The other weird bit is how this all works from the contestant's side. The twins will immediately recognize and be bonded with Taylor, but without implanted memories of her own Taylor will be essentially meeting them for the first time on camera; that's sure to be weird and traumatic for all three of them.
Yeah, pretty much:
This system basically means that it's the contestant who ends up as a clearly non-good sibling that way.
That's the redundancy I was referring to. The sisters setting themselves up is almost certainly something Taylor is going to be interested in, and will be good interaction between them, allowing an organic, conversational bit of exposition and worldbuilding on what it means that Taylor had semi-made-to-order people created for her. The bit of world/character building the sister snips gave us in the chapter (which in retrospect seemed out of chronological order, the sisters were probably being made well before the ritual) is therefore a waste. Similiarly the Cutie showing up to the empty house and feeling trepidation is a little character setting, and the exposition of Slut Life liking to throw the group into the deep end at the beginning could each be quite easily accomplished from Taylor's perspective on the way to moving in (it seems like something Cindy would warn her about) and Velma setting herself up to meet Taylor when she gets there with comment along the lines of "I know it can be intimidating moving into such a big house all by yourself". The neighbor is almost certainly going to have to explain all of the things she thought about in her bit to Taylor to get Taylor to cooperate, which is thus going to be more redundant scenes.
I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as a too long chapter. It is possible for a chapter to miss it's natural end point, and thus end up longer than it should be. A good example of this are the later obsidian dreamer's "snips" (particularly Hell and Back or Loss and Love(Naruto stories)). Each flashback and set up text are their own chapter. Of note, those are also very good examples of how to use flashbacks properly (in my opinion) and are a good example of what could be done with the various scenes in 2.8 instead of dropping them where they are.
That's a very good point. It's definitely something the beta readers should have thought of.
Well, yes, but at some point the QQ software just stops accepting it as one chapter.
Okay, are you implying that this point(? idea?) was thought of, discussed, and specifically decided against (even if over beta reader objections) during beta reading? Because that would suggest that this fic is very different from my ideas about it, and strongly damage --pardon the double negative-- strongly damage the idea that this fic isn't Not For Me.
This one.
I think it'd be better to see the whole of the new chapter at once so you can catch narrative issues and know how things fit together instead of a segment at the time...? It has certainly helped many people with flow and other issues before... is there a reason to do it segment by segment?
Because that's how he's writing them? Thanks to the magic of Google Docs, we can actually see him writing in near real-time (kinda pops in paragraph by paragraph) if we look on the beta doc at the right time.
I know all about Google Docs, I just know nothing of Jona's writing process as it isn't something I've discussed with him.
A spelling and grammar beta is a very different thing from a setting and narrative beta though. But then, to get best effect from a setting and narrative beta you absolutely have to be willing to let them in in spoilers -- otherwise they don't have the material they need to work with.
That's not that spelling and grammar are the only things we check, it's just that's mostly what we find.
*Checks FFN version*
I noticed the announcement and reread the chapter --by which I mean, "skimmed"-- but, well:
I didn't really notice anything other than this.
I can see the numbers 1 and 3, but why the numbers 2 and 4, especially together?
At this point Taylor won't be a Contestant anymore.
Taylor herself would be against this, given her motivation for becoming a SL recruiter (stopping people from bet from getting screwed over like she did) to begin with. Also SL gets in MAJOR trouble if Emma mentions that was the only option she had on camera (there's a reason Taylor got bribed with such a major upgrade not to mention her "recruitment" during the interview).
The restrictions still don't make sense in that light.
