Concritathon

[indri]

Text pinched from peasant_ and deadsoul820.

This is my post for peasant_'s Concritathon. Anyone who wants to give me public concrit for Descent is very welcome to do so here. Anyone who would rather send the concrit privately, my address is archaeoindri@yahoo.com.

According to the rules of the concritathon:

Concrit is Constructive Criticism. This means that it must point out at least one, preferably more, flaws in the story as well as at least one, preferably more, good points in the story. It must also be written so as to inform the author of your opinion without hurting their feelings.

Ta.

Comments

Re: Concritathon feedback!

[girlguidejones.livejournal.com]

Some of the lines I liked

"It's almost calming, this level of incomprehensible noise, as none of it triggers any warning bells or memories he wants to avoid. He has, he reflects, killed very few people on lakebeds."

I liked this, and actually smiled when reading it. It also made me realize that it was the only smile I'd felt so far in the story. I don't know if it was your intent to have a uniformly dark story without humorous interjection, so I thought I'd mention it.

"Blades of grass stick up through the mud an inch from Spike's face. He realises that his knees have given out."

Again, nice imagery...unique way of showing a collapse to one's knees.

"Around one corner is the Chinese Slayer. She snarls, "I was the best night of your life!"

I like the twist in this. Usually when a woman makes this sort of declaration, she's been scorned and discarded by the man, and she's trying to remind him of what he'll never feel again. In this case, she's been completely erased by a man and is reminding him of what he'll never feel again. Interesting.

"When Spike was a boy, this place didn't count as a country. He remembers when Stanley found Livingstone on the shores of another lake. Of course, they had to name this one lake Victoria. Every bloody thing was named Victoria, except for the things that were named Albert. If he had the chance, he'd name everything Buffy. Buffybuffybuffybuffybuffybuffybuff."

I think this might be my favorite line of the story. Brava!

Overall summary

Very strong grammatically!

As I mentioned earlier, I felt this story slides smoothly into canon. I liked the end especially, finding out how it is that Spike initially encounters The First. Neat!

The overall tone and feel to the story was rather dry and reserved to me personally. Other than a couple of the incidents I mentioned above, it seemed like I was watching a sequence of events dispassionately, with no real stake in or emotional investment with a character for whom I would normally feel a great deal of...something.

There were a couple of parts I felt were "inserted" rather than natural progression of the story: Dawn/Spike call, car into the lake, German woman. Rather than feeling intrigued by these sections, I was distracted, trying to figure out "why" it was happening and/or what I was missing. I like mystery, foreshadowing, and hints...I don't like if I have to re-read a lot or spend time trying to figure out why I didn't "get" something. Again, this is only my perception. Other readers may enjoy these same segments!

I felt your [Spike's] remembrances of Angelus and Drusilla were especially strong and well-characterized, and enjoyed reading them.

There were several really strong visual images...Spike's initial struggle to walk out of the cave across the sand, the broad, cloven-hoofed elder, the two different rooms where Spike stays (and him smoking, wet and naked on the chair), the fight scene at the railroad tracks, the chicken-carrying woman on the bus...all wonderfully described and easily seen in the mind's eye.

There were a couple of instances where I truly felt connected with Spike and his story, and, fittingly, they were associated with the women he loved- how he felt about Drusilla, his stunned reaction to Dawn's comments, Angelus' stating that Buffy didn't love Spike, and Spike's wanting to name everything after Buffy. As a whole, however, I felt too distanced from what was happening to him to be emotionally connected to the tale. On the other hand, this more austere style of telling the tale is quite original compared to how we generally see Spike portrayed, and I think that others will probably find it very interesting.

I hope this is helpful in some small way. If you feel I have misinterpreted or misunderstood anything, or simply want to "rebut" to any of my comments, please feel free to do so. I am not very experienced in giving organized crit, so I can certainly improve. I am also not easily offended, so please let me know if you think I've gotten something completely wrong. Thanks for allowing me to read and critique your work- I enjoyed the experience!