I'd want to know what expectations the chapter sets: what questions it opens, where you'd imagine the story might go, what kind of mood or genre you'd expect in the rest of the story, what (broadly) it might take to satisfyingly resolve what the first chapter sets up, or something along those lines.
I would say that the first chapter feels not exactly self-contained to me, but like it's something more focused on buddy comedy interactions than that it's necessarily going to resolve plot points or even have an end it's moving toward.
I'm not sure that's something that could be fixed in the story text itself, because it feels like it's doing a good job of being what it is and I don't think trying to push down the banter or misunderstandings to make the plot seem firmer would help. I think here your best bet is to communicate it somewhere around your story (summary/tags/title/author's note) Like Working summary: A Spike stan and a Spike hater discuss their Spuffy-related woes while painting each other's nails or doing whatever skirt girls do together; eventually, unicorns. not only doesn't convey that this is going anywhere in particular, but I don't think really does justice to even the first chapter.
Relatedly, Warnings: Buffybot, Harmony; not particularly Spike-friendly makes me assume this would probably be Spike-bashing and also that it might be more about Spike than either of the nominal main characters, not Spike-at-his-canonical-level-of-badness-and-not-particularly-foregrounded where even when you've got Buffybot thinking about Spike, it's really less about Spike but about how Buffybot feels about him and what this all means for her. As far as expectations go, the warnings just makes me consider the possibility this is still winding up for it and the next chapter will suddenly dip into OOC levels of Spike-bashing, which turns out not to be the case. But I don't really know the fandom situation and if it's an anything not overtly positive about a character has to be warned for situation.
I've been posting this gradually for a couple of years, and my main character's goals change during the story. How consistent does the story seem in terms of mood/genre/focus? Does it feel like it's still the same story? Do any developments seem to come out of nowhere or seem like sidetracking, based on how the story started?
I didn't really feel like they were changing. From her personal POV, she had specific goals and then subgoals to accomplish those goals and then finding out she actually had goals under those specific goals which she then can address more directly. But on a story level, Buffybot is trying to solve the problem of being unhappy with her present situation, she pursues it pretty doggedly and with good cheer throughout, and you also have her express it as about becoming "real" and have her buddy be someone who also has connections to authenticity and fakery, so it's not a surprise that's what the story goal is.
Chapter 3 is in an original character's POV, and one reader told me they miss the POV of the main characters. Anyone else get that? Might it be better if switched the POV back to the main characters for part of the chapter?
I didn't miss it, but I'm generally positive toward OCs. I don't think this is one of those things that really has a definite answer. I don't think it's necessarily even a CC vs OC divide at its core - I've seen people express similar opinions on side characters in standard novels where everyone's the author's OC, and I wouldn't be surprised if it comes up with canon characters in fic too. Some people like exploring a lot of characters, some people are here to get invested in one or two and want to stay focused on them, and a story fitting one or the other isn't better or worse for it.
That said, I do think it's possible a POV swap that chapter could add to the story, in that the cactus kitten demon doesn't understand a lot of what's happening and doesn't care very much either, so jumping into what this feels like is happening from Harmony or Buffybot's POV for an extra scene might add something.
Generally, is anything confusing or hard to follow?
So while I did like the cactus kitten demon, it does seem dark even for Buffyverse that feeling upset someone tortured you to death damns you to Hell so I was uncertain if there was something more going on there or some sort of lie, and probably spent more time than was intended trying to pick that apart without success. It seems like it should involve a little more active evil than dying with a lot of justified anger, like if the cactus was going to go to cactus heaven but a demon came in with the offer of kill X innocents for me and I'll give you the power to kill your owner or some similar thing that laid out that the issue is willingly deciding to harm others rather than getting sent to Hell and then agreeing to hurting others to be spared, and also having it tied more firmly to actual choice would've made it a little clearer what ultimately running off to be with the cactus cat instead of continuing to try to kill people meant, metaphysically.
How is Buffybot's characterization in Chapter 5? Does it make sense? Is it convincing and consistent enough?
I think it makes sense, especially when we don't know quite how much the white-hat robotics students changed, but I did find it somewhat dissatisfying how much of her old programming she was jettisoning without needing much of a push and that it was lining up relatively well with what a human would think made sense to throw out. It felt like she was kind of approaching "very weird person who had this junk slapped on top of her original personality and now she's freed of that" more than someone whose personality is built out of it. Like I said, it's plausible. The people messing with her code trying to free her knew she was programmed by Warren to be a girlfriend to someone else awful enough to ask Warren for that robo-girlfriend means they could've done things to give her a little extra encouragement to prune out those things (like "anything tagged What Your Man Wants isn't an important thing to care about and what matters is What You Want") because they're trying to counterbalance the existing bias that Warren probably put in. But I like the alien reasoning with a human face of Buffybot, so I'd have liked if her removal and edits of her code was along more alien robot reasoning where it didn't matter why she was made this way, it only mattered if it was causing her a problem now - ie, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that she'd feel constrained by the rules of what she can wear and then delete it and feel happy she can wear what she wants, as opposed to what she wants lining up with what Spike liked her wearing, but it might make sense for her to make a new category of fashion (art) and start figuring out what she thinks she likes about that kind, or delete it if there's a definite contradiction where Spike wanted her to like leather outfits so she'd appreciate his fashion sense, Warren put that in as a general like, and then Spike told her to wear other things and she had to so long as she had making him happy as her highest priority.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2022-08-06 12:58 am (UTC)I would say that the first chapter feels not exactly self-contained to me, but like it's something more focused on buddy comedy interactions than that it's necessarily going to resolve plot points or even have an end it's moving toward.
I'm not sure that's something that could be fixed in the story text itself, because it feels like it's doing a good job of being what it is and I don't think trying to push down the banter or misunderstandings to make the plot seem firmer would help. I think here your best bet is to communicate it somewhere around your story (summary/tags/title/author's note) Like Working summary: A Spike stan and a Spike hater discuss their Spuffy-related woes while painting each other's nails or doing whatever skirt girls do together; eventually, unicorns. not only doesn't convey that this is going anywhere in particular, but I don't think really does justice to even the first chapter.
Relatedly, Warnings: Buffybot, Harmony; not particularly Spike-friendly makes me assume this would probably be Spike-bashing and also that it might be more about Spike than either of the nominal main characters, not Spike-at-his-canonical-level-of-badness-and-not-particularly-foregrounded where even when you've got Buffybot thinking about Spike, it's really less about Spike but about how Buffybot feels about him and what this all means for her. As far as expectations go, the warnings just makes me consider the possibility this is still winding up for it and the next chapter will suddenly dip into OOC levels of Spike-bashing, which turns out not to be the case. But I don't really know the fandom situation and if it's an anything not overtly positive about a character has to be warned for situation.
I've been posting this gradually for a couple of years, and my main character's goals change during the story. How consistent does the story seem in terms of mood/genre/focus? Does it feel like it's still the same story? Do any developments seem to come out of nowhere or seem like sidetracking, based on how the story started?
I didn't really feel like they were changing. From her personal POV, she had specific goals and then subgoals to accomplish those goals and then finding out she actually had goals under those specific goals which she then can address more directly. But on a story level, Buffybot is trying to solve the problem of being unhappy with her present situation, she pursues it pretty doggedly and with good cheer throughout, and you also have her express it as about becoming "real" and have her buddy be someone who also has connections to authenticity and fakery, so it's not a surprise that's what the story goal is.
Chapter 3 is in an original character's POV, and one reader told me they miss the POV of the main characters. Anyone else get that? Might it be better if switched the POV back to the main characters for part of the chapter?
I didn't miss it, but I'm generally positive toward OCs. I don't think this is one of those things that really has a definite answer. I don't think it's necessarily even a CC vs OC divide at its core - I've seen people express similar opinions on side characters in standard novels where everyone's the author's OC, and I wouldn't be surprised if it comes up with canon characters in fic too. Some people like exploring a lot of characters, some people are here to get invested in one or two and want to stay focused on them, and a story fitting one or the other isn't better or worse for it.
That said, I do think it's possible a POV swap that chapter could add to the story, in that the cactus kitten demon doesn't understand a lot of what's happening and doesn't care very much either, so jumping into what this feels like is happening from Harmony or Buffybot's POV for an extra scene might add something.
Generally, is anything confusing or hard to follow?
So while I did like the cactus kitten demon, it does seem dark even for Buffyverse that feeling upset someone tortured you to death damns you to Hell so I was uncertain if there was something more going on there or some sort of lie, and probably spent more time than was intended trying to pick that apart without success. It seems like it should involve a little more active evil than dying with a lot of justified anger, like if the cactus was going to go to cactus heaven but a demon came in with the offer of kill X innocents for me and I'll give you the power to kill your owner or some similar thing that laid out that the issue is willingly deciding to harm others rather than getting sent to Hell and then agreeing to hurting others to be spared, and also having it tied more firmly to actual choice would've made it a little clearer what ultimately running off to be with the cactus cat instead of continuing to try to kill people meant, metaphysically.
How is Buffybot's characterization in Chapter 5? Does it make sense? Is it convincing and consistent enough?
I think it makes sense, especially when we don't know quite how much the white-hat robotics students changed, but I did find it somewhat dissatisfying how much of her old programming she was jettisoning without needing much of a push and that it was lining up relatively well with what a human would think made sense to throw out. It felt like she was kind of approaching "very weird person who had this junk slapped on top of her original personality and now she's freed of that" more than someone whose personality is built out of it. Like I said, it's plausible. The people messing with her code trying to free her knew she was programmed by Warren to be a girlfriend to someone else awful enough to ask Warren for that robo-girlfriend means they could've done things to give her a little extra encouragement to prune out those things (like "anything tagged What Your Man Wants isn't an important thing to care about and what matters is What You Want") because they're trying to counterbalance the existing bias that Warren probably put in. But I like the alien reasoning with a human face of Buffybot, so I'd have liked if her removal and edits of her code was along more alien robot reasoning where it didn't matter why she was made this way, it only mattered if it was causing her a problem now - ie, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that she'd feel constrained by the rules of what she can wear and then delete it and feel happy she can wear what she wants, as opposed to what she wants lining up with what Spike liked her wearing, but it might make sense for her to make a new category of fashion (art) and start figuring out what she thinks she likes about that kind, or delete it if there's a definite contradiction where Spike wanted her to like leather outfits so she'd appreciate his fashion sense, Warren put that in as a general like, and then Spike told her to wear other things and she had to so long as she had making him happy as her highest priority.