Hi, I'll just say straight up that I don't know your fandoms at all, so I can't speak to the characterization and canon consistency! Just to get the basics out of the way, your writing is good on the spelling/grammar level. I mostly found your style engaging; it's colloquial and often a bit chatty. One stylistic quirk, though: you often use the contraction "Name's" for "Name is", which occasionally made me pause and read again when I misread it as a possessive.
When posting on DW, I think you should separate your summary from the start of your fic by more than a paragraph break. In "Failure Boy" I couldn't quite figure out where the summary ended and the fic began.
Some notes on the untitled Final Fantasy XV WIP:
And Noct thinks he probably actually would, in the end—but he knows he wouldn't survive that conversation. The "he" is ambiguous: I couldn't figure out until the end of the paragraph whether it was Noct or Ignis who wouldn't survive the conversation.
as Prompto screws around on his phone Ha, I did a double-take here. I know nothing about the fandom, but going by the fandom name I'd expected it to be a fantasy world without modern technology...I guess not. Also later on you have references to horror movies and slasher films, which are very much things of our world, and there's nothing in the fic that wouldn't be there in our world...I suppose I that without the fandom name, I would never have known that this is set in a fantasy world. But I know nothing about the fandom conventions, so maybe this is normal in the fandom!
Six, he could eat Prompto out for hours Six? I don't understand.
The trans stuff is interesting--if you hadn't put the note in that Prompto was trans, I might not have got it. I would probably have thought "how odd to use the phrase 'to eat someone out' on a man" and "huh, two quick orgasms in a row for a guy?" It would definitely have nagged in my head and I might have gotten it later on? If you mean these things as hints for the reader to figure out, it kind of ruins it when you explain it in the notes beforehand. : ) But maybe you wanted to state it upfront instead of it being something the reader figures out.
if Prompto didn't start actually, full-on crying from overstimulation after about twenty minutes I guess this surprised me because it sounds like Noct was doing super-strong stimulation all the time, instead of varying the intensity and doing light stimulation or venturing away from the most sensitive parts when it was getting to be too much? Which I guess is what most people would do during sex if someone was overstimulated (if they didn't enjoy being overstimulated).
About the injury stuff: I have no idea what EDS is, so I would not have gotten the "EDS for Dummies" line. I guess either put that in the notes up top, or give it some name that is easier to understand? The injury itself I have no way of knowing how accurately it's described, but it worked for me!
Some notes on Failure Boy: I was quite confused by the beginning of this fic, partly, as I said before, because it wasn't clear where the summary ended and the fic began. My first guess was that the italicized lines were flashbacks/memories of a previous conversation. Then that they were...telepathy? Then that they were texting, but now when I reread the opening I'm not sure why I was so confused. The PDA must obviously be some sort of communication device. I'm not sure what I assumed it to be on the first reading... Er, this is probably not that useful to you since to anyone who knows the fandom wouldn't be confused by that.
Every inch of him is screaming that something is wrong, that he’s not safe that he’s going to get hurt - a lifetime’s worth of self-defense mechanisms all firing at once, even though there’s nothing in the late-evening quiet of his room that could possibly pose any kind of threat; even though his desperate attempts at protecting himself never did shit even when there was something, or someone, coming for him. The part after the semi-colon doesn't quite work for me: you're saying that he's helpless and can't protect himself, and wouldn't that just reinforce the fear reaction he's having in the first part of the sentence?
(He could always text Munakata. He probably should, even. Except... he absolutely can’t.
The only thing worse than this… episode, whatever it is, would be wasting the captain’s time with it when he has so many important things to deal with.) I don't know if the line break at "Except" is a mistake or not? The formatting is a bit strange. I would just have this whole bit as one paragraph without the parentheses.
Saruhiko always has a choice, and he can – has – shrug off the comfort and clarity Munakata offers him if he wants to wallow in his own misery. This doesn't work, since it's "can shrug", but "has shrugged".
He doesn’t know how to apologize to his boyfriend for stressing him out, but he knows how to apologize to his boss for being unproductive, and that’s close enough, right? Oof. I had no idea they were in a relationship until this point (I guess I skimmed over the pairing note)! It's very distancing to refer to your boyfriend as "the captain" even if that's also what he is, and in the quote, he's relating to his boyfriend as a boss because he can't communicate in any other way. Reading this canon-blind, I have to wonder about this relationship. It reads to me like Munakata is a superior officer/boss, who has strong magic powers, and is in good mental health. While Saruhiko is his inferior within the organization, presumably has less magic power, and is not in good mental health.
Just to be clear, I don't mean that you shouldn't have a relationship like that! I'm just wondering how they handle those power imbalances, and whether their relationship is actually a healthy one or not. It sounds like one that would be difficult to navigate, for sure. Saruhiko says: "their relationship solid and stable and real", which sounds like it's meant to convey that it is a healthy relationship? Of course, Saruhiko also might not exactly be a reliable narrator. In any case, this will all probably make a lot more sense to someone who knows the fandom.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2022-07-23 01:14 pm (UTC)When posting on DW, I think you should separate your summary from the start of your fic by more than a paragraph break. In "Failure Boy" I couldn't quite figure out where the summary ended and the fic began.
Some notes on the untitled Final Fantasy XV WIP:
And Noct thinks he probably actually would, in the end—but he knows he wouldn't survive that conversation.
The "he" is ambiguous: I couldn't figure out until the end of the paragraph whether it was Noct or Ignis who wouldn't survive the conversation.
as Prompto screws around on his phone
Ha, I did a double-take here. I know nothing about the fandom, but going by the fandom name I'd expected it to be a fantasy world without modern technology...I guess not. Also later on you have references to horror movies and slasher films, which are very much things of our world, and there's nothing in the fic that wouldn't be there in our world...I suppose I that without the fandom name, I would never have known that this is set in a fantasy world. But I know nothing about the fandom conventions, so maybe this is normal in the fandom!
Six, he could eat Prompto out for hours
Six? I don't understand.
The trans stuff is interesting--if you hadn't put the note in that Prompto was trans, I might not have got it. I would probably have thought "how odd to use the phrase 'to eat someone out' on a man" and "huh, two quick orgasms in a row for a guy?" It would definitely have nagged in my head and I might have gotten it later on? If you mean these things as hints for the reader to figure out, it kind of ruins it when you explain it in the notes beforehand. : ) But maybe you wanted to state it upfront instead of it being something the reader figures out.
if Prompto didn't start actually, full-on crying from overstimulation after about twenty minutes
I guess this surprised me because it sounds like Noct was doing super-strong stimulation all the time, instead of varying the intensity and doing light stimulation or venturing away from the most sensitive parts when it was getting to be too much? Which I guess is what most people would do during sex if someone was overstimulated (if they didn't enjoy being overstimulated).
About the injury stuff: I have no idea what EDS is, so I would not have gotten the "EDS for Dummies" line. I guess either put that in the notes up top, or give it some name that is easier to understand? The injury itself I have no way of knowing how accurately it's described, but it worked for me!
Some notes on Failure Boy:
I was quite confused by the beginning of this fic, partly, as I said before, because it wasn't clear where the summary ended and the fic began. My first guess was that the italicized lines were flashbacks/memories of a previous conversation. Then that they were...telepathy? Then that they were texting, but now when I reread the opening I'm not sure why I was so confused. The PDA must obviously be some sort of communication device. I'm not sure what I assumed it to be on the first reading... Er, this is probably not that useful to you since to anyone who knows the fandom wouldn't be confused by that.
Every inch of him is screaming that something is wrong, that he’s not safe that he’s going to get hurt - a lifetime’s worth of self-defense mechanisms all firing at once, even though there’s nothing in the late-evening quiet of his room that could possibly pose any kind of threat; even though his desperate attempts at protecting himself never did shit even when there was something, or someone, coming for him.
The part after the semi-colon doesn't quite work for me: you're saying that he's helpless and can't protect himself, and wouldn't that just reinforce the fear reaction he's having in the first part of the sentence?
(He could always text Munakata. He probably should, even.
Except... he absolutely can’t.
The only thing worse than this… episode, whatever it is, would be wasting the captain’s time with it when he has so many important things to deal with.)
I don't know if the line break at "Except" is a mistake or not? The formatting is a bit strange. I would just have this whole bit as one paragraph without the parentheses.
Saruhiko always has a choice, and he can – has – shrug off the comfort and clarity Munakata offers him if he wants to wallow in his own misery.
This doesn't work, since it's "can shrug", but "has shrugged".
He doesn’t know how to apologize to his boyfriend for stressing him out, but he knows how to apologize to his boss for being unproductive, and that’s close enough, right?
Oof. I had no idea they were in a relationship until this point (I guess I skimmed over the pairing note)! It's very distancing to refer to your boyfriend as "the captain" even if that's also what he is, and in the quote, he's relating to his boyfriend as a boss because he can't communicate in any other way. Reading this canon-blind, I have to wonder about this relationship. It reads to me like Munakata is a superior officer/boss, who has strong magic powers, and is in good mental health. While Saruhiko is his inferior within the organization, presumably has less magic power, and is not in good mental health.
Just to be clear, I don't mean that you shouldn't have a relationship like that! I'm just wondering how they handle those power imbalances, and whether their relationship is actually a healthy one or not. It sounds like one that would be difficult to navigate, for sure. Saruhiko says: "their relationship solid and stable and real", which sounds like it's meant to convey that it is a healthy relationship? Of course, Saruhiko also might not exactly be a reliable narrator. In any case, this will all probably make a lot more sense to someone who knows the fandom.