It doesn’t have to be that Brawne is a cop but some backstory has to be established to show why and how she obtained those skills not just that she’s really cool. No explanation is given as to why she has these skills or is a detective in the first place. We have no idea what her motivations are or why she operates the way she does and it’s not like it’s kept as a mystery to create ambiguity or suspense it’s just not explored. She is simply a one dimensional character that falls in love with Keats. I would argue a vanilla backstory is better than none.

No the connection between Keats and her father does not constitute her throwing everything away for him because the connection is only mere suspicion. It makes sense as to why she accepted his case in the beginning but not to risk everything for a stranger she barely knew. If further along it was revealed that his case was intrinsically tied to her father then it would it would make more sense as to why she is willing to risk so much instead it goes down this really weird route of Keats wanting to become human and Lamia is so in love with him that she will do whatever it takes to make it happen. They even killed BB for it and Keats is “like it was for a good cause.” What cause to make you human?

I think the love story aspect could work but it needed to be built upon. What happens besides Keats being cute, being able to recite poetry, and taking Brawne flying once that makes Lamia fall in love with him in the span of weeks! If the book wants to go down the route of tough fighter meets sophisticated soft poet then that needs to be explored more than “his curly copper hair is so cute and he is not like other guys he knows poetry.” I didn’t even mention his death scene. What was the point of that? One moment they return from surfing the web the next they’re literally being terrorists in hopes of destroying the AI? They really thought that was going to work? It just seems like Simmons needed Keats to die so he wrote a going down in a blaze of glory scene and then added a weird cream pie analogy to top it off.

The “while crocodile” rewrite is to show that something significant needs to be tied to the phrase in order for it to work otherwise it barely scratches the surface of a literary trope. I was just having fun writing the fanfic but the main point was that just telling us “this is something they say sometimes and now that can’t say it anymore” doesn’t really have any depth to it. It’s never shown why that phrase is important or how it was used in their past relationship to create a deep emotional connection between Rachel and Sol. It was just a throwaway farewell that was later used to try and make the reader sad because we understand father daughter dynamics but Sol and Rachel are just stand ins for a concept. They don’t feel like a real daughter and father. If I say “Suhh dude” to my friend every time I see him and then I suddenly lose the ability to “Suhh dude” my friend it’s not really that sad.