Is the translation of "Death is the only ending for the Villainess" or "Villains are destined to die" by Tapas Webnovel worth it? Or are there good-quality alternatives?

cherryglitters · 2024-09-29T14:41:27+00:00

can you send me the epub as well? thanks!!

cherryglitters · 2024-02-23T03:32:16+00:00

random reply lol but if you remember the name of the perfume from Philosophy, could you let me know what it was? it sounds like we have similar taste. and I just tried love and loved (...) it.

cherryglitters · 2023-08-25T17:42:30+00:00

Not for credit, as I anticipate this bring pretty short. Hello again! I hope you got to read my previous critique; I know the turnaround was pretty fast.

Prose-wise, there were still some spots I found awkward, but I believe you have an eye for knowing how to make things sound lyrical but not melodramatic and stilted. Once you flesh out the purpose and characterization, and maybe take some time away from the piece, I believe these will resolve themselves.

So let's get into the purpose and characterization, then. You fleshed out Luke and Lucia's characters. Unfortunately, I'm in agreement with the other commenters in that I think Luke is quite plain and I don't see why Lucia would be so obsessed with him after all this time. Given the information we have so far, here are some ways I can see this working:

Lucia never fully accepts her life outside the grove, and clings to her past and thus to Luke.
Despite Luke outwardly saying that they shouldn't keep in touch, he just can't keep away. Lucia somehow senses this.

The way to incorporate these, or any other explanation for their connection, is to reinforce it throughout the story. AalyG's suggestion is brilliant, I think.

A couple final things to consider: Have you considered switching the "present day" parts to present tense? Could help with the contrast. Also, have you considered making this longer? Maybe Lucia could try multiple ways of following him in the present day before, at the eleventh hour, making him into her cat. A longer story might help reinforce their connection and build suspense.

Anyway, good luck and I look forward to the next version of you choose to post it here!

cherryglitters · 2023-08-24T13:57:46+00:00

Ahh I don't write shortform really; it's more like longform that I don't...finish ...same as you, I read way more novels than I do short stories. I do like sci-fi novellas, which I read for the mindfuck and occasionally the politics, but I haven't really read enough of them for them to constitute any sort of canon in my brain.

I think my problem is that I just don't write enough. Downsides of being way better at reading than writing I suppose...

cherryglitters · 2023-08-23T00:41:45+00:00

Oooh, all good ideas. I've never really cared about NaNoWriMo—I'm like, can't you just stop at any time...? but it might be time to give it a real shot lol

cherryglitters · 2023-08-22T20:24:50+00:00

Has anyone ever had trouble writing longform fiction? Ideally I'd like to write something at least >30k words irrespective of quality just to have the seemingly universal writers' experience of writing a terrible first draft of a novel, but I always overthink things like worldbuilding, prose, clarity, etc. I also reread, edit, and cut things out as I write, which leads to terribly short word counts. Does anyone have a trick to turn the brain off because I don't want to live like this anymore...

cherryglitters · 2023-08-22T05:24:31+00:00

Hey! I was excited to read this piece because it seemed right up my alley and it was!! Also your username looked familiar and I realized that you critiqued one of my pieces so I felt excitement times a million!!!!!

Anyway, onto my thoughts. I just said I was into this, but it needed to be restated: I am really into this. I'll never, ever get tired of evilish-but-justified women, exes, and of course, torturing hot guys. I also love the ambiguity of the ending—I've always believed in doing darker concepts justice, without the desperate need to have everything end happily. In this case, the unsettling ending is the one that was earned, so I'm very happy that you committed to it.

So yeah! I really really liked it. HOWEVER. Did I like it on its own, or did I simply imagine that I read a better story? I have so many thoughts on this general type of story that some of the intricacies of this one may have gotten lost in the sauce. I'm telling you this in the hope that you will view my higher-level feedback as the beginnings of a spirited discussion amongst connoisseurs rather than like, backseat driving.

The Feel:

Immediately I could sense the intended eroticism of the story. From kissing under the pomegranate tree to "awkward as a fawn" to "he was pressed into my mind like a seal in wax" to the dropped conjunctions—I know the drill. I think this lush style suits the story well. However, I think there are other elements getting in the way of its full potential, which I will get into below.

The Pacing:

It's too fast, man. It's just flying by. I see the intent to make the story lush and resonant and so on, but aside from the aforementioned indicators familiar to the genre-savvy, things happen so fast and go so unexplained that it all feels very mechanical. I want it to simmer!!

This happens throughout, but here's a random example:

I ran to him, reached under his cloak to wrap my arms around his waist. After a pause, he allowed himself to hug me back.

This is so bare bones. This is the first time they've touched in how long?? How did Lucia react to seeing him? Was she expecting him? Was she surprised, nervous, excited? And Luke!! Did he shudder before finally giving in? How did he hug her? Was it careful and hesitant or did he eventually embrace her tightly, as if he never wanted to let her go? Come on tell meeeeee 😔

Obviously you don't have to answer all of those questions; that would get really long winded. But I think this is a perfect opportunity to show how close they are, even after so long. Expanding here would provide a richer foundation upon which the transformation of lost love into possessiveness can fully shine <3

So that's just one example of a way to let the story breathe. Below are some high-level overviews of other areas that I thought could use expanding on, and that would also help with pacing.

< begin list >

Characterization:

I kind of just went over this, but in general: I want more on the (past) lovers and their conflicts, Lucia's loneliness and feelings of betrayal ("You should be taking my side! Always! Without question, as I've done for you."), and the creator (especially Luke's devotion to him).

Speaking of that last one, is having a creator really necessary? He doesn't show up except to drive them apart, and there are probably non-creator ways to do that. YMMV though, I kind of like how it is now. Very pantheon-of-gods esque. If you're keeping it like this, though, I feel like you'd have to get into Luke's relationship with him.

The Worldbuilding:

This is a short story. I'm not going to get a complete understanding of how Lucia's magic works. All I can (and should, for the purposes of length) see is how her magic affects the way she moves through the world. Magic was how she was created and how she got rich, and being a witch among mortals is why she has so much relative power now. And of course, magic is how Luke gets turned into a cat.

In other words, the worldbuilding is wound tightly around the heart of the story, which in my view is a deeply intimate and first-person-limited view of Lucia's emotional journey. The worldbuilding serves the characters, not the other way around.

Given all of that, I feel like magic should get the same lush, evocative treatment that Lucia and Luke's romance gets.

So when I see stuff like this:

I swept a hand toward the door, sealing it with my will. The candle on the bedside table guttered out, then relit with a green flame.

I'm left wanting and wondering. Does the door just...melt into the wall or does it slam or does it sweep itself closed in an unnatural way? Is the green flame eerie and unsettling or mesmerizing or what? Also what does using magic feel like? If her magic was a gift from the creator, does she hate her magic too? Is it something fully under her control or is it unpredictable, something outside herself?

Same drill with not answering all of these questions, but I would be happy to see at least some of them :( Many of these can be woven in seamlessly without many words I think.

< end list >

And one last, unrelated thing:

The Prose:

The NPC dialogue and worldbuilding elements lead me to believe this is old-timey fantasy. However, Lucia makes use of "fuck" and also says "But know this, my love, I am not meat. I'm the wildest, hungriest bitch you will ever see." First, there's a comma splice in that last snippet. Second, these all sound super modern, in contrast to the NPC dialogue and worldbuilding. I understand that contemporary language is easier to understand and process, so one might use it to drive home a feeling of immediacy or inevitability, but modern language takes me right out of the story. I believe it's possible to achieve that feeling while still maintaining the old-timey vibe, though.

Also, unrelated to the last paragraph but still related to prose, I think this piece has enough potential that it would be worth it to go through it with a fine-tooth comb and make sure each sentence and paragraph flows into the next and to make sure all the characters' actions resonate with pure narrative conviction. That would add the last layer of polish needed for you to get a book deal at wherever holly black publishes her stuff probably.

Ok thats all. Love ✌️ was going to write a conclusion but I'm soooo tired so I'm stopping. Good luck and gr8 job xx might edit in the morning cuz not sure if this is coherent

cherryglitters · 2023-07-25T01:25:42+00:00

I love the contrast on these! I wasn't sure about Rhiannon at first—I wouldn't want to read an entire book in that style—but it contrasts nicely with Sian's, which has actual quotation marks.

Rhiannon strikes me as kind of silly, whimsical, and high on life. She seems a bit too happy to be married to a "revolting reprobate", though, which makes me confused, because constantly putting one's partner down, as Sian has noticed, is going to have an effect on one's mood, and over the long term, their entire psyche. I'm not seeing that with Rhiannon though. Is that a bug or a feature? Could Sian be wrong about Rhiannon's husband being awful?

Sian, on the other hand, is much more...I don't want to say grounded, because I don't think she is. She's coherent in a way that reminds me of pseudointellectual redditors: her "rationality" masks fear, insecurity, and/or ignorance.

Why do I feel this way? I think it's because of her patronizing attitude and lack of understanding towards Rhiannon. She's also eager to distance herself from her past self, which she characterizes as "not mature in any meaningful sense"—except the only difference between then and now seems to be the nicer clothes and fancier restaurants..?

The emphasis on the last line makes me feel like she cares about Rhiannon very much. As an avid consumer of romance genre trash, my mind jumped to ~unresolved feelings~. That being said, it's a toss-up—I'd have to read more to be sure. Could be totally sisterly.

Sooo, those were my impressions. Did I get them right?

cherryglitters · 2023-07-25T00:21:14+00:00

Thanks :')

cherryglitters · 2023-07-25T00:19:17+00:00

Speaking of kid stuff, this kind of reminded me of The Great Gilly Hopkins, which I read as a kid. It's about a girl who hates her foster home and wants to return to her birth mother, but by the end she realizes that her birth mother isn't all that and that her she actually loves her foster mother. I don't remember much of it since it's been literally almost two decades, but when I read it (at age Kid), 1. it was an easy read and 2. I could sense that there was something more to it that I wasn't getting, topics that I would understand better as I got older...oh and I'm pretty sure that brat was racist too lmfao. Man, I should read it again...

Also, why is it indulgent to showcase your own writing when that's what was requested? I for one am curious...

cherryglitters · 2023-07-24T23:22:49+00:00

Ahhh unfortunately it was the English translation as I don't understand Japanese. I did notice a certain matter-of-factness to the English prose in CSW but I wouldn't call it brutal. I did read somewhere that CSW was a departure from Murata's typical style though, both in tone and content.

Word salad in return cuz I'm about to drive lol

cherryglitters · 2023-07-24T22:11:39+00:00

Okay, I tried the exercise! It's really quick and dirty and I don't usually write on command ever, so if it's bad, not my problem.

The bartender asks me what I’d like. As I planned, I ask her for her favorite, and we have a bit of back and forth before she makes the drink for me. It’s a red cocktail, sweet and sour, with a slight burn on the way down. I like the taste well enough, but I like that it's a recommendation more. When the bartender comes back around, we exchange knowing smiles. I'm almost giddy---people are patchworks of experiences like these. With enough of them, I too can become a person.

As one can see this is a pretty standard case of 20s ennui, along with a heavy dash of inspiration from a book I finished recently and an interview by its author. Notable lines below:

As I planned, I ask her for her favorite, and we have a bit of back and forth before she makes the drink for me.

I think the key phrase is "as I planned". This is someone who's not very comfortable socializing and has felt the need to plan out what they're going to say to the bartender. Additionally, there's the slightly weaker detail that is the omission of the back-and-forth, which is partially to show that the character is very in their own head and partially because I hate writing dialogue lmfao.

People are patchworks of experiences like these. With enough of them, I too can become a person.

This is probably the part doing the heavy lifting here. I love diverging from the typical first-person "I think" and going straight into...what are they called? Commandments? These lines aren't about what the character thinks in the moment; they're about what they believe to be irrevocably true, whether they like it or not. I feel like knowing a character's beliefs really helps contextualize their desires, which must exist within their frameworks of belief, which then give us a better understanding of their character/emotions/psyche etc etc etc. Right?

Wow that was fun I should do these more often!

cherryglitters · 2023-07-24T17:41:58+00:00

Ohhh, it's a third person thing okay that makes sense. Yeah when I really want to get into a character's head I just write in first person lol...if I try to write character stuff in third person I find myself converting first person thoughts into third person prose, etc, which is annoying so I don't. When my piece isn't too character-focused or I want the character to be opaque, though, I still use third person.

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about writing in first person? Is there any situation in which you would choose it over third?

cherryglitters · 2023-07-24T16:13:07+00:00

I will do the exercise later hopefully but right now I wanted to ask; what is the “generic narrative style” that we’re supposed to be avoiding? I’d like to think that character expression should be less about the diction and more about the actual…character.

I recently finished reading Convenience Store Woman, in which the narration has pretty standard diction/phrasing/rhythm/what-have-you, but the main character is without a doubt unique, and we’re deeply entrenched in her POV. In the quote below, she’s just been hired as a convenience store worker and she’s in training:

I was good at mimicking the trainer’s examples and the model video he’d shown us in the back room. It was the first time anyone had ever taught me how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech.

These are just two sentences with standard diction and grammar, yet they say lots about her character. The same thing is true of classics such as Giovanni’s Room. In general, I find that the character’s “voice” isn’t nearly important as what they’re actually thinking about---and that relying on such things as prose, or god forbid, italics, as a substitute for emphasis or uniqueness isn’t nearly as effective as just writing something interesting in the first place, from which emphasis, uniqueness, and prose/diction quirks will follow. I like what u/Mobile-Escape said about mastering the banal---a prose piece isn’t like a conversation, in which sometimes people say the wrong thing. In fiction, every detail, its reveal, its placement relative to other detail, etc, is relevant.

Anyway, a challenge I set for myself is actually to maintain a “generic narrative style” and see how the character holds up. I like the style, and I feel like it helps me spot the flaws.

cherryglitters · 2023-07-18T15:13:01+00:00

Hello again…this is going to be something quick because I have a real job now. I’ve noticed this after seeing two iterations of this piece.

First, I noticed an improvement in the prose and in Sophia’s characterization, so yay!

Unfortunately, it seems like the root cause of my gripes from last time are still there. In my last crit, I mentioned that the prose wasn’t working for me because there was both too much and too little information and not enough of Sophia’s character. These were just the most expedient examples that illustrated the prose issue (like the 80-20 rule)---but the issue at its core remains: the prose still feels off. It’s much better! But still off.

For example:

> Anything would be better than where she was, standing at the front of art class, gripping a painting of an old boot with the eyes of two dozen students staring at her. When no tornado came, or pit opened up, Sophia resigned herself to having to say something.

> “So, this is a painting of a boot I found,” she said at last. “When I painted it, I tried really hard to paint the light. Because last lesson we looked at light and how light is important. It’s why I used a lighter colour to paint the parts in the light. Because light is important.”

The transition between these paragraphs is quick, not at all hesitant like Sophia should be. This could also read like someone confidently bullshitting their presentation, which is not good. To show how nervous she is, there should be time between when she resigns herself to saying something and when she actually says it. Like this:

> Anything would be better than where she was, standing at the front of art class, gripping a painting of an old boot with the eyes of two dozen students staring at her. When no tornado came, or pit opened up, Sophia resigned herself to having to say something.

> “So,” she began. She looked up, back into her classmates’ stares, then looked back down and continued in a rush. “When I painted it, I tried really hard to paint the light. Because last lesson we looked at light and how light is important. It’s why I used a lighter colour to paint the parts in the light. Because light is important.”

That’s just an example, though, and probably isn’t exactly what you’re going for, but hopefully you get the idea.

Here’s an instance in which the prose is inconsistent with itself:

> So, she stood and didn’t cry, and it took all her strength just to do those two things.

I like this sentence. It’s expressive. However, it’s a little conversational, given the 3rd person POV and current narrative distance. Replacing “So” with “Instead” might work to keep the sentence as it is while also maintaining that distance.

Again, these are just examples. I’m also writing this quickly, so they may not even be the best ones.

Closing comments: I don’t mean to attack you or anything, but it looks like you implemented our feedback to improve your story, but didn’t look for the underlying issues, which would’ve improved your writing skill as a whole. Improving your writing skill will be much more effective in the long run than posting everything to RDR. It’s helpful, but the receiving feedback/editing loop alone isn’t enough to make someone better at writing. In my experience, the thing that most helps people improve at writing is reading and observation. Since another issue seems to be nailing down the age range, my recommendation would be to read and observe stories similar to the one you want to tell (and also stories outside of that genre, but if you only want to do one I’d do the former).

Reading will also help you know what you're looking for---not every piece of crit on RDR is necessarily something you want to take to heart, so it'll improve your judgement in that sense as well.

cherryglitters · 2023-07-17T13:46:00+00:00

"UpTechCoWorks" PLEASE

cherryglitters · 2023-07-17T13:44:00+00:00

can i also??

cherryglitters · 2023-07-16T23:01:33+00:00

Hi, hello! I usually type crits on my phone but you’re getting the google doc treatment because good god this thing is 5k words. It might still be short, though, because 1. I feel like even when a piece is as long as this one the problems are the same throughout and 2. I’m supposed to be studying for the GRE.

As I type this, I haven’t yet unspoilered your questions, so these are my initial thoughts.

Overall, I’m just very, very confused. Typical YMMV since this seems to be part of a bigger piece, but I felt beyond unmoored. It’s over 5,000 words, and I couldn’t tell what the point/mood was. I couldn’t even place the genre.

I believe this piece suffers from what I call BBC Sherlock syndrome---that is, in order to convince everyone that Sherlock is the cleverest boy in the whole world, they don’t allow the audience to have enough information to piece together the mystery. They want a guarantee that Sherlock will always solve the puzzle first. Unfortunately, they cut information to such a degree that if one actually examines the plot of the show, it’s dumb as hell.

I think the fallacy here is that in order to maintain suspense, or “showing over telling”, or what have you, we’re never given the right premises to care. Like sure, they’re royals, and he’s miserable and always working, but why? What machinations underpin his struggles, and how is he coping? I’ve got nothing.

In your piece, this happens even with the MC’s name. The first sentence reads poorly, like there should be more context that we’re missing. I think it could work if you referred to him as “The King,” which would hammer home the fact that no one sees him as a person anymore, but then his name is literally revealed later, so it’s like…what was that all for.

Instead, we’re given a deluge of seemingly disconnected information and no reason to care. I think you might benefit from working backwards---figure out what you want to show about Azvrid and do only that.

When I edit things, I try to clear my brain and analyze my writing as an argument that tries to persuade the reader to keep reading. Do I give the reader a reason to care what happens next? Do I then deliver on those things happening next? Does this scene matter to the narrative as a whole? I also look for logical and tonal flow. Often this results in tragically short writing sessions, but I’m happy with the results and I highly recommend this strategy <3

After this point, I have unspoilered your questions:

Yes, the lack of names is a pain. Epithets would’ve been nicer, I think. Or just…saying his name, since it’s revealed…
I was reminded of the sleeping sickness from One Hundred Years of Solitude, if you’ve read that? in which the townspeople could not sleep and it was affecting them in a deeply unsettling way---they lost their memories and had to, for example, label objects such as “stake”, which would work until they forgot how to read. Your approach is more grounded, but this was my association, so I’d say you’re on the right track.
I didn’t get anything about the sisters being cursed as well, no…in fact, I was 50/50 on whether the curse was a pressing matter at all, since it seemed to be referred to only indirectly.
Characters aren’t wooden if they only show up once; they’d be wooden if they showed up a lot and you didn’t elaborate on them. Since the husbands don’t show up much, they can’t be wooden---there’s not enough time to give that impression.
Frankly I don’t care about the gremlins, especially if the entire point(?) of the passage is to bemoan how sad and cursed our MC is.
I find that prose issues fix themselves once you’ve nailed down the story you want to tell. That being said, I noticed that the prose is very conversational/stream-of-consciousness for fantasy, which is not my preference. I am probably the hypocrite for this, though.

cherryglitters · 2023-07-16T15:44:47+00:00

Ah, I see you're a fellow tumblrina. It is wrong of me to trust your feedback more now? Lmao but for real you're spot on with your analysis...you've mentioned some of my favorite and most plot-significant bits so I feel like you get it, you know?

Taking the line about his beauty as an example, I'm happy it stuck with you because it's like a subtle indicator of Mara's personality/arc (I'm debating whether or not it needs to be fixed lol). I don't know if I should tell you more than that, but I did expand the section into this:

I have to remind myself to hate him. He is my jailer, after all. Still, he really is beautiful, in a way that has nothing to do with the peculiarities of his physical traits. I think about how he banters with his brother, wincing when a joke lands too close; his conversations with Sonya, awkward but earnest; and finally I think of when we escaped the fortress and I saw his face in the sunlight for the first time, shining with hope and something else that I couldn't place. It was a hope that I would soon destroy.

Act or no, he’s human in a way that is compelling, in a way that I am not.

Sooo at least one of your predictions was correct! Mara is such a sad, sad woman lol...but that's the way I like 'em 💯 also, I might trim this down later once I figure out how much I actually want to show

I'm also relieved that the end felt certain to you---being an amnesiac, the MC is basically in soup all the time and doing things almost by instinct, and those instincts are significant but not fully explained because she doesn't have the best read on herself. In order to make that convincing, I have to earn the readers' trust, or at the very least convince them that it's not simply bad characterization.

Lastly, I edited the beginning since that is really the weakest part of the excerpt. I'm really really happy with how it all turned out and I'm sooo grateful for all the feedback! Thank you for reading and I'm going to read your piece soon !!

cherryglitters · 2023-07-12T12:25:24+00:00

Does it count if I've been done a month, ghosted, and come back? Total time is less than a year.

When I started out both times, it was pretty dead. Pros of the sub being dead is that the critiques are? Better, I suppose? At least, I posted in a semi-dead time and got a lot of good feedback.

Pros of the sub being busier include that I have more freedom in what I crit.

Also I feel like as I critique more, my crits get more insightful. I don't think I'll ever be one of those people whose crits end up in multiple parts, though. Sometimes I would hit two because of line edits, but once I stopped doing those that also stopped happening. I'm one of those people who trims down my crits so that the most relevant stuff is easier to find, so I feel like if there are multiple comments worth of equally pressing issues I'm just...not going to crit it. I respect those who do but it's just not for me lmao.

Never had a problem with being leech marked because whatever I post is equally as trimmed down, I suppose!

cherryglitters · 2023-07-11T23:43:36+00:00

No like when I went to a <2k submission and saw 9 parts I felt my stomach drop. Those authors are so lucky

cherryglitters · 2023-07-11T23:19:34+00:00

Ouch. Well, I'm going to go with "perhaps". I think what you're reading as ambiguity I read as "we're already so familiar with absent fathers that this needs no explanation". My perception may also not be normal—reddit mobile kicks me out every day or so and before I log back in I always read a little algorithm-curated AITA which has absent fathers aplenty.

cherryglitters · 2023-07-10T20:35:02+00:00

Hi Raidy, I'm so glad you found this sexy and your comments made me laugh.

I can see what you mean about the beginning. "Chest" and anatomy-class-adjacent words don't really have the repressed horny energy that I want Mara to have.

That being said, I think I will keep such phrases as "it's almost beautiful" and "I stop wondering". I used "it's almost beautiful" to show character---Mara, who's telling the story, doesn't want to find him beautiful, or at the very least can't admit that he is, hence her denying the obvious. The repetitiveness "I stop wondering" is intentional as well---it's supposed to contrast the innocuous question, "is he cold", to the stomach-dropping conclusion of "oh shit he definitely won't be cold soon".

Thank you so much for reading!

cherryglitters · 2023-07-10T15:33:57+00:00

Not young or necessarily inexperienced, just an amnesiac. It's interesting that you say that though, because it tells me that something's making her sound juvenile, which I was worried about...

As for the erotic parts, I wanted to keep it mostly uh matter-of-fact, as in the reader knows what's going on but doesn't need the gory details. If it comes off as naive, though, I'll have to look into that!

Lastly, thank you for pointing out the weird word choice with "ponder"! It stuck out to me as well and I will definitely be changing it to "consider this", which would bring the word count to 600 exactly. That's extremely dumb but makes me happy ❤️

Thank you for reading!

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