A Ballad of Lavender, SS, 3600 words (version 2)

ElJeffe

I posted this a little while back and decided afterward there were bits of it I was very dissatisfied with. Let us pretend that version didn't exist. This is a new version! It's a bit Alice In Wonderland-y because I wrote it shortly after I watched Alice In Wonderland.

Anyway.

<trimmed cuz I be submittin>

tapeslinger

I really like this and don't have a lot of advice except perhaps to try to condense it a little?

Also-- I like the callback to repetition in the ending, but I feel like his dad having already picked up the food reads a little weird? I dunno, my parents I think it would be better if it's maybe a little more "active," like maybe something like this:

Spoiler:

Maybe Lucas says something like, "It's Thursday again, Dad. We aren't going to have tacos AGAIN, are we?" and the conversation starts from there?

ElJeffe

Yeah, the ending is the one thing I keep coming back to, unsatisfied. Maybe I should use something other than dinner to establish that things have changed.

Quoth

I actually thought that was a good bookend. But maybe they want to cook something instead of going out? And there could be something else that gets mentioned, about school maybe, I don't know. But ending on dinner works for me, even if it could be tweaked slightly.

I agree about trimming and condensing. Overall, the dreamlike quality works and the vague creepiness is enough but not too much.

ElJeffe

I am going back and reading this for places to trim (and finding several) and there are so many typos. So goddamn many. Like, to the point where I am embarrassed.

tapeslinger

sad truth: I do at least half of my foruming from my phone, which has a screen of about three inches by about two inches

the odds are, if I actually notice you have typos, you have a LOT of typos (meaning, don't be embarrassed, Jeffe, because I 100% did not notice.)

Quoth

I noticed but I trusted Jeffe to find and fix them himself because he's not a noob.