timestamps on my post, specifically the distance in time between posting and last edit. They're about five hours apart; I'm not exaggerating when I say that this ruined my evening, and today's not looking great either. I went back in when I saw @kaisa's comments because it kind of left me with the impression that this stuff probably pass without much further comment and after finishing this off, I felt it was really important that it not be let go. But I am in rough shape right now after that. My recommendation is, once again, to hire a sensitivity reader.

What. Okay. I'm going back in, because if this is what it sounds, like, then I'm really mad here. p.9 Okay, so we've spent the past eight pages hammering in that this guy does not care about anything to do with Sam, like, at all, except for this one point of urgency. So I already go into it having a hard time believing that now he's going to stop and patiently hold his hand through this. Two, okay, you know, maybe Sam's agoraphobia is based off of a simple indoors/outdoors thing. It really doesn't feel like that from how it's been written though the rest of the chapter, and agoraphobia isn't exactly that simple in most cases, but ok, let's go with that. This particular phrasing here, 'none could help him with one piece of information' is a strong tell to me that you do not suffer from this or a similar condition, that you do not have a serious condition which has not been much helped by therapy, and please do forgive me if I'm wrong. But the way this is framed does not strike me as being framed by someone who's been going through therapy for something like this at all. It especially doesn't strike me as coming from someone who's had a significant issue that's been resistant to treatment. Anxiety issues (of which agoraphobia would be one) are not an on/off thing in the slightest, it's not-- 'one piece of information' is wholly and entirely nonsensical. Therapy can have been not much help with getting him outdoors better, he might not have found a medication that works yet, he might have had meds but run out and not been able to get a refill and he's off them, if you need him to be basically untreated at this point there's lots of ways to swing it. But it's not an 'information' thing. It's also kind of a non sequitur to the previous sentence regardless. Information on what? Nothing about the previous sentence suggests anything that would follow from. If you mean information about the cause, that's probably not going to be the focus of the therapy, because the goal there would be to help him figure out how to cope. I might be reading a bit too much into it, but the 'information' line here strikes me as coming from the cliche that 'knowing the cause' of a phobia is the big ~key~ to 'curing' it. Which is, of course, absolute complete bullpoop, trivializes people with phobias, and trivializes the treatment thereof. I hope my reading on this is wrong. The way this is framed leaves me desperately afraid that his agoraphobia is going to have some sort of magical source and magically cured. I can only hope that I am wrong. But all that aside: It feels outdoors to him and he's been reacting as if it's outdoors. His brain's snagged onto the notion of it being outside. He's really treatment resistant. You have not painted a picture where 'no actually it's indoors' strikes me as something that's going to be particularly effective. If his anxiety is so easily treatable by telling himself he's indoors, then you've wholly invalidated everything stated about his disability up to this point. p.10 And of course it is. I guess I should be thankful that it wasn't cured entirely, just neatly bundled up and set aside until the next time it's narratively convenient. But solving it even temporarily with just some pat reframing shows a really fundamental failure to understand the nature of an anxiety this deep. This does not seem like a good start in terms of depiction to me; you're falling into ableist cliche (and that's just with the broad strokes, this sort of ableism is really baked into your phrasing too in some places). This work needs a sensitivity reader, and it needs one very very badly, and you need to follow their advice. I really appreciate how you consistently crit my stuff even when you're not submitting, but if this is how this is being handled, I can't read further on this story, I can't. This was pretty upsetting on a personal level.

P.1 You've got some pretty odd sentence construction here; the second, eg, sort of goes in a pretty non sequitorial direction. I'm seeing a lot of weird repitition and contradiction pretty much all over the place. Light, and free, and his joints are locking and he's hitting the dirt and that just does not work. I definitely feel like you're overdescribing; I just don't think this is very interesting, and so far the dialogue is pretty standard. P.2 Yeah, my impression I got from just the first page was a pretty bog-standard 'knowledgable person assumes person who has stumbled into mysterious thing is aware of what they are doing' conversation, and this isn't deviating from the standard at all. I also don't really feel like Sam's panic here is really coming through, in the slightest; it's not actually coming across as affecting what he's doing in any way. If it's something he can just push aside and talk around apparently calmly enough that it isn't even registering with this other person, then yeah, it's not very meaningful at all. I don't expect every person to react the same way to this sort of thing, but it feels like a cariacture to me here. P.3 Yeah, this scene is still following the standard formula, and the wilful density required to continue assuming that Sam has any idea what's being talked about here is tremendous. If he doesn't care, yeah, that could possibly be interesting but as presented I really don't find it so. p.4 as above p.5 Cyrysi's behaving extremely inconsistently here; there's a wild waffle between behaving as though this information is assumed and explanations in aside and there's not a lot of consistency going on here. This is honestly really tiring to read; it doesn't feel like an actual conversation between people in the slightest. p.6 this is probably the best slice of conversation so far, but honestly it's so thoroughly undercut by the previous dialogue that I can't begin to care about what's going on here. The fact that we're still stuck in the land of Cyrysi continuing to act like Sam should have every idea what he's talking about, not picking up on that he doesn't, and Sam not communicating this isn't helping either. P.7 Ah, now we're finally touching on this. I don't think it should take seven pages to get to this point, and I think this still doesn't scan as a conversation, just as obligatory-feeling exposition. p.8 Yeah. No. Don't use 'schizophrenic' that way. Do not. I think think that pretty much exhausted my patience with the chapter.

blood would be something akin to a typo, yeah. it's backwash, is what it is. Sounds like ordinary streamlining will pretty much do the trick here, so far,, I think. Thanks!

This one absorbs the old chapters 6, 7, and some of 8. People talk about taxes in it. Previously: Lasila Vahendra has been doing her best to squeeze in research about the legalities of the dread magic the priestess Maranthe said she possessed, but has needed to devote her time to addressing her client's marriage contract. Savae Alevrin's been struggling to balance their duties fulfilling the desires of the goddess of the moons with their political duties dealing with the criminal Ashana family. Now, both of them are in attendance at the celebration of the goddess Alia's revival; one of them is soon going to find these two things come into conflict, and the other will find the two sets of duties are one and the same. Last time: a trilogy of short chapters about disgruntled people This time: a lot of conversations where nobody lies not even once, honest. Next time: Full frontal nudity!

ooooh, that's super pretty!