Steward McOy / Comments

Steward McOy

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Hobbyist writer, attempting to improve. Criticism welcome.

registered at: Jun 26, 2021

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Aug 30, 2023

To:Pope Evaristus

To complicate matters, some series pronounce the X as "cross", so I'm going to assume you pronounce it as "ex".

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:45

Aug 30, 2023

*Way* far out, man.

What a bunch of lovable dummies.

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:48

Aug 30, 2023

To:Pope Evaristus

I saw the "You're already dead" reference, and clumsily tried to smash it together with the title of the anime, "Humanity Has Declined".

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:44

Aug 30, 2023

Ha, that's certainly cute, posting this chapter on the evening of August 30th.

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:47

Aug 30, 2023

Did he literally just touch grass for the first time at age 97?

Serious point I forgot to make earlier: I think it's a great detail that, in his zeal to both protect the past and make the province safe from his boogeyman land mines, Eguchi ended up making an entire species of bird go extinct, destroying a bit of that past. One of those birds is even carved into a Nobuhide statue. It *is* the past. Eguchi's actions were always self-defeating.

Less serious point: Because of the giant chalice, I couldn't help but imagine Shun as Kiritsugu, Egushi as Saber, and the chalice as the Holy Grail at the end of Fate/Zero.

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:46

Aug 30, 2023

"That progress is good. That newness is inherently better. That the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

And there's the title drop. Is it appropriate to ask how the X is pronounced? Or is it not pronounced at all, since it's written?

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:45

Aug 30, 2023

Omae wa mou suitai shimashita.

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:44

Aug 29, 2023

To:Steward McOy

I'm making all the name typos tonight. I meant Karen.

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:43

Aug 29, 2023

To:Pope Evaristus

Glad to hear you're going to make it. I always get nervous for people this close to the end of the contest, though I guess I finished about this time last year too. I just don't want anyone to run out of steam or get disqualified at the very end over a technicality like a slightly missed deadline or being slightly over the word count.

And I feel you about the similarly-named characters. I really tried my best to avoid that in Meipouchou, because I was worried about people not remembering which characters are which. I even tried to ease readers into getting used to Japanese names by picking names that are Japanese but also appear in Western languages: Aina, Karin, Naomi, Mari. As much as possible, I wanted different first letters for the names, and when that wasn't possible, I tried to make sure characters with the same first letter were different genders, and/or one name was short while the other was long. It got a bit harder in the second book, so, no spoilers, but there were a couple new characters I introduced with similar-ish names to characters that had been gone from the story for a while.

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:43

Aug 29, 2023

To:Steward McOy

*Suga

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:43

Aug 29, 2023

In retrospect, I should have seen that coming, but it got me completely by surprise.

What a brutal chapter though. No one deserved that. I want to say that Shun should have tried to contact Soga earlier, but I dunno, I've lost touch with everyone from my high school days. Not saying that's a good thing either, but I can understand how it happens.

One typo noticed: "ends things with you"

Oh, and by the way, just in case you haven't checked recently, you're 13,076 words away from the word limit. At your average chapter length, that's just about 9 chapters left. I suspect you're fine, since we're almost exactly 2 days away from the deadline as I type this, and doing more than 9 chapters in that time would be quite the feat, but just something to keep in mind.

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:43

Aug 29, 2023

(In case it wasn't obvious. The Carl Sagan thing was some good-natured sarcasm.)

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:42

Aug 29, 2023

Far out, man. Tubular. That's some real Carl Saganesque philosophy, my dude.

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:42

Aug 29, 2023

One thing I struggled with in this contest, and I feel it a bit here too, is the exclusive POV from a single character in a romance. What we see of Shizuko is mostly her actions. She doesn't talk much (though she did write that passage), and that can make it difficult to discern her motives.

It's not that Shun's completely obvious about his, even to himself. He mentioned that he wasn't quite sure at what point he fell in love, but it's not quite clear what about Shun that Shizuko fell for. I'm guessing it was the way he supported her, especially in the race with Ume, but my headcanon wants to think it was the shared custody jokes.

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:41

Aug 29, 2023

Are *you* real?

"Loose Lips Sink Ships" seemed like an odd phrase for Shun to use here, given its origin. But a quick internet search seemed to indicate that the Japanese equivalent is 口は災いのもと, which Google Translate tells me means, "the mouth is the source of calamity". So if you think of it as Shun using this idiom, and "loose lips sink ships" is the closest English equivalent, it works.

Vibrancy x Vibrancy

Chapter:40

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