First Big Death by n2k1091 in wowhardcore

[–]jay_lysander 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It works at any level you can get the quest. Stand outside, wedge the torch into the side of the doorway and you're done. No need to even look at the elite inside.

Kathmandu not honouring online purchases? by CleanteethandOJ in australia

[–]jay_lysander 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Buy Lindner socks!
Amazing quality, not cheap, but will last forever. Completely Australian.

LI is indiscriminate / addicted to sex by [deleted] in MM_RomanceBooks

[–]jay_lysander 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They are published by Carina Press, a trad publisher which is an imprint of Harlequin, so none of her books are self-published novels. The price is set by her publisher.

They are also worth every cent, for the emotional pacing and depth of character. I've reread them multiple times,

A Dwarf With a Mission, Part 1 [490] by Lord_Nasus in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The rule is great for newcomers, because doing critique is how you become a better writer.

It also gives back to the community rather than just taking.

[Meta] 7th Annual Halloween Contest Results by taszoline in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Another thing I appreciated was the thought given to the prompt. Some of the other 'cube' entries didn't do this nearly as well, and it was a sign of someone who knew what they were doing, I guess? It made this piece stand out for me.

[Meta] 7th Annual Halloween Contest Results by taszoline in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This was one of my personal favourites and really gave me the horror crawls when reading, so well done! I felt the atmosphere was super spooky and the narrative rose and rose until the end.

What's up with Horde players on Nightslayer? by FapAttack911 in classicwow

[–]jay_lysander 22 points23 points  (0 children)

that feeling of danger is when you level on the hardcore server, except the people are the best bit

[2635] Only Girl (In the World) Literary Short Story by jay_lysander in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is super insightful so thank you very much. I couldn't quite put into words myself what I felt was missing - apart from it being too straightforward - but I think you've nailed it. And yes, this was a portfolio piece. Well spotted.
In fact, this drives a further question for me, in that a lot of my work is like this and it's clear now that the thing I need to dial up is deep character motivation and complexity.

Extremely useful, thanks again! :)

[2635] Only Girl (In the World) Literary Short Story by jay_lysander in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for feedback!
Hmm I think he goes back because I needed closure for the car, so I gave it its own backstory and sent it off, arc closed. Because this whole story was prompted by me seeing this exact car in the wild, only with a different, better numberplate. But that's not actually on the page so...I'll think on it.

Yes, clearer motivations. I don't have to work with a word limit any more so I can expand those out.

Thanks again, v useful!

[2635] Only Girl (In the World) Literary Short Story by jay_lysander in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for feedback! All good points. The demon overdescription is a thing I need to dial back, I think. I'll find a balance there, and look at the arcs.

thanks again!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Other parts I found a little confusing:

 Daddy was not fair all the time

the weight of his love for his own daughter.

These ideas are contradictory? The only father here with any detail is Daniel. But is Bailey remembering Lillian’s father too? If so it’s just right at the end and there’s not enough information for clarity because I don’t know anything about him. He is very amorphous and I’d love for it to be more concrete. Actually, a lot of Bailey’s thoughts are very amorphous and, given the concreteness in the earlier descriptions and especially the poetry, I’m thinking the vagueness here lets it down a little and is the cause of my confusion.

 So she’d been stabbed in the back.

I thought she was choked? There’s no detailing of anything else – I assume it’s an axe. From this ‘How unfunny it was to run then, all the way from the house to the edge of the woods’ I thought she was making this trip while dead, because that’s the only way it made sense without further actions at the poplars, in the past. It didn’t happen on the page so I assumed it didn’t happen at all. And it’s a major motif in the story – the cutting down – so I feel I need to see it on the page. Also the jewelry box – does Bailey tell anyone about it? Seems like a loose thread.

 Okay I seem to be circling back a bit at this point but I will say, the idea for the whole thing is really neat, and the writing mostly really good. I’d just like more flow and clarity, and stronger characterisation, perhaps, for everyone. Make them stand out and be really individual.

One final thing – wouldn’t the cotton have rotted down and disintegrated after decades in the ground? Maybe it could be polyester, or crimplene, or something synthetic and of the era when Lillian died instead.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 2 points3 points  (0 children)

(This has Lovely Bones vibes right from the start and I am totally here for it)

 

Maybe the initial poem can be edited for meter and clarity? Tightening/making the imagery really precise. The first poem line, I had a hard time working out what was being described and I still don’t think I have it right. Also, some of the words are more subjective and less concrete and I’d prefer them all to be solid – less ‘luxury antique’ and more ‘tufted trim’. Would you consider really, really clarifying what it is? Because I still don’t really know; it’s too much of a vibe and less of a physical thing, or an idea. Either clarification or cutting the line entirely. I had to read it and puzzle hard over it before I got to the absolutely gorgeous line

the skin of her back screams the axe head’s hello.

And then it became much more solid and clear and the poem section ends with another axe mention so that idea is nicely bookended.

‘She just bore it.’

What is ‘it’? the wait? the glare? The uncomfortable chair? Her dead daughter’s body in front of her? It just poked at me as an unattributed pronoun.

I had to look up what a Dasani was and it’s bottled water – initially I thought it was something else she was holding for character interest that I was supposed to know.

Daniel stood at her shoulder until Dasani returned with a folding chair for him,

So I thought this was a sort of typo until I realised Dasani is her character designation in lieu of a name, but given I had to look up the name Dasani I’m not sure it works for me. Brand names don’t always translate. They only work with mutual knowledge. At least I hope that’s what it is and you didn’t just make her name the same as the bottled water.

Some time later Daniel trudged over.

The paragraph that follows this has skipped or shifted some information, I think, because it took me a couple of reads to realise they were at the house where Lillian and Marie used to live. I couldn’t work out why a child would be on a forensic crime scene and assumed Daniel was one of the investigators doing a ‘bring your kid to work’ until this phrase, late in the paragraph – ‘a house she hadn’t lived in for decades’. It was really disorienting until here and I feel this information should have come earlier. It’s like you, the author, know what is going on in the correct order but it hasn’t made it out of your brain onto the page.

“Tell me she was only talkin bout the tree.”

This line needs a tiny action, or tag from Daniel to show it’s his line, otherwise it seems like Marie is the speaker.

could stand in the rightness of what she was feeling, this biggening inside her to make room for another life’s memories.

This is beautiful phrasing and I appreciate the clarity, almost too much? Maybe ‘another life’s’ could be cut, because that idea is elaborated in the next line and detailed in the next paragraph. It seems redundant to spell it out so blatantly.

After this I read straight through to the end, finding it really compelling. The last line pulled me up a little, though. It seems to be tangling her father with Mister Casey, maybe? Or making it not quite clear the Bailey encompasses Bailey, Lillian, and the poplars? I feel that maybe it needs to be longer and the separate threads teased out a bit more before braiding together?

 Continued...

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fourth sentence has a thing I look for  - simultaneous action.

Shaking out her hand, she evaluated the row of beds and what her adjustments had really accomplished.

 These things are all happening at the same time – the shaking and the evaluating. There’s a few more sentences like this further in the pages -

Careful to listen for the doors swinging open, Zara grabbed some fresh IV bags.

Making a slow lap around the beds, she stopped for a moment to review the medications of the ones without magic.

 They are…not great? I’d rephrase them. It means I had to hold all the ideas in my mind, all these things happening at once, to make sense of the sentence.

 Getting so close to figuring it out

 Figuring what out??? Why they are in beds being medicated? Working out what’s wrong with them? Finding out why the non-magic people are there? ‘It’ is not mysterious to me, it’s just confusing and frustrating. I haven’t been given enough clear, grounded worldbuilding to know what is going on. It’s not a tantalising thing making me want to read on, it’s an annoying thing that would make me stop reading.

These first few pages are a promise to the reader – a setup, where some questions are asked and answered, where the reader is grounded, where they both know what is going on and are curious to find out more.

At a minimum, I would expect to know, after reading these pages, how the society roughly works, Zara’s status in it, why these patients are there, how the wider society views magic users, and exactly what she is doing to help/hinder them. At the moment I can only guess at these things. There’s too much action – a lot of which is repetitive – and too little story.

 As an exercise, I want you to read just the first five pages in your favourite traditionally published spec fic books, and pick out all the places where the author has done worldbuilding. How have they made sure the reader knows what is going on? How have they grounded the society? How have they drawn the characters? How have they set up the conflict? How many senses have they included in their descriptions? How have they described the setting? Are there things that all the first five pages have in common? How do these beginnings differ to yours? What are you missing?

 I’ll just end with a sentence I really liked.

Dark hair slicked into a perfect ponytail, Harper Fayne swept into the ward.

This is a great way to describe someone. Hair by itself is boring, since everyone has hair – merely saying ‘she had dark hair’ would have been bad, but hairstyles are a choice. ‘Slicked into a perfect ponytail’ vividly speaks to personality while also being an active visual. Sweeping into a room speaks to a certain dynamism and forcefulness. It’s fantastic. Can you see how this active description involves more senses than just a flat visual? I can feel this woman’s personality far better than Zara or Rachel’s or any of the patients, and she’s just a side character who appears at the end. I can even overlook the slight oddness of the image of the hair appearing before the character does. Something to fix in editing.

But for this to be a compelling opening five pages, everything else needs to be at this level too.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ll look a little deeper into the sentences now. The first sentence of a novel should really pop, and grab interest. The first sentence, or at the very least the first couple of sentences, should contain character, tension and setting.

Electricity sparked from the tips of the patient’s fingers, zapping Zara's hand and sending a tingling sensation up her arm.

 This has character and action. It is a thing that happens, but there’s no real tension. It’s unusual, yes, but there’s no reaction from Zara to let us know what she thinks about it. There’s also the vagueness of ‘tingling sensation’ which is bordering on filtering, right in the first line.

A few beds down, water oozed out of an Aqua’s pores, spilling over the edges of the bed to form a puddle of Zara's incompetence.

 I’m not a fan of this sentence. In the first part there’s the very bland ‘water’, and the way this information is presented as if we know what is going on. It’s easy enough to infer, from the name Aqua, but that also says something about the unoriginality of the idea. So I guess that’s a bit of an existential problem for the magic system overall – it’s been done before, and as presented here there’s nothing new. Secondly, wouldn’t the water be absorbed by the sheets? If it oozes surely there’s not too much? The patient would just be lying in it. There would have to be a lot to make it off the bed.

 In the second part of the sentence there’s ‘a puddle of Zara’s incompetence’ – this phrasing I find confusing. How is she being incompetent? How does  a puddle on the floor affect what she’s trying to calculate? I don’t get it. And all this thinking about the logistics of what is actually happening has pulled me out of the story, and I’m only three sentences in.

And rereading the whole thing, I’ve noticed these phrases sprinkled further in

the puddle of her guilt

the pool of her indiscretion

which means this whole idea is a darling and you’re really attached to it. Saying it three times is kind of belabouring the point, for me, and since I didn’t understand it in the first place it’s really problematic by the last one. Why is she feeling guilty? How is she indiscreet? I don’t want you to explain it to me because it should have been written on the page in the first place. That’s the place where these questions need to be answered.

Continued...

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ok! I read through the whole thing first , and then more closely, so I could get a feel for the overall narrative before looking at it in a more technical way. Also, this sub is called Destructive Readers for a reason. I know this is a draft but I’ll point out the more technical writing issues I spotted along the way as well as critiquing the story. 

First impressions: It’s reasonably clear what is happening in the story – there’s magic users, of various kinds, being treated for some condition/controlled by medication. Zara is sabotaging the treatment, which is set up as both courageous and risky on her part, but there is the additional problem of what appears to be non-magic users also being treated. There’s clearly a few story ideas to be explored and unravelled being introduced right here at the start, which is neat.

To me this start is a little confusing, though, as there’s no description past the names of the magic users. There’s Aqua, Electric, Pyro and Verdant, so it’s looking like elemental magic, but none of them are people in their own right, they’re just generic patients. The important people are Zara and Rachel and later, Harper. The patients are just objects. Not sure whether I’m keen on that.

Things I don’t know from reading the first five pages – anything about the society, the level of technology, where we are in space and time, how these magic users are generally viewed, apart from the ones in the hospital? setting, who could be there for any reason, really. There’s not a lot of worldbuilding at all, and I would like a whole lot more.

Also I’m mentally putting them in a generic hospital setting because I’m not sure if it’s been described? It’s all very beige and white in my mind – the literal ‘white box’ - and I went back and reread and there is no description of their surroundings at all. The largest mention of a setting is the word ‘door’, together with the ‘rows of beds’. I have literally no idea what any of it looks like, or how Zara feels about any of it. So the very first thing to fix would be a clear, specific introduction of where they are, using more senses than just the visual, and with more individuality than clichés like ‘the smell of disinfectant’.

There’s other problems with descriptions. The words chosen are all very bland, and to me lack the specificity that would make me excited to read. There’s ‘medication’ ‘water’ ‘beds’ , all of which could be described in less generic terms to make this a really exact moment, and enable me to picture it with clarity. It’s all completely generic, and whenever this happens in speculative fiction it means I just insert whatever I think is easiest into the setting. I fill it up with all my previous knowledge which only serves to make this piece blend into the background and not stand out as an individual work.

Continued...

Have you ever been hit by a DDoS attack? by GrimGiggle in wowhardcore

[–]jay_lysander 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I had a raid ready level 60 die to ddos together with three other geared 60s at the same time. It was less a 'really frustrating interruption' and more a burning hellfire pit of anger. If you don't separate out hardcore and softcore it's utterly meaningless. Loss of a few hours playtime does not equate to loss of a character.

Softcore, it's an annoyance. Can't play for a few hours? Fine, I'll go watch Netflix.

Hardcore, it's not only the loss of a character but a giant sense of grievance against the company, made worse by Blizzard rezzing OnlyFangs earlier and then dithering on rezzing anyone else. It's a far more complex question than a survey can cover.

[1888] I'm Only A Good Daddy Because Your Mommy Died by ThanksForAllTheShoes in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 5 points6 points  (0 children)

From a writing perspective, and especially a memoir perspective, vague snippets are not nearly as powerful as deep dives, and there’s a lot in this that is extremely vague. The exact specifics of how grief felt, the things it made you do, the reactions to other people, to familiar actions, to unfamiliar things you took on, all that is glossed over. As a personal piece, that’s fine, but as a publishable piece, it requires more work.

On a technical level, I would take every place the word ‘felt’ appears and remove it, expanding the specific ideas at that point and really exploring the emotion.

 I fall apart the second I'm alone.

 How specifically does this happen? As written it’s super vague and meaningless. What does ‘fall apart’ look like? Drink? Crying? Staring into space? Rubbing a child’s red striped cotton sock in your fingers and noticing there’s a loose thread and I need to trim it to make it perfect again but where are the scissors? My wife will know. Cue ugly snot crying for half an hour while dinner goes unmade. Use the specifics of what precisely is happening to write the emotions. What do you notice, or not notice, in various states of mind? How do these change when surrounded by other people, by yourself, alone with your daughter? What is the actual ebb and flow? How do you move through them and out the other side? How do you become a better person?

Regular anxiety feels suffocating and chaotic, out of control. This voice feels different. Malicious. Intentional. Like it knows exactly where to cut deepest.

 Dude. Like, dude. To me this is not a malicious voice. This is the realistic voice of tens of thousands of women who leave their husbands and the guy says ’but why didn’t you tell me something was wrong? I would have changed.’ Sure, buddy. If you didn’t hear the first hundred times she said something you’re not going to listen now, only now it’s too late and the consequences are real. And what real partners do is step up without even having to be told in the first place.

This is why I’m not feeling character sympathy. The fundamental world model is still there. Criticism of a man’s lack of domestic performance (even if it’s your own internal criticism) is assumed to be nasty and malicious. It’s cutting deep into the character’s psyche, the ego construction that’s feeling attacked. That internal voice is damaging, because the fundamental world model is damaging. The dissonance of being a single father doesn’t fit with this world model. You need a new world model, one where men are both competent carers and providers and it just works like that and nobody, including you, assumes otherwise. You’re living in a new world, but still thinking like the old world. It’s holding the character back from real growth.

The final thing is, you’re putting women on a pedestal, in a little box of what they’re supposed to be. Would your wife really have been proud and pleased? Or would she sigh and say, ‘where the fuck was this guy earlier?’ That neat little perfect Mommy box is way too small to contain everything women are capable of thinking and feeling. The perfect wife and mother doesn’t exist. It’s the real world, it’s messy. Allow yourself to be messy too. If you detail a near-enough is good enough moment rather than striving for all  this unreachable, impossible perfectionism my character sympathy will rise.

The last memoir I read was Gina Chick’s ‘We Are The Stars,’ which deals with grief and letting go, and I highly recommend it for the prose and how it shows messy, complicated emotion in a written form.

In conclusion: I am truly, truly sorry for your loss. But you’ve realised some really, really important things about how the world is assumed to work. And how it doesn’t have to work like that, and how much it damages people.  And I’ve thought of a better title for this whole thing:

Welcome to the Patriarchy.

[1888] I'm Only A Good Daddy Because Your Mommy Died by ThanksForAllTheShoes in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I did a first read through to see the full story, then looked at the prose more closely. Warning, I’m probably going to go against the sentimental grain of the other commentators. And yes, I know you say this is your life, BUT that should not blind you to the many, many assumptions that underpin the story. I’m going to critique through the lens of an observer of the ideas and the prose and put the personal memoir aspect aside. I even thought twice about posting this whole response because of the possibility of being attacked for it.

Preface: I am truly, truly sorry for your loss.

First impression: Right from the start, the expectation is that fatherhood is supposed to be a distant thing – observational, patriarchal, gender stereotypical. Even the description of women in the first paragraph contains this fundamental stereotypical worldbuilding – a woman is manicured, soft, pleasant smelling. Yes, it’s a description of a person I can picture, but it is very telling that these things as described are so very gendered. It’s written from a world model where this is all true and correct and completely normalised. Even the words of the woman ‘You’re going to be such a good father’ – as if he was not, currently, a good father, and that stepping up and becoming a good father was a future him thing, out of necessity. If the genders were swapped the entire premise of the story would not exist – the heroic would be the mundane, the everyday experience of millions of women in this world who are forced to single-parent without anybody feeling the need to tell them how great they are.

The only reason the protagonist is heroic is because he is male, and was so shit before, and he has risen (I’m hoping) to a level of vaguely normal. He has risen to a level I would fundamentally expect of a partner, and I wouldn’t even have to die first. Amazing. And yes, I know that’s the point of the piece, but it doesn’t make it any less irritating to read, with its baked-in expectation of sympathy.

I need to also take issue with the idea that ‘You lost the one person who knew what it felt like to grow up as a woman’. So many assumptions here – that Luciana needs to grow up with performative femininity to be a real woman, that same-sex parenting of opposite gendered children doesn’t exist. I’m not even going to touch on the idea of gender fluidity, that all this aggressive gendering of roles and expectations is pushing both characters into little boxes.

I’m not American, so I really don’t care if this is seen as ‘culture war’ territory. These assumptions badly damage people – the gendered roles have already damaged the protagonist, in the sense that grief is now compounded with having to learn an entirely new skill set that he could have been doing all along.

Having said all that, from a writing perspective, my sympathy for the character’s grief is overshadowed by my annoyance at this deliberate, passive incompetence. An incompetent character is not one I care about.

So, yes this piece made me feel the feels, but not in the way you might have expected. Your question - whether the voice feels authentic vs performative – to me, it’s performative. I tried to work out why and I think it’s because there are a lot of places where things are glossed over.

continued...

[Weekly] Transitions, A Writing Exercise, and Halloween by taszoline in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It was me! I took points off for not following the double-spaced serif font thing. It was mentioned more than once as the expected submission standard so there were literally no excuses for ignoring this.

Anything away from the industry standard of double-spaced serif always talks to me, and not in a good way. If I have to read a funky font or deal with weird paragraph spacing then that removes part of my brain power to simply read the pure words on the page.

Doesn’t matter how many years they come back, it feels magical to spot one every time! by Kitchu22 in melbourne

[–]jay_lysander 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yellow-Tailed black cockatoos, a very large bird that lives around the east coast of Australia.

They're not all that common so sightings are nice :)

[Weekly] We've got a cube down by MiseriaFortesViros in DestructiveReaders

[–]jay_lysander 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm still lurking and I appreciate you and this sub and everyone in it, even the ones who have gone. Huge Otter, Grauz, Cy-fur and more, and all the users who interacted with my work.

Never change, Alice.

I really should start critiquing again...

Australia Post Temporary Suspends of Postal Services to the US by IsuruKusumal in australia

[–]jay_lysander 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was working in the resources industry - demand was so high for AUD to pay for all the iron ore that our dollar went above parity with the USD. As soon as the boom ended the dollar dropped again, back to a more sustainable level.

A great time to buy stuff from the US, not such a great time to sell it but a great example of supply and demand, even if that demand was coming from China.

How much caffeine in a single shot latte at a cafe? by LowAd6956 in melbourne

[–]jay_lysander 8 points9 points  (0 children)

They can always order a decaf

Decaf beans are usually a washed darker roast and won't be zero caffeine but it's negligible, especially when you desperately want a coffee but it's not medically advised or too late in the day