Concrit for Imperial_Dragon

[imperial_dragon]

I want to receive feedback by:
-Comment on my DW post in this community
-Email imperialdragonreader at gmail.com
-Comment where the work is published (AO3)

Here are the works I want feedback on : anything on AO3 (or a WIP not yet published which I would post here, if that suits a prospective critter better)

My works' fandoms and content notes are: I write Original Works only. One set is part of a shared modern AU ancient Roman universe (2770 auc), the other is a science fantasy story with tangential references to our world but mostly wrapped up in its own universe and not abandoned despite the updates being slow (Kin and Kind). Only one story is complete by itself (Roman AU but not part of a continuing narrative): Retail https://archiveofourown.org/works/17619455. All my works are slavefic. There is some sex but not as much as I hoped, and the kink is pretty minimal. There is reference to noncon, underage and the bad things that sexual slavery implies, and the fics are well tagged.

I have these questions for readers: Your spontaneous impressions. Mainly on flow, concentration on POV detail, characterisation, emotion (and everything) concisely delivered, world building believable, not too info-dumped, and enough shown to be intriguing but not too confusing.Also dialogue, clarity of action and whether my prose is clunky. I am aware that my plots/stories are not necessarily compelling and any advice valued, but this is not my focus. Please comment on anything that occurs to you.

I would prefer gentle (5) or direct (1) feedback, or something in between: Probably in between but maybe 3-2? I value directness and try to do that myself without being harsh.

Comments unscreened.

Comments

Forgot!

[(Anonymous)]

imperial_dragon

[ancslove]

Hello!
I am reviewing Retail. I really enjoyed this story! I love ancient Rome, and this modern version (I understand this story is at least inspired by a larger universe, but I haven’t read any of the original series) is intriguing and well executed.

I liked the way you handled the worldbuilding. The opening two paragraphs set the scene nicely, with the juxtaposition of the Roman world, and all that brings to mind, and the Latinized VosTubam to show the modern setting. The way other details of this slave society unfold was handled well. Through Gallus’ internal reactions and narration, we get a good idea of the world’s mores and culture, without a huge infodump of exposition. Things like his disapproval of the boy’s attitude, his exasperation at the master’s inexperience and mistakes, and thoughts on personal property showed the rules of his society and the expectations for what a respectable master and good slave should be. But the reminders of Gallus’ position as a sales manager, and his self-interest in keeping the customer happy and making the sale, added a nice ambiguity and made Gallus feel like a full character, not an exposition mouthpiece. It’s a great way to make this fic really feel like part of a bigger, lively universe .

Gallus is a great POV character, with a quietly wry inner voice that moves the story along briskly. The modern prose and dialogue, sprinkled with Latin vocabulary, reinforces the worldbuilding and reads quickly and easily. I like the contrast between his internal commentary and his professional, friendly dialogue as he keeps trying to make the sale. Sylvia works well with him, and their salesman/model byplay show how practiced they are at their occupations. The young master isn’t as three-dimensional, but his nervousness and care for Hedylium make him likeable (in a strange way). I would have liked a bit more with the slaves, although I can understand Gallus not really finding them interesting enough to comment on. Their ages, a little more of their backgrounds. There are interesting glimpses to Hedylium, like the way she goes to her master for comfort and her happiness at being given ways to be a better slave. And the boy’s (the poor thing never gets a name – a strong way to show how the master really sees him as a tool, an object) quiet unwillingness and small moments of rebellion provide a good counterpart to Hedylium’s relationship with their master.

The twist at the end, with Gallus and Sylvia, was great. Gallus had been so invested in Phallusy doing well, that it was interesting to see how even some of his inner thoughts were just a front, a salesman doing his job, and he’s planning and dreaming of leaving it all behind. Finding out that he used to be a slave adds nuance to his earlier thoughts about slaves and deepens the worldbuilding. Do pleasure slaves have the opportunity to buy their freedom? Or only “career” slaves? The relationship between Gallus and Sylvia made me go back and find and enjoy the earlier hints you left – her wink, Gallus admiring how convincing she was as a happy slave. Without the pretenses, as much as they can be without pretenses in their current positions, their romance ends the story on a sweet, tender note.

Overall, I found this an effective and immersive Slice of Life story that doesn’t feel it is handholding its readers. It makes me want to discover more about this world.

[imperial_dragon]

Thank you so much for your very kind con crit. I'm glad you enjoyed my story!

I would have liked to include more on the background characters, but the story was so slight that I was worried about overloading it with too many details. This particular shop is actually in front of the owner's house, which is why the owner walks past it everyday. The boy slaves live in the domus, in the owner's household. I think they have been in training and will soon be sent off to other shops in this retail empire.

All slaves are theoretically able to be freed, although not all are offered it or take up the offer. A good owner will make sure his or her pleasure slaves have training to support themselves; not all owners are good.

Your feedback has been very encouraging with regard to world building and point of view reactions. Thank you.

Con-crit for Retail

[filigranka]

Hey, hey!

I think one of the main problems with works set in wider ‘verses is striking the balance between how much we want them to stand on their own for the readers which might want to read only a few works, and how much we want to avoid repetitions – e.g. explaining the same part of worldbuilding in every story – not to bore those who read the whole series. So, considering I only read this one, I do realise some of my impressions might be less (or not at all) valuable to you.

Saying this, I think that while big picture is pretty clear, some small, specific details of the worldbuilding and relationship might be confusing. I’m not an expert in Ancient Rome, but I know a thing or two + some basic Latin, and this definitely helped – but I had moments of not being quite sure if I understood things well, and I imagine it might be even harder for readers without any Latin knowledge.

E.g. VosTubam as a name itself is an example of doing this right; Tube to Tubam is similar enough even someone who knows nothing about Latin has a chance to make a connection to YouTube. The same about “earned every as of her peculium” – here, the already-known phrase in English makes it easy for readers to “guess” the meaning of new words, they just need to switch them.

But with “puelle” and “pusio” or “cena” – not so much, especially because the sentences don’t give much clues about the meaning (“puella” or “pusio”, for someone without any knowledge of Latin, might as well denote the e.g. inter-slaves hierarchy, or the age, or anything else, really; and just the information one was in panic, and the other resigned doesn’t give us enough of the clues, because obedient and ashamed of their weakness slave might just as well look resigned; the focus of narration isn’t much on the boy’s problems, so it’d be better if his behaviour & description were as… coherent, unified, stereotype-like even… as possible, and yet first, we learn he’s resigned, then, that he’s a little defiant, rolling his eyes at his master… all of it seems pretty unclear to someone who has no familiarity with the characters, even if they understand Latin vocabulary).

“Cena” is even trickier, because it’s mentioned just once and never really brought up again and we get really no clue what it means – a praise? a rest? Something pleasant, yes, but there’s a lot of pleasant things sub sole. TBH, I’m not sure if it needs to be there at all, either in Latin or English version. It’s not mentioned later or earlier, the relationship between Varius’ and his slaves isn’t a focus of the fic, and it's not really helping us to understand/establish any story-relevant part of the world better.

I love worldbuilding myself, so I fully understand how hard it is to stop yourself from throwing Just Another Bit Of It into the fic, but I think, especially with foreign language already in the picture, one has to be very careful not to let it overshadow the story – or, if one really, really likes a particular bit, then doing the opposition of deleting, giving it more place and emphasis in the story, making it into a sub-focus, sub-plot/sub-theme of the fic is also a solution.

(ekhm, this might be the one I personally prefer, because I really, really, really like my worldbuilding. I’d be very happy to write basically one RPG settings and lore-books :))

So, like, just an examples of what I mean – I think adding some gendered-details (e.g. descriptions of their clothes, hair, make-up etc.) to the first appearances of words “puella” et “pusio” might help to clear up things for a reader; so would be adding some details to the word “cena”, cluing audience about at least the class/type of thing it is (food). It might either be a quick “no surprise, X is a great chef” or more or less detailed description of the food itself; Gallus might wonder what will be served today, or perhaps he already has his suspicions (e.g. he smelled something, he was asked to buy X, yesterday they ate Y and boss doesn’t like to waste food, so tonight they expect some form of processed Y…). For me, personally, a great advantage of such approach is that I can talk more, not less, about worldbuilding & research!

Of course, there’s a dictionary at the end, but:
a) the reader doesn’t know it until they reads the whole thing;
b) I think it’s taking one very much out of the story, destroying the immersion, if ones has to check it so (relatively, for such a short story) often.

As for worldbuilding & tone – ha, I like a lot of your worldbuilding details! And the tone is such an amusing mix between the advice for pet owners, satire on celebrity culture (everything about VosTubam and hard-working owner slash influence made me at least snort!) and textbooks for managers (human resources management) & salesmen (Gallus, constantly looking for a way to sale more – and more expensive! – things, and to ensure the customer’s loyalty, to make sure they’ll come back and spend some more!).

Gallus seems like a great manager, indeed. And quite an entertaining narrator – I think you made a good choice, picking a salesman as the narrator, by the way. First, shops are always great for showing the audience a lot of worldbuilding elements (all the wares!), second, the very job of the salesman is to know more than they show and to be observant. It feels natural for a narrator like this to smile to the customer and yet make tons of sarcastic (aka entertaining for the reader) comments in their mind; we all expect that they already have seen a lot of similar customers, after all. Salesman is more mundane version of a spy-narrator :D – and in, it gives a writer a lot of possibilities!

Gallus is the POV character, so of course we get to know him the best and he’s the highlight of the whole fic. About others, we get to know very little – a glimpse of hard-working, goal (freedom) focused Sylvia, YT celebrity slash owner Varius… I think the second best-developed in this piece character is that young customer. In a way, it’s not surprising – his problem serves as a plot framing device – and he’s also the one whom Gallus doesn’t yet know, so of course he’s focusing on classifying him, learning the details – and if Gallus learns/gets to know them, a reader learns with him.

So, it’s all understandable and easy to explain, but you might want to put attention to how developed characters other than POV one are. When I was reading, it seems pretty clear to me that all of them have pretty complicated backstories and relationships which you know already, but they weren’t quite shown clearly, coherently in the fic – which, I assume, might be partly because of my unfamiliarity with the rest of ‘verse – and it confused me from time to time.

E.g. I liked how you dropped the hints that relationship between Gallus and Sylvia isn’t, actually, the typical master-slave or even employee-employer one. He slips into “dear” at the beginning, he thinks of her by name, there’s also this very clear line about her being very convincing – aka insincere. But the sudden marriage “proposal” at the end and the apparent deep bond – and shared future – showed at the end of the story still felt a little rushed to me. Its introduction, that’s it – obviously, in-universe, their relationship had time to grow, but for me, the whole ending felt like added as an afterthought, not quite steaming organically from the whole piece. It’s like poor Gallus switched between two almost completely different modes. If their relations are so deep, then perhaps throwing more clues before – or just making them more emotional ones? – or touching upon the subject of Gallus/Sylvia/slaves’ future sooner in the text, making it a theme just as much as the customer’s trouble is – idk, throwing ideas at you, some lines about how the situation reminds Gallus of some past event between him and Sylvia? – might help to signalise a reader the importance of their relationship sooner.

Misc.:

“Gallus the salesman, a distinguished looking man in his forties with slightly grey temples”

I think it might be one and only instance in the whole fic in which the narration isn’t tightly tied into Gallus’ POV. I don’t mind changing narrator’s so much as many others, but when it’s done only a one place it’s a little jarring (also, when it is it should be done for something, like with every unusual lit. device). Especially when we do not get to know how anybody else looks like – Hedylium, Sylvia, the customer… So, all the people/characters which might be easily described from Gallus’ POV, he sees them, after all; if anything, the opposite situation, with us getting descriptions of everybody except Gallus, would be more natural from the chosen-POV+narration type perspective, and switching it only to add one description when everybody else can go without it, seems unnecessary.

“It was all very well for Varius Metellus to fig Ven with a finger of ginger, but he really ought to be using Phallusy products, not produce the customers could buy from the greengrocers.” – I laughed! :D
(but also, it’s the first time I got to know Varius Metellus is “the boss” from VosTubam and for surprisingly long moment I couldn’t connected those two, I only really got it after reading a second time, and getting all the details which appear later, so you might want to name-drop him before)

“Gallus said diplomatically, wondering why on earth he cared whether Hedylium liked the gags.” – It’s a small thing, but Gallus is definitely written like an experienced manager, one who has seen many things already; one who is more likely to be blasé than surprised/wondering. We also get to know – in the next few paragraphs – he encountered customers having similar problems with their slaves before, he’s able to fill in the gasp. So it feels… out of the character, so to speak… for him to wonder why an owner might care whether their slaves like the gags. It seems he should be able to come with a few hypothesis based on this one line alone, our little detective of marketing. 😉

“Welcome to Phallusy!” – XD XD
It’s a very good name! It’s funny, but it’s also something so… direct&crude… that it definitely fits sci-fi based on Ancient Rome’s customs. I wonder who came up with, Varius or Gallus?

“And once you’ve done our beginners course you might want to think about doing the intermediate course where you can learn all about using rope.” – I laughed, again! I love how level-headed, business-first Gallus is! Most of his dry, exasperated comments made me at least smile.

“When Gallus locked the door of the Phallosy shop not long after he pulled Sylvia to walk beside him.” – this might me being ELS talking, but I feel that there’s something wrong with this sentence. I cannot quite parse it.

[imperial_dragon]

Thank you so much for this detailed crit! I have found it really useful to get a comment from someone completely outside the usual readership of these stories. I think that most of my readers have already read some of the other stories, either mine or those of the other contributors to the universe, but of course a random reader might have picked "Retail" and have no background.

"Retail" is a side story and probably has the least development of all of my 2770auc fics, and as such it shows up my problematic tendencies very clearly. Your comments on my overuse of specialized vocabulary and random details are very useful, as is the inconsistent characterisation. I can see that, even in this little vignette, some judicious editing and expansion would improve it. Even though I probably won't do that, the comments you have made will help me going forward.

Phallusy and Drusus Varius Metallus are the creations of Mossgreen, so Phallusy is DVM's company.