NEO HYPER Book Club #5 (30th July - When I Say)

[PepsiYuuka]

Alrighty. I suppose I'll kick this thread off, then. Done as a stream of consciousness like usual under the cut. Divided by post, unless there was a post in which I had nothing to say (like a Storyteller post). Less payoff per post than Isabelle's thread last time but it's a long ass thread and also 4 AM. Meta at the end.

Oh, and since both of these two are big name longtime members of the site, I'm not really... Sugarcoating anything? Just saying it as it is.

[spoiler]

Trixie could barely contain her rage as she proceeded past heavily armed prison units. They had stripped her of rank and dishonorably discharged her from service. What the fuck had Nova been doing?

Minor nitpick- this should be a new paragraph, as the story has changed perspective.

Couple more minor grammar nitpicks with the first post. Confusion between plurals and possessives, ("fucks sake," "Ensign's") a few missing commas, I think since Nova is a woman she should be referred to as "blonde" rather than "blond."

Would've sorta liked to hear what King Bradley thought about that kiss, but it isn't important.

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I... Wouldn't really use bewildered to describe her there, but that's just my opinion.

Wait, the blade vanished when she touched it, then a few paragraphs later she has it again to extract it?

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I dunno if it's because she's been around a long time, but the way Trixie speaks is strangely... Meta. Like, calling her place a "base" and referring to the power specifically by the name "Foresight" and not by its effects. I'm not totally up to date on her character, but it did strike me as a bit strange.

The big chunk of fight content after Trixie uses the Combat Exoskeleton could and probably should be split into separate paragraphs.

Trixie sure does laugh a lot.

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Maybe I'm a spoiled easy reading brat, but the first paragraph here is written in a way that makes it very hard for me to parse. It feels like I'm missing something every time I read through it.

Trixie sure does make out with her GF a lot.

It's difficult for me to tell what in this post is flashback and what is going on currently. I'd recommend breaking it up better, maybe?

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While the monarch himself—aptly and lazily dubbed ‘The Emperor’—seemed mostly out of the public eye, the state itself was everywhere.

This feels repetitive even though it isn't. I'd recommend picking one out of "himself" or "itself" and nixing the other.

Overall I like this post, though.

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Have I mentioned I really like the way you write Seventeen's dialogue? I do.

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Some weird word choice here, but it's not bad or incorrect, just not what I would personally use. To each their own.

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Seventeen is still a real smartass.

Wish I knew what that key object was, but I'll just assume I'll figure it out later.

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Good choice to bring in the action around here, because right around this post is when I'm starting to wonder why this is happening in the same thread as Trixie's posts.

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You do like describing him as a machine-hybrid, and I get that. I'm not sure it's the term for me, though.

Damn it, I would have liked to see that pun go through.

At first I was assuming Orb referred to his Ki Barrier/Annoying Green Android Shield. Man I can sure read can't I.

With a guttural shriek, the man fell backwards, his gun discharging up into the air as he reflexively squeezed on the trigger of his gun with his last vestiges of life.

Another sentence that's a bit repetitive. I'd take out the second "of his gun" after trigger.

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Beginning to wonder again why this is on the same thread as Trixie's stuff, beyond it being the same quest.

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There's that key thing. Alrighty.

Overall the fight was pretty good.

That pun was not.

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Oh, there she is.

Trixie unclasped her helmet with a sharp hiss escaping from the re-breather unit. Pulling the helmet from her head she let her hair fall into her vision, her eyes darting to Nova to see the blond staring down at her blood soaked hands through her helmet.

That's a lot of helmet- three times in two sentences. You may want to specify the owner of one of the two helmets in the second sentence, like "her own helmet" or such to make it more clear.

She began to feel relieved until both repuslor engines on their transport exploded simultaneously throwing Terra from the ship as it came crashing down into some alleyway in Tier 3.

Not usually specific with my comma advice, but this sentence definitely needs one between "simultaneously" and "throwing". The first bit about her being relieved could also stand to be separated off with a semicolon or somesuch in my opinion, but it's fine.

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“I jammed the little think into her and she went blam!”

This is thus far the only typo or (major) grammar misstep I've seen from your posts. Pretty nice.

“Do you salt the earth afterwards?” Seventeen laughed.

The trooper tilted his helmet. “Do you suspect fel magicks? Should I call the arcanists?”

Fucking incredible.

That may be the best thing I ever heard get said.

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Couple grammar missteps in the first section, nothing major.

Oh hey, finally Seventeen is here. Or, uh, mentioned.

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God Seventeen really acts his number. As his age.

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Well that Jaxx bit is sudden.

The dialogue in this post could REALLY use something to help distinguish the characters. I can hardly tell who's saying what, beyond my assumption anything unusually sassy must be Seventeen.

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Was there some version of him who rode horses and shot magic missiles from his hands as he sought to bring outlaw justice to some fanciful hinterland.

As usual to find flaw in Seventeen's post I just gotta point out minor typos, like that this should be a question mark.

Relatable, Seventeen.

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Nova crossed her arms at the sight of Trixie hobbling towards the drug dispensary on the other end of the hall. Her stitches had torn and she was trailing droplets of blood along the linoleum floor. 
 
Nova herself still had bandages covering her body including the one over her left eye, but she was well enough to pursue the redhead.

Unlike prior advice, this should probably be merged into one paragraph. The second sentence should also clarify it's talking about Trixie being stitched up.

Trixie’s hair began to lengthen, her body becoming perkier, the curves various curves that she was gifted with becoming more refined.

I'm not sure if the repetition of curves here is a typo or intentional. Typo?

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Ooh. Mystique. She is in some way related to the one Seventeen knows.

Permanent scorch marks and scoring on the toughened durasteel littered the surface of the faded surface.

Again, this is repetitive- I'm only hard on this because I was very bad about repeating the same words over and over myself not too long ago. Pick another word for one of these or remove the first "the surface of."

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Another linger pause filled with static.

Lingering?

The dialogue for this secondary(?) seems a bit flat compared to your usual. It's passable, though, just felt it was a bit out of place.

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Whatever. He's dead anyway.

That Jaxx fight ended... Quickly. I guess it makes sense and it wouldn't be very fun to totally drag everything out for Seventeen, but I might have liked to see more.

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A swift chop to the next staggered his first assailant,

I presume that was supposed to be neck.

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The Darksaber ignited.

It’s shrill unique sound clashing around the room.

I'm pretty sure these could be one sentence as opposed to two, let alone two paragraphs.

And that's a pretty gruesome way to end. But leave it to the one who escaped the Underverse to do it.[/spoiler]

Overall, the whole thing was pretty good in quality, definitely above the site average, though not completely perfect. Obviously, as nothing is. Though I may have seemed critical, trust me, it's because I was looking to be. I'm sure the both of you know that overall the story was very good, and a bunch of these comments were more nitpicks than anything seriously detracting from the story.

I will say though, this thread felt like it kind of went... all over the place. Maybe it's just me, but it felt as though it should have been subdivided between the first part (prior to the two being put together in one squad) and the second part. I get it, word limits, gotta fill 'em, but it's... starkly different. The two aren't even interacting for nearly a full page of thread. I thought maybe they would have when Trixie crashed in T3, but they didn't. Missed opportunity, in my books.

Trixie's writing is certainly a bit less polished than Seventeen's in general. Not that this is a bad thing, and it's still very, very good as a whole. Sentence flow and such have a bit of improvement to be managed yet, and pacing and clarity could be improved to a slightly higher degree. But it's certainly still very good. Some parts of this thread also seemed a bit rushed, and I'm not entirely sure why. Overall, I'd nominate her for a Great bonus for this thread. My word counter says she has 9,970 words, 56,778 characters so I think she qualifies.

And I guess it's no secret that I really like Android Seventeen's sense of humor. It's written to be a lot more understandable from the view of an outsider than Trixie's more deep, convoluted plot, which may also be something of a factor. His portion of the plot carrying also seemed much more... linear and logical than Trixie's, even if it was a bit absurdist as according to the whims of the Omniverse. There are a few minor missteps, mostly just things that could be explained by rushing posts, but overall they really don't detract anything from the whole. I'd nominate him for Exemplary, as overall I felt he brought a lot of fun to this otherwise very downer table. The word counter tells me he contributed a grand total of 10,355 words, 58,851 characters to the thread, so he also qualifies as far as I'm aware.