Latest revision as of 00:50, 9 June 2010

Specific Discussion Forum for Phoenix of the West

Put comments and questions about specific chapters or plot developments here.

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chapter 7

As you might have guessed, this chapter is going to be a little late. I have it all plotted out in my head, but I got distracted by a lot of different stuff and only remembered again right now. --dissolvegirl

chapter 6

A year and a day? "Summon Third-Circle Exalt." Heh. I love it. --dissolvegirl

• grins* -- CrownedSun

chapter 5

So I guess Taban is definitely an Eclipse, huh? I was hoping he'd be Zenith. (In fact, I stopped just short of outright saying he was a Zenith in part 2.)\\ Full comments later.\\ _Ikselam

I take this to be your interpretation of the running scene. I don't necessarily agree! Solar magic can do the same thing, and Taban is a storyteller at heart. Perhaps he is just imposing Sidereal attitudes on Solar magic. - willows

I guess. My interpretation of that scene was definitely colored by me knowing that you love Sidereals to itty bitty bits. Quick, sign up for CaKe.\\ _Ikselam

I, too, tried to make him sound like a Zenith. The whole "were your kind meddlers who gave unwanted advice?" thing.. but I guess that could apply to Eclipses, too. :) I loved the fact that Osol made the collar sing, and enjoyed the chapter overall. --dissolvegirl

It was a very good chapter; it gave me a lot of nifty ideas too, and like dissolvegirl I particularly liked the collar singing. Once some of these nifty ideas start slowing down a bit from their wild and zany antics, I'll no doubt have some stuff to discuss even! Hmmm. I'm a bit confused as to where this Eclipse bit is coming from; I don't remember reading that into the chapter. *Reads again...* -- CrownedSun

chapter 4

I think this was a good example of how to write a successful short part. I enjoyed the dialogue, but that may just be a symptom of the fact that I always like big swatches of back-and-forth banter.

Pretty much my only quibble is that there was a point where a character brushed hair out of her eyes, an action which is one of my pet peeves. \\ _Ikselam

I liked this chapter a lot. - willows

I'm glad you guys didn't think it was too short. I just figured it would be more prudent to wrap up everything quickly, as opposed to go over the deadline a day or two just to write another scene. Also, iskelam: I had to go back and reread it to find the hair-brushing reference, as I think it's sort of a copout myself. Sure enough, Osol does it. I guess it's such a deeply-imbedded cliche I didn't even realize I'd used it! ;) --Dissolvegirl

chapter 3

I'll post comments on your part sometime tomorrow, Dim.\\ _Ikselam

gaaah......*gets nervous* -Dim

I really enjoyed your chapter, you have a flair for the descriptive. But for once and for all.. Is the character's name Oteitani or Otentani? I found myself spelling it "Otenkani," which I knew was wrong, and found it spelled two different ways throughout all the chapters. --Dissolvegirl

Oteitani is the correct (read: original) spelling. Five syllables: o-TE-i-Ta-ni. I'll go and edit through, be sure they're all spelled like that. - willows

By "tomorrow," I of course meant "two days from now." Gah.

• I noticed some typoes and stuff. I'll probably go through tonight and clean them up. Mainly just minor misspellings. Only grammar error I noticed was this instance of incorrect pronoun case: "Osol, her face wet with tears, had magicked a shield between she and her brother." "She" should be "herself," since it's (part of) the object of a preposition. (If Osol wasn't the subject of the sentence, "her" would be proper usage.)
• I liked how the kri continued to be an obnoxious jerk.
• I'm confused as to whether or not Aahz' Wake is above or belowground. Since Osol and Taban can "rise with the sun" there, and Lyeshe is propelled "skyward" in order to get there, I'm guessing it's on the surface. I think my confusion is coming from the fact that the swallowed-by-the-earth thing was described similarly to Stone Face's earlier use of Affinity Element Control to produce instant quicksand. If upward motion had been mentioned when the power is first used on O&T in this chapter, I think I wouldn't have had this problem.
• It seems like a stretch to say that Osol knows Sorcery, since she literally Exalted last night. Unless the collar somehow allows Lyeshe to force her to cast spells which he knows.
• A fairly short part, but as I said elsewhere, that's probably a good thing.

_Ikselam

1. This was written in the space of a few hours, with little proofreading. I appologize. 2. Thank you :) 3. Aahz' Wake is above ground; they were just sucked into the earth and propelled 'up'. Should I make it more clear? 4. I initially had it so that Osol *did* know sorcery. I was under the impression that even starting characters could have memories of magical workings and thus could know a spell or two. She's not formally trainned at all, but she deffinately has potential. Mechanically, I see this as having Essence 4. That plus a few spells, even Terrestrial, makes her a destructive force of extraordinary magnitude. 5. Yay -Dim

chapter 2

One of my big misgivings about chapter 2 is the way I nail the audience with foreshadowing in the intro. Do any of you think it's excessive? If so, it can be easily dialed back.\\ _Ikselam

Hm. I dunno. It worked for me. I just wanted to comment, though, on how you made Osol into a completely different character than I expected, without breaking character. Well done! - willows

A couple of things:

Turning Oteitani into a solar sure was totally left-field, but not really bad. I still liked him more as a Heroic Mortal. At least the fact that he thinks he's cursed is an interesting spin on ye olde tale of the Anathema.

YAY FOR STONEFACE! I've noticed this tendency to have Solars have an all "Let's go push some spirits around and beat up on them if they don't do as we say" attitude and I'm happy it doesn't always work. Yay.

I'm glad you didn't foreshadow too much. Nothing interesting in Improfic if it isn't Impro, right ;) --- medivh

Thank you for the comments. I am glad Osol and Stone Face were well-liked.

As far as the Oteitani thing goes, I made him into a Solar because that seemed like one of the most plausible ways of justifying him thinking that hunting an Anathema would be "the easiest job of his life." Regardless of whether or not it would be cool for him to be an heroic mortal who just happened to be the hardest mofo in the entire world (I've never been in the "mortals competing with Exalted is awesome!" school of thought, so I don't think it would be), it's not really conceivable that he'd be good enough that he'd think of it as a cakewalk.

Although you'll note that he did manage to triumph over a Solar prior to his Exaltation, even if it was mainly due to his target botching a defense roll early in the combat. ~_^\\ _Ikselam

I just wanted to say that I -loved- Oteitani's Exaltation story. Kinda gives new meaning to "Monkey on his back," huh? ;) --Dissolvegirl (who is burning through willpower not to use that anachronistic metaphor in the next chapter)

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