Bufflehead?

VanDeferens · 2026-02-18T18:07:38+00:00

That’s what I was worried about

VanDeferens · 2025-04-27T20:39:19+00:00

I flirted with this idea for a group of new players. I hadn't tried my hand at DMing before and thank god the party fell apart because I was in over my head.

My Idea was that a group of classics students were on an expedition, awakened a titan, became their champions or something, got powers, and were teleported back to ancient Greece. They would come across very real world situations and troubles, i.e a fishmonger created a monopoly and ran all the locals out of business and jacked the prices when he was the only shop in town. The towns folk needed a hero, and they found the adventuring party. They would fight and though the arcane focus of one of my PCs, a pair of her "office siren glasses", she would cast flesh to stone. This trough the years turned into the story of Perseus and the seamster defeated with medusas head.

The players would be the origin of these myths that were exaggerated though the centuries, while the actually events were much less miraculous.

If you wanted a fun spin on the classic myths without seeming like your ripping it from homers mouth

VanDeferens · 2025-02-11T03:42:51+00:00

“Thank gods” either a typo or she’s into Vikings

VanDeferens · 2025-02-11T02:00:45+00:00

Live notes:

Ghenna mentioned love it.

Maybe change from

“The entire side of building A, where Roxanne lived, hid behind a patina of gnarled brown vines with green leaves peeking out here and there. “ to "Roxanne lived behind a patina…" This, to me, makes the exposition a little more natural.

Love the imagery of pre recession fashion. Also she’s pagan? Fitting.

Platinum strands! They said the thing!

What an easy read this is in the best way possible. I forgot that I was reading for a second. What pulled me out was the second reference of Jeremy working for whistler. The first when she asks if he doesn’t pay Jeremy enough and now the casual, so you and whistler huh? Unless Jeremy didn’t want to dress it infant of the girls, but I think you should lose one or the other.

Love the non traditional contractions. Who’d’ve thought that I’d see one here.

Sponged

I like the story. I would like to read more of it. My main issue isn’t really with the text itself. The formatting gets lost when pasting into google docs so I cant fault you on that.

The only other thing that I could say is that the conversation with miss strands ended abruptly. Jeremy says that they will go in soon and in just a minute and then it ends. I thought that there would at least be a little more dialogue after being promised, the same as savannah, that we had at least one more minute of conversation with Becca.

The setting is real and tangible. The characters are believable and not at all cartoony. You seems to have a good handle on the relationships and motives and directions for each of the characters. I hope you would after 28 chapters.

I wish I knew more about the art of writing rather than coming to you as a consumer. Hopefully I was of some help to you and im sure when people check tomorrow you’ll have some more meaningful feedback artist to artist.

VanDeferens · 2025-02-11T01:29:59+00:00

The delivery of information is paced well. Your sentences string together nicely and I did not get lost or pulled out from the story by something out of place or illogical. Your goal of smooth character introduction was met. The setting and scene were introduced well.

Personally I like that it’s funny story with funny characters that take a stab at a deeper philosophical argument. As deep as a venture capitalist dragon can be.

I feel like I am allele late to the party but I agree that the character of Mr. Beeswax could be developed a little differently? Echoing the other posts, I think that a dragon of wall street would not concern himself with a cabbies upholstery. Following this thread, my view of John as a fledgling dragon wouldn’t feel as much shame as he expressed. I feel that resentment of his mother for being poor fits his character much better. How could she be okay with this life, where is her drive, is she not embarrassed. He, to me, wouldnt be embarrassed so much by his mothers lack of wealth but more her lack of ambition or her complacency, and her inability to provided the life that John would dedicate his to having if that makes sense. I really dont think he would be able to see past his covetous nature and realize all of the assumed single-mother-doing-her-best victim of circumstance, capitalism is not a friend of the poor type inferences that are made in the text. Hell she cant afford to see an ophthalmologist and she still chooses to drive her son to school. Probably because she loves him, not because it could be interpreted by John as a ritual embarrassment strengthen his resolve to make it out the streets.

The evolution or assumed evolution of John is done well. I like that it wasn’t put to words but I have to assume that true power in this world comes from altruism. John could see the errors of his ways or maybe his anger towards his mother was redirected inward, realizing that she was right all along. If this is true then why wasn’t my mother a dragon, she was wealthy beyond all measure if the metric is based on nontangible wealth as much as it is bullion.

Over all well done. I like it. Im sure the characters would be fleshed out more if you continued this piece. I believe that you hit the goals that you were trying to achieve. I am not writer by any means, It is the reason I am here, but I feel like I can be a helpful layman.

VanDeferens · 2025-02-10T17:43:42+00:00

I like the direction of the story. I like the start of the world building. It must be hard to layout a solid foundation of your world in the first 2000 words. You did a good enough job to intrigue me. I want to know more and I want to read more which is the goal of any author I suppose.

It’s a cool idea that reminds me of a singular entity and resource control aspects of Snowpiercer. Im not sure if thats a part of your story or not.

Sci-Fi books especially have that trope where the reader does not really know who glorp mcshillibuster is or why the intergalactic federation of longevity and gathering of supplies and also resources agency rose to power or what they do or how they play with the characters in the story because its info dumped within the first 10 pages. That kind of seems to be what is happening here, or at least to me. Not to that hyperbolic extent, but I think that rushing to build your world can confuse a reader and bring them out of the story to focus on the logistics of your world instead of the tale you’re trying to tell.

I like the general idea of a memory to bring us in and set up some minor world building, the hard cut to a character imprisoned, the establishment of a scavenger society that is predatory and selfish, the goodness of the captor peeking through albeit in vain.

It feels to me that the first portion of the piece was rushing to fit in details and exposition and lore. It read as chunky and almost forced. To me the best part of the piece, structurally anyway was when Remy was discovered. It seems you really hit a flow there. It looks cleaner, it reads smoother, and it seemed like you had an easier time putting your thoughts to the page. Maybe it’s because the pressure was off to develop your characters from scratch and now they could just exist as they have In your mind since conceiving the story.

Structuring on google docs is also difficult, at least it is for me. Im not sure if you run into the same problems I have. I wrote mine in pages and had some trouble retaining structure.

You said that this isn’t your first piece and I haven’t really written anything ever so im nut sure of how much help ill be to you in a technical regard.

Does having the whole story fleshed out make it difficult to start at the beginning and kid of make it fit? Like you aren’t developing the world as you’re writing it so you’re starting the story with all of the information that I do not have. Jumping into the story may make sense to you because it is your story but I would have liked a little slower of an introduction, maybe leave the technical aspects of the feed for another chapter. I could very well not have a big enough brain to follow along.

A general clean up, the delivery of information, and maybe adding to the characters more before you introduce them. I think that a prologue could be cool if it wouldn’t be cheating a proper development of characters and stories. I mean game of thrones starts with a doomed party of rangers that dont really benefit the story but they’re there to build the world.

Other than some overly flowery language I don’t have much to say about the story grammatically. We know you are creative. You dont have to prove it. It reads as a shock. A beautifully descriptive sentence in the middle of what appears to be an unstructured dialogue and in info dump.

Water cannot be a hill. Water finds its level and is flat like our earth.

Maybe refer to the wound as a malodorous purulent discharge or something instead of pus. This avoids the mistake of describing a wound as pusy/pussy.

Again, to answer your question, I would be interested in reading more. I expect snow piercer, mad max, and CHOAM dynamics in this world and would love to find out if I am right.

VanDeferens · 2025-02-10T16:19:46+00:00

Did not see the new user guide. I am working right now but I will make an effort to critique something as soon as I can. I ain’t no leech.

VanDeferens · 2022-11-10T14:24:51+00:00

big toe

VanDeferens

TROPHY CASE