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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Colmarr" data-source="post: 4235087" data-attributes="member: 59182">Ok. I'm back with some comments on the second instalment:[sblock=General]This instalment seems to me nowhere near as polished as the first. It's hard for me to put into words, but you seem to slip out of "Arken telling a story" mode and into "me telling a story about Arken telling a story" mode.More specifically, Arken seems to slip out of character on a number of occasions:"The Colossus that somehow-fits-in-the-pub is basically a 6’ tall robot that looks like the Zarr that pilots it"The "somehow-fits-in-a-pub" seems out of place here, both structurally and thematically. While Arken may be surprised to see the weapon suit in the pub, it strikes me as jarring that he refers to it that way. Similarly, it seems jarring to me that he describes it using the word "basically". We (the reader) may not know what a Colossus is, but Arken does.While I wouldn't dare try to re-write your story, an example might be appropriate to explain what I mean: compare your version with "The Colossus is stationed just inside the front door, plasma weapons blazing. I can't even begin to imagine how Kadil managed to sneak a 6 foot tall weapons suit into a heavily guarded establishment in a civilian area, especially one so outlandish as his." It conveys the same information but doesn't use what I hesitantly refer to as "flippancy" (the hyphenated term) or modern youth slang short cuts ("basically")."and all sorts of improvised evasive maneuvers"Again, I think this comes across as out of character for Arken. I would have preferred that you leave this clause out of the sentence altogether. It seems like a gag line in a non-gag story. If it was intended to be a wry condemnation by Arken of the civilians' panic, I think you need to expand on it more."while the others behind have the biggest and deadliest pulse rifles trained in our direction"You've shown earlier in the story that Arken knows the names of weapons (his plasma pistol and the Colossus suit), so it seems odd that immediately after specifically naming the Matter Shields, he refers to these weapons so generally. I think you would have been better off giving them a specific name. The following sentence adequately describes what the weapons do, so there's no need to stress in this sentence that they're big and deadly.[/sblock]Aside from those thematic issues, I did notice a few pedantic bits that I'll throw out there. Consider this proofreading more than criticism  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> [sblock=Pedantic stuff]"Unmolested" - I don't think this is the word you were looking for. "Unperturbed" or "unphased", perhaps?Safeties on weapons. If the guards had their safeties on, why did Rayne come out of the stealth field? The guards weren't in any position to stop Arken firing again. Similarly, why didn't Arken kill Rayne when he emerged? If the answer to that question is that Arken didn't know the safeties were on, why doesn't he react when he realises he missed such a prime opportunity?I think you need to put some more work into this issue, either by removing the reference to safeties altogether, or by expanding its impact on the actions of the characters.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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