Paideia

For some reason, I keep getting notifications of reviews to stories I follow.. Even though I have deselected those from the settings. There doesn't seem to be any other settings that could interfere with it. It's not solely from stories by authors I'm also following or from stories I followed before the last big site update.. Does anyone have an explanation, a fix or a work-around?

Oh, this was exactly what I needed today! I'm going crazy with boredom in lockdown. I'm loving Andiya's rant. Funny and poignant at the same time. I'm also very intrigued by Kiyan. I had thought him to be a one-dimensional character but of course I should have known better.. Keep up the good work.

Does a rough map of the world exist..? I'm having a little trouble discerning how the different kingdoms and territories are related to each other.

I don't think Jezebel is in the Order.. She's part of the sisterhood but that seems to me to be a separate organization.

To go back a bit to the original question, I do have a few things, that I will occasionally or even frequently skip over when reading. However, the things that make me stop reading a stor entirely are often very different. Sections with bad grammar or spelling, for instance, wouldn't be something I would skip but may make me stop reading altogether.. For this post, I'll stick to the first category - parts of the text, that I will skip or skim over: Physical descriptions of the characters with the sole purpose of telling us how hot they are My standards of beauty could be wildly different from the author's and in any case I'm perfectly able to imagine hot guys myself.. It mostly serves no purpose in the actual story. If it does, let it be communicated by how other people react to that person. Descriptions of songs or even (ugh!) song lyrics. Nothing pulls me out of a story quicker than an author telling me that this song really sums up that character, scene, or mood. I understand that to the author there might be an extreme and appropriate association with a piece of music (I have that for many things myself) but it really doesn't communicate well. Music is an extremely subjective thing. Don't use this as a shorthand for emotional impact. Earn my tears.. Trigger warnings They frame the reading in an way that is often not helpful. If I see a mention of non-consensual sex in the first paragraph, my reading of that chapter is gonna be focused on this and all the work the author did on the other parts of that chapter could be wasted.. I realize that a lot of people find them very useful but I always avoid them. Whether they are a good thing or not in general is a much longer and much more complicated discussion. Let's argue about that another day.. 😉 Sex scenes Not all of them but frequently they are too long or too awkward or too poorly written. These criticisms are ones that I frequently have in well-reviewed bestseller printed books as well. As an example I love Pillars of the Earth but it has two of the worst sex scenes ever put to paper that feel SO out of character with the rest of the novel. It's simply really, really difficult to write sexy well. Smut is easy. A cursory examination of Nifty.org should prove that beyond any doubt, but writing something to be sexy and moving and still feel like an organic part of a novel is incredibly hard. To be honest, I have much the same problem with film and television. So many bad sex scenes.. Even without the saxophone music.. Author messages about their backgrounds for writing or how sorry they are about the delays I'm sorry. I'm going to seem like such an asshole here, but I really don't want that in the story proper. If I'm truly invested in the story or find it sufficiently good I may seek it out, but even then I would prefer it contained to the comment section or the forums. And this goes both ways actually. If an author's real life caused certain delays in the publishing of an online romance novel, that's just the way it is.. They don't owe me anything. I have a right to feel frustrated that I won't get the resolution to a story, but I don't get to demand anything from the author.. All right. That should be more than enough to generate a reaction. 😉 These are my personal skips. I do not speak for the larger audience on GA in any way. Please don't feel that you have to appease me in your writing. Write for yourselves first, as someone else pointed out earlier in this thread.

Your stories never disappoint. They are among the very best on GA. Having just finished reading Mo Dao Zu Shi for the first time (and loved it) there are actually some cultural references that I'm starting to recognize.. I'm afraid I'm developing quite the addiction to xianxia (or would your stories be considered wuxia instead?). Don't let that stop you from writing more modern stories too, though.. 😉 I look forward to the next chapter of this story..

For the longest time I wasn’t really sold on this story.. It just never really caught me. But this chapter changed that. Suddenly all the flashbacks gelled into a whole and really worked to bring Kevin’s development home to me. I’m not naive enough to think is the last word in that development but this chapter finally made me fully invested in it. Maybe the problem has been that Becker’s experience is so much more similar to my own.. Good literature is characterized by its ability to make us see the world from different perspectives than our own. In his you have succeeded.

Nice story so far. It has elements of cliché but the strong writing fortunately elevates it beyond that. It will be interesting to see how you handle the drama that is bound to come their way in the next chapters. I must admit I really like to read a few more stories set outside the US (by writers who can actually do it credibly). It's so refreshing. The asian stories by Iilansui are other favourites of mine in this regard. I do however have to vehemently disagree with you in one point: the best make-out music ever has to be Sort Sol, Let Your Fingers Do the Walking

Another wonderfully well-written chapter. I love the constant distractions Elijah experiences in the confrontation with Sophie and especially how it reveals his conflicted emotions and how little he's realized them. Keep up the good work.

Wow, I'm really impressed by this story. It's one of the best I've read on GA for a while. Your characters are well-written and real, even though we see them through Elijah's somewhat harsh eyes. Your dialogue is refreshingly natural and the pacing in your narrative works really well. Your descriptions of the psychological environment and reactions in the story is especially good. You resist the temptation to be too obvious or cliché and write with an affinity and sensitivity that indicates either personal experience or excellent research. I'm impressed by your style. I like the sensitive, at times even florid prose you use and even more I like how wonderfully you control it with Elijah's more stark or laconic observations. The constant swing between the idyllic and the uncanny (for lack of a better term) has become to me an integral part of Elijah's personality. There are some absolutely wonderful turns of phrase, especially in his cynical deconstructions of the people and social connections around him. The section about Mr. Alders in chapter 8 is so far a personal favourite. One should always temper one's praise with something more critical and if I had to point out some (albeit very minor) flaws, I would advise you to be more sparing with your adjectives. If you use them too much they tend to lose significance. At least be very aware of how you apply them and contrast it with Elijah's acerbic and succinct wit (as you have so far succeeded in doing). I read everything so far in one sitting and can't wait to read more.