Barrier emerged from Tail and Amora’s bathroom with a content grin on his face. The previous twenty-four hours had left him visibly spent, and the prospect of him leaving his cadet’s home looking like a ragged wreck did not leave an appealing taste on the mind’s palate. “At least I’m clean,” he remarked. “I doubt that’ll save me from Luna’s smug rambling though. And the rumors… Shiny is going to have a field day with this.”
His sights snared the light pouring through the crack of an opened door, and the cropped image of scattered papers drew the captain into the chamber—where sheet upon sheet littered by equations, integrals, and raw hell bore into his sockets. “Faust above,” he gasped from the mental onslaught, “it’s like Twilight’s room after a forty-eight-hour study session. How can anypony live like this?”
It was then that Barrier’s hastily diverted attention found a far more familiar friend. Tail’s armor rested in shimmering, pristine condition, and the spectacle drew a broad smile across Barrier’s countenance.
“You’ve certainly kept immaculate care of your loan,” he commented before his focus drifted towards a book that had been placed beside the helm. The unicorn plucked the text from the floor and hummed. “Mm, and what do we have here? Discourse of War by Gracious Waters. Our little physicist has been doing some light reading.”
“Oh come on, Caddy!” Tail shouted, prompting Barrier’s gaze to narrow as he dashed out of the room with the book still in his magical hold. “Always the friggin' minus sign! It’s like the bane of our existences, you poor foal.”
“What’s wrong?” the captain called cautiously as he slid back into the living room. He froze when Tail glanced up at him. Thin, partial-rimmed glasses sat atop her muzzle and a quill hung from her mouth. Her foreleg was still raised with a grasped parchment awkwardly hovering above the couch-reclined mare. A liberty blue necktie cascaded like a river over a white shirt that snugly fit her barrel, and her lab coat had, at some juncture, found itself serving as her legwarmer and de facto blanket.
“Student bucked up a minus sign on his written qualifier. He’s a good kid, so it’s a bummer that I’m going to have to knock off some points for the mistake.” She moved the quill to her free foreleg and pursed her lips in response to his quizzical expression. “I have a stack of papers to grade, and you gave me the day off. I’m using it to get the faculty board off my case.”
Barrier’s slight smirk at the sight of her wardrobe made the mare groan. “Look, it helps get me in the mood for science, alright?” Her eyebrow descended when she spotted the book Barrier was still levitating, and her defensive tone immediately shifted to that of a more assertive timbre. “And is that my Discourse book? Really, Captain? Snooping around your cadet’s room already?”
The stallion jerked his head towards the text and his ear twitched. “Erm, your clutter made me curious? Then I shed a little captain’s pride at the condition of your armor.” The uncertainty in his voice dwindled with each word until his more familiar, commanding tenor remained. “Consider yourself commended for your treatment of your kit, Cadet. Though, I really don’t get what is going on with your current uniform choice.”
Tail’s wings ruffled and she tapped her quill against her side. “I told you. It’s for science! I’m grading physics exams. Science! Science attire. Research shows that wearing proper uniforms boosts efficiency by five percent!”
Laughter rumbled through Barrier’s frame and filled the living room. “Scientifically speaking, you’re full of shit, Rookie. Though, nice try.” A sly smirk accompanied the devilish twinkle that appeared on his face. “You could have just said you had a roleplay fetish. I’ve seen far stranger things in my time. It’s not the worst thing you could have held against you. Compared to some of the stuff Princess Luna is into, this is tame.”
“I’m getting in the mood!” She jolted at the recognition of her own words. “To grade exams! Exams. At least I’m not the one dodging the issue of sneaking into a lady’s room.”
“Lady?” Barrier snorted, “I don’t see a lady here. I see a smartass cadet trying to pass off some made up statistic to her commanding officer.”
The pegasus reached out, grabbed a stack of exams, and hurled them at Barrier. “Sweety, I’m the commanding officer in this house. I can make up statistics as I see fit, but that’s not really all that important. Right now, there’s a smug captain trying to hide his clear infatuation for lab coats with quips about ranks and roleplay. Maybe I’ll just have to bust your ass back to cadet and we can go retake the C.O. Special. I’m sure you’d love carrying me around. How’s that for a scenario?”
He easily caught the bombardment of parchments with a spell before setting the papers aside. “Not nearly as amusing as the one where I incinerate those exams and observe the fallout from a safe place.”
Tail recoiled from that particular tactic, and one of her trademark eeps rapidly came forth. Barrier brushed his mane, sighed, and released the captured ammunition from his cast. “Now that I have a moment of quiet, I’m sorry about the room.”
Tail’s muscles immediately reaped the benefits of released tension. She sat up and scooted to one side of the couch. “I guess that got a bit out-of-hoof,” she answered sheepishly before patting the vacated cushion for him to sit. “I shouldn’t really make such a big deal out of it. I did kind of bring you here, after all.” The pegasus grabbed the next ungraded problem from the pile. “You can borrow that book if you want. It can be the sign of our Great Sofa Truce. Princess Luna gave it to me a short time after we started. It’s all about how the guard has been influenced by Equestrian culture throughout history.” Her muzzle scrunched at what she was grading, and a large inked x was practically stabbed into the page.
“I appreciate the offer, but I’ll pass. If I’m being honest, I couldn’t care less. I’m not really a guard anymore—at least not a full-time one—and I’m far too old to consider signing back up. What Luna suckered me into is a contract job anyway, so I’d rather not get into it. Besides, I already know how culture affected the guard. It’s bucking pathetic.” Barrier shook his head in mild irritation. “I can name maybe three or four ponies that would’ve cut it back in my day and one of them is still in training.” With a strange, burdened weight in his eyes, Barrier let out a tired sigh, drawing Tail’s surprise as the unicorn suddenly seemed far older than he typically did. “Anyways, I should get going. There will already be enough rumors as is, and I’ve no doubt Luna will want to talk to me. After that, I have to go stab Trigger.”
The pegasus tracked Barrier’s stride as he made his way to the staircase to leave. Her ears splayed from the shootdown of the literature. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she hoped that the underlying meaning would shine through. Luna had clearly suggested the book to help her get a better understanding of what it meant to be a guard, and this was her opportunity.
Tail’s mind wandered to the previous night, when she was trapped in his grip and subjected to the ramblings of his subconscious thoughts. There had to be something there, right? There had to be some ground for further discussion—some way to keep learning. “Captain?”
Barrier craned his neck to face the pegasus but kept his foreleg primed for the first step.
“I was wondering who Ember is. You mentioned the name last night while you were”—Tail hesitated momentarily—“uh, hugging me. Each time, you sounded—”
“Ember…” Where Barrier’s tone had been light-hearted, it now emerged hard and pained—with no levity to be found.
The single word swept the shade of pink from Tail’s cheeks, and nothing more had to be spoken for Tail to know that she had screwed up.
The captain swallowed and blinked several times in rapid succession before an anguished grimace stole his composure. “She was someone important to me a very long time ago.” Barrier turned and took that heart-tugging step. “Cadet, for your sake, never ask me about Ember again, and I mean never ask.”
The mare leaned forward as her awareness captured the start of his solemn descent. She began to lift herself from her seat and blurted out his name, hoping that she could quickly patch whatever mental floodgate she had opened. The only response she received was that of the door clicking shut.
Tail slumped down onto the couch as the ringing silence grasped her senses. Emptiness filled her chest as the timbre of his vague threat and the memory of his projected sorrow lingered in her head. The words themselves faded, leaving behind a toxic character that devoured her spirits. “Way to go,” she mumbled, glancing at the ungraded papers with complete disinterest. “All you had to do was let him leave. He said he trusted you.”
She winced through the self-beratement. His frown and restrained anger reverberated in her thoughts. She had only gotten this far through the help of others. When things were in her own hooves, she crashed and hit the ground over and over again. Why would he trust or help a pony who just did that to him? The doubt crept into play, dredging up a piece of that nightmare that she immediately wanted to remain forgotten.
Tail stared down at the cracks in the Canterlot sidewalks as she trudged through the streets. Golden plates of armor weighed her down; however, her lowered muzzle, drooped ears, and limp namesake carried a far greater burden. Through block after block, her sights never left the ground. Other ponies were forced to sidestep her stubbornly set trajectory, and the mare just couldn’t be bothered with anything else until she planted her helmet into a steady, yet fluffy momentum sink.
“What’s going on, Flicker?” Trigger asked upon halting Tail’s advance. “Ya seem worn down. Did Barrier give ya a run for your bits last night?”
Tail winced at the pause in her aimless wandering. She gulped, not knowing what to say or if she even should. A sniffle joined her next breath, and she shrunk down when it inevitably drew Trigger’s hoof to her back.
“What happened, Ms. Tail?” he asked, tilting his head as he waited for the pegasus to respond.
She kept her head pressed against Trigger’s midnight coat. “I fucked up.” Tears swelled in her unseen eyes. Though, as the drops broke free and fell, the wavering in the mare’s voice betrayed her sorrow. “I did take care of him, and he even said that he trusted me. We had a nice breakfast with my roommate. Then I asked him about some things, and he went cold. It was like the first day all over again. A warning that actually had weight… I can’t start over. I need him to still trust me.”
The physicist watched the bartender’s hooves drift a step away. Gradually, she lifted her dampened muzzle to look upon the stallion’s expression. The ridge above his right eye, driven by confusion, arced downward, and his lips were firmly pressed together. Tail choked down a sob, feeling almost engulfed by his amber gaze.
Finally, his lips parted. “What did ya ask him?”
“Who Ember is. I asked him who Ember is.” The speed of her reply increased rapidly. “He kept saying her name and—”
Trigger’s hoof found the tip of her snout. “Say no more. It’s not really my place to give ya any of the details, and I don’t plan to.” He turned around and motioned for her to trot alongside him, only continuing once she complied. “Just keep working hard. He’ll come around. In all my years running that stupid special, I’ve never seen a rookie with your level of inexperience step up and put on a show like that. Regs wouldn’t stop talkin’ about it until closing time.”
He took away a little of the sting, but Tail could still feel the unease that yanked at her heartstrings. “But I hurt him,” she exhaled in time with a fresh, radiating ache that gripped her barrel and splayed her ears.
“And he’ll live,” the stallion retorted with a lighthearted grunt. “He’s been through more fights than even a seasoned vet could fathom. Curiosity from one of his cadets isn’t going to kill him.”
“That doesn’t make it right.” Tail’s feathers quivered as the tears began to well up once more. “I put a burden on him, and he shut me out because of my screw-up. What if I ask him something else that makes things worse? If it weren’t for his patience, then I wouldn’t have grown at all. And now, it feels like I changed him—like I’m walking alone. I don’t know what to do, Trigger. I’d rather not see that look again, and I’m afraid that I’ll make the same mistake with every question. Maybe the army brass was right. Maybe I don’t have what it takes to prove them wrong. How can I when the stuff I am clearly isn’t cut from the right stuff?”
A twitch snagged Trigger’s cheek and almost stopped him mid-stride. “Ms. Tail, let me give ya a good piece of advice. Never try to prove an asshat wrong. If ya piss time away doin’ that, then it just means that a part of ya believes the bullshit they’re spewin’. Just prove to yourself that you’re right. Dig your hooves in, and do whatever it takes. Find the pony that knows she belongs, and when ya do, I guarantee that you’ll wake up from whatever this shit is and Barry will be there.”
Perhaps it would have been better for Tail to not have asked Barrier about his former love life with Ember.
8008908 :rofl: Wiser words have never been spoken, but alas, 'I didn't know!'
Curiosity saddens the cathorse. x3
8008913 Yeah, but many of us who've known Barrier's backstory did.
Also, that should actually be "curiosity saddened the lynel." Lynels are essentially centaurs with feline facial features and they're from The Legend of Zelda franchise.
8008927 :P Tail can only know what she can know, though. In my opinion, we've reached a needed stretch. Sober and I wrote Chapters 8-15 while he was at my house, so there was a lot of discussion on whether or not we wanted to take the turn we did here. I thought it was necessary because life isn't all sunshine, and there was a good opportunity to put some of my own personality into Tail's reaction. I have a tendency to take missteps to an emotional depth that might seem wonky. I live in the world of academia myself. Asking the wrong questions and asking no questions are equally grave offenses that can really skew your professional reputation and career. That's where Tail's decision making and retrospection feels originate.
lol I have no idea why I rambled on that front... so back to that other thing.
Part of the reason why I pushed to publish our story on Sober's account instead of mine is the reader familiarity with Barrier. The mystery up in here is what Tail does--and of course the threads that come with the big reveals of her stuff and Barrier's backstory. Essentially, it's a case of.. you -- and in this instance, literally you -- are in on it. You know the different stories with Barrier, so you have the little added edge. I think that sort of character-reader dynamic is fun to utilize. Good times and all that. :P
Looks quite interesting and ive had a pony displaced on my read next list for when im done with another story, but this bit leads me to a question
, is there any particular order i should read the various stories in or are they all standalones?
8008963 So far, all the A Pony Displaced stories are standalone and separate continuities.
8008963 My long-winded thing on this subject is here: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/709536/nld-timelines-and-continuity. Alticron pretty much summed it up. If you want my insight with Barrier's history, you can get it from either A Pony Displaced, or APD: Another Path. The continuities are separate between APD, AP, and NLD.
If you want insight about what's going on with Tail, then you want to read A State of Darkness, but it is not necessary. (Tail isn't even in it--It's Wingpone's bit.)
8008963 Another bit that I forgot to mention. The interactions between Barrier and Tail were driven through RP stuff. The intertwined story bit kind of developed organically as Sober and I just let these two do their thing in chat. This entire story began as a way to deliver us to the RP--because writing with a friend is great. :3
8008945 You bring many excellent points. Congrats to you on that.
By the way, part of the reason I mentioned lynels is because it's been about a week since the epic release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and I've been watching all the awesome playthroughs of the game on YouTube and it makes want to play it myself someday.
8009056 :rofl: I only use the term cathorse because it was put into my head by a friend. I've used 'cathorse enthusiast' over 'brony' for several years. :P
8009067 Alrighty then. So I'm guessing you're not a Zelda? I won't mind if you aren't.
8009113 I'm indeed not a Zelda. I'm a physicist though. Pew pew lasers and all that.
the art work is super good.
and this chapter is vary strong and really shows how Tail is growing as a pony.
Dies again and again looking at that pic.
This chapter was brutal for the number of deaths.
8009536 Glad you liked it, HF. :3
8009607 All of the deaths, Neon! All of the deaths. :)
No Longer Displaced is a story I’ve had a lot of fun reading. While it’s a collaborative effort between two of you, for my purposes here I’ll refer to the pair of you as a singular person, “the writer”, or some such term because this is my habit and more usefully, doing so sidesteps all the awkwardness and confusion of trying to divide my thoughts between two distinct people. I address this to the both of you, you can then divvy my observations between the both of you as you see fit.
Speaking of habits and a bit of a prologue still: I typically avoid giving much at all attention to details like grammar and technicalities in my reviews. For the first reason that I’m really not interested in bringing the fine-tooth comb of rigid technicalities that style requires and for the second reason that, I tend to expect (and tend to find) a competency for basic sentence and paragraph structure in the stories I read. Sufficed to say that if it’s running smoothly and free enough of errors, I see no reason to go digging for whatever little specks of dirt there may be.
(Which is the case here by the way: Credit to your proofer/prereader/editor)
No Longer Displaced uses its hook from the very first sentence to strong effect. There are several implications right off the bat that this story genuinely made me want to explore: who back talks Luna, who sounds familiar enough with Luna to back talk her, who is this shy little one caught in the crossfire?
I could write a dozen examples or variants of these but the story’s hook comes back to one key concept of a question: Who are these characters and how are they connected? I really wanted to find out!
For an opening that might be considered a cold open, it nonetheless does it right and I enjoyed it. After that initial grab, there’s a steady drip of inferences, allusions and implications in the writing that go to further the scope and meaning of those questions, Who and How.
This Cold Open; Instant Hook approach works (when most times they flop) because of the writer’s quite likely single strongest quality:
The dialogue
I really enjoyed it. Very much so. Reviewing my notes, I can quote myself as calling it “immensely quotable.” Characters cuss and sass, flirt and backtalk, threaten and grumble. They really bring a lot - quite a lot - of sexy, funny vitality to anytime and anyplace they get to talking and indeed, this is what we see in the cold open: a clash of wills and words. The writer has put their best foot forward and it honestly makes for a very fine start.
As further example in this respect (there are others to come yet) the introduction of supporting characters Bonecrusher and Indar makes great use of back and forth dialogue. In a short few sentences, each really establishes their personality and perspective: the one being proud, arrogant and confrontational, the other being stoic, rational and unfettered.
This all might seem a bit convention-abiding; some might dare utter ‘clichéd’. For instance Bonerusher is exactly about as friendly as the name makes one presume: not very. Perspectives be what they may, it still works very well and conveys a lot of understanding in a short time: Again we come back to the leading premise, Who are these characters and how are they connected?
Where characters are debating, discussing or plain old dissing one another is where the writing is at its strongest. It’s fun, it’s sharp and it puts a smile on my face.
That raises a little question about how individuals fare.
Short answer: not as splendidly.
Longer, more complicated answer that’ll work it’s way to making a clear and resolute point, eventually :
Well... I like Tail more as a person, but Barrier is better written as a character. Ultimately they have similar ups and downs though, which I hope to illuminate.
In the ideal, characters are written in ways that reflect real life: people are a composite of blending layers, made up from who we are and our generalities internal and external right now layered over and blending with those same things of yourself yesterday, yesteryear and so on. Your changing and even contradictory experiences don’t override rather, they compile.
Who you were as a baby, a child, a teenager and a young adult never individually disappeared, simply deleted and replaced by the next iteration. Instead they each linger, joining a growing cast of characters, of characteristics, each of whom has some shares in the overall composite that is “you.”
It is this intrinsic quality to which we are essentially referring to when we use the word dynamic as it pertains to characters.
The question of dynamic casts a little shadow over the story, and brings me back to why I subjectively like Tail more while objectively appreciating Barrier more.
Barrier shows dynamic. He has lived a varied and interesting life and his layers, his compiled selves and experiences, his living biography if I can coin the term, that he carries with him in a way was apparent to me as a reader.
Moments of disciplined, almost (but not really) sadistic drill instruction present this mental image of a character that is then undermined and given nuance by surprisingly innocent and shy attraction to Tail, which in turn presents another image that is made a little less simplified by his raw and impressive confidence in arguing with the Princess. The relaxed, witty and understanding contrasts the grieving, traumatised partner.
Not one of these images is sufficient alone to accurately define his character, and that’s a wonderful thing. Characters are as people are, and people are not readily or easily defined, not really. It’s only in the appreciation of the whole and of the pieces involved do we get a true understanding.
Or, as the premise above has been: Who are these people and how do they relate? - this time we look at it in the perspective of all them the context of a single person.
I simply cannot make the same case for Tail. I like her, don’t get me wrong. What qualities she brings, she brings very nicely: optimism, vulnerability, determination, witticism. She has a scientist’s mind: observant and experimental. All this makes for a likeable person that I’d want to be around.
But look at it another way: Outside of Magic Barrier: who has Tail had the most discourse with.
Herself. The journal. And yes, the journal entries are endearing and fun, but they’re not indicative of a fully dynamic personality (I’d cautiously dub her partially dynamic - the potential is there, Tail just has to grow into her own as an individual that is visible from the audience’s seat.)
The journal entries, if we treat them as dialogue (which is, remember, this story’s highest strength and highly enjoyable) does not challenge her perspectives nor expose inner contradictions to scrutiny.
When Tail is moving closer to Barrier, she’s all in. When a painful question distresses him and Tail loses confidence whereby she feels she should pull away, she’s all out.
And that’s not to say that this sort of personality doesn’t exist. Plenty of people are commit early and commit hard. But even that characteristic is informed by a multiple of influences coming together and producing that trait as a result.
In Tail, it’s difficult to see what those influences are.
That was getting long. This is another approach on the same topic:
When Tail joins this elite-training program it is a massive - MASSIVE - upheaval of her life. This would be a very difficult adjustment to make just on how all-encompassing it is, let alone how strenuous and painful the new routine is. And she struggles with that, which is right and proper.
But taking on a new life equally means letting go of the old, and it’s this half of the struggle I never really saw apparent in the story to a level I was satisfied with. It is simple enough (if very challenging) to leave behind daily routines, luxuries and comforts, but another altogether to try and leave behind the inherited and accumulated prejudices, prioritizations, patterns of thinking and plain old habit that can’t not be steadily built up over the course of living.
Tail’s world when she joins the training programme is, it did seem to me, something of a vacuum. A bubble. There is the training programme and her place in it, end all, be all.
Which makes sense in the physical sense: instructors want to isolate you from your usual patterns of thinking and doing, the better to focus you on learning theirs and only theirs. In the intellectual and emotional dimensions though, it doesn’t make sense for Tail to have carried more of her world of science, students, academia, peer-reviews and a lifetime of soft living over inside her head.
The best example I can bring to develop this point are the nightmare sequences. Barrier and Tail experience simultaneous nightmares. Barrier’s is genuinely nightmarish: what was Ember dying becomes Tail fighting becomes Tail dying.
Past, present and future fears blur and blend together. Barrier’s commitment to Ember conflicts with his attraction to Tail, and each with his fear of Tail suffering the same fate. There is no easy consensus Barrier can find on what he wants to do or should do
Tail’s nightmare is different. Barrier, an imposing figure, tells her she’s a failure in no uncertain manner. That’s the entirety of the dream, though he says it in quite a few words more than me.
What got me was how singular the whole of this dream was: were there no past anxieties that could weigh in on how this dream took form? No present desires, no phantasms of the future?
There seems, simply, too few aspects weighing in on Tail’s conscious and subconscious processes.
*phew*
Indar I need to mention as well. Chapter two did introduce us a character: an Indar that was aloof, rational, uncowed by Bonecrusher’s imposing manner and disinterested in the mystery of Tail’s presence.
That was the character I met there.
Later, in a journal entry he’s referred to as a sweetheart by Tail and later still as an epitome of guard mentality, practice and ethics: put on the course to give Tail a role model. ((Unless I read that wrong?))
These are informed characteristics. Long version short: it’s a case of telling, not showing. A few scenes showing interaction (with some of that sweet sweet dialogue) with Indar gradually warming to Tail would make me believe that the new descriptions are merited against the personality I was introduced to but, without seeing that development myself the audience is left to take that information on faith.
Before I round out this review, there is also a degree of scene-setting I’d like to mention. The story is sparse where it comes to introducing its various localities and giving them detail. In my mind the place where the exercise happens is essentially a football (read: soccer) pitch: an outdoor and grassy but otherwise empty place. The details may well be hidden away in a sentence somewhere, but it didn’t take root in me. Tail’s living space seems disconnected from any broader image of street and building in a similar sense, floating in a condo or apartment shaped void.
When Barrier was in the pub with Tail, I was actually surprised when it turned out there were others there (besides Trigger.)
Barrier’s house is a good example of scene setting, though. The description is there, the tone is there, Tail interacts with her environment (the electric shock!) and all that gave me something to work with. It conveyed to me an older, perhaps wealthier (perhaps not) but certainly prouder district of town - maybe a little Roman sensibility with decorations, maybe a little Dickensian in its narrowness, maybe even a little Morrowind with edges and strange angles inspiring its ancient design. What’s important is, those handy few words of description words fired the imagination for me, and that gave the characters a stage
Stage is a good word. Such was the impression I took away from reading No Longer Displaced. The characters are very much present and lively, never more so than when they banter and bicker, but sometimes I struggled to connect that really nice core with a wider setting.
If we go back to the primordial question way, way above in this review in this respect it becomes
Who are these characters and how are they connected to their setting?
I really like this story. I do. From Barrier’s gruff but good manner to Tail’s fizz, to the driving mystery behind it all and sexy, funny, dangerous dialogue I like it.
What I come to now, ultimately, are some closing points:
The dialogue writing is an absolute gem. Absolute. Gem. Every verbal exchange, every jest, jibe, bite, flirt and zinger I enjoyed. It makes the story lively and very enjoyable. This is praise, and it’s not exaggerated.
By that same token, times where dialogue could have happened and was skipped over I felt a little disappointed, because this is a good thing and I want more of it. (I don’t recall a single one-to-one between Tail and Indar or Bonecrusher, and few meaningful words as a group between the three of them. Tail gets better with Trigger around at least)
Tail is the main character, one half of the main duo at any rate, but nearly twenty thousand words into this story it’s still difficult to get a read on who she is. I like her and she is fun, but between very little mention of her life before training and very little (if any) conflict between the habits and mentalities (responsibilities? Hobbies? Family connections?) of that life with this one, or any overlapping or blending of the two. Something isn’t so much hidden as...obscured.
Scene setting can be very nicely written at times, but appears inconsistently. At times, I’m enjoying the immediate foreground of banter and character engagement, but wondering where and what the background of a scene actually is.
AT THE VERY END OF THINGS, I can bring it all down to tiny tiny, humble observations.
1 - The writer has the skill and potential to, but sometimes overlooks framing the main characters and events of the story in a wider setting and context. This can sometimes make it difficult to visualize places and keep track on what's happening, as sometimes this makes things feel like isolated scenes rather than an interconnected series of events, relationships and circumstances. This applies physically, but also on the emotional and conscious levels for some characters.
2 - The writer’s skill in character interaction and dialogue makes a very lively, fun story that I’d genuinely recommend to anyone looking for a slightly more adult themed romance, with lovely elements of humour and intrigue set with a militaristic edge.
8012167 Geebus, ambion. That is a giant hunk of meaty text, and the long story short is.. I essentially agree with every point you make. I'm happy that you love the dialogue. Sober and I wrote this to essentially get to where our RP begins... kinda.. sorta. Much like the RP content, stuff is swirled up in that dialog... Honestly, I think bringing Amora back from the character void as Tail's roommate to me is like one of the points of the story that makes me chuckle the most. To me, she shines here, and I love it.
Thinking back on it, I do believe Sober and I should have paid more attention to setting. This may be better in later chapters. I have no idea. Though, I agree, some more attention there would have added to things.
As for Tail, you hit it right on the head, and I couldn't help but smirk while reading your text wall because obscuring Tail was definitely the point. it played a pretty substantial role as to why Sober and I posted it on his account. When Tail pops. When she steps from behind this veil, the effect gets a pretty big boost.
Nnnf, but ahh, this was just so thoughtful and refreshing... with pretty solid encouragement and some things to think about in the future. My review of your review is that it's top-notch, and I very much appreciate it. :)
I wanted to say that the flirting in this chapter was absurd and off the charts but all that was overwhelmed by HOW FRIKING ADORABLE TAIL IS IN THAT PICTURE!
Cute picture