Publish: Chapter 6, Part 1
Added 2024-03-10 23:32:41 +0000 UTCA little editing time opened up this weekend, a
Comments
I'm glad you liked it - and also looking forward to bringing us forward! Thanks for the typo catch; I'll go fix that.
David Sanders
2024-03-11 21:44:19 +0000 UTCIt reads really well. I too was taken in by the male fantasy version that the fictional Julia called out... It's great stuff - can't wait to see where you take us/it next! I only spotted 1 typo, Jonas says 'Thank I guess' rather than thanks...
Asklepios
2024-03-11 17:01:19 +0000 UTCThank you for the kind words, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. Julia's role has grown in the writing beyond her original planned remit, but she's been fun to write. But yeah, I messed up the age there - she's meant to be in her late thirties and I miscalculated the maths on the movie night. I've set Constant in 2053/54, though I don't want to drop any specific dates in the story because dates in sci-fi never age well. Top Gun: Maverick was a 2022 release, so she'd have been... about six, so yeah--not Top Gun. I'll edit that (along with a few other age references; I keep saying David's thirty-five but he needs to be a little older than that). And don't worry - I haven't forgotten the revenge/murder/hunt storyline - without wanting to give anything away it'll be a major component of the backend of chapter 6. The problem with splitting a chapter in half like this is that it breaks the overall structure of the chapter.
David Sanders
2024-03-11 09:58:04 +0000 UTCIncredible. A really good chapter (or part one of a chapter at any rate.) Having already seen and read bits and pieces you have stitched them together seamlessly. David and Julia are vivid and alive, both feel fully realized. Nothing rings false in their dialog and interaction and the pacing kept me reading till the end with no feeling of the story dragging. Cindy's new office crew were nicely introduced again without it feeling forced or over extended. The last part where Julia calls bullshit on his spiritually uplifting blowjob story worked brilliantly. I was taken in with Davids narrative believing him in attributing his joyous abandon to the drugs, so when Julia stomped on it and called him out it was perfect. I couldn't find any typos or transposed words in this edit, but I did notice that there's a formatting thing going on where there's a space missing after many of the italicised words. Might just be an artifact of cut and pasting it into Patreon. Speaking of formatting, have you considered when posting to FM doing so as a 'contains images' option (or whatever it's called) to keep the italics and bold headings intact? One tiny quibble. Is Julia so old she would be 17 when Top Gun was playing in the cinema? Even the semi recent sequel seems a bit old fashioned for a sci fi set a few decades into the future. Lastly, it's likely too late to shoehorn it into this part, but can we have some occasional cuts to the larger murder/investigation/hunt story? I'm thinking that as short intros/extro paragraphs it would be nice to see glimpses of what Katherine, Sakura, Steele and even good old best buddy and destined to be shot in the face Tom, who's not been seen since the first few chapters are up to. Not even stuff that reveals anything, just reminders to the reader that they exist and are doing things out there. Kinda of like short MCU post credit scenes. Teasers rather than reveals.
Julia
2024-03-11 02:51:11 +0000 UTC
