User blog comment:EmBELLEm/After the Fall Preview info/@comment-35434444-20190622130131

Velvet: "I hate sand. It's coarse and rough. And it gets everywhere."

Some of the choices are odd, like how the narration reminds you what a semblance is, which implies that they had this in mind as something that might be someone's first experience of the franchise. That's fine, but I think are more comprehensive summary would be in order but there isn't one. So as it is, it's just a weird break in the flow of the text.

Velvet's interior monologue implies that she's grateful to Yatsuhashi for helping her, but when she atually speaks to him she complains at him for stealing her kill without irony or any hint of relief. Huh?

Some of the descriptions are off like, "His green robe was soaked dark, almost black," when they could have just used, "His robe was soaked black." Or having, "The liquid was already evaporating in the hot afternoon sun, but the stench remained" when they could have used, "The liquid was already evaproting, but nothing could get rid of the stench." The former is just passive, while the latter implies that the stench is a constant source of irritation that Velvet is actively trying to put out of her mind.

I know these things sound like the nitist nitpicks you've ever seen in your life, but trust me, when you have 80,000 words of it, choices like these that facilitie lucidity, depth, and cohesion, add up fast. Not having such considerations been made when you read as much as I do quickly drives you insane. It's like the author keeps stopping mid clause to fiddle with a fidgit spinner and you just want to slap it out of his hand and tell him to stop screwing around.

It's not bad. I don't snap it shut in disgust like I do with most fanfics, but the form isn't that great. I could talk about the actual content as well, but I'll wait until it's out before I say anything conclusive. All I'll say for now is that it feels authentic, true to what we already now about the characters, and succeeds in carrying my interest.