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

create in me a clean heart

[morbane]

OK friend! Have crit. I hope this is useful. Reactions are adjusted as best I can for our differing preferences in h/c /she says affectionately, bowing with respect from atop a completely different hill.

You ask for comments on writing style changes. I'm not sure that's within scope, sorry - I have read many of your stories over many years but I'd still need to review a lot to answer you. Maybe we can make it a separate trade. Still, I've tried to keep my impressions of past fics in mind here.

I like what you focus on. There's just about zero waffle or unnecessary detail; at the same time, I feel I mostly have the information I need. You're very good at bringing relevant emotions quickly to the fore.

I'm not totally sure that the place where you start it makes sense. I think that the baseline time context being "we've conducted some interviews" might more sense than "we've just arrived". The alternating POV between Hiraga and Roberto mostly works, but a pure Roberto viewpoint until the last scene might also work, because, to me, there are some big gaps in the Hiraga perspective.

Details:

Hiraga had loved the town from the first jet-lagged glance.

No grammar problem here, and it's a nice clear sentence doling out a useful and manageable amount of information. However, on second reading, "loved" rather than "had loved" would make more sense to me because we don't spend enough time in this story hanging around the town before the action begins for this to feel like a distinct past. (If I'd been beta reading and making that suggestion, you would also have needed to tweak some grammar in the following paragraph. "Roberto had grumbled" would be fine; "Hiraga hadn't minded" would need adjusting.

I like maple shadows and green knees.

Ryuota's remission held, on the phone his brother was effortlessly cheerful, and all was right with the world. - Minor quibble. It's a little odd to me that you refer to Ryuota in two different ways in such a short space of time - on the first read, canon-unfamiliar, I assumed Ryuota and brother were different people. But it's minor because I don't really see how else you would efficiently and clearly convey this set of ideas.

an audit of a would-be saint - minor quibble but I thought the premise of the show was that that described all their cases?

Over the forty years since - Minor quibble. You later say the woman is in her sixties. "Child" here doesn't require the woman to be a teen or younger at the time, but does imply it; the timeline currently requires her to have been in her twenties at the time. "Forty-odd" or something would smooth it over.

It was a bit weird that the town’s community wasn't quite united behind this petition. The parishioners, while polite to them, seemed very cautious with their words.

To me, this is an abrupt transition. We've had the past of them arriving, then info about the case, and now "They arrived and then…" is still the context for whatever happens next. It makes me blink a bit that you then imply and skate over a raft of other events (check-ins, interviews, note-comparings) that are also in the past. The information in the paragraph is otherwise clear and it doesn't take me too long to catch up.

Roberto would find everything out in the due time - delete the

unexplainable and durable - unexplainable is fine, but inexplicable is less marked in this context. Durable isn't quite right - it's how you'd describe how you'd expect something to behave in the future (like if you're selling a suitcase), not how it's behaved up until this point. Enduring or resilient are options that work better for me.

woman in sixties - woman in her sixties (I like the food details to establish an unwelcoming atmosphere)

she was in very good health for all that she didn't seem to like them much - this distracts me; "for all" requires there to be some relation between these two facts, and there doesn't seem to be one.

which was weird because - does Hiraga use the word weird a lot? If not, that's twice in quick succession, distracting me a little. And he uses it soon again below.

no older than Ryota - Same person previously spelled Ryuota, or different?

He told her as such, and saw a first real expression - He told her such, and saw the first real expression

As always when the conversations lagged, Roberto stepped back into fray - the phrase before the comma is grammatically fine, but because it's plural, it's better suited to describe a group of situations, ie, "As always when the conversations lagged, Roberto [did a similar thing over several separate events]". Because what's being compared is single/unique, "As always when a conversation lagged" works better as a direct comparison. Also: into the fray.

until the coffee was finished and they left - probably best to have a comma after finished, if not some other tweak, otherwise both attach to "until", and "they finished coffee & left" is not a simultaneous, compound action.

"growing up with the other people thinking of her mother as a saint." - delete the before other? Fine if it's Hiraga's specific speech pattern, and okay as part of the general imperfection of speech otherwise, but not standard.

Roberto said pensively and refused to comment further. - You can get away with it, but when it's dialogue - speech verb - other stuff like this, I tend to prefer a comma after the phrase including the speech verb (or, comma after pensively) to avoid the structure of said & refused both taking the dialogue as their object.

Roberto caught Lauren scowling at him darkly from the screen and hastily excused himself before Hiraga could notice and become upset with both of them.

- I found this transition a little difficult. For one, there are hints, but since I wasn't expecting the POV to switch, I was trying to reconcile this with Hiraga's POV. For another, I'm a little confused about the sequence of events - did Roberto not know Hiraga was planning to call Lauren? Not clear if so. Did he know and think it would be fine and change his mind? That fits the text better, but in that case, I'm surprised Lauren's Lovelorn Scowl (over a very routine call) changed his mind so much. Does Lauren really scowl at Roberto for existing when Hiraga has called him to consult? It seems a little dramatic. Basically, I feel I can see why you want this sequence of events in order to bring up Roberto's feelings, but it feels a little forced.

Otherwise, from Hiraga's impression, I like the sequence of ideas. I like how this allows Roberto to overlook/justify Hiraga talking about Roberto's virtues without coming to the conclusion that Hiraga adores him - that's clever.

The wheels of the Vatican turned slowly but surely, grinding visionaries into dust one year and elevating them the next - I'm not sure about how the dust fits into this. Is it a progression? It doesn't work for Hiraga's elevation since he isn't being ground into dust first. If you're talking about caprice, I'm not sure how the sentiment fits. If this is a comment on how people have to be dead to be elevated, it makes sense but it might be too subtle for a comparison that works for people who are alive.

Sooner or later he'd be raised high, way beyond Roberto's grasp. - very minor note: I'd use far rather than way, since far is more formal, suited to the elevated tone

And no, Roberto wasn't a good enough man to console Lauren with this knowledge. - Hm. I like how this bridges to "But he could do his work". I see the callback to the sentiment about telling Lauren they aren't in competition. Here, though, is where the sentiment loses me, because it makes me imagine Roberto saying this to Lauren and Lauren reacting with disbelieving exasperation to the melodrama. And it's hard for me to buy any other character reacting with the kind of grudging gratitude Roberto seems to expect would occur. The idea that Roberto thinks this speech about the pedestal he's put Hiraga on - because imagining Hiraga's kindness to others as perfectly impersonal is kind of insulting to Hiraga, actually - makes me question Roberto's judgement and therefore makes me less willing to entertain his other emotional pronouncements.

there were weird lacunae in their interviews with the locals, slow undercurrents of tension - the use of weird is definitely chiming for me now; I like the feeling I get from "slow" here but I'm not actually sure what you mean by it.

Usually, when auditioning a saint, the challenge was - I'm not familiar with this phrase. Should this be auditing? This is also a dangling participle, since the challenge isn't auditioning - the subjects carrying out the action of auditioning are missing from the sentence.

They should've had petitioners under their door - at their door? Something else? "under their door" isn't an idiom and doesn't make literal sense either.

I like the observation about Roberto's growing unease about the townspeople's reticence.

And he didn't like the way Signora O'Brien looked - had looked

Hiraga probably forgot - had probably forgotten (can get away with had probably forgot if you prefer it)

The way the woman had looked at Hiraga when he said anything, with zealous hunger. - No quibble here! You asked for notes on your overall style and how it's changed, and I fear that project is out of scope for now for me even though I'm familiar. However, this is a technique I'd recognise as one you favour, possibly even in an exchange's anon period - the thoughts trailing off, then a grammatically independent statement, that uses a different structure so it can't follow on from the trailed-off thought, but that is emotionally relevant and emotionally charged It's doing what you need it to here.

just to give his panic some shape - I like this phrase! And I like the short urgent preceding sentences.

Hiraga must've - You use the 've contraction in non-dialogue more often than I expect, in general.

half-strangled by his burning lungs - Hm. I like the intensity of this, but the actual image doesn't work for me when I think about it - I only get something absurd, someone's esophagus twisted in a knot or something.

You'll have to stall until then, and I don't care how. - This instruction confuses me a little. He hasn't even found Hiraga; "stall" seems to require they are aware of a specific likely time-sensitive occurrence, and I don't think they can have that information. Also, I realise Lauren is also pining over Hiraga, but this seems like a big ask that is likely to get two Fathers killed, not one. Or, tl;dr - this is a dramatic statement but it doesn't quite work for me.

He would've missed the clearing if Lauren, in-between the bouts of swearing, wasn't giving him very precise directions. Here, your use of "would've" is particularly marked and unusual because although this is continually in his perspective, I don't think we're meant to take this as close to a reported thought, since it's a summary. The further away from dialogue they are, the less natural "should've" and "could've" and "would've" feel. In between should not be hyphenated here. I also quibble about the directions. You might know better than I would, but I don't see how Lauren, at a distance, having never been there before, and relying on what - Google Maps? - can give Roberto directions about the individual twists of trails on the ground in a small town/rural area. I would believe he'd be able to direct Roberto to the start of an old trail that's since grown over, maybe, but something more detailed than that seems implausible. And how did Roberto even know which direction to take? Are they going off Hiraga's phone's GPS signal? The sheer urgency smooths this over a bit in the moment, but not entirely.

His exhausted brain - already? Maybe overworked? I like the grim incongruity of the mental cartoon, though.

he was familiar with the cloth intimately, after years of ironing it - no grammar problem here and the phrase is perfectly serviceable, but I'm quibbling: the explanation feels a little intrusive, like Roberto's looking at the camera to say "You must be wondering how I knew it". And the only reason is it's worth raising is that I feel you could get more mileage out of that important sense of service if you tweaked this a bit more.

and the stained glass - stained glass, no 'the'. (In what way is it "roughly" built if it has stained glass? I'm willing to believe but not quite sure what I'm meant to picture. I think you're using roughly to gesture at a sense, but it doesn't offer up anything concrete to me.) I like the way you finish on "Its doors were open".

Signora O'Brien held court, standing in front of the altar, glowing with intent anger. - this is a nice balance of clear and dramatic

Lord's will, but - I would change that comma to a spaced hyphen or en dash to match what's after words, since "the lamb and our children and Lord's will" is a parenthetical interjection and should have the same punctuation on either side.

He knew what to do with perfect clarity - I like the emotions here, and I like his own certainty about his priorities. Very subjectively, I think I'd like it even more if this paragraph were slowed down or broken out or expanded, so that you give us space to linger on this very emotional moment even more. (Plus helps smooth over the contradiction from not knowing what to do three paragraphs ago to knowing perfectly now.)

In his other ear, Lauren was demanding updates with increasing fervor. Roberto whispered to him what he was going to do and hid the phone under the vestibule bench, cutting off Lauren’s anger. - Hm. You only give Lauren one line of dialogue in this scene, compared to at least four indirect summations. And I actually think more Lauren dialogue would get in the way. But because the summations are quite vague - he's swearing constantly, or he's giving directions I find implausible, or you talk about "increasing fervor" and thus imply a significant chunk of dialogue in order to allow that fervor to build, within a very compressed space in the narrative - that to me starts feeling noticeable as authorial shortcut. Separately, Roberto telling Lauren what he's going to do gives me pause - does he need to? why does he want to? Is he hoping this will reassure Lauren about Hiraga's fate? I'm skeptical that anything Roberto could say about that would be very reassuring.

Then he slammed the doors open I thought the doors were open? otherwise, what would he see when peering through the vestibule?

Re: create in me a clean heart

[morbane]

He willed her zealotry to recognize his authority, the weight of the Vatican behind him. - nice. The rhythm of zealotry and authority are very nice here.

You killed two people and it did nothing. - Obviously this refers to the two new bodies last month, but I am curious about before that. Is it that there were previous murders connected to this town (connected to the previous saved child) but they were a cold case until the most recent ones? I think that's what I'm supposed to get out of the phone call with Suskins + this information, and it's fairly neatly done, but if I'm wrong there might be something else to tweak.

You must know that you can't force a sacrifice. It has to be willing, as our Lord was willing." - This is a nice twist, with just enough sincerity - I admire the neatness of the set-up. He does consent to be tortured even unto death to spare Hiraga. Of course, he sees no moral difficulty with aiming to be rescued. Nice sentence lengths for what you're trying to do in this part.

She understood him, thank God. She understood him, and she didn't suspect anything. - another structure I would note as a favourite of yours at times of emotional height. Two sentences in a row starting the same way, building on each other. Working here!

but Roberto felt like smiling, anyway - I like this - it edges into melodrama but isn't quite too muh for me. And I like the calm before the intensity ratchets up again.

There is something cruel about this that mars the sweetness of Roberto's certainty for me - Hiraga not getting a say. Roberto gets his beautiful moment and Hiraga doesn't get input. Hiraga's been angry and terrified and in pain for a while, and although his safety is bought, someone else is trading it in for a different kind of pain without asking what he feels or wants. It sits uneasily with me, what Roberto's taking on. The way you write Roberto as if almost in a trance already helps, but … it kind of feels like Roberto's doing this for himself. Not for Hiraga.

tore the cassock off his back, - this should be "and tore" because it's the last in this particular list, being the last one that has "They" as its subject. "and he fought not to shudder" is an independent clause.

like some of his seminary mates had , - delete extra space

-I like the struck/stuck echo.
-When you say "he thought he got it, finally", like with the knowing / not knowing, I want a little more narrative space for the importance of this change.

splintered his breath and voice. - Nice.

The next parts feel a little too sped up for me. You've built this all up so much, and then we get one paragraph and a couple of scraps - it feels like you don't want to write this part. I think just one more described sensation at the start would help a lot to avoid "it didnt' stop" and "it didn't help, not at all" to feel a little less like generalizations. This is very heightened, with him forgetting why he's there and the passage of time getting uncertain, and the immense drama of him screaming out prayer lines, but underneath there's a slight vagueness that takes away some of the impact of the drama for me. When you first describe him screaming, you do that in a way that implies he was already screaming, and it's simultaneously true that the earlier screaming wasn't important to describe AND that the fact that he's *still* screaming, after a duration of screaming, gives this true pathos.

He couldn’t find his legs beyond the bright core of agony - this is pretty but not totally sure what it means - find and beyond are uncertainly metaphorical. I like his eyes not focusing, though.

because it was beyond him not to recognize symbols - this feels a little fancy. It strains my belief a little that he's as incoherent as you've made him and he's still having these kinds of very ironic, reflective, self-deprecating thoughts-on-top-of-thoughts. I think his mind whispering to him and him not being able to suppress a laugh reaction conveys the most important meaning!

now covered in blood and snot and tears; the indignity of it made him laugh harder - the following metaphor isn't working perfectly for me, but I like this and the combination of grounding and hysteria.

They were droning over him, something horribly like a sermon and he didn’t listen - This needs a comma after sermon - "something horribly like a sermon" is a parenthetical description in between the two independent clauses of a compound sentence. (Also there have already been sermons in this scene, so this being a sermon and him having an indignant reaction to that feels a little like old information presented as new.)

Then his right arm was grabbed and stretched out and pushed flat, palm out, against the stone and he rolled his head to follow the movement - preferably needs comma after stone, but you can get away more easily without it here - omitting the comma before the conjunction joining two independent clauses is a less strict rule.

time had mercifully stuttered to stop - to a stop

They grabbed his left arm and this time there was no mercy of going away. - In this part of the scene, the amount of detail you give really does work for me, much better than in the whipping part above. I'm not super into the puzzle pieces and this is important part - too abstract for me - but I really like the arm movement details, his head moving, and the way you let him check out for the first nail penetration but make him experience the second. The pacing is good there.

horrible quiet corner of his memory where his father lived and his mother died - I don't 100% understand this, and lived/died are a little grammatically complicated to put in parallel like this, BUT I really love it. The images are great and I totally buy into this being strange and dark and personal.

He wondered, inanely, if they had drilled the holes in the altar beforehand, if the man who had done it had whistled as he worked. - Personal reaction: the altar-drilling is interesting inconsequentiality, the whistling idea tends towards the maudlin.

The world was dimming, collapsing. Nothing was left but the four centers of pain, and yet something left of him was suspended between them, something small and insignificant, still whispering. - I like this a lot.

who it was that was praying for. - that he was

He floated in the pain I think this is a kind of conventional description, but it always seems a bit suspiciously contradictory to me. Floating is numbness or comfort, lack of pressured contact. Pain is not those things!

urgency he didn’t recognize - Not sure what you mean by recognize here. Do you mean something like relate to? If he's calling it urgency, he recognizes it.

saw a face, black hair, and terrified eyes - strictly speaking, these are three things that don't quite belong in a list of discrete things, because eyes are part of the face. Preferably tweak so this isn't structured as a list of three.

The comment "look, a miracle" is too maudlin for me personally because it isn't grounded. WHAT is a miracle? But would probably land fine with others.

“No,” Hiraga said, “no, no, Roberto, no.” - So this picks up in Hiraga's viewpoint here and we don't get even a flash of what it felt like for him in the intervening time; the bias towards Roberto feels strong. The explicit narratorial approval of Roberto's choices is a little heavy.

and this wasn’t right, couldn’t be. Surely He was not here now. - that wasn't right; otherwise, effective drama.

shock and blood loss and where’s the fucking saw already - this is a device you like that works if used sparingly. It's the second time in the fic that someone has been able to hear only certain words, and those words are coincidentally the most important words. (There are ways to tweak this to imply "person hears lots of disjoint words, and some are nonsense, and only the key ones are reported to the reader," but this isn't quite that.)

He nodded dumbly at her , - delete space

The knees of his vestment were stiff with Roberto’s blood. - Nice awful detail.

It was weird how the hospitals - you use weird a lot in this fic

like stale exhaustion and frozen minutes - ooh, I really like that

and he didn’t regret it for one minute. - the idiom is "for a/one moment". "for one minute" does not make sense here.

when he made himself hear her words - stable and you can see him now- he - again you're using the trope of special selected words. Also, space between now and punctuation

The transition to the dream is really confusing and jarring to me. First, it's that I can't easily tell whose perspective it is, and since you have Hiraga looking down, I don't even understand why he would be asleep. It's a big transition from the previous scene.

black of the cassock and red of the blood - I am not quite sure what these structures are meant to be doing, but they are very marked/weird/incorrect in English.

but it turned into the black snake in his hands - a black snake

His breath was whistling in his throat, his heart pounded - a semicolon works better than a comma there. They're independent, complete actions.

the dream forgotten - just MY experience of it makes me question that. Quite the dramatic dream!

Two days of bedside vigil - Oh! Quite the timeskip then!

He laughed, because it was better than drowning poor Roberto in tears on his sickbed, and said “No - drowning is a little melodramatic. Comma needed after said.

so heavily bandaged that it was hard to guess at their contours underneath - nice detail!

Hiraga sat down abruptly. “Roberto, it’s not... I can’t... You shouldn’t have done that. I can’t bear you having done that, God, you could have been - you could have…” - I AM VERY GLAD HE MAKES SOME PROTEST, BECAUSE WTH. Also, hm. You give us a lot of Hiraga's immediate feelings here, relating to the current situation, but this is overall very light on Hiraga's thoughts about the main traumatic event: being kidnapped, and manhandled along; being prepared for sacrifice; seeing his beloved friend tortured in front of him. It's all concentrated on the now, and that doesn't ring 100% true for me. He's not happy about Roberto having offered himself in Hiraga's stead, but it feels to me as if you're writing him as if he was off-screen for the event.

and I didn’t have to find it within myself at all. - I like this. The numinous sense is very clear to me, and it's a lot like Bujold's Chalion saints and their experience of being vessels.

as if he was suggesting Hiraga dismiss his words - suggesting Hirago should dismiss his words

where Hiraga spent way more time than at his own place - again, 'way' in this context is a register below, incongruously informal. 'much'?

“Roberto,” Hiraga said, “when you’re teaching at the seminary, where am I ? In this future of yours?” - This is a moment I like a lot! It's an insightful question and so lightly delivered.

and petted his hair until Hiraga fell asleep. - very minor quibble: a transition that doesn't require Hiraga to be aware of Hiraga falling asleep would work better for me. But otherwise I like the catharsis!

Re: create in me a clean heart

[eglantiere]

ahhhhh, friend, i love this so much. thank you! and thank you for picking the most drama-heavy fic of them ♥ i finished it so, so late, into the dead of fandom that moved on, and i just - really appreciated that.

i'm going to to meditate a lot over all those commas, and i have a separate grammar question crying for your help in the discord; there's a handful of stuff that are mostly canon-compliant because VME is a crazy place (lauren is a teenager genius hacker who's chained up in the vatican basement, he's that much of a dramatic asshole and also he's obsessed with hiraga and would like roberto to drop down into the well; they usually investigate miracles like crying statues and (cocaine) visions, but i don't remember if they actually audited a real saint; the talk about miracles is the show tagline and a bit of Anime Catholicism; Roberto IS that bad with his self-esteem. also i could've sworn i lifted 'unexplainable and durable' out of the article on vatican-approved miraculous healings, but i'm googling now and i can't find it, so it's possible it was all a dream.)

the thing i really, really love about your concrit, and that i'm going to really think about is that you notice a handful of shortcuts i use (or invent and use) for covering up either things i do badly or the things i'm not interested in doing (like baby artists painting people with their hands behind their back), and all the bits where generalities paper over the specifics, because sometimes i do it without thinking, or because i'm caught up in a certain... there's a very seductive cadence to cliches in english, you know? to my ear, anyway. and there's a certain amount of cost/benefit to me in writing fic, where sometimes i think 'yes i can expand but it's not worth it', but i'm also circling my poor zinnia and sparrow, trying to screw my courage together to make them into a coherent, no excuses story, and this is where i need to avoid, you know. all of this. paint the hands and the folds and fill in the background and everything. so! yes. and yes.

(and i always incredibly value when you put down the distinction between 'this works for me' and 'this doesn't work for me but works for h/c' and 'this doesn't work at all', it's ssssso good and right, and it always makes me think, even when i ultimately disagree. the best posible crit.)

thank you so, so much ♥