Concrit for Athaia

[athaia]

I want to receive feedback by : comment on my DW post in this community

Here are the works I want feedback on (optional: and my safe works are...): anything that's on my AO3 profile. That includes extracts of the longer works - for example, do the first chapters work as hooks, would you read on (if this was your fandom)? Of course, you can pick something from the middle, too.

I'm not interested in feedback on The Heart of All Things, as it's in a very different style from what I usually write.

My works' fandoms and content notes are: Mostly I write Gen, and most of my works are rated T. There are some M-rated fics, but I strive to tag everything that could raise concern, and I do pretty thorough summaries.

I have these questions for readers:

I'm aware that most people don't know my main fandom, so please approach it as if it was an original work, and let me know if the plot makes sense to you, if the characters feel relatable and believable, if their motivations are clear to you, if the pacing is appropriate, etc. Basically, let me know if anything makes you go "huh?", "meh," or "yeah, right! (as if!)"

But if you want to go more granular, by all means - the most interesting feedback is on the things I'm not even aware of. And for the sake of my ego, if you enjoyed something, let me know, too!

The style of feedback I prefer to receive is: Please be as matter-of-factly as possible. While gushing praise is nice, I'm not sad if that's not your style, but I don't think that any of us is qualified to give 'brutal advice' and will react a bit miffed if I perceive your crit descending from a soap box.

Also, please note that my attitude towards adverbs and semicolons doesn't follow American orthodoxy ;-) and while I will note your opinion about either, I probably won't change a thing about their use (or frequency).

Comments to this post will be: screened until July 31

Comments

Marooned On The Planet Of The Apes Ch5

[farla]

[After a moment, Burke's eyes found the outlet of the creek that made up one of the many arms of the delta; several women were busy there, probably collecting water. The tribe wasn't as nocturnal as Virdon had predicted, which deepened Burke's suspicion that their glowing eyes weren't the result of natural evolution.]

Ah, so Virdon was meant to be just guessing. Good to know, but I still think it'd be better to be clear in the previous chapter - when dropped into a new setting and trying to figure stuff out, trying to also guess whether or not a character is meant to be explaining or speculating is an extra layer of difficulty. And that in turn means Burke may be wrong as well - so possibly humans were messing around altering their own DNA and thought enhanced night vision was a good idea, but it could also be that there's something weird about their environment here - maybe the real reason they can't swim is because there's big predators there normally, and also diurnal land ones.

[Virdon was lying in his hammock; Iro was nowhere to be seen, thank god. Burke dropped the bucket at their cooking fire and went to snack on a tuber in the meantime. They were hard like twigs when raw, but if you chewed on them long enough, they were manageable, and he was hungry. ]

...that's probably because he's wasting tons of calories trying to chew and digest raw food. I'm surprised no one's stopping him - it took energy to dig those up, and it's really inefficient to then not cook it and get the maximum calories back. Unless he's digging up and drying his own, and even then, it seems they should still be pretty possessive of someone wasting plants they could've used themselves. And the two seem pretty confident they got good survival training, and I'd think that'd mention not only to cook food for calories but that there's plenty of food that's outright poisonous until you cook it.

[ While Burke had gotten into some „friendly" fights with the younger men - although to his credit, he hadn't started them -,]

I really doubt this. Even aside from how the Jones thing and Virdon's handling of it reads to me, they don't understand these people. There is no way Virdon can know that Burke isn't accidentally provoking people. He probably can't even tell if Burke intentionally starts things and then lies about it, because the other person isn't going to be able to communicate their side easily.

[„They'll be waiting for us - so what now? We try our luck further upstream?"
Virdon inhaled deeply and shook his head. „We have no idea how far their territory extends, and from the shore, they can easily see where we're headed."
„But downstream is just the ocean…" Burke paused. „We'll have to go back. Damn."]

I don't follow. The ocean would mean coast on either side. It seems a lot easier to just float downstream and if you reach the ocean proper, go left or right, rather than the immense struggle of swimming upstream in the first place. Yeah, the tide's pretty dangerous, but swimming upstream is incredibly exhausting and the kind of thing you drown doing too.

Also, dramatic irony's good, but this is quite a lot of words for them having made this little progress toward figuring out it's a planet of apes. Heading downstream and hitting something like a modern-looking fence cutting across the water and hemming them in would mean progressing the plot and give them more information to work with, while just trying to leave and finding more of the same isn't really.