I greatly desire to continue on my journey of doing my reps, which means "actually read stories and give feedback"
So, I read
https://rentry.org/cvt40k-vnugtale1I will be honest in all I say, which will include criticism where I feel like I could give some. I will spoiler the more critical comments in case you want to avoid any anxiety. Keep in mind I am not any great writer or anything, so what I will say are merely my personal thoughts. I will be nitpicky here and there, but I will be ignoring obvious grammatical mistakes.
Furthermore, I won't go too deep into the analysis autism in this.
>First HalfWe start with a pretty standard description, but there are some nice details in there. Using words that evoke fear to describe the mecha: "Towering machine", "Gaping maw waiting for its prey", "claustrophobic", etc., giving us the first hint that the POV is intimidated by the machine in some manner.
Especially the line about the myriad of monitors and instruments threatening to swallow the pilot seat. The focus given to the pilot seat as the last of the list, as well as the next few lines specifically describing it do two things:
1. They establish the seat itself to be the focus of the POV's fear.
2. It establishes POV as the pilot.
There is a slight flow issue here, which is in the repetition of the term "mundane force". This makes the text sound a bit off. I am not certain if this is valid criticism though, since it also creates another echo between the seat and the pilot. One could have probably achieved the echo effect by dropping the "force" from the latter, and going a bit deeper into the descriptive in that line. Consider: "but he could not shake off the lingering fear that his own mundane form/force would not be enough to break the chains/belts binding him in/to the steel maw." A line like this also puts more focus on the act of the POV being trapped. Might not be something you want to go into, but eh, decided to share.The second paragraph gives us the confirmation of the POV's ethnicity since it mentions the tail. Standard stuff, but its always cool to see this done without explicit telling.
It is a bit shame the language evoking a sense of fear or intimidation is not used here. But it could also get repetitive if one overdid it, so this may have been a better choice, especially since this is where the AI is introduced and she is clearly meant to be a comforting figure. Infact, you switch to using more comforting language here ("shielding him from the outside world"), which creates a small tonal shift which is a bit weird but nothing too bad, especially so if the intent is to put focus on the AI, or perhaps echo with the end of the Second Half.The dialogue is pretty standard. I have mentioned the few issues below in the "Overall" section. This is also where you first insert the lines building your second narrative, which starts out innocent enough so that it isn't immediately obvious.
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