Comment on His and Her's and His and Her's Circumstances

  1. byyt on Chapter 14 Sun 10 Sep 2023 08:31PM UTC

    I think I figured out what happened on the first read. The sequence with Seresdina confused me and I speed read through everything else waiting for the twist of her coming back.

    If we mark times, this is what is written:
    night 0: Iris meets Kazuma, then Seresdina meets Kazuma
    morning 1: "I went to the local jeweler first thing after grabbing a random sample out of the bag of silver"
    day 1: "spent the rest of the day fooling around online"
    evening 3: Seresdina is subjugated
    morning 3: Iris comes back, the pair shop around
    mid-afternoon 3: Kazuma goes back home

    But the time jumps are really easy to miss.
    "Morning came early" — "After lunch" — "It was that evening" <- this reads like a one-day sequence. "next couple of days" is at the end of the paragraph starting with "After lunch", but it can go unnoticed when only a paragraph break separates the parts, which is the first thing that happened to me.
    Then there is the part where Iris tells the story of how she prepared for Seresdina: "I smiled at the man beside me. \\ I’d met him in his apartment that morning". That Past Perfect is marking a time jump, but that's it. That's the second thing that got me confused because I missed it.
    I thought of the encounter with Seresdina as these events in chronological order: Kazuma actually wanted to agree to Seresdina's deal -> Iris interrupted -> they went on a date to think up a plan -> Somehow Seresdina is defeated. And then I was left thinking I was supposed to piece together how she was defeated through the later text. Maybe it wasn't a good enough way, so that's why it wasn't written about? The sentences that "seemingly" (actually) contradicted that view? I thought of them as hints to what "really" happened. It's where that feeling of frustration came from and then spread onto everything else, I guess.

     

    But with that misunderstanding no longer being a factor… Holy crap, this fic is fire! I'll be stocking up on writer energy through it, thank you very much.

    Btw, I just thought it might not have been clear, but the part with "cringing" in the first comment was about the original work, not the fic.

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    1. 83drew on Chapter 14 Mon 11 Sep 2023 08:17PM UTC

      Glad you liked it, it’s great to hear you changed your mind once the misunderstanding got ironed out.

      I’ll keep that in mind on making the time passage clear, you probably weren’t the only one to get confused.

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      1. byyt on Chapter 14 Thu 14 Sep 2023 10:19PM UTC

        Alright. If you don't mind suggestions, I think an extra paragraph break between the parts in these two cases will be enough.

        Last Edited Fri 15 Sep 2023 05:03AM UTC

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        1. 83drew on Chapter 14 Fri 15 Sep 2023 05:18AM UTC

          Done! That should work better.

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