#havent reread or edited this its stream of consciousness. im sleepy

[crimeronan]

had my original fiction opening critiqued at irl group tonight! under a cut because this is long and it'll be painfully boring for people who have not been following my Anxiety Saga (and who do not care about the OCs), but tl;dr: very positive :3 we went a half hour over our usual time just discussing the story.

the prose, imagery, and exposition were all highly praised, ppl said the style is easy to read & a few even said it scans as fully publishable right now

didn't have a chance to get into the whole magic-as-autoimmunity meta or a Million Other Things because this story is a BEHEMOTH. but if i write more then i can get into it at other sessions :3

UNANIMOUS praise for the depiction of magic as painful/costly, one guy says he usually hates fantasy magic bc the stakes feel too low. but these didn't

characters were much more polarizing. everyone had a slightly different interpretation of and different emotions about the various narrators

also nearly every time someone said "this character thing didn't work for me" or "i hated this character detail," someone else would pipe up like "actually that was great for me personally. you should keep it" which made me laugh. THRILLED to accomplish this

pretty strong majority opinion that sol is an insane sociopath, i got some 'i'd like to see more depth in her' feedback until one woman said "my problem with her is that she's supposed to be super powerful but then her narration is exactly as neurotic and hypervigilant as your reader proxy's" while i was Vibrating With Excitement like YOU HAVE IDENTIFIED THE THING I DID ON PURPOSE YOU DID IT YOU GOT THE UNRELIABLE NARRATION IM YELLINGGGG

pretty unanimous empathy with and concern for the reader proxy narrator who's in a Very Bad Situation. some devastation upon finding out i don't plan for her to narrate the entire novel. about half the group was like "but... but everyone else is. everyone else is an evil sociopath :( i like the girl :(" sorry guy.s. i promise i'll make you want to read about them before i rip ur girl away

i cut some explicit/graphic threats of sexual and physical violence because i thought they went too far, despite this being psychological horror. three ppl gave me the feedback "i need to see some kind of explicit threat to really know the stakes here" i'm never questioning my dark edgy shit again. every character is fucked forever. amen

ONE READER DID CLOCK DEVIN AS TRANS and it was the Same One who clocked sol perfectly. she was like the mention of scruff jarred me so much that i googled the dictionary definition of scruff. what's the deal there & i was like oh. transgenda. & she was like I THOUGHT IT WAS SOMETHING LIKE THAT

everyone else: wow i did not notice that at all. and/or i assumed the scruff was leaves or twigs not stubble

OH AND!! i got a note that my character dialogue is all extremely distinctive. which was Such A Relief because i Know my fanfic dialogue is distinctive but i wasn't sure if i was replicating that with the OCs. it's hard to figure out how people talk & make it different from how other people talk when you yourself are only one person with one speech pattern.

very good positive experience. the problem now is that if i want to talk about other aspects of the story like...... literally everything, literally everything about everything to do with the story..... i gotta. i gotta write it. oh god.