Destiny & Danger (Solo)

[Oliver]

Sister Of The Seasons (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtNFQ7RJbaQ)

2654



Set during the first year of Oliver Midwinter's life, before the fall of Albion, and the death of the Coven.


Species loom on graceful steppes,
To extinction they descend and flow,
How many must die before we see?
How many have died? No one can know.

Endangered are the fateful few,
Soon to walk to a duller day,
How can we whom hold the key to life?
Not save them none will ever say.

Actions preside over reactive words,
Which the mighty speak without commotion,
Stand tall, look sharp, save their futures,
Or watch in shock, as dies emotion.

It will be a day - that can't be forgotten,
When no longer swims the manta ray,
When birds are minor and species dwindle,
As we stand alone in human way.


Cydney Oliver.

[Oliver]

“John I hate to ask,” Sansa hesitated, choosing to pick the grit from beneath her nails instead of getting to the point, “but, you know…” she sighed. He stared at her longingly; he was loathing being distracted from his cross stitch. The small drawing room was sweltering enough without a heated argument ruining the short lived solitude he had sought away from the dusk hustle and bustle of their waking household.

“Indulge me…tell me…” he sniped.

“I am compelled to do so.”

“What is it sister?” he set the needle into the cloth, and placed the weaving circle onto his lap. “You sound like you are in pain.” He sniped. Without much guesswork, John arrived at the logical conclusion that he was going to be asked a question that none of the female members of the family wanted to ask him. He, as the eldest of the male members of the Midwinter family, however, was the one man in Albion with any sort of say in the day to day affairs of the Coven and its members.

“Why are you doing that?” she wheezed, the wind deflated from her sails. “I thought Heather knitted your scarves, did your embroidering, and darned your socks?”

John curled his lip and turned to the roaring fireplace to find solace in the flames, instead of in the exchange of sarcasm and gender battles with his youngest sibling. For many years, the men of the Midwinter household had been forced to learn the ways of the domestic servant, in order to maintain the family’s prosperous history. The fact that the women, placated by their new found position of authority within the community of the village called Albion, never seemed to sound grateful for the sacrifice made it all the more harder for the headstrong John to bear.

“Somebody has to maintain the household, Sansa, whilst the Coven guards the frontier,” there was a reservation in his voice that bordered on the bitter. Without thinking, John picked up the circle and rubbed his fingers over the course of the, splintered, dry, and well-worn wood. He stared at his sister longingly, but more through a need to rekindled the relationship they had before she ascended to the Coven than through some secretive fancy.

“We maintain the village, and the valley, not just the rooms within these four walls!” she protested. Her pallid, but plush cheeks wrinkled with despair.

“Or so you claim,” he spat, dropping his eyes back to the sewing to find solace in the needlework and the tri-coloured pattern that formed half a lion’s head on crème coloured silk.

[Oliver]

“That is hardly fair, John,” she jabbed a finger at him from across the dusty crimson carpet, before she began to roll her head and start to loosen her limbs from her long period of study. She set the leather bound tome down on the arm of the chair before she pushed herself free of its cotton embrace.

“Is it really?” he questioned further. The resignation in his tone suggested to Sansa that he already knew what she was going to say, but his own conventions kept him to the natural course of their exchange. Though John espoused the women’s conventions, he was as much a man of tradition as they were of the old ways.

“We do just as much to keep this household safe, happy, and alive as the men amongst us.”

John looked up at the bountiful stand of golden hair with distrust. He did not doubt his sister’s words, but somehow, it only seemed to make his reservations seem all the more pressing, poignant, and valid. He doubted there was anything in the world that could make him feel anything other than happy to be in his circumstance.

“I do not condemn your actions, Sansa, but I do condemn the tone you take when you are asked to do more than what is,” he shrugged, before he rose himself, as was custom after a woman left a table or meet, “required of you…” his glare, cold, deep, and jade green lances of doubt bore against his sister’s wall of impenetrable defence for several longing seconds before he realised it was worthless.

“You do?” she said smarmily. Her rebuttal was part surprise, and part confusion. Few stood up to Sansa; John was the only male who dared to try in the matriarchal society of Albion. A woman’s word in the red cliffs and pine lanes was gospel.

“Why are you so different to anyone else in the village, exactly?” he cocked an eyebrow, and wrinkled his reddened lips into a cruel smile. He picked up the sewing implements on his lap, set them onto the floral, battered arm of his wingback chair, and crossed his right leg over his left. “What makes you special, a mere daughter of the coven you hold so dear?”

Sansa, chided and bereft, struggled to put her thoughts to words. John, once again, had succeeded where other men had failed time and time again. She had been defeated with a simple rattling of her cage.

“If mother heard you talk to me like that…” the sentence, begun with conviction, swiftly fell into muttering, mumbling, and deflated shuffling of well-polished leather sided stilettos.

“She would do what, exactly?” John said without faltering. Many long years of sisterly oppression had made him cold and unfeeling to the plight of the womenfolk of the village. They, in his eyes, had wielded their traditional power and charisma for too long.

“Why, she would, she would…” Sansa gave up.

[Oliver]

“She would do nothing, given that she is dead.” The deadpanned expression he resorted to made his statement all the more succour. It cut through the atmosphere and sparked near-violence between them. Only the chime of the cuckoo clock hanging over the mahogany mantle prevented an all-out escalation of war in the drawing room.

“Okay, John.” Sansa stuck her thumb in between her lips, moistened them, and then produced a small wand from the folds of her dress. It revealed itself with a soft chime, a rush of warmth through the chamber, and a portent of a threat. John watched it keenly, smiling as he recited the various components which formed the implement. Unlike her sisters, Sansa was one of the few witches of Albion that still used a wand. The others, many years passed, had begun to use the now conventional athame, a true witches’ weapon for the new age of magic.

“Let me cut,” she drew the wand through the air, mocking the blade her sisters wielded, “right to the chase.”

“That is more the style I am used to,” he smirked.

Sansa adjusted her vocal chords, stamina, and nerve. “The Coven is concerned about Gideon and Marian’s…” her nerves faltered, “Shall we say, conjugation?”

“Relationship…” John corrected, with sincerity and a cold stare.

“Relationship…” she altered her point to suit, her pinafore bellowing as she began to grow uncomfortable in her own skin. John began to realise, that even with the familiar backdrop of the drawing room, the lavender wallpaper, and the rocky hearth, this was still an alien world to his sister. Truth, honesty, and obedience were things she had seldom had to turn to in her life. “We have come to the decision that an intervention is the best course of action.”

John sighed, wriggled, and clicked life into his neck. The long lethargy of darning socks, croqueting, and weaving scarves was beginning to take its toll. Despite his well cushioned girth, the red pine hardwood of his chair dug into his thighs and coccyx with naturalistic glee. He took a deep breath through bushy nostrils, set his crevatte straight, and relaxed.

“For whom?” he raised his left eyebrow.

“For Albion.” Sansa said, parrot-like.

“The inanimate ground upon which we walk deems your sister’s relationship with a man she is, for what I can see, quite in love with, unfit to grace our lapsing hovel?” the increasing level of irritation in John’s voice irked Sansa. She was used to getting her way, but even John, the most outspoken man of the Midwinter family, had never tested her patience this much before.

[Oliver]

“To combine what they represent is to undo not just our family,” her composure, shattered, dropped to the flagstones and the dust like shards of glass, “but the traditions of the Coven and the village as a whole.” She drew the wand through the air, formed three circles clockwise, then three anti-clockwise. John recognised it as a bond of loyalty, an invocation of a witches’ pledge to uphold the ways of her kin.

“We speak of love so openly, I find that very hard to believe!” John pushed down on the soft cotton arms of the chairs and rose like a seething leviathan, spitting, mewing, and puking rage as he ascended. His gold threaded waistcoat, threadbare but still resplendent at the heart of the simply decorated villa, shone as the firelight caught its trails. “Why can you not just let it lay down, Sansa?” he shrugged virulently, palms held upwards to the sky.

With the trail of her dress bellowing behind her, Sansa began to circle the chair and dance between the stacks of books, teetering box towers, and the detritus of her brother’s dutiful studies. Though she was tentative to her observance of knowledge, she had to admire John’s dedicated to learning the intricacies of the magical arts. The drawing room had long ceased to be a room for drawing. A library would be a more apt description these days. She pressed her index finger delicately onto the spine of the topmost book in a tower, and read it aloud wistfully.

“The Art of Connectivity scribed by Jakarta Novell.” She slid her wand back into the recess she had produced it from, allowing the warmth of her simple cantrip to tingle up and down her limbs like fire untethered and flame kindled with hope. The smell of burnt wood and almonds began to permeate through the stagnant musk of John’s long standing encampment in the book stacks.

John snapped his fingers, as if to attract her attention. “Do not change the subject, Sansa. Just because I do not bow down to the whim of the Mother, it does not mean that I am incorrect. You have to have some hope, pleasure, and love for her choices, surely?” the aggression John used to rise up against his sister’s oppression failed him, and he slumped back into the comforting embrace of the chair with a deflated descent.

Her eyes widened to the size and shape of dinner plates in shock. “I beg your pardon?” she flicked the top tome so that it slid from the stack with a clap of thunder to the flagstones. John flinched, and Sansa used her small victory to bolster her momentum.

The jostle of power between them was far from over.

[Oliver]

“Cut to the chase, Sansa. You are speaking in the term of the Coven, and I admire you for sticking to that zealot,” John buried his forehead into his fondling hands, “but I am growing tired of these arguments.” He sighed, “But I grow tired of trying to turn you to a path worthy of your keen intellect.” For many months, John had tried to break through the thick barricade that surrounded the tight knit community of women in the Coven. Sansa, or so John believed, was a weak link in an otherwise impenetrable force field.

“Oh you do, do you?” Sansa stooped to pluck the discarded tome up from the flagstones, and set it down atop the spire with tentative, guilty, and remorseful care. “It must be so welcoming to you to be able to default to that stance each time I best you.” The words settled the score even, and as she strolled full-circle about the imposing wind back chair, she swore she could hear her brother’s contempt seething through pudgy, well jostled lips.

“I default to this position you speak of,” John leant out from behind the sanctuary of the chair, “because it is the moral, just, and pious stance to take. I will not bow to your ethereal form simply because you are a woman.”

“You should bow to it because I am right, should you not?” there was a duality to her question that teetered between rhetoric and intellect. John, settling for rhetoric, retreated into the chair’s embrace. Sansa smiled with wild relish and short lived victory.

“If you were right, sister of mine, I would break the back of this chair atwain and consume it in the fires of that travesty.” Resorting to theatrics, John stroked the finery of his moustache with a confidence Sansa would have seethed at, had she seen it.

“What do you think of this affair, then?” she paused at the tower’s side, reading, re-reading, and spelling out the book’s title over and over to keep her mind keen and her wit sharp.

“Me?” John said with surprise, taken aback at having been asked for his thoughts. “Oh, well,” he pushed himself free of his chair once more, and this time, left it’s sanctuary to stand opposite the tower and from his sister’s smouldering form. “Since you thought it pertinent to ask, at last, I think no more of this happenstance than love.”

“Love?” Sansa slumped, adding swagger to her hips at the price of the spark from her eyes.

“That is what I said, is it not?”

“What do you know about that, brother?”

[Oliver]

John spat invisible lines of air. He had loved, once, and he had loved stronger and with more conviction than anyone else in the Midwinter family ever had. With honest intention, he began to tap the tip of his right foot onto the cold flagstones. He jostled with the different approaches he could take to reply to his sister, and settled, sternly, on the one he had come to wield as a cross in the dark times of the valley’s bitterest winter in many decades; the aged enemy that was scorn.

“Love is a many splendid thing Sansa, it tethers ideas to enemies, and in that bond, it kindles new prospects in the dead memories of the people who have forgotten,” he wavered his finger to and fro with academic care, “forgotten what it feels like to be alive.”

“Is it worth the treachery, this life you speak of, when it results in sorcery marrying into witch craft?” she raised her eyebrow, which tarnished her pale, red-headed, and fair complexion with an ounce of despair. “I pity you, if you let your heart, so scattered with raiment’s of delusion, dare to come before tradition, the mother, and the ways of our family!” her eyes shone, her heart beat, and her stiletto adorned feet shuffled and scuffled the well-worn rock.

For a moment, John took it upon himself to take the burden Sansa pressed down on him and suffer with it. It was a fleeting moment, however, and with the oppression laid onto his browbeaten form, he retaliated in the simplest of manners he knew.

He shed a tear.

“Tell me, sister, when did the wisteria mottled lanes of Albion, its children’s cries, and the bitterest of winters steal away your heart?” he shrugged, gestured with his hands that he was at a loss, and then slumped into an ignorant slouch.

Sansa stared into John’s cold, longing eyes for several prolonged minutes. There was doubt in her expression, which John used to steel his senses against the rising tension between them. Darkness began to brighten in the corners of the room, half from the flickering life of the fire, which resurged from near death with a rush of stored energy, and half from the rise of the sun on the croft of the valley and its sunshine as it pierced the solitary window of the drawing room.

“My heart,” she said softly, “never had the chance to flourish.”

“So why continue to resist its longing growth?”

“Because I have no choice, and in that loss, I bear the whips and the scorns of our family’s dominance of this community.”

[Oliver]

“Our family stole your heart?” John snapped with a bodkin full of scepticism.

“That is what I said,” she replied, mockingly.

“Please, spare me the travesty of your cowardice Sansa!” without thinking of the consequences, John stepped forwards with a slide of his left heel and ploughed up in an arc through the top of the teetering tower. The books collapsed away from him, and toppled about Sansa’s laced thighs and polished black stilettos. She yelped, as expected in a moment of surprise, but made no attempt to knock them aside or step out of harm’s way.

The tomes keenly read and tattered with age gathered about her feet like a grave of rocks for an unnamed hero. An awkward silence stole all life from the chamber, and echoed out into the cold corridor beyond that connected the summer house exterior of the drawing room with the vast catacomb like house that housed the Midwinter family at the centre of the Caroline Estate.

In ancient times, the drawing room had been nothing more than a shed, and in its firewood origins, a spark had been kindled by the early male members of the dynasty that today offered their ancestors a temple from the dominance of Albion’s women.

“That is a prime example, John, of why women conquered this valley’s sandstone cliffs in the tentative years of our society’s birth.” Her dry, bitter, and sordid tone cut through John’s confidence like a rusted, bloodied, and cruelly bent blade.

“Because they are cold and bitter harlots?” the stocky moustache and smouldering expression on John’s face lasted for a few moments before Sansa erupted from her mausoleum of tattered pages, and leapt at him. Her right hand, like a quicksilver dagger in the dark cut across his left cheek with a start.

Silence reigned through the mausoleum like bowels of Caroline Villa.

“Cute, really cute,” John said, without emotion and without heart.

“I…I am sorry…” she spluttered, a look of genuine surprise on her face.
He rubbed his reddened cheek out of convention, but felt nothing beneath his sister’s placid stare or in the wake of her outburst. He watched as she stumbled back through the flotilla of books, and could not help breaking into laughter when she nearly lost her footing.

“Do not be-” she stumbled again, and lost her composure. John made to help her, but broke into a chuckle again when she rose upright, and kicked aside a collection of tomes on thaumaturgy that threatened to topple her to the hard surface of the chamber. “Why must you be so childish?” Sansa snapped her fingers as she finally righted herself. “I am tired of treading on hot coals whenever you are in the room. Can you not just observe the stature of your place for once in your miserable life?” her reddened expression, tired and wrinkled with age glared at her brother with ageless contempt.

[Oliver]

“You think a life resisting oppression is,” he swallowed a lump in his throat noisily, “miserable?” he scoffed.

Sansa glared, “you make a habit and a career out of ruffling feathers. It is like you have nothing else to keep you alive, nothing worthwhile to emblazon your tapestry.”

“I will not bow down to theatrics, tabards, and heraldry that had been forced upon me Sansa!” he teetered on eggshells, stepping imaginatively between victory and defeat as he tried to make sense of his sister’s eternally morphing expression. It fused surprise and terror together into a death mask of struggle. “Would you live a life of servitude, if people tried to chain you to destiny because of your gender?”

“If I had to I would, because place and values are all that keep us ablaze in dark times.” John did not believe a word she said.

“You do not have the strength to even try!” he roared. The flames in the hearth glowed brighter alongside his outburst.

Sansa curled her lips, and turned away in shame from her brother’s fervour. She found comfort in the now dying flames of the ember bed of the hearth. Her brother’s invocation was short lived, a sign that his limited magic remained forgotten despite his potential. With the Basque of gold, crimson, and autumnal shades offering her solace, she thought long and hard about John’s question. Struggling with one’s lot was part and parcel of the Albion tradition. There had always been, for as long as she could remember, gender struggles in the idylls of the Villa, and more strongly in the farrowed ground of the village and the valley beyond.

“That is not…fair…” her eyes narrowed into thin slits, and her chest heaved with the fatigue and strain of mental combat. She wondered how powerful John would become if the Coven let men join their ranks, and offered them the same tutorage they did the woman progenies of the Midwinter family.

“Fair is pejorative when the people you care for consider themselves higher born than you will ever be simply because of their circumstances!” John threw his arms wide, and then let them fall with a flop to his sides. They pressed against the silk cut of his trousers and operatic garb boisterously.

“I am not higher born, just born into title.” She said softly, trying to utilise some of the decorum she had been instilled with since the moment she could talk.

“A title you think is worth its weight in gold…” John adjusted the eschew buttons of his waistcoat, showing signs of fatigue and mental distress.

“I am the daughter of the Mother, John, I am Albion!” Sansa’s eyes flared, her haired scuppered her beauty in a maelstrom of fury, and her heels stomped onto the now cracked stone.

“You are scared.” John said flatly.

[Oliver]

Both siblings stared at one another longingly in the dual eruption of firelight and daylight. For many years, the Coven of Albion had simply given in to the traditions it believed it was required to uphold. Decades, years, and hours could not measure the passing of the torment of the Coven’s members. Ages could pass without notice and still the village would remain stagnate? John had grown tired of standing on the precipice overlooking potential. He did not wish to waste his life, his potential, and his possibility in the shadow of the woman of his family. His sister, his brother, and all his distant relatives were not going to hold John Midwinter back from his Glory.

“I am honour bound!”

“You are honour bound, Sansa, to nothing more than your own ideals. You come here touting for my vote when It means nothing to you, and you expect me to simply ply my art to your whim, and say nothing on the matter…no, I will not besmirch my mother because an age old ideal demands it. If she wishes to elope with Gideon, then I wish them all the luck beneath the seasons of the world!”

“Then I assume you vote in favour of their corruption?” she resorted to petty sarcasm despite her relatively stoic handling of their conflict. John saw a moment to strike, an opportunity to shoot her down once and for all, and Sansa stepped back when she realised what she had done.

“I will invoke the Rite of Seasons if the Coven decide to deny them their engagement, Sansa, mark my words, I will fight this with every ounce of strength, stamina, and courage in my ageing body. Oliver, and Juno, and their sisters deserve so much more than what you would offer them in these bitter times.”

“They need guidance, not treachery!”

“I will guide them myself; since you have already decided he is to be left out in the cold!”

“He is a man!” she screamed.

“A man twice as powerful and earnest in his craft than you will ever be.” John said, without shouting, dominating tone, or with hatred on the tip of his tongue. The stark truth of his statement hit Sansa square in the chest like a sledgehammer against already brittle and worn stone. She cracked, fell apart, and wheezed and sighed beneath her own self-loathing and indecision.

“Invoke the rite…” she sniped. “End your life here in the village for all I care…Gideon and mother will never get the happiness they seek whilst I, or any member of the Coven remain alive…” she did not wait for her brother’s final word to deflate the returned wind in her crimson silk sails and auburn, strawberry tinted hair. She turned on a heel and departed the drawing room in a flurry of clips against stone of steel stilettos, and clucks and sighs and curses muttered beneath tired breaths.

“I will, sister, mark my words, I will…” silently, John returned to the comforting embrace of his chair, and picked up the sewing instruments he had been enthralled by before Sansa had decided to break out of her studies to try and side swipe him. In truth, he was not at all surprised by her timing. She had attempted to catch him unawares whilst he was placated by his hobbies and pleasures too many times before for it to work again. He licked the end of his thread, darted it through the eye of his long needle on the first attempt, and then continued his work on the lion’s eye, which glowed with jade light as it was caught by the flames of the final rise of the hearth.

Before long, the morning would turn to midday, and then he would have to stand before the Coven to answer for his crimes. Sansa would already be on her way to see the Matriarch, to demand he answer for his supposed rebellion. When he had defended himself John would call the Rite of Seasons, offering his own life in return for Oliver’s acceptance into the Coven’s circle. He would receive an education fitting for a witch of his calibre, and then, perhaps only then, would Albion begin to change.

The Coven, and John, would have to die for that chance to be given the time of day to shine, but as John worked in silence, he thought of nothing else in the world he would rather die for.

The Spirit of Seasons would recognise the power of the God, as part of the dual deity of magic once and for all, and women in Albion would have to learn to lie as equals, not as betters, for the first time in their lives.

[Vigil]

Duffy, you requested commentary from members of ALF from this thread and this will be the first for the group. So, I ecnourage other members to read this and share their piece of what they thought of it.

This thread is short and a narrative between two siblings over the course of a conversation that seemed to be used to advance the plot in your other work. There really was no necessary reading besides this to understand the point of the thread or background information required, and as always, if somebody feels a need for that its usually their job to go and track down the writer's other work and read it for themselves.

Destiny & Danger was a short and easy read, but interesting. From what I saw, your theme was how a family would act if the gender roles are switched and women held leadership positions and acted as head of the family instead of men. It was also told in the style of drama and I felt as I was reading this that I was watching a theatrical play which is definitely quite different then what I'm used to. I say this because a lot of the dialogue in your conversation seemed to be highlighted immediately afterward by an action from either character. Sort of like amateur actors looking at each other on set and reminding each other, "Okay, you said this, and now move." Like they were running lines or something. It felt a bit forced and not really natural.

To help, I'd suggest that if your most dominant component in a narrative is a conversation that before you write the narrative you try writing all the dialogue out before hand from beginning to conclusion between John and Sansa. In this exercise you could read over your dialogue once finished and begin to imagine how the conversation would go in your head from start to finish and begin filling in how in a natural dialogue how two people would probably act in this situation. Rather then placing movements in as you go along, it gives you a better picture of what you're attempting to do when you see it all at once. Perhaps it will help.

This conversation, for instance, was charged and very heated because both siblings are bound by tradition and one of them is seeking to move away from it for the sake of one of your characters. Or perhaps the act of freeing himself from matriachal tradition is the bigger side of his motive to defy his sister. I imagine in a conversation like this that there would be a great deal more vitriol between the two and from what I read it seemed more like you used the actions of either character more to keep the reader interested while you move forward with what John and Sansa are talking about than as natural actions in this narrative. Sometimes in a conversation there need not be as much movement and action at all, and you could stress more on not only what your characters are saying, but how they are saying it. Context in dialogue in some instances means a lot, and if you could address this more it would bring more substance to your characters and allow the reader to really see what you're trying to say.

So, to sum it up, I'd say look back on this thread and re-read it for yourself. Look at some of your word choices and the flow of conversation and try to picture it in your head to see how it moves. Does it move naturally for you or does it seem kind of stilted and awkward? It was the latter for me.

I think you should also really put some more value into setting. It seemed almost forgotten and in a narrative like this you need to consider what you're going to sell a reader on. This is a fairly simple plot, it acts like a chapter in a book, and centers around the conversation and history between two characters. Already you can see that this is a thread that focuses on dialogue, character development, and themes. To supplement that, you really, really need to try and throw the reader a bone by making the narrative seem as inviting as possible. This means using the tools that you have left in your disposal, and use of setting would have been ideal here. You could have spent more time on describing the drawing room and the Midwinter household to put it in the mind of the reader. More than the color of the carpet, the drapes and the pile of books in another room. You could easily go back in this thread and look at the way you used your setting and try to imagine it again using your five senses. How things not only looked, but smelled, tasted, touched and what either character heard.

This setting was passive and a bit placid. Remember that people don't live in a vacuum, especially when interacting with others. In a charged conversation like this, a lot of your senses would have been heightened by a feeling of impending physical or emotional conflict. You could definitely take full advantage of this and have John focus less on his longing for his sister during a break in the conversation to listening to the crackle of the fireplace, feeling the thread of the lion he was trying to sew against his skin, etc. It acts as a way to draw the reader in and allow them to better see things from John's perspective.

Take full advantage of every tool that you have when writing, especially in these instances where for the sake of the plot you are deprived of certain elements. Don't be forced to end up using them for the sake of using them, because as I pointed out earlier it looks awkard. But rather, utilize your remaining strengths and attempt to paint the best picture for the reader as possible.

I didn't really have any trouble understanding what you wrote in this thread, but there is one instance I'd like to highlight because I really didn't see the context or really understand why this was used;


In ancient times, the drawing room had been nothing more than a shed, and in its firewood origins, a spark had been kindled by the early male members of the dynasty that today offered their ancestors a temple from the dominance of Albion’s women.

“That is a prime example, John, of why women conquered this valley’s sandstone cliffs in the tentative years of our society’s birth.” Her dry, bitter, and sordid tone cut through John’s confidence like a rusted, bloodied, and cruelly bent blade.

“Because they are cold and bitter harlots?” the stocky moustache and smouldering expression on John’s face lasted for a few moments before Sansa erupted from her mausoleum of tattered pages, and leapt at him. Her right hand, like a quicksilver dagger in the dark cut across his left cheek with a start.

I had trouble understanding what you were trying to get across with what was in bold because it really had no preamble to why John said it or even after. And the action that followed is an example of what I was describing as forced and awkward. If you're going to use an example of why the women conquered the valley, you need to provide more context and reason as to why Sansa is saying it rather then to have her simply say it so that John could respond and she would have reason to slap him. It breaks the flow of the narrative and makes the point you're trying to deliver fall short from what I'm sure was supposed to be a definitive blow against Sansa while also emasculating John.

That's pretty much all I have, and hopefully I gave you some definite food for thought. Destiny & Danger was definitely interesting and with a bit more preperation and with better use of literary elements such as setting and dialogue, it could have really been much stronger as a narrative then acting as an engine to advance your overall story and plot.

Remember that this is ALF commentary, and not a judgment, Duffy. You can feel free to respond back to what I've given you in this thread if you have questions or you want me to elaborate more on something.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Duffy, I know your style is and always will be theatrical, so some of my criticism may not be useful to you because I think in doing so you tend to write in a detached, unrelatable, over-thick way. Your prose comes off rigid, stilted, unnatural. At times I think that is the point, but when it happens all the time it ceases to have a point and just becomes stale. The primness in which two siblings speak to one another could mean a lot of there were anything to contrast it with. Your non-dialogue prose is just as rigid so it comes off more as the writer's voice than any reflection on the characters.



He stared at her longingly ... He stared at his sister longingly


There's an illustration from the very first post. The idea of a brother staring at his sister "longingly" is frankly uncomfortable, and clearly their relationship is just that. At first I cringed a bit and then I thought, "Well, it made an impact, let's see if he does anything with it." But then it just repeated again later. The second time was just as weird but now it had lost its impact as well.




I have to agree with Vigil that the actions inbetween the dialogue seem... inhuman. They seem like the maneuvers of over-acted high school play actors. Example from the second post:



“That is hardly fair, John,” she jabbed a finger at him from across the dusty crimson carpet, before she began to roll her head and start to loosen her limbs from her long period of study.


She takes the time to call in by name, so the whole line doesn't seem fast or quippy enough to justify a finger-point. At the same time, she points and then stretches. That just seems bizarre. She was snappy enough to point but then tired enough to stretch. The whole combination just seems like a muddled mess.


Counterpoint



“I do not condemn your actions, Sansa, but I do condemn the tone you take when you are asked to do more than what is,” he shrugged, before he rose himself, as was custom after a woman left a table or meet, “required of you…”


While that action was still awkward, it was meaningfully so. It shows the depth of the cultural courtesy accorded to women that even in the middle of an argument where he's challenging her, he bothers to politely stand mid-line.


By the end of the second post, the dialogue seems more lively. It sounds more like people in an actual argument, prim and proper people to be sure, but living people, not the imaginings of a playwright.


And then, back in post three the silly "cut to the chase" pun and John's one liner, we're not even in a play anymore. It sounds more like the lines interspersed in a made for TV action movie.



John sighed, wriggled, and clicked life into his neck. This is another awkward description like Sansa's motions in part one. It seems like you're just putting filler actions for him to take between lines. He's straightening up now? Midway through an argument. "Clicked life into his neck" just baffles me, honestly. I can figure what it must mean, but while it's always good to try a novel turn of phrase, I have to say that one doesn't work for me.


The dramatic descriptions of how things are said and the actions that accompany them can be great, in fact, I really liked this one
spitting, mewing, and puking rage as he ascended but in this case, the line fails to follow through with the promise.
“Why can you not just let it lay down, Sansa?” he shrugged virulently, palms held upwards to the sky. That doesn't sem like someone puking rage. Also, shrugging virulently seems like a contradiction in terms.


Another example of an action I liked, a level of theatric motion that was perhaps uncommon but not unbelievable.
John snapped his fingers, as if to attract her attention. I would not say "As if" though because he seemed to be quite literally attracting her attention.




Post 6 features something that I'm guilty of from time to time. The tendency to fire back and forth with rhetorical questions. In the heat of writing sometimes it seems smart, but a lot of it just ends up being filler and as someone who argues with people a lot, it's just not the way people really talk, in any age.



John stroked the finery of his moustache with a confidence Sansa would have seethed at, had she seen it. That one's still a little baffling. Is it part of this gynocracy that stroking a moustache is considered too cheeky?





Sansa slumped, adding swagger to her hips at the price of the spark from her eyes. THis one too went over my head.




I'm going to stop quoting so much because I think it's becoming more burdensome than helpful. Post #7 is just too melodramatic. It borders on the Shakespearian but without the clever turn of phrase and in this day and age, even if it had them I think it would seem too dusty and trite.


In sum, the parting exchange finally had a bit of the spark and bite that the whole thread had lead up to. Unfortunately, the import of it was a bit too obscure for me without a background in your world. I know it's a tight line to walk between explaining everything over again to familiar readers and leaving the unfamiliar in the dark. I think just a little more context would help but you got pretty close. I had a decent idea of what was the point.


You were playing with some big ideas here and ultimately the payoff was decent, but the road to get there was a lot of stumbling and awkwardness. For such a short thread, too much of this felt like filler.

[Revenant]

Condensed rubric requested. Quite a bit of commentary has already been given by your ALF associates and they covered all the topics that I had.

Plot (10) – 20

Character (10) – 18

Prose (10) – 20

Wildcard (10) – 5

Total: 63

Oliver Midwinter receives 866 exp and 125 gp.

[Cydnar]

I would like to offer a somewhat delayed thanks to all those who commentated.

As ever, brutal, but insightful and to the point - entirely what I needed to sort out the kinks and give some direction and purpose to any future efforts.

I hope to put this advice to practice when I write with Oliver again - as a small token of thanks, could you split the gold and divide it between Visla and Saxon? Signatory, if anything else.

[Letho]

EXP/GP added.