Posted by saintheartwing 10 years ago Report

Yeah, we get it, humans suck and dragons are such pure and innocent beings and it's so wrong for humans to think badly of them, I was wiling to overlook this but now you are bashing in the message with a SLEDGEHAMMER, and it's soooooo overdone now!

Posted by ShadowLurker 10 years ago Report

You're right, I did.
Initially, When I read your comment, I wanted to 'put my arms up' and defend myself with the notion; "In war, both sides commit atrocities." and; "Perspective."
Now I realize I'd be shooting myself if I did that, because I've asked people from the start to; "Tell me what you think."
How can I improve if people don't jam my face into my own mistakes? I -DID- focus too intently on one side of the argument... But now I see that...
If anything, Thank you, saintheartwing, for being brutally honest.

Posted by saintheartwing 10 years ago Report

It's just that this is becoming so overdone. It's no longer subtle or nuanced, it's far too one-sided. And I LIKE the characters and story, but this one-sidedness is REALLY a drag.

Posted by ShadowLurker 10 years ago Report

Again, you're right, and now that I'm aware of the one-sidedness of it, Season two will probably have something to counter-balance that fact... Assuming season two ever gets off the launch pad anyway.
I hope you'll be there, and be brutally honest with me if it does get off the launch pad.

Posted by saintheartwing 10 years ago Report

I will, but I'll be honest here and now: the characters, and this is big, are VERY likable and the struggles of trying to overcome personal demons are relatable. It's just too one-sided for the dragons. It would be one thing if there were jerk dragons who are doing stuff just as bad as the humans do in this story, or if it's explained the only reason humans began hunting dragons to begin with was because dragons were always attacking human settlements and by the time they tried to back off or something, it was too late, humanity was too angry and too into wanting them all dead to forgive them for decades or centuries of predation.

Posted by Zack10RVB 5 years ago Report

Hey I think he gets it dickhead

Posted by playafreek 10 years ago Report

We'll be patient; don't give up on this series.

Posted by devildog423 10 years ago Report

great job as always Shadowlurker!
i love this series cant wait for season two.
but don't burn yourself out

Posted by blackrock215 9 years ago Report

I liked it - There's something charming about watching your writing style develop throughout the series. I was having a little bit of trouble reading the first few, especially because of your really strange word choice, but I kept reading. Behind the rather strange writing was a really good narrative, and you've managed to do something that I don't see enough of in creative writing, which is to give characters a real voice and create dynamic relationships between them. Towards the end of this series, I almost felt as if the characters were real people - but a few things held it back. There was the beginning when Leon was assaulted by his dragon - with a totally justified reaction, although judging by the comment you made on the post you didn't really understand why your character had this reaction. On some level you had to understand how he felt because he had that initial reaction of attempting to get away. It was a shame to me that you glossed over both how intense his reaction ought to have been given the fact that he had basically confronted death at the hands of one of his closest friends, which, in any similar human scenario (i.e. having a long time friend pin you against the ground and point a gun at you and pull the trigger), would at the very least heavily damage the relationship. There's also how emotional the characters are and how ready they are to cry about different things, but that's really only a minor issue for me - perhaps it was just a household full of really emotional people. In my personal experience most people past the age of 20 have had their share of painful experiences and are capable of showing emotion without having to cry about it. That became less of an issue as the story progressed and I almost feel like you may have figured out that yourself, so I'll leave that point where it stands. I was really bothered by what you chose to tell the reader, and what you didn't. There's a saying in the world of cinema. It's "Show, don't tell." And this applies somewhat to the world of writing, too. Some of the writing you put together was brilliant, and I was legitimately impressed by it, but other times I felt as if you'd spoon-fed really obvious pieces of information to the reader while leaving out other critical points that forced me to re-read several sections to attempt to figure out what exactly happened and put the missing bits of the story into place. That's just something that requires a lot of reading writing, and hours of proofreading to perfect. The structure was also a bit of an issue. not every sentence deserves its own line. When I first started writing this happened, and when I write free-form this still happens. I personally always thought every sentence as being vitally important to the story and wanted it to have its own line to prove to the reader the pauses and breaks in how important each sentence stands, but when writing prose that's just not possible. I can't stand most poetry, but I do envy them for having the creative freedom to dance about the page placing their sentences artfully around. A person writing in paragraphs can't do the same thing. It is possible to give a sentence it's own line - very rarely - but it's more common to bold and italicize words if they need stressing, usually in dialogue. Last thing I'd like to touch on has already been addressed by saintheartwing 2 months ago but I also want to say something about how black and white your narrative is - and how that makes it boring. You can have the most interesting characters, which you have, you can have a highly interesting world and good interactions, which you also have, but if there's only black and white going on in the world behind them and shaping their interactions with the world, the story is a little flat. Ambiguity is the spice of life. A story with no good guy and no bad guy is inherently interesting to read, in no small part because the reader is not sure who to root for. The simplest way to do it is to portray the dragons as you did the humans - with both evil and good. Every race capable of higher thought is going to have different factions, and what the individuals believe is going to be drastically different based upon the experiences they face.


Alright. I've re-read my entire comment and I don't want you to think I'm bashing on your writing. That's not what I'm trying to get across. I realize that some of what I've written here is a little bit harsh and I've gone into some pretty exquisite detail for a 2 month old forum post on a fetish website but at this point I'm too far committed to delete my comment and god dammit I think that I have some good points. I decided to cut myself off as the comment approached sky-scraper levels and I do have more things I could point out if you're interested...

Cheers.

Posted by ShadowLurker 9 years ago Report

*Wakes up with a yawn and a stretch, then starts off for breakfast. Glances out window, notices mailbox 'inbound' flag is up. Quickly makes way to mailbox and opens it to find a letter marked 'comment'. Curious, pulls out letter and opens it* -CRASH- *Gets buried under a mountain of words* "Huh..." (Note; this isn't a bad thing)
A bit cartoony, but I feel it gets my reaction across perfectly.
First of all, I'm glad you liked it enough to go to this much trouble to compliment, and critique what I've written. You do bring up quite a lot of points, some of which can only be addressed with time and practice, others in the -possible- second season.
I don't feel the least bit 'bashed', and instead, I found this rather informative. (And amusing near the end )
Now, as for having more things you could point out if I'm interested...
*Shrugs, then puts on riot gear*
I'm already buried under a mountain of words. Bring em on!
*Gets stampeded by a herd of rampaging words *

Posted by blackrock215 9 years ago Report

Careful what you ask for, sir...

First, I'd like to expand upon my society point, the last one in my previous comment before I realized that the comment I made was beginning to gain sentience and was eyeing me rather suspiciously. I gave the bare outlines of what I personally believe an interesting story - one that is believable and easy to relate to for a reader. This generally entails something that mirrors real life. Politics is an excellent place to start because in politics it's possible to find every form of scummy person as well as find people who are upstanding and really attempting to do the right thing. Politics also holds one of the best conflicts transferred to writing: someone who really means well attempting to fix a problem but either being unable to, either because of physical problems, (or most of the time in the case of politics) by a huge quantity of red tape or has their words misconstrued and has an unfavorable outcome. It also includes manipulation of large numbers of people, blame games being played and behind the scenes deals that most people are unaware of. As I stated in my previous comment, any society or group of intellectual individuals are at some point going to have differing opinions on a subject, and eventually these differences are going to be enough to create factions. Especially problems that have a right or wrong solution built in (i.e. Should abortion be allowed? or should people be allowed to keep dragons as pets? or are dragons people?) Based upon the story you've written so far the most likely and believable story I could put together in my head is that it was either like the crusades, in which fanatic ideological humans hunted down everything not like them in the name of god; not a nearly interesting enough story to stand by itself, or, similar to humans, dragons were capable of all of the same emotions and wants, and had their own factions that either saw humans as inferior creatures that they could do with what they please, or as toys to be broken - and that the humans organized against the dragons to protect themselves but in typical human fashion took things way too far and ended up going off the deep end. This is a great by-play but like all stories there needs to be a connection. You had this issue with a few things in that you simply just glossed over that left me, a reader, going "what?" If the story simply just jumped from "Humans were systematically going after and killing every dragon they could find regardless to whether the dragon was friendly or not" to "dragons are now tolerated in modern society because reasons" A lot of people would be scratching their heads. The story parts I had issue with you skipping in particular had to do with character interaction, but I'd better make a new paragraph for that so that this doesn't become one single mass of words.

OK. I'm going to do something I don't really like doing, which is I'm going to press the caps lock key. I want you to understand that for this portion of the comment, I am shouting, at you, because you have something that is so close to perfect and then you went and you messed it up. WHAT THE HELL IS LEON'S REACTION TO WHAT BASICALLY AMOUNTS TO SOMEONE ATTEMPTING TO KILL HIM. THERE IS SOMETHING EXTREMELY WRONG WITH A PERSON WHO LOOKS AT A CREATURE - STRONGER - FASTER - AND MORE DANGEROUS THAN HIMSELF AND THINKS "YOU KNOW THEY ALMOST KILLED ME BUT THEY'RE ALRIGHT." And the problem was he HAD the right response - somewhere in your mind you KNEW what the right response to that sort of action was, even if you didn't say so in the comment you put in that chapter. You knew how a human would react to an attempted murder and then you backpedaled. You kinda contrived something and said "there all better now." and to be honest when that happened I almost stopped reading. I was sitting at my computer, thinking, is this for real? And I kept reading, and it was. A relationship, ESPECIALLY a relationship that was as close as Leon and Ressanna doesn't just have a bombshell like that go off and then just recover and be the exact same thing as before, if not better. However - don't get me wrong. The scene in the beginning where he was eaten was what needed to happen. That was a perfect scene that set the whole tone of the story and put into motion the byplay between the two characters, allowing the rest of the story to fall into place. And I can understand that you didn't want to spend two whole chapters of your writing describing the complex process of a relationship repairing after a bombshell like that has gone off, but it could have been handled a little bit better. I'm not sure whether or not you are familiar with the Artemis Fowl series, but in that series the byplay between two of the main characters is very similar. Granted, it takes 5 books before they have a working relationship but most of the book isn't about their relationship and is more about the seat of the pants adventures they go on. They start as strangers in book one and Artemis Fowl kidnaps the other character, Holly, in order to hold her for ransom, nearly destroying her career and putting a lot of bad blood between the two. By the fifth book they're jumping through a space-time portal to save the world together because they've come to trust one another with their lives. I'm not in any way saying that you need a five book series to properly develop character interactions, but something that I've found is at least somewhat helpful is taking all of the life experiences a character has had, placing yourself into their shoes with the life experiences in mind and asking yourself "how would I react to this happening?"

Another thing I don't think I really mentioned to you but that you should one hundred percent do with everything you write, whether you publish it or not, is proofread. Proofread proofread proofread. The only time anybody who is ever writing anything should not proofread, and this is the only one scenario in which this is OK, is when an orc has just cut his guts out and he is scrawling on the wall in his blood before he dies "rez plz." That's it. There's no other circumstance that is acceptable to not proofread something. Sadly, a LOT of what is written, especially on the internet, is not proofread. If you read a lot of literature, especially books that are considered works of literature and have gone through countless iterations before being accepted to print, and then compare that to the typical internet fare you'll find on 4chan or this website, it doesn't hold candle to the well executed prose of the printed work. A lot of writers will say that words are their weapon, but that's a god damn lie. Words aren't given meaning unless they're put in the right order and sentences don't have impact unless they're hashed together properly. A work without a purpose, without any form of proofreading, is not going to be as good as something that's gone through a hundred iterations and has been bounced off of peers for changes and revisions before becoming a final, work of art.

Last thing I'm going to include in this tirade is going to be this paragraph, as I don't think that unloading every single gripe I had with the series in a single flaming comment of death is really fair to you. And this paragraph is going to detail the sex scenes you had. My head hit the keyboard. Went straight into the keyboard when I read some of it. I'm going to get my caps lock key again because I need to yell at you some more. THIS IS THE INTERNET YOUR MOTHER ISN'T GOING TO COME AND LOOK OVER YOUR SHOULDER ABOUT THE NAUGHTY WORDS YOUR PUTTING ON A FETISH SITE IN THE FAR CORNER OF THE INTERNET, AND NO SMALL CHILDREN ARE GOING TO ACCIDENTALLY MAKE THEIR WAY ALL THE WAY OVER TO THIS WEBSITE AND FIND THIS EXACT POST. This also extends to your use - or lack thereof - of swears. There were a bunch of amazing places you could have included my favorite words in the English language but you chose to leave them out and create this weird mishmash of G rated material and at the same time explicit - if childly worded - sex scenes. It just seemed like you weren't sure what exactly you wanted out of this series - whether you wanted something warm and uplifting that people of all ages can enjoy on a rainy day while drinking a freshly made cup of hot chocolate - or whether you wanted a rated R television show that only premiered on late night adult television channels that single parents watch after their children have gone to bed. I understand that there is a middle ground and that you may have been shooting for the middle ground, but I also think that there needs to be a decisive direction taken in what you want out of your work - if you are going to include descriptions of sex in your work then for the love of god just call it as it is. Otherwise give the merciful "and then everything fades to black and the reader is to understand that behind this black curtain the characters are having sex."

I lied. I'm a terrible lying person, I know but I had one last thing I wanted to yell at you about. Characters do more than "say" all the time. And characters have the ability to show emotion without crying. I thought my head would come clean off at the number of times I shook it when a character spontaneously broke out in tears at the slightest sign of misfortune. However, I'd like to get to the first things first. I noticed that in the later chapters you were beginning to use things such as "whispered" or "yelled" which is steps in the right direction but at the same time I was left wanting more. The English language is difficult to use with challenging spellings and more exceptions than rules but it makes up for this by being incredibly flexible. There is a myriad of words that you can use for any one given situation and in multitudinous order. There are so many words laying in their dusty nooks crying out to you "ShadowLurker, don't you love me? Why don't you use me in your writing more often?" And amusing personifications aside it also makes your work more interesting to read. People will become bored if you feed them the same word multiple times. Changing things up keeps it interesting and can keep the reader engaged. The second thing I wanted to tackle I probably should have gone over earlier but I think it fits here too - your characters do NOT have any sort of emotional coping mechanisms. Generally if somebody is crying something pretty terrible has happened to them. Young children cry more because they don't have a good repertoire of bad experiences with which to compare their current situation. It makes them emotionally more vulnerable. I worry for the characters in your book because with the crying they do at the slightest sign of misfortune they've either lived ridiculously happy lives without any sort of misfortune - which means they have really fragile psyches that could collapse at any moment, or they were born right as the story started as fully formed twenty somethings with filled in memories of the past and jobs already set aside for them, which is worrying for its own reasons - biologically controlling society non-withstanding.

And don't even think you've exhausted my ability to write more literary advice. That was just the first charge.

Posted by ShadowLurker 9 years ago Report

*Stretches hand toward the sky and moans; Rez plz*

Duly noted; will watch what I ask for.

Frankly, (And this is my mistake in this entire regard) I wrote this relying far FAR too heavily on my readers having given a good look over of Learner's stories. (They actually provide a hell of a lot of the backstory, but again, my mistake, and unless I take down this entire story, and re-write it, that mistake is going to stick)

*Gets run over by the caps-lock key*
When you put it like that, yes, it is an extremely large bombshell. Did I handle the reaction correctly? No. Putting myself in that place, I would feel betrayed, and would kick the betrayer to the curb... Is it something that gets patched up instantly? No. Very little ever actually is... I've no justification for screwing that up.

Proofread? Yes, I do that. I did it several times over the ensuing months while I was writing, and then again before I uploaded... But, grammar and proper phrasing and the like take PRACTICE... If you must know, during the writing of this, I wasn't that far off from breaking away from pure script-style writing. (Yes, I know, that's no excuse)

*Gets run over by the caps-lock key again*
I... Got nothing.

As to 'say'ing things... Again, another thing to practice.

Now about all the crying and emotional states; In Leon's case, IT IS JUSTIFIED. The man has a bloody damn demon rattling around in his heart, AND HE HAS DEPRESSION.
Should the dragons and the others cry nearly as much? Possibly not, no. Sometimes they are crying in SYMPATHY. Look at it this way; The dragons HAVE lived a pretty damn sheltered life. Emily and Jill, I can't recall any outstanding scenes with them crying. As for Fred, AGAIN, SYMPATHY, except when he was JUST TOLD BY THE -FIRST- WOMAN HE LOVED SHE WAS USING HIM. Tell me how you would feel. Also, you are unjustly nailing me to the wall with the exaggeration "The slightest sign of misfortune and they break."

Now, if this was all just the first charge, then damn it, I want the Siegfried Line for the second.

To end on a happy note; Thank you. If I'm ever to improve, I -need- people like you with your brutal honesty.

Posted by blackrock215 9 years ago Report

Unfortunately it's eleven PM currently and I have work tomorrow so this is going to be brief. You're right about a few things. Leon is justified to cry about more than everybody else - but I'm not too sure about the sympathy crying. The only time I really did sympathy crying in real life was when my father's father died and my father played this totally sad tune on his bass at the funeral. I felt some serious sympathy for him and I cried while he played. Both of us have put the goal posts out here, me on the end of "nobody should feel anything" and you with "people should feel sympathy." I'm going to be honest, I only managed to proofread my comment once because I was in a rush to get to the doctor's office and have them tell me I'm not going to die painfully in the next few days, so I'll take the time to apologize for my admittedly far fetched exaggeration. I'm a little worried about your "I got nothing" comment about the swearing, and I'm not sure to take that as "I'm not sure what you mean" or "you're so right oh my god take all of my money" or "you're so wrong I can't even come up with a coherent argument you're so stupid" so I'll take it as a little bit of column a, b and c and put a little excerpt from a story I'm writing to show what I'm trying to say here.

-begin quote-

Hammen had escaped, so we had a chance. An ambush this far into our territory wouldn’t go without at least some sort of response, and with men missing higher command would probably send medivac just in case with the response force. The problem was one of time. There were figures advancing towards us right now. Some of them on two legs, some on four. It was difficult to tell in the hot dusty landscape exactly what they were, as sand, heat shimmers and distance concealed both the number and type of troops coming towards us. I shook Thack, hoping to wake him. He groaned, and opened his eyes, wincing.

“Ah, fuck. Everything hurts. My leg. What happened?”

“We were hit, twice. Listen closely, Thack. If they get close, we need to defend ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to let them take me alive.” I drew my M1911. The weapon had been my father’s and he’d passed it on to me when I went to war.

“Agreed.” Thack stated simply, drawing his own pistol. “Make sure to leave one in the chamber. In case you… need it.” I nodded grimly, and then advanced to the end of the LAV, being sure to shield myself from any possible fire.

“Oh and Eagle?” I turned, casting a look back at Thack.

“You look like shit, man.” He said, smiling, tight lipped.

“No worse than you.” I said, grinning.

-end quote-



Swearing is a good way to ground a situation and really drive home how serious or how vivid the emotions are. In the entire story so far, these are the only two words - and there's a good reason for that. If everybody goes around cursing like a sailor it loses meaning. Here I use them to accent both one of my character's pain in his given situation, and show the attitude of both characters given their grim situation. The describing sex aspect of the thing is a little bit more difficult for me to elaborate upon because I don't have anything in my current repertoire to put here as an example, but it's something that really needs a lot of practice and you can't just pick up the local copy of pride and prejudice to get experience. There's a few examples that have really good descriptions of sex acts such as Fenoxo's Corruption of Champions but that's not so much well defined prose as it is an interactive story that's half character key words. Good place to start, though. Especially the consensual sex scenes between followers. I'm not saying that what you write has to have the same ridiculous detailed vulgarity of that game but the example it provides is a pretty good one to work off of and scale back to your needs.

Unfortunately I'm about to pass out from exhaustion over here so I'm going to cut short my other concessions about how you're correct, especially relating to my having not read Learner's stories, I'll go take a look at them tomorrow, and then come back and yell at you some more.

I'm just regrouping, the calm before the storm.

Posted by ShadowLurker 9 years ago Report

For the swearing bit... I've still got nothing. (Instead, I'm choosing column B to best represent my side; "You're so right, take my money!" )
There are plenty of places where I could have had the characters swear like sailors... Some cases, where I -should- have... The best counter to this I can think up is the question; "If a character is given every right to swear, but doesn't, doesn't that say something?" (I know, it feels like a REALLY flimsy counter to me as well.) I guess I'm going to trace this issue back to me instead; I don't do a lot of open swearing myself, and it apparently bled into my writing.

The sex scenes... I did put out the disclaimer with the first one I did between Leon and Ressanna AS BEING MY FIRST GO AT IT. I can only chalk this up to inexperience.

Now I'm going to go fire the weatherman, because damn it, he told me today was supposed to be sunny! I don't like the look of those clouds coming my way...