May 2021 Madness Round

[morbane]

Madness will happen on this post and in its comments. Thanks for playing!

Getting concrit - Requesting Now Closed
Ask for concrit by replying to this post (until the end of May 31 - NOW PAST). Anyone's welcome, whether or not you just took part in the April round. If you did sign up, you're welcome to ask for concrit on the same or different pieces, or ask for responses to more specific or different questions or the same ones. Concrit is not guaranteed.

Please include:

• How you want to receive feedback - ie, by reply to your own comment, by posting a review where the work is published (AO3, ff.net, LJ...), or by another means. (Note: comments are not screened on this post, so if you post a contact detail, anyone can see it.)
• Any specific questions you want concrit-givers to focus on, and what level of bluntness you prefer, if relevant
• Which works you want feedback on, and if any of your works are "safe" or should be skipped over.
• What fandoms and content, roughly, your works contain - especially if asking for feedback on just a few pieces.

You can comment asking for concrit until the end of May 31 - NOW PAST in your time zone.

It's okay to be more specific about the kind of concrit you want in Madness than in a normal round. You might not get anything, but feel free to ask.

Please feel free to leave constructive criticism for those who have requested it in comments!

General feedback

If you have thoughts on this community's events or the April 2021 round, please leave your thoughts on the previous post, which is a feedback post.

If you are willing to provide feedback on the feedback you get - "Yes, this was what I was looking for / I was surprised you focused on this aspect / Actually, that wasn't quite what I was asking / etc" - consider saying so. Please be constructive in these replies as well.

If you don't want any more concrit, reply to your own comment to say so.

Comments

[yelp]

Oooh, more feedback? Yes, please!

For the madness round, I'm asking for your general first impressions on the titles, tags, and summaries of any of these works. If you just scrolled through the page and shared e.g. would you click? what kind of story would you expect to find within?, I'd find that extremely helpful! The works are mostly Genshin Impact, Eyeshield 21, and Original Work, and most warnings are related to consent issues (though the summaries should be quite PG).  

Full feedback on any work is of course always appreciated. Since the concrit period, I've posted three new works, so I'm especially interested in hearing about these, but I'd be happy to receive feedback on anything at the above link.

• They Flying Trapeze (Genshin Impact, AU, explicit)
• Extinction of Suffering (Genshin Impact)
• Catching Up/Slowing Down (Eyeshield 21)

Please leave feedback directly at the work on AO3, or as a response to this comment. Please be as blunt as you like! 

[eglantiere]

I'm not familiar with either of your fandoms, but your summaries strike me as succinct and fun! I especially liked the first one, with its combination of fun and menace. I also applaud your commitment to the slavefic motion :D

Same with the titles: they're sharp, to the point, convey the mood well, and flow well. I'm fond of the wordplay in Hypocritic Oath, but I also like the title/summary combo in Half Sunk, A Shattered Visage Lies, and the menacing, possessive underlay in Lightbringer Mine.

[yelp]

Oh, thanks for the kind and detailed feedback! Very appreciated! Aha, all the slavefic... insert "don't touch my garbage" possum while I curl up in my id...

[eglantiere]

Ooooh, madness! Count me in!

1) Anything general about the shorter stories - here are stories between 1k and 4k, for reference

2) To steal a great question off the previous post: is there anything - a line, an image, a scene, a metaphor, an idea - in the fic you read that really stayed with you?

Any level of bluntness is okay! Comment anywhere you'd like.

[yelp]

Oh! I read "more than watchmen wait for the morning" during the concrit period! The thing I most remember is this image of the queen sitting in her prison/tower, all the other birds flying away at once, and the one remaining transforming into her daughter, probably still kind of hunched over, the two of them looking at each other. In my head it looked kind of like a classical painting!

From the first line, I found the writing in this really beautiful, both poetic and evocative. If I could offer one suggestion, I found the moment of transformation powerful but also a bit abrupt, like I haven't really caught up with the tragedy of their separation before it's already been resolved for me. Part of it is that the Queen is actively repressing the memories ("knows nothing, hopes for nothing"), but I wonder if it might be possible to foreshadow it somehow, e.g. give a sense of some absence, or have her narration about the seagulls be jarringly longing or affectionate in a way that would make us wonder. 

She wakes up to find her head pillowed on her daughter's knees. The wind still howls, but the sun is higher in the sky, and the ever-present salt in the air feels sharper. Being held is overwhelming.
I love how it feels like she's been distant from the world until now, blurred out somehow.

"I thought I killed you with my greed for you."
Ugh, this line really pained me, in a good way. The two of them discuss the spikes in the realistic understated dialogue of shared knowledge (and not wanting to put words to it), but paint a very vivid image of what happened nonetheless. 

I thought the ending was also lovely, open and implying change but content for now, perfect for a story of this length. 

[eglantiere]

Ohhh. It's about my third foray into OW, and it's super interesting to know what worked and what didn't. I think it was, essentially, two stories - of her loneliness and the sea/tower/birds imagery, and then of her daughter bursting back in - that could use some bridge in the middle, but I'm very pleased to know that the visuals and the overall... mood of this worked.

Thank you very much!

[ember_keelty]

My original sign up still stands! I will say that at this point I'd be particularly interested in hearing more about my Dragon Age fic, particularly from people who are familiar with the canon.

I am also open to providing feedback on feedback!

[mireia]

I'm up for more crit if anyone wants to give! Anything from my original post still stands, though at this point I'm particularly interested in what anyone might have to say about these two fics: Roses That Bloom in the Night (Final Fantasy II, Leon) and The Truth of the Heart (Long Live the Queen, Elodie/Ignatius). However, I'll be happy with anything anyone has to say about any of my works.

[farla]

My sign up, and for something specific, with Castlevania having just ended I'm particularly interested in what anyone familiar with the fandom thinks of the time travel fic I'm writing that was plotted after S2 but which I'm trying to keep as compatible in characterization/themes/etc with the later two seasons as I can.

[lirin_lirilla]

I'm looking for feedback about how I write description!

I recently discovered that I have aphantasia (i.e. when I try to picture something in my head, it looks approximately like this). Also (I'm not sure whether they're connected or not), I've always been someone who prefers pretty sparse description, both when reading and when writing.

But obviously not everybody's like that, so I'd like to get some outside opinions! For any of my works >700 words written 2017 or later, I'd be curious to know what you think of the description—could you picture the setting and what's going on? If you couldn't, did you feel like that absence was a problem, or did it just feel like the story was prioritizing other things? Or did you have one picture in your head that got messed up partway through when further details were revealed, and if so did that feel like a failing on the story's part or just the way things go sometimes? Or any other thoughts you had on the level of description and what I did with it. (If you wanted to also let me know whether you're familiar with the fandom & what your usual preference is in terms of sparse/average/heavy description, that would be helpful!)

You're welcome to reply to this comment, or if you prefer to give feedback privately, my email address is on my AO3 profile. The vast majority of my works are G-rated gen or background canon ships: mostly book fandoms, mostly Yuletide-sized, a bunch of crossovers. (As for megafandoms, I've written several fics for Marvel Cinematic Universe, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings.)

[eglantiere]

I read Over Grass and Over Stone and The Bottom Half of the Hourglass, and since I've been alerted by your question, I did pay attention to the descriptions, and for both stories there practically were no descriptions at all. Both stories were dialogue and action, practically without set pieces - it's especially noticeable in the Big Hero 6 fic, where there are several 'look' verbs - Hiro looks at the hospital and it 'looks the same,' Honey Lemon does her chemical stuff but it's descripted in broadest possible terms.

But at the same time: if you didn't mention your descriptions to your request, I think I wouldn't have paid attention to the lack of them? You have pastiche/voice down for the Ranger fic, and a lovely emotional tone to it; the BH6 fic moves along briskly, and evokes the mood of canon very well while keeping the canon divergence nice and interesting. I don't know if your style would work for something like original works, where the reader needs to have something sensory to ping off; but for fic it more or less works out. I read Tolkien and I've seen BH6; I know how things look and how characters look, and I don't need additional information that much.

(I do prefer more descriptive prose when I'm reading for myself! But I indeed thought this was a stylistic choice of 'just the ways things go sometimes.')

Hope this was helpful!

[lirin_lirilla]

Thanks so much, this was super helpful! It sounds like (at least for you; I probably shouldn't assume this across the board on only one data point) it's about how I figured and kind of hoped, where at least the lack of description doesn't jump out at the reader. (And if I do write original works, I'll know that's something to keep an eye on and try to push against my usual instincts a bit more.)

And thanks for your notes on what works well in the fics as well—those compliments were nice to hear. :-)

[vandoorne]

For the Madness round, I'd love to get concrit on any of the works in this list of filtered works! They're mostly fic that I've written recently.

Feedback I'd like:
- They're mostly all explicit fic: how does it read? Is it awkward, anything that works, doesn't work?
- Anything from a fic that stuck with you? (lines, descriptions, anything)
- Any comments/suggestions that you have about my writing style?

My original post still stands as well!

You can comment either directly at the work itself on Ao3, or you can comment as a reply on this comment. Blunt feedback is fine, as long as it isn't entirely about the negative aspects. Thank you!

[ancslove]

Hi, I'm ancslove on AO3, and I'd love feedback on any of my works. I'm especially interested in pacing, endings, and overall impressions, but I'd welcome anything else you have to say. Most of my stories are on the short side, 1-3k, and can range from fluffy gen to dark noncon, but they are all clearly tagged. I'm open to comments here, or on AO3. Thank you!

My Works