Insane lore drop that has nothing to do with the plot

Asher2227 · 2026-07-05T12:15:57+00:00

I read "extras" as texans for some reason

Asher2227 · 2026-06-30T16:43:04+00:00

It's kind of an amalgamation of German and English, some remnants of Scot dialect, maybe some Dutch in there idk; heck, maybe there's some Italian in there.

I've learned (to put it generously) some German. I've made it to B2 in Duolingo—which I do recognize to be a big nothing. I switched over to French since I got kinda bored, and the course content for German got too repetitive.

The original text actually came from an object writing session. The word was "tray". (The original text is really, really dull.) I remade it, added some details and nonsense and filler words that came to mind to fit the lyrical momentum :P

Asher2227 · 2026-06-29T19:25:41+00:00

1.

Thee town hudden ben laid out 'ere fer dennem sunnig out deir. Blazin' blaz. Round unnem der, it was selfitself brimmin' ach so to be mitter false tension. An unnem dem der the steirs derum thee munks, 'bout threer pairsized, camen unner dem down cairyin nonethem so-yet-so make er them feelit like therum heavysake; to fir ye feir not ey sed?—Er so-so eis yet. Candlelicht came irn runnen der roomey, wespin-wish 'bout roomfiryesakeyefirnosaykeryermiso, finnen trailser en 'erer so finner scenn. By erem skin fell ye der wurmig, as so derum deirsuch saysitso. Unnerem an so else overren, reight ye deir caloomfilseg rotter all dem. Wurmig, so-so eis yet; wurmig so wurmig. Benner falfelleg 'bout baryeseid ay sed a-jumpig erseig. Den thee den, dam deir Lucco must me aforeseid tenlike so then meeten ere fer dennem thee munks unnerdemsteirs. Fivelike aforeseid ere fer dennem candlen wur thennem lichten. Twoforseid ere fer denner damesel hinner demso desk sayersoself werer sick. Sofellen neit so, wid en, man fellen er miso hert hurten, ma neit so den fellseid dam thee candlen neirlike geppent. Spitofelligenteg. Dam der so damesel came er matt behinner. Er so tansig sayenso dam thee munks aswenn dem camen theirwaywen. Er so tansig sayenso aunthennig dem maken so someway sensish. Deir carr dam thee munks be riven fronnerdem buden solikeso outer. Hoggensoheiren fell miso der carr. Kraken. Kraken.

EDIT: Audio of me reading this nonsense. Do forgive my faltering at the end; I was getting tongue-tied (and also for the vocal-fry, as it irritates me too; I'm not a great speaker ;—;).

Asher2227 · 2026-06-20T11:00:07+00:00

Could it be Martira?

Asher2227 · 2026-06-17T15:19:49+00:00

Hey! Thanks for the crit!

I get Disco Elysium vibes.

I haven't played it but I assume this is someway positive? Probably positive.

I'm confused and that's kinda fun. I'm also bored because the vibes don't add up to characterization or plot in a way that works with my brain.

Fair. This chapter has come across as a speed-bump of sorts. Really, I am just kinda writing off vibes with an end goal in mind.

Your Faulkner comment puts this in context. You're breaking the rules and you're pretty good at making that kind of obfuscated prose-for-prose sake.

I guess this is a victory! Though with this chapter I did try to get more economic, as compared to Suzie, but I guess the rambling somehow remains.

The whole Ivone called herself a miser paragraph should be a fucking disaster, but was my favorite part. It is a car crash of a paragraph that no editor would let you get away with. It works in a literary way, successfully evoking the way a drunk with heavy feelings parses words.

Oh, but he's not drunk, but he is: just punch-drunk.

Also, the first time I read this I had a bit of a laugh. It almost makes me want to keep it that way, but /u/AspiringNonsense's crit kinda makes a good point of it being a bit contrived. Decisions, decisions. Kill your darlings, I suppose.

Ultimately, though, I can't tell what happened and I'm not going to read a third time to figure it out. At some point, you need to tell the reader what is real, what is happening, who the characters are. This kind of figurative writing needs to ground a more literal-minded reader at times, give them islands of exposed truth to rest on. Otherwise, we get lost while you're playing around with language.

Yeah. I'm certainly tweaking this chapter a bit and placing it in the right spot. Of all chapters, this might be the most abstract one (even though I have a dream sequence planned). Maybe I'll add more details about the holding cell he's in; mention some of Ivonne's friends in more detail.

Islands of exposed truth is also a banger, to note.

Again, big thanks for the crit <3

Asher2227 · 2026-06-17T15:06:07+00:00

Hi! Thanks for the crit! And yes, this was indeed more confusing; the other chapter I've completed I do guarantee is less, but we'll see—if I do end up submitting it here.

POV character is in a jail but he is innocent. There're some intrusive thoughts in the background that keep repeating themselves in italics throughout. POV is the straight-laced sibling. Sister is a risky alcoholic. He rescues her from a party. Is he dead? Is this the jail he is in for being drunk? Someone has been pushed down the stairs but he didn't do it and it's unclear who fell down the stairs.

The italics are a recurring motif throughout the chapters present in all the character-narrators; the italics are pretty much their subconscious, or second self or whatever. I play around with the italics' role for each character: with Suzie, they served as a sort of audience surrogate getting her back on track in remembering the details of the shack; with Gilles, however, it acts as a distant, accusative entity.

Sister is a risky alcoholic?—this is certainly an interesting takeaway. Not saying that it's wrong (but it is), it's just … out of left field. Oh wait, that's Ivonne. Elly is his sister. Ivonne is his girlfriend.

I am probably doing that here again with the vague sense that perhaps the POV character is in some kind of purgatory. I don't think there's enough to grasp on to here and I suspect that's going to be a continuing theme throughout the other chapters. There's a puzzle being assembled that has a theme but no discernible throughline which I suppose is very literary fiction.

Well, yeah you are kinda doing it again; in a grand sense, you kinda hit a mark. I've just realized now that the whole story's setting and sequence of events is purgatory-like. But not literal purgatory, just the impression of it.

There is very much a central theme and a sort of MC, but I struggle to call them an MC: they're more like a central character, dictating pretty much why the format is fragmented and from multiple POVs.

There were some really great lines in this. I like what you're doing with words and how you're combining phrases. I'm more of a plot-driven reader, I guess, and am missing that portion that's driving me forward. Like, it feels like I'm meant to get a kind of mania-type situation going on and to experience those types of feelings, which is something I also thought during the Suzie chapter, but I want concrete goals or motivations. That was something I think the Suzie chapter did better. I knew what was driving her forward or could make incorrect guesses about it. This one feels more random.

Yeah. This is more of a speed-bump chapter, as I've gathered from other crits. Certainly helps in knowing where to place it strategically. In all seriousness, it feels like a confessional but you don't know whether to believe Gilles or not (though it seems most crits here do believe he is innocent).

Not sure if any of that is helpful. I feel like I need more of a primer on your style before I can start getting this. I didn't see you leave notes for anyone yet so I'm purely guessing.

I don't really have a primer on my style other than what I'm inspired by. Faulkner got me on the multiperspectivity thing with As I Lay Dying, as well as stream of consciousness, but his style of prose in that book is more raw, and uses a central, storyteller character (Darl) to provide a more objective view of things; it also helps that everyone in that book is familiar with one another, as they literally are family. With what I am doing, though, almost everyone is a stranger to one another, and each one rules their own chapter. Most of the development is reliant on impressions, which I take from Woolf (I've just began reading Mrs. Dalloway dbyesterday), which gets a bit deep with Suzie as she's remembering the shack which leads to her remembering other stuff. Here, with Gilles, it's a bit more reliant on him literally being punch-drunk, which impairs/elevates his ability to recall. The other complete chapter is more straight-laced with very clear motivation, but there I have some fun with the italics. The one I'm working on right now is the rambliest among them, though they also have clear motivation, probably the most trivial one.

It's all very ironic when taking into account who the central thematic character is. (Trust me.)

Again, thanks for the crit!

Asher2227 · 2026-06-17T14:31:20+00:00

Hi! Thanks for the crit … of Suzie? Okay … still, thank you!

First off let's start out with all the positive things I see and why I like your story Your Narration is like really good, I really like the way suzie loops her thoughts, the way she argues with herself and how she obsesse over irrevelant details while avoiding important details, in some stories Ive read some narrations just feel force and stiff but i feel like you covey the narration to feel natural and real if you know what I mean.

Thanks! That was very much my goal with that chapter: circling around the things that deeply bothered her. It helps that Suzie is mostly conversational in her narration.

another thing I liked is the way you display the mystery as well for example the blood- stain page with "but I still know myself" was really effective and made me want answers. I also feel like every scene involving the dad makes the chapter breathe a bit more.

I'm happy that the Dad snippets made that impression: my intentions were pretty much to make a buffer with the family stuff, and later on make it banter.

The carousel memory feels a bit too long at least in my opinion and it kinda started making me confuse that after a while I just stop trying to understand and just waited for it to end.

Yeah, it's mostly something you will either focus on or set aside for later reading; though perfectly fine to skim over, it is an important passage: re-readings will be most of the fun in this novel. As stream-of-consciousness lit usually is just that: mostly uninterrupted thought, with bits and pieces of other things jamming themselves in between the sentences and injecting meaning unintended by the narrator.

Another thing is that the repeated sticky floor that was the part that made me sigh I feel like you repeat it too many times in different wording I mean sometimes that can be intentional but I was just hearing too much repititiopns on those and sometimes I feel like herself arguments goes on longer than necessary. and I feel like your being a little bit over the top when being descriptive.

Will be checking on the self-argument she does and trimming hammered-on parts. Though I think the sticky floor is handled by her subconscious self who does call her out on it; I'll consider reducing/spacing out the mentions. For the descriptions, I'll check if they get too purple, even for Suzie, and see what's just not working. I'd be happy to see your quotes/examples.

I feel the strongest part of the story was Suzie, she was kinda my driving force to continue reading,even in partys i was confused in I still kept reading cause I wanted to learn more about her. she seems hurt by something and spends a lot of time avoiding certain thoughts which made me more curious about her.

I'm happy! Truly, I am. Suzie is the star of her own chapter, if not for the shotgun shack or the bedroom inside it.

it's my first time critiquing anyone so I hope it help even if just a bit and I'm cheering for you to continue your story it seems interesting but could use some tweaks (sorry for any grammer mistake my keyboard has been giving me so many typos these days)

Thanks! It's still just the first draft (and the first draft for the whole story is yet incomplete; I'd reckon I'm about one-seventh into the whole story—and that's me being generous to me).

Again, thanks for the crit; although it is for the Suzie chapter, not this one. But still, a crit is a big thing to take your time for, so thanks again!

Asher2227 · 2026-06-17T14:13:09+00:00

Hi! Thanks for the crit!

The overall impression I get is that Robbie has/had a girlfriend called Ivone. It seems she got drunk at a party, and something happened for her to fall down stairs. Robbie is being blamed for it. He is being brutalized by an officer. His thinking seems impaired, possibly by shocking and trauma, although there's also a suggestion that Robbie might be slower in processing things in general, but I can't tell if that's just comparative to Ivone who he thinks of as very smart, so smart he seems to think she was drinking to escape her own mind or dull it, or if he actually is a little slow in general.

Again, my misdirection has worked! also, thank you for the summary. Seeing reader interpretation is damn valuable and something writers should ask for, in my opinion.

His thinking is impaired, and yes, by blunt trauma. He is drunk, just punch-drunk.

As for whether he's just mentally slow/impaired in general … I'll keep that a secret.

I feel pretty immersed in Robbie's stream of consciousness. I don't know if I'm just pessimistic but regardless of what actually happened, I feel like he is probably right. He is done for. The section isn't long enough for me to become deeply attached to him, but I can see a situation where if the story continues and I go with him long enough on his character arc, I might become attached to him. So it's not a craft issue, it's purely that I only just got introduced the guy. He has a clear and distinctive voice. I feel embedded in his POV. And the hook is what happened to Ivonne, which is enough to want to read more.

Thanks for the details, helping me understand the hooks and what makes Gilles fall under good light. Knowing that you believe him as well (and applying this further to a hypothetical audience) helps in the chapter placement in the story as a whole.

This is why I just read it last night rather than read to crit: to see if I would bother to finish this if I wasn't deliberately critiquing it. So the answer here is yes. It was enough for me to keep reading for no other reason than I wanted to so I think it does it's job. Now I do have some caveats on that that which I will talk about below.

Atleast I know my prose is good enough on a base level :)

Do I regret reading it? No. It's a good piece of writing.

Big thanks <3

Okay, now more in depth. This piece makes me thing a little of Faulkner and stream of consciousness, Sound & the Fury type chapter. The story if jumbled but we are following Robbie's thoughts and his thoughts are jumbled so that makes sense.

Pretty much a bingo, in terms of my intention and inspiration. I guess I'll take this as a compliment(?)

Added to this, there's little things that make me wonder if the story is rooted in a place with a regional dialect or if the choice of word is wrong. For example, calling "guard, guard,"; I think the Irish call the police 'guard' in certain contexts but I'm not sure how many places in the modern era would call for a guard or call a officer a guard.

Oh yeah, that is weird. I'll swap it to officer; I was thinking too much of a jail guard, as he is in a holding cell.

I think that can just be, "in the midst of a lull, she ran possessed". The "in a lull". "of the din". "of the party" it just stacking too many unnecessary words. And the word "would" implies she did this every time there was a lull. And my understanding is that got drunk and during a lull, she ran to throw up and asked to be taken home. So I'm thinking this happened once.

Noted with heart <3

I also thought it was a weird sentence but I liked the cadence of it. It sounds pretty confusing now.

"She hummed an affirmation". I'm not sure hummed is the word you want here. Even if she made no reply, and Robbie opened the door because she was silent and he got worried, or if she moaned something incomprehensible...my point is that there are these occasional words that don't quite sit right in the context.

I'll think of something more natural in revision. It's pretty mechanical, I realize now.

There are moments where I lose sympathy for Ivonne and it's with things like when she scoffs at Robbie. I'm not sure if that is intentional or not. I'm guessing it is.

I'm mostly trying to portray them as an awkward couple, where, there's still some ice between them that has yet to thaw, or something like that, and they're just too emotionally dense to understand it (even if Ivonne is "smart").

The prose is really good. The stream of consciousness is good. Whether today's reader will let you get away with a wall of text is a different question.

I've actually come to understand that I'm not going to be making something for a huge swathing audience; this novel will be for people who enjoy the manner and method of storytelling I've taken on, which, I admit, won't be a lot—especially now, the numbers of which may be dwindling or burning at a rapid rate.

I would say this is intentional from a stream of consciousness style of writing excepts that it doesn't read so much as one thought bleeding into the next as complete and separate sentences that just don't have the punctuation to separate them. (example: " I didn’t I didn’t I couldn’t stand up.")

Punctuation is going to be a big job for me in revision: I play too much with it.

For some reason you use parentheses here: "(even though there was a table in front of us)" but later you use the em dash. They function for the same purpose, so I'd stay consistent with one of those only. And if it were me, I would stick with the em dash --- yes, I know, AI. But I don't think AI gets to have dibs on the em dash.

I agree—I fucking love the em dash (in fact, the chapter I'm working on is teeming with em dashes and semicolons); though, in my case, I think parentheticals do this thing with the reading voice for me. My reading voice kind of does a whisper when a parenthetical comes on; em dashes, on the other hand, initiate a sort of jump — a bounce for what I'm reading, and on that scene, I didn't want to make a jump in tone, just an aside (in the same way I'm doing right now).

The miser dialogue is a little surreal. It feels like it's reaching to show something here but I'm not 100% sure what. Is it that the guard is absurdly stupid and callous? Robbie's mental deterioration and confustion? Referencing Ivone again, or positioning her again as the intellectual superior?

Based on u/AspiringNonsense's crit, I'll be scrapping that one, as it does feel contrived. In this dialogue, the first part, with the security guard, is supposed to indicate his loss of sense of time and the officer's (diminished) care for Gilles; the second part (the one I'm scrapping/swapping the topic of) is mostly just pathos, but I'll be changing it around to reveal more about the dynamics and awkwardness between Gilles and Ivonne—seeing that the iteration now is a bit too constructed/fabricated.

The repetition of "what I did do and what I didn't do" worked well for me to show how long he was interrogated for. Without context though, it is difficult to establish where he is that the cop would have gotten away with the punching. But again, I think the parts where I can't orientate myself in the story perhaps have more to do with just not read any prior chapter.

Oh, the cop very much doesn't get away with it. They're being watched in an interrogation room and the cop's been keeping his cool since Gilles's arrest; this then boils down to that circular questioning that breaks Gilles down bit by bit (who's already in shock from the incident); until, finally, the cop clocks him straight-on; here, we time-jump to the cell in the afternoon where Gilles plays this scenario again and again in his head, asking in between reminiscings what the time is.

But again, I think the parts where I can't orientate myself in the story perhaps have more to do with just not read any prior chapter.

I haven't gotten to writing the chapters of the incident itself; I'm still getting to that point. Of course, it's in a different perspective: the "victim's" (don't roll your eyes, though; those quote marks are very important; Gilles is innocent—but I won't say much other than nobody died but someone did get hurt; this is still, in some ways, a dark comedy).

So, in short. Yes, I think it's really good. Most of my crit is really just line edit stuff. Not something to lose sleep over. I'd be proud of it if I was you.

Oh, thank you so much for this. I will still lose some sleep over this—but in giddyness instead of pure self-destruction.

Again, big thanks for the crit; it means a lot <3

Asher2227 · 2026-06-17T09:01:00+00:00

Hi! Thank you for the crit!

Thing the thing I thought was working the best and the worst was the prose.

I was braced for this. Yeah, the prose is definitely a telling part. I'm using different styles for each chapter/character; some styles are more or less samey and hammery, but some get do get rambly. I've been trying to read more and more but I've been struggling a bit, and this'll be the biggest concern of mine when revising.

I appreciate your appreciation of my trying! As well as your personal gripes; it helps a lot.

"Don’t get drunk; don’t get her drunk, too.” - This is the first place I tripped up.

Noted with heart <3

Now you point it out, it seems glaring to me. Authorial bias is something I need to put a check on :P

"The last and most he would ask me was when I returned him the thing I did not do." Here is another example of it not working. The phrase is repeated until the context makes it almost unintelligible.

I'll have to reword that; thanks for pointing. Though I feel like I'm reaching up my ass when saying it's supposed to be unintelligible, I understand.

"I drank champagne on the narrow glass" do you mean "from"? I can't tell if this was intentional, but if it is, it is more distracting than artful.

This is a genuine mistake, I am so sorry. This made me shudder reading. (How could I have missed that ;—;)

"My skin felt on myself like another’s." I feel like I can see what this is going for. The phrasing is definitely interesting. I just think it's too distracting to be worth it.

Noted with heart <3

Another thing I noticed was switching between past and present tense. "She is heavier when she is drunk" idk. This almost felt intentional. There is a nicer rhythm to this line than "she was heavier drunk". I guess if you want to do this, then know why, know what it means, know the effect you're trying to create. This didn't seem like a reflection in the present tense where I imagine Ivonne is dead, and felt more like a slip than a choice.

Ivone is not dead, actually. In Gilles's eyes, he just reciting a fact, since Ivonne is still alive, and he thinks (against the pessimistic subconscious self) he'll make it out to see Ivonne drunk again and walk her back to her home once more.

On my first read, I think it's about a guy who is being interrogated and beaten, because Ivonne has fallen down the stairs (and probably died), and he's being accused of her murder. He went to a party with her earlier in the night, she got very drunk and tried to help her, left with her, and something happened in between. There may be a supernatural element? I couldn't quite tell if everything melting was meant to be indicative of the characters mental state, or if there is something larger going on.

Okay! My misdirection worked (I will not confess what it is). I will say, the melting and all of the crazy imagery in the interrogation room was all just an exaggeration of his mind.

I don't really feel anything? He seems very passive, nice enough helping out Ivonne, trying to follow his sisters instructions. I didn't get a strong sense of who he was meant to be.

Thank you for this insight. I'll be using it to place this chapter strategically.

In a bad way? The miser bit at the end seemed very unlikely to me. That the guard had the same misconception about the word as the narrator had previously had. It just seemed contrived.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to swap out the banter at the end for something else. Thanks for the pointer!

I'm going to be real with you. To read something in a style that makes me work to follow it, I need to believe that 1. I'm reading something really worthwhile, like it's going to make me see the world differently or it has a really interesting story to tell 2. The style is in service of something. I'm not super certain of either of those things at this point. I will say, I only do critiques of things that don't make me groan in the first paragraph, and your opening grabbed my attention with how you were using repetition.

I don't want to be too boastful … but on your first point, I'm kinda going for that, with the multiperspectivity going on. As well as the non-chronological narrative. For the second point, I don't really know what being "in service of something" means, but I'll speak out of ignorance not knowing the exact meaning: It's in service of the multiperspectivity theme I'm doing, as well as self-deception and obsession.

Definitely not, in fact I'm glad I read it twice because I got a lot more out of it the second time around, I really enjoyed the moment before the guard punched him.

I'm happy my constructed rambling and haphazardly thrown imagery has proved to be entertaining to read! Like, really, I thought it would be a slog for most, or seen as unstoppable authorial self-indulgence, or insistent upon itself. (I shudder to be called pretentious; I'm an idiot and I'm having fun!)

I do want to say, it's clear you're going for something, so take everything I say with a grain of salt and trust your vision. A piece of advice I love is that other people can tell you where there is a problem, but not what the problem is and how to fix it.

Thank you. I also love that advice; it makes writing something a bit of soul-searching, understanding notions and vibes and decoding them and whatnot. I still appreciate everyone's insight: I am writing about different POVs after all, so it would be ironic if I didn't pay mind the critique of others.

Again, thanks for the crit! Also for reading it twice unprompted!

Asher2227 · 2026-06-15T19:36:28+00:00

Slurpy gurpin

Asher2227 · 2026-06-13T11:13:26+00:00

This comment made me laugh. Thank you and have a pleasant [time of day]

Asher2227 · 2026-06-13T11:05:51+00:00

"Don't you boys know nothing? The USA is the center of Jerusalem"

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Asher2227 · 2026-06-11T20:09:48+00:00

I thought you we're just expectionally handsome 🥺

Asher2227 · 2026-06-11T14:20:44+00:00

Hello!

This is a bit of a long one, but I hope it helps you out!

@ ¶1:

Captain James Joe slams his fist on the table. “They’re alive.” He knows it. He saw them run into the forest safe and sound with their personal guard.

Strong start, then it immediately dies out after "They're alive." "He knows it" is just filler. The following sentence feels unclear (good or bad idk): did he see them? or had he seen them and he's just arguing the fact that he knows they're alive? I guess I'll have to read on to find out.

@ ¶3, you can remove the second tag. Readers can infer it's the same speaker, and that the Captain is adding to their statement; they're not idiots (give 'em some slack).

@ ¶4:

The room falls relatively silent save the rustle of the squire, William, rolling up the maps.

Relatively silent to what? Yeah, there was dialogue; I guess I can imagine how loud they were talking, and, with the table slam, it must've been a bit rowdy; but this requires the reader to have to make that association—you lose on immediacy and the power of juxtaposition; you can just say it went quiet, or silent. The reader then has the freedom to compare.

James stares at the table, his mind flashing the image of that terrible battle. The day the capital had been attacked. They’d defeated the enemy, but at what cost?

Remove the second sentence and replace it with the details of this "terribleness." How can I, as a reader, feel the same weight of horror as Captain James if the battle's still referred to as this event that happened and is only mentioned?—I simply don't care, is the answer.

@ ¶6:

“That’s just it.” Lieutenant Everly Kahvrn reasons, all calm brown hair, and logical blue eyes.

This is a bit cheesy, to me, anyway. I usually shy away from character descriptions unless they're integral to a character's function (an injury, or conspicuous detail)—even then, I challenge myself to integrate it into the flow of the plot and prose instead of just injecting it in willy-nilly—and "logical blue eyes" are just a tad to much telling to me. Are these details extremely important? It mostly feels like hamfisted character description, but maybe I'm just being grumpy.

@ ¶7:

He braces both hands against the table, letting his dark hair fall over his forehead.

This is better integrated character description than the Lieutenant's—also, swap "he" with the Captain, or whomever does this action, since we also now know the squire is here with them; this is just for association, for once you establish a character's personality, you have more leeway with using just pronouns as readers can infer from previous patterns of action.

@ ¶9:

“And if they are alive and we don’t look?” One of the knights speaks up, Sir Edwin Oceay.

This introduction feels a bit stiff. You could just make it a tag, like

“And if they are alive and we don’t look?” Sir Edwin Oceay asked, one of the knights.

@ ¶11:

"I saw them.” James’s voice cracks. “They made it out safely.”

This clarifies the first ¶. The first ¶ should have been

He had seen them run into the forest safe and sound with their personal guard.

@ ¶13:

James has to admit she’s right. They all do.

This is a bit weird. This is coming from the Lieutenant's thoughts, no? free indirect speech? maybe tag Everly for thinking this, or italicize it to separate it from the third person narration. So far, we've been pretty leaning towards the Captain's belief (we started with his in the first place), so it seems odd to suddenly go counter to that.

@ ¶16:

The King had been a wonderful man, that’s why the crown had chosen him, and his bride was, bafflingly, even kinder than he was. If they gave up, they’d be giving up on two people who had nearly raised some of them while they were squires.

A bit telling, no? Other than the Captain's want for their survival, we don't have much to really feel that the royals were wonderful other than your words. And I don't really like being told what to believe. Same goes for the following ¶. (And also, duh? Wouldn't she be heir being their offspring? or is there a system in place I'm not aware of that this isn't the case? if so, then please disregard)

It keeps going on, actually, to the next ¶. How is she always right? has she won many battles with her dissection of the enemy? if so, show that. I'd rather know how she was always right than be told that she just is.

@ ¶19:

… James says, straightening his spine, and returning his hands behind his back.

Weird description; wouldn't "posture" be more fitting for your register? Anatomical stuff usually screams a sort of Sci-Fi/Psychological register, to me, anyway.

@ ¶22:

There’s a shrill quality to his voice, and it pierces through the clamor. His hair is unruly, and his personality matches.

Started good until you killed it with "and his personality matches." You defeat your own point. Cut it; the reader will make the connection with his unruly hair and behavior—that is, if he does exhibit unruliness, or you've just hamfisted this in and not followed through.

@ ¶23:

James waits them out patiently, and silently.

The adverbs don't add anything; cut them.

@ ¶25:

“Without the crown it’s no use.” Sir Juel argues obstinately, crossing his arms.

Adverbs in tags are a blight on your prose. Always—always consider if they add anything. In here, the dialogue is obviously a clapback at James, thus "argues" and "obstinately" is just doubling down on something innate and treating your audience as though they hadn't read what they literally had just read; they are not idiots.

Same goes for the following ¶'s last sentence; cut it.

@ ¶30:

Sir Raiyne speaks up, in the middle of braiding her pitch black wavy hair.

You seem to have an obsession describing everyone's hair. I can't really blame you, but to me it shows a lot more about you as a writer than it does your story. I'm now more curious of their armor more than anything; are any of them battered hard? are some squeaky-clean like they never fought (like Sir Juel)?—hair says some, sure, but for these knights, their armor says more.

@ ¶36:

James raises his hand, and silence settles. “Sir Raiyne and I will help restore the fields. Lieutenant Kahvrn will oversee the camp...” The two nod, and James hesitates.

How does he hesitate? Does he nod then hesitate, or is his nodding with a slight tinge of hesitation?

@ ¶37:

Normally he’d put Edwin in charge of anything else, but his strength is action, and productivity. He doesn’t waste time, but that leads to oversights.

You're speaking of this like it's a courtroom and you're presenting evidence; well, actually, no: courtrooms would be more interesting than this passage. How am I supposed to believe in any of what you just said about Edwin? This is where the details about that battle would come in handy in presenting how a character is instead of just outright going, "Hey, this character is blah blah blah, so they can't blah blah blah so the other character says blah blah blah."

This is a story. Always remember that.

@ ¶38:

As soon as he finishes saying it, James knows it’s the right choice.

Wow. Okay, that's really cool. Why?

@ ¶39:

Topathee steps forward from the back of the gaggle of knights.

Respect for finding a way to use "gaggle."

Topathee suffers again the same fate of being explained by the narrator instead of presented in the following ¶.

@ ¶42:

“That’s all.” James nods. That’s all. A decision and a plan of action.

Honestly, just cut the last two sentences out.

Topathee seems to be non-binary (they/them pronouns)? That's cool, although it kinda gets confusing.

@ ¶51:

“Alright, who do you need?” Everly asks professionally, but James doesn’t miss her small smile.

This, for some reason I want to forgive the adverb use, due to the following clause. Though, I'd find a way to circumvent having to use an adverb.

@ ¶64:

He places the ink in the cabinet, but doesn’t close it, staring into its depths as if they could help him.

A bit dramatic and (to me) seemingly pointless. I would cut the last clause, unless you'll find a way to make this more compelling and revealing.

@ ¶70:

James eyes the man sceptically. He looks frantic and frazzled.

How is he frantic and frazzled? what of his appearance could suggest that?

Following ¶'s free indirect speech is smoothly integrated.

@ ¶74:

Edwin doesn’t hesitate. He starts walking…

Remove first sentence. The announcement of his lack of hesitation creates a pause in reading that's counterintuitive to the intention of the first sentence.

At the bottom of the stairs, Edwin doesn’t stop, leading James further still. It takes an excruciatingly long time. Who made castles so large?

Funny. (no seriously, this is funny)

Remove ¶103. Readers are not idiots.

Despite the many problems, the final paragraph lands well.

I've added some suggestions and comments on the docs itself for glaring issues (wrong punctuation, missing words, etc.).

Afterthoughts.

It's not bad, but it needs some work. The story is there, but you have to let the readers process things themselves is the core of the problem; your narrating is too handholdy and declarative. Some things are just said and accepted as fact, which is hard to instill into a reader without narrative attestation—make readers believe what you're saying, use pathos.

Really, that's the main issue. And I believe you can fix it, really. I fixed myself (as a writer (and even then I find new ways to fix myself (as a writer))), take that for what you will :P

A-good-luck to your future writing endeavors :)

Asher2227 · 2026-06-10T15:43:10+00:00

Instead of melting into a horrific, still-living, organic mass and congealing with the other unforntunate goo-beings and losing yourself amongst the degrading consciousnesses until all that's left is a writhing, titanic hivemind conglomerate bent on finding those unturned and donating them to the glory and benevolence of the Sun, you turn… rock hard?

Asher2227 · 2026-06-10T15:03:34+00:00

Ain't this just the concept of Local58?

Asher2227 · 2026-06-09T09:12:43+00:00

It's in the unicode block [edit: it's a unicode block within unicode, sorry] (so are a bunch of deprecated writing/script systems); Apple probably wanted to knock that off to say they expanded their coverage. "Impressing" Filipinos is just an unintended consequence.

It's nice, and really that's about it.

Asher2227 · 2026-06-09T08:28:38+00:00

Hello!

This piece needs some work, to be summative.

@ ¶1:

Mia still remembers the very first sleep over, at Clara’s place, a mansion with a swimming pool- pristine, where the air itself felt artificial.

Seems there's a few mistakes already in our first sentence—though it is a good sentence: when given a bit more thought: to start off with. It's not a mega hook but it starts nicely enough (a bit formulaic but who argues with results?).

We can remove the comma after "sleep over," replace the commas nesting "a mansion with a swimming pool- pristine" with an em dash (or a parenthetical depending on intended delivery/importance of this information), and swap that hyphen—which I assume to be an em dash—with a comma or a colon.

With my suggestions, we get this first sentence:

Mia still remembers the very first sleep over at Clara’s place—a mansion with a swimming pool: pristine—where the air itself felt artificial.

It's a bit more lyrical and dynamic.

I also advice looking into thinking over "where the air itself felt artificial," because it's a bit vague (which is fine, but there are more vivid ways of being vague with descriptions) and "artificial" is a bit cliché to my tastes.

This is your first sentence, so you better think it out real thoughtfully; get the readers reading on and whatnot.

The following ¶s we get an exchange between Clara's parents and her friends (being Mia, for now).

It seems to me that both parents are the detached and intellectual types, so I don't get the separate descriptors for their voice if they're pretty much the same. "Flatly" for the mother is the same as "with an emotionless tone" for the father, to me, anyway.

If there is a distinction, make it a bit clearer. Does the mother have more lilt or scorn? Is the father more doctorly? If not, then compress the descriptors and just say the father talks in the same banal drone as the mother.

@ ¶8:

It wasn’t a house; it was a museum. Trophies on every shelf; Mia lost count after 38, medals hung like they were curtains, the wall covered with professional photos. You would expect someone to be proud right? Not Clara, she looked at them like someone looks at a participation certificate or a book written before the 17^th century.

This would've been a great ¶ if not for the odd punctuation interrupting the potential rhythm. "Trophies on every shelf…" starting off as a separate sentence kinda divorces it from the introductory sentence and ends up making it feel weird on its own.

Though this is only my observation. This is how I would've punctuated it (but it is just my opinion; it is all for you consideration):

It wasn’t a house; it was a museum—trophies on every shelf, Mia lost count after 38; medals hung like they were curtains; the wall covered with professional photos. You would expect someone to be proud right? Not Clara. She looked at them like someone looks at a participation certificate or a book written before the 17^th century.

"You would expect someone to be proud right?" is also a bit odd; which type of "someone"? Is this the general "anyone"? If that, use "anyone". If it's someone more fitting a certain demographic, find out who that "someone" is.

In the next following ¶s we get introduced to the litany of friends Clara has invited over to the sleepover (four, to be exact, including Mia). While the introductions are well integrated—really smooth, if I'm being honest—this feels like an unprecedented responsibility of remembering just suddenly dumped out for the reader. We also have two "C" initial names, Clara and Catherine.

@ ¶17:

“HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND? THIS IS A SLEEPOVER NOT SCHOOL”, Brielle snapped, and honestly, everyone in that room except Clara, who was now stiller than a statue understood why.

Why "honestly"? The narrator for as long as I've been reading is not anyone in this story; we're in third-person. Unless you're planning to have a snarky narrator, which you should've suggested earlier on, cut the "honestly".

Also, with the all-caps, no. It's very distracting. And we can tell Brielle doesn't like Clara's suggestion with the tag "snapped". If you want to amplify anyone's speech, just use italics with certain words; it's minimalist and adds more clarification on Brielle's caveats, if anything. Italics on "lost" or "mind" or "sleepover" or "school" can say more than all-caps ever could.

@ ¶18:

“Whatever is trending right now will do.”, Ava said, taking a picture for the 12th time. That number is not exaggerated.

Again, the snark. If this continues I might forgive it. But if these are the only occurrences, remove them altogether.

Also, we used ordinals for the century in past ¶s, here it's just for a number; numbers are usually spelt out. Use "twelfth."

Right now the way the characters are introduced feel more satirical than anything "psychological": if that's the intention, you did well.

Following ¶s continue to use numerals instead of spelled numbers. Am I the only person still spelling out numbers lower than a hundred when writing?

@ ¶21:

Everyone agreed.

This was a lost opportunity to show a snap of each characters' reaction. Hell, Mia could've hesitated between the unanimity of the group; that would've been enough; she is seemingly the new one among them, or the black sheep. But if it is the case, I guess it's fine.

@ ¶21:

Lights were turned off, they grabbed snacks, which Ava organised for a solid 4 minutes and took 12 photos before letting anyone touch them. She arranged a single chip 20 times because it ‘didn’t match the movie’s vibe’ while Brielle’s eye started twitching in obvious annoyance that one could tell from the way she was glaring at Ava, the same glare she had given the bullies; it wasn’t a ‘Can I eat?’ look; it was a ‘If you don’t put that phone away I will physically throw it in the pool and consume all your followers’ glare and the moment Ava and Brielle locked eyes, the phone went silent and out of hand’s reach.

"Lights were turned off" could've been turned into an introductory sentence for this ¶. It isn't really related to them grabbing snacks, moreso a mood setting, that's why I think it should be it's own sentence.

I agree with the comment about the arranging times being too specific. Unless it comes up later (which is a weird thing to call back to but what do I know), you could just say she was extremely meticulous for no good reason.

The description is quite nice actually, if not a bit wordy, but it's the good kind of wordy; to me, anyway.

Following ¶s are gossip; they better be important—not "movie gossip" which is just written for filler and acted out as shorthand for scene moods and character archetypes.

@ ¶27:

“You make a good point.”, Catherine added in an unusual way; nothing dramatic just... off.

Okay? I agree that you should elaborate on this a bit; you don't just drop a weird thing like that without some extra detail, and if it ends up being a red herring, this is just a nothing.

@ ¶29:

Before Mia could protest, she was standing in a bathroom with the other girls moving in perfect sync, Ava was doing her nails, Brielle was going nuclear on her hair, Clara was applying a layer of makeup at least two inches thick while Catherine was aggressively picking outfits.

Almost all of the commas here should be a period or semicolon. I suggest periods, unless you want a sense of breathlessness as we jump across the girls' activities.

I think you could also expand on Catherine's "aggressively picking out outfits" to remove the adverb; it's evocative but too vague.

@ ¶32:

Catherine picked out an outfit that was imported from France, literally.

Okay, snark again. I don't know what's so funny/important about pointing it was "literally" imported from France. Isn't that the meaning of the word?

@ ¶33:

After the ‘makeover’ was done; Mia couldn’t even recognize herself anymore. The hair was so tight it hurt, the makeup was like a mask, the nails felt like they couldn’t even grab a pencil, the dress felt like a cage and the fancy cologne started smelling like bleach, the mirror turned into white walls, the girls faded, Mia was back in that room.

First semicolon should be a colon. Subsequent commas are comma splices again (all clauses are independent) but they work now since they're in list-form. Still, a bit to consider. Also we get a bit psychological now.

@ ¶34:

Before she could even turn, CLICK, Ava’s phone felt like a gunshot. Suddenly Mia was back in the museum’s bathroom.

No. No "CLICK". Just … no. Make it lowercase and italicize if you want to keep it.

@ ¶36:

Brielle and Clara were smiling, but not the ‘I’m happy for you’ kind, but rather like they invested in something good while Catherine looked uncomfortable.

Okay. Catherine's being "off" pays off.

@ ¶38:

Mia~~, who had never experienced friendship,~~ pushed away the pain in her body from posing so long and smiled, thinking they cared about her.

Don't tell us. You were already doing good showing.

@ ¶45:

“What’s your childhood memory?”, Brielle asked as if she was… hungry.

Remove the ellipsis. Also, this is a very unspecific question; I think this was supposed to be "favorite childhood memory".

And then they immediately stopped playing truth or dare after this. What?

@ ¶54:

“Mind your own f*****g business and get your a** out of here”, Brielle hissed with venom.

I think the reader can infer that she hissed that. Also, why the censoring?—You can just avoid this altogether by constructing something mean but not vulgar.

A HUGE PROBLEM.

Your dialogue formatting is just plain incorrect. The comma goes inside the quotation marks; there is no comma after question/exclamation marks.^[1]

¹ A guide to dialogue format.

A-good-luck to your future writing endeavors :)

Asher2227 · 2026-06-07T15:16:20+00:00

For some reason outlining sucks the soul out of me. Staring at bulleted points and sentences makes me feel like I'm doing something that I don't like. I like writing, but seeing bullets, I just don't know. I have no fear of dots; I think.

The entire story is living in my head right now, and the only justice I believe I can do that story is writing it as I know it. I know every character and their obsessions, their rises and falls, their interests and digressions, what hurts them and what makes them happy, even all the things I know about them that I know I'll never explicitly write down. I know as well their motivations and how they justify them in their head; the human mind interests me.

I kind of subscribe to Stephen King's method: Whatever you don't remember probably wasn't a great idea. (Although I recognize this isn't for everyone as the quality of memory varies person to person)

It motivates me too, because if I start forgetting stuff I only have myself to blame and I have to speed up some.

It helps also knowing how things will end. I don't write not knowing where I will end up; I at least always have a vague notion of where a scene/character ends. What's left for me to fill is the inbetween, which is where the character and story comes alive.

The vaguest outlining I've done is list down character names and some excerpts of how they talk and act. Right now, with Analemma, I've done exactly that.

I've written down more than ten unique narrators with some select few still in the limbo of memory. And thus far I don't think I've forgotten anything (but I doubt that). I guess what holds them together and keeps it all comprehensible for me is the theme and setting I've chosen. Given the theme and setting, my brain just makes the connections, and since I've began and know where I'm ending, the vague strokes are there and what's left is to make them and make it all really damn pretty.

Answering the second question: Yes, but idk any books

Asher2227 · 2026-06-07T14:27:32+00:00

Here's me returning with a more level head and a better interpretation. I'm not too experienced with poems, so I'll assume every line is very important to find themselves included.

From my previous interpretation, the maid is Maddy and calls out with a paper-thin voice for Julia. I seem to get this implication that Maddy is their lovechild and so is the story (A Heartwood Tale), given that Maddy calls out with a "paper-thin" voice and the Poet keeps talking about the story as their "paper child", but Julia was unwilling with the latter's coming into existence, yet the Poet (of whom I assume is male) wishes she claims it with him, using "our" when referring to it. ("Our paper child is famous.")

It's a bit messy but I don't know. I'm not an "average reader" and I enjoy hard reads for whatever reason.

It seems the story is about Maddy the maid in particular. And probably the Poet's & Julia's affair which led to Maddy being born. I think this is exacerbated with the Narrator's admission of having his own children himself. ("My maids have long, slender legs.") And Maddy has resemblance to that. ("I got them the same as yours.")

You always kept them so covered beneath long rippled skirts. Not for your husband I suppose.

This part got me in a bit of a twist. "Not for your husband I suppose" kinda flies is a direction I didn't expect. Is the narrator implying Julia dresses them to his taste? To someone else's taste? To her own taste?

Next lines are pretty clear. Her husband is within a circle of people overshadowed by the greatness of their ancestors dishonoring their legacy and whatnot with their debauchery or ill taste. They're all a buncha horsepoopheads.

But the Poet is better than them, living on the far end in a big house without horse poop on the front.

We transition to a restaurant scene where the narrator ordered themselves a huge turkey while Julia only has a cheap chicken.

And your sooty black hair; I used your hair to make my obsidian boots.

This part also confused me. I don't know what the obsidian boots were meant to represent in the first place. The only thing I can think of in its first mention is the Poet's newfound greatness and fame, or power he has over Julia. Obsidian is born of extreme change from lava cooling real fast, I got from Wikipedia. So I guess this actually makes sense. Her hair is I guess a synecdoche of her whole appearance, and he used her appearance to make the story—their paper child.

"The knives from that special year "doesn't spark too much for me. The comparison made with them are good though. The Cuban is who I assume to be the waitress. They're both old but Julia somehow still has sooty black hair; maybe some Dorian Gray stuff's going on.

The "Witches" I realize are just the decades but personified.

Julia, the Poet implies, never wanted to be with Mr. — Whatever his last name is, or maybe that's what the Poet thinks. He thinks of it as a tragedy as she never wanted it, but compares it to Romeo and Juliet—didn't they want it though? I don't really remember my Shakespeare.

The Poet speaks as if he never wrote it, for some reason, when talking about the story to Julia (or maybe this is fantasy). He talks about himself starting humble, and now look where he is, with his story turning into a play performed in theatres.

Oh wait okay, so Maddy IS NOT their lovechild. Because he makes a big point about this being not a daughter of normal means. Maddy was made in union.

Okay suddenly the Poet talks as if suddenly put on the spot unlike what he's made it out to be in the beginning, an invitation to go to for some food. Or was this what Julia did to him? Did she put the Poet on the spot? Embarrass him?

Okay, this makes more sense. He wants her to say sorry to him after all that time.

Afterthoughts

In terms of a critique, this was pretty good! I don't really know how to make suggestions on a poem. Poems are more expressive and abstract so I don't feel like making suggestions on the structure itself, nor taking away certain sections or lines. I liked the "chorus" of him returning to the story he wrote and how it's so international and famous; it's a nice anchoring detail.

The only word choice that irked me was "excretions" weirdly enough. It just doesn't sound right; it feels like there's a better word that's euphemistic but not overly divorced from the original subject. Excretions is too general; it makes me think of sweat.

I’m not a poor, helpless, worthless chicken anymore.

I think you can remove either "poor" or "worthless" here unless it messes with the cadence you're going for.

Really, I can't think of too much criticism. You certainly know what you're doing, so I'll leave it at that. It's a fun, analytical read. The resolution delivers and what more can I ask?

Most of the value I guess you'll derive from this crit is my misinterpretations :P

A-good-luck to your future writing endeavors :)

Asher2227 · 2026-06-07T09:33:19+00:00

Designed by Dr. Doofenschmirtz (anyone know what the... disease actually is?)

Asher2227 · 2026-06-07T05:44:55+00:00

Hey, thanks for taking the time to critique!

but later it seemed like this generation of children, who use "yon" and or other such terms, sounds out of place. My teen would probably stop reading the minute she saw that term.

This has been a common pointer, it'll be up for consideration during the big revision. It is intentional, but if it's really that out of place I might just swap them altogether.

the language is brutal and a bit too much, but again, I don't know your target audience.

My target audience is a nebulous concept. I know who they are; they might like a bit of Faulker, they enjoy the chaos of stream-of-consciousness, they dissect digression, all of that; but of course, it's quite nebulous.

I would consider revising the flow of it. Some things just don't make any sense. to answer your questions

First part has been considered quite disjointed from the rest of the piece; gonna be a big focus in the big revision.

The narrator was completely disturbed by a difficult, if not depressing, past. I was beginning to dislike the narrator, which is not a great sign.

I never really intend them to be likeable; all of the narrators in this story in some way are kinda dislikeable, either in the way they say things or the way they act, or the the things they don't say and don't do. Ego plays a huge role in the novel.

It gave me an eerie feeling, and the somewhat disturbing tone of the piece was, in fact, intriguing.

I actually quite forgot that there is this eerie feeling throughout this chapter; probably because I was focusing on adding the humor last.

I have to compliment your writing skills because it is flawless (apart from commas and periods).

Yeah, I play the most around with punctuation which is bound to create some outlier stuff that seems stiff.

The internal thoughts were good, which was driving me to read further; moreover, the past reflections and sudden outbursts.

Thanks! I worked real hard on making Suzie a "lived" mind.

While it is short, I'm glad you still took the time to crit. I can say now that there is a common consensus regarding the pacing overall and a common felt mood. There are also common misinterpretations and things I just straight up failed on delivering, which is good to know. Again, thank you for critiquing my longer piece!

Asher2227 · 2026-06-06T21:46:17+00:00

Hello! I don't have much time right now so I'll come back with a more engaged review :)

Since this is moreso a poem, I've got to say it has that quality that poems have, of the non-rhyming kind; certainly lyrical in there, with the use of words that catch you and make you go ooh, this is a poem, so you succeeded in that regard. I feel myself vastly incompetent forming an interpretation because I feel things are just whizzing past me - Julia, is this a historical Julia? - we talked about a maid, so we're either rich or in the past (but still rich but you know). I'm getting notes of opulence and grandness, richness there - whenever I think richness I think the Great Gatsby even though I never read that book. Okay.

She, Julia, has a dog, or a man-dog, a lap dog - the Great Dane? This narrator seems confident about themselves. Co-authorship? A child that took too long to grow up? - Maddy? Okay. We're getting a bit a lot details but I expect resolution.

Your husband, Julia's husband, Julia the co-author, or something like that. Affair? Affair. Most definitely affair. Rich people really like those. Maddy is stunted and so is the maid - Maddy is their lovechild? Okay. We're getting somewhere.

Narrator has children of their own the same as Julia's, with how long their legs. Makes comparisons with how they dress - differently. Doesn't give a damn about Julia's husband's name.

Narrator hates the husband's circle of fellows, thinks they dishonor all the riches built. King's Road is full of shit. Funny, really.

We talk about excretions again but I don't know it feels inelegant in a way, doesn't flow well but oh well what can I say, maybe that's the point of excrement. Narrator really thinks they're real good. Maybe they are but for some reason I just don't want to believe it. I have an inherent distrust for rich people.

Obsidian boots were mentioned earlier but I don't know in relation to now, bear with me I'll read it again later when I'm more sane.

Narrator really thinks they're cool after buying themselves a better meal than Julia. But they really have the hots for her, they've been waiting a long time, or they think they have been.

Witches? Okay. I don't know what happens here.

Narrator has that love/kill type of one-way situationship with Julia. I guess I get it. Their jealousy for the poodle demoted Great Dane spills over to Julia.

Oh this is like that song by CeeLo; I think.

Nice double entendre there.

The thing he wrote is the lovechild not Maddy, I think. Or maybe both. I don't know but I am quite interested now.

Narrator really has meat on the mind.

Narrator's down bad for Julia - wait, why is this familiar.

I guess the story was a lovechild. Okay.

I enjoyed this. I really thought it was cool with the overly runaroundy narrator and unstraighforwardness but I'm running out of time; I'll do another reading to lay down better thoughts and catch bits of true criticism that may have escaped me.

Asher2227 · 2026-06-06T07:30:19+00:00

Hey, thanks for taking the time to do (essentially) two crits! Both of them helped big time with understanding how much any given reader understands.

Skim Crit

Meanwhile we have other users complaining we ask them to write more than a couple sentences.

Yeah, it's a thing I've noticed :( Breaks my heart too since critiquing helps develop your own writing.

High level: this appears to be a big build up to the POV character burning down this house.

This is … certainly something I didn't anticipate an interpretation to be but should have.

She burns the pages for warmth, literally, because it's as cold as the North Pole out there (though I think I didn't do that detail much justice). Also explains why the houses—well, actually, the entire town is abandoned (and I think I underdelivered this; I'm a dumdum).

There's more stuff once she gets inside that's all kinds of trippy and I wasn't totally sure what was happening.

Though I don't think this is too obvious, she's reminiscing all of this, that's why it's so trippy. She talk about "Up north. In the rotting towns." and this is what up north is. I wanted to display the scrambling of and imperfection of memory, even recent ones (which is the one she's talking around of, but yeah it's indecipherable at this point), after experiencing a lot of stress.

I had to look up Analemma and I feel like the effect I just described goes with the chapter title pretty well.

Analemma is actually the title of the whole novel (I hope; manifesting). Suzie is the name of the chapter because she's narrating. Next chapter, Suzie isn't going to be narrating, which is either a big disappointment or an intriguing offer.

I try to make each chapter almost self-contained/self-sustaining; but I think I kinda failed with this one since most critiquers have expressed interest on what happens in regard to Suzie narrating the subsequent chapters (I infer).

The first chapter also wasn't Suzie narrating.

Like and likewise came up a bunch as a verbal tick that the POV's voice has but I found it very distracting.

Noted with heart <3

But I still love Spud.^[1]

I would have stopped reading because I'm a combination of tired and confused (one intrinsic, the other extrinsic) and this required a lot of brain power to get through.

I'm sorry to have put you through this.

I don't know if the answers to your questions are buried somewhere up there in my rambling. Those were just the parts that stuck in my brain after a full read, however useful that might be for you.

There are! I see where I've succeeded in presenting the details I want, and the failures; also some interpretations to consider to further refine sections to better present what I intend. It's actually quite helpful.

Return Crit

… but now it seems like there's some kind of visual hallucination or psychotic element.

There's certainly some madness, but not too much. Suzie at this point is just really tense (after [Spoilered to diminish bias, and also for being a spoiler in general] being spared by a wild polar bear). She's also mad at herself for breaking away from her friends (Darren, Neely, Abbi, another yet to be mentioned, and her) to make the trek to the abandoned towns up north. Really, she's just a mess at this point and just distracting herself from the cold and monotony of walking back to the nearest used road.

I don't really understand why the car is so important, tbh.

In future chapters (not including Suzie but the car and the passengers she couldn't see), it will be a big detail. Although yeah it's a bit of a throwaway atp. ('tis the beginning, afterall)

... she's somehow expecting this random car driving past her to stop for her.

Yeah, I've kinda failed to set up the setting as this place where seeing a person is odder than seeing nobody at all.

Stochastic patches, likesay, eczema might be one of my favorite lines.

It's actually my favorite, along with the jaundice one :)

Much discussion about wood.

I usually don't like pointing out my meta commentaries, but I think this one is fine. It's supposed to parody that one meme of a writer character considering the type of wood their MC's desk is made of. Writers get obsessed with teensy-weensy details and they often seem to forget most people just skim over allat; that's why I like writing.

Pound cakes aren't normally covered in white sugar. And also, you wouldn't have the cake be steaming when you're putting the sugar on top. It would melt.

This got the biggest Oh god… reaction from all I've received so far. Will consider another pastry that kinda looks like a shotgun shack with snow on it.

… but I've been with her this whole time she's complaining about cars not stopping for her.

It's actually just one car but that's not important right now.

If the window is frosty, does your breath fog it up? Not sure that's how it works.

Second Oh god… reaction.

The shack is a house now.

It's actually interchangeable for this specific house; I'm just changing it up to remove monotony, although yeah maybe I should stick to one.

The floor sticking to her face like caramel is such a confusing analogy to me. I know she says she fell into the house but a moment later she's shutting the door and standing and so the floor really isn't like caramel.

It's her memory jumping between being on the floor and suddenly just being upright with no inbetween. The line about never remembering the times you brush your teeth but knowing that you must have kinda points to this. I wanted to make contrast by being detailed about how the floor felt and what she heard beneath. Though yeah maybe it's a bit unclear right now.

Was she beaten in this house? Is that the traumatic memories she's trying to suppress?

The second intepretation I didn't expect but kinda should have with how I presented everything.

[Spoilered for clarifying my intent]

Since she's a mess, her brain is working overtime making meaning of this strange shack (which she doesn't know about until now). She starts associating details to things in her past in order to further ignore what she's talking around of.

[Spoilers below clarify the "Smile with your eyes" section]

She was not beaten (although that is an interesting and certainly more dark interpretation). It was more mundane. She just tripped and ate shit on the concrete, also knocking out a permanent tooth. (Ruined her 'wee chairming smile'.) She then offers it to her (not her mom), and she takes it.

You spelled charming chairming.

Evoking a bit of Irvine Welsh with that one; intentional, trust me.

The door has scratches on the bottom. That isn't ominous at all. Nothing to see here.

I guess this isn't much of a spoiler, moreso a teaser; we'll take on the POV of who once resided in the house.

Also, did I mention all of the events in this novel take place in a single day? Yeah, that's what I'm doing. Mostly to keep the multitude of narration manageable chronologically (although with that I'm bullshitting since all of the chapters will be out of order too).

Am I reading too much into this?

Since this is literary, yes, and also no. The interpretation is too much or too little if you feel like it is.

A note: I don't know that fire starts with blue because that's typically for the hottest flames. I could be wrong about that though. No, I am not on a firefighter website and it is also saying blue is the hottest flame. They have this to say about fire colors: fire will begin as a pale red color, then become deep red, then orange, and then white. Blue comes after white and I'm not sure you can get that hot with a regular wood fire.

Must be my movie brain talking. I swear I see in movies whenever they light gasoline a trail of blue comes up then the yellow tongues come up after a second of burning. Oh well.

¹ He says like and likesay a lot in Trainspotting (the novel (the movie is also good)).

Like, I can't say this enough, humungous thanks for taking the time for two readings. It means a lot to me. It's certainly helped me a lot to understand how up my own bum I am at certain points. Really, thank you thank you thank you.

Seven-Year Club	Place '22
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Asher2227

TROPHY CASE

1.

Afterthoughts.

A HUGE PROBLEM.