The Angel and the Pussycat - Comments

One-shot for One-shot~

Well, hello there (: First, I have to say that the layout was marvelous. I love the colors - and the picture is extremely interesting as well! Is that Greek, by the way? I wish I knew how to read Greek x] Oh, and the title is quite interesting as well.

Anyways, onto the review...

I touch galaxies when I sleep. Okay, this pulled me in and didn't let me go. It gives an air of mystery. I really like it. I'd love to touch galaxies in my sleep, lol!

And I'm blue, God when I think about it, it makes me melancholic. You have such a lovely way with words, I swear. This line is my favorite so far. Your writing is so gorgeous that it seems almost effortless.

I lie awake in the heat of the night, surrounded by a cocoon of soothing music and the fog created by the medical onslaught required to cure this melancholic from bad things and bad thoughts. Maybe it's just me, but I get a slight feel of insanity here? Don't mind me though - I like insanity x]

I also have to mention that I love the we are dead men thingy - sorry, lost the word. The repetition is lovely (: It doesn't come off as stupid or anything.

Those are my favorites lines out the whole thing, but in all honesty, I love everything about it. The words were absolutely glorious. I like the slight insanity of it, the imagery, the context, the vocabulary - you get the deal. You have a lovely idea here and you took it and made it blossom into something along the lines of maybe Tolstoy or Wilde. It wasn't so predictable like other stories that I've read. It was almost like a splash of cold water at every new paragraph.

You did an amazing job with this; it was truly a joy to read! <3

Oh wow. I’m not usually into layouts, but I really liked this one. Very pretty and the colors mix nicely. Also, the image you used really made me interested in reading; I wanted to find out how it fit in with the story.

The chapter title, I did think you should have added the translation somewhere – maybe in the a/n or chapter description.

I touch galaxies when I sleep. – I liked this as a starting point. I think it made a really good opening line. The terseness of it makes it seem like a simple statement when it really isn’t.

As I read on, I do like the way you start each paragraph with a short statement, like a intro to each part of the start. Again, the brevity of those sentences makes me stop short, and I think that’s a really nice effect.

I don't think one could understand until you hear it. I don't think so at least. – There’s a repetition here that seems more like a stammer than purposeful. One couldn’t understand until you heard it. I don’t think so, at least.…

There are whispers on the pages of my book… – This entire paragraph, I think was the most effective and well-written of the piece. I think that here you were really able to clearly reflect the state of mind of the character. That sort of rambling consciousness was really well relayed, the way her mind moved from one thing to another.

Continuing on, I think the story gets progressively better. When you move away from the more extravagant and frilly descriptions and metaphors, I think your work stands out more and becomes stronger for that. There it’s standing on its own for its ideas and for what you’re really saying (for the content) rather than just relying so heavily on pretty wording that will “awe” the readers.

a foul swoop – did you mean foul swoop or fell swoop (which is the idiom)?

"Yes." I can barely choke it out and I sound dead when I do. We are all dead. So that makes sense to me. To others it doesn't but who cares about them, anyway? – This seemed forced to me, the rambling. Too much like you’re trying to bang the idea (that the main character thinks differently or is possibly insane) into the readers head, rather than just letting them figure it out as we move along in the story. I think that her “normal” thought process speaks for itself, so you don’t have to actually remind us that she’s different.

I found the bickering between the two voices to be too much. It’s just a portrayal of that idea I’ve seen too often with the whole voices in your head arguing in a way that’s so like a bickering couple. I think if it a bit more subtle, a little softer, it may have been more effect. More persuasive than forceful.

Okay, honestly, I didn’t like it. I think it’s just…over-metaphoric and it just seems over the top. It’s just not the style of literature I enjoy reading and it comes off a bit pretentious, as though you stuffed a lot of what was supposed to be “symbolism” in there just for the sake of being deep. But maybe that’s just your writing style. I haven’t read any of your other work, so I wouldn’t know. I think that if this is a one-shot though, then I can see why some people may enjoy it; I think it would be too much for a chaptered story.

Sometimes your use of words seems awkward and unnatural. It makes me feel like you used a thesaurus to simply swap out words, rather than use the vocabulary you’ve got and try to improve on that. Like here, for example: I taste it but the saline taste is absent. By “saline taste” I imagine you mean salty? I think simply going with that, simply using the word “salty” amidst all your other ‘big words’ would have added some variety to your vocab as well make the sentence flow better.

Overall I think you have a very interesting idea, and I think that you do get it across somewhat well, but at times your use of description and vocabulary is more distracting and off-putting than an effective.

I loved the summary a lot. I also like the way you have some of it in a different language. The picture is quite good too, I'm assuming it's not yours though. The title is nice, it's a change from most peoples titles.

And I'm blue, God when I think about it, it makes me melancholic. I think there should be a full stop after the word blue. I think it makes more sense.

I lie awake in the heat of the night, surrounded by a cocoon of soothing music and the fog created by the medical onslaught required to cure this melancholic from bad things and bad thoughts. This sentence is a bit long. You could shorten it by putting a full stop after the word music and starting a new sentence with 'the' rather then 'and' becuase that's bad grammar and only ever to be used in emergencies, or so I was told by my English teacher.

I taste it but the saline taste is absent. Like it's water or phlegm or some other bodily fluid snailing down my face. It would make more sense if there was a comma after absent or you could say, "Like, it's either water or phlegm or some other bodily fluid snailing down my face."

However. I don't get how this is a paragraph on it's own. It should either be tied in with the previous or following sentence.

It's not pencil: I checked and you couldn't erase the words. Instead of the dot thing (I can't remember the name) it should be a semi colon.

We are dead men.

We are all dead.

We're dead.

We're all dead men.

No one is alive. I quite like this bit. It's intriguing.

It reminds them of old school desks and rulers slammed against wrists and ink and condensation and Spam fritters and hobnail boots and a million other moderate-to-miserable remembrances Instead of all the ands, put commas to tie it all together.

To others it doesn't but who cares about them, anyway? There is no need for a comma there.

buzzing honey in my ears, sticky words like honey bees crawling in my ears,Honey mentioned twice in one sentence doesn't really work. You should have said, "buzzing honey in my ears, sticky words like bees crawling in my ears," You would already know the sticky bit is because of the honey so no need to say honey bees.

Chug chug chug along, mowing down the suicidal pleas of the outside world. Should be commas after each chug, except the last one.

I'm no psychologist. I don't know if this is bad grammar but I think it sounds bad. I am no, sounds weird. Maybe say, "I'm not a psychologist."

In the following paragraph you said the word man too much, try to change it around a little.

And that's when they disappeared. I could still hear them bicker bicker bicker in my ears, buzzing in the honey. But everyone was looking at me. It was my scream that made them fade away. It should have commas after each bicker except the last.

Overall, I loved this story so much. It was so thrilling and different. It was amazing. So mysterious. I loved it. Keep up the good writing. :-)

I adore the title. It's so different, and it leaves an air of...mystery.
I wasn't really expecting what the story brought.
It was truly unique, gripping and masterful.

Wow, this is brilliant.
I was truly gripped - the way this was written was brilliant, I felt as if the whole piece was directed to me on purpose, and it really made me think.
This piece was so... weird? Mysterious. I can't think of the word to describe it, but trust me it's the positive sense.
This piece is so unique... just wow.

Your summary is very interesting and from the title, a Nursery Rhyme came to mind. But when I actually saw the picture and background image, a Native American aspect came to play, I thought about those little stories our teachers used to read to us about how the moon and stars were created or why clouds feel lonely, little stories like that. The foreign writing was lovely too, even though I had no idea what the origins of it was from.

They say I'm delusional. They've never been stared at by a car. I had t tell them about what happened in the library.

In this line, you forgot the o in the word to. But so far, I have no idea what’s going on with the main character in the story. The setting is difficult to comprehend, but you capture the fact that this character is different from the rest and how isolated she feels around her friends.

There are whispers on the pages of my book. Whispers from Time itself. It's written in a soft, gray ink. It's not pencil: I checked and you couldn't erase the words.

I loved this sentence because a lot of Native tribes tell stories that are mainly said orally. And I liked how this story is written in ink, but is always changing, like something’s in life are doing, it just shows that nothing is written in stone and things are always changing.

So I trust Time over Sophronius. The words themselves scare me: why are they directed to me? The book is not read by many other people; the fourteen lines are either too complicated or too twee for this place./

I really like your main character. I love the narration, but sometimes you have awkward wording that makes it hard for me to understand what’s going on.

"Don't you understand them>?" I could tell she was trying to pull that trick that psychologists pull when they want to know something, even when they know you don't actually know.”

I noticed you have an error is the quotation, but so far, I realized that now the main character is named Alice, and Alice, to me seems like a daydreamer and is sometimes confused with reality and fantasy. I think the biggest thing that bothered me was the writing style, I know I said I like the narration of Alice, but while reading, the style is sometimes isn’t working. It doesn’t flow smoothly I think it’s just me, but I don’t like stories written in second person with present tense.

But, I must say, I adore who you incorporated classic literature in this, like Dante’s work. "The world is a lie. This is the afterlife, Limbo, Purgatory, Hell, Heaven, Valhalla..."

Kissing oblivion, feeling its cold edges pressed against my body, that overwhelming darkness leering when I sleep or lie, like right now. And I’m in two minds.

That is my favorite line in the entire story. Overall, I thought this story was such a difficult read, and hard to understand. I felt there was a lot to take in at one time and wasn’t clearly stated right. Your character Alice was my favorite and I loved how she thought about dreamed, but this story is not something I would read for fun, it wasn’t my cup of tea and it wasn’t exactly what I expected from the summary.