purplepjs
Gender: Female
Rank: Decisive Witness
Joined: Thu Mar 05, 2009 11:26 pm
Posts: 181
Shiki Tohno wrote:
Well I just re-read it again to make sense of it all in one huge sitting.
Remarks:
- For a story encompassing so many time periods (around four at the very minimum), it's ridiculously solid.
- Looking back, there were a few instances in which characters felt a little out of character, but I personally feel they were more than justified given the circumstances. (Think of it as knowing that the characters WOULD behave that way if we were ever presented with the opportunity to see them in that context in official material.)
- No offense, Kitty dear, but you should pass the last... 15-20 chapters through a spell checker. xD There's a lot of minor punctuation and spelling mistakes that an untrained eye engrossed in the story might not immediately catch. I myself had to double-back and re-read some parts to make sure my brain wasn't tricking me and there was a random apostrophe or period missing here or there.
- Considering the events, span and scope of this story, I'll admit that upon this second read I feel a little bit cheated out of what could've potentially been an incredibly cathartic scene when Nick and Maya made love for the first time. While I myself am a proud alumnus of the "tasteful fade-to-black" school, I've found that (even though it takes a good long while to manage it, as I discovered to my chagrin) if properly worded, it's possible to describe sex scenes in a tasteful, non-sexualized way that fully conveys exactly what's going on in context without going into lewd language or implications. I'm terribly sorry but it's a little hard for me to explain since I can rationalize the concept in my head, but it's tough to put it in english words. If you want I can expand upon this elsewhere or here, wherever you prefer.
- This is more of a personal opinion than any sort of relevant remark like the previous ones, but I still can't reconcile the differences between your and my head-canons. =p Specifically the facts that in my head, it's not Chris and Alex but rather Liz and James, and Polly is going out with Ema instead of Vera. =p
...I think that's all I have to say for now.
...I think. :V
Thanks for the constructive criticism. Having re-read it (only once) since finishing it, I think it's terribly obvious that I wrote it over a span of two years. There are minor points that annoyed me and even one or two things that I overlooked in the resolution of the story, but for the most part I'm just happy that I managed to finish it.
I tried to keep everyone at least close to being in character, but sometimes that proves to be hard (Iris being a glaring example) considering many of the characters are not that fleshed out to begin with. I also changed circumstances for others (Sister Bikini) which warranted a change of perspective.
Re the spelling/grammatical errors, I did the best I could. I did try to spell check everything, and the chapters that were read by my beta reader are better than those that weren't. I am aware that there are some grammatical grey areas in there (not my strong point) but I don't remember catching too many spelling errors. Perhaps I need to give it one last read through.
Regarding the Nick/Maya scene, I just couldn't bring myself to write it in detail. They are both such innocents that I honestly felt intrusive going into things any further. Weird, I know, but that's just how I write. I do agree though, in the right hands it could have been particularly poignant, but romance writing is not one of my strengths and I wasn't going to allow my own sub par writing skills to ruin something so important.
But thanks again for reading it and giving me good advice. I have so many ideas right now, but my workload appears to have magically doubled in the last three months so I have very little time. I have basic plot points written for another multi chapter fic, but nowhere near the size of this one. Possibly only 10 or so chapters.
The problem with headcanon is that everyones is different.
icer wrote:
What, you FINISHED THE STORY?
AMAZING.
Now I have to catch up and read it, REread from chap 1 on (since it was so long ago it started, I have to do it justice)
Yes I did! What a monster of a fic it turned out to be, but I'm glad I brought it to a close.