Timewaster's Guide Archive

I love "In late, out early" : that last sentence is so much more powerful like that.

The trouble is that I don't have a next chapter to read right now! What does he say???

Nice piece, as always. I have a few comments though:

* "I get paid either way" : that one felt out of place here. I don't know if it's just because of the positioning or if I don't feel like that character would think that, but it felt wrong somehow. Sorry I can't be more specific.

* "and tanned skin brightened in a smile" : this felt clumsy and strange, since skin can obviously not change its color with someone's moods (unless it's part of the magic system. If so, you need to explain more).

* "make the stars look like glowing spheres" : the astronomer jumped on his chair here. A galilean telescope would bring out a magnification of 30 at best. At that magnification, stars should still be pinpoints.

* "Si, I am feeling sorry for myself..." : Mathieu's reaction in this whole passage seems strange. Despair, then dismissal, then anger. It feels like he doesn't know which emotion to choose, which makes the reader jump from one emotion to the next.

* "Si, I would love nothing more than to bash ..." : that sentence doesn't seem to follow what came before. Mathieu was addressing Sasha, not Mena, so why did she say that?

* "Her father pays more for her..." : I never took Mathieu to be of the jaleous type before, so this feels a little out of place.


Nothing terribly wrong here, as you can see : some parts would benefit from a little bit of clarification, but it's otherwise pretty good.

 I hope he says the right thing, I'm in a mood for a nice duel scene!

Another interesting chapter to read. I hope you'll continue to submit them, because I wouldn't like not knowing what happens next.

I'll take a side note on roman military structure. If I understand correctly, the legion is lead by a Legate (high born), with a tribune (also high born, but frequently a young man waiting for a Senate career) which acts as a second in command when the Legate is incapacitated. The direct field command is given to a prefect (often a veteran from the ranks) who oversees the 10 cohorts, each commanded by a senior centurion, and a junior centurion per centurie constituting the cohorts.
With that in mind, I wonder why Gaitu doesn't hold the rank of Legate, since he's obviously high born. I ask this question, because it felt like Ponticae's rapport to Gaitu isn't clear. From his rank, he should be clearly over Gaitu (even if Tribunes didn't have too much to do in operational command), but it feels like he's the junior here, which would make Gaitu a Legate, not a Prefect. Also, tribune is a stepping stone in a political career, and not a pity assignment.
And I'll join Fireflyz here : your captains need to be Centurions (I know, almost everyone is a centurion, since there are so many types of centurions).
I'd like to commend you in your research, I didn't know that Immunes were indeed people in the support corps.

Side note over. Now, to my actual impressions : I like the fact that we're fast paced At the beginning, I told myself "Another war council?", but since it's cut short, I can't complain about it. Love the fact that the soldiers go on swearing by their gods, despite the fact that they're not allowed to anymore.

Some word of warning here : you've put in a very nice chekov's gun when you told me about power struggles between the prefect and the emperor, and the emperor disavowing the legion. I now fully expect the story to take a political turn, with lots of plotting and betrayals (Felt like you were writing a Malazan book for a while here : great!). If this was not a promise you were aware you were making, consider yourself warned!

Now, I have some issues with Gaitu's "plan" with Jhuz : why go to such lengths to make him take part into the fighting? It would have been much easier for him to talk to Jhuz, or even order him to fight (despite the imperial orders against it). In that respect, the reveal didn't work for me. I think it comes at the right place, though. Just make sure that even though that plot point is resolved, the character of Jhuz does change gradually in the next few chapters. I'd hate for him to go on a barbarian killing spree without any remorse from now on.

The part about Gaitu dying didn't work for me either : first, because the man was wounded in the leg, but shows signs of sickness all over 3 days after? First, I don't think that gangrene spreads that fast, and even if it did, any man in the legion would have taken a saw and cut off his leg well before it got that bad, so I didn't buy having him die there (and off the screen). It felt too much like the plot demanding that this character died, so you killed him off. And having him die also cuts off the resolution about Jhuz (though it might be something that you wanted to do).
I like the character of Zaisha : I hope you treat her well in the next chapters (you might even consider fleshing her part out :-))

Now, some lesser points:
* At the beginning of page 4, the dialog doesn't have attributions, and I found difficult to tell which character was speaking.
* "Lexio’s shrug was relaxed. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s not like he has to do any of the fighting.”I’m sure I gave you enough time, mejj-master. " : This felt a little like a POV error to have the character talk to himself in between two parts of another character. I would have put this in a different like.
* A couple of words seemed poorly chosen (his custom to speak (habit?), Imperial Glory is disappointed (saddened?), can afford no soldiers  (send?)).

I'm still very much interested in your story, despite the fact that I think Gaitu disappeared too suddenly. I'm ready for the next installment!

Ok, looks like I'm going to have a little more to say on that submission than on the previous ones

Ch 5 :

Basically, this chapter is exposition about the character's former life. It's good that you kept it short, a longer chapter would have been too much.

"He stroked his goatee with one hand and sighed. " : The apparition of past tense here, while in the flashback, did upset me. Probably it's because I didn't expect to find narrative in a flashback that short, when I'm still thinking about the character in the “present”. Relating the flashback as seen from the “present” would have worked better for me, like : "He had stroked his goatee with one hand and sighed. " I know that structure is a little cumbersome, so maybe it would be better to drop the narrative in those instances altogether.

Maybe presenting the chapter as a single flashback (with a paragraph of introduction maybe) would have worked better for me.

I liked the reprise of "And right is a color of many shades."

Ch 6:

I kept wondering what was the purpose of the "futbol" scene, besides making me cringe (more of that later). It only served to setup that a - there are fireworks around, b - he gets drunk. If you didn't include the scene for other purposes, maybe it would be better to drop the scene altogether and say what you need to say in two sentences before the next scene.

Futbol : if you keep referencing real earth settings and just change the name, but not so much that we can readily recognize the real word behind, you're sort of breaking my suspension of disbelief. Either use a different word to describe something that is similar to something we know, or describe something that is wildly different from the word you're mimicking. If you really want to stick with a word that is that close to a real one, I think "Calcio" would have done the job nicely (and is probably more accurate historically).

Explosions phobia : maybe I didn't pick it up and it was introduced before, but I think you need a little more foreshadowing on that part. As it is, I felt like having the protagonist crumble after hearing simple sounds did drop out of nowhere (even if it's explained).


Now that I found some things to say, it might seem like I didn't like this submission, but I did like it, just not as much as the previous ones.

Still a very good job, keep them coming!

Congratulations, I think you captured the style for that type of stories; I really liked the use of old flowery English and the short phrases. It reminded me why I loved so much the Silmarillon.

The only real thing that bothered me throughout the story was the names : Albion, Englemark, Finnland, ... Those are too reminiscent of real earth names for me not to think that this is some kind of earth setting. I think using different names might have been a little bit easier for me to read.

Two phrases didn't work for me near the end : "So much for them. / So much for them, and for us all." as I found that the style did clash with the rest of the tale. I was a little disappointed that one of the phrases I didn't like did end up being the last one in the story; I would have loved to end on a better note.

Just a remark about the copyright thingy : I'm told that it's not only unnecessary to put it in, but that it can actually hurt you if it's there.

Again, really good job on the style, I really enjoyed that read.

Another pretty darn good piece of writing; I'm not going to be able to critique much about it.

Some remarks :

* If I understood correctly, the students study the forms, then pass to a personal trainer when the forms are good enough. In those conditions, I would not expect the students to actually know what forms to use while fencing. I believe that those are instincts that are acquired after many hours of practice in duels. I wouldn't expect new students to be any good at it, even with the very gifted ones. How has Mena become that good (especially considering the fact that she's not interested in fencing) ?
* I found the two girls name to be too similar on the page; it made the fencing scene a little more difficult to follow.
* I know I'm always pointing at the use of profanity, but would a noble born publicly use an expression like "be fucked" while adressing another noble, however low its standing?
* Is the sexual banter adequate here between a teacher and students (even if in character)?

As I said, not very much to pick on.

I really liked the reversed roles of the two girls and am waiting for the next part !

If your main character only takes the lead in chapter 3, I would suggest that you introduce chapters 1 and 2 as a prologue : that way, the reader doesn't feel compelled to find a protagonist right at the beginning.

For adverbs, they're a pet peeve of mine since I heard someone say that "the road to hell is paved with adverbs"; I've only recently convinced myself that it's OK to put in some.

Still a very nice piece, waiting for the next part!

I'd like to begin by stating that this was a nice piece of writing, with very descriptive passages.

Now, some things that I feel could be improved:

* you might want to tune down the number of adverbs : you have over 160 adverbs for 7.5k words, that's way too much (I found a paragraph where 1 word in 20 was an adverb!). While you're at it, you can also remove some adjectives (they are more "telling" than "showing").

* "the rising sun peeked nervously" made me laugh, because we all know that "the wind blew carelessly and freely" : if you're trying to put an emotion behind the sun, it has to mean something.

* "light years" : actually, the concept of light traveling at a finite speed is a very advanced scientific concept. Beware using expressions like these if the person telling this is coming from a less advanced society (and I doubt that a human/elf hybrid comes from such a society). If the character actually knows what a light-year is, it might be fine, though I would still argue the expression shouldn't be there at all in this world.

* As LTU said, when you wrote "Earth", you made me a promise that I would have some sort of crossover between two worlds : if you're going to make good on that promise, fine; otherwise, beware!

* The action begins about halfway : 4k words is a long read without action, and little dialog. As said LTU, you could have gotten the same exposition from dialog, which would have shown character and would have been more lively than what we've got here.

* As I said once before, I'm not a fan of omniscient. In this case, I would ask you if you know who the protagonist is. If yes, please, put more emphasis on that character : it's difficult to get interested at once in three characters, you need to point the reader to the character who needs his attention at this point.

Anyway, fine piece of writing!