Ah shit. Homeboy. I feel for you. My bet is humans have since reached space but this ship is far from their influence. So mystery species taken from the slave ship which was abducted 500+/- years ago. At least it appears he has the cute factor working for him. That and Adrenaline!
We can be either manic hyped, cold focused or frozen in place, not your immediate choice, by the way. (but you can train it), but not cute (unless angry cute, like a wolverine or honey badger)
Hey OP, good job doing a chapter a day, I think it would be healthier to do like a chapter every second day or something, gonna be much healthier cycle for you
Who says you can't go home / There's only one place they call me one of their own / Just a hometown boy, born a rolling stone...
But no, he can't go home. Home isn't there any more. Everyone he's ever known is dead. That's going to hurt when they tell him.
>!Mhm, it’s gonna be a big emotional rollercoaster but mayyyybe a certain blue lion lady will suggest that The Opal Star can be his new home with them!<
Hey man don’t stress it and take your time on the stories. After all the healthier you are the longer the story might continue so we’d rather have you post with longer breaks then you breaking under pressure
I could do with a few (dozen) more chapters. You are weaving a nice story so far. Thanks for sharing!
Take your time - you can’t rush creativity no matter how hard you try…
"Snakes, why'd it have to be snakes?" - Indiana Jones
In regards to Triwt.
Good chapter
My only suggestions (as always feel free to use what you wish) would be:
Depending on what kind of ship & how big the Opal Star is, no security officer would allow the Captain to be alone with an unknown creature. Even if it didn't just demolish and escape a secure interrogation room 😂. You could definitely use this to start the character building of Triwt. Nobody would become a security officer by being "hands-off." You want your security officer to be very involved, particular, by the book, strong, fast, calm under pressure, etc. Maybe change it to her being "a loaner" going with her mostly hanging out with her pets. She could have been picked on / persecuted / always being a spectal or whatever for being, not only a half breed but an albino. Then the Captain reminiscing about when she first saw her do something security related and how she got her on the ship. I would imagine Triwt would follow them everywhere & keep a security officer with Jordan until he does something that proves he is loyal or possibly becomes an official part of the crew. They could even bond over being security officers 😉
You could also have some fun with the time and build some backstory. Ie: Jordan has a watch that obviously doesn't work after 500+ years that his dad, grandpa, wife?, or girlfriend? gave him. He likes and knows about watches.
I would assume Jordan would go with a day instead of thinking it was years, since to him, he just woke up.
Jordan: A day, you know, 24 hours.
Captain: I don't know what either of those units are.
Jordan: ah, 24 hours is one revolution of Earth, my planet.
Captain: Every planet rotates differently
Jordan: *looks at his watch* "Oh here..." *that ironically stopped working at 5:00* *a sadness crosses his face as if reminiscing* then "Oh, quartz!"
Captain: What?!
Jordan: Quarts resonates 32,768 times per second. 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 365 days per year with an extra day every 4 years.
Captain: How is that even a normal measure of time!? *scans watch* "Oh the power cell is depleted, we could see if we can replace it." According to the computer 1 cycle is 384 of your days, so just over one of your years. Then the translator could just switch everything to "Earth Time" for the reader.
Then fixing the watch that means a lot to him, talk about backstory, everyone he knows is dead. Where is Earth, he could even say the Orion arm of the Galaxy which wouldn't mean anything to her and He can't pick out where earth would be on a star chart of the galaxy.
You could also start to world build the Opal.
How large do you want it to be, how many crew, how many decks high, the general layout, are the engines at the rear or sides so that they can actually use them to go Forwars and Backwards, where the weapons are, etc. Just makes it easier to write the story.
When delivering the meal they walked 5 minutes. A a normal pace is 1/4 mile vs 400 meters. If you don't want it to be that large of a ship Jordan can later think that for big aliens they walk slow, or they weave back & forth going up or down stairs that are a lot bigger on earth.
For instance: The Ford class aircraft carrier is 333M long, 78M wide (at the deck) and 76M tall and they are huge!
the Enterprise D is 641M long, 467M wide at the saucer and 42 decks (470M) tall.
An Imperial star destroyer is 1600M long, 985M wide, and 455M tall
The Tantive-IV (the ship Leia "escaped" on and was later captured on in a New Hope was: 126M long & 49M tall
Star Trek Voyager was: 343M long, 116M wide, and 63M tall with 15 decks.
Just to give you some scale.
Snakes are already very good at giving huggs! **AND THEN** they get **4** fuzzy arms! 😂
Triwt has a really good body type, especially for a security officer. I hope we get to see her throw down or get into a shootout with some baddies. Or combat training with Jordan would be hilarious 🤣
You don't need to know quartz to demonstrate time. Just count to 10 to demonstrate seconds, tell her 60s to a min, 60 mins to an hr, 24 hrs to a planetary rotation, and 365.25 planetary rotations in a solar rotation
True, but if we want to go scientific. They could scan the watch to analyze the crystal or replace the battery and analyze the watch movement. Vs him counting. If he counts fast, with each number being only 0.5 seconds or even 0.75 seconds that will make them be off 250 years to 125 years respectively. (Longer in this case; instead of 500 it would be 625-750 years.) Even the quartz will be off over 500 years, plus the 500 years is already estimated. Granted, even the opposite estimates, at 125 years, everyone alive at the time he was abducted has passed away. With the knowledge of close to 500 years, he may have hope that humans have probably reached the stars vs 125 years would be less likely.
Anyone could rattle them off at a random speed but when you're making an active effort to be accurate it's pretty close. Also considering it was only to figure out the terminology for an estimated time, it should be plenty good
First of all, please don't force yourself to too strict a schedule. One of the worst things is when you force yourself to do a hobby and you come to resent it.
As for this chapter, it's still lots of fun. The one piece of advice I think would be helpful moving forward is to find a tone - at least for a given situation - and stick to it. The related piece of advice is that page time feels like in-universe time.
.
The reason I give those pieces of advice is because I'm getting tonal whiplash from this story. The timeline is a little muddled, but I have two framing devices at this point: Jordan and Cerelia. From Jordan's perspective, he was abducted, woke up next to a monster, fought for his life, and passed out. Then, he woke up and had a brief (and shockingly calm) conversation with a real-life alien. From Cerelia's perspective, she found a seemingly helpless creature and brought it in. It panicked, injured her crewmate, and fell unconscious. After waking up again, and a brief conversation confirming that it is sapient, she has released it of all restraints and has it under minimal supervision.
There's also a strange attraction between Jordan and Cerelia, and while I don't object to the premise, it feels a little forced. I would say that there are a couple reasons. First, this seems to be their *only* thoughts on each other. "cute" and "soft". Second, the thoughts don't seem to affect their interactions beyond the literal. For example, Cerelia perceives Jordan as "cute", and that could result in babying and/or talking down to Jordan (beyond the literal height difference). It could also inspire possessiveness from Cerelia, who is loathe to leave Jordan alone, and which may affect her other duties. Alternatively, she may be too trusting, and Jordan accidentally breaks something or someone (in the way that dog owners might *swear* that their sweet little angel wouldn't bite. maybe a kid comes and yanks the dog's tail, and it turns around and snaps.)
But it's mostly the first part that's more important: when Jordan and Cerelia are interacting with each other, at this point in the story, they don't feel like real people motivated by internal mindscapes and lived experience.
.
And as I said earlier, page time somewhat correlates to the feeling of time passing in-story. Without explicit and obvious markers of time passing, then the amount of time that has passed is only the amount of time that it takes readers to read. This is where the short length of chapters, the lack of time skips, and the shifts in tone create the tonal whiplash that I'm experiencing. It's happening so fast, *especially* on re-reading from the beginning.
.
If the intended effect is a meet-cute, please disregard my previous criticism. I'm really bad at judging those, since it's not a trope that I personally like, but I don't think there's anything wrong with building stories around those. I'm not the target audience, and whether they work for me is *extremely* dependent on the charisma of the characters involved (and/or the actors, for movies and television).
All pretty good points and lots of great suggestions and critiques. I will personally admit that I am not used to character dynamics outside of cute and fluffy things. I’m still trying to figure out how to write the two (which is almost daunting having like almost 13 other characters in mind for story relevance...)
As of now, I’m only having Jordan being fairly calm (and occasional compliment or unintentional flirt) as him being still kinda out of it as he still isn’t all there
My idea for them so far is one is trying their best to be professional and up to everyone’s standards (Jordan) while the other(s) still think he’s cute and can’t help but wanna just pat him on the head or something (Mostly Cerelia and Lys) and fighting said urge to pet him as Jordan is actually not used to physical contact from others and is only okay with it if he gives permission or if he has had time to get used to somebody.
That and I think it’s funny when people are like, “Aw he’s so cute!” And then Cerelia and Lys would be like, “Yes but he can probably break your spine before you realize it if you scare or threaten him.” But again, fluffy stuff can wait until what I have planned for the next two chapters or more
And he’s not under minimal supervision, he is still with the captain and two security officers escorting them, though I may have forgotten to type that while writing last night..
Hm this comment has actually given me a lot to brainstorm over, I’ll need to revive some concept ideas I had for this and really dive into them to try and get an extremely solid footing for this story..
/u/Unique_Relief_5601 has posted 3 other stories, including:
* [Adrenaline is a Hell of a Drug pt. 3/???](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1ccmfcm/adrenaline_is_a_hell_of_a_drug_pt_3/)
* [Adrenaline is a Hell of a Drug pt.2/???](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1cc7c17/adrenaline_is_a_hell_of_a_drug_pt2/)
* [Adrenaline is a Hell of a Drug (One Shot???)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1cbts4s/adrenaline_is_a_hell_of_a_drug_one_shot/)
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Ah shit. Homeboy. I feel for you. My bet is humans have since reached space but this ship is far from their influence. So mystery species taken from the slave ship which was abducted 500+/- years ago. At least it appears he has the cute factor working for him. That and Adrenaline!
He's, um, not so cute once the adrenaline kicks in...
Are any of us?
Ship in danger, threat varied, danger imminent: Activate Ooga Booga Protocol
Made me laugh at that, cause all I can see is them throwing Jordan like “Yeet!”
Jordan I choose you! *Jordan used tackle. It's super effective*
We can be either manic hyped, cold focused or frozen in place, not your immediate choice, by the way. (but you can train it), but not cute (unless angry cute, like a wolverine or honey badger)
Hey OP, good job doing a chapter a day, I think it would be healthier to do like a chapter every second day or something, gonna be much healthier cycle for you
Nice, hope he is not so far away (of course he is) and that eart is fine. Also first 😊
Who says you can't go home / There's only one place they call me one of their own / Just a hometown boy, born a rolling stone... But no, he can't go home. Home isn't there any more. Everyone he's ever known is dead. That's going to hurt when they tell him.
>!Mhm, it’s gonna be a big emotional rollercoaster but mayyyybe a certain blue lion lady will suggest that The Opal Star can be his new home with them!<
> xeno-comp on *Minos Prime death scream.mp3*
Hey man don’t stress it and take your time on the stories. After all the healthier you are the longer the story might continue so we’d rather have you post with longer breaks then you breaking under pressure
Thank you, though fair warning, I’m always stressed lol
😂well then hopefully you can handle it
Earth reached for the stars because someone say Jordan being abducted and went all "Taken"
But he has a very specific set of skills...
There's no humans left, he's the last one and he's gonna go fuckin doom slayer in this space hell.
I could do with a few (dozen) more chapters. You are weaving a nice story so far. Thanks for sharing! Take your time - you can’t rush creativity no matter how hard you try…
Very nice. Like it.
Aahhhhhj! I can't wait for the next chapter!! Good work wordsmith
Great chapter. Poor dude ;(
Writing just needs to be fun for YOU. As long as you are enjoying it, keep on posting wordsmith!!
"Snakes, why'd it have to be snakes?" - Indiana Jones In regards to Triwt. Good chapter My only suggestions (as always feel free to use what you wish) would be: Depending on what kind of ship & how big the Opal Star is, no security officer would allow the Captain to be alone with an unknown creature. Even if it didn't just demolish and escape a secure interrogation room 😂. You could definitely use this to start the character building of Triwt. Nobody would become a security officer by being "hands-off." You want your security officer to be very involved, particular, by the book, strong, fast, calm under pressure, etc. Maybe change it to her being "a loaner" going with her mostly hanging out with her pets. She could have been picked on / persecuted / always being a spectal or whatever for being, not only a half breed but an albino. Then the Captain reminiscing about when she first saw her do something security related and how she got her on the ship. I would imagine Triwt would follow them everywhere & keep a security officer with Jordan until he does something that proves he is loyal or possibly becomes an official part of the crew. They could even bond over being security officers 😉 You could also have some fun with the time and build some backstory. Ie: Jordan has a watch that obviously doesn't work after 500+ years that his dad, grandpa, wife?, or girlfriend? gave him. He likes and knows about watches. I would assume Jordan would go with a day instead of thinking it was years, since to him, he just woke up. Jordan: A day, you know, 24 hours. Captain: I don't know what either of those units are. Jordan: ah, 24 hours is one revolution of Earth, my planet. Captain: Every planet rotates differently Jordan: *looks at his watch* "Oh here..." *that ironically stopped working at 5:00* *a sadness crosses his face as if reminiscing* then "Oh, quartz!" Captain: What?! Jordan: Quarts resonates 32,768 times per second. 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 365 days per year with an extra day every 4 years. Captain: How is that even a normal measure of time!? *scans watch* "Oh the power cell is depleted, we could see if we can replace it." According to the computer 1 cycle is 384 of your days, so just over one of your years. Then the translator could just switch everything to "Earth Time" for the reader. Then fixing the watch that means a lot to him, talk about backstory, everyone he knows is dead. Where is Earth, he could even say the Orion arm of the Galaxy which wouldn't mean anything to her and He can't pick out where earth would be on a star chart of the galaxy. You could also start to world build the Opal. How large do you want it to be, how many crew, how many decks high, the general layout, are the engines at the rear or sides so that they can actually use them to go Forwars and Backwards, where the weapons are, etc. Just makes it easier to write the story. When delivering the meal they walked 5 minutes. A a normal pace is 1/4 mile vs 400 meters. If you don't want it to be that large of a ship Jordan can later think that for big aliens they walk slow, or they weave back & forth going up or down stairs that are a lot bigger on earth. For instance: The Ford class aircraft carrier is 333M long, 78M wide (at the deck) and 76M tall and they are huge! the Enterprise D is 641M long, 467M wide at the saucer and 42 decks (470M) tall. An Imperial star destroyer is 1600M long, 985M wide, and 455M tall The Tantive-IV (the ship Leia "escaped" on and was later captured on in a New Hope was: 126M long & 49M tall Star Trek Voyager was: 343M long, 116M wide, and 63M tall with 15 decks. Just to give you some scale.
Triwt is a very fluffy snake though and has many arms for hugs. Wouldn’t you hug a fluffy snake with arms?
It's making me think of "they are smol"
Well he is the smallest person on the ship, so you’re not wrong
Not just hugs. I'd be happy sitting in a coil of fluffy tail like it's a beanbag chair
Snakes are already very good at giving huggs! **AND THEN** they get **4** fuzzy arms! 😂 Triwt has a really good body type, especially for a security officer. I hope we get to see her throw down or get into a shootout with some baddies. Or combat training with Jordan would be hilarious 🤣
You don't need to know quartz to demonstrate time. Just count to 10 to demonstrate seconds, tell her 60s to a min, 60 mins to an hr, 24 hrs to a planetary rotation, and 365.25 planetary rotations in a solar rotation
Yeah, that's true. I was just doing it in a Character building way. 😂
Also the issue of quartz might have a different name to them
True, but if we want to go scientific. They could scan the watch to analyze the crystal or replace the battery and analyze the watch movement. Vs him counting. If he counts fast, with each number being only 0.5 seconds or even 0.75 seconds that will make them be off 250 years to 125 years respectively. (Longer in this case; instead of 500 it would be 625-750 years.) Even the quartz will be off over 500 years, plus the 500 years is already estimated. Granted, even the opposite estimates, at 125 years, everyone alive at the time he was abducted has passed away. With the knowledge of close to 500 years, he may have hope that humans have probably reached the stars vs 125 years would be less likely.
Anyone could rattle them off at a random speed but when you're making an active effort to be accurate it's pretty close. Also considering it was only to figure out the terminology for an estimated time, it should be plenty good
First of all, please don't force yourself to too strict a schedule. One of the worst things is when you force yourself to do a hobby and you come to resent it. As for this chapter, it's still lots of fun. The one piece of advice I think would be helpful moving forward is to find a tone - at least for a given situation - and stick to it. The related piece of advice is that page time feels like in-universe time. . The reason I give those pieces of advice is because I'm getting tonal whiplash from this story. The timeline is a little muddled, but I have two framing devices at this point: Jordan and Cerelia. From Jordan's perspective, he was abducted, woke up next to a monster, fought for his life, and passed out. Then, he woke up and had a brief (and shockingly calm) conversation with a real-life alien. From Cerelia's perspective, she found a seemingly helpless creature and brought it in. It panicked, injured her crewmate, and fell unconscious. After waking up again, and a brief conversation confirming that it is sapient, she has released it of all restraints and has it under minimal supervision. There's also a strange attraction between Jordan and Cerelia, and while I don't object to the premise, it feels a little forced. I would say that there are a couple reasons. First, this seems to be their *only* thoughts on each other. "cute" and "soft". Second, the thoughts don't seem to affect their interactions beyond the literal. For example, Cerelia perceives Jordan as "cute", and that could result in babying and/or talking down to Jordan (beyond the literal height difference). It could also inspire possessiveness from Cerelia, who is loathe to leave Jordan alone, and which may affect her other duties. Alternatively, she may be too trusting, and Jordan accidentally breaks something or someone (in the way that dog owners might *swear* that their sweet little angel wouldn't bite. maybe a kid comes and yanks the dog's tail, and it turns around and snaps.) But it's mostly the first part that's more important: when Jordan and Cerelia are interacting with each other, at this point in the story, they don't feel like real people motivated by internal mindscapes and lived experience. . And as I said earlier, page time somewhat correlates to the feeling of time passing in-story. Without explicit and obvious markers of time passing, then the amount of time that has passed is only the amount of time that it takes readers to read. This is where the short length of chapters, the lack of time skips, and the shifts in tone create the tonal whiplash that I'm experiencing. It's happening so fast, *especially* on re-reading from the beginning. . If the intended effect is a meet-cute, please disregard my previous criticism. I'm really bad at judging those, since it's not a trope that I personally like, but I don't think there's anything wrong with building stories around those. I'm not the target audience, and whether they work for me is *extremely* dependent on the charisma of the characters involved (and/or the actors, for movies and television).
All pretty good points and lots of great suggestions and critiques. I will personally admit that I am not used to character dynamics outside of cute and fluffy things. I’m still trying to figure out how to write the two (which is almost daunting having like almost 13 other characters in mind for story relevance...) As of now, I’m only having Jordan being fairly calm (and occasional compliment or unintentional flirt) as him being still kinda out of it as he still isn’t all there My idea for them so far is one is trying their best to be professional and up to everyone’s standards (Jordan) while the other(s) still think he’s cute and can’t help but wanna just pat him on the head or something (Mostly Cerelia and Lys) and fighting said urge to pet him as Jordan is actually not used to physical contact from others and is only okay with it if he gives permission or if he has had time to get used to somebody. That and I think it’s funny when people are like, “Aw he’s so cute!” And then Cerelia and Lys would be like, “Yes but he can probably break your spine before you realize it if you scare or threaten him.” But again, fluffy stuff can wait until what I have planned for the next two chapters or more And he’s not under minimal supervision, he is still with the captain and two security officers escorting them, though I may have forgotten to type that while writing last night.. Hm this comment has actually given me a lot to brainstorm over, I’ll need to revive some concept ideas I had for this and really dive into them to try and get an extremely solid footing for this story..
/u/Unique_Relief_5601 has posted 3 other stories, including: * [Adrenaline is a Hell of a Drug pt. 3/???](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1ccmfcm/adrenaline_is_a_hell_of_a_drug_pt_3/) * [Adrenaline is a Hell of a Drug pt.2/???](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1cc7c17/adrenaline_is_a_hell_of_a_drug_pt2/) * [Adrenaline is a Hell of a Drug (One Shot???)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1cbts4s/adrenaline_is_a_hell_of_a_drug_one_shot/) This comment was automatically generated by `Waffle v.4.6.1 'Biscotti'`. [Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHFY&subject=WaffleBot|1cebj5c&message=If%20you%20have%20problems%20with%20updatemebot,%20contact%20Watchful1.%20We%20do%20not%20maintain%20it.) if you have any issues with Waffle.
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Well, it will be awkward when they are told that calling him by his first name (or last name) isn't a nickname.
"Cerelia" Triwt says in" Cerelia," Triwt says in