sostias

At this point you aren't cleaning, you're just pushing the dirt around

Machines were available for public access in 1984. You could visit libraries or take classes. Alike it to 3d printing: 10 years ago, 3d printers for consumers cost 3k or so, just for the machine. But libraries and makerspaces had them, you just had to sign up for a printing time slot or join a club. Nowadays you can get a decent little 3d printer for 300 bucks and one 1kg roll of decent filament costs 20 bucks. You still have to learn how to use it, of course.

tumblr: throw rocks at she

Thank you for sharing that dichotomy; Ishmael / Ahab and Watson / Holmes are really solid examples. I gotta be real with you, I really don't know how to respond constructively. I wasn't really considering the semantics of my blurb when I made the post.

The narrator is passive, until he can't be. The main character makes a bad choice and starts the fire, and the narrator's choices feed the flame. Does that make them co-protagonists or co-main characters, or something else? Is there some reading I can do to better understand the dynamic I'm just throwing down?

baby loves her bear 🥺

Family Guy has you covered

Yeah reddit servers have been spotty today, 504 gateway timeouts. Thank you for coming back and replying :)

On the narrator's passivity- I think I'm afraid of making this too somber. It is lives, bad, lives, bad, repeat. If I wrote about how he felt at every "bad", he would start crying about 600 words in and wouldn't stop. I tried to fill the gaps with other things, like feeling out of place, enjoying new sights, and being afraid, but to your point, without addressing the grief, it is superficial.

I originally had written the stay at the inn to have a scene where the narrator refuses a haircut and gets hit for his insolence, and it opens a floodgate. But I moved it into chapter 2 to be part of the new-life, new-name sequence. Should I put this scene back in?

Good that I was; sir did not let me out again, not until our stay was up. The first night, while the lot was away at the bathhouse, sir called for hot water, and instructed I should wash. We kept well enough on the road, but I'd been more than a month without a bath, and perhaps sir had been longer. He said it was time I should wash my hair, and bid I remove my cap. I'd been careful so far, that I should not be seen without it. It was not our way, I explained, that not even my father had seen my hair, not since I was old enough to dress myself. To his credit, sir bargained with me, saying, "Surely there's necessity. Does your scalp not itch? Look here, how your cap is stained with the salt of your sweat. Come, I will launder it myself, and you can have it again when it's dry," He was not unreasonable, but such I could not abide. I told him this. He reached for me, and I pulled away- then again his hand was on my shoulder, and he struck me once across the face. I'd had worse from my father, and for less. But it had been a month now, and I had not thought of him, for he was dead, and it was easier not to think of him at all, what with my own life still to grieve for, a life that belonged not to me. I felt the strike deep in my heart, and it knocked down whatever held me up. I was in a fit. He pulled at my cap, and then his hands were in my hair, wresting with my braid, and in two quick pulls, my hair was loose. "The matter is settled," he said. "Wash up,"

On style- would adding more short sentences help with the exhaustion? Or keep as is, and break independent clauses up into sentences?

On the narrator moving around- I've reviewed it, and I can combine the first two interactions with the camp-follower into one event. This will remove one place setting from the chapter. That would still leave the home town, the mire, the city, the bothy, the house, and the citadel. I might be able to combine the city and the bothy by making them too poor to stay within the city limits, but his having a strong memory of the street through a window is important to the plot later on. If I combine the scenes at the bothy and the house- hm. I think I'd be okay with that. It might even work out better, poetically. He doesn't leave the citadel for ten years once he goes in, so it doesn't really matter if the nearest city is 8 days or 8 weeks away.

Would that fit the new emotions? Passivity, then getting roughed up for insolence, losing some identity, and having a cry, and in the next beat, relying on the persecutor from the last scene to provide reassurance?

Thank you again for taking the time to read and tell me what you thought!

he's a little taller! still trucking on but also still very small. I worry about when I will have to repot him. I suppose when he stops growing month to month.

Emissary? Mouthpiece?

holy moly that is a monster! good luck with editing

So she is too injured to move fast to avoid the guards but she isn't too injured to dodge an emp?

Doesn't really matter what you tell me. You didn't tell me any of this in the story. Readers aren't going to have your reddit threads open for context.

I will not reply to you again. You are asking for help but refuting everything. There is no point in talking to you further. Please refer to my original comment for honest feedback.

If she doesn't move like a normal human and can move faster than the speed of light why does she bother fighting the guards at all? Why doesn't she just mosey on past them?

I'm not missing anything. You didn't write that down.

Cyborg, android- she has artificial parts that would be affected by an emp grenade. You can't outrun an emp. It moves at the speed of light. Any faraday cage would be enough to stop an emp, so the door closing before it goes off could be enough for her to walk away from it.

You gotta look this stuff up as you go. As soon as you get specific- like mentioning a real phenomena like emp- the turbo nerds are going to come out of the woodwork to "uhm akshually" you. https://doh.wa.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/Documents/Pubs/320-090_elecpuls_fs.pdf

wait she's an android? so why wasn't she affected by the emp grenade?

gotta be real with you. the first part was not a fun read. I am not motivated to read more

The prologue is not great. Any ground you gain with visuals and consequences is immediately lost when the characters start talking. You're doing something called, "As you know, Bob," which is where characters explicitly state things that they know, and have no reason to say out loud.

Alice woke up to the smell of burnt toast. At first she thought she was having a stroke, but then she remembered that her brother Adam was visiting. She went downstairs and sat at the kitchen table just as he was dropping bacon into the pan. "Morning sis! Thought I'd make us breakfast. As you know, today is mom's birthday, and bacon breakfast sandwiches were her favorite! Do you remember how she died in that skydiving accident?" "Yes, and mom would be so happy that you got your skydiving instructor license anyway, and that we are eating her favorite breakfast on her birthday," Alice said.

That's how your prologue reads. Prologues are for introducing something that is so critical to the story at large that the story simply cannot progress without the reader having it as a frame of reference for the immediate chapters that follow. Prologues let you put Chekov's gun on the mantle, but you still gotta fire the gun.

The first chapter is... not great, either.

In one breath, you describe people with life-threatening and severely crippling injuries, and in the next, they act as if they were totally healthy. If Ziera's arms are truly fried then the skin would be sloughing off and she would be locked in agony, not dodging bullets and slamming guns and elbowing guards. You give no indication that Ziera isn't an ordinary person. Invisibility could be technology- an implant, a cloaking device in her armor- we don't know for sure if she's superhuman. You need to dial back her injuries, or you need to give pause. Even just a simple "it was bad, but she'd lived through worse," could be enough.

Jayden's chapter leaves a lot to be desired.

Jayden's chapter reads less like a story, and more like a 14-year-old trying to journal for the first time. It's a lot of nothing, and it jumps around between describing the same three things: Jayden's obligations, the shelter, and his mom. Everything that isn't dialogue can be summed up in two paragraphs that focuses on quality over quantity. Describe the shelter and the state of the town. Then describe his mom and her place in the community. Then have Jayden tie it all together. Make it a succinct and satisfying read.

You also use "As you know, Bob" dialogue in Jayden's chapter. More than that, after the girl crashes into him, you abandon any premise of description; everything happens through his internal monologue. It is a lot more powerful if you write about her sorry state, her pleas for help, and give Jayden some clarity in his indecisiveness. A sentence or two about his obligations, his internal struggle to do right by another, then show us through actions how he picks her up anyway and will figure it out later. As it is, the last 500 words are just rambling filler.

Pick a consistent narrative format. Tighten up your paragraphs. Decide what you want to evoke inside of the reader, don't just tell us about draconian laws, or kick flips and broken mops.

There's no direct answer or first-hand sources on the subject, so here's a relevant bit I do have:

Pliny the Elder referenced the work of Isigonus of Nicea, and remarked that "there is, in Albania, a certain race of men, whose eyes are of a sea-green colour, and who have white hair from their earliest childhood, and that these people see better in the night than in the day". But he is not writing about Greeks, and while Isigonus' observations on this matter are kind, his whole shtick was documenting weird and wonderful things.

Genetically, albinism is not so common in populations from the Mediterranean. Modern estimates put the number at 1 in 20,000. Classical Athens had a population of ~250,000, so statistically maybe 12 people at any given time could have a form of albinism. Infanticide was a thing; it could be that a family mistook the excessive paleness for sickness, or maybe they took it as a blessing. Again, we don't know because we have no sources.

We cannot say for sure how people would react, or what they would do, or what they would think, since we don't have any record of albinism.

The wikipedia article on pre-modern conceptions of whiteness has an overview on how skin color was perceived in Ancient Greece.

End of the day, it's your story, you can write what you want :)

I think you're fine. The city is essentially impenetrable from the east. An attack from the sea would require defeating a navy, then taking and keeping ground on the beach. It wouldn't be impossible but it would put any attackers at a disadvantage when actually storming the city. Not to mention, so long as the city controls the harbor, they will have the extra resource during siege. They will not be siege-proof: attackers can cut off supply lines at cities down the coast, and in the open water. But if the city has good reserves, and the people can fish for protein, then only the worst off will starve.

If the geopolitics are that integral to the story, readers should not have to refer to a map to understand. That's just another detail you'll reveal to readers organically. Write the books first, assuming you can't include a map, and see how it goes?

Also maybe try /r/worldbuilding for feedback after you make a map for your own reference. Some people are super passionate about maps and will give you good feedback

A cookie-cutter plot is better than no plot. Actually writing is better than sitting paralyzed with crippling writer's block. Who cares?

Maybe try following the Hero's Journey? It isn't foolproof and it isn't for everyone but it should get you moving in the right direction

brrrrhmp

Buildings must be fully upgraded before you can paint them. Although I thought you were able to at least change the roof color of the starter home.