1. Pacing: I think the pacing was great for the most part right up until I started to run out of a backlog to post. Right around then, I began inflating the story a bit so I would have more chapters to post at once. For example, a passage which was originally 1600 or 1700 words would quickly become 2200 just so I could split it into two 1000+ word chapters and get an extra ‘buffer zone’ to keep up with daily uploads. This is especially prevalent during the War Games arch. I never really intended to make this arch, but when the writeathon started I wanted to have something to write about. In the end, I’m glad I went through and made the arch, but it definitely inflated the page count of the story. It took a lot to set up the characters, there were a lot of moving parts, and even if it helped me build and characterize some characters it also slowed things down quite a bit with regards to where I wanted to end the story.
How to fix: I would probably take this War Games Arch and repurpose it sometime later in their story. Instead of having these weeks leading up to the Siren Ceremony build more about the War Games than the Siren Ceremony. Perhaps I keep the War Games arch and turn that into the ‘rite of passage’ so that I can leave the Siren Ceremony as something else to do down the line. Or perhaps I could do the opposite. I can focus on how the people in camp prepare for the Siren Ceremony. Their dances, rituals, food, and how they treat their guests. Perhaps tests of courage and nights designed for everyone participating to get to know one another. Only to leave the War Games arch as a future arch for when Dreiki is a little bit older.
1. Amaro: Earlier iterations I felt Amaro was a rather bland character with no dislikable traits and a story which was not all that compelling. He’s a character of noble birth who hates his dad.He very much used to be the ‘Good noble among bad nobles’ trope we often see in fantasy fiction like this.
In order to solve this, I attempted to lean into him being more of a flawed and foolish character. I think it worked to an extent, but I definitely went past the line with regards to his flaws. He just became unlikable and annoying as opposed to flawed and compelling.
How to fix: I think adding more wholesome or silly motivations might help. Perhaps have him as more of the ‘big brother’ that he actually is. I need to do a better job of establishing his good traits from the jump so that his bad traits come off better. Treating his siblings with kindness and trying to do what’s best for them even if it is at the cost of himself and his reputation is one idea. Giving him a bit more of a childish, airheaded, or ‘Heart of gold Dumb of ass’ mentality might work. Perhaps a person who mistakes their cynicism for wisdom.
On the other end of things, I wonder if I need to change Amaro much at all. Sure, he had his bad moments, but I think that makes his redemption arch more compelling. He is intended to represent the ignorance of privilege, and to show that even with good intentions the powerful will still harm the weak for their own gain. I intend Amaro’s character to challenge the ‘altruistic prince’ trope wherein the Prince of a story will show how good they are by donating to a beggar, all while not really using their power to change the system which turned them into a beggar in the first place. Telling the poor and downtrodden that they can rise and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, all the while expecting them to ignore that the one telling them to do so has never done it in his life. There is an inherent hypocrisy, and I can understand how that can annoy people. Amaro is probably going to be the one I focus on most when writing his character. I’ve got some ideas and scenarios which can make him more compelling and interesting to read about, while still displaying his flaws and inherent hypocrisy.
2. Power Scaling: Tadios is really strong. Deka is really strong. I feel that the War Games Arch pushed me to write them stronger than I initially intended them to be so that I could capitalize on the hype of these characters meeting in battle. Everyone is also really really strong at age 12. It will be difficult to scale them when they get older, so it’s probably best to scale their power back just a bit. I go back on forth on this. Sometimes the fights are scaled at the proper levels, and other times I feel they do things such as moving too fast or destroying too much of the enviornment with their attacks. I want to write it dramatically, but it also ends up screwing with their power levels. The War Games only exacerbated this issue. Ux is both hard to understand and overused very early in the story. I intend for Ux to be something easy to learn, but impossible to master. I wanted to drip feed the information and make it less of a writing crutch, but it ended up being a bit of a crutch. The more I utilize Ux, the less magic tends to matter, and I want to expand more on the magic system/ spells before I involve Ux into that equation.
And yet here I am reflecting on the story as a whole once again going back on thinking that the power scaling is off. With Ux being something that provides an inherent ‘ceiling’ to character power, I have to wonder if maybe the power scaling is actually correct.
One of the purposes I want Ux to serve, both in the story and the world as a whole, is to maintain the concept of strategy and technique over brute force and planet busting as the story progresses. If you’ve watched shonen anime, you’ve likely seen it. Characters will go through power up after power up whenever the plot requires it. Instead of introducing a more compelling villain, they introduce a more powerful villain. The new villain often utterly decimates everyone with ease, meaning the heroes must unlock a new level of power, only for the cycle to repeat in the next arch. Then you have to wonder how the hell the ‘next generation’ of characters is meant to scale with that godly power after the first series ended. Only for the writers to instead walk back the power of their older characters so as not to run into conflict with the new characters. The whole ‘Why doesn’t Adult Naruto just beat them up?’ scenario.
I find a good analogy is this: In fighting there is a concept of 'range' and 'reach' in striking. Those who have lengthy arms tend to have an advantage over fighters who do not. Many people will attribute reach advantage as something which leaves a fighter predisposed to winning. To an extent this is true, but not always. In a typical battle shounen, the main protagonist and all their opponents would focus solely on who can get the longest reach. As the series progresses, pretty soon every character has the stretchiest arms imaginable and are now hitting each other with massive orangatan arms that span entire oceans. It is because battle shounens often get tunnel vision during their power scaling, and instead of introducing new elements or strategy (ie horizontal power scaling) they opt to simply stack onto existing power (ie vertical power scaling). For the purposes of the metaphor, what I aim to do with my power system is to introduce a 'Mike Tyson'. Basically, in a world of tall long reaching heavyweights we have a (relatively) small short armed heavyweight who knows how to close the distance and counter the reach advantage of other fighters. A good fighter knows how to put their opponents in unfamiliar territory and shut down their advantages. In a game of long arms, the longest arm wins until those with shorter arms learn to use their own inherent advantages. The powers in my world aren't about what's 'best' or 'unbeatable' it's about finding one's own unique strength and fighting style, and controlling the 'rules' of the fight. If the rules say long arms win in boxing, Mike Tyson says I'm gonna get so close that your long arms are actually a disadvantage now.
Good writing and compelling combat dies when we begin to argue whether or not a certain character can beat Goku. It pressures writers to one-up each other, and is utterly eyerolling when I see it. Powerscaling communities will take a single feat to show that their favorite character can move at several times the speed of light, only for the writer to contradict their calculations by establishing another character is able to move at the speed of light and is canonically faster than the character they calculated for. It’s boring, annoying, and generally a useless discussion within communities (Even if it is admittedly fun sometimes), and I am conscious of it as a writer. That’s why I want my power system to ground characters within reality and move such a discussion away from ‘who can blow up the most planets’ to ‘who is the better fighter?’
With Ux, I wanted to invent a power system where gaining raw power has diminishing returns. Ux is not how much you can blow up with it, it’s how much you can do with it. And Ux is not power which only comes once every thousand years, or is only extremely potent in someone because they share a bloodline, or better for some people because they're special. Ux rewards understanding, skill, and technique. What makes us special is how well we can bring out our unique talents, and so I want my power system to reflect that.
There is no talent or genetics or bloodlines for Ux. Soul marking can boost its power and make things easier, but you cannot use that power if you do not have an understanding of yourself and the world around you. Our main characters will become champions and legends in their own right, but that does not mean future generations will never get to their level or that previous generations haven’t already. I envision that there are a great deal of stories in Itaro, and none of them are greater or lesser than the other. They are all equally important and valuable to me, and they always will be. There will never be a true number one in my world. Styles make fights and just because someone can beat the 'number 1 guy' it does not mean they can beat the 'number 5 guy'. Planet busters and universe destroying threats may still exist, but my characters do not need to become planet busters to beat planet busters. They simply need to be good fighters who win with their wits, experience, technique, and tactics.
So in essence, you could say I think a lot about this, and I want to prevent the flanderization of my power levels. There’s a lot to think about when it comes to depicting the feats of my characters. At the present moment, I think the power scaling is okay but I want to draw things back just a little bit for the rewrite.
* Ux techniques are too easy to learn?
I'm kinda caught between on this one and here's why:
In previous versions of the story, Ux was a hidden power that manifested naturally among all xiozians when they cast their magic. It was more or less the same concept as it is now, but with a few key differences. Kaara and the other Tibur children were unable to use it in previous drafts of this story. Additionally, Amaro and his siblings could partially use Ux, but did not understand it even when they were in the Siren Ceremony. Dreiki was the only one who had learned how to wield Ux in previous versions of the story and that was only because Savekio trained him to do so. During this draft of the book, I wanted to experiment with what it would be like for the other characters to learn about it earlier, and I think it might be a good idea to have Ux be something which pretty much everyone learns at some point or another. I feel with the Ux scrolls, while they do present a challenge towards learning the techniques, it also removes some of the interesting ‘training’ aspects of Ux. I alluded to the fact that the scrolls only teach the technique, but it must still be practiced to be mastered. However, the Straffaka Parry is a good example of a technique which is kind of just learned in the story and rarely do the characters screw up or have trouble using it. This goes along with power scaling getting out of control too quickly. And yet I am once again going back and forth on it. Knowing how to do the Straffaka parry and actually pulling it off are two different things. I like to think of it as a counter in smash bros. It leaves you open, and you have to predict your opponent to land it, but when someone can land it, that’s a show of skill and reflexes and it’s hype. Writing is not a video game, though, and so I can just say someone lands the parry whenever they need to and it’s not as hype because we know as readers its not truly a show of skill and reaction by the character, but an action written by the author.
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How to fix: I think forming that illusion, building tension, and having characters miss at poor moments which force me as a writer to think of something better is how I would fix this issue. I think failure, consequence, and limitation are also important tools for establishing that Ux is not an easy thing to master even if it might be an easy thing to learn. If you walk into a boxing gym, you can generally look pretty good after about five lessons. However, it will take a lifetime to truly master the art of boxing. That’s true for any martial art, and that’s sort of how I want it to be for Ux. Techniques which combo together and are used for certain scenarios. I want the characters to be constantly reading one another, having a battle of the minds, feinting and jabbing their techniques. Testing their opponents and setting traps while they fight. If an opponent knows what a straffaka parry is, for example, they can bait it out with a feint and deal more damage on the punish. And if their opponent knows they know, then the opponent can fake the straffaka parry and land it after predicting the feint. Stuff like that. These techniques can be easy to pick up in concept, but difficult to pull out in a fight. Characters will forget techniques, they will rely on what is comfortable. That’s the chaos of a fight I want to write in my stories. That is what is compelling about a fight to me. The way things slow down and how there is this wordless conversation between opponents. How two fighters will ‘talk’ to each other in a way when fighting. I think it’s something most writers can’t capture unless they’ve competed in martial arts like I have.
So basically, on one end, I like the idea of Ux being a secret technique that only the rich and powerful have access to, but the few rebels are able to get their hands on the knowledge and master it. However, I also like the concept of a power system which is easy for xiozians to learn, but impossible to master. I think a good union of this would be that Ux is more well known, but the techniques and theories behind it are more safely guarded by the upper class of Itaro. Everyone uses it to some degree or another, but it takes training and education to truly bring it out.
* Difference between ‘Awakened’, ‘Partially Awakened’, and ‘Unawakened’ Ux is convoluted and hard to grasp: I find myself giving a lot of exposition about Ux, not only because it is important information, but also because I myself as a writer am attempting to understand and create the differences. In future versions, I think I will make these differences more pronounced and easier to understand. Awakened = full control. Partial Awakened = a little control, but mostly passive benefits. Unawakened = Only protects you from your own magic and grants magical resistance/healing factor.
I might just scrap the difference between the three altogether. Or invent a new system to show a character's 'level' with Ux. Might reference martial arts belts, or perhaps differentiate the different stages of Ux so that things are more clear and easier to understand.
* The Gray Order and how it is revealed: I’m not sure if I like Shiira being a part of the order, or how this order is revealed. It just adds yet another layer of complexity for the audience which is unnecessary for the present moment. While I always intended it to exist, I ended up introducing it without having a solid enough grasp on what it is. For future versions of the story, I intend to expand on what The Gray Order actually is, how it works, who’s in it, and why they exist. Writing this rough draft made me realize how little I’ve actually worked out about it.
* Too much exposition: I fell into a lot of periods of expositional dialogue because I had certain concepts floating around in my head and I wanted to get them written out. I feel a lot of this information is best left for future parts of the story. A lot of the expositional dialogue is also me trying to explain my own story to myself and untangle all of the stuff it’s been wrapped up in. I find much of it is justifying why it exists and why it’s relevant now rather than being introduced and immediately understood because it makes sense in the moment. Instead, I should just move the plot forward, do a time skip, and progress the story. Certain reveals can be saved for later. I may even change a few of them. And yet this is also something I go back and forth on. Either way, I think there are more concise and effective methods of relaying a lot of information which is dumped in ladder half of the book.
* Nobility is all one note: Too many nobles are high and mighty pompous asshole bullies. I think adding more characters who care about honor, justice, and all the liberal platitudes is useful. People who are good by nature, but who still benefit from the suffering of others whether they intend to or not. More good aligned nobility. More compelling noble characters. Perhaps a couple more chill nobles here and there. Spoiled brats have their place, but some should truly be noble. Especially some of the adults. I think having at least one or two kind and caring noble adults would really help the story. After all, my power system rewards people for being kind, compassionate, and friendly. It's only natural that at least some powerful nobles would be wise and humble too.
* Kaara’s Curse does not cause enough conflict: The characters around Kaara are too good and a little too mature. They are kids, and sometimes kids are irrational. In the current story, I feel they responded too well to the curse and its implications. Perhaps they would come to the same conclusion in future versions of the story, but it should be after some conflcit.
In the future, I think it would be good to have her not tell anyone about it and keep it a secret for as long as possible, pushing friends away (Or at least just keeping them at arm’s length) and generally not wanting to hurt them with the truth. Right until she meets someone she can truly confide in (Such as a certain Bat drake or Wulviir who can't talk). I meant for Ragna to be a bigger part of Kaara's story, but it didn't work out that way. I'll have to look at what to do with Ragna or if I want to even involve them in the plot at all during this part of the story. Not to mention, Malaki being attracted to her has not really been all that bad even during the Siren Ceremony. Perhaps in the events to follow it will become more of a problem, but I feel I could make this into a greater conflict during rewrites. Such as a Malaki storming the camp to try and get to her, or other tribesmen seeing her as a cursed child who only exists because of the Chief’s protection. Or perhaps even a Malaki showing up in Yvian when she is trying to rescue Dreiki from the Poachers.
* Dreiki’s promise to his mother is not difficult to keep: It’s also sort of kept and resolved really early on. It’s not maintained as a driving motivation for Dreiki. And then I go back and forth because Dreiki is very often brushing with death. I am also thinking of a spin off story for Dreiki’s mother. Perhaps a short story of how she met his father, or how she became a venator knight. Or even a prequel story of how she protected Dreiki in Lithiria as a single mother for the last ten years. Either way, I wanna do more with Zesa Iriik than I have, and I want her to be a greater part of the story than she was in this version. Perhaps she is one of the Gray cloaks in the Siren Ceremony? Something to think about, I suppose.
* The weight of Amaro’s actions do not have enough effect on him and his family:
War is meant to come with weakness. Having his manner attacked might be good. Assassination attempts, coups in the city, rioting, things like that might be more compelling story-wise. Perhaps an arch where Amaro is trapped in his home with an assassin while his parents are away. Or perhaps vagabonds on the road who stop their carriage.
I also haven’t fully worked out why weakness means war. I mean, yeah, weak offspring = weak house = easy to go to war with and conquer. However, I think it would be more compelling if I developed noble politics more so that the humiliation Amaro presents to his family name is more understandable. It does not just need to be war, it could also be getting less resources for the people they govern, or being unable to form alliances with other noble clans.
After all, if noble houses can be brought together through marriage, then what noble house would want to marry their child off to some bratty rebel like Amaro? And what does it say about the Grand Duke's ability to manage soldiers if he cannot even manage his own rebellious son?
Stuff like that I think would make Amaro’s conflict more compelling and interesting to read about. Perhaps even a few duels or other situations where Amaro intentionally loses against the heirs of other noble houses. Garnering him a bad reputation as an easy target. Something which comes back to bite him when he gets to the Tibur camp and has to fend for himself. I also think Amaro should have more outside-world experience before the story. He should have a history of being taken on vacations with his siblings. His family should let him out of the walls before he can open the doors on his own, so he gets to see the world, but only the nice parts that aristocrats feel safe in. I envision he is still pretty isolated from the darkness of the world with a small militia of soldiers always guarding him when he goes out. Opening the doors of his estate should represent that he is able to be on his own without a guardian (Although he likely still has retainers watching from afar). Even if an assassin comes, or he gets in trouble, opening the door means he’s strong enough to survive it without help. Or that he is now strong enough to undergo the Siren Ceremony.
* The ‘Poacher’ Storyline is pushed aside
In future versions of the story, I think it would be a lot cooler if the Poacher storyline followed our characters into the Tibur camp. For example, what if some of the Poachers were selling children as slaves or servants in the markets for nobility? What if Amaro, Dreiki, or Kaara overhear the noble adults speaking of events that happened in Kul Creek? Perhaps there is an antagonist among the nobility during the Siren Ceremony? What if Rixam finds his sister in the camp and he leaves the group after the ceremony so he can protect her?
I think it would be more compelling if the Poacher Storyline intertwined with everything else, and so I am going to be brainstorming ideas for that.
Anyways, I likely have a few more critiques of the story I would make as a while, but I do not want to make it too long. Instead, I would like you guys to give me some critiques of your own! Please do not let your voice go unheard. Your feedback is the most important to me because you have all read through the entirety of my story, and you know this story better than anyone else. I need outside opinions on these things. Perhaps there are moments in the story I have not thought about, or perhaps some of my own critiques are going too far in trying to fix what isn’t broken. Regardless, let your voice be heard here. I want to open up the floor to you guys and get ideas for what to work on. Ignore grammar, ignore spelling, that will be fixed. Tell me your impressions of the story, what you’re excited for, and what could be done better.
Thanks for reading!