I have only read the first chapter but I have a couple of things to point out. This is purely my opinion and others may say it's not a problem.
First of all, I can't get a grasp of where Kagami got his weapons. You mentioned he was close, but did he run back to where he stored his weapons? Or were they hidden behind the wall he was hiding behind? You left out some details regarding movement and location that makes some portions a bit confusing.
Second,the fight scenes are a bit choppy and reads like a pokemon battle. During the fight, you basically listed what was happening instead of giving a description, it also gave the impression of each persob taking turns performing an action. Unless that is what you are trying to go for, perhaps consider making it more fluid. A fight is a seamless sequence of actions and reactions. Maybe try and combine two actions into the same sentence, actions in a fight are rarely separate. Also some actions can be inferred. For example when Kagami used his spear to hit the bandit, instead of saying "He stabs the bandit with his lance, which is stopped by the bandit’s round shield. The bandit is pushed back, but he calmly swings his mace to Kagami’s face." Perhaps do something like "Kagami thrust at the bandit, the tip glancing off the bandit's raised shield. As the bandit stumbled, he planted his foot and retaliated, swinging his mace up towards Kagami's face. Kagami deflected the blow off his shield and was forced back by the momentum of the blow." The bandit raising his shield to block was implied by the lance hitting a shield. Doing this also combines the strike and block in the same instant instead of two separate moments. The same criticism also applies to the rest of the exposition, although it is less of a problem there. I also fall prey to this mistake, so you aren't alone in having to improve this.
Finally, this is a small problem and it probably won't bother most people. But during the scene where Kagami gets shot, the reaction timeframe is a bit off. Kagami saw the bandit pull back the bowstring, but he barely dodged the arrow. It seems like the arrow teleported or something. Unless it is actually a teleporting arrow, it might be better to change it to seeing the bandit let loose an arrow instead of drawing the bow. That gives a good timeframe to "barely dodge" because any self respecting warrior would start moving as soon as he or she notices a nocked arrow and thus it wouldn't be "barely dodged".
So all in all, the story seems like a list of actions, events, and descriptions, instead of a fluid sequence. There are some location and movement details missing, and perhaps consider the timing of some of the action-reaction pairings then change the writing accordingly.
This list is also available as a Atom/RSS feed
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Some opinions by
on 2017-07-24 08:54:00 UTC
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That was... really lovely. (nm) by
on 2017-07-24 08:28:00 UTC
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The Wolf appeared again. by
on 2017-07-24 06:47:57 UTC
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He tapped his cane on the ground. "Happy birthday, and hello." He took a glance at the table, hoping to find another card. Magic was always fun. Not seeing any, he turned to Sapphire. "The Ghast over there and I are planning a bit of exploring. Care to join us?"
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... At least Tolkien won't ever stop rolling after that? (nm) by
on 2017-07-24 06:28:00 UTC
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My thoughts on the mission by
on 2017-07-24 05:32:00 UTC
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Well, that's a quick palate-cleanser of a mission. Storm got her wish.
But speaking of Steormægð,
SPOILERS INCOMING
SPOILERS INCOMING
how come she could not change back? Wouldn't the embryo become human if she resumed human form? And (unless you plan to reveal this later) what will become of the baby once it's born?
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Subjunctives? by
on 2017-07-24 05:29:00 UTC
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There are two spots where I am unsure if it's a typo or deliberate, namely, these:
1) as the world fade around them momentarily
(IMO, I really think that it should be "faded" here to clarify what's going on)
2) The present subjunctive make another fleeting appearance,
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"I... oh dear." by
on 2017-07-24 04:31:10 UTC
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"Are you sure you're all right?" The Musician asked, taking the note. She glanced at the code, and then back at Time.
"How mysterious," she said. "I don't suppose you happen to know what this is about?"
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She beamed. "Of course!" by
on 2017-07-24 04:07:53 UTC
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Scanning the crowd, she picked out the Garnet Ghast. Perfect! Taking the Cryptographer by the arm, she dragged him over with at least some semblance of grace.
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After espying the musician, Rod sauntered over awkwardly. by
on 2017-07-24 04:05:18 UTC
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"Yeah, hey, hi again—" He saw the Crimson Woman. "And hello, also, at you, hi there! Um. Okay. So, Musician! Um, you remember—okay, hang on. You, you dropped this, earlier. Okay? This is yours, that you dropped. By accident. And then I found it . . . by very accident, also . . . and kept it, but for you, because it was an accident, my taking, of the thing that is yours, that you dropped, wholly accidental. But now it's back, to you, yours again, where it should be, and always should have been, because you shouldn't have dropped it, that thing, that happened. So, here!" He held the slip of paper out to the Musician, watching the Crimson Woman out of the corner of his eye holes.
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I don't have too many specific thoughts by
on 2017-07-24 03:55:00 UTC
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That being said, this was something I really liked reading. (I'd say "YES YES YES!" but that'd be over the top). A TARDIS's POV is a really fun thing to think about, and I like the whole "multi time stream perspective" thing. It's fun. I'd've maybe liked to see more of that way of looking at the world, but conveying it in text is hard, so I can't blame you. (Also, did I mention that I have A Thing for strange, non-human points of view?)
Also, Elanor is cute.
- Tomash
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Rod read the message . . . by
on 2017-07-24 03:54:19 UTC
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"Oh my gosh, this . . . the Musician was the person I was talking to when I . . . when I took the . . ." He mask-palmed. "This wasn't even for me! Thank you for the help, guys, but I need to get this back to the Musician. She's probably got her own puzzle she's trying to solve, and I got in the way . . ."
((Sheepishness is true out of character, also.))
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They started at the tap, but once they heard the Wolf's voice, they relaxed. by
on 2017-07-24 03:32:34 UTC
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"Very," they said, looking over their shoulder at the White Wolf. They put their phone away, wrote a quick translation on the scrap of paper with a pen they'd pulled out of a pocket, and showed it to the other two. "What do you make of this?"
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The only review I can give at this time is incoherent squees by
on 2017-07-24 03:07:00 UTC
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Perhaps someone else can be more coherent. |D I approve of this on general principle, though!
/Why I rarely review things just before bed... even when I read them then.
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Quick follow up... by
on 2017-07-24 02:53:00 UTC
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I know that I've spoken with some of you on the Discord Chat. Because Discord is a privacy nightmare due to content monetization and data collection, I'll probably be minimizing my presence on the Discord Server. I'm going to post this in case anyone needs something beta read, since this is primarily my way of communicating.
I make extensive use of Ricochet Messenger (https://ricochet.im) to chat with people one-on-one in real time. My Ricochet ID is as follows:
ricochet:2kkwiqmck2opvh36
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"I'm looking forward to these ... challenges." Pads said. by
on 2017-07-24 02:47:00 UTC
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"That being said, I'm afraid I don't know many of the people here. Could you introduce me to someone?".
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Nope. Nope. Abort mission. Nope. (nm) by
on 2017-07-23 23:46:00 UTC
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New, uh, interlude? by
on 2017-07-23 23:08:00 UTC
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This one's got the Aviator and Zeb in it, but the narrator is someone they've interacted with quite a bit but has never really been given the spotlight herself. So, uh, please be gentle with the reviews, because I'm very nervous about this one. So, without further ado:
The Aviator's TARDIS listens to her pilot and thinks about hugs.
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Ix has asked me to post an image response: by
on 2017-07-23 22:44:00 UTC
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Hello from TripleDES. by
on 2017-07-23 21:58:00 UTC
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
Hello, PPC.
I'd like to join the website and see what you guys have to offer. I don't want to say how I arrived here, but I'm very interested in the community and writing in general. I've been a long time writer and first started learning my trade on fanfiction, and it went from there.
If anyone wants to know what TripleDES means, my screen name is chosen after a now-obsolete symmetric cipher. Triple Data Encryption Standard was hastily implemented as an interim measure to bridge the gap between the older Data Encryption Standard and Advanced Encryption Standard. Despite its obsolescence, it continues to come back, and come back to this very day.
I log in through Tor, so I apologize if there's any ruffling of feathers from Tor use on this server, it's for my own protection and anonymity. To prevent impersonation, I will be signing all of my messages cryptographically with a Brainpool P-512 signing key which has been selfsigned with my master certification key.
Any data that has not been signed with a key that has been certified by a public key with the key fingerprint matching the one below exactly (in all cryptography, there is no close, there is only exact, or counterfeit) should be considered counterfeit. At this moment, I use SHA-512 as a digest for signing, please take this into account.
F509 6084 6B00 56D7 3D17 96AC 1AFD B5CF 1ED9 B926
My public keys with their attached signing, authentication, and encryption subkeys can be obtained from the PGP Public Key Server at:
https://pgp.key-server.io/0x1AFDB5CF1ED9B926
or through Tor, via a hidden service at:
http://gnjtzu5c2lv4zasv.onion/0x1AFDB5CF1ED9B926
You will need a copy of GnuPG 2.1 or GPG4Win 3.0 in order to verify my signatures, which can be obtained from:
For Windows:
https://files.gpg4win.org/Beta/
For Macintosh, Linux, BSD, et al:
https://gnupg.org/download/index.html
You can leave me confidential messages that only I can read by encrypting them with the attached public key and leaving them for me, and I will recover them when I check the board. Please note that I may delete and rotate encryption subkeys at regular intervals (usually when the encryption subkeys expire) to achieve a very crude form of forward secrecy, so be sure to synchronize your keyring with the keyserver!
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=espE
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Aiya Earendil elenion ancalima... (nm) by
on 2017-07-23 21:56:00 UTC
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A cane tapped the Ghast's shoulder. by
on 2017-07-23 19:03:29 UTC
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"Interesting conversation?" The White Wolf settled into the group easily, leaning slightly on the cane. "We cracked the code once at least."
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If you look deep enough, I think Sexy! Shelob already exist. (nm by
on 2017-07-23 15:48:00 UTC
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Warning: Graphic violence. (nm) by
on 2017-07-23 15:44:00 UTC
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Time to break my fears... by
on 2017-07-23 15:43:00 UTC
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AND FACE THE MUSIC FOR ONCE!
Apologies, trying to psych myself up to receive beatings, I mean constructive criticisms from all of you.
I present before you my English langauge fic, a Kuroko no Basuke and Mount and Blade crossover. http://archiveofourown.org/works/11459085
And a Malay language fic, where KnB characters learn HEMA. http://archiveofourown.org/works/11567364
Please, complain about all the problems you see. At this point, the only thing worse than knowing my faults in writing, is to not know it and worry about it every single day.
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I... I'm sorry... what? by
on 2017-07-23 15:39:00 UTC
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So.
Okay.
I think I see what they're trying to do? Shelob in this is like the anti-Galadriel. Which is. Kinda cool, I guess. From a thematic point of view. Or something.
And, okay, there might be some sort of logic train that goes Ungoliant = Maia, so therefore her children = Maiar, and Maiar wear fleshly forms like clothing, so therefore they can change them like you'd change your shirt.
But. Uh. We never see any of them actually do that in canon, except maybe Sauron the Deceiver.
And seriously, did we read the same books? As I recall, Shelob's main character trait was hunger, and she lived in near-total darkness, fearing the light, so where they're pulling this Sight thing from, I don't like to contemplate.
Eru save us from ever having to PPC a Sexy!Shelob fic. >.<
~Neshomeh