Slowpoke’s Hot Takery Bakery

Piping hot takes released minimum six months after everything happened

[hottakerybakery]

Finally watched the Fjordster Wedding Live Show and I have something to say:

I searched on Ao3 for all Shadowgast fics published in the month after the show was posted on YouTube: and there were only TWO that used the revelations about the bachelorette party and Essek’s whole *waves hand around in that direction*

I am disaPPOINTED!

[carys-the-ninth]

"The magic system is never fully explained" yeah that's how life works. Imagine having a story set in modern day America and the characters have several pages of exposition on combustion engines and telecommunication networks before we get to the plot

[et-in-arkadia]

i think this is absolutely correct and good writing advice but also victor hugo would like to have a word with you about the parisian sewer system circa 1832

[bendingsignpost]

victor hugo would like to have many words with you about the parisian sewer system circa 1831

[hottakerybakery]

Hot take: if a Masters program is in person, you shouldn't be allowed to have mandatory classes that are online only.

Like why the fuck did I move closer to campus if I'm gonna be sitting in my apartment on a laptop anyway?

[alice-of-hearts92]

@rrlawrentian wrote up a post that included this screenshot and it made me realize something. AOS is absolutely not about revolution.

Throughout the book there is a lot of talk of anger and fire and rebelling going on, but the conclusion isn't lets fight the government. It instead goes "Ok. Let's take our stuff and go to the proper authorities and use the system to change the law like law abiding citizens." Huh? Thats not fucking shit up! Thats just, obeying the law? They decided not to change the code by forcing the government to do so, but instead going through the corrupt system to fix it! (Note: It's been a bit since I read the ending so if I'm missing something pls let me know!).

Thats like if Katniss ended the first Hunger Games book by going up to President Snow and politely asking him to stop the death games please and Snow then goes "You know what? You seem like a nice girl, sure! No more games! The dystopia is over!" Can you imagine how boring that would be for a book? Is that why sequels to AOS were gonna be the same book over and over again because otherwise it would just be five chapters of going to court and getting the law changed???

Hell you can see the "revolution" being tame in that glimpse of the series ending we saw. Rieka goes "guys lookie its the sword!" and everyone is like "oh bitch, you're right! no more code now!". Then its legally fine to commit Zodiac Murder(tm) on the one motherfucker, and bam! Your government now!

Revolutions don't normally follow the law, they break it to achieve their goal(s)! Revolutions that become violent are brutal and complicated and a lot of people, including innocent people, usually die in the process! If a writer is promising a violent revolution, then they better be prepared to take on writing all the brutality and complexity that comes with it.

[lowchaosenthusiast]

It doesn't help that Milo is narratively speaking out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to the legitimacy of Gardian's governmental structures.

To my recollection, neither the narrative or the characters question the validity of the Celestial Determinism™ (which is just a strange thing to back up as a queer AFAB TRANS person). If you are born a Saggitarius, you must be banned to the seas: nobody considers that to be an injustice, it's just how things are. It is presented as a morally neutral policy which the population just complies with. People are apparently okay with just dropping off their children to sight unseen. We are told that the sign-segregated institutional schools are pretty alright, actually.

The characters are not rebelling against a system which forces them into social roles based on something as insignificant as a birth date. They are doing so because the super special magic awesome main character can't love her girlfriend, and isn't that bad?

For a story that is supposed to be an overt criticism of Christianity (and Milo doesn't even really highlight which flavour of it -- doctrinal differences do matter!!!), the text can't help but infer that a top-down imposed authoritarian theocracy is valid because the religion is a matter of fact, not belief. The only thing that is a problem within this authoritarian theocracy is that you have bad actors that may exploit the structure for their own personal gain (ie Blaine and the Scorpio Code).

[hottakerybakery]

It's a very "the system is bad because it makes my main character sad" sort of thing.

and once AGAIN I keep getting slammed in the face with "this isn't a bad thing to say to a younger audience"!

Having a story for middle schoolers that says to neurodivergent kids "Hey, that thing the teacher yells at you for? That's not your fault and it's wrong of them to punish you for something you can't control."

which also says to "normal" kids, "Yeah the teacher is nice to YOU, but how do they treat the 'troublemaker' kids? Are those kids trying to make trouble, or is this something they can't change about themselves?"

This is all fine! This doesn't need to be about systemic injustice or be deeply rooted in political theory: it can just be a fun adventure story.

[alice-of-hearts92]

@rrlawrentian wrote up a post that included this screenshot and it made me realize something. AOS is absolutely not about revolution.

Throughout the book there is a lot of talk of anger and fire and rebelling going on, but the conclusion isn't lets fight the government. It instead goes "Ok. Let's take our stuff and go to the proper authorities and use the system to change the law like law abiding citizens." Huh? Thats not fucking shit up! Thats just, obeying the law? They decided not to change the code by forcing the government to do so, but instead going through the corrupt system to fix it! (Note: It's been a bit since I read the ending so if I'm missing something pls let me know!).

Thats like if Katniss ended the first Hunger Games book by going up to President Snow and politely asking him to stop the death games please and Snow then goes "You know what? You seem like a nice girl, sure! No more games! The dystopia is over!" Can you imagine how boring that would be for a book? Is that why sequels to AOS were gonna be the same book over and over again because otherwise it would just be five chapters of going to court and getting the law changed???

Hell you can see the "revolution" being tame in that glimpse of the series ending we saw. Rieka goes "guys lookie its the sword!" and everyone is like "oh bitch, you're right! no more code now!". Then its legally fine to commit Zodiac Murder(tm) on the one motherfucker, and bam! Your government now!

Revolutions don't normally follow the law, they break it to achieve their goal(s)! Revolutions that become violent are brutal and complicated and a lot of people, including innocent people, usually die in the process! If a writer is promising a violent revolution, then they better be prepared to take on writing all the brutality and complexity that comes with it.

[lowchaosenthusiast]

It doesn't help that Milo is narratively speaking out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to the legitimacy of Gardian's governmental structures.

To my recollection, neither the narrative or the characters question the validity of the Celestial Determinism™ (which is just a strange thing to back up as a queer AFAB TRANS person). If you are born a Saggitarius, you must be banned to the seas: nobody considers that to be an injustice, it's just how things are. It is presented as a morally neutral policy which the population just complies with. People are apparently okay with just dropping off their children to sight unseen. We are told that the sign-segregated institutional schools are pretty alright, actually.

The characters are not rebelling against a system which forces them into social roles based on something as insignificant as a birth date. They are doing so because the super special magic awesome main character can't love her girlfriend, and isn't that bad?

For a story that is supposed to be an overt criticism of Christianity (and Milo doesn't even really highlight which flavour of it -- doctrinal differences do matter!!!), the text can't help but infer that a top-down imposed authoritarian theocracy is valid because the religion is a matter of fact, not belief. The only thing that is a problem within this authoritarian theocracy is that you have bad actors that may exploit the structure for their own personal gain (ie Blaine and the Scorpio Code).

[hottakerybakery]

Hot Take:

Foofy coffee, with the whipped cream, syrups, and soy/oat/almond/whole milk, is fine actually. I would feel much better about only having coffee in the morning instead of breakfast if there was a lot more milk in this.

[hottakerybakery]

Part 3: Attempting Compassion (and where it stops)

When criticizing The Age of Scorpius, while I tend to keep my commentary focused on the writing and not (*waves hand at everything else*), I try to keep these things in mind. [I made this as an anonymous side blog where I could be as unfiltered and mean as possible and I STILL end up putting so much effort into being kind and thinking the best of people. Ugh. I would be a terrible cult leader.]

Milo doesn’t know this stuff about religion. Most people don’t think about it in this way. I do, but that’s because I read Durkheim when I was 18. And the only reason I did that was I went to pretentious hashtag elite college (If you ever hear a college tour guide say the phrase “The Life of the Mind”, run in the opposite direction and only consider returning if they’re paying you).

Milo is 23-24. He was 13-14 when the Angry Orange became president. I was around the same age when Obama became president. Those are very influential years for gaining an understanding of wider society, politics, and world events. This is the earliest memory of politics that most people remember, or at least the earliest age where they consciously realize they have a political opinion. Milo’s entire political life has occurred in a time when political norms have been thrown out the window.

Milo would have graduated high school in 2021. The last year and a half of his education was dramatically interrupted by Covid. This a) impacted what he learned from school and how teachers evaluated him. There are a lot of reports of teachers acknowledging that they just let everyone pass those years. Compassionate, but for older kids that meant passing them out of the educational system entirely; b) this moved Milo’s entire life online. Online in the age of algorithmic feeds and social bubbles. This makes it very easy to fall into echo chambers and circles where any criticism is “drama” and everyone supports you blindly.

“Military brat” = inconsistent teaching, learning, and evaluation. Having to start over every few years. It’s probably easier to keep in touch with your friends nowadays, but that is still via the internet.

And despite keeping all of the above in mind, my compassion is stopped by a brick wall.

How could anyone read this and say it’s okay?

A lot of the criticism of the book are addressing the themes, the concerning implications, the worldbuilding, etc.

That’s fine, but that’s all criticism you can throw at a lot of shitty books. You can throw this criticism at some good books too.

The writing in this book, as in the actual word choices and sentence structures, is nonsensical. It is confounding. And it is utterly unique.

An AI wouldn't have written this: LLMs are trained on word use in context. Milo's word choices indicate that he probably doesn't read a lot because he uses words in contexts they don't belong in. He uses words that make it clear what he means but are just…wrong. Reading the chapter, you can easily tell from the context that when he says “demeanor”, he means “clothes”. But that’s not what “demeanor” means. It’s just not!

This is not the work of someone who speaks English as a second language: the errors that come from that tend to be with tone, idioms, and the differences in the literary conventions. Milo writes like someone told him a dictionary and a thesaurus were basically the same thing, and then that thesaurus was the only book he had access to for twelve years.

There are two facts that just cannot fit together in my brain:

Milo Winter has worked for years to become an author. He desperately wants to be a writer.

Milo Winter has no idea how words work and little interest in using words to communicate.

And these two facts just keep colliding in my brain, refusing to stick together.

[hottakerybakery]

I think I've figured out a *part* of why the Age of Scorpius situation fascinates me. There's a lot going on, but I had a eureka moment just now.

I haven't done a lot of creative writing recently, but I realized that I actually write a lot. Between graduate school, work, applications (I wish all "cover letters" a very "die"), and the fact that I have no shame about double-texting people, I write so much. (Might be weird to consider 'texting my friends' as 'writing', but yesterday I typed ~800 words to explain hockey culture to them.

Gift giving is my love language, and the gift in question is marginally useful knowledge.)

I'm not the best writer in the world (evidence: see posts), but I am deliberate. And I am constantly rereading the sentence I just wrote and, well, editing it.

For example, I just wrote the phrase "...especially when it involves the US military's being deployed." Stared at it, and then went "why tf did I phrase it like that?" and changed it to "especially when it involves the deployment of the US military". That first sentence is so awkwardly worded, I noticed as soon as I reread it. And I immediately fixed it. I still don't think it's very good, but if I come back to it later with fresh eyes, I'll be able to improve on it again.

I'm not even sure this process should be called editing or "editing-as-you-go". It's just, like, double-checking? Is there anything distracting from my point? Am I communicating exactly what I mean? Will the reader be pulled out by having to think "wtf does this even...oh I see now. Why would you say it like that?"

*That's* at least one part of why this grabs me: how does a person write like this? How is it possible to end a paragraph with a phrase and start the next paragraph with the same phrase? How can a person write without reading what they just wrote?

[hottakerybakery]

Back on my Age of Scorpius bullshit again again, [Part 1]

(This section is not as nice as Part 1, to the point that it felt wrong to have them inhabit the same post)

Part 2: "And is the religion that's oppressing us in the room right now?"

I had this whole screed drafted about writing religion from a non-US-Protestant perspective. And then I realized that none of it mattered because Milo didn't even get to the point of making *those* mistakes. The Scorpio Code fails at being an analog to religious oppression because

There is NO RELIGION in Gardian!

Where is it? Where is the religion in this book? Who*/how do they worship? Where do they worship? Is there a church in town? Is the Stellarium some form of theocracy? Or is there a separation of church and state?

*[I know not all religions pray to something or believe in a high power. I've read Durkheim.]

We heard mention of "the Gods", but what kind of gods are they? Even that previous sentence: are they gods or capital-G Gods? Are they physically present in the world? Are they psychically present? Or is this religion by faith alone?

There aren't any mentions of shrines, temples, festivals, or even meetings. People follow the code because the government tells them to, and NOBODY gives any kind of "the gGods want it this way" explanation.

"Blaine has invented the Scorpio Code and is telling everyone it was from the gGods!" And? So what? Why is that a convincing argument? There is no evidence of anyone giving a shit about the gGods.

Without a religion or any sense of religious life, the Scorpio Code cannot be religious oppression. It is oppression via power, yes, but the power of religion works differently than the power of the state, even when they are enforcing the same thing.

It betrays a deeply juvenile view of religion. Why are people religious? "Oh it must be because they are either mindless sheep or dicks." And that's why a governing body took Blaine at his word: he said the phrase "gGod told me so" and everyone blindly accepted that and started enforcing it immediately, and nobody called him crazy.

Even the most basic Christian stories, as in "sanitized down to an kindergarten picture book" level of basic, involve a Chosen of God telling the people something that God told him, and then most of those people don't believe him. Moses and the Pharaoh, Noah and the Ark, I mean for fuck's sake

THERE'S A MEME ABOUT IT.

It's not just that the author doesn't portray any form of religious life in this world, it's that he fundamentally doesn't care to understand why being religious matters to people. And you can't write about religious oppression without trying to understand why people follow religion and what causes people to stop following it.

TL;DR: Gardian can't be religiously oppressive because there is no other mention of religion at all in this book. Also "because God told me so" is not a cheat code to getting religious people to believe bullshit.

Coda:

A lot of the flaws in Milo's worldbuilding do come from him just not having a lot of experience with life. He wants to tear down organized religion because it's oppressive, but he doesn't understand why some people like religion. Honestly (disclaimer: this is kind of mean) this is another sign of Milo's arrogance. He is the smartest person in the room, and people who don't think the exact way he does are either evil or stupid. If you don't like his writing, it's because you're too stupid to understand narrative voice. If you are religious, you're pitiable for believing in a magic guy who lives on a cloud. If you find it confusing that this super oppressive government would prohibit marriage between Unions, but also be pro casual sex: that's a failure of your imagination, not of his understanding of society.

I honestly think the best way for Milo to become a better writer is to, counterintuitively, not write and only read for some time. I particularly suggest reading non-fiction: not Malcolm Gladwell "how to hack your life into six figures" type shit. I mean a history book. Like a biography/memoir, or an account of some period of history (recommendation: "Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland" by David McKittrick). None of us are born with the knowledge we need to understand the world, and a hundred years isn't enough time to learn it all through lived experience. Which is why reading about the world beyond your immediate surroundings is so amazing.

[hottakerybakery]

Hot take: worldbuilding doesn’t have to make sense

A lot of recent AOS criticism is focused on the subpar worldbuilding. And I get it: if this is the part Milo spent 10 years on, how does it make no sense?

I think it’s actually okay if the worldbuilding is shallow. If it falls apart if you dig into it a little. I think that’s fine

IF

…if it’s a middle grade book.

There’s a book series I remember liking in middle school by Patrick Carmen called The Land of Elyon. Fun little magical adventure story. Twelve year-old girl Alexa finds a magical stone that gives her the power to talk to animals, leading her to discover a conspiracy that threatens her home and the walls beyond. And she and her animal friends, along with the ~16 year-old son of her recently deceased mentor, thwart the conspiracy and save the cities!

[after reading the summary to refresh my memory about this book, YIKES. Using convicts to build your infrastructure, not pay them, and return them to prison when they’re done? So slave labor but worse? And we’re not gonna…mention it? At all?

The things we told children during the Bush Administration…]

If you actually examine the Land of Elyon, its worldbuilding is bad, arguably worse than the World of Gardian.

But it works! Carmen just keeps writing about Alexa's adventures in this land that doesn't make economic or socio-political sense, and that's OKAY.

A) He knows his audience (middle grade) isn't going to read that deeply. He can gloss over the "how does this society work" part.

B) He writes well enough to let the reader suspend their disbelief.

That second part is key though: you've got to be able to write coherently.

More under the cut if you're interested in the "bad" world-building of a middle grade book I read literally over 20 years ago.

**

See this map? The entirety of the first book only concerns the 4 cities connected by the walled roads. The walled roads were conceived of and built by Alexa's mentor Thomas (who seemingly dies of old age at the beginning of the book). He founded Lunenburg (North of Bridewell) when he was 33 as a safe place to live in the dark and scary woods. When people started believing him that it was safe, they followed him and settled there to the point that it became overcrowded. To relieve overcrowding, he proposed building walled roads into the woods and creating towns at the ends of them.

People only live in these cities. There are some other people living in the other cities marked on the map, but if there isn't a city, nobody lives there. (Technically people do live in the wastes, but they're portrayed as roving bands of scavengers, not isolated homesteads.) There is no farmland mentioned, no trade, heck this whole place is an island. And 4 of the 8 places where people actually live are at the most 40 years old.

Where are the people *coming* from? How is this place feeding itself? How do they have so many books to fill multiple libraries? There’s one river and it doesn’t even go near people! Where are they getting water?!

[one thing I did remember about this series, without needing a reminder, was that when the protagonist learns who her biological father is, she’s like “oh so that’s why I never had a crush on [Boy]: because he was my brother!”…….😬

Patrick, my guy, you know kids my age were reading Flowers in the Attic, right? Like in the 1980s?]

Also, (this is the unfortunate implications part) because the people of Lunenburg are afraid of the monsters in the woods, the road is built by convicts Thomas "borrows" from Ainsworth. On the condition that once the roads are done, they are returned to prison in Ainsworth. How does this society have *that* many convicts?!?! There is no logical answer that isn’t troubling.

There's more stuff that's nonsensical, but the point is none of this matters. It's still a well-written middle grade book. At the end of the day, the most important part of being a writer is the writing.

Some pointers:

If you notice a worldbuilding hole, trying to address it with a hasty explanation

"You can sleep in our guest room"

*shit they live in the woods that no one should live in, why would they have a guest room? um um*

"that's weird, but our house has a guest room too. Because dad didn’t build the house, it was like that when we moved in."

Reader: ...wait, what?!

might be worse than just ignoring it or deleting the part that triggers the cognitive dissonance.

"I can pull out some blankets, but I'm afraid you'll have to sleep on the floor"

Expectations differ for different age groups. Sometimes that's limiting (can't have sex in a middle grade book), sometimes that's liberating (no I don't need to explain how the Government works. I thought it was cool so there it is.)

The "two questions” trick: people will go, at the most, two questions deep on worldbuilding elements, after which any old bullshit is enough. After two answers, you can get away with "it's matter-antimatter fusion, very complicated to explain" or "ahh it's all in tune with the Weave, the channels of power that flow through space and time" or "I don't know, man. It's like, crystals or some shit".

[hottakerybakery]

Back on my Age of Scorpius bullshit (i'm so sorry)

Part 1: Praising Milo (because this part was legitimately a strong concept)

The thing is that Reika's struggle with the Scorpio Code is a really really good analogy to being neurodivergent. It's *such* a good idea. You can just hammer the point home with this:

Reika not understanding why "controlling your emotions" is so easy for everyone else, but not her. What is she missing?

The feeling that there was a guidebook that everyone else she knew got but not her. Unwritten and unspoken rules she was never told.

Reika continually gets into trouble at school because the school punishes her for not fitting into a neurotypical mold. (Ya know, like in the real world? How neurodivergent kids who aren't "autistic enough" are left in a mainstream classroom where they are denied accommodations and punished for the inevitable breakdowns?)

Discovering that her emotions are what fuels her Zodiac powers! The thing she's been struggling to repress her entire life is also what makes her able to access this super special power! (Yes, autism isn't actually a mechanically balanced superpower, but metaphors don't have to be one-to-one)

Meeting other people/societies where people are not punished for showing emotion. Yes, Reika knows that other signs can show emotion, but I'm talking, like, seeing a 8-10 year old have a full meltdown in the street and the mom just being like "Come on bud, I know it's too loud here. But we're almost home." A very direct parallel to a memory of herself, at the same age, punished for being "too excited" about history or something. And realizing: My life didn't have to be like that.

Kaia basically doesn't have a personality: maybe make her autistic too? Or neurodivergent in a different way, but just one person who Reika spends a lot of time with who just gets it. And maybe by spending time with also-autistic!Kaia and therapist/mom-coded!Chase, Avia would also come to understand that her sister isn't wrong or broken: she's just different.

There's so much to work with here! There are so many ways to reinforce the central theme, to the point that an adult audience will be yelling "I get it already, geez!", but a YA or a middle grade audience will get a lightbulb moment. It's such a good metaphor. The Scorpio Code fits much better to being a metaphor for neurodivergence than it does to religious oppression.

Unfortunately, by attempting to make a single vehicle (The Scorpio Code) represent two different tenors (the experience of neurodivergence and religious oppression), the allegory is automatically weakened. Add to that Milo's subpar understanding of religion in general, and the allegory is completely destroyed.

Part 2

*I'm splitting the criticism of the religious angle into a separate post. This part ended up so positive that including my criticism of the religion aspect induces severe tonal whiplash.

**Also, thanks to SBU English Club for teaching me the terms 'tenor' and 'vehicle' for metaphors. I'm glad I now know the actual terminology instead of saying "the thing the metaphor is referring to" and "the thing the metaphor is using as the comparison"

[hottakerybakery]

Hot Take: the "Soft and Juicy" dried mango at Trader Joe's is way better than the "Just Mango".

Yes, the former has added sugar and sulfur dioxide. Yes some people react to sulfur and mangos don't need extra sugar.

Don't care: the Just Mango slices are tough and bland. I'm ripping it with my teeth like an actual jerky strip (I assume) and it doesn't taste half as good. I had to rehydrate the last pack I bought for it to be edible

[hottakerybakery]

Embroidery cold take: the DMC Light Effects Metallic thread is TERRIBLE. It is of the actual devil. I don’t know who designed this but they deserve jail time. It is the worst thread I’ve ever handled and that includes the cotton stitch I picked out of my own fucking head two weeks after a nurse “removed” them.

Embroidery hot take: the Light Effects Pearlescent thread isn’t that bad

[getvalentined]

Okay so I am so indescribably bothered by the formatting of Age of Scorpius that I painstakingly recreated the first chapter with its original formatting and then reformatted it with the majority of design fumbles fixed. It's all done in MSWord to prove you really don't need anything fancy to do this.

This is not remotely intended to insult the original layout artist—he is a very skilled graphic designer and illustrator with a fantastic eye for color and an overall impressive body of work. This was just very clearly not his wheelhouse, and I kind of assume he got roped into it at the last minute.

My hope with this post is that people can see what I'm talking about when I say that this book should never have gone to print formatted like this. The reading experience is so visually exhausting I am genuinely gobsmacked.

Obviously the page numbers don't match up to the printed version, and I didn't go so far as to scan the artwork so it's a little low-res in these images, but everything else is pretty much 1:1.

Original formatting:

Edited formatting:

The only graphical elements I completely removed were the logo (which shouldn't be in the body of the book, Milo) and the divider that was originally under the chapter header. I created a new little star graphic for the page headers so that they match the page numbers.

I did not check the edited version for rivers, but it's not terrible. There is also one orphaned line and one widowed line, both on page 6, but there are no partial-word orphans and no single-word orphans between pages. I honestly just got too tired to fix it by that point, I think this gets the point across. (Also there's a huge difference between a two-word orphaned line and an orphan consisting only of "ing.")

You may note that the edited version has the exact same number of pages as the original, which was a surprise to me! This means that formatting was not, in fact, intended to pad out the pagecount of the book as I theorized! It's just Like That for some reason! (Milo why.)

Anyway. Indie authors! Please format your books like you want people to read them! Especially if you have a ton of money to spend on other visual elements of your book! Working with large blocks of text can be difficult, but a good layout artist should go over every line of your book to make sure it's formatted in a way that makes it easy to read.

[hottakerybakery]

...what do you mean the first chapter is only 6 pages long?

[getvalentined]

The chapters are quite short! The body of the book takes up a total of 378 pages and comprises 39 chapters, giving an average length of 9.7 pages per chapter. The first one is a little over 1700 words.

Also relevant, I think, is that my layout has exactly the same number of lines per page as the original (27) but the changes in spacing and kerning and alignment make the last page 9 lines instead of 24, so there would definitely be a drop in page count eventually. If that trend persists through the rest of the book, averaging 2.14 lines of text formatted out of existence per page, that would remove a total of 809 lines from the book, which cuts about 30 pages.

So maybe it is about padding the length? I don't know.

[hottakerybakery]

It's probably about padding the length because this isn't a goddamn arms race chapter, it's a scene (listen, *I* think I'm funny). If the first chapter is about setting up your world, this should include: the narrator's name, an explanation of the Scorpio Code and the narrator's trouble with it, family introduction, magic introduction, and wider worldbuilding.

I was considering editing/rewriting a chapter a week as a writing exercise, so this is my analysis:

-if we want to start with this scene with the arch, put the arch OUTSIDE of the woods, on the other side of the border. Natural way to explain political geography and makes the woods scarier to outsiders

-the scene with the guards starts on page 2 and continues to page 6. That's way too long for two characters that are just there to worldbuild via infodumping. It can be cut down to, like, 10-20 sentences.

"Wait, did you see that?"

"See what?"

"Someone just crossed the border"

[1-2 sentence description from narrator's POV]

"Well what are you waiting for?"

"I'm not going into the cursed woods! Are you crazy?"

[2-3 line back and forth about the woods].

[Guard enters the woods (1 sentence, longer than normal to set ambiance)]

[Guard gets attacked (2-3 sentences. First is very short as a way to break the ambiance set up by the previous sentence)]

The narrator escapes (1-2 sentences)

-all the exposition dumping in the guards' dialogue can be put in the (still unnamed) main character's narration. This can be used to a) set up a little more of the world and b) showcase the main character's unique voice and perspective

If we keep the general content the same (aka not including the stuff I mentioned above about what *should* be in a first chapter), this is how I would structure it:

"The arch should be here, where is it?"

Description of woods

Narrator pulls out map, trying to figure out where exactly the arch is

Narrator explains this is an assignment as a part of her training in being a historian (tbh, this is so not what an actual historian does that I'd give it a weird fantasy name, like "Remembrance Scholar")

Narrator explains the goal of the assignment according to her boss/supervisor

Narrator explains her secret theory about what the arch will actually prove (gets very excited and info-dumpy, in a way that shows this is what she's passionate about aka her Special Interest)

Narrator takes closer look at map, thinking out loud under her breath. (gives the reader the names of all these places and maybe some more world building info)

Eventually realizes that the marked place is off by a (pick a measurement that would be within eyesight).

Sees the arch but realizes that it's not in the woods. It's on the other side of the border road.

Narrator contemplates breaking the law and going over there to get a closer look. Introduce idea that she already gets into a lot of trouble at school for ...

Scorpio Code infodump. Add angst to taste.

Crosses border, closer description of arch. Can flex those poetic description skills.

Gets some but not all of it before she hears guards coming closer

Runs back across into the woods

Guard scene as described above.

If I were to add content to make this chapter, I would at least include a returning home scene: it's very early morning, Avia says "Rieka, you're cutting it too close. Mom's gonna come up here in like 10 minutes." Rieka [OUR NARRATOR FINALLY HAS A NAME!] responds, sneaks into bed, falls asleep. (Next chapter opens at breakfast table)

[getvalentined]

Okay so I am so indescribably bothered by the formatting of Age of Scorpius that I painstakingly recreated the first chapter with its original formatting and then reformatted it with the majority of design fumbles fixed. It's all done in MSWord to prove you really don't need anything fancy to do this.

This is not remotely intended to insult the original layout artist—he is a very skilled graphic designer and illustrator with a fantastic eye for color and an overall impressive body of work. This was just very clearly not his wheelhouse, and I kind of assume he got roped into it at the last minute.

My hope with this post is that people can see what I'm talking about when I say that this book should never have gone to print formatted like this. The reading experience is so visually exhausting I am genuinely gobsmacked.

Obviously the page numbers don't match up to the printed version, and I didn't go so far as to scan the artwork so it's a little low-res in these images, but everything else is pretty much 1:1.

Original formatting:

Edited formatting:

The only graphical elements I completely removed were the logo (which shouldn't be in the body of the book, Milo) and the divider that was originally under the chapter header. I created a new little star graphic for the page headers so that they match the page numbers.

I did not check the edited version for rivers, but it's not terrible. There is also one orphaned line and one widowed line, both on page 6, but there are no partial-word orphans and no single-word orphans between pages. I honestly just got too tired to fix it by that point, I think this gets the point across. (Also there's a huge difference between a two-word orphaned line and an orphan consisting only of "ing.")

You may note that the edited version has the exact same number of pages as the original, which was a surprise to me! This means that formatting was not, in fact, intended to pad out the pagecount of the book as I theorized! It's just Like That for some reason! (Milo why.)

Anyway. Indie authors! Please format your books like you want people to read them! Especially if you have a ton of money to spend on other visual elements of your book! Working with large blocks of text can be difficult, but a good layout artist should go over every line of your book to make sure it's formatted in a way that makes it easy to read.

[hottakerybakery]

...what do you mean the first chapter is only 6 pages long?

[hottakerybakery]

Number of Aabria hate/critical posts I've seen: 0

Number of Thaisha hate/critical posts I've seen: 2

Number of Aabria/Thaisha defense posts I've seen: 1200+

[hottakerybakery]

Fuck it, have another tswift hot take:

She followed up my favorite album of hers ever with two dogshit records in a row.

I maintain that TTPD is the worst. Like

But Showgirl is pretty bad too. The lyrics that aren't *painfully* juvenile are just scattered with words and turns of phrase that make me want to shake her and tell her

I heard a girl once say that Taylor Swift was a genius because "who else could rhyme 'cruel summer' with 'ooh woah woa"'.

And that girl was GODDAMN RIGHT. That rhyme IS genius.

You don't need to use the $5 and $10 words: when you say "ooh woah woah, it's a cruel summer" we FEEL it. Far more than any quip about mahogany grain or melancholy or a misinterpretation of Hamlet that is, frankly, unforgivable at 36.