Hopefully Tao will figure out how to deal with the little kiddies, and maybe even why they're acting so differently from their normal selves, and I have the feeling that he'll figure out how to deal with them before I do. I might need to do a little editing of the story to make sure their actions more clearly reflect the traits outlined here, because honestly, they weren't fully fleshed out until now.

I couldn't shake the remarks about the lack of dimension in my characters (as a result of essentially having 10 main characters) given on a review of another OT10 story I wrote, and this is my only other story that features the entirety of OT10 as main characters, so I want to do better this time. I absolutely love getting comments about how cute the characters are, and in addition to that, I want this to be a story that doesn't solely rely on "OMG MY BIAS IS SO KAWAII I COULD JUST EAT HIM!" and a good word from an excellent writer to be entertaining. I want to have better depth of character, instead of them just being cute and falling into one of four character types (troublemaker, good, neutral/switch, too-young-to-really-do-anything-but-be-chubby-and-adorable.) There are nine of them. I want nine characters whose names are completely un-intertangeable, and I don't have that now. (That's something I thought up myself, by the way: If you can switch the names on two of your characters and it doesn't affect the flow of the story at all, those characters are too similar, and the beagles fail this especially hard.)

Another thing I would like to do better (which is something one of my favorite stories on the site, xXthunderloverXx, is (CN: Wirty dord) freaking brilliant at,) is use words more suited to the characters even when they're the ones being referred to, not just when they're talking, i.e., using fewer big words when I'm referring to things the children are seeing/doing. The children aren't going to see a 'torrential downpour,' they're going to see 'bazillions of big, fat raindrops,' or something right? Sorry, grad student, can't turn off the vocabulary so easily, but I want to try. I'll be working on that when I get a chance, but for now, I just want to write~!

[The rest of this is more about my plans overall for my time on AFF, so if you want to head out, now is a good time.]

Part of my worry is because this story sits on the chopping block, awaiting judgement from eleutheromaniac at Kodawari Reviews. Kodawari, as they will tell you, is a very honest review shop. Brutally so. And its owner, eleutheromaniac, is by my judgement, the most wonderfully brutal of them all. She just gave an 18% score to a fic that was given a 78% at a different shop (I know opinions differ, but this is not a difference of opinion, this shop is just that much more serious.) If you want to know where your story is lacking, she--or anyone else at her shop, but especially her--is your girl. I requested this story to be reviewed specifically because while I don't question Korekrypta's opinion of my story (I mean, it's like, an opinion,) I feel that in many ways that she held it in higher regard than I did, and I know eleuthero, who reviewed the other OT10 fic and gave it a 25%, will point out exactly from where my feelings of being unworthy of Korekrypta's 75% review are stemming. I do feel that this story, while it doesn't suit my writing style as much, and I didn't work as hard on it as Psycho (the story that got the 25%,) is better.

That's the last thing I want to discuss: The potential results. It's possible that this story does get a lower or similar score to Psycho; my writing style hasn't changed  that much, and she has made it clear that she does not like it. If that happens, I don't know. I have been thinking about taking a hiatus from the site to spend some more time reading (I used to be a pretty good fanfic writer when I always had a novel in my hand; now, I almost never read for fun and not only have my writing skills deteriorated, my vocabulary and mental faculties feel like they have, too.) I hate leaving on a hiatus with unfinished stories, and this is one of the ones I would want to finish before I left, but if the score is worse for this story, its a huge red flag pertaining to with the way I write. I know some of you might think I shouldn't base the worth of my fiction on one reviewer, and you're right. As I said before, eleuthero is "wonderfully brutal," and I think that Kodawari is one of the best shops on the site. I would much rather have my work critiqued without offering alternative solutions than have someone who says "I liked it well enough ^^": Being told where to start without many tips on how to do so is better than being mostly complimented, and not being told at all what was wrong.

If their review is bad, I will probably try to spruce up the story with the aforementioned changes, seek out a second good shop, and request with them. If they also dislike it, I'll likely be putting all my stories on hiatus and leaving the site until I can regain some of my old writing abilities through reading.

I'm amazed if you actually read this, but thanks!

Kodawari Reviews: http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/984068/
"The Boy Wore Black" a.k.a. my favorite AU HunHan story on the site by xXthunderloverXx (M rated for adult themes:) http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/675183/
Korekrypta's stories (I really need to read some of these:) https://www.asianfanfics.com/profile/view_author_stories/654908/L