Concrit for egelantier

[eglantiere]

I want to receive feedback by: Comments on the published fics are the best, but if you prefer to be more private, the mods have my email, and my discord handle is egelantier#0472.

Here are the works I want feedback on: anything on egelantier is good to go!

There are several recent fics that are out of my usual wheelhouse and so I'd be very interested in feedback on them, but honestly anything goes, regardless of posting year:

give us a little love (TGE, Maia/Csethiro arranged marriage canon divergence AU)
create in me a clean heart (VME, fairly graphic hurt/comfort fic with crucifixion)
the rivers of the sky are dry (Narnia, ensemble)
lead me down to the dusty garden (FFXV, fairly graphic whump)

I have these questions for readers:
- If somebody's read my earlier fics, I would really love to know if there's a visible change/progress in my writing over the years.
- The other question I'm burningly curious about is whether the stories in different fandoms feel samey because my writing 'voice' - the cadence, the word choices, et cetera - overwhelms setting/characterization differences.
- Is there a stylistic quirk / repeated pattern that feels really visible to you, in an inorganic way?

The style of feedback I prefer to receive is: Pretty much everything goes, including SPAG and stylistic, sentence-by-sentence feedback. I'm ESL, and I would be grateful for any comments here (I'm endlessly beholden to my betas for saving the readers from the worst of my comma and semicolon sins before they see the light of the day, but...).
It's fine to be blunt as long as there's an elaboration on what didn't/did work for you.

Comments to this post will be: unscreened

Comments

[filigranka]

Ok, ok, ok, soo – I’m a great fan of your writing, especially the way you write the drabbles and how much you’re able to pack into each of them, so I’m afraid I won’t be able to offer much in terms of the actual criticism. Which is probably the nicest possible disappointment, but still.

I love your drabbles, so I decided to use this exchange as an excuse to do some quick comparison and interpretation of them, and this is why I write here, not under each of them separately, as you asked.

For me, the main themes in your works – drabble or otherwise, actually – are:
a) Family, above all – blood relatives and found family both, and how complicated, fragile and painful these relationships could be, but also, ultimately, how much strength, love and safety they bring (sometimes it is a found family, or more distant relatives, which give this to the characters instead of their closest relatives, like e.g. in your Vader-Leia fics, or in Natsume’s ones); family is IMHO more important than romantic love in your works in general, although I didn’t read them all, so feel free to disregard this point.

b) Water – pantha rei, everything flows, drowns, swims and finds itself mirrored and mesmerized by streams, waves, rives, lakes, seas. Water appears in your fics as a part of a scenery, of course, but also as a great metaphor for life in a metaphysical or sometimes (depends on the canon) religious sense. The Force, The Life, that great, deep feeling of connection to others, not only people, but the whole world, and readiness to being lost in this feeling and in this universe, in the meaning which tries material with metaphysical – from dust to dust, from atoms to atoms, constant circle of life and smallest particles of the matter. So, it’s the life which has death in itself, of which death is a central part, and readiness to truly accept life – and therefore ability to live it – lies in one’s readiness to accept the death, getting melt in the stream of life, becoming one with nature, again, losing individuality. Which is a crux of many philosophical and religious concepts and, accidentally or not, you tend to write for canons which uses these. ;) And of course, writing this, I already started the third theme, so going back to water – when you write about The Life in this meaning, you almost always use water imaginary, more verbs than nouns, which makes sense, because Life (and a lot of other beings/things when they’re given divine-ish importance) is better described by what it does than what it is.

BTW, do you the song “Waters of March/ Aguas de Março”? Because if not, I think you might love it.

c) So, life as something which contains Death, and it’s Right and Good, and how it should be, life as countless small being parts of big things which are parts of even bigger things; the constant change; life as polyphony of voices and death (but also enlightenment, true understanding and acceptance) as losing one’s individuality and this being OK, too, this being a great secret and ultimate wisdom to be learnt by the characters sooner or later – to let go of “I/me/ego” aka accept Death and Ceasing of I as Right, not “the metaphysical scandal”, to accept that having a good, which means: fulfilling life – to fulfil one’s sense and purpose in life – is more than enough and there’s no need to ask for eternity different than being part of the great, ever-changing symphony of life. “What-Exists/The Being is God, ‘I’ is a sin”, as Theologia Germanica says (btw, I don’t know if you read it, but if you didn’t, you should, you sooo should, I think you will like it and find a very good source of quotes for your titles). So, classic mysticism, even in the most pro-individuality religions! I love mysticism, even if makes me cry, so, ekhm, I totally love this layer of your fics, too, although I cry on them like a kid, because I’m far from this level of acceptance. ;)

d) Ah, good life as fulfilling life and fulfilling life as meaningful life, life which fulfils its purpose, mission, duty, sense, meaning, adventure – I’m multiplying words not only because we both like enumerations and syntax parallels (oops, that should be the next point), but because these aspects are connected and mixed into one in your works; or rather, they play the same narrative and philosophical role, function, in your fics, I think – or a very similar one – and whichever one is used depends mostly on the canon, I think. And even when one of these aspects dominates the other, at least a couple of others is present, too. And from them, the most surprising is probably “adventure”, but I mean it like in folklore- anthropology- and similar studies, mostly, so as a part of the “quest”, an adventure which marks the rites of passage and is a liminal space, sacred quest/adventure, tied to the mission, and via mission tied to duty and via liminal space, tied to finding meaning and true purpose.

e) Ok, now when I mentioned it, of course rites of passage, usually the two classic two: the moment of death and start one’s adventure/quest, with all the anthropological and psychoanalytical (in literary theory sense more than current psychological school, to be honest) meanings and layers. Going on a quest to become independent from the family and find one’s “I”, finding one’s purpose and role in life, in both inner (what I am, what I like, what I dislike, recognising one needs and wishes…) and outer (what my family, my time, my community and the world needs me to be, recognising one duties and obligations) sense, starting this great adventure called life… And then, when the death comes, as the death comes, learning to de-learn all of this, accepting the death, learning to letting go of our youth, our visions of ourselves and our “I”, to find our meaning in giving back to The Life and the life in non-metaphysical sense (other people, community) what we got from it – and, in the moment of death, the one you often describe in your drabbles, just letting go, not trying to hold on to life or to self, letting go, contented with the knowledge that stream of life is eternal and will go on – without us.

Sniff, sniff, I got teary-eyed writing this and above, but it’s a good thing, it’s a very good thing when 100 words fics makes the reader(s) so moved! But yes, rites of passages and sometimes that liminal space which comes just after/before (like in Leia-Vader fic, this long one, where she saves Luke – it’s one long liminal space, triangle of liminal space, Luke is between life and death, Vader is between dying and going further, letting go of self/ghost, Leia goes into Luke’s liminal space with Vader as her guide – classic antro- and cultural themes are piling, I know – but she’s also the one starting this fic’s adventure and finding her – new, post-defeating the Empire – sense/purpose in life, and learning to accept her legacy and family – which parts of the family she wants to keep and which don’t quite deserve it – so she’s in her inner liminal space, between choices, and because these are choices of the Force- and blood-family weight, so the biggest caliber in traditional communities, it’s fitting it calls narratively for the proper liminal space, life-death, Dante’s Inferno and all that jizz, too) it’s a very constant theme in your fics, drabble or not, for me.

f) Btw, because – theme sixth! – you often write your drabbles about older than fanfiction’s average characters, characters middle-aged or older, that adventure might come to your characters after their youth, too; the best example, for me, is your Natsume’s “a ribbon at a time” drabble, in which it’s Fujiwara Touko who is getting drawn into an adventure and magical world of spirits and “talking cats”. Like a young boy or girl in most of the kids’ stories! The very, very, very same trope! And she goes to save her boy, not her father or mother, or the romantic interest! :D I loved this little twist and turning of traditional roles for older characters, especially women – supportive and/or mentoring.

g) You pick the very best titles, which often add layers and layers to the interpretations!

h) That one drabble about Luke and Leia you wrote for me, the one with “the world is unfair, but not unkind” still makes me cry even when I think about it, which is why I couldn’t check the quote and had to pull it out of my head. But oh my, it’s incredible, incredible, how perfect and good this drabble is, you know? I just find it unfair and like I said, I have no acceptance of the life world the death Star Wars sequel trilogy, either existentially, psychologically or philosophically. ;)

i) A bunch of stylistic quirks – you like repetitions and enumerations, especially the ones based on three and pretty often based on “two-three things following the same theme, and then the last one, contrasting” (I’d stick to my opinion both are three-based, the two-one obviously, and three-contrasting one because of the first part ;)). You tend to use strong rhythm and a rhythm which adds to the meaning of the text, e.g. adds the sense of motion – like, again, in “a ribbon at a time” (again? Again, it’s such a good drabble, so light and funny, and gives one all “ahoy, adventure” fuzzy feelings) – “and rising up, and up, and up” – it not only tells us how high Touko feels they are rising, it also suggests us the way they’re flying, these little waves of air she’s feeling, and that the motion for her isn’t smooth, but more jump-like. And of course alliterations, a lot of them. Also, you like to use pauses/n-dashes to emphasise the punchline, the last line, just before a few last words (I love this).

And something which is probably connected to being ESL, because I and a lot of people from EE writing in English (ekhm, Conrad) do it too, but it seems that native speakers almost never – putting All The Things into the middle of the sentence. Small digressions, descriptions, adjective groups, the whole additional stories within stories – ha, as 1001 Nights’ tales proves, every single sentence can be a thousand stories within a story, if you try hard enough! – all of them. Which is nice, imho, because it gives me the feeling of getting the information… organically? synchronically? in a way which suggests me they’re all organic part of the e.g. describe character, I get to know them before I go to the end of the grammar sentence, so they’re a part of the story told to me by this sentence; if something is told after, then I assume it’s done on a purpose. But English does it differently, of course… Which is not to say it sounds unnaturally in your writing – I’d not be able to tell either way! I just I notice it now, after being told about it, and so I notice it in your writing, too.

j) Two interesting – not so much exceptions as variants – of the above themes are in the “but they’re not yours, they are my own” (aka Criminal Minds’ drabble) and “captivate the sweet machine” (the Jupiter Ascending drabble), perhaps because these are one of your earliest ones. In “but they’re not yours…” we have water, yup, and liminal space, yup the second, but not in starting adventure or dying situation – JJ’s liminal space is connected to death, absolutely, but in the worlds of traditions and archetypes she would be more of a guide, guiding the troubled souls to the afterlife via finding their murderer (and stopping them for hurting others – and here, a role of an angel, saving victims from a certain death, pulling them from liminal space back to life). Her adventure started long before drabble and is a circular one – the charm of episodic TV series. So, in this drabble, for her, the water and the liminal space it symbolises, it’s more like a ritual of cleansing, again, connected to death – ritually, she’d be cleansing herself after and because of the contact with the dead – but not in terms of her dying. In the case of Jupiter Ascending, the water being a symbol of re-birth is already present in the canon and the drabble isn’t about it, in theory… But Jupiter, even if her hero journey was done in the canon, tries some new things and chooses her next steps, here, tastes the family ties (and I love that it’s not specified who exactly she meant as “Mom”), and the water of rebirth – being cursed in the canon – is still the cursed thing in the drabble, too. The pool is a luminal space, but a luminal space of the dark queen, buying her long life with the deaths of young peasants, and buying it because she can’t accept her own death. The stream of life being absorbed instead of absorbing, the image of a sin or unnatural monstrosity across the (pop)culture (Lifestream in FFVII and Shinra, and Sephiroth!). It’s all canon and this is probably you wrote it this way, but still, an interesting variation.

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[filigranka]

k) "Life Running Towards Death” (stealing from Heidegger, but tbh, 90% of philosophers and writers of any country which was occupied/non-existent for longer period of time would say similar things) and death meaning “idea, purpose, meaning, higher sense”, with the assumption that those demands this ultimate sacrifice or at least the readiness for it. No meaning in life without accepting death and service, and sacrifice. To keep to life, to want to preserve life – not only in terms of wanting to preserve one own life, but e.g. being attached to such a worldly things like romantic love, porcelain, family, self – is not to understand it and sentences one to not realising their own purpose and missing their time, and dying full of regrets. This is, I guess, the general gist of ideologies and religions, many of them, with changing accents.

And, imho, in your earlier fics there’s more tension between readiness for death and acceptance of one’s duty understood as above, there’s that need to be understood and remembered as a self, not a monument, to being remembered truly and via this – to getting some sort of immortality for the “self” (both drabbles about new heroes of SW ST have this tension in them, imho – “about love or fears that surround us” and “staring down from the fifty-sixth floor”; Finn and Finn and Poe and Rey feel this human regret at the thought of being forgotten or misunderstood by the future, the future generations or just The History, Hegel tm, and they also feel that having the little moments of their humanity, their hedonistic pleasures – aka preserving the shreds of the “selves” – would “make for a brighter story”) and in your more recent ones, the tension is almost gone. This, of course, might be also accidental, an effect of writing about different characters – although in the drabble from the same time, but about Luke, this tension is present, too (“each summer thronged the grass”). Luke still learns to let go of the “self” and still has some little, mundane and worldly attachments, even if only in a form of the tea set (there’re these two poems in Polish, one Miłosz’s “I don’t miss/regret anything, except porcelain” about post-war, and one Barańczak’s, in response to it “If [to have] porcelain at all, then only this kind, which won’t be regretted/missed when crushed by tanks”, and this is that tension in a nutshell, between life and ultimate duty, sacrifice, idea). He’s plagued by his feelings, his memories, his past, he’s in liminal space aka purposeless, meaningless, searching for the sense, in between the role of the hero and the role of the mentor (which, in sharp terms of adventure cinema, means death ;)), although he doesn’t know the latter yet. Of course, there’s water. And a pause/n-dash in the last line. ;)

And this tension is gone in your later drabbles, although of course it’s more like a trend, so sometimes two approaches appear at similar time. But e.g. that one with Leia and Luke for me, sniff, sniff. The “oh, the wind, the wind is blowing” (Rouge One) – Jyn is lonely, but not for long, because she’ll soon die and join all the others, whom she felt, joining The Great Life Symphony moments before – finding one’s purpose in life and sacrificing one’s life for others is enough in this drabble to get Jedi-like abilities, at least in regard to feeling the Living Force, The Life/Force around you, and to archive enlightenment (which, perhaps, is still a very European, very 19th century and later thing; certainly, EE national writers would sing the same, oh, dulce and decorum, feeling the beating heart of nation and its children as one’s dies, all the tropes, I think they shaped us all, in Europe, at least its big part, more than we think in everyday lives). Her lifetime of loose ends gets its meaning in sacrifice and death, and theirs, too, terrified and elated – and so, she doesn’t feel the need for the “terrified” part and welcomes death with the smile, like the most classic martyrs of religions and ideas. But there’s no more tension, there. And then, in Mushishi drabble, a recent one “who will ungrant my every wish” Ginko acts like someone who already archive the truest possible understanding, englithment and acceptance – when he feels the temptation of mundane, of attachments, of self-indulgence in the most literal sense, he chooses The Life Which Is Death, The Death Which Is Life – in the image of water, of course (I knooow, it’s canon) and returns to Mushi, to the most basic, primitive form of Life, filling this world and usually invisible. Atoms to atoms, a spark to the fire – or to the darkness, in this case, but it’s a darkness kind enough to meet him, darkness which rises to that overly complicated and trembling, and hesitant being a human is, before pulling him down when he belongs, into the first darkness, darkness without self, doubts and the rest. Down – so, a humility, a true humility, because Ginko chooses it himself. There’s tension, but almost outside of the character, character wins over the temptation wish ease, almost naturally, there’s no question what is right on narrative level. Death is a part of life, this is right, and so is right to die, the end, Ginko prefers to die to becoming mentor and ends his journey still on the hero stage. Very fitting, because he is a chosen one, the one touched by Mushi, and we all know what happens to those beloved by gods. ;)

Daaarn, I made the points to stay on topic and not go into my wild ramblings inside digressions inside my babbling – and yet. But I think it’s more disciplined than my comments usually, at least. And while I’m sure you won’t find anything new here, I hope you will find something amusing.

Re: the rest of the comment

[eglantiere]

okay i just want to open with, like, this whole comment made me So Happy. i feel like i made it! themes and philosophies, damn yessssss. just - thank you so much, it was such a great gift and analysis, all at once, i've been sneakily rereading it and smiling over it all this time.

it's interesting because i thought, consciously, of some of those things - i love the water imagery, for example; i love my last stands; i love the agnostical sense of there-is-something-after - and didn't of some other (letting go of self, right to die, right to live, all of this). i'm glad that there's a fandom that's of interest to you as a whole, too - i'm very tangentially connected to sw fandom, with very specific and narrow focus in it, and i'm tickled that you tracked this, like - entire philosophical swing in it. (and that milosz's quote, ahhhh).

in short - the death of author, sorta! because author did not put any intentional heideggery and scullduggery in, but is pleased to discover them there anyway ♥