Concrit for Enisy

[enisy]

I want to receive feedback by: Comment where the work is published (AO3), or here in this thread if you prefer.

Here are the works I want feedback on: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enisy Anything from 2020 except these safe works: Makeover Day; Pretty Girls Keep One Foot on the Floor; Rider, Rider

I would especially appreciate feedback on any of the following:

• Blowing Smoke Rings in the Second Circle (OW, rated Explicit, noncon, 4.2K)
• Parental Supervision (South Park, 2.6K)
• Credo (Mass Effect, 1.8K)
• Everyone Speaks Standard Here (Star Trek: DS9, 1.8K)
• Time After Time (Angel the Series, rated Mature, 1K)
• Clay Doll (Star Wars, 1K)

My works' fandoms and content notes are: Available on AO3.

I have these questions for readers: What is your overall impression? What could be improved? How does the pacing seem to you?

I would prefer gentle (5) or direct (1) feedback, or something in between: 2-3

Comments are unscreened.

Comments

[nonexistentwench]

Hi! Although I do not know the fandom and am only familiar with the general tone of the show, I was really positively impressed with Parental Supervision.
The family atmosphere is warm and sweet and your comedic timing is great, just great. Googling was not helpful in determining whether Suzie is your OC or a minor character but I really like how you wrote her! Suzie from the abortion clinic. Ah, teenagers.

I love the irony of how Thomas wasn't necessarily thrilled with his son's heterosexuality and yet he's far more upset when he brings home a girl, and that of Craig finding it to be the "road of least resistance" despite that. It shows how Thomas still managed to be very supportive! And I know its fashionable to dislike miscommunication plots now, but it's just so realistically handled.

“Babe,” whispered Craig, “don’t be like that.”

Tweek’s head shot up.

Then Suzie’s head shot up. She was blinking in confusion. “Like what, Craig?”

Craig was conscious that he’d put his foot in his mouth. But he covered it up, reaching out and taking his girlfriend’s hand. “Don’t be so down,” he said. “I don’t mind rewatching Red Racer with you. It’s only the best show in the multiverse.”

OH MAN. I was just... cringing all through. Perfection. Definitely related to the listing off of torture devices.

The little tickle fight is so painfully UST-y even from an external POV, and I found myself suffering through it. I felt their relationship very much even without knowing the characters much at all, and it's very touching.

In this place, I think there is a little struggle to keep into Thomas' POV - such as "Horrified by the volume of his own anger" or "it was an habit he'd grown out of", some bits feel like they're Tweek's thoughts. But that's pretty normal for external POV I think.

I really loved this image: "He forced his hands off, all the way behind his back, as if they were unruly children that required discipline." It's just very sweet and conveys his frustration well, and it's just such an endearing fatherly thought.

Still, Thomas couldn’t stave off a grin at the snatches of conversation that wafted up a few minutes later. He pumped his fist at his son’s conciliatory tone. He chuckled at his son’s boyfriend’s cheeky retorts. Heck, he even sent up a quick prayer at the smacking, slobbering sounds.

This is so adorable! I love the idea of his dad rooting for Craig like he's at a baseball match or something, it feels so sweet and supportive.

My overall impression of this fic is, as I think you can tell, very positive. You balanced well a premise that's very easy to turn mildly issuefic-y with the comedic tone of the canon and the softness of the themes of the fic - family and high school romance, which are easy to turn sappy but didn't. It's overall very well balanced and fun, and the pacing flows well. The only thing I think I would change was making the conversation between Craig and his dad less one-sided, especially wrt Craig's fears of social judgement? I feel like his motivation could have come a little clearer, that's it, although possibly it might have been OOC for him to open up too much.

Otherwise, I think your style works perfectly for the genre. Very good job!

[enisy]

Thank you for the feedback! I'm glad you could get into the story even without fandom background, and I really appreciate you taking the time to write such a detailed review!

I see where you're coming from re: the external observer - for example, "horrified by the volume of his own anger" could become "apparently horrified by the volume of his own anger" so we can stay in Thomas's head. I'll see if I can get back and tweak that sometime soon. Same with the final scene - I've thought for some time now that the pacing was off there, but maybe the one-sidedness of it all is the bigger issue, like you pointed out.

(Yes, Suzie is an OC. I don't think I gave her any traits besides "perky" and "social" and "inquisitive" - I was mainly trying to avoid the person-in-the-way-of-my-OTP-is-a-horrible-dirty-skank pitfall - but people really took to her!)

Thanks again for listing the things that worked for you, and for the useful tips! <3

[subjunctive]

Hi! I took a gander at "Makeover Day." I thought it was a really interesting premise, a darker twist on Faith stealing Buffy's body later on. Wilkins's cleanliness fetish was a really funny and striking way to open the scene. I also liked how the vase image returns when she uses the katra, and the parallels between Spike and Faith.

Most of what I think could be improved is little stuff. For example, in the junk food exchange I wasn't clear at first who was speaking--since Xander had just been mentioned, I for some reason thought he was one of the speakers and it took a couple of read-throughs to clear everything up. (The "him" in "They played with him and Willow" was similarly unclear.)

I also thought these lines could be rearranged slightly for impact:

He did – his forehead sopping wet, his eyes huge, his tongue extended like a begging bowl.

She didn’t.

I felt like the "He did/She didn't" set-up/follow-through might have worked a little better if they were right next to each other. The further apart they get, the more clauses between them (and there are three here), the more snappiness it loses. The first sentence could be rearranged to put "He did" last instead of first, for example.

This could be a result of my not having watched the relevant episodes for so long, but I thought the bodyswap was a little confusing on a purely physical level. Did they actually swap physical places so that Buffy-in-Faith's-body was still tied up, or was Faith now in Buffy's tied-up body?

A final moment of confusion that snagged me was this bit: There was some strange significance, he thought, in the blond Slayer’s warped forehead, in the dark Slayer’s tear-sodden face, in Giles’s slow, quiet, gruesome death – some answer to a long-standing question – but it seemed like he was missing the context to suss it out. The way that Spike doesn't completely understand what's going on or why it's significant would be most effective if it was clear to the reader, I think, and it wasn't clear to me. Again, could be the result of not watching in a while, or maybe I just missed the relevant connections I was supposed to make.

[enisy]

Ohh, thank you so much for taking the time to read and review this! That's one of the stories that I definitely think can be improved, if I just sit down and adapt/embellish a few things, and your pointers are excellent starting places. The unclear pronouns seem to be an issue across my writing in general - I think I use them to avoid repetition, but (to use an unpopular expression) the cure is worse than the disease. Also, you are 100% correct about the reduced impact of the "He did/she didn't" sentences and about Faith-as-Buffy needing to be tied up in the body swap. Derp! I kinda like the last sentence you quoted, but maybe I should give Spike some more context about Buffy and Faith's relationship before that.

I'll see if I can take a crack at the story this week. Thanks again!

ETA: I notice I included Makeover Day in my safe works, probably because I already had several fixes for it in mind, but it's fine! I really appreciate the review.

[subjunctive]

Sorry, I totally missed that despite thinking that I double-checked! Thanks for being flexible.

[cordialcount]

Hi! I'm not familiar with the other fandoms you listed, so I read

Blowing Smoke Rings in the Second Circle

I was delighted and impressed by this! Your use of language was marvelous. There are so many memorable turns of phrase in here, the setting really came alive (the wedding milieu gave this a great edge, I love how the wedding party's demands serve to box Gregory in), and your character voices made me very envious. You conveyed so much about who Gregory is, what he values, and how his neuroses string him up through the tone of his dialogue and the things he emphasizes in his thoughts. He's a very specific, recognizable type of ass, which helps me feel both a degree of sympathy and schadenfreude about how gleefully Mike fucks with him. The knife Mike verbally takes to his psyche in Day 3 was incredible.

The progression from Day 1 to 2 and 3 seemed very well paced. I love how once Gregory meets Christian the depravity/deeply repressed self-discovery just keeps escalating; this fic gathers steam like a freight train. Within each day, the transition from mind games to sex + degrading language did feel a little more abrupt than I would have personally preferred, but mind control isn't a kink I read much of, so perhaps that's just my failure to understand the expectations, sorry!

One point of confusion for me was when Gregory realizes he's being controlled. In Day 2, he appears ignorant at first of how the control works, e.g. "where had that thought come from". But even as Mike's influence intensifies to get Gregory to suck him, Gregory recognizes "a gentle little thought-nudge", which is so matter-of-fact it felt to me like either a sudden loosening of PoV or a missed chance to play up the kink. On a similar nitpick, since Gregory is just starting to understand "the implication" later in this scene, I was distracted by "the familiar weight"; I would have anticipated "a familiar weight", perhaps?

Some of my favorite evocative character details:

there will be three other bridesmaids wearing that skimpy thing who I’m not related to

Part of him hoped some Japanese pervert would revolutionize sex bots in his lifetime

like he was subject to a DoS attack. Maybe the government was mind-raping him to steal his Great Western Trail techniques, he thought wryly – or maybe he’d been watching too much Alex Jones, ironically or not

he made a conscious effort to look for lesbian videos, specifically to avoid seeing another man’s penis

Energy-saving lamps

Three, Gregory thought vacantly

And some lines I loved, in general:

“A three-day wedding.” Gregory repeated this a few more times, as if he could chant the concept out of existence, like a reverse Bloody Mary.

Surprise transformed his face. He still looked inhuman, but in the other direction, like he’d been carved out of the Sistine Chapel.

this was very clearly a man’s face: the thought made him shiver

Which circle of Hell are you from, he wanted to ask, the one reserved for therapists and rapists

grab Gregory’s own cock once, like a handshake

A possible typo:

Marlboro’s

[enisy]

Thank you so much! It's very helpful to know which parts worked for you and which ones tripped you up a bit.

You have a point about the story being inconsistent vis-a-vis the mind control, specifically Gregory's perception of it. It looks like an easy fix, too, so I'll get to it soon!

Also, yes, the transition from mind games to sex is a tad abrupt, especially on Day 2, IMO - you're right about that, as well. I'll see if there's an easy way to add padding without screwing up the pacing. Thanks again for taking the time to review this!