Date: August 16 2012 12:50 AM Title: From Time Immemorial
Hello, Emma. I saw that this story hadn’t received any reviews yet, which seemed like a real shame to me, since I just finished reading your newest tale and enjoyed it a great deal, as is the case with many of your other works. So, I thought it only right to drop in with a few of my thoughts.
THE COMPLIMENTS: A common theme I always admire in your work is your dedication to establishing a psychological base for your characters: where they’re coming from, where they’re going, their motivations, and their emotions. Many other stories skim over this crucial aspect in favor of the “action” scenes, neglecting the fact that without this small yet critical addition, we have no real connection to the characters and thusly can’t really appreciate the fetish aspects nearly as much. Even in your opening scene of Chapter 2, where the actual narrative begins, you immediately give a clear picture of the insane yet founded goddess complex of Lillian as well providing a brief yet all-important look at her twisted mentality. In contrast, you establish the place of all humans to the Five, and in particular Lillian in this scene, as insects to be crushed when they don’t uphold their end of the deal of existence. It works great and continues throughout the whole read. It may seem like a small thing, but it speaks volumes to your ability as a fetish writer, and as a writer in general.
Your fantasy setting is another item I must take a moment to praise. Comparatively speaking, few writers venture into that territory, and even fewer are particularly talented at it; you could probably count them on one hand. You would probably be among those counted on said hand. While it may sound oddly specific and more offbeat, one of my favorite subgenres in the giantess world is the fantasy story based on a pre-existing story or mythology. Your opening chapter’s brief and bite-sized history crash course was appreciated and made me certain I wanted to see where you took the story given your chosen premise. As I suspected based on your successful other stories, you did a great job expanding from the starting point of the myth, keeping the flavorful tone of the fantasy setting while having the fetish material in ample supply as well, skillfully weaved in between each other. Well done.
Your descriptions are fantastic. Even when allowing the reader to visualize the simplest of actions taking no more than an instant, such as the newly shrunken Ashley pushing up against the bottom of her former fellow goddess’s foot, you use tangible adjectives and brief yet effective descriptors that work very effectively. The reader is delivered the visual cues in a compact sentence structure, is instantly able to physically feel and see the sights themselves, then is immediately taken to the next idea, their imagination doing the rest of the work for them in terms of transportation into the narrative’s flow. It’s a simple yet highly successful formula you’ve developed, and I urge you to continue its use.
I’m a fan of your dialogue. Your conversations between characters are real-sounding, engaging, and even do a good job of contributing to the fetish aspect of the story without having to frequently break in between quotes for a description-heavy moment just to meet the imaginary quota. They’re fun to read and easy to imagine being spoken by the characters.
THE CRITIQUES: As much as I enjoy your narrative structure, as well as the brisk clip your story moves along at, I would’ve appreciated just the tiniest of added development times for the conflict between Ashley and Lillian prior to the former’s shrinking, if only to more heavily establish the rivalry and Ashley’s deserved fate. In the end, it’s a trade-off to read the action faster, but it’s just something I think might’ve been interesting.
This will sound like a nitpick (which it is), but the names of your goddess characters felt a bit out of place in a fantasy story, particularly one centering on a pre-established mythology. I’m not saying you would’ve had to have found versions of the names from the legend, but names more befitting of the setting might’ve gone a ways to drawing the reading more effectively into the setting itself.
Your dialogue, while certainly well-written (as I’ve said), is perhaps a bit out of place, as is the case with the names of the goddesses, in that it often resorts to more modern-sounding phrases and slang usage that doesn’t quite suggest the fantasy setting. While the time period doesn’t particularly matter when dealing with immortal goddesses (although I got the feeling this takes place in the past?), it seemed a bit like the goddesses were, when they used these language conventions, a group of bratty and argumentative twenty-somethings, not creators of the universe. It’s more jarringg because there are indeed points in the story where you connect more with the setting, only to switch the voice to one of a 21st century whiner. This is just a minor gripe, but it was nonetheless noticeable.
OVERALL: One of my favorites of your works, and I’ve read at least half of your repertoire posted here on the site. It’s brief, readable, well-written, bursting with fetish content, and brave enough to delve into the fantasy genre. Kudos for a job well done and I look forward to reading your future works.
Author's Response: Thank you very much for the review. I was hoping to get ANY amount of feedback here, but only minutes after I posted this at least 3 more stories came around and pushed this down the queue of most recent stories :( But I do feel like addressing the critiques randomly. I tend to write the pre-action moments a bit slower than any other, and took roughly a week to write the few pages that came before anything really happened. It definitely could have been fleshed out a little more, and it was likely the amount of real-time spent writing it that led me to believe it was longer than it really was. The story was a commission, so the names of the characters were given to me by that person. I personally agree that the names were a bit too normal, given the setting though. I do very much like writing dialogue, and am still on the elusive search for a story that can be done where communication is only through dialogue. As for dialect, my original plan was to make them seem somewhat timeless, and not bound by the speech of their version of modern times, but that kinda fell off the side somewhere along the line, and just wound up sounding like today. Thanks very much for the compliment on the dialogue though. But thank you very very much for the in depth review. I REALLY appreciate it, and am always happy to receive advice on how to improve.